With A Single Spell

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “That’s probably its lair,” Tobas said.

  “I don’t know,” Arden said. “It’s just a cave, I think.”

  “You couldn’t have seen much of it, though.”

  “Well, no...”

  “And what does a dragon’s lair look like, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Arden admitted.

  “I think that’s the dragon’s lair, then,” Tobas declared.

  Nobody argued the point further.

  After a long moment of silence, Elner asked, “Well, what do we do now?”

  Tobas hesitated, but finally asked, “Do you still want to go after the dragon?”

  “By all the gods in Heaven and the demons of Hell, of course not!” Elner declared. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “I was just asking,” Tobas said mildly, trying not to smile at Elner’s vehemence. “We know what it’s like now, and where its lair probably is. We know what we’d be up against if we went after it.” He had no intention of going after the dragon, but he wanted to know where his companions stood on the matter.

  “I don’t think that cave is its lair,” Arden insisted.

  “Whether that’s its lair or not, I’m not going back there and I’m not going to try and kill it,” Elner said. “I’m going back to Dwomor and buy passage back to Ethshar. If they ask me at the castle I’ll tell them as much as I can about the dragon, but I’m going home; I’ve had enough of this. Let my parents nag me if they want to.”

  “You won’t try to seduce Alorria?” Tobas asked, teasing. “I’m sure marrying a princess would impress your family.”

  Elner snorted. “There are plenty of pretty girls at home, and they don’t care that I’m a commoner. Alorria can marry a dragon-slayer or a prince, with my blessing.”

  “What about you, Arden?” Tobas asked.

  Arden looked uneasy. “I guess I’ll go back,” he said. “I don’t want to see that dragon again, and I don’t much like Dwomor, from what I’ve seen of it. I don’t have any money to buy my way home, but maybe I can find work and earn enough to pay for my passage.”

  “I’ll pay your fare,” Elner volunteered. “I’d be glad of the company, and you can pay me back later. Maybe my father can give you a job, if you want, aboard one of his ships.”

  “All right,” Arden said, obviously relieved. “I’d be grateful. I’m no sailor, though; maybe he could find a job for me on shore.”

  “Whatever,” Elner said, dismissing the matter.

  “Peren,” Tobas asked, “what are your plans?”

  The albino did not answer for a long moment. Finally, he said, “What about you, Tobas? Aren’t you going back?”

  Tobas hesitated for a few seconds before answering. He had been asking the others at least partly to help him make up his own mind. He had arrived at a decision, but was not yet entirely sure of it. “No,” he said slowly, “I don’t think I am — at least, not unless all three of you go back. There’s nothing for me in Dwomor or Ethshar, and I’m not welcome in Telven any more. I was never very welcome in Ethshar, for that matter. I think I’d rather go on over the mountains into Aigoa, or whatever it is that’s on the other side, and see if I can find something profitable to do there. I’m not going to try and go alone, though; if all three of you want to go back to Dwomor, I’ll come with you and see about finding some way to make a living there — or to get to somewhere else.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Peren said. “I don’t have anything in Dwomor or Ethshar, either.”

  “Thank you,” Tobas said sincerely. He turned to the others. “Arden? Elner? Would you reconsider?”

  Elner shook his head. “I’m going home,” he said emphatically.

  Arden wavered, but then likewise shook his head. “No. I’m going with Elner. These mountains, and trees, and dragons, and castles, and princesses — they’re all strange. I’m going back to Ethshar. I grew up on the streets there, and I guess that’s where I belong.”

  Tobas nodded understandingly; his own home was gone, but he did not begrudge the others theirs. “I guess this is goodbye, then. Peren and I will be heading on to the east, over the mountains, and you’ll be heading south, to the castle. We’ll probably never see each other again.” He paused, then said, “Good luck; may the gods watch over you.”

  “Don’t be in such a hurry to get rid of us!” Elner said peevishly. “It’s almost sunset; I figure we’ll camp here tonight, the four of us, and split up in the morning.”

