The Wizard And The Dragon (29 page)

I
could feel how tense my face was as I looked at her. Like in the tavern cellar,
her smiles and grins were gone. She was taking me seriously now and I was
apparently being difficult. I put my hand in my pocket and closed my hand
around Candle’s core. I wished it was just the two of us again.

“I
can’t explain everything without sounding crazy,” I said honestly. “If you’ve
heard about another village being destroyed you must have heard other things.
You know where the dragon has been sighted, don’t you?”

“Yes,”
she said and raised her head slightly, unsure of what I was about to say.

“But
you won’t tell me.”

She
nodded.

“Then
how about another deal. You can keep the half of the bounty you promised me for
helping with the trolls. You can lead me to the dragon. If I kill it then you
can strip away its body parts and I’ll even help you carry them. They must be
powerful compared to a troll’s. And rare, if a dragon hasn’t been killed in so
long.”

Her
eyes narrowed again and I thought I had finally piqued her interest.

“I
won’t help you fight it,” she said. “You’d be alone in that fight.”

“I
don’t expect you to.”

“Can
I still try to talk you out of it on the way there?” she asked.

“If
you must.”

“And
if you survive you will answer all of my questions, crazy answers or not?”

“Yes,”
I said slowly. “Though I don’t see why you’re so curious.”

“You’re
stranger than you know, Tower. The fact that you don’t know makes you even more
strange. Okay, then it’s a deal. I will lead you to the gigantic monster that
will bite you in half and eat you like a snack.”

“You’re
starting right away I see.”

“Of
course,” she said and smiled sweetly.

She
extended her hand and we shook over the agreement. It was an awkward handshake,
the first I had had since I was a boy meeting people with my father. She left
me at the fire and went to sleep at the side of the tavern, far enough away
from the door to avoid the stench from the cellar.

I
stared into the bonfire’s flames until I fell asleep. The exhaustion of my body
came quickly after our conversation was done, urged on by having food in my
belly. I woke up often throughout the morning, with half-formed thoughts of
being burned alive and panicking over the futility of holding back walls of
fire. There were a few fleeting thoughts of hope for success, although in my
dreams I never fully conjured up an image of the dead dragon, only thoughts of
what kind of potions could be made from its remains.

* * *

I woke up in the
late afternoon. There was a thin blanket over me that hadn’t been there when I
had fallen asleep. I saw that Kate was still laying down when I looked over at
the tavern. She must have gotten up once already and then went back to sleep.

The
bonfire had died down throughout the day. I brought Candle out of my pocket and
ignited him. It was one of the longest periods of time that he had been dormant
and he was a flurry of excitement around my feet after finally being let out.
His little head would twist and turn as he looked around the village. I
wondered at how small his world had been up until this moment, and then frowned
when I had the same thought for myself.

He
jumped into the bonfire after a short time poking around the clearing. What was
left of the piled wood and corpses were once again burning as his fire caught
onto them, filling the air with crackles, heat, and popping sounds once more.
It was the largest fire he had ever been in and it looked like he relished it.
His sollite core was glowing brighter than the flames around him before long.

Kate
made a face at my familiar when she woke up. She kept her distance from the
fire at first and only came closer when I made us breakfast from one of my
gemstones. Manipulating the magic no longer sickened me but my focus felt off
and wrong, as though it was aching like an injured muscle. Kate was equally
suspicious of the food as she was Candle. She sniffed at the chicken and
potatoes before taking tiny bites, chewing more thoroughly than the small
mouthfuls needed.

“Tastes
a little funny but it’s mostly okay,” she muttered and then ate the rest
heartily. I wondered how many days she had been eating nothing but her fish and
stale bread.

Candle
came and sat on my shoulder part way through our breakfast. Kate watched him
closely while she chewed her food. Despite how long he had been sitting in the
fire, I offered a small gemstone to him and he engulfed it quickly. It began
its slow orbit around his core as it was slowly absorbed by it.

“What
is that? A pet?” Kate asked.

“My
familiar. He’s an elemental. More a friend than a pet.”

“Where
did you find him?”

“I
didn’t. I made him,” I explained.

She
was quiet for the rest of the meal. I wasn’t sure if she didn’t believe me or
if I had once again contradicted the other wizards she had met. I made a mental
note to ask her more about the other wizards if I survived my fight with the
dragon. If, I thought, and set down my food. Suddenly I wasn’t hungry anymore.

We
didn’t stay in the village ruins for long. I helped her pack her supplies and
load them onto her horse. The rest of the bags were split evenly between us. I
offered to carry more and she just laughed at me. She led the horse on foot and
I could hear glass clinking softly together, matching the rhythm of each step
that we took.

We
exited the village through what was once the north gate. I followed Kate’s lead
off of the road and we followed the river for the rest of the evening. The
ground was mostly uneven and we moved at a slower pace than we would have on
the road. We were also slowed by Kate constantly stopping to look at different
plants that I would have marched straight passed.

She
would inspect everything that we found, sometimes for only a few seconds.
Sometimes she would click her tongue in disappointment and leave the plants
alone. Other times she would yank clusters of flowers from the ground and stuff
them into her bags. Some flowers she plucked the petals from one by one and
carefully wrapped them in a cloth bundle. Some small shrubs she pulled out of
the ground, severed and collected the roots, and tossed the rest into the
river.

“You
make potions,” I said, hoping to start a conversation as she cut slivers of
bark from a tree trunk.

“Yes,”
she replied, and then said nothing else. She finished with the tree and then
walked ahead of me, leading us along the river. I thought I could see her
smiling but I wasn’t sure.

“Is
that why you collected the blood?”

“Of
course,” she said and, once again, said nothing else.

I
let out a huff of air and I heard her laugh ahead of me. Candle stirred on my
shoulder at the sound of it. I tried again. “What kind of potions can you make
from troll’s blood?”

