Lusam: The Dragon Mage Wars Book One (14 page)

The shop area was empty, so she called out to the back of the shop to inform them it was only her entering, and so there was no need to come through to serve any potential customers. She thought she heard a reply, and continued downstairs to meet up with Lusam again.

Entering the book room she almost walked straight into a large pile of books floating through the air towards where Lusam was standing.

“I've got us some breakfast,” Neala said, holding out a sweet pastry wrapped in brown paper and an apple.

“Mm-mm … thanks, I'm starving. I don't know why, but doing magic always makes me feel ravenous,” he said.
Lusam took the two items from Neala, opened the packet containing the sweet pastry and completely wolfed it down, even before Neala had opened hers.
“I think I'd better start buying you more food if you're going to eat it that fast,” Neala said laughing at Lusam's face, which now had sticky fruit sauce all around his mouth.

“Sorry,” he replied, trying to clean around his mouth with his tongue. “Did you manage to find what you were looking for?”

“Yes, kind of. I got a set of throwing knives, but I'll have to balance them myself. It's a long story,” she replied, before filling him in on all the details. Lusam looked quite worried when she recounted the part of the story where she had fought the blacksmith, but he didn't comment on it.

“Sounds like you had some fun this morning,” Lusam said, still trying to get every last bit of the apple from its core.

“Yeah, nothing like an early morning workout,” she replied laughing. Neala decided not to tell him about the strange feelings of being followed, in case he thought she was just being paranoid. “How's it going with the books? Seems you have a large stack to sort through at the moment,” Neala said, trying to change the subject.

“It's going much faster now that I can move large numbers of books with my magic. I guess we don't need that
wheelbarrow anymore,” he replied.
“It should be a lot easier on our backs from now on too.”

“If you don't need me to move books for the time being, would you mind if I start balancing these knives?” Neala asked hopefully.

“No problem at all,” replied Lusam. He was happy that she would have something to occupy herself with, while he continued cataloguing the books.

“Do you have any of that chalk left you used on the walls?” Neala asked.

“Yeah. There are a couple of sticks of it here. How many do you need?”

“Oh, just one is fine thanks. I found an old table in one of the rooms a while back. I was planning to take it into the large room. I figured that if I stood it up against the wall, and drew some targets on it with the chalk, it would help me balance my knives.”

Lusam found the chalk and handed a stick to Neala. “There's more if you need it. Do you need a hand with that old table?” he asked.

“Thanks, but it didn't look very heavy. Besides, I doubt it matters if I damage it slightly by dragging it around if I'm going to be throwing knives at it anyway,” she said laughing.

“True, I guess,” he agreed laughing along with her. “If you do need any help, just let me know.”

“Okay, thanks. I think I'll eat my breakfast first, then go get the table,” she said, finding a seat on a pile of books and opening her own sweet pastry. Noticing Lusam hungrily eyeing up her breakfast, she just laughed and tossed her apple to him. “Here, eat this. I'm not that hungry at the moment, and I can't train on a full stomach anyway.” Lusam deftly caught the apple in mid-flight, smiled at her, and started munching on the juicy apple. Neala just smiled at him, shaking her head ever so slightly to herself, and continued eating her pastry.

