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."

Reluctantly, Dumery came.

Out in the street, during a lull in the downpour, Doran called, "Well, now that wizardry is out, you'll need to give some thought to what you want to do instead."

"No," said Dumery, emphatically, "I won't. I want to be awizard!"

His father glared at him silently for a moment.

"Youcan't be a wizard," Doran said. "You heard what Thetheran told us."

"That's just Thetheran," Dumery said. "He's not the only wizard in the World."

"No, he's not the only one," Doran agreed, "but he's a good one, and he knows his business. Don't be an idiot, boy; we'll find you something else."

"No," Dumery said again. "I want to be a wizard, and by all the gods I'mgoing to be a wizard!"

"No, you're not," his father said flatly. He could be stubborn, too.

Dumery didn't reply. He didn't want to argue any more.

At least, not right away.

Chapter Four

It took him a full sixnight to convince his father to try again.

This time, the master was to be a young wizard by the name of Zatha of the Golden Hair. Dumery was interested to see that she reallydid have golden hair-blonde, his father called it. Dumery had rarely seen anything so exotic, even in Shiphaven.

Unfortunately, the results of the interview were no different than what had happened with Thetheran. Simple analytic magic revealed no power at all in Dumery, and he utterly botched a few trial spells.

"I'm very sorry," she told Dumery, "but the talent just isn't there. It's something people are born with, like double-jointed fingers or green eyes, and you were born without it."

"But can't Ilearn it?" he asked, on the verge of tears.

She shook her head. "No," she said. "Really, I'm afraid not. If there were any skill at all, it could be nurtured, I suppose, and a few spells learned-but there wouldn't be much point in it. For someone with only a trace of talent it would take years to learn what a real wizard, or an apprentice, or anyone with the knack for wizardry can pick up in an afternoon-and in your case, Dumery, I don't think there's even a trace. You're one of those rare people with absolutely no talent for wizardry at all."

He managed not to cry, and didn't argue with his father on the walk back home.

At least it was sunny, with no rain soaking them through.

After that, his father was adamant. No third attempt would be made, and Dumery was to find some other career to pursue.

Dumery yielded to this, asked for time to think, and got it.

He then took all his carefully-hoarded savings-birthday gifts, Festival pickings, money earned running errands, his winnings from the kid down the street who couldn't play the finger game but kept trying to learn, all of it-and very early one morning, while out playing, he "wandered off."

Once he was out of sight, he headed straight for the Wizards' Quarter, and started going door to door, looking for someone,anyone, who would take him on as an apprentice.

In doing so, over the course of a very long day and well into the evening, he spent all but a few copper bits in honoraria and testing fees, and learned that not only did he have no talent for wizardry, but that he had no talent for warlockry, demonology, theurgy, witchcraft, or any other form of magic-except possibly sorcery. The only sorcerer he dealt with had no tests to perform, but merely looked him over carefully and asked him a variety of peculiar questions, mostly dealing with numbers and unlikely hypothetical situations.

Finally she shook her head.

"I'm sorry," she said, "but you won't do."

By that time Dumery had given up arguing. He nodded, thanked her, and went on.

Twice, as he prowled through the Wizard's Quarter, he glimpsed Thetheran the Mage, going about his business. Both times, Dumery tried to stay out of sight, ducking back into doorways; he was afraid that if Thetheran saw him he'd say something embarrassing.

Dumery felt he had been embarrassed quite enough already.

It wasn't fair, he thought, that Thetheran should be strolling about, so calm and collected and confident, after he had ruined Dumery's entire life! It wasn't fairat all.

If only there were something he could do about it! Some way he could get back at Thetheran for refusing him.

Couldn't the nasty old wizard have at least taken him on for a few days, to see if the talent might havedeveloped, or something?

He was sure that it wouldn't do any good to go and ask for another chance; after all, the great man had stated his position. He wouldn't back down from it just because one spoiled rich kid asked him.

Of course, Dumery didn't consider himself spoiled, but he'd noticed that whenever he asked a grown-up to do something for him, the grown-up always seemed to think that Dumery was being a spoiled rich brat. He ascribed this to the fact that the adults concerned hadn't grown up rich, and were jealous.

For himself, he thought he'd much rather have grown up poor-that would have eliminated the jealousy, and he'd be able to dress in comfortable old clothes he could get dirty instead of the fancy velvets that his mother always gave him. Sure, he'd have to live in a tenement instead of his father's house, and he wouldn't have his own room, but so what? Sharing a room with his brothers might have been fun.

He wouldn't want to bereally poor, living out in the Hundred-Foot Field or something, but a tenement apartment wouldn't have been all that bad.

Would it?

Maybe it would. If he were going to be rich, then, why couldn't he have been born to the nobility? Living in the Overlord's palace would be fun, wouldn't it?

Speculation was pointless, of course. Hehad been born the son of a successful merchant, and he was stuck with it.

He sighed, and trudged on.

When his funds, energy, and ingenuity were all largely exhausted, and most of the magicians had long since closed their shops, he headed wearily home, stumbling now and then as he dodged the ox-droppings on Arena Street.

He reached home long after his mother had cleared away the dinner dishes, and in fact she would have been in bed and asleep had she not waited up for him.

She was angry enough to refuse to feed him anything but the left-over heel of the loaf of bread that had been served with supper.

He ate that, and drank water from a crystal goblet he got down from the kitchen cupboard himself. He consumed this sorry excuse for a meal while sitting morosely in his room, staring out the window into the courtyard behind the house and trying to think what he could do with his life.

Magic, it appeared, was out. Whether he really had no talent at all, of any sort, or whether Thetheran had a grudge against him and had somehow coerced all the others into turning him down, he wasn't sure, but at any rate, magic was out.

At least, if he stayed in Ethshar of the Spices, magic was out. What if he were to sail off somewhere on one of his father's ships? Might he find more obliging magicians in, say, Ethshar of the Sands, or Morria in the Small Kingdoms?

It wasn't likely. Everyone agreed that Ethshar of the Spices was the greatest city in the World, its merchants the richest, its wizards the most powerful, its overlord the wisest.

And he wouldn't have his father there to pay his apprenticeship fee, if he went somewhere else.

Well, then, he would just forget about magic and try something else.

But what elsewas there? He'd wanted to be a wizard for as long as he could remember. He had never seriously considered anything else.

Well, now it was time to consider, so what else was there?

He could apprentice to a merchant, of course, or a pilot, either a harbor pilot or a ship's pilot. His father would have no trouble at all arranging those.

Or he could sign on as a sailor, and try to work his way up to captain.

Commanding his own ship, sailing free across the waves-that sounded nice.

But it probably wasn't. The sea captains he'd met were mostly foul-tempered men who didn't seem to enjoy their work particularly. And there were storms and pirates, and while it was all very romantic and heroic to battle storms and pirates, Dumery remembered Captain Senallon, a big, robust, cheerful man who had rumpled Dumery's hair, taught Dumery a few interesting swear words, showed him how to tie a few knots, and who had never come back from an ordinary run up to Ethshar of the Rocks. His ship sailed out and was simply never seen again. A report eventually came that a pirate had caught him off Shan on the Sea, but that was never confirmed.

And Daddy had been furious about that, not because Captain Senallon was dead and his widow and children bereft, but because the cargo was lost and Doran of Shiphaven was out goods valued at some seventeen pounds of gold.

Sailing anywhere didn't sound very appealing after all, Dumery decided as he swallowed the last stale mouthful of bread.

Maybe he should just wait and join the city guard, then.

One had to be sixteen to join the guard, of course, and Dumery's family was sufficiently well-known that lying about his age probably wouldn't work, at least not for long, so that would mean a four-year wait. And after that four years, it would mean living in the barracks under the city wall or over in Camptown, spending his time marching back and forth or standing guard at a gate somewhere or going up and down the streets collecting taxes for Lord Azrad. That was not really a very exciting life, when one actually sat down and thought about what was involved; it was no wonder that the guard got most of its recruits from failed apprentices, boys who had been kicked out by their masters for stealing or disobedience or incompetence, or whose masters had died before the apprenticeship was completed.

Of course, life in the guard could be exciting if there were a war or something, but Ethshar hadn't been in a war for over two hundred years-not a real war, anyway. The Great War had ended back in 4996, or maybe 4998, or something-Dumery wasn't really very good at history, particularly not remembering dates-and he wasn't sure if there had been any little wars since then.

A war would be exciting but dangerous, too. And while Dumery didn't think he was really all that bothered by danger-hecertainly didn't consider himself a coward-he didn't care to depend on the chance of something as dangerous as a war to make his life interesting.

No, not the guard, then.

What did that leave?

Well, there were ship chandlers, and ropemakers, and coopers, and sailmakers, and shipwrights, and shopkeepers of every sort, and none of them looked very appealing. Most of them involved a lot of standing around haggling with customers, and hauling dirty, heavy objects around, and they didn't pay all that well, either.

The brothels in Shiphaven made plenty of money, and the gamblers and gamers, but Dumery didn't think one got into those trades through apprenticeship. He really wasn't very sure.

Being a gambler might be interesting-but it had its risks. What if you lost?

The gods of luck could be fickle, everyone knew that. And losing opponents could be hostile; Dumery had seen a sailor knifed over a stupid little game of three-bone once. The stake had only been about four silver pieces-Dumery had spent more than twice that in testing fees today.

