The Wizard And The Dragon (28 page)

I
stepped forward and pulled the dagger from under my shirt. The magic I felt
within it dwarfed that of the harness, but it wasn’t enough. I drew from them
both, weaving multiple threads of lightning that sparked and jolted down my
arms. They joined together in seconds but, for me, the energy I was
manipulating was so immense that it was an intoxicating agony that elongated
the spell.

The
bolt of lightning streaked forward and collided into the smaller of the trolls.
The spell punched into its chest so hard that it flew backwards, moving too
fast to see any more than a blur. The flash of the lightning dazzled my eyes
that were primed for darkness. I ignored it. I could still see well enough to
make out the last troll lumbering toward me.

My
muscles burned from the strain of all the energy. The lightning had been too
detached and quick. I focused with kinetic power now. I flung shackle after
shackle, such a wild and dangerous thing amplified to that extent, no longer
the gentle prison that I had used to trap the spider’s legs. The troll was
caught in them and stuck in place. I could feel the energy around its arms and
legs, pulsating to the same rhythm as the magic coursed through my arms. It was
physical and magical at the same time, as if my hands were those of a giant and
I was crushing the troll.

It
was like pulling apart an insect. The monster’s limbs popped free of its torso.
The bones snapped and organs ruptured and rained blood down onto the ground.
When I released the shackles the body parts splattered to the ground. It was
dead and in pieces yet its claw still clutched the bone.

My
focus was still in place even though the troll was dead. I realized that I had
started shaking. I had channeled too much power and I couldn’t direct it all
back into the sollite that I held. It had nowhere to go but to seethe through
my body as it slowly radiated out from my skin. I felt like I had set fire to
my insides.

“What
are you?” I heard Kate whisper behind me.

Hours passed
before I could move without the urge to vomit. I spent most of them on the
ground, sweating and unable to cool down. I felt like I had been running for
days in an endless summer heat. Toward the end I managed to divert some of the
magic back into the harness and dagger but I was too enfeebled to master the
process.

Kate
left and I thought she had decided to move on without me. As I sat immobile on
the ground I couldn’t blame her. I must have looked like a fool that didn’t
know what he was doing; a reckless boy that had once again played too
dangerously with something he didn’t understand. A smarter man would have
tested the sollite first and amplified his spells gradually. I had saturated
myself with the magic without caution and nearly killed myself.

I
was proven wrong, however, when Kate came back within the hour. She led her
horse and tied it up on the tavern wall. All of her bags were strapped to the
horse and she removed them quickly. It looked like she had moved her entire
camp into the village.

She
walked toward me when she was finished. I saw that she had taken off her armor
while she was gone. She wore a plain tunic and trousers now. The sleeves of her
tunic had been rolled up near to her shoulders. She put a bottle down in front
of me.

“Drink,”
she said. “It’s just water.”

I
shook my head. The thought of drinking anything made my stomach churn. She
placed a hand on my forehead and then jerked it back away from me.

“Shit,”
she muttered. “You should go in the river. The water will take the heat better
than the air.”

I
shook my head again. She shrugged and then picked up the bottle. She opened it,
dumped the water over my head, and then walked away. It did make me feel better
for a few minutes but after it dried up I felt worse. The brief cooling made
the heat feel stronger when it returned.

I
watched Kate work in the hours that I recovered. She went back through the
village and dragged all the corpses of the trolls near the tavern. I wondered
at her strength as I watched her. She was nearly my height but her arms were
slim. Yet she had been able to hack her way through the trolls we fought and
now easily pulled their bodies around. I doubted that I could have moved them
as quickly as she did without resorting to magic.

She
unpacked empty jars and bottles from her bags when all the trolls had been
gathered. She took other instruments that I didn’t recognize. Some looked like
knives and scissors. Others were made of glass and looked like hollow arrows,
pointed at one end but dull on the other. She laid everything out and then went
to work.

Her
early comments made sense as she opened up the trolls and harvested their
organs. There was blood coating her arms passed her elbows in no time but she
didn’t seem to care. She carved open their chests and plunged her hands right
in, pulling out seemingly never ending intestines and discarding them on the
ground.

She
broke through ribs with her hands and sliced out the troll’s lungs. They joined
the intestines in a growing pile of unwanted organs. Her face was neutral as
she worked, as if she was scooping out the insides of a pumpkin. When she
checked on me I would see spots of blood on her face.

