Wizard of the Grove

by Tanya Huff

  “This is what you were born for, and they never mentioned it?” Doan snarled in disgust. “You can’t count on those blowhards for anything. Kiss him!”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  Doan sighed, “An enchanted sleep can be broken only by the kiss of a maiden both fair and pure.” Critically, he looked her up and down. “The Lady was the most beautiful woman ever to walk the earth and you’re her image, I guess that should be fair enough. How’s your love life?”

  Crystal remembered Bryon lying blasted on the ground and started to laugh. Kraydak had outsmarted himself that time. Had Bryon been allowed to live she, no doubt, would have been unqualified to wake anyone from an enchanted sleep by now. Kraydak would have the world to himself and . . . to her surprise she found herself cradled in Doan’s powerful arms and weeping bitterly.

  “Hush, child,” he whispered as she clung to him, sobs racking her slender body. “Tears won’t bring him back.” He remembered another silver-haired maiden who’d wept in his arms, then dried her eyes, and walked away from her tree to her death. He cursed mortal men, individually and collectively, for the pain they caused.

  Gradually Crystal calmed and pulled away. She felt surprisingly better. Was that all it took, then, to forget, to ease the pain, just a few tears? She checked her heart and found Bryon there as he always had been, but the cold fire surrounding the memory had been put out. Doan reached up and took the last tear off her cheek with the tip of his finger. It sparkled there for a moment then shimmered and changed; where the drop of water had been was a perfect blue opal.

  “That’s never happened before,” Crystal sniffed, wiping her nose on the tattered edge of her tunic.

  “You’ve never cried on a dwarf before,” Doan told her, offering her the gem with an oddly gentle smile on his ugly face.

  She managed a weak smile in return and tucked the stone in her belt. Then, with new resolve, she turned back to the dragon.

  “Why me?” she asked. “Why a wizard? Wouldn’t any beautiful virgin do?”

  Doan snorted. “What would any beautiful virgin do with the dragon once she woke it? Hopefully, it’ll listen to a wizard.”

  One silver eyebrow went up. “Hopefully?”

  “That’s the theory.” Doan shrugged. “We won’t know until you try.”

  “On the lips?”

  “I don’t think it has lips.”

  “Oh.” Crystal squared her shoulders, leaned forward, and kissed the dragon on the exact center of his golden nose. Then she stepped back beside the dwarf and they waited.

  The snoring, which had been a rumbling background noise from the moment they had entered the cavern, stopped. The dragon twitched, rubbed at his nose with the curve of a talon, and opened his eyes. They were the brilliant blue of a summer’s sky and faceted into a thousand gleaming parts. Six feet of forked tongue snaked out and gently touched Crystal’s face.

  “Wizzzard.” Its teeth were very large.

  “Not your wizard,” Crystal protested, as the tongue touched her again.

  “Young,” said the dragon. “Different. Tassste like treesss. Ssstill, wizzzard.” In a blur of gold and blue, he reared back, opened his mouth, and shot forth one large but not very hot puff of smoke.

  Doan almost collapsed, he was laughing so hard at the puzzled expression on the dragon’s face.

  Crystal, who had dived out of the path of what she expected to be a killing blast of flame, was not as amused.

  “Well, what else did you expect?” she said, limping back to meet the dragon face to face. “You’ve been asleep for thousands of years.”

  “Thousssandsss?” For the first time he looked around and realized where he was. “Kraydak!” The softly sibilant voice grew to a roar that shook the roof. Crystal and Doan scrambled for cover as he surged to his hind feet and, talons extended, ripped and shredded the air. He fell back to the floor with a crash and began maneuvering his bulk around so he could get out the only tunnel large enough for him.

  “Hold it!” Crystal grabbed a dragging wingtip and dug in her heels. She couldn’t let this lizard and Kraydak destroy everything people had worked for over the last thousand years; the scars of their last conflict were barely healed. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Releassse, wizzzard,” snarled the dragon, appearing very willing to take care of her first. “There isss job left undone.”