The sailor had lived, and in fact his wound really wasn't very serious at all, but any occupation where one ran a significant risk of being stabbed wasn't quite what Dumery had in mind.

As for running a brothel-well, just now, at age twelve, he was embarrassed just thinking about it. And surely, one didn't get into it through an apprenticeship.

He sighed, and gulped the last of his water.

He'd have to findsomething, but right now he couldn't think of a single possibility.

Maybe he would do better in the morning.

He left the goblet by his bed for his mother to pick up, and went to sleep.

Chapter Five

When the sunlight poured through his window the next morning, thick as honey and warm as a purring cat, Dumery still hadn't thought of any non-magical occupation he cared to pursue.

He told his mother that at breakfast. He couldn't tell his father, because Doran had left early to make sure an outgoing ship caught the morning tide without leaving any of its cargo behind on the docks.

"You can do anything you like," Faléa the Slender told her son as she poured herself tea.

Dumery started to contradict her. "Except wizardry," she added hastily, cutting him off.

He glowered silently for a moment, then said, "But I don't know what I like."

Dessa snickered; Dumery glared at her, and she turned away, smirking.

"Look around, then," Faléa said as she picked up her cup. "See what you can find."

"Look where?" Dumery asked.

She lowered the cup and looked at him in mild exasperation.

"I'velooked all over Shiphaven," he explained.

"Then look elsewhere," she suggested. "It's a big city. Why not go to the markets and look around?"

"The markets?" Dumery thought that over.

So did Faléa. She remembered, perhaps a little later than she should have, that Shiphaven Market was the recruiting center for all the crackpot adventurers and axe-grinding lunatics in Ethshar, and that the New Canal Street Market was the center of the local slave trade.

She didn't particularly want her youngest son to run off on some foolhardy attempt to unseat a usurper in the Small Kingdoms, nor to sign up as an apprentice slaver. There was something distinctly unsavory about slavers-she had always had her suspicions of how they acquired and handled their merchandise, despite the official claims that the whole business was closely regulated by the city. As a merchant's wife she knew how easy it was to bribe the overlord's harbor watch, and she didn't doubt it was just as easy to bribe other officials.

There was a certain romance to undertaking desperate adventures, and even to buying and selling slaves-just the sort of romance, unfortunately, that might well appeal to a twelve-year-old boy. Particularly to a twelve-year-old boy who had been interested in magic, rather than any safer and more sensible occupation. Faléa decided that it would probably be a good idea to distract Dumery before he investigated either of the markets in Shiphaven. If he once got it into his head to sign up for some half-witted expedition-well, Dumery could be incredibly stubborn.

"Why don't you go down to Westgate Market," she said, "and take a look at the people there, both the city folk and the customers who come in from beyond the gate. Maybe you'll see something of interest."

Dumery, who was familiar with the recruiters in Shiphaven Market and had been wondering whether that could really be what his mother had in mind, considered her suggestion.

There was a certain charm to the idea, certainly. He hadn't been in Westgate in months, maybe years. He remembered it as being full of farmers smelling of manure, but surely there was more to it than that; he'd been a little kid when he went there before, not yet old enough to apprentice. He'd be looking at it with new eyes now.

"All right," he said. "I will." He served himself an immense portion of fried egg and stuffed it in his mouth.

His mother smiled at him, glad that she had successfully diverted her son from New Canal Street and Shiphaven Market, and not particularly concerned about what he would find in Westgate. She rarely went there herself, and then only to buy fresh produce when the courtyard garden wasn't doing well, but it seemed like a wholesome enough place, where the boy wouldn't get into any serious trouble. There were no slavers or recruiters there.

Dumery finished his breakfast, then went up to his room and pulled on his boots. He took a look out back, where his mother was feeding the chickens and chatting with one of their neighbors from the other side of the courtyard.

If he ever got as rich as his parents, Dumery thought, he'd hire servants or buy slaves and letthem feed the chickens. His mother seemed to enjoy little chores like that, but Dumery was quite sure thathe never would.

He turned and hurried downstairs, and out onto the street. Two blocks from home he turned right onto Shipwright Street. The avenue was already crowded with people hurrying in both directions, and Dumery quickly fell in with the southbound stream.

He stumbled and almost fell once, near the corner of Sea Captain Street, when something small and green ran between his legs, but he caught himself in time.

When he turned to see what had almost tripped him it was gone.

He wondered if it had been the same sort of creature he had seen in Thetheran's workshop, but he couldn't spot it anywhere.

He shrugged, forgot about it, and marched on.

Twenty minutes' walk brought him to Wall Street and into the northeast corner of Westgate Market, where the morning sun shone brightly on the vividly-colored awnings of half a hundred merchants' stalls, and even turned the somber grey stone of the great gate-towers cheerful. Farmers in brown or grey homespun jostled against city-dwellers in blue and black and gold, and a freshening sea-breeze had worked its way through the streets and over the rooftops to send the tunics and robes and striped awnings flapping. The snapping of fabric provided a beat for the shouts of hawkers proclaiming the superiority of their wares.

"The finest hams in all the Hegemony!" a man shouted, almost in Dumery's ear as he passed a wagon beneath a red-and-white striped awning, and for a moment the pungent scent of smoked meat pierced the more general overlay of dust and sweat.

"Peaches, sweet peaches!" called the woman in the next stall, gesturing at her own fruit-heaped cart.

Dumery looked, then walked on. He had no intention of becoming a farmer or a butcher, nor anything else so mundane.

The market was not over-large-certainly smaller than Shiphaven Market-but it was very crowded, so it took some time for Dumery to see everything.

He passed stalls selling apples and pears and plums, beans and broccoli, beef and mutton. He passed churns of butter and shelves of cheeses, all fresh from the farm-or so their sellers swore. Fine wool and spun cotton, felts and velvets, silks and satins, all, proclaimed a cloth merchant with an unfamiliar accent, the best in Ethshar, and at bargain prices.

Dumery didn't believe that for a moment. He knew that the best fabrics were sold in the Old Merchants' Quarter, not in the open-air markets.

Most of the goods sold here were the products of local farms; that was Westgate's specialty, after all. Anything that came any great distance came in by ship, and went to the markets of Spicetown and Shiphaven and Newmarket.

Anything that could stand to sit unsold on a shelf for any length of time was more likely to wind up displayed in a shop somewhere, rather than hawked in the market square. That foreign cloth merchant was an anomaly, probably some ambitious fellow from the Small Kingdoms who had hoped to get around the Ethsharitic shipping cartels. Westgate Market was a place to find pumpkins, not a career.

All the same, it was pleasant to stroll about, taking it all in. The sun was warm, the colors bright, and the smell of manure much less than he remembered.

As he strolled, there was a brief disturbance on the far side of the market, and Dumery heard a cry of "Thief!" He stood on tiptoe and craned to see, but could make nothing out through the intervening crowds.

He shrugged, and wandered on.

After a time it occurred to Dumery to look behind the carts and wagons and stalls of the vendors, at the permanent buildings that lined the east side of the square.

They were all inns, of course-the Clumsy Juggler, the Gatehouse Inn, half a dozen in all, squeezed into the hundred or so feet between Shipwright Street and High Street, each with its signboard and open door. Dumery paused and considered.

He knew that scores of other inns did business in Westgate, in addition to this row on the square, and there were many more elsewhere in the city as well, a few at each gate and several scattered along the waterfronts-though of course, Westgate had the largest concentration.

Dumery thought about inns. Could he become an innkeeper, perhaps?

Howdid one become an innkeeper? Did innkeepers take apprentices?

It might be interesting, meeting new people all the time, listening to travelers' tales-but on the other hand, an innkeeper probably heard more about account books than adventures, more complaints than chronicles. And really, he'd be little better than a servant. It wouldn't do.

All the same, he looked over the row carefully, admiring the artistry of the signboards.

The Clumsy Juggler, with its red-clad fool dropping half a dozen multi-colored balls, was the most whimsical of the six; most were fairly straightforward.

Two, the Gatehouse Inn and the Market House, had their names spelled out in runes, while the others relied, sometimes mistakenly, on illustrations to convey their names. The sign two doors from High Street, showing something green and wiggly on a field of irregular blue and gold stripes, seemed particularly incomprehensible.

Dumery was staring at that one, simultaneously trying to figure out what it was supposed to be and wondering who painted the boards and whether there was a potential career there, when two figures emerged from the door below the sign.

He glanced at them, then stared.

The lead figure, a big man wearing scuffed brown leather, he had never seen before, but the other, following a step behind and looking very irritated, was Thetheran the Mage.

Dumery blinked in surprise, and then, without really knowing why, he turned to follow the pair.

They were marching straight across the square toward the southern half of the huge pair of towers that bracketed the city gates. The man in the lead seemed cheerful and lighthearted; Dumery glimpsed a smile on his face when he turned to look back for a moment. Thetheran, on the other hand, seemed very annoyed about something; he was frowning ferociously and stamping his way across the hard-packed dirt.

Dumery wondered whether he would hurt his feet, walking like that. Maybe there was some sort of magic in it.

Curious about what could possibly annoy the wizard that way, Dumery continued to follow even after his initial impulsive action. He hurried through the crowd, dodging around clumps of haggling tradesmen and farmers, at one point ducking through a display of melons and almost toppling a pyramid of the great pale fruit.

