The Luckmaster's Promise

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Sometimes, like now, months would go by without a winged shadow passing overhead, or the snap of fangs against fingers in the berry bushes. Other times a new crop of the beasts would seem to arrive daily. But with every sighting, after a string of dragonless weeks or none, the Luckmaster would totter out to read the omens, and tell the Valley at large what future the new flights heralded. That, and what they must do about it.

And somehow, he always seemed to be right. Nobody knew how he did it, short of the Luckmaster himself. Least, nobody would tell Alyana. She had even been inside his house once, sneaked in right under his nose and got a sight of the great tomes he consulted in his craft. To this day, even the Luckmaster didn’t know she'd been there. Not that it had helped. Alyana would be happy to tell anyone who asked that she could write her own name (her aunt just made her mark with a cross). But such lofty educational heights hadn't helped her to recognise any one of the letters in the Luckmaster’s books. Only that he had so many of them – six at least, she counted, and all of them so large she wouldn’t have been able to lift more than one at a time. Those books must have held incredible knowledge and learning. Or maybe he simply had magical powers, or consulted the gods. But when he saw a dragon, what he said always came to pass.

Once, a flock of them the size of starlings had taken up temporary residence in the wheat fields on their way south. The Luckmaster had scooped one up in a gnarled hand, examined the blue spots on some, and the wings shot with silver thread on others, and proclaimed that three incessant weeks of heavy rain were ahead. In the end, it had lasted three and a half, and at least half of the houses took in an ankle-depth of water even after they had been fortified with bags of sand.

Another time, a dragon larger than a horse alighted on the Luckmaster’s own roof. That one had meant good fortune, abundant crops, travelling merchants carrying bargains, and all the rest of it. A good thing too, for the Luckmaster: the damage to the roof was considerable, but in such a time of plenty so too were the helpers on hand for the repairs.

Sometimes the dragons didn’t pass by Wecester on their way through the Valley, and the news of them came only from the surrounding villages. The one time Alyana could remember the Luckmaster’s prediction being wrong was when a boy from down Soucester way had come panting into the village with the sighting, eyes shining: a great, grey-purple monster trudging through the meadowlands, taking ambling steps. Giving its wings a rest, no doubt. And by its side, a chick – a calf – a pup. The boy didn’t seem to know what to call the young dragon, but he was certain it had yellow spots along its belly.

“I ran all the way here,” he managed after he had garbled out the telling, puffing out his chest. “Ran all the way myself. I saw it first so I wanted to be the one to bring the news.”

The Luckmaster gazed with runny eyes over the child’s head, examining the horizon. “I shall be the judge of whether the creature was resting its wings,” he finally said, his voice thin and watery. Then he required a second full description, complete with probing questions, and disappeared inside with his books for a day.

The village held its breath as it waited, and the Soucester boy too. He had the attention of every street, every house, was plied with food and drink for another description, and another, and another. And he never tired of telling right up until the Luckmaster’s door creaked open and the old man made his unsteady steps into the square.

It was good news: a cache of gems to be found in the western caves along the Valley’s edge, three days hence. But the gems were never seen. Instead, word came back of a landslide, dirt and dust and finally great rocks crashing down around the searchers. Then an hour later, a second message: a man had died in the crush. His wife was the first at the Luckmaster’s door to hear his explanation. And the Luckmaster was the first at the Mayor’s door, demanding the boy be dragged back from Soucester and his story examined again.

They brought out a chair into the square and perched the boy wide-eyed on it across from the Luckmaster. The Mayor stood silently to the side, listening to the thousand and one questions.

“Was it the size you were exaggerating?” the Luckmaster’s gaze was piercing. Alyana could almost feel it from her place at the edge of the crowd.

“It was almost as big as a house, I swear it.”

“Anything unusual about the snout?”

The boy shook his head as the Luckmaster consulted a paper in his hand.

“So we return to the spots on the belly of the young…”

“I told you, they were yellow!”

“And I told you not to interrupt.” The Luckmaster’s voice was quiet, cold and slow. “You told me yellow today and you told me three times on the day of the sighting. I asked you three times because the detail is crucial. Yellow spots on the young point to just the future I told, there can be no doubt. But if rather than yellow, the spots were brown, we would be looking at something different indeed. The signs would point directly to danger.”

The boy shook his head again, looking directly at the ground. “They were yellow, not brown.”

