Dragon Weather

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Black embraced the youth and let him cry, and the two men stood together for a long time.

  No further mention was made of Arlian’s supposed sorcery.

  19

  The Merchant Lords

  Black stopped dead in his tracks as the two walked down the Street of the Wainwrights, and flung his arm across Arlian’s chest.

  “What is it?” Arlian asked, startled, as he, too, came to a sudden halt.

  Black pointed at the notice tacked to the crazed green paint on a provisioner’s door. “At last!” he said,

  Arlian looked, and read.

  CARAVAN the parchment read in big blue letters at the top. Just below, in smaller print, it said TO THE SOUTHERN BORDERLANDS.

  And in black, below that, “Seeking Merchants to Join the Expedition, and Men at Arms to Escort Us.” At the bottom were instructions for contacting the caravan masters—three partners’ names were listed, with the address of an office on the Street of the Silk Merchants.

  Arlian read this with mixed emotions. Black had been seeking employment with a caravan all along; while he accepted the gold Arlian paid him for lessons in swordsmanship, he had made plain that he considered this a stopgap and had no intention of being a mere tutor.

  “There are things you won’t learn on the practice ground, boy,” Black had said one night as they drank ale at the tavern around the corner from Black’s room—Black had undertaken to teach Arlian to tell good ale from bad, along with his other tutelage. “I don’t know who this ‘Lord Dragon’ of yours is, but if he’s as formidable as you make him sound, you’ll need to know more than I can teach you here in Manfort!”

  Arlian was not entirely convinced. Lord Dragon was here in Manfort, he was certain; it seemed wrong, somehow, to spend a year or so deliberately going elsewhere—and he now knew that a caravan’s journey out and back, with stops for trade along the way and at the end, could easily last a year or more.

  But on the other hand, he knew he still had much to learn before he could face Lord Dragon, even if he found him.

  He had not had to make a choice before, as no caravans were in the offing—but now this notice meant he would have to decide, and quickly.

  “The Borderlands,” he said, as they stood before the provisioner’s door. “That’s a long way, isn’t it?”

  Black glanced at him. “Very long,” he said. “Could be two years, all told, before we’re back here.”

  Arlian frowned. He was thinking that Sweet might be alive somewhere in Manfort. He had asked a few questions, made a few brief excursions into the broad avenues of the Upper City, where the city’s nobles made their homes, but had found no trace of her, nor heard any mention of any lord calling himself Dragon—but they might still be here.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s a long time.”

  “You’re young, lad,” Black said, as he turned away from the door. “You’ve plenty of time for your revenge. And you’ll learn more about the world this way, not just about swordsmanship; when you come back you’ll either be ready to take vengeance or you’ll know you’ll never be.”

  “You seem very sure of that,” Arlian remarked, turning to follow.

  “I am sure of it,” Black replied, setting a brisk pace. “If it were Lorigol, or one of the other ports like Benthin or Sarkan-Mendoth, or if it were into the western mountains, or if it were any number of other routes, then maybe not. But the Borderlands—you visit the Borderlands, boy, and the lands beyond the border, and you’ll come back with a proper respect for dragons, and for the people who took their places.”

  “Why?” Arlian asked. “What do dragons have to do with the Borderlands?”

  Black turned to stare at him as they walked. “You know why they’re called the Borderlands, don’t you?”

  “They’re the farthest extent of the Lands of Man,” Arlian said. “So?”

  “So, my boy, think about it! The Lands of Man are the lands we took away from the dragons, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And all the dragons are gone, yes?”

  “Well, they’re sleeping in the caverns,” Arlian said. “They aren’t dead. I saw them.”

  “Then what lies beyond the Borderlands, my young lord?”

  Arlian stared at him blankly.

  Black sighed as they turned a corner onto the Street of the Coopers. “Think, boy! You’ve just all but said that what lies beyond is the lands ruled by neither men nor dragons. So what do you think does rule there?”