Later that morning Neala managed to move the old table into the main chamber. She removed the legs from the table quite easily. In fact, it almost removed its own legs, as it stood swaying from side to side. It looked like the old wood had dried out completely, and the joints had become very loose. It had been a simple task of pushing it to one side, and the legs had just folded under the table with the sideways pressure. She was now left with a large board: which had once been the table top. It was about the same height as her when she stood it up against the wall, and maybe twice as wide as a person. For a few moments Neala wondered what type of target to draw on the large board, before deciding it might as well be human-shaped. Standing with her back to the board, she traced, as best she could, around her own body with the chalk onto the table top,
switching hands with the chalk several times in the process.
When she had finished she took a few steps back and looked at the outline. '
Not bad
,' she thought to herself. A few minutes spent on strengthening the lines and smoothing parts out, and she was left with an accurate outline of a person of average height. She added a few targets within the outline to represent various kill points, before moving back ten paces to have a go at throwing a knife at the target. She knew the knives were not balanced, but decided to see how they would fly anyway. It didn't take Neala long to realise they were a long way from perfect for her. Over half of them hit the target handle first, which for obvious reasons, wouldn't be much good in a fight of life and death. Neala knew she could adapt to them eventually, but that meant almost having to relearn the skill of throwing knives all over again; something she wasn't prepared to do. An advantage of centre-balanced knives was the fact you could throw them accurately from either the handle or blade, something you couldn't do with an unbalanced knife. If you trained to throw balanced knives, you could throw any balanced knife accurately. If you normally used unbalanced knives, you would have to learn each knife set individually, which could be a big disadvantage, especially if you happen to have just picked up a random knife during a fight, only to find out you couldn't throw it accurately.

Thinking about the knives, her best guess was that
the man who had originally ordered them, had been taught to throw using an unbalanced set, and therefore he would always order them that way if he could, to maintain his accuracy.
Neala knew she preferred them balanced, and so, she started the long process of filing the handles of each knife to achieve a perfect balance point. It was hard work, and she estimated she was only about half-way through balancing the first knife, when Lusam came into the room and announced he was hungry again. Rolling her eyes, she pointed towards the package of food near the door, before continuing to file her knife handle.

“That looks like a laborious job,” Lusam said, nodding towards the knife and file in her hands.

“No kidding. The metal that blacksmith used is very good quality, but it makes it incredibly difficult to file anything off, because it's so hard,” Neala replied, slightly out of breath and sweating.

“Can I take a look?” Lusam asked, holding out his hand. Neala handed him the knife, and then watched as he inspected the file-work she had already done on the handle. “How much more do you think you need to take off?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe about the amount same again. I prefer the handle and blade to be perfectly balanced at the half way point, or as close as possible,” she replied, pointing to the centre of another knife.

“I see,” he replied, studying the knife carefully. “I
noticed you're filing off the weight from the handle.
Would it make any difference if the blade was slightly longer, and the handle equally slightly shorter?”

“No, not really. I'm making the handle shorter anyway by filing it. Balance is the most important thing for a throwing knife. Why do you ask?”

“Well … remember when I made those gold coins? I think I could do something similar with your knives. I could put them in a force-field, heat them up, and lengthen the blades slightly. Metal from the handle would be added to the blade section as I manipulate the force-field,” he replied, with a thoughtful look on his face.

“Really? You could do that?” Neala asked, a little shocked at his suggestion.

“I guess there's only one way to find out, but they're your knives, so you have to decide whether to take the gamble or not.” Thinking for a moment longer, he added, “Worst case scenario; I mess them up, and you'd have to wait a few days until Seventh-day, until I could make a few more gold coins. Then you could simply go back and buy some balanced knives from that blacksmith. As long as you don’t kill him this time,” he said, laughing at his own joke.

“Hey!” she said, slapping his arm. As she hit his arm he dropped the sharp knife, and it sank deep into his foot. Lusam screamed with the sudden pain in his foot, stumbled backwards, and found himself sitting on the floor
staring open mouthed at the knife protruding from his foot.
“Oh gods! I'm so sorry Lusam,” Neala said, panicking at the sight of her knife in Lusam's foot. “What shall I do? Shall I go get the healer to come down here? Oh, I'm so, so sorry!” Neala was almost beside herself with grief at what she had done to Lusam.

Breathing through the pain, Lusam replied, “It's okay, just wait a second.” He concentrated on the area of his foot where the knife was sticking out, and searching his, newly acquired, knowledge of healing magic, he applied a spell to stop the pain emanating from it. With a huge sigh of relief, he lay back on the floor. He then took several deep breaths, desperately trying to stop himself from feeling so nauseous. Now that his mind was free of the pain, he could think much more clearly for a solution to his predicament. He realised the book had taught him how to heal wounds, and although he was confident he could complete the spell successfully, he would have preferred his first attempt had not been on himself.

