Brokedown Palace by Steven Brust Page A

A SHEET around the base of the Mountains of Faerie. Here and there, intermixed with trees, brooks, weeds, and shrubs, were outcroppings of granite—an advance guard, as it were, for the eastward march of the mountains. Some of these were almost high enough to be considered mountains themselves, or at least hills. They were new, as such things go, and hadn’t been around long enough to develop a layer of topsoil for the use of grass and trees. Only occasional weeds sprang from flaws in the rock.
    It was from a shelf on one of these that Miklós, perched like a hawk ready to dive (though feeling more like a teckla ready to scurry), watched the dragon, trying to guess its path. Even from this vantage, forty feet above the floor of the forest, he could only rarely glimpse the massive form of the beast, weaving in and out of trees that it doubtless found as strange as Miklós did. Odd how silently a dragon could move, even on unfamiliar terrain.
    The dragon was a mountain animal, he reflected. Odd that it
was only when he came down out of the mountains that he encountered one.
    The dragon stopped suddenly, and the Prince could see its neck tentacles becoming hard and rigid. He chuckled to himself at the vaguely sexual impression it gave. Then he realized that the dragon was standing in almost the same place he had vacated a few minutes before, and he was very pleased he had moved. But what had it found? The athyra?
    Then he saw the dragon’s head snapping at the branch of a tree and knew that it was true. He shook his head in sudden sympathy with the foolish bird. Apparently dragons were so rare in the Forest that the athyra didn’t know how to contend with one. The athyra was a hunting bird; it lured its prey to it with mind-tricks, sending out silent messages of safety and food. Its means of defense were similar—hiding itself and sending messages of fear to keep predators away. It was a shame, Miklós reflected, that it didn’t know better than to play mental games with a dragon. Or maybe it did know, but the dragon had snared it in the same sort of web it wove, so it was powerless to escape.
    The dragon struck again, and the prince’s straining eyes could almost make out a few feathers, drifting softly to the ground.
     
    AN HOUR BEFORE, MIKLÓS HAD HAD SOME IDEA THAT HE was traveling in the right direction. Now, he had none. He had blundered by many streams and pools, but not the River. Was he anywhere near it? He had had no time to search. Whichever way he went, it seemed, the dragon was behind him.
    Yet the oddest thing was his feeling, almost a conviction, that the dragon wasn’t following him. Certainly, there was no reason why it should, unless it had gotten a good, strong scent where it had killed the athyra, but there was no indication that it was following or looking for anything. It was more as if, no matter which
way Miklós turned, the dragon happened to turn that way, too. And every time Miklós turned, he became that much more lost.
    Yet the fires of Faerie had tempered him, and even pursuit by a dragon didn’t shake the stubborn confidence he had learned among that people—fighting for everything he needed during days of labor and nights of hopelessness. He was lost and he was pursued; he was not frightened.
    He heard a snarl off to his left and stepped back, alert. He found himself staring into the yellow eyes of a dzur, about thirty feet away from him. Five hundred pounds of black death.
    He let out his breath. “Nice kitty,” he remarked.
    Thoughts of the Power came flickering through his mind, but he brushed them off; even his master would have feared to use it against such an animal. The dzur snarled again.
    Miklós had encountered dzur before and knew that they didn’t usually attack men. He watched its rear legs and took a slow step back. The cat continued watching him. Miklós sensed, rather than saw or heard, that the dragon was approaching. Another step back and he bumped into a tree. His