The Eyes of the Dragon

87

Go back to the castle?” Dennis asked the next morning, in a hoarse voice that was almost a whisper. “Go back to where he is?”

“If you feel you can’t, I’ll not press you,” Peyna said. “But you know the castle well enough, I think, to stay out of his way. If, that is, you know a way to get in unnoticed.

To be noticed would be bad. You look much too lively for a boy who is supposed to be home sick.”

The day was cold and bright. The snow on the long, rolling hills of the Inner Baronies threw back a diamond dazzle which made the eyes water before long. I’ll probably be snowblind by noon, and it’ll serve me right, Peyna thought grumpily. The stranger inside seemed to find this prospect hilarious indeed.

Castle Delain itself could be seen in the distance, blue and dreaming on the horizon, its walls and towers looking like an illustration in a book of fairy stories. Dennis, however, did not look like a young hero in search of adventure. His eyes were full of fear, and his face bore the expression of a man who has escaped from a den of lions… only to be told he’s forgotten his lunch, and must go back in and get it, even though he’s lost his appetite.

“There might be a way to get in,” he said. “But if he smells me, how I get in or where I hide won’t matter. If he smells me, he’ll run me down.”

Peyna nodded. He did not want to add to the boy’s fear, but in this situation, nothing less than the truth could serve them. “What you say is true.”

“But you still ask me to go?”

“If you can, I still ask it.”

Over a meager breakfast, Peyna had told Dennis what he wanted to know, and had suggested some ways Dennis might go about getting the information. Now Dennis shook his head, not in refusal but in bewilderment.

“Napkins,” he said.

Peyna nodded. “Napkins.”

Dennis’s fearful eyes went back to that distant fairy-tale castle dreaming on the horizon. “When he was dying, my Da’ said if I ever saw a chance to do a service for my first master, I must do it. I thought I’d done it coming here. But if I must go back…”

Arlen, who had been busy closing up the house, now joined them.

“Your house key, please, Arlen,” Peyna said.

Arlen handed it to him, and Peyna handed it to Dennis.

“Aden and I go north to join the”-Peyna hesitated and cleared his throat-"the exiles,” he finished. “I’ve given you Arlen’s key to this house. When we reach their camp, I’ll give mine to a fellow you know, if he be there. I think he will be.”

“Who’s that?” Dennis asked.

“Ben Staad.”

Sunshine broke on Dennis’s gloomy face. “Ben? Ben’s with them?”

“I think he may be,” Peyna said. In truth, he knew perfectly well that the entire Staad family was with the exiles. He kept his ear firmly to the earth, and his ears had not grown so deaf that he was not able to hear many movements in the Kingdom.

“And you’d send him down here?”

“If he’ll come, aye, I mean to,” Peyna replied.

“To do what? My Lord, I’m still not clear about that.”

“Nor am I,” Peyna said, looking cross. He felt more than cross; he felt bewildered. “I’ve spent my whole life doing some things because they were logical and not doing others because they were not. I’ve seen what happens when people act on in-tuition, or for illogical reasons. Sometimes the results are ludi-crous and embarrassing; more often they are simply horrible. But here I am, just the same, behaving like a crackbrained crystal gazer.

“I don’t understand you, my Lord.”

“Neither do I, Dennis. Neither do I. Do you know what day this is?”

Dennis blinked at this sudden change in direction, but an-swered readily enough. “Yes-Tuesday.”

“Tuesday. Good. Now I’m going to ask you a question that my cursed intuition tells me is very important. If you don’t know the answer-even if you are not sure-for the gods’ sake, say so! Are you ready for the question?”

“Yes, my Lord,” Dennis said, but he wasn’t sure that he really was. Peyna’s piercing blue eyes under the wild tangle of his white brows had made him very nervous. The question was apt to be very difficult indeed. “That is, I think so.”

Peyna asked his question, and Dennis relaxed. It didn’t make much sense to him-it was only more nonsense about the napkins, as far as he could see-but at least he knew the answer, and gave it.

“You’re sure?” Peyna persisted.

“Yes, my Lord.”

“Good. Then here is what I want you to do.”

Peyna spoke to Dennis for some time, as the three of them stood in the chilly sunshine in front of the “retirement cottage” where the old judge would never come again. Dennis listened earnestly, and when Peyna demanded that he repeat the instructions back, Dennis was able to do it quite neatly.

“Good,” Peyna said. “Very, very good.”

“I’m glad I’ve pleased you, sir.”

“Nothing about this business pleases me, Dennis. Nothing at all. If Ben Staad is with those unfortunate outcasts in the Far Forests, I mean to send him away from relative safety and into danger because he may be of some use to King Peter. I’m sending you back to the castle because my heart tells me there’s something about those napkins he asked for… and the dollhouse… something. Sometimes I think I almost have it, and then it dances out of my grasp again. He did not ask for those things idly, Dennis. I’d wager my life on that. But I don’t know.” Peyna abruptly slammed his fist down on his leg in frustration. “I am putting two fine young men into terrible danger, and my heart tells me I am doing the right thing, but I… don’t… know… WHY!”

And inside the man who had in his heart once condemned a boy because of that boy’s tears, the stranger laughed and laughed and laughed.