by Jeff Wheeler
“Choose,” the man said again. His voice had the ring of finality.
The sun had lowered. Soon it would touch the edge of the world and disappear.
If he left, if he walked away, he would never know the kind of power that awaited him below, in the bowels of this place. He might learn magic and become a maester himself, but he would lose Mnementh. He would lose his chance. He would never feel the power of a dragon thrum through his veins.
Choose, Mnementh whispered into his mind.
That liquid voice filled him with a coolness that was like a deep river, flowing over and through him.
The plan was so simple, really. Almost too easy. Mnementh hated Griven. He hated the man who had chained him in this abomination of a place for so many years, using him at will like a hammer and nails. Griven must never be allowed to touch the ring. Keeping him from it would be easy. Cyril wouldn’t have to kill him. All he needed to do was let Mnementh loose. Unlock the manacles.
Free the dragon.
Mnementh would take care of Griven, and then the power of the ring in all of its dark glory would be his to do with as he would. The blended magic of man and dragon, contained in a single band of gold, would belong to him.
Cyril looked back into the scarred face of the Wardein, framed by the setting sun. The twisted lips were turned down, his eyes sad. They pleaded with Cyril to change his mind, but he could not. There had never really been a choice. Not for him. His life had led him here. This was his destiny, and he was going to grab it with both hands. He was going to ride the dark wind.
Slowly but firmly Cyril closed the door, shutting out the light.
T.E. Bradford
Tracy wrote her first complete story and her first song when she was twelve. They set an early tone for her desire to express faith and inspiration with words and music. Since then, she has continued to express herself, and to convey her beliefs in stories and song. She has published poems and articles in various literary magazines, and her column “Inside Technology” ran in the Harbinger out of Mobile, Alabama, for several seasons. As co-owner and a senior editor of ABC Editing Services, she helped aspiring and self-published authors achieve their goals, and is proud to have several books on her shelves at home that recognize her contributions to their success.
Tracy found her true writing voice when she combined young adult with fantasy, added a dash of music, and wove in a breath of spirituality. She will tell you that her husband once told her that kids today know more about fictional characters than they do about God. It is her deepest desire that through her words and stories she might be able to change that, and to shine a light that will help others find their way when the path is dark.
The Wizard's Granddaughter
By Christopher Baxter | 11,500 words
Dwyn felt her spells react to the explosion before she heard it. She dropped the flask she’d been about to fill and darted to the window just as a dull boom rattled her cottage. Across the garden stood her grandfather’s tower. Guided by her spells, flames roared out of the narrow chimney that poked up from the steep roof. The rest of the tower seemed unharmed, not a stone out of place.
The wards should have protected her grandfather, but she wasn’t positive she’d gotten everything right; they had been very complicated to create. She turned to sprint for the door. Then she paused to ensure that her pots were all simmering at safe levels—she felt guilty for taking the time when her grandfather might be hurt or worse, but if she didn’t, then she risked a second explosion right there in the cottage. It only took a moment to satisfy herself that everything would be safe, and then she took off down the hall.
A foot from the front door, Dwyn tripped and nearly fell, barely catching herself against the wall in time. As she opened the door, she glanced back to see what she’d tripped over—it was a stack of newspapers, the South Wales Echo. Several matching stacks stood along the wall. When had her grandfather left those there? She’d just cleared the room out the night before.
She sprinted along the gravel path between her home and the tower. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a few of her neighbors peeking over their fences. They were used to odd noises from the high wizard’s tower, but that one had been louder than most. A car had stopped in the street, and the driver was leaning out the window with his bowler tipped back on his head.
Dwyn yanked open the tower’s heavy oak door. A narrow staircase ran up along the curved outer wall, made even narrower by the stacks of papers, boxes, and clothing as high as her waist that crowded the left side. She cursed her grandfather’s traditionalism as she scrambled up the four flights to the top. Most wizards those days lived in simple houses or flats in the city—why couldn’t he?
