The Dubious Gift of Dragon Blood

by J. Marshall Freeman

  “Oh, we do have one. I noticed Frelga a few turns back. She’s one of the sneaky chaperones who watch in secret, in the hope of catching us slipping up.”

  Creeped out, I glanced around, trying to play spot-the-perv. “But if no one can have sex without the Arbiter guy’s say-so, don’t they get…you know…frustrated?”

  “The great dragons understand the People’s need for carnal bonding. Vixtet especially finds our hunger for skin contact and mutual pleasuring fascinating. That’s why, other than when we are paired or on temple visits, we all take pleasure with our own sex. We ghey. Is that the Earth word?”

  “More or less,” I said, suddenly distracted. I couldn’t help it. I started imagining everyone I’d met so far in the Realm of Fire paired off same-sexually, Kriz’mig with Stakrat, Grentz with the bellboy, Grav’nan-dahé doing some crazy bondage scene with the schoolteacher, and Davix… I cleared my throat, which had suddenly clogged up. “So I guess you and Davix are hoping that the Arbiter of Blood matches you up someday.”

  “Why? Do you think we’re tangled?” She laughed. “No, Davix is my oldest friend. Besides, he is exclusively attracted to males.”

  “Oh,” I said—the nonchalantest, most disinterested “oh” in history—even as my heart started dancing with hope. We stepped abruptly out of a fog bank, and before us was the wide expanse of the valley. The road we were on continued to descend the mountain, but Stakrat pointed to our right. There, at the end of a winding path, at the top of a long, stone staircase stood a thin tower, alone on the rocky peak.

  “The Atmospherics Tower,” she told me. The appropriately weatherbeaten stone structure was maybe ten stories high, with only a few windows down at the bottom and up at the top. The roof was crowded with weathervanes, lines of triangular flags, glass cylinders, and other impressive technical doodads. It reminded me of my grandma’s pincushion.

  “So, Davix is working up there?”

  “He is, but wait a moment. I see his master coming.”

  At the end of a winding path, Tix-etnep-thon-dahé was closing the door of a small hut, built up against the rocky wall of the hill. A solitary tree with a thick, gnarled trunk shaded the building. Beneath it, a chestnut horse and a dark grey mule stood side by side, nibbling at the patchy grass. The old man walked toward us slowly but with great dignity, not always appearing to need the cane he carried.

  “Peace and balance, children,” he said when he reached us.

  Stakrat and I repeated the greeting more or less in unison, and I gave the formal bow, which brought a rueful smile to the master’s face. He said, “You are like a medieval courtier, Copper Guest. I am charmed by your manners.”

  “Could you tell my mom that, please?”

  “Young Stakrat, is it?” Tix-etnep-thon-dahé said, turning to her.

  “Yes, Master-da.”

  “I will take the Copper Guest up to the tower. You wait here for his return.”

  Stakrat clearly didn’t like this. “But Master-da, Korda says I’m supposed to stay with the Copper Guest today, to make sure nothing happens to him.”

  “Nothing will happen to him in the Atmospherics Tower. At least not while I’m around.”

  “But she said—”

  “I heard you the first time. If Koras-inby-kir-dahé asks, you will tell her I make the decisions in my domain. If you like, you may sit at the table in my hut and read my books. You may even have a piece of honeycomb from the larder. But now I am taking the Copper Guest up. Alone.”

  Chapter 15: The DragonLaw

  Old as he was, Tix-etnep-thon-dahé didn’t seem to mind the climb up the long, steep staircase. I supposed he did this every day, probably for decades. I looked back down at Stakrat, who shrugged at me and sat down on a low rock to sharpen her knife.

  The Atmospherics Master stopped for a rest at a landing halfway up the hill, and I took a moment to survey our surroundings. We had left Cliffside, apparently. All its buildings were clustered farther up the hill to our right. Or maybe that was considered downtown, and we were in the suburbs. Fog danced along the hill in little clumps, sometimes descending on us, sometimes parting to let the sunshine through.

  Tix-etnep-thon-dahé said, “A very unusual season. Nothing is as it should be.”