“You believe, then, do you, that it is most likely the signs of prophecy have been misaligned? That we can no longer trust in the futures we are presented with?”

The boy looked up, tried to meet the Luckmaster’s eyes and failed. He opened his mouth but didn’t speak.

“You don’t think it possible that you could have mistaken the colour? A trick of the light, perhaps, in the early morning? Or in the excitement? The spots were on the low belly, unless you were mistaken about that also. Perhaps the colour wasn’t clear among the grass of the meadows.”

Alyana craned to see the boy’s response, but he stared ahead, still not closing his mouth.

“It would be a mistake anybody could make.”

He finally closed his mouth, swallowed, and opened it again. “Maybe – maybe the spots were a little brown.”

“A little brown?”

“They could have been brown.” The boy glanced sideways at the crowd, which rumbled with sudden chatter. Suddenly there wasn’t a person standing there who hadn’t doubted the boy’s story the moment he told it.

So it was the report that had been wrong. The signs of the future were not at fault and could still be relied upon. That was all they had wanted to hear. Only two months ago the Luckmaster had told Fenna that her baby would come early, and saved her from birthing in the forest on the way to her mother’s house. The month before, the dragons had warned old Matron Longtree of a fall that she would have, and it was thanks to him that her nephew had been on hand to help. Not one of them wanted to lose the Luckmaster’s wisdom.

The Mayor had declared that matter over, with a stern warning to all to be sure of the sightings they brought, but the Luckmaster suggested the Soucester boy be punished for his carelessness. She didn’t like it, but when the Luckmaster impressed upon her the importance of being wise to what the future holds, and the dangers of blundering into it unarmed… after that, what choice did the Mayor have but to prescribe him a sound whipping before sending him on his way?

That was the last time Alyana had seen that boy in Wecester, but every villager's report became less trusted after his turned out to be wrong. If there was a dragon sighting, the Luckmaster was now known to make long trips to observe the beast himself. Sometimes the prophecies were late now, or the dragon was clean gone by the time the Luckmaster arrived. He would be heard grumbling about the wasted trips, but that, he said, was the price of getting it right. He had even refused trips entirely, protesting that he was too old for a journey to the northern tip of the Valley, or that crossing the river in this weather would lay him up in bed for a week, and what use would he be then?

Once, Alyana had mustered the courage to ask him if he would ever take on an apprentice, somebody young to ease the burdens of his task and take long journeys for him. After he had realised she was addressing him, he had simply shrugged. “I don’t see how such a question concerns you, girl,” he had said. Alyana had wrinkled her nose at him as he turned away.

But now, apprentice or no, a month had gone by with no call for the Luckmaster’s services, a month almost to the day. Alyana had begun to wonder if the Luckmaster got bored in times like this. No runner had appeared from the surrounding villages, and no dragon had been spotted in Wecester. No dragon save one.

Alyana squatted by the blackberry bush, peering inside at the faint signs of movement. She knew that the creature was about the length of her arm, metallic grey-blue, like a sword out of legend, though it was too dark in the bush to see that now. Its body was whipping around, long like a snake’s but with six lizard-legs. It stopped, trained its eyes towards her, eyes shining white and steady against its half-silhouette. She saw the glint of teeth as it coughed out glowing ash, then gave a burp. The metal-blue scales were visible in the half second of light. It was a miracle some dry leaf didn’t catch flame.

It had been a day ago that she first saw the dragon, crouching by the old well and tasting the air with its tongue. It was only Alyana’s aunt that required her water come from the old well on the edge of the village and not the new one in the square, so Alyana had been the only one to see it. And she had told nobody. She knew she must bring the story to the Luckmaster soon, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it yet. Its eyes had a playful glint, and its tail flicked jauntily when it ran. And it was hers, a secret even the Luckmaster didn’t know about. A dragon even the Luckmaster didn’t know about.

So, she reasoned that if she was going to keep it to herself, she might as well get to know the thing. She had watched it scuttle into the blackberry bush while she was fetching the morning water for her aunt, and headed back that way as soon as she got the chance to be alone. Locking eyes with the dragon, she thrust her hand into her pocket and pulled out what she had brought. Alyana wasn’t quite sure what dragons ate – nobody was, except for probably the Luckmaster – but she assumed food was a natural first step in friendship with a dragon, so she had brought everything she saw that looked promising. A chicken bone with scraps of meat still on it, an acorn, a pinecone, an end of carrot, a chunk of coal swiped from the fire pile. On the way she had remembered that dragons were known in legend for hoarding gold and coins, so she had added the nicest pebble she could find, which glinted a hundred colours if you held it up to the light. The few pieces of actual money she had remained in her pocket, and she laid the six out in a line just outside the bush, then sat back, willing the little dragon to come and investigate.

