Dragon Castle (12 page)

One feather jutted out from the others. Pavol opened his fingers, took hold, and it came away in his grasp.

“Two,” Pavol whispered to himself as he slipped it into the pouch that always hung around his waist.

Then he carefully descended the great tree.

AS ALWAYS, WHETHER it is the dead of winter or the heat of summer, the door of Uncle Jozef and Baba Anya's dom is open. A roughly made two-room hut with a roof of thatch, it seems no different from those of any of the other common folk of our valley. A curl of smoke drifts up from their chimney.

Ucta and Odvaha flop down into their usual guard posts on either side of the door. They'll wait there while I'm inside, even if it means spending most of the day in the sun.

Baba Anya's chickens immediately come flocking up to cluck and peck at the earth around them. Ucta lifts up his right front foot so that Uncle Jozef's imperious red-cockaded rooster can pry out a bit of grain beneath it. Unlike the princess's nasty cat, my friends will do no harm to these feather-brained cluckers. I think they're amused by the foolishness of those strutting, potential snacks.

I sniff the air. There's a lingering scent from one of Baba Anya's mouth-watering stews. But it's from yesterday. Nothing cooking just now. I shouldn't be surprised. It's market day. On market day Uncle Jozef makes do with a cold midday meal while she's off from early morning to mid-afternoon trundling from stall to stall, chatting with friends and bargaining.

“Ahoj,”
I call as I stand at the threshold of the single-roomed hut. “Uncle Jozef?”

My hello is not to make Uncle Jozef aware of my arrival. I have no doubt that he already knows I am here. But there's a certain amount of ceremony attached to any of my dealings with him. Cesta, again.

“Vitaj, synovec,”
his deep, gruff voice answers from the shadows beyond the doorway.

It thrilled me the first time he welcomed me with those words. It still affects me like that. To be called
synovec
, nephew, by Uncle Jozef, to be told you are welcome, is like passing a test. Or, to be accurate, being admitted into the examination chamber.

I tried once to explain that to my brother. But Paulek just looked at me blankly. Paulek likes Uncle Jozef. He respects him for his strength. But he has no idea at all what our village wise man knows. He's never been invited into Uncle Jozef's dom.

Nor has he wanted to be. Why would he, the older son of a baron, bow his head to venture into the cramped, smoky hut of some old peasant? Even though he does not know what he is missing.

I shake my head at the wry thought that comes to me. Among the things Paulek is missing from Uncle Jozef are a variety of bruises.

I duck my head and hunch my shoulders as I enter . . . and not just because of the low doorway. I never know what might happen whenever I venture here. I might be crushed in what seems a friendly bear hug but turns into a wrestling lesson. I might have something thrown, swung, or shot at me. Or I might be asked a seemingly simple question that eventually makes my brain start spinning.

Today, it's none of those. Uncle Jozef is just sitting there by the fireplace with his eyes closed, hands held out palms up. There's a benevolent look on his face. This worries me more than having a club hurled at my nose or being asked “Why water?”

“Sadni si,”
he rumbles.

I sit on the dirt floor. I'm not just being humble. There's little in this room in the way of furniture. Aside from the kitchen area to the left—which is Baba Anya's alone—the main features on this side are Uncle Jozef's massive oak chest to the left of the fireplace, a single chair, and a large writing table strewn with an assortment of quill pens and sheets of parchment. The entire wall behind that table is lined with well-made shelves laden with books and scrolls of all shapes and sizes.

I used to ask why he, a man of such learning, and Baba Anya, an almost magically talented herbalist, have chosen to live in these simple surroundings. With their abilities they could have amassed much wealth and power. Failing that, why hadn't they at least built themselves a finer house?

Uncle Jozef's answers were like those enigmatic sayings like Father loves. Now that I think of it, I wonder if Father learned his proverbs from Uncle Jozef?

“Rashko, no matter how large a salmon grows, it always returns to its own stream.”

“My boy, no man can eat more than his belly can hold.”

