Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 4 - The Blood of a Dragon

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The Blood of a Dragon
Dedicated to Marian, Tom and Gordon
Chapter One
The boy stared eagerly down into the Arena, chewing his lip in anticipation.
The horse races were over, and as a foretaste of what was to come the sands
were being raked smooth by magic.
The rakes themselves were the same perfectly ordinary wooden rakes that had
been dragged back and forth across the sand by perfectly ordinary people
before each race. Now, however, the rakes were moving by themselves, as if
held in invisible hands, and the slaves, or servants, or whoever the people
were who were responsible for the Arena's maintenance, were nowhere to be
seen.
Dumery wondered whether the rakes had been animated somehow, or whether they
were being wielded by sylphs or sprites or demons, or whether the servants had
been turned invisible. Magic could do so many amazing things!
The rakes were all painted bright blue, and he wondered if that was important.
Did the magic in use here only work on blue things? He knew that magic could
have peculiar requirements. Or were the rakes blue because the Lord of the
Arena had taken blue and gold as his colors?
Or perhaps, had he taken his colors from the golden sand, and the blue rakes
and other fittings?
Or was there some other reason entirely?
There were so many things that he didn't know! He had read everything he could
find about magic, but that wasn't much; he had asked questions of everyone he
knew, but he knew no wizards, nor witches or warlocks or sorcerers or any
other sort of wonder-worker. He had occasionally met a magician or two, and
had always asked questions, but he hadn't always gotten answers.
The rest of the time he just asked whoever was handy, even though they weren't
magicians. Sometimes they had answers anyway, sometimes they didn't, so he
just kept trying.
"Dad," he asked, "why are the rakes blue?"
Startled out of a contemplative half-doze, Doran of Shiphaven let the front
legs of his chair drop heavily to the floor of the family box, rattling the
gold chain that draped across his velvet-clad chest. Rings clicked against
wood as he gripped the arm of the chair and turned to stare at his son.
"What?" he asked.
"Those rakes out there," Dumery said, pointing. "Why are they all painted
blue?"
On his left, Dumery's sister Dessa, a year older than he, giggled into her
hands. Their two older brothers, noticing the noise, peered over from their
father's right side to see what the fuss was about.
"So they won't rot, I suppose," Doran said, puzzled, "or to keep down the
splinters."
"But whyblue?" Dumery persisted. "Why not red, or green? Brown wouldn't show
the dirt as much, or if theywant to see the dirt then white would be better.
Why blue?"
After a baffled pause, his father admitted, "I don't have the faintest idea."
Derath leaned over, smirking, and said, "It's to match your eyes, Dumery!"
"My eyes are green, stupid!" Dumery retorted. "Maybe you'd better have an
herbalist checkyour eyes if you don't know that!"
"Oh,I know that," Derath said sweetly, "but the Lord of the Arena doesn't!" He
turned and grinned triumphantly at the eldest brother, Doran the Younger, who
snorted derisively.
Dessa giggled harder than ever.
Dumery felt his cheeks redden slightly, and he turned his attention back to
the Arena floor, pointedly ignoring his siblings. He didn't think Derath's
joke was funny, since it didn't really even make any sense, but he knew from
long experience that if Derath and Doran and Dessa once got started mocking
him it would last for hours. Retorting wouldn't stop it; ignoring them might.
The raking was finished, Dumery saw, and the arena sands gleamed smooth and
golden in the afternoon sun. The crowd quieted in anticipation.
The silence grew, and a certain tension grew with it, until suddenly a cloud
of thick yellow smoke appeared, swirling out of one of the many gateways that
opened into the arena from the labyrinth below. The smoke did not dissipate,
like any natural smoke or vapor, but instead hung together in a spinning
globe, something like a miniature whirlwind but far denser, and ball-shaped
rather than the tapering cylinder of a normal whirlwind.
Dumery caught his breath and stared, and beside him Dessa stopped giggling. On
the other side of the box Doran the Younger and Derath fell silent, as well.
