Dragon Weather (24 page)

On the dusty walk back to Manfort he asked Black, “What should I buy?”

“A wagon and two yoke of oxen, to start with,” Black said.

“I know
that,
” Arlian said, nettled. “I mean, what do we take to
sell?
”

Black shrugged. “I'm no merchant,” he said.

“But you've been to the Borderlands before, haven't you?”

“Twice,” Black acknowledged. “The merchants brought wool and silk and other fabrics, and northern wines, and certain herbs, and traded for talismans, gems, dyes, rare woods, drugs and potions, strange foodstuffs, and for still other fabrics. Oh, and exotic pets—there was a fashion for lizards at the time, though it had all but passed by the time we returned.”

Arlian nodded and shifted his pack to a more comfortable position. “And if we were bound for Lorigol?”

Black looked at him, startled. “Why?”

“I'm just curious.”

“Wool and silk and wine, and we'd come back with oil and salt and spices, with dyes and pearls and curiosities made from seashells.”

“And the western mountains?”

“Well, we wouldn't take wool!” Black said with a snort of laughter. “Theirs is better than ours. We'd take oil and grain and spices, and we'd bring back brass and chalk and dyes and herbs. And other things; I don't know. Merchants are always trying new goods.”

“And isn't that where the most money is to be made?”

“Or lost, if you misjudge what people want to buy.”

Arlian nodded, thinking hard about gold and what it could buy. The best goods were obviously things that were small, so that more could be fit into a wagon, and cheap to buy but precious at the other end of the caravan's route. And best of all would be something that no one else in the caravan had brought, so that you and the other merchants would not undercut each other.

What gold could buy …

“Do they make good swords in the Borderlands?”

Black looked thoughtful. “No, they don't,” he said. “They hardly work metal at all. That's one reason
we
go
there,
rather than their merchants coming to Manfort—they make their wagon fittings of wood and leather rather than iron, and arm themselves with arrows, spears, and slings, and the wagons just don't last that well.”

“Then … well, is there some reason no one takes swords and ironmongery to sell?”

“I don't know,” Black said slowly. “I believe … well, remember, many of the lands beyond the border are ruled by magical creatures of one sort or another. Such beings are said to dislike silver and cold iron; I know that all the coins in the southern lands are of gold or copper, never of silver. Perhaps iron and silver aren't
allowed
there.”

“Then wouldn't that make them all the more precious?”

Black smiled. “Most likely,” he agreed.

Arlian was careful not to say anything more on the subject until the following day, at the office on the Street of the Silk merchants, after Black's employment as commander of the caravan's contingent of guards was settled and the contracts signed. Then, when that was irreversible and Black's position secure, he announced what he proposed to sell.

The three caravan masters, seated in a row behind their polished black table, were shocked. “Selling iron is
forbidden
in the magical realms,” Lord Drens said.

“Most of them,” Lord Sandal, seated on Drens's left, corrected. “Not in Arithei or Stiva.”

Arlian, standing before the table, started at the mention of Arithei; this was the first time since Hathet's death he had heard the name spoken aloud. And it was spoken by someone who had been to the Borderlands, and would know the truth. That meant it
did
exist.

It didn't mean any of the rest of Hathet's story was true, though. He was probably mad, not an ambassador at all, and his amethysts were probably nothing but pretty stones.

“But who can
get
to Arithei or Stiva?” Drens retorted. “Not I! The roads are closed, and the native guides are gone, and the only routes are across the Dreaming Mountains. I have no desire to live out my life beset by nightmares, to never again have an untroubled night's sleep!”

“Really, my lord,” Lady Thassa, at the right end of the table, said, addressing Arlian directly again, “I would not advise bringing ironwork. Our wagons and swords are not permitted in certain areas as it is; we bring them over the borders only under severe restrictions.”

“What about silver?” Arlian asked, pushing Arithei out of his mind.

