The Blood of a Dragon

Chapter Thirteen

There may, Dumery reflected, be worse ways of paying for one’s passage than by shoveling manure, but offhand he couldn’t think of any.

Seeing the five crewmen lolling about doing nothing much most of the time didn’t make the work any easier or more enjoyable, either. Oh, they fed the cattle four times a day, and directed the gaseous spirit that was pulling the barge along at an impressive speed, but that was about the extent of it.

Dumery wondered why all five of them were along, since it seemed that three would have been plenty, even if he hadn’t been there himself to help.

It wasn’t any of his business, though. He stuck to his shovel-sometimes literally, when the sweat from his hands mixed with the accumulated crud on the handle-and didn’t ask questions.

An hour or two after leaving what the crewmen called Azrad’s Bridge came the first really enjoyable part of the journey, when the bargemen hauled out provisions and ate lunch. Dumery was included, and stuffed himself with cold smoked ham, creamy cheese, hard brown bread, and a thin, watery ale.

It was simple food, but after the near starvation of the last day or two it was absolutely delicious and wonderfully filling.

The break didn’t last long, though.

Dumery was pleased to see, when he looked up from his shovel and considered the sun’s position an hour or so after that excellent repast, that the river had indeed turned north rather than continuing to the west. Sardiron of the Waters, everyone agreed, lay to the north, and the dragon-hunter was on board a boat bound for Sardiron of the Waters.

Not that Dumery had seen any branches where theSunlit Meadows could have turned aside, or that he thought the crew of the barge had lied to him about where they were going; it was just reassuring to know that the World around him was behaving in a consistent and rational manner, and that they hadn’t all gone mad or wandered into some demonic netherworld. Being outside the familiar walls of Ethshar was not good for Dumery’s peace of mind; he didn’t entirely trust the exterior World to stay solid and consistent. The whole experience of gliding along a river had a feeling of unreality to it.

The sun grew steadily less visible as the day wore on; clouds gathered and thickened, but no rain fell that afternoon.

As soon as the barge had pulled over to the side and tied up to a tree for the first night, Dumery and the five crewmen ate a simple, hearty dinner, very similar to their lunch. It wasn’t until after they had all finished eating and were settling in for the evening that Dumery got up the courage to ask how long the journey to Sardiron would take.

“Oh, a sixnight or so,” the first mate, Kelder the Unpleasant, told him.

“Depends on the weather and how well the sylph does. Those things are pretty unpredictable.”

“Short of hiring a seer, anyway,” Naral Rander’s son remarked.

Dumery guessed that the sylph was the almost-invisible thing that pulled the barge-all he could see of it by day was an occasional flicker, like the distortion in the air over a hot stove, and now that night had fallen it appeared as a faint filminess, like a wisp of steam. Emboldened, he asked, “Where’d you get the sylph, anyway?”

“Oh, it’s not ours,” Kelder explained. “The baron who bought this load of cattle has a wizard working for him who sent it along. It’s fast. We need to be quick so we can fit enough feed on board; wouldn’t want the cattle to starve. The baron likes his meat fat and tender, I guess. Anyway, getting pulled by the sylph is a lot faster than poling upstream, or hiring some sort of tug, or rigging a treadmill and paddlewheel.”

Naral snorted. “I’d like to see anyonepole a loaded cattle barge upstream!” he said.

Kelder whacked the back of Naral’s head, and the conversation degenerated into general insults.

Not long after that the crew bedded down for the night, four of the five crawling into the tiny, cramped space under the foredeck-too small to be called a cabin, really-where four narrow berths took up virtually the entire space.

The fifth, Kelder the Unpleasant, took the first watch, sitting quietly on the foredeck.

Dumery was tossed a decaying brown blanket and told he could sleep on the afterdeck, a space about two feet fore and aft and thirty feet across.

Dumery eyed his assigned bed nervously. There was no railing across the back, only a low coaming, and the prospect of rolling off the barge into the river was unappealing.

His only other option was to bed down under the hooves of the cattle, however, and getting stepped on seemed rather more likely than rolling into the river, and almost equally undesirable. There were other unpleasant aspects to sleeping in the bottom of the barge, too, since Dumery hadn’t done any shoveling since just before supper. The planks of the afterdeck were blackened by several years’ accumulation of grease and grime, but the bottom of the barge was far worse.

Reluctantly, Dumery climbed up, dismayed by the slimy feel of the planking, and lay down. He pulled the ragged blanket over himself, curled up, and tried to sleep.

Cramped and uncomfortable as he was, dismayed by the hard planking and the smell of cattle, it took time, time he would have spent counting stars had any been visible through the overcast. The outside world seemed all too real, now.

Eventually he dozed off.

His last waking thought was that that was the end of the day’s adventures, but he was wrong. He had been asleep no more than half an hour when he began dreaming.

The dream began in an ordinary enough way; he was on Wizard Street, wandering from door to door, looking for someone-but he didn’t know who.

At first none of the doors were open, and no one answered his knocking and calling, but then he saw that all the rest of the shop doorswere open, and he had somehow failed to notice before. He ran up to one, and found himself facing Thetheran the Mage.

He didn’t want to talk to Thetheran; he turned away and ran to the next door.

Thetheran was there, too.

Again Dumery turned away, and this time Thetheran was there behind him, looming over him. He looked taller and more gaunt than ever.

