Lusam: The Dragon Mage Wars Book One

LUSAM

THE DRAGON MAGE WARS

BOOK ONE

by

DEAN CADMAN

(c)2015

Chapter One

The cold rain came down hard, driven by the strong northerly wind which had been blowing relentlessly for the past three days. Winter was definitely on its way, and Lusam knew it. If he did not find shelter soon he would be in big trouble.

Ever since his grandmother died two years ago, he had been forced to live the hard, unforgiving life of a street kid. Living on the streets was hard enough, but for a twelve-year-old boy alone in a city like Helveel, where thieves and murderers were commonplace, it bordered on the impossible.

Lusam spent the first two years after his grandmother had passed away living in the alley behind the baker's shop. For the most part, he only had to compete with the rats for scraps of burned or spoiled food thrown out by the baker or his wife. The dead end alley also helped him shelter from the wind, and although meagre, the baker's chimney gave off a small amount of heat, especially first
thing in the morning when the ovens were lit to cook the daily bread.
In fact, the only reason he had found the alley, which had undoubtedly saved his life that first year with its bitter cold winter, was that chimney.

Almost starving, he had smelled the bread cooking from the chimney and it had led him to that alley. Lusam found a small grate in the wall that first day, and had managed to crawl inside it, out of the worst of the cold. There wasn't much room to move inside, but at least it was dry, and the small space helped retain a portion of his body heat. He didn’t need a lot of room as it happened. Apart from his well-worn clothes, his only other possession was a small crystal amulet his grandmother had given him the day she had died. She had told him that his mother had entrusted it to her for safe-keeping, and that she should give Lusam the amulet when he came of age. Lusam had tried to ask about the amulet and his mother, who he never really knew, but his grandmother was far too ill from the fever to be able to answer any of his questions. He had fully intended to ask her more in the morning, after she had rested, but he never had the opportunity, as she quietly passed away in her sleep that very night.

Lusam had thought many times about selling the amulet to buy a little food, or even one night's warmth at an inn, but no matter how much he told himself he needed to sell it, he couldn't bring himself to part with it. It was the
only thing he had left of his mother and grandmother in this world, and selling it for any reason seemed so wrong.
So this small insignificant hole behind the baker's shop became his home and safe retreat from the night-time city for almost two years.

One morning, stirring from his sleep, Lusam noticed an unusual smell. It was nothing like the mouth-watering smell of freshly baked bread to which he would normally awaken. At first he thought it part of the dream he was having; it's funny how the mind can take real sounds and smells, and incorporate them into your dreams, making them all the more real. He was very comfortable this morning. An almost spring-like warmth surrounded him in his small living space, the likes of which he had not felt in months. He started drifting off, back into deeper sleep, dreaming of the summer evenings spent with his grandmother in the forest, cooking food over an open campfire with the stars overhead twinkling down on them.

His grandmother had once told him that one of those stars was his mother watching over him while he slept each night, and that had given him great comfort in the cold, dark, lonely nights since he had found himself all alone in the world. As he was drifting deeper into sleep, he was startled awake by a cry of: “Help! …  Fire! … Fire!”

When he opened his eyes, he could not believe what he was seeing. The bakery was engulfed by flames, with
thick black smoke billowing out of the windows and under the door.
The flames leapt through the roof and high into the morning sky. As he started to take in the scene more, and his mind started to process the information through the haze of sleep, he noticed the heat inside his small grate increasing rapidly. He quickly removed the grill from the entrance and was about to poke his head out to take a better look, when a large piece of burning timber landed directly in front of his face, bouncing twice down the alley before coming to rest in a shower of sparks. He knew he had to get out of there fast, before the rest of the building came down on top of him. With a silent prayer to Aysha, that no more of the building would come down on him while he was climbing out, he took a deep breath and wriggled out of the hole as fast as he could.

When he was able to stand, he began to run as fast as he could towards the far end of the alley, away from the burning buildings. From behind him came a huge crash. As he looked back over his shoulder, he saw that the front of the building adjoining the bakery had collapsed right where he had been only seconds before, burying his grate entrance in a mass of rubble and flames. As he stood watching the carnage unfold before his eyes, the cold realisation suddenly hit him. He had lost yet another home.

No matter how poor a home it had been, at least it had been his, and had kept him dry. Then a second thought
struck him with even more force.
He had just lost his main food source too.

He had no idea how long he stood there staring dumbfounded at the flames, while people were trying to contain the fire and save what they could, and the rats ran in all directions, fleeing for their lives. When Lusam finally regained some of his composure, he simply turned around and walked away from the relative safety of the alley, and into the unforgiving streets of Helveel.

