The Wizard And The Dragon (20 page)

The
more experienced I grew at healing, the more I realized how I could have hurt
myself if I had experimented on my own body. It was the first time I saw magic
as too general a term for what I was doing. As a child I had seen it as
something similar to reading; once learned, I knew the basics for every word,
sentence, and paragraph. In magic I saw more complexity and depth in healing
than I had in all other spells combined. The way farren could regrow limbs
mystified and eluded me. I had to wonder if I was just as ignorant in how I
handled fire or light.

Eventually
I grew competent enough to heal myself of deep cuts and bruises. The books I
read detailed ways to do so without scarring but those were beyond me. As the
months in the underground turned into years, my body began to show that lack of
knowledge. Still, I survived and learned from each scar.

The
farren did become vermin to me in time and ceased to be a threat as I could
channel greater amounts of magic. I learned to weave multiple spells and
focuses at once, as I had seen Tower do. I found other nests of giant spiders
and other creatures morphed after centuries of living too close to the magic in
the stone.

It
was during those years that I think I lost sight of my intended goal. The
underground became another world to me, full of wonderful and vicious things. I
explored it eagerly, sometimes lost in the rough beauty of the place.

The
caverns sometimes gave way to vast expanses of lava or water. I once stumbled
upon a place where the two met, endlessly colliding in a deafening hot hiss of
steam. I often wished that I could sleep in the underground and venture even
further, to see where the water poured down from above. My experience had
taught me that there was no safe place to rest.

The
lakes of water were often as dangerous as the lava flows. Creatures would come
to drink and be snatched below the surface by the things that lived in the
water. They were too fast for me to ever see, and burst out in a spray of
frothing water and were gone before the air cleared. Whatever was unlucky
enough to be drinking nearby was taken with them. I kept my distance and never
risked a drink.

I
often searched for a way into the chamber full of pillars and statues but never
found it. Following the lava rivers was dangerous and I couldn’t be sure if
they would lead to the one I had seen. The light of the fire attracted all
sorts of beasts, most too large for me to fight if they weren’t alone.

There
were lizards that could live in the lava. Sometimes I would catch them
slouching out onto the river banks, glowing hot and pouring molten rock in a
trail behind them. Their bodies would cool and turn as gray as the stones
around them. They would lay still like that and snap out when something passed
close to them.

I
had three long years in the underground before I met something that I couldn’t
either defeat or run away from. I was twenty-three and, although I didn’t know
it yet, I had only two years left alone in the tower.

For all the hours
I spent deep in the caverns, it was when I was attacked near the tunnel that I
came closest to death.

I
didn’t even have time to erect the barrier or ignite Candle. I could see the
thing shifting in the dark at the edge of the light. It was heavy enough that I
could feel the vibrations it sent out with each step as it snuffed at the
ground. The tunnel was so close that I took it as a challenge I had no chance
of losing. My escape was right behind me.

I
stepped forward and felt the familiar tingle as the lightning crawled up my arm
and over my shoulders. It shot faster down my other arm and I unleashed it at
the back of the monster. It was only then that I realized the magnitude of my
error.

The
lightning bolt made contact in less than a second and broke up the darkness for
less than that, but it all the time I needed. I saw the monster’s body in the
flash of light and my body tensed. I had just attacked the same type of monster
that had chased Tower out of the mines so many years ago. A krogoth.

A
roar returned my strike and I felt as if it had physically struck my body. I
was stunned as it launched itself toward me. It was easily triple the size of
the one I had seen Tower fight. That one must have been young. The fully grown
version had even more teeth and longer claws. Its four legs still looked too
big for the rest of its body, as if it used them to tear out chunks of rock.
The head of it looked less like a dragon than it did before but it was still charging
at me. My attack had only made it angry.

It
twisted as it got close and slammed its tail into my side. I expected to be
knocked to the floor, not smashed clear into the air, and hit the wall hard. I
fell quickly onto the floor and scrambled to my feet. I didn’t know how injured
I was but I couldn’t risk staying down.

Somehow
I had kept my grip on the gemstones and fired another lightning bolt at the
monster. The spell smacked into its face but it kept on running at me as if I
had done nothing at all. Either lightning did nothing to it or my power wasn’t
strong enough. I threw one of the stones to my feet as the monster grew closer
and released the energy as a percussive blast. I dived as the power was
unleashed and blew myself out of the krogoth’s way.

The
monster had been running too fast to stop in time. It collided with the wall as
I landed and scraped over the ground, still moving from the force of the blast.
My left arm was snagged by a sharp rock and it tore into my flesh before I came
to a stop. When I was on my feet I could feel the blood trickling down my
forearm.

