The Blood of a Dragon

Chapter Twenty-One

The first crossroads had almost fooled him; one branch was so small, nothing more than a trail, really, that at first Dumery thought there were only three roads at the intersection.

The man had been quite definite about the order, though-fork, fork, crossroads, crossroads, fork, fork.

There was an inn at the second crossroads, but Dumery didn’t stop; it was hardly past midday.

He also ignored various markers along the way; they were all written in Sardironese, which used similar runes to Ethsharitic, but which Dumery could not otherwise read. He recognized the name “Aldagmor” on most of them, now that the tavern girl had alerted him to where he was, but the rest was just gibberish as far as he was concerned.

He passed houses, as well, but didn’t stop to investigate any of them.

Since leaving the inn where he had breakfasted the road he followed had run more or less parallel to the ridges, rather than across them; that made traveling significantly easier.

The slopes were getting steeper, though-much steeper.

And the weather was growing steadily colder, which seemed almost unnatural. It was spring, after all-the weather was supposed to be warming up.

The hills undoubtedly had something to do with it, as well as the fact that he was well north of Ethshar.

At sunset he still hadn’t found the last two forks, nor an inn. His generous breakfast was long past, and his gnawing hunger had returned. All the same, he had little choice but to curl up by the roadside and try to sleep.

He tried to think of somewhere, anywhere, that he could find food, but nothing came to mind. It had been hours since he had passed a house with a garden, and when he had he hadn’t seen anything that was even close to ripe yet. He still hadn’t found any of the nuts or berries that always seemed to be at hand in the stories, either.

Well, he had always thought most of those stories were lies. He lay there listening to his stomach growl.

Eventually, exhaustion overcame hunger.

He was awakened well before dawn by a thin, cold drizzle. He sat there, huddled and soaking, until there was enough light to see, and then began stumbling slowly onward, always watching carefully for even the faintest paths.

The rain had ended, the clouds had dispersed, and the sun was finally peering over the mountains when he passed a rather decrepit inn; he was tempted to stop, but remembering that his total fortune was down to a mere two bits, and that Kensher Kinner’s son might be just a few steps ahead of him, he reluctantly forged onward.

He found the third fork around midday, and turned left, up into the mountains.

After that the journey got worse. The road ran up and down slopes steeper than Dumery had ever imagined climbing, and often wiggled so much on the way up or down that he felt as if he were constantly doubling back on himself. On occasion he found himself looking straight ahead at the tops of mature pine trees, trees rooted at the base of a cliff or drop-off, sixty or seventy feet down.

The mountains he had seen in the distance back by the river were no longer distant at all; in fact, he wasn’t sure whether the hills around him were merely hills, or whether he was actually among the mountains now.

He certainly wasn’t up among the highest peaks, which still towered to the east, but the slopes he was climbing were long and steep enough to qualify as mountains by most definitions. Small mountains, perhaps, but mountains.

He passed very few houses along this stretch, and those few were all set well back among the trees, doors closed and windows shuttered. He didn’t inquire at any of them.

He might have tried robbing a garden or orchard if he had seen any, no matter how unripe the fruits might be, but he saw none.

His boots, which were soft-soled city boots that had lasted longer than he had really had any right to expect, finally began to give out around midafternoon-the shredded left sole pulled loose from the stitches that had held it, so that it hung down and flapped awkwardly with each step he took.

After tolerating this for the better part of a mile he gave up, took the boots off, and tucked them in his belt as best he could. Then he trudged on, barefoot.

The sun was behind the treetops in the west when he reached the fourth and final fork.

Another of the stone markers was set up at this fork, the first one he had seen in hours, but as it was entirely in Sardironese he couldn’t make out any of what it said. He ignored it, and took the right fork.

The left fork was plainly the main trail-it could no longer honestly be called a road, even in comparison to the paths he had followed thus far. The right fork was little more than a trace.

It led almost directly up a mountainside-unquestionably a mountainside, this one, and not a hillside-and Dumery followed it as best he could, but he had not yet reached the peak when the fading sunlight made it impossible to proceed. He was certain he was nearing his goal, the lodge or cabin whence Kensher based his dragon hunts, but stumbling on in the dark would be too dangerous. He could fall over a cliff all too easily.

