The Wizard And The Dragon Read online

  The Wizard and the Dragon

  By Joseph Anderson

  The Wizard and the Dragon

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © 2012 by Joseph Anderson

  Also by Joseph Anderson:

  The Wizard and the Dragon

  Monster Slayer Series

  The Monster Slayer Series One, Complete

  Origins

  Vampire Season

  The Immortal Demon

  Werewolf

  Zombies

  The Monster Slayer Series Two, Complete

  The Slayer and the Dragon

  The Ogre and the Bridge

  The Beast of Charn

  A Murder of Vampires

  The Missing Bride

  Night of the Necromancer

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter One

  I have torn pages from this book and burned them, erasing false starts as I struggle to find a way to explain everything that’s happened. I struggle because I don’t know if you’ll believe me. I don’t know if I would believe me. My summaries fall short and sound hollow, even as I read them back. Instead I will tell you the whole story and allow you to judge it yourself. I hope what you learn from it will not make things worse.

  The pages left will have to be enough. No more false starts.

  The dragon attacked sixteen years ago almost to this exact day. It was late afternoon on a warm summer’s day and I had climbed the wall that surrounded our village. I was only ten years old and boys weren’t allowed on the wall, but I had a good hiding spot on the east side. There was a small gap in the stone below the walkway on the wall that I could crawl into and hide. It was barely big enough for me to fit into.

  I would lay there when it was nearing evening and watch the village stretch out in front of me: the small clearing that was used as a marketplace around the village tavern and the rows of small houses around them.

  I would watch people go about their business and spy for any unattended stalls with a piece of fruit that wouldn’t be missed later on. Some days I would watch the sun sink over the far side of the village beyond the west wall. The light would cast shadows from every building in my direction. It was part of what made my hiding spot so good.

  I think I was the first to see the dragon. It came from the west and was a small blot on the sun. The size of the monster played tricks on my eyes and I thought at first that it was a bird that was close to the village. The flapping of its wings caught my attention and I watched as it flew closer, at first only curious at what kind of bird could be so large.

  Someone screamed nearby. Someone near me that was far enough from the west wall to see over it. I was the first to see the dragon but not the first to recognize what it was. The last image of it flying toward us will forever be fuel for my nightmares. The dragon’s body eclipsed the sun and then continued to grow as it neared us, blocking it out completely and engulfing our entire village in its shadow.

  There was a moment of quiet as the dragon hovered over the village. I could see the people in the market as still and silent as I was, either gripped and stilled by terror or holding their breath and hoping the monster would decide to leave us alone.

  Fire came around the dragon’s body from its wings and tail, swirling together in blues and reds and oranges. Each flap of its wings increased the intensity of the blaze and flames came together and covered its body like a cloak.

  The people in the market began to stir but it was too late. The fire surged forward and coalesced at the dragon’s snout, packed tightly together as a vibrating ball of molten heat. There was a roar from the monster as the ball of fire was hurtled down into the middle of the village and it hit like the sun itself had crashed into us.

  The silence had been broken with the dragon’s roar and screams came out muffled amongst the crackling fire. There was a crater in the middle of the village and the people that had been standing there weren’t burning or dead but were simply gone, obliterated by the fire. Those that had been nearby were corpses and burned, darker shapes in the fire. Others were running through the flames wailing as each step brought them more pain. There was no where they could run that wasn’t burning.

  The dragon flew forward again and I felt marching footsteps above my head on the wall. The guards of the village were responding and gathered to shoot their arrows at the monster. Shouts and bellowed orders joined the sounds of shrieking people and collapsing homes as they crumpled from the fire.

  The dragon must have swooped down over the wall. The bodies of guards were shot into the village and fell from the wall in front of me. Some were burning, some fell in pieces, and others weren’t dead until they hit the ground with a sickening crunch.

  Smoke was heavy in the air. Most of the buildings had been made of wood and the fire seemed to have spread to them all. The dragon came back again and landed this time, putting its claws down through the fire on the ground as if it were nothing and could do him no harm.

  Arrows flew from the last few guards on the wall and bounced off the dragon like twigs being thrown at a rock. The beast ignored them and turned his head to the tavern near the middle of the village. It was one of the only stone buildings that we had and stood on the outer edge of where the ball of fire had landed.

  The dragon began to flap his wings and the smoke was blasted clear from the air. I saw fire once again gathering around the dragon’s body but it spewed forward this time, coming around the dragon’s mouth in a stream of fire instead of condensing together. The flames filled the tavern in seconds and an explosion thundered out from it. The roof popped off the walls and the building collapsed into itself.

