The Realms of the Dragons 2

THE WOMAN WHO DREW DRAGONS

The Year of the Helm (1362 DR)

Of course, if that female painter hadn't shown up about the same time that Guerner called for more drinks, the tavernkeeper Varney might not have pursued his great idea about dragons. At least, that was what Varney said later. Mrs. Varney just said, "Well, isn't that like Varney, trying to blame somebody else for his troubles."

It all started with Varney's customers, as Varney pointed out to Mrs. Varney. Those customers, a group of regulars, were having one of their endless nightly debates about the habits of dragons and their own fortitude during encounters with the scaly beasts.

"So I just twitched the string like this, and up leaps that black dragon. Thought his whole cave was infested by snakes, and he lets out this roar and races away. Leaving me in possession of all his treasure," said the gnome Silvenestri Silver, wriggling a piece of twine across the table.

In the middle of winter, in the dark days that marked the end of one year and the beginning of the next, Silver spent most of his time in his favorite tavern, the Dragon Defeated, telling tales of his past exploits as a treasure-stealer. When the roads dried out and warmer weather came, he'd be away to a bigger city to look for work. Sembian cities held certain perils for a professional treasure-hunter (like rival claimants to his prizes and unkind people who whined that he'd cheated them of their share), so Silver preferred to wait out winter in Halfknot, the small town with a mixed population of humans, dwarves, and gnomes where nothing much ever happened.

Varney and his wife scrubbed the tables, moving around the group of listeners gathered around the gnome and his string. Mrs. Varney wished that they'd all go home and whispered to Varney that it was time to shoo everyone out the door. But Varney disagreed. Winter was too slow a time for the Dragon Defeated and its owner to lose any chance of an extra purchase.

Looking over the group arguing about dragons, Varney knew the order wouldn't come from the dwarf, Badger Bates. The dwarf would nurse his one drink all night unless someone else paid. If the human, Wyrmbait Nix, hadn't lost all his coin to Silver in one of their numerous bets, he might buy something to eat. The big man was always hungry and not too fussy about Mrs. Varney's cooking. Of course, His Honor, Grangy Guerner, part-time magistrate and full-time ratcatcher, always had plenty of jingle in his pocket, but he rarely lingered in the tavern for any length of time.

"Dragons aren't afraid of snakes," said the dwarf Badger Bates, taking up the thread of his never-ending dispute with Silver about which of them knew the most about the dragons.

He pointed one dirty finger at the gnome sitting across from him. "All I'm saying is that proof is proof. I've never seen any proof of your story except a snip of dirty twine. Now folks know when I tell about Malaeragoth, I'm going show them proof of my words. I've got my scale, don't I?"

Bates tapped the iron box sitting beside his plate. The dwarf worked in the local foundry but had once dug gardens and built fountains for the wizard Uvalkhur the Undaunted. When certain rival wizards murdered the old man in his own home, Malaeragoth, the sapphire dragon and sometimes steed of Uvalkhur, suddenly appeared before the thieving wizards ransacking the mansion and revenged his former master. Almost one hundred years had passed since the day that Malaeragoth tore apart the manor to play cat-and-mouse games with the murderers, but the ferocity of his vengeance remained a favorite tale in Sembia. Of all those who'd occupied the manor that day, only Badger Bates had escaped with his life. And from that day to the present, no more had been seen of the sapphire dragon.

"And besides, the last time that you told that story about the black dragon, you said you cast an illusion of one snake crawling across his den," argued Bates. "Now when I talk about Malaeragoth-"

"One snake, ten snakes, what does it matter?" Silver said, cutting off Bates's last sentence. "You're missing the point. What I'm trying to say is that it pays, and pays well if you're hunting someone else's treasure, to know who you're stealing from. Dragons are no different from people. Know their habits, know where they keep their loot, and know how to trick them. That dragon-and I never said that he was the usual sort of black dragon-that dragon had what the wizard called a pho-bee-a. Couldn't abide snakes in any form. And when he saw a snake, or thought he saw one, he ran."

"I am the last person alive to have actually seen Malaeragoth and I can produce my proof anytime I want," Bates persisted, flipping open the lid of his iron box. The shimmering sapphire scale inside shone like an evening star in the tavern's dim light. "Besides, Malaeragoth wasn't one of your commonplace black dragons that any reprobate gnome illusionist could trick," finished Bates in a huff.

