Most people wouldn’t want a dwarf to work magic on them. Dwarves and magic went together like eis cream and chilli peppers — even if you could put them together, you wouldn’t want to.
Carin Medarin wasn’t a dwarf wizard, though. He was a dwarven thief. And he didn’t cast spells, per se. Rather, he knew how to “steal” magic from items that wizards imbued with their power. Wands, staves, even complex spellscrolls he could decipher and use …
Sometimes. On a good day.
He’d gotten Neifon Baako into this mess. And now it was up to him to help get him out. At least, for the length of one shopping excursion.
“Hold still!” the voice by Baako’s feet hissed. “Quit flapping your wings already!”
“Sorry,” he whispered, and held his enormous frame rigid.
The dwarf was beneath his long neck, so Baako couldn’t see him. But long experience with magic had made him sensitive to it, and it tickled his nostrils and made him want to sneeze. Finally he did, and in that instant he was back to being his old self, standing next to a young, beardless dwarf in a chainrobe.
“Gesundheit,” he said, putting the wand back in his satchel.
“Thanks,” Baako said, and sniffled. He took a step towards the line of buildings past the meadow, and wobbled a little bit, not used to standing on two legs again. He straightened out his black leather longjacket, and wondered if he’d ever get the chance to have his clothes laundered again.
“You look like you just got off a bumpy elevator,” Carin remarked.
“I’m fine,” Baako said, even though he was not really. It’d only been a few days, but he’d gotten used to his new form, and going back to his old one was disorienting. His insides felt like they were in the wrong places, his limbs felt unnaturally long, and he did not have a tail to balance himself. He was genuinely worried about falling over.
Carin took hold of his elbow to steady him. “Let’s get in, sell the loot and get out before it wears off.”
* * *
The town looked different from inside it at ground level. Wood-and-plaster houses shone white in the sun, while children ran through the streets and men and women swept porches off. The wide cobblestone ways were clear of human and animal waste, and Baako passed at least one handcart vendor on his way to the center of town.
Off in the distance, in the ring of trees surrounding the clearing the town was in, he could see signs of elven habitation; the edge of a building here, a glint of something reflective there. A distant platform elevator ascended into the trees. Baako wondered how Carin felt about this place, but he didn’t ask.
The first place they stopped at was a surprisingly large outfitting establishment, run by a young man named Fox. He took the bag of mundane loot off their hands with no questions, after running it over with a divining rod, but he wouldn’t buy their enchant items. The market was saturated, he explained, and they weren’t even worth what it cost to create them. He suggested they visit the local spellshop, to see if the mage wanted more reagents.
The spellshop was run by a mage who was a fox, or at least had fox ears and a tail. Baako couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been subject to a curse. He didn’t look especially wizardly — he was even shorter than Carin — and his tail kept twitching and his ears kept flicking, back and forth between Baako and a ring of cushions on which sat human and elvish students. He seemed tense, and jumped straight onto the counter when one of the elf students dropped her pen. Baako was glad to get out of there, even though they’d only sold half the enchant items.
Standing in the town square, Baako felt his nose tingle and innards shake as the magic started to wear. He urgently nudged Carin, and the dwarf got out the right wand and concentrated on it for an alarmingly long moment, before whisking it past him and strengthening the spell. Baako’s form solidified, and he let out a sigh of relief.
“Let’s not stay here much longer,” he said.
“Agreed.” Carin nodded, and put the wand back up.
Their last stop was a small, stone building with a round doorway. It was a dwarf jeweler’s, owned by a distant member of Carin’s clan — or at least, that was what Carin said. Baako had handled the other transactions, but now he stood back and let them handle things, speaking rapid-fire in Erdsprech.
Baako spent a long time examining the inside of the shop, because he didn’t have a lot else to do, besides listen to guttural language and the occasional hearty laugh. Small, imperfect jewels lined the stone inside walls of the shop, and the wooden shelves further in were packed with rocks and large, uncut gems. He suspected the silver cord that divided the front area from the back was enchanted, because just standing next to it was making his nose twitch-
Oh. Uh oh.
He nudged Carin with his foot. No answer.
He nudged him more urgently, and he looked up and waved him off. “Nur ein moment, bitte! Wir sind nicht noch vertig.“
Baako knew better than to argue with him further. But the longer this went on, the more he started to feel like he was trapped in a place without a public restroom. Edging closer to the open door, he finally stepped out through it and looked around.
The town square was packed full with eating establishments, from women at handcarts ladling soup into bowls to well-dressed waiters bringing plates up to outdoor tables. The sun was directly above, and there were few empty spaces that people weren’t walking through, as they were all crowding in to get lunch.
That meant there was noplace to hide. Baako searched frantically, looking for an unused alley or lot to duck into. But there weren’t any, and more people were coming in from all directions. Finally, Baako stopped near a patch of mud beside a covered stall, its vendor happily counting out change, and cast an invisibility spell right before it happened.
