As he slept, she had ample time to study his physiognomy. There was something of each of the other hominid races in the blighter, though half-formed and rudely constructed, like an apprentice’s clay imitation of a master’s sculpture. He seemed to take three times as long to accomplish anything when compared with one of the accommodating dwarves, and burned himself once or twice in a stupid fashion on the coal furnace, which struck her as strange for one who’d been fetching and filling coal all his life, especially since he did most of his other duties intelligently. His intelligence might also account for the lack of scars on his hairy back; most of the other blighters Yellowteeth’s age she’d seen elsewhere had bare patches on their shoulders and backs from the lash.
When alone she looked out the windows and dreamed as lazily as Yellowteeth shoveled waste. She kept thinking of the hacked-to-pieces dwarf, feeling somehow responsible for placing this dread monarch at the head of these dwarves, who she hated to begin with but now felt a little sorry for. After all, the whole nation of them didn’t storm her home cave.
She knew what she wanted to do; she simply had no idea how to go about doing it.
In the end, as the summer sun reached its zenith, she decided to start small, like Mother’s single rock that created an avalanche.
“I must see the king! I must see the king!” Wistala told Djaybee, the dwarf of the star-guild and the most senior of those who resided in their small house carved into the top of Tall Rock below the tower.
Djaybee looked through his off-center mask at the half-sun crawling up between the mountains to the east and scratched his underchin. “For one so insightful, you know little of the habits of King Fangbreaker—a golden garland upon him, long may he lead.”
“You would deny—”
“Not deny, good dragon, not deny. It’s just that he often works all night and is not to be disturbed until after the noon-bell tolls, and usually then only with his mornmeal.”
“Can you arrange an audience, then?”
“We’ve not much influence in the king’s hall—may it see no evil deed.”
“Try and I will praise you to him, good Djaybee.”
Djaybee bobbed down to one knee. “Then I will endeavor to get you a place in the line.”
Wistala got her audience that very afternoon, though whether it was through Djaybee’s exertions or the King’s interest in hearing from her she could not say.
Djaybee took her across the Titan bridge and through the passages to Fangbreaker’s throne room. Yellowteeth trailed along at the back in case during her wait anything needed to be cleaned up and disposed of, for she was too large to use the dwarvish comfort rooms hygienically.
The throne room was long, high, and austere, formed into a tunnel that narrowed at the top into a triangular arch like a shovel-tip. Squared-off pillars running up the sides created a series of alcoves. In each alcove stood a member of the king’s bodyguard.
A long, slightly raised walkway ran from the door wardens to the steps leading to King Fangbreaker’s iron throne, forged from the melted weapons of those he vanquished in single combat, or so Djaybee told her. To either side of the walkway were wooden benches of dwarf-size, positioned so the bodygard could look out over all.
Long files of dwarves filled the twin bench areas, snaking back and forth in long lines, many carrying sealed scrolls, or gifts. (Baskets of food seemed to be the most popular—Wistala smelled one surreptitiously; it was filled with sausages and cheeses and tiny bits of hard-baked salty bread.) The older or expectant mothers sat, others stood, some talked to their fellow petitioners across the raised walkway and made jokes about having joined the slower-moving line, according to Djaybee.
Upon reaching the front of one of the two lines, the petitioner would speak to a purple-garbed dwarf seated at a little half-desk. The one to the left was male, the one to the right female, her face hidden under elaborate draping. Sometimes the officials would write, sometimes they would lay a waxen seal upon the petition, and sometimes they passed gifts up to the king through his guards.
King Fangbreaker sat on his throne with his artifical leg off. He toyed with the skull-and-crystal, his heel resting on the horsehoof which had been detached somehow, and used it as a baton to point, or offer a sort of salute of acknowledgment to those who brought gifts, or to wave the very few of the petitioners up who would be granted a personal audience.
Behind King Fangbreaker sat a line of the dwarf nobles, some dozing against their fellows. She recognized a few of them from the balconies, but thanks to the masks, it was hard to tell one dwarf from another.
