The Blood of a Dragon

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  He rolled over and dove for the black hatchling, catching it off-guard. He came up with his left arm clamped around its throat, his right hand holding his knife under its jaw.

  “I'll cut the little bugger's throat if you come any closer!” he shouted.

  The black dragon squirmed, one foreclaw gouging Dumery's leg, but it stopped when it felt the prick of the blade.

  The great green dragon's gleaming golden eyes blinked, thick horny lids sliding down across them and then flicking back up.

  “Very well,” the beast said, in a voice like an avalanche, “then I shan't come any closer.”

  Dumery's mouth fell open.

  He had known that dragons could talk, at least in theory—but theory wasn't reality. All the dragons he had seen so far had been treated as mere beasts, and had behaved as mere beasts, either caged and subdued or wild and dangerous. Even given the far greater size and obvious relative maturity of this monster, he hadn't expected speech; where could it have learned Ethsharitic, out here in the forests of Aldagmor?

  Still, it had clearly spoken, and spoken clearly.

  For a moment Dumery stood, the black dragon's head clutched to his chest, the knife at its throat, while those huge golden eyes watched him, the gigantic dragon's expression completely unreadable.

  His own throat was dry; he swallowed.

  “If you would be so kind as to release the hatchling?” the tremendous rumbling voice said.

  The hatchling reacted to this by scrabbling viciously, shredding the right leg of Dumery's breeches and drawing three deep scratches down his thigh. He squeezed its neck more tightly, and it stopped.

  “You'll eat me if I let it go,” he said.

  “Nay, I shall not,” the great dragon replied. “I feasted well ere I fetched the kine for these younglings, and I've no appetite left in me. I'll swear not to harm you, if you'll in turn swear not to harm these infants here gathered.”

  Dumery glanced down from those eyes, and saw the other five dragons watching with interest.

  “You've got to promise to keep the others away from me, too,” he said.

  “Surely,” the dragon agreed. It turned its immense head and hissed, a sound like storm-driven waves breaking across the docks of Ethshar; the yearlings and the blue dragon backed away to the far side of the nest, thoroughly cowed.

  Then the head swung back to face Dumery.

  “Release the youngling, then,” the dragon said.

  Still reluctant, Dumery looked down at the black hatchling. It glared up at him with its yellow-gold eyes, and squirmed again, but this time its foreclaws missed his leg.

  He dropped his knife and took the little beast's neck in both hands, then flung it aside, stepping back away from it as he did so.

  The dragon tumbled, then scrambled to its feet and started back toward Dumery, hissing, its neck weaving like a snake preparing to strike.

  The adult dragon hissed in reply, loud as an ocean; startled, the hatchling stopped in its tracks, turned its head, and stared up at its guardian.

  The big dragon bent down and picked the infant up, grasping it gently in its gigantic maw and depositing it, unhurt, with the others.

  Then it turned back to Dumery.

  “You swore,” Dumery said, nervously.

  “Aye, I swore I'd not harm you, and I shan't. Speak, then, manling, and tell me what has brought you hither. Why have you come to my nesting and keeping?”

  The beast spoke Ethsharitic very clearly, but also very oddly. Its words were accented strangely, consonants enunciated far more clearly than Dumery was accustomed to, and some of the words it used struck him as curiously old-fashioned. Dumery tried to make sense of the dragon's question. Did it mean why was here in the area, or what was he doing in the nest?

  He decided it must mean the latter.

  “It was an accident,” he said, defensively. “I was just curious about what was in here, so I was looking through the logs, and the wind from your wings knocked me down inside.”

  “Ah, and what was a lad from Ethshar, for I note your use of the Old Tongue as spoken in that land, what was a lad from Ethshar doing in the wildernesses here, where few men dare venture, save the warlocks bound to their fate?”

  This sentence was too much for the boy, with its warlocks and tongues and ventures.

  “What?” he asked.

  The dragon made a noise in its throat that reminded Dumery of a heavy bucket dropped into a very deep well. “Are my words hard on your ears, then? I confess, I must strain to apprehend some of your own pronunciations.”

  Hopelessly, Dumery repeated, “What?”

