The Wizard And The Dragon

by Joseph Anderson

“A lot more paper to start, probably with some stones from the cellar to keep things weighed down. There are a few axes down there. You could risk chopping down a tree for wood. That would work too.”

  “There’s no spell to bind things together?”

  “There probably is, I just don’t know it. It’s not in any of the books we have either. Spell might not be the right word. You’ll start manipulating gems in a few weeks. You’ll see what I mean then.”

  “I will? So soon?” I whispered.

  “Simple things first. Don’t get too carried away. Each thing you create using magic has its own pattern and shape. It’s a lot like how you learned each letter of the alphabet. You can combine different letters in different orders and make different words. Magic is far more complicated, though. There are thousands of different patterns and millions of different combinations.”

  “I don’t think I could ever learn a language with thousands of letters,” I muttered.

  “Then you see what I mean. Out of all of those combinations it’s likely one would lead to something that could hold all of this together. You can learn a lot from experimenting, but it can be dangerous. Don’t worry, you’ll understand. I don’t want to say too much now and confuse you.”

  We sealed the remainder of the windows in silence. I thought I had accomplished something by extending my focus and now I felt like I knew next to nothing. Similarly I was only recently able to read passages from books by myself. I could almost read the beastiary page on the giant spider. The fundamentals of my education were almost complete and I couldn’t decide if I was excited or daunted by what I had to learn next.

  The tower felt cozier and more secluded than ever while we ate dinner that night. The only light we had came from the enchanted water, now that all of the windows were obstructed. For some reason it made me feel calm and safe, and the tower felt more like a sanctuary than ever.

  After our meal we climbed up to the roof. Tower lifted the slab in the wall and exposed the bowl of water and the gemstones inside. It had been almost two weeks since they were last replaced and they were tiny. They looked like globs of ice that were melting away into water.

  “Snow will be here soon. It’s best to add another gem for extra heat to both keep the tower warm, and to make sure the water doesn’t freeze up here. You have to make sure that this door is always closed. If snow falls into the water it’ll sap all of the heat.”

  He dug around in his pockets for a handful of the gems that he always carried on him. He portioned out four instead of the usual three. They were deep, darker gems than he usually chose. Each of them was dropped into the water but they did not begin to shine. He hadn’t opened the magic up to the water yet.

  “This will be one of the first techniques that I’ll teach you,” he said. “You won’t be trying tonight, but next time we replace these gems I want you to try. For now, I want you to gather yourself around the gems and pay attention to what I do. You may not recognize it immediately and that’s okay. It might seem as foreign and odd as when you tried to read your first word.”

  I leaned closer to the water and nodded. I centered my focus quickly and was ready to feel as much of the magic as possible. I wanted to impress Tower.

  At first I felt nothing, and I worried that I had already made a mistake. Moving my focus into the water proved to be more difficult than I anticipated. The magic that was already contained in it was active and felt like a buzzing sensation, like a wasp that was hovering close to my ears.

  I realized intuitively that plunging my presence into the water was like running my hand against the flow of the river. I was obstructing the magic and needed to harmonize myself with it instead of pushing against it. When I settled myself amongst the sparks of heat and light, the droning sensation faded and became close to a pleasant tickling sensation.

  I found the new gems and surrounded them with my focus. They weren’t glowing and I saw with both my eyes and magic that Tower had not activated them yet. It wasn’t the first time that I felt the magic contained within the gemstones. Each one was like looking at a different page of a book without being able to understand the words. I could see how each part of it was different and how a pattern eventually emerged out of repeating shapes and lines. I just didn’t know what each of them meant.

  The gems began to glow as if burning hot in a fireplace. I felt the change as it happened. The previous stability of the pattern of magic began to change like a churning of the magic being stirred into a different form. It was over quickly and, I think, would have been a simple process if I was able to understand what I was witnessing. The next and last step was to transfer that change of magic into the water.

  I felt between the four gemstones. Three of them were for heat and those were already complete. The heat came from within the gems and was naturally absorbed by the water and carried down through the tower as it flowed through the channel in the wall. Light was another matter and was not conducted through the water.

  Tower’s presence was already around the final gem when I focused on it. His magic felt strong and confident. It reminded me of how easily my father could lift something heavy that I couldn’t lift even as I strained my whole body. I felt like the child that I was when I watched him work.

  The gem was punctured too fast for me to witness how it was done. I did manage to recognize the pattern for light as it leaked out into the water. I traced it back into the gem and saw that the pattern had been imprinted heavily around the puncture. The magic that flowed out was changed as it passed into the water. The light stayed with it and continued to shine as it moved into the tower.

  “Did you manage to sense anything?” Tower asked.

  “Yes. A little. I don’t think it was much. I don’t understand a lot of what I saw.”

  “That’s okay. This will be harder to learn than anything I’ve taught you. If magic was easy it would be a lot more common,” he placed a hand on my head. “Follow me now. I want you to see one more thing before it’s time for bed.”

