by R. D. Henham
The more he thought about it, the more Sandon came to the same conclusion: His mother was dead. Any dragon that might have once lived in the cave—if there had been one—was long gone, as was the gnome or whatever had built the construct. The only person he could think of who was involved in this mystery and still in the barony was his father.
As of tomorrow, however, even his father would be gone.
Swallowing hard, Sandon put down the empty glass of water and pushed up from his seat. If he wanted to stop the sacrifice, he had to get to the bottom of this mystery. He’d gone up to the cliff to find out if the gold dragon could help save his father from Malaise and Lazuli. He might not have found a real dragon, but he wasn’t going to give up on it so long as there was any chance he could help his father.
That meant he couldn’t just sit here in his room, no matter how late it was. If he knew his father, Camiel would still be awake, shuffling through papers, getting ready for tomorrow. Father was a perfectionist, and tonight would be no different. Sandon opened his bedroom door and poked his head out into the hall. Darkness. He could hear footsteps patrolling the corridor, but there was no one in sight.
Moving quickly, Sandon slipped out into the hallway. He closed the door behind him as softly as he could, wincing when the latch clicked. He could hear the guard at the end of the hall pausing by the window before he started back. As quietly as he could, Sandon hurried down the hallway toward his father’s chamber. Sandon ducked behind pillars set into the walls and jerked to a stop when he caught sight of a pale white shoulder—just a marble sculpture of some forgotten ancestor sitting on a table in the hall. Sandon breathed a sigh of relief, swearing that he could hear the pounding of his heart in the empty corridor.
At last, he reached the door to his father’s chamber. The outer door led into the study, and Sandon tested the lock. Open. He pulled the door ajar and ducked inside, grateful that he had a place to hide from the patrolling guard. The study was gray and silent, thick rugs on the floor padding Sandon’s footfalls as he crossed the room. He nearly smacked into the corner of his father’s heavy mahogany desk. He tweaked his body to the side just in time to prevent reinjuring the hip that was already bruised. Muffling a curse, Sandon crept up to the door that led into his father’s bedroom. Light peeped beneath the wood, illuminating a thin line against the floor. It looked like his father was still awake.
Sandon paused when he reached the door. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say when he opened it. A few ideas flitted through his mind, but they all seemed silly or meaningless. Saying a quiet prayer to Paladine, Sandon rubbed his sweating palms on his trousers and reached for the knob.
He pulled the door open just a crack to peer inside. The bedroom beyond was dark blue, the walls covered by paper of a royal shade, and the floor rugs so dark they seemed almost indigo. A large fireplace was the source of the light. All the candles were cold and unlit. Sandon’s father leaned against the hearth, staring into the fire with a faraway look on his features. He rolled something back and forth between his fingers, the idle gesture of distraction catching Sandon’s attention.
Before Sandon said anything, he realized that his father was not alone in the room. Captain Vilfrand stood on the far side, setting down a tray by the baron’s bed. Sandon let out a soft grunt of displeasure and pulled back, intending to close the door before the two men noticed him. I’ll come back later, he thought, when Dad is alone.
“Everything is prepared for tomorrow, Camiel,” Vilfrand said, breaking the silence. Sandon froze at the sound of his voice. “The boy will never know.”
Boy? Does he mean me?
“I wish it hadn’t come to this.”
“I know,” Vilfrand said. “But it has.”
The baron stood in silence, looking down at the vial in his hand. Sandon could see it clearly, the blue glass reflecting purple glints from the firelight. Vilfrand wasn’t looking. He didn’t see the baron staring down at the little vial. Before Vilfrand looked up from the tray he was arranging, the baron set the vial on the mantel and turned away.
“Has Torentine been back to the keep since …” The baron’s voice held a forced lightness.
“No.” Vilfrand answered curtly. “I’ve told him to stop wandering around up here. He’s stuck his nose into our business one too many times. The next time I find him in the keep unannounced and unescorted, I swear, I’ll lock him in the brig with that foul soldier and let them kill each other over scraps.” He shook his head, growling under his breath.
The baron let out a wry chuckle. “You shouldn’t worry about him so much, Vilfrand, though your loyalty is commendable.”
