The Wizard And The Dragon (5 page)

He
nodded once at me, seemingly satisfied. He made a swirling motion with his
finger and then turned from me to begin his silent descent down the stairs.
Despite how careful we were being I hung back by more than a dozen steps.

The
journey was tedious but the constant grunts and snuffs that I heard below us
kept me moving slowly and quietly. My legs ached from the effort but it was
better than attracting the attention of whatever monster was below us.

When
we were more than half way down the tower we stopped and both looked out over
the stairs. There was something moving around on the floor, scuffling around
the table. I saw that the wooden door had been reduced to pieces and splinters
that were strewn everywhere. Whatever the creature was it had been strong
enough to break through the door.

The
thing looked human at first and moved around on two legs and felt out the
surface of the table with two arms and hands. It didn’t seem to care that its
feet were pressing into a mess of sharp, broken wood.

I
realized it wasn’t human when it raised its head up in my direction. I stopped
the shriek that threatened to burst out of my throat when what I thought were
its eyes found me. Then another grasp of horror came around my body when I got
a clear view of its face: there were no eyes. In place of eyeballs there was
more of its sickly gray skin, draped and stretched over where a man’s eye
sockets would be. Its nose was twice the size of a human’s and dominated its
face. It inhaled deeply through its nostrils and I heard the same snuffling
noise as I did when it was first at the door. It was blind and was trying to
smell us.

When
I turned my head away from it I saw that Tower was moving down the stairs once
more. We must have been too far away for the monster to smell us and it had
returned to investigating the table. The food was still there, protected and
suspended in whatever spell that Tower had placed on it. The magic must have
confused the creature because it continued to sniff the air around it, able to
detect the lingering smell of the food that it couldn’t find with its hands.

When
Tower reached the door to my room he waved for my attention. He pointed to the
creature below us. He then pointed to his own eyes and shook his head. He
pointed to his ears and nose and nodded vigorously. He firmly jabbed the air in
front of him in a downward motion, which I took to mean to stay put. I nodded
and hoped that my comprehension was correct.

I
looked back at the creature and studied it again now that we were closer. It
was mostly hairless and made up of scrawny, stringy muscle that seemed to be
too small for the bones it covered. It looked smaller than the average person
but not by much. I saw that the thing had a pair of vicious looking claws at
the end of each arm, and that I had been wrong before to call them hands. It
scraped them in a futile attempt to find the food on the table and its claws
bit into the wood and peeled it away.

Tower
came into my view of the creature and I turned my head to watch him. The thing
must have sensed him at the same time I did and it whipped around from the
table. It let out a screech much louder than I expected from something of its
size. It was a high pitched whine that hurt my ears and reverberated through
the stones below my feet. I let out a cry from the pain and my chest
constricted when the monster heard me and starting charging to the stairs
instead of Tower.

“Hey!
At me! Focus on me!” he yelled and stamped his feet. His boots slapped against
the stone floor.

The
creature emitted another screech and I covered my ears this time. I watched
Tower stand and let the sound pass over him as if he felt nothing at all. He
shoved a hand deep into his pocket and pulled out one of the large, rough gems
I had seen earlier that day. He gripped it tightly in his left hand and held it
behind his back while he extended his right hand in front of him, the palm of
it facing the creature.

The
next few seconds seemed to elongate and pass slowly. I wondered if it was some
sort of spell that Tower was using or simply that I was holding my breath and
clinging to the stairs, hoping that I wasn’t going to lose someone else the
very next day after losing my village.

The
monster leaped through the air at Tower. I saw flames begin to spark and spread
from his hand behind his back, extending up his arm like a curtain of fire not
unlike how the dragon had focused its fire along its body.

From
my vantage point it looked like a race: if the fire could focus and be
unleashed on the monster before it finished its jump through the air and tore
Tower to pieces. The flames came up to his shoulder and, even as things were
slowed, shot quickly across his back and along his extended arm. The monster
was nearly in striking distance when Tower twisted his hands and the fire
erupted from his fingers.

The
flames spewed from his hand and all at once things regained their normal pace.
The creature was enveloped in fire and caught in midair, suspended and kept
aloft by the force of Tower’s magic. The monster swiped through the fire as it
roared and screamed in both agony and rage. The shrieks soon turned to a howl
and to a wail and then to silence. The limbs of the thing went limp and hung
dead in the torrent of fire.