“Trolls
are amazing, you know,” she said as she held a knife above the largest troll’s
torso. “You probably know this already. They can regrow limbs and recover from
obscene amounts of damage. Except for the ones that lost their heads, these
weren’t really dead dead until now.

“Even
this one,” she waved the knife in a circle above the troll’s head. “Even though
you, ah,
removed
its arms and legs, it would have survived if it was
given food and water. More likely its friends would have eaten it but it’s
still amazing.”

She
placed the tip of the knife delicately in the troll’s neck and sliced it
vertically open. Another set of lungs and intestines went on the pile before
she pulled out the troll’s heart and liver. The heart was larger than I
expected and was the same red and green mix of its blood. The liver was massive
and Kate draped it over both of her forearms. It was dark green and shiny,
catching the light with a gleam that reminded me of an oversized raw chicken
breast.

“You’re
lucky you didn’t ruin this,” she said with a smile on her face. She looked like
she had just found a treasure. “I told you to only burn their heads for a
reason.”

The
liver was stuffed and coiled into the largest jar she had. The heart was put
into a jar with the others she collected. It was so much larger than the others
that they looked like they came from different creatures. She left the livers
in the other three trolls that she cut open.

The
final two trolls were the ones that I had killed with fire and lightning. She
dragged the mutilated corpses of the others away so the last two were side by
side. The one I hit with lightning had a black smear across its chest and face
but was still intact. The head of the other was a charred wreck.

Kate
didn’t seem to care. She brought over the rest of her empty jars and placed
them around the bodies. She took the glass objects that I had thought were
arrows and pierced into the troll’s neck with them. She put one on each side of
its throat and worked it around inside the neck until it punctured the artery
she wanted.

The
jars were placed underneath the glass cylinders and fastened down with a strap.
She then started pressing down on the troll’s chest, pushing hard between the
ribs until blood rushed through the glass and into the jars. She would stop and
check how much she collected each time. Sometimes she filled the smaller jars
in only two compressions.

That
part of her work was the most time consuming. I was feeling well enough to
stand before she was finished. She had to secure each individual jar and then
pack it away when it was full. She was careful about not wasting the blood
since she had butchered the other trolls already. She had nine jars left and
had been working on the last troll for an hour by the time I was walking again.

I
went through the north gate and followed the wall to the river. It was a route
that purposely avoided my old house and I was keenly aware of that decision as
I knelt down and submerged my head in the water. I drank deeply afterwards,
enough water that I felt bloated and sick but I knew that I needed it. I left
the river without looking at the spot where my parents always used to fish.

Kate
was thumping her fists on the troll’s chest when I returned. The last bits of
blood were spluttering out but she still had six jars to fill. She got up and
began dragging the other corpses back and I wondered again at her strength. Was
the potion she drank responsible for that, or was it something she maintained
alchemically over years?

I
was lost in such thoughts when I reached the tavern. There was a terrible
stench coming from the door that abruptly sobered me and I scowled at it. I
took the steps slowly down in the cellar. There was another fire burning below,
much smaller than the bonfire, and the smoke from it made the smell worse.

There
were bones at the bottom of the stairs and I knew that I had made a mistake.
The bone the troll had been holding had been enough to send me into a rage and
now I saw more than I could count over the floor. I took a step into the room
and tried, uselessly, to brace myself for what I should have walked away from.
It wasn’t enough.

I
should have known when Kate said the troll’s would eat their own kind. They had
thrived in my village. There were too many bones and skulls for the survivors.
They had gotten at the buried corpses too. Some parts still had flesh on them,
too rotten even for the trolls to eat. The fresher ones, probably travelers
that had unknowingly followed the road, were picked clean. Those were the bones
that had been cracked open for the marrow inside.

My
family was here. My parents and sisters. Maybe they were among the bodies that
I couldn’t recognize and maybe it was a blessing that I couldn’t. There were
flies everywhere and piles of feces in every corner. The largest troll had
settled deeply into this cellar and made it his den. I was suddenly angry at
how quickly I had killed him.

“They’re
just animals,” Kate said from behind me. I had no idea how long she had been
standing there. I had no idea how long
I
had been standing there. “I
know you’re angry but they’re no worse than wolves or crows. They saw an
opportunity for food and shelter and they took it. There was no malice. Only
survival. Your anger is misplaced.”

