by Rain Oxford
“I’m sorry!” Then again, they shouldn’t have been outside if they were that irreplaceable. I suspected she was lying in order to sell them at a high cost. “Someone catch that goat!” I shouted as he reached the end of the line of shops and turned. He went straight for the shop across the road and continued his destruction on that row. I aimed my wand as well as I could. “Stop the goat!”
Magic shot wildly, struck a barrel, and exploded, spilling wine across the road. A man who had been moving the barrels outside dropped to his knees and dramatically cried, “My barrel! No! That was my favorite barrel!”
“I’m sorry!” I shouted as I passed. I shot again at the goat, and this time I hit a crate sitting out in front of another shop. It popped open and unleashed a few dozen rabbits, which immediately attacked people’s feet. People screamed in terror and tried to get off the ground.
“Why did you have a crate of rabbits?” someone shouted.
“There were only two when I trapped them in there last night!” another villager responded.
I knocked a few rabbits out of my way as I ran. As I passed Merlin and the girls, I snatched up my bag, hoping to use the rope I kept in it to catch the goat. The goat disappeared into the castle ruins, and by the time I made it to the closest hole in the wall, he was gone. I paused at the gaping hole in order to catch my breath.
He bleated again, but the sound vibrated off all the walls, so I couldn’t tell where it originated.
“You might want to catch the goat before it jumps off the roof,” Merlin said in my mind.
I groaned with irritation and started up the stairs. It was worse than it had been the previous time I’d been there. Most of the roof had fallen through the stairs, and the steps between the third and fourth floor were completely destroyed.
After detaching my bow from the bag, I pulled out an arrow and the rope, then tied the rope to the arrow and shot it at a beam in the ceiling of the fourth floor. Sweat ran into my eyes, but with my magic guiding it, the arrow bit into my target with precision.
I flung my bag up and climbed up the rope. Working the arrow loose once I was on the fourth floor was actually the hardest part. I had to do this again to get to the last floor, which was nothing more than rubble. Broken furniture, molded clothing, and rusted armor hinted at the lavish lives of the people who had once lived there.
The goat bleated again, alerting me of his location. “How did you get up here?” I asked, panting. The goat was on the edge of the roof. Although I didn’t think his intention was to jump, the last thing I wanted to do was scare him. I knelt and took off my robe slowly. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. Come here, goat, come away from the ledge.” It wasn’t easy to speak soothingly after running and climbing.
He bleated and took a step backwards, towards the edge.
“No, no, don’t back up. Your daughters told me about your curse and I can help you. I really don’t want to tell them you fell off a castle. Please come here. I won’t hurt you. I’m nice to animals. I don’t even eat meat except for sometimes. I can help you, just come away from the edge.”
The goat took a single step towards me and bleated nervously.
“Yes, that’s it. Come on.” He didn’t, so I held out my robe. “Do you want a snack?” He took a few steps forward. “Good goat.” He was far enough away from the ledge that he wasn’t at risk of falling. I slowly reached into my bag and pulled out the first piece of clothing I touched— a sock. “Do you want this?” I held it out to him and wiggled it. Hesitantly, the goat approached while I spoke soothingly. When he was close enough to get the sock, I pulled it closer. As he chewed on my sock, I tied a knot in the rope and looped it around the goat’s neck as a weak leash. He happily followed me until we reached the steps. “What’s wrong?”
He bleated and pulled away. Curious, I followed him to the other side of the roof… where a set of steps led to the ground behind the castle. They were in perfect condition.
“I’m… okay, you might be smarter than me.” He bleated. “Please don’t tell Merlin about this.” I stepped down and the goat pulled away. I groaned. “Are you joking? You can climb up to the fifth level of a castle, but you’re afraid to go down?”
He strained against the leash.
With a sigh, I went to him and picked him up. Fortunately, he didn’t fight me, because he was heavy. “Dumb goat,” I grumbled, carefully descending the steps. “I hate you, goat.”
By the time I made it to the bottom, I was cursing him, his family, his species, and everything else I could come up with. When I set the goat down and led him to his daughters, he followed me happily, still chewing on my sock. “I’ve got him,” I said, joining Merlin and the girls. “Someone hold him so I can break the curse.”
“You look like you spent a day doing hard labor,” Merlin commented.
“I hate goats.”
The goat bleated indignantly.
“Yes, I mean you, too.”
The goat bleated sadly and nudged my hand.
I immediately felt guilty. No one should feel hated. “I’m sorry. I don’t hate you, I’m just tired.”
The older girl petted the goat and frowned. “Oh, wait, this isn’t our father.”
“What?” I screeched.
“Our goat father has black eyes. This one has blue eyes.” The goat tried and failed to nip her hand.
“If that’s not your father, who is?”
She glanced around. “He’s that one,” she said, pointing to a shop in front of the stream, where another black goat was tied to a post.
I sighed, dropped my bag, picked up my staff, and approached the black-eyed goat. The blue-eyed goat, much to my frustration, followed me. Once I was just out of reach of the cursed goat, I aimed my staff at him and focused my magic. Magic flowed into him and encountered the curse. This curse was done well; the sorcerer that had inflicted it was smart. He had taken his time.
