The Wizard And The Dragon (36 page)

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to stay here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to continue killing
monsters?”

“Calder, I don’t know.”

He put his hand on the front door and
stepped into the house before she could protest. She followed him into the
study and watched while he pressed his hands to the wall next to the fireplace,
the only wall in the room that wasn’t covered in shelves or a bookcase. She
heard something click, responding to the pressure from his hands, and then part
of the wall slid apart from the rest of it.

There was a hidden compartment, a meter
long and half again that wide and deep. There were four pairs of hangars
attached inside, with blades on the top three. The lowest one was empty. The
swords were the same length as the one on her hip but that was where the
similarities ended. Calder took one of them from the compartment and held it up
for her. He unsheathed it slowly, showing the beautiful blade that flourished
in the light around it, near shimmering with how well its surface was
maintained.

He sheathed the sword and held it out to
her. The hilt felt perfect in her hand. There were straps of cloth wrapped
tightly around the handle so she didn’t have to hold the sword so tightly. The
blade felt more like a balanced extension of her arm rather than the awkward
hunk of metal the sword at her hip had felt. She wondered if that was why it
had felt so foreign to her right up until she was forced to use it.

She put the sword back in the compartment.
She wondered at the empty hangar for a moment before Calder was moving again,
opening the door to her bedroom and walking in without asking for permission.
She followed him once again and saw that he already had his hands on another
wall, the one that the room shared with the workshop. A larger compartment was
revealed this time, and he stepped aside for her to see it.

There were two sets of armor hanging
within the wall. It explained the lack of a doorway, she thought. Like the
blade, the armor put the set she was wearing to shame. There were several more
straps and separate pieces for her shoulders, upper arms, wrists, thighs, and
shins. There were matching boots at the bottom of the compartment. All of the
pieces were a dark brown, almost black like her hair. There were no patterns or
embroidery on the leather, just simple layers of protective armor that she
could already see would fit her precise measurements.

“Who made these?” she asked, suddenly
realizing how stupid she looked in what she was currently wearing. It was a
wonder that Calder took so long to call her out on not knowing what she was
doing.

“You did,” he said, cocking his head at
her. “You didn’t look outside the house, I assume.”

She shook her head. Already she was
looking around the room for any other potential hiding places. Something still
nagged at her about the state of the room. Something was missing, she just
didn’t know what. There were clothes on the floor. An empty wooden bath in one
corner. The bed’s blankets were still a mess from when she had abruptly woken
up that morning. She looked at Calder.

“You’ve been in here before, then.”

“Many times,” he said without smiling.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not you I’m angry at. It’s who you
were before that I’m having trouble forgiving.”

He walked around her and out of the
room. She followed after him but he moved quickly through the study and out the
front door. She watched him leave down the path without looking back. Despite
herself, she felt guilty.

Do not trust Calder.

She closed the door.

There
was an extension at the back of the house where she found what Calder
mentioned. Stones had been placed from the back wall of the house and the roof
extended to be supported by two thin pillars a few meters out. There was a
large, circular hearth and a variety of objects and tools around it. She didn’t
recognize them and it wasn’t until later when she found her notes on working
metal that she could identify all of the parts of the forge: the bellows, the
cooling tank, the different sections and uses of the anvil, and the seemingly
endless hammers and tongs scattered around it.

She was almost certain that her
knowledge of using the forge had been lost. She tried not to think of what
other skills had been taken by the poison. She carried piles of wood into the
house instead, starting up the main fireplace and the cooking hearth in the
kitchen. There had been no time for breakfast when Calder had arrived that
morning and she hadn’t eaten the night before. The day had caught up with her
and, as much as she wanted to start reading through the books in the study, her
growling stomach took priority.

The kitchen was kept in the same orderly
pristine condition as the study. Everything looked to be in its rightful place,
in a system that eluded her. She felt like she was rifling around a stranger’s
kitchen as she prepared a simple meal of porridge. The basics of cooking seemed
to still be present in her mind but no more than that. She reasoned that she
simply never learned more than what was necessary.

She ate at the table and then left the
dirty pot and bowl for later. She considered disposing of the many apples
around the kitchen but set it aside, eager to enter the study. There were too
many unanswered questions and too many inconsistencies. She knew that either
the note or Calder was lying to her, or at the very least her past self had
kept things from the man. Book after book detailing her exploits and day to day
life seemed to lend itself to Calder being kept in the dark, and she decided to
investigate that before anything else.

There were rolls of empty parchments in
the drawers of the desk near her bedroom door. She kept track of her findings
between each book, quickly noting down the different dates and the length of
the gaps between each entry. There was at least one record for every month of
each year that she read through, even if the month’s details were mundane
things. It was dark outside when she had finally worked her way backwards from
the most recent journals. She was now certain that at least half of the book
had been systematically cleansed of any mention of Calder, but it was the
oldest dates that now gave her pause. She stared at the numbers again and again,
hoping that they would begin to make sense. They didn’t.

Eight hundred and sixty-seven. I am
eight hundred and sixty-seven years old.

The oldest book began with no
introduction either, no dubious opening or remarks about a newly started
journal. It read like yet another continuation in a long series, like every
other volume did. She searched through the rest of the shelves and found no
others. The journals were kept rigidly apart from the other texts and she found
none older.

