"Shhh ..." cautioned Ander, breathing a sigh of relief and pointing to the cavern roof. "Another loud noise and the other half of this mountain could come down on us." He stepped over a wide crevice and hastened to Blot's side. "You startled me for a moment there, but thanks for backing me up. We've got to get out of here! I found a scale, and the mystery of poor Rilliger's fate is solved. But I think we should leave now. The dragon's returned home!"
Blot slowly lowered the knife, his chance gone. But then Ander edged past him, moving down the tunnel, his back again vulnerable. From the north wall, the click and scrape of claws.
There was no time to lose. Blot raised the knife and took a step toward the torchlight, lunging for Ander's back. But the would-be assassin slipped on the ice-slick floor. Blot's feet went out from underneath him and he toppled backward into a deep crevice.
Ander turned at the sound of falling rock and ripping fabric.
"Blot! Are you all right?" Ander called softly, dodging a low-hanging lancet of ice. He held the sputtering torch out a few feet away from him, trying to find the inkmaker in the absolute darkness of the tunnel.
"Down here!" cried Blot, his voice muted and full of pain.
Ander bent to the sound. Holding his torch over the crevice, he discovered Blot three feet below, hanging over the grisly oubliette, held fast by one leg. He clutched at the other shin, a dark streak of blood beginning to ooze from his trouser.
"Hold on, Blot, I believe I can still reach you. Just don't move. And stay quiet," whispered Ander. Planting the torch into a crack in the cave wall, he lay down on the cold grit of the floor. Mercifully, the sounds coming from the north wall now seemed to be those of the great beast feeding. Ander leaned forward as far as he dared. Reaching down, he caught hold of Blot by the grimy shirt collar and pulled the dwarf up and over the edge.
"Put your arms around my neck!" Ander ordered. He lifted the dwarf upon his back and dashed through the corridor, back toward the fire and safety.
*****
"There-that will do until we can get you to a proper healer," said Ander as he finished wrapping Blot's leg. "It's needing stitches sure enough, though. I know it must pain you."
"You have no idea." said Blot weakly.
"But, thank Gilean, the storm has moved off." Ander pointed to the mouth of the cave, where a bright beam of the afternoon sun glittered off the new dusting of snow. "There's enough light left to get down the mountain if we hurry. And I think we had better take this chance. The dragon's probably occupied with her kill now, but who knows how long before she notices us." "I'm ready," said Blot, wincing as he tried to stand.
"Let me carry you," Ander offered. "We can leave everything but the tablet and the scale."
Blot nodded, unable to refuse, unable to meet Ander's eyes.
*****
The trip down was quicker by far, and by far more uncomfortable. Because the dwarf outweighed Ander by at least thirty pounds, the journey was something of a miracle. Blot's leg throbbed and pounded with every step Ander took over the rough country, and the snow turned to rain as they descended into the tree line. Then Ander stumbled and they both slid the next hundred and fifty feet down a deep ravine, shaving at least an hour off the walk but also some three inches of skin from Ander's shoulder.
Blot passed out somewhere along the rocky slide, the deep gash on his leg reopening. When he regained consciousness, the leg had been rebound and Ander was carrying him through the last of the pine forest in labored silence, concentrating on the ever-darkening path before him. Sure enough, just as the sun set, the ground leveled out into a warmer, drier, wider way.
Blot looked back at the snow-shrouded peak of Mount Valcarsha, hardly believing he was alive. Not only had Ander brought him out of the dragon's lair, he had risked his life again and again on this steep trail to carry him safely down the mountain.
Blot began to rethink his mission. For all the time he had worked and slaved and hauled and done his master's bidding, Falon had never done one single thing for Blot. For a year now, Falon had been all grand talk and no action-continually telling Blot they would go together to Palanthas. The truth of it was that Falon didn't even take Blot along when he went to the inn for a mug of ale. Blot touched the unbloodied dagger at his belt.
Ander eased Blot onto the ground and stretched, his aching muscles glad for the relief. "Hold on, my friend. I saw the tavern's lights as we came down. It won't be long until we reach a fire and some grog. As I recall, the healer lives in the back of the inn. Say, Blot, you're very quiet. Is the pain worsening? You've lost a lot of blood."
