The Dragon Keeper

It had not been that hard to slip away from the ship at night. Each evening, Leftrin nosed the Tarman onto the muddy banks of the river as close as he could get to wherever the dragons were sleeping. Some nights the keepers slept on board; sometimes they bedded down near their dragon wards. He had been fortunate. The dragons had settled for the night on a grassy shore and their keepers had decided to collect driftwood and sleep near them. Leftrin himself had taken the watch. Alise had been his unwitting accomplice for she had distracted the captain so completely that Sedric had no problem in stealthily leaving the ship.

The dying glow of the keepers’ bonfire and the nearly full moon had been enough to light his way. He’d slogged over trampled grass and through puddles as best he could, resigned that his boots and trousers would be sodden and caked with mud by the time he returned. He’d taken care earlier in the evening to watch the dragons as they settled, so he knew approximately where the exhausted brown was sleeping. It had been late and both the keepers and their dragons had been sleeping soundly as he moved cautiously among and then past them. The sickly dragon slept alone on the outskirts of the group. It hadn’t stirred as he’d drawn near it. At first, he’d thought it was already dead. He could detect no movement and heard no sign of it breathing. He’d forced himself to boldness, and cautiously set a hand to the creature’s filthy shoulder. It made no response. He gave it a slight push, and then a harder shove. It made a wheezing sound but did not move. Sedric had taken out his knife.

His first ambition had been to claim a few scales. The shoulder was perfect; he’d used his opportunity to observe the dragons while Alise attempted to talk to them to good use. He knew that the larger scales were usually on their shoulders, hips and the broadest parts of their tails. By the moonlight’s feeble gleam, he had slipped the edge of his knife under a scale, pinched it hard against the blade with his thumb and jerked. The scale did not come out easily; it was rather like pulling a plate from the bottom of a stack. But it came, edged with gleaming blood. The dragon gave a twitch but slept on, apparently too feeble to care.

He’d extracted three more scales from the creature, each about the size of the palm of his hand, wrapped them carefully in a kerchief and tucked them into the breast of his shirt. He’d nearly returned to the barge then, for he knew that even one of the scales should bring him a rich price. But while a rich price might be enough to win their freedom, he doubted it would long keep Hest at his side. No. He had taken the risk already. He would either gain enough from this gamble to live like a king or he’d not bother. He’d be a fool to stop now when he was so close to making his fortune.

He’d chosen his tools carefully. The little knife he took out now was a butcher’s tool, one used for sticking a pig and draining off the fresh blood for pudding. He’d been surprised to find that such a tool existed, but the moment he’d seen one, he’d bought it. It was short and sharp, with a fuller that passed through a tunnel in the knife’s hardwood handle and acted as a passage for the flow of blood.

He had moved to a fresh spot on the dragon’s body, on the neck just behind the jaw. He slapped at the mosquitoes that had found him and were now buzzing hungrily about his own ears and neck. “Just a very big mosquito,” he suggested to the comatose dragon. He lifted one of the heavy scales on its neck, took a firm grip on his tool and punched it into its flesh.

The tool was as sharp as a grindstone could make it. Even so, it didn’t go in easily. The dragon gave a squeak in its sleep, a comical sound from so large a creature. Its clawed feet twitched against the muddy ground and Sedric knew a moment’s terror and very nearly fled. Instead, hands shaking, he’d taken a glass flask from his small pack and drawn the glass stopper out of it. He waited. After a moment, the blood began to fall, drop by shining drop. He manoeuvred his flask’s mouth under the falling drops and caught them, one by one.

His hands were shaking too much. He’d never done this sort of thing and found it much more distressing than he had imagined. A drop of blood missed the mouth of the flask and ran greasily over his fingers. He grimaced and then braced the neck of the flask against the end of the knife. In that instant, the drips became a trickle and then a sudden flow of blood. “Merciful Sa!” he exclaimed in terror and delight. The flask grew heavy in his hand and then suddenly overflowed. He snatched it away. He had to pour out some of the blood before it would admit the stopper, and wished in vain that he had brought a second flask. He wiped his bloody hands on his trousers and then carefully stowed the flask in his pack. A quick tug freed the knife from the dragon’s flesh and he added it to the pack.

