"Because I only draw what I have seen and all my dragons are true in every detail," answered Petra, and her voice went a little higher at being questioned by the gnome as well as the dwarf. "And if you had any brains behind your eyes, you'd give me that cup that sits on the bar. For I've shown you more of dragons tonight than any tale told here this winter!"
Bates sucked in his breath and blew it out again. "Show me Malaeragoth," he said, "and I'll give you Malaeragoth's sapphire scale and double the coins in the cup as well."
The tavern crowd gasped. The sapphire scale might be rare, but coin out of Bates's purse was something even rarer.
"Done!" said Petra, for like most painters, she never could resist a bet. "I'll draw Malaeragoth as I last saw him, old and wily, and as fond of magic as any wizard! But he's a large dragon and I need a large space to paint." She looked around the room and walked over to the north wall. Mrs. Varney had whitewashed the plaster only a few days before. Petra looked at Varney, still sitting on the top of his bar, and asked, "May I paint the dragon here?"
Varney agreed, thinking that a mural of the sapphire dragon would draw the drinkers just as much as any story. And that, as Mrs. Varney would say in later years, was just typical of Varney's foolishness.
Petra called for raw eggs and clean water to mix her paints. Varney brought the ingredients, totaling the cost in his mind and determined to add it as "extras" to her tab. From her pack, Petra pulled out her paint box with its jars of powdered pigments and its multitude of brushes. She grabbed a stick from the fireplace and sketched the outline of Malaeragoth upon the wall. In her drawing, the dragon was frozen in midstep, facing a floating mirror.
Petra mixed the colors on the lid of her paintbox, which unhinged to become a separate tray holding five colors and three brushes. At first, she painted with a broad brush, tipped with oxhair, and laid down large strokes of a deep sea blue.
Then she painted with a smaller brush, tipped with fox fur, the finer details of Malaeragoth's scales, claws, ears, and nose in ultramarine and turquoise. Last, she took up a tiny brush, tipped with squirrel hair, to add minute dots of lapis and gold dust to the dragon's form. Malaeragoth twinkled like a jewel upon the wall, and the sapphire scale in Bates' box shown with the same blue light. Looking closely at Malaeragoth's long throat, the crowd could even see where a single scale had dropped away and been replaced by a newer, lighter blue scale.
Petra painted very fast, something that she had learned from trying to draw pictures of dragons in flight, but dawn light was showing at the windows before she was done. Her audience stretched and shook some sleeping gnomes awake as she cleaned her brushes with quick economical moves.
Nix and Silver shoved and pushed other people aside to take a closer look at the dragon, but Bates remained in his chair, clutching his iron box in one white-knuckled hand.
While the crowd admired the vibrant sapphire dragon, Petra mixed new colors in her box lid and painted a smaller picture within the frame of the painted mirror. But no one except Varney looked at Malaeragoth's mirror, painted as floating before the dragon. In the painted mirror, Varney saw his own tavern with himself counting coins into his coin box behind the bar and others craning to look at a woman painting upon the wall a sapphire dragon looking at them. It was, thought Varney, a very clever conceit and he felt very pleased about the new mural decorating the wall of the Dragon Defeated. Unlike the sign creaking in the wind outside, he wouldn't even have to pay the painter in kind for the new decoration of his tavern.
"Well," said Petra to Bates as she worked on the picture in the mirror, "is that not Malaeragoth to the life?"
The dwarf had not moved, nor spoken, nor slept for the entire night. Instead, he'd sat on a stool watching the painter with his face growing redder and redder as she got closer to finishing her portrait of the sapphire dragon. Looking at the black anger in his scowl, Nix and Silver knew that the dwarf had lost his bet, but they winked at each other, sure that Bates would find a way to wiggle out of paying.
"Not to the life," said the dwarf after a long, long pause. "I'm an old dwarf and I know what I know. I'm not going to be tricked by some woman."
The crowd murmured their disapproval. "Why it's a fine picture," said Nix, "you can almost see the beast breathe!"
"Still," added Silver for mischief's sake, "the dwarf doesn't lie. What's wrong with the painting, Badger?"