The seething ball of smoke drifted out into the arena, moving across the sand
at about the speed of a brisk walk, until it stood in the exact center, its
base just barely disturbing the neatly-raked lines.
The smoke was a paler yellow than the deep gold of the sands, a sickly, ugly
color, like the belly of a snake. Dumery stared at it, utterly fascinated.
Thunder boomed from nowhere, and lightning flashed, almost blinding him; he
looked up, startled, but the sky was still clear and blue, the sunlight still
sweeping across the stands.
When he looked back, the yellow smoke was gone save for a few fading wisps,
and in its place stood the wizard.
Dumery leaned forward eagerly.
The wizard was a plump fellow of medium height, wearing a gleaming
ankle-length robe of fine red silk. Dumery was no good at guessing ages, but
this man was clearly no longer young-his face was weathered and his jowls
sagged. His hair was still a glossy black, though, without a trace of grey.
The wizard thrust his hands up in the air, fingers spread, and cried,
"Behold!"
The vastness of the Arena swallowed his voice, and it was obvious that only
those in the best seats could hear what he had said. Dumery felt a twinge of
disappointment at that. Surely, a wizard's voice should have enough magic in
it to overcome such inconveniences.
Then he forgot about the voice as streams of colored smoke poured forth from
the ten spread fingers. Each spouting plume was a different color-crimson,
violet, ochre, lizard green, and pale blue spewed from the left hand, while
magenta, indigo, copper, forest green, and midnight blue streamed from the
right.
The wizard waved his hands, crossing them above his head, and the rising bands
of smoke braided themselves in intricate patterns, each remaining pure and
discrete.
Then, abruptly, the smoke stopped, and the wizard dropped his hands. He took a
step forward, and then another, and with the third step Dumery realized that
his feet had left the ground. He was climbing up into thin air as if it were
solid stone steps!
When he had ascended to a height of about eight feet above the ground the
wizard stopped, and stood calmly unsupported in mid-air. He waved a hand
again, and a trail of golden sparks glittered behind it.
"Behold!" he cried again.
Behind him, the sands of the Arena rose up into a column, sweeping away the
last traces of the colored smoke. The column rose to a height of perhaps
fifteen feet, then burst apart into a flock of white doves that flew quickly
away, scattering in all directions and fluttering up out of the Arena. A
single snowy feather fell from one bird's wing, unnoticed until the wizard
turned and pointed at it.
The feather grew, and changed, and became a white cat that fell to the sand,
landing, catlike, on all fours. It did not run away or wash itself as an
ordinary cat would have, but instead began chasing its tail, spinning faster
and faster until Dumery could no longer make out anything but a blur.
When it suddenly stopped, the cat was black, from its whiskers to the tip of
its tail.
It sat back on its haunches, and the wizard waved at it.
It grew, and became a panther.
The wizard waved again and the panther was gone, leaving only a cloud of smoke
that rolled up the sky and dissipated.
Dumery stared, enthralled, as the performance continued.
To his right, Dessa was somewhat less impressed. Dumery could hear her humming
quietly to herself.
When the wizard conjured a naked man out of a seashell Dessa giggled; Dumery
ignored her.
To his left his father was dozing off in the bright sunlight. Beyond him
Derath and Doran were loudly whispering crude jokes to each other.
Dumery's lips tightened.
How could they fail to appreciate such marvels? How had he ever been born into
such a family of clods?
Finally, the wizard finished his performance, bowed, and then began climbing
up that invisible staircase in the sky again. He mounted higher, and higher,
and higher, while behind him the blue rakes emerged again-guided, this time,
by merely human hands.
Dumery paid no attention to the rakes, nor the servants wielding them, nor the
scenery being hastily erected for the play that would conclude the day's show.
He watched the wizard as he climbed upward into the sky, out over the side of
the arena, passing fifty or sixty feet above the family of Grondar the
Wainwright two boxes over, eighty feet above the outer wall of the Arena, and
on into the distance until he vanished.
