The Blood of a Dragon

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The front of the inn wasn't bad, because of the torch over the door, but the stableyard was almost black with the night. The sun was gone; neither moon was in the sky just now, and the stars were obscured by high, thin clouds. Dumery had to find his way mostly by feel.

  One thing he felt was that the ground beneath his feet was muddy and slippery; twice his feet almost went out from under him, but each time he managed to catch himself on something.

  The stableyard was roughly square, with stalls around three sides—the fourth side was largely taken up with the gate he had entered through. The stalls were under roof, and awash in gloom, while the yard itself was open to the sky and held what little daylight still lingered.

  He heard large animals moving around in the darkness along the sides, and glimpsed shadowy forms in the gloom, and decided against trying to get into a stall with one of them. Yes, the stalls would have straw, which would be relatively warm and dry, but he didn't like the idea of getting stepped on by a horse or ox that failed to notice him in the dark.

  Instead he worked his way to a back corner and curled up there, huddling miserably, trying to ignore the mud and the dirt and the heavy animal stink.

  Was it really worth it?, he asked himself after a few minutes. This seemed like a lot of hardship to put up with just to get an apprenticeship, even in a trade as exciting and exotic as dragon-hunting.

  Maybe he should go back home and pack proper supplies and put on proper traveling clothes and borrow a reasonable amount of money, and then set out anew.

  Of course, the problem with that was that the man in brown would be long gone by then, and picking up his trail might be impossible. Dumery had no idea how often he came to the city, either, so he couldn't rely on finding him at the Dragon's Tail again; if his visits were annual, as many tradesmen's were, then by the time he came back to the city Dumery would be too old to be apprenticed.

  His stomach growled loudly. He was not accustomed to going this long without plenty of good food.

  Something ran across his foot, and he started, looking about wildly, but unable to make out, in the darkness, just what it was that had startled him.

  He settled back again and sat there, waiting.

  After a time, he found himself wishing he had some way to send a message home to his family. They were probably worried about him; he had, after all, vanished without warning. His mother was probably sitting up, sewing to keep her fingers busy while she got more and more worried.

  Well, it wouldn't kill her, and at least she would catch up on the mending. And his father might not even notice his absence until his mother or one of his siblings pointed it out.

  And his siblings probably wouldn't miss him.

  Even if they did, they would survive, he was sure. They would all survive, even his mother, and he would get word to them eventually, let them know he was safe.

  He wasn't going to think about that, he decided. Right now he had enough to be miserable about in his own situation without worrying about how miserable he might be making others.

  It seemed hours later—and in fact may have been hours later—when light came spilling suddenly into the stableyard. A door in the wall of the inn had opened, at the back of a narrow passageway that Dumery had mistaken for just another stall, and a figure was standing in it, lamplight pouring out around him.

  “Are you out here, boy?” the innkeeper's voice called.

  “Yes, sir,” Dumery replied, getting stiffly to his feet.

  “I've got the scraps for you. Leave the bowl on the step when you're done. Sleep well.”

  Before Dumery could say anything, the figure stepped back and closed the doorway.

  Dumery hurried to the doorstep and found a large wooden bowl, full of something he couldn't see at all. It smelled of grease.

  He dipped in a hand and came up with a crust of bread, soggy with congealing gravy; he ate it eagerly.

  It took some chewing, and as he worked on it he ambled back through the short passageway to his corner of the stableyard, where he settled down, cross-legged, with the bowl in front of him.

  He began picking through it, working by smell and touch, dropping back the pieces he considered unfit to eat.

  Unfortunately, most of it he considered unfit to eat.

  He was pawing through it, trying to find something edible, when his hand hit something unfamiliar. He tried to pick it out, to see what it was, but it pulled away.

  He blinked, startled, and peered through the gloom. Was something sitting there on the other side of the bowl?

  Yes, something was, something about the size of a kitten, but more or less human in shape, with its hands in the bowl of scraps. He stared.