“Nephew, you do not have to climb to the top of a tower to see the stars.”

It was maddening. So, finally, I gave up asking why Uncle Jozef is so content with being a mere village sage, Baba Anya with being the midwife and healer for any in our valley needing her help.

But I have not given up inquiring about other things. And the question I have to ask now is a direct one. What in the name of heaven and earth can I do about the fix in which my family and I have found ourselves?

I can't ask right away. Waiting is part of Cesta. The more impatient you are, the longer your wait will be.

If I were Paulek, I suppose I'd just try commanding Uncle Jozef to give me an answer. Straightforward as an arrow shot at a target—even if that target is a big rock that will shatter your bolt.

“You might also stop grinding your teeth, nephew,” Uncle Jozef rumbles.

Then he laughs, a huge belly laugh that makes his whole body shake. Uncle Jozef is not fat. There's nothing but muscle on his massive frame. But he is shaped like a barrel, a very big one. That is why his chair in front of that writing desk was made from the heavy limbs of a huge old oak tree. Anyone seeing that monumental seat for the first time might wonder why it was built to bear the weight of a bull. Until they saw Uncle Jozef and said, “Ah-ha.”

As Uncle Jozef fills the room with his roaring laughter, I start to chuckle in spite of myself. How foolish my impatience and self-absorption is. It really is funny. I relax into laughter almost as loud as that of my teacher.

Laughter, Uncle Jozef has taught me over the years, is medicine. Even in the midst of pain and confusion, mirth brings healing. It lifts your heart, lightens the load. Without laughter we humans would long ago have been crushed by the weight of the past and its sorrows.

“Dobre,”
Uncle Jozef growls. He straightens up, suddenly serious. “Good. Now you are ready to ask about what to do about those botflies who have mistaken us and our little land for some herd of cattle they can prey upon. Eh?”

“Unh,” I say. “Unh . . . unh.” Uncle Jozef does this to me almost every time. He reduces me to the level of a stammering fool.

“
Ano
, yes, it is a big problem.
Pod.
Come.”

Uncle Jozef rises. It's an impressive spectacle, as if a hill decided to grow legs and walk. I stand with him, feeling like a badger next to a bear, and we move over to his table. He pulls out his chair, the weighty legs scraping lines in the hard-packed earth of the floor, then he drops his bulk onto the seat. Massive as it is, the chair creaks under his weight.

“That book,” he says, pointing with his right thumb. “Bring it to me.”

I walk over and reach up to reverently remove the large volume he's indicated from the wall. Holding it with both hands, I carry it back to Uncle Jozef. He takes it with one huge paw and tosses it on the tabletop in almost the way one might throw dice. The book lands lightly and falls open, as if of its own accord. There, on the left-hand page, is a large portrait of a sinister-looking figure. Ornately appareled, the narrow-faced man holds a curved sword in one hand and the head of someone clearly not a friend in the other.

I draw in a quick breath. The woodcut must have been done by a talented artist—one sensitive enough to have been rather nervous while making it. The small sharp teeth, the thick eyebrows. Alive with malevolence, snake-like eyes stare straight up at me from the page. A date is printed beneath the picture.

“Three hundred years ago!” Uncle Jozef's voice is deep as the first warning roll of thunder before a storm strike. “Baron Vladimir Temny.”

“The same name? His great-great-grandfather or something like that?”

“Nie.”
Uncle Jozef tosses his head back in a vigorous shake that makes his great mane of silver hair swish across his face. “Though he has been known by other names, it is he.”

One word immediately comes to my mind. I speak it . . . carefully.

Uncle Jozef turns and slowly shakes his head. “
Nie.
Your house guest is not one of those.”

He turns a page and runs his finger down the words written in Latin. It's a language I recognize but have not yet learned to read, so looking over his shoulder doesn't help. All I can do is wait.

“Ah, here it is. Bitten once by vampire. Vampire died.”

I start to laugh, but he gives me a look that shows he is not joking.