  I followed him back into the tower and down the stairs. We stopped at Tower’s floor and went into his study. The room had become as much mine as his in the past few months, although I still hadn’t seen inside his bedroom. He kept that door closed.

  He led the way along the bookshelves to the far side of the room, where the second door was that he always kept closed. I had wondered what was in it for a long time but we were always too busy with lessons when I remembered to ask. I thought he was leading us to the room and got excited at the prospect of seeing what was inside. I was disappointed when we stopped next to it and he pointed into the corner instead.

  “Do you remember what I said about this?”

  I looked to the giant gemstone in the corner. It was always a marvel to look at and I never stopped wondering how it had been carried into the room.

  “That it was dangerous. And not to touch it. Which I haven’t!” I said quickly.

  Tower laughed. “Good. Focus again now. I’m going to show you how this was made. Don’t try to manipulate anything. There is an immense amount of power here and if something is done wrong it might, well, explode.”

  Despite knowing better I still took a step back. Tower pulled out another gem from his pocket and placed it on top of the gigantic one. I was cautious as I moved my focus between the two gems and moved it so slowly that I barely reached it in time to witness Tower merging the two together.

  The joining of the two gems was easier to understand than the magic on the roof. It reminded me of when the sollite had absorbed a stone in the cellar except it was a more gentle process. There was no disorientating flash that stunned me for a moment.

  “I’ve been building this for many years. It’s a collected supply of magic. There’s probably enough to sustain us for years if anything ever went wrong,” Tower explained.

  “You join the gems together?”

  He nodded. “Next time we’ll fuse two small ones. You’ll see that the gem doubles in size.
This one is too big to notice anything like that.”

  He seemed to be finished and I turned to the closed door. My curiosity was back and prodding me. I finally had a chance to ask.

  “What’s behind this door?” I asked as Tower began to walk away.

  He turned around and looked at it as if he needed to confirm which door I was asking about. He opened his mouth and then closed it. He was hesitating and that got my attention. It was rare that he wasn’t quick to answer.

  “Something. Something bad,” he muttered. “That door is locked and it’s locked for a reason. You must never try to get inside that room.”

  I straightened my back immediately and looked at the door and then back to him. “What’s in there?”

  He shook his head and said nothing else. His eyes were moving around the room as if they couldn’t decide what to settle on. It was an expression I had never seen on Tower’s face before. I think it was fear.

  He walked away and went inside his bedroom. Even the chance of a glimpse inside there wasn’t enough to take me away from the other door. After seeing the study and the mines I thought I had learned all of the exciting, dangerous places of the tower. I went to bed that night with my imagination burning with ideas of what could possibly be locked inside.

  That same imagination gave me one of my worst nightmares that night. It had been weeks since my previous one and I had hoped that they were behind me.

  In the dream I was outside collecting leaves and I walked too far from the tower. Something pressed me away and urged me further into the forest and I could never find my way back. Even though the trees were bare from the approaching winter I was still stifling hot as I wandered through the trees. It felt like summer in my dream.

  The forest surrounded me and became denser with trees the longer I walked. The trees felt alive and could move closer to me when I wasn’t looking at them. It frightened me and I ran until I hit a wall of them, as if the trees had merged together like the gemstones in Tower’s study.

  I turned behind me and saw that I was trapped in a circle of them with no gap big enough to squeeze through. The sound of something creaking and cracking assaulted my ears and I turned to see branches stretching out to me like clawed, bony hands. They froze when I looked at them but I heard more sounds behind me. I couldn’t keep my eyes on all of the trees at once. Some of them would always be moving to grab me.

  I kept my eyes on the nearest tree and jumped at it. The noise behind me increased and was joined by a stomping noise, as if something colossal was marching behind me. I climbed as fast as I could, not daring to look behind me. I was too afraid to see what was chasing me. I was too afraid that the tree I was climbing would start moving if I looked away.

  The tree was impossibly tall as I climbed higher, as if its trunk kept stretching all the way up into the clouds. Inexplicably, the higher I climbed the louder the crackling noise became until it suddenly wasn’t a tree at all. I was climbing a stone wall. The nightmare changed instantly, as dreams often do, and I was no longer in the forest. I was climbing the wall in my village.

  The crackling sound was the fire. There was too much smoke to see anything and I fell, my hands slipped from the wall as though the smoke reminded me of the ash that coated it and made me loose my grip. I landed on my feet and there were no piles of bodies to greet me this time. The villagers weren’t dead yet and were scrambling around me. All of them were on fire and all of them were screaming.

  I didn’t have time to run. A crash came from above the smoke. It sounded like thunder but I knew better. I stared up at the direction of the sound and felt helpless. I knew it was the dragon before another crash came and its wings parted the smoke and revealed its body. It was looking at me.

  The sounds of the dream turned to silence. The dragon reared its head as though it was roaring but I heard no noise. The fire began to swirl around its tail and wings and spread over its body toward its mouth. It was still looking at me. I raised my hands.

