The Forging of the Dragon (Wizard and Dragon Book 1) (4 page)

“He was waiting there for you, no doubt,” Quirl snorted. “You did well in bringing him to me.” Then Quirl looked at Seagryn. “I’ll say this for the boy. He does a clever job of setting up support for his lies. But what I don’t understand is what you Lamathians hope to accomplish by all of this? Are you in league with the bear? Is that it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Quirl snorted again. “Yes, you do. But what do you gain? You hope to frighten us away. But why? This easternmost edge of the Marwilds has no value to you, while to us it is a last retreat from the bear and the armies of Arl! If you think a ruse will drive us from it, you are much mistaken. Nor will we be swayed by this morning’s rumors of a horned monster.” Quirl’s golden mustache twitched as he grinned with half his mouth. “We of the Marwilds recognize the power of magic, but we have better sense than to believe such foolishness.”

As he struggled to absorb Quirl’s words and make sense of the man’s strange conclusions, Seagryn heard the unmistakable crack of a strap hitting a back, and a strangled grunt in response. He jerked upright, his eyes wide. The boy?

“Oh, yes.” Quirl smirked. “We caught your little friend, and now he’s paying for his constant jokes. Can you tell me why you deserve any better treatment?”

The whip cracked again, somewhere outside the tent. “Seagryn!” he heard the boy cry out. “Seagryn, remember last night?”

Indeed he did, and the memory of that conversation and its implications jolted him into action. “Stop!” he commanded, and he ducked out of the tent. His response was so swift and unexpected that the two guards who had been holding him were left staring at one another. Quirl mod Kit flashed them both a look of incredulous disgust before darting between them and out after Seagryn.

“Stop!” Seagryn shouted at the man who held the strap, but not soon enough to prevent another lash.

“Oww!” Dark hollered. “Didn’t you hear the man? He said
stop
! I’m not going to be responsible if he sticks a horn through you —”

Three pairs of hands grabbed Seagryn’s arms and shoulders, and he heard Quirl shout “Keep flogging!” at the executioner. Something the lad had said the night before sprang to mind; as the whip was raised again, he wondered if this, too, might be so. “Powershapers can make flame if they try,” the boy had said. Seagryn tried.

“Ahh!” shouted the executioner as he dropped his strap to the ground and stepped away to stare at it. “It’s on fire!” he gasped. Indeed, it was, and Seagryn, who had willed it so, was as surprised as any of them.

Dark didn’t seem surprised at all. “Better turn me and this wizard loose,” the boy ordered his captors, “or the next thing to fry will be you.”

Quirl looked at the boy, the burning strap, and Seagryn in quick succession, his astonishment evident. “Are — are you a powershaper?” he asked.

Seagryn didn’t like the question. Given his loathing for magic, he didn’t like it at all. But circumstances demanded that he not quibble with that description just now. He nodded.

Quirl jumped back. “Release him!” he shouted. “Release the boy, too!”

“Dark,” the lad said wearily. “The name is Dark.” The boy was quickly untied, and he immediately pulled down his brown tunic and turned to Seagryn. “Whew,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. “I’m glad that’s over.” Then he sauntered past Quirl mod Kit and ducked into the leader’s tent. Quirl followed him. Seagryn saw little alternative but to go back inside it himself.

“Hello, mod Kit!” Dark was saying cheerfully. The lad had stacked a tower of cushions in a corner of the tent and lay on his stomach across it. Seagryn found it a bit difficult to connect this slight figure to that strange voice that had visited him in the blackness the night before. He’d imagined the lad to be taller, somehow, and gangly and blond — as were most of these Marwandians. But Dark was — dark; he had brown eyes, dark brown hair that curled up at the back of his collar and hung in a straight fringe across his forehead, and deeply tanned skin. Dark winked at him, then went on to his captor, “Didn’t I promise that you’d survive yesterday’s attack by the bear?”

“You arranged it thus, traitor!” Quirl snarled — then he looked fearfully back at Seagryn. “Are you about to set this tent aflame?”

“No,” the fledgling shaper mumbled.

“Then please take a seat and help me understand the purpose to all of this. As you see, your partner has already made himself comfortable.”

“Not entirely,” Dark grumbled, rubbing his back.

“You were lucky this time,” Quirl threatened. “You’d better stay close to your powerful friend, or such misfortune might find you again.”

