The Forging of the Dragon (Wizard and Dragon Book 1) (24 page)

The tugoliths all eyed him for a minute before their leader spoke. “You can’t get down,” he observed sensibly. With that the members of the circle — the wheel? — turned their backsides to Seagryn and Dark and wandered off across the endless ice.

“Looks like you made a good first impression,” Dark muttered sardonically. Seagryn thought about tipping his horn forward and dropping the boy headfirst into the valley, but resisted the temptation.

The tugolith leader had been right. There was no way off this glacial cliff other than to turn around and go back. It took them most of the morning to find a kind of rampway down, and by that time both the tugolith wheel and the bloodied loser were beyond the reach of Seagryn’s sensitive nose.

“Nothing,” he grumbled, giving his head a shake in frustration.

“Could I remind you just once more that I’m sitting up here and that, every time you do that, you threaten to toss me off?”

“Might do you good to experience a little suffering,” Seagryn grumbled, sympathizing with the plight of the tugolith who’d been driven away. “Might make you more sensitive to the plight of those less fortunate.”

“I can’t imagine anyone less fortunate than myself at the moment,” the prophet on his forehead responded. “I’m starving. If your sense of smell is so keen, why don’t you use it to find us some food?”

“I’ve been trying,” Seagryn said pensively. “I suppose you didn’t notice ...”

“Notice what?”

“That every one of those beasts we saw today appeared emaciated.”

Dark paused for a moment, remembering. “They looked fat enough to me.”

“How would you know?” Seagryn muttered, then caught himself before adding, “You’re not a tugolith.”

“I know this. I know you find one of these beasties and lure it homeward. But I do wish you’d get on with it. I’m cold, I’m tired, and I haven’t eaten in the-megasin-knows-how-long!”

“Oh, I forgot,” Seagryn said with a touch of cruelty. “You’re in a rush to get back and rejoin Uda.” He shouldn’t have said it, he realized. He rarely let that caustic aspect of his personality have any access to his tongue. But it was out — and Dark seemed to freeze in place upon his head.

They said nothing else to one another for many minutes as Seagryn worked his way down a steep slope made treacherous by patches of glass-slick ice. He had time to think about it, and time to feel regret. For of the virtues Seagryn believed himself to possess, the two he cherished most were his loyalty to friends and a basic kindness. “I’m sorry,” he said when they finally reached the flat snow plain.

“I know.” As usual, the boy reacted flippantly.

“How do you know!" Seagryn demanded.

“Quite simple.” The lad sighed. “My gift is back.”

Chapter Twenty-two

BEING THE WISER

“JUST like that? It’s back?” Seagryn asked.

“Unfortunately.” Dark sighed, sounding as if he really meant it.

“You think so?”

“You remember what I told you last night before we went to sleep, how peaceful I felt? I liked that feeling, Seagryn. I liked it a lot.”

The boy had experienced suffering, Seagryn remembered. True suffering of a kind he could only imagine. He felt genuinely sorrowful — for he was, most certainly, a loyal friend.

“One advantage, of course,” the boy chirped suddenly. “I know where we can get some food. To your right, Seagryn, and move those hooves!”

It was not very long before they reached a stretch of the snow that seemed oddly pockmarked. Seagryn would have rambled on through it if Dark hadn’t suddenly ordered, “Stop.”

“Stop? I thought you were hungry?”

“I am hungry. So are you, but don’t let it cloud your judgment. Investigate these holes.”

A tugolith frown curled Seagryn’s scaly lips downward. “I think I liked you better when you were a little more dependent.”

“Strange that you should say that,” Dark muttered. “I was thinking the same thing myself. But you really should examine these little potholes, Seagryn. They’re the reason those tugoliths we saw this morning are starving. Ah — you were right about that, by the way. At the time I didn’t know.”

Still frowning, Seagryn shuffled to one of the holes in the ice and sniffed at it. “Something lives here,” he observed very quietly. “Something warm and furry.”

“You can tell it has fur just by sniffing?”

“Quiet — it’s stirring around —” They both hushed then, waiting. Nothing happened.

“It’ll come,” Dark said firmly.

“Quiet —”

“You’ll see.”

“I said hush!”

“But you still won’t be expecting —”

Out of the hole popped a shaggy little head topped by two quite terrified yellow eyes. They hushed and stared at it, and the little animal responded by staring back at them. After a motionless moment, Seagryn took a tentative step toward the little creature. With a sudden hiss, it swelled its body up to the size of a small dog, and Seagryn, although forty times its size, nevertheless bolted backward. The balloonlike creature didn’t budge, nor did its eyes lose their expression of utter horror.

“What is it?” Seagryn asked, expecting the animal to disappear down its hole at the sound of his voice. It didn’t.

