Dragon and Judge

CHAPTER 11

The days under the desert sun quickly fell into a rhythm. At sunrise Jack would be awakened by Thonsifi, he would shower and eat, and then it was off to the Great Hall for the morning judging session. At noon there would be a break for lunch, at which time the boy sometimes quietly discussed the thornier cases with his hidden K'da companion. After lunch would be the afternoon session, and then Jack would return to his apartment for dinner, a quiet evening of talking and perhaps a little exercise to help him keep in shape.

It was in the evenings that the white stones and light shafts finally came into their own. The reflectors on top of the pillar were obviously angled to catch the rays of the sun as it dropped across the western sky, sending light down the shafts to set the white stone aglow. The effect lingered on for nearly two hours before the sun finally vanished below the horizon, giving a welcome bit of additional light where the canyon floor had already grown dark.

Once the glow faded from the white stones, it was usually bedtime. Sunrise and Jack's Judge-Paladin duties came early.

And when Jack and the rest of the canyon populace were asleep, Draycos set off on his night's patrolling.

He'd been doing this since their second night in the canyon, though he hadn't yet told Jack about it. His original goal, after the first night's shuttle incident, had been to watch for further activity by Foeinatw or other possible informants.

But Foeinatw stayed out of trouble from that point on. Or at least he stayed out of Draycos's sight.

Nor, apparently, did any of the other Golvins stir once they'd retired to their homes at sundown. Not really surprising, given the long climb most of them had to reach those homes in the first place.

And so, with the canyon floor apparently deserted, after the first three nights Draycos switched from watching for trouble to looking for a way out of the canyon.

Only to find that there wasn't one.

Certainly the steep canyon walls were climbable, at least for Draycos himself. The vine mesh that covered the stone pillars didn't grow on most of the cliff faces, but there were enough cracks and claw openings in the stone itself to provide a patient K'da with a path to the surface.

But without his climbing equipment, Jack didn't have a hope of doing the same. Draycos could carry him for short distances, but as he and Jack had already concluded, there was no way he was going to climb three hundred feet of cliff with the boy on his shoulders. There was a line of small caves about fifty feet up along the eastern cliff, but they were too low to make a convenient halfway resting point. Draycos didn't climb up to examine them, but from the pathways of ivy mesh that had been set up between them and the ground, it was clear they were being used for something by the Golvins.

The ends of the canyon were no better. At the upstream end the river rose sharply into a series of impassable waterfalls, while the downstream end cut through a narrows that would be as tricky to climb as the cliffs themselves.

On the first night of his scouting Draycos spent so much time traveling back and forth across the canyon that he nearly got caught out in the open when the sky began to lighten. The second night, he made sure to watch his time, returning to Jack's apartment well before dawn.

He arrived to find the apartment brighter than when he'd left, the white stones in the wall giving off a soft glow as the reflectors above sent down the light from the larger of Semaline's two moons. Draycos slipped through the doorway fringe, and he was padding his way to the bedroom when the light subtly changed.

He spun around, expecting to see someone behind him in the doorway. But there was nothing there.

And then he saw it. One of the glowing stones in the wall had gone dark.

Someone, or something, was in the shaft.

Silently, he crossed to the opening. Narrowing his eyes to slits to hide most of their own telltale glow, he looked up.

The shaft was pitch-black, with not even the sky visible. The usual airflow, too, was greatly diminished. Something, clearly, was blocking most or all of the opening.

Draycos flicked out his tongue. He hadn't had much experience yet picking out individual Golvin scents, but if whoever was coming down the shaft was someone he'd met, odds were he could identify him.

But to his surprise, it wasn't a Golvin scent he found tingling across his tongue.

It was the scent of a human.

Draycos felt his neck crest stiffen as he tasted the air again and again. But there was no mistake. Somewhere above him was a human.

A human, moreover, whom the Golvins had been careful not to mention to Jack.

From high above him came a faint sound, softer than the scratching he'd heard their first morning in the apartment. A moment later, as the shaft's normal airflow resumed, a single star appeared high overhead.

The blockage had disappeared. So had the human scent.

The question was, where had they gone?

Draycos didn't know. But he was going to find out.

He waited until Jack had showered and was eating breakfast before telling the boy about his night's discoveries. His discoveries, and his plans.

"I don't like it," Jack said when the K'da had finished. "What if they won't let me come back to the apartment at lunchtime?"

"Who would stop you?" Draycos asked reasonably. "The One hasn't been there to observe since the second day. I can't imagine any of the others having the authority to refuse a simple request from their Judge-Paladin."

"Just because you can't imagine it doesn't mean it can't happen," Jack countered. "These alien cultures can take a sudden hard right-angle turn on you, usually when you think everything's going great."

He waved toward the fringed doorway. "Especially since no one's even hinted I'm not the only human in the canyon," he added. "That's grade-one suspicious all by itself."

"Though perhaps that's because you've never asked," Draycos pointed out. "Some cultures also seldom volunteer information."

Jack made a face, but nodded. "I suppose," he said. "Maybe I should ask Thonsifi some specific questions before you go charging off on this search-and-discover thing."

"It would be wiser to have information of our own before we approach the Golvins," Draycos said. "Especially if they intend to lie to you."

"I thought you just said they just didn't volunteer information."

"I said some cultures were like that," Draycos corrected him. "I didn't say this was necessarily one of them."

Jack turned his head away, glowering across the room at the suspect light shaft. "I get stuck in the Great Hall and I might not make it back in time," he warned. "You get stuck up there and you may not make it back in time."

