The Blood of a Dragon loe-4

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Face it, boy,” Thetheran said after the third unsuccessful attempt. “You have no knack for wizardry. Teaching you wizardry would be like trying to make a minstrel of a deaf man. There’s no shame to it; it’s just the way you were born. It’s not just that you don’t hear the words clearly, nor that you get the gestures wrong; it’s that the magic doesn’tlike you. You don’t feel it, and it avoids you. I don’t know why, but it’s true; I can sense it.”

  Dumery had run out of protests. When Thetheran jogged his elbow he got down from the stool silently; he followed quietly when the wizard led the way back through the curtain and into the parlor, where Doran was sitting, watching the fire.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Thetheran said when Doran looked up expectantly, “but I’m afraid your son is not suitable for an apprenticeship with me.”

  Doran blinked in surprise.

  “He seems like a fine lad,” Thetheran explained, “but he has no innate aptitude for wizardry. It’s just not in his blood. I’m sure he’d do well in any number of other fields.”

  Dumery stood, silent and woebegone, as Doran looked past the mage at him.

  “You’re sure?” Doran asked Thetheran.

  “Quitesure,” Thetheran said.

  “Well,” Doran said, “thank you for your time, anyway.” He glanced at the silver tray, where the crystal goblet had clearly been used. “And theoushka, too; it was quite good, and just what I needed on a day like this.”

  “Thankyou, sir,” Thetheran said, with a trace of a bow, “and I’m sorry I couldn’t take the boy.”

  “Well, that’s all right, I’m sure we’ll find a place for him.” He gestured.

  “Come on, Dumery, let’s go.”

  Dumery stood, not moving.

  His father said, “Comeon, Dumery!”

  “It’s notfair!” Dumery wailed suddenly, not moving from where he stood. “It’s notfair!”

  Doran glanced at Thetheran, who gave a sympathetic little shrug. “I know, Dumery,” Doran said. “It’snot fair, but there’s nothing we can do about it. Now, come on.”

  “No! He didn’t give me achance! He said the words so fast I couldn’t even hear them properly!”

  “Dumery,” Doran said, “I’m sure the wizard gave you a fair test. He’s as eager to find an apprentice as you are to be a wizard, and he wouldn’t send you away without good reason. Now come along, and we’ll go home and figure out what’s to be done about it.”

  Reluctantly, Dumery came.

  Out in the street, during a lull in the downpour, Doran called, “Well, now that wizardry is out, you’ll need to give some thought to what you want to do instead.”

  “No,” said Dumery, emphatically, “I won’t. I want to be awizard!”

  His father glared at him silently for a moment.

  “Youcan’t be a wizard,” Doran said. “You heard what Thetheran told us.”

  “That’s just Thetheran,” Dumery said. “He’s not the only wizard in the World.”

  “No, he’s not the only one,” Doran agreed, “but he’s a good one, and he knows his business. Don’t be an idiot, boy; we’ll find you something else.”

  “No,” Dumery said again. “I want to be a wizard, and by all the gods I’mgoing to be a wizard!”

  “No, you’re not,” his father said flatly. He could be stubborn, too.

  Dumery didn’t reply. He didn’t want to argue any more.

  At least, not right away.

  Chapter Four

  It took him a full sixnight to convince his father to try again.

  This time, the master was to be a young wizard by the name of Zatha of the Golden Hair. Dumery was interested to see that she reallydid have golden hair-blonde, his father called it. Dumery had rarely seen anything so exotic, even in Shiphaven.

  Unfortunately, the results of the interview were no different than what had happened with Thetheran. Simple analytic magic revealed no power at all in Dumery, and he utterly botched a few trial spells.

  “I’m very sorry,” she told Dumery, “but the talent just isn’t there. It’s something people are born with, like double-jointed fingers or green eyes, and you were born without it.”

  “But can’t Ilearn it?” he asked, on the verge of tears.

