The Wizard And The Dragon (11 page)

“Is
that why our writing books only work here? The magic is taken from the walls?”

“Clever
boy, yes,” Tower nodded. “You can’t make something appear out of nothing. A
small amount of magic is used each time, similar to how I make our food.”

“Why
do we need to mine gems, then? Can’t we use the tower’s magic as well?” I
asked, hopeful of a permanent solution to never having to go into the tunnel
again.

Tower
frowned. “No, we can’t access that magic directly. The tower is collecting it
for something. It won’t allow anyone to access it.”

“Collecting
it? What for?”

“Whatever
it is, it must be a big spell from the amount of magic it’s accumulating. I
don’t know,” he said, still frowning.

Winter arrived and
we were prepared.

The
gems we had collected were moved upstairs from the cellar. We kept them in a
pile on the first floor of the tower. Combined with what Tower had collected
before, we had a few hundred of them to use for heat, light, and food. Even if
the tunnel hadn’t been collapsed, we would have had plenty of supplies to last
throughout the winter.

My
knowledge was growing each week but so was my curiosity. It felt like each new
lesson brought more questions that I immediately asked Tower. Looking back I
know I must have been testing his patience, but he always tried to answer as
much as he could.

When
we moved the gemstones from the cellar:

“Does
the color of the gem effect the magic it has?”

“No,”
Tower answered. “The color represents quantity, not quality. Think of fire. A
blue flame burns hotter than a yellow flame. Darker gems are more concentrated
magic. That’s all.”

When
we collected fallen leaves from outside of the tower:

“You
said the tower has a spell that tries to keep people and animals away. Could we
ever find a way back here if we walked away right now?”

We
collected leaves carefully, keeping our feet on the stone foundation around the
bottom of the tower. We scooped them up and made a pile of them near the door.

“Would
you like to?” Tower replied.

I
shook my head quickly.

“If
you left right now you would likely not find your way here again,” Tower
explained. “I could if I opened myself and followed the source of magic here.
You could too after a few more years of training. But now, no. You would be
lost.”

He
walked to the edge of the stone and stepped onto the grass. I felt a rush of
panic but forced myself to remain calm. He turned around and looked at me. His
eyes seemed to be lost, staring a few paces next to me rather than directly at
me.

“I
can’t see you or the tower now,” he said. “Can you hear me? I never tried
that.”

“Yes,
I can hear you,” I shouted back.

If
he heard my words, he made no reaction to them. He stood still for another
moment and then stepped back onto the stone. His eyes snapped to me and he
smiled.

“Did
you hear me when I spoke?” he asked.

“Yes.
You couldn’t hear me?”

He
shook his head.

“You
try now. Don’t worry, I’ll keep hold of you,” he said.

I
hesitated and then walked slowly to the grass. I kept my feet on the stone and
felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff. I think I would have felt more
comfortable teetering on the rim of the tower’s roof.

Tower’s
hands gripped my shoulders and he spun me around so my back was to the grass.
He lifted me easily and placed me down one step outside of the stone.
Immediately the tower seemed to pop out of existence. I could see the sky
through the trees and the part of the forest that the building had been
obstructing.

Terror
gripped me just as quickly. I felt vulnerable and abandoned. I could still feel
Tower’s hands on my shoulders but I couldn’t see them. I tried to endure the
fear until he pulled me back in but my mind was already racing.

I
turned my head back to stare in the direction of my village, the route I had
taken through the trees months ago. I felt like the dragon could swoop down
through the trees in an instant and snatch me from Tower’s hands.

I
sprung off the grass and back toward him. The tower came back, seeming to grow
abruptly out of the ground, and I felt my body lurch as if I was knocked off
balance from it. I didn’t feel like I was completely safe until my back was at
the wall near the door. Tower was staring at me.

“It’s
okay, Bryce. You’re all right,” he said. “Do you see now why you’re safe here?”

