The Forging of the Dragon (Wizard and Dragon Book 1) (3 page)

“Stop right there, magic user!”

Seagryn stopped, and waited, but Ranoth said no more. When it became apparent that no one else intended to speak, Seagryn made his attempt. “I ... I was only trying to help —”

“You destroyed the house of my ancestors!” Talarath croaked. “You call that help?”

“But I saved you from the Marwandians!”

“Now who will save us from you?” This came from Ranoth — his teacher!

“I swear I will do nothing to harm any Lamathian or —”

“Then prove it by leaving! Immediately!”

Seagryn paused, his mind racing. For years he’d dreamed of meeting exactly this reaction. He knew there was no hope. Yet now that he faced it, he found he couldn’t give it up without at least trying to make them understand. “This isn’t my fault!” he pleaded. “Do you think I want to be like this?”

“It makes no difference!” Ranoth responded, his voice quavering with passion. “Just go!” Seagryn was startled. He’d never seen the ruling elder this agitated.

“But — but I’m a Lamathian! I belong here!”

Ranoth drew himself up straight and squared his shoulders, then stretched a bony finger out at Seagryn and shook it accusingly. “Young man, the people of Lamath are people of faith! Two centuries ago we withdrew from the magic users and other heathens because we could not abide their presence among us! You suddenly reveal yourself to be one of these infidels, a spy, a mudgecurdle in our midst. And do you now expect us — the arbiters of Lamathian justice — to let you remain? Go, Seagryn — or whatever your true name is! Go swiftly, or we shall certainly send an army equipped to dispatch you! Go!” Ranoth now pointed that trembling finger westward toward the region of the hated Marwandians.

“But Ranoth, just today you spoke of — of drawing together with the neighboring lands, of joining together with those of the other fragments to —”

“I said nothing of the kind!” Ranoth screamed, his face turning a brilliant red. “You are a liar, a heathen, and a magic user! Begone!”

“But the Marwandians will not welcome one who routed them —”

“Who ate them whole?” Talarath added scornfully. “What they do with you is their affair. Depart, Seagryn. But know this — we’ll have an army on your trail by the morning!”

Desperate now, Seagryn searched through the crowd for just one understanding pair of eyes. He saw only terror and hatred there — even in the gaze of Elaryl.

“You said you could forgive me anything,” he murmured flatly. “Can’t you forgive me this?” She trembled at his question, then hid her face against her father’s sleeve.

That was enough. A few more words passed between him and Ranoth, but he couldn’t recall them later. Elaryl had cut him off, and he saw no use in further attempts to redeem himself. After a moment, he shuffled away, moving westward, not because he’d chosen that course, but because that way had been chosen for him by those who’d been his life’s authority. After an unremembered time of walking, he was deep in an unknown forest. He walked on ...

Several hours later he came to his senses and stopped beside a large clump of bushes. “I’ve got to make plans,” he announced aloud. An anger he’d kept dammed up within himself for years suddenly exploded, and he raised a defiant fist to the sky. “Very well then! I’ll be a wizard!” Energized by his commitment, he thrust off toward the west with thoughts of vengeance boiling through his mind. Now, at least, he had chosen his fate.

He stalked away so rapidly he didn’t see the enormous bear rise up out of the clump of brush to watch him go. The bear’s black lips curled away from its fangs, which gleamed pink in the light of the setting sun. A malevolent intelligence burned in the great beast’s eyes, a human intelligence that was at the same time more than human — and utterly, irredeemably selfish.

When Seagryn disappeared over a tree-covered rise, the bear dropped to its forepaws and shuffled out of the underbrush. Then it sniffed the ground where Seagryn had stood. “Stinks of tugolith.” The giant bear snorted. Then it lifted its huge head, eyes gleaming, and followed.

Chapter Two

DARK TIDINGS

SEAGRYN sat alone beneath the blackest night he could remember and faced the sobering truth. “I can’t become a wizard! I loathe wizardry!”

“You’ll grow out of that,” a voice above him said, and Seagryn grunted in shock and leaped blindly away from it. “A good thing, too,” the voice continued, “since self-hatred can really cause you problems. Are you all right?”

Seagryn was not all right. He’d landed spread-eagled upon a pile of loose gravel and had slid several feet down it. He pushed himself up on his hands and peered into the darkness. “Who’s there?” he demanded.

“Some consider me the voice of the Power.”

Clearly it was a youth, Seagryn thought to himself, and an impudent one! “The One we do not name is ageless!” he barked. “Surely that One’s voice has had time to change!”

The unseen stranger chuckled. “I bet you imagine the Power as an ancient grandfather with a floor-length beard.”

“I do not discuss the One in such disrespectful terms,” Seagryn answered self-righteously. “Nor do I appreciate talking to a person I cannot
see
!”

“You can’t see the Power yet you talk to H —”

“Who are you?” Seagryn roared, leaping to his feet. That was a mistake. The gravel slid beneath him, and he wound up back on his face, this time a few feet further down the slope.

The youth cleared his throat, then announced, “I am Dark the prophet. And I would be happy for you to see me, but you’ve neglected to start a fire. I wish you’d done so, since that would have made it a lot easier to find you.”