“Hello, Dumery,” the wizard said.

Dumery turned away, and found himself facing another Thetheran.

“Sorry to bother you, lad,” this one said, “but your parents are quite worried about you. You went off without a word of warning, and they were concerned for your safety. They hired me to contact you and make sure you’re all right.”

Dumery turned, and turned, and turned, and Thetheran was always there in front of him.

“I’m fine!” Dumery said angrily. “Go away and leave me alone!”

“Don’t worry,” Thetheran told him. “Your parents only paid me to talk to you, in your dreams, not to bring you home. They just want to know what’s become of you. Your mother’s very worried.”

“I’m fine!” Dumery repeated.

“Well, I’ll let you tell her that, then.” Thetheran stepped aside, and Dumery saw that the door of the shop on Wizard Street led into the front hall of his home in Shiphaven. “Go on in, she’s waiting,” Thetheran urged him.

Reluctantly, Dumery obeyed; he stepped into the corridor, and Faléa emerged from the parlor to greet him.

“Dumery!” she said. “Is it really you?”

“It’s me,” Dumery said a little doubtfully, “but is that you?”

“Of course it is!” Faléa replied. “Or at least... I don’t know. I don’t understand all this magic. It doesn’t matter. All that matters-Dumery, where are you?”

“I’m on a cattle barge,” Dumery said.

“A what?”

“A cattle barge,” he explained. “You know, a big flat-bottomed boat with a lot of cows and steers on it.”

“What are you doingthere?” Faléa demanded.

“Well...” Dumery wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. For one thing, he wasn’t entirely certain whether he was talking to his mother, or Thetheran, or himself. He knew he was dreaming, but he didn’t know any way to be sure that it was a magical dream sent by the wizard and not just his own imagination running amok.

And if it was really a magical sending, did that mean that he was talking to his mother, or to Thetheran? He had no idea how such things worked.

“I’m going to be an apprentice,” he said.

His mother blinked at him, startled.

“On a cattle barge?” she asked.

“Well, that’s how I’m getting there. I met a man in Westgate Market, and arranged to meet him in Sardiron, and I didn’t have time to tell you before I had to leave.”

The possibility that Thetheran had some mystical means of telling truth from falsehood in this dream occurred to him, a trifle belatedly. If the wizarddid have such a spell...

Well, he wouldn’t worry about that.

“What kind of an apprenticeship?” Faléa asked.

Dumery hesitated. “Well, dealing in exotic goods, mostly,” he said.

“You need to go toSardiron for that? Couldn’t your father have found you something here in Ethshar?”

“I wanted to do it on my own!” Dumery burst out.

“Oh,” his mother said. “Oh, well, I suppose...” Her voice trailed off, but then she gathered her wits and said, “You be careful! Are you safe? Is everything all right? You tell me about this man!”

Dumery sighed. “I’m fine, Mother,” he said. “Really, I am. I’m perfectly safe. I didn’t have the fare for the fancy riverboat, so I’m working my way north on a cattle barge, and the crewmen are treating me well, and I have plenty to eat and a good place to sleep.” This was not, perhaps, the exact and literal truth, but it was close enough. “I’m going to meet this man in Sardiron and sign on as his apprentice, and I’ll send you a letter telling you all about it as soon as I can.”

“What man?” Faléa demanded. “Who is he? What’s his name? Where did you meet him?”

“He didn’t tell me his name-he said he wanted to keep it a secret until I’d earned it.” Dumery had considered making up a name, but had caught himself at the last moment; if and when he reallydid sign up as the dragon-hunter’s apprentice, he didn’t want to have an awkward lie to explain. He continued, “I met him at the Dragon’s Tail, and he offered me an apprenticeship if I could prove myself by meeting him on... on the Blue Docks in Sardiron of the Waters in a sixnight.”

Dumery hoped that this impromptu lie would hold up-he had no idea if therewere any “Blue Docks” in Sardiron, or whether his mother would know one way or the other. As far as he knew, she had never been to Sardiron-but he was a bit startled to realize that he didn’t really know much of anything about her past, even though she was his own mother.Had she ever been to Sardiron?

Either she hadn’t, or there really was such a place as the Blue Docks, because she was somewhat mollified by his tale.

“All right,” she said, “but you be careful, and take care of yourself!”

She turned, and was gone; her abrupt disappearance reminded Dumery that this was all a dream.

He looked about, wondering what would happen next, and as he did Thetheran stepped out of nowhere.

The mage told Dumery, “Well, lad, I’ve done what your parents paid me to do, so I’ll let you get on with your regular night’s sleep now. In case you aren’t sure this dream is really a wizard’s sending-well, I can’t give you any proof, but I think you’ll find you’ll remember it more easily and more clearly than a natural dream. I hope that you’ll send a letter if and when you can, and save your parents the expense of doing this again-I don’t particularly enjoy staying up this late working complicated spells just to talk to an inconsiderate young man who runs off without any warning. Good night, Dumery of Shiphaven, and I hope your other dreams will be pleasant.”

Then the mage’s image popped like a soap bubble and vanished, taking with it the corridor and everything else, and Dumery woke up, to find himself staring stupidly at the hind end of a steer, faintly visible in the diffuse light from the watch-lantern on the foredeck.