Dragon and Judge

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.