The silence that fell over the market square of Split-Stone was as total as the stillness of a winter dawn on Mount Sunder.
Three thousand mountain citizens stood shoulder to shoulder. Men who had carried empty water buckets for twenty years, women who had watched their terraced vines wither, and young boys who had known only the threat of debt-bondage in the Gray Pit. Every eye was fixed upon High Circuit Magistrate Ronald as he stood behind the oak court table. He held the heavy parchment decree of the Crown.
Magistrate Ronald dipped his iron quill into the registry ink-pot, signed his full title. Then he affixed the great circular wax seal of the Country Assizes.
Then, he stood erect and read the judgment into the clear autumn air:
“In the matter of the Free Cantons of Split-Stone versus the Dragon-Slayer Heritage Trust.
“This court finds, upon unimpeachable careful, material, and documentary evidence, that the Dragon-Slayer Charter granted in Year Zero was got through deliberate, criminal fraud against the Crown and the mountain cantons. No dragon existed within the Great Siphon. The cave was unlawfully obstructed with royal military explosives to effect the fraudulent appropriation of a sovereign communal watershed.”