Tower
stabbed forward with his hand and a final blast knocked the creature away from
him and into the wall. It fell onto the floor, charred and burning, and I saw
the remnants of the door around the body catch fire and begin to burn alongside
it. I saw Tower put the gemstone back in his pocket. It looked to be about half
of its original size after being siphoned into the spell.

 “Bryce,”
he said, without turning to face me. “I am going down there. I want you to open
the door outside and stand in it. If anything comes out of here that isn’t me,
anything at all, you need to close the door and run. Run and don’t come back.
Understand?”

I
nodded but he didn’t turn around to confirm that I had heard him. He stepped
through the doorway and I saw his image get lost in the darkness. It looked
like there were steps leading downward but I was too scared to look. I opened
the stone door and lodged myself between it and the wall, thankful that there
was no windy storm to fight with to keep it open.

The
scattered fires around the room eventually died down, leaving small piles of
condensed ash around the floor. The table and chairs had luckily been spared
from the flames and the food that the monster had been after still sat
untouched. I tried not to look at the smoldering corpse of whatever the
creature was that Tower had fought, but curiosity got the better of me. I kept
glancing between it and the dark doorway, as if repeatedly studying the
creature would help me better identify another one.

Many
times I thought about running and weighed the possibility of the smaller
monsters with the dragon. Each time I chose the smaller ones and stayed at the
tower. It was a choice I would make time and time again over the years.

Tower
must have been gone at least a few hours. It had been warm and bright out when
he first left and it was dark and cool when he finally came back. There was a
tension in my back and chest that I didn’t realize I was keeping until I saw
him.

Both
of his hands were full. In one he grasped another lumpy bag that I guessed was
full of jewels. In the other he carried a bucket of water and I wondered how
our water came from a doorway that appeared to lead down into the ground.

He
set both items on the table and I crept into the room, still afraid of
attracting more monsters. Tower emptied the bag out onto the table and I saw
that I had been correct: a pile of gems fell out onto the table along with two
small bottles with stoppers.

He
rummaged through the gems until he found one that was as clear as glass. He
walked back to the broken doorway with it and placed it in the middle of the
opening. When he stepped back the gem stayed in the air, floating as if it was
held by an invisible string from the ceiling. I watched as the gem began to
flatten and stretch out from itself, melting out of its form and into a thin
barrier that covered the doorway.

When
he was finished the substance of gem appeared altered in more ways than being
stretched out. Tower tapped his knuckles on his magic barrier and it responded
to his touch, a ripple of light running through it. I stared at the magic
wishing I could understand it.

He
seemed satisfied with his work and came back to the table. We sat down and with
a wave of his hand the covering he had made for the food seemed to evaporate.
The smell of the food wafted around us and I was surprised to find that it was
still as warm as it had been that morning.

“Eat.
Drink,” he said while he scooped up water from the new bucket with our cups.
“I’m sorry this happened. It’s not meant to be like this.” He stated the words
firmly, with the force of something he knew to be true driving them. “Something
must have stirred up the tunnels. Something strong enough to get through the
wards I set up. I made them stronger now.”

“Tunnels?”
I asked while my imagination already hurtled ahead. There were tunnels below
the tower?

He
dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. I began to spoon food onto a
plate to hide my disappointed. I tried to remind myself that he said I
shouldn’t be curious.

“We’ll
have to make a new door,” he said as he ate. He separated the gems with his
free hand, pushing them over the table with his finger tips and sorting them
with the dozens he had placed on the table that morning. Some of them had been
knocked onto the floor by the monster and lay discarded amongst the shards of
wood.

We
ate the rest of our meal in silence. We were too hungry to talk and I was
impressed by how much of the food we ate in just one day. Tower reapplied his
spell to preserve the food and left the table.

The
floor was a mess and we started to clean it. I gathered up the pieces of wood
while Tower scooped up the gems and put them on the table. We were nearly done
when he looked at me with a grin as though he had noticed something I hadn’t.

“Do
you like how our work paid off?” he said.

“What?”

“It’s
night now. And you can still see me, right?”

I
suddenly understood and I looked up through the interior of the building. There
was no more sunlight coming through the windows. The water that we had sent
running through the walls was shining. It was as if a vein of moonlight had
been woven through the stones of the tower.

“Bryce,”
Tower said, pulling my attention away. He handed me the two glass bottles he
had brought up with the bucket of water. “Fill these up from the stream. I’m
going to get rid of our, uh, guest here.”

I
did as he asked while he dragged the body of the monster outside. I opened the
bottles and held them carefully above the purple gem to catch the water. The
magic seemed precious to me and I tried not to waste any of it by spilling it
on the floor. When Tower returned I had finished filling both of the bottles. I
placed one on the table and held the other one in my hands.

