“Was that a big red and gold one?” Dumery asked. “I mean, not big, not like you, but bigger than most of those.”
“Indeed he was,” Aldagon answered, startled. “Saw you such a one?”
Dumery shook his head. “No,” he said, “but I followed his trail back here. He left some scales on a tree he scraped against, so I knew what color he was.”
“Ah, well,” Aldagon said, “and you had seen him he would most likely have devoured you. A shame that he's gone, for he was the eldest and largest I had here, and knew a few words, as none of these others yet do.” She sighed.
“Couldn't you follow him and bring him back?”
She shook her head, and Dumery got dizzy just watching it swing. “Nay, how could I know whither he's fled? And am I a gaoler, in my turn, to keep him pent against his will? Neither gaoler nor mother, but only a friend and tutor, and with other charges who must be tended, leaving little time to pursue those who refuse my care.”
Dumery blinked. “But ... you said you'd rescued a lot of dragons. If you've been doing it since just after the war, that's two hundred years! You must have rescued hundreds of dragons. Where are they all?”
“How am I to know?” Aldagon snapped, angrily; Dumery cowered a little, involuntarily. Then the great dragon calmed and said, “I fear, though, that most have long since perished. I have seen them fight amongst themselves, aye, and even battle to the death over a scrawny bullock ere I could intervene. I have seen them slain by men armed with swords and spells, their heads and tails fetched away as trophies of the fight. I have found their starved bodies, little but skin stretched on bone, dead of hunger, for most never learned to hunt properly—the foolish creatures have been accustomed to having their food fetched to them. I have found them dead in a hundred ways, of falls and drowning and fire, sword and spear and spell, choking and poison and traps, claws and teeth and fangs. Few have lived long enough to learn speech, and none long enough to learn sense.” She twitched her tail. “Which may be all for the best, in truth, for if dragons were wiser when young and survived in greater numbers, the entirety of the World might now be covered with dragons.”
Dumery shuddered at the thought, and for a moment the two simply stood looking at one another.
“It occurs to me,” Aldagon said, staring at Dumery, “that your presence here may bring me the answer to a mystery, to wit, the continued existence of that farm. Is't maintained only lest there be another war, and dragons recalled to service? If so, it seems to me that they are doing their job but poorly, as they train them not, neither do they permit them to attain a size that would allow them to be effective in combat. Why, then, do they continue, breeding the poor little beasts and then slaying them? And you have not answered my question, as to the part you played in the liberation of little Pish. Might there be some link, betwixt these two?”
“Well,” Dumery said, “you might say so...” He hesitated, trying to think what to say, and the hesitation grew into an awkward silence. “I mean...” He let his voice trail off.
“Speak to the point, Dumery of Shiphaven,” Aldagon said irritably, “ere my temper bests my honor.”
“I'll try,” Dumery said. “I ... I let the black dragon out because I was trying to steal it.”
“Steal Pish?” Aldagon asked, startled. “Whatever for?”
“I wanted him and a female, a breeding pair, so I could start my own farm.” Dumery suddenly found himself fighting back tears, and though he succeeded in that effort, words began to spill out instead. “I didn't mean any harm, and I wouldn't have broken their wings that way, I think it's cruel, and I'd be good to them, and...”
“Peace, lad, and fear not,” Aldagon told him, holding up a foreclaw.
Dumery gulped, and regained control of himself.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
“Lad, you've no need to apologize,” Aldagon said kindly. “Think you I know not that I am a thing of terror to you? Think you I expect a mere child to have courage to face me without fright, or the wit to charm me, or the wisdom to know wrong from right, when your elder fellows do not? You saw a farm where dragons were treated as cattle, and you knew naught of dragons but what you saw there, so why should I think the less of you for wishing to keep dragons yourself, as if they were only cattle?”
Dumery swallowed again, and attempted a smile.