"I paid good gold for information about that black dragon," snarled Silver, "and more for a great snake illusion. That's what made it possible for me to defeat that dragon-and a lesser gnome couldn't have done it. You may have been clever enough to pick up that scale, after you crawled out of whatever hole that you hid in, but avoiding Malaeragoth isn't the same as tricking a dragon in his own lair!"

"Humph," said Badger Bates. "Proof is proof, and I still don't see anything on the table."

"I've got the scars from my encounters, and nobody asks me to plop those on the table when I tell my stories," said Wyrmbait Nix. "But scars or no scars, I still believe the gnome. As for putting things down on the table, Silver pays for his fair share of the drinks, which is more than you've ever done, Badger," continued Nix, who made his living capturing baby dragons for wizards' menageries. He spent his winter months in town, offering to show any lady in the tavern his scars, including the terrific bite mark left on his leg by a baby blue dragon. "And neither of you has spent day after day crawling through dark dank holes after those nasty-tempered wyrmlings!"

"Yeah, well, they don't call you Wyrmbait for nothing," said Silver. "But I'd rather steal a treasure and keep a whole skin, than carry around a bag of hissing, wiggling baby dragons nipping at my fingers. Nasty way to make a living, Nix, nasty."

"Baby bites," scoffed Bates. "Why that's nothing compared to the fury of Malaeragoth. He ripped Uvalkhur's roof off with one swipe of his claws. He hunted Uvalkhur's killers through the hallways like one of Guerner's terriers after rats. I saw him, and that's more than either of you have ever seen-a great old dragon like that, fighting with all his strength!"

The ratcatcher Guerner suddenly spoke up. "Well, I've never seen a dragon, and I've never wanted to see one. Catching rats is enough vermin for me. But I like hearing your stories, makes these winter nights pass quicker. I'll stand you a drink all round for your tales. Hey, Varney, draw us four more cups," he said to the tavernkeeper.

Varney smirked at Mrs. Varney. He'd been right and she'd been wrong, it was worth staying open a little longer.

The chink of Guerner's coin dropping into his box sparked Varney's big idea, or "another one of Varney's big ideas" as Mrs. Varney would say in later years to friends and relations. Middle of the tenday, middle of the winter, was such a lonely time for a tavernkeeper's coin box in Sembia. It had been another lousy winter for trade. There'd been talk of odd trouble in odd places, ghosts in the forests and suchlike. In a small town like Halfknot, where Varney ran the Dragon Defeated, people relied on travelers for their extra coin. And when the gods, elves, Zhentarim, and who knew what else kept disrupting trade, well, then, it meant everyone got very nervous and hoarded what gold they had.

But with the Year of Maidens passed and the Year of the Helm begun, Varney wanted to encourage customers to stop saving and start spending at the Dragon Defeated. Advertising Mrs. Varney's meat pies as being made from the best ber-rygobblers hadn't done the trick. In fact, some unkind bard had started a song about "Mrs. Varney's Rat Pies."

As Varney served Guerner's round, a woman blew through the tavern's door with a cold, wet wind and an offer to repaint the Dragon Defeated's sign. Varney just knew that her offer was all that was needed to start his great idea attracting a little cash to his tavern.

Small and fair-haired, the painter's skin held that ruddy brown tinge of a wanderer who spent most of her time outdoors. Spots of color sprayed across her hands, the marks of her trade.

"I was heading east," the painter said, "but the roads are rivers of mud and I'm tired of slipping and falling every third step. So I'm stopping in Halfknot until the roads dry out. I'm painting signs for the baker, the butcher, and the hostler. I'll do yours too in return for a few meals."

Varney promised as many meat pies as the painter could eat.

The next morning, Varney, the painter, and Mrs. Varney discussed a new design for the Dragon Defeated's well-weathered sign. The current placard depicted a group of men attacking a rearing white dragon.

"I noticed your sign when I first came to town," said the painter, standing underneath it, ignoring the rain dripping on her head and down her neck. "That dragon is simply awful. The neck is all wrong, the head's too small, and those wings! They look like a bird's wings, not a dragon's!"