I
ignored it and looked at the monster. Its front claws were embedded into the
wall but he was already working on tearing them free. I grabbed a fresh fistful
of gems and took the opportunity to hone my focus on the krogoth. It was then
that I realized why Tower had run from the previous one. My focus was like an
extra sense, and trying to gather it on the monster was like trying to see
through a thick fog. Like it did with the lightning, it was resisting the
magic.

Focused
or not, I blindly sent a blast of energy—three gems worth—toward the monster
and I might as well have tried to punch a stone wall. It was knocked slightly
forward but reared back as though it felt nothing. It yanked its left claw out
and pressed it higher into the wall, pushing down to free the second one.

I
grabbed the emergency gems from my pocket and I ran. I wildly channeled
lightning as I sprinted toward the tunnel, sending out random arcs to light my
way. Another roar came from behind me and I turned to see only its teeth and
eyes glistening in the darkness.

Two
paces from the tunnel the krogoth caught up to me. Its claws lashed at me as I
flung my body into the tunnel. The tips of the claws drove down the flesh of my
back but the tips were enough to tear chunks out of my body. I landed on my
side, barely a meter into the tunnel, screaming as my back felt like it had
been smothered in fire.

The
monster was too big to get into the tunnel but that wasn’t stopping it. I could
see it carving its way in already, cutting deep gaps in the wall of the cavern.
I tried not to think of my back as I watched it claw through the stone as it
had done to me. I pressed weakly with my feet, pushing myself into the tunnel
and shrieking each time my back moved.

I
was too hurt and the krogoth was digging closer to me faster than I could
squirm away. I grabbed the bag from my belt and looked inside. There were at
least two dozen gems within and only a few more in my pockets. I kept only two
of them and shoved the rest inside. I tied the top closed and threw it on the
ground.

To
this day I still don’t know how I got to my feet. My back felt like it was
being torn open all over again, as if my body was splitting apart. I stumbled
forward, away from the bag and fell down again after a few paces. I crawled the
rest of the way, feeling the rush of air from behind as the monster brought
down another part of the wall and leered deeper into the tunnel.

The
pain was what stopped me and I knew I had no other option than to risk it. The
bag still looked so close when I turned around and focused on it, gathering
around every gem within it, unlocking the energy of each in tandem with the
rest. I held one of the gems I had kept as the power began to stir. The stone
spread out as a barrier over me, shielding me, and I hoped it would be enough.
The krogoth may have had the ability to resist my spells, but the walls around
us didn’t.

The
explosion rocked the tunnel as if it had been unhinged and torn away from the
rest of the world. Even the monster’s roar was drowned out in the sound. The
ceiling and floor cracked around me, and fissures opened letting loose torrents
of stone and dust. The barrier was coated in debris and I was left in darkness.

I
brought out Candle’s core from my pocket and he served as my light. He turned
his head at me, confused, and watched as I painstakingly drew out the energy of
my final gem and worked at healing my back. The wounds were dirty and that made
the process even longer and more painful. Part of me was glad that I couldn’t
see just how bad they were.

The
gem ran out before I was fully healed, but it was enough that I could move
without being in agony. The barrier above us sported as many cracks as the
walls and had barely held. I shifted it slowly, reshaping the energy until I
had enough room to wriggle out. Candle went out first and lit my way.

On
my feet I turned and saw the destruction I had caused. The downward slant of
the tunnel made it look like the floor had been flooded with rubble. There were
no more sounds, not even of the krogoth digging, and I had to wonder if the
wall above us had collapsed on top of him. I wouldn’t risk finding out.

I
turned and staggered up in the direction of the cellar. Each step sent a spasm of
pain from my back. I had enough energy in my body to complete the healing but I
didn’t know if it would leave me with enough to walk home. I endured the pain
to be safe but still winced every other step.

I
tried to take some comfort in knowing that I had sealed the tower from harm.
The tunnels that were left open had ample amounts of gemstones to be mined out.
Still, after healing my back and settling in once again to a comfortable life
in the tower, I bitterly missed my expeditions down into the underground.

Those
final two years passed just as quietly as the first few I had spent alone. The
only differences were that I often took walks in the forest and was adding my
own books to the collection in the study. I wrote about my experiences that I
could find no reference to in the other books. I added information to my copy
of the beastiary that Tower had made me start.

I
still practiced with Candle, but part of me had long since lost the goal of
leaving the tower. I became attached to my home that kept me warm, dry, with an
unlimited amount of food and paper to busy myself.