They were silent for a moment, until Baron Camiel noticed the food. He wrinkled his nose. “Is that stew?”
“Gallia’s finest. Made from the leftovers of yesterday’s feast.”
The baron groaned and waved his hand to ward away the steamy smell. “This is my last real dinner. For Paladine’s sake, let me have something solid. Is there anything left of the venison we hunted a few days back?”
“I think there is. Come on, we’ll go look.” Vilfrand picked up the tray again and headed for the door. The baron followed.
They were coming this way! If Vilfrand knew he was out of his room, Sandon would get it for sure—and the captain might even be so mad he’d lock the door this time. Panicked, Sandon ran to the mahogany desk and crawled under it, tucking his knees up against his chin. He reached out and pulled his dad’s chair closer, covering the opening so that he could hide in the shadow while the two men passed. He heard the bedroom door open, and light spilled into the room on the far side of the big wooden desk, followed by two sets of footfalls. Sandon held his breath, a hand clamped over his mouth, while they passed by. The far door opened, there were steps in the hallway, and then the door closed, shutting the study off from the rest of the house once more.
Sandon slumped against the wooden sides under the desk. He’d give them a few minutes to get down to the kitchen, and then sneak back to his room. What had they been talking about anyway? Guildmaster Torentine was sneaking into the keep? Why? How long had he been doing that? Vilfrand made it sound like he’d been caught multiple times—but what about all the times he hadn’t been caught?
Torentine was a guildmaster, a crafter, and a workman. He might know a few gnomes. He might even have helped with the constructs—or, if he didn’t make them, he might know who did. Torentine was looking for something here, that was for sure, or he wouldn’t keep coming back.
And what was in the vial his father was holding? A sleeping draught? He wouldn’t blame his father if he couldn’t sleep tonight. Sandon was having a hard time with that too.
He climbed out from under the desk and crept into his father’s room. The fire still crackled in the hearth, shedding a warm glow over the chamber. Sandon paused to listen, but the footsteps in the hall had faded, and the only rhythm he could hear was the pounding of his heart.
The little vial was still on the mantel. Sandon reached up and lifted it, bringing it down to read the writing on the label. In his father’s thick lettering were the words “yellow lakrak.”
Sandon almost dropped the vial.
That label had to be wrong. He tugged off the cork carefully and put the vial to his nose, smelling the bittersweet scent of the liquid inside. The familiar aroma made Sandon’s knees sag, and he shoved the cork back into the bottle with a shaking hand. Fearful of dropping the bottle, he lifted it again to the mantel and slowly drew his hand away. Horrified, Sandon backed out of the room.
He slipped into the study and opened the door to the hallway, not even checking to see if the patrolling guard was right outside the door. The corridor was empty. Sandon felt his way back to his room in the darkness. He made it back and closed the door behind him, leaning stiffly against it as it shut.
Yellow lakrak. He’d smelled the sickeningly bittersweet aroma only once before. The physician had shaken his head when he said the words, explaining that
the root was found in lands far from these. There was no way it grew in the valley, or even in Solamnia. Lakrak had to be brought here deliberately from far away. That was why everyone in the barony assumed it was brought by a traveler, one of their guests, a wanderer given succor to rest on his way home from the war. They’d never found the source of it. The physician had to identify it by studying the wine left in an abandoned glass. Yellow lakrak.
The cloying aroma clung to Sandon’s fingers and in his nose, refusing to go away. He breathed in the dust of his chamber, the faint scent of his mostly eaten meal, and the ashy smoke of his fireplace, but he couldn’t get the scent to go away. He could still remember the first time he’d smelled it—on his mother’s last breath the night she died.
he night passed like molasses pouring from a pitcher. Sandon stayed awake for it all, watching the moons’ slow, solemn progression across the second half of the sky. It took an eternity after the moons had set for the sun to rise, tickling the clouds at the eastern edge of the sky with yellow and pink. Sandon sat in his window, listening to the house wake up around him. Gallia cracked pots together in the kitchen. A guardsman took one of the horses from the stable and walked it around the courtyard to ease its stiffened leg. Sandon heard his father go downstairs, and voices rose in greeting as the baron met with Vilfrand and some of the other men. Only after the voices faded and a door downstairs closed loudly did Sandon get up.
