Gold Dragon Codex (13 page)

No. Sandon chided himself. I’m not even going to consider it.

What were you doing, Mother? I wish I could ask you. Sighing, Sandon mopped up the last of the gravy with a crust of bread. If you did fly the dragon, how did you make it work? Was there a password? A key? Some sort of special combination in the levers that made it start to move?

He turned the problem over and over in his mind, coming to no conclusions. Someone had to know what was going on. Kine? Sandon frowned. Sandon would let himself be thrown off a cliff before he went down to the prisons to ask the soldier anything. The man was a liar, and even if he’d kept the secret of the passageway behind Sandon’s mother’s room, he had also tried to steal from
her—from Sandon and his family. That grungy soldier was a conundrum of a different type—at once helpful and deceitful, and Sandon wasn’t interested in adding another mystery to the pile he already had.

The more he thought about it, the more Sandon came to the same conclusion: His mother was dead. Any dragon that might have once lived in the cave—if there had been one—was long gone, as was the gnome or whatever had built the construct. The only person he could think of who was involved in this mystery and still in the barony was his father.

As of tomorrow, however, even his father would be gone.

Swallowing hard, Sandon put down the empty glass of water and pushed up from his seat. If he wanted to stop the sacrifice, he had to get to the bottom of this mystery. He’d gone up to the cliff to find out if the gold dragon could help save his father from Malaise and Lazuli. He might not have found a real dragon, but he wasn’t going to give up on it so long as there was any chance he could help his father.

That meant he couldn’t just sit here in his room, no matter how late it was. If he knew his father, Camiel would still be awake, shuffling through papers, getting ready for tomorrow. Father was a perfectionist, and
tonight would be no different. Sandon opened his bedroom door and poked his head out into the hall. Darkness. He could hear footsteps patrolling the corridor, but there was no one in sight.

Moving quickly, Sandon slipped out into the hallway. He closed the door behind him as softly as he could, wincing when the latch clicked. He could hear the guard at the end of the hall pausing by the window before he started back. As quietly as he could, Sandon hurried down the hallway toward his father’s chamber. Sandon ducked behind pillars set into the walls and jerked to a stop when he caught sight of a pale white shoulder—just a marble sculpture of some forgotten ancestor sitting on a table in the hall. Sandon breathed a sigh of relief, swearing that he could hear the pounding of his heart in the empty corridor.

At last, he reached the door to his father’s chamber. The outer door led into the study, and Sandon tested the lock. Open. He pulled the door ajar and ducked inside, grateful that he had a place to hide from the patrolling guard. The study was gray and silent, thick rugs on the floor padding Sandon’s footfalls as he crossed the room. He nearly smacked into the corner of his father’s heavy mahogany desk. He tweaked his body to the side just in time to prevent reinjuring the hip that was already
bruised. Muffling a curse, Sandon crept up to the door that led into his father’s bedroom. Light peeped beneath the wood, illuminating a thin line against the floor. It looked like his father was still awake.

Sandon paused when he reached the door. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say when he opened it. A few ideas flitted through his mind, but they all seemed silly or meaningless. Saying a quiet prayer to Paladine, Sandon rubbed his sweating palms on his trousers and reached for the knob.

He pulled the door open just a crack to peer inside. The bedroom beyond was dark blue, the walls covered by paper of a royal shade, and the floor rugs so dark they seemed almost indigo. A large fireplace was the source of the light. All the candles were cold and unlit. Sandon’s father leaned against the hearth, staring into the fire with a faraway look on his features. He rolled something back and forth between his fingers, the idle gesture of distraction catching Sandon’s attention.

Before Sandon said anything, he realized that his father was not alone in the room. Captain Vilfrand stood on the far side, setting down a tray by the baron’s bed. Sandon let out a soft grunt of displeasure and pulled back, intending to close the door before the two men
noticed him. I’ll come back later, he thought, when Dad is alone.

“Everything is prepared for tomorrow, Camiel,” Vilfrand said, breaking the silence. Sandon froze at the sound of his voice. “The boy will never know.”

Boy? Does he mean me?

“I wish it hadn’t come to this.”

“I know,” Vilfrand said. “But it has.”

The baron stood in silence, looking down at the vial in his hand. Sandon could see it clearly, the blue glass reflecting purple glints from the firelight. Vilfrand wasn’t looking. He didn’t see the baron staring down at the little vial. Before Vilfrand looked up from the tray he was arranging, the baron set the vial on the mantel and turned away.

“Has Torentine been back to the keep since …” The baron’s voice held a forced lightness.

“No.” Vilfrand answered curtly. “I’ve told him to stop wandering around up here. He’s stuck his nose into our business one too many times. The next time I find him in the keep unannounced and unescorted, I swear, I’ll lock him in the brig with that foul soldier and let them kill each other over scraps.” He shook his head, growling under his breath.

The baron let out a wry chuckle. “You shouldn’t
worry about him so much, Vilfrand, though your loyalty is commendable.”

They were silent for a moment, until Baron Camiel noticed the food. He wrinkled his nose. “Is that stew?”

“Gallia’s finest. Made from the leftovers of yesterday’s feast.”

The baron groaned and waved his hand to ward away the steamy smell. “This is my last real dinner. For Paladine’s sake, let me have something solid. Is there anything left of the venison we hunted a few days back?”

