The Wizard And The Dragon (24 page)

One
large change had been made and already it had unraveled into several other
changes. As night came and I tried to heal his hand, I was unsure of just what
I had done.

The boy continued
leaking blood onto the table and I continued staring down at it, wordlessly
berating myself. I shouldn’t have been so reckless. I should have spent more
time learning how to heal. I should have stopped thinking and tried to soothe
the boy’s pain.

The
missing finger taunted me. I had no idea how to restore bone, veins, and blood.
I had only worked flesh and skin, and poorly at that. My Tower had been a
pillar of knowledge and confidence. I’m not sure what unsettled me more in that
moment: that in reality I knew next to nothing, or that my Tower had been in
the same position all along.

I
thought back to the question I had asked him—me—so long ago. I had made one of
my first roast chickens. Could I create a live one? The bones were underneath
the roasted flesh. The flavor of it tasted correct. It might be possible but
risky, he had said. I looked down at the boy’s mangled hand. Risky.

I
gathered my focus around the wound. The pattern of ruptured flesh was familiar
to me. I could easily work that and mend over the opening. The bone was a
mystery to me, but one I felt I could solve in time. I’d need weeks and dozens
of farren bodies to get it right. Could the wound be reopened then and the bone
worked later?

Then
there were the arteries, veins, and capillaries. The shape and position of the
muscle around the bones. The joints and tendons. The ligaments and nerves.
Could I create those and bridge them to connect with those in his hand, or did
I need to extend those that already existed? The books on healing had been
thorough and I barely understood most of the pages. This was a finger that
needed to move and function. It wasn’t a chicken that I could mimic a simple
pattern and be done with it.

Bryce
had long since stopped screaming. Tears rolled down his face and he started
silently up into the tower. I worked as quickly as I could, mending the flesh
around the knuckle and filling in the missing pieces of his surrounding
fingers.

The
stump looked unnatural and discolored next to the rest of his skin. The other
fingers looked better but deeply scarred. I wondered how bad my back looked. It
dawned on me once again how lucky I had been. My injuries were never grievous
enough that I couldn’t stumble my way through fixing them.

The
boy stayed silent as I carried him up to his room. He stared at the wall as I
covered him with furs and left him with the candle flickering in the dark.

I
slumped down onto the floor outside his room and stared down at my left hand.
My finger was still there. Candle was still in my pocket. I had changed
something to be better for myself and my younger self had paid the price. I
squeezed my finger with my other hand as if to make sure it was real. I felt
like I didn’t deserve it.

I
fell asleep there, propped against the wall. My body seized the opportunity to
rest after the strain I had put it through in the tunnels. I had channeled too
much too quickly. It was a wonder that I had been able to carry the boy out of
the cellar and heal him before succumbing to sleep.

I
woke up in agony but I expected as much. It was nearly morning and I hobbled
down the stairs in slow, stiff motions. My muscles would be aching for days but
I couldn’t rest. I had too much to put right.

The
spider was alive in the cell and backed away at the sight of me. I shackled
it—and nearly screamed at the pain of doing so—before giving it food and water.
The gems we had already extracted had been knocked all over the room in the
tunnel collapse. I filled my pockets with them and then carried a bucket of
water up into the tower.

I
brought Bryce a plate of food and water. He stirred when I walked into the room
but didn’t turn to me. I left everything on his table and went back to the
cellar for more water. I intended to scrub our dining table clean of all the
blood before he came out of his room.

It
was days before he spoke to me. He turned to me one evening as I brought him
dinner. He looked scared. I had been so ashamed of what I had done that I
hadn’t tried to speak to him. I opened my mouth to say something but he blurted
out before me.

“I’m
sorry.”

Deja
vu struck me and I was stunned. I stood still for a moment and then set his
food down. I sat at the table and turned to him.

“What
for?”

“The
spider. I stood too close. You told me to run if it moved and I didn’t. I was
scared and,” he held up his hand and his eyes welled up behind it. “Please
don’t make me leave.”

I
felt my heart break. I leaned forward and took his hands.

“It
was my fault, not yours. You can stay here as long as you like, Bryce. You
never have to leave.”

“You’ll
stay too?” he stuttered as he continued to cry.

“Yes,”
I lied. “I will.” I wished I could mean it.

When
he stopped crying I moved the table and he ate from the edge of the bed. I
watched as he only used his right hand, leaving the left anchored in his lap.
Regardless the act of eating seemed to settle him.

I
wondered if my Tower had gone through a similar experience. He had been shocked
when I stopped him from killing the spider. He had been so sure that it needed
to die. Had he witnessed that when he was a boy? Did he let Candle die and then
find out after all that he could have saved him? His week alone in the study
suddenly made more sense.

The
future seemed more dangerous and unpredictable to me. I needed to begin
teaching the boy. I had less than a year now and I wanted to prepare him better
than I had been. As he slept that night I began my plans, remembering the best
parts of my own lessons and combining them with my own ideas. If things could
be changed then I intended to make them better.

After
finishing our breakfast the next morning, I withdrew Candle’s core and placed
it on the table. The boy straightened up in his chair at the sight of it.

“There’s
going to be some fire, Bryce. I promise that you won’t be hurt. I need you to
trust me,” I said gently.

He
turned his head and looked uncertain. He looked down at his hands and then gave
a small nod.

I
ignited Candle and tried not to frown when Bryce flinched. Candle walked slowly
around the table and then stopped near the food platter. He looked between me
and the boy, tilting his head back and forth as though he couldn’t tell who was
who.

“What
is it?” Bryce whispered.

“A
familiar,” I explained. “Wizards sometimes have them. They’re a friend or a
companion. You saw him once before but I’ve kept him away until now because of
how he looks. He won’t hurt you. He’s like me. He doesn’t have a name.”