People screamed as the stall split apart and collapsed on one side, the vendor leaping out from behind it and her customer diving for cover. Invisible growth knocked pedestrians aside. Enormous claws dug into the mud, and scratched paving. Then a hurricane blast knocked everyone back, as he took to the skies beating leathery wings.
A few doors down, Carin stepped outside and sighed.
* * *
This was all his fault.
Baako sighed, and got another swallow past the metal shackle around his neck. It slid down until it became tight, every time he raised his neck to look out at the inn at the edge of the caravan park. Its lights were on, and he could just see their silhouettes in the window; Carin and Anra were arguing again, like dwarves were wont to do.
His eyes flicked down to the pack and riding saddles beside him. They’d made two hundred miles in just two days, and were almost to the Glass Mountains. It was a gift from God … or was it a curse? Baako had no idea when the spell was going to wear off. None of them did. The scroll that Carin had cast it from had been so old and dusty, for all he knew it would last as long as the parchment had.
Would it wear off tonight? Let him finally join them inside for a decent night’s sleep, and dodge questions about their missing “pack dragon” later? Or would it wear off tomorrow in midflight, and send them all plummeting to their deaths?
What if it never wore off?
Baako stretched his long neck as far as he could, ignoring the biting pain down near his chest, looking out at the lights of the city. The flickering fires lit up in the trees; the glowing lanterns strung over the lanes; the sea of windows that never winked out. He heard people moving to check on their animals, and get supplies out of the backs of their wagons. And when he finally lowered his neck to the ground, shaking it quickly to loosen his shackle, he smelled wet grass, and felt its tickle as he lay down.
Crickets chirped, in the distance, and tiny glowing insects traced slow patterns in front of him. He watched them a moment, before closing his eyes.
He didn’t hear the footsteps until they were right next to him.
Baako snorted, and woke up with a start, standing up and looking down at the man next to him. He was dressed in a plain cloak and wasn’t carrying a lantern, and he didn’t seem to be armed. That didn’t mean Baako wasn’t suspicious, though. He growled, hoping to scare the intruder off.
“Do you need any help?” the man asked, in a calm, measured voice.
That brought him up short. “Um … why do you ask?”
“Because I happened to overhear a ‘discussion’ between two angry dwarves, and they mentioned something about a friend of theirs. And a spell that refused to wear off.” He looked up, but Baako could not see his face.
Baako snorted again, and looked over at the distant inn. “You could tell the people who run this place that I’m not dangerous. Or at least to get me a blanket or something.”
“Humans are skittish creatures,” the man said. “They feel threatened if something is larger or stronger than they are. They don’t feel safe unless they bind it down, with treaties and laws; with wars, and shackles and chains. It has to be ‘under control’ before they can rest easy around it. If they know that it’s there, that is.”
The man’s eyes glowed, and in that instant Baako knew what he was dealing with. He shuddered involuntarily, and pressed himself low to the ground with his eyes closed, feeling like an impostor. A pretender.
The “man” stepped around him, and examined the chain. Baako heard it rattle, and felt it tug at his neck. “This must be very unpleasant for you.”
“Yes.” It came out as a whisper, his eyes squeezed shut and muscles held perfectly still.
“If you were human again, it would not even fit.”
“Yes … “
“The Drakhen have a way to escape detection, by assuming the forms of humanoid creatures. Why don’t you try it?” the voice with the small form and enormous presence asked.
“Because I’m not a real dragon.” He tried to keep his breathing steady enough to answer in complete sentences, still without moving or looking up. “I only look like one. I can’t do the things they can. I can barely even fly. I’m sorry.” He could not suppress a shiver.
“I think you have more dragon in you than you know.” Baako felt the chain drop to the ground, and heard the footsteps retreat to a “safer” distance. “You smell like magic, the kind that comes naturally and flows in the blood. The kind that’s derived from dragon ancestry.”
Baako held still, unsure of what was coming next.
“Would you like me to show you how to use it?”
* * *
Carin was startled to see Baako in line at the breakfast table next morning, happy and human-shaped. The dwarf was upset, and tried to figure out what went wrong, but his mate took it in stride. She decided that they’d stay in town that day, while she researched overland paths.
Carin mostly stayed up in his room and pouted, while Baako took a long walk through the paths and the trees, and even up to the elven city. Then he came back down and had a good meal and a hot bath, and sent for his clothes to be laundered. He spent that evening reading through a book that he’d bought, about dragons.
The next day they were back on the road, he on a horse and they on two ponies. Crossing the bridge out of town, he felt a familiar presence, and looked to see a cloaked man beside the bridge, watching. He smiled at Baako, and Baako smiled back, nervous but still grateful.
He felt different inside; both more and less than human. But mostly more. Maybe I’ll learn to do more things a Drakhen can, he thought. Like breathe fire, and fly like I was born winged.
Maybe someday I will become a dragon. But in a small way, he felt like he already was.