"Malaeragoth had eyes," said Bates pointing to two empty holes in the dragon's head where Petra had not laid a speck of paint upon the plaster. "If she'd really seen him, she'd know what color they were."
"As green as unripe plums when he's content, as bright as summer lightning when he's angry," answered Petra.
"Show me!" challenged the dwarf.
"Best not," said Petra, packing up her paints and all her brushes except one tiny brush tipped with golden hair. "Better that you should pay me as you promised and leave Malaeragoth as he stands. Leave his eyes blind. The old wyrm doesn't like people spying on him. And" she added in an angry undertone, "I don't like people trying to weasel out of a bet."
"If you can finish it, and finish it right," said Bates, "I'll pay. But not a penny before that, and not the cup either. Don't you lads agree?"
"Well," said Nix, who had a tingle in his big toe that reminded him of the time that a red hatchling had bitten him to the bone, "I think the lass has done a very fine job. It's definitely not your ordinary blue dragon. It's a sapphire as sure as anything, and who's to say it's not Malaeragoth."
"I do!" shouted Bates. "I'm the last living person to see that dragon and only I know what his eyes look like!"
Since Silver loved to make trouble, he sided with the dwarf. "An unfinished painting is like a tale without an end. We've never given the cup away to any story that didn't have a proper ending. Varney, what do you say?"
Varney made another mistake at that moment by saying, "I say that you're the judges. If you don't think it's worthy of the cup, the cup and the coins stay here. Not a single button for the lady. And you, Miss Petra the Painter, owe me for your drinks and those eggs and water for your paints."
Petra flushed as red as Bates. "Have it your way," she muttered, loud enough for Nix to hear and remember afterward. "I warned you. But it's your wall. And your lives."
She picked up the little brush tipped with golden hair and pulled a silk-wrapped jar out of the side pocket of her pack. She unscrewed the ivory lid of the jar and dipped the brush into it. Something sparkled on the tip of the brush but nobody could say for sure what color was the paint. With quick, deft strokes, Petra filled in the eyes of the dragon.
The dragon's eyes were beautiful, iridescent as pearls and green as new plums, and they sparkled in the pale winter sunlight shining through the cracks of the tavern's shutters. The play of shadow and light upon the dragon's head made the eyes look alive, thought Varney.
"I'll take my payment now," said Petra, grabbing the cup off the bar and tipping the coins and buttons into her pack. She was heading toward the door as she talked.
To everyone's amazement, Bates did not protest. The dwarf let out a long, loud sigh.
"Yup," he said. "It's Malaeragoth!" And he added in a stubborn, angry tone, "But it's not a very good likeness! He was much uglier than that."
At the sound of its name, the painted dragon blinked and took a long, hard look into the painted mirror that floated in front of it. Varney stared at the painted mirror too. He saw the crowd within the mirror turn, and shove, and move in a swell of mixing painted colors, pushing away from the painted dragon staring at them with a malevolent gaze.
Varney saw his own painted jaw drop open in surprise. His painted wife rushed to his side. And he felt Mrs. Varney's hard grip upon his arm.
"Run, you old fool, run!" she shrieked.
On the wall, Malaeragoth's painted lips curled back from long, gleaming fangs.
"It moved!" cried Nix, diving for a window and tearing at the shutter as he spoke, years of dragon hunting pro
pelling him away from possible danger.
Silver followed close upon his heels.
"No," said Badger Bates, stubborn and argumentative to the last, "it can't move. It's just a picture."
But even as Bates spoke, the painted dragon coiled off the wall, leaving gaping holes in the plaster behind him. Stones and plaster crashed and ricocheted through the screaming, running crowd. Varney shoved Mrs. Varney behind the heavy wooden bar and threw himself over her.
"Ooof," said Mrs. Varney.
"Hush," said Varney.
The painting crumbled slowly like a dam dissolving before raging flood water. Plaster and stones, flecked with a blue rainbow of painted colors, washed across the floor.