But the blood had continued to run.

The smell of it, reptilian and strangely rich, filled his nostrils. The insects that had been buzzing around his head forsook him for this flowing feast. They clustered around the wound, feeding greedily. The trickle of blood became a scarlet rivulet down the dragon’s shoulder. It dripped from the animal onto the trampled ground. A small puddle started to form. In the moonlight, it was black and then as he stared at the deepening pool, it reddened. It gleamed scarlet and crimson, the two reds swirling like dyes stirred into water, separated only by silver edging. He felt drawn to it and crouched by the puddle, entranced by the colour.

His gaze lifted to the thin stream of falling blood that fed the puddle. He put his hand out, touched two fingers to the flow. The stream parted and ran over his fingers like silken thread. He pulled his fingers back, watching the unimpeded flow and then set his bloody fingers to his mouth and licked them.

He recoiled from the touch of dragon’s blood on his tongue, shocked that he had obeyed an impulse he couldn’t even recall having. The taste of the blood flooded his mouth and filled his senses. He smelled it everywhere, not just in his nose but in the back of his throat and in the roof of his mouth. His ears rang with the scent, and his tongue tingled and stung. He tried to shake the remaining blood from his fingers, then wiped his hand down his shirt front. He was covered in blood and mud now. And still the dragon bled.

He stooped and cupped a handful of mud-and-blood. It was both warm and cold in his hand, and he felt as if it squirmed there, a liquid serpent coiling and uncoiling within his hand. He plastered it over the injury. When he lifted his hand, the tiny trickle of red burst forth afresh. Another handful of mud and another one, and the last one he held hard against the dragon’s throat, panting through his mouth both in fear and with the effort. He tasted and smelled only dragon, he felt dragon inside his mouth and down his throat. He was a dragon. There were scales down his neck and back, his claws were sunken in mud, his wings would not unfold and what was a dragon who could not fly? He rocked on his feet dizzily, and when he staggered back from the dragon, the flow of blood had finally ceased.

For a time he had stood there, his hands braced just above his knees, breathing the night air and trying to recover. When his head had cleared a bit, he straightened and felt instead of dizziness, a rush of horror at how badly he had managed this. What had happened to his stealth and his “leave no sign” intentions? He was covered in mud and blood, and the dragon was lying in a pool of blood. How subtle!

He kicked mud over the blood, tore marsh grass loose and spread it there, and then kicked more mud over it. It seemed to take him hours. By moonlight, he could not tell if any red showed through his efforts on the ground or on the dragon’s neck. The creature slept on. At least it would have no recall of him.

He went back to the barge and attempted to reboard it. He spent an agonized near hour in the shadow of the bow. Above him, Leftrin and Alise talked softly about knots, of all things. When finally they moved away, he clambered up the rope ladder and fled to his cabin. There he had changed hastily into clean clothing and hidden his precious blood and scales in his case. It had taken him three furtive attempts before he was able to clean his muddy, bloody tracks from the deck of the barge. Leftrin and Alise had nearly caught him in the act of throwing his soiled clothing and ruined boots overboard. If they had not been so completely engrossed in one another, they would surely have discovered him.

But they had not. They had not, and the vial of blood that he now held in his hand was his prize for all he had gone through. He stared at it, at the slow shifting and tangling of the trapped red stuff inside it. Like serpents twining round one another, he thought, and a ghostly image of sea serpents wrapping round one another in the dim blue of an undersea world invaded his thoughts. He shook his head clear of the fancy, and resisted the sudden urge to uncap the flask and smell the contents.

He had sealing wax in his case. He should melt some over the neck of the flask to seal it securely. He should. He’d do it later.

The sight of his treasure left him oddly calmed. He put the flask back into the secret drawer and took up a small shallow box made from cedar. He opened the sliding lid and looked inside. The scales rested there on a shallow bed of salt. They were slightly iridescent in the dim light of the cabin. He closed the lid, replaced the box in the secret drawer, and shut and locked it. They’d probably find the brown dragon dead. They wouldn’t suspect him, he suddenly knew. He’d covered his tracks well. He’d smeared the blood away and the wound from his knife was so tiny that no one would find it. He hadn’t killed the beast, not really. Everyone saw that it was nearly ready