"Can you add a princess, dear?" asked Mrs. Varney, who was a sentimental soul. "You know, one of those girls all dressed in fine silks with a little tiny crown perched on top of her curls, being rescued by the lads? Like in the stories my granny told."

"Well," said the painter. "I don't know as much about princesses as I do about dragons, but I can draw one. What else?"

"Can you make the chaps in the sign look like those three over there?" asked Varney, pointing a thumb at Silver, Bates, and Nix, who were walking down the street. The gnome, the dwarf, and the human were still arguing about who knew more about dragons.

The painter looked them over. "Don't you want something better? I'm not sure that they'll attract the customers."

"I want it to look just like them," said Varney. "I've got an idea about those three."

Once the repainted sign was flapping in the gusts of winter wind, Varney nailed another smaller sign next to his door advertising free beer on the slowest night of the tenday in return for a good dragon story.

Much to the town's surprise, Varney lived up to his promise. Every storyteller got one free beer-small and a bit watered, but free. Also, Varney had every listener and storyteller put a coin or a button or a packet of pins in a cup. At the end of the evening, the best story was awarded the cup, with the tavern's own "dragon defeaters" Silver, Nix, and Bates acting as judges. Of course, food and additional beer were charged at Varney's usual rates, and the winner most often stood the company an extra round, all of which meant that Varney's coin box started to fill up very nicely.

So Varney's idea worked, as Varney liked to tell friends and relations in later years. More people came to the Dragon Defeated, just to hear a story well told, and after a few ten-days, as the weather improved and travel became easier, the promise of a free beer and the possibility of winning a cup of coins and buttons spread up and down the roads, drawing more out-of-towners and regulars from other taverns. All sorts of strange folk began to appear at the Dragon Defeated to compete with their story.

Silver, Nix, and Bates took to strutting around town because of their positions as "dragon experts." The dwarf even promised to give Malaeragoth's sapphire scale to the first person who managed to astound all three judges.

On the night of the "unfortunate incident," as Varney described it in later years, the Dragon Defeated was packed with a lively, hard-drinking crowd of humans, dwarves, and gnomes. A human fighter with well-oiled leather armor and a really big sword slung across his back finished his tale of hand-to-claw combat with a green dragon with a thump of his fist on his chest. The audience looked between him and the judges, waiting to hear what the trio thought.

"Well," said Nix, cleaning his teeth with an ivory toothpick, "if you'd lunged a bit more and ducked less, you could have finished the fight in half the time. If you're going to go hunting dragons, you can't be afraid of being nipped on the arm or leg. Bites heal. Look at my scars. Besides, we heard something similar from a man from Triel last tenday, didn't we boys?"

"Yup, I don't think that story is worth even a button," said Bates, who was known throughout Halfknot as a dwarf so cheap that he wouldn't give away the time of day for free. There was a running side bet going at the Dragon Defeated that no one would ever get Malaeragoth's sapphire scale from the dwarf. "Besides, I like to see a bit of proof, I do. Anyone can tell a fancy story, but not everyone can produce solid evidence."

"I think the whole thing showed a lack of finesse," Silver said, washing his fingers in a porcelain bowl. "With a little bit of guile," added the gnome, using his embroidered hankie to dry off his fingertips, "he could have had the head off that creature and been out of the forest without even pulling that really big sword out of its scabbard. If he'd studied his dragons before he went, he'd have known how to handle them. Everyone knows that you're most likely to find green dragons there and those type of dragons are cross-eyed and easy to confuse."

"You're wrong," said the sign painter, sitting in the corner nearest the fire and eating one of Mrs. Varney's meat pies. "A green dragon is not that easy to kill and they're never cross-eyed."

A number of heads turned to stare at the woman. She smiled slightly at the three dragon experts and continued to eat her pie with calm, deliberate bites.

"What do you know about greens, missy?" said Nix.

"I've painted a hundred or so, and I've never seen a single crossed eye," she replied, saying more than she'd said in all the previous tendays. Behind her table, her large pack leaned against the wall. The roads outside were dry, she was dressed for traveling, and she'd come for one last meal before leaving town. Being on her way out of Halfknot, she obviously didn't care who she offended that night. Or, at least, that was Mrs. Varney's explanation of the subsequent events.