Once the wizard was really, truly gone Dumery waited impatiently for the play
to be over, paying no attention to the clever dialogue-after all, even when he
could make out the words, half the time he didn't understand the jokes, which
usually seemed to involve sex. His knowledge of sex was still very limited and
entirely theoretical.
The sun was scarcely above the western rim of the Arena when the actors
finally took their bows and the crowd called out polite applause.
As they were marching down through the stone corridors, on their way back to
the street, the elder Doran remarked, "Well, Dumery, I hope you enjoyed that.
Seemed like a good way to mark your birthday."
Dumery nodded, not really listening, and totally unaware of the annoyed look
his lack of enthusiasm received.
"WhenI turned twelve," his father continued a moment later, "I didn't get any
trip to the Arena, let me tell you! I spent the day in the hold of a ship,
cleaning up the mess where a storm at sea had broken open a dozen crates of
pottery and herbs."
Dumery nodded. "You own that ship now," he pointed out. He had heard the story
before-several times, in fact.
"Damn right I do!" Doran replied. "I was lucky, and I worked hard for it, and
the gods blessed me-I own that ship. And if she's still afloat when I die,
she'll go to your brother Doran, becausehe was lucky, and was born into the
right household. You boys don't appreciate what you've got, because you've
always had it, you didn't have to work for it."
"I appreciate it, Dad," Derath interrupted.
"No, you don't," the elder Doran snapped. "Maybe you think you do, but you
don't really, because you've never been poor. Your mother and I saw to that!"
Derath and Doran the Younger exchanged glances.
"You've never had to work for anything in your lives," their father continued,
and Dumery wondered whether he was complaining, or boasting, or both.
They reached the street and turned north in the golden twilight, joining the
loose-packed throng that was strolling up Arena Street, a hundred sandals
slapping the hard-packed dirt in a patter like falling rain. Shopkeepers were
lighting their storefront torches, and the familiar, friendly scent of burning
oil reached Dumery's nose. As a rule he never noticed the city's ubiquitous
odor, which had been a constant in his life since the day he was born, but the
smoky smell of the torches seemed to emphasize that distinctive mingling of
spices and ordure that always flavored Ethshar's air. As he remembered the
wizard's performance, the fading light and that complex odor suddenly seemed
magical, transforming the familiar avenue into something exotic and wonderful.
"Never worked a day, any of you," his father muttered suddenly, breaking the
spell cast by the sunset and smoke.
"Andthey never will!" Dumery said, annoyed, jerking a thumb at his brothers.
Doran of Shiphaven looked at him, startled, then back at Doran and Derath, and
then at Dumery again.
"No, they won't," he agreed. "And I don't suppose Dessa will, either, if she's
careful."
Dessa threw him a startled glance, but then went back to watching the shops as
they passed, ignoring the rest of the conversation.
"Just me," Dumery said, trying to sound flippant, rather than resentful.
"Well," his father said, "I don't know. We could find you a way out of
working, I'm sure."
"Oh? Like what?" Dumery replied, making less of an effort to hide his
bitterness. "Doran's getting the ships, and Derath's getting the money, and
Dessa's getting the house-what do I get, if not an apprenticeship fee? What
else is left? And every apprentice I ever heard of works hard enough!"
"Maybe we could dower you..." Doran began.
Dumery made a rude noise.
"As far as I know," he said, ignoring his father's annoyance at the
interruption, "I don't want to get married, let alone like that!"
Doran said, "You'll want to get married when you're older..."
"Oh, I suppose I will," Dumery interrupted, "but I don't want some fancy
arranged marriage where I don't have any say about who or when or what we'll
do afterward."
Doran nodded. "I can see that," he said. He kept his eyes straight ahead, not
looking at Dumery.