There was a cat at the inn, and if you stared into its eyes for long enough and blinked, slowly slowly, and it blinked back, nice and slow, the innkeeper said that meant the cat trusted you. Alyana thought it must be true, because after she had blinked at it, the cat had come up and rubbed its head soft against her hand and settled itself by her leg. So she tried the same with the dragon, trying to keep eye contact except for the blinks, slow as she could. The dragon didn’t care to blink back, just flicked its head sideways almost as if it had sneezed. But it crept forwards, little by little, to inspect the offering.

The head just poked out, two tiny nubs of horn and fluttering nostrils, sniffing each object in turn. Alyana bit her lip, fiddled with the lining of her pocket, pushed her hair behind her head, then pulled it over one shoulder, then back behind her again. Still the dragon sniffed. A bird was scratching in the ground off to her right; Alyana’s gaze darted towards it, and she almost missed the dragon grabbing the pinecone between its teeth and hurling it the other way as far as it could.

Fair enough, Alyana thought. The pinecone had been something of a long shot anyway.

The rest of the selection was met with less disdain. The dragon spat a spark onto the coal, then another, and suddenly only the pebble remained. Alyana wasn’t sure what had been eaten, or thrown, or otherwise disposed of.

She tried blinking again, but the dragon didn’t seem interested in meeting her eyes. It scratched the ground a couple of times and nudged the pebble with its snout. Then its ears pricked, head jerked up. And it was gone, swirling around and slithering right back into the bush.

“Hey,” Alyana said to its retreating tail. “I didn’t know you didn’t like pinecones.”

She hadn’t even finished speaking when she heard what had really spooked the dragon. Commotion back towards the village. Alyana grinned and turned to follow the shouts. The last time there had been kerfuffle like this a pig had got loose in the square, squealing and trampling and generally putting on a show.

She almost bumped into Matron Longtree standing outside her house on the edge of the village and gazing down the track at the gathering crowd. “What is it?” Alyana asked in a hurry.

“Nothing I’ll tell to you, witch child,” the Matron said. “And watch your step around me, you know well I’m unsteady on my feet.”

Alyana stuck her tongue out. “You know I’m not a witch child,” she said. It was what Longtree always called her, just to infuriate her, Alyana thought. She knew well enough it wasn’t true. But Alyana wouldn’t be thrown today. “What’s going on?”

“Dragons in the square,” Longtree told her, chewing bitterly on nothing. “I’ll not make it there in time for the excitement, that’s for sure.”

Dragons. Alyana bounced on her feet. “Thank you, Matron Longtree,” she said. “And I will watch my step around you in future.” She took off, then called over her shoulder, “I’ll be sure to tell you all the excitement.”

And sure enough, by the time she reached the crowd ahead, almost at the square, she had reached a dragon blocking the way too. Bigger than a large dog, it lay across the track leading to the square, sleeping, or maybe just resting. She supposed only the Luckmaster could be the judge of that. Its scales were bronze all over, like burnished armour, its tail furnished with bronze spikes all the way down. People were jostling to try to get around it and reach the Luckmaster’s house, but it wouldn’t be overtaken. It turned slowly to the crowd, blinked, and shook its head like a wet dog. Scaled muscles rippling, it heaved itself up onto thick legs and began to wander down the path ahead of what was now a procession.

The crowd flooded around it once it got out into the square, then as one stopped in its tracks. The Luckmaster and the Mayor stood together in the centre, a ring of people already around them. And on each side was another dragon, exactly like the sleepy bronze newcomer, except that one had scales of flowing silver and the other’s were bright gold.

“The time has come!” The Luckmaster’s voice was louder and brighter than Alyana had ever heard it. He sounded almost like a child as he raised his arms up for all to see his leathery hands splayed open. “The bronze, the silver, and the gold, all united. Their arrival has been promised and wished for by many Luckmasters before me. This can only mean the beginning of bright times ahead. A time of bounty. Sickness shall not strike the Valley for at least a half-year, maybe more. The flowers will bloom bright and even the least of us shall want for nothing.”

