The Wizard And The Dragon (9 page)

“Close
your eyes,” Tower would say. “Focus your mind to a point. What do you feel?”

“Pressure.
Like something pressing on my head between my eyes.”

“It
is
in
your head, not
on
it. You rely too much on the senses you
use all the time, and your eyes far more than any other. That is the only
reason you feel it there. You can move that focus to your chest if you like, or
your hands. Your hands are especially useful, to create a focus there so you
can properly channel your magic in the right direction. Move your focus.”

I
tried but it only made my head hurt more. I felt a throbbing grow where there had
previously been only pressure. When I gave up, I opened my eyes and felt my
stomach lurch. My vision was blurry and felt foreign, as if I was seeing with
the wrong pair of eyes.

“You
will be able to in time. When you are very good you can find a focus even
outside of your body,” he said with a smile.

By
the time we moved onto sentences and books, I had been able to shift my focus
to different parts of my body. I had experienced fleeting brushes of magic. At
first I thought it was like something running along my skin, like a gust of
wind or the touch of a fingertip. Over the weeks I learned to distinguish it as
something that came from within myself, rather than without. I wasn’t reaching
out and bringing a cold or warm sensation from the magic to my skin, I was
creating that sensation from something within myself that radiated out of my
skin.

It
was the barest of connections but I found it intoxicating.

When I could read
sentences and paragraphs, Tower opened up his floor of the tower to me.

I
remember the excitement I felt at exploring new territory. I had been living at
the tower for nearly four months and I had never seen a single glimpse of what
was behind Tower’s door. It had built up in my mind like the cellar room had,
an exotic place full of magical experiments and items. Frightening too, but in
a way that made a nervous grin cross my face instead of a grimace.

“Easy
now,” Tower said as he saw that look on my face. “You have to be careful in
here. Only touch what I give to you and be careful of where you rest your
hands. You are capable of channeling magic. There are things in here that will
respond to that. Some things might even take advantage of that.”

“Advantage?”

“This
place was not built or filled by me. There are objects here that even I don’t
understand. Some are useful, others are amusing but have nothing practical to
offer. Some are helpful, while some are dangerous. They are tools like any
other, but tools can be weapons if mishandled. Be excited to learn, but be
cautious.”

“Who
taught you magic?” the question blurted out of me as the thought of it popped
into my head.

“Another
who lived here, a long time ago. I was a boy like you. You might meet him
someday.”

“I’d
like that,” I said.

“So
would I,” Tower replied, but the way his eyebrows furrowed together belied the
light tone of his voice.

He
pressed open the door and I followed him inside. The doorway opened into a
corner of the room. There was a wall immediately to the right with a closed
door that Tower explained was his bedroom. The rest of the room was to our
left.

The
room exceeded my expectations, and those were that of a young boy’s imagination
running wild for months. It was massive, for one, and looked like it circled
around the entire tower. It was strange to be in a room that curved along with
the shape of the wall.

There
was a bookcase that started near the door. It was built into the wall closest
to the center of the tower and ran along the length of it. I followed it and
discovered that it kept going until I reached the end of the room.

Books
were neatly lined up on every shelf at first, with all of the spaces firmly but
comfortably taken up on each separate case. As I got further along I noticed
that the amount of books began to dwindle until that last third or so of the
bookcase was filled with loose papers and, eventually, nothing at all.

I
came to the end of the room as if I had woken from a dream during which I
imagined what secrets each book held. I looked back and saw Tower watching me
from across the room. I thought he had an amused expression but he was too far
away for me to tell. I looked at the wall I was up against and found another
closed door. I wanted to open it but I stopped myself, remembering what I had
been told about keeping my hands to myself

The
room was far longer than it was wide, and I reached the other side of the room
quickly. The wall that must have been the outside of the tower, like my room,
had no windows.

Once
again, I had to remind myself not to touch anything when I saw what was in the
corner of the room. All of the gemstones we had collected from the mines and
extracted from the rocks had never diminished their beauty or splendor for me,
but the object I saw there may have been the moment that I finally adapted to
handling gems and crystals as a normal part of my life.