"No ... no. I'm just thinking is all," Blot muttered. "I can make it to the tavern."
"Then let's go before I stiffen up and we are both stuck here for the night," said Ander, lifting the dwarf back over his shoulders for the short walk to the inn.
*****
A couple of hours later, Blot's leg was stitched and the healer had gone to her supper, leaving the dwarf with a warning about keeping the wound clean. Blot sat with his feet propped before a roaring fire, his belly full of stew and a tankard of grog in his frost-reddened hands.
"Ander..."
"Yes, Blot?" The assistant scribe put the last touches on a drawing of the white scale, closed his tablet and waited for Blot to finish his thought.
"I have something to tell you."
"Did you have enough stew? Is your tankard empty? I'll call the host."
"No, I'm fine, thanks. Ander, I tried to kill you."
"Once again, please, Blot? That sounded like you said you tried to kill me." Ander laughed uneasily.
"You heard right. I did try to kill you. That's why I lost my balance and fell. Falon ordered me to do it. He's been stealing your work for years now, taking credit for it so that he could get a soft job back at the Palanthan library. The white dragon was going to be his moment of triumph. I was supposed to kill you, take the entry back to him, and then he'd get his promotion. On all the work you've done. Falon erased your name and put down his own. No one even knows about you at the main library, Ander. Falon wanted to make sure they never did."
A long moment passed before Ander could speak.
"I see. And . . . you would have done it? You really would have killed me up there?" Ander fought hard to keep his voice from trembling.
Blot stared into his tankard. "You were supposed to have been a casualty of the dragon's wrath."
"All the time it's taken for me to advance. Falon's sealed dispatches to the library. This assignment. It all makes sense now. And you knew. And you were ready to leave me up there." Ander sighed.
Blot did not reply. There was nothing to say.
Ander moved to the window and looked out into the windy, wet night. Finally he spoke, his voice a little stronger. "Blot, there is one thing I still don't understand. After all this, why did you tell me? There would have been other chances to carry out your orders. Tonight, as I slept. Tomorrow, after we left the inn. Anywhere on the trail home."
At last Blot found his own words, a kind of strength returning to him as he spoke them. "I couldn't do it, Ander. After I fell, you could have just left me there in that dragon's pit the way I was going to leave you-I've never been so scared in all my life. But you brought me here, paid for my food and the healer. I never had a friend before. So I had to tell you. Even though now you'll hate me." The dwarf looked miserable.
"I see." Ander returned to the table, sat down, and stared a long time into the crackling fire. "Well, Blot, where does this leave us? You know that Falon will not let this pass. If we go back together, he'll have to find a way to kill you, too."
"I know. I didn't figure to go back at all. I'm tired of doing Falon's dirty work."
Ander shook his head. "That won't work. He'll only come after you. You know that. And if I go back alone, he'll still have to try to kill me to get his promotion. What are we going to do?" Ander drummed his fingers lightly on the oaken tabletop, his sketches and notes spread before him.
They sat lo
oking at one another for a few bleak moments. Finally Ander spread his hands wide across his fine work and took a deep breath. "Blot, there's nothing for it. You'll have to go back alone, and give this entry for the Bestiary to Falon, and let him do with it as he will. It's the only way everyone stays alive."
"But you'll never be a full-fledged scribe then!" Blot countered.
"No. But I'll be alive, and so will you. And that's better, given the choices," Ander replied, almost laughing.
"Well..." Clearly, Blot had no better idea.
Ander gathered the papers and handed them to his erstwhile assassin. "It's all right, Blot. I hope to see you again someday. Watch your back."
*****
" '... and in summary, with the aforementioned measurements and illustrations, the mysterious beast can be irrefutably identified as the rare white dragon, as is evidenced by the collected specimen of one scale. By its size and shape, the scale is presumably from the anterior thorax of a female dragon. Accurate composite drawings can now be made.' Nicely done, Blot. This is just what I needed!"