“Neala, I need you to pull out the knife,” he said, still lying flat on his back. “If I do it myself, I think I'll just throw up.”

“But, if I pull it out it's going to hurt you even more. I've already hurt you enough,” she replied almost in tears.

“No. Don't worry, it won't hurt me. I've already blocked the pain with magic. I definitely need you to remove
the knife though.
I've never been good with blood, especially my own,” he replied, still looking at the ceiling.

“Okay … if you're sure you want me to do that?” she asked, looking at his very pale and sweaty face. He nodded his agreement to her, so she quickly bent down, and removed the knife in one swift movement. Much to her relief, Lusam didn't make a sound, but now she was stood holding one of her knives, coated in her best friend's blood. She had seen blood many more times than she cared to remember, but never had it effected her this way. Putting the knife down, she went to Lusam's side and took hold of his hand. Lusam looked up at Neala and smiled at her, then squeezed her hand.

“Don't worry. I'll be fine,” he tried to reassure her. “Could you remove my boot please? I'm not sure I can sit up yet, and it feels like it's bleeding quite badly. I can feel my boot filling up.”

At that Neala began to look even more worried, but she began to loosen his boot as he asked. When she was able to remove the boot and see the wound for herself, she was amazed how calm Lusam was. The knife had passed right through his foot, and left a nasty looking hole the full width of the blade. His boot did indeed contain a lot of blood—as he had said—but far more concerning, was the amount of blood now flowing freely from his foot. The knife must have cut through a blood vessel of some kind, and now it was
pumping from his foot with each beat of his heart.
Lusam concentrated on his foot with his mage-sight, and applied his new healing knowledge to the wound. First he had to reconnect the severed dorsalis pedis artery, which was responsible for pumping out the blood so fast. How he even knew the name of it was a mystery, but one he would ponder over at a more appropriate time. Bringing the two severed parts together, he fused them back into one piece with magic, before moving on to inspect the rest of the injury. He didn't find anything else too serious, and began knitting the wound back together from the inside out. When he reached the surface layer, he pulled the two sides of skin back together, before finally sealing the wound completely.

When he opened his eyes he saw Neala still staring at his foot with her mouth wide open, as if in mid-sentence. She noticed Lusam looking up at her, and still completely speechless, she simply shook her head, before almost diving on top of him, and enveloping him with a huge hug.

“That was amazing! Your wound just healed right before my eyes. How did you do that?” she asked in a shaky voice.

“It was amongst the spells I learned from the book, fortunately for me. I was hoping to try it out on someone else first, though, to be honest.” Tentatively he removed the spell suppressing the pain, and was relieved to find he no longer had any pain in his foot. He wiggled his toes and
rotated his ankle to make doubly sure everything was working correctly, then with a sigh, he said, “I suppose I better go wash all of the blood out of my boot before I put it back on again.”
“Oh, no you don’t! I'll go do that for you. It's the least I can do after causing the problem in the first place,” she said, reaching for his boot. “You stay right here and eat your lunch. I'll be right back.”

Lusam almost lost control of his stomach at the thought of eating anything. “I think I'll give food a wide berth for a little while,” he replied, still looking very pale.

Neala took the boot and disappeared up the stairs towards the shop above. After a few minutes Lusam began to feel much better, and sat upright to look around the room. He noticed the knife on the floor that had been inside his foot only a few minutes earlier. Reaching over, he picked it up to take a closer look at it. He was no expert when it came to knives, although, he could testify with absolute conviction at how sharp the blade was, but even he could tell it wasn't well balanced: the handle was much heavier than the blade. He decided to try and correct the balance while Neala was gone. He very much doubted Neala would give him a hard time, even if he did end up destroying the knife whilst trying to correct its balance. Not after what had just happened.