DragonKnight (29 page)

In the morning it didn’t matter. Bardon got up from his pallet, rolled it and stored it with his gear, and went to tell the tumanhofer he was returning to Dormenae.

Bromptotterpindosset was gone.

         
37
         

B
OOTS

The young o’rant Ahnek followed Bardon as they circled the area east of the camp, looking for evidence of how and why the missing mapmaker left. Others searched the perimeter as well. Regidor canvassed the north with two leecents. Captain Anton and two riders studied the ground on the west. The last rider and Holt covered the south. Granny Kye, N’Rae, Sittiponder, and Jue Seeno fixed the morning meal.

“How’d old Bromp get past the guards?” asked Ahnek. “Isn’t that what they’re posted for, to keep people and things from coming into or leaving camp?”

The squire gave his young companion a stern look. “You will refer to our lost tumanhofer with respect, Ahnek. He is Bromptotterpindosset unless he gives you permission to call him by a more familiar name. And that is highly unlikely.”

“Do you think he’s dead?

“No, I don’t think he’s dead.”

“Then why won’t he ever say I can call him Bromp?”

“He just doesn’t seem the type to want to be called in a familiar manner by a scrap of a boy.”

Rather than being insulted by Bardon’s description of him, Ahnek grinned. “So how did Bromptotterpindosset get out of camp without being seen?”

“The guard did see him leave,” explained Bardon as he crouched to examine some marks in the dirt beside a large bush.

“Nobody told me,” complained Ahnek.

“Obviously.” Bardon gestured for the boy to come closer. “Look at this. Someone with big feet covered with a soft material such as well-worked leather stood here for a long time.”

Oval imprints overlaid each other in the scuffed dirt.

Ahnek let out a low whistle. “Someone was watching us?”

“Probably.”

“Why didn’t the guard raise an alarm when Bromptotterpindosset left?”

“It was one of the major dragons, and she saw nothing unusual with one of the men leaving the camp for a few minutes.”

“Those guards sure don’t like it when Sitti and I go out.”

“They probably assume you’re up to mischief.”

“Well, it was Bromptotterpindosset who was up to mischief, wasn’t it?”

“We don’t know that.” Bardon stood and followed the indistinct tracks as they moved from one bush to the next.

“Do you think whoever was standing here watching clobbered Bromptotterpindosset on the head and hauled him off?”

“Problem is we don’t know if these tracks are coming or going.” Bardon stopped and put his hands on his hips. He surveyed the terrain around them. “The shape doesn’t indicate front or back of the foot, and the ground is too hard to show the indentation of the heel when it hit the dirt first.”

“Do you think it was a high race or a low race watching us?”

“Low.”

“Bisonbeck, grawlig, or ropma?”

“Grawlig.”

“Those that tried to carry off N’Rae or some others?”

“No way of telling.”

Ahnek scratched his head. “I can see why someone would want to carry N’Rae off but not that tumanhofer.”

“Ahnek.” Bardon’s voice held a note of warning.

“Mistress Seeno calls him ‘that tumanhofer’ all the time.”

“Mistress Seeno is not a callow lad, who—”

“Uh-oh.” Ahnek had stopped in his tracks and stood staring down a steep slope into a patch of bushes.

A scrap of the tumanhofer’s shirt snagged by a thorn, broken branches, signs of a struggle in the trampled grass, and small, dark splotches of drying red blood on a rock told an interesting story.

Bardon tucked his lower lip under his upper teeth and whistled, loud, sharp, and clear. Those searching for clues came running.

“It would seem,” said Bardon as they waited for the others to gather, “that whoever was standing there watching clobbered Bromptotterpindosset on the head and hauled him off.”

Ahnek gave a satisfied nod. “See? I told you.”

Regidor arrived first and surveyed the scene. “Grawligs,” he said. “Six of them.” He looked back to the camp. “By going down into this little depression, our mapmaker took himself out of the line of vision of the guard.” He paced a few feet with his eyes on the ground. “It’ll be an easy trail. I’ll fly ahead and see if I can learn anything.”

“I thought you were going to get rid of him anyway,” said Ahnek. “I thought he was a hindrance to our quest because he didn’t truly follow Wulder.”

Bardon and Regidor stared at the boy. Ahnek clamped his mouth shut and became very still, as if he could turn into a mere shadow and not be noticed.

“That’s very interesting,” said Regidor.