“I think there is. Come on, we’ll go look.” Vilfrand picked up the tray again and headed for the door. The baron followed.

They were coming this way! If Vilfrand knew he was out of his room, Sandon would get it for sure—and the captain might even be so mad he’d lock the door this time. Panicked, Sandon ran to the mahogany desk and crawled under it, tucking his knees up against his chin. He reached out and pulled his dad’s chair closer, covering the opening so that he could hide in the shadow while the two men passed. He heard the bedroom door open, and light spilled into the room on the far side of the big wooden desk, followed by two sets of footfalls. Sandon held his breath, a hand clamped over his mouth, while they passed by. The
far door opened, there were steps in the hallway, and then the door closed, shutting the study off from the rest of the house once more.

Sandon slumped against the wooden sides under the desk. He’d give them a few minutes to get down to the kitchen, and then sneak back to his room. What had they been talking about anyway? Guildmaster Torentine was sneaking into the keep? Why? How long had he been doing that? Vilfrand made it sound like he’d been caught multiple times—but what about all the times he hadn’t been caught?

Torentine was a guildmaster, a crafter, and a workman. He might know a few gnomes. He might even have helped with the constructs—or, if he didn’t make them, he might know who did. Torentine was looking for something here, that was for sure, or he wouldn’t keep coming back.

And what was in the vial his father was holding? A sleeping draught? He wouldn’t blame his father if he couldn’t sleep tonight. Sandon was having a hard time with that too.

He climbed out from under the desk and crept into his father’s room. The fire still crackled in the hearth, shedding a warm glow over the chamber. Sandon paused to listen, but the footsteps in the hall had faded, and
the only rhythm he could hear was the pounding of his heart.

The little vial was still on the mantel. Sandon reached up and lifted it, bringing it down to read the writing on the label. In his father’s thick lettering were the words “yellow lakrak.”

Sandon almost dropped the vial.

That label had to be wrong. He tugged off the cork carefully and put the vial to his nose, smelling the bittersweet scent of the liquid inside. The familiar aroma made Sandon’s knees sag, and he shoved the cork back into the bottle with a shaking hand. Fearful of dropping the bottle, he lifted it again to the mantel and slowly drew his hand away. Horrified, Sandon backed out of the room.

He slipped into the study and opened the door to the hallway, not even checking to see if the patrolling guard was right outside the door. The corridor was empty. Sandon felt his way back to his room in the darkness. He made it back and closed the door behind him, leaning stiffly against it as it shut.

Yellow lakrak. He’d smelled the sickeningly bittersweet aroma only once before. The physician had shaken his head when he said the words, explaining that the root was found in lands far from these. There was no
way it grew in the valley, or even in Solamnia. Lakrak had to be brought here deliberately from far away. That was why everyone in the barony assumed it was brought by a traveler, one of their guests, a wanderer given succor to rest on his way home from the war. They’d never found the source of it. The physician had to identify it by studying the wine left in an abandoned glass. Yellow lakrak.

The cloying aroma clung to Sandon’s fingers and in his nose, refusing to go away. He breathed in the dust of his chamber, the faint scent of his mostly eaten meal, and the ashy smoke of his fireplace, but he couldn’t get the scent to go away. He could still remember the first time he’d smelled it—on his mother’s last breath the night she died.

he night passed like molasses pouring from a pitcher. Sandon stayed awake for it all, watching the moons’ slow, solemn progression across the second half of the sky. It took an eternity after the moons had set for the sun to rise, tickling the clouds at the eastern edge of the sky with yellow and pink. Sandon sat in his window, listening to the house wake up around him. Gallia cracked pots together in the kitchen. A guardsman took one of the horses from the stable and walked it around the courtyard to ease its stiffened leg. Sandon heard his father go downstairs, and voices rose in greeting as the baron met with Vilfrand and some of the other men. Only after the voices faded and a door downstairs closed loudly did Sandon get up.

Sandon remembered Kine’s words that pointed a finger at the baron.
I’m just saying you should think about it, that’s all
.

“Well, I thought about it,” Sandon muttered to himselfas he walked out of his room. “And I don’t like what I’m thinking.”

This time, Sandon passed his father’s chambers, the guest rooms, and the stairs leading down. He knew exactly where he was going.

His mother’s room.

The door was still unlocked from their escapade yesterday, when Uncle Vilfrand had caught Sandon and Kine trying to get out. Vilfrand still didn’t know about the secret closet in the baroness’s chambers, but that wasn’t the reason Sandon wanted to go back inside. This time, Sandon locked the door behind him and stuffed one of the armchair pillows against the crack at the floorboards so that any of the guards passing by wouldn’t hear noise inside. Nobody was going to be looking for Sandon right now anyway, so he had all the time in the world.

It took more than an hour to search the entire room. He looked inside every box, on top of all the shelves, even in the jewelry compartment where her necklaces and bracelets were stored. There had to be something, something that explained why his mother hadn’t told his father about the dragon, something that cleared his father of any kind of involvement. Sandon just couldn’t believe his father had anything to do with the baroness’s death.

At last, Sandon found what he was looking for. Wedged under the bed, in a corner as if it had fallen between the bed and the wall, was a small leather-bound journal. Exuberantly, Sandon jerked it out and sat down on the far side of the bed to read it.