Dragon (Vlad Taltos) by Steven Brust Read Free Book Online

weaknesses and your opponent’s in light of your goals.
    As I say, I didn’t follow the analogy, but now, looking back on it, when I can, if I want, see everything I did in military terms, I suppose you could say that it was somewhere in there that I began to take stock of my own forces, as if this were a campaign I had decided to enter on. The fact is, it wasn’t until a day or two later that I became committed to it, but even as I sat there in my office contemplating what Kragar had told me and preparing another visit to Castle Black, I was, even if I didn’t know it, embarking on a campaign, and somewhere in the back of my head I was assessing the forces I had to work with and preparing myself for what was to come.
    I just didn’t think I was going to give my report to Morrolan and be finished with it, even though I couldn’t have told you why I had that feeling.
    But my campaign had no goal, at least at that point, which made the preparation a bit tricky. And it was all unconscious, which made it trickier. And the fact is, I still think I’d have been done with the whole thing if Fornia hadn’t … but no, we’ll leave that to its proper place.
    This time I had one of my own sorcerers do the teleport: a guy named Temek who had been with me all along. He was competent as a sorcerer, though his main skill was, let’s say, elsewhere. He did a good enough job.
    When I reached Castle Black, I made a point of noting landmarks—most of them way below me—in case I had to teleport myself there one of these days. I achieved only limited success, but I’m never excited about performing a teleport; I’m not that good at it. The stream was very thin below me, and details were hard to pick out, but there was certainly some sort of footbridge over it, partially hidden by a pair of trees at one end. The trees themselves, and those nearby, seemed from above to be oddly shaped; perhaps shiptrees bred millennia earlier for designs no longer used. Then again, perhaps my eyes and the altitude were conspiring to trick me.
    When I felt ready, I moved toward the doors of Castle Black; I even managed a jaunty salute toward a pair of guards who watched me from the wall. They didn’t appear to notice. Again the doors swung open and again Lady Teldra greeted me. She was tall and lithe and managed to achieve beauty without sexuality—that is, I enjoyed looking at her but felt no desire. This is unusual for me, and I wondered if it was a calculated effect.
    “The Lord Morrolan,” she said, “will join you in the library directly. Would you care for refreshment?”
    “Please.”
    She escorted me up the long winding stairway to the library, left me for a moment, and returned with a glass of a red wine that had too much tannin for my taste and was too warm, but which was good anyway. I’d been in that library on several occasions; this time, while I waited, I looked at some of his books. Most of them seemed, predictably, to be either history or sorcery. There were some books about the East that aroused my interest, in particular one called Customs and Superstitions in the Eastern Mountains, and another called The Wars for Independence in the Mountain States , both published in the East, and both written by someone
called Fekete Szüszí, which I knew to be a Fenarian name. I wasn’t sure what I thought about Morrolan having such books.
    Loiosh informed me of his approach just before he said, “You may borrow them, if you wish,” so I could avoid letting him startle me.
    “I’d like that very much.”
    “I should warn you, however, that I have several volumes devoted to curses for people who don’t return books.”
    “I’d like to borrow those, too.”
    “What brings you here?”
    “I have the name you’re after.”
    “Ah. So soon?”
    “If you’re going to employ Easterners, you’ll have to adjust to things happening quickly.”
    “Boss, do you think he really has books full of curses for people who—”
    “It