  The last thing I saw gave me a brief moment of hope as I lay shaking in my hiding spot in the wall. The village wizard came into my view behind the dragon. He was an old man but he had always done magic for children on feastdays. He could move things without touching them and make light dance in his hands.

  I saw the wizard stop a few paces from the dragon’s tail. He was dwarfed by the monster, his head barely reaching the same height as the dragon’s knee. I saw a gathering of light in the wizard’s hands similar to how the fire brewed around the dragon’s wings and tail. There was a bright flash and a bolt of lightning arched through the air and collided with the back of the dragon’s head.

  The dragon stumbled forward from the blast and roared. It turned around, its tail smashing through the wreckage of buildings and scattering rubble. It tilted its head at the old wizard. He had fallen to his knees after focusing the spell. It seemed to consider the man for a brief moment before it snapped its head down, faster than I could ever imagine something so large moving, and chomped him in half.

  There was so much blood. The dragon roared and took off into the air again and the smoke returned, thicker than before. My view and hiding spot were smothered. The last thing I remember is the sound of the drago
n’s wings, beating through the air when my vision went dark.

  I don’t know how much time passed before I woke up. My throat burned and my mouth was dryer than I had ever felt. I became aware of my own shallow breathing and began coughing uncontrollably. When my lungs had cleared a little I was able to move and look around. At first I thought I was blind, but I rubbed my eyes and cleared them of ash and peered out again. My eyes could see but it was too dark to make out anything.

  I felt out for the edge of the wall and pulled myself up. My muscles ached but I suddenly felt uncomfortable and anxious in the small slot in the wall. My hands groped the wooden surface on top of the wall and slipped from it. There was a layer of ash over it. I rubbed my fingers through it and cleared some of it away. I felt some of it fall into my hair.

  When the wood felt clear enough I gripped the edge and pulled myself up like I had done hundreds of times before. I propped myself up and out of the wall but my fingers had collected too much of the ash and some of it still clung to the wood. I tried awkwardly to squirm back into the hole but I pulled myself out too far. My fingers slipped away and I fell clear from the wall and down below.

  I landed on the bodies of the guards. It didn’t register at first. The shock of the fall that should have broken my back ended without the spasm of pain I expected. When I struggled to get upright and found that I was amongst a pile of body parts and corpses, the horror of the dragon’s slaughter hit me harder than the fall.

  My feet slipped in blood and ash but I never stopped clambering to get away from the dead men and women. When I was finally clear of them I raced along the bottom of the wall and out from the ruined houses. I sprinted into what remained of the market and fell on my knees.

  Most of the fires had burned away but smoke still streamed out in scattered places around the village. There were still embers among the collapsed buildings and stalls and too many charred corpses to count. The crater still sank the middle of the clearing and the bodies closer to there were contorted in agony, as if they were still burning after death.

  I looked down at my arms and couldn’t see my skin. It looked like I had been climbing through a chimney. My throat was burning and I suddenly noticed how thirsty I was. I decided I’d walk through the north gate and head to the river from there to wash and drink. My family’s house was near the gate and I thought I would see my parents and sisters on my way.

  I was still a child. The idea hadn’t occurred to me yet. My parents stood like invincible pillars in my life, strong and powerful. That the dragon had killed them too didn’t occur to me until I was standing at the north gate, looking at the blackened, exposed frame of our house. Something was still burning inside and I couldn’t look. I walked through the gate with tears running down my face, mixing with the soot and stinging my eyes.

  When I reached the river I fell back on my knees. Even out here, a few moments from the village, the ground was littered with the burn remnants of our home. The surface of the river was sick with it, a murky gray, and I wept harder at the sight of it. My parents had been fishermen. They had their own stall in the market. The thought of them next to the soiled river made me hysterical.

  I don’t know how long I spent there. It must have been late in the evening when I walked through the gate and it was deep into the night when I finally stopped sobbing and screaming. No one came to check on me.

  The night sky was heavy with clouds and it started to rain as I walked up stream, far away enough that the water was still clean enough to drink. It hurt to swallow the water but I was too thirsty to care. I had intended to wade in the shallow parts of the river to clean myself but the rain was hard enough that I didn’t bother. It was washing me well enough.

  I looked back at the village and the same rain falling hard through the smoke that still snaked up from inside the walls. The fires would be extinguished but it was already too late. In the distance I saw lightning branch out across the sky and panic grabbed me when the thunder came several seconds later. It was like the roar of the dragon.

  I ran from the sound without thinking. The hairs raised on my back as if something was about to snatch me from behind. I ran from the village and through the farms around it. Each time the thunder boomed it seemed closer to me, and my mind imagined how a dragon could hide itself in such a noise. The image of the dragon parting through the storm clouds was fixed in my mind. I couldn’t run fast enough.