Nestled
in the corner was the largest gemstone I had ever seen. It was scarlet red. It
was colossal. I was not tall for my age, but neither was I short, and this gem
stood as tall as my chin. It was wider than it was tall, and looked to me like
it couldn’t have fit through the entrance to the room. I wondered how it got
there.

“Don’t
touch it,” Tower said, his words serving as a reminder rather than a rebuke.
“That gem is the most powerful object in here and probably the most dangerous.”

I
nodded to him. I didn’t know when he had walked up behind me. The gem must have
enthralled my attention more than I realized. I continued walking along the
wall away from the corner.

There
were a few cabinets and chests pressed against the wall. On some I saw padlocks
while others were open and displayed their contents. There were candles and
cups, dozens of pieces of glass molded into different shapes, and other items
that I didn’t recognize. In one chest I saw hammers, tongs, and other tools. In
another, curiously positioned next to the tools, was a box full of what
appeared to be children’s toys. There were wooden carvings of people, animals,
miniature sized weapons and armor, and little wooden houses. They were untidily
piled into the box. I thought it was a waste.

About
halfway across the room, the cabinets parted and I found a large barrel between
them. It looked similar to the one on the roof of the building, but as I got
closer I noticed there was an odd vapor pouring from the open top. I was too
short to see what was inside of it and looked to Tower for help. He brought a
chair from across the room and lifted me on top of it. I leaned forward, with
my feet on the chair, and peered down into the barrel.

Initially
I thought I saw boiling water, but as my eyes adapted to seeing through the
misty vapor I saw that it was more like snow. Winters in this area weren’t
particularly cold but we would get snow for a few months of the year. To see a
barrel almost full of it in the middle of a warm room made no sense to me
whatsoever and I loved it.

I
hopped off the chair and continued surveying the final half of the room. There
were tables and countertops filled with intricate glass objects that I had
never seen before. Glass, like the gemstones, had been a rarity in my village.

“Did
your village have an alchemist?” Tower asked as I looked confused at the items.

“No.
What is that?”

“It’s
the study and application of substances and their reactions to other
materials.”

I
looked at Tower as if he had just spoken words that I had never heard before,
because that was exactly what had just happened.

“Sorry,”
he said with a grin. “Many things in the world have uses if put together the
right way. Some creatures and plants have magical properties that draw from the
magic that is inside of them. The root or leaves of a certain plant might
create something that can cure a disease if prepared properly.”

“That
sounds complicated. What if you get it wrong?”

“Exactly,”
Tower nodded. “There aren’t many books on the subject here. I don’t know much
about it myself, but this apparatus was here before I was. It didn’t seem right
to move it. There are flasks, an alembic, a burner...”

The
equipment looked to me to be an extensive collection. I continued to explore
the final part of the room and stopped at the final corner. There was a writing
desk in it. It took up the little section of wall that was next to Tower’s
bedroom door. There were papers, quills, and books piled all around it. The
chair looked sturdy but worn down after decades of use.

I
stood at the start of the bookcase once more, back at where I had started, and
looked at Tower. He had walked several paces down along the bookshelves and was
shuffling through them.

“Once
you can teach yourself new words and work your way through any book on your
own, you can take whatever you like from here as long as you remember to put it
back,” he spoke at the books more than at me, too engrossed in his search to
turn and face me. “There’s one book in particular I want you to learn from. It
should be up here somewhere.”

I
walked passed him and stopped when I reached the bookcases that had piles of
paper instead of bound books. I stretched my hand out to hold some of them
before I remembered Tower’s rule. I didn’t think it applied to papers but I
couldn’t be certain. My book was full of enchanted paper, after all.

“Why
aren’t these books? Did these pages fall out?”

“What?”
Tower took a quick glance at where I pointed and then turned back into the
bookshelf. He continued talking while still shifting through the books. “No,
those are mine. I wrote those. They’ll be bound in a book eventually.”

I
was stunned. For some reason, in that moment, I was more impressed by what he
had just said than the magic he had shown me. “Really? You’re going to write a
book?”

“Going
to?” Tower said and then laughed. “About a third of these were all written by
me. The one I’m looking for now included. Which is, ha! Found it. Here you go.”

For
some reason I had never considered where books actually came from. Wooden
carvings and furniture had qualities that I could trace back to their creation.
They were pieces of worked and shaped wood. Stone also. But books? I carefully
took the book that Tower held out to me and considered it.