"What do you mean, madam, that you've painted greens?" said Silver.

"I draw dragons," said the woman. "My name, by the way, is Petra. The dragons sometimes call me Ossalurkarif, but I prefer Petra. I definitely prefer Petra to 'missy' or 'madam.'"

"Lady Petra," said Silver, leaping up on his table so everyone could see him, then making an elaborate bow, "my apologies for these repeated questions, but what do you know about dragons?"

"More than you do." Petra sighed and pushed her pie aside. "I've sat and listened for all these tendays. And your tales are all very pretty and well-told. But not one of you has really looked at the dragons that you say that you've met. You've fought them, you've killed them, you've stolen from them, and once or twice, you've even had a conversation with one. But none of you have ever noticed much more than if a dragon is green, red, or blue."

She reached behind her and pulled a number of long metal and oiled canvas tubes out of her pack.

"I draw dragons," she said again. "Somebody has to. We live in a realm filled with dragons, but what does anyone really know? Your wizards talk of Draco Mystere, but what good is reading the words of others compared to actual field study? Why you won't find in books whether a red adult has one or two phalanges or the color of a bronze hatchling's tongue. But I can show you that! And I can prove greens don't have crossed eyes."

Petra opened one of the tubes and drew out a number of tightly rolled parchments. As she spread them across her table, people stood up to get a better look, causing the gnomes to join Silver on the tabletop so they could see over the heads of the humans. The dwarves just muscled themselves to the front of the crowd. As the sound of "oohs" and "aahs" rose from the crowd, Varney stopped pouring beer and boosted himself up on the bar to see Petra's drawings.

Filling every inch of the vellum were dozens and dozens of drawings of green dragons. There were greens in flight, rearing up to peer over treetops, curled around a clutch of eggs, and resting with chins across crossed claws, looking like tabby cats asleep in the sun.

"Look there," said Petra, pointing at the head of a green dragon with eyes deep-set under a row of hornlets and crest fully extended. "Perfectly normal eyes. Not a sign of crossing."

"Well," said Silver finally. "I guess I got my dragons a little mixed up. It's the whites that have crossed eyes."

"No," said Petra, pulling another tube from her pack and twisting it open. "Whites have beautiful eyes. Much more variation in eye colors than other dragons, in fact, probably because of the white scales. I've seen whites with blue eyes, green eyes, and the most wonderful shade of amber. The one with amber eyes was a very old dragon whose scales had gone a lovely shade of cream, with just a slight tint of azure on the belly. He said that all his brothers had amber eyes, but none of his sisters, who tended to have lavender or violet eyes."

"You talk to dragons?" said Nix, managing to sound both intrigued and disbelieving at the same time. "You've spoken with white dragons?"

"The polite ones," answered Petra with a shrug. "If I'm painting a big portrait. It can take hours sometimes and they do get so bored posing. I guess that's why I like doing the little sketches more, like the ones of the greens. There I'm just drawing them quickly as they go about their lives. It seems less intrusive somehow. Dragons are very sensitive about such things."

"So how many kinds of dragons have you drawn?" challenged Nix. "I've captured more than three different species in my time. I could show the bites on my leg from a blue, and the one on my arm from a green, and the one from a red wyrmling on my-"

"Not in front of the ladies," cried Froedegra, the blacksmith's daughter, who knew very well where the little red dragon had bit Nix and never wanted to see that scar again.

"Thank you, but you don't need to show me anything," said Petra. "I know the bite of one dragon from another. I've drawn copper dragons on the High Moor, red dragons playing in a volcano's fire, gold dragons reading scrolls in labyrinths, white dragons sliding through snow and ice, bronze dragons being ridden by wizards on battlefields, blue dragons burrowing beneath hot sands, and black dragons flying above the salt marshes, where the world is neither sea nor land, but a bit of both. I've walked all the Realms from end to end, just to draw dragons."

As she recited her catalog of dragons, Petra pulled scroll tube after scroll tube from her pack. Dragons crawled, walked, swam, flew, dug, ran, stretched, fought, and slept in the dozens of drawings spread across all the tables of the tavern. More dragons in more colors than anyone had ever seen before. Silver and Nix were silenced.

