The Wizard And The Dragon (25 page)

“You’ll
still help me though, right?”

“Of
course,” I lied. I turned my head from him and rubbed at the new skin. After
all the cutting I had done, I could hardly feel anything there at all.

The day arrived
and I met Bryce in his room. I left Candle in the study. I had spent the
afternoon staring at the massive gem in the corner. I knew that it vanished
with me but it was still there. I was ready to fight whatever came for me but I
needed to give the boy his final lesson first.

At
the time my memory of that conversation was flawed. The events that surrounded
it were too potent: meeting Candle and losing Tower. I remembered vaguely that
I would give the directions on the spell and the warning about using fire that
came from his own self. My eyes paused on the candle flame for a brief moment
at that.

“I
want a fire elemental like you,” the boy said after I asked him what kind of
familiar he’d like.

“Is
that because I taught you magic? Fire elementals are not easy to keep,” I said.

“No.
It’s because of the dragon. I don’t want to be afraid of fire. You have a
friend made of fire. I’d like one too,” he said.

“That,”
I said, as a chill ran down my back, “is a very good reason.”

I
felt like I was on the precipice of something. I had expected to be ambushed in
the study, not when talking to the boy. Something was coming and I couldn’t
remember it. Something important.

“We’ve
never spoken about the dragon,” I was compelled to say the words. “Do you ever
plan to go back to your village? To see if someone else survived?”

He
answered too quickly. There was no thought or reason to his answer. It was an
emotional response, something that he knew down to the core of his being.

“One
day I will kill the dragon.”

I
felt as though I had been struck by what he said. It took effort not to shake
as I stood there in front of him. I remembered how much I meant those words. In
that moment, as a boy, I truly believed that I would grow strong enough and one
day leave for my revenge.

In
that moment it all made sense. I should have been relieved but I wasn’t. I knew
why Tower left that day because I suddenly knew that I was leaving too. He left
to kill the dragon, stirred up by my words rekindling the rage that had been
forged when my village burned. The tower had given me a gift. I had been a
helpless boy when my home had been destroyed and now, only a year later, I was
strong and powerful.

“Your
familiar,” I said.

“What
do I do?”

I
reached over to the sollite core on the table. It was identical to Candle’s. I
had been certain I would have to be dragged out of the tower to leave the boy
alone. Candle would look after him, just as he always had for me.

“This
will act as the core for the elemental. You’ve had it so long that you probably
already have a connection to it. It’s why I wanted you to keep it here. You’ll
sit and focus on the sollite until you’re aware of that connection. You’ll need
to smother it with flames until it catches fire,” my eyes flickered to the
candle on the table.

“Should
I do it now?”

“Yes.
It will take a few hours. Don’t rush,” I needed the time to get ready. “It’s
important the fire comes from you, Bryce. That’s part of making sure the
familiar will be connected with you.”

He
nodded at me and I smiled.

“Good
boy,” I said. “I’ll leave you to it.”

I
hesitated at the door. It didn’t feel right to leave it at that. I turned back
to him.

“Bryce,”
I said. He turned to me and I thought back to how I analyzed every part of this
conversation for any clue to where he had gone. How much would a goodbye, even
a veiled one, change things? I couldn’t do it.

“Ah.
Nothing, never mind. I’ll see you in the morning.’

He
grinned at me. I closed the door behind me and walked slowly down the stairs. I
had only a few hours if he got through the procedure faster than I had.

In
the cellar, I gave the spider food and water for the last time. I took one of
the larger bags and a small pouch. I tried not to think of the impossible task
before me as I climbed back up the stairs. Were there any books on dragons in
my collection?

I
filled the small bag with gems when I reached the tower’s main chamber. There
were only a few dozen in the bag but I didn’t dare to take any more. I had to
leave the boy with enough to survive. In the study I filled the large sack with
loose papers and my writing book. I frowned at the quill that was magically
linked to it and remembered that it wouldn’t work outside the tower. I’d have
to find some ink in the outside world.