Chairs and tables snapped like twigs beneath the dragon's great weight as he advanced into the room. Malaeragoth lashed his tail free of the painting and the roof beams cracked as he rose to his full height, pushing up against them. Malaeragoth roared, a psionic blast that blew through the crowd like a storm wind through a flock of birds. The sheer force of Malaeragoth's cry buckled the remaining walls and blew out the shutters. Nix and Silver leaped through the open window and ran as fast as they could, never stopping until they reached the edge of town.
But Badger Bates stood firm, rooted by the sheer shock of seeing the sapphire dragon again and frozen by the fury of knowing that he was not the last living person to witness Malaeragoth's fabled rage.
And Malaeragoth fell upon Badger Bates, crushing him beneath sapphire scales. The dragon raised itself off the dead dwarf, roared once more, and vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
When the dust cleared from the collapse of the north wall and the subsequent fall of the Dragon Defeated's roof, Varney and Mrs. Varney crawled out from their hiding place behind the bar and began to pick through the ruins.
Once assured that the sapphire dragon was gone, Nix and Silver, being very thankful to still be alive, returned to help them.
"Well," said Silver, rummaging through Badger's flattened remains as any good thief would, "there's nothing of value here." He slipped his former friend's purse into his own pocket and blew the dust of the crushed iron box and Malaeragoth's sapphire scale off his hands. "What have you got there, Nix?"
"It's the sign," said Nix. He called to the tavernkeeper trying to dig out his squashed coin box from the rubble. "Hey, Varney, do you want this?"
The sign's paint had been scraped away in several places, leaving the rearing white dragon without a head, showing only two of the three adventurers, and depicting just the remains of the painted dwarfs left boot. But the princess, with a tiny crown perched on top of her golden curls, was still smiling valiantly at her rescuers.
"Aww," said Nix, "it's a terrible shame that it's so ruined. It was a grand picture. Maybe you could have the painter woman paint it again. She said she was sorry for what happened, but Bates shouldn't have tried to cheat on a bet."
Varney shuddered. "Not her. I'll have nothing more to do with a woman who draws dragons," he said. "She's off to the east, says she wants to study landwyrms."
Varney took the sign from Nix and stared at it for a few minutes.
"I have an idea," Varney said, getting more and more enthusiastic as he talked. "I'll cut it down and just save the princess. We could call the new place something like the Royal Rescue and hire a bard to sing tales of royal ladies in love. Everybody likes a good love story in the springtime. Stories about princesses are much safer than letting people draw dragons on a wall."
But that princess idea, as Mrs. Varney would say in later years to friends and relations, was just the start of another of Varney's disasters.
THE HUNTING GAME
Erik Scott de Bie
Flamerule, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)
The caravan rolled along, the wagons creaking, the men coughing and cursing, and the horses whinnying, just as it had for miles and miles before across the Heartlands. The road to Baldur's Gate would be a long one, one that many of the gruff caravan guards had seen many times before. They were familiar with it, familiar enough to watch gullies, turns, stands of trees, and boulders that made up familiar ambush spots.
The scouts were so preoccupied with watching for trouble at their flanks, front, or rear, such that few paid attention to a dark shape in the sky.
Few except Alin Cateln.
Looking out the window, idly plucking at his harp as the wagon in which he rode jostled on, the young bard wondered absently if it was a wisp of cloud or some high-flying night bird. The trip had passed so uneventfully that he was eager to make up distractions for himself on this, the sixth day out of Hill's Edge. His seat tossed him up and down, but still it was more comfortable than a saddle.
"Say, what's that, do you reckon?" he asked the driver.
The gruff-faced man looked at the sky. "What?"
"That shape right there," Alin said, pointing.
"There? The only thing that ain't cloud?" he asked, and Alin nodded. "That'd be Selune, boy, on her nightly walk."
Alin rolled his eyes. Of course the man had not seen it. Just like that, the shape-if it had even existed outside his imagination-vanished.
The stopover in Hill's Edge had been entirely too long and torturous, for the warm Flamerule nights-especially in the hot Year of the Wave-had kept joviality and company outside the inns and taverns where he had needed to play for his lodging and meals. Dashing young men with songs on their tongues and blushing maidens with flaxen or dusky hair and faces tanned golden by the sun… too bad Alin had been trapped indoors.