But Badger Bates was moved to speak, because he knew that if he displayed the awe that the others showed, he'd lose Malaeragoth's sapphire scale. And Bates never gave up anything without a battle.

"There's no sapphire dragon here," he said, surveying the drawings that littered the tavern. "There's one that I've seen that you have not: Malaeragoth in his rage! I saw him that day he ripped up the wizard's killers, and nobody has seen him since."

"Malaeragoth! That dragon is dangerous to draw," said Petra, frowning at the name. "I painted him once and only once, as he paced through his cold caverns, but he caught sight of my painting in his scrying mirror and sent a servant to steal the picture from me."

"Easy to say, hard to prove," answered Bates. "I don't believe you. That old dragon has been gone for a hundred years. There's many here who know that I'm the last alive to see him."

Petra shook her blond head at the dwarf's taunt and began to gather up her pictures, rolling them tightly and packing them back into their protective tubes.

"Malaeragoth served Uvalkhur in Sembia many years ago," continued Bates, "and I was digging a fountain for the wizard's garden when thieves snuck in and murdered the master in his own place. And I can give you proof that I was there that day, for here's Malaeragoth's own scale," said the dwarf, banging his iron box down on the table and flipping open the lid.

"I never said that you were a liar, though you were more than rude to call me one," answered Petra in the same calm voice that she had used to tell Nix and Silver that they knew nothing about green dragons' eyes. "Malaeragoth's scale that may well be. It's off an old dragon, and a sapphire too. The color and the size are evidence of that. But if you've seen Malaeragoth's rage than you know that the sapphire dragon is a dragon best left sleeping. I wouldn't go shouting his name and boasting of my knowledge quite so loud. It's not for nothing that he's taken to calling himself the Unseen Dragon."

"Well," said Silver, determined to regain his status as dragon expert before the crowd, "Badger's not a complete fool. Proof is proof, as he likes to say. You could have drawn your pictures from the stories that you've heard here. You've been listening to us all winter long. How do we know that you've seen these beasts with your own eyes?"

"Because I only draw what I have seen and all my dragons are true in every detail," answered Petra, and her voice went a little higher at being questioned by the gnome as well as the dwarf. "And if you had any brains behind your eyes, you'd give me that cup that sits on the bar. For I've shown you more of dragons tonight than any tale told here this winter!"

Bates sucked in his breath and blew it out again. "Show me Malaeragoth," he said, "and I'll give you Malaeragoth's sapphire scale and double the coins in the cup as well."

The tavern crowd gasped. The sapphire scale might be rare, but coin out of Bates's purse was something even rarer.

"Done!" said Petra, for like most painters, she never could resist a bet. "I'll draw Malaeragoth as I last saw him, old and wily, and as fond of magic as any wizard! But he's a large dragon and I need a large space to paint." She looked around the room and walked over to the north wall. Mrs. Varney had whitewashed the plaster only a few days before. Petra looked at Varney, still sitting on the top of his bar, and asked, "May I paint the dragon here?"

Varney agreed, thinking that a mural of the sapphire dragon would draw the drinkers just as much as any story. And that, as Mrs. Varney would say in later years, was just typical of Varney's foolishness.

Petra called for raw eggs and clean water to mix her paints. Varney brought the ingredients, totaling the cost in his mind and determined to add it as "extras" to her tab. From her pack, Petra pulled out her paint box with its jars of powdered pigments and its multitude of brushes. She grabbed a stick from the fireplace and sketched the outline of Malaeragoth upon the wall. In her drawing, the dragon was frozen in midstep, facing a floating mirror.

Petra mixed the colors on the lid of her paintbox, which unhinged to become a separate tray holding five colors and three brushes. At first, she painted with a broad brush, tipped with oxhair, and laid down large strokes of a deep sea blue.

Then she painted with a smaller brush, tipped with fox fur, the finer details of Malaeragoth's scales, claws, ears, and nose in ultramarine and turquoise. Last, she took up a tiny brush, tipped with squirrel hair, to add minute dots of lapis and gold dust to the dragon's form. Malaeragoth twinkled like a jewel upon the wall, and the sapphire scale in Bates' box shown with the same blue light. Looking closely at Malaeragoth's long throat, the crowd could even see where a single scale had dropped away and been replaced by a newer, lighter blue scale.