I
nodded and became aware that I had started breathing heavily. I had been
sucking air through my nostrils and letting it out as a hiss between my teeth.
I slumped down onto the ground and watched Tower resume collecting the leaves,
giving me time to calm myself.

We
spent that evening sealing the windows of the tower. We used a combination of
the leaves and paper torn from our writing books to fill each of the windows.
Tower brought up the spindles of spider silk he had been gathering over the
weeks and we used generous amounts of it to finish the seal. The windows were
thin but quite deep. It took us a while to fill each one.

“What
would we have used if we didn’t have the spider?” I asked as I tore out two
pages from my book. I closed it and then turned back to where the pages had
grown back. I pulled two more out and handed them to him.

“A
lot more paper to start, probably with some stones from the cellar to keep
things weighed down. There are a few axes down there. You could risk chopping
down a tree for wood. That would work too.”

“There’s
no spell to bind things together?”

“There
probably is, I just don’t know it. It’s not in any of the books we have either.
Spell might not be the right word. You’ll start manipulating gems in a few
weeks. You’ll see what I mean then.”

“I
will? So soon?” I whispered.

“Simple
things first. Don’t get too carried away. Each thing you create using magic has
its own pattern and shape. It’s a lot like how you learned each letter of the
alphabet. You can combine different letters in different orders and make
different words. Magic is far more complicated, though. There are thousands of
different patterns and millions of different combinations.”

“I
don’t think I could ever learn a language with thousands of letters,” I
muttered.

“Then
you see what I mean. Out of all of those combinations it’s likely one would
lead to something that could hold all of this together. You can learn a lot
from experimenting, but it can be dangerous. Don’t worry, you’ll understand. I
don’t want to say too much now and confuse you.”

We
sealed the remainder of the windows in silence. I thought I had accomplished
something by extending my focus and now I felt like I knew next to nothing.
Similarly I was only recently able to read passages from books by myself. I
could almost read the beastiary page on the giant spider. The fundamentals of
my education were almost complete and I couldn’t decide if I was excited or
daunted by what I had to learn next.

The
tower felt cozier and more secluded than ever while we ate dinner that night.
The only light we had came from the enchanted water, now that all of the
windows were obstructed. For some reason it made me feel calm and safe, and the
tower felt more like a sanctuary than ever.

After
our meal we climbed up to the roof. Tower lifted the slab in the wall and
exposed the bowl of water and the gemstones inside. It had been almost two
weeks since they were last replaced and they were tiny. They looked like globs
of ice that were melting away into water.

“Snow
will be here soon. It’s best to add another gem for extra heat to both keep the
tower warm, and to make sure the water doesn’t freeze up here. You have to make
sure that this door is always closed. If snow falls into the water it’ll sap
all of the heat.”

He
dug around in his pockets for a handful of the gems that he always carried on
him. He portioned out four instead of the usual three. They were deep, darker
gems than he usually chose. Each of them was dropped into the water but they
did not begin to shine. He hadn’t opened the magic up to the water yet.

“This
will be one of the first techniques that I’ll teach you,” he said. “You won’t
be trying tonight, but next time we replace these gems I want you to try. For
now, I want you to gather yourself around the gems and pay attention to what I
do. You may not recognize it immediately and that’s okay. It might seem as
foreign and odd as when you tried to read your first word.”

I
leaned closer to the water and nodded. I centered my focus quickly and was
ready to feel as much of the magic as possible. I wanted to impress Tower.

At
first I felt nothing, and I worried that I had already made a mistake. Moving
my focus into the water proved to be more difficult than I anticipated. The
magic that was already contained in it was active and felt like a buzzing
sensation, like a wasp that was hovering close to my ears.

I
realized intuitively that plunging my presence into the water was like running
my hand against the flow of the river. I was obstructing the magic and needed
to harmonize myself with it instead of pushing against it. When I settled
myself amongst the sparks of heat and light, the droning sensation faded and
became close to a pleasant tickling sensation.