Candle
flared up in disgust at my lie and the boy flinched again. I didn’t enjoy lying
but I didn’t want to influence the boy’s decision when it was his turn to name
his elemental. I held out my hand to the table and Candle climbed up my arm to
sit on my shoulder. It was good to have him out again.

“You’ll
have one someday too,” I said.

“Have
one what?”

“A
familiar.”

“You
said that only wizards have them,” Bryce replied slowly.

“Yes.
I did,” I said back, just as slowly.

“I
don’t understand.”

“You
will. I’m going to teach you, if you’ll let me. Would you like to learn?”

He
was quiet for a long time. I remembered that moment. I weighed the decision in
my head as if I had any idea what I was considering. I wanted to smile but I
forced myself to look plainly at him. He would say yes but I knew it was
important that it felt like his decision.

“Can
you teach me to hold fire in my hands?”

I
tilted my head as I looked at him. I didn’t remember asking that. Had fire
really been that important to me?

“So
that it can never hurt me?” he added.

“In
time. I can.”

“Then
yes, please.”

“We’ll
start tonight,” I said, and rose to my feet.

Things became
clearer over the months as I taught Bryce how to read, write, and set the
foundations for his magic.

At
night I would write in the study. As more time passed the more I began to
accept that I had become the Tower I once knew. I would write to trigger my
memories of learning as a boy. It was a slow process but they did come back to
me. They helped immensely when I was teaching Bryce.

I
discovered that Tower had been such a good teacher because he knew where I
would stumble. He had stumbled at those same places. The boy also stumbled at
them. I already knew which areas would need the most review and could plan
accordingly.

It
was a surreal experience. The changes in those months were minimal at first but
in time they snowballed until I could barely recognize our day to day life. I
was setting Bryce up to be a different man than I was and I couldn’t tell how
drastic the changes might be.

He
was understandably afraid of the giant spider and it took several weeks of
careful planning and kinetic shackles before he would go near it. This slowed
down our collection of spider silk and the tower was much colder in the first
few days of winter. By spring, when he could create the shackles himself, Bryce
was closer to how I had been with the spider. I was cautious when he went into
the cell alone. He was not attacked like I had been when I was a child.

Teaching
him the basics of reading and writing took longer than it had for me.
Conversely, he grasped magic faster than I did and could focus himself weeks
earlier than I had managed. Transforming gems into food came easier to him even
as he struggled to read more complicated words.

Most
curious of all was how he reacted to fire. Although he was still too afraid to
handle it himself, he was less terrified of it than I had been. I had to wonder
if it was Candle’s presence that caused that change, or if it was because of
the spider’s attack. Perhaps the constant reminder of that pressing fear caused
the other to dwindle.

The
thunderstorms that came with spring gave ample opportunity for practice. Like
most magic, the boy took to keeping his focus steady even in a heavy rain
better than I had fared. I pushed him harder in those sessions, driving him to
excel. I hoped he would be a better wizard than I because of it.

When
I opened the study to Bryce, and he began reading on his own, I began to copy
the books on healing magic. It was the biggest change in my lessons: I planned
to leave him with the potential to heal his finger. I copied the books with my
own notes, in a way that I knew he would understand, and left them on the
bookshelves.

I
would often look down at my left hand and stare at the finger that should be
missing. The boy did it too when he thought I wasn’t looking, though he would
poke and prod at the stump that was left. Of all the changes that I had
inflicted on him, that was the one that bothered me the most.

Spring
turned to summer and in my last months I began showing Bryce how to heal
directly. The tunnels were closed and I refused to torture the spider. I took
it upon myself to be the test subject.

“Why
can’t we practice on the chicken we make? That’s flesh too,” the boy said.

“It’s
not the same. We get a lot wrong when we make the food. Imagine carving an
apple shape out of wood. All you have is a knife. It wouldn’t be too hard. Now
imagine chopping that apple into thousands of small pieces and putting it back
together again. Much harder. You might even get a piece wrong and not even know
it.”

I
was holding a piece of stone in my right hand. I had grinded it down to a fine
point. It was our first lesson on healing and he wasn’t pleased that I was
about to slice open my finger. I was having second thoughts too, but one glance
at the boy’s mangled hand was all I needed to persevere.

The
cuts were shallow at first, small enough that his early mistakes could be
corrected. I showed him the pattern and he struggled to be precise where he
manipulated it. I would often be left with uneven skin and small bumps in my
finger. I would cut them out and let him try again.

The
pain was at its worst when he caused a rampant growth from the energy in my
hand. I had been older and more experienced when I had taught myself, and had
weeks of practice on the farren. The boy would burn through the energy in the
surrounding muscles and leave me with bulging masses on my fingertip.

He
finally mastered restoring the simple flesh and skin when summer was near its
end. I knew I couldn’t delay the inevitable for any longer. I dreaded each
night that I put off announcing that he was ready to create his own familiar.
We had found the sollite core months before and it was a constant reminder of
my last day.

I
didn’t want to leave the boy. In an odd way I felt more like an older brother
than the same person. I was protective of the child and didn’t want to leave
him alone. His safety wasn’t guaranteed: his missing finger was proof of that.
Had I taught him enough? Had I fulfilled my role sufficiently?

In
those final days I considered forcing another change and not teaching him the familiar
spell. In the end it was Candle that convinced me otherwise. He had been my
companion all those years alone and I don’t think I would have survived without
him. It was too big of a risk to think that the familiar spell was linked to
Tower’s disappearance. Perhaps I would put it off and still be taken away,
leaving the boy without a familiar to fill my place.

“You’ll
keep learning how to heal like this,” I said to him the first time he mended my
finger.

“I
will,” he said.

“You’ll
be able to heal your hand one day, just you watch.”