“Grandda?” she shouted as she burst into the uppermost room of the tower. “Grandda!” She couldn’t see him over the piles of junk that filled the place. Somewhere in the room, his old radio was blaring, dry old newsreaders discussing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in dusty but deafening voices. But when their speaking paused, she could just barely make out the sound of coughing and grumbling. She sighed in relief. If her grandfather was grumbling, he was probably not seriously hurt.
She took a moment to catch her breath, relief warring with irritation and guilt. She shouldn’t let him make potions anymore—disasters would just keep happening. Then she snorted and shook her head. How was she supposed to stop him?
She edged down the one relatively clear path through the stacks of junk, occasionally tiptoeing in a vain attempt to see her grandfather. It didn’t look like anything in the room was on fire; the wards had worked, though they’d left more smoke in the room than she’d have liked. The explosion had also knocked things into the narrow pathway through the junk—an old burlap doll here, a bundle of brown weeds there, and a box of dried plum pits beyond that.
Dwyn carefully stepped over it all, fanning herself with her hand. Whenever she went in there, the piles of junk seemed to loom in toward her, crowding her space, and the smoke made it even worse. The blaring radio was beginning to make her head pound. She bit back curses. That was it; she was going to clean the whole tower out.
Coming around a curve in the path, she finally found her grandfather. He was standing next to a table that sat beneath the window, using an old shaving brush to painstakingly sweep fine purple dust off a stack of newspapers.
“Grandda, are you all right?” Dwyn asked as she climbed over a toppled crate. He couldn’t hear her over the radio show, which had moved on to a discussion of the looming threat of war on the continent. She bit her tongue in irritation; that was the last thing she needed her grandfather to hear about. She pushed her way to the radio, a tall, decade-old standing model that poked out of a pile of junk a few feet from her grandfather, and switched it off. “Grandda!”
Her grandfather jumped and turned to face her with a reproachful frown. “Dwyn, there you are,” he muttered, his voice gravelly with a heavy, singsong Welsh accent. “Did you meddle with my protective wards?” He waved a gnarled hand over his head, gesturing to the smoke. “This should have cleared out by now.”
Dwyn sighed. “I replaced your wards years ago, Grandda. I told you about it—you had let them fade.”
“My wards were fine,” he grumbled, hunching his shoulders and turning back to the stack of newspapers.
“Are you hurt?” Dwyn took the old man by the shoulder and turned him to face her. He was a little bit shorter than she was, wrinkled and tan—at least, she hoped he was tan and not just dirty. His hair was disheveled, as though he’d only gotten halfway through combing it before giving up, and he’d missed several small patches of white whiskers when he’d shaved that morning. Dwyn stifled another sigh and straightened the ragged green robes that he wore—the man looked like a beggar.
“I’m fine, Dwyn, leave it alone,” her grandfather said, pushing her hands away and turning back to the stack of newspapers. “If you want to help, you can get the fae dust off these papers.”
“G
randda, they’ll fall apart before you could ever get them clean. Just throw them out.”
“Well, I can’t throw them out until I’ve read them.”
Dwyn leaned over his shoulder to look at the top newspaper: the UK Wizard’s Times from June 25, 1919. “They’re over twenty years old.”
He didn’t reply; she was pretty sure he’d heard what she said and was simply ignoring her. Rolling her eyes, she turned to his workstation.
“What happened, then?” she asked, eyeing the dented, cracked cauldron on his workbench. A towel had been hastily shoved beneath it to sop up the mud-thick brown goop that was dripping out.
Her grandfather didn’t reply.
“Grandda, what exploded?”
“What?” Her grandfather turned to her, his brow furrowed. “Oh, this blasted cauldron cracked and leaked the potion I was brewing. I’ll tell you, I’m angry about that—I just got it back from McKaeton, and he promised me that it was patched up perfect. Overcharged me too.”
“Blacksmith McKaeton moved back to Glasgow three years ago, Grandda.”
