Wizard of the Grove

by Tanya Huff

  “The dragons?” the council repeated in one voice, an incident that would have been funny any other time.

  “The dragons,” snorted the new Duke of Lorn, a wiry, brown man who resembled his sister Kly a great deal, “returned to the earth thousands of years ago. When the wizards died.”

  “But one of those wizards lives,” Crystal reminded him. “If the legends are true, then so too must one dragon.”

  The wizards had created the dragons in a contest to determine, once and for all, who was mightiest. They had drawn up the very bones of the earth and changed them, reshaping them into giant flying reptiles, breathers of fire and frost. Each wizard poured his or her mightiest spells into a dragon, and when the great beasts were finished each wizard gave up a piece of his or her own life force so that the dragons might live. Each dragon was a part of the wizard who’d created it.

  But the dragons were also made from the body of the Mother and, to their horror, the wizards could not control the creatures they had made. In great battles that lasted years and forever changed the face of the land, the dragons slew their makers. There was never any doubt of the outcome. In their conceit, the wizards had created too well. As long as the wizard who created it lived, so too would the dragon. And the dragons were stronger.

  When the wizards were defeated, the dragons returned to the earth from which they were made. But if one wizard still lived . . .

  “Then Kraydak’s dragon must live!” Hope rang out in Tayer’s voice. They had a chance after all.

  But Cei was shaking his head, jowls jiggling with the motion. “Impossible. Firstly, if it lived, it would be fighting Kraydak, which it isn’t. Secondly, Kraydak is many things, but I’ve never seen anything to make me think he’s a fool and he must believe that the dragon is dead. You said yourself, he emerged from hiding when he realized he’d escaped his Doom.”

  “It’s been thousands of years,” Crystal replied. “Kraydak has to believe he destroyed the dragon during their last battle. How else could he still live?”

  “How, indeed,” muttered Lorn.

  “But you don’t believe the dragon is dead?” persisted Tayer.

  “If Kraydak lives, the dragon lives. He may have stopped it, but he couldn’t kill it without killing himself.”

  “And why hasn’t Kraydak come to this conclusion?” Lorn demanded. “As Cei pointed out, he’s no fool.”

  “Because he’d rather believe he escaped his Doom than believe it still lurks around some dark corner.” Crystal shrugged. “He was the most powerful of the wizards, maybe he has convinced himself that he can’t be defeated.”

  The council considered that. Kraydak’s ego could indeed blind him, convince him that he must have killed the dragon and, alone of all the wizards, escaped the consequences.

  “Maybe,” said Lorn suddenly, “Kraydak’s right. Maybe he did accomplish what he thinks.”

  “Impossible. The dragons were created as extensions of the wizard’s life force, not as separate beings. If a wizard lives, a dragon must. The Mother doesn’t break her own rules.”

  But She’s willing to bend them, Tayer thought, watching her daughter and knowing that Crystal was something more than just the last wizard. Moonrise came early last night.

  “Why,” asked Belkar softly, “did you not think of this until now?”

  Crystal turned slowly to face him. Why did you not think of this earlier, asked his heart, before my son had to die. “Until last night, I thought as Kraydak does; he is the most powerful of the wizards, he destroyed his Doom. But last night I touched the body of the Mother and it is stronger that he could ever be. The dragons were made of that body, he could no more destroy them than he could destroy it. Somewhere Kraydak’s Doom still lives, and I swear to you I will find it and use it to destroy Kraydak.”

  It will not bring back my son, said Belkar’s heart, but the old duke only nodded and gently touched Crystal’s face, wiping away the tears she hadn’t been aware she’d shed.

  “All right,” Cei said at last, “where do we find this creature?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to ask someone who was there.”

  “That was a thousand years . . .” Cei began, but Tayer broke in.

  “The Grove!”

  Crystal nodded. “Yes, Mother, the Grove. It’s time to wake the trees.”

