One Good Knight

by Mercedes Lackey

  Solon bowed. “I will see to it, Majesty.”

  It was lottery day.

  Andie stood beside the Queen’s throne, overlooking the Forum of the Concord, which was where the lottery took place. Between the benches for the Members, and the galleries for observers, there was plenty of 134

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  room for anyone who wanted to be here. Most people did; she supposed it was easier to be here and hear the bad news at once, than be waiting tensely at home, never knowing if the next set of footsteps was that of the priest come to take your daughter away.

  Once again, she wore black. The Queen, however, did not. She wore gray with a hint of rose-pink in it.

  Not exactly frivolous, but not full mourning, either.

  There was an interminable wait while the old man from the Concord who was next to choose the sacrifice hobbled to the cauldron that held all the names of the women and girls that met the criteria—or at least, all of them that could be identified. There were probably some hiding in the mountains, and maybe more disguising themselves as boys. But there were more than enough to fill the cauldron, and there was always the pressure of the neighbors whose girls’

  names were in the lottery, to keep too many young women from escaping their duty.

  Finally the old man stood beside the huge iron vessel, bit his lip and plunged his arm in as deep as it would go. The crowd went as still as only a group of people, all holding their breath, could be. Then he held out the bit of paper to the presiding priest without glancing at it himself. He looked as if he was going to weep, as if he felt personally responsible for what was about to befall some poor, unknown—

  “The name—” the priest’s voice sounded unnaturally shrill “—the name is—Princess Andromeda, daughter of Queen Cassiopeia.”

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  For one, incredibly strange moment, Andie literally could not understand what he had said. Princess Andromeda—who is that?

  And then every head in the Forum turned toward her and every eye in the place was fixed on her, and her mind snapped into understanding, and from understanding, into horror.

  And she did something she had never done in her life.

  She fainted.

  “Are you sure you won’t have the potion, Princess?” the priest pleaded. Andie shook her head, beginning to be angry with him. As a concession to her rank and birth, she had been allowed to stay in her own rooms in the Palace, but she had had to send most of her attendants away because they just wouldn’t stop weeping and falling into hysterics.

  “I am sure,” she said, with the peculiar cold calm that had settled over her once she had been revived. “And I would appreciate it if you would please go away.”

  The importunate priest finally did take himself off; she heard the click of the lock as he left. As if that would stop her if she intended to run away…

  That left her alone with Iris, who was as white as snow on the mountains, but looked just as determined as Andie felt. “You aren’t going through with this, are you?” the handmaiden asked.

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  she was determined. “Iris, I am not going to wait tamely for that thing to eat me up. If there’s a way I can kill it, or at least get away from it, you and I have to figure it out!”

  Iris hesitated. “But—if you escape from it, won’t it be angry? Won’t it come after the town again, or even the Palace?”

  She grimaced. “They won’t know I got away, and if it’s angry and starts attacking things again, I bet they’ll find a way to get a Champion here quickly!”

  A little more color crept into Iris’s face. After all, she was the one who had brought Andie the rumor that no one was really making a great effort to find a Champion as long as it wasn’t costing anyone more than the lives of a few worthless girls.

  She was also the one who had brought Andie the rumor that it was the daughters of those who objected to one or another of the Queen’s policies that were being selected a little too often for chance. And her eyes widened.

  “You don’t think—” she began, and swallowed.

  “You don’t think that your own mother—”

  Andie felt tears stinging her eyes and angrily brushed them away. “My own mother—no. But Adviser Solon would happily sell me into slavery to a pirate if he thought it would gain him a political or trade advantage,” she said harshly. “Throwing me to the dragon to quell the rumors is exactly what he would do.”

  Iris was a smart girl. “It’s a good thing I’m not a virgin,” she murmured, as if to herself, then One Good Knight

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  focused on Andie. “And if they can diddle the results to get your name, they can easily have been doing it all along.”

  Andie nodded. “So this whole thing has been a sham, and a fraud, and I am not going to feel one bit guilty about trying to bring it crashing down. But I need your help, and somehow, before dawn, we need to figure out as many ways as we can for me to do that.”

  “I’m going to get my aunt,” Iris said instantly, then hesitated. “Do you trust Lady Thalia?”

  “I’m going to have to,” Andie said, after a moment of hesitation.

  “That’s very good, child, because otherwise I should have to force myself on you,” said Lady Thalia from the shadows of the doorway. “For instance—do you know how to pick a lock? I do.”

  Andie gaped at her.

  Thalia smiled mirthlessly. “Believe it or not, it is a skill that comes in handy for a Keeper of the Household. People are always losing keys, or locking themselves into places with the keys, and one grows tired of sending for the locksmith to do a relatively simple task one could do one’s self. I am never without at least one set of lock-picks.” She reached up into the severe knot of hair at the top of her head, and pulled out something, gazing at it meditatively.

  “Amazing, how they look so very much like hair-pins. Especially when one has little decorative knobs crafted onto the ends.”

