With a Single Spell

CHAPTER 12

Three days passed quickly. Five by five, the adventurers set out for the hills, starting on Tobas’ second day in the castle; each night the dining halls were a little less crowded.

The castle armory was also partly emptied, as well as the dining halls, though Tobas noticed that only the second-rate, bent, ill-balanced, or rusted swords were handed out. When he finally decided that he should have a sword, even though he didn’t know how to use it, he spent over an hour coaxing a decent blade out of the armorer, using dire threats of magical vengeance and unbreakable curses; and even then, he found a few rust spots and had serious doubts about the metal’s temper.

He asked several Dwomorites about the dragon and got a variety of descriptions. It was said to be blue, silver, black, or green and anywhere from forty to a thousand feet long, with the most common estimate fifty or so. One woman claimed it could fly, another that it recited poetry to its victims before devouring them. Everyone agreed that it was scaly and shiny and shaped much like the traditional storytellers’ dragon, that it breathed fire, that it ate people, and that it had a very nasty disposition. No one had any useful suggestions on how to go about killing the creature.

Among the various foreigners, no one he spoke to seemed the least bit interested in taking a wizard along with his party while hunting the beast, at least, no one who spoke Ethsharitic. A rather sickly-looking prince from somewhere called Teth-Korun expressed interest through an interpreter, but Tobas reluctantly turned him down; the language barrier would be too much trouble. The prince didn’t even speak Dwomoritic; his native tongue, the interpreter said, was Quorulian, and his only other language a variant of Trader’s Tongue. He lived in virtual linguistic isolation, since only one other person in the castle, a minor official of some sort, spoke Quorulian; Tobas pitied him, but not enough to join his party.

Although Tobas made it a point to find the other magicians, none of them were any more interested in his company than were the various princes and fortune hunters. The sorcerer spoke no Ethsharitic; the theurgist knew only a few words and phrases, most of them religious in nature, and seemed to be generally suspicious of everything about Tobas. The wizard finally concluded that the priest had gotten wizardry and demonology confused, somehow; naturally, no theurgist wanted anything to do with a demonologist.

The witches could all speak to him; only one had actually learned Ethsharitic in the normal way, but the other two had enough magic to pick it up as needed. Witchcraft, Tobas had heard, was very good at that sort of thing; many witches had the gift of tongues. In other schools of magic, it was rare and difficult to achieve.

Ease of communication did not matter, however, as all three wanted nothing to do with him. The three worked as a team and made it plain, politely but unmistakably, that they needed no wizard, with his tools and chanting and ritual, getting in their way. They seemed to consider wizardry somehow old-fashioned and unreliable.

Tobas, for his part, had always considered witchcraft to be a sort of poor relation of true magic, since, in all he had heard as a child, witches tended to be very limited in what they could do and traditionally lived in genteel poverty, unable to compete with the mightier magicians, the wizards and warlocks and sorcerers and the rest, who often became quite wealthy and powerful.

He had to admit, though, that his one pitiful spell was probably of less use than even the feeblest witchcraft. A witch could light a fire without athame or brimstone and with no need of gestures or incantation. Thrindle’s Combustion did not require much in the way of ritual or preparation, but it called for more trappings than any witch needed. Disappointed, he gave up on the idea of teaming with a witch and perhaps picking up a little of the craft.

Tobas had also hoped to see more of Alorria, but was disappointed in that; with several dozen adventurers around, Alorria could spare little time for any one, even the only wizard. Her mother, Queen Alris, was not particularly impressed by claims of magical power and did not allow any of the princesses to show undue favor; after all, any one of them might find herself required to wed any one of the dragon hunters, and any premarital attentions to others might crop up unpleasantly in later years.

He thought that Alorria seemed somewhat disappointed, almost as disappointed as he was, when her mother the queen would come and chase her away from him to take a turn speaking to another adventurer. He hoped that this wasn’t just wishful thinking on his part.

He had not even realized that first night in the castle that Dwomor still had a queen, but her Majesty Alris of Dwomor certainly made her presence felt during the rest of his stay; it was she who actually ran the household. The king and his courtiers were responsible for the country as a whole; the queen and the Lord Chamberlain were responsible for the castle and everything in it, including the people.

That meant the queen and the Lord Chamberlain were the final authority on who slept where, who ate when, who could see the armorer, who could practice swordplay or magic in the courtyard, and who could speak to whom. Tobas discovered that, as a commoner, he was not allowed any contact with several members of the royal family. The king and queen could do as they pleased, of course, the five princesses had a special dispensation in light of the prospects for marrying one of the adventurers, and not even Queen Alris could control the widowed Queen Mother, but the three young princes — Derneth and Alris had not produced females exclusively — were carefully kept away from the ordinary dragon hunters at the same time that they were encouraged to hang around the foreign princes. Since the foreign princes were often in the company of commoners, making their plans for the hunt, and since a true nobleman is never rude enough to snub someone openly and obviously, this got quite complicated, and Tobas found himself pitying the boys.