“There, lad, that's better! Now, tell me, what use are these infants, that they have been raised there these two centuries, and that you would have your own?”
“Blood,” Dumery explained.
Aldagon blinked, and Dumery was surprised just how puzzled a dragon's relatively immobile features could look.
“Dragon's blood,” he elaborated.
“I had not supposed you meant chicken blood,” Aldagon retorted, “nor fish oils nor insect's ichor. Of what use to them is dragon's blood?”
“For magic,” Dumery said. “Wizards use it in their spells. Almost all the good spells need dragon's blood.”
Aldagon frowned. “Do they?” she asked. “Do they indeed?”
Dumery nodded. “I think so,” he said. “I wanted to be a wizard, but it's all secret, you have to be an apprentice to learn anything, and then join the Wizards’ Guild and swear secrecy, so nobody really knows but wizards. I wanted to be a wizard, but they all turned me down, nobody would take me on as an apprentice, and then I saw Kensher selling dragon's blood and the wizards had to pay any price he asked, and I thought...”
“You thought that you would take a petty revenge,” Aldagon finished for him.
Dumery nodded, shame-faced.
“Well, ho, boy, I expect no better from one of your years, so you needn't look so woeful. You've done no wrong that I can see—save, wait, you sought to steal Pish and his mate?”
Dumery nodded again. “They wouldn't take me on as an apprentice there, either.”
“Nor sell you a pair?”
“No, of course not,” Dumery replied.
Aldagon blinked. “Why not?”
“Because that would break their monopoly,” Dumery explained. “That's the only dragon farm left in the World.”
“Is it, in truth?” Aldagon rocked back on her four heels at this news and eyed Dumery with renewed interest.
Dumery nodded.
“And they bleed the little dragons, and sell the blood?” Aldagon asked. “Well, I suppose ‘tis no worse than some other wizardly ingredients—now that I think back all these long years I seem to recall wizards calling for virgin's tears and lizard skulls and the hair of unborn babes, and other such things, and dragons are said to be magical in nature—though the gods know I have no magic, else I could scarcely live here, so close to the Warlock Stone!” She mused, while Dumery absorbed this new mention of the Warlock Stone. Was it really close by?
“Do you know,” Aldagon said at last, “I believe I remember, when I was very young, that at times wizards drew my blood. The memories are very dim, after so long a time, but meseems they are truly there, that I do recall such a thing. The drawings stopped, of course, when first I went to fight, and had need of my full strength. So they carry that on, and bleed the dragons at the farm?”
Dumery nodded. Then he stopped. She didn't understand, he realized. And she should understand—these were her kin they were discussing. He swallowed, and said, “They kill them, and drain the blood. They cut the dragons’ throats.”
Aldagon reared back, her head flying upward. "Kill them? Kill them? Do they so? Is that why they breed so many, and kill them so young?”
Dumery squeezed back against the hard logs of the nest wall. “Yes,” he said.
“Why, those foul, treacherous fools!” Aldagon roared, so loud that Dumery thought his ears would burst inward into his skull. “What need, to kill the poor things? Those barbaric idiots! Any pinprick will draw blood; what need to open their throats? What need to slay them?” She stamped about, her tail thrashing, and the smaller dragons scattered in terror, while Dumery readied himself to
climb back through the gap between the logs.
"Idiots!" Aldagon roared, spewing forth a huge gout of flame, the single word so loud that the ground shook, and wind rustled the leaves in the surrounding trees for several seconds.
Finally, though, the great dragon calmed herself, and sought out Dumery once again.
He stood with his back pressed against the rough, peeling bark, trying not to cower too obviously, and faced her as she lowered her head toward him.
“Tell me, boy,” she said, so loudly that Dumery's ears rang, “did you intend to slaughter them so, had you your own farm?”
Dumery had sense enough to lie. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “of course not!”