“There’s no question of that,” Dark snorted. “I know precisely when and where it will. But that’s
not
before it will find you, Quirl. Was there any more of this?” The boy gestured with a cup that had held some beverage. Quirl glowered at him, then grabbed the cup away and left the tent, snarling muffled curses. Dark looked knowingly at Seagryn. “They’ll try to kill us tonight.”

“Who are you, really?” Seagryn demanded.

The boy sighed heavily, then answered with exaggerated weariness, “I am Dark the prophet. I know that sounds incredible: ‘He’s just a boy; how can one know the name of a prophet who’s just a boy; surely Dark the prophet is an old man,’ and so on. That’s what you’ve been thinking, right? But I can’t help it. I’m Dark. And whatever you believe, I’d appreciate you using the name. You’ll be convinced soon enough.”

“I suppose you’ve reviewed our shared future and know the precise instant of that?” Seagryn mocked.

“I do. But we’ll be discussing my gift of sight later. Here’s Quirl.” Dark fell silent as Quirl stepped back into the tent.

“Here,” he said, thrusting filled cups toward them. “Please sit still, and I’ll bring you some supper.” He ducked back out.

Dark leaned toward Seagryn and whispered, “They’re having a quick meeting to decide what to do with us. They’ll agree to kill us, plan how to do it, then Quirl will return all smiles to convince us they’ve accepted us into the family.”

“You’re certain of all of this?” Seagryn wondered, amazed at the boy’s self-confidence.

“I was certain of it last night! If you’d let me stay I could have told you this whole day’s events. Of course, I knew in advance you wouldn’t,” Dark grumbled.

“Just as you knew of the beating,” Seagryn murmured to himself.

“Oh,” the boy moaned, “I’ve known about that for months.”

Dark shivered. “I’m so relieved to have it over, at last. Can you imagine what it’s like to know for months you’re going to get a drubbing and not be able to do a thing to avoid it?”

“But that makes no sense,” Seagryn said. “If you knew such and really wanted to prevent it, you’d simply be elsewhere! I think you planned last night to let yourself be caught, knowing that I’d —”

“For what!” Dark snapped, truly angry. “That’s exactly what these forest fools thought, and why they were beating me! Just because I know something’s coming does not give me any control over it! Why is it everyone thinks it should? I told Quirl and his people they would be ambushed. They were. Does that make me responsible? It does to them, even when I tried to warn them! You don’t like the future? Punish the prophet. Happens all the time.” Dark swirled the liquid in his cup and took a long, ferocious draught.

“Then — you actually know the future ...”

“Anything I care to know. And a whole lot I don’t care to know.”

Seagryn nodded. “And you already know what will happen tonight — that these Marwandians will try to kill us but we’ll manage to escape?”

“Close,” Dark corrected. “They’ll attempt to kill us and most of them will manage to escape — from you, anyway.”

“Then — I’ll turn tugolith again tonight,” Seagryn said quietly. When Dark didn’t reply, Seagryn asked, “How long have you known?”

Dark raised his eyebrows. “Known what? You have to be specific, Seagryn. I can read the future, but not minds.”

“That I would become a tugolith.”

“Oh, that. Long enough.”

“Long enough for what?”

Dark sipped his drink and swallowed, his eyes not leaving Seagryn’s. He seemed about to answer when the tent flaps opened.

“Ah, my friends!” Quirl smiled as he stepped inside, bearing two steaming bowls. “Marwandian stew! You’ll enjoy it.” As Quirl passed the bowls to his two guests, his smile seemed a bit too brilliant. Dark caught Seagryn’s eye and nodded knowingly. Seagryn looked at his bowl with some worry, then back at Dark, but the boy was already eating. So ... not poisoned. Seagryn tasted the stew and found it to be delicious, but he ate without appetite, due to Dark’s revelations. That annoyed him. Why did this lad burden him with such disturbing predictions?

Quirl had fetched a bowl for himself and reentered the tent to sit cross-legged in front of Seagryn. “Now my friend,” he began. “Just tell me straight. Weren’t you really sent by the Conspiracy to destroy us?”

The question stunned Seagryn. “Sent by whom?”

“The Conspiracy!” Quirl smiled belligerently. Seagryn looked at Dark for support but found him studying his stew meat. “Oh.” Quirl chuckled. “You’re going to pretend you’ve never heard of it.”

“Of course I’ve heard of it. Who hasn’t? But it’s really only a rumor — a theory people in distress rely on to rationalize their failure.” As he listened to himself quote Ranoth, a dart of doubt stabbed at his heart. This is what he’d always been told, but then he’d always trusted his teachers. Why should he now, when they had so swiftly abandoned him in his need?