The
water was warm and radiated a pleasant heat through the glass. I rolled the
bottle in my hands and watched the miniscule flares of light swirl around in
the water. The more I moved the bottle the more heat and light it produced.
When I shook it hard enough the individual sparks grew until they seemed to be
join into one, large gleaming source of light.

“Don’t
do that too much,” Tower said. “The magic will last a few days, maybe a week,
but less if you demand more light and heat out of it.”

I
still smiled at my new toy. It was like I had my own piece of magic now to go
along with the candle in my room.

Tower
sat back down at the table and was fiddling with a small pouch. I guessed that
he must have found it on the body of the creature. He emptied it out next to
the pile of gemstones and I saw a mess of items spill out: some coins, bones,
scraps of dirty food, cloth, and rough shaped carvings made of stone.

“What
was that monster?” I asked as I stepped closer to the table.

“They’re
called farren. I’ve seen them before. They’re common beneath the tower. I think
they’re a distant relative to trolls. Smaller, blind cousins with paler skin.
They prefer to be cold and are susceptible to fire. They’re not very smart or
strong but almost anything can be dangerous when it’s cornered.”

“There
are a lot of them? Where do they come from? Are they the worst thing that’s
down there?”

“So
many questions,” Tower smiled. “I will tell you eventually. For now we need to
rest. We have a lot to do over the next few days. Summer is ending and we need
to prepare for winter. Don’t be afraid of what might come up from the door.
I’ve made sure that nothing can get to us. I promise.”

I
yawned and then nodded. I felt safer as I climbed the stairs. Seeing Tower put
himself in danger to protect me had made me trust him more than I realized.
However, I was just about to push open my door when he called out to me. I
turned and looked down at him over the stairs.

“You’ll
be able to get your own answers in a few days, Bryce. After the rest of the
tower is ready I’ll have to go back down into the tunnels. You should prepare
yourself, because you’ll be coming with me.”

I
saw a scowl cross over his face as if he hadn’t enjoyed saying those words. I
went to bed both excited and terrified, not knowing which was worse: reliving
the dragon’s attack in my nightmares, or a dark tunnel full of monsters.

A week passed
before we went below the tower. It was a relatively calm week but I was
thankful for it. After the dragon attack, witnessing Tower’s magic, and seeing
a monster that apparently came from underground, I was happy to settle into
more normal things.

Most
of my time was spent cleaning the tower and making myself familiar with it. The
channel that carried the enchanted water around needed to be cleaned often in
those early days. Dust and grime that had collected over the years gradually
came loose and clogged sections of it. I always kept an eye out for any leaks
when I traveled up and down the stairs.

The
roof was particularly dirty and Tower and I spent most of the week scraping
dirt and moss from the stones. The more time passed the more I realized the
truth in Tower’s statement about keeping to his own floor for so long. If it
weren’t for him I would have thought the tower was abandoned.

The
water barrel was emptied, both for helping us loosen the dirt on the roof and
to clean the inside of it. Tower explained that it was one of the few items
that wasn’t magical in some way and needed the usual maintenance of a mundane
item. I spent the majority of a day scrubbing at the build up of greenish mold
from the wood. I also removed clusters of dead insects and decayed plant matter
before it was pushed back upright.

Each
day was filled with tiring, slow work but I took a feeling of satisfaction from
it. I had hated doing chores in my village but in the tower it was different. I
felt like I was contributing to something and genuinely helping instead of
doing work solely because I was ordered. I didn’t feel like a child that was
constantly in the way.

The
work also gave me something to focus on and keep my mind off the loss of my
family. Each night I continued to have nightmares but I found comfort in
busying myself during the day. I wonder if a boy has any other option to deal
with such a loss or the ability to truly comprehend the death of his parents.

Our
trip down to the lower levels of the tower came suddenly one morning. I had
woken up each day dreading the looming threat of venturing down to where the
things
apparently lived. My imagination had run wild with it. I imagined all sorts of
dungeons and prisons, brimming with monsters, murderers, and savage animals.
Each day I would brace myself during our breakfast and each day I would be
relieved when Tower listed simple, yet safe, tasks that had to be done.

“Ah!
There we go. Much better, that’s more like it,” he exclaimed that morning,
after shaping another gemstone into a roast chicken. “It’s been so long since I
needed to conjure larger meals. I was worried I had lost my touch.”

“What
are we going to do today?” I asked between taking bites of food.

