The Wizard And The Dragon (14 page)

Each
shackle took me a moment or two to secure, and I revisited each of them after a
new one was formed. It was close to the mental juggling of numbers when doing
mathematics, making sure to maintain each strand of magic while threading a new
one around another leg.

The
process was far more tiring than the stone had been and I could feel sweat
running down my back when I was finished. When I got to my feet I could feel
the effects of maintaining the magical force pull at me from the cell. It felt
like a faint buzzing inside my head, vibrating out into my ears. I turned to
Tower.

“Well
done. Go in now and collect some of the silk,” he said and handed me a few of
the wooden paddles. “I’ll watch the spider in case something goes wrong.”

His
warning set me on edge and I was extra careful to maintain each of the shackles
as I worked around the room. I swabbed at the walls and wrapped several strands
around the wood at once, coiling around them thickly until they became too
large to handle. I set them outside one at a time, remembering to check that
the spider was still subdued before I returned to the cell.

I
had trouble with the final collection. There was a particularly thick section
of silk and I couldn't unravel it from the wall. I pulled on it futilely before
I remembered what Tower had done each time I had watched him. I placed my hand
near the silk and focused myself on my fingertips, trying to create heat through
my hand to sever the web. It wasn’t something I had tried before and I wanted
to get it right to impress him.

“Bryce!
No!” Tower screamed and rushed forward into the cell.

I
felt the shackles break at the same time as I heard him scream. I had focused too
intently on the heat and had lost the threads around the spider. I had my back
to it and the hiss it created came so close that I felt it trickle down my
neck. I could do nothing but flinch.

The
spider must have reared up at me and jumped as Tower flung his spell toward it.
He had gotten into the cell with me as it happened. Something smacked into my
back and I fell forward into the webs. I saw Tower was next to me but there was
no movement from the spider.

He
seared the webs from around me and I squirmed free of the wall. The silk still
clung to me in patches and I made a face at it. I turned and saw the spider
suspended as it had been the first time in the tunnel. His spell must have hit
it in midair and it collided into me with the force it still carried. If Tower
had been any later it could have torn me to pieces.

“You
need to be careful,” he said as he walked out of the cage. “Take this as a
lesson for trying to get ahead of yourself. I’m still here to help you.”

“I’m
sorry. Thank you for not killing the spider. It wasn’t its fault,” I said
softly, my head lowered in shame. It was the first time in months that I felt
that I had disappointed him.

“It’s
okay, just learn from it. Any mistake you can walk away from is a lesson
learned. Remember that.”

We were in the
middle of summer when Tower decided it was time that I create my own familiar.

The
windows had been cleared and opened. We discarded the used paper, leaves, and
silk outside at the back of the tower. A gemstone was removed from the bowl on
the roof so less heat ran through the walls. The cooler, dark, windowless rooms
of the tower became a refuge for us from the heat. I spent most of the days
reading my way through the collection of books, while Tower busied himself with
writing new additions for it.

It
was over a year since I had first stumbled my way into the tower but it was now
fully my home. I had grown comfortable in the safety and shelter of its walls
and Tower’s protection. I think the first weeks of that summer were the most
peaceful and stable of my life, and I had no idea that the creation of my
familiar was the first step in shattering that comfort.

Tower
gave me books on the subject at first, and I devoured them quickly. I had few
stumblings in reading them. I was becoming adept enough at working through the
meaning of words by looking at the relevance to the rest of the sentence. Each
day my level of comprehension was growing.

The
books on familiars fascinated me. Tower had been correct when he said there was
a large variety of forms and methods to create or imbue a life to fulfill the
purpose. Some books suggested that a familiar could be found instead of made,
and that an intelligent creature could easily fulfill the role. Others read
more like instruction manuals to infuse stones with magical energy and the
power of thought and movement, and went into great detail on maintaining such a
creature.

The
idea had been in the back of my mind ever since Tower told me about his
familiar and how I could be trained to be a wizard. Although I had been warned
about getting ahead of myself, I had long before decided what type of familiar
I would like to have. When Tower came into my room one afternoon and asked me
to take a few days to consider my options, I told him I had an answer already.

“Really?”
he asked and seemed genuinely surprised, which was a rare thing.

“Yes.
I want a fire elemental, like you had,” I answered.

