The Blood of a Dragon

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “All right,” he said. “I will.” He served himself an immense portion of fried egg and stuffed it in his mouth.

  His mother smiled at him, glad that she had successfully diverted her son from New Canal Street and Shiphaven Market, and not particularly concerned about what he would find in Westgate. She rarely went there herself, and then only to buy fresh produce when the courtyard garden wasn't doing well, but it seemed like a wholesome enough place, where the boy wouldn't get into any serious trouble. There were no slavers or recruiters there.

  Dumery finished his breakfast, then went up to his room and pulled on his boots. He took a look out back, where his mother was feeding the chickens and chatting with one of their neighbors from the other side of the courtyard.

  If he ever got as rich as his parents, Dumery thought, he'd hire servants or buy slaves and let them feed the chickens. His mother seemed to enjoy little chores like that, but Dumery was quite sure that he never would.

  He turned and hurried downstairs, and out onto the street. Two blocks from home he turned right onto Shipwright Street. The avenue was already crowded with people hurrying in both directions, and Dumery quickly fell in with the southbound stream.

  He stumbled and almost fell once, near the corner of Sea Captain Street, when something small and green ran between his legs, but he caught himself in time. When he turned to see what had almost tripped him it was gone.

  He wondered if it had been the same sort of creature he had seen in Thetheran's workshop, but he couldn't spot it anywhere.

  He shrugged, forgot about it, and marched on.

  Twenty minutes’ walk brought him to Wall Street and into the northeast corner of Westgate Market, where the morning sun shone brightly on the vividly-colored awnings of half a hundred merchants’ stalls, and even turned the somber grey stone of the great gate-towers cheerful. Farmers in brown or grey homespun jostled against city-dwellers in blue and black and gold, and a freshening sea-breeze had worked its way through the streets and over the rooftops to send the tunics and robes and striped awnings flapping. The snapping of fabric provided a beat for the shouts of hawkers proclaiming the superiority of their wares.

  “The finest hams in all the Hegemony!” a man shouted, almost in Dumery's ear as he passed a wagon beneath a red-and-white striped awning, and for a moment the pungent scent of smoked meat pierced the more general overlay of dust and sweat.

  “Peaches, sweet peaches!” called the woman in the next stall, gesturing at her own fruit-heaped cart.

  Dumery looked, then walked on. He had no intention of becoming a farmer or a butcher, nor anything else so mundane.

  The market was not over-large—certainly smaller than Shiphaven Market—but it was very crowded, so it took some time for Dumery to see everything.

  He passed stalls selling apples and pears and plums, beans and broccoli, beef and mutton. He passed churns of butter and shelves of cheeses, all fresh from the farm—or so their sellers swore. Fine wool and spun cotton, felts and velvets, silks and satins, all, proclaimed a cloth merchant with an unfamiliar accent, the best in Ethshar, and at bargain prices.

  Dumery didn't believe that for a moment. He knew that the best fabrics were sold in the Old Merchants’ Quarter, not in the open-air markets.

  Most of the goods sold here were the products of local farms; that was Westgate's specialty, after all. Anything that came any great distance came in by ship, and went to the markets of Spicetown and Shiphaven and Newmarket. Anything that could stand to sit unsold on a shelf for any length of time was more likely to wind up displayed in a shop somewhere, rather than hawked in the market square. That foreign cloth merchant was an anomaly, probably some ambitious fellow from the Small Kingdoms who had hoped to get around the Ethsharitic shipping cartels. Westgate Market was a place to find pumpkins, not a career.

  All the same, it was pleasant to stroll about, taking it all in. The sun was warm, the colors bright, and the smell of manure much less than he remembered.

  As he strolled, there was a brief disturbance on the far side of the market, and Dumery heard a cry of “Thief!” He stood on tiptoe and craned to see, but could make nothing out through the intervening crowds.

  He shrugged, and wandered on.

  After a time it occurred to Dumery to look behind the carts and wagons and stalls of the vendors, at the permanent buildings that lined the east side of the square.

