The Wizard And The Dragon (27 page)

“See?”
she said as she delicately tilted a drop of the fluid into each of her eyes. I
watched as her pupils expanded and pushed her irises until I could no longer
see the green of them. I assumed that my eyes must have been in a similar
state, except I had wet cheeks and eyebrows to go along with them.

She
put the bottle back into the bag and brought out another. This one contained a
pale blue liquid, but I wasn’t sure if I could trust the color that my eyes
were seeing. She removed the stopper from the bottle and drank half of the
contents. I saw her shudder after she was finished but she made no sound that
she may have been in pain.

She
closed the bag and checked that her horse was securely fastened to the tree
before she motioned that she was ready. She pulled her hood up over her head
and once again looked the way she had when I first stumbled out onto the road.
Her face was covered in shadows but her eyes still somehow caught the light
like glass.

“Let’s
kill us some trolls,” she said and we set off to the ruins of my village.

I couldn’t help
but be amazed at how clearly I could see in the night as we walked along the
road. Perhaps it was a way of keeping my mind off of what we were walking
toward. As a boy I would have been terrified of monsters and trolls. Now they
were the least of my worries. Seeing the wrecked buildings and occupied corpse
of my village was what I was dreaded.

Instead
I focused on how Kate’s concoction worked. Was it a kind of magic? I wondered
if it would have let me see in the underground and concluded that it likely
would not. My eyes seemed to be more sensitive to the low light that was around
us now rather than piercing through the darkness. There was no light to begin
to exploit in the underground, save the areas of lava.

We
stopped when we were a few minutes from the village wall. The wooden gate that
used to block the road was a ravaged thing now, burned in the dragon’s fire and
hung in tattered scraps on crumbling hinges. I could already see some of the
broken houses through the gateway. The smoke was coming from deeper into the
village.

“Tower,”
Kate said firmly.

“What?”
I turned to her.

“I
asked if you know any magic to move quietly. Something to absorb your sound,”
she was regarding me strangely again as she spoke.

“No,”
I said softly.

“That’s
fine. Try to follow me as closely as you can. I’ve been in here a few times
already to see how many are here. I’ve seen five. At most there might be two
more on top of that. Trolls can’t see very well in the dark so we already have
an advantage. They aren’t the most cautious creatures either. We’re going to
follow the wall around once and then start with whichever one is farthest out
from the others.”

I
nodded along as she whispered to me. I made to move toward the wall and she
grabbed my shoulder.

“Don’t
burn them too much,” she hissed at me. “If you have to use fire aim it at their
heads.”

She
started walking without answering and I followed behind her. We slipped in
through the gate and pressed up against the wall. We stood there for a few
minutes as Kate waited to see if she could hear any movement nearby. The
crackling of the fire was audible now but I still couldn’t see it. The building
in front of us had collapsed entirely into a dense wreck that blocked our
sight.

Kate
seemed satisfied enough to start moving again after a few moments. She turned
and, instead of moving along the wall, started to climb it. She had meant that
we would follow the top of the wall. I was suddenly grateful for all the
climbing I had done as a boy. I was stronger now and easily kept up with her.

On
top of the wall she moved in a crouched position, far faster than I could move
in the same way. Her footsteps were silent despite how quick they were and I
bitterly reasoned that I could have moved faster if I crawled rather than
matching her crouch. Still, she waited for me every few paces as she stared
down into the village below. I wondered if she really was scanning that often
for trolls or if she was being kind to me.

When
she reached the southeast corner of the wall she held up a hand to me and I
halted in place. She pointed down over the wall and I leaned out over the edge
to see the troll below her. It was sprawled out with its back into the corner
of the wall. Without whatever it was that Kate put into my eyes I would have
seen only a deep shadow. Now I could see clearly that its eyes were closed and
its chest was rising and falling slowly. It was asleep.

She
pulled her hood and looked down the length of the eastern wall. There were no
other trolls there or any others that we had seen so far. She turned to me and
made some movements with her hands in my direction that completely baffled me.
I shrugged and shook my head and she puffed her cheeks out at me. She waved me
back and jabbed a finger down through the air. She then mimed slitting her own
throat with the same finger. That was simple enough for me to understand and I
nodded at her.

