Blood of an Exile

by Brian Naslund

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  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  For my mother and father,

  who taught me how to write.

  PART I

  They’ll tell lies about me.

  Enjoy them. Don’t ask for the real story.

  You won’t like it.

  —Silas Bershad

  1

  JOLAN

  Almira, Otter Rock Village

  On the day of the dragon slaying, Jolan woke an hour before dawn to prepare the supplies. Two spools of catgut stitches, all three healing mosses, one jug of boiled water, two skins of purified potato liquor, six tree-bark bandages, scissors, opium, all the knives, and, in case it was finally Bershad’s day to die, a white seashell to leave in his mouth, so that his soul would find the sea.

  Jolan worked methodically, taking each item from the shelves and placing it in the correct pouch of the leather traveling pack they used to transport supplies. There were two floor-to-ceiling shelves in the workshop, each one taking up an entire wall. One shelf held dozens of glass bottles filled with different salves, reagents, fermented animal organs, and moss poultices. Jolan and his master—Morgan Mollevan—had painstakingly gathered them from the countryside or grown them in the humid greenhouse out back. The second shelf was also full of glass jars, but each vessel contained the same thing: a toxic red-shelled snail. They were becoming overpopulated along the nearby riverbanks, and Morgan had been contracted by the local small lord—Crellin Nimbu—to find an antidote to the snail’s poison. He and Jolan had been studying the snails for years, but the path to an antivenom had proved elusive.

  Once the sun rose, the workshop would fill with a multicolored glow as daylight refracted through the bottles of their failed experiments.

  Jolan used a stepladder to reach the Gods Moss, which Morgan kept in a small, locked wooden box on the top shelf so it was out of sight. The locals were too afraid of Morgan to rob the apothecary, but wandering thieves weren’t uncommon, and the Gods Moss was the most valuable ingredient in the apothecary.

  Jolan saved the bone saw for last, since it required the most careful attention. He laid the long blade across the big wooden table in the center of the room, tested each tooth, and sharpened those that needed it. The last dragonslayer to come through Otter Rock had every muscle in his leg torn to ribbons by the great lizard he’d tried to kill. As Morgan was sawing the man’s leg off, the only thing louder than the dragonslayer’s screams were his master’s curses that the blade was too dull. Jolan wouldn’t let that happen again.

  He was finishing the last tooth on the bone saw, internally congratulating himself on his foresight, when Morgan came down from his bedchamber above the apothecary. He wore a simple gray robe. A pair of sealskin gloves were carefully tucked into his belt. The gloves were designed for the radical repair of arteries and organs deep inside a dying man’s body. Morgan only took them out of the apothecary when there was going to be a dragon slaying.

  Battlefield surgeons used them as well, but there hadn’t been a battle in Almira for thirty years. Not since the Balarian Invasion.

  “Coffee?” Morgan asked, frowning. He had jet-black, unkempt hair that shot out from his head in every direction. Jolan often wondered how a man could spend five hours straight measuring herb packets by candlelight, but forget that his hair required combing in the morning.

  Jolan looked to the idle stove across the room, as if a pair of sad eyes could materialize a pot of freshly brewed coffee. His first responsibility, from his first day as an apprentice, was to have coffee ready when his master awoke. He had lingered too long on the saw.

  “I’m … the bone saw needed sharpening, and—”

  “Forget it, there’s no time. Bershad will want to make his pass within the hour. Get the kit.” Morgan disappeared out the front door, leaving it open behind him.

  Jolan packed the bone saw in a side holster of the pack, slung the thick leather straps around both shoulders, and followed. A dozen yards down the road, he matched pace with Morgan, leaning forward to account for the added weight.

  “Why is a dragon best slain in the early morning?” Morgan asked. He was fond of quizzes when he was annoyed.

  “It’ll be sluggish then, before it’s had a chance to sun itself.”

  “And why does it need to sun itself?”

  “They’re reptiles. The largest known classification. Like all reptiles, their blood requires outside warmth to supply their energy. He won’t reach full strength until nine, even ten in the morning. Before that, most dragons are either unable or unwilling to fly.”

  “Are there any exceptions to this rule?”

  “Just one,” Jolan said. “Ghost Moths are able to warm their own blood. But the source of the heat is unknown.”

  Morgan nodded once, the only sign of approval he ever gave.

  “And why do I require coffee in the morning?”

  Jolan paused before answering, realizing where this line of questioning was headed.

  “Coffee beans stimulate the human mind, allowing clearer thought at a faster pace. They also stimulate the colon, creating the urge to—”

  “Wardens and brutish men with swords can afford to live out their lives half drunk,” Morgan interrupted. “They can always just bash a man’s skull in if they don’t have any better ideas. Our only weapons are our minds.” He looked down at Jolan. “We are defenseless without them. Never forget that.”

  “Yes, Master Mollevan.”

