One Good Knight Read online

note, she told herself. You never know what you might find out—or when you’ll need it.

  But she couldn’t concentrate on them for long.

  They were like dolls, or like the shadow-puppets Merrha had brought in to amuse her when she was very small—flat, artificial, and without a very wide range of expression. She couldn’t hear them from here unless they really raised their voices, so that made it obvious that they kept doing the same little stilted actions over and over. Take the people playing bowls—one of the young men would knock over several pins. The young ladies would jump up and down and clap their hands. The other young men would posture, probably boasting that they would do better.

  Most of the young ladies, with the exception of the one or two who had designs on the current bowler, would simper. The rest would gaze with feigned adoration on the object of their desires. Then a young lady would bowl. She would miss, or perhaps knock over a pin or two. The young men would smirk and commiserate; she would pout and be comforted.

  Then a young man would bowl and the actions would repeat. Maybe that was just Court manners, but it still didn’t make for very interesting watching.

  Her attention wandered, and she began staring at the clouds, dreamily watching them drift over the city. When she was little, she wished she could fly up there and play, or even, when things were particularly miserable, stay there forever. She’d never told anyone, but she used to daydream about trapping one of 96

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  the flying horses that were supposed to live in the mountains, or finding some other way of getting up there. The idea of living in a place where you were never above the same landscape, that in fact, you could see the world without leaving “home,” was enchanting.

  In fact it wasn’t anything that she learned, nor anything any adult said that ultimately persuaded her that this might be a bad idea. Partly it was that she couldn’t think of any way of bringing enough food and drink up there with her to keep from having to find a way back down to the ground eventually. And partly it was because eventually she observed for herself that clouds didn’t just stay lovely, puffy, soft-looking things. No, they grew—and they also dissolved.

  The dissolving business would be no problem, she had reasoned, while she was awake. She could just jump to another when she noticed the cloud she was on beginning to shrink in size or use whatever means she’d found to get herself up there in the first place to move to a new home. But if she was asleep when it happened, she might suddenly find herself plummeting to earth in the dark…. Not so good, and the realization was reinforced by a dream of doing just that, from which she woke up with a thump on the floor beside her bed.

  Still, she thought lazily, I wonder what it would be like to be up there? Would it be like running through acres of fleeces, or bouncing on acres of pillows? What are they made of, anyway? There’s water up there, or One Good Knight

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  there couldn’t be rain, but where does lightning come from? The old myths say it is the gods, and the priests still say God is responsible for it, but it seems altogether too random for that. Balan swears it’s a natural phe-nomenon, like rubbing a cat with amber, but—

  She frowned, her attention caught by a tiny, winged thing among the clouds, moving very quickly, and very high. What on earth is that? It’s too big for a bird—

  It moved a little nearer. The wing-beats were…

  odd. It’s too big for an eagle. Could it be one of the flying horses from out of the mountains? She thought it looked as if it might have four legs as well as the wings. But the neck seemed awfully long, and as it drew nearer, it just didn’t look horse-like.

  It’s not a flying horse, and it’s not a bird—

  Then the vague shape resolved itself, and as she realized what it was, horror washed over her like a flood of ice-cold water. At that moment, she was paralyzed; she tried to shout, and nothing came out of her mouth but a tiny squeak, not even a word—

  Dear gods.

  She tried to scream, but it was exactly like being in a nightmare, seeing the horrible thing coming and being unable to do anything—she felt her whole body go cold as she struggled against the paralysis.

  The thing was impossible! It couldn’t exist!

  And the impossibility was approaching on pon-derously beating wings.

  In the end, it wasn’t she who gave the warning, it was whoever among the Guards that had Sea Watch 98

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  above on the cliff that began frantically sounding the horn, in desperate blats and honks. At first heads swiveled toward the harbor, but by that point, the thing was close enough that the movement caught their eyes, and someone, some man, was the one who finally screamed the word in a voice as shrill as any girl’s.

  “Dragon! DRAGON!”

  In the garden, the pretty little tableaux dissolved into a chaos of screaming, fleeing bodies, and with a few rare exceptions, it was pretty much every man (and woman) for himself. Andie stayed where she was—partly because she was still held in that paralysis of fear, and partly because some tiny little crumb of rational thought reasoned that the dragon probably couldn’t see her in the tree, and if it went after anything, it would go after the people running around like frightened rabbits with arms waving, go after the people announcing themselves with screams of panic, and not after someone that wasn’t drawing attention to herself. Maybe it was rabbit-reasoning, but rabbits were pretty good at surviving.

  It seemed like forever, but it couldn’t have been very long before Guards appeared in the garden, rushing out of the Palace doors. Some began herding the senseless idiots toward the Palace, picking them up and carrying them when their legs failed to hold them. Others lined up with bows along the highest retaining wall and began firing arrows at the beast.

  The beast completely ignored the arrows, which One Good Knight

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  bounced off its hide and wings without harming anything. It didn’t seem particularly concerned or annoyed by them, but approached the Palace in a leisurely manner, for all the world as if it were King here.