  Tayer sighed. She felt the peace of the circle of trees tugging at her heart. The one thing that had made all this death and destruction bearable had been the thought of the Grove, forever unchanging, waiting silently and patiently for her return. If Crystal had to wake the trees, there could be no hope that that peace would remain unbroken.

  “But the Grove is weeks away,” Hale protested. “Even riding the fastest horses with frequent changes.”

  “The wind can get there in a few hours,” Crystal told him, “I’ll ride the wind.”

  After what she had done to the mountain, no one doubted she could ride the wind; ride it, dance with it, and tie it in knots if she wanted to.

  “But what of Kraydak?”

  Silence fell as they all considered what would happen if Kraydak attacked while Crystal was gone. Very faintly, in the distance, could be heard the wails of the Melacian survivors.

  Crystal almost smiled. “He set the rules for this game and they say we must both have an army. He’ll be busy for a while.”

  “When are you going?” These were the first words Riven had said to Crystal since he had left King’s Town so many weeks before. They weren’t what he had intended his first words to be.

  “Now.” She brushed past him, uncomfortable with the way his eyes followed her—Bryon was dead—and left the pavilion, a breeze dancing ecstatically in her hair.

  Tayer held tightly to Mikhail’s hand as Crystal spread her arms and the wind began to rise. Harder and harder it blew, until tent ropes snapped and men had to scramble to keep the tents from flying away. Dirt and ashes spun through the air, blinding those who still had their eyes open. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the wind stopped. When people could see again through watering eyes, the wizard was gone.

  Crystal didn’t so much ride the wind as become a part of it. Spread thinly on the air, she let it blow away her doubts, her fears, her anger. It was very tempting just to let go, to let it blow away her self as well, to give up form and failure completely and be one with the wind. Very tempting.

  Fortunately for the Ardhan army, the centaurs had spent six long years implanting in Crystal the one thing that the original wizards had never acknowledged: with great power comes great responsibility.

  The Grove stood silent and beautiful, untouched by the world outside. The peace within it was a warm and loving presence. A presence that fled with Crystal’s arrival. The trees pulled back from her and their leaves trembled in a way that had nothing to do with the wind.

  The centaurs had taught her more than one way to wake the Ladies of the Grove. She chose the fastest. She wasn’t very polite about it either. Looking deep into the heart, of each tree, she wrapped lines of force about the life that slumbered there, and pulled.

  Yawning and grumbling, the hamadryads were drawn forth. Twelve beautiful women, with silver hair, ivory skin, and leaf green eyes, stood ringed around a thirteenth. But the resemblance was purely physical between Crystal and these distant aunts, no emotion stronger than self-interest marred the expressions of the twelve, no breeze dared disturb the beauty of their hair.

  “Well, Youngest,” said one finally, “are you going to tell us why we were so rudely awakened or are you going to stand and stare at us all day?”

  Crystal started. She hadn’t realized she was staring; knowing you bore the face and form of an Elder race was one thing, seeing it something else. “I need your help.”

  “She needs our help,” echoed another. “Did Milthra ask for our help when she started this mess?”<
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  “No,” continued a third. “And did They ask for our help when They planted that,” all heads turned to look at the youngest of the trees from which no hamadryad had come, “in our grove?”

  “No,” finished a fourth. “But now the last of the wizards needs our help.”

  “You know me?” The last of the wizards knew she asked a ridiculous question. It annoyed her that she found the massed presence of the Mother’s eldest children so intimidating.

  “Know you? We watched you being conceived.”

  “And an ugly . . . mortal display it was, too.” added the nymph who had spoken first. “My name is Rayalva. I am Eldest now Milthra is gone. You may address your plea to me.”

  Crystal was not in the mood to be patronized. She gritted her teeth and her eyes began to glow.

  Rayalva smiled with total insincerity. “You have no power over us, wizard. Now, what do you want?”

  Swallowing her ire, and reminding herself how badly she needed the information these infuriating creatures possessed, Crystal forced politeness into her voice. “I need to know where Kraydak’s dragon is.”