Reluctantly, he settled in for the night, curling up on a pile of fallen pine branches, all too aware that he hadn’t eaten in almost two days. He could hardly hope for an inn up here in the wilderness, of course, and in fact he had seen no human habitations of any kind since a few miles before the final fork. His city-bred eyes had not spotted anything he knew to be edible and reasonably non-toxic anywhere along the way-no apples nor pears nor anything else he recognized as food. The few berries he had seen had been unfamiliar, unripe, and not very appetizing.

He would need to find food very soon. If he didn’t catch up to Kensher by midday, or find some place he could beg a meal, he would have to turn back.

Even now, he wasn’t entirely sure he could retrace his steps far enough to find food before he collapsed.

With that depressing thought, and the gnawing in his gut, it took him a long time to get to sleep.

When he awoke the sun was already high in the east. He stood, and stretched, and took a moment to orient himself, ignoring the pain in his stomach.

The path led upward, over a rocky outcropping and through a line of pine trees on a shoulder of the mountain; beyond that he couldn’t see where it went, but at least it would have to be going down, rather than climbing any farther.

He stretched again, took a deep breath, and marched on.

He only took about fifteen minutes to top the shoulder and look down through the pines, and when he did he stopped dead in his tracks and stared.

The path led down from the rocky shoulder onto a broad, flat plateau, through a large herb-and-vegetable garden, between two small, well-tended flowerbeds, and up to the front door of a large, comfortable-looking farmhouse built of square-cut timbers, topped by a red tile roof. To the left of the house was a cliff, the edge of the plateau; to the right was a sizeable fenced-in pasture extending across the plateau and up the slope toward the mountain’s peak, where a few dozen head of cattle were going about their bovine business.

Dumery didn’t notice any of this until later; he was too busy staring at what laybehind the house.

There, in huge pens made out of massive black metal beams, were dozens of dragons, ranging from little ones not very much bigger than a housecat up to monsters perhaps twenty feet in length.

Dumery stared, flabberghasted.

One of the larger dragons, a green one, raised its head and looked at him, and Dumery swallowed.

The dragon roared, and was answered by a cacophony of shrieks and bellows from its companions.

Dumery blinked, and felt tears welling up, tears of exhaustion, frustration, and despair.

This was no hunting lodge, no trapper’s cabin. Kensher Kinner’s son was quite obviously not a dragon-hunter at all.

He was a dragon-farmer.

Dumery let out a sob.

This possibility had never occurred to him, never would have occurred to him.

A dragonfarm? It went against everything he had ever heard. All the stories were about wild, treacherous beasts living free in the forests and mountains.

Oh, there were people who had brought home dragon eggs, hatched them, and kept the dragons as pets until they reached an unmanageable size and had to be butchered-the Arena had had a dragon on display once when he was very young-but he had never dreamt of anything like this.

No wonder Kensher hadn’t wanted an apprenticehunter!

Dumery wiped away tears with the back of his hand and tried to get himself under control. Crying wasn’t going to do him any good, no good at all.

And besides, wouldn’t a dragon farmer need apprentices? There were a lot of dragons in those pens; it must take several hands to do all the chores for an operation this size. There must be special skills involved in running it.

Farming was not an occupation that Dumery had ever taken an interest in; farmers, as he understood it, were generally people too poor or stupid or unambitious to find any better trade. Dragon-farming, though, dragon-farming would have to be different.

Dumery began to feel a little better. Dragon-farming might not be so bad.

And hunting or farming, if he had a supply of dragon’s blood, it didn’t matter how he got it; he could still lord it over Thetheran and the other wizards who had rejected him.

And most importantly of all, if he didn’t get something to eat soon he would never make it back down out of these mountains, he’d die up here, of cold or hunger or something.

Still shocked, he forced himself to march onward, over the rocky shoulder and down toward the farmhouse.

Dumery was in worse shape than he realized; he had barely managed to knock on the door before his legs gave out, and he collapsed heavily on the doorstep.

His cheek was pressed against the cold stone of the threshold, one hand underneath, the other out to the side, his feet off some other direction, and he didn’t care about any of it any more. He didn’t want to move, and in fact he didn’t think hecould move any more. His determination had finally run out.

He just lay there, dazed and unable to move, and even when the door swung open he didn’t react. It took too much effort.

In fact, everything took too much effort. Even staying conscious took too much effort.

So he didn’t.