She glared at him suspiciously. Then she turned away. “Oh, foul creatures,” she muttered, more loudly than Dumery could shout, “to slaughter them so needlessly! Would that I had smashed that den of evil long since! Would that I ... but shall I now, then?” She turned, head raised, and looked north, her tail lashing, sending up showers of broken wood and bone. “Nay, they would summon their clients, all those wizards who purchased hatchlings’ lifeblood, to turn their spells against me...”
Dumery watched this display of draconic fury, marvelling, and very glad indeed that Aldagon had managed to keep her word and hadn't killed him in her first burst of anger.
He sympathized with her, really. The farm's methods did seem unnecessarily cruel. The memory of all those hatchlings dragging their poor broken wings around the cage was still fresh. But what could anyone do?
Inspiration struck.
"Hai!" he shouted. “Aldagon!”
She ignored him.
“I have an idea,” he called. "Aldagon!"
She turned. “Manling,” she growled, “you'd be well advised not to draw my attention just now.”
“But I have an idea," he insisted. “A way to put the farm out of business!”
She blinked, paused her thrashing, and lowered her head to look at him more closely.
“Manling,” she said, “your idea had better be good."
Chapter Thirty-Five
Aldagon sat and considered, the tip of her tail twitching slightly.
“I don't know,” she said doubtfully.
“It'll work,” Dumery insisted. “It'll work fine. We'll just undercut their prices. My father's a merchant, I know how it's done!”
“I don't know,” Aldagon repeated.
“Look, Aldagon,” Dumery said, “how big are you? What do you weigh?”
“How am I to know?” She looked back along her gleaming, green-scaled body, past the dark green wings and the four great hunched legs and out along her tail. “Forty yards, perhaps, from head to tail? Seventy, eighty, ninety tons?”
Dumery nodded. “Say it's eighty tons,” he said. “I think that's the important part. Well, the farm has, what, a dozen dragons a year to ... um ... I was going to say harvest, but that's not the right word.”
“To slaughter,” Aldagon said. “And betimes it's a score.”
“All right, twenty. Well, they aren't any bigger than twenty feet long, ever—Kensher told me that was a rule his family had always lived by, ever since the war ended. And a twenty-foot dragon weighs maybe a ton, he said.”
Aldagon nodded. “About that. Betimes a plump one could be a ton and a half.” She considered, then added, “A very plump one.”
“Well, then,” Dumery said, “say twenty dragons at a ton and a half apiece—and that's more than it really is, you know.”
Aldagon acknowledged that, with a dip of her head.
“Well, that's thirty tons of dragon a year that they drain of blood. You weigh eighty tons...”
“And you drain thirty tons of me, I'll perish,” Aldagon replied angrily.
“If we drained it all at once, it might kill you, yes, but suppose we bled you once a month, drawing blood equivalent to three one-ton dragons—three-eightieths of your blood.”
“And how much would that be, in fact?”
Dumery shrugged. “I don't know,” he said. “I've never done this before.”
“And is there no variation with age and size? Does a ton of my flesh hold the same blood as the whole of a lesser dragon?”
“I don't know,” Dumery repeated.
“You would have me, alone, compete with the entire farm?”
“Why not?” Dumery asked. “You're bigger than every dragon on the farm put together!”
She shook her head. “I am not convinced of that,” she said.
“Well, then, you can steal some more dragons there! And we can bleed some of the ones you've rescued, the bigger ones, anyway—you can hold them while I do it, so they won't hurt me. And they can breed—or you can...” He stopped, unsure of himself, and a little embarrassed at bringing up something so personal.
“Mayhap it's still possible,” Aldagon said, untroubled by the topic. “I've no idea. There's been none of a size to interest me these past two centuries. But yes, Prittin should be good for many a fine clutch of eggs, and there are more females to be had at the farm.” She glanced at the blue dragon as she considered. “But what's to stop the farmers from breeding more of their own? What if they turn to slaughtering two score, or three, each year? Then I'll have suffered this bleeding for naught but your enrichment, Dumery of Shiphaven, and while I have no dislike for you, yet I see no reason to gift you so generously with the very blood of my body.”
