the subsequent events.
'What do you mean, madam, that you've painted greens?' said Silver.
'I draw dragons,' said the woman. 'My name, by the way, is Petra. The dragons sometimes call me Ossalurkarif, but I prefer Petra. I definitely prefer Petra to 'missy' or 'madam.''
'Lady Petra,' said Silver, leaping up on his table so everyone could see him, then making an elaborate bow, 'my apologies for these repeated questions, but what do you know about dragons?'
'More than you do.' Petra sighed and pushed her pie aside. 'I've sat and listened for all these tendays. And your tales are all very pretty and well-told. But not one of you has really looked at the dragons that you say that you've met. You've fought them, you've killed them, you've stolen from them, and once or twice, you've even had a conversation with one. But none of you have ever noticed much more than if a dragon is green, red, or blue.'
She reached behind her and pulled a number of long metal and oiled canvas tubes out of her pack.
'I draw dragons,' she said again. 'Somebody has to. We live in a realm filled with dragons, but what does anyone really know? Your wizards talk of Draco Mystere, but what good is reading the words of others compared to actual field study? Why you won't find in books whether a red adult has one or two phalanges or the color of a bronze hatchling's tongue. But I can show you that! And I can prove greens don't have crossed eyes.'
Petra opened one of the tubes and drew out a number of tightly rolled parchments. As she spread them across her table, people stood up to get a better look, causing the gnomes to join Silver on the tabletop so they could see over the heads of the humans. The dwarves just muscled themselves to the front of the crowd. As the sound of 'oohs' and 'aahs' rose from the crowd, Varney stopped pouring beer and boosted himself up on the bar to see Petra's drawings.
Filling every inch of the vellum were dozens and dozens of drawings of green dragons. There were greens in flight, rearing up to peer over treetops, curled around a clutch of eggs, and resting with chins across crossed claws, looking like tabby cats asleep in the sun.
'Look there,' said Petra, pointing at the head of a green dragon with eyes deep-set under a row of hornlets and crest fully extended. 'Perfectly normal eyes. Not a sign of crossing.'
'Well,' said Silver finally. 'I guess I got my dragons a little mixed up. It's the whites that have crossed eyes.'
'No,' said Petra, pulling another tube from her pack and twisting it open. 'Whites have beautiful eyes. Much more variation in eye colors than other dragons, in fact, probably because of the white scales. I've seen whites with blue eyes, green eyes, and the most wonderful shade of amber. The one with amber eyes was a very old dragon whose scales had gone a lovely shade of cream, with just a slight tint of azure on the belly. He said that all his brothers had amber eyes, but none of his sisters, who tended to have lavender or violet eyes.'
'You talk to dragons?' said Nix, managing to sound both intrigued and disbelieving at the same time. 'You've spoken with white dragons?'
'The polite ones,' answered Petra with a shrug. 'If I'm painting a big portrait. It can take hours sometimes and they do get so bored posing. I guess that's why I like doing the little sketches more, like the ones of the greens. There I'm just drawing them quickly as they go about their lives. It seems less intrusive somehow. Dragons are very sensitive about such things.'
'So how many kinds of dragons have you drawn?' challenged Nix. 'I've captured more than three different species in my time. I could show the bites on my leg from a blue, and the one on my arm from a green, and the one from a red wyrmling on my-'
'Not in front of the ladies,' cried Froedegra, the blacksmith's daughter, who knew very well where the little red dragon had bit Nix and never wanted to see that scar again.
'Thank you, but you don't need to show me anything,' said Petra. 'I know the bite of one dragon from another. I've drawn copper dragons on the High Moor, red dragons playing in a volcano's fire, gold dragons reading scrolls in labyrinths, white dragons sliding through snow and ice, bronze dragons being ridden by wizards on battlefields, blue dragons burrowing beneath hot sands, and black dragons flying above the salt marshes, where the world is neither sea nor land, but a bit of both. I've walked all the Realms from end to end, just to draw dragons.'