She
moved several meters along the wall before climbing down. I watched as she drew
her sword at the bottom of the wall, not risking the noise of it when she was
near the troll. She did a final check in between the ruined buildings to make
sure the troll was isolated and then moved toward it.

The
troll never woke up. Kate moved faster on the ground than she did on the wall
and made no noise that I could hear. Her sword was small enough for one hand
but she held it in two as she brought it down on the troll’s neck. The blade
cut cleanly through its flesh and spine and the monster didn’t have a chance to
cry or scream. There was a faint gurgling sound of blood flowing from the
exposed neck as Kate climbed back up onto the wall.

There
was blood on her boots and I was surprised to see that it wasn’t a uniform
color. It was a mess of red and green like the colors never mixed together. She
looked down at them and shook her head.

“Such
a waste,” she muttered.

“We
can clean them,” I whispered back.

“That’s
not what I meant.”

We
continued around the wall and saw two more trolls sleeping amidst the ruined
buildings. One of them had made a clearing in the bottom of a house and slept
in a circle of rubble. On the north wall we finally got a clear view of the
village center and the fire that was burning there. There was a massive bonfire
where the marketplace had once stood. There were two trolls sleeping around it.

“There’s
one more,” Kate whispered. “There was another one I saw last night, too big to
miss. It must be in the large building next to the fire.”

“That
was the tavern,” I said.

The
stone walls of it were still standing but the tavern roof had not been added
back. Seeing it again, at almost the same vantage point that I had the last
time I was here, hit me harder than I expected. I started to recall things I
had done as a boy.

The
blacksmith’s house was opposite the tavern. I had spent many afternoons
watching the work being done there, fascinated by the transformation of ingots
into tools and, rarely, weapons. The hiss of steaming water as hot iron was
submerged into it always made me grin. The memory of the heat made me think of
Candle and I instinctively felt for him in my pocket. His core was safely with
me.

The
tavern owner had always been kind to me and I sometimes did little jobs for him
for small bits of food between meals. I remembered how my father would
sometimes sneak me a sip of his drink on the rare times I was allowed to go
with him, usually as a detour when my mother had given him too much time to
complete an errand.

I
remembered sneaking around the marketplace. It was barely recognizable now. I
used to steal pieces of fruit from the farmer’s stalls and I wondered now if
they had turned a blind eye to it. Sneaking around now, making twice as much
noise as Kate, I was certain that they had.

She
started moving again and I followed her to the east wall. We climbed down near
where I had fallen from the wall after the dragon attacked. I looked at the
ground and remembered the corpses that had softened my landing. They were gone
now. Buried by the survivors, I suspected, although I hadn’t seen the graves
yet. Part of me hoped that they had been buried separately. Another part hoped
it had been a mass grave. That way I would at least know I was paying my
respects to my family in the right place

We
crept between the houses, never risking the noise of stepping through the
broken interiors. The troll we were moving toward was one of the smaller ones.
I wondered if the stronger ones bullied it away from the fire and whatever food
they had there. It was sleeping in the middle of a street adjacent to the
marketplace.

When
we neared the troll, Kate signaled me to stop and moved forward without me. I
was closer to the creature this time and was able to see the resemblance to the
farren. Its facial structure was the same, as was the proportions of its body.
Its skin was more green than the farren’s, although it wasn’t far off the pale
gray that I was used to.

She
drew both her sword and knife this time. She held the sword in her right hand, above
her head, poised to drive it downward into the troll’s torso. The knife she
held close to the troll’s neck, keeping the blade vertical and ready to swipe.
I envied her ability to move so precisely without being heard.

A
moment passed where she seemed to collect herself. I saw her hand tighten
around the hilt of her sword and then she struck faster than anyone I had ever
seen. The sword went first, plunging through troll’s chest and skewering into
the ground. Its eyes snapped open but Kate’s knife was already tearing open the
troll’s throat, piercing its windpipe and muffling the scream of pain to low a
gurgle.

She
took one step back and kept turning her head in the darkness. She barely
noticed the dying troll in front of her, too busy looking to see if the noise
had woken any of the others up. The sword was left in the creature’s chest as
she looked, trapping it as it writhed out its final moments. Blood pooled
around the blade and then dribbled thickly down its skin.