Petra painted very fast, something that she had learned from trying to draw pictures of dragons in flight, but dawn light was showing at the windows before she was done. Her audience stretched and shook some sleeping gnomes awake as she cleaned her brushes with quick economical moves.

Nix and Silver shoved and pushed other people aside to take a closer look at the dragon, but Bates remained in his chair, clutching his iron box in one white-knuckled hand.

While the crowd admired the vibrant sapphire dragon, Petra mixed new colors in her box lid and painted a smaller picture within the frame of the painted mirror. But no one except Varney looked at Malaeragoth's mirror, painted as floating before the dragon. In the painted mirror, Varney saw his own tavern with himself counting coins into his coin box behind the bar and others craning to look at a woman painting upon the wall a sapphire dragon looking at them. It was, thought Varney, a very clever conceit and he felt very pleased about the new mural decorating the wall of the Dragon Defeated. Unlike the sign creaking in the wind outside, he wouldn't even have to pay the painter in kind for the new decoration of his tavern.

"Well," said Petra to Bates as she worked on the picture in the mirror, "is that not Malaeragoth to the life?"

The dwarf had not moved, nor spoken, nor slept for the entire night. Instead, he'd sat on a stool watching the painter with his face growing redder and redder as she got closer to finishing her portrait of the sapphire dragon. Looking at the black anger in his scowl, Nix and Silver knew that the dwarf had lost his bet, but they winked at each other, sure that Bates would find a way to wiggle out of paying.

"Not to the life," said the dwarf after a long, long pause. "I'm an old dwarf and I know what I know. I'm not going to be tricked by some woman."

The crowd murmured their disapproval. "Why it's a fine picture," said Nix, "you can almost see the beast breathe!"

"Still," added Silver for mischief's sake, "the dwarf doesn't lie. What's wrong with the painting, Badger?"

"Malaeragoth had eyes," said Bates pointing to two empty holes in the dragon's head where Petra had not laid a speck of paint upon the plaster. "If she'd really seen him, she'd know what color they were."

"As green as unripe plums when he's content, as bright as summer lightning when he's angry," answered Petra.

"Show me!" challenged the dwarf.

"Best not," said Petra, packing up her paints and all her brushes except one tiny brush tipped with golden hair. "Better that you should pay me as you promised and leave Malaeragoth as he stands. Leave his eyes blind. The old wyrm doesn't like people spying on him. And" she added in an angry undertone, "I don't like people trying to weasel out of a bet."

"If you can finish it, and finish it right," said Bates, "I'll pay. But not a penny before that, and not the cup either. Don't you lads agree?"

"Well," said Nix, who had a tingle in his big toe that reminded him of the time that a red hatchling had bitten him to the bone, "I think the lass has done a very fine job. It's definitely not your ordinary blue dragon. It's a sapphire as sure as anything, and who's to say it's not Malaeragoth."

"I do!" shouted Bates. "I'm the last living person to see that dragon and only I know what his eyes look like!"

Since Silver loved to make trouble, he sided with the dwarf. "An unfinished painting is like a tale without an end. We've never given the cup away to any story that didn't have a proper ending. Varney, what do you say?"

Varney made another mistake at that moment by saying, "I say that you're the judges. If you don't think it's worthy of the cup, the cup and the coins stay here. Not a single button for the lady. And you, Miss Petra the Painter, owe me for your drinks and those eggs and water for your paints."

Petra flushed as red as Bates. "Have it your way," she muttered, loud enough for Nix to hear and remember afterward. "I warned you. But it's your wall. And your lives."

She picked up the little brush tipped with golden hair and pulled a silk-wrapped jar out of the side pocket of her pack. She unscrewed the ivory lid of the jar and dipped the brush into it. Something sparkled on the tip of the brush but nobody could say for sure what color was the paint. With quick, deft strokes, Petra filled in the eyes of the dragon.

The dragon's eyes were beautiful, iridescent as pearls and green as new plums, and they sparkled in the pale winter sunlight shining through the cracks of the tavern's shutters. The play of shadow and light upon the dragon's head made the eyes look alive, thought Varney.