  It was sitting cross-legged, a pot-belly slopping across its lap, and it was staring at him with outsize, bulging eyes. Dumery couldn't make out much more than that in the darkness; he had no idea of its color, or what any features except the big white eyes might look like.

  “Gack,” Dumery said, snatching his hand away.

  “Gack?” the thing replied.

  Dumery suddenly guessed that this was probably one of those little green things that had been running about Ethshar lately, tripping people and getting in the way.

  That didn't tell him what it was, though.

  “What are you?" he asked.

  “Spriggan,” the thing said, in a squeaky little voice. “Hungry,” it added pitifully.

  Dumery looked down at the bowl; even in the dark he could see that the thing had both its arms thrust into the scraps almost to the elbows.

  “Oh,” Dumery said. He gently pushed the bowl away, toward the spriggan. “Here,” he said. “Help yourself.”

  He had lost his appetite.

  As if eating garbage weren't bad enough, he was supposed to share it with some vile little monster? A monster that had shoved its dirty little paws into the bowl like that?

  That was simply too much. He wouldn't stand for it. He turned away, huddled up against the stableyard wall, and tried to go to sleep.

  Given his exhausted condition, that didn't take long.

  Chapter Eight

  Faléa had begun wondering around mid-afternoon just what Dumery was doing that was keeping him so long. Was he still at Westgate Market? Had he found something to do, some apprenticeship or other prospect, that appealed to him? Had he, perhaps, wandered off to some other part of the city?

  If he'd found an apprenticeship, that was fine—if it was something completely inappropriate Doran could refuse to cooperate, and that would put an end to it, and if it was anything halfway respectable then the problem of Dumery's future was solved.

  If he hadn't found an apprenticeship, that didn't matter; he had plenty of time left before his thirteenth birthday.

  She did wonder, though, what was keeping him.

  The wondering turned gradually to worry as the sun set, and supper was cooked and served and eaten, and still Dumery didn't return.

  This wasn't the first time Dumery had missed a meal, of course, or even the fiftieth, but still, Faléa worried.

  Doran, of course, hadn't even noticed the boy's absence. He was involved with the accounts from the Sea Stallion's latest run out to Tintallion of the Isle—Faléa knew that there were apparently some discrepancies, and that this was important, so she didn't force her worries about their youngest son on her husband.

  Doran the Younger and Derath and Dessa all made the predictable snide adolescent remarks about their brother's absence, naturally, and Faléa hushed them half-heartedly.

  Their father paid no attention.

  After dinner Faléa and Derath cleaned the table and kitchen, while Dessa swept and Doran the Younger hauled water in from the courtyard well. The elder Doran finally found the flaw in the records about an hour after dinner, as Dessa was settling to bed, and spent the next twenty minutes loudly arguing with himself as to whether he should have his agent whipped for theft, or merely fired, or whether he should forgive her this one last time—a
keg of good Morrian brandy was missing and unaccounted for.

  “Why not ask her what happened to it?” Faléa suggested. “It might be an honest mistake.”

  “Ha!” Doran bellowed. "Honest? Her?"

  “It might be.” While she had her husband's attention, she added, “By the way, have you seen Dumery? He wasn't at supper.”

  “I'll ask her, all right,” he said. “I'll ask her first thing in the morning, with a guardsman at my side.” He snorted.

  “Have you seen Dumery?” Faléa insisted.

  “What? No, I haven't seen the boy. Ask his brothers.”

  Faléa did ask them, catching them just before they retired for the night. Both of them insisted that they hadn't seen Dumery since breakfast.

  “You're sure?” she asked.

  They took offense at that, unsurprisingly, and she could get nothing more out of them. She let them go on to bed.

  Ordinarily, she would have gone to bed herself not long after, but this time she didn't. She sat up, waiting, instead.

  She got out her sewing basket and did the mending. That kept her hands busy, but didn't really distract her thoughts from all the terrible things that might have happened to her youngest child.

