The Wizard And The Dragon

by Joseph Anderson

  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 dir
ection. 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.

  The next morning I woke up and my dad had killed the rat. He displayed it proudly outside our front porch and I convinced myself that it wasn’t as intimidating as my thoughts had built up. It wasn’t quite as large as what I imagined I saw in the room at night, but it was still bigger than a cat, with teeth longer than my fingers.

  That had been our definition of vermin. The vermin down here were the farren. They had been shaped like a man, shrieked horrible noises, felt around with claws instead of hands, and had taken a concentrated blast of fire to kill. That was just the vermin. The rats.

  I never let go of Tower’s hand until we reached the end of the tunnel. There had been no other turns, and when he held up the light I saw that the wall glistened. It was bloated with gems and crystals and looked far too beautiful to be in such a terrible place.

  He unhooked one of the pickaxes he had on his belt and handed me the bottle of light. I clutched it awkwardly while still carrying the bags and food plate. He struck the wall once and the sound of the impact rang down the tunnel behind us. He struck twice more and then turned around to peer down the tunnel. I held the light up and let a few moments pass in silence. He seemed satisfied and went back to strike the wall.

  This became our routine. Tower would chip away at the wall while I kept watch. Occasionally he would tap my shoulder and I would hold open one of the sacks for him to deposit a large chunk of stone. The bags filled slowly and sometimes more than an hour would pass with nothing being dropped into the sacks.

  For some reason I thought he would have been more precise and pried out individual gems instead of large lumps of the wall. The work benches, piles of rocks, and other tools I saw in the cellar suddenly made sense.

  I don’t know how long it took to fill the first two bags. They were heavy and I dragged them aside and Tower plopped himself down next to me. Sweat covered his face and had soaked through places in his clothes. He picked up the food we had brought and removed the spell from around it. We ate in a miserable silence.

  I don’t think I even tasted the food. I don’t remember doing so. The sound of chewing it made me uncomfortable and I was never quite sure if the noise in my head was my teeth or something moving down the tunnel. Tower seemed to share my reservations, at least in part, and kept watch the entire time.

  When we were finished I stuffed the plate into one of the bags. The clanging of metal against rock continued for several more hours until the remaining two bags were full. Nothing attacked us or even seemed to notice us the entire time. At any previous point in my life I may have been a little disappointed but as we finally left the mine unscathed I only felt relief.

  In the cellar, after the barriers had been put back into place, we washed ourselves and drank from the well. The bags were emptied. The candles were extinguished and we headed back up the stairs to be greeted by the twilight of the day, when the coiled light around the inside of the tower began to give off its most prominent shine.

  I slept well that night, and every following night of that week since we spent each day in the mines. My nightmares still came but I still relished the rest. After a few more excavations I began to relax a little down in the dark. None of the creatures seemed to care about what we were doing and I began to believe what Tower said about usually being undisturbed.

  On the final day, when Tower announced that we only needed one more trip to get us through the upcoming winter, I was shown what happens when we weren’t left alone.

  Chapter Five

  The mining session started as smoothly as all of the others. I was keeping watch and holding up our light while sitting on a portion of the wall that Tower had excavated. Over the week he had extended the tunnel by only a step or two. He told me that after today we would begin to grind down what we had collected and extract the gems. I was looking forward to something new to do but more than that I was relieved to not be returning to the mines.

  “How much space is left in that bag?” he asked in a low whisper.

  We had started to risk talking to one another after being left alone for so many days. The sound created by the pickaxe making contact with the wall was louder than our voices, but Tower explained that it may be heard as normal noise to some of the creatures that lived down there. The sound of a voice would be more foreign and draw attention. Still, Tower seemed confident enough to take a chance after we had not been disturbed.

  “Enough for one or two more pieces,” I replied, keeping my voice even lower than his.

  “Let’s eat now then. I’m hungry today.”

  I refused to let the bottle of light leave my hand and picked at my food with my free one. I was afraid that if I let it go the light may go out.

  “Will we have to replace the gems in the water on the roof soon?” I asked between bites of food.

  “They’re probably entirely gone by now. We’ll need more of them when it gets colder. Part of why we’re mining so much is so we have a supply that lasts us throughout the winter. For food and other things as well. You’ll see.”

  “Why winter? Couldn’t we just come down and get more months from now?”

  “We could,” Tower said, then chewed a piece of pork thoughtfully. He had conjured up the new platter freshly that morning. “This place is more lively during the colder months. I don’t know why. You’ve noticed how it’s warm down here, even though there’s no sunlight? It gets even hotter in the winter months, and I think it drives the creatures closer to the surface. Again, I don’t know why. I’ve only explored a few of the tunnels.”

  “You went exploring down here? You’re brave. I wouldn’t do that.”

  He gave a small laugh, keeping his mouth closed to muffle the noise.

  “We’ll see.”

  When the plate was empty I slid it into one of the bags and got back on my feet. I held the light out and Tower resumed mining. We filled up the second bag quickly and were an hour or so into the third bag when things began to change. The strikes of the pickaxe sounded louder. Tower took longer pauses between each hit and listened to the sound reverberate through the walls like an echo.

  I remember that I turned to look at him before it happened. He was staring intently at each place that he hit the rock while the rest of his face was scrunched into a sour expression. It wasn’t exactly enjoyable work but he never let his distaste for it show on his face. It was almost as if he knew what was about to happen and loathed that he was unable to stop it.

  The pickaxe struck into the wall a final time and it felt like we had been struck by lightning. The wall gave in to the blow and fell away from us. For a brief moment I was able to see the rocks crumble away before part of the ceiling collapsed and everything went dark. I thought I was blind but I could still see swirling shadows after rapidly blinking.

  The dust and disintegrated rock clouded my vision. There was a staggering whine in my head, near my ears, but I could still hear things as if they were coming from far away. The crashing stones moving furious
ly after centuries of being still were chaotic and violent. They grinded angrily against each other as they fell, but what came after they settled was worse.

  There was a moment of absurd peace and reprieve before the next noise came. It was enough time that I wiped most of the dust out of my eyes. My right eye was stinging but my left eye was fine. I kept my soiled eye closed and I peered out of my good one as the air cleared.

  I couldn’t see Tower. I held up the bottle and shook it, causing more light to burst out of the water. The dust cleared enough that I could see through it. There was a hole where Tower had been digging and piles of rock had fallen away from it. Through the hole I saw hundreds of white objects, glowing in the light I shined on them.

  At first I didn’t know what I was looking at. I thought it was a different color of stone, or that the tunnel had opened up into some sort of light filled cavern. I held the light closer and I felt a tremor run through me when I finally processed what I was seeing. My knees buckled and I screamed.

  They were spider webs. Layers upon layers of them, thicker than any I had ever seen. The more I stared at them the more spiders I saw emerging now that the dust cleared. Each of them looked to be twice as large as my hand and they swarmed over the webs, cloaking the white silk with their black bodies.

  I took one step backwards and then heard something screech. The spiders reacted furiously to the sound and bolted away from the opening we had just made into their home. Even though they moved away from us, every part of my body suddenly demanded to be scratched. Every itch felt like a little leg on my skin.

  Another screech came and my eyes snapped into the middle of the spider’s nest. I saw the eyes first. They glistened at the edge of my light like the gemstones in the walls. Its two front legs came into the light first, each wider than my arms. Its head came after that and its eyes and mouth seemed to gleam with some sort of substance that covered its entire body. Below its eyes were two large fangs that peeled backwards as it let out a third screech at me.