He
looked at me for what felt like a very long time. I thought that maybe I had
offended him before he spoke again.

“Is
this because I taught you magic? This decision should be made for yourself, and
fire elementals are not easy to keep,” he said.

“No.
It’s because of the dragon. I’m afraid of fire still. Even though you’re
teaching me how I can control it, it still scares me. You told me that a
familiar is like a friend. A companion. I’d like to not be scared of fire
anymore,” I explained and then looked away from Tower’s face, afraid to see his
reaction there.

“That,”
he said, after another moment of silence, “is a good reason.” I met his eyes
and found him regarding me with an odd expression.

“We’ve
never spoken much about the dragon,” he continued on. “You are welcome to stay
here for as long as you like, of course. But do you ever plan to go back to
your village? To see if someone else survived?”

I
hadn’t given much thought to ever leaving the tower but some part of me had
already decided the answer to that question. The words came out of me without
any conscious thought, as if the idea had fermented inside me over the last
year.

“One
day I will kill the dragon.”

Tower
once again had the odd expression on his face, as if he regretted hearing those
words. He gave one solemn nod and then walked out of the room. I thought the
conversation was over for the day and that we’d start work on the familiar
tomorrow. It was already late in the evening. To my surprise, he was back a few
minutes later and handed me another book.

I
looked down at it in my hand. The cover was blank.

“What
is this?” I asked.

“A
book on fire elementals. There are some loose pages inside that I wrote as
well. You can start reading it tomorrow. Tonight you must focus on the creation
of your familiar.”

“What
do I do?”

He
reached over to the sollite I had been keeping on my bedroom table for months.
He held it tightly in his hand as if to get a feel for its weight. I couldn’t
properly read the expression on his face; I couldn’t tell if he was sad or deep
in thought.

“This
will act as the core for the familiar. You’ve kept it for so long now that you
probably already have a connection to it whether you intended to or not. It’s
why I wanted you to have it. You’ll sit and focus on the sollite until you’re
aware of that connection. You’ll then need to smother it with flames until it
catches fire, just like starting a cooking fire,” he said, and for the briefest
moment his eyes flickered to the candle on my table.

“Should
I do it now?”

“Yes.
It will take a few hours. Don’t rush it,” he said and placed the sollite back
on the table. “It’s important that the fire comes from you, Bryce. That’s part
of making sure the familiar will be connected with you. I know you’ve had
trouble with that but you can’t use a gem or any other source of magic for
this. You must create the flames from your own body.”

I
hadn’t been able to do that yet and Tower knew it. He must have been trusting
me to succeed now, when it was important. It was a challenge and I gathered
myself up for it. I nodded at him.

“Good
lad,” he said with a smile. “I’ll leave you to it.”

He
started walking to the door and stopped partway there. He turned back to me.

“Bryce,”
he said.

I
ripped my eyes from the sollite and turned to him.

“Ah.
Nothing, never mind. It can wait. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I
grinned at him, excited about getting my own familiar but also at the chance to
prove my capabilities to my teacher. He closed the door behind him and I
cleared away the books and papers so it was only the sollite and the candle,
still burning as ever since my first day in the tower, on the table.

I
sat on the bed and fixated my eyes on the sollite. It felt different than a gem
when I reached out for it. The amount of power contained within it was far
greater than any other stone of its size, and that resonated back at me as I
prodded it with my focus. I tried to visualize the energy growing around it and
I felt it react, vibrating and buzzing back at me, resisting what I was trying
to do to it. It felt like there was a protective layer around it that I would
need to crack open to get at the energy inside.

Drawing
from the stone didn’t feel right to me, nor did it sound like Tower’s
instructions. I kept my focus around it and studied it, circling my power
around it as if to feel it from every angle. I don’t know how much time passed
before I felt the change. I was attuned with it. It was a similar sensation to
holding something for so long that you warmed it with your body heat. I held it
with my focus until it was warm with my magic.

The
next step was to create the fire and I was nervous merely thinking about it. I
had created heat but fire was something else entirely. The control of it had
eluded me and I suspected it was more a problem with my fears than a lack of
knowledge and experience. Each time I would feel the stirring of energy
coalesce around my fingertips and then snatch my hand away when I began to
conceptualize the fire. I don’t know what frightened me more, the idea that the
fire may get out of my control, or that I may horribly burn my hand by not
converting the energy properly.

