The Blood of a Dragon

Chapter Thirty-One

At least, Dumery told himself, it was warmer once he got down off the mountain. And the forest could be very beautiful-the sunlight spilling down through the trees, the branches stirring in the breeze with a whisper like the waves of a distant sea, the squirrels and chipmunks darting about in the treetops and underbrush every so often, like little flickers of fur.

The ground was rougher than he had expected, though. He hadn’t realized just how much difference having a trail, any trail, underfoot actually made. He was sure that he wasn’t making very good time at all.

He had the horrible suspicion, the first night, that he hadn’t gotten more than a league or so from the dragon farm. He wrapped himself tightly in the one thick woolen blanket Pancha had given him, which he had surreptitiously stuffed in his pack, and huddled against a tree, hoping that there were no night-prowling predators in the area. Dragons, he was fairly certain, were basically diurnal, but didn’t wolves hunt at night? He wasn’t sure. And of course, nightwalkers were all of necessity nocturnal, but he had never heard of any of them in the north; they were found in the Small Kingdoms, according to the tales his mother had told him.

Of course, he didn’t know how far they might roam, or even how far he was from the northernmost of the Small Kingdoms.

Something, probably a bird, shrieked weirdly in the distance, and Dumery tried to make himself smaller. He was a city boy; this sort of thing was not his idea of a good time. Going north he had at least been on trails, and usually within a mile or less of some sort of human habitation, but here, for all he knew, there wasn’t another human being for a league or more in every direction.

He lay curled up in a ball, one hand on the hilt of his belt-knife, while he eyed the surrounding trees suspiciously, trying to see by the feeble light of the cloud-smudged moons until exhaustion got the better of him and he fell asleep.

The second day of the journey he was stiff and sore from sleeping all tensed as he had, and that made walking even worse. He took frequent rest stops, telling himself there was no real hurry. He didn’t need to catch up to anybody now; he was just going home, and he could take his time. He still had months before his thirteenth birthday, months in which to make his demand for a pair of dragon eggs.

On the other hand, his trail rations were already running low, and traveling cross-country meant that he wouldn’t pass any inns. When this fact sank in, after lunch, he tried to pick up his pace a little.

When he settled for the night this time he tried to find a sheltered spot where he could stretch out, to prevent the sort of cramping he had suffered that morning. He found what seemed like a good spot, but when he lay down he found that a knob of pine root dug into the small of his back. After shifting about in unsuccessful attempts to dodge it he finally gave up and moved to a nearby corner that looked much more crowded, but which in fact proved to be quite comfortable.

He was sleeping soundly and peacefully when the dream came.

He was home, in the front hall of his parents’ house, and Thetheran the Mage was standing there before him.

“Hello,” Thetheran said. “This is another magic dream. Your parents haven’t heard from you in quite some time, and they’re worried. They even sent someone after you, an apprentice witch, but we haven’t heard from her, and I take it she hasn’t found you. Are you all right, Dumery?”

“I’m fine,” he answered, a little defensively. It was somewhat reassuring to know that Teneria hadn’t reported in. “I’m on my way home. The apprenticeship didn’t work out. I have another plan, though, one that I think they’ll be happier with.”

“What sort of a plan?” Thetheran asked.

“That’s none of your business, wizard!” Dumery noticed that he was bolder in these dreams than he was when he was awake, and wondered if it was some side-effect of the spell.

“All right, then,” Thetheran said. “There’s no need to be rude. I’m just asking on behalf of your parents-I’m sure they’d want to know. When do you expect to be home?”

That was an awkward question, but reasonable enough. Dumery hesitated, and then said, “I’m not sure. I’m traveling overland from Aldagmor, and I don’t know how long a journey it is.” He was annoyed at his own inability to give a clear answer, and he turned that irritation on his questioner. “You tell them that I’m safe and on my way,” he shouted. “That’s enough!” He waved angrily, and to his surprise a wind swept Thetheran off his feet and blew him back down the hallway into the kitchen and out of sight.

Dumery looked foolishly at his upraised hand. “Did I do that?” he asked.

A great grinning mouth suddenly appeared on the wall next to him. “You might say so,” it said. “Thetheran’s spell is slipping-it’s not one he’s done very often, and he didn’t get it quite right this time. He’s losing control of the dream. It’s turning into just an ordinary dream, rather than a wizardly one. He managed to send me here anyway, but I’m afraid that the two of you aren’t really talking to each other any more.”

Dumery stared at it. “Why would I dream you?” he said.