The man in brown reached the base of the south tower, where a guardsman in yellow tunic and red kilt was leaning comfortably against the grey stone beside a small wooden door. He spoke to the guard; the guard rapped on the door and shouted something that Dumery couldn't quite make out over the noise of the crowd.

Thetheran, Dumery noticed, looked quite impatient about all this.

The door opened, and the man in brown stepped inside, out of sight; Thetheran started to follow, but the guardsman stopped him with an outthrust hand against the wizard's chest.

Thetheran exploded into a bellow of rage, but the guardsman bellowed back, and the wizard subsided.

Dumery stared. He had expected Thetheran to pull out a magic wand and blast the guardsman to dust, or something, not to simply back down like that. He wondered what in all the World could possibly make Thetheran behave this way.

Of course, even wizards, he supposed, must fear the power of the city's overlord, Azrad VII. And the guards were Azrad's direct representatives.

Then the leather-clad man re-emerged from the tower, one hand held high, clutching something that looked like a peculiar sort of bottle. It wasn't particularly large, perhaps the size of a big man's fist, and it gleamed purplish-red in the sun.

Thetheran reached for the bottle, but the man in brown turned away, holding it out of the wizard's reach.

Dumery had now crept close enough to hear when the man in leather said,

"That'll be six rounds in gold, in advance."

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.

The man in brown was gone.

Dumery stared, horribly disappointed, at the empty table where the wizard had bought the flask of dragon's blood. The boy turned, quickly scanning the rest of the room, but he saw no sign of his target.

How had the man slipped away? Dumery had never turned his gaze from the tavern door for more than a couple of seconds. He looked around the taproom.

There was the hearth, and a door to the kitchens, and a long wall adorned with a strip of scaly green hide-from a genuine dragon's tail, perhaps? Then came a broad, many-paned window, and the door to the square, and then the stairs.

The stairs. Dumery finished his circuit of the room, past the curtained booths below the stairs and past an open door that appeared to lead to the cellars, and back to the hearth.

Unless there was a way out through the kitchens or the cellars, or behind one of the draperied private booths, none of which seemed like anywhere an ordinary customer would go, the man in brown had probably just gone up to his room.

Of course, if the man in brown thought that Thetheran was angry enough to try some dire revenge, then perhaps hehad gone out through the kitchens or cellars or booths-thoughts of secret passages and ancient crypts and hidden tunnels came to mind.

That didn't seem very likely; Dumery was old enough to know that most of the more romantic tales he had heard were exaggerated, and that as a general rule everyday life did not include many hairbreadth escapes or mysterious passages.

All the same, this was a man who dealt harshly with wizards. If anyone might anticipate a need for a secret departure, he might.

"Hai!"Dumery called, waving to a young woman in a white apron, carrying a tray under her arm.

She saw him, and sauntered over.

"What is it, boy?" she asked. "Aren't you a bit young for a traveler?"

"I'm not a traveler," Dumery said, concocting a lie on the spot. "I'm a messenger. My master heard that there was a man here selling dragon's blood, and as it happens, he has need of a pint or so."

The woman frowned. "Oh? And who would your master be?"

"Doran of Wizard Street," Dumery improvised.

"And the name of the man he sent you after?" she asked.

"I don't know," Dumery admitted. "A tall man in brown leather, I was told. My master said I'd be sure to know him when I saw him. But I've looked, and I don't see anyone here like that. Thisis the Dragon's Tail, isn't it?"

"Of course it is!" she snapped. "You saw the signboard, and there's the skin of the tail itself." She gestured at the hide stretched on the wall.

Dumery nodded. "Of course. Well, maybe he's stepped out, then, this man I was sent after?"

"No," she said, "I know who you mean. He's upstairs, settling his bill and packing his things; he's been three days here, and he's done his business and ready to go. I don't think he's got a drop of that stuff left, but if you want to ask him, he should be down again any minute."

"Oh," Dumery said. "Thank you."

Someone called, and the woman turned away, lifting her tray. Dumery sat down on a nearby chair and waited.

While he waited, he tried to figure out just how he wanted to approach the situation.

Perhaps fifteen minutes later, when Dumery was beginning to wonder if he'd been tricked, two people came tramping noisily down the stairs. One was a plump, elderly woman wearing a white apron and carrying a plump purse-the innkeeper, presumably-while the other was the familiar man in brown. The man had a large pack slung over one shoulder.

Dumery waited until they had passed him, then got quickly to his feet.

The innkeeper turned left and headed for the kitchens; the man in brown turned right and headed out the door.

Dumery followed the man in brown.

The man marched across the market square, Dumery staying close behind, watching his every step. It appeared he was heading for the south gate-tower once more.

Sure enough, he stopped and exchanged a few words with the guard; Dumery was not close enough to catch the words this time. He worked his way through the crowd, and emerged a pace or so away just as the man in brown turned away and marched on-out through the city gates and into the wide World beyond.

A sudden irrational terror struck Dumery at the thought of following him.

Never, in all his life, had Dumery left the protection of Ethshar's city wall.

Venturing out of the streets into the wilderness beyond-or at least, comparative wilderness-was truly frightening. Dumery knew that the real wilderness didn't begin for a hundred leagues or so, butanything that wasn't city seemed dangerous and alien.

Still, this was his one chance at becoming a dragon-hunter.

"Hai!"he called, running after the man.

Even as he ran, Dumery was surprised to see that the market continued outside the gate. The city did not; to either side of the bare packed dirt of the highway lay open green fields, rather than streets and shops. Even so, wagons lined the sides of the highway, and farmers were selling their wares to a milling crowd of city-folk just as if they were all safely inside Westgate Market.

"Hello," he called, "dragon's blood! In the brown leather!"

The man in brown heard him, and stopped. He turned, startled, as Dumery ran up to him.

"Yes, lad?" he asked.

Dumery had to catch his breath. Furthermore, he was disconcerted to find himself actually outside the wall, and the broad expanses of open space, dotted with trees and farmhouses, were so strange that his eyes kept being drawn away from the man's face. By the time he could gather himself sufficiently to speak impatience showed in the man's features.

"Please, sir," Dumery said, "I'm of an age to begin an apprenticeship, and I saw you selling dragon's blood, and I thought that you must be a dragon-hunter, and I can't think of anything I'd rather do than to become one.

A dragon-hunter, I mean."

This was not the careful explanation and appeal he had tried to plan out while sitting in the Dragon's Tail, but rather a rush of words that got out before he could stop them. He shut his mouth, cutting the flow off, and bit his lip nervously, trying to think what he could say or do to improve the impression he was making.

The man stared coldly down at him, and for the first time Dumery really got a good look at him.

The man's hair and beard were dark brown, almost black, and both were long and thick and not particularly tidy. His eyes were brown and sunken, beneath heavy brows. His nose had obviously been broken at least once, and three scars ran parallel across his right cheek, as if something had clawed him badly once. He was big, well over six feet, probably over six and a half, and he was broad, too-his chest and shoulders looked as if he'd have to turn sideways to fit through most doors. His hands were gnarled and scarred and looked strong enough to crush stone.

He wore a heavy brown leather tunic, cut longer than was the fashion in Ethshar, and matching breeches that were stuffed into the tops of his heavy brown boots. A wide brown belt held three knives of different sizes, an ordinary purse, and a larger pouch. He carried a pack on one shoulder that was roughly the size of Dumery.

He did not actually look like very pleasant company, but Dumery had committed himself.

"Ah..." the boy said. "My father can pay all your expenses, if you take me on..."

"Boy," the man said, interrupting him, "I don't want an apprentice, and if I did, it wouldn't be a runt like you. Go home and find something else to do."

Dumery's mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Runt?

The man had calledhim a runt?

He wasn't terribly big for his age, but he was no runt! He was maybe a little over average height, even. Perhaps a little thin, but he'd fill out, he was sure, in a few years.

"I..." he began.

The man held up a silencing hand.

"Forget it, kid," he said. "I don't need an apprentice, I don't want an apprentice, and I won'thave an apprentice, and I certainly won't haveyou. I don't care if your father's the overlord himself and you're Azrad the Eighth to be, I'm not interested. And quite aside from any apprenticeship, I won't tell you anything about dragons or hunting or anything else. I don't want anything to do with you. Don't argue-just go away."

Dumery blinked, but could think of nothing to say.

The man in brown-or the dragon-hunter, as Dumery thought of him-turned away and marched on down the road.

At first Dumery simply stood there, watching him go, but something inside him refused to give up that easily.

The man had called him a runt and had refused him-but what if he showed that he wasn't a runt, wasn't as scrawny as he might look? What if he proved he could handle the wilderness, and wasn't just a pampered rich city kid?

Thenmaybe the dragon-hunter would take him on!

After all, even Thetheran had tested him. He had failed that test, of course, but he wasn't going to fail this one.

Maybe the man in brown was even doing itdeliberately! Maybe he reallywas testing Dumery, to see if Dumery had what it took to hunt dragons.

Dumery had to follow him.

He began to hurry after the man in brown, but then he stopped, considering.

If itwasn't a deliberate test, and maybe even if it was, he didn't want to be spotted too easily. He ducked off the highway, cut through the line of farmers' wagons, and set out, traipsing across a muddy field, paralleling the road, trying very hard to keep the man in brown in sight.

Maybe, he thought, I can find some way to help him out somewhere. Then he'dhave to accept me as an apprentice, if I saved his life from a rampaging dragon or something.