Without
a window in the room I had no idea how many hours I spent on the precipice of
creating fire and then backing away from it at the last moment, terrified of
what might happen. Many times I thought of going to Tower for assistance but
stopped myself. In the last few months I had gotten used to being treated like
an adult. I was capable of learning and figuring things out for myself. I
resolved to do this on my own.

The
idea scratched at me distantly at first, and I found myself in a dreamlike
state considering another option. I looked at the lit candle on my desk and the
fire that was already there, already burning, safe and controlled. That was
fire that could be handled and funneled around the sollite. It wasn’t fire that
I had made, but perhaps if I held it for long enough it would work as well.

I
pushed the thought from my mind and spent another long stretch of time
fruitlessly gathering energy around my hand. Each time I failed I would look
longingly at the simple fire on the table. Each time I failed my resolve waned
a little more. It must have been deep into the night when the temptation
finally won me over and I extended my hand to the candle.

The
fire was taken so easily it was as if it wanted to be handled. I drew the flame
into my hand, beckoning it through the channels of energy that I kept around my
fingertips. The fire danced above my palm just as calmly and nicely as it did
on the candlewick and I smiled, a smile full of relief and joy. On my hand it
felt gentle, and I felt stupid to be afraid of such a simple thing. Still, the
thought of creating my own flames felt like a dangerous one.

I
held out my hand to the sollite as though it was an offering. The connection I
had with the stone had been kept steady the entire night, and now I sent the
fire slowly through that link. The reaction was slow at first, with little
sparks of flame circling around the acorn sized object. Each moment that passed
saw another ball of fire add to the orbit until it was a complete circle of
fire, spinning as one connected unit.

The
fire reached its critical mass at that point and the remaining flames whipped
from my hand and into the sollite. There was an abrupt burst of light as the
metal itself ignited. The deep oranges, reds, and yellows of the fire swirled
amongst each other, crashing and building into itself until there was a second
eruption so bright that I had to shield my eyes with my forearm.

I
expected the table to be burned to ashes when I looked back, or at the very
least a fire beginning to burn and consume the wood. Instead there was a single
flame, a little plumper than the one that had been on top of the candle but no
less similar to it. I could see the sollite core hovering comfortably in the
center of the fire.

“Hello?”
I asked, and immediately felt foolish. I hadn’t read enough to know how this
worked. Would I be able to talk with a familiar? Could it talk back?

The
peak of the flame seemed to shudder in response to my words and then turned, as
though it was considering me. The flame looked awkward in that pose, with the
fire building up and curving to the side of it instead of at the top. It looked
unnatural and odd. Fire was supposed to rise.

I
was ready to admit that I had done the spell wrong and go to Tower for help
when it began to move. The center part of the fire was white hot, a darker
orange on the outside, and blue at the base. As it moved around the table, the
white section seemed to extend down to the wood, as if tiny feet with plodding
around down through the fire and causing it to move.

I
was suddenly afraid that the table would catch fire, and felt stupid that it
had taken me that long to start worrying about it. There seemed to be slightly
darkened patches in the wood wherever it traveled, but no signs of it catching
fire. If I looked closely, it appeared that a faint ember of fire was left
after each of its footsteps, but it was near instantly drawn back up into the
central fire as if it didn’t want to lose any of its heat.

My
familiar stopped when it reached the candle. Its peak moved again, as if it was
looking the candle up and down. After a moment it leaped up at it and caught
fire to the wick. A low spitting noise came out of it and then it settled, a
flame easily triple the size that was previously on the candle, but at rest and
comfortable on top of it.

“Newborns
sleep a lot. Is that what you’re doing?” I said out loud, more for myself than
the elemental. The core was nestled against the wick of the candle, and the wax
showed no signs of receding from the flame. Its enchant remained and it would
not go out.

I
weighed the option of going down to tell Tower that I had done it, but the
passage of time came crashing down on me as I saw the familiar sleeping. It had
to have been many hours since I came up here and Tower was most likely asleep.
I settled into bed myself, blissfully unaware of how my life would change the
next day.

Two
things would never be the same after I woke up.

The
first: I had a familiar of my own now, a magical creature to accompany my
studies of magic and my new life as a wizard.

The
second: when I woke up the next morning, Tower was gone.