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. “Really, I’m afraid not. If there were any skill at all, it could be nurtured, I suppose, and a few spells learned-but there wouldn’t be much point in it. For someone with only a trace of talent it would take years to learn what a real wizard, or an apprentice, or anyone with the knack for wizardry can pick up in an afternoon-and in your case, Dumery, I don’t think there’s even a trace. You’re one of those rare people with absolutely no talent for wizardry at all.”

  He managed not to cry, and didn’t argue with his father on the walk back home.

  At least it was sunny, with no rain soaking them through.

  After that, his father was adamant. No third attempt would be made, and Dumery was to find some other career to pursue.

  Dumery yielded to this, asked for time to think, and got it.

  He then took all his carefully-hoarded savings-birthday gifts, Festival pickings, money earned running errands, his winnings from the kid down the street who couldn’t play the finger game but kept trying to learn, all of it-and very early one morning, while out playing, he “wandered off.”

  Once he was out of sight, he headed straight for the Wizards’ Quarter, and started going door to door, looking for someone,anyone, who would take him on as an apprentice.

  In doing so, over the course of a very long day and well into the evening, he spent all but a few copper bits in honoraria and testing fees, and learned that not only did he have no talent for wizardry, but that he had no talent for warlockry, demonology, theurgy, witchcraft, or any other form of magic-except possibly sorcery. The only sorcerer he dealt with had no tests to perform, but merely looked him over carefully and asked him a variety of peculiar questions, mostly dealing with numbers and unlikely hypothetical situations.

  Finally she shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you won’t do.”

  By that time Dumery had given up arguing. He nodded, thanked her, and went on.

  Twice, as he prowled through the Wizard’s Quarter, he glimpsed Thetheran the Mage, going about his business. Both times, Dumery tried to stay out of sight, ducking back into doorways; he was afraid that if Thetheran saw him he’d say something embarrassing.

  Dumery felt he had been embarrassed quite enough already.

  It wasn’t fair, he thought, that Thetheran should be strolling about, so calm and collected and confident, after he had ruined Dumery’s entire life! It wasn’t fairat all.

  If only there were something he could do about it! Some way he could get back at Thetheran for refusing him.

  Couldn’t the nasty old wizard have at least taken him on for a few days, to see if the talent might havedeveloped, or something?

  He was sure that it wouldn’t do any good to go and ask for another chance; after all, the great man had stated his position. He wouldn’t back down from it just because one spoiled rich kid asked him.

  Of course, Dumery didn’t consider himself spoiled, but he’d noticed that whenever he asked a grown-up to do something for him, the grown-up always seemed to think that Dumery was being a spoiled rich brat. He ascribed this to the fact that the adults concerned hadn’t grown up rich, and were jealous.

  For himself, he thought he’d much rather have grown up poor-that would have eliminated the jealousy, and he’d be able to dress in comfortable old clothes he could get dirty instead of the fancy velvets that his mother always gave him. Sure, he’d have to live in a tenement instead of his father’s house, and he wouldn’t have his own room, but so what? Sharing a room with his brothers might have been fun.

  He wouldn’t want to bereally poor, living out in the Hundred-Foot Field or something, but a tenement apartment wouldn’t have been all that bad.

&n
bsp; Would it?

  Maybe it would. If he were going to be rich, then, why couldn’t he have been born to the nobility? Living in the Overlord’s palace would be fun, wouldn’t it?

  Speculation was pointless, of course. Hehad been born the son of a successful merchant, and he was stuck with it.

  He sighed, and trudged on.

  When his funds, energy, and ingenuity were all largely exhausted, and most of the magicians had long since closed their shops, he headed wearily home, stumbling now and then as he dodged the ox-droppings on Arena Street.

  He reached home long after his mother had cleared away the dinner dishes, and in fact she would have been in bed and asleep had she not waited up for him.

  She was angry enough to refuse to feed him anything but the left-over heel of the loaf of bread that had been served with supper.

  He ate that, and drank water from a crystal goblet he got down from the kitchen cupboard himself. He consumed this sorry excuse for a meal while sitting morosely in his room, staring out the window into the courtyard behind the house and trying to think what he could do with his life.