Falon read Ander's words and held up the filmy white scale Ander had retrieved. Through its hazy translucence, the dingy little outpost copy room almost looked like the grand library at Palanthas. Falon could almost see himself standing in the warm, brightly lit southern wing, lecturing to aspiring apprentices while his assistants sharpened his quills and tidied his desk. Only one question remained.
"Blot?"
"Yes, sir?" said Blot, sullenly.
"You took care of Ander, did you? As per my instructions?"
"He'll not trouble you again, sir," Blot replied tersely. "I'll be going now, sir, to take back the horse."
"Yes, of course. You can pack my bags when you return. And then, Blot, I have a special task for you. As a reward for your faithful service." Falon smiled, his beady eyes following Blot to the doorway.
Blot could almost feel the knife enter his back as he limped away. The dwarf quietly shut the sturdy oaken door behind him, pulled himself onto the innkeeper's pony and headed down the road, a different road than he usually took.
Falon shuffled the papers together neatly, sat back in his rickety chair. He held up the dragon's scale again before the sharp ray of sunlight pouring through the outpost's one window and began to laugh heartily as the scale shimmered and sparkled in the bright ray. The thing seemed to have a life of its own.
Far away, a deep rumbling shook Mount Valcarsha, and a dark shadow passed overhead as Kale and Edrin walked their traplines in the valley.
*****
Ander turned from the window and signaled to the tavernkeeper that he was ready to move on. He had been on the road a week, and this was his fifth inn. He took a long pull on his last tankard and stared out into the night. Time to travel under the cover of darkness.
"That'll be one steel, sir," said the tavernkeeper, handing Ander his bill.
"Going out this time of night, sir?" asked a voice behind him.
Ander's weary face broke into a grin. "Blot? What are you doing here? How did you find me? And you've . . . changed." Ander blinked, amazed at how clean the dwarf looked.
"I'm a fair tracker, remember? I've been on your trail for days. There is strange news."
"What are you talking about, Blot?" said Ander incredulously. "What about Falon?" His face grew dark with suspicion. "Did he send you after me?"
"Falon's gone," replied Blot casually.
"Gone?"
"And the old outpost, too. After I delivered your entry to him, I returned the horse to the innkeeper, and when I came back, the place was totally flattened, absolutely destroyed. Nothing left standing. Everything covered in frost. Lot of folks spotted the dragon flying out from the mountain and some said they heard the explosion from seven miles away. You never saw such a mess, Ander. Gonna take a lot of work to rebuild the outpost. Innkeeper, another tankard, please."
Ander shook his head in amazement.
"But I've saved the best for last, Ander. Look what I found in the rubble. Everything is here, except for the scale." Blot held out a tablet, its edges still coated with gleaming frost.
"That's my entry-my observation on the dragon!"
Blot broke into a huge grin. "So it is, Ander. And now there's nobody to head the outpost."
"So..."
"So, don't you see?" Blot took a big gulp of grog and slapped Ander on the back. "Looks to me like Outpost Twelve is in need of a new chief scribe. I'd say you've just been ... promoted!"
Even Dragon Blood
J. Robert King
It was the early days of the War of the Lance. So early, most people in Ansalon didn't even know there was a war. The town of Sanction knew, though it liked to pretend it didn't. The afternoon sun still hung, swollen and bloated, above Sanction's steaming harbor. The two at the bar were as drunk as if it were closing time. Aside from a half-asleep bartender, they were alone in the small wood-smelling place.
The two had been strangers when they walked in. Now, after a few pints of dragon blood ale, a few fifths of highlord hooch, and more than a few steels passing hands in a friendly card game, the two were thicker than thieves. Which was what one of them was.
The thief-a short stout man with a balding head and a beard like soot smeared across his chin-dealt another card to his besotted companion. Another card from the bottom of the deck. "Your luck will turn any moment now, my friend."
The tall man beside him nodded. His piercing brown eyes blinked. "It's got to. You've nearly cleaned me out. If I don't win something back, I'll have to walk out on Martha and the triplets, for sure." It was a standard loser's line.
