The Dragons of Morad Read online

  So what is it we would see, if we could see the fibers of this throne? Would we see light, or would we see dark?

  Well, it is both.

  Prince Virgil, you see, is a boy like his mother and like his father. Queen Clarion is a woman of virtue and honor and everything that is good and beautiful, and his father, well. His father was not always this way. He was a good and kind and honorable boy once upon his time, before his brother was banished and a father trained him for the throne.

  Believe it or not, the first time King Willis sat this throne, he saw what Prince Virgil sees. A brighter world, dimming only at the corners. And every sit the king permitted him, the corners grew dimmer.

  It is what King Willis plans for his own son.

  But for now, Prince Virgil sits on the throne, grips the sides, rests his back against its cold gold and stares right into the confines of his heart, though he does not know at what he looks. He sees the light. He sees the dark. He watches them wrestle. Back and forth, over and over, light and dark.

  And light, today, wins.

  Prince Virgil sits, and he listens to his father go on and on and on about the responsibility of running a kingdom, how there are certain matters that must be tended every day, and people who must be managed every day and decisions that must be made every hour. Prince Virgil’s mind wanders, for his father, you see, loves to talk, and he knows that he does not need to listen to every single word to hear what his father says. He will hear him the same, but he will think, too. He thinks that he has not seen many people knocking on the doors of the castle, ever. The only ones who travel to and fro are the king’s men. In fact, he cannot recall his father settling any disputes or making any decisions that did not involve food since Prince Virgil was old enough to save memories. How hard must it be to run a kingdom?

  King Willis moves on to the food and the sweet rolls and all the grand delicacies that a boy could ever want, and this is where Prince Virgil’s mind wanders ever more. For he has seen the children in the village, how some had only a loaf of bread to eat at their noonday meal, while the castle has always had more food than can possibly be eaten in a day’s entirety. It seems wasteful to Prince Virgil, to carry on in such a way.

  As if he has heard the thoughts of his son, King Willis moves on to what he calls the most important matters of running a kingdom, and that is keeping the people in their proper place.

  “A king,” he says, “is not a wish giver.”

  Yes. Prince Virgil has heard these words before. He stretches his legs out before him.

  “A king does not simply give people food. They must work for it.” King Willis looks on his son with something that could quite possibly be interest, though he has never shown the slightest bit in the recent past. Perhaps he has come to an understanding that his time on the throne is nearing its end. Prince Virgil will be ready to sit the throne in only four years’ time.

  The prince looks on the windows that line the throne room. It has grown darker outside, near enough to black that the boy grows antsy. He does not want to miss the first star. So he stands from the throne.

  His father turns, his stomach shaking, and now that Prince Virgil has risen from the spell of his father’s throne, he can see more clearly. He sees his father, large and growing larger, and he thinks of Arthur and Maude, thin enough to nearly get lost in a doorway. His heart aches with a longing that surprises him. What he would give for one of Maude’s cookies.

  What he would give to see his friend Theo.

  King Willis is smiling. “What did you think, son?” he says. “Was it merely wonderful or...magnificent?”

  We know well enough that the king has used words that are not so different from one another at all, dear reader. King Willis, however, does not see the similarities between the two. He was not so good at language lessons, you see.

  Prince Virgil does not think it was either, really. It was cold. And hard. And what is the word he seeks? Difficult? Unsettling? Terrifying?

  Why, it is all three.

  But he would never tell his father, of course, so he says, “Magnificent.” He hopes his father will be pleased enough with that.

  But his father appears disappointed. Perhaps he has noticed the brightness of Prince Virgil’s eyes. Perhaps he has somehow sensed his son’s sadness, though he is not a man much given to these kinds of emotions any longer. Once, perhaps. But no longer. The throne, you see, stole more than light from him.

  “Well,” King Willis says. “Well, then.”

  “It is time for my supper,” Prince Virgil says, though he is not in the least bit hungry. “I must go.”

