The Blood of a Dragon

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  He looked about, considering.

  His home, he knew, was in the region of Srigmor, which had once been claimed by the Baronies of Sardiron. The claim had been abandoned long ago; the North Mines weren't worth the trouble of working, when the mines of Tazmor and Aldagmor were so much richer and more accessible, and Srigmor had nothing else that a baron would consider worth the trouble of surviving a winter there.

  Sardiron was still there to the south, though.

  To the west lay unnamed, uninhabited forests; he did not want to go there. True, beyond them lay the seacoast, and there might be people there, but it would be a long, hard, dangerous journey, and he knew nothing about what he might find there.

  To the southwest the forests were said to end after about three days’ travel, opening out onto the plain of Aala. If Srigmor were part of any nation now, it was part of Aala.

  He had never heard of any magicians living in Aala, though. He tended to associate magicians with cities and castles, not with farms and villages, and Aala had no cities or castles.

  The Baronies of Sardiron it would be, then.

  His grandfather had visited Sardiron once, had made the long trip to the Council City itself, Sardiron of the Waters. If his grandfather could do it, so could he.

  He stood up, brushed off pine needles, and marched onward, now heading almost directly south.

  6

  Streams were harder to find than he had thought, and not all were as clean as he liked; after the first day he made it a point to fill his flask at every opportunity, and to drink enough at each clear stream to leave himself feeling uncomfortably bloated.

  His food ran out at breakfast the third day, and he discovered edible mushrooms weren't as common as he had expected—though the poisonous ones seemed plentiful enough—and that rabbits and squirrels and chipmunks were harder to catch than he had realized. Skinning and cooking them was also far more work than he had expected it to be; the hunters and cooks at home had made it look so easy!

  He almost broke his belt knife when it slipped while he was holding a dead squirrel on a large rock as he tried to gut it; he felt the shock in his wrist as the blade slipped and then snagged hard on a seam in the rock, and he held his breath, afraid that he had snapped off the tip.

  He hadn't, but from then on he was more careful. The knife was an absolutely essential item now. He wished he had had the sense to borrow another, so as to have a spare.

  He had made good time the first two days, but after that much of his effort went to hunting, cooking, eating, and finding someplace safe to sleep. He dropped from seven or eight leagues a day to about four.

  He had expected to find villages where he could ask for food and shelter. He didn't. He knew that there were villages within three or four leagues of his own, and assumed there were more scattered all through Srigmor, but somehow he never managed to come across any. He saw distant smoke several times, but never managed to find its source.

  By the third night he was very tired indeed of sleeping on dead leaves or pine needles, wrapped in his one thin blanket. Even in the mild weather of late spring, the nights could be chilly—so chilly that only utter exhaustion let him sleep.

  Late on the afternoon of the fourth day, though, his luck finally changed. He saw a break in the forest cover ahead and turned toward it, since such openings were often made by fallen trees that rotted out and became home to various edible creatures.

  This opening, however, was not made by just one fallen tree. Rather, an entire line had been cleared away, and the surface below was completely free of debris. It was a long ribbon of hard-packed dirt edged by grass, with two shallow ruts running parallel for its entire length, and Wuller realized with a start that he was looking at a highway.

  His spirits soared; checking his bearings from the sun, he set out southward on the road, certain that he would find other people to talk to within minutes. In his eager confidence, he did not worry about finding supper.

  The minutes passed, and added up into hours, as the sun vanished below the trees to his right, while he encountered no one at all.

  At last, long after dark, he gave up. He found himself a clear spot by the roadside where he unpacked his blanket and curled up in it, still hungry.

  Despite his hunger, he slept.

  7

  He was awakened by laughter. He sat up, startled and groggy, and looked about.

  An ox-drawn wagon was passing him by. A man and a woman sat on its front bench, leaning against each other as the woman giggled.

  “I like that, Okko!” she said. “Know any more?”

  “Sure,” the man replied. “Ever hear the one about the witch, the wainwright, and the Tazmorite? It seems that the three of them were on a raft floating down the river when the raft started to sink...”

  Wuller shook his head to get the bits of grass and leaves out of his hair, stood up, and called out, "Hai! Over here!”

  The man stopped his story and turned to see who had called, but did not stop his pair of oxen. The woman bent quickly down behind the bench, as if looking for something.

  “Wait a minute!” Wuller called.

  The man snorted. “Not likely!” he said. The wagon trundled on, heading north.

  With a quick glance at his unpacked belongings and another down the highway to the south, Wuller ran after the wagon, easily catching up to it.

  The driver still refused to stop, and the woman had sat up again, holding a cocked crossbow across her lap.

  “Look,” Wuller said as he walked alongside, “I'm lost and hungry and I need help. My village is being held hostage by a dragon, and I...”

  “Don't tell me your troubles, boy,” the driver said. “I've got my own problems.”

  “But couldn't you help me? I need to find a magician, so I can find this girl...” He realized he had left the sketch with his pack, back where he had slept. “If you could give me a ride to Sardiron...”