  “Isn’t the fog supposed to clear when that festival ends? What’s it called?”

  “Sarensikar. The conjunction of the festival and the atmospheric conditions is more coincidental than determined, young man. Sarensikar will arrive on schedule, but we’ve never had such a hard time predicting when the season of fog will actually end. The other disciplines are all waiting for our wise counsel so they can begin their planting, their construction, make cyclical pilgrimages. But now, especially following the death of T’lexdar-inby-thon, we are…in a fog.” He smiled darkly at his own joke.

  “Why is the fog different this, uh, cycle?”

  “Ah! That’s the crucial question. All I can say is that we are gathering data—when we’re allowed.” Before I could ask what he meant, he began climbing again, and I followed, feeling stupid. Tix-etnep-thon-dahé, I noted, was different than he had been at dinner. I’d taken him for some dozy professor who knows pi up to five thousand places but shows up to a lecture still wearing his lobster bib from lunch. Had he been putting on an act? Or was he just sharper on his own turf?

  When we reached the door of the tower, a window opened above us and a pair of arms released a kingsolver into the sky. I watched it circle up on a thermal, a scrap of paper tied around its leg. It cawed twice, angled into a dive, and took off across the valley.

  A voice came from the window above. “Master, stay there, I’m coming!”

  I thought I had recognized those arms. It was Davix. I waved, but he had already retreated into the tower. My heart began to pound, and I listened carefully to what it was saying in its particular Morse Code: “Davix is not Stakrat’s boyfriend. Davix is only attracted to males. Davix snuck up to see you in the tower last night, despite being a good boy who loves rules more than triple-fudge chocolate ice cream.” Also, “Will he notice you didn’t brush your teeth this morning?”

  Tix-etnep-thon-dahé leaned on his cane, sighing. “I don’t need help.” He turned to me. “Quite a coincidence, don’t you think, that a prophecy should lead you to the Realm of Fire just now when the very weather refuses to behave?”

  Before I could say a slack-jawed I dunno, Davix burst through the door. “Let me help you, Master-da,” he said, offering an arm, and Tix-etnep-thon-dahé, despite his show of independence, seemed grateful for the help. Davix smiled at me over his shoulder. “Welcome, Copper Guest.” Our eyes locked just long enough for it to get deliciously embarrassing before he returned to the task of helping his master up the spiralling central staircase to an office on the third floor.

  There, Tix-etnep-thon-dahé lowered himself with relief into a large chair behind a huge desk littered with books and charts. Davix put a mug of water in front of him and stuffed a pillow behind his back. I looked around the comfortable old room, with its curved outer wall and high ceiling. Checking out one of the big bookshelves, I saw that not all the books were in the Tongue of Fire. Some were Earth languages, mostly Latin or Italian or something.

  I heard a scratching above me and almost jumped out of my skin when I noticed one of the black and red birds sitting on top of the bookshelf.

  Tix-etnep-thon-dahé raised a hand in the air. “Flak, to me!” The bird flew across the room and landed on his forearm, then stepped off and began marching around the desk like a little sentry on guard duty. “Flak is my personal kingsolver. Unlike me, he has visited Farad’hil, the dragon abode. In general, though, he is too independent and stubborn to be a reliable courier.”

  Davix, standing in front of the big desk, cleared his throat, like he had no patience for chit-chat. “Master, I arrived early this morning to review the logs for anomalous incursions. When I compare Rinby’s results with—”

  “Apprentice, don’t leave our
visitor standing there.”

  “Oh, forgive me, Copper Guest.” He ran over and pulled a chair from the corner and placed it to one side of the desk. He touched my shoulder with his warm, firm hand as I sat.

  “Good,” the old man said and gestured at another well-stuffed seat. “And you can sit here to my right.” Davix stared as if the chair was full of snakes. Tix-etnep-thon-dahé said, “Come, you used to spend many hours there, reading and pestering me with questions, before you began your studies with the Prime Magistrate.”

  “But that’s Rinby’s—”

  “Sit.”

  Davix sat shyly. He was blushing.

  “Good, and now you can explain to the Copper Guest what it is you have been investigating.”

  “You want me to tell him…?”