They walked on in silence for a few moments. Doran and Derath dropped back a
bit, slowed by their horseplay, and Dessa dawdled as well, looking in the shop
windows, so that Dumery and his father were able to talk in relative privacy,
without being overheard by the rest of the family.
"Maybe," Doran suggested, "we could arrange for you to stay with the family
business-not as an owner, of course, because we've already settled it all on
Dorie, but as a manager, perhaps. Something that would pay well."
"And wouldn't have me hauling on ropes? Thanks, Dad, but I don't think so.
It's bad enough being the younger brother now; I don't think I want to spend
the rest of my life being Dorie's kid brother, and having to do what he tells
me or starve."
"You always were stubborn," Doran said, "and too damn proud to take orders
from anyone."
They walked on, and a block later Doran shrugged and said, "Then I can't think
of anything except an apprenticeship."
"I know," Dumery said. "I've been thinking about it for weeks myself, and I
couldn't think of anything else. And I don't really mind that much. I'm still
lucky, just as you said-it's just Dorie and Derath and Dessa were luckier."
Doran could think of no reply to that.
After a moment, Dumery added, "I'm not afraid of work, anyway."
"Well, that's good," Doran said, in a satisfied tone. "Have you given much
thought to what sort of an apprenticeship you want? I'm sure we could get you
aboard any ship you like, if you'd care to be a pilot, or to work toward a
captaincy."
"Thanks, but I don't think so," Dumery replied. "I'm not that interested in
going to sea."
"Well, there's bookkeeping, or chandlery, or we could apprentice you to a
merchant of some sort. Had you thought about any of those?"
"I've thought about them all, Dad," Dumery said, stating what he considered to
be the obvious. "I know what I want to do."
"Oh?" Doran was slightly amused by his son's certitude. It was a trait the boy
had had since infancy, always knowing what he wanted and being determined to
get it, no matter what it took. "And what's that?"
Dumery looked up at his father and said, quite seriously, "I want to be a
wizard."
Doran stared at his son in shocked disbelief.
Chapter Two
Doran of Shiphaven had not given his son an immediate answer. When pressed, he
had limited himself to a noncommital, "We'll see."
In the days following the show at the Arena he thought the matter over
carefully.
There could be no doubt at all that the boy was serious. Dumery had never been
one to take things lightly; when he asked for something he meant it, it wasn't
just a passing whim. And he had been obsessed with magic for years now.
That wasn't unusual, in a boy his age, and somehow Doran hadn't realized just
how obsessed Dumery was. The child didn't just want tosee a wizard, he wanted
tobe one.
That took some thought.
In theory, wizardry was a perfectly respectable profession, and Doran should
have no objection to seeing his youngest son pursue it, but somehow he just
wasn't comfortable with the idea. Wizards were such strange people, either
showy braggarts or ill-tempered recluses, from what he'd seen. And wasn't
magic supposed to be dangerous stuff? All that messing around with unseen
forces simply didn't seem safe.
It could be worse, of course, it could easily bemuch worse. The boy might have
wanted to be a demonologist. Nowthat was dangerous work, dealing with the
forces of evil themselves, and trying to wring good from them!
Or maybe not trying to wring good from them, for that matter; Doran had
certainly heard plenty of rumors about demonologists performing assassinations
and the like. And nobody ever denied that they laid curses on people. And
every so often demonologists would disappear, leaving only the most bizarre
and fragmentary evidence behind, and nobody really knew whether they'd lost
control of their demons, or lost out in a dispute with other magicians, or
maybe been struck dead by the gods for their tampering in places where humans
weren't supposed to meddle.
At least Dumery wasn't interested inthat!
And he wasn't interested in witchcraft, which was such a peasantish sort of
magic, or sorcery, which still had a rather unsavory reputation even though
the Great War had been over for centuries, or warlockry, which was new and
strange and whose practitioners all seemed to make everybody very nervous.
Theurgy, though-that was respectable enough, and nobody ever heard about
theurgists getting a spell wrong and vanishing in a puff of purple smoke.