  “And it’ll stay undone unless you listen to me. Kraydak beat you once, he can do it again.”

  “Accident.”

  “Maybe, maybe not; and he’s been getting more powerful while you’ve been napping. This time he could kill you instead of just putting you to sleep.”

  The dragon glared at her suspiciously but he stopped trying to leave the cavern. “Lissstening.”

  Crystal let go of the wingtip. She was aware that the dragon considered her at best an annoyance to be eliminated and at worst, regardless of her differences, one of the race he was sworn to destroy. She wiped her sweaty palms on her thighs and met the glaring blue of his gaze. This, the hamadryads hadn’t told her. She’d been created to wake the dragon, yes, but that couldn’t be the end of it.

  “Kraydak will have to be distracted if you’re to have any chance of getting close to him.”

  “Ssso,” he hissed contemptuously. “What dissstractsss wizzzard?”

  She spread her hands and said simply, “Another wizard.”

  The dragon smiled. It was the most terrifying thing he had done so far.

  “Yesss.”

  * * *

  With Doan as a guide, the walk back to the sandstone pillar was pleasant and much faster than her earlier journey across the badlands. Although Crystal wanted to hurry, for she knew that C’Fas could mask her absence for only a limited time and she’d spent longer than she’d intended with the dragon, the wonders of her surroundings invited her to linger. The caverns of the dwarves were, indeed, as beautiful as legend described them. Thick pillars, carved to resemble fantastic animals, carried the weight of the roof—and the mountain of stone above it—on their massive shoulders.

  “Not bad for just a few thousand years,” the dwarf agreed as Crystal admired the jewel-encrusted mosaics covering the walls.

  “A few thousand years? But the dwarves have been since the beginning.”

  “Been, yes, but not here. We came here to guard the dragon.”

  “Against what?” Crystal couldn’t think of anything that would dare to harm such a magnificent and powerful creature.

  “Against mortals,” Doan snorted. “A plague on the earth they are. Can’t imagine what the Mother was thinking of when She created them. Consider the mess we’d all be in had a human stumbled on the dragon. When Kraydak emerged, they’d have led him right to it and we’d have the battles of the Doom all over again.” He chuckled and suddenly sounded much more approving of mortalkind. “Of course, they’d have probably tried to make him pay for the privilege of destroying them. This is the way out.”

  Crystal took one last look around, then began to follow Doan up the narrow, winding staircase. “What I really mind,” she said suddenly, “is having Kraydak be right.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, he said I couldn’t defeat him, and he was right.”

  Doan stopped climbing and turned to look at her. “Who told you that?”

  “Everyone.”

  “Everyone?” The dwarf made it sound like an expletive. “Did I?”

  “No . . . But I thought I was created to wake the dragon?”

  “You were.”

  “And I wasn’t supposed to fight Kraydak at all?”

  “You weren’t. But that has no bearing on whether or not you could beat him.” He sighed at the expression on her face and motioned for her to sit down, seating himself on a higher step as she did so. “I’ve been keeping an eye on your b
attles . . .” A wave of his hand cut off her question. “Never mind how, let’s just say I have. And I’ve been keeping my eye on you for a lot longer. You’ve got closer ties to the Mother than any of the old wizards ever did and every time you forget to be a wizard with a capital W . . .” He reached down and lifted her chin with the tip of one hoary finger. “Every time you’re just Crystal and you hit him with what you’re feeling, you whop his ass.”

  “I do?”

  Doan grinned fiercely. “You do.”

  “Then I didn’t need the dragon?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. You’re young, comparatively untrained, and not even at seventeen can you exist on emotions all the time. The dragon is a tool for you to use, why not use it?” His finger under her chin increased its pressure and then withdrew. “But if it means so much to you, in my opinion, Kraydak is wrong. You can defeat him.” He got to his feet and started climbing again. “Besides,” he threw back over his shoulder, “that arrogant s.o.b. hasn’t been right about anything for thousands of years, so why should he start now?”