  “If you want a dragon,” yawned a nymph who had not yet spoken, “make one yourself. That’s what all the other wizards did.”

  Crystal ignored her and her sisters and spoke only to Rayalva. “The dragons were tied to the life force of the ancient wizards. If Kraydak still lives, then the dragon he created must live also.”

  The Eldest stared at her in disbelief. “You woke us up to tell us that? Of course, the dragon still lives. He’s sound asleep, mind you, but he lives. Didn’t the centaurs teach you anything?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “For several centuries great forces have been stirring and making things decidedly uncomfortable for the sole purpose of creating you so that you could wake the dragon.”

  Crystal sat down rather suddenly on the grass. Her mouth opened and closed a few times. “They never told me that,” she managed at last.

  “It’s something the centaurs would expect you to figure out for yourself,” Rayalva said unsympathetically. “Men, idiots! You, no doubt, have been fighting Kraydak yourself.”

  “Yes.” A blue bolt smashed Bryon from the saddle. Crystal cringed, her throat closed, and she seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. Because she had fought Kraydak, Bryon had died. The hamadryad’s next words came from very far away.

  “A waste of time, you can’t defeat him. Well, maybe in a couple of thousand years you could,” Rayalva was forced to admit, “when your powers mature. You can do many things, you know, not dreamed of by the wizards of old. All your mothers saw to that.”

  “All my mothers,” Crystal repeated weakly, her gaze going to her father’s tree.

  Rayalva sighed. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you?”

  She forced herself past Bryon’s death. At least she could learn how to avenge him. “Figured what out?”

  “Who were the parents of the ancient wizards?”

  “The male gods and mortal women.”

  “And what was the first thing the wizards did when they came into their powers?”

  “Killed their fathers so there would be no more wizards.”

  “And their father were?”

  “The male gods!” Crystal snapped, becoming impatient with the catechism.

  “Leaving who to create more wizards?”

  “If the male gods were dead . . .” She thought for a moment. “The female gods? But my father . . .”

  Rayalva sighed again. “When the remaining gods saw that a wizard had survived, they pooled their essence and presented it to a daughter of the Royal House of Ardhan in such a way that she would be forced to create a child from it. Only Milthra’s heritage kept her alive through that creation; a fully mortal woman would have been consumed.” Rayalva began to slide back into her tree, the other hamadryads following her lead. “You have no father, child,” she said almost kindly, “but you have a multitude of mothers.”

  “I knew we shouldn’t have let the centaurs educate her,” muttered a disappearing nymph.

  “Wait!” protested Crystal, leaping to her feet and staring around the now empty grove. “You haven’t told me where the dragon is!”

  “With the dwarves,” came the answer, and then even the leaves were silent.

  * * *

  Crystal was almost back to the camp when she felt Kraydak searching for her. He used only a tendril of his power, the merest fraction of what she knew he could call up, but it was enough. Dwelling on Bryon’s death, she had forgotten to set barriers, leaving herself open to attack. Bit by bit, Kraydak pried her free from the wind and when he had re-formed her flesh, he dropped her.

  Over a lake.

  He still played games.

  Crystal hit the water with enough force to knock the breath from her, plunging straight down to the bottom. Bound by the weight of her clothes, she began to panic. She thrashed toward what she thought was the surface, her violent movements erasing any chance of floating. Her clothes felt like lead sheets wrapped around her arms and legs. Her lungs burned. She had to breathe. She had to breathe. She had to breathe. She . . .

  Suddenly, something grabbed her hair and hauled her head up out of the water. She forced herself to relax, to gulp great mouthfuls of air, and allow herself to be dragged to safety by the strong arm under her chin. In the shallows, the arm released her, but before she could try to stand, she was picked up and carried to shore.

  “Are you all right?” asked Riven anxiously as he gently eased her down.

