Dragon Castle (18 page)

“Dost dobre?”
Pavol asked, an amused smile on his lips. “Good enough?”

“Ano!”
Jedovaty, the warhorse, replied in a deeply satisfied voice. “More than good . . .
kamarat
.”

Pavol took the four remaining items from the flat stone. The bear's tooth, the wing bone, the iron ring, and the bronze bracelet were placed back into the pouch, the leather string wrapped about its neck four times and tightly tied.

“No more miracles this afternoon?” Jedovaty asked.

Though his voice was now deeper and no longer carried a bitter overtone, it was still as ironic as it had been when he was a mere donkey. Pavol felt grateful for that. He had not liked the thought of traveling with a companion who was deadly serious or overawed by wonders.

“Not for now,” Pavol said. “Let us see what happens when we reach the Cave of the Worm.”

“Of course,” Jedovaty said. “I can hardly wait.”

Irony still,
Pavol thought,
but eagerness too.

“Ano,”
Pavol said.

He vaulted up into the fine saddle that had previously been nothing more than a loosely fastened moth-eaten blanket and some mostly empty and nondescript saddlebags. Those saddlebags were now much larger, well-made and happily bulging. Pavol patted them once, wondering if their contents had also been made into better fare than the previous few handfuls of grain and dried beans. But there would be time for eating later—provided they were not first themselves the main course.

“And we are off,” Pavol said.

“In more ways than one,” Jedovaty agreed.

But despite his sarcasm, there was nothing but determination in the way he charged up the steep slope, his steel horseshoes ringing against the stones and shooting off sparks.

On up the mountain they continued. But a bit slower now.

Jedovaty's first eager charge up the slopes had been brief. When they reached the top of the pass, what they saw was not the top, but yet another, even steeper ridge ahead. And beyond that was yet another. So it went through much of the morning, which grew hotter and hotter.

“Oh my,” the mighty charger sighed, not winded, but a bit discouraged.

“Ah well,” Pavol said, leaning forward to pat Jedovaty on his neck, “as the proverb says, one does not reach the end of the day any faster by running. Up we go.”

“Up indeed,” Jedovaty replied. But he did not hesitate to move forward.

And so, at that considerably less brisk but steady pace, they continued on. The sun rose higher and their shadows shortened. It was a long, slow journey.

Plenty of time for Pavol to think even more about this quest. Perhaps too much time. In the heat of action, one has little opportunity to ponder over whether or not one's nickname of Pavol the Foolish will, indeed, turn out to be unfortunately appropriate. He reached down to touch the sheath of his sword, reassuring himself that it was truly there, lifted up and hefted his impressive shield. Just the sort of weapons that a true hero would carry into battle.

Real enough
, he thought.
Proof of something
.

He looked toward his waist. The pouch still hung there, securely fastened to his belt. And the wide, thickly muscled back of his sturdy steed beneath him was further reassurance that at least one or two things had gone quite well thus far.

I have been trained for this,
he thought.
Wise words and strong hands have guided me. This is my true destiny.
But still the doubts remained.

Finally, the merciless sun directly overhead, they crested one more ridge and saw it half a league above them—a blotch of darkness on the mountainside. The large mouth of a cave.

What if there is no dragon at all up there and that cave is empty?
Pavol thought.
What then? Go back home in disgrace or stay on top of the mountain and live as a hermit?

His doubts, though daunting, were fleeting. They were all too quickly replaced by musings about . . . technique. What exactly should one do when actually confronted by an immense fire-breathing lizard? Though Pavol had heard much mention of dragons in the stirring stories of Baba Marta, and read in Uncle Tomas's books numerous lengthy tales of heroes defeating such baleful beasts, all those accounts had been unsatisfyingly inexact about the precise tactics to be employed. As far as he could recollect, all that was ever said or written was along the lines of
With one swift swipe of his sharp singing sword, the hero sliced off the dragon's head
.

Pavol swabbed his sweating brow with a kerchief. Though the other peaks around them were topped with ice and snow, this part of the mountain range was quite dry and bare. The higher they had gone, the warmer it had become. Pavol thought he knew the reason for that, but did not voice his conjecture until Jedovaty spoke up.