  Andie blinked. And dared, for the first time, to hope.

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  * * *

  If she had not been so keyed up with fear, she would have been perishing to sleep. She had spent the entire night learning how to pick locks. Merrha had confirmed what she thought she had remembered; the pliant, drugged victims were tied to the stake, but the lively ones were locked in chains. So Iris had spent a goodly part of the early evening sharpening one edge of an ornate ring, so that she could use it to slice through rope. They tried it with her hands tied behind her, and she freed herself fairly quickly. Merrha had brought as much of the poison that the Guards used to kill rats in their barracks as she could lay her hands on, and Lady Thalia sewed it into the hem of the sacrificial victim’s gown that the priest had brought along with the potion. So at least, if it eats me, I might have some revenge….

  Merrha had brought a long, slim dagger that Lady Thalia sewed into the back of Andie’s chemise, down her spine. Recalling the size of the dragon, Andie tried not to think of how it would be like trying to kill someone with a needle, and instead concentrated on listening to what Merrha was telling her about the weak spots where a stab would do the most good. She’d love a sword, if only she knew how to use one. Then again, where would she hide it on her person?

  But the big hope was this: the rest of the Six were out tonight, hiding real weapons among the rocks of the sacrificial valley. And by now, she knew every One Good Knight

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  rock and landmark in that valley. If she could just get away, she’d have her hands on something useful in a very short period of time.

  “But your real hope isn’t to kill it,” Merrha said, over and over. “Your real hope is to make it more trouble than it’s worth for it to eat you. Look, I don’t know dragons, but I know lions, and lions won’t go after anything that gives them too much grief. If you can just hold it off long enough
to make it irritated, it’ll go away and find some better quarry. Which is what you want, anyway.”

  She noticed that no one had made any plans beyond that—

  Maybe because none of them really expected her to survive this. They were distracting themselves with these plans, but in the back of their minds, they really didn’t think any of them were going to work.

  Well, she did. And she knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to cut her hair, get hold of some boy’s clothing, somehow, and make her way into the mountains. They always loaded the victims down with gold jewelry to appease the dragon’s other appetite, and they’d probably deck her out with even more. She could hammer off bits of it to pay for what she needed.

  I am going to survive this.

  Finally, Merrha slipped away, out the window. And as dawn began to gray the sky, the expected knock came at the door. They all started. It was loud, and rang hollowly through the rooms. It sounded—final.

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  She had long since donned her gown and Lady Thalia had put her hair up with the lock-picks. At her own insistence, Iris had added a heavy belt of gold links, a matching necklace and two bracelets. As the procession of priests came in, she was once more offered the potion, and once more, she refused it.

  The priest who seemed to be in charge noted the jewelry as he placed the flower-crown on her head, and seemed to approve of it, though he said nothing.

  Then, it was time.

  Outside, the drums began.

  Now it was her turn to make that long, lonely walk, flanked by priests on all sides—to step into the litter and take her place in the seat.

  Her mother was not in the usual position for the victim’s parents. In fact, her mother was not in the procession at all.

  Well…if her mother was not aware of what Solon had done, she would probably be prostrate with grief. And no one would blame her.

  The journey that always had seemed to take forever before, now went far too quickly. Her heart was beating so fast that she thought for certain those carrying the chair must hear it, even over the chanting of the priests. It all seemed horribly unreal, like a nightmare. Part of her was paralyzed with terror, numb—and yet, her mind was racing. It felt as if she were two different people in the same body—

  And when they reached the valley, she might just as well have drunk the potion after all, she felt so One Good Knight

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  helpless. Obediently, in a kind of fog, she let them assist her from the chair, up the path to the stake, and chain her hands to a ring at the top, above her head. She accepted the Last Rites, and watched in dazed and shaking horror as they all left her, walking out of the valley to the cadence of the muffled drums, and no one looked back.

  And only then, as the last of them vanished, did she look up, to the crag above the valley.

  Where, patient as death itself, the dragon still perched.

  Waiting. But not for long. Only until it was sure they were alone.

  The dragon fanned its wings wide against the dark gray sky, then pushed off from the cliff, spiraling down in a lazy fashion, its eyes fixed on her. It didn’t seem in any great hurry to get down to claim its meal— Well, of course not! It knows this is one meal that can’t fight back or run away!

  When she jolted out of her paralysis, her hands began writhing in the shackles over her head, trying to get to the lock-picks in her hair, and only at that moment did she realize that although she had practiced picking the locks on the shackles in this position, she had never even considered that she might not be able to reach the picks themselves.

  When she’d had her hands bound above her head, they’d been resting practically on the top of her head, not stretched far above it. She strained her fingers toward the ends fastened in her hairdo, but 142

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  no matter what she tried, she couldn’t even feel her hair, much less the picks fastening it all up. She fought her panic, and felt herself losing, as the dragon drew nearer.

