The Forging of the Dragon (Wizard and Dragon Book 1) (7 page)

Chaom shrugged and yawned broadly. He, too, had ridden all night. Jarnel nodded and yawned back, and they moved together into the sitting room, each taking an empty couch.

“When is the merchant due to arrive?” Jarnel asked as he stretched himself out.

“These servants know nothing,” Chaom grumbled, turning onto his side in quest of a comfortable position.

Jarnel was already drowsing off, but remembered a warning he’d intended to pass along, and forced himself to sit up. “By the way — next time guard the fords. Merritt wanted to cross the river behind you and cut off your retreat. I wouldn’t let him.”

Still shifting, Chaom turned his back to Jarnel and snuggled his hips into the cushions. “You should have. We’d laid snares in all those fords, and you would have been rid of your troublesome Merritt.”

“Snares?” Jarnel frowned. “How?” But Chaom’s only answer was a snore.

“I don’t wish to be rid of Merritt — nor of any of my people,” Jarnel growled to himself. “What I really wish is to spare them any more ...” Before he finished, sleep had claimed him.

*

The bear cracked a human skull between his teeth, enjoying the crisp crunch it made. He liked the taste, too. Marwandians had a delicate flavor — probably from all the wild forest herbs in their diet. He chewed slowly. There was no rush. He could watch from here upon the bluff, and there appeared to be no one stirring inside the single tent left standing in the ruined stockade.

Did the boy know of his presence? Probably. That mattered very little. Dark was a nuisance, but hardly a threat. He could only relate the future, and that future he told contained the results of all Dark’s own best efforts to change it. Besides, he was a boy and subject still to all boyish insecurities. And fears ...

This Seagryn, however, with his tugolith shape and lofty religious ideals, might prove to be a problem if not quickly mastered. The bear tore off another chunk of flesh and gnawed it thoughtfully. He could take Dark aside and force the boy to be precise about his predictions. But Sheth didn’t like knowing the future. It seemed to tie the hands of the present.

No, he would simply wait. Perhaps circumstances would permit an early confrontation with this would-be wizard. Having finished the last of the Marwandians that this Seagryn had chased into his paws, he felt no need to linger. He had business to finish before the Conspiracy met. These two would be there. Dark had promised.

The twenty-foot-tall bear metamorphosed into a man — a caped patrician gazing arrogantly into a little valley. Then, just as suddenly, he was gone, and the humid air rushed to fill the void with a sharp snap.

Chapter Four

PROPHECY’S BURDEN

SEAGRYN woke with a start. He sat trembling for a moment, remembering where he was. Dark still slept on a pile of cushions nearby. “Dark?” he whispered. The boy groaned, but never moved.

The heat within this tent felt stifling. Late morning ... it had to be late morning! “Get up!” Seagryn whispered, sliding off his own pallet of cushions to crawl to the tent flap. He peered out.

The stream rolled through the ruined encampment, sloshing gently against the rocks that lined its banks. Insects buzzed over the few patches of grass that hadn’t been tramped down by Marwandian boots. Seagryn listened — had they returned? Did warriors wait on either side of this tent to spear them as they stepped out? He crawled to Dark’s side and shook the lad. “Wake up,” he muttered. “Wake
up
!” he spat in the boy’s ear, and Dark’s eyes shot open.

The boy blinked a couple of times, then smacked his lips together and grumbled, “Give me one good reason why I should.”

“There are enemies about!”

“Of course there are,” the boy agreed, shifting his body away from Seagryn and snuggling into a cushion. “But not any right outside this tent.”

“How do you know that?”

Dark yawned, and shrugged his shoulders in a clear signal that he intended to go back to sleep.

Seagryn stood. “If, as it seems, you know everything in advance, then you know I’m about to do this!” He grabbed Dark by the collar and belt and jerked the lad into the air. The boy struggled ineffectually as Seagryn turned him upright and set him on his feet.

“Oh, I knew you were going to do it,” Dark growled, “but that doesn’t mean I needed to help you.”

“You actually knew I would jerk you out of the bed?”

“Of course. Just as I know that our friends have not returned to camp and that later on you’re going to toss me into that river out there.”

Seagryn leaned his head back disdainfully, then folded his arms on his chest. “I see. But that’s where you’re wrong.”

Dark scowled, then rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he said, “And now you’re going to prove to me that I don’t control your future by vowing
not
to throw me into the river.” Dark walked to the tent flap and casually tossed it aside, then ducked out and went straight to the stream. He knelt there and washed his face. Seagryn followed him, casting furtive glances to either side but seeing no one else around.

“Are you now going to throw yourself in and say I was responsible?” Seagryn challenged.

Dark stood up, drying his face with his sleeve. “No.”

