CHAPTER 12
Three days passed quickly. Five by five, the adventurers set out for the hills, starting on Tobas’ second day in the castle; each night the dining halls were a little less crowded.
The castle armory was also partly emptied, as well as the dining halls, though Tobas noticed that only the second-rate, bent, ill-balanced, or rusted swords were handed out. When he finally decided that he should have a sword, even though he didn’t know how to use it, he spent over an hour coaxing a decent blade out of the armorer, using dire threats of magical vengeance and unbreakable curses; and even then, he found a few rust spots and had serious doubts about the metal’s temper.
He asked several Dwomorites about the dragon and got a variety of descriptions. It was said to be blue, silver, black, or green and anywhere from forty to a thousand feet long, with the most common estimate fifty or so. One woman claimed it could fly, another that it recited poetry to its victims before devouring them. Everyone agreed that it was scaly and shiny and shaped much like the traditional storytellers’ dragon, that it breathed fire, that it ate people, and that it had a very nasty disposition. No one had any useful suggestions on how to go about killing the creature.
Among the various foreigners, no one he spoke to seemed the least bit interested in taking a wizard along with his party while hunting the beast, at least, no one who spoke Ethsharitic. A rather sickly-looking prince from somewhere called Teth-Korun expressed interest through an interpreter, but Tobas reluctantly turned him down; the language barrier would be too much trouble. The prince didn’t even speak Dwomoritic; his native tongue, the interpreter said, was Quorulian, and his only other language a variant of Trader’s Tongue. He lived in virtual linguistic isolation, since only one other person in the castle, a minor official of some sort, spoke Quorulian; Tobas pitied him, but not enough to join his party.
Although Tobas made it a point to find the other magicians, none of them were any more interested in his company than were the various princes and fortune hunters. The sorcerer spoke no Ethsharitic; the theurgist knew only a few words and phrases, most of them religious in nature, and seemed to be generally suspicious of everything about Tobas. The wizard finally concluded that the priest had gotten wizardry and demonology confused, somehow; naturally, no theurgist wanted anything to do with a demonologist.
The witches could all speak to him; only one had actually learned Ethsharitic in the normal way, but the other two had enough magic to pick it up as needed. Witchcraft, Tobas had heard, was very good at that sort of thing; many witches had the gift of tongues. In other schools of magic, it was rare and difficult to achieve.
Ease of communication did not matter, however, as all three wanted nothing to do with him. The three worked as a team and made it plain, politely but unmistakably, that they needed no wizard, with his tools and chanting and ritual, getting in their way. They seemed to consider wizardry somehow old-fashioned and unreliable.
Tobas, for his part, had always considered witchcraft to be a sort of poor relation of true magic, since, in all he had heard as a child, witches tended to be very limited in what they could do and traditionally lived in genteel poverty, unable to compete with the mightier magicians, the wizards and warlocks and sorcerers and the rest, who often became quite wealthy and powerful.
He had to admit, though, that his one pitiful spell was probably of less use than even the feeblest witchcraft. A witch could light a fire without athame or brimstone and with no need of gestures or incantation. Thrindle’s Combustion did not require much in the way of ritual or preparation, but it called for more trappings than any witch needed. Disappointed, he gave up on the idea of teaming with a witch and perhaps picking up a little of the craft.
Tobas had also hoped to see more of Alorria, but was disappointed in that; with several dozen adventurers around, Alorria could spare little time for any one, even the only wizard. Her mother, Queen Alris, was not particularly impressed by claims of magical power and did not allow any of the princesses to show undue favor; after all, any one of them might find herself required to wed any one of the dragon hunters, and any premarital attentions to others might crop up unpleasantly in later years.
He thought that Alorria seemed somewhat disappointed, almost as disappointed as he was, when her mother the queen would come and chase her away from him to take a turn speaking to another adventurer. He hoped that this wasn’t just wishful thinking on his part.
He had not even realized that first night in the castle that Dwomor still had a queen, but her Majesty Alris of Dwomor certainly made her presence felt during the rest of his stay; it was she who actually ran the household. The king and his courtiers were responsible for the country as a whole; the queen and the Lord Chamberlain were responsible for the castle and everything in it, including the people.
That meant the queen and the Lord Chamberlain were the final authority on who slept where, who ate when, who could see the armorer, who could practice swordplay or magic in the courtyard, and who could speak to whom. Tobas discovered that, as a commoner, he was not allowed any contact with several members of the royal family. The king and queen could do as they pleased, of course, the five princesses had a special dispensation in light of the prospects for marrying one of the adventurers, and not even Queen Alris could control the widowed Queen Mother, but the three young princes — Derneth and Alris had not produced females exclusively — were carefully kept away from the ordinary dragon hunters at the same time that they were encouraged to hang around the foreign princes. Since the foreign princes were often in the company of commoners, making their plans for the hunt, and since a true nobleman is never rude enough to snub someone openly and obviously, this got quite complicated, and Tobas found himself pitying the boys.
There were other princes and princesses around, as well; Derneth had two sisters and a brother who still lived in Dwomor, and the brother had a wife. These four stayed in their own quarters and out of the way. Tobas might not even have known they existed had the attempted robbery not occurred.
The entire theft was bungled from the start.
One of the first parties to equip itself was made up of the three Ethsharites Tobas had considered scoundrels, along with two men from the Small Kingdoms, not of royal blood; Tobas never did get all the names and nationalities straight. He did see the five men together, though, and noticed that they had chosen rapiers from the armory rather than broadswords and carried an assortment of knives, all more practical for use against men than against dragons. No one else seemed to find anything odd about this, so Tobas said nothing.
Although apparently as prepared as they were going to get, this group did not depart, but stayed in the castle, roaming the corridors and making nuisances of themselves, until the final night, the thirtieth of Summersend.
Tobas was in his tower, in that vague state between sleeping and waking, when he heard shouting. The thought gradually penetrated his mind that if he could hear the shouting all the way at the top of a tower, then it must be quite loud indeed, and that in the ordinary course of events nobody had any business making such a racket in the middle of the night.
He sat up and listened. Several voices were yammering at each other.
He rose, pulled on his tunic, he had gotten in the habit of removing it at night, despite the cold, so that it might air out, and descended the stairs to find utter chaos below.
He was unable to make sense of what was going on, but he noticed, with some surprise, unfamiliar faces moving about; he had thought he had at least glimpsed everyone in Dwomor Keep by this time, but here were several he had not previously seen, including a handful with a noticeable family resemblance to the king.