Her grandfather blinked, his face startled. “Oh. Well . . . it must have been another blacksmith, then.”
“Why aren’t you using the new cauldrons I bought you for your birthday?”
“Well, my old one is good enough,” he grumbled, returning to his newspapers.
“Obviously it wasn’t.” Dwyn leaned forward to sniff the puddle of brownish potion on the workstation. Icebark, fourth clover, and . . . mandrake? No, something else, something with a strong scent. Was he trying to make a shapechange potion? “Grandda, which potion is this?”
“The clearthought potion, of course. I managed to salvage enough to fill a flask, though.”
Dwyn’s stomach dropped and her headache seemed to spike. He’d been trying to make clearthought, and he’d ended up with that? She followed the puddle to where it leaked off the back of the workstation, and found the twisted remains of a rusty steel bucket on the floor there. So the potion had leaked into the bucket and reacted with whatever it held, causing the explosion. She picked up the bucket and then frowned, studying the charred remains of plants within it.
“Grandda, was this bucket holding anything other than powderpods?”
“No. I picked them the other day,” he said, not looking up.
“There’s not much that would have reacted with powderpods,” she said, frowning. She turned to search the shelves above his workstation. “What was in that potion?”
“You know what goes in clearthought, Mair. Nothing in there caused the explosion.”
“Something caused it,” Dwyn replied. She didn’t bother, anymore, to point out when he called her by her mother’s name.
“I’ll tell you what it was,” her grandfather said, pointing out the window at their neighbor’s house. “I caught those goblin neighbors of mine nosing around my garden last week, trying to steal some of my ingredients. I’m sure they messed around with the powderpods and got something else in them. Goblins are always doing things like that.”
“The Jameses aren’t stealing from you, Grandda.” She pulled a tray of dark green leaves from one of the shelves and sniffed it. They had a strong scent—the smell she hadn’t been able to identify in the potion. “What is this?”
Her grandfather stared at the tray for a moment and then turned red. “Well, that’s just some of the starleaf that I found in my lawn.”
“Grandda . . .” Dwyn closed her eyes and took a deep breath before continuing. “We discussed this—it’s not starleaf, it’s a weed!”
“I know starleaf when I see it.”
“Where’re the points on the leaves, then? Where’re the silver veins?”
Her grandfather turned away with his lips pursed stubbornly.
“It’s a weed, Grandda,” Dwyn continued. “It’s a weed that’s been growing in your yard and soaking up stray bits of magic. It’s what made the potion explode.” Shaking her head, she dumped the weeds off the tray and into the dustbin beside the workstation.
“Dwyn, don’t!” her grandfather shouted, hurrying forward and snatching the bin from the floor. “Maybe I wouldn’t have to scrounge for wild starleaf if I still had any in my garden.”
“Scrounge . . .” Dwyn gritted her teeth, fighting for calm. “The starleaf needed to be harvested before the full moon, Grandda! You’re the one who taught me that! I kept asking if you were going to pick it, and you never did. Half of the crop went bad before I harvested the rest.”
Her grandfather mumbled something under his breath as he began picking the weeds out of the dustbin and placing them carefully on the tray.
Dwyn shoved the tray aside. “And then—then I brought you half of what I picked. You said you didn’t want it, remember? I had to force you to take it, and what did you do with it then? You left it in the sunlight and it withered!”
She realized suddenly that she was almost shouting, and went quiet, breathing heavily. She rubbed her temples. How had her mother dealt with him for so many years?
Her grandfather simply pulled the tray back into place and resumed picking leaves from the bin. After a moment, Dwyn sighed and turned away.
“I’ll bring you some starleaf later,” she said, “and we’ll dig through this place and find the cauldrons I gave you. Are the other potions ready? I’ll take them down.”