Dark was silent for a moment as he remembered a bit of the future in order to answer the present question. “The tugoliths call them lesefs, but they never tell you why.”

“It’s clearly terrified of us! Why doesn’t it run away?”

“It can’t. It’s stuck.” Seagryn took a step or two closer to get a better look, but Dark warned him off again. “Whatever you do don’t step on it.”

“Why not?”

“Its body fluids evidently cause terrible boils on a tugolith’s feet. Look, I know you’re rather inappropriately clothed, but our dinner is on the other side of these legions of shaggy balloon creatures and you can’t get across in tugolith-form. You don’t seem to feel the cold anyway, so would you mind setting me down and changing shape for just a few moments? I think you’ll be glad you did.”

Seagryn took the boy’s word for it and assumed his human-form. They quickly threaded their way through the lesef burrows and he modestly resumed his larger guise.

“You see those high cliffs over there?” Dark said confidently.

“Those are the tugoliths’ regular feeding grounds. I have it on good authority that the food is excellent.”

“Whose authority?” Seagryn asked.

“My own. Words I speak in just a few hours.”

And as usual, the boy prophet proved to be correct. The crevices of the cliffs were filled with round objects, well out of reach of most predators but easily harvested by the tip of a tugolith’s horn. Seagryn flipped down a dozen or so while Dark busily cracked them open. They were eggs, laid in the cracks by some species of cold-dwelling bird and then abandoned. They proved to have a delicate, salty flavor, and Seagryn soon went back to flip down more. The cliffs held an abundant supply.

“The tugoliths haven’t been able to get to them,” Dark explained between mouthfuls. “That’s why there’s so many to harvest.”

“Why not?” Seagryn asked.

“You really don’t want me to tell you. You’d rather figure it out for yourself. And you will.”

“Humph,” the wizard snorted. “If you don’t blurt it out first.”

“Oh, I won’t do that,” the boy said seriously.

“You’re certain of that, I suppose?”

“Very certain. I’ll not be with you.”

Seagryn stopped eating and looked at Dark. “What?”

Dark didn’t look back. Instead he studied a half-eaten egg, turning and twisting it before his face as if he held a gemstone. “My gift is back. And now I know what will be, and where I’ll go. You don’t need me here, and I’d probably freeze to death if I tried to stay. I’m not a tugolith, Seagryn, and you — at least in part —
are
.” The boy carefully placed the egg between his legs, and now looked up into his enormous friend’s eyes. “Whether I could stay and survive the cold or not, the fact is I won’t. Destiny again, right? My duty’s clear, and I’m off to get it done. Oh, and I will be there for your arrival in Lamath, so don’t worry about me.” Suddenly the boy’s eyes fell away, and he seemed to gaze inward again for a moment before saying, “I’m starting to miss the megasin. It was dark and fearful down there, but I can’t recall a more restful holiday in my life ...”

Seagryn’s appetite had disappeared. He was already feeling lonely again, and Dark hadn’t even left yet. “Can — can you stay the rest of the afternoon?” he asked.

Dark thought a moment. “Well I would, but — some of your fellows are starving ...”

The boy pointed his finger back the way they’d come, and Seagryn thought again of the wan, solitary tugolith he’d seen bloodied today. Dark hopped to his feet, made a futile attempt to hug Seagryn’s enormous neck, then started away, walking southeast along the line of the egg-filled cliffs. After a few steps he stopped and grinned back over his shoulder. “By the way, if you decide to take your normal shape again in human company, I hope you’ll remember you haven’t got any pants on. Thanks again for the extra layers!” Then Dark waved, and headed onward.

As the lad disappeared behind the icy wall Seagryn pondered his own mixed feelings. Dark was right. This was no place to be a person. And certainly the tugoliths would have a much easier time accepting him if he could devote his entire attention to them without needing to worry about keeping a boy prophet from freezing. Nevertheless, the ancient feelings of betrayal and abandonment that had abbreviated his childhood and given a melancholy cast to his adult life had returned again to nibble at his confidence. Dark was his friend — perhaps his only friend — and there was something inherently unjust in having a friend he really couldn’t be comfortable being with. For that was another feeling that had pushed its way into the front of his consciousness — he felt much freer to act when his choices weren’t being watched by someone who already knew their consequences. “And Dark certainly must know I feel that way,” he mumbled aloud. Once again he found himself grieving for a boy who knew far too much. Dark’s gift certainly didn’t seem to benefit Dark that much. “Then again,” Seagryn mumbled, “I guess these gifts are given for the sake of others and not for ourselves.” The next thought followed naturally, and Seagryn heard himself saying, “So whom, exactly, is my gift supposed to benefit?”

