Brokedown Palace by Steven Brust Read Free Book Online

she says, “I want to marry handsome Mózes, but my father won’t let me unless he can make the stars shine during the day.”
    “Well, Mózes,” says the lady, “how old am I?”
    “Oh, that is easy,” says Mózes. “You are twice as old as I am.”
    “You are a clever lad,” says the lady, and has her demons fly up and put a blanket over the sun, so the stars shine during the day.
    The next day, Mózes came to the King again. The King said, “You certainly are a clever fellow, Mózes. But now the third task: you must move my Palace to the other side of the River.”
    Well, just like before, he goes to pretty Rózsa, and she goes to the window and hums like a flock of geese. Pretty soon, a fat lady comes in. When she hears the story, she says, “Well, Mózes, how much do I weigh?”
    “That’s easy,” said Mózes. “You weigh twice as much as I do.”
    “You are a clever fellow,” said the lady, and she had her demons move the River so it flowed behind the King’s Palace.
    Well, the King was really a good fellow, and he knew when he was beaten at his own game, so he gave the two young people his blessing, and they got married, and Mózes’s father and his brothers and sisters all moved into the Palace, and when the old King passed away Mózes became the King, and if they haven’t since died, they are still alive to this day.

THREE
    The Dragon
    C LEAR WATER NIBBLED THE TOES OF BROWN LEATHER boots and made small, slapping sounds against the low rocks at the lake’s edge. The boots supported legs wrapped in brown wool, and a body wrapped in a dirty green tunic over a stained yellow jerkin. On the breast of the jerkin a small animal was sloppily embroidered in black and white.
    Miklós stood on a shelf of flat, grayish rock. Mountains rose behind him and to either side, some of them showing faint white cap-pings. Before him, as far as he could see, was a lake, also gray but with a blue tint. The lake covered nearly all of the mesa on which he stood, save for an unscalable mountain wall to the near side. On the other side, the north, he could see nothing but water. The breeze came from off the lake, chilly yet bracing.
    Miklós squatted on the rocks. He dropped the branches he had picked up along the way, brushed off his hands, and scooped up a handful of the water of Lake Fenarr and tasted it. It wasn’t, perhaps, as sweet as he’d remembered it from the first time he’d passed this spot, or as deliciously icy as he’d imagined it would be during his long years of servitude. Yet, it would do.
    He stood once more and studied the spot where his shadow would be if the sun weren’t hidden by the Hand of Faerie. It was more than two years ago that he had passed this way, traveling west. Then, he had known it as the source of the River. Now he knew it for a basin that collected water from higher mountains, and sent it forth both east and west. In the west, the Lake’s spawn was called the Eastern River.
    The first time he had come this way it had been morning and the water had been blue and silver in the sunlight. Now it seemed brown and gray. Then, his shadow had preceded him on the final stage to Faerie. Now, at the end of the first stage home, his shadow was so faint it was hardly noticeable.
    Home …
    His reason told him his memory lied, yet, in his memory, home was clean and fresh and strong and secure and a place of rest. His reason told him that László would have turned his room to some other use, but his memory only told him how safe he had felt in his bed.
    Reason had done him no good during the last two years, but memory of home had kept him alive. It was reason that had held him there for as long as he had stayed—reason had told him that he was learning, that the strange, extra sense he had been given, the Pathway in his mind, wouldn’t help him unless he knew how to use it.
    Enough of that.
    He gathered twigs and dried leaves together on the rocks at the water’s edge. He called upon the