  The ruined farms were a blur to me in the dark. They hadn’t been spared in the attack. There were no farm animals left alive and the fields I ran through were empty. I ran without even knowing where I was going until I spotted the edge of the forest in the dark. My childish mind decided that I could hide from anything in the trees, darting between trunks and hidden under the branches and leaves.

  When I first entered the forest the loudest explosion of thunder yet erupted in the sky, reminding me of the sound of the tavern bursting open from the dragon’s fire. I’m still not sure if what I heard next was actually the dragon’s shriek through the rain or only my imagination, but it was enough to keep me running through the trees and deeper into the forest.

  Some days I have felt that it was cowardly to run from noises. On my most bitter days I hate that I didn’t have the courage to stay behind and at least bury parents. Especially now, years later, that I know how they were defiled in the months after the attack. On better days I know that a child should not be blamed for running from the monster that had just reduced his home to a husk.

  I didn’t see the tower in the distance and I didn’t know how far I had ran. I stepped on the stone foundation around the tower and stopped in shock, and my lungs and legs began throbbing the moment they were given a rest.

  The tower was dark and blended in with the shadows of the forest. It should have been a foreboding, dreadful sight, but my clothes were soaked and clung to my skin. My chest felt hot and raw from running so hard but the rest of my body was cold from the rain. The tower looked welcoming in comparison to the drenched forest.

  I walked up to the tower door unaware that this was about to become my home. A place of danger and magic, but nevertheless my home and prison for sixteen years.

  Chapter Two

  The door was made of the same kind of stone as the rest of the tower. It was large and heavy and had a handle carved into the stone itself. I was a small boy and it was a strain to pull the door open. My feet scuffed and slipped along the floor to gain only a tiny amount of movement. I had to stop and rest a few times before the door finally budged enough that I could see inside.

  The interior looked dark and I had a final moment of doubt before the storm blasted in the sky above the tower. It felt like the thunder was chasing me and I started to press myself through the doorway. I squeezed my way into the small opening and then rushed to close the door behind me.

  The storm seemed to be picking up and the wind howled, pressing against the door and helping me close it with a loud slam. The sound echoed through the hallway and up through the tower. I walked cautiously down the hall in the dark.

  It was a dozen or so paces before I reached the central chamber of the tower. It was a large, circular room that ran the entire height of the building. There was a staircase that spiraled along the interior wall. I saw at least two closed doors at different levels along the stairs. I guessed they led to rooms built into the inner wall of the tower. The rest of the room was hollow and I could see the roof far above my head.

  The tower was easily the largest building I had ever been in. Despite the fear I had felt outside, I had a quiet moment of wonder at the size of it. Along the stairs I spotted narrow windows that shimmered with each flash of lightning. The sound of thunder was muffled by being inside but it still set me on edge.

  I dripped water everywhere as I walked around the ground floor, not wanting to brave the stairs yet. There was a table and a few chairs in the middle of the room. The table was bare except for a layer of dust. There was a second door on the opposite side o
f the room. This one was made of wood and was smaller than the front door.

  I walked toward the second door and was about to place my hands on it when I heard a noise from upstairs. It sounded like another door being closed and I froze in place. There had been no lightning so it wasn’t thunder. My mind leaped to the conclusion that it was the dragon landing on top of the tower but I forced it aside. The sound hadn’t been loud enough for that.

  The thought of monsters was enough to get my imagination going. Every story I had heard about abandoned buildings came back all at once. Travelers would talk about trolls claiming empty buildings and hunting out of them, killing and eating anything. Others spoke of spirits and the undead, former owners lingering on after they had passed not willing to give up their homes.

  The tower suddenly seemed colder and darker and a shiver ran down my back like hands on either side of my spine. I could hear footsteps now, coming down the stairs, but I didn’t wait to hear anything else. I darted across the room and back into the hallway. I crashed into the door and started to push.

  The wind worked against me now and my feet skidded along the floor uselessly. I could feel the wind creeping through the tiny gaps between the door frame, hissing at me as I struggled against the stone. Even throwing my weight against the door wouldn’t shift it.

  I turned as the footsteps drew closer and put my back against the door. I slid down onto the floor and huddled together, hoping that I could maybe hide in the dark from whatever monster was coming to eat me. I thought of how the village wizard was bitten in half and wanted to scream.

  There was a moment of quiet where all I could hear were the footsteps and my own heart racing, waiting to explode at the sight of a monster and save myself from the pain of being eaten. I took shallow breaths that grew more rapid as the shadows around the hallway began to fade from a light being drawn toward them. Whatever was coming down the stairs must have been holding a torch.