“Hot dragon breath,” the former donkey sneered, no lack of his previous irony in his tone. “Delightful, isn't it?”

Indeed it was not. Imagine the stench of rancid meat mixed with peppery smoke.

They were now no more than a spear's cast from the cave mouth. So much larger than it had appeared from far below.

Three times the height of a tall man
, Pavol thought as they moved slowly forward.
Wide enough to drive a wagon through
.

His eyes were beginning to water from the sulfurous air streaming out of the ominous dark opening. He blinked, trying to peer within its obsidian depths. Almost anything could be hidden in there.

Pavol did not feel afraid at that moment. However, strangely enough, it came to him that he had never checked the contents of his transmuted saddlebags to see what his meager meal of beans had been transformed into. Breast of pheasant? A leg of lamb? Some stuffed pierogies? A roll of poppy seed cake? He'd been so excited when he set out that morning that he had failed to eat anything at all. His stomach rumbled and his mouth watered.

Then there was his steed to think about. Poor Jedovaty was probably half-starved too. Being metamorphosed from a donkey into a warhorse had to work up a bit of an appetite. Might it not be a good idea to turn back and pause for a late breakfast somewhere a bit farther and cooler down the slope—say back down in the valley they had started out from?

No, it was too late now for that. He could not abandon his quest, having come so far. Even though perhaps the only one consuming anything edible that day might be a large reptile.

And is that why I am feeling interested in eating just now?
Pavol thought.
Because there is an almost palpable atmosphere of hunger all about me, the sort that might emanate from a huge ravenous monster?

A singularly large, one-horned head, its mouth over-supplied with fangs, poked out of the cave at the end of a long neck.

“
Ja som
Jedna,” it growled, leaning so close that its nose was an arm's length away. “I am Jedna. Prepare to meet doom!”

“Dobre den
, Jedna,” Pavol said, “Good day. Prepare to meet my blade.” Then, unsheathing his singing sword, he sheared off the dragon's head with one swift swipe.

“
Do videnia
, Jedna,” Jedovaty said, turning to watch the dragon's head roll down the slope like a large green boulder. “Bye-bye.”

The blood-spurting neck of Jedna swung back and forth a few times in apparent confusion before being jerked back into the cave. Almost immediately another larger head on an even thicker neck thrust itself out from the cave mouth. This head was two-horned. Its eyes glowed red as the fires of Hades.

“
Ja som
Dva!” it roared, its mouth gaped to display at least twice as many fangs as Jedna. “Your fate is sealed!”

“Oh my,” Jedovaty sighed. “Here we go again.”

I'M NO LONGER watching from far above, no longer sharing Pavol's thoughts. A great mist as white as a sheet of parchment has swept in, obscuring Pavol and Jedovaty and the dragon from view. I'm back in Uncle Jozef and Baba Anya's dom, sitting at the table staring at the blank space at the end of a parchment.

“What happened next?” I ask.

Uncle Jozef holds up another roll of parchment with a ribbon wrapped about it.

“Here,” he says. “You read it later. Now go back.”

Baba Anya nods.

They're both right. I've been away too long. But I have the distinct feeling, the foresight, that if I were to try to enter the way I always do, across the drawbridge and through the front gate, another ambush will be waiting for me.

“What shall I do?” I ask. I don't expect a direct answer and I don't get one. Just another question, this time from Baba Anya.

“What do you hear?” She taps her forehead with her little finger.

However, it's a question I understand. I need to search my mind.

I close my eyes. And as soon as I do so I hear a voice. It sounds like the voice of Pavol that I've heard in my visions.

“Our tapestry,” it says. “Look.”

I look. In my mind's eye I see the huge wall hanging that depicts our ancestor's tale.

I hold that image in my mind, study it. There's the dragon and Hladka Hvorka. Strangely, our castle is not portrayed as the usual front view at the bottom of the hill where the road begins that leads up to the gate. Instead, it is shown from the back. Ah! The back way. Of course.