“Today
will be different,” he explained. “After we eat I want you to portion out a
meal we can share. I’ll suspend it for us and we will take it with us. Today
we’re going down into the mines.”

“The
mines?” I asked, initially not understanding. I looked to the doorway, still
protected by the glass-like shield that Tower had placed there, and my heart
sank.

“Yes.
You asked where I get all the crystals and gems. This tower was built on a
mine. There are tunnels far underneath our feet. It was probably the reason why
it was built here in the first place, however many years ago that was. It was
already ancient by the time I got here.”

A
mine. I had never seen one before, but the thought of being so far underground
surrounded by rocks was scary enough without all of the monsters. I looked down
at the floor as if I couldn’t trust it anymore. I felt unsafe and unsteady on
my feet.

“I
placed several wards down in the tunnels like I did over the doorway. Over the
next few days we’ll be going down there to prepare for winter. After that I’ll
place many more wards to keep us safe. While the tunnels are open you’ll have
to be near me so I can protect you.”

I
tried not to look sullen as I separated some food and handed it to him. I
didn’t want to seem ungrateful for my new home and sanctuary after the dragon
attack. The thought of monsters rattled that feeling of safety and I tried to
look brave as we left the table.

Tower
suspended the food with his magic and handed it back to me. The plate and
chicken and vegetables felt like one combined, solid object in its frozen state
and it was like holding a sculpture or carving rather than food. I wondered if
it would still be warm when we ate it later.

Tower
removed the barrier from the doorway by reversing the magic spell. I watched as
the gemstone pooled back together and reverted to its old form. The jewel
looked smaller than it had been previously and I wondered if some of its energy
was lost in the spell. He caught the stone from the air and pocketed it.

The
stairs were opened to us and I didn’t like how quickly the darkness became
impenetrable when I looked down. It looked like anything could be waiting for
us in the shadows. Tower withdrew the bottle of enchanted water I had filled
for him and even then the stairs were only illuminated by a few paces in front
of us.

We
began moving down the stairs with Tower leading with the light. I felt like I
was entering a constantly narrowing tunnel. A few dozen steps down the stone
slabs that formed the walls vanished and gave way into coarse rock. I looked
down at my feet and saw that the stairs were similarly changed, as if we had
descended so far that the path had been carved into the world itself rather
than placed down.

The
air began to feel heavier to me. The stairs were steep and never turned. It
felt like we walked further down than all of the stairs in the tower spanned
upward. When it looked like we were about to reach the narrowest point, the
shadows in front of us parted and we finally stepped into a room.

I
nearly stumbled into the back of Tower when he abruptly stopped. The room was
large and dark enough that only a small part of it was visible in the circle of
light around us. Tower swept a hand slowly into the room, as if he was brushing
something out of the way, and small fires popped to life along the walls.

A
warm glow filled the room from a candle in each corner and several other
sconces along each wall. Like the stairs, the room seemed to have been shaped
and dug out of the rock itself rather than built into the ground.

“The
candles are the same kind as the one in your room. They would stay burning
forever as long as they stay near the tower. I don’t like to keep them lit,
however. The light can sometimes attract beasts from the tunnels.”

The
room was far larger than I expected it to be. It was several meters wide but
many times longer, stretching far out and away from the bottom of the stairs.
There were several cabinets and item racks along the walls, full of the bottles
and tools. I counted shovels, pickaxes, and a few rusty blades. There were
piles of rough stone on countertops next to finely ground up heaps of sparkling
powder. It would have been the perfect kind of getaway for a boy to hide from a
whole village.

The
dungeon I had imagined was not completely wrong. I had pictured more chains and
jail cells but there were two sets of bars that walled off two caged rooms on
the left wall. They were empty and looked like they hadn’t been used for years.
Cobwebs had gathered between the iron bars. I left them alone and walked around
the room again.

On
the far side of the room, directly opposite the stairs, I solved the mystery of
where we got our drinking water from. At first the well looked oddly out of
place and strange to see underground. Then I realized that all wells stretched
down beneath the earth to draw up water. I wondered how far down the bucket had
to fall before it reached the water, but Tower spoke before I could operate the
crank and find out.

“I
believe a lot of the stone that was dug out of here was used in building the
tower. The mines were here first, for reasons that you’ll understand soon. Come
over here.”

I
had made a complete circuit of the room without finding any other exit except
the stairs. I didn’t understand where the tunnels were or where the monsters
came from. I walked over to where Tower was standing and my breath caught when
he waved a hand at part of the wall and it moved. He gestured for me to do the same
I discovered that it was a dark sheet of cloth draped from the ceiling.

