The Princess's Dragon (4 page)

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✥ Th e Princess’s Dragon ✥

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The neighing of her horse interrupted her meditation and she turned to find her guard struggling to hold on to all three mounts as they danced skittishly. Liliana stood huddled and miserable, casting frightened looks north, and Sondra sighed. She hated always requiring an escort. Had she been alone, she would far prefer finding a place where she could watch the storm break over her to experience a touch of its rage before seeking shelter, but she couldn’t penalize her keepers who’d committed no sin greater than seeking gainful employment at the castle, and suffered her as punishment.

She turned to the horses as Liliana grabbed gratefully for the workbox to follow her, but as usual the girl couldn’t lift the heavy box and the guard still struggled with the rearing horses. Self-consciously Sondra returned, easily hoisted the box with one hand, and strode back to the horses to strap it to her mount. She knew her strength surprised people since it better suited a peasant wife laboring in the field than a delicate princess, so she went to great lengths to avoid revealing it. However, when it came to her workbox, she had little choice. Outside of her study chamber, it was the container for all of her sketches, specimen jars, and tools for logical research.

They mounted up and raced back to the castle just before the storm broke over the meadow, ripping the head off the Asterix lily in its rage.

Sondra rushed into the castle after handing off her horse to the stable boy and shook the rain off her coatdress and out of her riding hat. Her sister and brother intercepted her the moment she entered the great hall flanked by stairs to both residential wings of the castle. They had been waiting outside the massive throne room doors carved and gilded with rearing unicorns and flying dragons. A gaggle of ladies-in-waiting fluttered around anxiously or perched gracefully on delicate gilded chairs with embroidered silk cushions. Gigantic tapestries stretched from the wooden beams in the ceiling to the marble floors, depicting everything from the annual hunt to the legend of Ulrick the Clever.

“Sondra! Thank the gods you’re here. Father is in the throne room with a miners’ representative from the obsidia mines in the eastern region near Arivale.

Apparently he brings important news and Father and Mother ordered that all of us be present to hear it. You must change quickly and meet us back here. Go!

Don’t talk; just go! Or both Mother and Father will be furious at the delay!” Sondra about-faced and, grabbing a fistful of her skirts, raced up the stone steps to her chambers in the east wing. She dashed blindly past wood-paneled stone walls adorned with paintings and tapestries, tiny, fragile occasional tables 18

✥ Susan Trombley ✥

topped by candelabra and delicate obsidia carvings, and small windows tucked into stone embrasures. Real glass distorted the sunlight pouring onto the carpeted wooden floors.

Reaching the iron-clad door to her chamber just as Liliana threw it open, she sighed gratefully upon discovering that her resourceful maid had already heard the news and pulled out her court dress. She nimbly unfastened the row of silver buttons on the front of Sondra’s wool coatdress, and Sondra quickly shrugged out of it and stood in her simples. Liliana held open the back of the heavily brocaded court-dress, the gold embroidery, gemstone beads, and silk ribbons flashing in the early afternoon sunlight. Sondra slipped her linen-clad arms through the flowing spidersilk sleeves of the overdress. It took only seconds for the skilled maid to lace up the dress and quickly unbraid, brush out, and pin up Sondra’s hair with a jeweled tiara. Sondra helped out by unbuttoning her high leather boots and sliding her feet into embroidered slippers. A brush of powder on her flushed face, and Liliana pushed her out the door, where her ladies-in-waiting clustered, impatient to hear the news that had the castle abuzz with speculation.

Sondra arrived at the great hall just as the king’s own guard cast open the heavy doors to the throne room and summoned the heir and two princesses into their father’s presence. They approached the king and the sisters curtsied while their brother bowed, then took their places on the dais besides the two heavily carved and gilded thrones encrusted with obsidia.

The king and queen barely acknowledged the presence of their children before summoning the nervously sweating man standing off to one side of the cavernous chamber. He’d been attempting without success to blend into one of the many standards of the kingdom’s nobles hanging from the marbled walls. The representatives of those various noble houses had already returned to their tiny and purposefully uncomfortable chairs beneath their standards after rising for the entrance of the younger royals. There followed a brief flurry of confusion as several of the ladies-in-waiting jockeyed for position near their respective princesses in the seats behind the dais, reserved for those who directly served the royal family. Sondra resisted the urge to roll her eyes and carefully studied the small man the king motioned forward.