  Tobas glanced at the western sky and realized Elner was right. “Well then, let’s get the tents set up,” he said, reaching for his pack.

  The four of them spent a pleasant evening together, talking about their lives, discussing wild schemes for disposing of the dragon — though they all knew none of them would be implemented — and enjoying each other’s company. The tensions that had previously kept them at arm’s length had faded with Tobas’ revelation of the extent of his wizardry, and with the greater understanding that had resulted from the confrontation with the dragon.

  In the morning they packed up the camp, divided the supplies, and headed off in their separate directions.

  As Elner and Arden were about to vanish from sight among the trees, though, Tobas called after them, “Hey! What will you do if you meet the dragon?”

  Elner turned back, drew his sword, flourished it over his head, took a heroic pose, and called back, “Run for our lives!”

  Tobas and Peren laughed, then turned and hiked on up the slope.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They came upon the ruined town on the morning of the second day after leaving their companions. Peren was the first to see it; he pointed it out to Tobas.

  Although the ruins looked quite old, they were well up into the mountains by now, and Tobas wondered whether looters would have gotten this far. Even if they had, they might have missed a few items; the town looked fairly large. He could not imagine why a community of any size would have been built up among these empty mountains in the first place. Curiosity, combined with the possibility of finding abandoned valuables, compelled him to suggest they investigate more closely.

  Peren had no objection, and together they headed across the forested valley that separated them from the ruins.

  The town had been built into the stony slopes of a fair-sized mountain peak. Tobas estimated that it had once been home for three or four hundred people, but that seemed incredible up here in the barren middle of nowhere.

  They reached the outskirts just after noon, and paused to rest and eat before continuing.

  When they had brushed away the last crumbs they cautiously approached the nearest ruins and looked them over. Tobas guessed that the building had been a house, but a very peculiar house; the few windows were narrow slits, so that the interior would have been very dim and gloomy had the roof been present.

  The rooms inside were arranged oddly. Tobas could not locate a kitchen at all; he found no oven and no chimney.

  As Tobas poked through the scattered stones in a back room Peren exclaimed in surprise. Tobas turned and peered back through the door; the albino was holding up something small and black.

  “What is it?” Tobas asked.

  “Sorcery!” Peren announced.

  “Really?” Tobas came back to look at Peren’s find.

  It was a convenient size and shape to fit in the palm of a man’s hand, partly corroded metal and partly something black that had a texture resembling shell or ivory. “What is it?” Tobas asked again, when he had studied it closely.

  “I don’t know,” Peren admitted, “but doesn’t it look like a talisman? You’re the magician; don’t you know what it is?”

  “I’m a wizard, not a sorcerer. I’ve never seen sorcery in my life. It looks like a lady’s jewel-case to me, not a talisman.”

  Offended, Peren took it back, saying, “Well, it looks sorcerous to me!”

  “All right, maybe it is,” Tobas agreed.

  They found nothing else of interest in tha
t first building, and moved on to other ruins.

  They turned up nothing of value. In one roofless and crumbling ruin Tobas found a sword lying atop a heap of rubble, thick with rust; when he picked it up the blade fell to powder, leaving him clutching the lead-wrapped hilt and sneezing uncontrollably, a long reddish rust-streak down his arm.

  “This place must have been built during the Great War,” he remarked. “Maybe they came up here to get away from the Northerners.”

  “Or from the press gangs,” Peren suggested. “I can’t believe the Northerners ever got anywhere near this far into the Small Kingdoms.”

  “How long would it take a sword to rust away like that, anyway?” Tobas asked. “The air up here is pretty dry, isn’t it?”

  Peren nodded. “Yes, it is. I’d say that must have been lying there ... oh, three or four hundred years, anyway. The war’s been over for two hundred, after all.”

  Tobas looked at the hilt with increased respect for a moment before tossing it away. “Three hundred years ago, Telven was empty grassland.”