There were other princes and princesses around, as well; Derneth had two sisters and a brother who still lived in Dwomor, and the brother had a wife. These four stayed in their own quarters and out of the way. Tobas might not even have known they existed had the attempted robbery not occurred.

The entire theft was bungled from the start.

One of the first parties to equip itself was made up of the three Ethsharites Tobas had considered scoundrels, along with two men from the Small Kingdoms, not of royal blood; Tobas never did get all the names and nationalities straight. He did see the five men together, though, and noticed that they had chosen rapiers from the armory rather than broadswords and carried an assortment of knives, all more practical for use against men than against dragons. No one else seemed to find anything odd about this, so Tobas said nothing.

Although apparently as prepared as they were going to get, this group did not depart, but stayed in the castle, roaming the corridors and making nuisances of themselves, until the final night, the thirtieth of Summersend.

Tobas was in his tower, in that vague state between sleeping and waking, when he heard shouting. The thought gradually penetrated his mind that if he could hear the shouting all the way at the top of a tower, then it must be quite loud indeed, and that in the ordinary course of events nobody had any business making such a racket in the middle of the night.

He sat up and listened. Several voices were yammering at each other.

He rose, pulled on his tunic, he had gotten in the habit of removing it at night, despite the cold, so that it might air out, and descended the stairs to find utter chaos below.

He was unable to make sense of what was going on, but he noticed, with some surprise, unfamiliar faces moving about; he had thought he had at least glimpsed everyone in Dwomor Keep by this time, but here were several he had not previously seen, including a handful with a noticeable family resemblance to the king.

After fifteen minutes or so, he gave up trying to make sense of the noise and returned to his bed.

The next morning at breakfast he got the full story pieced together. Arnen and his companions had never had any intention of fighting a dragon; they had planned from the first to steal the reward money and anything else valuable that they happened to come across. Their frequent wanderings about the castle had been attempts to locate the treasury.

They had thought that they had found it when they discovered an entire small wing that no one was allowed to enter and from which no one ever seemed to emerge, directly adjoining the wing occupied by the royal family itself. Accordingly, that night, when they believed everyone to be asleep, they had somehow gained entry to the forbidden rooms; but instead of gold, they had found two middle-aged women who had assumed that rape was intended and had raised a cry.

The five would-be thieves had scattered. The two princesses, Sadra and Shasha, had gone to their nearer brother, Debrel, for aid; it was he whose shouting had first awakened Tobas.

Debrel’s wife, Shen, had misunderstood what was happening and thought that her sisters-in-law were somehow conspiring against her; she began her own shouting.

The king and queen and their eight unmarried children had all been awakened, along with a dozen assorted servants, by the noise, each with his or her own interpretation of what was going on, resulting in the incredible confusion Tobas had observed.

The Queen Mother had managed to calm down her family, finally, and the Lord Chamberlain had gotten the commoners in line. Two of the thieves were captured immediately; the third, Korl Korl’s son, was found in a larder when the cooks started preparing breakfast. The remaining two, Arnen and one of the ones from the Small Kingdoms, had apparently gotten out of the castle and escaped.

The whole affair struck Tobas as singularly stupid. He had no idea where the thousand pieces of gold might be, but surely they would not take an entire room, let alone an entire wing! One fair-sized chest should do, he estimated. That assumed that the money really existed; at times, he had his doubts. This entire dragon hunt seemed preposterous, and he had wondered whether it might not all be an elaborate fraud of some sort. He had noticed that a few of the adventurers had departed alone or in pairs or threesomes, presumably giving up the quest, and Tobas suspected they might have had the right idea. Azraya had been one of them, to his surprise; he had thought she was the sort of person who would stick it out no matter how foolish or dangerous it might become.

He had never quite found the nerve to ask any of the Dwomorite officials why the hunt was being carried out as it was and why no experts or high-order magicians had been called in; that still seemed to him like a far better approach than turning this motley group loose on the countryside.

The attempted theft was the sole topic of conversation throughout breakfast and on into the morning, but Tobas was far more concerned about his own fate than Arnen’s. He had signed up to fight a dragon, made a commitment at least to get out in the hills and look, and he intended to make at least a pretense of honoring that commitment, if only because he saw no other way to survive for long in Dwomor and no way to get safely out of the country. He would accompany four others out there and would wander around a little; if they had the monumental bad luck actually to come across the dragon, he would do everything he could to help the others kill it. That, he felt, was as much as anyone could expect from him under the circumstances. As yet, however, he had found no team willing to take him on, and this was the final day, the first day of Harvest.

By the midday meal the population of the castle had dropped significantly, despite the disturbance of the night before. The king himself made a tour of the dining halls as the adventurers ate, then returned to the chamber where Tobas and the remaining Ethsharites, the trio of Peren, Arden, and Elner, were eating and announced, “Only nine of you remain. Two groups, then, five in one and four in the other. Have you decided how the division is to be made? There are four in here and five in the Lesser Hall; is that to be the final ordering?”

Tobas and the others looked at one another; this quickly transformed into the other three studying Tobas while he looked warily back.

“I have no plans to the contrary, your Majesty,” Tobas said, breaking the silence.