The
realization that I was actually leaving didn’t sink in until then. I slumped
down on my bed to steady myself and looked around the walls of my room. The
tower had been my home for longer than my village. I would have to be careful
in the wild, from both animals, monsters, and people. I’d have to talk to
people. It had been sixteen years since I had seen another person.

That
was assuming the dragon didn’t kill me. I thought of my struggle with the
krogoth in the underground. The dragon was easily twice the size of that, maybe
bigger if my memory hadn’t exaggerated it. The krogoth had been resistant to
magic. Would the dragon be also? Were they distant relatives like the farren
and the trolls?

I
had read through every book and had found no trace of dragons. There had been
an entry on them in the beastiary but I had skipped over it, too afraid when I
first saw it as a boy. The drawing of it alone was enough to stir up my
nightmares. I placed the book down at my desk and brought Candle out as I
turned through the pages. He needed to hear what we were up against too.

The
picture was as I remembered it. This dragon was red whereas mine was brown.
There was fire all around the page, spewing forth from the dragon’s mouth.
Whoever had drawn the picture had dedicated more space to the flames than the
actual dragon. No wonder I had been so frightened of it as a boy.

“The
Dragon,” I began.

“A
complex topic about a complicated species. Much of the information on dragons
is either warped as stories pass from person to person, or outright
fabrication. An example can be seen in this very book. The depiction of the
dragon here is shown to be breathing fire, whereas we know that is not the
case. Dragons are capable of manipulating magic, just like humans. Their use of
fire is no different in technique than our own.”

I
paused there and closed my eyes. I thought back to the dragon above my town.
Its wings were beating down on us. The fire started there, on its wings, and
spread out over its body. I remembered seeing it the same way when Tower first
channeled it in front of me. It was the same when I drew the fire from a
crystal into my other hand.

The
krogoth had been resistant to magic, not capable of using it. The dragon’s
capabilities were surely the more daunting of the two. I pressed on and
continued reading.

“Much
of the false information on dragons comes from two factors: their rarity, and
the large amount of possible differences between each individual dragon. They
are fiercely territorial and, as such, most do not live long enough to reach
maturity. A newly hatched dragon may already be the size of an adult human, but
they have the capability to grow far larger than that. The exact limit on a
dragon’s size is unknown; however, the largest reported have been from sea
vessels that were attacked far from land. Those that survive claim the dragons
are twice the size of the ships that they destroyed.

“They
are intelligent creatures, able to match the problem solving capability of a
human at the least. Some stories claim they can reproduce human speech through
magical means, but this is either a rare trait or another fabrication. The
dragon’s intelligence seems to be a weakness as well as a strength. Dragons
rarely mate as they are suspicious of each other and clash frequently.

“In
the early days of dragon hunts, feuds between the creatures were exploited to
destroy their eggs and young while they were fighting. Adult dragons were too
powerful to be defeated directly and their population was culled by
infanticide. As humans grew more adept at manipulating magic, groups were able
to bring down mature dragons. It is thought that the species is near extinction
at this time, endangered to the point that they avoid humans and keep their
presence hidden.”

I
frowned at the book and then looked around the walls of the study. Once again I
found myself wondering how long the tower had stood. The books and structure
were maintained by the focal point of magic it had been built upon. I had seen
that much for myself to confirm what Tower had said to me. How old was the
information in this book?

Was
the dragon that attacked my village an exception to the rule? I suddenly wished
I had paid more attention to the news brought in by travelers to the village.
Had the dragons come back? Or was this book thousands of years old and out of
date?

I
left my desk and began pacing down the bookcases on the study wall. There were
more books there that I had added than the original, leather bound tomes. Many
by my hand were merely copies, but a fair amount were filled with new
information. I had only personally added a few and yet there were many shelves
filled with my handwriting.