  The dragon eyed him warily, then asked, “Do you have trouble understanding my words, lad?”

  Dumery nodded. “Yes,” he said, nervously.

  “And I yours,” the beast said. “I fear our common language has changed since last I had occasion to speak it.”

  “And you use big words,” Dumery said.

  The beast snorted in amusement, and the gust of hot, fetid air nearly knocked Dumery off his feet. “Aye,” it said. “Surely I do, by the standards of a lad as young as yourself. I forget myself. Well, then, I shall attempt to limit myself to simpler words, and my apologies to you, boy, for my inconsideration.”

  Dumery just stared.

  “Now then, boy, why is an Ethsharite in this vicinity?”

  “I ... I was on my way home.”

  “Ah? Whence, that your route led through these wilds?”

  “What?”

  “Where had you been, lad?”

  “Oh. In Aldagmor.”

  The dragon made the bucket-in-a-well noise again—could it be a chuckle? Dumery hoped it was that, and not something more ominous. The dragon said, “Verily, lad, still are you in Aldagmor, as they call this land, and indeed at its very heart and namesake. Mean you that you were at the keep of he who falsely claims to rule here, him styled Baron of Aldagmor?”

  “No,” Dumery said. He hesitated, then asked plaintively, “Um ... smaller words, please?”

  “Forgive me, child,” the dragon said, with what Dumery took for a sort of smile. “'Tis such a pleasure to speak to a human again, after all these years with none but foolish young dragons to hear me, that I find myself wrapping my tongue around the richest and finest words that strike me, the better to savor the experience. I've had none with whom to hold converse for twenty years or more save younglings of my own kind, taught to speak by myself, so that I've but heard my own words prattled back to me, and poorly, at that. This drought has been hard and long on my ears, so that I would now drink deeply indeed from the font before me. Is't truly hardship for you, then, to follow my thoughts?” It looked at Dumery's bewildered expression. “Ah, I see it is, and again I would beg pardon.” The beast paused, clearly thinking, its head cocked slightly to one side. Then it spoke again.

  “I shall try to use smaller words. Were you visiting the Baron of Aldagmor?”

  “No,” said Dumery. He debated whether to volunteer more information, and if so, whether to tell the truth.

  “You are surely a reluctant font, that needs must be pumped,” the dragon remarked. “Where, then, were you, if not at the castle?”

  “I applied for an apprenticeship,” Dumery said. “I was turned down, and I lost my way, and I knew that if I headed south, I'd eventually come to the river or the sea.”

  “And in truth you might, but had none warned you of the perils of such a journey? This land is counted accursed by many of your kind, boy, and indeed I myself am a portion of that curse, though of late only the lesser portion.” It saw Dumery's helpless expression and said, “'Tis dangerous, lad! Did no one tell you?”

  “No,” Dumery said. He was beginning to accustom himself to the beast's manner.

  “Well, ‘tis. Truly, it is. Aside from the presence of myself and my kind, this is the land where warlocks vanish, where ordinary folk may become warlocks, to vanish in their turn. All this, and the more usual hazards of any wilderness,
as well.”

  “I didn't know,” Dumery said. It seemed the simplest reply, under the circumstances, and after all, he hadn't known there were wild dragons, or that the Warlock Stone was real and dangerous, if it really was.

  “And did you make this journey unaccompanied, with none to aid you?” the dragon asked. “No father, nor mother, nor sib, nor comrade, to see you safe to your destination?”

  “No,” Dumery said. “Just me. My father didn't approve.”

  “Ah,” the dragon said, in a curiously sympathetic tone, “an outcast from the bosom of family, are you? So was I, once, these few centuries past, to a way of thinking. What name do you go by, lad?”

  “Dumery,” Dumery said. “Dumery of Shiphaven.”

  “A fine name, it seems me, a fine name. No patronymic, then, but merely a residence?”

  “I'm the third son,” Dumery said in explanation. He didn't mention that patronymics were out of fashion in Ethshar.

  “Ah. Well, then, Dumery of Shiphaven, I have been known, and know myself as, Aldagon, which is in the speech of the lost ancients ‘She Who Is Great Among Dragons,’ or so I was once told. Some have called me Aldagon of Aldagmor, but that strikes me ill, since the land's named for me.”