Seagryn pushed himself onto his knees and began scraping bits of imbedded sand from his burning palms. “I had nothing with which to start a fire,” he grumbled.

“There’s wood —”

“But I have no flints!” Seagryn shouted. “I had no time to prepare for this journey,” he added sourly.

“Oh, you had time,” the boy chided. “You just chose not to face the fact you were leaving.”

Seagryn carefully got to his feet and stared savagely toward the voice. Unfortunately, his fierce expression was quite lost in the darkness. “And what do you mean by that?”

“You know.”

“I don’t know, but I should like to know!” Seagryn challenged, sliding cautiously forward through the gravel as he balled up his fists. “Who are you? Why are you following me?”

“I didn’t follow you; I met you here,” the voice answered with youthful annoyance. “And I already told you who I am.”

“You said you were Dark the prophet!”

“Then you did hear?” the boy asked sarcastically.

“Show yourself!” Seagryn demanded.

“You want me to pull the moon down through the clouds and hold it up to my face? You’re the powershaper, not I.”

“And you are an impudent boy!” Seagryn proclaimed. “Continue to taunt me and you’ll suffer for it!”

“What’ll you do?” the voice mocked. “Run your horn through me and eat me for supper?”

Seagryn’s stomach knotted with self-revulsion, and he fought a sudden dizziness. The boy
knew
. Guilt gushed through him. After a silent moment, the youth asked:

“Are you still there?”

Seagryn didn’t answer. Instead, he sat down in the gravel and put his head in his hands.

“You know, most powershapers can make fire, if they try ...” the boy suggested.

“What’s a powershaper?” Seagryn mumbled. He no longer looked toward the voice. His head ached.

“A powershaper shapes the powers. He — or she — is a wizard. Like you.”

“You deny that you followed me here, yet you know that I’m ... cursed ... with wizardry. How is that?”

A pair of feet hit the ground next to him. The boy had evidently been on top of a large rock, or up a tree. “I really think I’ve answered that already,” the lad groused. “I can’t help it if you don’t believe me.”

“I’ve heard of Dark the prophet all my life,” Seagryn muttered scornfully.

“Are you sure?” asked the boy. “Or does it just seem that you have? You’d be surprised how quickly people come to believe they’ve been doing something forever —”

“Does your mother know where you are?” Seagryn asked. When the reply didn’t come immediately he enjoyed the silence, feeling smug.

“Yes, she did. Does,” the boy said after a moment.

“What?”

“She told me — tells me — well, I guess I’d better say she will tell me that she did. Not that she has the gift; it’s just that she has a sense about these things.”

Seagryn frowned into the darkness. “I don’t understand what you’re —”

“Gets confusing, doesn’t it? To me, too. I get ahead of myself, and it’s hard sometimes to stay in the present.”

“What are you talking about!” Seagryn barked.

“Oh.” The boy sighed. “The future. What will be. That sort of thing.”

Seagryn snorted. “No one can tell the future.”

“Wrong!” the lad corrected. “There are plenty who tell the future. There are very few of us who actually know it.” Seagryn groaned, and rubbed the knotted muscles in the back of his neck. “And those who actually do, if they have any sense, don’t tell what they know. Otherwise, they might get themselves beaten!” Seagryn groaned again, but the lad seemed to be talking to himself now and took no notice. “Unfortunately, I tend to tell too much. A character flaw, I realize. My s’mother says I’ll grow out of it, but who can believe her? She doesn’t know the future.” The boy sighed heavily, as if he bore the weight of fifty years upon his shoulders instead of a mere fifteen. “Why do I have to?”

Seagryn waited a moment. “Are you finished?”

“Am I boring you?”

“If you’re finished, then please leave me in peace. You apparently know a great deal about me. Perhaps you know also that this has been the worst day of my life.”

“Not quite,” the boy muttered.

“What!” snarled Seagryn.

“Oh nothing ... just that there might be worse still in store —”

“Leave me be!”

“I will,” the lad mumbled, and Seagryn heard footsteps crunching away. Then they stopped. “One more thing before I go ...”

“Yes,” Seagryn sighed.

“When you hear somebody yelling tomorrow, would you mind responding quickly? It’ll be me, and I’d appreciate suffering as little as possible.”

Despite its dependence upon a foundation of faith, Seagryn’s education had been hedged about by a rigid system of logic. He’d never heard such nonsense in all his life, and the boy’s words made him wince up at the dark sky in protest. He said nothing, however, fearing that might encourage the lad to stay, dooming him to listen to this adolescent drivel all night. He waited in silence as the youth departed, reassured by the sound of receding footsteps. Then he got down on his knees to search with his hands for the grassy spot he’d originally occupied. When he found it, he lay down, rolled onto his back, and gazed upward. The sky had grown no brighter. “With my luck, it’ll rain tonight,” he grumbled. Then he slept.

It did not rain; but with the high humidity and the late summer heat, Seagryn might have been more comfortable if it had rained. He was no outdoorsman. Dreams of flies and snakes and unnamed crawling things plagued his sleep. But throughout the night’s fitful naps he was at least oblivious to his tragic personal loss.