Awash in dreams of glory, Dumery marched on through someone's cotton field, stumbling over plants and ditches. He kept an eye on the man in brown, but he didn't try to catch up; instead he deliberately hung back. He didn't want to be spotted.

Once they were both well past the outermost fringe of the market, though, Dumery did return to the highway. Pushing through the fields was just too much work.

They marched on. Or rather, the dragon-hunter marched, while Dumery kept up as best he could, maintaining the distance between them. He had to run occasionally, to make up for the big man's much longer legs, and he often thought he was about to collapse from exhaustion-but each time he reached that state the man in brown would settle down for a rest.

When the dragon-hunter rested, Dumery rested, stopping fifty or a hundred yards away, where he wouldn't be easily recognized. He would sit, massaging his feet and nervously watching the man in brown, and when the dragon-hunter rose, Dumery would snatch his boots back on and leap to his feet and set out anew.

A brief afternoon shower almost discouraged him, but after some initial dismay he hunched his shoulders and resolved to ignore it. The man in brown pulled a hat from his pack and put it on, but other than that he, too, ignored the rain.

The rain ended in less than an hour, and the sun reappeared, clean and bright.

Through it all, Dumery marched on, westward and then northward along the highway as it curved, keeping the leather-clad man in sight, but never drawing near.

Only when the sun finally reddened and sank low in the west, and the skies began to darken again even though the clouds continued to dissipate, did Dumery realize just what an incredibly foolish mistake he had made.

Chapter Seven

He was only twelve years old. He was wearing an ordinary cotton tunic-velvet hadn't seemed practical for a morning visit to Westgate Market-and woolen breeches, and soft leather boots. He had a cheap belt knife with him. He had a purse with a few bits in copper in it, and down at the bottom a few scraps of string and an old and somewhat dusty honey drop he had never gotten around to eating, and not much else. No blanket, no flint and steel, no enchanted bloodstone, no sword, no pads for the blisters that had formed on his feet, none of the supplies a sensible traveler would have.

And he was about ten leagues outside the city wall and it was almost full dark, and he had never been outside the city before, not for so much as a ten-minute stroll.

The man in brown was still walking, though, still marching on, just as he had all day.

It was too late to turn back. Dumery knew he couldn't possibly make it back to the city gate until long after midnight, even if he didn't lose the road in the dark, even if he didn't meet any wolves or bandits or demons prowling along the way. He wasn't sure he could make it back at all. His feet and legs ached; he had never before walked anything near this distance. The soles of his boots, which he knew were really still perfectly sound, felt paper-thin and soggy with sweat; every pebble seemed to jab him.

He saw a low ridge ahead, and at the point where the ground began to rise the road forked, the right branch going up across the ridge, the left fork paralleling the slope; a glance at the sun's fading glow told him that the right fork ran north, the left fork west.

Nestled in the fork was a good-sized building, and with a start Dumery realized that it wasn't a farmhouse. The farmhouses he had passed all day were never built so close to the road.

Most of them weren't so large, and most weren't built entirely of stone, either. This structure ahead had wooden shutters and doors and a thatch roof, but the walls were all stone, right up to the gable peaks, and peculiar-looking stone at that. Even the attached stable was stone.

There was no signboard, but all the same, Dumery guessed it was an inn. The fork was certainly a logical place for one, being not merely at the junction of two highways, but just exactly a full day's walk from Ethshar.

The man in brown marched directly up to the front door of the inn and entered, opening the door without knocking. Dumery hurried after him.

By the time he reached the building the man in brown was inside, and the door was closed again. Dumery hesitated, unsure whether to knock or just walk in-this place, with no signboard and its door closed, and so big, was not like the inns he was familiar with in the city, and he was uncertain of the etiquette. The dragon-hunter hadn't knocked, but did that mean nobody did? Or was the man in brown privileged somehow?

Just then the door opened again, and a man stepped out holding a torch. He was fairly tall, brown-haired and heavily built, but nowhere near the size of the dragon-hunter. He was wearing an ordinary woolen tunic and a white apron.

"Oh, hello," he said, noticing Dumery. "Welcome to the Inn at the Bridge." He turned and reached up to place the torch in a bracket over the door.

"Bridge?" Dumery asked, looking around and seeing no bridge. There were meadows, and the inn, and its attached stable, and the highway, but no bridge.

"Other side of the hill," the man in the apron said, turning back and jerking a thumb toward the north fork of the highway.

"Oh," Dumery said.

"Come on in," the man said, and he led Dumery inside.

The main room of the inn was spacious and comfortable, with a plank floor and stone walls. At one end was a huge fireplace with a nondescript sheathed sword hanging above it; doors here and there led to the kitchens and stables and other such places. A score or so of customers were scattered at various tables.

Something small and green scurried along the floor; Dumery tried to get a look at it, but lost sight of it among the chairlegs.

He'd been seeing a lot of those things in the last few days, where he had never seen any as of, say, two months before. He wondered what they were for a moment, then turned his attention to more important matters.

The man in brown was seated at a table near the kitchens, chatting with a young woman who was standing beside him; Dumery turned his face away hurriedly so that he wouldn't be recognized if the man happened to glance this way.

The woman turned and bustled away, into the kitchens, and Dumery saw she was holding a tray-one of the serving girls, obviously. The man in brown looked up when she had gone, and Dumery did his best to not be noticed.

The man in the apron, presumably the innkeeper, told Dumery, "Make yourself at home, and someone will be right with you." Then he, too, headed for the kitchens.

Dumery looked about for a chair where the man in brown wouldn't see him, and as he did the thought occurred to him that although he was ravenously hungry and utterly exhausted, he couldn't stay here.

He couldn't afford it.

He had all of six bits in copper, as best he could recall, and that probably wasn't enough for a meal and a bed. He didn't know how long it would have to last him, either. If he spent it all here and now, what would he do tomorrow?

If he had any sense, he told himself, he'd go backhome tomorrow. He wasn't equipped for anything else.

Well, he replied mentally, he obviously had no sense, because he wasn't going to go home, he was going to follow the dragon-hunter tohis home, even if it took a sixnight.

And that meant he didn't dare spend all his coins. He might need them later.

Accordingly, when another serving girl, one who looked scarcely older than he was, came and smiled down at him he said, "I'm sorry, but I don't have any money. Can I work for room and board, perhaps?"

The girl's smile vanished.

"I don't know," she said. "Let me ask Valder."

She turned and hurried to the kitchen.

A moment later the man in the apron re-emerged and crossed directly to where Dumery sat. The boy glanced over at the man in brown, hoping that he wouldn't notice anything out of the ordinary, anything that might draw his attention to Dumery's presence.

"Asha says you told her you have no money," the innkeeper said, without preamble.

Dumery nodded. "I can work, though," he said.

The innkeeper shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry, boy, but I already have more help than I need. You'll have to go." He did sound honestly regretful.

His sincerity didn't help any. Dumery asked, "Are you sure?"

"I'm quite sure, yes. Asha herself is here more from pity than because I needed another wench."

"Oh," Dumery said. "Ah ... but couldn't I sleep right here, in this chair? I don't need a bed." His stomach growled, and he added, "And I have a bit, in copper; could that buy me some scraps?"

The innkeeper sighed, looking about the room as if the furnishings might offer advice.

The furnishings remained silent, and Valder asked, "Do you have any family, boy?"

"Yes, sir, back in Ethshar," Dumery replied.

"Then what in the World are you doinghere?"

"I'm ... I'm on my way to take up my apprenticeship, sir." That was close enough to the truth, Dumery thought.

"And nobody gave you any money for the road?"

Dumery shrugged and looked woebegone. Given his exhausted condition, that wasn't hard to do.

The innkeeper turned away, throwing up his hands."Hai, what a world!" he said.

He turned back.

"All right, boy," he said, "you can sleep in the stable, not in here where you might annoy paying customers. And I'll be bringing scraps out after everyone's eaten. Keep your bit; people farther up the road may not be so generous."

"Thank you, sir," Dumery said, relieved that he wasn't going to be thrown out entirely, but disappointed that he would have to sleep outside and eat table scraps.

He had never eaten table scraps. He'd heard about poor people doing that; in fact, the scraps from his father's table were regularly left by the street for beggars, which was where he'd gotten the idea of asking.

He looked forward to his dinner with as much trepidation as anticipation.

The innkeeper stood over him for a moment, and Dumery realized that the conversation was at an end and it was time for him to leave. Reluctantly, he got up and left.

The only comfort, he thought as he made his way around the corner of the inn and into the stableyard, was that at least the man in brown hadn't spotted him.

The front of the inn wasn't bad, because of the torch over the door, but the stableyard was almost black with the night. The sun was gone; neither moon was in the sky just now, and the stars were obscured by high, thin clouds. Dumery had to find his way mostly by feel.

One thing he felt was that the ground beneath his feet was muddy and slippery; twice his feet almost went out from under him, but each time he managed to catch himself on something.

The stableyard was roughly square, with stalls around three sides-the fourth side was largely taken up with the gate he had entered through. The stalls were under roof, and awash in gloom, while the yard itself was open to the sky and held what little daylight still lingered.

He heard large animals moving around in the darkness along the sides, and glimpsed shadowy forms in the gloom, and decided against trying to get into a stall with one of them. Yes, the stalls would have straw, which would be relatively warm and dry, but he didn't like the idea of getting stepped on by a horse or ox that failed to notice him in the dark.