“You’re
not good at this. Talking,” she said, and I could hear the smile this time.
“Not many different kinds of potions from troll’s blood. Its a very potent
ingredient and dominates most others. All of them involve healing in some way,
but it depends on what is added to it. Disease and illness can usually be
cured. If its prepared correctly it can heal injuries or reverse the effects of
aging. It won’t make a person immortal but it can prolong a life.”

“It’s
that powerful?”

“Yes,
but it’s difficult. The person who drinks the potion must prepare a base for
the troll’s blood with their own blood, and even then it must be created
carefully so it will not be overpowering. There’s only a few people I know that
can do it.”

“How
did you learn?”

She
stopped and turned her head back to me. She was already grinning. “I taught
myself.”

Her
grin widened when I glared at her. She resumed walking and I let a few moments
pass before I continued my questions.

“Could
you heal an injury from a long time ago?” I asked as I looked down at my hands.
I rubbed at the finger Bryce was missing. “A missing arm or a toe?”

“Yes,
but it would be difficult. You’d have to cause another injury at the point that
you want to fix. If a hand was missing you would have to cut off another part
of the wrist before taking the potion. I’ve done it a few times for other
people. It is,” her words dragged out as she searched for the right one, “a
painful process.”

“The
blood was your real target then. The bounty was secondary?”

“Clever
boy,” she said, and then sang the next words as if they were a cheery song.
“It’s too bad the dragon will eat you.”

We
turned back onto the road as it got dark. Kate continued to study the trees and
bushes as we passed them. She would carve up pieces of fungus and they would
join the rest of the jars she had filled. She seemed to have her own way of
cataloging each specimen in different pouches and bags that I couldn’t
decipher.

I
asked her more questions about potions and alchemy when we made camp that night
and began to be more direct with how I spoke to her. She responded better to
those questions and I felt that I was learning how to talk with people all over
again, relearning after spending sixteen years talking to myself in more ways
than one. She would still get in her quips about how the dragon was going to
kill me.

“I
wonder what wizard parts would make as a potion,” she said before she went to
sleep, in the same tone as someone would discuss the weather. “If there’s
anything left I might find out.”

The
next two days passed in the same manner. We woke up earlier each day and walked
along the road as long as there was daylight. The trees thickened the further
we got away from my village. Sometimes Kate would circle us off the road and
slow our progress. I began to wonder if she was deliberately stretching out the
journey to give me time to reconsider. Her verbal jabs and reminders about my
imminent death never ceased, although she also continued to collect different
herbs and plants as we walked.

At
the end of the third day I was worried that she may not know where the dragon
was at all, and the entire agreement was an elaborate ruse to convince me to
give up. Considering how sure she was that I was going to fail, I decided to
press her for more information to make sure I wasn’t wasting my time.

We
had settled into taking turns to provide meals and it was my turn when we made
camp that night. I waited until we were comfortably into our dinner before I
started my questions. It was a cooler night and we had made a fire. Candle sat
in it between us.

“Has
the dragon attacked anywhere else in the past year?”

“Aside
from the two villages on this road, no. No other settlements, just travelers on
the road. I’ve heard similar rumors from other cities of similar attacks. Too
far away to be the same dragon. They’re rare and few enough that they usually
leave people alone. Now, after so long, they’re attacking. Maybe someone
provoked them. It’s odd.”

I
nodded along as she spoke. It wasn’t the information I wanted but it was
strange to think about it. Our village had never threatened anything as far as
I knew, but I had just been a boy. It had slaughtered most of us without much
effort.

“There
must be a reason behind the attacks.”

“Maybe.
Maybe not,” she shrugged. “I’ve heard stories about how they were hunted nearly
to extinction many centuries ago by hundreds of wizards working together, not
just a single one alone thinking he can do the impossible. Maybe they’ve
recovered their numbers now. Maybe it’s that simple. Maybe there are no other
attacks and it is just this one dragon. Rumors have a way of spreading and then
coming back as a different story.”

“What
have you heard about my dragon, then?”

“A
brown dragon that destroyed a village. The road here is considered blocked and
gone, like it was a river that dried up. Some merchants try to walk the road
anyway and most vanish. Some make it and speak of the forest burning as they
walk through it. Are you having second thoughts?” she asked suddenly.

“No.”

“Are
you sure?”

“Yes,”
I replied firmly. Candle flared up in the fire between us, reacting to the
stern tone in my voice.

“Feisty
thing. Protective of you. That’s good,” she said. “It’ll be a few more days until
we find it. I only know that people say not to take this road. Eventually we’ll
come near the part that they avoid. You can probably already imagine what that
will be like.”

She
went to sleep after that. I stayed awake for a while longer and then left Candle
soaking up the fire. It was another two days before I saw that Kate had been
right. She collected less samples from the forest but doubled her efforts in
dissuading me. I often got angry at her and refused to answer her taunts, which
she seemed to take as a sign that they were working.

It
was late into the afternoon when I began to see the ash. It lay sporadically
over the road and the grass either side of us. We slowed our walk as if the ash
was still hot and dangerous, something that warranted careful steps as we
trudged closer to where it covered increasingly more of the road.

We
stopped when we saw the clearing up ahead. The trees didn’t gradually lessen
and give way to a field. They abruptly ended a few meters ahead of us where the
dirt road became black. It looked like a warning, a scorched message on the
earth to keep people away. As I stepped closer I saw that it was just a symptom
of the dragon’s destruction. A huge scar burned into the landscape.

The
sky above us was a clear blue. It was a calm summer day and the way the wrecked
road sat below it gnawed at me. It didn’t seem right or natural. The day should
have been dark and gloomy. Rain should have been pouring down to mix with the
ash and heal the land.