The two slid into intoxicated silence as they studied the cards that jittered in their hands and blurred in their eyesight. The soot-jawed fat man gritted his teeth in a smile that might have been apprehension, or ecstasy.
"Something's coming for you, my friend. Your luck is changing."
The lean man glanced up and saw the inadvertent fulfillment of his companion's prophecy. Something was coming for him-something in a steel scroll case carried in the hands of a young man. He was a dark-haired youth, wearing the stern face of a stripling who wants to prove himself at his assigned task. He wore, too, the grim livery of the Blue Dragonarmy, with its occupation forces in Sanction.
If the fat man were less drunk and less recently rich from sharping his companion, he would have held his tongue in the presence of any representative of Ariakas's army. But he was both. "Your luck has changed, looks like," said the thief, and he gestured to the messenger standing in rigid attention behind his companion. "But for the worse."
"Kith Krowly of East Waverly Road?" the young man asked, his eyebrows drawn in a serious line. "You have just been conscripted into the Blue Dragonarmy, in the service of Highlord Ariakas. Here are your orders."
Kith reached for the scroll case, his thin hand trembling even more than it had when he had first seen the terrible cards dealt him. He took the case, goggled for a moment at the forbidding wax seal that had been stamped with Ariakas's own ring, and then solemnly opened it. A rolled piece of parchment slid forth, and he held it closer to his chest than he'd held his cards. He squinted down at the page, and read.
To the Esteemed Kith Krowly of East Waverly Road,
From Highlord Ariakas,
Greetings:
It is your distinct honor to abandon your current enterprise and report immediately to the Northern Army Encampment on the plaza of the Temple of Luerkhisis.
Kith looked up, frowned a moment at his bald companion, and said, "You're right. I've got to go."
A pudgy-fingered hand clamped onto Kith's arm. "Let's see your cards first."
With no sign of his former reluctance, Kith tossed down a whole lot of nothing, not a crown or a digger anywhere in his meld. The fat man's tight grimace turned into a broad smile as he showed his winning hand: three gold crowns and two silver. His corpulent fingers snapped up the coins before him.
Kith watched in what mig
ht have been dazed disbelief. "Thank you for the entertainment, my friend-"
"Jamison's the name," the fat man replied, and he scraped the last of his coin pile into his bulging purse. "Remember it."
Kith repeated the name, nodding. "Jamison, yes. Jamison. I thought I'd finally found you. My true name is Bulmammon, Aurak assassin. Don't write it down. You'll have no need of remembering it."
Jamison raised his astonished gaze in time to see Kith's sword descending. It was the last sight he saw. The sword cleaved through bone and muscle. Kith snipped the purse strings dangling beneath a loose hand. The sack dropped, was caught short by Kith's darting hand.
Gasps of breath from the messenger and the barkeep, and the taproom went deadly quiet. The young man took another step back, and a third, until he ran up against an empty table.
Kith tied the purse of gold to his waist. Turning, he glanced at the shaken youth. "Oh, come now," Kith sneered. "You were told I was an Aurak assassin, weren't you?"
The young man nodded a stunned confirmation.
"You were told I was the best, right?" Kith continued.
Another nod. "Absolutely the best. That's what Colonel Armon said." He added lamely, "It's just... I've never seen an Aurak draconian before."
Kith gestured with irritation. "So stop shaking like an elf maid who's seen a spider! You've seen one now."
Somewhere in midsentence, the assassin had ceased to be a tall, lean human. He had transformed, changing into an imposing, gold-tinted draconian. Toothy jaws snapped once. A riffle of pleasure ran from the tip of Kith's snout, shivered his distinctive red coxcomb, and rippled down a leather-plated back, all the way to the tip of the creature's muscular tail.
"Well," he said, his voice deeper, coldly reptilian, and dangerously sober, "Ariakas said immediately. Let's
go." The Aurak's clawed hand snagged the youth's
unchevroned sleeve and brusquely propelled him toward the door. As the pair made its exit, Bulmammon grinned at the barkeep. "It'd be best for you to get a mop and a shovel and forget what you've seen."
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