  The driver snorted again. “Sardiron! Boy, take a look which way we're going! We're heading for Srigmor to trade with the natives, we aren't going back to Sardiron. And I'm no magician, and I don't know anything about any magicians. We can't help you, boy; sorry.”

  “But I just came down from Srigmor, and I don't know my way...”

  The driver turned and stared at Wuller for a moment. The oxen plodded on.

  “You just came from Srigmor?” he asked.

  “Yes, I did, and...”

  “There's a dragon there? Where? Which village?”

  A sudden rush of hope made Wuller's feet light as he paced alongside. “It doesn't really have a name—it's not on the highway...”

  “Oh!” the man said, clearly relieved. “One of the back country villages, up in the hills?”

  “I guess so,” Wuller admitted.

  “Then it won't bother me," the driver said. “Sorry, it's not my problem. You go on south and find your magician.” He turned his eyes back to the road, and said to the woman, “As I was saying, the raft starts to sink, and they're too far from shore to swim. So the witch goes into a trance and works a spell to keep it afloat, and the wainwright gets out his tools and starts trying to patch the leaks and caulk it all up, but the Tazmorite just sits there...”

  Wuller stopped, and watched in dismay as the wagon rolled on northward.

  He had not expected a reaction like that.

  On the rare occasions when an outsider happened into his native village, he or she was invariably made to feel welcome, given the best food, drink, and shelter that the village could offer. He had expected to receive the same treatment in the outside world.

  It appeared that he had misjudged.

  Or perhaps, he told himself, that rather hostile pair was a fluke, an aberration. Surely, most people would be more generous!

  He turned and headed back down the road, collected his belongings, and marched on southward toward Sardiron, certain that the pair in the wagon could not be typical.

  8

  The pair in
the wagon had not been typical; most people either wouldn't talk to him at all, or shouted at him to go away.

  It didn't help any that all the traffic he encountered was northbound.

  By mid-afternoon he had met half a dozen such rejections, and gone a full day without food. He was debating with himself whether he should leave the road to hunt something when he glimpsed a building ahead, standing at the roadside.

  He quickened his pace a little.

  A moment later he spotted a second building, and a third—an entire village!

  Fifteen minutes later he stood on the cobblestones of the village square, looking about in fascination.

  Roads led off to north, south, and east; he had come in from the north, and to the south lay Sardiron of the Waters, but where did the eastern road go? The mountains lay to the east, and while they did not look as tall here as they did back home, surely that was just a matter of distance. Why would anyone want to go into the mountains?

  The square itself amazed him. He had never seen cobblestones before; the only pavement back home was the slate floor of the smithy. Here, a broad circle, perhaps a hundred feet across, was completely cobbled. He marvelled at the work that must have gone into the job.

  At the center of the circle was a fountain, and he marvelled at that, too. He wondered how they made the water spray up like that; was it magic? If it was magic, would it be safe to drink?

  Houses and shops surrounded the square, and those, while less marvelous, were strange; they were built of wood, of course, but the end of each beam was carved into fantastic shapes, like flowers or ferns or faces. He recognized the smithy readily enough by its open walls and glowing forge, and the bakery was distinguished by the enticing aroma and the broad window display of breads and cakes, but some of the other shops puzzled him. The largest of all, adjoining a shed or barn of some sort, bore a signboard with no runes on it at all, but simply a picture of a lone pine tree surrounded by flames.

  Curious, he took a few steps toward this peculiar establishment.

  An unfamiliar animal thrust its head over the top of a pen in the adjoining shed, and suddenly something clicked into place in Wuller's mind.

  That was a horse, he realized. The shed was a stable. And the building, surely, must be an inn!

  He had never seen a horse, a stable, or an inn before, but he had no doubt of his guess. An inn would give him food and a place to sleep; he marched directly toward the door.

  The proprietor of the Burning Pine blinked at the sight of the peasant lad. The boy looked perhaps fifteen, and most northern peasants kept their sons at home until they were eighteen; if one was out on the road at a younger age it usually meant a runaway or an orphan.

  Neither runaways nor orphans had much money, as a rule. “What do you want?” the innkeeper demanded.

  Startled, Wuller turned and saw a plump old man in an apron. “Ah ... dinner, to start with,” he said.

  “You have the money to pay for it?”

  Wuller had never used money in his life; his village made out quite well with barter, when communal sharing didn't suffice. All the same, his uncle Regran had insisted that he bring along what few coins the village had.

  Wuller dug them out and displayed them—a piece and three bits, in iron.

  The proprietor snorted. “Damn peasants! Look, that'll buy you a heel of bread and let you sleep in the stable—anything more than that costs copper.”

  Old stories percolated in the back of his mind. “I could work,” Wuller offered.

  “I don't need any help, thank you,” the innkeeper said. “You take your bread, get your water from the fountain, and you be out of here first thing in the morning.”

  Wuller nodded, unsure what to say. “Thank you” seemed more than the man deserved.

  Then he remembered his mission. “Oh, wait!” he said, reaching back to pull out the sketch. “I'm looking for someone. Have you seen her?”