Nothing
came for us. Kate stood up, held the troll’s corpse down with her foot, and
pulled the sword out. I moved closer to the body and saw the wound she had left
in it. It was too low to have punctured the heart. I wondered why she aimed for
that area or if she had made a mistake. I turned to her and found her frowning
at the blood coating a third of her blade. She didn’t sheathe it.

“One
more for me,” she whispered. “The one that was sleeping in the ruins. After
that the ones next to the fire are yours.”

We
moved once again through the village and toward our first mistake. I should
have offered to kill the next troll when we reached the piles of rubble around
it. Kate stepped forward gingerly and was too far away for a whisper when I saw
the danger. She hesitated as she stepped onto the mess of wood and stone. She
must have seen the problem too but decided to risk it.

To
her credit, she came close. She was one step away from striking distance when
something cracked under her boot. In the day it would have been a small sound,
but next to a sleeping monster it sounded like thunder. The troll woke up.

Kate
stabbed at it as it sat up. The knife was going for its throat but instead sunk
into its head and was lodged firmly into it. The troll roared and slashed
wildly in her direction. She let go of the knife and leaped from the monster’s
claws. She landed at the edge of the rubble and already the troll had turned
onto its stomach and dived at her.

I
connected to power in the harness as the monster soared through the air. The
knife was still protruding out of its skull. Kate was already rolling out of
the way as my focus gathered around the troll. It was about to hit the ground
when the energy was linked with the focus and I caught it. There was no
resistance. The troll hung in the air as easily as I could have held up a rock.

The
power in the harness was incredible. I felt it flowing through me and I
tightened it around the troll. The force of it surprised me and the monster. It
thrashed in the air as if it was held up by chains that it could break but just
not see. For all of its larger size the troll was no better than a farren
against magic.

Kate
was gawking at me, staring at me like I was more of a monster than the troll.
The two of us seemed frozen for a moment before we both took action. She charged
at me instead of the troll and I frantically tried to concentrate the energy on
the troll’s body so I could shift it to her if necessary. Why was she running
at me?

I
drew more magic around the troll and it was like holding up a rag doll. The
fire came so easily, spreading down both of my arms and blasting from my hands.
I centered all of it around the troll’s head, a swirling inferno that boiled
away its eyes and roasted its brain. When I released my hold on the creature it
fell to the ground in a heap. I turned, prepared to set the same fire on Kate
if she was really charging at me. She rushed passed me instead, thrusting her
sword at something behind me.

I
whipped around and watched as she pushed the blade all the way through another
troll’s side, sliding it between its ribs. It had snuck up on me while I was
lost in the strength of the magic from the harness. The monster turned its
claws onto her now instead of me and she ducked away from the attack, leaving
the sword instead of wasting time pulling it out.

It
looked like she danced as she moved, hopping just out of the troll’s range and
waiting for the right opening. She lunged when it came: the troll was becoming
unsteady from blood loss and swung its arms too hard. Kate grabbed the hilt of
her sword—twisted it, and the monster screeched—and pulled it out. She hopped
once more to the side and then brought the blade down on the troll’s head,
cleaving through its skull and smacking its head onto the ground from the force
of it.

Her
hood had fallen back in the fight and I could see her face as she wrested her
sword free. There was sweat on her forehead and she looked angry, even when she
looked up at me. She opened her mouth to say something when a duo of roars came
from behind her.

We
had counted six. We had killed four and now the other two were awake. I saw
them coming, stepping out in front of the bonfire. These two were larger than
the others and knew exactly where we were. They couldn’t be taken by surprise
and they were angry.

“We
should run,” Kate said as she backed away from the trolls. “Come back in a few
hours when they’ve let their guard down.”

I
was about to nod but the largest troll was closer now. I could see what it was
a holding. A bone, what looked to be a human bone, a femur it had been gnawing
on. He held it like a club and I felt a hot rush of anger fill my entire body.
That was likely the bone of someone I had known all those years ago, reduced
now to below food: a toy, a plaything for this monster that had forced itself
on people that had endured having their homes destroyed.