  “As I said.”

  Davix looked at me, a bit flustered, and leaned forward in his seat. “We—the Atmospherics Discipline, that is—have noticed strange fog patterns this cycle. You know this is the Season of Fog, yes?”

  “Hard to miss it,” I said, which seemed to amuse the Atmospherics Master, though not Davix.

  “Well, we began recording unusual incursions of this sheep fog, as the People sometimes call it, descending every few days from the anti-spinward range of the Chend’th’nif Mountains, and we’ve been trying to find the cause. Since Rinby died…” He lost his composure for just a second, but then recovered himself. “I’ve logged sudden heat spikes accompanied by winds from greenward, gusting to five. Within half a day of these events, sheep fog descends into the valley.”

  Tix-etnep-thon-dahé was staring out the window during this speech, absently scratching the bird’s head. He asked, “How many of these events have you noted?”

  “Six, Master-da, since I took on these duties.”

  “All following the same pattern?” Davix nodded. “Yet when you consult the DragonLaw for T’lexdar-inby-thon’s observations—”

  “Rinby made no mention of the heat spikes or the anomalous winds.”

  I blurted out, “Even though there were sheep fogs then, too?” Davix nodded again and sat back in his chair.

  “Isn’t this exciting?” The Atmospherics Master said drily, clapping his hands slowly. Flak jumped and squawked a reprimand at him. The old man took a seed ball from his desk and fed it to the bird. “And what date shall we give pious Grav’nan-dahé for the coming of clear weather, Apprentice?”

  “I-I don’t know, Master-da.”

  “Nor I.” Tix-etnep-thon-dahé opened up one of those leather books with the jewel in the corner, this one green. He started writing, the jewel blinking as he did. Without looking up, he said, “Leave me, I have work to do. Give the Copper Guest a tour of the tower.” We stood, and he added, “And do your work here in my office, Davix. You and I have always studied well together.”

  Davix was quiet as we left Tix-etnep-thon-dahé’s office and began to climb up the circular staircase.

  “Everything okay?” I asked as we completed our first circuit. “You going to tell me stuff about this fine, old building?”

  “Sorry. I was just…thinking.”

  “Hey, don’t worry, I can do it myself!” I wanted to crack him up, get him back to the mischievous visitor of the night before. I began gesturing with outstretched arms, putting on the most chipper of Tina Tour Guide voices. “On your right, you will find a stone wall. Note the way the stones have been laid really evenly, just like everywhere else in the Realm of Fire. Note how each successive step in this beautiful staircase is just a bit higher than the previous, creating an overall rising effect. And here”—I stopped to check out a series of diagonal scratches on the wall—“is where Grav’nan-dahé slipped on a banana peel and—”

  I shut up my stupid act because Davix, a few steps ahead of me, had frozen to examine the marks with knitted brow. I had a chilling thought. “Is this where Rinby…?” I couldn’t finish.

  “Apparently not,” he said in a low voice. He reached out his hand and touched the wall, splaying his fingers so that one was on each of the scratches. “Apparently not,” he repeated, but now he sounded angry. He continued to climb the steps, and I followed, totally confused, right up to the top of the tower where a door stood open.

  “This is the measurements room,” he said as we walked in. “Where I used to work.” Two younger apprentices looked up and went wide-eyed when they saw me. I felt like a Hollywood celebrity spotted at their local burger joint. I gave them a friendly smile, and they grinned back excitedly until a sharp look from Davix made them drop their heads back to their work.

  Davix said, “We record raw weather data here in these notebooks. Also, we send and receive birds with data from remote weather stations across the Realm.”

  Near the window stood a series of wicker cages with more kingsolvers in them. Several of the cages were empty, and I remembered how Stakrat had said Davix flew her a message.

  On our way out, one of the young apprentices brought Davix a notebook, and Davix passed it to me. Every page was filled with neat tables of characters.

  “Thank you, Zent’r,” he said to the kid. “This is yesterday’s data, Copper Guest,” Davix explained, taking back the notebook as we walked down one level. “The charting room,” Davix said, holding the door open for me. The room was full of books and maps and elaborately rendered diagrams on sheets of paper, some of which looked a hundred years old. Davix sat down at the desk in the centre of the room, adding the notebook to a pile of them accumulating there.