“Where did you come up with that information?” asked Bardon.

Ahnek swallowed. “Sittiponder.”

Bardon narrowed his eyes at the boy. “And where did Sittiponder learn of this?”

“His voices.”

“Hmm?” Bardon looked at Regidor.

The meech dragon shrugged.

Holt ran up, followed closely by the others coming from various directions. “What did you find?”

Before they could answer, he spotted the site of the abduction. “Oh.” He studied it for a moment. “Looks like he wasn’t hurt too badly.”

As the search party crowded closer to see, they shoved Ahnek next to Bardon’s leg.

Holt shook his head and half laughed. “If they knocked him on the head, old Bromp won’t hardly have felt it.”

Ahnek nudged Bardon at the words “old Bromp.” The squire glared at the lad’s impertinent grin. The boy tried to control the muscles that lifted the corners of his mouth but failed. He looked away.

A whoosh of air captured Bardon’s attention.

Regidor had paced off a few yards and released his wings. “I’ll make a reconnaissance flight and bring back information. You might as well eat, then break camp.”

His wings spread to their full span and beat the air twice. On the second downward motion, Regidor lifted off the ground. In a moment, he swooped over the hills and soared away. Soon he looked like a large bird of prey in the distance.

The talk, as the group walked back into camp, centered on speculations. Bardon listened but didn’t participate. His thoughts centered on this new twist in the plans to find and rescue the sleeping knights.

Ahnek pulled on Bardon’s sleeve.

“But why are we going to try to find Bromptotterpindosset?” he asked. “Couldn’t this be Wulder’s way of taking away the problem of what to do with him?”

Bardon clapped a hand on the lad’s shoulder. “Some might think so, but when you read the Tomes, you find that Wulder expects us to treat someone like Bromptotterpindosset with respect, just as we would treat Paladin with respect, or would want to be treated with respect ourselves.”

Ahnek shook his head. “What does respect have to do with it?”

“I have two pairs of boots, Ahnek. One pair is new and looks good. The other pair is old and looks bad. I’ve cleaned my boots and put them on the windowsill to air, because the polish I use is strong and smelly. The good pair looks better. The bad pair looks only passable. It begins to rain, and I retrieve my boots out of the rain. Do I fetch both pairs in out of the rain, or just the new pair?”

“Both.”

“Why?”

“Because both pairs need to be out of the rain, not just the good pair.”

“Correct. They are my boots, and I will take care of them. We are Wulder’s people, and He will take care of us.”

“Whether we are shiny and new, or old and stinky?”

“I never said the old boots were stinky.”

Ahnek wrinkled his nose. “Old boots just are.”

“Well, yes.” Bardon roughed up the lad’s hair. “And Wulder takes care of His people with equal respect, whether they are old boots or new.”

“But Bromptotterpindosset is not one of Wulder’s people at all.”

“But Wulder has put the mapmaker in our midst. And before we were able to hand him over to someone else’s sphere of influence, he fell into trouble.” Bardon smiled at the image in his mind. “Bromptotterpindosset is an old boot in the rain, Ahnek, and we must retrieve him.”

“B-but he isn’t
our
boot, Squire Bardon. And he isn’t Wulder’s boot either.”

“It’s one of those hard things to understand, but Wulder is very interested in all boots.” Bardon laughed.

They breakfasted on fresh journey cakes and fried wild onions. Bardon thought the sweet corn flour biscuits and crunchy onions an unusual combination, but he didn’t want to spoil N’Rae’s pleasure in providing the morning meal. She had done most of the cooking herself. Granny Kye had pulled out her easel. An hour later, Bardon urged the old emerlindian to pack up her art. They had completed preparations for departing.

“We are going to follow Regidor and, hopefully, catch up with the grawligs who have Bromptotterpindosset.”

She merely nodded.

Bardon went searching for N’Rae. He found her communing with a furry animal twice the size of his foot. He’d never seen one outside of drawings in a book, but he guessed it was a steppesman. The burrowing animals earned their name by the locations of their colonies and the odd habit they had of congregating around an object. As these furry animals sat up on their haunches and chittered at one another, they looked like a group of men discussing something of great import. The creature saw Bardon’s approach and dashed down his hole.

N’Rae gave the intruder an exasperated look.

“Was he saying anything important?” asked Bardon as he gave her a hand and helped her to rise from her seat on the ground.

