Dumery swallowed again, and attempted a smile.
“There, lad, that’s better! Now, tell me, what use are these infants, that they have been raised there these two centuries, and that you would have your own?”
“Blood,” Dumery explained.
Aldagon blinked, and Dumery was surprised just how puzzled a dragon’s relatively immobile features could look.
“Dragon’s blood,” he elaborated.
“I had not supposed you meant chicken blood,” Aldagon retorted, “nor fish oils nor insect’s ichor. Of what use to them is dragon’s blood?”
“For magic,” Dumery said. “Wizards use it in their spells. Almost all the good spells need dragon’s blood.”
Aldagon frowned. “Do they?” she asked. “Do they indeed?”
Dumery nodded. “I think so,” he said. “I wanted to be a wizard, but it’s all secret, you have to be an apprentice to learn anything, and then join the Wizards’ Guild and swear secrecy, so nobody really knows but wizards. I wanted to be a wizard, but they all turned me down, nobody would take me on as an apprentice, and then I saw Kensher selling dragon’s blood and the wizards had to pay any price he asked, and I thought...”
“You thought that you would take a petty revenge,” Aldagon finished for him.
Dumery nodded, shame-faced.
“Well, ho, boy, I expect no better from one of your years, so you needn’t look so woeful. You’ve done no wrong that I can see-save, wait, you sought to steal Pish and his mate?”
Dumery nodded again. “They wouldn’t take me on as an apprentice there, either.”
“Nor sell you a pair?”
“No, of course not,” Dumery replied.
Aldagon blinked. “Why not?”
“Because that would break their monopoly,” Dumery explained. “That’s the only dragon farm left in the World.”
“Is it, in truth?” Aldagon rocked back on her four heels at this news and eyed Dumery with renewed interest.
Dumery nodded.
“And they bleed the little dragons, and sell the blood?” Aldagon asked. “Well, I suppose ’tis no worse than some other wizardly ingredients-now that I think back all these long years I seem to recall wizards calling for virgin’s tears and lizard skulls and the hair of unborn babes, and other such things, and dragons are said to be magical in nature-though the gods know I have no magic, else I could scarcely live here, so close to the Warlock Stone!” She mused, while Dumery absorbed this new mention of the Warlock Stone. Was it really close by?
“Do you know,” Aldagon said at last, “I believe I remember, when I was very young, that at times wizards drew my blood. The memories are very dim, after so long a time, but me seems they are truly there, that I do recall such a thing. The drawings stopped, of course, when first I went to fight, and had need of my full strength. So they carry that on, and bleed the dragons at the farm?”
Dumery nodded. Then he stopped. She didn’t understand, he realized. And she should understand-these were her kin they were discussing. He swallowed, and said, “They kill them, and drain the blood. They cut the dragons’ throats.”
Aldagon reared back, her head flying upward. “Kill them? Kill them? Do they so? Is that why they breed so many, and kill them so young?”
Dumery squeezed back against the hard logs of the nest wall. “Yes,” he said.
“Why, those foul, treacherous fools!” Aldagon roared, so loud that Dumery thought his ears would burst inward into his skull. “What need, to kill the poor things? Those barbaric idiots! Any pinprick will draw blood; what need to open their throats? What need to slay them?” She stamped about, her tail thrashing, and the smaller dragons scattered in terror, while Dumery readied himself to climb back through the gap between the logs.
“Idiots!” Aldagon roared, spewing forth a huge gout of flame, the single word so loud that the ground shook, and wind rustled the leaves in the surrounding trees for several seconds.
Finally, though, the great dragon calmed herself, and sought out Dumery once again.
He stood with his back pressed against the rough, peeling bark, trying not to cower too obviously, and faced her as she lowered her head toward him.
“Tell me, boy,” she said, so loudly that Dumery’s ears rang, “did you intend to slaughter them so, had you your own farm?”
Dumery had sense enough to lie. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “of course not!”
She glared at him suspiciously. Then she turned away. “Oh, foul creatures,”
she muttered, more loudly than Dumery could shout, “to slaughter them so needlessly! Would that I had smashed that den of evil long since! Would that I... but shall I now, then?” She turned, head raised, and looked north, her tail lashing, sending up showers of broken wood and bone. “Nay, they would summon their clients, all those wizards who purchased hatchlings’ lifeblood, to turn their spells against me...”
Dumery watched this display of draconic fury, marveling, and very glad indeed that Aldagon had managed to keep her word and hadn’t killed him in her first burst of anger.
He sympathized with her, really. The farm’s methods did seem unnecessarily cruel. The memory of all those hatchlings dragging their poor broken wings around the cage was still fresh. But what could anyone do?
Inspiration struck.
“Hai!” he shouted. “Aldagon!”
She ignored him.
“I have an idea,” he called. “Aldagon!”
She turned. “Manling,” she growled, “you’d be well advised not to draw my attention just now.”
“But I have an idea,” he insisted. “A way to put the farm out of business!”
She blinked, paused her thrashing, and lowered her head to look at him more closely.
“Manling,” she said, “your idea had better be good.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Aldagon sat and considered, the tip of her tail twitching slightly.
“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully.
“It’ll work,” Dumery insisted. “It’ll work fine. We’ll just undercut their prices. My father’s a merchant, I know how it’s done!”
“I don’t know,” Aldagon repeated.
“Look, Aldagon,” Dumery said, “how big are you? What do you weigh?”
“How am I to know?” She looked back along her gleaming, green-scaled body, past the dark green wings and the four great hunched legs and out along her tail. “Forty yards, perhaps, from head to tail? Seventy, eighty, ninety tons?”
Dumery nodded. “Say it’s eighty tons,” he said. “I think that’s the important part. Well, the farm has, what, a dozen dragons a year to... um... I was going to say harvest, but that’s not the right word.”
“To slaughter,” Aldagon said. “And betimes it’s a score.”
“All right, twenty. Well, they aren’t any bigger than twenty feet long, ever-Kensher told me that was a rule his family had always lived by, ever since the war ended. And a twenty-foot dragon weighs maybe a ton, he said.”
Aldagon nodded. “About that. Betimes a plump one could be a ton and a half.”
She considered, then added, “Avery plump one.”
“Well, then,” Dumery said, “say twenty dragons at a ton and a half apiece-and that’s more than it really is, you know.”
Aldagon acknowledged that, with a dip of her head.
“Well, that’s thirty tons of dragon a year that they drain of blood. You weigh eighty tons...”
“And you drain thirty tons of me, I’ll perish,” Aldagon replied angrily.