“We have no objection to the wizard’s aid,” Peren said, ignoring distressed glances from Elner and Arden.

“Then that’s how it shall be,” Derneth declared. “We would not send even a wizard against this dragon alone.”

“Your Majesty is very considerate,” Tobas said.

The others said nothing, and Tobas looked at them with some misgivings as the king departed. For the most part, they avoided looking at him at all.

Three hours later the four found themselves in the castle courtyard, their supplies heaped at their feet and the sky thick with clouds above their heads.

“I guess we can’t put it off any longer,” Arden said.

“There’s no reason to; we’re all here. Let’s go kill a dragon,” Elner said, hoisting his pack.

“You make it sound easy,” Tobas replied as he picked up his own.

“It will be easy,” Elner answered. “With your magic and Arden’s strength and my cunning, that dragon’s as good as dead. I just hope someone else didn’t get to it first; some of those princes and other foreigners had horses, where we’re on foot. We better hurry if we want that reward.”

“Oh, really?” Tobas demanded. “You’re sure it’ll be easy, are you? Who do you think you are, Valder of the Magic Sword?”

Startled, Elner stared at Tobas.

“Valder didn’t kill any dragons that I ever heard of,” Arden commented.

“He killed demons, though, and if he could kill demons he could presumably kill dragons,” Peren pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter what Valder killed; I’m the one who’s going to kill this dragon,” Elner insisted. “It’s not as hard as you think.”

“What do you know about dragons?” Tobas demanded.

“More than you, anyway!”

“Ha!”

That ended the discussion for the moment; when he judged that it was safe to speak, Peren asked, “Can you provide transportation, Wizard?”

“No,” Tobas said. “All I know is fire-magic.”

Peren shrugged. “It was worth asking.” He shouldered his pack and started toward the gate.

The other three followed, and together the four marched out beneath the raised portcullis.

On the road outside they paused, looking about at the drab scenery and leaden skies.

“Which way?” Arden asked.

“North,” Peren answered. “All the sightings and killings have been north of the castle.”

“Which way is north?” Elner asked.

Tobas thought he remembered the castle’s orientation, but to be sure he looked for the sun, which he hoped would be visible as a bright spot in the deepening overcast. Before he could locate it and reply to Elner’s question, Peren pointed off to the right. “That way.”

Tobas nodded agreement.

“There’s a road up ahead that branches off that way,” Arden pointed out.

“The dragon won’t follow the roads,” Elner said. “Why should we?”

This received general agreement, and the four headed off cross-country, around two of the village’s houses and past the castle midden.

Tobas tried to ignore the stench of the refuse heap by studying the land and sky around him; the mountains were fascinating, a little like gigantic frozen whitecaps. He looked them over, wondering how much climbing he would be doing in the next few days, then glanced up in time to catch the first raindrops in his face.

By dusk they were past the first ridge, out of sight of the castle, lost in the forests, and soaked through. They stopped for the night in the first clearing they found, which had once been the dooryard of a small cottage. The cottage was now a burned-out, roofless ruin, and after a brief debate about making some use of its charred and crumbling walls, they chose instead to stay well clear and set up their two small tents in the yard in miserable silence.

When the tents were up, Arden and Elner immediately crawled into one. Tobas glared at them through the flap for a moment, then said, “Hey! What about dinner?”

“What about it?” Elner demanded.

“Someone’s got to gather firewood.”

“What for? We can’t light a fire in this rain! We’ll just eat dinner cold.”

Tobas drew his dagger and stuck his other thumb into his pouch for a little brimstone. “I,” he declared, “intend to have a hot dinner, even if it means roasting one of you.” He worked his spell, and a small shrub near Elner’s elbow burst into flame. “After slogging up these hills I think we deserve something warm, don’t you? I can light a fire, rain or no rain!”

Elner stared at the burning shrub, even as the rain doused the flames. Peren announced, “I’ll get the wood.”

Even as the albino vanished in the surrounding trees, Tobas regretted his actions. He had driven a wedge between himself and the others, he knew, by showing off his magic and ordering them around; that might be a serious error. He had no way of knowing how long he would be with these people.

He was not at all sure just what he and they would do. Elner seemed certain that they would quickly find and dispatch the marauding dragon; Tobas was just as sure they would not. Elner probably assumed that this cottage had been burned out by the dragon, Tobas thought, but more likely someone had simply been careless with a cookfire.

Of course, if he was right and the monster was not anywhere near them, what would become of them when the dragon failed to materialize was uncertain.

The hospitality of Dwomor Keep was intended for dragon hunters; if they returned there empty-handed, they would not be welcome. That left two choices, stay in the mountains looking for the dragon indefinitely or go somewhere else. Tobas was all in favor of going somewhere else, but had not yet broached the subject to the others. Elner, convinced that he was destined to kill the dragon, would surely refuse to consider the idea. Arden would go along with the majority.

And Tobas was not sure of Peren. The albino did not usually talk much and did not seem inclined to volunteer opinions or information. However, he was here, so he presumably intended to tackle the dragon.

Maybe a few days of sore feet and wet clothes would change their minds, Tobas thought as he waited for Peren to return.