“Well?”

“Well what?” Dark asked, his brown eyes finally open and fixed upon Seagryn.

“How can you account for the fact that I won’t throw you in?”

Dark gazed at him a moment, his eyes looking much older than the rest of his youthful frame. “How much of this do you actually want to know?”

“How much of what?”

“What’s going to happen today.”

Dark’s blasé tone infuriated Seagryn, so he pretended not to understand. “What do you mean?”

“Just that.” Dark shrugged. “How trivial do you want me to be? How much detail?”

Seagryn stared at the boy a moment, then shook his head in disgust and walked away, looking at the row of squashed tents and trying to judge which one might contain the food supplies.

“For example, right now you’re going to find us something to eat —”

“Well, of course I’m going to find food!” Seagryn snarled, whirling around to look at Dark again. “It’s almost noon! I’m hungry! Aren’t you?”

“— and you’ll find some dried meat in the third tent down.” Seagryn put his hands on his hips and glared at the young prophet. “But now you’ll try every way you can to find something to eat somewhere else, just to prove I’m wrong.” Dark found a patch of grass and sat down on it. He picked up a rock and tossed it idly into the river. Seagryn did, indeed, search the other tents first. The boy waited, watching the water glide past. After a few minutes Seagryn rejoined him, frowning in frustration as he shoved some dried meat the boy’s way. Dark took it, saying, “Just tell me when to shut up. My s’mother always does.”

“Where is your mother?” Seagryn asked gruffly. “Does she know you’re here?”

Dark took a bite and chewed reflectively before answering. “She knows I’m safe. I’ve told her that much. More than that she doesn’t want to know. It’s very tedious having someone around who knows everything you’ll do before you do it. But you’ll discover that soon enough.”

Seagryn was thinking he already had learned that when it registered upon him that, if he felt that way, Dark had again predicted his reaction properly. “No!” he lied brightly. “I don’t think it tedious. In fact, I find it fascinating!”

“Right,” Dark muttered, lying back in the grass to gaze into the clear summer sky.

“I do! How do you do it?”

Dark turned his head to frown up at Seagryn, then closed his eyes and laced his fingers behind his head. “How do you become a tugolith?” he asked.

Seagryn thought. “I don’t know.”

“Nor do I understand my ability.” Dark shrugged. “It’s just the way I am. A part of me. My gift, or curse, or whatever you want to call it.”

“It’s a gift, certainly,” Seagryn said. “Look how it’s helped us already.”

“How?” Dark frowned.

“Why, we can ...”

“Don’t say we can avoid trouble, because we can’t. I have the welts on my back to prove that.”

“But you could have avoided it!” Seagryn challenged. “You could have ... been home with your mother!”

“Oh,” Dark grunted. “Like you could have avoided turning into a tugolith last night?”

“I don’t control that,” Seagryn muttered.

“And I don’t control the future. You think I didn’t try to avoid these outlaws? I did. I wanted to stay with you! But — as I knew you would — you sent me away. So, I was trying to run home and ran right into three of them instead.”

“But didn’t you know you would?”

“Of course I knew. Don’t you understand? Knowing just makes it worse! You can’t avoid the future any more than you can avoid the past!”

Seagryn puzzled over this awhile. “Then everything in the future is fixed? Is it all preordained?”

Dark snarled in frustration. He’d obviously tried to explain this many times. “It’s not like someone, the Power for example, orders the future to be such. It just is. Decisions now don’t change the future, because the future isn’t, yet. My problem is I know what it will be, what all the decisions will add up to. If I decide to do something to change an outcome, inevitably it’s the very act that makes that outcome happen. Augh —” He broke off wearily. “Why do I even try to make people understand ...?”

“Then,” Seagryn began in a philosophical tone, “you know the instant of your own death —”

“No!” Dark shouted, and he was suddenly onto his knees and had grabbed hold of Seagryn’s robe. His words tumbled out. “Please don’t ever say that, don’t ever mention that again, Seagryn, in the name of friendship or the Power or whatever you want to say! Please don’t! My sight of the future is like your memory of the past. Things are there; you could give attention to them if you wanted to, but some things are too painful, so you don’t, you block out those memories by thinking of pleasant ones, right? Don’t you?”

“Ah — I guess —”

“You do, everyone does, and so do I! I block that out, I talk about foolish things, I look at the future of others, I play games with their minds, and all of it is designed — Listen to me Seagryn! It’s all designed to keep that one secret from me! Please! Change the subject!”

The boy’s dark eyes implored him. Seagryn didn’t know what to say.

“Something else! Anything else! Get my mind off of this before I —”

“So you remember the future?” Seagryn said quickly, unsure if that would help.

