The Forging of the Dragon (Wizard and Dragon Book 1) (34 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

THE BETTER HEAD

SEAGRYN slept a lot, and he dreamed. He dreamed of Bourne, of his mother and father, of school examinations and school pranks, of Elaryl — and of tugoliths. He smelled tugoliths in his sleep and for some reason felt more in common with dream tugoliths than he did with dream humans. He dreamed things about tugoliths he had never learned — much more of the way they thought, of their poetry — of their jokes! And he would sometimes wake up laughing ... and discover again where he was, and remember what awaited him.

Elaryl was always there, now, waiting for him to waken, watching over him. And the time seemed to be stretching out — “He hasn’t netted me to Vilanlitha yet?” he always asked, and Elaryl’s reply was always the same.

“Don’t rush him. Perhaps he’ll forget how.” Then she talked of other things, reminiscing with him about their courtship, fretting about his not eating. For although Seagryn could talk, and thus could surely eat if he’d wished to, he found he did not.

“I’m not hungry,” he said and tried to shrug; but he couldn’t move a muscle other than those in his face.

He felt remarkably content. Oh, he’d spent hours thinking how he might rescue himself and Elaryl from this predicament and carry her off to Lamath to live happily forever after, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. He’d tried some shaping, early on, and discovered it was impossible. Of course, he’d finally realized, for he was in his altershape, and no powershaper could do more than one thing at a time. He’d hoped that might mean his being netted would prevent Sheth from any shaping as well, but remembered that Sheth had fought him with wizardry while the two tugoliths remained fixed to one another. This, then, was a spell. Thus the priests of Lamath had been correct, and weird old Nebalath had, for his own reasons, lied. Seagryn assumed only Sheth himself could undo it — and he would not until he was ready.

Sometimes Seagryn woke to find Sheth grinning up at him, but the sorcerer never said anything. He only waited until Seagryn was fully awake, then went away laughing. And the time passed ...

One person he greatly missed was Dark, and he asked about him frequently. “He’s gone,” Elaryl finally told him, but there was something in her voice that made him question that. He knew Paumer wasn’t gone, for he heard the merchant’s sugary voice on occasion, and he doubted Uda would leave without her father. And Uda surely wouldn’t have allowed the youthful prophet to leave without her, would she?

He was dreaming of the Great Wheel, only now it stood in the middle of the city of Lamath, and all the assembled tugoliths wore clerical robes of ceremonial green. He was addressing them on the nature of the Power when a strange sense of gloom blew through the vast city square, and all the beasts turned their rumps to him and looked at the darkening clouds far to the south. And then he heard the scream —

“What was that!” Seagryn shouted, fully awake and terribly alarmed.

“It’s nothing, go back to sleep!” Elaryl pleaded, but her expression seemed false and her reassurance too facile. When another shriek echoed through the bear’s den she winced in surrender and turned away.

Seagryn had never heard a scream like that in his life, and it caused a tremor in his frozen intestines. That scream conveyed volumes of pain — inexpressible pain, the kind that comes with such intensity it instantly builds a sharp-edged monument to itself within the memory. It trumpeted rage, an anger freed by hatred to vent itself upon any available object — in this case any listener’s ears. And it wailed with despair, the kind of desperation that remains to torment the sufferer with hope in the midst of an utterly hopeless situation.

Seagryn understood immediately, but he asked Elaryl anyway. “What is that?” He expected — and got — that hesitant look he realized now hid the truth and had been hiding the truth for days.

“It’s — Vilanlitha. Isn’t it horrible? Oh, Seagryn, I can’t stand the thought of the same thing happening to you!”

“But it won’t now. Will it?”

Elaryl gazed at him, her sweet expression beginning to sour as she saw her lies exposed. “No,” she said defensively — or angrily. Why was she angry at him?

Another shriek grated through both of them like fingernails upon slate, and Seagryn found himself screaming back in sympathy. Elaryl clapped her hands over her ears and ran from him, stopping to look back once before dashing on out of the chamber. He’d seen her cheeks in that brief instant — they glistened wet in the ever-burning firelight. Then she was gone.