“I see.” Quirl mod Kit smiled dangerously. “So you’re saying that I lead a band of distressed failures?”

“Why — no, I mean that —”

“The Conspiracy’s just a stupid myth,” Dark muttered.

Quirl whirled on the boy. “A myth you are a part of!”

“Me? A lad?” Dark cackled. “If there were such an organization, do you think they’d allow a boy to be a member?”

“Do you actually know something of this Conspiracy?” Seagryn asked eagerly. “I’ve always wondered, but it’s not a topic for polite conversation in Lamath.”

Quirl mod Kit’s expression mocked Seagryn’s parochial culture, but he jumped at the invitation to share his collected lore. For, like many who hated the Conspiracy with a passion, he also loved nothing better than to whisper about it long into the night. He told of a treasonous alliance between leaders of every land-warriors and shapers, merchants and priests. Seagryn scoffed at the idea of Lamathian participation, but Quirl swore it was true, even though he admitted he could name no names. Much of it sounded ridiculous, but the new wizard listened in rapt attention, while Dark interjected annoying jests and generally made a nuisance of himself.

“But why?” Seagryn kept asking. “What’s their purpose in these secret rituals?”

“The purpose of the powerful in every age!” Quirl shouted, his eyes ablaze. “To subjugate the poor! To keep us under their heel! To rob us of our land and gold and thus grow ever more wealthy themselves! To steal our freedom!”

The sun set and the tent’s interior grew dark, but Quirl had still more to tell. When he finally finished his tale they could barely make out one another’s faces.

“Well,” Quirl rumbled, his throat grown raspy from so much talking, “there will be more time to discuss this tomorrow. It’s night. Rest here, the two of you. I’ll find a bed elsewhere.” He ducked out of the tent, then put his head back inside to say, “I hope you sleep soundly.” Then he was gone.

“He means that, too,” Dark muttered, “and we know why.”

“I find Quirl quite personable,” Seagryn argued, “and his story fascinating. You really believe they would attack us after such warm conversation?”

“I don’t believe, Seagryn. I know. They’ll wait until the middle of the night when they’re certain we’re both asleep. But you won’t be, and you’ll turn into a person-consuming monster and chase them screaming from the camp.”

He found the boy’s authoritative tone highly irritating. “Suppose things do happen just so? How will I know that your suggestion didn’t put my reactions into my mind?”

“Self-fulfilling prophecy,” Dark muttered sourly. “Why can’t anyone ever ask me a new question?”

“What if it does?” Seagryn demanded.

“Go to sleep. I intend to.” Dark snuggled into his pile of pillows.

“You can sleep when you fear someone is about to take your life?”

“That’s just it, Seagryn, I don’t fear. The reason I’m so sleepy now is because I didn’t sleep at all last night, knowing today I’d get a beating.” The boy turned his face to the tent wall.

“And you’re not afraid of a death threat?” Seagryn asked, incredulous.

“Of course not. It’s a threat, not a thing that will be.” Dark’s voice already sounded groggy.

“Well, I can assure you that I won’t sleep since you’ve told me this,” Seagryn grumbled, and the boy gave a low, sleepy cackle.

“I know.” Dark smiled. “That’s why I can ...” Moments later the disgruntled Seagryn heard the regular breathing of a deep sleep. He wished he could feel so drowsy ...

It happened exactly as predicted. Seagryn suddenly came awake, gripped by an uncontrollable shaking. Then a sword slashed through the fish-satin tent wall, right above his head. He turned tugolith in an instant, exploding the tent around him, and both the sword and the one who wielded it bounced harmlessly off his thick scales. Seagryn trampled that horrified warrior, then roared with tugolith wrath and charged down the line of tents, flattening each one and, he hoped, their occupants as well. Screaming Marwandians ran everywhere, but he couldn’t see them. Evidently tugoliths possessed poor night vision. He galloped toward the sounds of their howls and suddenly felt the stockade walls splintering around his forequarters. Then he stopped, listening as the screams of terror receded into the black woods beyond. Turning around and trotting back into the enclosure, he listened carefully and discovered that his huge tugolith ears possessed a sense of hearing that more than compensated for the poor eyesight. Someone nearby approached him — by the casual nature of the stride he knew it was Dark. “I didn’t crush you?” he said, his voice sounding horribly deep.