I
parted the curtain and saw the tunnel. There was another barrier similar to the
one that had been placed on the doorway upstairs, but through I could make out
the beginning of the tunnel.

At
first I could see nothing but a foreboding darkness, but I made out more
details as I squinted in the dim light. The walls through the archway were
crude things: bumpy, uneven, and chaotic, stripped away from the rock that
surrounded it.

There
were no monsters or anything moving through the barrier, but that strangely
frightened me even more. A combative creature would want to ruffle itself up to
be more intimidating and set its prey on edge. The things I was imagining
didn’t need such a trick. They already knew they could eat me and would lay
perfectly still, striking when they felt like doing so.

“It’s
not as bad as it looks, Bryce. You do need to be careful and stay on alert, but
I’ve been down here hundreds of times. Almost all of them were uneventful. I
came down, mined for a few hours, and then went back upstairs. Nothing bothered
me. I promise you that I will keep you safe. Do you trust me?”

I
stared into the tunnel for a moment longer before I turned to face him. I
nodded and, to my surprise, I meant it.

“Good.
Now, once I take this shield down we’ll have to keep talking to a minimum.
Whisper if you need something. I want you to take a few sacks from the cabinet
over there. You’ll be in charge of keeping hold of all of the jewels we find.”

The
cabinet wasn’t far and was full of thick bags of various sizes. Some were small
enough that they looked more like coin purses. I took four of the largest ones
I could find and walked back to the entrance of the mine. Tower had gone for
tools and had two pickaxes latched to his belt when he walked back beside me.

“Any
questions before I open the way?”

“How
do things get into the tower from here? Wasn’t this dug down?”

“Yes,
it was. The tower has stood centuries. The mine was excavated over all of that
time, and I believe that the tunnels stretched too far and too deep. I do not
think something dug into the mine, but rather that the mine dug into something
of
theirs.
”

“Underground?”
I said without being able to hide the disbelief on my face. I gawked at him.

“Yes,”
he nodded seriously. “This is a place of power, which is why the gems form in
the ground here. The further down you go the stronger and denser that power
gets. We are still near the surface and deal with the vermin, so to speak, of
what calls the underground home. But go deeper and you will find monstrosities
that could give dragons the same nightmares you have about them.”

“How
do you know about my nightmares?” I raised my head as I spoke.

“Who
wouldn’t have them after what you went through? They may never go away. Your
fear may be with you forever, and you will have to conquer it each time that
you come to face with it. Just as I do, each time I have to come down here.”

“The
mines scare you?”

Tower
nodded. “Every time.”

I
couldn’t imagine being scared of anything if I was a wizard. Somehow, I found
comfort in his confession. I stood up straighter and steeled myself against the
darkness we were about to traverse. The barrier was removed and we stepped
through.

He
held the bottle of light ahead of us with one hand, and kept his other twisted
at his back clutching one of my own. We walked together, slowly at first and I
matched each twitchy movement of Tower’s head as he assessed the mines with
each step pretending, as a boy does, that he knows far more about what he was
seeing than was actually true.

After
a few minutes we came to a fork in the tunnel. The mine abruptly diverged to
the left and right. Tower waved the light to get my attention, then pointed the
bottle down the right passage. There was a gemstone barrier there that must
have been placed the last time he was down here. He then turned to me and held
the light to his face. He shook his head firmly with a stern expression on his
face. He then pointed the light down the left passage and led us down it.

My
mind exploded with possibilities about what was in the other direction. The
likes of trolls and undead, the very things I had thought might infest an
abandoned tower in the forest, seemed boring and harmless in comparison.

Things
skittered along the walls and shied away from the light as we walked and only
served to fuel my imagination. The thought of gigantic insects and hungry
vermin, as Tower had called them, seemed real enough to reach out and claw at
me from the darkness.

My
house in the village, where I lived with my parents and sisters, once had a rat
problem. It had only been a single rat but I had only ever seen mice. My father
had told stories of a huge, black rat that would bite my sisters while they
slept if they misbehaved, and the diseases that they carried might my make our
fingers and toes shrivel and fall off.

My
sisters had screamed and then slept soundly at night, while I had laughed and
then stayed curled in my blanket with my back to the wall so I could keep my
eyes on the door. I thought I would see it moving in the shadows of the
bedroom, a patch of deeper shadows that shifted closer to me, but it was never
really there.