  Magic, it appeared, was out. Whether he really had no talent at all, of any sort, or whether Thetheran had a grudge against him and had somehow coerced all the others into turning him down, he wasn’t sure, but at any rate, magic was out.

  At least, if he stayed in Ethshar of the Spices, magic was out. What if he were to sail off somewhere on one of his father’s ships? Might he find more obliging magicians in, say, Ethshar of the Sands, or Morria in the Small Kingdoms?

  It wasn’t likely. Everyone agreed that Ethshar of the Spices was the greatest city in the World, its merchants the richest, its wizards the most powerful, its overlord the wisest.

  And he wouldn’t have his father there to pay his apprenticeship fee, if he went somewhere else.

  Well, then, he would just forget about magic and try something else.

  But what elsewas there? He’d wanted to be a wizard for as long as he could remember. He had never seriously considered anything else.

  Well, now it was time to consider, so what else was there?

  He could apprentice to a merchant, of course, or a pilot, either a harbor pilot or a ship’s pilot. His father would have no trouble at all arranging those.

  Or he could sign on as a sailor, and try to work his way up to captain.

  Commanding his own ship, sailing free across the waves-that sounded nice.

  But it probably wasn’t. The sea captains he’d met were mostly foul-tempered men who didn’t seem to enjoy their work particularly. And there were storms and pirates, and while it was all very romantic and heroic to battle storms and pirates, Dumery remembered Captain Senallon, a big, robust, cheerful man who had rumpled Dumery’s hair, taught Dumery a few interesting swear words, showed him how to tie a few knots, and who had never come back from an ordinary run up to Ethshar of the Rocks. His ship sailed out and was simply never seen again. A report eventually came that a pirate had caught him off Shan on the Sea, but that was never confirmed.

  And Daddy had been furious about that, not because Captain Senallon was dead and his widow and children bereft, but because the cargo was lost and Doran of Shiphaven was out goods valued at some seventeen pounds of gold.

  Sailing anywhere didn’t sound very appealing after all, Dumery decided as he swallowed the last stale mouthful of bread.

  Maybe he should just wait and join the city guard, then.

  One had to be sixteen to join the guard, of course, and Dumery’s family was sufficiently well-known that lying about his age probably wouldn’t work, at least not for long, so that would mean a four-year wait. And after that four years, it would mean living in the barracks under the city wall or over in Camptown, spending his time marching back and forth or standing guard at a gate somewhere or going up and down the streets collecting taxes for Lord Azrad. That was not really a very exciting life, when one actually sat down and thought about what was involved; it was no wonder that the guard got most of its recruits from failed apprentices, boys who had been kicked out by their masters for stealing or disobedience or incompetence, or whose masters had died before the apprenticeship was completed.

  Of course, life in the guard could be exciting if there were a war or something, but Ethshar hadn’t been in a war for over two hundred years-not a real war, anyway. The Great War had ended back in 4996, or maybe 4998, or something-Dumery wasn’t really very good at history, particularly not remembering dates-and he wasn’t sure if there had been any little wars since then.

  A war would be exciting but dangerous, too. And while Dumery didn’t think he was really all that bothered by danger-hecertainly didn’t consider himself a coward-he didn’t care to depend on the chance of something as dangerous as a war to make his life interesting.

  No, not the guard, then.

  What did that leave?

  Well, there were ship chandlers, and ropemakers, and coopers, and sailmakers, and shipwrights, and shopkeepers of every sort, and none of them looked very appealing. Most of them involved a lot of standing around haggling with customers, and hauling dirty, heavy objects around, and they didn’t pay all that well, either.

  The brothels in Shiphaven made plenty of money, and the gamblers and gamers, but Dumery didn’t think one got into those trades through apprenticeship. He really wasn’t very sure.

  Being a gambler might be interesting-but it had its risks. What if you lost?