Two weeks had passed since the fire, and Lusam had spent most of that time cold, hungry and tired. He sat on the edge of the fountain in the main square, listening to the water behind him cascading down a statue of some long dead king. He watched the people walk past for hours, all busy in their own little worlds, never taking any notice of the street kid sitting on the small wall of the fountain watching them go by.

He had hoped that the baker's shop would be repaired, and that he could go back to how it had been for the last two years, but the damage had been far too severe, and it had been pulled down instead. Life was much harder now. There were plenty of street kids in Helveel, but there was also a distinct hierarchy among them. Although Lusam had been in Helveel for the past two years, he had not associated himself with the street kids there much, so they
didn’t know him, and therefore, he was a long way down the pecking order when it came to anything, especially food or work.
Many of the street kids had to resort to theft on a daily basis simply to survive. If caught they would be severely punished with a public whipping for their first offence, and having a digit removed from their hand for any future crimes they committed. Many of the street kids had various numbers of digits missing: it seemed the older they were, the more they had lost. It was simply a choice—steal or starve.

Lusam refused to resort to stealing anything. This was not because he was frightened of the consequences, although he didn’t relish the thought of either type of punishment. When he had been a young boy his grandmother had caught him taking a freshly baked biscuit without permission from the window sill, where they had been left cooling. She had been most vocal in her displeasure with him. Although, obviously he never got whipped or lost a digit over the biscuit, he also never forgot the lesson she had taught him, that stealing was wrong in any form, and he had given his word to her that he would never steal anything ever again.

While he sat there in the weak winter sunshine, he couldn’t help but think about all the good things he used to enjoy doing with his grandmother. His favourite was when
she would take him into the forest and teach him small tricks, like how to light a camp fire with only a word, or how he could communicate with the animals.
He remembered the time he asked her if they could talk back, but she explained that she wasn’t really talking to them, she was simply projecting a feeling towards them. She could make a bird, or a rabbit come right up to them by projecting a feeling of safety towards the animal. He practised for hours until he could also do it. In fact, he got so good at it, he could summon several different creatures at the same time with little effort.

He had used a similar method in the alley to keep away the rats at night. He would project the image of a hungry cat as if it was waiting behind the grate, ready for a tasty rat supper, and it seemed to have worked very well indeed. He did feel a little guilty about doing this sometimes, because he once asked his grandmother why she didn’t just get the animals to come to them, and catch them for their dinner, so they would always have meat for the table. She looked him straight in the eyes, and with that stern look she used to wear whenever she wanted him to know something was important, she had replied: “Y
ou should never betray the trust an animal gives you willingly, or
 
unwillingly. To use the power Aysha has given you in that way would
 
dishonour her and yourself in equal measure, and that would not be wise in many ways, my child.
”

She had also explained that all life had a force of magic running through and around it, and even some things that were not alive had a certain amount of magic within them. Each person had an amount of magic inside them, most could neither sense it nor use it, but a gifted few could see it in others, and even fewer could use the power inside themselves to varying degrees.

She taught Lusam to recognize the aura that glowed around everyone, and how he would notice it glow more intensely around the few who could use magic, and to be very wary of such people if he did not know them.

One of his favourite games as a young boy that he had played with his grandmother, was hide and seek in the forest. When they first played the game, he could never understand how his grandmother was able to find his hiding places so easily. When it was his turn to seek, sometimes it would take what seemed like forever to a young boy to find her, and many times he called out that he “
gave up,
” and that she should come out of hiding.

On one occasion when they went to the forest and played the game, he had the idea of looking for his grandmother's aura instead of looking directly for her. He was amazed when he cleared his mind, concentrated, and searched using his mage-sight—instead of his natural-sight—that he could spot her so easily, and from so far away, even through the trees. He soon realised how she had won the
games so quickly in the past.
He was about to suggest they did something different, as it would be far too easy to find each other now that he knew her secret, but then he had an idea. With a mischievous grin on his face, he told his grandmother he would go and hide, and not knowing he had discovered her secret, she readily agreed and started counting to the mandatory one hundred. Lusam ran a few hundred paces into the forest, just as he had done dozens of times before during his previous visits. He found a suitable hiding place, and crouched down behind a large fallen tree. He closed his eyes, cleared his mind as he had been shown countless times, and he tried to hide his aura using magic. He had no idea if it would, or even could work, but he had to try, then maybe he could win for once.

He could see his grandmother stand up from her starting point and head directly for his hiding place using her mage-sight. `
No!
` He thought to himself, and redoubled his efforts to hide his aura. It was a strange feeling he experienced, like a shutter had been lowered over the lantern that was his mind. He knew the light was still as bright behind the shutter, but no light escaped to the outside world. He saw his grandmother halt in mid-stride, and then start to look around frantically in all directions. He knew for certain at that point he had achieved his goal, and smiled to himself, knowing he was at last going to win for a change.