Sandon remembered Kine’s words that pointed a finger at the baron. I’m just saying you should think about it, that’s all.
“Well, I thought about it,” Sandon muttered to himselfas he walked out of his room. “And I don’t like what I’m thinking.”
This time, Sandon passed his father’s chambers, the guest rooms, and the stairs leading down. He knew exactly where he was going.
His mother’s room.
The door was still unlocked from their escapade yesterday, when Uncle Vilfrand had caught Sandon and Kine trying to get out. Vilfrand still didn’t know about the secret closet in the baroness’s chambers, but that wasn’t the reason Sandon wanted to go back inside. This time, Sandon locked the door behind him and stuffed one of the armchair pillows against the crack at the floorboards so that any of the guards passing by wouldn’t hear noise inside. Nobody was going to be looking for Sandon right now anyway, so he had all the time in the world.
It took more than an hour to search the entire room. He looked inside every box, on top of all the shelves, even in the jewelry compartment where her necklaces and bracelets were stored. There had to be something, something that explained why his mother hadn’t told his father about the dragon, something that cleared his father of any kind of involvement. Sandon just couldn’t believe his father had anything to do with the baroness’s death.
At last, Sandon found what he was looking for. Wedged under the bed, in a corner as if it had fallen between the bed and the wall, was a small leather-bound journal. Exuberantly, Sandon jerked it out and sat down on the far side of the bed to read it.
The first page of the journal was dated about fifteen years before Baroness Lehna’s death. It, and every page thereafter, was written in her curling hand. Sandon started reading, flipping through the pages eagerly. Early entries talked about her life in the castle, how much she missed her parents, and about her suitors. Among them, Sandon recognized both his father’s name and Vilfrand’s. Vilfrand courted my mother? he pondered. It explained why Camiel’s brother had been so devoted to the barony that he’d become captain of its guard.
Then Sandon came across a name he didn’t recognize: Kadastrofee. Frowning, Sandon flipped ahead, looking for other instances of the name. The date was about a year before his birth, and his mother apparently had a visitor in the palace. A female visitor, someone who stayed in the baroness’s chambers with her while she was here. When she mentioned Kadastrofee’s tools (as in, they needed to get an extra wrench from the village), Sandon stabbed the page with his finger. “She must have been the gnome who built the constructs!”
Yet there was nothing about the constructs or even about the cave. Sandon kept reading. His mother and Kadastrofee spent a lot of time together building—or fixing?—something. The references were really vague, and Sandon could tell only because he already knew that his mother was referring to the constructs.
Here was something interesting: his mother hinted that a very large sum of money had been entrusted to her by someone named Acinyoshu. Although she didn’t mention who that was, she did say that he had left her a great deal of wealth, from gems to ancient coins, to steel weapons and beautiful pieces of art. That sounded like a dragon’s hoard! So this Acinyoshu who gave her the riches … maybe there was a gold dragon once after all!
Sandon scanned the pages greedily, trying to find any other references. His mother apparently hid the wealth after Acinyoshu gave it to her, and then brought in Kadastrofee.
Even though the journal carefully hid any details, anyone who had seen the construct and knew what it was could put two and two together to get the answer. And Sandon did just that. “She used the dragon’s hoard to make the constructs,” he mused. “Melted down the steel for the frame … used the gold for the scales … probably even melted down the statue in the center of the square for raw materials. My mother was a genius.”
Kadastrofee left just after Baroness Lehna married Sandon’s father, Camiel. Judging the next several pages to be boring love stuff, Sandon flipped on until he saw another mention of the name Acinyoshu. He paused and read the page.
A letter from the war came today. Apparently, the evil dragons were stealing good dragon eggs to make horrible creatures they call draconians. I can’t imagine how awful that must be. I hold my little boy, Sandon, in my arms, and I try to understand how it would feel to lose him in such a tragic way. We are lucky to have this beautiful valley, so far from the front lines. We were even luckier to have a gold dragon protecting our valley for so long. I can’t wait until Sandon’s fourteenth birthday, when he’s old enough to learn my secret. I want to share everything with him. I can’t tell Camiel. He would never understand. It’s hard to keep silent, but there’s nothing I can do—not if I want to keep the villagers believing. Not if I want to keep the valley safe.