She brushed off her skirts. “I was learning quite a bit about the local weather.”

“You were discussing the weather?”

“Not exactly. I was trying to get information about anything unusual around here, like a place where my father might be. But the silly little rodent could only think about sunshine and food.”

Bardon patted her arm, not knowing how else to offer sympathy. “I need your help.”

She looked up at him sharply. “You do?”

He nodded. “I can’t pry Granny Kye away from the picture she’s painting. I have requested on numerous occasions that she pack up and get ready. Her only response, if she answers at all, is, ‘My landscapes are getting so much better.’”

The younger emerlindian laughed. “Yes, I’ll come and help.”

“He’s coming,” yelled Ahnek. He pointed to the mountains.

Bardon shielded his eyes with his hand across his brow. In the sky, flying toward them from the mountains, a shape like a large bird approached.

Greer, is that Regidor?

Instead of hearing his dragon’s droll comments, he heard Regidor’s voice.

“It is, indeed, I.”

You can mindspeak over such a great distance?

“No, I can’t. I’ll talk to you when I get closer.”

Bardon paused for a moment and digested the sarcastic reply. How like his friend to tease him in the midst of a crisis.

Regidor?

“Yes?”

So it was a stupid question. I deserved that jab at my intelligence.

“Stop, Bardon, you are driving me to the end of my patience.”

I was merely acknowledging that my remark was spoken without first considering.

“You are being a boring, sanctimonious academician. Just laugh and ask me what I found out.”

Bardon didn’t laugh.
What did you find out?

“That these grassland grawligs dig holes like rabbits.”

You found where they have taken the tumanhofer?

“In a manner of speaking. I found their village, which is a warren of burrows in the foothills of the mountains you see to my back.”

This isn’t going to be a simple rescue, is it?

Regidor laughed.
“You are correct. ‘Simple’ is not the right descriptive word. Try ‘interesting.’”

         
38
         

G
ILDA

“Carry this.” Regidor handed Bardon a blue glowing globe and pulled another out of an inside pocket of his cape.

“You’ve got hollows,” Bardon said as he balanced the palm-sized light in his hand. He tossed it to the other hand and back. “Are you sure of your translation of Glas’s diary?”

Regidor nodded. “This warren has burrows crisscrossing under the land for miles in any direction.”

“I’ve always thought of burrows as small, housing rabbits and badgers and the like. These are huge.”

“Yes, but what else would you call them? They are tunnels with small chambers dug out for sleeping.”

Bardon nodded in agreement but still marveled at the size.

Regidor continued. “This particular tunnel leads to a central meeting place of the local grawligs, a watering hole inside the first range of mountains. It seems reasonable to assume Bromptotterpindosset’s captors would take him to this location to show off their prize. The diary describes just such activities when Glas explored the territory.”

Bardon nodded.
This does seem to be the most logical place to start our search. However, there is something inherently wrong with using logic to predict the actions of grawligs.

They sat in the entrance to one of the many burrows that riddled the hills. Out of the wind, Regidor had opened the top of a shapely bottle made from thick glass.

“Do you like it?” he asked. “I think it suits Gilda much better than that clay jar she used to inhabit. I got it at an open-air market in Vendela.” He held the blue vessel in front of him. “Blue is her favorite color. And the silver…well, the silver is because she is precious to me.”

A wisp of smoke floated out of the opened top. It formed into Gilda, and the female meech dragon sashayed over to sit on one of the boulders lining the side of the tunnel as if placed there for a purpose. Neither Regidor nor Bardon had figured out the purpose.

This entrance to the warren showed little sign of use, which seemed odd. The map showed this large tunnel to be the most direct route to the grawligs’ celebration site.

Bardon had firmly refused Ahnek’s plea to come along. And he’d left instructions with Captain Anton to return the questing party to Dormenae if he and Regidor did not return in a day’s time.

“You know, there should be some advantage to having a wizard as a friend,” Bardon said, still tossing the light back and forth between his hands. “How about giving me a hollow as a gesture of our deep and abiding brotherly affection?”

Gilda laughed softly, and Regidor scratched the ridge above his left eye. “Hadn’t thought of the depth of our mutual esteem before. I guess I could make you a hollow to commemorate our bond…Do you want a small hollow or a large?”

“I thought a hollow could hold as much as you put in it. I didn’t know they came in sizes.”

