The Wizard And The Dragon (32 page)

Five more books had been taken down and
then replaced before she remembered. She snatched at the parchment eagerly from
the desk where she had left it. The books were far older than she would have
guessed and she pressed on through them, flipping quickly only looking at the
numbers. There were hundreds of the books, each containing a few years. By the
end she skipped to the last page for the final date until she found the most
recent book; each entry was written by the last iteration of herself, the one
that she had been only hours before.

Immediately she knew something was
wrong. The book was too small. The thick cover compressed too much in her
grasp. She ran her thumb through the pages and stopped when she felt too large
of a gap skip over her skin. There were pages missing. Many pages. Pages had
been torn out seemingly at random from all throughout the book until the last
third all of which had been ripped out and taken. Burned, she guessed.

Do not trust Calder.

There was no mention of the name in the
book. She saw others and she skimmed the paragraphs, names that matched up to
those listed at the end of the note she found. No mention of Calder, like every
page with his name had been surgically removed. She stared back at the fire and
wondered if the pages had been thrown into it.

She closed the book and took it with her
into the bedroom, keeping it apart from the others with the intention of
carefully reading it. The room looked welcoming now that she had explored the
entire house. There were things she saw that she had missed when she had woken
up, drawn so quickly to the note on the door. There were clothes and a pair of
shoes on the floor. On the bedside table, behind the book and candle, was a
small hand mirror. She sat on the bed and reached for the mirror.

There had been hundreds of books. She
expected to see an ancient, worn face as she turned the mirror. Instead, she
saw a youthful woman. There was scarcely a line or wrinkle on her face, save
faint ones from the corner of her nose. Her eyes were green and looked as young
as the rest of her, with no years of wisdom or experience hidden behind them.
Her hair was a dark chestnut brown and blended with the dark walls around her.
She had no opinion of her image, dumbstruck above all consideration that she
didn’t recognize her own reflection.

You are far older and far stronger than
you appear,
she recalled, and began to squeeze the
metal handle of the mirror. She felt something give and put her other hand on
the back of it, applying what she thought was a small amount of pressure and
seeing the metal bend easily from her strength. She stopped and looked at the
damage she had inflicted on the item. The iron below the glass was pale and
strained. She straightened it just as easily, afraid it would snap as she did
so. She placed the mirror back on the table.

She ran her hands down each of her arms
and then placed them together in her lap. Like her appearance, what she felt
didn’t make sense. She knew, like she had known the sheepskin and how to read words
on a page, that her muscles were not large enough to do what she had done to
the mirror. Her arms did not bulge underneath her sleeves, and yet they felt
firm under her fingertips. She had looked slender and delicate in her
reflection, but she felt strong and heavy now, as though her flesh was packed
denser than it should have been.

The fire swayed in her eyes as it had
when she had woken up. She stared at it again.

Who am I?
Kate thought to herself.
More importantly, what am I?

* * *

There
were no dreams of lost memories. No recollections of past lives. The effects of
the poison were permanent and her dreamless sleep was no comfort.

There was a noise. A crackling or
popping.
The fire?
She opened her eyes and saw that the room was dark,
save a sliver of cold light coming from the fireplace. The wood had burned
away  and even the smouldering ash had extinguished itself. Still, the noise.
Not a popping, but something being struck.

“Kate?” a voice called when the noise
stopped. The word was muffled through the walls of the house. She sat numbly on
the bed before she remembered that it was her name.

She got up and opened the door. The
study was full of light from the window, but it was still cold without the
fire. She moved quickly to the far door and into the small entrance vestibule
of the house. She was wearing a plain, buttonless tunic and pants made of the
same thin material. The coats were still hanging on the wall and she grabbed
one and pulled it over her tunic. Her feet were cold and she reached for a pair
of boots when the door began to knock again. She froze in place and turned to
it.

“Hello?” she asked and felt ridiculous.

“It’s me. Open up. Since when do you
lock your door?” the voice was a man’s and the door rattled after he spoke, as
if to confirm what he said.

“Me who?”

“Calder. Who else? Is something wrong?”

Kate narrowed her eyes.
A
coincidence?
Some part of her, an analytical part that had lived through
the poison, was screaming that something was wrong but was vague about the
details. She weighed her options. This Calder may be responsible for her poison
and the missing pages in the books, but then the note didn’t make sense. Why
would he have left her alone when she was poisoned and vulnerable? However, if
he wasn’t responsible, then why were the pages removed?

Or maybe you removed them,
the thought came suddenly.
Maybe you weren’t a good person, but you would
still have your best interests even if you weren’t. Maybe Calder knows
something that you did and is a threat. What kind of a person knows how to make
poison?

She unbarred the door and opened it
slowly. Her body tensed and was ready to slam it closed if the man rushed
inside to strike her. He did no such thing, remaining stationary and looking
directly at her. It was her own senses that came to attack instead, bombarding
her like they had the night before:

Hands first. Gloves. Leather. Holding
nothing. Weapon on his hip—short sword, left side, right handed. Stance tense,
expecting a fight, but not a physical one. Face now. Hair brown, eyes brown,
beard brown. Three days growth. Usually shaven, skin underneath is uniformly
tanned. Eyes red and heavy. Drunk? No. Tired. Worried. Nervous. Pouch on his
belt. No knife. Pants. Boots. Bulge around right ankle. Knife. Boots are clean.
Didn’t circle the house before knocking.