The crowd stood silent, stunned at such a fast and glorious prognosis.

The Luckmaster turned to the Mayor and spoke more quietly, but still pitching his voice to carry over the crowd. “I confess I will need to work hard to smooth out the details of the future to come,” he told her. “But these three particular dragons, arriving as they did, the gold, the silver and the bronze… they are known by Luckmasters the land over as the best of omens. The individual circumstances… the positions, the time of day… all must be checked and double checked. That may take me days. Notwithstanding, before making a single calculation I can tell you with full certainty that this is the best omen I have ever seen.”

Whispers rushed through the crowd like wind, one to another. The Mayor straightened to her considerable height, towering over the Luckmaster. “This news is joyous indeed,” she spoke to the whole square. “The Valley as one will greet it with jubilation, I am sure.” She reached into a pocket of her robe of office and offered a large pouch to the Luckmaster. “On behalf of Wecester I give you your just reward for sharing this with us as you have. Tomorrow no doubt your work begins in earnest, but for today I declare a day of festival, and declare also my sincere hope that you will join the celebrations.” He looked to need no persuading.

The crowd erupted around Alyana. Three dragons and a day of festival. Probably a whole week of festival at that. Or a half-year. The village would not be content with just a day. She smiled. That should leave her plenty of time to slip away and search again for the little blue dragon for a while, and join the celebrations herself later.

Nobody noticed her duck into a side street and head off in the direction of the old well. She was taking a different route, and was halfway there by the time she remembered she had promised to tell Matron Longtree about the dragons. Sighing, she veered off back towards the path, but Longtree wasn’t outside anymore, and nobody was in the house, so the diversion was meaningless.

The last place the dragon had been was the blackberry bushes, so that was where to begin the search. She crept forwards, keeping her eyes peeled for a flash of blue and finding none on the way to her old spot. The glittery stone, she realised with a start, was gone. But so was the dragon. She tried to poke her head in to get a better look around and was rudely reminded that blackberry bushes don’t come unarmed. Scratches covered her cheeks as she pulled back. “Little monster,” she muttered.

Next time she was more careful, pulling her sleeves down over her hands before she tried to peel back the undergrowth with them. There wasn’t much that could be done to the dense bushes, and she cursed under her breath, peering around for a glint of blue or the flash of a spark. “Dragon,” she tried calling out, but that felt silly so she cast about for a name. “Pinecone,” she whispered. “Little Pinecone.” It sounded even worse. Maybe the dragon wasn’t here at all.

She gazed deeper into the tangled blackness. There. A milk-white glint of a creature’s eyes. Her breath caught in her throat and she tried a blink, but the eyes ahead remained firmly open and staring. She had no more to offer in her pockets except for three grimy coppers, and she wasn’t about to part with those when days of festival were ahead for spending them. So that was that. She sat back on her haunches and tried to retain the gaze of the white eyes.

“I’ll bring you another coal tomorrow,” she tried bargaining.

She tried one blink. And waiting. Another blink. She sighed. The eyes in the bush didn’t respond at all. It must have been an hour she waited, or more.

Finally, in a fit of frustration, she tried the only thing she could think of: she dived into the brambles, sleeved arms trying to cover her head. She didn’t get far before the bush expelled her straight back out, face and arms stinging with cuts. Her clothes were torn too, and she saw mud almost everywhere she looked.

And the eyes hadn’t moved. She glared at them and crossed to the well to make a weak attempt at cleaning herself up. “I’ll still bring you more coal tomorrow,” she conceded gruffly. “But I’m not sitting here forever.”

Not when there was a festival on at any rate. She would go back past Longtree’s house, see whether she had heard about the dragons yet.

She smelled that something was wrong before she saw it, and long before she reached the house. A rich, rusty smell that caught in her throat and hung in the air. The sky was turning to dusk-grey, and she froze, casting about for the scent. There was something on the side of the path ahead, a mound maybe, not very high. Whatever it was, Alyana knew she didn’t want to be close to it, but she crept forward anyway, step by step and half looking away.

It was the hand she made out first, sticking out on an arm from the rest of the mound, thin and bony and wrapped in old skin that shone in the dusk. Then she saw the slick red of blood on the floor, pooling fast and soaking slowly into the ground. Her eyes followed the arm to the rest of the body, and to the Luckmaster’s hard face pressed into the floor and staring lifelessly back at her.