  “Stay,” King Willis says. “Sup with me.”

  Oh, reader. Prince Virgil wants nothing more than to please his father, but this, you see, he cannot do, for he has not the stomach this night. Perhaps another time.

  “I cannot,” Prince Virgil says. “Mother is waiting.”

  “Your mother can wait,” King Willis says.

  “Please, father,” Prince Virgil says.

  “Very well then,” King Willis says. As you can see, he is in a very generous mood this eve. “There are many more opportunities to sup with me.”

  King Willis folds himself into the throne again, tucking his rolls around the arm rests as if he were a plush doll to be molded and positioned into all the corners. Prince Virgil looks away until his father is no longer moving, and then he turns back. He would like to leave his father now, truth be told, but he knows that his father has more to say. And he is correct.

  “When my father was a boy,” King Willis says, “he was very poor.” King Willis clears his throat, as if unaccustomed to telling stories such as this one. And, truth be told, he is. “My grandmother died because my father’s father was so poor. She would have yet lived if my father had become king sooner.”

  Prince Virgil wonders, then, why it is that his father would not feel some responsibility for the poor. Why had his grandfather forbidden the feeding of the poor? Why would they both not ensure that the poor were fed and cared for in a way his grandfather’s mother had not been?

  Our prince, you see, has much to learn about this world in which he was born.

  “My father worked very hard for this throne,” King Willis says. “He worked for his wealth. He trained men for years. He braved the dangers of the Violet Sea and crossed it.” King Willis pauses in this story, for he knows that this is a feat to be admired, though, if one were to travel back in time, one would know that King Sebastien never even set a foot in the Violet Sea. Prince Virgil, though, has already heard these stories from his mother, and the one he hasn’t—about his grandfather crossing the Violet Sea—he does not believe. King Willis, disappointed, continues. “He marched through the dragon lands and felled dragons. He did something. He risked his life. He could never abide those who did nothing. He could never abide the poor.”

  “But some do not have magic as he did,” Prince Virgil says. “What could they do?”

  “There is always something one can do,” King Willis says. “There is always work to be done. One must be resourceful. Industrious. Smart.”

  “Like Arthur,” Prince Virgil says. He claps a hand over his mouth, for he did not mean to say it. The words came out of their own accord. He had never known anyone as resourceful or industrious or smart.

  “The woodworker,” King Willis says. He tilts his head, examining his son. “You think him a good example of the kingdom?” There is a tinge of anger in the king’s voice. Prince Virgil shakes his head.

  “I did not mean—” he says.

  “I could tell you otherwise,” King Willis says. “But I will let time do its work.” The king is silent for a moment, until he says, in a softer, lower, and somehow more frightening voice: “He stole the children. He escaped with them. He is only a traitor. As every poor man eventually shows himself to be.”

  Prince Virgil does not say anything, though he is burning to ask questions.

  What if poor people have nothing w
ith which to be resourceful?

  What is it his father hates so much about the poor?

  What does he know of them at all?

  He would begin with all of those. But he drops his head and studies the ground.

  “You know nothing of the poor,” King Willis says then. “You know nothing of ruling a throne. But you will learn.” Prince Virgil raises his eyes. His father is looking on him with eyes that are very nearly black. “You will learn.”

  Yes, he will learn. But what is it, exactly, that he will learn? Is it mercy? Is it hate? Is it something sinister and cold? Is it something gentle and warm?

  Time will do its work, and we are powerless to stop it.

  Prince Virgil, in truth, does not know if he has what it might take to sit the throne of Fairendale, for he considers himself kind, for the most part, though he was not so very kind on the last meeting he had with his friends. He would change that if he could. Oh, yes, he would. And for this, we can momentarily feel glad.

  Prince Virgil dips his head again. He is done, for now, with this throne room and his father. “May I be excused, Father?” Prince Virgil says. “I must get to Mother.”