  They were all inns, of course—the Clumsy Juggler, the Gatehouse Inn, half a dozen in all, squeezed into the hundred or so feet between Shipwright Street and High Street, each with its signboard and open door. Dumery paused and considered.

  He knew that scores of other inns did business in Westgate, in addition to this row on the square, and there were many more elsewhere in the city as well, a few at each gate and several scattered along the waterfronts—though of course, Westgate had the largest concentration.

  Dumery thought about inns. Could he become an innkeeper, perhaps?

  How did one become an innkeeper? Did innkeepers take apprentices?

  It might be interesting, meeting new people all the time, listening to travelers’ tales—but on the other hand, an innkeeper probably heard more about account books than adventures, more complaints than chronicles. And really, he'd be little better than a servant. It wouldn't do.

  All the same, he looked over the row carefully, admiring the artistry of the signboards.

  The Clumsy Juggler, with its red-clad fool dropping half a dozen multi-colored balls, was the most whimsical of the six; most were fairly straightforward. Two, the Gatehouse Inn and the Market House, had their names spelled out in runes, while the others relied, sometimes mistakenly, on illustrations to convey their names. The sign two doors from High Street, showing something green and wiggly on a field of irregular blue and gold stripes, seemed particularly incomprehensible.

  Dumery was staring at that one, simultaneously trying to figure out what it was supposed to be and wondering who painted the boards and whether there was a potential career there, when two figures emerged from the door below the sign.

  He glanced at them, then stared.

  The lead figure, a big man wearing scuffed brown leather, he had never seen before, but the other, following a step behind and looking very irritated, was Thetheran the Mage.

  Dumery blinked in surprise, and then, without really knowing why, he turned to follow the pair.

  They were marching straight across the square toward the southern half of the huge pair of towers that bracketed the city gates. The man in the lead seemed cheerful and lighthearted; Dumery glimpsed a smile on his face when he turned to look back for a moment. Thetheran, on the other hand, seemed very annoyed about something; he was frowning ferociously and stamping his way across the hard-packed dirt.

  Dumery wondered whether he would hurt his feet, walking like that. Maybe there was some sort of magic in it.

  Curious about what could possibly annoy the wizard that way, Dumery continued to follow even after his initial impulsive action. He hurried through the crowd, dodging around clumps of haggling tradesmen and farmers, at one point ducking through a display of melons and almost toppling a pyramid of the great pale fruit.

  The man in brown reached the base of the south tower, where a guardsman in yellow tunic and red kilt was leaning comfortably against the grey stone beside a small wooden door. He spoke to the guard; the guard rapped on the door and shouted something that Dumery couldn't quite make out over the noise of the crowd.

  Thetheran, Dumery noticed, looked quite impatient about all this.

  The door opened, and the man in brown stepped inside, out of sight; Thetheran started to follow, but the guardsman stopped him with an outthrust hand against the wizard's chest.

  Thetheran exploded into a bellow of rage, but the guardsman bellowed back, and the wizard subsided.

  Dumery stared. He had expected Thetheran to pull out a magic wand and blast the guardsman to dust, or something, not to simply back down like tha
t. He wondered what in all the World could possibly make Thetheran behave this way.

  Of course, even wizards, he supposed, must fear the power of the city's overlord, Azrad VII. And the guards were Azrad's direct representatives.

  Then the leather-clad man re-emerged from the tower, one hand held high, clutching something that looked like a peculiar sort of bottle. It wasn't particularly large, perhaps the size of a big man's fist, and it gleamed purplish-red in the sun.

  Thetheran reached for the bottle, but the man in brown turned away, holding it out of the wizard's reach.

  Dumery had now crept close enough to hear when the man in leather said, “That'll be six rounds in gold, in advance.”

  Dumery's jaw dropped.

  Six rounds in gold!

  That was six hundred pieces in copper—more than a laborer earned in a year!

  What was in that little bottle?

  “I'll pay five, after I weigh it,” Thetheran said.