Instead he worked his way to a back corner and curled up there, huddling miserably, trying to ignore the mud and the dirt and the heavy animal stink.

Was it really worth it?, he asked himself after a few minutes. This seemed like a lot of hardship to put up with just to get an apprenticeship, even in a trade as exciting and exotic as dragon-hunting.

Maybe he should go back home and pack proper supplies and put on proper traveling clothes and borrow a reasonable amount of money, and then set out anew.

Of course, the problem with that was that the man in brown would be long gone by then, and picking up his trail might be impossible. Dumery had no idea how often he came to the city, either, so he couldn't rely on finding him at the Dragon's Tail again; if his visits were annual, as many tradesmen's were, then by the time he came back to the city Dumery would be too old to be apprenticed.

His stomach growled loudly. He was not accustomed to going this long without plenty of good food.

Something ran across his foot, and he started, looking about wildly, but unable to make out, in the darkness, just what it was that had startled him.

He settled back again and sat there, waiting.

After a time, he found himself wishing he had some way to send a message home to his family. They were probably worried about him; he had, after all, vanished without warning. His mother was probably sitting up, sewing to keep her fingers busy while she got more and more worried.

Well, it wouldn't kill her, and at least she would catch up on the mending.

And his father might not even notice his absence until his mother or one of his siblings pointed it out.

And his siblings probably wouldn't miss him.

Even if they did, they would survive, he was sure. They would all survive, even his mother, and he would get word to them eventually, let them know he was safe.

He wasn't going to think about that, he decided. Right now he had enough to be miserable about in his own situation without worrying about how miserable he might be making others.

It seemed hours later-and in fact may havebeen hours later-when light came spilling suddenly into the stableyard. A door in the wall of the inn had opened, at the back of a narrow passageway that Dumery had mistaken for just another stall, and a figure was standing in it, lamplight pouring out around him.

"Are you out here, boy?" the innkeeper's voice called.

"Yes, sir," Dumery replied, getting stiffly to his feet.

"I've got the scraps for you. Leave the bowl on the step when you're done.

Sleep well."

Before Dumery could say anything, the figure stepped back and closed the doorway.

Dumery hurried to the doorstep and found a large wooden bowl, full of something he couldn't see at all. It smelled of grease.

He dipped in a hand and came up with a crust of bread, soggy with congealing gravy; he ate it eagerly.

It took some chewing, and as he worked on it he ambled back through the short passageway to his corner of the stableyard, where he settled down, cross-legged, with the bowl in front of him.

He began picking through it, working by smell and touch, dropping back the pieces he considered unfit to eat.

Unfortunately, most of it he considered unfit to eat.

He was pawing through it, trying to find something edible, when his hand hit something unfamiliar. He tried to pick it out, to see what it was, but it pulled away.

He blinked, startled, and peered through the gloom. Was something sitting there on the other side of the bowl?

Yes, something was, something about the size of a kitten, but more or less human in shape, with its hands in the bowl of scraps. He stared.

It was sitting cross-legged, a pot-belly slopping across its lap, and it was staring at him with outsize, bulging eyes. Dumery couldn't make out much more than that in the darkness; he had no idea of its color, or what any features except the big white eyes might look like.

"Gack," Dumery said, snatching his hand away.

"Gack?" the thing replied.

Dumery suddenly guessed that this was probably one of those little green things that had been running about Ethshar lately, tripping people and getting in the way.

That didn't tell him what it was, though.

"What areyou?" he asked.

"Spriggan," the thing said, in a squeaky little voice. "Hungry," it added pitifully.

Dumery looked down at the bowl; even in the dark he could see that the thing had both its arms thrust into the scraps almost to the elbows.

"Oh," Dumery said. He gently pushed the bowl away, toward the spriggan.

"Here," he said. "Help yourself."

He had lost his appetite.

As if eating garbage weren't bad enough, he was supposed toshare it with some vile little monster? A monster that had shoved its dirty little paws into the bowl like that?

That was simply too much. He wouldn't stand for it. He turned away, huddled up against the stableyard wall, and tried to go to sleep.

Given his exhausted condition, that didn't take long.

Chapter Eight

Faléa had begun wondering around mid-afternoon just what Dumery was doing that was keeping him so long. Was he still at Westgate Market? Had he found something to do, some apprenticeship or other prospect, that appealed to him?

Had he, perhaps, wandered off to some other part of the city?

If he'd found an apprenticeship, that was fine-if it was something completely inappropriate Doran could refuse to cooperate, and that would put an end to it, and if it was anything halfway respectable then the problem of Dumery's future was solved.

If he hadn't found an apprenticeship, that didn't matter; he had plenty of time left before his thirteenth birthday.

She did wonder, though, what was keeping him.

The wondering turned gradually to worry as the sun set, and supper was cooked and served and eaten, and still Dumery didn't return.

This wasn't the first time Dumery had missed a meal, of course, or even the fiftieth, but still, Faléa worried.

Doran, of course, hadn't even noticed the boy's absence. He was involved with the accounts from theSea Stallion 's latest run out to Tintallion of the Isle-Faléa knew that there were apparently some discrepancies, and that this was important, so she didn't force her worries about their youngest son on her husband.

Doran the Younger and Derath and Dessa all made the predictable snide adolescent remarks about their brother's absence, naturally, and Faléa hushed them half-heartedly.

Their father paid no attention.

After dinner Faléa and Derath cleaned the table and kitchen, while Dessa swept and Doran the Younger hauled water in from the courtyard well. The elder Doran finally found the flaw in the records about an hour after dinner, as Dessa was settling to bed, and spent the next twenty minutes loudly arguing with himself as to whether he should have his agent whipped for theft, or merely fired, or whether he should forgive her this one last time-a keg of good Morrian brandy was missing and unaccounted for.

"Why not ask her what happened to it?" Faléa suggested. "It might be an honest mistake."

"Ha!" Doran bellowed."Honest? Her?"

"Itmight be." While she had her husband's attention, she added, "By the way, have you seen Dumery? He wasn't at supper."

"I'll ask her, all right," he said. "I'll ask her first thing in the morning, with a guardsman at my side." He snorted.

"Have you seen Dumery?" Faléa insisted.

"What? No, I haven't seen the boy. Ask his brothers."

Faléa did ask them, catching them just before they retired for the night. Both of them insisted that they hadn't seen Dumery since breakfast.

"You're sure?" she asked.

They took offense at that, unsurprisingly, and she could get nothing more out of them. She let them go on to bed.

Ordinarily, she would have gone to bed herself not long after, but this time she didn't. She sat up, waiting, instead.

She got out her sewing basket and did the mending. That kept her hands busy, but didn't really distract her thoughts from all the terrible things that might have happened to her youngest child.

There were slavers over on New Canal Street, and prowling the streets. There were drunken sailors starting brawls all along the waterfront.

Dumery had gone to Westgate Market; that was near Wall Street and the Hundred-Foot Field. There were thieves in the Field, and maybe worse. Slavers never dared enter the Field itself, but they patrolled Wall Street, collecting strays.

There were stories about evil magicians kidnapping people from the Hundred-Foot Field for various nefarious purposes-as sacrifices to demons or rogue gods, as food for monsters, as a source of ingredients for strange and terrible spells. Young innocents were supposed to be especially prized-virgin's blood, hair, and tears were reputed to be necessary ingredients in several spells.

That was usually presumed to meanfemale virgins, but perhaps boys had their own uses.

And there were stories about other people than magicians finding uses for boys. She had never heard such stories about Westgate, but over in Camptown there were rumored to be all-male brothels.

Any number of horrible things could have happened to Dumery. Her needle jerked through the cloth she held as she considered just how dangerous her native city actually could be.

Around midnight Doran put away the account books and looked around for Faléa.

He found her waiting in the parlor, staring at the front hallway, her sewing done and heaped on the floor; he remembered suddenly that Dumery was missing.

He snorted under his breath. That damned troublesome boy. The little fool was probably playing some stupid prank, Doran told himself, or else he was staying with friends and had forgotten to tell anyone.

Telling Faléa that wouldn't do any good, though. She knew it as well as he did, but still, she worried.

Nothing wrong with that, Doran thought. A mother had every right to worry about her youngest. And Dumery was a bright lad, a promising lad-Doran was proud of him. He would have been even prouder had the boy not been so pigheaded and prone to wild fancies and foolhardy adventures.

Still, Dumery would turn up, safe and sound, he was sure. He always had.

Doran waved a good night to his wife and went to bed.

Faléa waved back, half-heartedly, and sat.

An hour later, her head still full of thoughts of her Dumery captured by slavers, or set upon by thieves, or run off on reckless adventures, Faléa joined her husband in bed.

Chapter Nine

Dumery awoke at the sound of rattling harness; a traveler was fetching his mount from the inn's stable.

The boy blinked up at the bright blue sky, and then panicked. He leapt to his feet, sending the scrap bowl spinning and knocking aside the spriggan that was curled up against him, and he ran for the gate, spooking several horses. The traveler shouted at him angrily, but Dumery paid no attention. He was too worried.

It was morning, and none too early. What if the dragon-hunter had already gone? Dumery didn't even know which fork of the road the man in brown would be taking, north or west.

He paused at the door of the inn to catch his breath. Looking up, he saw that the torch above the door had burned away to a blackened stub. The sun was still low in the east, but it was clear of the horizon.