Talking to gods seemed a lot healthier than messing around with runes and
powders and so forth.
He suggested it at dinner one night, and Dumery sat silently for a moment,
pushing his greens around his plate with his fork.
"Well?" Doran demanded at last.
"I don't know, Dad," Dumery replied. "I mean, it just doesn't interest me the
way wizardry does. None of the other magicks do-at least, not the ones I've
heard of."
Doran was baffled. "What's so special about wizardry, then?"
"Oh, I don't know," Dumery replied. "It just ... I mean, it ... it justis,
that's all."
Doran sighed. He knew he couldn't argue with that. It rarely did any good to
argue withanything Dumery said.
"We'll see what we can do," he said.
He tried to think of an alternative, or an excuse for delay, but nothing came,
and three days later he and Dumery slogged through muddy streets in a steady
spring downpour, hats pulled down tight on their heads, on their way to an
interview with Thetheran the Mage.
"Spoiled," Doran muttered under his breath as yet another puddle turned out to
be deeper than it looked, "I've spoiled the boy. Wizardry-ha!"
Dumery could hear that his father was muttering, but couldn't make out the
words, and took it for curses directed against the gods of weather.
He didn't mind the rain, not really-the important thing was that he was going
to be a wizard! He really was!
Oh, he'd start out as a mere apprentice, of course, and he'd have to work
harder than he ever had in his life, and study night and day, and practice,
but after six years-or nine, or twelve, depending-he'd be a wizard! A real
wizard!
They were on Wizard Street now, and Dumery pushed his hat back a little, so
that he could see the signboards better as they walked along. He didn't want
to miss Thetheran's place.
"There it is!" he called, pointing.
His father looked up. "Yes," he agreed, "that's it."
As they approached the little shop the door swung open; Dumery felt a tingle
of excitement run through him, and he shivered with anticipation.
A tall, gaunt man in a midnight-blue robe appeared in the doorway, then
stepped back to make room for them as they crossed the threshold.
Something Dumery couldn't see snatched their hats away, sprinkling his face
with cold rainwater spilled from the brim.
"Come in," the tall man said. "Come in and dry off."
Dumery looked up at him expectantly, thinking that their clothes were about to
be dried magically, but the wizard-if this was he-performed no magic, he
merely gestured toward a half-circle of velvet-upholstered chairs arranged
around the hearth, where a fire was crackling comfortably.
Mildly disappointed, Dumery followed along and slid onto one of the chairs.
His father took the next, and the tall man the one beyond.
"So you're Dumery," the tall man said, staring at him intently.
Dumery stared back, but said nothing.
"I am Thetheran the Mage, master wizard and master of this house, and I bid
you welcome," the tall man said.
Doran discreetly prodded his son with an elbow. "I'm Dumery of Shiphaven,"
Dumery said, remembering his manners. "Thank you for making us welcome."
"I understand that you wish to apprentice yourself to me, to learn the
wizardly arts," Thetheran said, still staring him in the eye.
Dumery threw his father a glance, then looked back at the wizard. "That's
right," he said. "I want to be a wizard."
Thetheran finally removed his gaze from Dumery's face, looking instead at
Doran. "If you will forgive me, sir, I must speak to the lad in private, and
see whether he has the makings of an apprentice. You may wait here, or go
where you will and return in an hour's time." He raised one hand in a peculiar
way, the wrist twisted in what looked to Dumery like a very uncomfortable
fashion, and added, "Should you choose to stay, you will be brought food and
drink, if you wish. Simply call out what you want; I haveoushka, if the rain
has chilled you, and ale, to wash theoushka down or merely to slake your
thirst, and a well of clear water that I keep pure by my magic. To eat, I fear
I have little to spare at present but good bread and a fine wheel of Shannan
red cheese."
Doran nodded politely, and was about to say something, when the wizard stood,
staring at Dumery again and obviously no longer interested in anything the
boy's father might have to say.
He reached out, and Dumery stood as well.