… I haven’t heard from Acinyoshu in months.
I fear he’s given his life.
Sandon pondered this. So the gold dragon never came back, and his mother used the hoard to make the gold construct in order to protect the valley and keep Acinyoshu’s legend alive. As long as people still thought there was a gold dragon living in the cave, she didn’t have to do much to keep the valley safe—bandits avoided the place because of Hartfall’s reputation. She would make a few flights here and there, respond when the horn was blown and look very showy in the sky, and then everything else took care of itself.
Then she died, and when the baron blew the ancestral horn—the sky stayed empty.
Sandon had found a lot of the answers he had been looking for, and the journal certainly confirmed a lot of things he believed, but it still didn’t explain who killed her. The boy frowned. Maybe she suspected something and wrote about it closer to the end of the journal. Sandon closed the book and opened it from the rear, looking at the last few pages. They were wrinkled together as if the book had been crushing them where it lay for so long behind the headboard of the bed. Obviously, she hadn’t stored the book back there, not if it ruined the pages like this.
Sandon read from the last pages of the journal.
Vilfrand is so kind to keep an eye on me. I’m weaker since the child was born, that’s true, but I’m perfectly capable of walking to and from my rooms alone, even if Camiel argues about it. Vilfrand told me today that he was worried about Camiel—that my husband’s been acting strangely. I’d noticed, but I’d put it down to the excitement of having a new son. If Camiel suspects I’m keeping something from him, he might be trying to find out… he can be so jealous. I wonder if Camiel knows about Acinyoshu’s treasure?
Uh-oh. That didn’t sound good. Sandon skimmed on. He stopped on a page just before the end of the entries.
Someone has been in my room. I confronted Camiel about it, but he claimed to know nothing. Vilfrand was right. I think Camiel’s looking for the dragon’s treasure. He knows I have it, and he’s trying to find where I hid it. That’s why he’s set his watchdogs to follow me. The guard is more loyal to the baron than to me these days, and I’m sure that Camiel found out about my secret construction. Now he wants the magical key to activate it. I need to be more careful…
The next page had been ripped out, the crumpled edges worn and raw. Sandon fingered the rough scraps of paper jutting out from the inner spine of the journal, wondering what had been written on that page. Had his mother removed it? Had someone else? The book was wrinkled and had been jammed behind the bed …
Jammed quickly. If someone was really trying to hide the journal, they could have done a better job putting it in a drawer or beneath loose floorboards. Stuffing it behind the headboard was a desperate move. Sandon looked up and scanned the room, his eyes resting on the table by the fireplace. He’d found it tipped over when he and Kine came from the secret closet into the bedroom, as if someone had been surprised while in the room and hadn’t had time to set it upright again. It was likely that someone found the book, read it, and then stuffed it behind the headboard when the guard—or someone else—came into the room. They’d had just enough time to rip out a page. A page could be hidden in your hand, Sandon decided, but the journal was too big to pocket.
Then the doors were locked, and they couldn’t get back inside to right the table … or take the journal away. Sandon closed the book and tapped it against his hand. Was Kine right? Had his father done the unthinkable? Camiel had obviously known that his wife was keeping secrets. He probably knew about the dragon’s hoard too, though he didn’t know about the secret door or the gnome-made contraption that transported the baroness to the dragon’s cave with the constructs. There had been a gold dragon, that much was true, but Camiel obviously didn’t know it had left—or when—or that it had been a fake for so long. The baroness hadn’t shared any of that with him. She didn’t trust her husband, and this journal gave some very good reasons why. Camiel knew she was hiding something. He’d even searched her rooms. And now, Sandon had seen a vial of the same poison in his father’s chamber that was used to kill his mother! Nobody had ever told Sandon anything about this, but his mother must have raised some of her suspicions with the house staff. Were any other people involved?