For
the past few months I had been teaching my younger self how to use magic, just
as my older self had taught me. How many generations did it span backwards? The
books filled up the shelves with more information with each cycle, just as the
next Bryce knew a little more about magic. Each time the cycle looped it was
with a better, more accomplished wizard and a better, more adept teacher. How
many times had I lived through this? Hundreds?

I
thought of what a horror of a time the first boy must have had. Alone in the
tower. Too afraid to leave because of the dragon. Starving even though the
tower was keeping him alive, as it had kept me alive when I had nearly killed
myself with exhaustion. How long had he struggled to teach himself to read from
the meager scraps of knowledge he knew? Had those first few gone mad when they
were cycled back to the beginning? I thought of the words etched into the wall
of the windowed room. “I’m so hungry.” I shuddered.

I
stopped suddenly as the thought came to me. My Tower was dead. I knew it as
clearly as I knew that I was leaving the tower. The dragon had killed him. If
he had lived he would have came back to explain things to me, just as I had now
decided I would not risk the boy to that madness. Eventually the cycle would
produce a wizard accomplished enough to kill the dragon. It was an inevitable
thing, but it had not been my Tower. Was it me? Would I be the first?

I
went into my bedroom and collected spare sets of clothing to put in the sack. I
tried to remember what I had found as a boy. What had been missing from what I
saw now. I opened the drawer containing the sollite objects for the first time
in a year and stared at them. Tower had taken them when he left.

The
first time I had seen sollite it had been with Tower. He had fused a gem within
it and stored the energy inside it. I held up the dagger in one hand and the
harness in my other. I gently centered my focus and found that they were empty.
No magical power in either of them. I still held them as I walked back into the
study. Had he used these to store the energy instead of keeping a pouch of
gems?

Candle
flared up at the sight of the sollite. His acorn core was still within his
form, powering his body like it had for years. There was an immense capacity
for energy in Candle’s core. The harness had a smaller amount of sollite
amongst the straps but the dagger was larger than the acorn. I don’t think I
had enough gems to come close to filling it.

I
smiled when I saw it. The last mystery that was solved before I left the tower.
The massive gem I had made in the corner. I almost laughed as I walked over to
it. Such a simple solution that I should have known when I first saw the
objects.

The
harness went first. I pressed it against the gem and I felt a wave of power
wash over my focus. It was like my magical sense had been blinded and I
couldn’t gather myself around anything for a few minutes. The gem was visibly
smaller now, but not by much. Only a fifth of the magic was within the harness.

The
dagger went next and the movement of the energy was strong enough that I felt a
hot blast hit my body. The gem was gone. The dagger was gleaming as the energy
settled within it. It was no bigger than it was before, but the delicate
appearance it had once had was gone. Parts of it still showed hints of the rich
brown that it had been, but most of it now resembled shining steel. When the
light caught the surface of it a spectrum of colors would be in the reflection.

When
my focus recovered the dagger still felt like it was pulsating with magic. It
looked stable to my eyes but it felt alive to my magic sense. I took off my
shirt and put the harness on. It was surprisingly warm against my skin and I
could feel the connection to the energy when I concentrated on it. The dagger
could be knocked free of my hand but the harness would remain, a stash of
energy for emergencies.

At
the bottom of the harness was a sheath for the dagger. They were a pair, I
guessed. When the dagger was placed in it, and my shirt was back on, the weapon
was hidden under my clothes. It was awkward at first, pressing against my back,
but I tried to ignore it as I picked up my sack of supplies and carried it over
my shoulder. Candle jumped up on the other side of my head and we left the
study together.

The
light coming through the windows was fading as I walked down the stairs. I
stopped briefly at the door to the boy’s room. By now he might have been
agonizing over whether or not to use the candle flame for his familiar. I had
to wonder if he might succeed at it where I had failed. I could already see the
potential in him to be better than I was. I hoped Tower had seen the same in
me.