  There were slavers over on New Canal Street, and prowling the streets. There were drunken sailors starting brawls all along the waterfront.

  Dumery had gone to Westgate Market; that was near Wall Street and the Hundred-Foot Field. There were thieves in the Field, and maybe worse. Slavers never dared enter the Field itself, but they patrolled Wall Street, collecting strays.

  There were stories about evil magicians kidnapping people from the Hundred-Foot Field for various nefarious purposes—as sacrifices to demons or rogue gods, as food for monsters, as a source of ingredients for strange and terrible spells. Young innocents were supposed to be especially prized—virgin's blood, hair, and tears were reputed to be necessary ingredients in several spells.

  That was usually presumed to mean female virgins, but perhaps boys had their own uses.

  And there were stories about other people than magicians finding uses for boys. She had never heard such stories about Westgate, but over in Camptown there were rumored to be all-male brothels.

  Any number of horrible things could have happened to Dumery. Her needle jerked through the cloth she held as she considered just how dangerous her native city actually could be.

  Around midnight Doran put away the account books and looked around for Faléa. He found her waiting in the parlor, staring at the front hallway, her sewing done and heaped on the floor; he remembered suddenly that Dumery was missing.

  He snorted under his breath. That damned troublesome boy. The little fool was probably playing some stupid prank, Doran told himself, or else he was staying with friends and had forgotten to tell anyone.

  Telling Faléa that wouldn't do any good, though. She knew it as well as he did, but still, she worried.

  Nothing wrong with that, Doran thought. A mother had every right to worry about her youngest. And Dumery was a bright lad, a promising lad—Doran was proud of him. He would have been even prouder had the boy not been so pigheaded and prone to wild fancies and foolhardy adventures.

  Still, Dumery would turn up, safe and sound, he was sure. He always had.

  Doran waved a good night to his wife and went to bed.

  Faléa waved back, half-heartedly, and sat.

  An hour later, her head still full of thoughts of her Dumery captured by slavers, or set upon by thieves, or run off on reckless adventures, Faléa joined her husband in bed.

  Chapter Nine

  Dumery awoke at the sound of rattling harness; a traveler was fetching his mount from the inn's stable.

  The boy blinked up at the bright blue sky, and then panicked. He leapt to his feet, sending the scrap bowl spinning and knocking aside the spriggan that was curled up against him, and he ran for the gate, spooking several horses. The traveler shouted at him angrily, but Dumery paid no attention. He was too worried.

  It was morning, and none too early. What if the dragon-hunter had already gone? Dumery didn't even know which fork of the road the man in brown would be taking, north or west.

  He paused at the door of the inn to catch his breath. Looking up, he saw that the torch above the door had burned away to a blackened stub. The sun was still low in the east, but it was clear of the horizon.

  If the man in brown was gone Dumery would have no way of finding him again. He would be left with little choice but to give up and head home to Ethshar.

  That would mean giving up his dream of becoming a dragon-hunter himself, though, and he wasn't going to give in that easily if he could help it. He was determined to be a dragon-hunter and rub Thetheran's nose in it.

  He opened the door, and, suddenly nervous about being spotted, peered carefully in.

  The man in brown was there, sitting at one of the tables, eating grapes, carefully plucking out the seeds as he went. He wore a different tunic, this one tan wool rather than brown leather, but Dumery was sure it was him. The man's size and slovenly hair were distinctive enough to make a positive identification.

  A sigh of relief escaped the boy. The man was still here. He hadn't left yet. Dumery hadn't lost him.

  His ticket to a career in dragon-hunting was still in reach.

  Dumery stood in the doorway for a moment, trying to figure out what to do next.