“How
do you get all the pages together? Is there a spell?”

“Maybe,”
Tower said. “If there is, I haven’t discovered it. The books I made here are
quite crude, but they work. My writing book is like yours that I can remove
pages from. I use a combination of those and spider silk to bind the pages and
papers together for covers. I weigh them down and keep them pressed together
until they dry, then smooth down the edges with a knife. They’re not as pretty
as the old books with leather covers but,” his words trailed off.

“I
like them,” I finished for him.

“Thank
you,” he said. “It’s funny that you asked. This book is about animals,
creatures, and monsters. It’s called a Beastiary. There’s an older one here
that I made copies from and then added some pages. Here.”

He
opened the book as I held it in my hands. He turned the pages and I saw a blur
of pictures as he searched for the right one. With only a passing glance, I saw
only glimpses of each topic. Some were ordinary animals, while others were
horrific darkly shaded depictions of monsters. I thought I saw one that looked
eerily similar to the creature that Tower had to collapse the tunnel on but the
page was turned before I could get a better look.

“There
we are. The Giant Spider,” Tower said. “For now I want you to take this book to
my desk. Go to your room and bring down your book and quill and make a copy of
this page. You probably won’t be able to understand all of the words and
sentences just yet, but that’s okay. Copy it one letter at a time. If you make
a mistake, start again. If you need help then I’ll be here. Find me if you get
stuck.”

I
did as he instructed and we were deep into the evening by the time I finished.
I had been following his examples when learning to write for months and my
individual lettering looked similar to Tower’s. For this copy, my words were
far too big. I had made a few mistakes and had to start over, but I stuck with
it. At first I was confused when my larger letters made it so my sentences and
words didn’t match up line by line with his version. I eventually adapted and
completed a rough copy but resolved to learn in the future how to write in a
neater, smaller hand.

Tower
was satisfied with my work and we ate a late dinner in the central room of the
tower. He told me eventually he would have me copy the pictures down in
addition to the words. Although I was discovering that I enjoyed drawing,
perhaps even more than writing, I was confused as to why it was important to
learn.

“So
you can make entries in the book yourself,” he responded simply.

“What?”

“And
also when you write your own books. Diagrams can help a lot. Both for the
reader and for yourself when you use the book as a reminder,” he explained.

“I’ll
write a book? Me?”

“Of
course,” he said with his mouth full. “Magic has many unexplored areas. You’ll
need to write down what you learn.”

Again,
I found myself stunned. Every day when I thought I was finally getting a grasp
on my new life something came along that rattled my perspective all over again.
It wasn’t always unpleasant, but I often worried that I wouldn’t live up to
Tower’s expectations.

We
finished our meal but instead of ascending the stairs for our evening magic
lessons, Tower beckoned me over to the stairs down to the cellar. Even though
the tunnel was sealed, I still disliked going down there. Surprisingly, I had
gotten used to the spider. It was being near anything to do with the monsters
in the mines that set me on edge.

I
couldn’t tell if the spider was sleeping or not when we entered the cellar. It
was usually very still except for the occasional twitching of its legs. The
walls had been covered in its silk and pulled awkwardly into webs over the
months. It didn’t have a lot of room to maneuver in the cell so it mostly hung
like a thick, second layer on the walls.

“Your
focus has been improving quickly over the past few weeks. I think we’ll be
moving onto a few simple spells and energy manipulation soon,” Tower said as we
stood side by side at the bars of the cage. I wasn’t quite sure why he was
explaining this down here.

“I
wanted to give you an example,” he continued. “This will be one of the first
techniques you’ll be working toward. Initially you may need to use a gemstone
but eventually you’ll have enough strength to go without.”

I
felt a stirring of magic build within him. I felt it in the same way someone
might notice the heat of a nearby fire or feel the vibrations of something
through the ground run up their legs. Over the months I had learned to keep
myself open to sensing such a thing, not only in others but also myself.

Instinctively,
I sought a point to focus myself. Lately it had been in the center of my chest
as Tower insisted that I remove my magical sense from the focal points of my
vision and hearing. From my point of focus I could feel a reaction building in
the air between us and the spider. It reached out to it, between the bars and
wrapped itself around the legs of the spider.