She noticed that his attempts to present himself properly failed miserably amongst the excessive glitter and wealth of the surrounding nobles. It grew painfully clear that the poor man felt something akin to terror at his surroundings

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and his unfortunate role as mining representative. His short stature, receding chin, thinning hair, and protruding nose, not to mention his obvious myopia, made him appear mole-like. He wore a badly fitted flaxweed coat, breeches, sagging stockings, and simple, square-toed dress shoes generations out of date. Sondra wondered whimsically if he really was a mole, captured and sent to work in the mines and, having done such a great job, he found himself promoted to foreman. She smiled inwardly at her fanciful thoughts as the man bowed deeply to the king. His hands crushed the chipbark wide-brimmed hat favored by the middle class—those who could afford head coverings but could not afford quality materials.

“Well,” said the king, “tell us what this is all about, man, and why your employers felt it warranted the attention of the entire court yet didn’t see fit to appear before their king themselves!” Her father’s voice boomed across the throne room, and the mole-man flinched at the tone of offended anger in the king’s words. Several nobles covered sly smiles behind gloved hands, amused by the man’s obvious discomfort, and Sondra felt a little sorry for him. After all, his bosses offended the king by not appearing before him themselves, not the poor beleaguered mole-man.

“P—please, Your Highness, I beg of you just a moment to explain everything. Myself and my employers believe the news I bring is worthy of such a gathering.” The man glanced nervously around at the cold, hard eyes surrounding him; it seemed that each noble eagerly anticipated a royal reprimand to provide their daily entertainment. The man paused and the king waited impatiently.

“Well!” he barked, causing the man to jump. “Get on with it and explain!”

“Y—yes, Your Highness. Our stone expert found evidence of a potential rich obsidia deposit just outside of Arivale and petitioned for the rights to sink another tunnel in that region.”

“We already know this since we personally approve every mining petition that your employers submit, man! What importance does this have for the kingdom other than more obsidia for trade to the southern lands?”

“W—we,” the man glanced around fearfully as the king’s face grew red with impatient anger, “we sunk the mine and found ginacite, fully charged.” He blurted this last out and waited with a relieved grin on his scrubbed pink face. The grin faded when the room failed to erupt into cheers, applause, or even excited whispers as he no doubt had expected might happen. Only one 20

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person reacted, and Sondra caught the abrupt twitch of movement from the Warlord Derek only because she surreptitiously watched him from the corner of her eye. He stood slightly behind the king’s throne and no one else seemed to notice the abrupt change in his usual stoic demeanor.

When his news failed to elicit the expected reaction, the foreman began rotating the hat in his hands and elaborated, his voice gaining confidence as he described a subject he actually felt comfortable with.

“Ah … ginacite is an exceptionally rare stone, prized in the southern lands for its ability to store aether … or, ah … magical energy. In fact, wizards and witches use the stone in amulets and staffs so they may charge it with their own magic and release it at a later date. We discovered a rich vein of the ginacite beneath the first layer of obsidia that we mined. One small stone, uncharged, is worth more than forty carts of carved obsidia to the southlanders. I am told that they use the stored aether for everything from lighting to cooking to moving carriages about without the aid of horse teams.” The man paused as if he couldn’t wrap his mind around such a thought and then continued into a different quality of silence, as the bored nobles, suddenly vastly interested in what this man had to say, strained forward to avoid missing a single word. The King and royals remained frozen, listening while each one’s mind raced down its own path of speculation.

“As I said, the uncharged stones are what are typically mined in the south in a very paltry amount, which only adds to the stone’s rarity. The vein we uncovered glowed with what our stone expert claims is a full, nearly overloaded charge of aether.” The man paused again, this time more pleased with the reactions around him. A murmur of excitement rose behind him and a brilliant smile replaced the king’s scowling anger.

