Dumery’s jaw dropped.
Six rounds in gold!
That was sixhundred pieces in copper-more than a laborer earned in a year!
What wasin that little bottle?
“I’ll pay five, after I weigh it,” Thetheran said.
“No,” the man in leather said. “You’ll pay six, now.”
“Forty-four gold bits, then, but I weigh it first.”
“Forty-eightbits. Six rounds. I told you.”
“All right, all right, if it’s full weight I’ll pay the six rounds!”
“Fair enough,” the seller said. “They’ll have a balance at the Dragon’s Tail; we’ll weigh it there.”
Thetheran nodded. “All right, then. A quarter its weight in gold, then, as we agreed-for the blood only.”
“Counting the flask, of course,” the other said, grinning.
Thetheran began to protest again, but thought better of it.
“Allright, damn it,” he said. “Counting the flask.”
“Good enough, then,” the man in brown said. “Come along.” He marched back toward the inn they had come from, and Thetheran followed in his wake, fuming.
Dumery stared, then ran over to where the guardsman was once again leaning quietly against the wall of the tower.
“Hai,” he called. “Guard!”
The soldier stirred and looked down at him.
“What doyou want, boy?” he asked mildly.
“That man,” Dumery asked, pointing. “What did he sell that wizard?”
The guard glanced up at the retreating back of Thetheran’s midnight-blue robe.
He grinned.
“Oh, that,” he said. “That was dragon’s blood. We guard it for him.”
Dumery blinked. “Dragon’s blood?” he asked.
The guard nodded. “Wizards use a lot of it. It’s one of the most common ingredients for their spells. Without dragon’s blood they couldn’t do half what they do.”
“Really?” Dumery stared after Thetheran and the man in brown.
“Really,” said the guard. “Or at least so I’ve always heard.”
Dumery nodded. It made sense. He’d always heard how wizards used strange things in their spells, and he’d seen himself that Thetheran had shelves and shelves of such things, like the hair of a beheaded man and all the rest of it. Dragon’s blood would fit right in.
He ran after the two men, back toward the inn with the strange signboard, the one that really didn’t look much at all like a dragon’s tail, regardless of what anyone said.
They were inside. Dumery didn’t enter; he leaned in through the doorway, looking for them, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the shadowy interior of the taproom.
It took him a moment to spot them, among the thirty or forty people in the room, but at last he saw them, seated across from each other at a small table near the stairs; Thetheran’s dark blue robe was fairly distinctive, and the man in brown was tall enough to be easily noticed, taller than Thetheran-who was no dwarf-by half a head. The pair was not far away at all, merely in an unexpected direction.
Dumery leaned in further, listening intently.
The transaction was under way; Thetheran was counting out coins, and the man in brown was testing each one, making sure they were all real gold.
He looked up. “I haven’t sold to you before,” he remarked, loudly enough for Dumery to hear, “but I hope you know that if any of this gold turns out to be enchanted, you’ll regret it.”
“I know,” Thetheran said, almost snarling. “I’ve heard aboutyou. It’s all real, you’ll see. I didn’t enchant anything.”
“I hope not,” said the man in brown, “because if you did, the price goes up for everyone, and you know your guild isn’t going to like that.”
“Iknow, I said!” Thetheran snapped. “Gods, all this just for dragon’s blood! You’d think the beasts were extinct, you make this stuff so precious!”
“No,” the other corrected him, “you make it precious, all you wizards who use so much of the stuff. Dragons aren’t extinct, but they’re damnably dangerous-if you want dragon’s blood, you have to pay for it.”
“I know, I know,” Thetheran said, rummaging in his purse for the last gold bit.
Dumery stared, silently marveling.
Dragon’s blood. Thetheran had let himself be humiliated for a flask of dragon’s blood. He had paidsix rounds of gold for a flask of dragon’s blood-as much as Dumery’s father would earn from an entire trading voyage.
And dragons were big; a dead dragon, justone dead dragon, even a small one, would surely fill a dozen flasks easily.
Dangerous, the man said. Well, yes, dragonswould be dangerous, that was obvious. Even if the stories about breathing fire and working magic weren’t true, and for all Dumery knew they were sober fact, dragons still had claws and teeth. But all that gold! And to have wizards humbled like that! To haveThetheran, who had refused him and insulted him, forced to pay any price he asked!
It was irresistible. Now Dumery knew what he wanted to do with his life.
He wanted to be a dragon-hunter.
Chapter Six
It occurred to Dumery that in all likelihood not a single full-time professional dragon-hunter lived inside the city walls. It was not an occupation that could be practiced in an urban environment, or that would be in great demand on the streets of Ethshar. In order to ply his trade a dragon-hunter would naturally require the presence of wild dragons, and the only dragons in the city were baby ones kept as pets or showpieces by rich eccentrics, or for the Arena by magicians and show people.
No wild dragons lurked in the streets and courtyards, Dumery was sure. Not even in the sewers or the Hundred-Foot Field.
So no dragon-hunter would live in the city.
That meant, Dumery realized, that his father wouldn’t be able to arrange an apprenticeship for him. Doran’s contacts in the city were extensive and varied, but elsewhere, outside the walls, as far as Dumery knew all his contacts were with other merchants.
To the best of his knowledge, the only person Dumery had ever seen, since the day he was born, who might be a dragon-hunter, or at least might know where one could be found, was the man in brown leather, right there in the Dragon’s Tail, pocketing Thetheran’s gold and gloating shamelessly over it.
Furthermore, the odds of Dumery finding another dragon-hunter-if the man in brown actuallywas a hunter, and not just a middleman of some sort-before he was too old to apprentice toany trade except soldiering looked rather poor.
After all, he had gone twelve years without ever noticing a dragon-hunter before; even when looking, he suspected that he might easily go two or three years without seeing another.
This, then, was it, Dumery told himself. This man in brown leather was the key to his entire future, an opportunity he could not afford to waste.
An over-hasty approach might bring disaster; Dumery decided against simply marching up and presenting himself.
As the boy reached that decision, Thetheran rose, haughtily ignoring his supplier. As the mage stalked out of the inn into the sunlit market Dumery ducked back out of sight, behind a wagonload of tanned leather.
Of course, there was no real reason to hide from Thetheran; he had done the wizard no harm, and had no real reason to think the man wished him ill-Dumery didn’t really believe in his own theories of a conspiracy created by Thetheran for the express purpose of preventing one boy, himself, from learning magic.
All the same, Dumery preferred not to be seen.
When the magician had grumbled his way around the corner onto High Street, out of sight and sound, Dumery emerged from behind the wagon and hurried into the Dragon’s Tail. He looked at the corner by the stairs.