But he wasn’t any more powerful than my brothers, and I had been breaking their curses my entire life. I focused on the details of the curse, which was usually its weak point. That wasn’t the case this time. Instead, I encountered magic of a different type; magic of death. The girls’ father was a necromancer.
Fortunately, the curse hadn’t bonded with his magic, or it would have been a lot more dangerous to remove. It was supposed to make him act like a goat, and by not doing so, the man was fighting it. This made my job easier. First, I used my magic to further separate the necromancy and sorcery in him.
The goat bleated with irritation, which I ignored. I imagined the goat changing back into a man and shredded the curse from the behavior element. As long as the goat loved his daughters, the curse couldn’t completely control his behavior, and that was a subjective weakness. The curse tried to resist my magic.
I had learned to break curses because my father never helped me when my brothers cursed me. It wasn’t until I learned to accept all aspects of my magic that I understood why I was so good at it. Wizardry couldn’t be used to hurt people, while sorcery was pretty useless in protection. I had both, so my magic could fight the other sorcerer’s power and protect the necromancer simultaneously.
I opened my eyes when I sensed the foreign sorcery dissolve. The goat transformed into a tall, thin man with long black hair, black eyes, and a robe that matched his daughters’. He patted his clothes and arms. “You broke the curse! Thank you, wizard.”
“He’s a curse breaker, Father,” Lemar said.
“There’s no such thing. Wizards break curses.”
“Wizards, sorcerers, and mages all make potions,” I pointed out.
“Well, that’s true. Can you only break curses?”
“No; I can also curse people, among other things. My kind is rare.”
“Yet you wear the Dracre robe.”
“I’m a Dracre on my mother’s side and a curse breaker because of my father. Anyway, I should be going.”
“Please stay for the night. I’m in your debt.”
“We have more than life debts. This warrants at least giving you a warm meal and a safe place to rest for the night.”
“We should sleep somewhere safe tonight so that you can be of sound mind tomorrow. If you stir all night and jump at every sound in fear of your mother, you will be useless in finding the egg when Vactarus reveals its location.”
I nodded. “Okay,” I said to the necromancer. “Merlin and I appreciate your hospitality.”
The necromancer introduced himself as Lidor Denzo. I didn’t take comfort in the fact that I recognized his family name, but he made no indication of knowing my mother personally. I really hoped it wasn’t a trap.
We decided to help repair the damage done to the town, but the dumb blue-eyed goat wouldn’t stop following me. “Why won’t he leave me alone?” The goat was still chewing on my sock, which he’d had to fight Lidor for. Apparently, Lidor hadn’t resisted all of the goat behaviors, and some of them stuck.
“It seems your goat is a nanny, and your efforts to sooth her were all too effective.”
“No…” I rubbed my temple. “You knew she wasn’t the girls’ father, didn’t you?”
Merlin grinned. “You should have listened to me.”
“I don’t want a goat following me around.”
The nanny goat bleated and tugged on my robe sleeve.
I turned to yell at her, but she looked at me with her huge blue eyes and I hesitated. I was certain those eyes weren’t that large or sad before. “Stop following me,” I said gently. I turned my back on her and she rammed me in the leg, pushing me into a barrel of wine.
“My second favorite barrel!”
“I am so sorry. The goat made me do it!”
“That’s what everyone says.”
* * *
Although I volunteered to help repair the village, Merlin insisted I do it by hand in order to conserve my magic, so I tired quickly. Alas, when I complained, Merlin just laughed at me and told “when I was your age” stories.
It wore me out so much that when it was time for bed, I slept deeply on blankets on the necromancer’s floor. The hut was not as fancy as my mother’s home, but it wasn’t the worst place I had stayed and it was clean.
I woke feeling warmth against my back and assumed Merlin had moved sometime in the night. Then a distinctive stench reached my nose and I jumped up. “How did you get in here?” I asked the blue-eyed goat.
She bleated and closed her eyes.
“She was crying all night. She was so lonely without her hero,” Merlin said, standing in the doorway.
“You’re not helping!”
He laughed.
We left and returned to the main road leading south. Not surprisingly, the goat followed us.
* * *
“It’s a bad idea,” I said.
“I agree.” Nevertheless, we headed into the Dark Forest. Despite the fact that the forest was dangerous, we didn’t have extra time to go around.
After a while of traveling without running into anything, we stopped when we came to a woman sleeping on a bed in the middle of the forest. She had braided, red-blonde hair and wore a sparkly purple dress. She was breathing, so I knew she wasn’t dead. Beside her was a sign.
The princess is under a sleeping curse until her true love finds her.
If you’re not her true love, please leave her alone.
“That is way too vague. Should I break the curse so that she can find her true love herself?”
“You already have a goat infatuated with you. Let the princess have her nap. Princesses are worse than dragons when you wake them.”
We continued on our way. When the sun was high in the sky, I asked, “Are you sure we’re going the right way?”