  “I’m fine,” she said, checking and discovering it was true. She looked up at Riven’s worried face but couldn’t quite manage to smile. He’d saved her life. Lord Death had been very close. What a stupid way for a wizard to die. She’d never been so embarrassed in her life. “Thank you.”

  Riven shrugged self-consciously and pushed his wet hair out of his eyes. His hand was fine-boned, an old scrape nearly healed across the knuckles. His eyes were deep-set under heavy brows and so light a hazel they were almost green. He was slender but obviously strong and . . .

  Crystal couldn’t believe she was lying there considering the appearance of the Duke of Riven. Bryon was dead. She struggled to her feet, pretending not to see Riven’s offer of a helping hand.

  “Where are we?”

  “About two miles from camp. I was checking the patrols when I saw you fall.” He watched her with an almost puzzled expression on his face. For just a moment the wizard hadn’t looked like a wizard at all. Nor like a princess.

  She nodded, and staggering only slightly, set out in the direction he’d indicated. Riven fell into step beside her and an uncomfortable silence prevailed.

  “Did you find out about the dragon?” he asked at last.

  “With the dwarves,” she said shortly, not wanting to acknowledge his presence because then she’d have to acknowledge some disturbing thoughts, mostly having to do with the feel of his arms around her as he carried her from the water.

  “The dwarves?” He stopped, then had to hurry to catch up as Crystal marched resolutely on. “But the dwarves refuse to have anything to do with humankind. No one has any idea of where to find them.”

  Crystal remembered Mikhail’s great black sword and finally achieved a smile.

  SEVENTEEN

  “The dwarves . . .” Mikhail stroked the hilt of his great black sword and stared thoughtfully off into the distance. He’d been only sixteen when he’d fought for and won the dwarf-made blade; twenty-two years and the golden caverns and carved halls of the master craftsmen still shone as bright in his memory as they had the day he’d left. The home of the dwarves was a sight to remember for as long as life lasted. Unfortunately for most of those privileged to see the caverns, life didn’t last very long.

  “The dwarves,” Mikhail repeated. “Yes, I kno
w where to find them.” He smiled at a memory. “In fact, after you get to a certain point they usually find you.”

  “What point? Where?” Crystal asked, trying not to sound impatient and failing. Kraydak was busy bringing in fresh troops and supplies to continue the game, but that couldn’t take him long. She had to wake the dragon before he turned his full attention back to her.

  “North of the badlands of Aliston,” Mikhail told her, snapping out of his reverie and moving to stand by the map. “Where the northern mountains end, there’s a red sandstone pillar. Whether it was carved by the winds or the dwarves, I have no idea, but it marks the boundary of the territory they’ve claimed for themselves. Here,” he pulled out a dagger and stabbed at the map, “as near as I can mark it, is where it stands.”

  The Duke of Aliston came over and peered closely at the point of Mikhail’s dagger. “Rough area that.” He clicked his tongue. “You’ll need one of my lads as a guide or you’ll never get through the badlands.”

  “I have to go alone.” Always alone, she thought, remembering her reflection fading from Bryon’s eyes as Lord Death claimed him. And it was her fault he was dead. She was never meant to stand against Kraydak. She should have known it from the start.

  “Crystal, no. Not alone.” Tayer got to her feet and held out a hand to her daughter. “If you can’t use your powers for fear Kraydak will notice what you’re doing, you’ll have to take soldiers; guards to protect you.”

  Crystal pushed both her dead friend and her guilt to the back of her mind and gave Tayer’s hand a comforting squeeze. “Don’t worry, Mother, I’ll be fine. Besides, there’s nothing a guard could do to protect me from Kraydak.”

  Tayer wasn’t very reassured.

  “No magic, eh?” Belkar growled. “Then how do you expect to wake the dragon?”

  “I don’t know,” Crystal admitted.

  “And how do you expect to get there?” Cei demanded, the thought having just occurred to him. “Kraydak’s on to your wind trick and we haven’t the time for you to ride. Aliston’s badlands have got to be at least a month away.”