  The nightmare was real to me and I groped for my focus. The fire concentrated around the dragon’s mouth and poured down at me. My mouth contorted into a scream that I couldn’t hear and I tried uselessly to catch the fire in my hands, to hold it like Tower could. The flames washed over me and I burned. My flesh ruptured and my blood boiled on my skin.

  Even in my dream I failed to control fire.

  Chapter Eleven

  In the early days of winter I spent a lot of time on the roof. The tower was caught in the awkward phase before the temperature became consistently cold. Snow fell and then melted the next day. In the morning I might wrap myself up in the furs on my bed to keep warm, but by evening the tower might be too hot now that an extra gem had been added to the water.

  The roof offered an escape from the heat on the warmer evenings. The chill of the air would be cool and pleasant on my skin, if only for a little while. Some nights I would climb up there to escape from potential nightmares. The skyline that I used to find so unnerving now had a reassuring effect. I felt confident that nothing would be able to see me and I could confirm that there was no dragon nearby in safety. Sometimes it helped me sleep.

  Each day was now filled with more lessons. Tower focused solely on magic and left me to continue reading in my own time. He pressed me to learn quickly but also expertly knew when to slow down on some of the more complicated techniques. It was as if he knew ahead of time which areas I would find the most troublesome.

  One night, after dinner, he cleared the table so that there was nothing between us except for his bag of gemstones. I moved my chair and sat close to him. We shared a corner of the table.

  “You’ve developed your focus well so far,” he said. “You could be faster with it but some things come with time, not just practice. So far you are using your magic like you use your eyes to read. It’s an accomplishment but you should also be able to change things. You should be able to use your magic to write.”

  I looked from him to the bag on the table. I shifted in my chair.

  “Relax. You’re ready. Now watch closely,” he said softly.

  The drawstring on the bag began to move independently. I heard the sound of it scraping through the holes along the rim of the bag, but Tower wasn’t touching it. I reached out with my focus and felt his presence manipulating the string and then moving into the gems. They clinked against each other as he surrounded one of the stones. I felt him grasp it and then levitate it out onto the table.

  “That’s amazing,” I whispered.

  “Do you still think magic is doing the impossible?”

  I looked once again away from him and to the table. My eyes shifted between the bag and the gemstone. I turned back to him and reluctantly nodded.

  “Sorry,” I muttered and lowered my head.

  “That’s all right, Bryce. Remember the last time I asked you that question. We spoke about the apple tree. What did you say was impossible about that scenario?”

  “The speed that the tree grew. It was too fast,” I replied.

  “Good. What do you think is impossible this time? What happened?”

  “You moved something without touching it. That’s impossible.”

  “Very good. You think it’s impossible because you do not yet understand what’s happening,” he explained. “The special quality that wizards have is their ability to manipulate energy in all of its forms. Keep that in mind. I am going to move the stone again. This time, I want you to focus yourself on me instead of the gem. If you do that, I think you’ll understand.”

  I nodded and took a deep breath before finding my focus once more. I did as Tower asked and centered myself on him and ignored the table. For the first time I felt him acknowledge my presence with something akin to a gentle tap. It reverberated back to my chest and I smiled at the sensation.

  He started to gather energy after he knew I was watching. It reminded of the day he had channeled fire over his body and shoulders when he burned the farren monster to death. The energy look
ed like a pale blue that swirled around his arm and then reached out to the table. I felt it envelope the gemstone and then lift it, the trail of energy still connected back to Tower’s body.

  He abruptly broke the channel and it was gone. The stone fell back onto the table and he turned to me.

  “Still impossible?” Tower asked.

  “No. I think I get it.”

  “Ah,” he smiled. “Explain it to me then.”

  “It would still be impossible if you weren’t touching it but you are,” I stopped after I said that, thinking I might be wrong. A grin crossed over Tower’s face and I was encouraged to continue. “You reach out with something other than your body. You’re connected to the stone for a few moments by changing the energy between you. Though, I don’t know how you did that,” I added sullenly.

  “Well done, yes. Think of it like heat or light. You can see the source of where they’re coming from, usually fire, but you can still feel their effects even if you aren’t touching them. The energy is reaching you. Wizards are capable of changing energy into other forms, from magic to light or heat. Or from the energy within ourselves into kinetic energy.

  “This is the easiest kind of manipulation there is, both to learn and to use,” he continued. “Changing the energy within yourself into fire is not only difficult but it leaves you drained of most of the fuel you have stored from eating. That’s why gemstones are so important. You use energy from them instead of your own.”

  Tower reached over and cleared the table again. He placed his right hand down on top of it, palm up, and I saw the energy build around his arm even without finding my focus. The fire lashed out as it raced down his arm and joined at his hand. I leaned back in my seat as far as I could.

  The flames shot up without warning and roared through the tower. I craned my head and saw that they reached up like a pillar, burning through the center of the room. I looked at Tower and saw the sweat that was already pouring down his face. I knew, somehow, that it was from the exertion of the spell rather than the heat of the fire.