  Arlian’s stare was no longer blank, but shocked. He stopped in his tracks. “I don’t know,” he said. “Gods?”

  “Maybe some places,” Black conceded, as he, too, stopped and turned to face his young companion. “Gods here and there, perhaps, and certainly a few magicians elsewhere, but mostly … mostly it’s other things. Things that neither men nor dragons conquered.”

  “Oh,” Arlian said.

  “And what’s more,” Black continued, “they’re things that couldn’t conquer the dragons. And we’re going there to trade with them—or at least with their subjects. When you see what’s beyond the borders, maybe you’ll see a little more of why I think that’s important, and what it says about the dragons.”

  “I know about dragons,” Arlian said.

  “You know everything about them?” Black asked. “Can you tell male from female? Do they lay eggs or bear their young alive? How long do they live?”

  “I don’t know,” Arlian admitted, taking a step down the sloping street.

  “Neither do I,” Black said. “No one does, so far as I know. But you said you know about dragons.”

  “I know enough!” Arlian said angrily, turning away and marching on.

  “How do you know you do?” Black insisted, pursuing. “Isn’t it good sense to know everything you can about your enemy before you go to fight him?”

  “All right!” Arlian said, throwing up his hands in surrender. “All right. I’ll come with you to the Borderlands—and you’ll teach me to fight. Every day.”

  “Every day,” Black agreed. He glanced thoughtfully back toward the notice. “And if you have any sense, boy, you’ll take that gold of yours and you’ll buy a wagon of your own, and stock it with trade goods, and you’ll sign onto the caravan as a merchant, not a guard.”

  Arlian stopped, thunderstruck.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.

  He had been slightly concerned of late at how fast his supply of gold was dwindling; he still had more than enough to fill any purse, but after arming himself and paying Black’s teaching fees he was no longer sure that his stolen fortune would be enough to live on indefinitely.

  He hadn’t worried about it, really. After all, he could always go back to the Blood of the Grape and fetch out more of Lord Kuruvan’s gold, and that would be enough to live on for a very long time.

  But if he invested it in a caravan—especially if he took all the gold from the broken keg and invested all of it …

  Everyone knew that caravans were risky, but highly profitable. He might well return to Manfort really rich, a real lord instead of a fraud, rich enough to hire men to hunt down the looters, buy the twelve women free, and hire an army to hunt the dragons.

  Or if disaster struck, he might return to Manfort penniless—or not at all. Still, if he was going to accompany Black in any case, it seemed worth trying.

  He would need to get the gold out of the inn’s cellars. He would be able to handle the operation far more effectively this time, since he knew just where the keg was and he had the time and money to prepare properly, but he would still need a distraction.

  Black had stopped beside him; now Arlian turned to face the older man.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Do you know much about wine?”

  The next night, while Black spent half an hour choosing exactly the right expensive wine for an imaginary occasion, thereby keeping the innkeeper busy in the vault, Arlian told the rest of the inn’s staff, “I’ll just get my own ale
, thanks!” and strolled down the cellar stairs, mug in hand.

  No one argued with the impeccably dressed young lord. He wore his hair brushed back in the latest style, his beard neatly trimmed to a point; he wore a beautiful sword on his belt, and had a fine leather pack slung on one shoulder. He simply reeked of wealth and confidence.

  And if he took a long time fetching his ale, and the pack looked a little heavier when he emerged, what of it? He tipped each of the staff a gold half-ducat, even the pot-boy, and it wasn’t as if anything in the cellars other than the rare wines in the vault would be worth such a man’s efforts to steal.

  On the dusty walk back to Manfort he asked Black, “What should I buy?”

  “A wagon and two yoke of oxen, to start with,” Black said.

  “I know that,” Arlian said, nettled. “I mean, what do we take to sell?”

  Black shrugged. “I’m no merchant,” he said.

  “But you’ve been to the Borderlands before, haven’t you?”