“So what are you telling us, man, and why are your employers not here to tell us this wonderful news themselves?” the king asked.

“Ah … my bosses consider the open mine a security risk and are busy securing protection from the local Citizen’s Force…”

“Bah! We shall dispatch a platoon today to guard the lode. This wealth will fall under the king’s protection, naturally.”

“Naturally, Your Highness,” the man bowed, knowing that the taxes from that single vein would outweigh the taxes the kingdom collected in over ten rotas on the obsidia trade.

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“Now, who else besides your employers and the other miners know of this find?”

“Of course, Your Highness, we brought news of our find to the court without delay. My employers dispatched me two days ago, immediately after we cleared the obsidia vein and saw the glow of the ginacite.” The man’s expression grew dreamy as he recalled his first sight of the magnificent vein of ore, the milky ginacite glowing with an intense violet light that pulsed within the inky darkness of the tunnel, dimming the candles on the miner’s helmets the way the sun dims the stars.

“We assume you brought proof of this great find?” the king asked, nearly rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

Sure enough the mole-miner nodded jerkily and motioned to a second man, so dun-colored that he blended into the marble column he stood beside.

The man hastened forward, clutching a leather case to his chest like a mother protecting her babe. Reluctantly he stopped before the dais, bowed clumsily to the royalty above him and set the case down, opening the top flap and revealing a stone the size of a hogshead, pulsing with the brilliant violet glow of charged ginacite.

Everyone gasped, and Sondra nearly fell from her seat in mingled awe and disbelief. It couldn’t possibly be magic; she knew there must be a purely logical explanation for the oscillating light within the stone; but at the moment logic failed her, and her heart seemed to throb in time to the pulses in an almost painful rhythm. Everyone mentally sighed with disappointment as the second man pulled the flap back over the stone, concealing its luminescence.

The king regained his composure and clapped his hands together, snapping everyone in the throne room to attention. “First, the Arivale claim is open property held by the crown, and the mineral rights are granted in bulk percentage to the Miners Cooperative, with taxes and fees paid to the crown.

The remainder of all profit belongs to the Duke of Arivale, which, as we are all aware, is an unclaimed title since the previous duke passed into Morbidon’s embrace without producing heirs. Therefore, until a new duke is named, the crown will hold the ducal percentage in trust.” The gathered nobles glanced around speculatively, wondering yet again who would gain enough of the king’s favor to earn the Dukedom of Arivale.

The title and holdings already produced a larger income than any other, prior to the mining claim shares. Many glanced at the seasoned warrior standing 22

✥ Susan Trombley ✥

at the king’s right hand, a favorite of those betting on the outcome of that question.

“Next, our finest platoon of guards will leave from the castle barracks tonight and should arrive at the mine in three days time, so Foreman, you will send this man back to your employers on our swiftest mount and inform them that the soldiers are coming, and they must avoid any security breach until then. Tell them we order all of your mining resources, tools, men, and equipment diverted to the ginacite mine. Leave the obsidia mining to the Merchant’s Mineral Acquisition Guild.”

Everyone present realized that the MMAG members would pull their hair out in rage over passing up this incredible claim. The sallow foreman’s assistant looked sick at the thought of riding a royal messenger mount across the rugged terrain and unimproved roads to the mining venture.

“Naturally your employers will want to gift us for our generosity and beneficence with that sample you brought.” The second man turned green and looked even sicker. His eyes caressed the leather case as the foreman waved him from the throne room.

“Of course, Your Highness; the stone sample is just one of many gifts from my employers.” The foreman, his task nearly complete, took a deep and relieved bow.

“For now, we call a meeting in the council chambers attended by all council members, as well as the Warlord. Steward, we demand the presence of the foreign trade advisor to the Merchants Guild in the council chamber. Also we request that the Royal Scribe pen a missive to our daughter Elona, asking after her health and humbly requesting the presence of her husband to renegotiate our existing trade agreements with Bladen. The foreman will also join us in the council room. We may need more information from you.” Sondra swore she heard an audible urp as the foreman straightened, his throat bobbing and his barely visible chin quivering.