If the man in brown was gone Dumery would have no way of finding him again. He would be left with little choice but to give up and head home to Ethshar.

That would mean giving up his dream of becoming a dragon-hunter himself, though, and he wasn't going to give in that easily if he could help it. He wasdetermined to be a dragon-hunter and rub Thetheran's nose in it.

He opened the door, and, suddenly nervous about being spotted, peered carefully in.

The man in brown was there, sitting at one of the tables, eating grapes, carefully plucking out the seeds as he went. He wore a different tunic, this one tan wool rather than brown leather, but Dumery was sure it was him. The man's size and slovenly hair were distinctive enough to make a positive identification.

A sigh of relief escaped the boy. The man was still here. He hadn't left yet.

Dumery hadn't lost him.

His ticket to a career in dragon-hunting was still in reach.

Dumery stood in the doorway for a moment, trying to figure out what to do next.

As he stood, it registered with the boy that the man in brown looked clean and well-rested and well-fed and was finishing up a leisurely and generous breakfast. He had undoubtedly slept in a fine bed paid for with Thetheran's gold, while Dumery had spent the night freezing in the stableyard mud, with nothing to eat but a few nauseating scraps. He was filthy and stinking, his feet still ached, his back was stiff, and his stomach was so empty it was trying to tie itself in knots.

This journey was no great hardship for the man in brown, who was well-prepared and well-financed, but it was clearly going to be torture for an ill-equipped boy who didn't even know where he was going.

Dumery turned and looked down the road, back toward Ethshar. He couldn't see any sign of the city, but he knew it was there, and in it his parents' house.

Should he turn back?

He chewed on his lip as he thought it over.

Back in Ethshar, somewhere over the horizon, he had a home and a family and a fine soft bed, regular meals and a warm fire every night. He had a mother who loved him, a father who treated him fairly well, and three reasonably-tolerable siblings who usually left him alone.

He also had no prospects of any interest for the future, however, and the city was home to a dozen wizards and other magicians who had rejected and humiliated him.

That decided him. He would go on.

He would continue on until he reached the dragon-hunter's home base, and then he would present himself again anddemand an apprenticeship.

He looked back into the main room of the inn, just as the man in brown pushed back his chair and got to his feet.

The serving maid, Asha, hurried up as the man dropped a heavy coin on the table-a silver piece, by the look and sound of it. The two exchanged a few words that Dumery didn't catch.

Worried that he might be missing something important, he slipped in the door as they were talking and crept closer.

"So the boat's there now?" the man asked.

"I think so," the girl replied.

"Well, that's fine, then. I might as well wait there as here. My thanks, to you and to Valder." He reached down and picked up his pack as the girl pocketed the coin-a silver round, all right. That would cover his entire bill, Dumery was sure, and probably leave a bit or two over for the maid.

Well, with a purse full of wizard's gold, the man could afford to be generous.

Dumery realized suddenly, as the man in brown shouldered his pack, that the man was about to leave.

Not wanting to be seen, the boy ducked back out the front door as the man in brown turned. He scurried back to the stableyard and through the gate; then he turned and watched, peering around the wall as the dragon-hunter emerged.

The man in brown wasted no time in looking around at the scenery, or admiring the weather; he marched around the far corner of the inn and up the northern fork of the highway, out of sight.

Dumery started to hurry after him, only to trip and fall headlong in the mud.

Blinking, he got to his knees and looked around, trying to figure out what had tripped him.

The little monster that had called itself a spriggan was sitting there, looking as dazed as Dumery felt.

The thing was green, as he had guessed, and would have been about eight inches tall standing upright. It looked like a frog that had started to turn into a man and then changed its mind; it was sitting in a human pose, rather than a batrachian one, its hind legs stretched out before it, its forelegs-arms, really, with hands, fingers, and even thumbs-dangling to either side. It had broad pointed ears, far too large for it, and great protruding eyes.

"Ooooh!" it said, in a piercing, squeaky little voice. "We bump!"

"Yes," Dumery said, "I guess we did."

The creature looked harmless; Dumery decided to ignore it. He got to his feet.

"Ooh, wait!" the spriggan said. "Where we going?"

Dumery looked down at it. "I don't have any idea whereyou're going," he said,

"butI'm goingthat way!" He pointed to the northern fork, where the man in brown had vanished.

"Come with you, yes! You feed, I come!" the spriggan announced enthusiastically.

"I'm not going to feed you," Dumery said, annoyed. "I don't even have food for myself."

"You feed me last night. I come with you," it insisted, stamping a foot ludicrously.

"Right," Dumery said. "Try it." He turned and marched off briskly, almost running.

The spriggan let out a piercing shriek, hopped up, and ran after him.

Dumery's longer legs made the difference; he easily left the little creature behind as he topped the low ridge that ran behind the inn.

As he did, he suddenly saw why the place was called the Inn at the Bridge.

From the ridgetop the road sloped steeply down toward a river bigger than Dumery had ever imagined rivers could be. He had never seen a real river, of course, just drainage ditches and canals; the broadest canal he had ever seen was the New Canal, between Shiphaven and Spicetown, which was two hundred feet wide for much of its length, big enough for the ocean-going ships to use freely.

The lower part of the Grand Canal, between Spicetown and Fishertown, was about the same.

The two of them could have been put side by side and still not equalled more than a tiny fraction of the river before him now.

And the really amazing part of the view wasn't the river at all; it was the bridge across it. It was stone, soaring arches of stone supporting a roadbed higher and broader than Ethshar's city wall-and built across water, rather than on solid ground!

Dumery stared at it in amazement.

Soldiers, four of them, in the uniform of Ethshar's city guard, stood at the near end, chatting quietly and watching half-heartedly for approaching traffic. Just now no one was crossing, but on the far side, in the distance, Dumery thought he could see a wagon on the road.

What he didnot see was the man in brown, and he looked about worriedly as he hurried on down the long slope.

Then Dumery spotted his quarry; he wasn't on the main road at all. Rather than approaching the bridge, he had turned aside onto a smaller and even steeper road that branched off inconspicuously to the left, just where the approaches of the bridge parted company with the natural contour of the land.

This little branch road followed the slope down to the river and a dock.

It wasn't a particularly impressive dock compared with the great trading wharves in Spicetown or the shipping piers in Shiphaven, but it was undeniably a dock. What's more, there were boats tied up there, and the man in brown was heading straight for the biggest one, which waited at the end of the dock, its gangplank out.

Forgetting about any need for secrecy, Dumery broke into a run, chasing after the dragon-hunter, lest the boat leave with the man aboard before Dumery could reach it.

The boat was long and square, without masts or rigging, and with little freeboard. Sweeps were racked on either side of the deck, their blades poking up at a steep angle, giving the whole craft something of the appearance of an overturned beetle with its legs in the air.

Despite its rather ugly shape, the craft was gaily painted; the hull was a deep rich red picked out with gold, the deck and superstructure a gleaming yellow, with predominantly-green fancywork around the ports and hatches. Green and gold banners flew at bow and stern. The sweeps were painted green, with gold scrollwork on the shafts.

This was not, Dumery realized, a sea-going ship, nor even a harbor boat. It bore more of a resemblance to the flat-bottomed barges that were used to haul materials around the waterfront, especially in the shipyard, than to anything else Dumery had often encountered. He thought he might have seen a few such craft here and there along Ethshar's waterfront, but he wasn't really sure; he had certainly not seen many, and never at the deep-water piers.

It had to be a riverboat.

The man in brown marched up the gangplank without slowing and waved a greeting to the handful of brightly-dressed people on the boat's deck. Two of them waved back; a third stepped forward and exchanged a few words with the dragon-hunter.

Dumery wished he could hear what was being said, but he was still much too far away.

He was running as fast as he could on the downgrade, but the man in brown's head start and longer legs had given him a sizable lead, and the slope made running difficult. Dumery's feet thumped onto the dock's first plank as the man in brown vanished through a low doorway, his business with the man on deck completed.

Dumery ran out the dock's length and up the gangplank without slowing.

At the sound of his approach-which was easy to hear, thanks to the dock's loose planking-the party on deck turned and looked at him. The man who had spoken with the dragon-hunter, a man in a white tunic and sky-blue kilt, stepped over to the gangplank.

Dumery ran straight into his outstretched arms.

"Hai,there," the man said, grabbing Dumery's arms. "What's your hurry?"

Dumery realized he had made it; he was aboard the boat, with the man in brown.

"I didn't want to miss the boat," he said, panting.

"No danger of that," the man in the white tunic said. "We won't be leaving until noon."

"Oh," Dumery said, feeling foolish. "I didn't know."

"Ah," the man said, releasing one arm. "Well, now you do." He looked Dumery over, and Dumery stared back defiantly.

He knew he looked terrible, after sleeping in his clothes in the mud and then tripping over that stupid spriggan, but he didn't care, and he waited for the man to criticize him, ready to reply.

"I take it," the man said, "that you'd like to stay aboard for the ride north?"

Dumery blinked and looked around.

No, he wasn't confused; there the sun was on the far side of the bridge, which meant that was east. The other direction on the river was west. Was this boat just a ferry, then?

If so, he could have just walked across the bridge!

"North?" he said.

"Yes, north," the man replied. "Didn't you know, then?" He pointed due west.