  Finally it hovered just below the top of the lookout cliff, regarding the buildings and inhabitants below. The Guard on the top of the cliff had stopped blowing the alert. God only knew what he was doing now. The Guard on Sea Watch wasn’t armed with anything more lethal than a knife.

  The dusky-bronze dragon stretched out its neck and peered down at the bowmen, tilting its head to one side. This was too much for some of the Guards.

  They broke and ran.

  The rest, however, stood their ground and drew their swords, which looked about as useful against the huge armored beast as toothpicks against a war chariot.

  It seemed to dismiss them, then looked around on the same level with itself. Then it stretched its neck out and Andie held her breath, so terrified now that there was only room for one thought in her mind.

  It’s going to flame!

  She had never seen a dragon before—no one in Acadia had—but every story she had ever heard or read warned of that indrawn breath, that long pause, and what it meant. And if it directed that flame down on the poor Guards—it would be bad.

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  taking in a long, deep inhalation, heard the pause as it held its breath for a moment—

  Then it whipped its head around, pointed its snout at the unoccupied bell tower of the Palace chapel, opened its mouth, and with a roar like angry surf in a killer storm, a fountain of flame burst out of the gaping jaws. She couldn’t even hear her own screaming over the roar of the dragon. She clutched the trunk of the tree as a hot, sulfurous blast of air hit her, feeling as if she were standing too close to a forge.

  It didn’t last long. One moment, there was a cone of white-hot fire gushing from the thing’s mouth.

  The next, it had snapped its mouth shut on the flame, cutting it off.

  And the bell tower wasn’t there anymore. There was a s
tump of charred wood and stucco, but no tower.

  The dragon turned its head, and that was when Andie noticed another peculiar thing. It was more than near enough for her to make out its features perfectly, and she would have expected to see the cold, unemotional, unintelligent eyes of a snake or a lizard in its head, unwinking, and unfeeling-looking.

  Instead its smoky-dark eyes were warm, bright, intelligent, round-pupiled and very nearly human.

  And they looked—sad.

  It didn’t flame the men. Why didn’t it flame the men?

  The dragon snorted, and with a couple of wingbeats that made the branches of the trees around Andie thrash as if in the midst of a winter storm, it arced away from the Palace and down toward the One Good Knight

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  town. It hovered there for a moment, while screams and cries came up from below, and then it folded its wings and dove.

  Andie emitted a horrified gurgle.

  It rose again, and in each taloned foreclaw was a limp form. One was a donkey. The other, a cow.

  She heard that sound of intaken breath, and cow-ered against the trunk of the tree—and again, the dragon whipped its head around, opened its mouth and flamed. This time, it was the marble statue of Victory atop the column in the center of the Public Forum that was the target, and when the flame cut off, poor Victory was looking very damaged indeed, black as a cinder, with her bronze spear melted and her wings mere shattered stumps.

  This seemed to satisfy the dragon. With another snort, it propelled itself upward in surges, with every beat the wings making the snapping sound of a sail filling with wind. Andie watched in stunned fascination as it lost itself among the clouds.

  Only then did she shake off her paralysis, slide down to the ground, slip her sandals back on and shake down her skirts. Then she headed back into the Palace. The Guards still on the garden grounds ignored her, or perhaps they just didn’t notice her, since she was the only person walking quietly back into the Palace amid a horde of screaming, weeping and fainting courtiers, servants and hangers-on.

  They clearly had their hands full.

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  All she could think was that she had something she needed to research with a lot more urgency than any of Solon’s requests.

  The Queen and her advisers stared at one another. Cassiopeia was on her throne, with Andie on a low stool beside her. The advisers had been granted the unusual concession of low chairs, since this was going to be a very long meeting. All six of them faced the Commander of the Guards to hear his latest information.

  “There are reports coming in from all over the countryside, Majesty.” The weary Guard Commander looked as if he had personally collected every one of those reports himself.

  Andie felt terribly sorry for him. He looked as if he was taking the failure of the Guard to protect people from the monster as his own responsibility. There were dark rings under his eyes. His curly black hair had been flattened under a helmet for hours, and his face and uniform-tunic were slightly charcoal-smudged.

  “The creature can’t be stopped. It doesn’t even notice arrows, and doesn’t come down to the ground long enough to be attacked with spears or swords. It seems to have an insatiable appetite. Everywhere it goes, it’s been seizing livestock and devouring it. So far, it hasn’t set fire to any occupied buildings, but that may just be luck.”

  “It is difficult to imagine the word luck in connection with that monster,” Solon said dryly. “Precisely how bad are things, do you know?”

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  “Bad enough.” The Guard Commander shook his head. “The people are terrified. Those people in the city are fleeing into the country, the ones in the country are trying to get into the city. It’s a madhouse out there, especially at the gates. No one seems to know what to do, but they’re all trying to do something, and if the monster wasn’t so horrible, I’d say that the mere effect of his presence is far worse than the actual damage he’s caused. So far he’s burned a couple of high ornaments and eaten some livestock—but everywhere he goes, people trample market stalls, foodstuffs, and each other. There’s been some looting in the chaos, fighting has broken out, and when people catch sight of him, they just go mad with terror.”

