“If we drained it all at once, it might kill you, yes, but suppose we bled you once a month, drawing blood equivalent to three one-ton dragons-three-eightieths of your blood.”
“And how much would that be, in fact?”
Dumery shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never done this before.”
“And is there no variation with age and size? Does a ton of my flesh hold the same blood as the whole of a lesser dragon?”
“I don’t know,” Dumery repeated.
“You would have me, alone, compete with the entire farm?”
“Why not?” Dumery asked. “You’re bigger than every dragon on the farm put together!”
She shook her head. “I am not convinced of that,” she said.
“Well, then, you can steal some more dragons there! And we can bleed some of the ones you’ve rescued, the bigger ones, anyway-you can hold them while I do it, so they won’t hurt me. And they can breed-or you can...” He stopped, unsure of himself, and a little embarrassed at bringing up something so personal.
“Mayhap it’s still possible,” Aldagon said, untroubled by the topic. “I’ve no idea. There’s been none of a size to interest me these past two centuries. But yes, Prittin should be good for many a fine clutch of eggs, and there are more females to be had at the farm.” She glanced at the blue dragon as she considered. “But what’s to stop the farmers from breeding more of their own? What if they turn to slaughtering two score, or three, each year? Then I’ll have suffered this bleeding for naught but your enrichment, Dumery of Shiphaven, and while I have no dislike for you, yet I see no reason to gift you so generously with the very blood of my body.”
“Well, first off,” Dumery said, “they don’t have much room to expand on that mountaintop of theirs. And second, once there’s another source of blood-yours-then the wizards won’t need Kensher so much, and who’s going to retaliate if you destroy the farm someday? You’ll be the one with wizards for customers! And third, I could split the gold with you, of course, I don’t have to keep it all. I wouldn’t expect to keep it all.”
Aldagon snorted, and grey smoke curled up from her nostrils. “Oh, surely, and what good to me is a fat purse? What is money to me? Am I to stroll into an inn and order a barrel of ale? Am I to buy gewgaws and playpretties, as if I were a female of your own species? Where would I wear such things, that they might be seen? And if we have customers among the wizards, and Kensher has customers, and I burn that stinking farm to the ground, will not his wizards be pitted against ours? Might we not provoke a split within the Wizard’s Guild, or perhaps an outright war?”
“Well, what if we do?” Dumery said.
Aldagon blinked, and thought, and replied, “Aye, what if we do, indeed? You’ve no love for wizards, have you? And in truth, neither do I.”
“And as for the gold, it can buy more than jewelry or wine. What if I spent half the money on cattle? I could bring them up here to feed you and the little ones.” Dumery blithely waved an arm at the “little” dragons on the other side of the nest, the smallest of them larger than he was.
“Could you, then?” Aldagon asked, startled.
“Sure, why not?” Dumery said. “And anything else you want, I could buy it for you and bring it up here.”
“Cattle?”
“Of course! You won’t need to hunt any more, or steal from the farmers-no more worries about poison or magic or hunger, because you’ll have your own cattle to eat! And seasonings for the meat, if you like. Sheep for variety, or anything else you fancy.” He was beginning to pick up a trace of Aldagon’s archaic phrasing.
“This seems too good to be true,” Aldagon said suspiciously.
“Oh, not really,” Dumery insisted. “I mean, I’ll have to work hard, build up the business-I better start off by apprenticing myself to a merchant to learn the trade and make contacts. And you’ll be giving blood every month or so, once we get going, you won’t be just doing nothing. And you may need to free some more breeding stock from the old farm.”
“I still find...” she began, then stopped. Then she asked, “How is it that a mere lad like you should bring this about, when I, after better than four centuries, had never managed it?”
“Age isn’t everything,” Dumery said. “You need determination, and ambition.”
“And you, a child, have those in greater quantity than I?”
“Well,” Dumery said, “back home in Ethshar, there’s a saying that’s used to describe someone who pushes hard, who won’t be stopped-they say that he was apprenticed on his twelfth birthday.” Aldagon looked puzzled, and Dumery explained, “That’s the first day someone can be apprenticed; it’s not legal to take on an apprentice before he’s twelve. Most people wait a few months, to look around and think it over and see what they want.”
“And were you, then, apprenticed on your twelfth birthday?”
“No,” Dumery admitted, “I wasn’t apprenticed at all. But it was on my twelfth birthday that I asked my father to arrange it; it’s not my fault it didn’t work out.”
“Ah,” Aldagon said, “and will this arrangement of ours work out?”
“If we’re careful,” Dumery said, “it ought to.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
They talked for hours, well into the night, working out the details; when the sun dropped below the horizon they moved outside the nest, into a clearing where Dumery made a small pile of brush that Aldagon lit, providing a fire for light and heat.
They tackled such questions as how long it would take to get things under way, and how much of the arrangement they had made should be kept secret, and how many other humans would be hired to help with establishing a cattle ranch, selling blood, and the like.
Taking Dumery’s age into account, they decided to build up slowly.
“After all,” Aldagon said, “I’m in no hurry. I should live another millennium or so, if I’m careful, ere my body fails of its own weight and my heart bursts. I’ve learned patience.”
The final discussion was over just how Dumery was to get back to Ethshar.
“You can’t walk from here,” Aldagon insisted. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Why?” Dumery asked, puzzled. He had survived encountering wild dragons; what worse dangers could remain?
“Why, you’ll be passing within two leagues of the Warlock Stone!” the dragon told him.
“I will?” Here was a chance to confirm or refute what Teneria had told him. He asked, “So what?”
“Lad, don’t you know?” Aldagon said, amazed. “That stone is the source from which all warlocks draw their power, and which draws them in when it can, turning their own power against them. I don’t pretend to understand it well, but I’ve spoken with a good many warlocks on their way to it-on their way to destruction, for none have ever returned. Ordinary mortals who go too near the Stone become warlocks themselves, but take no pleasure in the transformation, as they’re drawn immediately to it. I’ll not have you devoured by the Stone, whatever it truly is!”
“But I don’t have any talent for warlockry!” Dumery pointed out. “Everybody told me that.”
Aldagon considered.
“Well, ’tis possible,” she admitted. “In truth, I’ve flown within a league or so of the Stone myself and felt nothing beyond a certain unease-but why risk it?”
“Because if I don’t, how am I going to get home?”
“Why, go around, of course. And in truth, to be sure, I could fly you there. I’ve not seen Azrad’s Ethshar in three hundred and seventy years, but I think I can find it. I could deliver you right into Westgate Market-if Westgate Market still stands.”
“Oh, it does,” Dumery said. Then he stopped to think.