  I said, “This is your office?”

  “It is now, yes.”

  “Now that you’re Lead Apprentice.”

  He knit his eyebrows, face twisting between annoyance and sadness. “I suppose so, yes. I take the raw data and perform calculations on it. Then I bring it to my master, who checks the work and sends it off for inclusion in the DragonLaw. Rinby could do the calculations in her sleep, but it’s taking up all my time. I’ve had to cancel my study sessions with the Prime Magistrate. He isn’t happy.”

  “Is he ever? Those books with the blinking lights, like Tix-etnep-thon-dahé had—that’s the DragonLaw?”

  “No, that’s called a grace book. Everything entered in a grace book goes to the dragon abode of Farad’hil, where the dragon, Renrit, the Great Collator, reviews it and adds it to the sacred DragonLaw.”

  “And the DragonLaw has everything in it? All the history and laws, plus what I had for dessert last night? Must be a big book.”

  “See for yourself,” he said, pointing to a heavy tome sitting on a stand by the wall.

  “That’s it? That’s a copy of the DragonLaw?” I approached it slowly, like holy flames might leap out and burn me. It was a big book, all right, but not that big. Davix came up behind me and put a hand on my lower back, which made my knees go a little weak.

  “Don’t be afraid, X’risp’hin, open it.” I did, at random, impressed by the golden beauty of the vellum pages, elegantly penned in the Tongue of Fire.

  “What does it say?”

  Davix looked over my shoulder. “When the polar fires ebb for more than three days, cold will fall on the land, rarely rising above nine bars. The cold-blooded will enter their still-time, the warm, their burrows. Rinby was training the new apprentices in the basics of Atmospherics. I guess that’s why this passage is flowed.”

  I was trying to follow. “You mean…other times when you open the book, something else is…flowed?”

  He reached around me to flip the pages of the book, and I couldn’t help leaning back into his chest. On the book’s first page was a drawing of a tree, annotated with text I couldn’t read.

  “That’s the table of contents? Hey, can we read what I said last night at the dinner?”

  “That won’t be entered yet. Would you like to read how the People came to the Realm of Fire?”

  “Yeah, okay. I was actually wondering about that.”

  He touched the tree, close to the bottom of its trunk, running his finger up a low branch.
As he did so, I was startled to see the text—which looked like ordinary ink on paper—continually vanishing to be replaced by new text. He stopped his finger on a set of characters that had just appeared, and after a second, they glowed. A line of light ran from the text and down the edge of the book, stopping about a third of the way through.

  “This is how you tell the Book what section of the DragonLaw to present.”

  “Like a big e-reader,” I said.

  “A what?”

  “Never mind.”

  Davix opened the book to the indicated spot and read, “In a time of calamity, the People were rescued by the beneficent dragons. Hail to the Fire Lords. Great are their Five Names. Their voices shook the ground, and lava touched the skies. Lo! said They to the People. We will build for you a world of peace and balance. Be our servants in this holy enterprise. And the People were raised up along the strands and brought to their new and eternal home.”

  Davix’s face was a bit flushed as he closed the book, like he had just read the most heartbreaking fanfic you could imagine. But I had to spoil the mood, because…what?

  “So, that’s all the detail it gives about how some population on Earth ended up here?”

  Davix looked confused. “Well, yes…”

  “But who were the People? What part of Earth were you from?”

  Davix was knitting those eyebrows again. He was doing so much knitting, I expected Christmas sweaters to start dropping at his feet. “I-I don’t know. The DragonLaw doesn’t expound on—”

  “What kind of calamity was it? Earthquake? War? Did the People have time to grab their vinyl collections before the roofs came down? And did they want to come or was it more like, you know, alien abduction?”

  “I have read you all that is recorded in the DragonLaw, X’risp’hin. No more is known.”

  “You mean the dragons haven’t told you any more.”

  “The great dragons tell us all we need to know.”

  “So, they hide important details about your past, but you can look up every dull detail about last year’s wind speeds.”