  “Ethshar was about half the size it is now, I guess,” Peren said.

  Tobas looked at his companion. “I suppose you’re used to old things, then, but in Telven ... well, if my grandfather made it, it was old. We didn’t have anything from the war; Telven wasn’t built until long after it was over.”

  “Where is Telven, then? You’ve never said.”

  “Oh, it’s near the coast, west of Ethshar of the Sands,” Tobas said, trying to sound casual. His reply was truthful enough, if not quite complete. He was unsure how Peren might react to learning that his companion was a pirate’s son.

  “Near the Pirate Towns?”

  “Near there,” Tobas agreed uncomfortably.

  They moved on, and spent the rest of the day exploring the town. They found nothing of any value, but accumulated considerable evidence that led them to surmise that the place had been abandoned roughly three hundred years earlier, after only a century or so of occupation.

  Several of the buildings were cut directly into the living rock of the mountain; Tobas judged that most of the work had been done by magic. He had heard that the ancients used much more magic than modern people, and this town seemed to bear that out quite emphatically. They found traces of a demonologist’s pentagram carved into the stone floor in one house, shattered jars and broken shelves reminiscent of wizards’ workrooms in several others, and any number of mysterious objects that Peren thought might be sorcerous. Witchcraft and theurgy left no traces, of course, and warlockry had not been known until the start of the fifty-third century, so they came across no evidence of those, but they encountered what Tobas thought might be wholly unfamiliar magicks, perhaps entire schools now lost — strange etchings in floors and walls, substances neither of them could identify, shards of oddly-shaped vessels of glass and porcelain.

  They made camp in one of the larger, cleaner ruins that night, and made a very peculiar discovery when Tobas tried to light their campfire. Thrindle’s Combustion would not work. He tried it several times, with no success.

  Finally, he gave up and let Peren light the fire by means of slow, laborious work with flint, steel, and tinder.

  When the fire was going and two strips of dried beef soaking in a tin of hot water, Tobas shook his head. “I don’t understand why the spell didn’t work,” he said for the hundredth time. “I know I did it right. It’s been months since I made any error in it. It always works.”

  “Maybe you’re just tired,” Peren said.

  “No, that’s not it; I’ve done it plenty of times before when I was tired.”

  “Maybe it’s something about the ruins, then.”

  “Maybe. Maybe so much magic was used here that some of it still lingers, and that’s messing up my spell somehow.”

  “That sounds reasonable.”

  “I suppose it does.” Tobas was still not convinced, even though the theory was his own. Finally he shrugged. “I’ll just have to try again in the morning.”

  In the morning he tried the spell again, several times, still without success.

  “I’m going to go back down and see if it works outside the ruins,” he announced.

  “I have a better idea,” Peren said. “Why don’t we go the rest of the way up to the peak, and take a look around? From there we may be able to see the far side of the mountains, and see how much further we have to go to reach Aigoa — or someplace, anyway. And you can try your spell up there; the ruins stop before the top.”

  Tobas had to admit that sounded reasonable; he followed as Peren led the way through a broken wall onto the open slope.

  Fortunately, the mountainside above the town was not particularly steep. It was, however, the highest peak in the area, and the winds were ferocious and unpredictable, whipping Tobas’ tunic about like a flag. He climbed with his arms wrapped about himself, keeping the garment from ballooning out with each gust.

  A few feet from the top Peren stopped abruptly and fell to his knees, then crawled forward, first on all fours and then on his belly. Tobas stopped in his tracks and watched this performance with surprise.

  Then he looked on ahead of his companion and saw the reason for it. Squinting against the wind and concentrating on his own garments and feet, he had not really watched the terrain ahead. They had reached the peak, and rather than a symmetrical slope down the other side, as he had expected, Tobas saw that it ended in a cliff. Peren had not dared to approach that sheer drop while standing upright in a high wind.