  She stood on tiptoe, trying to bring the top of her head nearer her fingers. She scrabbled about with her feet for some support to raise her higher—and all the while, the dragon kept circling nearer—and lower—

  And then it landed. It regarded her thoughtfully, its head to one side, and took a slow, deliberate step toward her.

  And she couldn’t help herself. She screamed in sheer, weak-kneed, hysterical terror.

  The dragon snorted and backed up a pace. She screamed again, hopelessly, certain that it was going to flame her, and she began to thrash, all thought of trying to get to the lock-picks gone, and nothing in her but the fear and the mindless need to run, get away, somehow hide from the horrible, horrible death that was approaching her.

  And at that moment, as if this was a tale in a book—

  Something clad in black armor leapt down out of the rocks above the dragon, landing on its back. A knight! An incredibly agile knight, because he managed to keep his balance as he stood on the dragon’s shoulders, pulled a sword from a sheath at his back and swung for its neck. With a little more luck on the knight’s part, and less on the dragon’s, the contest would have been over then and there. But the dragon, really startled now, reared and bucked like a One Good Knight

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  horse and managed to toss the knight off before he could connect with that sword.

  The knight landed in a controlled tumble, rolled, and came back up on his feet. Somehow without losing the blade. He faced the dragon, standing between the monster and Andie, sword in both hands. The dragon eyed him, snorting in alarm, but before it could make up its mind what it was going to do next, the knight charged.

  Now, much though Andie wanted to watch the fighting, two things prevented her from doing so.

  The first was that within moments, as the knight continued to rush the dragon aggressively, the fight moved up the valley and out of sight, at least as far as Andie was concerned. And the second was that if she was going to watch the fight, she wanted to do so someplace other than chained to the sacrificial stake!

  After a moment of contorting her body in every direction she could, she realized that there was just enough slack in the chains that she could get herself turned around to face the stake. If she could do that—

  She gathered herself, took a deep breath, thrust herself sideways as hard as she could—and bit back a scream.

  She felt like she’d wrenched her shoulders out of their sockets, and the thin dress hadn’t protected her skin from the rough wood of the stake—it was on fire where she’d scraped it. And she was still only halfway around, one shoulder jammed into the 144

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  stake, and forced up on the tips of her toes as the chain holding the manacles twisted—

  Don’tstopdon’tstopdon’tSTOP! With a scream, she wrenched herself all the way around, now sure she’d dislocated one or both shoulders, and landed with her cheek against the stake.

  She rested for just a moment, panting, but the sounds of combat coming from up the valley reminded her that there was no telling when the dragon would win the battle and come back for her.

  If. No, when. No, if. Never mind. Concentrate!

  Still on tiptoes, she braced herself, gritted her teeth against the pain and wrapped her hands around the chains. Using the manacles, she pulled herself up off the ground as tears ran down her face.

  She wrapped both legs around the stake and hitched her way up it. Once her legs were holding most of her weight, it was easier.

  She didn’t have to go far—just enough so that she had the slack to get at the lock-picks in her hair.

  And once she had them, she could actually hitch herself up a little farther, until she could see the locks she was picking. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t climbed trees and poles like this in the not-so-dis-tant past!

  She lost one of the picks, but that was why she had several hidden in her hair. She tried very hard to ignore the sounds of battl
e as she worked; she concentrated only on the lock, and the “feel” of the pick on the inside. Right hand first—that was her domi-

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  nant hand, and if she could get it free, she could get the left off in half the time.

  Finally, with a reluctant pop, the lock yielded and the manacle fell open.

  At that moment, the knight and dragon came ramping down the hillside toward her. The knight had lost his sword. She watched in awe as the knight dodged a blow from the dragon’s fore-claw, rolled away, and came up with a boar spear in his hands.

  She blinked, wondering, for a moment, where that had come from.

  Then she realized what it was—one of the weapons her own friends had seeded around the valley. And how had the knight known it was there? He must have been here for hours. He must have watched them hiding every bit of it.

  So, not only skillful, but smart.

  As the dragon made several little wing-assisted backward leaps and the two of them tumbled out of sight again, she returned to freeing herself.

  Finally the second manacle opened. With a yell of her own, she slid down the stake, hauled her skirts up out of the way with both hands, and sprinted for the shelter of a pile of enormous boulders.

  Just as knight and dragon came tumbling back…

  and the knight was definitely losing.

  From the way he was tumbling, he had been swatted over the rocks, and he didn’t look nearly as agile now; the parts of his armor that were plate—the helmet, shoulder-protection, and knee-, elbow- and 146

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  ankle-guards—were dented and battered. And as he landed on the path, the dragon leapt over the rocks between them, did a half turn and swatted him into the air with its tail. He landed farther down the valley—and didn’t move.

  Her heart in her throat, Andie waited for the dragon to flame, to leap on the knight and tear him apart, or to spot her.

  Instead, the dragon gave a snort, shook itself all over and leapt into the air. With heavy wing-beats, it labored into the sky, got over the rim of the valley and vanished.