Not so in the morning. He awoke sitting straight up and shouting, “Elaryl!” He was at once fully conscious, feeling the burden of his grief settling down around his shoulders to be borne through yet another day. He had lost his love. He had lost his life.

He wasn’t at all hungry, and he attributed that at first to his grief. Then he remembered with disgust his feast of the day before. He had consumed — how many fully armed Marwandians? His stomach boiled at the thought, and he wondered momentarily what had happened to all the bits of chain mail and shield. The explanation was both simple and horrible. Magic.

The very word caused a wave of nausea to sweep Seagryn’s stomach. He realized again that his strong aversion to its presence in his life would not be easily overcome. While he did need to learn how to manage his curse as swiftly as possible, he decided he shouldn’t think about it all that much. He got up, picked a direction, and shuffled forward.

He moved aimlessly — but how could it be otherwise? There were no congregations of the faithful out in these forests, waiting for a leader to come and guide them. Perhaps there would be homeless to care for, but he would have to count himself among them now, not as one who could lend aid. He was lost in this wilderness — a perfect metaphor, he thought grimly, of his own spiritual condition. For in a way he’d not been since he’d been forced to abandon his home so long ago, Seagryn was lost.

He raised his head, and his green eyes narrowed as he tried to peer into the northwest. Would they accept him in Bourne, once this was known? No. If anything, Bourne was more rigid than City Lamath itself. Besides, when they heard this news, the simple folk of the west country would be putting it together with the awful appearances years ago of a terrible beast who’d devoured one of their finest young lads. There had been a few who actually knew the truth. Did they live still? Would they still look at him with the same revulsion in their faces?

“Yes,” he mumbled, tousling his brown hair. “I can’t go back there.”

He tried to feel grateful that the charade was over. He’d known, somehow, that discovery was inevitable. He was too well known, too closely watched to hide a secret this huge. “Huge,” he muttered with bitter irony. Certainly an apt description. “Too huge to hide. Someone had to see me eventually. If — if I could only control it, as the magic users do —” But he could not control it. And to a man of faith that meant that the One who is not named had permitted this calamity to befall him. Seagryn felt betrayed by the very Power he’d led others to worship. He gazed imploringly skyward. “Why?” he begged. “Why would you allow such a horror?”

“Stop where you stand!”

Seagryn was surrounded by Marwandian warriors so quickly he hadn’t time to be frightened, only astonished. “Where did you come from?” he asked the circle of faces.

“We live here,” grunted one fighter. “The question should rather be where did you come from, although it’s obvious from your gown that you’re a Lamathian cleric.” The man looked around at his raiders. “So the boy was right again.”

“What boy?” Seagryn asked, but he closed his mouth when the tips of several lengthy swords danced before his nose. Assuming these instructed him to keep silent, he heeded their pointed urgings.

“What next?” someone asked the leader.

“We can’t hunt the bear with a captive in tow —”

“Then let’s kill him,” another warrior suggested.

“The boy said we would take him back to camp when we found him ...” the leader murmured to himself.

“Then let’s kill him to prove the boy wrong.” The same warrior shrugged, and Seagryn frowned at the bloodthirsty fellow. The man frowned back.

“No,” the leader growled. “We’d better let Quirl make that decision ...”

Seagryn noticed an exchange of looks that made him feel uncomfortable. These men knew more about him than they were saying. Did they know he was a wizard? Worse, did they suspect he was the magic user who had stomped or swallowed some of their friends? And was this boy — “He couldn’t be Dark the prophet,” Seagryn mumbled to himself.

The leader stepped closer and asked, “What did you say?”

“Why are you doing this?” Seagryn demanded. “You don’t even belong here! These are Lamathian lands!”

“Silence, priest, or I’ll slaughter you here!”

“You should have done that already,” the bloodthirsty Marwandian grumbled, drawing the leader’s eyes away from Seagryn.

“You shut up, too, mod Herjak,” the man said wearily. Then he looked around the circle. “Let’s take this priest to Quirl mod Kit so we can get back to hunting the bear. He’s nearby today — I can
smell
him.”

Someone behind Seagryn gave him a push, and he started walking. He wasn’t afraid, which surprised him a little. What he felt most was weariness — he was just tired of the constant stress of the last few weeks and in despair at the sudden collapse of all he’d struggled to build. Was he now about to be butchered in the forest by a band of strangers, just for being a Lamathian priest? What bitter irony, considering his current feelings toward the One who is not named! What a fitting end for one so abandoned as he!

After a fast hike that left Seagryn sticky with sweat, the band stood upon a bluff overlooking a pleasant valley. Directly below them a semicircle of fish-satin tents faced a small stream. A larger semicircle of sharpened timbers formed a rough stockade which enclosed the camp. One of the warriors pushed past him toward a path and slid down it. Then he held his sword in readiness as Seagryn was forced to slide down. Soon the group clustered around him again, and he was escorted to a stile that crossed the stockade wall. Moments later he was being pushed into the tent of Quirl mod Kit, the yellow-mustached Marwandian who commanded this encampment.

“We found this one in the forest,” the group leader explained apologetically in the face of Quirl’s contemptuous smirk.