  They walked in silence down the forest path that snaked toward town, but Jolan could tell Morgan wasn’t finished talking. He had a way of tightening his hands into fists and releasing them again when he had more to say but didn’t particularly want to say it.

  “It was good that you sharpened the bone saw,” he said at last. That was the closest Master Morgan ever came to apologizing for something. “We might need it today, even if it is the Flawless Bershad waiting for us.”

  “Is he really as good as they say?” Jolan asked.

  “In my experience, legends never live up to their reputations.” Morgan paused. “But Silas Bershad has killed more dragons than anyone else in Terra. The stories can’t be entirely comprised of vapor.”

  Morgan’s tone was academic and dry, but Jolan got the sense he was excited to see the Flawless Bershad in action. Jolan certainly was.

  The apothecary was two leagues outside of Otter Rock. The people of Otter Rock did not trust the alchemists, with their glass bottles and carefully measured ingredients. They preferred to sacrifice goats to nameless mud gods by the light of the moon and hope for the best. But when their wounds grew painful enough, they all came trekking up the forest path for treatment.

  Jolan was always amazed by how effectively a nasty rash or toothache
could strip a man of conviction.

  There was already a crowd when they reached the center of the village. It looked like every peasant, farmer, and craftsman had taken the morning off from his or her work to see the Flawless Bershad try to kill the dragon. At least thirty people milled around the square—their breath puffing in the cold of early morning as they made small talk with one another. The Flawless Bershad wasn’t there.

  “It seems we are not the only late arrivals,” Morgan said. “He’s probably drunk, same as every dragonslayer before a pass. Go check.”

  Jolan nodded and headed toward the inn.

  He crossed a shallow river on his way, careful not to step on any of the mud statues the villagers had molded along the bank. Almirans were notorious in the realm of Terra for their habit of crafting these totems on the ground. Jolan stepped around one that was about a stride tall and shaped like a man, but covered in green fish scales. There was a crow’s beak pressed into the face and black feathers radiating out from the head. Another totem was cloaked in willow bark and animal bones—it had river pebbles for eyes and an otter tail attached to its back.

  Most Almirans kept a small pouch on their hip to collect items they felt had magical properties—sticks, leaves, animal parts, rocks. That way, they’d be ready to make a totem at a moment’s notice if they wanted to conjure healthy crops from a freshly planted field, grant themselves safe passage while fording a dangerous river, or protect a newborn child from wet lungs.

  On the eve of a battle, every soldier’s yurt was guarded by a battle totem holding a scrap of steel.

  Morgan had dispelled Jolan’s belief in the totems’ power a week after his apprenticeship began. Once he saw how Morgan conjured healing properties from roots, herbs, and mosses with carefully mixed concoctions and alchemical reactions, it seemed silly to rely on a statue to do the work for you.

  Still, Jolan sometimes made totems when Morgan wasn’t watching, just for luck. There was no recipe for that.

  The riverbank of Otter Rock had been lined with an unusually high number of totems for months. Farther upriver, the villages were plagued by a strange disease that brought skin boils, seizures, and violent nightmares. The pestilence was traveling downriver—every few months they heard of another village becoming afflicted. The citizens of Otter Rock were convinced that forest demons were re sponsible, so they built more totems every day, hoping the gods would stop the malign spirits at the waterline.

  Jolan knew better. The plague was caused by the inexplicable abundance of toxic red-shelled snails farther upriver. That’s why Morgan had been hired to find the antivenom. But it was hard to convince a man who fell to shaking fits twice a day and dreamed of monsters every night that he was being poisoned by distant river snails, not possessed by a demon.

  Better to suffer them their mud totems and try to work faster on the antidote. They were running out of time—by Jolan’s calculations, the sickness would reach Otter Rock before the end of summer.

  Jolan entered the inn’s hall and found it empty except for a man behind the bar, struggling to lift a cask of wine. He was a sour and skinny man who had spent his entire life in Otter Rock. Three weeks ago, Jolan had prepared a special kind of soap for him to remove the worst case of pubic lice the young alchemist had ever seen.

  Demon-induced rashes and seizures weren’t the only afflictions of backwater Almirans.

  “Is the dragonslayer in here?” Jolan asked. The bartender jerked his head to the left as a response, but did not turn around or cease his struggle with the cask. Jolan looked toward the back of the room. There was a man there, passed out cold with his head and hands flat on the table.

  “Him?” Jolan asked.

  “Him,” the bartender responded. “Was at it most of the night. Passed out an hour ago.”

  Jolan moved toward the man. He could tell that he was tall, even slumped over the table like he was, but he looked more like a beggar than a legendary dragonslayer. His face was obscured by a mess of long dark hair, full of tangles and silver rings tied into greasy braids. He wore a black woolen tunic and breeches, both covered in stitched repairs and patches. Jolan reached out to shake the man awake, but the dragonslayer spoke before Jolan’s hand reached his shoulder.

  “What time is it?” he asked, not moving anything except his lips.