"I'll take my payment now," said Petra, grabbing the cup off the bar and tipping the coins and buttons into her pack. She was heading toward the door as she talked.

To everyone's amazement, Bates did not protest. The dwarf let out a long, loud sigh.

"Yup," he said. "It's Malaeragoth!" And he added in a stubborn, angry tone, "But it's not a very good likeness! He was much uglier than that."

At the sound of its name, the painted dragon blinked and took a long, hard look into the painted mirror that floated in front of it. Varney stared at the painted mirror too. He saw the crowd within the mirror turn, and shove, and move in a swell of mixing painted colors, pushing away from the painted dragon staring at them with a malevolent gaze.

Varney saw his own painted jaw drop open in surprise. His painted wife rushed to his side. And he felt Mrs. Varney's hard grip upon his arm.

"Run, you old fool, run!" she shrieked.

On the wall, Malaeragoth's painted lips curled back from long, gleaming fangs.

"It moved!" cried Nix, diving for a window and tearing at the shutter as he spoke, years of dragon hunting propelling him away from possible danger.

Silver followed close upon his heels.

"No," said Badger Bates, stubborn and argumentative to the last, "it can't move. It's just a picture."

But even as Bates spoke, the painted dragon coiled off the wall, leaving gaping holes in the plaster behind him. Stones and plaster crashed and ricocheted through the screaming, running crowd. Varney shoved Mrs. Varney behind the heavy wooden bar and threw himself over her.

"Ooof," said Mrs. Varney.

"Hush," said Varney.

The painting crumbled slowly like a dam dissolving before raging flood water. Plaster and stones, flecked with a blue rainbow of painted colors, washed across the floor.

Chairs and tables snapped like twigs beneath the dragon's great weight as he advanced into the room. Malaeragoth lashed his tail free of the painting and the roof beams cracked as he rose to his full height, pushing up against them. Malaeragoth roared, a psionic blast that blew through the crowd like a storm wind through a flock of birds. The sheer force of Malaeragoth's cry buckled the remaining walls and blew out the shutters. Nix and Silver leaped through the open window and ran as fast as they could, never stopping until they reached the edge of town.

But Badger Bates stood firm, rooted by the sheer shock of seeing the sapphire dragon again and frozen by the fury of knowing that he was not the last living person to witness Malaeragoth's fabled rage.

And Malaeragoth fell upon Badger Bates, crushing him beneath sapphire scales. The dragon raised itself off the dead dwarf, roared once more, and vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

When the dust cleared from the collapse of the north wall and the subsequent fall of the Dragon Defeated's roof, Varney and Mrs. Varney crawled out from their hiding place behind the bar and began to pick through the ruins.

Once assured that the sapphire dragon was gone, Nix and Silver, being very thankful to still be alive, returned to help them.

"Well," said Silver, rummaging through Badger's flattened remains as any good thief would, "there's nothing of value here." He slipped his former friend's purse into his own pocket and blew the dust of the crushed iron box and Malaeragoth's sapphire scale off his hands. "What have you got there, Nix?"

"It's the sign," said Nix. He called to the tavernkeeper trying to dig out his squashed coin box from the rubble. "Hey, Varney, do you want this?"

The sign's paint had been scraped away in several places, leaving the rearing white dragon without a head, showing only two of the three adventurers, and depicting just the remains of the painted dwarfs left boot. But the princess, with a tiny crown perched on top of her golden curls, was still smiling valiantly at her rescuers.

"Aww," said Nix, "it's a terrible shame that it's so ruined. It was a grand picture. Maybe you could have the painter woman paint it again. She said she was sorry for what happened, but Bates shouldn't have tried to cheat on a bet."

Varney shuddered. "Not her. I'll have nothing more to do with a woman who draws dragons," he said. "She's off to the east, says she wants to study landwyrms."

Varney took the sign from Nix and stared at it for a few minutes.

"I have an idea," Varney said, getting more and more enthusiastic as he talked. "I'll cut it down and just save the princess. We could call the new place something like the Royal Rescue and hire a bard to sing tales of royal ladies in love. Everybody likes a good love story in the springtime. Stories about princesses are much safer than letting people draw dragons on a wall."

But that princess idea, as Mrs. Varney would say in later years to friends and relations, was just the start of another of Varney's disasters.