"We'll be cruising upstream, all the way to Sardiron of the Waters."

"Oh," Dumery said.

Either the entire World was confused somehow and the sun was rising in the south, or else the river to the west turned north somewhere along the way.

This was no local ferry-Sardiron of the Waters was hundreds of miles away.

In fact, it wasn't even in the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars. It was the council city of the Baronies of Sardiron, a land Dumery had heard described in countless tales as a barbarous foreign realm of gloomy castles, deep dark forests, icy winters, hungry wolves-and marauding dragons.

Wasthat where the man in brown was going?

It made sense, of course. There were no dragons left in the Hegemony, so far as Dumery knew; certainly not anywhere near Ethshar of the Spices.

He should have thought of that sooner. A dragon-hunter could scarcely ply his trade in such quiet, civilized country.

He might have to pursue the man in brown for sixnights, even months.

He hesitated.

"Were you going to Sardiron, then?" the boatman asked.

Dumery nodded. "Yes," he said.

"Ah," the boatman replied, nodding. "And you have the fare?"

Dumery's heart fell. "Fare?" he asked.

"Of course," the boatman said. "Did you think we man this boat for the sheer delight of it?"

"No, I ... how much?"

"To Sardiron?"

"Yes."

"The full fare, lad, is five rounds of silver, but for a boy your size-call it three."

"Oh," Dumery said. While that discount meant that the price was actually negotiable, Dumery knew there was no way in the World he could haggle three silver pieces down to a few copper bits.

And all he had was a few copper bits.

"Haven't got it, have you?" the man asked, glaring at him.

"No, I..." Dumery began. Then he caught the boatman's gaze and just said,

"No."

"Off the boat, then," the boatman ordered, pointing ashore and using the grip on Dumery's arm to turn the boy.

"Could Iwork ..." Dumery began.

"No," the boatman said, cutting him off. "TheSunlit Meadows is no cattle barge, boy, to be hiring anyone who comes aboard with two hands and a strong back-and your back doesn't look that strong, for that matter! This is the finest passenger boat on the Great River, and we've had a full crew of trained professionals working her since before we left Sardiron of the Waters; we've no need for a fumble-fingered farmboy." He put his other hand between Dumery's shoulders and began pushing the boy down the gangplank.

"I'm not a farmboy!" Dumery protested. "My father's a wealthy merchant in the city..."

"Then have him buy you passage, boy!" He gave Dumery a final shove, not particularly hard or vicious, that sent the lad staggering onto the dock. Then he stood there, astride the gangplank, hands on hips, and stared.

Dumery stared back for a moment, then turned away.

He was not going to get aboard theSunlit Meadows easily, that was plain.

All the same, he was not about to give up. The man in brown was aboard that boat, and wherever he went, Dumery was determined to follow.

He had no ideahow he would follow, just now, but he'd find a way.

He had to.

Chapter Ten

"He still hasn't turned up?" Doran asked, startled.

"No, he hasn't!" Faléa answered. She glared at her husband. He hadn't done anything wrong, but she was furious with Dumery for worrying her this way, and he wasn't there, so she directed her anger at his father.

Doran was used to this; it didn't bother him. "Have you asked the others if they've seen him?" he asked.

"Of course I have!" Faléa snapped. "Dessa saw him yesterday morning at breakfast; Doran and Derath won't even admit that much. All three of them swear they haven't seen him since. I've got them out searching the neighborhood, asking his friends, but so far they haven't found any sign of him."

Doran considered this, and said, "You asked that little ratty one with the long hair, what's his name, Pergren of the Runny Nose, or whatever it is?"

"Pergren of Chandlery Street," Faléa corrected him. "Dessa talked to him an hour ago. From what she said I think she threatened to beat him so hard his nose would stop running..."

"From what I've seen of him that would probably kill him," Doran muttered under his breath.

"...but he still didn't know where Dumery was," Faléa said.

"All right," Doran said, "I can see that you're seriously worried, and I suppose it's with good reason. What is it you want me to do? What do you think might have happened to the boy?"

"Oh," said Faléa unhappily, "I don't know. Maybe some slaver took him by mistake. Or maybe he ran away to sea. Or..." She took a deep, unsteady breath.

"Or maybe he got himself killed, somehow."

Doran sighed. "All right, listen," he said. "I'll send a letter to Lord Talden; he'll alert the city guard and get a description posted everywhere.

And I'll check with the Slavers' Registry; if theydid pick him up, even if they've already shipped him off to Ethshar of the Sands or something, they'll have reported the capture."

"If itwas aregistered slaver..." Faléa began.

"Well, damn it, woman," Doran burst out, "if he got captured by anunregistered slaver, then he's in the hands of outlaws, and it doesn't much matter whether it's slavers or kidnappers or what, does it? There isn't much we can do!"

"Oh, I know that," Faléa admitted dismally.

Doran grimaced at her despairing tone. "Where was he going when he disappeared, anyway?" he asked.

"Westgate Market," Faléa explained, "to see if he could find an interesting career to apprentice for."

"Well, then, maybe hefound one!" Doran roared. "Why didn't you tell me that sooner? Maybe the boy signed on as an apprentice somewhere, and will send word when he can, in which case we're all getting upset over nothing! Have you sent anyone down to Westgate to ask around?"

"Derath," Faléa said. "He left half an hour ago. But Dorie, we'd have word by now..." She let her voice trail off.

"Weshould, anyway," Doran admitted. "But some of these tradesmen are eccentric. Listen, are you sure he went to Westgate? If he was looking for an apprenticeship, maybe he went back down to the Wizards' Quarter again-he might have some new scheme for learning magic.You know how stubborn ...

howdetermined he can be!"

Faléa did indeed know how stubborn Dumery could be, and she considered this suggestion. It sounded plausible, but there was one problem with it. "Why would that keep him overnight?" she asked. "And ... but Dorie, if hedid go there..."

"If he went there," Doran finished for her,"anything could have happened, with all those magicians and all their spells running around loose."

"Even if hedidn't go there, maybewe should. We could buy a spell to find him."

Faléa's tone and expression shifted from woe to delight with amazing speed.

"Oh, that's what we'll do! We'll buy a spell! That wizard you went to, what's his name?"

"Thetheran the Mage," Doran replied. He was less enthusiastic than his wife; magic was expensive. He started to say something to that effect, then took another look at Faléa and swallowed his words.

After all, this was his son they were talking about, not an escaped chicken or strayed cat.

"All right," he said. "We'll go buy a spell."

"Good!" Faléa said, almost grinning. "It's chilly out there; I'll get your coat while you find your purse and some money." She bounced toward the doorway.

"I thought we could go after lunch..." Doran began.

The grin vanished."Now," Faléa said.

Doran sighed. "Now," he agreed.

Chapter Eleven

Dumery sat on the slope above the dock, to one side of the road, and stared disconsolately at the river.

The World was going about its business all around him, albeit in a more leisurely fashion than a city boy like himself was accustomed to. Travelers were crossing the bridge in both directions, on foot or horseback, or riding in wagons and ox-carts, and the soldiers were collecting tolls from all of them. Boats of various sizes and shapes were moving up and down the river, some powered by sails, some by oars, most by magic. Some had tied up to the dock; some had departed.

Dumery just sat, staring at theSunlit Meadows and plotting out possibilities.

What if he headed to Sardiron of the Waters overland? There must be a land route, after all. Could he meet the boat there, in Sardiron, and pick up the dragon-hunter's trail?

Probably not; he suspected that the boat would get there by water much more quickly than he could on foot, particularly if it used magical propulsion. The boat didn't look as if it could hold enough men to work all those sweepswithout magic.

And if Sardiron of the Waters was anything like Ethshar, he might not be able to find the right dock even if he got there in time. Ethshar of the Spices was the largest city in the World, yes, but Sardiron was surely good-sized itself.

Besides, he didn't even know whether the man in brown was really going to Sardiron. It seemed likely, but what if he were planning to disembark somewhere along the way? The boat probably didn't just run from the bridge to Sardiron, but made stops at other places along the river.

For that matter, he wondered if this was as far downstream as it came. It was low enough to fit under the central arch of the bridge, certainly. It might have gone all the way to Ethshar itself.

If so, though, why hadn't the man in brown boarded it there?

Well, maybe this particular vessel didn't go that far. After all, Ethshar wasn't on the river, it was on the south side of the bay, and the river emptied into the northwest corner, if Dumery remembered his lessons correctly, where the water was all shoals and shifting sandbars. Getting across the bay wouldn't be easy sailing.

But even if thiswas as far downstream as theSunlit Meadows went, that still didn't mean that it wouldn't make stops on its way north.

Maybe, Dumery thought, he could ask the boat's crew where the man in brown was going. They might know. They might even be willing to tell him.

Just as that thought occurred to him, he felt something like tiny fingers grabbing at his arm. He turned his head, startled, to look for the cause.

The spriggan grinned up at him. "Found you!" it said. "We have fun, yes?"

"No," Dumery said. "Go away!"

"Aw," the spriggan said, "we havefun!"

"No," Dumery repeated. Before the spriggan could reply, he demanded, "Whatare you, anyway? Where did you come from?"

"Me, spriggan!" the creature said. "Came from magic mirror, me and all the others."

"A magic mirror?" Dumery asked, intrigued.

"Yes, yes," the spriggan agreed. "Mirror!" It mimed staring at a glass, its eyes bulging absurdly.