  “No,” the man in leather said. “You'll pay six, now.”

  “Forty-four gold bits, then, but I weigh it first.”

  “Forty-eight bits. Six rounds. I told you.”

  “All right, all right, if it's full weight I'll pay the six rounds!”

  “Fair enough,” the seller said. “They'll have a balance at the Dragon's Tail; we'll weigh it there.”

  Thetheran nodded. “All right, then. A quarter its weight in gold, then, as we agreed—for the blood only.”

  “Counting the flask, of course,” the other said, grinning.

  Thetheran began to protest again, but thought better of it.

  “All right, damn it,” he said. “Counting the flask.”

  “Good enough, then,” the man in brown said. “Come along.” He marched back toward the inn they had come from, and Thetheran followed in his wake, fuming.

  Dumery stared, then ran over to where the guardsman was once again leaning quietly against the wall of the tower.

  "Hai," he called. “Guard!”

  The soldier stirred and looked down at him.

  “What do you want, boy?” he asked mildly.

  “That man,” Dumery asked, pointing. “What did he sell that wizard?”

  The guard glanced up at the retreating back of Thetheran's midnight-blue robe. He grinned.

  “Oh, that,” he said. “That was dragon's blood. We guard it for him.”

  Dumery blinked. “Dragon's blood?” he asked.

  The guard nodded. “Wizards use a lot of it. It's one of the most common ingredients for their spells. Without dragon's blood they couldn't do half what they do.”

  “Really?” Dumery stared after Thetheran and the man in brown.

  “Really,” said the guard. “Or at least so I've always heard.”

  Dumery nodded. It made sense. He'd always heard how wizards used strange things in their spells, and he'd seen himself that Thetheran had shelves and shelves of such things, like the hair of a beheaded man and all the rest of it. Dragon's blood would fit right in.

  He ran after the two men, back toward the inn with the strange signboard, the one that really didn't look much at all like a dragon's tail, regardless of what anyone said.

  They were inside. Dumery didn't enter; he leaned in through the doorway, looking for them, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the shadowy interior of the taproom.

  It took him a moment to spot them, among the thirty or forty people in the room, but at last he saw them, seated across from each other at a small table near the stairs; Thetheran's dark blue robe was fairly distinctive, and the man in brown was tall enough to be easily noticed, taller than Thetheran—who was no dwarf—by half a head. The pair was not far away at all, merely in an unexpected direction.

  Dumery leaned in further, listening intently.

  The transaction was under way; Thetheran was counting out coins, and the man in brown was testing each one, making sure they were all real gold.

  He looked up. “I haven't sold to you before,” he remarked, loudly enough for Dumery to hear, “but I hope you know that if any of this gold turns out to be enchanted, you'll regret it.”

  “I know,” Thetheran said, almost snarling. “I've heard about you. It's all real, you'll see. I didn't enchant anything.”

  “I hope not,” said the man in brown, “because if you did, the price goes up for everyone, and you know your guild isn't going to like that.”

  “I know, I said!” Thetheran snapped. “Gods, all this just for dragon's blood! You'd think the beasts were extinct, you make this stuff so precious!”

  “No,” the other corrected him, "you make it precious, all you wizards who use so much of the stuff. Dragons aren't extinct, but they're damnably dangerous—if you want dragon's blood, you have to pay for it.”

  “I know, I know,” Thetheran said, rummaging in his purse for the last gold bit.

  Dumery stared, silently marveling.

  Dragon's blood. Thetheran had let himself be humiliated for a flask of dragon's blood. He had paid six rounds of gold for a flask of dragon's blood—as much as Dumery's father would earn from an entire trading voyage.

  And dragons were big; a dead dragon, just one dead dragon, even a small one, would surely fill a dozen flasks easily.

  Dangerous, the man said. Well, yes, dragons would be dangerous, that was obvious. Even if the stories about breathing fire and working magic weren't true, and for all Dumery knew they were sober fact, dragons still had claws and teeth. But all that gold! And to have wizards humbled like that! To have Thetheran, who had refused him and insulted him, forced to pay any price he asked!