As she recited her catalog of dragons, Petra pulled scroll tube after scroll tube from her pack. Dragons crawled, walked, swam, flew, dug, ran, stretched, fought, and slept in the dozens of drawings spread across all the tables of the tavern. More dragons in more colors than anyone had ever seen before. Silver and Nix were silenced.
But Badger Bates was moved to speak, because he knew that if he displayed the awe that the others showed, he'd lose Malaeragoth's sapphire scale. And Bates never gave up anything without a battle.
'There's no sapphire dragon here,' he said, surveying the drawings that littered the tavern. 'There's one that I've seen that you have not: Malaeragoth in his rage! I saw him that day he ripped up the wizard's killers, and nobody has seen him since.'
'Malaeragoth! That dragon is dangerous to draw,' said Petra, frowning at the name. 'I painted him once and only once, as he paced through his cold caverns, but he caught sight of my painting in his scrying mirror and sent a servant to steal the picture from me.'
'Easy to say, hard to prove,' answered Bates. 'I don't believe you. That old dragon has been gone for a hundred years. There's many here who know that I'm the last alive to see him.'
Petra shook her blond head at the dwarf's taunt and began to gather up her pictures, rolling them tightly and packing them back into their protective tubes.
'Malaeragoth served Uvalkhur in Sembia many years ago,' continued Bates, 'and I was digging a fountain for the wizard's garden when thieves snuck in and murdered the master in his own place. And I can give you proof that I was there that day, for here's Malaeragoth's own scale,' said the dwarf, banging his iron box down on the table and flipping open the lid.
'I never said that you were a liar, though you were more than rude to call me one,' answered Petra in the same calm voice that she had used to tell Nix and Silver that they knew nothing about green dragons' eyes. 'Malaeragoth's scale that may well be. It's off an old dragon, and a sapphire too. The color and the size are evidence of that. But if you've seen Malaeragoth's rage than you know that the sapphire dragon is a dragon best left sleeping. I wouldn't go shouting his name and boasting of my knowledge quite so loud. It's not for nothing that he's taken to calling himself the Unseen Dragon.'
'Well,' said Silver, determined to regain his status as dragon expert before the crowd, 'Badger's not a complete fool. Proof is proof, as he likes to say. You could have drawn your pictures from the stories that you've heard here. You've been listening to us all winter long. How do we know that you've seen these beasts with your own eyes?'
'Because I only draw what I have seen and all my dragons are true in every detail,' answered Petra, and her voice went a little higher at being questioned by the gnome as well as the dwarf. 'And if you had any brains behind your eyes, you'd give me that cup that sits on the bar. For I've shown you more of dragons tonight than any tale told here this winter!'
Bates sucked in his breath and blew it out again. 'Show me Malaeragoth,' he said, 'and I'll give you Malaeragoth's sapphire scale and double the coins in the cup as well.'
The tavern crowd gasped. The sapphire scale might be rare, but coin out of Bates's purse was something even rarer.
'Done!' said Petra, for like most painters, she never could resist a bet. 'I'll draw Malaeragoth as I last saw him, old and wily, and as fond of magic as any wizard! But he's a large dragon and I need a large space to paint.' She looked around the room and walked over to the north wall. Mrs. Varney had whitewashed the plaster only a few days before. Petra looked at Varney, still sitting on the top of his bar, and asked, 'May I paint the dragon here?'
Varney agreed, thinking that a mural of the sapphire dragon would draw the drinkers just as much as any story. And that, as Mrs. Varney would say in later years, was just typical of Varney's foolishness.
Petra called for raw eggs and clean water to mix her paints. Varney brought the ingredients, totaling the cost in his mind and determined to add it as 'extras' to her tab. From her pack, Petra pulled out her paint box with its jars of powdered pigments and its multitude of brushes. She grabbed a stick from the fireplace and sketched the outline of Malaeragoth upon the wall. In her drawing, the dragon was frozen in midstep, facing a floating mirror.