“Banned in Shei, Furza, and Tirikindaro,” Lady Thassa replied. “Out of favor in the neighboring lands and of no use as currency, but not forbidden.”

“Is it more valuable there than here?”

Thassa, Drens, and Sandal exchanged glances.

“I don't know,” Sandal admitted.

“And what if I were to sell my goods on
this
side of the border?”

“We can hardly object to
that,
” Sandal said. “Trade within the Lands of Man is free and open.”

Lord Drens started to protest, and Lady Thassa interrupted him; a moment later the three were in the midst of a full-blown argument.

Their clerk sent Black and Arlian away, with instructions to return the next day.

They did, and learned that the vote was two to one in Arlian's favor; Lord Drens yielded with poor grace, but he had yielded.

Now he glared across the table at the troublemaker. “Always remember, Lord Ari,” Drens said, using Arlian's latest alias, “that we reserve the right to expel you from the caravan at any time should we decide that your continued presence endangers the rest of us.”

“Understood, my lord,” Arlian said with a bow.

“And you understand our contracts? That each member shares in the expenses?”

Arlian nodded. The contracts were quite complex, and rather daunting, as they covered any number of possible contingencies, including provisions for what would happen to his goods if he died at various points in the expedition, and how any proceeds would be shared between his heirs (if any) and the other members of the caravan.

Arlian understood this, and since he was going more to continue his education than to make a profit and had no heirs, nor any intention of dying, he was untroubled by the terms.

“They are quite satisfactory,” he said.

The three masters nodded, and the papers were brought out for Arlian's signature, concluding the negotiations.

When the caravan assembled in the plaza before the Blood of the Grape two days later, Arlian's new wagon held some three dozen fine swords—the complete stock of four swordsmiths' shops—and hundreds of good daggers. A large part of his wealth had been transformed from gold to silver, as well.

He had also acquired all the usual requirements for a long journey—clothing, bedding, nonperishable foods, extra harness for his four oxen, a huge quantity of grain, water, wine, lamp oil, hundreds of feet of rope, and so on. He had even equipped himself with a bow and a dozen arrows—not that he knew how to use them effectively.

In addition, he brought two pairs of practice swords—low-grade steel with no edge and blunt points, but with the weight and balance of a proper sword.

Although he was a merchant and a full member of the caravan, Arlian was also contracted as a guard in training, an unpaid apprentice, and as such he was assigned the second position, directly behind the lead wagon Black shared with seven other guards; that suited him well. He hired one of the other guards, a man called Quickhand, to teach him to tend and drive oxen, and to drive for him until the lessons were learned.

There were three more guards at the rear, in the masters' large and elegant wagon, and four on horseback who also slept at the rear—fifteen guards in all. That was deemed adequate by all.

The two wagons that were to hold guards—the lead wagon and the masters' oversized conveyance—both had large shutters on either side that could be swung back, opening the sides to let in air and light, or to allow the occupants to survey their surroundings; the other wagons, intended primarily for keeping goods safe, were far more solidly built. Arlian's was little more than a large wooden box on wheels with a platform on either end and a bench seat at the front, all painted a rich blue and trimmed with varnished bamboo.

And on a fine bright day in late spring Arlian sat beside his hired driver as the caravan rolled out of the plaza and headed south, toward the Borderlands.

20

The Road South

“This is Benth-in-Tara,” Quickhand said, as the wagon rolled past a stone marker toward the sprawling town ahead. “We'll be stopping here for a day to trade with the locals.”

Arlian frowned at the name; he knew he remembered it, but couldn't quite place it. The long fertile valley of Tara Vale was familiar enough, of course …

Then it came back to him; Benth-in-Tara was where Grandsir had been headed when he saw the ruins of Starn, the village in the Sandalwood Hills that the dragons had destroyed.

Arlian turned to the southwest, peering into the distance.