"I understand the risks," Draycos said. "But we need to find the truth."

Jack took a deep breath. "I'll be back at lunchtime," he said, standing up abruptly from the table. "You just make sure you're ready."

Ten minutes later, he was gone. Draycos watched from the edge of the door as Thonsifi and the two guards escorted the boy toward the Great Hall and the day's work. Then, trying not to think of the clock ticking down, he got busy.

The light shaft was clear, its shimmery white stone extending unblocked toward the sky. Rolling half onto his back in the opening, Draycos stretched out his neck and studied the inner surface.

While the white facing seemed to be all the same kind of stone, it had been put together out of a large number of separate pieces, much the same way as the bridge the Golvins had built to Jack's apartment. The technique had left plenty of crevices and gaps and cracks big enough for a K'da's claws to slip into.

Whether the white stone was strong enough to hold a K'da's weight, of course, was a different question. But there was only one way to find out. Sliding his front paws up into the shaft, Draycos found a set of clawholds and started to climb.

Fortunately, the stone was indeed strong enough. Searching out new gaps, thankful that he was doing this in daylight and not in the dead of night, he continued up.

He'd gone about a hundred and fifty feet when he came to a hole in the wall.

A good-sized hole, too, easily big enough for Draycos to get through. Even Jack would have no trouble, though there were some protrusions that might scrape against his shoulders.

But while the hole itself seemed to extend all the way though the stone of the inner wall, the far end was blocked by something that looked like stone but clearly wasn't.

Draycos examined the blockage, first with smell and then with careful touch. The material was soft and slightly flexible, rather like a thick paper or cardboard. It was wedged solidly into the hole, its edges curled inward against the stone.

Extending his tongue, he touched it lightly to one of the folds. It was mainly grain-based material, similar to Golvin bread but with traces of other vegetables mixed in. Some kind of homemade papier-mache, perhaps. The color was already very close to that of the stone in Jack's apartment, and from the lines he could faintly see through the material he guessed that the other side had been made to blend in even more with the rock.

Someone had laboriously carved a hole in the side of his apartment, which was probably strictly against canyon rules. That same someone was concealing the fact with a homemade camouflage mask.

But who? The human he'd smelled last night?

More importantly, why?

It would be simple for him to push the mask aside. But from the faint sounds coming from the other side of the hole he could tell that the occupant was still at home. Perhaps later, if and when the other left, he would have a chance to check the place out.

And then, to Draycos's dismay, two sets of fingertips appeared from the far side of the camouflage mask, carefully squeezing through around its edges. They got a grip on the mask and began to pull.

There was no time to think. For the past four months, ever since his advance team had been slaughtered, the first rule of Draycos's life had been to keep his existence a deep, dark, black-scaled secret. Only twice in all that time had he broken that rule, and both had been life-or-death situations.

Bracing himself, he let go of the stone.

For perhaps the first half second he fell free and clear, the wind of his passage streaming past him. Then, his back slammed against the wall behind him.

Suddenly he was tumbling out of control, his body caroming off the four sides of the shaft, each bounce sending a fresh jolt of pain through him.

And meanwhile, the bottom of the shaft was rushing up at him at deadly speed. Bracing himself, he slammed all four paws outward.

They caught the sides of the shaft and began skidding down, the friction against the uneven stone sending agonizing fire through them. But at least he was slowing down. Clenching his jaws together, ignoring the pain, he pressed harder.

And a second later, with barely a bump, he landed in an undignified heap on top of the reflector stone.

He pulled his legs inward, pressing his burning paws against the scales of his belly to try to cool them. His whole body was throbbing with agony, every scale, muscle, and joint voicing its protest against his thoughtless treatment of them.

But he was alive. That was all that mattered. That, and—

He looked up. The glow around the shaft made it difficult to see, but he thought he could make out a dark shadowy shape leaning into the air. A face, perhaps, gazing down at him.

Draycos froze. The interfering glow from the shaft worked both ways, he knew. If he stayed perfectly motionless, whoever was up there would have trouble making anything out.

Nevertheless, the shadowy figure held its position for a good long minute. Perhaps he was likewise hoping Draycos hadn't spotted him and was waiting for his visitor to make some revealing movement.

But Draycos had the patience of a poet-warrior of the K'da. The other didn't. A minute later he stirred and disappeared from the shaft.

Still, Draycos didn't move until he sensed the subtle change in airflow that indicated the camouflage mask had been put back in place across the hole. Then, wincing with every movement, he dragged himself out of the shaft and headed for the bathroom.

A cool shower would have felt good against his bruised scales. But though Jack thought the shower system was probably self-contained, they really didn't have any proof of that. The last thing he wanted was for some Golvin monitoring the canyon's water usage to suddenly see activity in a supposedly empty apartment.

He settled instead for dampening a washcloth with water from the puddles on the shower floor and mopping away the worst of the black blood seeping through his new collection of cracked scales.

When he had finished, he went to the galley and forced himself to eat some of the cold meat from the refrigerator. He had no real taste for food right now, not with the pain lancing through him. But his body would need the extra nutrients during the healing process.

When he was finished with his meal he went back to the bedroom, easing himself carefully down onto the stone floor on the far side of the bed. If one of the Golvins happened to wander in, he didn't want to be instantly visible.

Jack had said he would be back at lunch. Hoping fervently the boy would decide he was hungry a little early today, Draycos settled down to wait.