“What
anger?” I said as I turned to her. There was still blood all over her arms and
clothes. There were smears on her face and splatters in her hair now. She had
come straight down here to find me.

“Friends,
you said? That died. You’re here to kill the dragon. I didn’t believe it at
first, or that you were a wizard. But I do now. Trolls aren’t monsters, no
matter how many times they’re called such. They deserved to die and were a
threat on the road but they shouldn’t get your anger. You should be saving that
for what destroyed this village.”

She
had been all smiles at her campsite but now her face was straight and firm. The
blood on her should have detracted from the solemn look but it didn’t.

“You
might be right,” I said.

“Might
be,” she repeated. “I meant what I said before. You’re too young to be a
wizard. Who taught you?”

“I
taught myself,” I said honestly, although it sounded stupid even to me.

She
narrowed her eyes at me and I couldn’t tell if she was suspicious of what I
said. Once again I found myself at a loss to read facial expressions after
being alone for so many years. I suddenly appreciated the obvious signals that
Candle would send at me.

“I’ve
traveled to many places in the world,” she said. “I’ve met many wizards and all
of them have been old men and women, and none of them would be able to do what
you just did to one troll, never mind three in the space of a few minutes. Do
you know this? Are you lying?”

“No,”
I shook my head. I had always thought our village wizard was a retired old man,
resting after a long youth spent with magic. “I didn’t know that, and I am not
lying.”

She
looked at me intently for a few moments and then grinned. She turned around and
I followed her up the stairs and back outside. The jars of harvested organs and
blood had been packed away but the corpses were still strewn about the
clearing. I helped her lift and throw them onto the bonfire. My hands were
bloodied from the work and I went back to the river with her to wash. I was
finished before she was and left her alone. She had far more to wash than I
did.

We
ate a small meal when she returned to the camp. She gave me some of her fish
and a tough piece of bread. I thought about adding more food to match her
supply but the barest thought of manipulating magic made my stomach roll. I
made a promise to return the favor with one of the dozen potential feasts I had
in my gem pouch.

I
thought of the dragon as I ate, and how I had already been diverted by the
trolls. I stared off into the darkness surrounding the village, watching how
the effects of whatever Kate had put in my eyes began to wane and fade away. It
would be morning in a few hours and I would have to resume my search after I
slept. I had exerted myself too much with the trolls but I needed to press on.
I had no idea how far away the dragon might be.

Kate
must have been staring out with me, following my eyes for something she saw me
looking at so closely. She waved a hand in front of my face when she saw that
it was nothing. I turned to her and watched as she bit off a chunk of the bread
and spoke as she chewed her way through it.

“So
you are serious about fighting the dragon, then. I was right?” she spoke as if
it were an admission rather than a question. I nodded. “Even if I do believe
you’re a self-taught prodigy—and I’m not saying I do, you could be an old man
made young again by some spell for all I know—I don’t think it will be enough.
That dragon will rip you apart, cook the pieces, and gobble you up. If you’re
lucky it’ll be in that order.”

I
looked at her without an answer. The words hung awkwardly in the air between us
for a few moments. She looked back at me until she grew impatient. She took
another mouthful of bread and spoke again. “Is there any chance I can talk you
out of it?”

“No,”
I said. “I have lied to you once so far. I didn’t have friends here. It was my
family. My mother and father and sisters. This place was once my home and the
dragon took that away from me.”

“You’ll
die,” she said. “I am sorry about your family but your reasons don’t make any
difference. You could be hunting it for fun or for revenge and your chances are
still the same. It will kill you.”

“Maybe,”
I said softly. “Maybe this time, but eventually one of us will kill it.”

She
put the last of the piece of bread into her mouth and narrowed her eyes at me.
I couldn’t tell if she was annoyed by my apparent stubbornness or if she was
thinking of new ways to try to convince me to leave the dragon alone.

“How
are you going to find it?” she asked after swallowing the last of her food.

“I’m
going to follow the road north until the next village--”

“No.
It’s gone.”

“What?”

“Dragon
destroyed it six months ago.”

“South
then,” I said.

“That’s
a few days out and in the wrong direction since you must have already come from
there if you didn’t know about the other village being gone. Seems like you
just walked out of the field and onto the road at random. There’s something
you’re not telling me, Tower. You don’t make sense.”