  King Willis looks at him, long and hard. “Enjoy a sweet roll before you go,” he says. He waves his hand at Garth, who comes running with a plate, already heaped with the sweet rolls that seem to be in great abundance in the castle, perhaps because of the king’s love for them.

  Prince Virgil does not argue but takes one of the sweet rolls, though just now he would prefer rye bread hot from the oven with a slab of butter smothered on it, just the way Cook makes his snack in the afternoons. He will miss that snack today, because of this meeting with his father. He eats the roll as quickly as he can, hoping that his father cannot see how tired he he has grown of sweet rolls, and then his father dismisses him.

  “Tomorrow,” the king calls as his son nears the end of the red carpet. Prince Virgil turns around. His father is still on the throne, eating his third or fourth, or possibly his tenth, roll. “Tomorrow you will come sit the throne again.” King Willis knows the power of this throne, the way it will crawl inside his son and dampen the glow of his light. He knows that he will sway his son to his side, if he only has time.

  Prince Virgil wishes he could disagree, but it is the king, and, even more, it is his father, and so he dips his head and turns away. He will come late. He will come late in the evening on the morrow, and perhaps the king will forget what he has asked his son to do.

  But the king, dear reader, never forgets a thing.

  THE children wake to whispering. It is not yet fully night. Maude has been unable to sleep, for she has too many worries. Arthur, you see, returned with a bit of water, but he could not gather food, for he could find none. The children cannot survive on only water, and they are too weak to turn the stones to bread.

  So Maude whispers. She is not loud, but she is urgent, and children, as children often do, sense her urgency. They sense her fear. They sense that something has gone wrong. Is it Arthur? Is he in danger? They have not seen him since falling asleep, and even still, they cannot see him now.

  Hazel turns toward the sound of the whispers. She is the only one close enough to touch her mother, to feel her softness, though all the children can hear the words that are whispered now. The children do not move even the slightest bit, for they do not want to disturb the two. They lie still and listen. And what they hear trails cold fingers down their backs.

  “We did not hide our tracks well,” Maude says. “The moon will show them.”

  “No man would dare remain in the woods after dark,” Arthur says. “It is too dangerous.”

  “Perhaps,” Maude says. “But King Willis is a desperate man. And desperation can...” She does not say what desperation can do. She merely sighs, and the children are left to draw their own conclusions.

  What sort of conclusion might we draw, dear reader? Let us think, for only a moment, what it is that Maude might be saying. Perhaps she would say that desperation can turn a coward brave. Perhaps she would say that desperation can overcome reason. Perhaps she would say that desperation can make a man, in fact, stay in a dangerous forest far longer than he might otherwise.

  “They will not make it out of the forest alive,” Arthur says. “And if they did, they would not dare cross the boundary line.”

  “No one knows if the dragons still exist,” Maude says. “We have seen none.”

  “We do not know if we have seen them,” Arthur says. “Dragons are quite skilled at hiding.”

  “We must run at first light,” Maude says. “We cannot keep the children here.”

  “We must take precautions. We must move slowly,” Arthur says. If one could see into the dark, one might see him squeezing the hand of his wife. “Please. Get some sleep. We will talk in the morning. When the children are not sleeping.”

  “I cannot sleep, Arthur,” Maude says. “Not like this.” Her whispers have grown louder, more insistent, more terrified, and this, of course, terrifies the children. By now both Arthur and Maude know that she has probably woken them all, though it is not waking time yet, but poor, frightened Maude cannot stop the tide of words from continuing, for there is something she must say, something she must admit, something that has chased her since they first vanished into the forest. “I am afraid.”

  Oh, dear reader, how wonderful it feels to admit to fear, to disappointment, to anger, to the host of emotions that overtake a human heart. How beautiful it is to unburden oneself, to cease carrying the truth on one’s own.

  Arthur sits up. He senses that the children are awake. “We must sleep,” he says, louder now. “We are safe here. And we need our rest if we are to move on. We must, of course, move on.”