She exhaled and found that she had been
holding her breath. She shook her head from the strain of it. The back of her
eyes were throbbing. She leaned against the door and stared at him.

“I’m sorry,” Calder said immediately.

No movement of his hands. Mouth
twitched, almost a smile. Eyes not looking away. Didn’t shift on his feet.
Honest.

She tightened her grip on the door
handle as if she could choke herself to stop the flood of perception.

“You told me to leave you alone for a
while,” he continued. “I’m not here for me. We don’t have to talk about what
happened. The town sent me. Something has been slaughtering some livestock up
in the hills. It’s just a troll, only one and probably small, but you know what
they’re like. Why risk some guards when you live so close.”

She nodded once and wanted to blurt out
that she didn’t know what he was talking about. What was a troll? She wanted to
close the door, get the fire burning, and read every single book she could
find. Had that been the plan all along? Was that why he had been told to leave
her alone? Why were they on speaking terms at all if she wasn’t supposed to
trust him?

“Okay,” she said. “Let me get ready.”

He stepped forward before she could
close the door. She calmed herself and managed to suppress her inner processing
to merely noting that he was used to waiting for her inside. He closed the door
behind himself and she turned only when his back was to her, quickly opening
the kitchen door and stepping inside before he could see her. She hurried
through to the workshop, naturally counting his footsteps as he followed slowly
behind her. She struggled against it at first, trying to ignore the mental
tally that she was keeping until she succumbed to it, realizing that she was
paranoid without it. She needed to know where everyone and everything was at
all times, and felt at ease when she accepted it. He took seven steps while she
was in the workshop, enough that he made it to the kitchen table.

“You kept the apples?” he called through
the door. “But you hate them.” He sounded pleased.

Not so different then.

Kate looked around the room and still had
no idea what a troll was. She thought of the books from the night before, with
their pages of creatures and monsters. A small, weak one if Calder was so
casual about it. Routine work for someone like her, she guessed. The leather
armor she had seen the night before looked well used in the light of day. There
was dried blood on it and she took that as a good sign. She took off her coat
and strapped the chest piece over her tunic, tightening its belts until she
couldn’t breathe. She loosened them and felt like she squirmed beneath the
leather rather than it moving with her. She fiddled with the buckles until she
was satisfied.

The armored pants were easier, with only
a single strap around her waist. She tapped her knuckles against the coarse
surface of the armor and had no idea if the resistance it offered was good or
not. Her forearms were exposed and the leather was thinner around her legs, but
her movement felt unrestricted as she stepped forward.

There were five swords on the floor. Two
short, one long, and two in between. She picked up each of them and swung them
awkwardly, one at a time, gleaning no information from any of them.

I had forgotten how to use a blade.

She chose one of the medium length
swords, about a third longer than the one Calder had at his hip. The sword
looked to be in the best condition out of the five, still rough at the base of
the blade but sharper closer to the tip. There was a simple strap on the belt
that she carefully threaded the blade through, shifting the handle of the
weapon when it reached the thicker base to work it further through the strap.
Once satisfied that it was secured, she walked back into the kitchen.

“You’re going in that?” Calder asked,
his eyes wide.

“Yes,” she said, surprised by the
stirring in her chest at being challenged. “You said it was just a troll.”

“I know, but,” the last word droned out
of him and then he was quiet. She counted his footsteps back to the front door
while she went to her bedroom cabinet. There were socks and gloves in the top
drawer. She took only the socks and pulled them on, doing the same with a pair
of boots at the front door. Unlike the armor, they fit her perfectly.

She followed him out, closing the door
and preparing a response when she realized she didn’t know how to lock it from
the outside. He said nothing, however, watching her closely as if he was seeing
her for the first time.

“You’re serious about wearing that?” he
asked again.

Kate shrugged and felt the upper straps
tighten around her chest. The lower ones felt too loose. She stepped forward
and felt the sword sway at her hip, the broad side of it hitting her thigh.

“Kate, don’t be like this. Talk to me at
least. It doesn’t have to be about what happened.”

“No,” she said firmly, drawing from the
only source of knowledge that she had: what he had already said to her. “You
said you weren’t here to talk. You’re here for the town. Walk.”

She gestured forward. She had no idea
where she was going and had to rely on him to lead the way.

There was a path leading from the house.
The trees had looked more imposing through the dark windows the night before,
but she saw that they were sparsely strewn around her home. She had either
found a clearing to build the house or cleared it herself. Most of the trees
were devoid of leaves, bony and bare branches reaching up to the sky. The path
was mostly clear of fallen leaves but the occasional one still crunched
underfoot as they walked. They followed the path to the main road and she could
see the river when they reached it. The water was far wider than she expected,
a massive slow moving river that would have taken considerable effort to swim
across. When they reached the road, they turned and walked in the same
direction that the water was flowing.

Calder kept turning to her. It was
distracting, each time making her consciously aware of the tiniest details on
his face. He looked either angry or confused, usually ranging somewhere in between.
She knew for certain that he wasn’t aggressive or a danger to her. If anything,
she surmised he was looking to her for direction. She couldn’t understand why
her note had said not to trust him.

“Tell me about the troll,” she said,
keeping her voice casual.

“It’s a troll,” he said as though he
were talking about one of the trees around him. “Everything I know about them I
learned from you.”