“I’ll take them,” her grandfather replied. He dropped the dustbin and shuffled past her to a half-buried chair near his completely buried bed, grabbing a small leather satchel that was balanced precariously on the edge. “I need to make sure the lad knows the proper dosages.” He tromped from the room.
Dwyn took a deep breath, reminding herself how glad she was that he wasn’t hurt, and followed him down the stairs. She eyed the stacks of junk along the wall; it couldn’t have been more than two months since she’d last cleaned it out. Where did he even get all that stuff?
A young man was sitting on the grass outside with his back against the fence—she hadn’t even noticed him earlier, or the rusty bicycle that leaned on the fence beside him. The lad’s hair was a dark brown, a little lighter than Dwyn’s, and when he scrambled to his feet, he was just a few inches shorter than her.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, wringing his hands.
“Everything’s fine,” her grandfather replied. He held up the satchel. “Here are the potions for your father.” He proceeded to list off when the young man should give his father doses of which potion, as though he expected the lad to remember it all from the one lecture. Dwyn shook her head—his instructions made little sense, anyway.
The young man nodded, wide-eyed, and bowed once her grandfather finished. “My whole family gives their thanks, High Wizard,” he said. “Our local hedgeman has tried to treat him, but it wasn’t helping. I couldn’t believe it when he told me I could go to the great Arliss Bobydd himself!”
Despite her frustrated mood, Dwyn smiled slightly at the look on her grandfather’s face—he was beaming. He stood up a little straighter and adjusted his robes. “Yes, well . . . I’m always happy to help. If anyone else in your village falls ill, you just come back to me.”
“Thank you, sir!” The lad hesitated, biting his lip. Just as Dwyn’s grandfather began to turn away, the young man blurted, “Why is everyone talking about war, sir?”
Dwyn’s grandfather blinked. “What?”
“It’s just . . . won’t the Peace Ward—”
Dwyn stepped between them and placed a hand on the lad’s arm. “How far is your village?”
“Oh—I’m from Llanelwedd,” the lad replied, glancing back and forth between them. “About seven hours away on my bicycle.”
“So you probably haven’t eaten since you left home, have you? In what . . . eleven hours?”
“Oh . . . well, no.”
“Come inside and have a meal before you go, then. That’s a long ride to make on an empty stomach.” Dwyn forced a smile and gestured to the cottage, pushing the boy alon
g before he could bring up the rumors of war again. If her grandfather heard about that, he’d want to run off to the continent to fix things, and no one would be able to convince him that he wasn’t able to anymore.
Her grandfather was frowning, but he didn’t follow them. Grumbling, he turned and headed back into his tower. Dwyn sighed; that good mood hadn’t lasted long.
The young man hesitated, glancing down at the satchel he still held against his chest. “I just . . . I worry about keeping my father waiting for his medicines.”
“We’ll get you something you can eat while you ride, then.” Dwyn took him by the arm and began pulling him toward the cottage.
The lad looked up at her with a frown. “Miss, can I ask you something?”
“Certainly.”
“If the Peace Ward is still protecting us, then why is everyone so worried about war?”
Dwyn winced and glanced over her shoulder involuntarily. Her grandfather was nowhere in sight . . . not that he would have been able to hear them if he was. “Wards don’t last forever,” she replied, turning back. “They fade over time.”
The young man’s eyes went wide. “So . . . there could be a war?”
“Don’t worry.” Dwyn tried to make her tone reassuring. “We can always make another peace ward.”
“Would the high wizard do it again?”
“Well, he’s retired now,” she said. “But I’m sure that Lord Wizard Churchill will make one if things come to that.”
The young man nodded. His shoulders relaxed a bit, and he smiled as they entered the cottage. “Thank you, Lady Wizard.”
“I’m . . . not actually a full wizard. Just a student.”
“Are you the high wizard’s assistant?” the young man asked as she sat him down at the kitchen table. “Is that why you live here?”
“I’m his granddaughter,” she replied, digging through a pouch at her waist. “This was my mother’s cottage until she passed last year.”