  As Crystal climbed after the dwarf, the last of the guilt wrapped about Bryon’s death dissolved. While she’d thought it inevitable that Kraydak would win, Bryon had died because of her stupidity in accepting the older wizard’s challenge. Now that she knew the truth, Bryon was still equally dead, but it wasn’t her fault. Now, he could be mourned.

  At the top of the stairs, they went through a red sandstone door and out to the badlands of Aliston. Even knowing it existed, Crystal could see no sign of the door on the pillar that marked the edge of the dwarves’ territory.

  “That’s amazing,” she breathed.

  “On the contrary,” lectured C’Tal from behind her, “as the dwarves are master of stone, it is not amazing at all. It would be amazing only for a hamadryad, or a mer, or a human to have built that door.”

  “It would be impossible,” Doan grunted, turning and looking up, way up, at the centaur. “How’re you doing, you old horse’s ass?” He grinned as C’Tal pretended not to have heard. “Hear you’ve begun to believe your own legends.”

  C’Tal speared the dwarf with a condescending glare, his arms folded across his mighty chest. “What legends?”

  “The legends that say centaurs are the holders of all knowledge.”

  One gigantic hoof gouged a hole in the dirt. “We do not feel there was anything amiss in our teaching. She possessed both the information and the ability to fashion it into an understandable whole. And,” he emphasized the word with a mighty stamp, “all the free peoples of the earth should be grateful that with this wizard there will be no danger of her indulging in random and irresponsible behavior. If nothing else, we have instilled in her the belief that she must employ her powers for good.”

  “If nothing else,” Doan agreed amicably, leaning against the pillar, both hands shoved behind his belt. “But it’s not polite to talk of the child as though she wasn’t here.”

  “She is not here.”

  “Wha . . .”

  Crystal, spotting a flash of gold amidst the gray sameness of the badlands, had scrambled to the top of a rocky hillock to get a better look. Slowly at first, for his wings were stiff and unsure, the great golden dragon rose into the sunlight and appeared to burst suddenly into gilded flame. Crystal caught her breath at his splendor and one hand reached out as though to touch the glory. Her heart seemed to be beating too violently to stay within her chest. There were tears in her eyes as she wondered how such a creature would look in silver and green. . . .

  “Do you think she’ll survive?” Doan asked, after he had explained the plan that Crystal had given the dragon.

  “Although her powers are great and still growing, she is, despite our teachings, relatively untrained and it is unlikely that she will prevail against one who is infinitely more experienced in both the means and the method of wizardry.”

  “Which means?”

  “I do not think she will survive. The hope of the world can only be that she continues to amuse the Enemy long enough for the Doom to approach.”

  “Got a better plan?”

  “No.”

  EIGHTEEN

  When Crystal arrived back at the Ardhan camp, it was late evening. She had been gone for four days. Kraydak had apparently not missed her.

  The centaurs disappeared practically the instant Crystal’s foot hit the ground. One moment they were there and the next they were gone. The queen and her council breathed a collective sigh of relief. Not only was their wizard—daughter, princess—safely back, but it hadn’t been easy sharing close quarters with C’Fas for four days. A centaur is an awe-inspiring creature and trapped in a tent—for he had to stay out of sight of Kraydak’s spies—he is overwhelming in the extreme.

  The dwarves had replaced Crystal’s tattered clothes from some hidden store, and had set her opal tear in silver. She wore it on a chain around her neck and it glowed softly in the folds of her tunic.

  “Well?” asked Mikhail at last, for Crystal still stood where she’d dismounted, eyes unfocused.

  With a barely perceptible jerk, the wizard returned to her body. “He is almost ready to attack again,” she said. “We will be only just in time.”

  “We?” repeated Lorn skeptically, “Does this mean . . .” He broke off as Crystal turned to face him. He suddenly couldn’t remember what he was going to say.