  It was irresistible. Now Dumery knew what he wanted to do with his life.

  He wanted to be a dragon-hunter.

  Chapter Six

  It occurred to Dumery that in all likelihood not a single full-time professional dragon-hunter lived inside the city walls. It was not an occupation that could be practiced in an urban environment, or that would be in great demand on the streets of Ethshar. In order to ply his trade a dragon-hunter would naturally require the presence of wild dragons, and the only dragons in the city were baby ones kept as pets or showpieces by rich eccentrics, or for the Arena by magicians and show people.

  No wild dragons lurked in the streets and courtyards, Dumery was sure. Not even in the sewers or the Hundred-Foot Field.

  So no dragon-hunter would live in the city.

  That meant, Dumery realized, that his father wouldn't be able to arrange an apprenticeship for him. Doran's contacts in the city were extensive and varied, but elsewhere, outside the walls, as far as Dumery knew all his contacts were with other merchants.

  To the best of his knowledge, the only person Dumery had ever seen, since the day he was born, who might be a dragon-hunter, or at least might know where one could be found, was the man in brown leather, right there in the Dragon's Tail, pocketing Thetheran's gold and gloating shamelessly over it.

  Furthermore, the odds of Dumery finding another dragon-hunter—if the man in brown actually was a hunter, and not just a middleman of some sort—before he was too old to apprentice to any trade except soldiering looked rather poor. After all, he had gone twelve years without ever noticing a dragon-hunter before; even when looking, he suspected that he might easily go two or three years without seeing another.

  This, then, was it, Dumery told himself. This man in brown leather was the key to his entire future, an opportunity he could not afford to waste.

  An over-hasty approach might bring disaster; Dumery decided against simply marching up and presenting himself.

  As the boy reached that decision, Thetheran rose, haughtily ignoring his supplier. As the mage stalked out of the inn into the sunlit market Dumery ducked back out of sight, behind a wagonload of tanned leather.

  Of course, there was no real reason to hide from Thetheran; he had done the wizard no harm, and had no real reason to think the man wished him ill—Dumery didn't really believe in his own theories of a conspiracy created by Thethera
n for the express purpose of preventing one boy, himself, from learning magic.

  All the same, Dumery preferred not to be seen.

  When the magician had grumbled his way around the corner onto High Street, out of sight and sound, Dumery emerged from behind the wagon and hurried into the Dragon's Tail. He looked at the corner by the stairs.

  The man in brown was gone.

  Dumery stared, horribly disappointed, at the empty table where the wizard had bought the flask of dragon's blood. The boy turned, quickly scanning the rest of the room, but he saw no sign of his target.

  How had the man slipped away? Dumery had never turned his gaze from the tavern door for more than a couple of seconds. He looked around the taproom.

  There was the hearth, and a door to the kitchens, and a long wall adorned with a strip of scaly green hide—from a genuine dragon's tail, perhaps? Then came a broad, many-paned window, and the door to the square, and then the stairs.

  The stairs. Dumery finished his circuit of the room, past the curtained booths below the stairs and past an open door that appeared to lead to the cellars, and back to the hearth.

  Unless there was a way out through the kitchens or the cellars, or behind one of the draperied private booths, none of which seemed like anywhere an ordinary customer would go, the man in brown had probably just gone up to his room.

  Of course, if the man in brown thought that Thetheran was angry enough to try some dire revenge, then perhaps he had gone out through the kitchens or cellars or booths—thoughts of secret passages and ancient crypts and hidden tunnels came to mind.

  That didn't seem very likely; Dumery was old enough to know that most of the more romantic tales he had heard were exaggerated, and that as a general rule everyday life did not include many hairbreadth escapes or mysterious passages.

  All the same, this was a man who dealt harshly with wizards. If anyone might anticipate a need for a secret departure, he might.

  "Hai!" Dumery called, waving to a young woman in a white apron, carrying a tray under her arm.

  She saw him, and sauntered over.