The wizard started to lead the boy toward a curtained doorway in the rear wall
of the shop-if a shop it actually was, with no merchandise nor displays of any
kind, but only the furnishings that one might find in an ordinary parlor.
"Wait a minute," Doran called.
Thetheran turned back toward him.
So did Dumery, and for a moment the boy thought his father looked uneasy,
though he knew that couldn't be true; nothing ever bothered Doran of
Shiphaven, master of the sixth-largest trading fleet in the city's harbor.
"Just call?" he asked.
Thetheran nodded.
"Callwho?" Doran asked.
Thetheran sighed. "What would you like?" he asked.
What Doran really wanted was to take Dumery and go home and forget all about
any involvement with wizards or magic, but Dumery wanted to be here, and it
was pouring rain outside, which made the prospect of strolling about for an
hour extremely unappealing.
He didn't understand what the wizard was talking about, telling him to just
call for what he wanted, but right at that moment he thought he could use
something warming to drink."Oushka," he said. "I'd likeoushka."
Thetheran nodded."Oushka!" he called in a firm, clear voice, pointing at
Doran.
With a sudden swirl, the curtain hiding the back room was swept aside, as if
by a strong wind, and a silver tray sailed out into the room, unsupported and
rotating slowly. Upon it stood a brown earthenware jug and a small crystal
glass.
It sank gently onto the chair next to Doran, who stared at it-fearfully?
Distastefully? Dumery wasn't sure.
Then Thetheran took Dumery by the hand and led him through the doorway, and he
saw no more of his father or the magical tray for quite some time.
Chapter Three
At Thetheran's behest Dumery seated himself on a tall stool that stood close
beside the wizard's littered workbench. He sat there, staring at the room
around him, while the mage puttered about with various mysterious objects.
This room was as large as the front parlor, maybe a bit larger, but far more
crowded. The parlor had held six chairs around the hearth, a few small tables,
and a divan, with a few assorted knicknacks and oddments here and there; the
walls had been mostly bare. In this workshop Dumery couldn't evensee the
walls, behind all the clutter!
A stair leading to the upper storey ran along one side, and an incredible
miscellany of pots, pans, and boxes was jammed under it, stacked every which
way. On the opposite side several hundred feet of shelving were piled high
with books, scrolls, papers, pouches, boxes, bottles, jars, jugs, and other
wizardly paraphernalia. The great stone workbench ran down the center of the
room midway between these, and while half of it was kept scrupulously clean
and clear, the other half was strewn with scraps of paper, spilled powders in
every color of the rainbow and several colors of more doubtful origin, bits of
bone and bent metal, and other arcane debris.
At either end of the room a curtained doorway led somewhere-one to the front
parlor, the other the gods knew where. The walls around both doorways were
plastered over with diagrams and sketches and outlines, none of them making
any sense at all to Dumery.
Something small and green was staring at Dumery from behind a jar; he stared
back, and the thing ducked down out of sight before Dumery could get a good
look at it. He wasn't sure what it was, exactly; he'd never seen anything
quite like it. Some of his brothers' friends had been telling stories about
strange little creatures that had been stowing away aboard ships from the
Small Kingdoms and then getting loose around the docks; maybe the stories were
true and this was one of them.
Wizard Street wasn't anywhere near the docks, though. Maybe it was some
magical creature, like the sylph, the air elemental, that must have brought
his father'soushka.
Or maybe it wasn't a sylph, maybe the tray was enchanted-wizardry was so
varied and wonderful!
He sat there, surrounded by the artifacts of wizardry, and stared at it all in
amazement.
Then Thetheran was back, holding a small black vial and a pair of narrow
silver tongs. He put them down on the workbench and turned to Dumery.
"So, boy," he said, "you want to be a wizard?"
"Yes, sir," Dumery said, nodding enthusiastically. "Very much indeed."
"Aha," Thetheran said. "It's not your father's idea, then?"