  “It is?” the boy asked, startled.

  “Aye,” the creature said, “Aldagmor means clearly, the Mountains of Aldagon, and the Aldagon so named is myself. I was here ere this land had any name in our common tongue.” Aldagon turned its—or rather, her head slightly and squinted at Dumery. “Meseems we've wandered afield in our converse, lad. I was asking whence you came, and why, and we've rambled off to names and whatnot whilst I have no sound reply from you.”

  Dumery said nothing—not because he was stubborn or reluctant, but only because he didn't know what to say.

  Aldagon let out a long, earth-shaking draconic sigh. “Speak, lad, tell me the tale entire, in whatever words and manner that you choose, but you tell it all. How came you here?”

  Dumery hesitated, but then explained, in awkward and stumbling sentences, that he had wanted to see dragons, and that he had seen Kensher Kinner's son in Ethshar, and had followed him home to the dragon farm. There he had asked for an apprenticeship, had been refused, and had left in despair, only to lose the trail and head south, cross-country, toward Ethshar.

  That was the tale as he told it, and Aldagon accepted it. No mention was made of burglaries or witches.

  “You sought dragons, you say, and indeed you've found a surfeit of them, I'd venture—first came you to that accursed and damnable farm, and now to my nesting, where you find us all.” She flexed a wing slightly to indicate the half-dozen young dragons huddled on the far side of the lair.

  Dumery nodded.

  “Meseems you have an unusual favoring of fortune, to chance upon so many. In truth, I am not often to be found here; my common dwelling is to the east, beyond the mountains, where I'm little troubled by your kind. I take pleasure in converse with humans, but alas, few care to join me so; the more likely occurrence, should I appear amongst them, is a flurry of spears or spells, flung hither and yon for fear of me.”

  Dumery gulped, and ventured, “Well, you do eat people, don't you?”

  “Nay,” she replied, with a shake of her head, “I've not tasted man—nor woman, nor child—for these two centuries and more, not since the Great War ended.”

  “Oh.” The idea that this creature had been around during the Great War seemed absurd at first, but then Dumery looked at it again. Aldagon was immense, her head alone a good bit bigger than a farmer's wagon. She had certainly needed a very long time to grow to such a size.

  And she was clearly old. Her scales were thick and overlapped each other heavily, while the edges were all worn smooth. Her teeth were huge, but they, too, looked worn.

  And if she had really been around back then it made her claim that Aldagmor had been named for her more reasonable, too—Dumery was rather vague on the details, but he thought that Aldagmor, like most of the rest of Sardiron, might have been part of the Northern Empire, so it wouldn't have had any name that ordinary people could use until after the war was won.

  “Were you really around during the War?” he asked.

  “Oh, aye, of course,” Aldagon said. “I was born and bred for the war, these four hundred years past. I was hatched on just such a farm as you saw, though not that very one—the Ethsharite forces had not penetrated so far in my time. I was trained from the egg to fight and fly in the service of the Holy Kingdom of Ethshar, against the minions of the Empire, and for a century I burned the towns and camps of the Northerners, slew their sorcerers and the sorcerous beasts sent against me, and devoured whatever Northern soldiery I could find. I took many a blow in that service, and with damnably little in recompense.”

  “Really?” Dumery asked.

  “Aye, really,” Aldagon said. “Oh, at first I was but a beast, rampaging where my masters sent me, at the behest of a half-trained fool whose hand-signs I had been made to recognize, but when I had at last learned to speak I began to operate more freely, to take orders too complex for a beast, to fetch back what news I could, and my masters sent me ever farther afield in pursuit of sundry military goals. And what did I ever receive for my pains, but shouted commands, scant provision—for they wanted me always hungry, the better to feed on the foe—and the occasional whack on the snout?”

  Dumery made a wordless noise of sympathy. Aldagon nodded.

  “At last I thought better of it,” she continued. “I betook me across these mountains, and made my home upon their eastern slopes, where I could dine in peace upon the abundant wildlife and the stray Northern patrol that ventured by.”