The tormented beast answered from the dragon forge, and Seagryn understood now how it could say so much with one scream. It gave vent to its feelings with two voices, powered by a pair of lungs each the size of a house. In horrible pain and horrible sorrow, the new-made dragon called to him, and Seagryn struggled to break loose of his net, even as he trumpeted his response.

“You can’t do it by yourself!” someone behind him shouted, and he almost didn’t hear it for the screams.

“Shut up! Would you shut him up?”

“You can’t! But you do know how to let go!”

That had been Dark’s voice! Seagryn stopped screaming and listened, but all he heard was a heavy thump and someone’s answering grunt. “Dark!” he shouted, but the prophet’s voice had been silenced.

Still, it had been enough. Had the boy known from the beginning of their friendship that it would be? Had he silently harbored that assurance throughout all their intervening conversations? It was enough, for Dark was right. Seagryn knew how to release himself to the power of the One he now named. “I don’t know why I labor so, when I know better,” he told the Power, and — as he’d done in the megasin’s cave — he surrendered himself to that Power’s shaping.

Peace came first, stilling his rage and funnelling it into resolve. Elation always came along with that, for any commitment to action empowered by that One brought with it tremendous potency. Seagryn could do what needed to be done, not by his own wisdom or strength, but by and through the Power. It didn’t bear description. There was no time to think about it, nor to relish the feeling. Seagryn moved, the net broke free, and he sprinted down the corridors of the bear’s den toward the source of the horrible screaming.

“Sheth!” someone behind him — probably Paumer — was warning as he sprinted into the dragon forge. “Seagryn’s free!”

Seagryn saw the delight on Sheth’s face just before the wizard whirled in alarm to look at him. Delight in his own creation? Or delight in the tormenting of it? For there was no question that Sheth had been tormenting the great dragon — which filled the entire tunnel. Seagryn stared at the twi-beast in shock, but had the presence of mind to distract Sheth first with a twist of his imagination. He’d set fire to the wizard’s sandals — it proved to be simple but effective. As Sheth danced and cursed and Paumer came running into the dragon forge behind him, Seagryn gazed up into the frozen features of the two-headed dragon — and saw instantly which head had once been his pair.

“Berillitha,” he said to the head on his left, and its eyes seemed to narrow in confusion.

“Do you address me?” that head wondered, perplexed.

The other head roared with frustration, “I am not a Berillitha! I am Vicia-Heinox!”

“No, I am,” the once-Berillitha head said.

“That’s what I said!” the other head screamed.

“And I agree.”

They continued, but Seagryn listened no more. Sheth had doused his sandals and disappeared. Seagryn felt it best to do the same, and that left Paumer in the middle of the room shouting, “Sheth! Seagryn! Where are you both?”

Seagryn ran to a wall and crouched beside it, scanning the room for some sign of Sheth. He didn’t think to try to penetrate, however, and obviously Sheth had, for he suddenly appeared two feet in front of Seagryn and took his bear shape, then slashed Seagryn across the face with a mighty swipe of his claw.

Seagryn took it across his horn instead of his nose; while it knocked his snout aside, it did no damage. He immediately dipped his head and horned upward, but Sheth was gone again, and Seagryn cloaked himself and ran to the other side of the tunnel as quietly as he could. His mind was swirling. What to do next?

Again Sheth was on him. This time flames engulfed his head and he nearly panicked. Instead, he jumped forward, grabbing Sheth with both arms and shoving his burning hair into his rival wizard’s face. Sheth screamed and jumped backward, and Seagryn wished for water and found it flooding him. Thoroughly scorched, he ran a side-winding route through the dragon forge, looking for something he might use as a weapon. He’d not fought enough shaper battles to have a storehouse of stock responses. Human weapons he thought he understood.

He found he suddenly had gained another adversary. The mouse-dragon was loose, and it flew, squeaking fiercely, at his face. This terrified him more than Sheth’s attacks, for suddenly he saw before him that bloody squirrel, and realized both mouselike heads were focused on his!