"No, sir; I believe he'd much rather I do something else. ButI want to learn
wizardry!"
Thetheran nodded. "Good," he said, "very good."
He drew a dagger from his belt, and Dumery tensed, wondering if some sort of
blood ritual of initiation was involved.
Thetheran reached out and touched Dumery's forehead with the tip of the
dagger, very gently. "Don't move," he warned.
Dumery didn't move. Not only did he want to make a good impression, not only
was he worried about magic spells, but that knife looked very, very sharp.
Thetheran muttered something, and Dumery, looking up as best he could without
moving, thought he saw the blade of the dagger glowing first blue, then
purple.
Thetheran blinked, then pulled the blade away. He looked at it closely.
Once again it looked like a perfectly ordinary dagger to Dumery.
Thetheran muttered something again, then said, "Hold still."
As before, Dumery froze.
Thetheran reached out with the dagger again, but this time he touched it to
Dumery's black velvet tunic, directly over the boy's heart. He held it there
for a moment, and then ran it lightly down Dumery's breastbone and across his
belly to his navel.
Dumery held his breath until Thetheran finally pulled the knife away. As
Dumery exhaled, the wizard held the blade up in front of his eyes and studied
it closely, his expression at first puzzled, then annoyed.
He put the dagger down on the workbench and picked up the vial and tongs.
"Here," he said, gesturing, "watch very closely, now.Very closely. I'm going
to do a simple little spell, and then ask you to try and do it."
Dumery nodded, almost trembling with anticipation. He leaned over and stared
intently.
Thetheran opened the vial and fished out its contents with the tongs. He held
up a roll of white fabric for Dumery to see.
Dumery nodded slightly, keeping his eyes on the little cloth bundle.
Thetheran put it on the bench and unrolled it with the tongs.
Inside lay a sliver of greyish wood roughly the size of a man's finger, a tiny
glass bottle half-full of a brownish-red substance, and a wad of brown felt.
Thetheran spread the wad of brown felt to reveal a lock of hair. He plucked
out a single strand with the tongs and held it to one side.
Then, using his other hand, he pried the black rubber cap from the miniature
bottle.
He dipped the single hair into the open neck of the bottle and drew up a
single misshapen drop of the substance within, and as he did so he said
something, speaking very slowly. The words sounded to Dumery like, "Fulg the
walkers nose arbitrary grottle."
Then he moved one hand in a circle while the fingers of the other seemed to
dance madly about, and then he lowered the hair with the drop of stuff down to
the piece of wood.
The instant before it touched, he said what Dumery took for, "Kag snort ruffle
thumb."
When the stuff did touch, a white spark appeared. Thetheran dropped the tongs
and let the hair fall-except that it seemed to Dumery it fell the wrong
direction, and when he tried to follow it with his eyes he couldn't find it.
Then the wizard reached down and picked up the glowing spark between his two
index fingers. He brought his thumbs down to it, hiding it from sight.
Then he announced, "Behold, Haldane's Iridescent Amusement!" He drew his hands
apart, and there in the air between them, stretching from one thumb to the
other, was a string of gleaming polychrome bubbles the size of oranges, each
joined to the next at a single point, colors shifting eerily around their
surfaces almost as if they were somehow alive.
Dumery stared, delighted.
Then the bubbles all silently popped and were gone, without leaving even a
trace of moisture. Thetheran smiled a tight little smile, then touched his
hands together and drew them apart again, and there was a new string, the
bubbles even larger this time. Where before the commonest hues had been blues
and reds, now green and gold predominated.
Then these, too, popped, and once more the mage drew out a new string, this
time milky and streaked with purple.
When those vanished there were no more.
"There," Thetheran said. "Now you try it."
Dumery blinked, and reached out for the tongs.
The hair had vanished, along with the drop of stuff, so Dumery picked up a new
one from the felt. He was unfamiliar with the tongs, so it took several
attempts before he managed to pick up one, and only one, strand.