  “Half an hour past dawn,” said Jolan, bending down to try and get a look at his face. He didn’t quite believe that this was the Flawless Bershad—the most famous dragonslayer in the realm of Terra. Slowly, the man bent an arm and pushed himself up from the table. His green eyes were bloodshot and glassy. His face was covered with small indentations where the rings in his hair had pressed against his skin as he slept. In no way did his dark, rough features bring to mind the handsome, perfect dragonslayer of the poems and songs and stories. He looked like he was somewhere between thirty and forty, but it was hard to tell exactly where. The world had gone hard on this man.

  Still, the blue tattoos on his cheeks were unmistakable.

  Every dragonslayer was given the same tattoo when their sentence was passed so that all men would know them on sight: a rectangular blue bar running down the length of each cheek. In Almira, any dragonslayer who abandoned his duty, spent the night in a real bed, or was caught within a day’s ride of the capital—Floodhaven—was put to death. Other countries in Terra had slightly different customs, but dragonslayers were always outcasts—forbidden from enjoying the full comforts of civilization until their task was complete.

  “Are you the Flawless Bershad?” Jolan asked.

  “I am the Late and Hungover Bershad,” he growled. “Where is Rowan?”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “Generally, it’s him that wakes me up. Not strange children.” Bershad pushed himself to his feet. He burped, tottered, and for a moment looked like he would collapse back into his chair, but instead headed for the door.

  People began to cheer as soon as Bershad was out of the inn. He surveyed them placidly for a moment, then caught sight of a man standing next to a gray, leafless tree. He was tightening two long spears to the side of a donkey.

  “Rowan!” Bershad barked, starting toward him. “Were you planning on waking me, or did you intend to kill the fucking lizard yourself?”

  Rowan was unfazed. He finished his work on the spears and rubbed the donkey gently on the muzzle. He was a hard-looking man, with graying hair and a rough beard. Jolan noticed that even though he was short, his arms were long and sinewy. He had thick wrists, huge hands, and his knuckles were covered in dark hair. Men built like that made for good farmers or good fighters, depending.

  Since he was preparing the Flawless Bershad’s equipment, Jolan realized this must be his forsaken shield. Each dragonslayer was granted one—a man of low birth to assist in the hunting and killing of dragons. If a dragonslayer was killed by a dragon, his forsaken shield was executed afterward. So most of the time they were unlucky men or criminals who had been coerced into the duty one way or another. Jolan wondered how Rowan had been stuck with the job.

  “Figured you’d want as much rest as possible after a night of such aggressive revelry,” Rowan said, turning to face Bershad. “If you’re ready, everything is set.” He motioned to the hills in the east, where the dragon had made its lair the past three weeks.

  Bershad sniffed, spat, and headed down the eastern path. Rowan followed with the donkey. Master Morgan was close behind, so Jolan hustled after them. The villagers did nothing for a moment, but Jolan soon heard them following in a noisy pack. They didn’t want to miss the excitement.

  And, of course, if Bershad did manage to slay the dragon, they wanted their share of the carcass.

  As they moved down the path, Jolan noticed a long dagger strapped to the small of Bershad’s back. It was strange-looking—the blade was thickest at the tip and it curved inward, the opposite of most weapons. The handle looked like a gnarled root cluster, and the grip was made from a complicated braid of sharkskin leat
her that somehow created a place for fingers overtop the irregular shape of the handle.

  “That’s a dragontooth dagger, isn’t it?” Jolan asked Morgan.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think he made it himself?” Jolan continued. “I read they’re near impossible to properly forge. Something with the calcium going soft unless you heat it just right. Plus—”

  “I think you should focus on the living dragon down the road, not the teeth of dead ones,” Morgan answered.

  Jolan didn’t respond. Morgan was clearly done with the conversation.

  “What’s your name, alchemist?” Bershad asked after they had been walking for a while.

  “Morgan Mollevan. Of Pargos.”

  “You’re a long way from home,” Bershad said.

  “All of us are a long way from home, my lord.” Morgan didn’t need to use Bershad’s old title, shouldn’t have, even—it had been stripped from Bershad the day he became a dragonslayer. But Morgan often did things that were not necessary and that Jolan did not understand.

  “Let me ask you something, Morgan Mollevan of Pargos,” Bershad said. “What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen a wounded man do?”

  “Strangest?” Morgan repeated, running a hand through his wild hair as he considered the question. “I once amputated a leper’s legs to save his life. An hour after I was done, he was running around on his hands as if he’d been born that way. Never seen someone adapt to two lost limbs that quickly. Probably had something to do with the nerves in his legs already being—”

  “No,” Bershad interrupted. “I mean, have you ever seen something you can’t explain? Someone who survived a wound when they shouldn’t have?”

  “My work is a game of odds,” Morgan said. “People beat them occasionally, but no, I wouldn’t say I’ve witnessed any miracles. Everything has an explanation, in my experience.”

  “I see.”