And there, glowing in the midst of the tapestry, brighter than ever before, is Pavol's pouch. And as I look at it, I realize that I've seen it in three places. Once in the tapestry, once with my great ancestor as I have been watching his tale unfold . . . and one other time.

The first day when my mother took us down into the cavern I had felt something. A pull toward an object as plain and simple as a piece of homespun cloth. I had not known then what that power was, how that power felt. But now, after watching Pavol's tale unfold, I do. I recognize its pull on me—and how it might draw one like Baron Temny, who would seek such power in the hopes of turning it to evil use.

I know where Pavol's pouch is! It's the key to everything. Of course it's what Temny has come to find. But if it still holds any of the objects of power that Pavol gathered, I may be able to turn them to our defense.

I start to open my eyes, but then Pavol's voice speaks again.

“Look further.”

Something else in my mental image of the tapestry begins to glow, to stand out. It catches my attention so strongly that I cannot look away. It's the figures that have always seemed out of place in the tales, the shapes of those two agile jugglers.

As soon as I take note of them, the tapestry vanishes and I find myself remembering something else. I remember the market day just last week.

Paulek and I had gone there because we'd heard there were going to be jugglers. I suppose our initial interest in that deft art had been piqued by growing up playing next to that great wall tapestry. By the time I was nine and Paulek was ten, the jugglers in the great cloth hanging had so fascinated us that we began to try tossing balls back and forth between us.

Then, and this may surprise you, juggling actually did become one of our shared skills.

How did the sons of a king learn the skills of itinerant, minor entertainers? Blame Black Yanosh for that. Hired by our father to teach us martial ways, he arrived at our castle and entered our lives not long after Paulek and I had begun enjoying some success at tossing three balls back and forth. We were doing just that when someone suddenly was there between us. It was an elegant old man, all dressed in black, with a beard trimmed so precisely that its edges appeared sharp as a knife. But it was not just that neither of us had seen him approach that made our mouths gape open. It was also the way, without looking, that he snagged the balls we had just thrown out of the air with one hand. It made me think of a hawk catching pigeons on the wing.

“So,” he said, “you like this game? I am Yanosh, I also juggle. Shall I show you?”

I nodded for both of us.

But balls were not what Black Yanosh used to demonstrate his ability. The grizzled old weapons master yanked our daggers out of their sheaths. Then, hurling them high up into the air with his own larger blade, he proceeded to catch and toss, catch and toss, catch and toss each in turn. The light that reflected from their razor edges was hypnotic, the exactitude of each catch and toss, the calm look on Black Yanosh's face as he did it, natural as breathing.

“I want to do that,” Paulek whispered.

“Can you teach us?” I asked.

“Can you learn?” Black Yanosh replied, turning his hooded eyes toward us. Then he caught each dagger in turn and flipped it—again without even looking—spinning through the air. Chunk! Chunk! Chunk! All three embedded themselves in the center of the wooden target thirty feet away.

“We can try,” Paulek and I answered as one, something we did as children until my vocabulary outpaced his.

“Good answer.” Black Yanosh nodded.

We were good students. The best he'd ever had, he admitted in an unguarded moment.

Juggling, our old weapons master believes, is not just an amusement. It tunes the senses, quickens the reflexes, makes more precise the movements of limbs that might bend a bow, swing a staff, thrust with a sword, block or evade a killing strike.

The gymnastics that went with it were part of that same philosophy. Within a year the two of us could leap, cartwheel, and flip as well as any acrobats.

Juggling is perhaps the only time when Paulek and I can do anything together that is neither competitive nor limited by his lack of comprehension. My brother may be a disaster as a classroom student, but he's a brilliant juggler. The quick flurry of his hands as he passes back to me one, two, three, four clubs, from the front, from behind his back, between his legs, even blindfolded, is inspirational to watch. I can barely keep up with him. And when he handles a dozen balls and they blur into one continuous circle, the look on his face is so intense, so knowing, that I can hardly believe he is the same person who always seems to be amazed in the classroom that two and two never fail to make four.