  She swept the tent with her gaze and the questions that had not yet been voiced disappeared. Not until Doan pointed it out, had she realized her stupidity in mentioning the dragon to so many people. It was not beyond Kraydak’s ability to lift the knowledge from their minds and thus gain the time to prepare himself for the attack. Crystal hated to alter the memories of her parents and their council, but it was by far the lesser of two evils. She could only hope she wasn’t already too late, hope that they hadn’t told everyone in the camp what they knew.

  Tayer recovered first from the tampering. She blinked twice, looked momentarily puzzled, and then stared questioningly at her daughter. “You look exhausted,” she said at last. “You need a hot bath, a light supper, and a good night’s sleep.”

  “A heavy supper please, Mother,” Crystal said as they walked arm in arm from the tent, leaving Mikhail and the council shaking their heads and wondering what they’d missed. “I’m starved.” She’d need all her strength for tomorrow.

  In the quiet hour between moonset and dawn, a great white owl lifted from Crystal’s tent, circled once around the queen’s pavilion, and headed east with strong, unhurried beats of its wings. The sentries that saw it go watched until it vanished in the clouds, then turned to each other and said in voices of wonder, “The wizard,” as if that was enough to explain it. For them, it was.

  Tayer and Mikhail slept on, wrapped in each other’s arms, unaware that their daughter was changing the rules of Kraydak’s game. They would have tried to stop her had they known, so she hadn’t told them she was going.

  * * *

  Kraydak, safe in his tower, smiled as Crystal entered his territory. Given her previous displays of power, he had expected more resistance to his call. If the form she wore was intended to deceive him, it was an abject failure, for he had spotted her the moment she crossed the mountains. Mindshielded or not, there just weren’t that many owls with a fifteen-foot wingspan.

  * * *

  Crystal flew on, thinking owl thoughts on the surface but behind the shield concentrating only on distracting Kraydak and bringing things to an end one way or another. She realized her end would probably come before his. Not even the centaurs who had trained her expected her to live. And if by some miracle she did . . . well, she doubted the dragon would allow the last of the wizards to continue to exist. She was calm now, accepting, but in the dark hours of the night she’d considered running, running and letting Kraydak and his Doom fight it out without her. The world would be ripped apart once more, b
ut she would live a while longer. It isn’t fair, she sniffed. I’m only seventeen. But still she flew on.

  The foothills of the Melacian side of the mountains were passing far below her when the storm struck. Gusts of wind tossed her about, trying to slam her out of the air, and the rain beat through her feathers, hitting hard enough to bruise. The water was so dense she could hardly see, the wind ripped feathers free, and the thick down that should have kept her warm and dry was soaked through. She’d expected him to find her but not so soon. She had to survive, her death now would be too short a distraction.

  * * *

  “Distract me from what?” wondered Kraydak, who’d pried free a tiny piece of the thought.

  * * *

  Screaming a challenge, she dove for the first clear area she spotted and her talons sank deep into the soft mud beside a mountain stream. She threw back her head, the green eyes blazed, and a weeping birch, the silver’s more flexible cousin, danced in the wind and lifted its leaves to the rain. The wind blew harder, but the tree bent gracefully out of its way, bent so far that its uppermost branches trailed in the swiftly moving water of the stream.

  A huge silver salmon with green-gold eyes leaped away and sped downstream as the blue bolt came out of the sky and crashed into the earth where the tree had stood.

  * * *

  Kraydak smiled, calmed the wind and stopped the rain, for they were no longer needed. She was very resourceful, this wizard-child, and he looked forward to making her trip an interesting one before welcoming her to his tower and finding out just what exactly she thought she was doing. If she fought the calling he’d laid upon her, she did it in a very peculiar way. He considered boiling away the stream and the rivers it ran into but decided against it; that would hardly be sporting and he did want her to arrive in one piece. He hadn’t been so diverted in centuries. Where had she learned to think so much like a fish?

  * * *