“Well, first off,” Dumery said, “they don't have much room to expand on that mountaintop of theirs. And second, once there's another source of blood—yours—then the wizards won't need Kensher so much, and who's going to retaliate if you destroy the farm someday? You'll be the one with wizards for customers! And third, I could split the gold with you, of course, I don't have to keep it all. I wouldn't expect to keep it all.”
Aldagon snorted, and grey smoke curled up from her nostrils. “Oh, surely, and what good to me is a fat purse? What is money to me? Am I to stroll into an inn and order a barrel of ale? Am I to buy gewgaws and playpretties, as if I were a female of your own species? Where would I wear such things, that they might be seen? And if we have customers among the wizards, and Kensher has customers, and I burn that stinking farm to the ground, will not his wizards be pitted against ours? Might we not provoke a split within the Wizard's Guild, or perhaps an outright war?”
“Well, what if we do?” Dumery said.
Aldagon blinked, and thought, and replied, “Aye, what if we do, indeed? You've no love for wizards, have you? And in truth, neither do I.”
“And as for the gold, it can buy more than jewelry or wine. What if I spent half the money on cattle? I could bring them up here to feed you and the little ones.” Dumery blithely waved an arm at the “little” dragons on the other side of the nest, the smallest of them larger than he was.
“Could you, then?” Aldagon asked, startled.
“Sure, why not?” Dumery said. “And anything else you want, I could buy it for you and bring it up here.”
“Cattle?”
“Of course! You won't need to hunt any more, or steal from the farmers—no more worries about poison or magic or hunger, because you'll have your own cattle to eat! And seasonings for the meat, if you like. Sheep for variety, or anything else you fancy.” He was beginning to pick up a trace of Aldagon's archaic phrasing.
“This seems too good to be true,” Aldagon said suspiciously.
“Oh, not really,” Dumery insisted. “I mean, I'll have to work hard, build up the business—I better start off by apprenticing myself to a merchant to learn the trade and make contacts. And you'll be giving blood every month or so, once we get going, you won't be just doing nothing. And you may need to free some more breeding stock from the old farm.”
“I still find...” she began, then stopped. Then she asked, “How is it that a mere lad like you should bring this about, when I, after better than four centuries, had never managed it?”
“Age isn't everything,” Dumery said. “You need de
termination, and ambition.”
“And you, a child, have those in greater quantity than I?”
“Well,” Dumery said, “back home in Ethshar, there's a saying that's used to describe someone who pushes hard, who won't be stopped—they say that he was apprenticed on his twelfth birthday.” Aldagon looked puzzled, and Dumery explained, “That's the first day someone can be apprenticed; it's not legal to take on an apprentice before he's twelve. Most people wait a few months, to look around and think it over and see what they want.”
“And were you, then, apprenticed on your twelfth birthday?”
“No,” Dumery admitted, “I wasn't apprenticed at all. But it was on my twelfth birthday that I asked my father to arrange it; it's not my fault it didn't work out.”
“Ah,” Aldagon said, “and will this arrangement of ours work out?”
“If we're careful,” Dumery said, “it ought to.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
They talked for hours, well into the night, working out the details; when the sun dropped below the horizon they moved outside the nest, into a clearing where Dumery made a small pile of brush that Aldagon lit, providing a fire for light and heat.
They tackled such questions as how long it would take to get things under way, and how much of the arrangement they had made should be kept secret, and how many other humans would be hired to help with establishing a cattle ranch, selling blood, and the like.
Taking Dumery's age into account, they decided to build up slowly.
“After all,” Aldagon said, “I'm in no hurry. I should live another millennium or so, if I'm careful, ere my body fails of its own weight and my heart bursts. I've learned patience.”
The final discussion was over just how Dumery was to get back to Ethshar.
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