He dipped it in the little bottle and drew up a drop of the reddish gunk. He
announced, "Fulg the walkers nose arbitrary grottle."
He waved one hand in a circle while wiggling the fingers of the other.
He touched the hair and goo to the piece of wood and said, "Kag snort ruffle
thumb."
Then he waited for the spark to appear.
Nothing happened; the thick stuff on the hair dripped onto the wood, but that
was all.
He waited, but his hand quickly grew tired, holding the tongs steady like
that, and at last he had to put them down.
"It didn't work," he said.
Thetheran was staring at him.
"My boy," he said, "you are a phenomenon. A curiosity, really."
Dumery blinked. "What?" he asked.
"You are a fluke, an aberration. You have absolutelyno talent for wizardry
whatsoever!"
His previous blink had been from startlement; this time he blinked to hold
back tears that were suddenly welling up. "What?" he said again.
"Lad, I tested you first with a simple spell with that dagger," Thetheran
explained. "It should have glowed green, at least, when I touched you with it.
If you had the talent strongly, it would have been golden, and if you were
destined to be one of the great wizards of the age it would have glowed
white-hot. You saw what it did-a flicker of blue, no more, and it stayed as
cold as iron."
Dumery stared up at him, uncomprehending.
"I thought perhaps I'd misspoken the spell, or something else had gone wrong,"
Thetheran continued, "so I tried again, with your heart instead of your head,
and still got nothing. Well, I thought, perhaps you're a special case. So I
gave you a chance to show me a spell. I took the hair and blood of a beheaded
murderer, and a piece from the scaffold he died on, and I worked one of the
simplest little spells I know, one that can't go wrong easily, if at all, and
then I let you try-and you gotevery single step wrong! Not one word of the
incantation, not one gesture, was right! You didn't even speak the second
stanza until too late in the procedure. And with some of the most potently
charged ingredients I have on hand, short of wasting dragon's blood, you
raised not a single spark of eldritch energy. Not one little twinge.Nothing."
"But..." Dumery began.
"It's amazing," Thetheran said, shaking his head.
"Let me try again!" Dumery said. "Please! I'll do it better this time, I swear
I will!"
Thetheran stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. "Go ahead," he said.
Eagerly, blinking away tears, Dumery picked out another hair with the tongs.
Maybe, he thought, the power wasn't there because I didn't know what these
things were. The hair and blood of a beheaded murderer-gods!
He trembled slightly at the very idea.
He dipped the hair in the bottle of blood and drew it out, and Thetheran
coached him."Pfah'lu gua'akhar snuessar bitra rhi grau k'l," the wizard said.
"Fall oogah acker snoozer bid rory grackle," Dumery said. He watched closely
the gestures Thetheran made, and tried very hard to imitate them.
"Khag s'naur t'traugh f'lethaum,"Thetheran said.
"Cog sonar to trow fill them," Dumery said, just before he touched the drop of
blood to the bit of scaffold.
Again, nothing at all happened. Dumery stared at the bit of wood in abject
disappointment.
When Thetheran started to say something, Dumery burst out, "Let me try a
different spell! This one's too hard to start with; let me try another!"
"It's an easy spell, boy," the wizard said, and when Dumery started to protest
he held up a silencing hand. "It's an easy spell. But we'll try another, if
you like."
Dumery nodded.
He fared no better with Felojun's First Hypnotic than he had with Haldane's
Iridescent Amusement. The ingredients were simpler-a mere pinch of dust from
the floor-and the incantation shorter, being a single word, but still, Dumery
failed utterly.
"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."
摘要：

TheBloodofaDragonDedicatedtoMarian,TomandGordonChapterOneTheboystaredeagerlydownintotheArena,chewinghislipinanticipation.Thehorseraceswereover,andasaforetasteofwhatwastocomethesandswerebeingrakedsmoothbymagic.Therakesthemselveswerethesameperfectlyordinarywoodenrakesthathadbeendraggedbackandforthacro...

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