But that argument wasn’t going to convince Kensher to let him stay, he was sure.
“And you really don’t care if I tell all the wizards back in Ethshar that you people are running a farm here, and not hunting dragons in the wild?” he asked.
Kinner blinked, Pancha flinched, and Kensher sighed.
“Not much,” Kensher said. “The hunting story is a convenient fiction, and we’re happy with it, but it’s not really essential. We’d stay in business without it; we might need to negotiate a little with the Wizard’s Guild, that’s all.” He put down his spoon. “Look, Dumery,” he said, “give it up. We don’t need an apprentice here, and if we did, it wouldn’t be a rich, spoiled city boy who was stupid enough to follow me home the way you did. And particularly not one who makes threats about revealing secrets.”
Pancha flinched again. “Kenshi,” she said, “don’t be so harsh. It took courage and resourcefulness for him to come all the way up here by himself.”
“Doesn’t mean it was smart,” Kensher said. “And resourceful or not, we donot need an apprentice!”
Kinner made a noise of agreement, and even Pancha couldn’t argue with that.
Dumery often didn’t know when to quit, but this time it finally sank in that he wasn’t getting anywhere, and he finished his pudding in silence.
When he was done he sat staring at the empty plate, and inspiration struck. He looked up.
Pancha was clearing away the empty dishes, and Kinner had gone off somewhere with some of his younger grandchildren, but Kensher was still at the table, leaning back comfortably.
“What if I bought a dragon?” Dumery asked.
Kensher let out his breath in a whoosh, then leaned forward, startled.
“What?” he demanded.
“What if I bought a dragon?” Dumery repeated. “Or two, actually. They wouldn’t have to be good ones; a couple of hatchlings you’d cull anyway would do just fine.”
“We don’t sell dragons,” Kensher said, eyeing him suspiciously.
“You sell their blood,” Dumery said. “What’s the difference?”
“Plenty,” Kensher said. “A bottle of blood never bit anyone’s arm off.”
“All right, so it’s not the same,” Dumery admitted. “Will you sell me a pair anyway?”
“A pair, is it? You mean you don’t just want any two dragons, you want a male and a female?”
“Well, yes,” Dumery admitted, “that is what I had in mind.”
Kensher stared at him for a moment, then leaned back in his chair and said, “Boy, you’re amazing. You must think I’m as dumb as you are! You want me to sell you a breeding pair so you can set yourself up your own little dragon farm and go into business in competition with us?”
That was, in fact, exactly what Dumery wanted, but it seemed impolitic to say so just now. Instead he sat silently frustrated, staring at Kensher.
“I have got to admit, Dumery, you are the stubbornest, most persistent lad I have ever met in my life,” Kensher said, his tone almost admiring. “Even the dragons aren’t as determined as you. But it doesn’t matter. We arenot going to set you up in the dragon-farming business, either here or in competition with us. We’re going to send you home to your family, and hope you have the sense not to go and cause pointless trouble by telling everybody where we live and what we do. Is that clear enough?”
Dumery reluctantly nodded. “It’s clear,” he said.
And in fact itwas clear that the descendants of Sergeant Thar wouldn’t help him intentionally.
Perhaps, though, they might be made to provide assistance without knowing it.
As he carried his empty plate to the scullery Dumery was planning just how that might work.
It would involve lying and stealing and a good bit of danger, but he thought he could manage it.
Just a little while ago he had been reluctant to lie to Kensher and his family about wanting to marry Shanra, and here he was considering not just lying, but robbing them as well.
Well, he was desperate. And this new scheme was much more likely to succeed, anyway, and it would be over much sooner, one way or the other.
There was a chance it would get him killed, but he refused to worry about that. It might work.
And if it worked, it would be well worth the risk.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Teneria stared in disbelief at the pens.
Dragons!
Dozens of dragons!
Big dragons, small dragons, red, blue, and green dragons!
She had never seen any dragon before, in her entire life, and here there were dozens of dragons.
What in the World was this place?
And what was Dumery doing here?
She lowered her pack to the ground, then scooped the spriggan off her shoulder and dropped it onto a nearby rock. She sat down, still staring at the farm, and tried to think.
As she did, she was aware once again of a sort of soft muttering in the back of her mind, as if someone were trying to sneak up on her, or was thinking loudly about her somewhere nearby. The same uncomfortable sensation had come over her a few times on the way up into the mountains, and she didn’t like it at all.
She had disliked it right from the start, but oddly, it had taken until the fourth time she felt it before she recognized it.
It was the Calling.
Witches weren’t supposed to be susceptible to the Calling-but on the other hand, Adar had told her that people who got too close to the Warlock Stone could spontaneously become warlocks, and witchcraft and warlockry were apparently not all that different, after all. She knew that she had been born with a strong talent for witchcraft-Sella had told her as much. That was why Sella had been willing to take Teneria on as an apprentice even though Teneria’s parents couldn’t pay the customary fee.
And if Teneria had the innate talent for witchcraft, why wouldn’t she have the talent for warlockry, as well?
Even so, she might not have picked anything up, might not have sensed the Calling, if she hadn’t spent those long, horrible hours focused on Adar’s mind, trying to hold the Calling out. That had taught her what the Calling was, had attuned her to it.
She wasn’t a warlock, even now, by any means; she could levitate things, of course, but it still tired her, it was still witchcraft, not warlockry.
Witch or warlock, though, she could feel that unpleasant mental touch, ever so lightly.
And it seemed to be growing more noticeable as she continued southward and eastward. She did not like the idea of venturing even farther in that direction.
But now she wouldn’t have to. Dumery was here; despite the delays, she had finally caught up to him. And this, surely, was where he had been headed all along.
She could see why he hadn’t wanted to tell the truth when his parents’ hired wizard contacted him. That would have sounded so reassuring to his poor mother... “Oh, I’m hiking up into wild, dragon-infested, warlock-haunted mountains in Aldagmor, along what used to be the frontier of the old Northern Empire. I’ll be up there in the freezing cold weather without any supplies or money, with nothing but the clothes on my back. I’m going to a secret menagerie of dragons up there.”
And what in the World did Dumery want in this miserable, gods-forsaken place, anyway? What business did a twelve-year-old boy have at an all-dragon zoo like this? Had he been tricked into coming here as dragon-fodder?
No, that didn’t make any sense; he was still alive, she could tell. And even if there were some reason to feed dragons boys instead of sheep or cattle, surely there were gullible boys to be found closer than Ethshar of the Spices.