  “Twice,” Black acknowledged. “The merchants brought wool and silk and other fabrics, and northern wines, and certain herbs, and traded for talismans, gems, dyes, rare woods, drugs and potions, strange foodstuffs, and for still other fabrics. Oh, and exotic pets—there was a fashion for lizards at the time, though it had all but passed by the time we returned.”

  Arlian nodded and shifted his pack to a more comfortable position. “And if we were bound for Lorigol?”

  Black looked at him, startled. “Why?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “Wool and silk and wine, and we’d come back with oil and salt and spices, with dyes and pearls and curiosities made from seashells.”

  “And the western mountains?”

  “Well, we wouldn’t take wool!” Black said with a snort of laughter. “Theirs is better than ours. We’d take oil and grain and spices, and we’d bring back brass and chalk and dyes and herbs. And other things; I don’t know. Merchants are always trying new goods.”

  “And isn’t that where the most money is to be made?”

  “Or lost, if you misjudge what people want to buy.”

  Arlian nodded, thinking hard about gold and what it could buy. The best goods were obviously things that were small, so that more could be fit into a wagon, and cheap to buy but precious at the other end of the caravan’s route. And best of all would be something that no one else in the caravan had brought, so that you and the other merchants would not undercut each other.

  What gold could buy …

  “Do they make good swords in the Borderlands?”

  Black looked thoughtful. “No, they don’t,” he said. “They hardly work metal at all. That’s one reason we go there, rather than their merchants coming to Manfort—they make their wagon fittings of wood and leather rather than iron, and arm themselves with arrows, spears, and slings, and the wagons just don’t last that well.”

  “Then … well, is there some reason no one takes swords and ironmongery to sell?”

  “I don’t know,” Black said slowly. “I believe … well, remember, many of the lands beyond the border are ruled by magical creatures of one sort or another. Such beings are said to dislike silver and cold iron; I know that all the coins in the southern lands are of gold or copper, never of silver. Perhaps iron and silver aren’t allowed there.”

  “Then wouldn’t that make them all the more precious?”

  Black smiled. “Most likely,” he agreed.

  Arlian was careful not to say anything more on the subject until the following day, at the office on the Street of the Silk merchants, after Black’s employment as commander of the caravan’s contingent of guards was settled and the contracts signed. Then, when that was irreversible and Black’s position secure, he announced what he proposed to sell.

  The three caravan masters, seated in a row behind their polished black table, were shocked. “Selling iron is forbidden in the magical realms,” Lord Drens said.

  “Most of them,” Lord Sandal, seated on Drens’s left, corrected. “Not in Arithei or Stiva.”

  Arlian, standing before the table, started at the mention of Arithei; this was the first time since Hathet’s death he had heard the name spoken aloud. And it was spoken by someone who had been to the Borderlands, and would know the truth. That meant it did exist.

  It didn’t mean any of the rest of Hathet’s story was true, though. He was probably mad, not an ambassador at all, and his amethysts were probably nothing but pretty stones.

  “But who can get to Arithei or Stiva?” Drens retorted. “Not I! The roads are closed, and the native guides are gone, and the only routes are across the Dreaming Mountains. I have no desire to live out my life beset by nightmares, to never again have an untroubled night’s sleep!”

  “Really, my lord,” Lady Thassa, at the right end of the table, said, addressing Arlian directly again, “I would not advise bringing ironwork. Our wagons and swords are not permitted in certain areas as it is; we bring them over the borders only under severe restrictions.”

  “What about silver?” Arlian asked, pushing Arithei out of his mind.

  “Banned in Shei, Furza, and Tirikindaro,” Lady Thassa replied. “Out of favor in the neighboring lands and of no use as currency, but not forbidden.”

  “Is it more valuable there than here?”

  Thassa, Drens, and Sandal exchanged glances.

  “I don’t know,” Sandal admitted.