  The innkeeper took the drawing and studied it, holding it up to the light.

  “Pretty,” he remarked. “And nicely drawn, too. Never saw her before, though—she certainly hasn't come through here this year.” He handed the portrait back. “What happened, boy—your girl run away?”

  “No,” Wuller said, suddenly reluctant to explain. “It's a long story.”

  “Fine,” the innkeeper said, turning away. “It's none of my business in any case.”

  9

  Wuller was gone the next morning, headed south, but not before listening to the chatter in the inn's common room and asking a few discreet questions when the opportunity arose.

  He knew now that he was well inside the borders of the Baronies of Sardiron, that this inn, the Burning Pine, was the last before the border on the road north to Srigmor. Each spring and summer traders would head north, bringing the Srigmorites salt, spices, tools, and other things; each summer and fall they would come back home to Sardiron with wool, furs, and amber.

  To the east lay The Passes, where a person could safely cross the mountains into the Valley of Tazmor, that fabulous realm that Wuller had never entirely believed in before.

  There was little magic to be found around here, save for the usual village herbalists and a few primitive sorcerers and witches—but a mere fifteen leagues to the south was Sardiron of the Waters, where any number of magicians dwelt.

  None of the people who had visited the inn had recognized the girl in the picture, or had any useful suggestions about finding her.

  He also knew now that a lump of stale bread was not enough to still the growling of his stomach or stop the pinching he felt there, but that he could buy no better unless he could acquire some money—real money, copper or silver or even gold, not the cheap iron coins the peasants used among themselves.

  As he left the village he sighed, and decided he needed to catch another squirrel or two—which would probably be a great deal more difficult now that he was in inhabited country.

  Even as he decided this, he looked down the road ahead, past the trees on either side, and saw what looked like a very large clearing. He sighed again; squirrels preferred trees.

  He watched both sides of the road carefully, but had spotted no game when he emerged into the “clearing” and realized his mistake.

  This was no clearing. This was the edge of the forest.

  Before him lay a vast expanse of open land, such as he had never seen before, or even imagined. Rolling hills stretched to the horizon covered with brown plowed fields and green grass, and dotted with farmhouses and barns. The highway drew a long, gentle curve across this landscape, no longer hidden by the forest gloom.

  A few trees grew on the farms and hills, to be sure—shade trees sheltered some of the houses, and small groves of fruit trees or nut trees added some variety. In some places, neat lines of young trees marked boundaries between farms.

  Most of the land was treeless, however, like the mountains where the sheep grazed above his home village.

  He would find no squirrels here, he was sure.

  Even as he came to that conclusion a rabbit leapt from concealment and dashed across the road in front of him, and he smiled. Where there was one rabbit, there would be others.

  Two hours later he knocked on the door of a farmhouse by the roadside, a freshly-skinned rabbit in hand.

  In exchange for half the rabbit and all of its fur, he was permitted to cook over the kitchen fire and eat sitting at the table, chatting with his hostess while two cats and three young children played underfoot. Water from the farmer's well washed the meal down nicely.

  Thus refreshed, he set out southward again.

  Not long after that he passed through a fair-sized town—to him, it seemed impossibly large and bustling, but he knew it couldn't be any place he had ever heard of, since he was still well to the north of Sardiron of the Waters. A large stone structure stood atop a hill to the east, brooding over the town and a highway, and Wuller realized with a shock that that big ugly thing was a castle.

  Hav
ing no money, Wuller marched directly through without stopping.

  An hour later he encountered another village, and another one an hour or so after that, though these had no castles. They had inns—but Wuller had no money.

  At sunset, he found himself on the outskirts of another town. Like the village of the Burning Pine and the town with the castle, this one had three highways leaving it, rather than just two. Unlike the other towns, here the directions weren't north, south, and east, but north, south, and northeast; it wasn't a crossroads, but a fork.

  There were no fewer than three inns on the town square; Wuller marvelled at that.

  He was tired and hungry, so he did more than marvel—he went to each in turn and asked if he could work for a meal and a bed.

  The proprietor of the Broken Sword said no, but was polite. The owner of the Golden Kettle threw him out. And at the Blue Swan the innkeeper's daughter took pity on him and let him clean the stables in exchange for bread, cheese, ale, and whatever he could pick off the bones when the paying customers were finished with their dinners.

  She also found him a bed for the night—her own.

  10

  No one at the Blue Swan could identify the girl in the portrait, but the innkeeper's daughter suggested he contact Senesson the Mage when he reached Sardiron itself. Senesson was a wizard who was said to be good at this sort of work.

  There were a good many magicians of various sorts in her town of Keron-Vir, but she doubted any of them could help—and certainly not for free.

  Wuller hesitated over that, but in the end he took her advice. After all, Sardiron of the Waters was only one day's walk away now, and he wanted to see the capital after coming so close. Besides, Teneria surely knew her own townspeople well enough to judge such things.

  He did, however, stop in at the Golden Kettle and the Broken Sword to show the portrait around.

  As he had expected, nobody knew who the girl in the picture was.