Those hills were surely the Sandalwood Hills, then—though he was seeing them now from the other side, and as a result there was little familiar in their appearance. The shadowy spike on the horizon would be Skygrazer Peak, and the distant smoke rising from a humped peak beyond the hills would be from the Smoking Mountain, where he had been born.

When he was in the mine he had often dreamed of returning there, and now, if he chose, he could—who would stop him?

But why should he? Nothing remained of Obsidian but ruins. Sweet had told him, one long night last winter when he and she had exchanged reminiscences, that the village was never rebuilt; a place that dragons had destroyed was considered cursed, forever unsafe.

The thought of Sweet troubled him; he seemed to see her face in the western sky. He felt guilty that he was here, rather than back in Manfort searching for her.

He could never have found her and rescued her as the ignorant naïf he had been before meeting Black, though. He was not yet ready to make his bit of justice in the world, not yet ready to free her and avenge poor Rose. Thinking about Sweet could only distract him from more immediate concerns; he would come back for her in time.

He once more turned his attention to the town they were entering.

So this, he thought, was Benth-in-Tara, where his grandfather had long ago come to trade. And now here he was, following in Grandsir's footsteps—but nobody here would be interested in swords or daggers.

He had not thought of that when stocking his wagon; of course the caravan made other stops on its way south, and he had brought nothing to sell at any of them.

That might be an expensive oversight. He frowned.

“A day here,” he said. “What's the next trading stop, then?”

“Jumpwater, I think,” Quickhand said.

“And after that?”

Quickhand thought for a moment, then ticked off the names on his fingers.

“Blasted Oak, Sadar, Cork Tree, Stonebreak,” he said. “Then we get to the Desolation, and from there there's nothing until we reach the Borderlands, and where we go depends on what road the masters choose.”

“There's more than one road?”

“There are at least three routes across the Desolation, and they branch further on the other side.”

“And what determines which route we take?”

Quickhand shrugged. “News and rumor in Stonebreak, the weather, any signs or omens we might encounter … whatever the masters hear and see.”

Arlian frowned. It all seemed too vague and poorly planned for his liking.

“It's in the southern part of the Desolation that Black and I are going to earn our pay,” Quickhand remarked. “That's bandit country, where the roads come down off the high plateau and wind through the canyons.”

“Not until then?”

Quickhand shrugged again. “Oh, maybe,” he said. “If we weren't here there would probably be burglars and sneak thieves slipping into the wagons in every town, but who would dare tackle a group this size, even if they were just merchants?” He gestured at the long line of wagons trailing behind them. “Even merchants can put up a fight, after all.”

“But then how do the bandits in the Desolation operate?” Arlian asked. “How can there be enough to attack this large a group, but few enough that a dozen or so guards can handle them?”

“The canyons,” Quickhand explained. “They can block the road, trap the whole caravan, with just a few men, and then starve the caravan into submission. A dozen good fighters can drive them away and keep them away while the others clear the road.” He paused, then added, “Usually. They have other tricks, as well—they'll try to split the caravan, or disable a few wagons so they can loot them, or take a few prisoners they can ransom.”

“Oh,” Arlian said. Just then he caught sight of a curious structure ahead, at the very heart of Benth-in-Tara—a single vast roof supported on a forest of pillars, its sides and interior open. “What's
that?
” he asked.

“The marketplace,” Quickhand explained, as he steered the plodding oxen directly toward it.

The caravan rolled into the marketplace and formed up in three lines beneath the roof—one along either side, and one down the shady center. The guard wagon, which had no goods to display, was in the center—and Arlian's own wagon was right next to it.

When they had stopped, as the other wagons were still rolling into position, Arlian leaped to the ground and greeted Black, who had already disembarked.

“Nothing to sell here?” Black asked.

Arlian shook his head. “I didn't think of it,” he said. “Foolish of me.”

“Ah,” Black said. “And here I thought you'd done it deliberately, so I'd have more time to thrash you tomorrow.”