“So if he is not one of the Undead, then how has he managed to live for so long?”

Uncle Jozef doesn't answer. He just looks at me in that way he does when I've said something foolish. Is it like the look that I suppose comes over my face when I am trying to explain the obvious to my older brother?

“Care to venture a guess, nephew?”

“Magic,” I say.

Uncle Jozef nods. “Drawn from wherever he can find it.”

Magic, inexplicable as it is, explains a great many things. As the proverb goes, it is better to believe the truth than investigate why it is so.

“I have another question.”

“Of course you do.” That pitying look is on his face again.

I ask my question anyway.

“Why has be come to us?”

Uncle Jozef reaches one of his huge hands up, pulls down one of the parchment scrolls and unrolls it. It's a map of our country and the lands around it, those twelve often quarrelsome realms.

“How are we different here?” he asks.

“We're at peace.”

“
Ano.
And why is that?”

I think about his question. Is it because we are isolated by our mountains? Because the road that leads here ends at the slopes of the High Tatras? Then it comes to me.

“Prince Pavol,” I reply.

“Ano.”
Uncle Jozef nods, raising one thick eyebrow. “And what did he bring back from his quest?”

Pavol the Good. In the past, small as our realm might be, wars were fought here until my severaltimes-great-grandfather Pavol gained the dukedom.

I don't know all of my ancestor's story. But what I have been told is that when he was a young man, only a little older than I am now, Pavol set out on a great quest.

Though an orphan, with little to his name other than the clothing on his back, Pavol had an unshakably friendly and positive attitude. He wandered about, his head held high, delighted at the songs of the birds and grateful for whatever good happened to come his way—even if it was a turnip bestowed upon him by some goodwife who took pity on this ragged clown of a man. Even if someone ridiculed him one day, on the next day Pavol would be the first to offer that person help when he needed it. Should a bit of coin come his way, Pavol would invariably give it to the first beggar he saw by the roadside, even if it meant going hungry himself. When things went awry, he would be amused rather than dismayed. If he was so engrossed with watching the clouds that he fell into a ditch and came up muddy and bruised, he would laugh even louder than those who observed his idiocy.

Pavol the Foolish, they called him.

When he went on his quest up into the High Tatra Mountains on the back of an ass everyone assumed that he would perish.

How wrong they were.

I don't know exactly what happened next. I wish I did. But what I have been told is that when Pavol did return, astride a silver stallion with fiery eyes and horseshoes forged of steel, he was a different man. Charismatic and confident, he became Duke Pavol the First. He regained control of our country, which had been held in the iron grip of an evil tyrant, without spilling a drop of blood. He might have even gone further in making our land great. But he stopped when he reached the pass leading into our valley.

“A wise man knows,” he said, “when his reach does not exceed his grasp.”

It was Duke Pavol the Good who built Castle Hladka Hvorka on top of the hill of the same name, that height where no man had ever dared to venture alone, much less spend the night. In fact, some say—though that does seem to be stretching it a bit—that our great castle rose up complete in a single night, like a stone bud opening in flower.

Then Duke Pavol invited all of the rulers from the human lands around ours to Hladka Hvorka. Amazingly, they all came. They sat together and met in a spirit of truce. However, no one drank the wine that was served to them, and whenever they sat, there was always a bit of a scuffle for the best chairs—the ones with their backs to the wall.

At that great convocation, presided over by Pavol the First, or Pavol the Just, as he began to be called by the surrounding powers, an agreement was forged between us and all the other powers around. We will hold our land in peace. All we ask is that you do one thing. Just leave us alone.

Prosim?
Please? Duke Pavol said, lightly fingering the large, bejeweled sword that hung by his side and the pouch that hung at his belt.

The visiting powers eyed that sword. They also took note of the duke's impressive white horse, which was always by his side, even when he was not riding it. Even at meetings inside the castle. Now and then it would lean forward to nuzzle Duke Pavol's ear as if whispering to him.