  Tobas realized he didn’t care to, either, and dropped to his belly before inching up to Peren’s side.

  The view looking over the cliff was incredible — and distressing. The mountains continued for as far as they could see, row after row of them, some wooded all the way to the top, others with bare gray rock peaks that reached above the timberline or lacked sufficient soil for trees to grow in.

  Tobas glanced back the way they had come and noticed a determined patch of lichen clinging to the rocks. Remembering what he had come up here for, he fumbled at his belt, found his dagger and brimstone, and tried Thrindle’s Combustion on the lichen.

  Nothing happened.

  Annoyed, he sheathed the blade and looked out over the cliff again.

  Peren was staring off into the distance, studying the mountains, and Tobas saw little point in that. Instead he looked down, toward the bottom of the drop.

  Something very odd stood almost directly below them. He inched up further toward the edge and stared down, shading his eyes with one hand.

  “Peren,” he said, “do you see that?” He tugged at the albino’s sleeve and pointed.

  Peren looked. “What is it?” he said at last.

  “I think,” Tobas said, “it’s a castle.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Peren said. “Why would anyone build a castle down there, where an enemy could drop things on them, instead of up on a mountaintop where they could see further? And besides, I can see the sides as well as the roofs; it’s all crooked.”

  Tobas studied the structure for another long moment. It was undeniable that whatever it was, it was at a very strange angle. “I don’t think it was built there,” he said, “I think it fell there.”

  Peren looked at him in surprise, then ran a hand along the edge of the cliff. “You mean from here?”

  Tobas nodded. “Maybe,” he said.

  Peren looked down at it again, then back toward the ruins. “You can’t be right,” he said. “I mean, it would make sense, a castle up here would have guarded the town behind us, I suppose, but the fall would have smashed it to pieces!”

  “Not if it had strong magic holding it together,” Tobas suggested.

  “But magic won’t work here, will it? Your spell didn’t.”

  “Wizardry doesn’t work here now, but maybe it did once; after all, weren’t there ruins back there that looked like they were wizards’ laboratories once? Besides, I don’t know about other kinds of magic; maybe it was sorc
ery that held it together.”

  Peren stared down at the red roof and white walls of the mysterious structure. “Maybe you’re right,” he admitted grudgingly.

  Tobas said, “I want to go look at it.”

  Peren looked at him, then back down the cliff. “That must be a thousand-foot drop,” he said. “We can’t climb down that.”

  “No, of course not!” Tobas said, “but we can go around.” He pointed off to their right, to the south, where the cliff dropped down to meet another slope.

  “Besides,” he added, “that’s no thousand feet. Three or four hundred, if you ask me.” He started backing away from the edge.

  Reluctantly, Peren followed him.

  When they were both upright and walking back down through the ruins, Tobas remarked, “That castle looked intact, not very ruined at all; I mean, not only did it survive the fall, but it hasn’t weathered away since. I guess it’s pretty well sheltered there, with the mountain on one side and trees on the other. And hidden, too. There might still be some valuables.”

  Peren nodded. “Maybe. I wonder what it’s doing there, though. Why would anyone build a town and a castle up here? A town of draft-dodgers or refugees I suppose I can understand, but a castle? And on a precipice where it fell off eventually? Who would build such a thing?”

  “I don’t know,” Tobas said, “but maybe we can find out.”

  As they worked their way down the mountainside Tobas insisted on stopping every few hundred yards to try his spell. As he had expected, it failed completely all the way down through the ruined town, and at the first two stops beyond the ruins as well.

  After that, however, it worked, feebly at first, and then more reliably. He successfully ignited several small shrubs and a patch of moss. Peren grew annoyed at the frequent stops and the need to put out the various fires Tobas started, but made no protest.

  As they circled around to the southeast the spell’s power faded again, so that it elicited only a few sparks by the time they reached the south end of the cliff face, and ceased to work at all as they turned northward again, toward the fallen castle.