The
giant spider died part way through my final year. I buried it in the crater in
the tunnels, as close to where its nest had been as I possibly could. It may
have been a beast, perhaps even a mindless one as Tower had said, but I still
mourned its passing. Aside from Candle, it had been the only being I had
interacted with over all the years.

I
continued adding to the gem in the study as time passed. Near the end of that
final year it was nearly as big as I remembered Tower’s being. It was a small
thing, but it made me happy to see that I had fully restored at least one piece
to the room.

I
often wrote about Tower. My theories on him and the magic around me were
intertwined. Over a decade had passed since I began learning magic and still
the enchantments in the tower baffled me. The very books I wrote on were
restored and regenerated themselves from magic drawn from the tower. I could
not even begin to reverse-engineer those spells.

My
writings often pondered who had built the tower. I imagined an ancient group of
incomprehensibly powerful wizards, who would look at my own crude spells and
laugh at them. I could hold energy in my hands and transform it into light,
fire, and then back again into a solid state. How did the creators of the tower
view that energy when they could so easily draw it from the ground?

I
wondered if Tower may have been one of them, or if he had never even left at
all. The room with the window, still blocked all these years later, might have
acted as some sort of portal that he had come from. A wizard that had taken
pity on a young boy and then gotten tired of his stumblings through magic,
something that came as easily as breathing to him. The years alone had made my opinion
of him exponentially grow.

Toward
the end I even considered that he was himself an embodiment of the tower, that
his name was more than a passing title. The same magic that powered the books
and candles, if so advanced, might sustain the image of a man in the way I
could morph energy into meat and vegetables. I thought of the chicken question
I had asked Tower so long ago and grasped at the possibility. The tower saw a
boy and gave him the means to survive, just enough, and then receded back into the
walls.

In
the end, all of my theories were wrong. He was no great, immortal man from a
long lost age. He wasn’t made flesh from the tower’s magic, although it may
have sustained him at times. The answers came suddenly one morning, when I woke
up and the windowed room was open.

The
light from under the door woke me up. I liked sleeping in the dark, sealed off
in the bedroom adjacent from the study. The candle light was too dim to reach
through the crack under the door and that’s what made me spring out of bed. I
thought the light was a fire and ripped the door open while still barely awake.

I
saw it immediately, even through the visual overload of the bright lights
assaulting my eyes. The door at the other end of the study was open. The chests
I had stacked were strewn across the floor, as if the door had been violently
pushed open. Somehow the door was still intact and hinged in its frame.

The
window was a dazzling blaze of blue light. The stones in the wall shined along
with it, as if the light snaked its way between all of them, stretching out to
light up the entire perimeter of the room. The bedroom behind me stayed dark.
It was only the study that was caught in the window’s magic.

Candle
climbed up my leg as I walked toward the window. I could feel the magic
pulsating from it with only the smallest effort of focusing toward it. The gem
in the corner, now as high as my hip, was only a fraction of the energy that
was bombarding through the walls.

I
entered the room not knowing what to expect. The door stayed open behind me.
The chilling writing was still on the walls, the letters still looked like they
had been etched in while in agony. My head felt light, as though it could float
from neck at any moment, caught in the whirlwind of magic in the room.

There
was something on the window. The thin frame was emitting the light, but the
glass—if it truly was glass—was still as clear as ever. In the center of it was
a small symbol. It was a simple shape, four lines curving upwards from the same
point, in the same blue color as the light in the room.

I
was compelled to touch it. Maybe it was the possibility of solving a mystery.
Maybe I thought it would bring Tower back. Maybe it was that I missed the
excitement of exploring the unknown of the underground. I pressed my hand
against the symbol and felt like I had been struck with my own lightning.

The
room swirled in and out of my comprehension. A mess of blue light and gray
stone and me in the middle of it, my hand shocked stuck to the glass of the
window. The vibrations moving up my arm caused my whole body to shake and then,
as abruptly as the window had latched onto me, it released me and I fell into a
heap on the floor.

The
lights were gone and the window felt empty. All of the power was gone and the
room was cold. Candle was on my shoulder and was still as I got to my feet.
From outside the tower I heard a crackle of thunder.

I
turned and saw the study was also in darkness. Out of habit I raised my hand to
Candle and used his light to guide my way. The candles had all gone out but the
room seemed to be as I had left it. The bedroom door was somehow closed and I
frowned at that.

Another
boom of thunder rattled through the tower walls and I walked to the study’s
door. I opened it and found no light coming in from the windows along the
stairs. It had been morning a few moments ago and no storm, no matter how
severe, could have blocked out all of the light. Had I been knocked
unconscious? How long for?