  “And what if I were to sell my goods on this side of the border?”

  “We can hardly object to that,” Sandal said. “Trade within the Lands of Man is free and open.”

  Lord Drens started to protest, and Lady Thassa interrupted him; a moment later the three were in the midst of a full-blown argument.

  Their clerk sent Black and Arlian away, with instructions to return the next day.

  They did, and learned that the vote was two to one in Arlian’s favor; Lord Drens yielded with poor grace, but he had yielded.

  Now he glared across the table at the troublemaker. “Always remember, Lord Ari,” Drens said, using Arlian’s latest alias, “that we reserve the right to expel you from the caravan at any time should we decide that your continued presence endangers the rest of us.”

  “Understood, my lord,” Arlian said with a bow.

  “And you understand our contracts? That each member shares in the expenses?”

  Arlian nodded. The contracts were quite complex, and rather daunting, as they covered any number of possible contingencies, including provisions for what would happen to his goods if he died at various points in the expedition, and how any proceeds would be shared between his heirs (if any) and the other members of the caravan.

  Arlian understood this, and since he was going more to continue his education than to make a profit and had no heirs, nor any intention of dying, he was untroubled by the terms.

  “They are quite satisfactory,” he said.

  The three masters nodded, and the papers were brought out for Arlian’s signature, concluding the negotiations.

  When the caravan assembled in the plaza before the Blood of the Grape two days later, Arlian’s new wagon held some three dozen fine swords—the complete stock of four swordsmiths’ shops—and hundreds of good daggers. A large part of his wealth had been transformed from gold to silver, as well.

  He had also acquired all the usual requirements for a long journey—clothing, bedding, nonperishable foods, extra harness for his four oxen, a huge quantity of grain, water, wine, lamp oil, hundreds of feet of rope, and so on. He had even equipped himself with a bow and a dozen arrows—not that he knew how to use them effectively.

  In addition, he brought two pairs of practice swords—low-grade steel with no edge and blunt points, but with the weight and balance of a proper sword.

  Although he was a merchant and a full member of the caravan, Arlian was also contracted as a guard in training, an unpaid apprentice, and as such he was assigned the second position, directly behind the lead wag
on Black shared with seven other guards; that suited him well. He hired one of the other guards, a man called Quickhand, to teach him to tend and drive oxen, and to drive for him until the lessons were learned.

  There were three more guards at the rear, in the masters’ large and elegant wagon, and four on horseback who also slept at the rear—fifteen guards in all. That was deemed adequate by all.

  The two wagons that were to hold guards—the lead wagon and the masters’ oversized conveyance—both had large shutters on either side that could be swung back, opening the sides to let in air and light, or to allow the occupants to survey their surroundings; the other wagons, intended primarily for keeping goods safe, were far more solidly built. Arlian’s was little more than a large wooden box on wheels with a platform on either end and a bench seat at the front, all painted a rich blue and trimmed with varnished bamboo.

  And on a fine bright day in late spring Arlian sat beside his hired driver as the caravan rolled out of the plaza and headed south, toward the Borderlands.

  20

  The Road South

  “This is Benth-in-Tara,” Quickhand said, as the wagon rolled past a stone marker toward the sprawling town ahead. “We’ll be stopping here for a day to trade with the locals.”

  Arlian frowned at the name; he knew he remembered it, but couldn’t quite place it. The long fertile valley of Tara Vale was familiar enough, of course …

  Then it came back to him; Benth-in-Tara was where Grandsir had been headed when he saw the ruins of Starn, the village in the Sandalwood Hills that the dragons had destroyed.

  Arlian turned to the southwest, peering into the distance.

  Those hills were surely the Sandalwood Hills, then—though he was seeing them now from the other side, and as a result there was little familiar in their appearance. The shadowy spike on the horizon would be Skygrazer Peak, and the distant smoke rising from a humped peak beyond the hills would be from the Smoking Mountain, where he had been born.