  Maude, though, cannot rest until she has unburdened it all. “I am more afraid of what the king’s men will do when they find us than I am of the dragons,” she says. “But I am afraid of the dragons, too.” And her words feel like the words of every child in the dark cave, for it is exactly what they feel, too.

  “We will tread carefully,” Arthur says. “The king’s men will not find us. The dragons will not discover we are here. We will escape. If we need it, we have magic.”

  Yes. They have magic, though it is significantly weakened now. Magic, you see, needs health, and children who starve are not children with health. But the children do not consider this. They merely let the words of Arthur warm their hearts with courage. The girls place a hand on their staffs. The boys close their eyes, knowing that magic is the force that will protect them to the end.

  “How is it that we will reach safety?” Maude says. “We merely move from one danger into another.”

  The children wait. Danger is something they do not quite understand. What is a dragon to them? They are beings from the storybooks, that is all. And what is the king? He is another man, like Arthur, though not like Arthur at all. They do not know the dangers that wait in the hearts of men and the fire of dragons.

  “We will move slowly,” Arthur says. “With great care. And we will be together.”

  “We must find another way,” Maude says. “Around this land, around the forest.”

  “There is no other way,” Arthur says. “We have gone the only way forward. It is the safest place we can be.”

  The children ponder this. Are they, in fact, safer in the forbidden lands of Morad than they were in the Weeping Woods?

  Well, that is a question our children cannot answer, dear reader. It is a question only time can know.

  “One danger into another,” Maude says again.

  “Such is life,” Arthur says. He squeezes his wife’s hand and stretches out upon the stone once more. “Children. I brought water. Drink only a bit, and when you are finished, pass this jug back to me.”

  For a few moments, the only sound is a jug thumping into new hands and children slurping a taste of water. The jug returns to Arthur.

  “Lie down now, children,” he says. “Sleep. We will think more clea
rly on the morrow. We will make our plans.”

  The children do as they are told, though it is not so easy this time to find sleep. Many of them stare into the dark long after others have fallen asleep.

  Arthur, too, stares into the dark. And no one can see it, for the cave is much too dark, but Arthur is smiling.

  Arthur, you see, has a secret.

  Hate

  CORA’S father worked for King Sebastien, in the kitchens. It was a menial job, to be sure, but it gave them quite enough to eat at night, as her father would bring home batches of what he had cooked in the kitchens. He would even share with the neighbors when he was able to take more than he and Cora needed, which was not often. The king was a stingy man with opinions on whether the villagers needed rich food for free. He did not relish giving his servants more than he thought should be their share.

  Sometimes Cora’s father would give his own portion to the old widow in the house across from them. Cora would watch him with sadness, and then she would leave a bit of food in her bowl so that he could have something to eat, too. She watched him grow thinner and thinner, and she grew to hate the king more and more every day. Her father would die of starvation before he let his daughter starve. And there he was, in the castle kitchen, surrounded by food every day that he could not eat. It was unjust. Cruel. Maddening.

  What kind of king does not care for his people?

  One day, when she was a girl of seven, Cora followed her father to the castle. He did not know that she followed, of course, for she braved a daylight shape shifting for once and wore her feathers and trailed him at a safe distance. She watched him walk across the bridge where the mermaids beneath it called out insults about his bones and his skeletal eyes. So already Cora was riled up, for she did not like those who said unkind words to or about her father. She alighted on a window where she knew the kitchens to be. It was open. She watched the door and waited for her father to enter.

  When he did, she saw that his eyes were sad. The kitchen was piled high with the best vegetables from the castle gardens and sacks of grain delivered regularly to the castle. He began cutting tomatoes and onions and carrots, probably for some rich stew, for King Sebastien loved soup more than anything else. Her father had told her that his job was fairly simple, for he rotated the same meals every few days. The king was not keen on trying new dishes. So he kept the same ones in an ever-revolving menu. Roast leg of lamb, glazed ham, and stew. That was about all King Sebastien desired.