She read the most recent journal in its
entirety. There were many mentions of things Calder had described. An ogre that
had attacked the town. A den of vampires she had found and exterminated in a
place called Bancroft’s Dam. Pages had been torn out, ruining each of the
narratives as, she guessed, they mentioned Calder’s role in all of them. There
was nothing said about the Varis he had stated. The most recent year had been
ripped out completely.

She began to loathe her past self for
her deceptions even as she wondered if they were necessary. As she read the
other texts, those describing monsters and their qualities, she found that it
was a trend among her past selves. She knew for certain then that Calder was
wrong, she was far older than he had ever been told. The bickering on the pages
was proof enough.

Each of the books began with a picture
of the monster they were devoted to. She read about trolls first. The first
page had an accurate, anatomically correct drawing of the monster and the
second had a more creative, artistic rendition of the beast. The next few pages
had general notes on the monster and then several blank pages for more
information to be added later. After the empty pages was another sketch of a
specific part of the monster. There were more specific notes and then more empty
pages. Another body part followed and the cycle repeated until the end of the
book.

The troll is a fearsome combatant,
the book began.
For you, maybe,
was scrawled in the margin next to it.

Their size varies considerably between
each individual and their access to sustenance. I have seen some as small as a
human child. The largest I have encountered has been:

There were a series of numbers
continually crossed out until
five meters tall
remained unscathed.

The troll’s most intriguing ability is
also their greatest strength. Given adequate nutrition, they are capable of
regenerating their flesh and bone at a rapid rate. Wounds that would be fatal
to nearly any other creature are merely inconveniences to the troll unless
proper measures are taken. Burning or beheading the corpse is required to
ensure that the monster remains dead.

Acid works too,
in the margin next to it.

The brain is the important part,
was written vertically on the side of the page.
Bash open the skull and
remove the brain. Save the major arteries in the neck for extracting blood for
potions.

The book continued on with each entry
composed in the same way, a collaboration of knowledge from her past selves.
The mention of potions made her stop and think. Something didn’t make sense to
her, a mass of details in her head that was spelling out that she was missing
something. She turned and looked up at the chandelier in the room and then at
the hidden compartment, its panel was still open and the swords were visible.

She got up and walked into the bedroom.
Something was missing and it was the thought of making potions that had sparked
the realization. She tried to picture what had happened before she had woken up
staring at the fireplace the night before. She would have written the note and
then stabbed it through the door with the knife. She would have drank the
poison and then gotten into bed. She sat down and it was then that the thought
struck her.

Where was the empty vial of poison?

The bed was checked first. The blanket
and furs underneath it were stripped away and made a pile in the study. She
checked under the bed and then pulled it away from the wall when she couldn’t
see anything. She moved everything she checked out of the room until the floor
was clear. There was no vial on the floor, or in the armor compartment that
Calder had opened. There were only clothes in the bedroom cabinet.

She marched back into the study and
stared up at the chandelier, the very first thing that had nagged at her since
she started exploring the house. It hung on a thick chain from a small slot in
the ceiling. The chain looked solid, too large for the modest chandelier. She
walked underneath and could reach up and touch it easily. Any chandelier in a
room otherwise so plain and functional made little sense. The fireplace was
more than enough light for reading and writing. She hadn’t even bothered to
light the candles.

She reached up and grabbed the center of
the chandelier. She pulled it down and felt it give for a moment, only a
moment, and then catch. She let go and saw the chain slide back up through
ceiling, the barest of movements but something all the same. There was a loud
crunching noise when she pulled down with both hands from the direction of the
central fireplace. She let go and stared at it.

Why are there two fireplaces?
The question came back to her from the night before.

The kitchen was too hot with both fires
burning but she was certain now. She stood in the kitchen facing the central
fireplace, her back to the cooking hearth. The hooks were there, on the
opposite side of the room, hanging pots and pans over the fireplace that never
used them. She had been so sure before of how far they extended in the stone
but now she doubted herself.

She cleared away the hooks and then
grasped one of them and pulled on it as hard as she could. It slid from within
the stone and revealing itself to be far longer than she thought, enough that
it must have protruding directly above the fire. The other hooks came out just
as easily and she put them carefully on the kitchen table. She went back into
the study and pulled on the chandelier once again.

The chain lowered easily as she pulled
on the chandelier. A grinding noise came from the fireplace and she felt
resistance as she pulled down. She pulled harder and watched as the stone floor
of the fireplace began to rise up through the chimney. It ascended at the same
pace as the chandelier descended in her hands until it was near the floor of
the study. Something snapped then, something in the ceiling sliding into place
and locking together. The chandelier refused to be pulled down anymore but
neither did it rise back into place when she let go of it.

The thrill of discovery ran through her.
She practically dived onto the floor to look into the fireplace and what had
been hidden underneath it. A hidden chamber, she was sure of it, and the stairs
she could barely make out in the darkness all but confirmed it. She took one of
the candles from the desk and lit it with the fire in the kitchen. She leaned
into the central column with the light and saw the stairs leading up toward the
bedroom and then abruptly stopping.