A minute later, Grail concurred. "Very good. It's still not completely down, but that'll come with time. Here's your next task." He touched a jagged trace on a second display. "This should become more like a sine wave: smoother curves and with the peaks spaced farther apart. I found this step easier than the last one when I was learning, if that makes you feel any better."
Royd felt his ears prick up. "You learned to control the dragons this way, too? Who did you learn from?"
Grail ignored the question, nodding instead toward the book on the table. "I see you're reading Iviza. What do you think of his theories?"
"I don't like them," Royd told him, switching mental gears with somewhat less ease. "He doesn't seem to even allow for the existence of morality in politics. I think he's wrong."
Smiling slightly, Grail settled himself more comfortably in his chair. "Tell me why," he challenged.
The two men talked long into the night, discussing politics and related subjects. At times Royd almost forgot who he was talking to; the Dragonmaster's political views—or at least the ones he was admitting to—were much closer to Royd's than the latter would ever have expected. It was a wrench sometimes to remember that this was the man who had sent Royd's father to his death. The man Royd had sworn to kill.
—
The days stretched into weeks, and Royd's life settled into a reasonably comfortable routine. He worked several hours daily on the mind-conditioning equipment; ate, slept, and exercised on a rigid schedule; and spent the rest of his time reading. Every few days Grail would stop by, usually in the evenings, to check on Royd's progress and to bring him new books.
He also kept Royd informed on current events, both general news and the more private details of governmental business and infighting. His candor in speaking about his subordinates was sometimes surprising, and gradually Royd began to see that the Dragonmaster was less an omnipotent ruler than simply a powerful man in the midst of a machine not entirely under his control.
Almost against his will, Royd frequently found himself in sympathy with the dictators goals, and at such times he had to sharply remind himself to watch for traps, verbal and otherwise. If there were any traps, though, he never spotted them.
Oddly enough, as Royd's feelings toward Grail began to soften, he noticed his own confinement was being eased. His door was no longer locked, and he was allowed to move freely among the half-dozen rooms of his section of the palace, though he was still forbidden to enter the more public areas where people might see him.
More than once he considered escaping and rejoining the Rosette Freedom Party's underground, where his new knowledge of Grail, the government, and the dragons could be put to good use. Each time, though, he chose to stay. The more he learned, he told himself, the better their chances of ultimately bringing down the regime—he no longer thought of it in terms of Grail alone—and of restoring freedom to Rosette. It never occurred to him that he might be staying simply because doing otherwise would be betraying Grail's trust.
But Grail was not the type to let his subordinates have secrets, even from themselves, and eventually he forced the issue in his characteristically blunt way.
It was in Royd's eighth week of captivity when Grail showed up unexpectedly as the youth was beginning his mind-conditioning work. "Turn that off and get your coat," the Dragonmaster ordered. "We're going on a little trip today."
Royd blinked his astonishment. "What? Where are we going?"
"To see dragon pax in action. Come on."
He led the way to the palace roof, where one of Rosette's three VTOL gunships was waiting for them. The craft was designed to carry up to thirty troops: on this trip, Royd and Grail were its only passengers. They strapped in, and Grail used the intercom to give the pilot his orders.
"Where exactly are we going?" Royd asked as they lifted silently into the sky.
"The Rosette-Easterland border," Grail answered. "Louys Pass, about six kilometers southeast of Hagston. Our patrols say that there's a new Easterling base being set up there. I want to walk One past it, just to remind them what they'll have to face on this side of the line."
One. It was the first time Royd had ever heard Grail refer to any of his dragons by any sort of name. " 'One' is your biggest dragon, I take it?"
Grail nodded. "One, Two, and Three, in decreasing order of size."
"Not terribly original."
The Dragonmaster stared out a window. "I originally called them Alecto, Magaera, and Tisiphone—the three Furies from ancient Earth mythology, who pursued and punished evildoers in terrible ways. But... I suppose after the fracture- bombing of Solfa it seemed to me that I had no business calling the dragons by cute names. They're fearsome, deadly weapons and shouldn't be treated like pets."
Royd shivered. For the Furies to be considered 'cute names'... "It must have been pretty bad. Solfa, I mean."
"The entire world was destroyed. I mean that literally; what the bombs themselves didn't get the tectonic upheavals that followed did." Grail's jaw muscles tightened visibly. "Three billion people killed, for the sole purpose of trying to destroy two Dragonmasters. That shows you how much the Emperor fears us."
Royd digested that. "How'd you escape?"
"I was already in space when the attack started. My ship took some damage, but I got away. That's when I came here." Grail spoke almost mechanically; from the look in his eyes it was clear his thoughts were still with the slagged surface of Solfa. His breathing seemed to have quickened, and Royd noted with some uneasiness that he was beginning to wheeze.
"Maybe we'd better stop talking for a while," he said. "You don't want to go into one of your coughing fits."
"You're right." Grail sank back in his seat and smiled wanly. "It has been getting worse, hasn't it?"
"Yeah. What are the doctors doing for you?"
"Not much they can do. My lungs are slowly filling up with scar tissue. It's something I picked up forty years ago out on Agave. Not contagious, by the way."
"Glad to hear it. Now shut up and get some rest."
Grail smiled again. "Yes, Doctor," he murmured, closing his eyes.
The aircraft reached its destination—one of Rosette's border outposts—an hour or so later. Grail, seemingly recovered from his earlier discomfort, obtained two horses, and he and Royd rode off into the low mountains that formed a natural barrier between Rosette and Easterland. No one at the base asked Royd's name or position; Grail did not volunteer that information.
The mountains were not particularly high, but they were steep and treacherous in places. Clearly, though, Grail had taken this path before, and he led them skillfully up the slope. After perhaps an hour he reined in. "We go on foot from here," he told Royd. "I want to get a little closer before I release One."
They made their way through the trees and underbrush for half a kilometer to a small clearing where, without warning, the forty-meter dragon appeared. Shifting its bulk with surprising grace, it moved off between the trees. "Glad we found this clearing," Grail grunted. "If you bring One out in the woods you usually knock down a tree or two in the process. Makes a hell of a noise." He looked at Royd. "Did you feel anything when I released it?"
Royd hadn't even thought to try applying his mind-conditioning work. "Uh—"
"Forgot to, huh? Never mind; get ready and I'll bring out Three."
And this time Royd did sense something. A presence of sorts, but cold and faintly menacing.
Grail nodded when Royd tried to describe it. "That's the dragon, all right. Scared hell out of me when I first contacted it, too. I'm going to put Three through its paces; watch how the feeling changes with each movement." The dragon turned and leaped into the lower branches of the nearest tree. "Shouldn't you stick with one dragon at a time?" Royd asked, glancing in the direction that One had taken.