  “But if he starts burning crops and devouring entire herds,” Solon pointed out, “I doubt that you’ll be able to say that for much longer.”

  “Not to mention the sheer chaos that’s being caused,” the Queen put in. “Nothing is getting done while people are milling about, trying to find a way to flee from the beast. Businesses, crafts, farms—it may be a race between all of us starving to death or being killed by the dragon!”

  “I wish I could argue with that assessment, Majesty,” Solon replied. “As our good Commander has explained, our usual weapons don’t seem to be affecting the beast. We must find a way to kill it, or at least drive it away—and I hope Princess Andromeda has some information for us on that score.”

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  All heads in the Audience Chamber turned, and all eyes stared at Andie.

  She swallowed hard, and surreptitiously rubbed her sweaty palms against her gown. Yes, she had gleaned every bit of information on dragons that there was in the Great Library. Not that there was much. And none of it was very comforting. Still—

  “If everything I’ve found in the Library is correct, there is a way to be rid of it. First, we need a Champion,” she said carefully. “Every single document is quite clear on that. Only a Champion will have the weaponry and the magic to defeat a creature like a dragon. Champions generally belong to Orders, and each Order has a Chapter-House. The nearest is—” she consulted her notes “—the Kingdom of Fleurberg, the Chapter-House of the Order of the Glass Mountain.”

  Cassiopeia turned her gaze upon the Guard Commander, who looked happier than he had since this meeting started, and nodded. “Inland and north of here. It’s farther than we usually trade, but I’ve seen it on the maps. Messengers will be dispatched immediately, Majesty.”

  “But until the Champion can be found?” Solon asked, persistently, turning his penetrating gaze on Andie while her nerves stretched thin. “Is there a remedy to keep this monster from ravaging the countryside? As the Queen has said, if we cannot keep it in check, we will starve before help can come.”

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  neck. “Well, yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “The Tradition is very—very strong on this point. There is one way to keep it from raging everywhere. But—but it’s not very nice—”

  “My dear child!” one of the other advisers exclaimed. “What is going on now is a great deal worse than ‘not very nice’! Come, what it is?”

  She bowed her head over her notes. “You have to give it an offering. Mostly The Tradition says that it has to be once a week, although some records say it has to be more often. Once a week is probably right.”

  She felt the words forced out of her against her will.

  “But it has to be a very—very special sort of offering, in order to make the thing work. It has to be something that’s a real—sacrifice.” Finally the last of it came out in a rush. “You have to offer it a virgin to eat. A girl. A live girl, once a week, left tied to a stake where it can easily find her.”

  Her words fell into the silence like leaden pellets.

  Then, everyone began talking at once.

  Andie remained numb, listening to them. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. Not one of them asked if there was some other way of dealing with this dragon. Not one suggested a different approach. They simply, and without argument, and with no hesitation at all, accepted this preposterous idea, and began putting forward ways of implementing it, immediately.

  “Slaves—” said Lord Hira, who was something of a slave trader. “We can bring in slave girls to feed it.

  I can have my factors contact the slave fl
eet—”

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  “I believe that the sacrifice was specifically to be a virgin, Lord Hira,” Solon said dryly. Papers rustled in his hand as he looked over the copy of the notes Andie had made for him. “Yes. A virgin, and nubile, not a little girl. So trying to get around the stipulation by using a child won’t work—and when have you ever brought in a nubile virgin, eh?”

  Lord Hira mumbled something, but he knew, as Andie knew (though she wasn’t to say so, as she wasn’t supposed to be aware of such things) that Acadia was the end of the corridor of the slave trade.

  Technically in fact, the slave trade was illegal in Acadia; any slave purchased was supposed to be freed immediately, and allowed to work off the price of his or her freedom from the master. In practice, this was impossible; a master would set the value of the slave so high, and wages so low, that it would take a miracle to work the sum off. Only someone like Cassiopeia, who chose to buy her slaves’ loyalty with their freedom, would actually follow the spirit as well as the letter of the law.

  But because of this, it was unlikely that Lord Hira would be able to purchase a dozen virgins or even one virgin at short notice, at this end of the trading corridor. Virginity had a very high value, and a cor-respondingly high price tag attached to it in the southern kingdoms across the Lesser Sea, and by the time a girl arrived here, that price would certainly have been met long ago.

  “We should ask for volunteers!” said Lord Cheon insistently. “For the good of the country!”

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  “You don’t really believe that any girl is going to offer herself to be eaten by a dragon, do you?” Lord Hira sneered. “At least, not a sane one! I suppose we might get some poor wet fish of a girl who wants to kill herself who will offer, but surely not more than one!”

  “Well, then, offer to enrich her family if she volunteers!” Cheon said desperately. “Offer a fat reward!”

  “Then we will not be getting volunteers,” Solon pointed out. “We will be getting young ladies whose families have no use for them, or who value gold over their offspring. And what is more, I should doubt their virginity, as well.”