I
found the new gems and surrounded them with my focus. They weren’t glowing and
I saw with both my eyes and magic that Tower had not activated them yet. It
wasn’t the first time that I felt the magic contained within the gemstones.
Each one was like looking at a different page of a book without being able to
understand the words. I could see how each part of it was different and how a
pattern eventually emerged out of repeating shapes and lines. I just didn’t
know what each of them meant.

The
gems began to glow as if burning hot in a fireplace. I felt the change as it
happened. The previous stability of the pattern of magic began to change like a
churning of the magic being stirred into a different form. It was over quickly
and, I think, would have been a simple process if I was able to understand what
I was witnessing. The next and last step was to transfer that change of magic
into the water.

I
felt between the four gemstones. Three of them were for heat and those were
already complete. The heat came from within the gems and was naturally absorbed
by the water and carried down through the tower as it flowed through the
channel in the wall. Light was another matter and was not conducted through the
water.

Tower’s
presence was already around the final gem when I focused on it. His magic felt
strong and confident. It reminded me of how easily my father could lift
something heavy that I couldn’t lift even as I strained my whole body. I felt
like the child that I was when I watched him work.

The
gem was punctured too fast for me to witness how it was done. I did manage to
recognize the pattern for light as it leaked out into the water. I traced it
back into the gem and saw that the pattern had been imprinted heavily around
the puncture. The magic that flowed out was changed as it passed into the
water. The light stayed with it and continued to shine as it moved into the
tower.

“Did
you manage to sense anything?” Tower asked.

“Yes.
A little. I don’t think it was much. I don’t understand a lot of what I saw.”

“That’s
okay. This will be harder to learn than anything I’ve taught you. If magic was
easy it would be a lot more common,” he placed a hand on my head. “Follow me
now. I want you to see one more thing before it’s time for bed.”

I
followed him back into the tower and down the stairs. We stopped at Tower’s
floor and went into his study. The room had become as much mine as his in the
past few months, although I still hadn’t seen inside his bedroom. He kept that
door closed.

He
led the way along the bookshelves to the far side of the room, where the second
door was that he always kept closed. I had wondered what was in it for a long
time but we were always too busy with lessons when I remembered to ask. I
thought he was leading us to the room and got excited at the prospect of seeing
what was inside. I was disappointed when we stopped next to it and he pointed
into the corner instead.

“Do
you remember what I said about this?”

I
looked to the giant gemstone in the corner. It was always a marvel to look at
and I never stopped wondering how it had been carried into the room.

“That
it was dangerous. And not to touch it. Which I haven’t!” I said quickly.

Tower
laughed. “Good. Focus again now. I’m going to show you how this was made. Don’t
try to manipulate anything. There is an immense amount of power here and if
something is done wrong it might, well, explode.”

Despite
knowing better I still took a step back. Tower pulled out another gem from his
pocket and placed it on top of the gigantic one. I was cautious as I moved my
focus between the two gems and moved it so slowly that I barely reached it in
time to witness Tower merging the two together.

The
joining of the two gems was easier to understand than the magic on the roof. It
reminded me of when the sollite had absorbed a stone in the cellar except it
was a more gentle process. There was no disorientating flash that stunned me
for a moment.

“I’ve
been building this for many years. It’s a collected supply of magic. There’s
probably enough to sustain us for years if anything ever went wrong,” Tower
explained.

“You
join the gems together?”

He
nodded. “Next time we’ll fuse two small ones. You’ll see that the gem doubles
in size. This one is too big to notice anything like that.”

He
seemed to be finished and I turned to the closed door. My curiosity was back
and prodding me. I finally had a chance to ask.

“What’s
behind this door?” I asked as Tower began to walk away.

He
turned around and looked at it as if he needed to confirm which door I was
asking about. He opened his mouth and then closed it. He was hesitating and
that got my attention. It was rare that he wasn’t quick to answer.

“Something.
Something bad,” he muttered. “That door is locked and it’s locked for a reason.
You must never try to get inside that room.”

I
straightened my back immediately and looked at the door and then back to him.
“What’s in there?”