“Yes!” Dark smiled thankfully. “Yes, that’s it! I remember the near future best, just as you recall events of the past two or three days better than you do what happened last month. Critical days, important days, they stand out in your memory regardless of how long ago — oh, the details get fuzzy, but you understand. And I know of critical days in the weeks and months ahead, many of them days we share ...” Dark trailed off, and his young eyes grew distant as he looked inside himself at what was to be. “I know of events that will shake you to your core — and the world as well ...” He said this so dramatically that Seagryn could not help but be drawn into the vision.

“Do — do I play a critical role in these — events?”

Dark came back into the present and stared Seagryn in the face. “Everyone wants to be important,” he said, quietly. “Everyone is.”

Seagryn flushed, embarrassed by his own ambition. “Of course,” he muttered.

“However,” Dark added with a hint of mystery, “by virtue of luck or providence or fate, some get close enough to the wheels of destiny to turn them by their own weight ...” He paused, and it seemed he was holding this morsel out as a temptation for Seagryn to ask more.

The former cleric frowned. “And ... I am ... one of those?”

Dark nodded curtly. Seagryn felt a bit light-headed at the news. The thing he had always wanted most was to be important. Here was confirmation that his dreams would be realized. “And ... you could tell me exactly how?”

“How much do you want to know, Seagryn?” Dark asked again, but now his voice could have been that of an ancient oracle. No wonder Dark’s name had already moved into legend, Seagryn thought with a shiver. “Do you want to be made to feel powerless by knowing the outcome of your decisions in advance?”

Seagryn stared at the boy for a minute, then shook his head. “No. Occasional help maybe, but no.”

“Good choice,” Dark muttered. “I only wish I could make it.”

The lad seemed older now — much older, almost a peer. And Seagryn began to understand the weight of the boy’s burden. He thought carefully before asking his next question, but decided to risk it. “Is there any other area you prefer not to think about?”

Dark met his eyes worriedly — then a slight smile turned up the corners of his lips. “One.”

“And what’s that?”

Dark blushed. “Ah ... love.” Seagryn raised an eyebrow, and the boy shrugged and continued. “I think whom you love and ... and
how
you love ... that kind of thing ... ought to be a surprise. Don’t you?”

Seagryn chuckled, but glumly. “I suppose.” He thought of Elaryl, remembering how the sun glistened in her hair in that moment before the Marwandians broke in upon them. Where was she at this moment? Did she think of him? “Although,” he murmured, “there are some things about my love I’d like to know.” Seagryn wasn’t really asking — or at least he told himself he wasn’t. Nevertheless, Dark answered:

“You’ll get her back.”

Seagryn frowned slightly, fighting the impulse to grab the boy and shake him. “You’re certain?”

“I’m certain,” Dark replied firmly, and Seagryn nodded, not daring to ask more. “Of course,” the boy continued offhandedly, “you’d better not treat her the way you did that girl back in Bourne —”

“How did you — !” Seagryn’s reaction was swift and violent. Cursing in a most nonclerical manner, he grabbed Dark by the tunic and flung the lad mightily toward the river. The moment he let go he realized what he was doing; as the boy plunged into the water, Seagryn had to double over with laughter at his own lack of self-control. Dark came up gasping and spluttering and waded out immediately. He was grinning; when Seagryn couldn’t stop cackling, Dark laughed along with him.

“How did you know?” Seagryn asked when he finally contained his mirth. “I’ve never told anyone that story, and she’s the only other person who knew!”

Dark shrugged and wiped his face. “You’re going to tell me. Sometime next week.”

Seagryn shook his head in amazement, then sighed. “Very well then. I confess that I cannot alter the future. And since you’ve showed me abundantly that while you can’t either, you do know it. Why don’t you lead us to wherever we are about to travel next?”

Dark nodded thoughtfully as he wrung the water from his full sleeves. “These times always make me uncomfortable.”

“What times?”

“When I make — suggestions. Well. Shall we pack up our tent and go join the Conspiracy?”

Seagryn’s smile faded, then returned with a little less enthusiasm. “After hearing Quirl mod Kit’s lengthy diatribe against it, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“I understand.” Dark nodded, peeling a wet curl from his forehead and squeezing the water out of it. “But you also learned you can’t trust what a Marwandian tells you.”

“Can I trust what you tell me?”

Dark focused his eyes past his forelock and on Seagryn. “I thought I’d already proved —”

“To be in my best interests?” Seagryn expanded.

“Oh. Well. Aren’t you going to have to judge that for yourself? After the fact?”

“You can’t judge it for me before it happens?” the new wizard asked.

Dark’s brown eyes were large and liquid. He answered with utter sincerity, “I wouldn’t dare.”