Seagryn ducked and disappeared at the same time, not certain that would help his cause at all. To his delight it did — the diminutive dragon shot right over his head. Seagryn leaped up and raced for the much larger dragon. In its attack, the twi-beast’s tiny predecessor had given him a critical idea. He heard footsteps behind him and imagined Sheth wearing on his two feet that special double-footed shoe he and Elaryl had donned on the day of their wedding. A moment later he heard a heavy clump behind him, and Sheth’s voice swearing in frustration. By that time he was already climbing the side of Vicia-Heinox.

He found it was easy to scale a dragon if he used the dragon’s scales. He made his way quickly up a foreleg and onto the saddle between the twi-beast’s humped back where its two necks joined its body. Then he stood up, dodged a ball of fire flung from below, and decided that the better head — the one who had been Berillitha — was atop the neck to his right. He climbed it.

This was not so easy. Although he was still cloaked, Sheth could see him clearly and kept tossing magical projectiles of all descriptions at him. Besides, each neck was spined with vicious, razor-edged scales. He was glad he climbed this dragon while it was still frozen by the net — he could imagine a far more treacherous climb if the twi-beast were mobile.

“What’s that on my neck!” the better head shouted.

“I don’t feel anything on my neck,” the other replied.

“I do, too,” the Berillitha head argued. “Can I look at my neck and see?”

“I see nothing,” the other said petulantly. “Sometimes I think I am crazy,” it added.

“And sometimes I know I am!” snarled its pair.

“You’re right,” Seagryn announced as he climbed onto the better head. “I mean about something being on you! I’m Seagryn, and I’m on you, arid I’m going to release your net!”

He did. He had to dodge another fireball to do so, however, this one thrown from ten feet in front of him. Immediately after tearing through the net Seagryn gasped in admiration at his adversary’s daring. Sheth had grabbed hold of the mouse-dragon’s legs and let the tiny twi-beast bear him all the way up to the cavern’s roof. To Seagryn’s great fortune, the little creature didn’t have the necessary strength in his wings to keep both itself and Sheth aloft, and one of its heads darted down to nip Sheth on the arm. Seagryn heard the wizard yell as he fell, but he didn’t watch. His eyes were studying the roof.

“Don’t do it, Seagryn!” he heard Paumer shout from far below, and he wondered how the merchant knew already what he was contemplating. “It’s not trained yet! Think of what you’ll be releasing upon the world!”

Of course, he thought to himself. Dark must have told Paumer what would eventually happen — or perhaps he told Uda, and she told her father in confidence? It didn’t matter. He had a task to perform, and he bent down to a dragon ear to begin it.

“Vicia-Heinox,” he said, “you have power you may not yet realize.”

“What?” the better head said. “Something is whispering in my ear —”

“I don’t hear anything,” the other head said doubtfully.

“Then by all means, allow me to shout!” Seagryn shouted.

“Ah! I do hear it.”

“I told myself I did,” the better head pouted.

“You must focus all your eyes upon the rock above you,” Seagryn instructed with great authority. “Do it. Do it right now, before the one who hurt you recovers!”

That got the dragon’s attention, and it raised both of its heads upward in response to his command.

“Now. You see the rock above you?”

“I see,” both heads said in unison.

“Just — wish it out of existence!” he shouted.

“What?” the better head asked.

“I don’t understand,” the other said.

“I know I don’t! Voice, could you explain?”

This had once been two tugoliths, Seagryn reminded himself. He needed to talk slowly and simply. “Don’t you wish you could see the sky?”

Again, he struck a nerve. “Yes!” both heads said together, and they turned their eyes to the roof. There was a rumbling inside the cave, and a chunk of its roof suddenly turned to powder and drifted to the floor.

Sunlight! Bright blue sky! Some snow dropped into the cavern also, but what Seagryn longed for most was the sight of daylight. When he saw it he shouted for joy. “Fly!” he cried. “Fly through it!”