The mouth vanished without answering, leaving Dumery alone in the house. He started up the stairs, feeling less real every moment; a huge green dragon thrust its head out the door of Dessa’s bedroom at him, and he turned and fled, the dragon’s head pursuing on a neck that stretched longer and longer, without end, and from there on the dream turned into an ordinary, if distressing, nightmare, full of fangs and claws and dark hallways.

In fact, when he awoke and blinked away grit he wasn’t sure whether the magical part of the dream had been genuine, or whether he might have dreamt that by himself.

He assumed it was genuine, though. That meant that they were still thinking about him, back home, and now they’d be expecting him. He really hadn’t anticipated that they would go to all this trouble over him-wizards’ spells and witches’ apprentices and all. He sighed, brushed himself off, and got on with the business of walking interminably south.

Around mid-morning he was feeling fairly cheerful-his parents were concerned about him, which might not seem like much, but it was something. And the weather was beautiful-it had been an unusually dry spring so far, which undoubtedly had all the farmers worried, but which made for easy traveling.

He casually dodged a malodorous object that lay more or less in his path, and then stopped.

He turned and took another look.

Whatever sort of beast had left that was big. And it was fresh, too. His good cheer faded abruptly at the thought of large, hostile animals in the area.

There was something familiar about the stuff, too, both appearance and odor.

He studied it for a moment, then looked around uneasily.

Something had scraped that big oak tree there. He stepped over and investigated.

Two or three tiny flakes of red-gold scale clung to the rough bark. They were unmistakable.

A dragon. A wild dragon had passed by here, quite recently-a good-sized one.

He was torn by two powerful and conflicting urges.

First, here was a dragon, and quite possibly a female, and a female might have eggs or hatchlings nearby, and it was too good an opportunity to ignore. The gods had sent him this chance. He should follow the trail-and yes, there was a visible trail through the underbrush-and track the beast to its lair, and see what the situation was. This might be the only chance he would ever have to realize his dream of capturing dragons he could raise as his own, to start a dragon-farm and get rich selling dragon’s blood and rubbing the wizards’ noses in it. His father might not be able to buy dragon eggs, or might not get both sexes, but he might be able to just pick up a couple for himself if he followed that trail.

On the other hand, here was a dragon, and dragons were flesh-eaters, by all accounts and by the evidence at the farm perfectly willing to settle for eating people if they couldn’t find anything tastier. It was a fairly large dragon, too, no mere hatchling-the scale fragments on the oak were level with the top of Dumery’s head, and presumably came from the beast’s flank. An animal defending its nest was likely to be particularly vicious, and dragons had remarkable teeth and claws. This was no half-tame farm dragon, either, but a wild dragon, that might breathe fire, might be able to fly-it could be lurking overhead, waiting to pounce, even as he stood and debated with himself.

He looked up quickly, and scanned the treetops, but saw no sign of a large red-gold dragon anywhere.

The gods might have sent him this opportunity-but he was an Ethsharite. He knew the proverb, “Trusting the gods is no better than throwing dice.” The gods were powerful and benevolent, but that didn’t necessarily mean that everything they did would work out for the best. If he went after the dragon the gods probably wouldn’t help him fight it, or escape from it, or rob it. If itwas some god doing him a favor, just putting the dragon in his path was probably the extent of it, he couldn’t hope for any further protection. The gods could be whimsical, and they generally kept their meddling to a minimum.

If there were eggs or hatchlings, he would have to steal them from their mother, and the mother was likely to strenuously object to that. He would do best to kill the mother, if he possibly could-but how could a twelve-year-old boy kill a grown dragon? He didn’t even have a sword or a shield, just his belt knife.

For that matter, if there were hatchlings, how could he hope to capture them and get them back to Ethshar? He had no tools, no rope, no sacks or nets, he was tired and footsore and didn’t really know where he was. He was in no shape to handle even hatchling dragons.

Eggs, though-if he could slip a couple of eggs out when the mother dragon wasn’t home, he could wrap them in the blanket and carry them that way.

Or if there were no eggs, at the very least he could see where the lair was, what it looked like, and maybe he would be able to find his way back to it later, when he was better-equipped.

He would go and take a look, anyway, and hope that he didn’t encounter the dragon.

That brought up the question of whether the dragon, when it passed through, had been going to its lair, or from its lair.

It was still morning; Dumery guessed that it was going from its lair, and therefore he wanted to backtrack, rather than following the beast.

Besides, this way he was far less likely to wind up as the dragon’s lunch.

He knew he was being reckless following the dragon’s path in either direction, but after all, one couldn’t be a great hero or become fabulously wealthy without taking some risks.

He studied the scraped bark, the trampled underbrush, and turned eastward, back the way the dragon had come.