And so, Emory began to climb. He had strapped his sword to his back to free his hips and legs and belted the pouch of chalk at his waist. He had tucked his black pants into his black boots and his black shirt into his pants. He had used a strip of leather to gather his hair back into a rough knot, keeping it from his eyes. He had rolled his sleeves back, in spite of the cold, knowing that he would warm as he climbed.
Hand over hand, hold after hold, Emory ascended. Always he had been a skilled climber—as well as a skilled fighter, a skilled rider, a skilled swimmer—anything he needed his body to do, it did, and well. Part of the trick was to take his mind off the task. In this, as in many things, his body knew better than his head what must happen next, and his mind’s job was to keep still and let the muscles get on with it.
As if watching a stranger, Emory saw his fingers creep along the wall, touch and reject a possible hold, find a second hold, accept it, and latch on, clawlike. His feet shimmied up several inches, his biceps curled, and he was higher, fifteen feet off the ground at least, and hundreds more to go.
To keep his mind entertained while his body was working, Prince Emory of Harding allowed himself to imagine what they might be saying about him back at home.
His mother, as ever, came first into his head. He saw her sitting where she liked it best, all the year round, regardless of the temperature outside—next to the fireplace in her chambers, pressed up closer to the flames than anyone else could stand, surrounded by cushions and cats, never dogs.
“Now, Emory,” she was wont to say, patting the cushions beside her, “tell me what you’ve conquered today.”
And as a young boy, Emory would obligingly scramble up beside her, even when the heat from fire made him sweat, and report exactly what he had mastered:
The puppy he had trained to follow him through the palace grounds, simply by keeping a fatty piece of breakfast meat in his pocket.
The teacher he had talked into freeing him from lessons a quarter hour early.
The horse he had broken to saddle.
The cook he had cajoled into baking an extra cake, just for him.
Later, when he was too big to cuddle, Emory would stand across from Mother and report, just as proudly:
The buck he’d felled in Moss Forest.
The soldiers he’d rallied to fight.
The rider he’d beaten at joust.
The scholar he’d bested at chess.
Other conquests, those of the soft-skin variety, Emory did not tell Mother about, though he suspected that she both knew and approved of them:
Pink-cheeked Elaine, the cowherd’s daughter.
Raven-dark Lila, who kept shop for her mother, the apothecary.
Flour-dusted kitchen apprentice Fabiana, on the heavy canvas sacks of flour in the cool dark pantry, while old Cooky pretended she didn’t know what was going on.
And Mother always listened, and nodded, and approved of the things Emory said and the things he did not say in equal measure. The fire blazed, the cats purred, and Mother listened.
Emory’s muscles warmed and loosened as he climbed. When his fingers began to slip with sweat on the slate, he dipped them into the bag of chalk, its fine powdery residue recalling the flour that had puffed up, from the sacks on which they lay, from Fabiana herself, as they rutted in the pantry back at home.
But this was not a safe direction to allow his thoughts to wander. Not now, not here on this cliff, a hundred feet above the ground. From here, a fall would be death.
So Emory took Fabiana and placed her to the side, out of the way, where she belonged. He watched his left hand reach, fingertips stretched, feeling for a hold that must be there, it must, and he felt the strong muscles of his thighs and calves tremble as he pushed up onto the tips of his boots, as his right hand held tight into the good hold it had, and the fingers of his left hand were still searching when the slate beneath his right hand began to crumble.
At first the crumbling could be mistaken for just the sensation of the chalk powder rubbing against the wall, so fine was the beginning of the end. And brains don’t want to believe they are imperiled. A brain will lie to the body, even when the body is the brain’s only hope.
Emory had seen this, many times: the blind stare of disbelief from a buck, freezing it in place as he aimed and shot his arrow; the blank-faced shock of impending loss on the face of a fighter who, until that very moment, had been undefeated.
So he did not trust his brain’s initial reasoning—it’s just chalk powder, his brain told him. It’s fine.
It wasn’t fine, not fine at all, and Emory shifted his weight even farther to the left, the fingers of that hand straining and praying for purchase, as the slate beneath the right hand crumbled in earnest, the handhold disintegrating like burned bone.
For a fraction of a second, Emory held nothing—not with his left hand, nor with his right. No stone in his hands, no thoughts in his head, no hope in his heart, which did not dare to even beat in that moment, no breath in his lungs, no sight in his eyes. Suspended, still, empty.
And then he began to fall.
The Dragon’s Lair
As cold as it was below, so it was warm above. As gray as it was below, so it was golden above.
On the outside, the castle was cold and gray, it was true, but inside was a different story altogether. A thousand feet above the cliff face from which Emory of Harding was falling, curled like a kitten, rested the dragon.
If you were to visit the dragon in its chambers, the first thing you would notice, of course, was the dragon itself—the enormity of it, the vastness of its spear-shaped head, the rows of opalescent scales, each the size of a tea saucer.
But what would you notice next? Well, if you were of a mercenary nature, perhaps it would be the jewels.
Great piles of jewels filled each corner, heaps of jewels spilled through each doorway, hundreds of jewels lined the walls, a rainbow of opulence—rubies rich as blood, tourmalines as bright and round as oranges, citrines yellower than the sun, emeralds as green as the greed of goblins, sapphires as blue as the brightest sea, amethysts as purple as the velvet cloak of a king.
And diamonds. Everywhere, diamonds. A veritable hoard of them.
If, on the other hand, you had emerged half frozen from the cliffs below, perhaps the jewels would not be what drew your attention. Perhaps it would be the heat.
Twin billows of steam emerged from the sleeping dragon’s nostrils, thick plumes of dragon vapor. The dragon’s lair was oppressive in its heat, sultry and overwhelming and boilingly hot. The air was almost hot enough and wet enough to poach an egg, if you had an egg. Almost hot enough to knock you flat.
But if you were a visitor with a Narcissus-like vanity, perhaps the heat and the jewels and maybe even the dragon itself would not be what caught your eye, first of all. For the entirety of the castle, floor to ceiling, each and every surface, was lined in mirrors—mirrors that threw golden reflections tinted with rose, mirrors that reflected mirrors and mirrors beyond that, and each of them, whichever way you turned, reflecting your reflection, again and again, forever.