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“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.”>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.