Merlin just sighed.
* * *
“That looks ominous.” A long band of dead trees stretched from the east to the west. Even the brush was gray and covered in sharp thorns.
“I believe this is what it looks like for the plants to have lost their magic.”
“But plants don’t have magic.”
“They cannot cast spells, but the world is full of magic, and just like in people, it is fading from the world.”
“I wish we knew what the dragon egg has to do with the black star.”
“I wish we knew why there were no female dragons hatched in a long time.” Fortunately, nothing attacked, and although there wasn’t a single sound, we didn’t run across any animal corpses.
When we stopped to rest, the goat stuck her head in my bag and I assumed she was looking for another sock. To my dismay, she confused my socks with transformation clay and ate the entire batch before I could stop her. Then again, I should have expected it; transformation clay smelled and tasted like socks.
We had to pick up the pace in order to get through the forest before nightfall. While we did run into some creepy animals, they wanted to be left alone as much as we did. After we got back on the main road, I turned my robe inside out so that no one would see my Dracre emblem and other than meeting a few quirky travelers, our trip was uneventful.
Chapter 4
Vactarus’s mansion was exactly as I remembered it— spooky. Vactarus had an illusion spell over it so that it could not be seen from a distance, but he also purposefully made it appear haunted in order to deter bandits. Since it actually was haunted, I didn’t see the point.
I raised my hand to knock, but before I could, it opened and I was hugged tightly. I recognized the arms around me and waited patiently to be released. Merlin growled until Mira let me go. The thief was a beautiful woman with large, azure eyes, full lips, and high cheekbones. Her shiny hair was a blend of reds and golds, curled in loose waves around her face and shoulders. Her short, peach-colored dress was silk.
At that point, the goat tried to ram her, but she dodged easily, and the goat ended up inside. Mira ignored her. “Who is this big guy?” she asked, reaching for Merlin. He stepped out of her range.
“He’s Merlin, a very powerful---”
“Wizard from another world,” she interrupted. “Vactarus told me about him.”
Vactarus and Merlin had been friends since before I was even born. “We’re here to see Vactarus.”
“Then come in.”
“Who is she?” Merlin asked, not moving.
“A friend of Vactarus. This is Mira, a thief who lives here sometimes.” Merlin reluctantly entered the mansion while the goat tried to ram Mira again. I scolded the goat and finally gave her another sock to calm her.
“What is Mira’s magic?”
“She doesn’t have any. At least, not that she knows of. She was an orphan and never met her parents, so it could be that she just doesn’t know what her power is, especially if her magic is weak.”
Mira took us to the dining room and left, saying she would find Vactarus for us. The table, like the rest of the mansion, was covered in dust and cobwebs, yet there was no food or clutter that could rot or grow mold.
Vactarus appeared and the goat immediately tried to ram him, only to go right through him. I was concerned for the ghost’s wellbeing, not because of the goat but because he was a little paler than usual.
Vactarus was a head taller than me with long, black hair, a trimmed goatee, and stone gray eyes. His black robe with a silver crow clasp at the nape never changed, although it was faded this time.
“Ask him if his age is catching up to him,” Merlin said. Although it was a rude way to ask if Vactarus was unwell, I could tell that Merlin was concerned for his friend.
“How have you been?” I asked.
“Very well, Ayden, thank you for asking.” He was lying. “What have you two been up to?”
“Hoping to stop the end of the world and training to defeat my mother.”
“That’s nice. However, I know you never come just for a visit.
What do you need? And also, why do you have a goat?”
“I talked her off a ledge and now she won’t leave me alone.”
Vactarus nodded. “Oh, that explains it. Many goats have fallen in love with me for saving them.”
“We’ll get right to it then. Merlin and I are looking for the dragon egg he hid. You’re the only one who knows where it is.”
Vactarus’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Let’s take this somewhere private.”
We went to the study. From Vactarus’s travels, he had an impressive collection of books. Even though most of them were not in my language, I enjoyed the atmosphere of the room.
“How did you defeat Baltezore?” Vactarus asked.
“Um… well… we haven’t yet.”
He frowned. “In that case, I’m afraid I can’t help you. Merlin made me swear not to tell anyone where the egg is until Baltezore is defeated.”
“But we have to save the egg before the black star comes or magic will die!”
“I understand the severity of the situation. The entire world will crumble into chaos if magic is lost. I also believe you if you say finding the egg will stop the black star. However, I will not break my promise.”
“But Merlin needs to know.”
“Then I suggest you defeat Baltezore or find the egg on your own.”
“That’s ridiculous! We need---”
“Ayden,” Merlin interrupted quietly. I shut up. “If I believed for an instant that he would break his promise, I would never have trusted him to begin with. We do not know the extent of Baltezore’s power.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We will find the egg ourselves.”
“There has to be a clue. Is there anything you remember about it that you haven’t told me?” He shook his head. “Okay. Vactarus, you can’t tell me where it is, but can you tell me about it?”
He considered it. “I think I can. I don’t see how that will help you, though.”
“What does it look like?”