  The gods of luck could be fickle, everyone knew that. And losing opponents could be hostile; Dumery had seen a sailor knifed over a stupid little game of three-bone once. The stake had only been about four silver pieces-Dumery had spent more than twice that in testing fees today.

  The sailor had lived, and in fact his wound really wasn’t very serious at all, but any occupation where one ran a significant risk of being stabbed wasn’t quite what Dumery had in mind.

  As for running a brothel-well, just now, at age twelve, he was embarrassed just thinking about it. And surely, one didn’t get into it through an apprenticeship.

  He sighed, and gulped the last of his water.

  He’d have to findsomething, but right now he couldn’t think of a single possibility.

  Maybe he would do better in the morning.

  He left the goblet by his bed for his mother to pick up, and went to sleep.

  Chapter Five

  When the sunlight poured through his window the next morning, thick as honey and warm as a purring cat, Dumery still hadn’t thought of any non-magical occupation he cared to pursue.

  He told his mother that at breakfast. He couldn’t tell his father, because Doran had left early to make sure an outgoing ship caught the morning tide without leaving any of its cargo behind on the docks.

  “You can do anything you like,” Faléa the Slender told her son as she poured herself tea.

  Dumery started to contradict her. “Except wizardry,” she added hastily, cutting him off.

  He glowered silently for a moment, then said, “But I don’t know what I like.”

  Dessa snickered; Dumery glared at her, and she turned away, smirking.

  “Look around, then,” Faléa said as she picked up her cup. “See what you can find.”

  “Look where?” Dumery asked.

  She lowered the cup and looked at him in mild exasperation.

  “I’velooked all over Shiphaven,” he explained.

  “Then look elsewhere,” she suggested. “It’s a big city. Why not go to the markets and look around?”

  “The markets?” Dumery thought that over.

  So did Faléa. She remembered, perhaps a little later than she should have, that Shiphaven Market was the recruiting center for all the crackpot adventurers and axe-grinding lunatics in Ethshar, and that the New Canal Street Market was the center of the local slave trade.

  She didn’t particularly want her youngest son to run off on some foolhardy attempt to unseat a usurper in the Small Kingdoms, nor to sign up as an
apprentice slaver. There was something distinctly unsavory about slavers-she had always had her suspicions of how they acquired and handled their merchandise, despite the official claims that the whole business was closely regulated by the city. As a merchant’s wife she knew how easy it was to bribe the overlord’s harbor watch, and she didn’t doubt it was just as easy to bribe other officials.

  There was a certain romance to undertaking desperate adventures, and even to buying and selling slaves-just the sort of romance, unfortunately, that might well appeal to a twelve-year-old boy. Particularly to a twelve-year-old boy who had been interested in magic, rather than any safer and more sensible occupation. Faléa decided that it would probably be a good idea to distract Dumery before he investigated either of the markets in Shiphaven. If he once got it into his head to sign up for some half-witted expedition-well, Dumery could be incredibly stubborn.

  “Why don’t you go down to Westgate Market,” she said, “and take a look at the people there, both the city folk and the customers who come in from beyond the gate. Maybe you’ll see something of interest.”

  Dumery, who was familiar with the recruiters in Shiphaven Market and had been wondering whether that could really be what his mother had in mind, considered her suggestion.

  There was a certain charm to the idea, certainly. He hadn’t been in Westgate in months, maybe years. He remembered it as being full of farmers smelling of manure, but surely there was more to it than that; he’d been a little kid when he went there before, not yet old enough to apprentice. He’d be looking at it with new eyes now.

  “All right,” he said. “I will.” He served himself an immense portion of fried egg and stuffed it in his mouth.

  His mother smiled at him, glad that she had successfully diverted her son from New Canal Street and Shiphaven Market, and not particularly concerned about what he would find in Westgate. She rarely went there herself, and then only to buy fresh produce when the courtyard garden wasn’t doing well, but it seemed like a wholesome enough place, where the boy wouldn’t get into any serious trouble. There were no slavers or recruiters there.