Regidor pulled out two metal contraptions and handed one to Bardon. Demonstrating its use, the meech fitted the pointed, clawlike clamp over the light. With the sphere held in the device, he could grasp it by a handle or clamp it to some object.

As the squire followed his example in mounting the light into its holder, Regidor reached again into the hollow. “Once the object you wish to store is inside the hollow, it takes up no discernable space. At least, not in this dimension.”

Bardon held up a hand. “Stop. Don’t explain dimensions to me. Just get to the point.”

“I agree with him, Reg.” Gilda crossed her legs, shifting to a more comfortable position. “Too often you launch into explanations that are truly beside the point.”

“And nobody wants to hear,” muttered Bardon.

“More reason to find my clan,” said Regidor. “The hope of finding intelligent conversation.”

The meech dragon twisted his face into a mask of extreme tolerance, eyebrows raised, lips pursed, and eyes cutting Bardon a look of disdain. “However,” he continued as if not interrupted, “the size of the opening to the hollow can severely limit what you collect. If you can’t pass the object through the opening to the other plane, you cannot store it.”

Bardon nodded. “Like a dragon cannot go through a gateway unless the gateway is sufficiently proportioned.”

The meech wrinkled his brow. “Not quite an exact parallel, but close enough.”

“At this point,” said Gilda, “it would be worth our while to have the little Dragon Keeper with us.”

Both men looked at the beautiful, exotic female sitting coolly on her rock.

“Don’t look so astonished,” she said. “I’m surprised you haven’t thought of it before. Those minor dragons are excellent as scouts. She herself is an admirable warrior. And although she has not nearly the expertise of dear Reg, she is a formidable wizard.”

“Be that as it may, Kale is thousands of miles away,” responded Regidor as he checked his weapons—a sword, two knives, and a pouch of small projectiles.

Gilda’s eyes glittered in the blue light of the globes. “These tunnels twist and turn like a maze. You’ll be sorry you haven’t got Kale and her little dragons beside you.”

Regidor did not answer.

Gilda smiled in what Bardon thought was a catlike manner, with her head tilted and a look of superiority on her lovely features. She hunched a shoulder and spoke to Regidor. “Now you’re grumpy because you should have thought of her joining you earlier, and didn’t.”

He faced her and spoke softly, no anger or impatience marring his tone. “Do you want to ride in your bottle or walk with us?”

Her eyes widened, and her lips parted as she took in a quick, small breath. She glanced down the dark tunnel and shivered. Her chin tilted up, and she slid off the boulder. As always, her movements were smooth and fluid. “I prefer to ride in comfort, thank you.”

He unstopped the container. She transfigured into her vapor form and flowed into the bottle. Regidor replaced the stopper and put the container in his pocket.

“Can she hear us while she’s in there?” asked Bardon.

“She used to be able to, but her powers have diminished over the years.” Regidor led the way down the tunnel, holding the light in front of him. “She used to be able to stay out of the bottle for longer periods of time without beginning to dissipate. She used to be able to perform minor acts of wizardry. She used to enjoy a good debate, especially when she thought she’d bested me.”

“You’re worried about her.”

“I think she is dying.”

They walked along in silence for a while, skulking through the earthen corridors, listening intently for anyone else who might be in the large burrows.

“Regidor,” Bardon said after a long stretch. “Has Librettowit or Fen or Cam been able to uncover any solution? a spell? a recording of a similar circumstance such as Gilda’s?”

The meech dragon did not turn but shook his head. “Like the plight of the sleeping knights, Gilda’s end hinged on knowledge that apparently passed away with Wizard Risto. He cast the spell that placed her essence in a bottle. Presumably, he knew how to undo his enchantment.”

“You’re hoping to find something to help her, aren’t you?”

“I hope for so much, Bardon, my friend. To free Gilda from her prison. To find other meech dragons who can tell me more of my heritage. To break the spell that put good men to sleep to keep them from fighting for justice and against oppression. And even to serve Paladin in some outrageously heroic deed.” He turned slightly and flashed his toothy grin over his shoulder. “Perhaps we are destined to do all these things together.”

Bardon smiled back. Odd as Regidor was, he always managed to lift Bardon’s spirits.

Regidor turned a corner and disappeared from view.

“Oh, bother.” His deep voice rolled back to Bardon. “Gilda was right. We should have fetched Kale to help us.”