"Where?" Dumery asked. "Where was this magic mirror?" He remembered that the very first place he had glimpsed a spriggan had been in Thetheran's laboratory; had that despicable wizard created these little nuisances?

The thing developed an expression of comical and complete bafflement. "Don't know," it said. "Not good at places."

"In Ethshar?" Dumery persisted.

The spriggan thought about that for a moment, then said, "Don't think so."

"Then how did you get here?" Dumery asked. "I saw a couple of you ... you spriggans in the city before I left, I think."

"Yes, yes!" it said enthusiastically. "All over, now. Go on ships and in wagons and ride everywhere we can!"

"Oh," Dumery said. He considered this for a moment, then asked, "Why?"

"Havefun!" the spriggan explained. "Spriggans have lots of fun! You and me,we have fun, now!"

"No," Dumery said, losing interest.

"Fun!" the spriggan repeated.

Dumery just stared at it, silently.

It stared back.

After a long moment the spriggan realized that Dumery wasn't going to say anything more.

"Havefun!" it repeated.

Dumery just stared.

The spriggan looked up at him for a minute longer, then said, "You no fun." It kicked Dumery's leg and walked away.

The kick didn't hurt; in fact, Dumery hardly felt it. All the same, he was tempted to swat the stupid little creature.

He didn't; he just stared after it as it stamped off.

When he looked back at the dock he saw the tillerman on theSunlit Meadows casting off a final hawser. While Dumery had talked with the spriggan the crew had been readying the boat for departure.

"Hai!"he shouted, jumping up and running down the slope. "Hey, wait!"

His feet pounded on the planks, and one popped up beneath him and tripped him.

He fell sprawling.

When he lifted himself up again theSunlit Meadows was well clear of the dock, the sweeps working steadily, propelling it upstream. Dumery could see no one aboard paying any attention to him, or to anything else the boat was leaving behind.

In fact, he couldn't see much of anyone aboard save for the man at the tiller; the sweeps were working by themselves, by magic-or at least by some completely invisible force-and everyone else seemed to be belowdecks.

Dumery wanted to cry. The man in brown, the dragon-hunter, the key to his future, was aboard that boat.

And he, Dumery, wasn't.

He looked around and saw a few miscellaneous people smirking at the pratfall he had just taken; he didn't cry, but instead climbed solemnly to his feet. He brushed dust from his sleeves and pretended to ignore his surroundings, including the slow, uneven drumming noise that was coming from somewhere.

"Hai,boy," someone called, "better look out behind you!"

Startled, Dumery turned and looked back at the land.

A small herd of cattle, perhaps a dozen head, was marching down the road toward the dock-straight toward him.

Dumery blinked, and started backing out further onto the dock, but then stopped.

That wasn't going to work if the cattle were really going to charge right out; he would just be crowded off the end of the dock into the river. Since he didn't know how to swim that was not a pleasing prospect-to say the least.

Instead he turned aside and jumped from the edge of the dock onto the deck of a convenient, if small, boat.

He misjudged his landing and sprawled once more. This time, when he lifted his head, he found himself looking at an old woman's grinning face.

"Hello," Dumery said.

"Hello yourself, boy," the old woman replied gleefully.

"I, ah ... I wanted to get out of the way," Dumery explained as he shifted around into a sitting position.

"I gathered that," the woman said, with a smile that exposed her two remaining teeth. "And you're free to stay until the dock's clear; I'm in no hurry."

A possibility occurred to Dumery. He asked, "Where are you going, then?"

Perhaps he could beg a ride, if she were headed upstream, and maybe he could catch up with theSunlit Meadows somewhere.

"Downstream to Ethshar," she said, dashing his hopes. "Got family there I haven't seen since the third moon last rose."

Dumery puzzled for a moment over that expression. He'd heard "when the third moon rises" used to mean "never," but this was different. If there had ever actually been a third moon it had been gone for a thousand years or more, or so Dumery had heard, and this woman didn't lookthat old, so he assumed it was a figure of speech.

It must just mean not for a long time, he eventually decided.

"Oh," he said, disappointment plain in his voice.

"You were looking for a ride upstream?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Can't help you there. You missed theSunlit Meadows, and by the look of you you couldn't have afforded it anyway. Only other boat I know bound for the north is that cattle barge they're loading, and I wouldn't expect them to carry passengers."

"Cattle barge?" That reminded him of what the crewman on theSunlit Meadows had said when Dumery had offered to work for his passage. He stood up and peered across the dock.

Sure enough, the cattle were being herded across a heavy gangplank onto a great flat-bottomed barge.

"That's right," the old woman said. "The lords up in Sardiron like to get their beef from the south. I've heard they think it's better-tasting and more tender than the local meat."

"Oh," Dumery said, reaching a quick decision. "Excuse me, but I think I'll be going. Thank you very much for your help."

"You're welcome, boy," she said, watching with amusement as Dumery clambered back up onto the dock.

He had had a sudden inspiration when she had said the cattle were going north, and now he acted on it; he ran forward and slipped between two of the steers as they were herded across the gangplank onto the barge.

The drovers were too busy keeping the cattle headed the right direction to worry about anything else, and the barge crew was crowded to the ends, out of the way of their frightened and rambunctious cargo. If the drovers noticed Dumery at all they didn't mention it, and the barge crew, he was sure, hadn't seen him.

Of course, his chosen method of boarding was not particularly comfortable. The cattle jostled against him from all sides, and several times he narrowly avoided falling and being trampled. Even staying upright, three or four times a heavy hoof landed directly on his toes, making him gasp-but not cry out-with pain.

He'd seen cattle now and then in the markets, and had passed a few on the way from Ethshar to the Inn at the Bridge, but up until now he had never come directly into contact with the beasts. They were, he discovered, quite large, completely solid, surprisingly warm to the touch, and not very pleasant company.

He stood there, half-smothered by steerhide pressed against his face, for what seemed like half of eternity, getting bumped back and forth and scraped about.

Several of the steers were lowing plaintively, their hooves were thumping loudly on the decking, and people were shouting incomprehensible orders, adding up to a real cacophony. The stink of unwashed, frightened cattle was thick and foul in his nostrils. He could see nothing but brown hide.

Then the barge began moving, and though the shouting died away the cattle made more noise than ever, stamping about and bellowing. Dumery waited, concentrating on continuing to breathe.

He was considering several interesting questions, such as whether it was time to reveal his presence to the crew, whether he wanted to reveal his presence at all, how he could attract their attention in the first place, and whether he was going to survive this little escapade, when he raised his head to take a breath and found himself looking up directly into a man's face.

"Just what the hell are you doing there, boy?" the man demanded, in oddly-accented Ethsharitic.

"Mmmph," Dumery said.

"Hai!"the man called; he slapped the steers surrounding Dumery, and they parted, as if by magic.

Relieved, Dumery obeyed the man's order to march up to the little deck at the bow of the barge. The man followed close behind.

Dumery found himself the center of attention for the five-man crew as he clambered up onto the narrow deck; all eyes were on him.

"Who areyou?" one man demanded.

"Dumery of Shiphaven," Dumery replied. There wasn't any point in lying.

"And what are you doinghere?" asked another.

"I needed a ride north," Dumery explained.

The five just stared at him for a long moment, and he added, "I can work for my passage. I have no money, but I really want to go up north..."

The five men exchanged glances with one another.

"You'll work?" one of them asked.

Dumery nodded. "Whatever's needed," he said, "if I can do it, I will."

Another man grinned. "Kid," he said, "I think you've got a deal."

"Hey, Kelder," another called, "where's the shovel? We've got someone here who's really going to need it!"

Chapter Twelve

"Well, now," Thetheran said, "it's not really my specialty, finding things..."

"Dumery is not athing," Faléa said. "He's our son."

"Oh, I know, I know," Thetheran assured her. "I merely meant that locative magic is outside my usual practice."

"Your sign says you're a mage," Doran pointed out, "and when I brought my boy here I was told you were one of the best wizards in the Quarter. Are you telling me you can't even find my son?"

"Oh, no, no, nothing like that," Thetheran said hurriedly. "Merely that it's not a spell I commonly use, so that I may not have the ingredients readily available! I'll need to check. And I'm not sure just which spell would be best. Do you merely wish to knowwhere he is, or do you want to know his state of health? Do you want a message conveyed? Would you..." He stopped, catching himself. He didn't want to promise anything he couldn't deliver. The truth was that he had no idea what spells he had that might apply in this case, or which spells he could buy from the neighbors without his customers finding out about it.

"Well, we certainly want to know if he's still alive and well!" Doran snapped.

"It isn't going to do us any good to locate a..." Suddenly realizing that completing the sentence with the word "corpse," as he had intended to do, might upset his wife, he let it drop and instead said, "I mean, yes, we want to know the state of his health!"

"And if there's some way we could talk to him..." Faléa added, ignoring her husband's blunder.

"Ah," Thetheran said, stroking his beard. "Well, if you actually want totalk to him, that will call for a little research. Tell me, do you have any idea at all where he is? Is he still inside the city walls?"

"We don't know," Doran said, annoyed. "All we know is he's gone."

"Well, then," Thetheran said, "I suggest that the two of you go keep yourselves busy for an hour or two while I investigate the matter, and when you come back I hope to have a spell ready for you."

Hehoped he would, but he admitted to himself that it wasn't very likely.