  As he stood, it registered with the boy that the man in brown looked clean and well-rested and well-fed and was finishing up a leisurely and generous breakfast. He had undoubtedly slept in a fine bed paid for with Thetheran's gold, while Dumery had spent the night freezing in the stableyard mud, with nothing to eat but a few nauseating scraps. He was filthy and stinking, his feet still ached, his back was stiff, and his stomach was so empty it was trying to tie itself in knots.

  This journey was no great hardship for the man in brown, who was well-prepared and well-financed, but it was clearly going to be torture for an ill-equipped boy who didn't even know where he was going.

  Dumery turned and looked down the road, back toward Ethshar. He couldn't see any sign of the city, but he knew it was there, and in it his parents’ house.

  Should he turn back?

  He chewed on his lip as he thought it over.

  Back in Ethshar, somewhere over the horizon, he had a home and a family and a fine soft bed, regular meals and a warm fire every night. He had a mother who loved him, a father who treated him fairly well, and three reasonably-tolerable siblings who usually left him alone.

  He also had no prospects of any interest for the future, however, and the city was home to a dozen wizards and other magicians who had rejected and humiliated him.

  That decided him. He would go on.

  He would continue on until he reached the dragon-hunter's home base, and then he would present himself again and demand an apprenticeship.

  He looked back into the main room of the inn, just as the man in brown pushed back his chair and got to his feet.

  The serving maid, Asha, hurried up as the man dropped a heavy coin on the table—a silver piece, by the look and sound of it. The two exchanged a few words that Dumery didn't catch.

  Worried that he might be missing something important, he slipped in the door as they were talking and crept closer.

  “So the boat's there now?” the man asked.

  “I think so,” the girl replied.

  “Well, that's fine, then. I might as well wait there as here. My thanks, to you and to Valder.” He reached down and picked up his pack as the girl pocketed the coin—a silver round, all right. That would cover his entire bill, Dumery was sure, and probably leave a bit or two over for the maid.

  Well, with a purse full of wizard's gold, the man could afford to be generous.

  Dumery realized suddenly, as the man in brown shouldered his pack, that the man was about to leave.

  Not wanting to be seen, the boy ducked back out the front door as the man in brow
n turned. He scurried back to the stableyard and through the gate; then he turned and watched, peering around the wall as the dragon-hunter emerged.

  The man in brown wasted no time in looking around at the scenery, or admiring the weather; he marched around the far corner of the inn and up the northern fork of the highway, out of sight.

  Dumery started to hurry after him, only to trip and fall headlong in the mud.

  Blinking, he got to his knees and looked around, trying to figure out what had tripped him.

  The little monster that had called itself a spriggan was sitting there, looking as dazed as Dumery felt.

  The thing was green, as he had guessed, and would have been about eight inches tall standing upright. It looked like a frog that had started to turn into a man and then changed its mind; it was sitting in a human pose, rather than a batrachian one, its hind legs stretched out before it, its forelegs—arms, really, with hands, fingers, and even thumbs—dangling to either side. It had broad pointed ears, far too large for it, and great protruding eyes.

  “Ooooh!” it said, in a piercing, squeaky little voice. “We bump!”

  “Yes,” Dumery said, “I guess we did.”

  The creature looked harmless; Dumery decided to ignore it. He got to his feet.

  “Ooh, wait!” the spriggan said. “Where we going?”

  Dumery looked down at it. “I don't have any idea where you're going,” he said, “but I'm going that way!” He pointed to the northern fork, where the man in brown had vanished.

  “Come with you, yes! You feed, I come!” the spriggan announced enthusiastically.

  “I'm not going to feed you,” Dumery said, annoyed. “I don't even have food for myself.”

  “You feed me last night. I come with you,” it insisted, stamping a foot ludicrously.

  “Right,” Dumery said. “Try it.” He turned and marched off briskly, almost running.

  The spriggan let out a piercing shriek, hopped up, and ran after him.

  Dumery's longer legs made the difference; he easily left the little creature behind as he topped the low ridge that ran behind the inn.

  As he did, he suddenly saw why the place was called the Inn at the Bridge.