  “And you've been there ever since?” Dumery asked.

  “That I have, save when the whimsy takes me, and I stray back this way, seeking a taste of beef, or to rescue a handful of my fellows from that foul farm where you were turned away.” Again, Aldagon gestured toward the young dragons.

  “Oh,” Dumery said. “They didn't just escape?”

  “Nay, I brought them forth—save that one hatchling, he of the black scales, who I found wandering the mountaintop behind the farm, lost and alone. I know not how he came there.” She made a motion with her neck and shoulders that bore an uncanny resemblance to a shrug.

  “Oh,” Dumery admitted, “I think that was my fault.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Aldagon eyed Dumery with interest.

  “Speak, child,” she said. “Tell me how you came to send this youngling roaming free.”

  Dumery cleared his throat uneasily, stalling for time to think about what he wanted to tell this gigantic beast. Despite its oath, he still feared that if he said the wrong thing he might be roasted, eaten, or both—after all, a fit of temper would only need to last an instant for a dragon as large as this one to kill him.

  “First,” he said, “tell me about rescuing the others.”

  “There's little to tell,” Aldagon said, lashing her tail slightly and sending dry bones and broken branches flying. “I came upon that farm in the waning days of the war, when I chanced to be flying over the area and saw dragons beneath. Mine is a lonely life, lad, so I descended, only to see that my fellows were penned up like beasts, as had I been in my youth. I realized that it was but another breeding farm, and paid it no more heed—I had no wish to interfere in the Ethsharitic war effort.

  “But then came rumors of peace, and I wondered what was to become of dragons, when they were needed no more in the great conflict, so I took to flying over that establishment every few days.

  “To my confusion, I saw few changes. Still were there dragons penned there, and still did humans tend them, and assist in breeding them, and watch carefully over the hatchlings.

  “But in time I did notice that all was not as it had been. Many of the hatchlings were slain, and yearlings as well. Those that reached an age to be trained were not trained, but were slaughtered instead. Wings were broken, and broken again, and I
know not why. It seemed to me that this camp had become a mere prison, with no sound reason to continue.

  “I mused upon this, and considered what action I should take. The thought that I might destroy the establishment and free my fellows occurred to me, but I pursued it not—surely some sound and logical reason existed for its continuance, and had I obliterated it I might be doing great harm, in some way I failed to comprehend. I might well, I thought, by such an action, have given your fellow men reason to hunt me down and slay me—something that none ever troubled to seriously attempt, though my presence was widely known. I bothered few, and the task of exterminating me, while certainly within the abilities of your kind, was apparently deemed to be not worth the effort required. Had I destroyed the camp, though, perchance that had provided the impetus needed to send wizards against me with spells sufficient to the task.”

  "Are there spells that could kill you?” Dumery asked.

  “Oh, assuredly,” Aldagon replied. She continued, “Thus it was, though, that I knew of that iniquitous place, yet feared to demolish it. Instead, I ventured near, and snatched free one of the largest dragons, whilst no humans watched. I sought to question him, but alas, the poor thing was still only a beast, with no powers of speech and little thought beyond his belly. So no greater purpose was served by my effort.”

  Dumery nodded his understanding.

  “I noted that no retaliation was made against me for his freedom, though,” Aldagon went on. “No embassy was sent, no traps set, no spells cast. It seemed to me that though I dared not blast the farm to rubble, I might even so save some of its inhabitants from the abattoir, and the humans would not trouble to stop me, should I keep my depredations minor. And in fact, such has proved true—though I have returned every few years and carried off as many as a half-score of dragons at a time, as yet have they done naught to deter me.”

  She made an odd noise in her throat, then continued, “I confess, ‘twas for the most part loneliness that drove me to these rescues, more than altruism, for I had hoped to enjoy the company of my own kind again, as I had not since I fled my duties long before. In that I was sorely disappointed, for the infants I have saved from slaughter are none of them capable of speech, and most perish ere they learn.” She glanced around the nest. “I see, certes, that the one I called Kuprik has fled the lair, no doubt seeking the food that I would have brought him, had he but waited.”