He’d addressed this question to no one, but a mental image of starving tugoliths came immediately to mind. It startled him. After all, he’d come here, not to help these animals, but to lure one to — a different destiny. Then again, when he’d embarked upon this quest he’d had only his own self-interest in mind. After his experience in the megasin’s cave ...

“Obviously I need to rethink some of this,” he announced aloud. But whatever he did depended upon his forming some kind of relationship with the massive inhabitants of this region, and he decided he’d better get to it.

It took him only a few moments to scamper through the lesef holes again and resume his bulky altershape. Then he was off in search of companionship, and he found his tugolith senses well-equipped for that task. Here among the snowdrifts, where there were relatively few scents upon the wind, he could smell things that had to be great distances away. His hearing, too, was far sharper than that of his human ears. It wasn’t long before he heard the tramp of heavy feet and scented the pungent aroma of his adopted species. He turned his own gait in that direction and began making very large tracks.

Did the group smell him coming? They stopped, evidently, for, after a while, he no longer heard their movement, and the odor became richer. At last he topped a small ice ridge, and there they were, waiting for him. They’d formed themselves in the same kind of circle he and Dark had seen earlier — and all ten horns pointed directly at him.

He hesitated upon first sight of them, but only for a moment. When he started forward, one of the group broke free from the circle and advanced toward him. The rest of the beasts closed ranks as this leader called out, “Where is your wheel?”

Seagryn had expected him to say, “Go away.” He had prepared a speech to make in response. But this question surprised him. “What?” he answered. Ten pairs of tugolith eyebrows raised in response, then immediately knitted in contempt. He suddenly felt very foolish.

“You have no wheel?” the lead tugolith asked suspiciously.

“I — don’t even know what a wheel is. I mean, I do know, of course. I just don’t know what
you
mean by it.”

The tugoliths stared at him.

“What I’m saying is, you obviously aren’t talking about a wagon wheel, or anything like that.”

Still they stared.

“Perhaps — by a ‘wheel,’ you mean what group do I belong to? As you yourselves are formed into a group? Do you make up a wheel?”

The lead tugolith had an unmistakable frown upon his face, and it occurred to Seagryn he’d seen just such an expression on the weathered visage of old Talarath many times before. “You talk too much,” the animal said politely.

“I — I’m sorry. I just don’t know how best to — communicate ...” His words faded out, for the tugoliths were no longer listening to him. The entire circle — wheel? — was mumbling to one another.

Suddenly one young female spoke up. “He’s the Wiser.” Her words caused an enormous stir.

“He’s no Wiser.”

“He’s a punt.”

“He can’t talk.”

“He talks too
much
.”

“He has no wheel!” This last had come from the lead tugolith, and it seemed to put a period on the discussion. When the leader looked back at him, Seagryn was in the midst of marveling at how he could know the relative age and gender of each member of the wheel. There were no obvious physical differences, yet he simply knew, and that amazed him. “You have no wheel,” the leader observed again.

“You could let me join yours,” Seagryn suggested. He was quite unprepared for the response. The leader reeled backward onto his hindquarters, much as the loser in today’s battle had when beaten backward by a mighty bash of a horn. The members of the circle began to dance in agitation, particularly the females. The young males snarled with barely fettered rage, and two even turned to rush together and clack horns in the center of the wheel before returning to their places in the circle to dance in frustration. The whole group seemed to churn with shock and embarrassment — all, that is, except that young female who’d said something about a Wiser. The snarls and growls startled Seagryn, and the clashing horns made him tremble a bit inwardly. But to be honest, the gaze in this young female’s eyes worried him more. It appeared — almost human.

The head tugolith finally got back to his four feet, and sputtered out, “You have no pair!”

“No what?” Seagryn asked. He’d already created a furor. He supposed it didn’t matter now if he caused even greater confusion. He needed to know these creatures, and he couldn’t think of a better way to go about it than this.

“Pair!” the old male roared, his huge eyes bulging.

“He smells of food,” the young female said loudly, and suddenly the stamping and muttering was replaced by a chorus of sniffing. Then the wheel stood silent again, all horns once again pointing toward him.

“He does,” the lead tugolith agreed with evident consternation. It appeared he wanted time to mull this over.

“How did you get food?” Predictably, this was the young female again. Seagryn directed his response to her.

“I walked to it.”

“There are lesef holes.”

“I walked through the lesef holes and got it. That’s what I’ve come to tell you. I can lead you to the food.”

He’d tried to make his sentences clear and declarative this time, and the female seemed to understand. But Seagryn had evidently breached tugolith etiquette again by talking to her. A young male standing beside her growled, “Berillitha! Don’t talk!” He punctuated his command with a forceful prick of his horn to her flank, causing Berillitha to yelp and Seagryn to frown.