The wagon gave a shake and disrupted his reverie. Tossing the dark hair that fell in spikes across his face, Alin plucked a sour note on his harp. Ever since that day when his father had sent him away for failing at the Cormyrean academy, Alin had always needed to sing for his supper, or for rides with caravans, and not make merry.
Even on the road, he had to compete with another, much more practiced minstrel: an adventuring bard by the name of Tannin, who traveled with the caravan along with his adventuring companions. The caravanners would surely put Alin off soon-he only hoped they waited until Triel.
There came shouts from outside, but he ignored them. Surely it was just another arguing match between two of the caravan guards.
Unbidden, the words of a song came to his lips, and he strummed a few notes on the harp.
"I walk the road both winding and true," he sang. "It leads to friends both old and new."
Alin was in the midst of remembering the third line when the front half of the wagon vanished in a flash of burning crimson fury. The force of the blast threw him back, shattering open the shutters on the wagon window as his body flew out. Immolated by flames spawned from the Nine Hells themselves, Alin screamed in pain and terror. Through the darkness, he could see only one thing-the flash of a terrible, dark eye wreathed in crackling flame.
Then he saw nothing.
When light came back into the world, Alin was aware of a sensation of softness surrounding his body. He wondered, for a moment, if he had made it to the Great Wheel and if he would see his mistress Tymora any instant.
Then, after a few happy breaths, Alin realized he was hungry-in fact, he was starving. A brief look around told him he was not quite in Brightwater yet. Instead, Alin was merely tucked under thick blankets and staring up at the ceiling of a bedroom.
He tried to rise, but his head exploded in lancing pain. At first, Alin was afraid his head had come free of his body, but he soon realized-by feeling with his fingers-that it was still attached to his neck.
What a terrible dream, Alin thought.
Finally, after many abortive attempts, Alin managed to lever himself out of bed. He was nude but he was not cold. The window, open to the night air, let in a pleasant breeze. The room was simple, bare, and small, with only a bed and a chair for furniture. His light tunic, indigo-dyed vest, and leather breeches, neatly folded, sat on the chair. Alin picked them up and inhaled their scent-not flowery, but clean.
Fo
r a moment, as he dressed, Alin wondered if it was all just a dream. Then he heard voices. The joyous sounds of a tavern rose to meet him from down a flight of stairs.
Still rubbing his head but smiling, Alin went down.
The atmosphere in the common room of Triel's Singing Wind Inn was on the somber side, though travelers still raised tankards and mugs in toasts to companions long gone and new friends made. Several spoke in hushed voices about a dragon attack, but Alin didn't know if it was for real, or just the ale talking. The rafters were smoke-stained and the air was thick with the scent of pipes, spilled ale, and unwashed bodies. A bard strummed on a harp and sung a tawdry ballad of gallant but stupid knights and the lusty barmaids who loved them.
Alin inhaled deeply and felt his lungs burn. He loved every moment of it.
Over in the corner, Alin glimpsed an unusual pair-a hulking man in dark leathers with a greataxe standing by the table and a thin woman in silks and robes who must have been half the man's size-sharing a quiet drink. He did not have time to see more, as a meaty hand came from the side to catch his shoulder.
"Hey, look who's up!" a friendly voice said.
Alin turned. Beside him was a hefty man in a gold and white tunic. His skin was fair, his hair gold, and he wore a thick mustache.
"I'm sorry, have we met?" asked Alin, who didn't know the face.
"If by 'met,' ye mean 'hauled yer half-dead carcass from the burning wreck of a caravan and healed ye while Thard carried ye back 'ere,' then aye, we've met," the man said. "After the dragon, ye're lucky to be alive-thank the Morninglord for young bones!"
It came back to Alin in a flash: the caravan, the flames, and the burning eye. Apparently, it had not all been a dream.
"You… you saved my life?" Alin asked. "How can I repay you?"
"Well, yer name would be a good start," the man said. He took Alin's hand. "Mine be Delkin Snowdawn, Morning Brother of Lathander, o' Luskan. And who might ye be?"
The Realms of the Dragons 2 a-10 Page 4