“I shall wait in line for you, Oracle,” Djaybee said, moving for the back of the left line, which stood three-quarters of the way toward the entrance.
But King Fangbreaker turned and called to one of his nobles, who rose and hurried down the raised central walkway. He bobbed and gestured for Wistala to come directly up the center aisle.
As she approached, she noticed that one of the sets of stairs was in fact an overhang. There appeared to be a room under the dais. She saw helmets in the shadows within and some sort of war machine with a good view of those waiting in line, and especially the central walkway.
“Tala, step up! Tala, it is a pleasure to see you,” King Fangbreaker said. “Are your accommodations lofty and airy enough for your comfort?”
“They are admirable, my king, and I could fill your afternoon with a thousand thanks, but I’ve had visions that I thought I should bring to your attention.”
“Shall we speak privately?” King Fangbreaker said, his eyes narrowing.
“Oh, no, this is good news for you and all your people. But I fear I must ask that all who participate in the discussion speak Parl that I may weigh their words, for I have no knowledge of Dwarvish.”
“Easily done. Do all hear?” King Fangbreaker said.
The nobles behind stirred, and the two attendants to either side set down their pens and seal-wax. All listened.
Wistala spoke loudly enough for all—at least all who could understand Parl—but she kept her snout fixed on the king: “I’ve had troubling dreams the last week, but I thought they only applied to me. It was of tasty dishes, gold, all things a dragon’s stomach desires. But they came in one door and out the other all while I slept unaware.”
“Opportunity passing you by,” King Fangbreaker said. “The lowliest soothsayer could tell as much.”
“Ah, but then last night came a very specific dream. I saw a great triumphant parade, celebrating dwarves, fireworks, marching up a street paved with gold toward you, Good King. I believe an opportunity is coming your way.”
“Can you add anything more helpful?” King Fangbreaker asked, twirling his leg.
“The one who led the parade was a human boy, a boy of fair hair and wide set eyes, bronze skin. But he was in manacles, my king. You embraced him, struck off his manacles, and took him to your breast, and the broken pieces of manacle turned into an ancient crown, and the boy put it on your head, but as he hesitated, the crown began to fade, and I woke up.
“I fear this opportunity may be brief, Great King.”
“This is not helpful at all. There must be a million boys—”
“He was aged eleven years or so. Garbed like a barbarian, somewhat dirty about the face and hands. Perhaps he is a slave.”
King Fangbreaker set his chin on his hand and thought. “Still a search for a nugget in a riverbed.”
Wistala cocked her head, the way Auron used to when he had trouble understanding one of her ideas. “What do you mean—you must know the name! Is no one talking of it? Did you not hear the eagle?”
She saw the whites of King Fangbreaker’s eyes. “Eagle? What eagle?”
“A most remarkable eagle flying at sunrise circled over Thul’s Hardhold, my king. Purple it was—”
“Purple?” Fangbreaker thundered.
Wistala continued: “And as it circled it called the name Rayg in so mighty a voice, I can’t imagine anyone didn’t hear it. But now I fear it was part of the dream, as well.”
“Did anyone see this eagle?” King Fangbreaker said, hopping off his iron throne and standing on one leg, using the throne-arm to balance.
“Eagle . . . perhaps . . . bird high up and far off . . . dark, possibly purple,” the Lords of the Wheel of Fire said.
“A feather fell from it, and landed on my doorstep, purple it was,” said one lord, falling to his knees. Another at the other end of the group slapped himself on the forehead as if to punish his wits for not being quicker.
“Hmfp! Very unhelpful, Lord Lobok, that I am only hearing this now,” said the king, turning a hairy eye upon the kneeling lord.
“My wife thought it suitable to, ahem, set it in a bed of flowers, or preserve it in glass. I shall get it at once,” he squeaked, and bowed himself down the stairs, and then hurried up the walkway, jumping over Wistala’s twitching tail.
“A man-child. A man-child,” King Fangbreaker puzzled.
“The boy’s face was alive with intelligence,” Wistala said. “Perhaps he will serve as an emissary, or a craftsman.”
