Balthazar roared and loosed another line of flames. Oliver screamed and covered his head, thinking that he would smash into the stone. The lights of the tunnel expanded, as if to catch them, and the dragon’s breath was licking again at their backsides as they entered the wizard’s tunnel.
12
Tales from Better Days
Small wisps of smoke rose from their clothes as they tumbled back into the wizard’s cave, all three in one ball. Brind’Amour, showing surprising agility, extracted himself first and rose laughing.
“Old Balthazar will be steaming about that one for a hundred years!” the wizard roared.
Luthien eyed him, stone-faced, his stern gaze diminishing the wizard’s howls to a coughing chuckle.
“Young Bedwyr,” Brind’Amour scolded. “Really, you must learn to laugh when the adventure is at its end. Laugh because you are alive, my boy! Laugh because you stole an item from a dragon’s hoard . . .”
“More than one,” Oliver corrected, producing several gemstones from his seemingly bottomless pockets.
“All the more reason to laugh!” Brind’Amour cried. Oliver began juggling three of the stones, admiring their glitters in the flickering torchlight, and Brind’Amour raised his fist in a salute to the halfling.
Luthien did not crack the slightest hint of a smile. “Balthazar?” he asked.
“Balthazar?” Brind’Amour echoed.
“You called the dragon Balthazar,” Luthien explained. “How did you know?”
Brind’Amour seemed uneasy for just a moment, as though he had been caught in a trap. “Why, I watched you through my crystal ball, of course,” the wizard replied so suddenly and exuberantly that Luthien knew he was lying. “The dragon named himself—to Oliver, of course.”
“He did,” Oliver remarked to an obviously unconvinced Luthien.
“You knew the name before the dragon declared it,” Luthien pressed grimly. He heard a clinking sound as Oliver stopped his juggling, one gem falling to the stone floor. And Brind’Amour stopped his chuckling, as well, in the blink of an eye. The atmosphere that only a moment ago seemed to Oliver and the wizard to be a victory celebration now loomed thick with tension. It almost appeared to Oliver that Luthien would strike out at Brind’Amour. “Your tale of a cyclopian king was a lie.”
Brind’Amour gave a strained smile. “Dear young Luthien Bedwyr,” he began solemnly, “if I had told you that a dragon awaited you at the other end of the magical tunnel, would you have gone through?”
“Very good point,” Oliver conceded. He looked up at Luthien, hoping that his friend would just let the whole thing go at that.
“We could have been killed,” Luthien said evenly. “And you sent us in there, expecting us to die.”
Brind’Amour shrugged, seeming unimpressed by that statement. The wizard’s casual attitude only spurred Luthien on. A barely perceptible growl escaped the young Bedwyr’s lips; his fists were clenched tightly at his sides.
“Luthien,” Oliver whispered, trying to bring him back to a rational level. “Luthien.”
“Am I to apologize?” Brind’Amour spat suddenly, incredulously, and his unexpected verbal offensive set Luthien back on his heels. “Are you so selfish?”
Now Luthien’s face screwed up with confusion, not having any idea of what the wizard might be talking about.
“And do you believe that I would have allowed the two of you to walk into such danger unless there was a very good reason?” Brind’Amour went on, snapping his fingers in the air in front of Luthien’s face.
“And your ‘very good reason’ justifies the lie and is worth the price of our lives?” Luthien snapped back.
“Yes!” Brind’Amour assured him in no uncertain terms. “There are more important things in the world than your safety, dear boy.”
Luthien started to react with typical anger, but he caught a faraway look in Brind’Amour’s blue eyes that held his response in check.
“Do you not believe that I grieve every day for those men who went in search of my staff before you and did not return?” the wizard asked somberly. A great wash of pity came over Luthien, as if somehow the gravity of the wizard’s words had already touched his sensibilities. He looked at Oliver for support, honestly wondering if he had been caught by some sort of enchantment, but the halfling appeared similarly overwhelmed, similarly caught up in the wizard’s emotions.
“Do you know from where a wizard gains his power?” the man asked, and Brind’Amour suddenly seemed very old to the companions. Old and weary.
“His staff?” Oliver answered, a perfectly reasonable assumption given the task he and Luthien had just completed.
“No, no,” Brind’Amour replied. “A staff is merely a focus for the power, a tool that allows a wizard to concentrate his energies. But those energies,” he went on, rubbing his thumb across his fingertips in front of his face as though he could feel the mysterious powers within his hand. “Do you know where they come from?”
Luthien and Oliver exchanged questioning expressions, neither having any answers.
“From the universe!” Brind’Amour cried abruptly, powerfully, moving both of the friends back a step. “From the fires of the sun and the energy of a thunderstorm. From the heavenly bodies, from the heavens themselves!”
“You sound more like a priest,” Oliver remarked dryly, but his sarcasm was met with unexpected excitement.
“Exactly!” Brind’Amour replied. “Priests. That is what the ancient brotherhood of wizards considered themselves. The word ‘wizard’ means no more than ‘wise man,’ and it is a wise man indeed who can fathom the complete realities of the universe, the physical and the spiritual, for the two are not so far apart. Many priests do not understand the physical. Many of our recent inventors have no sense of the spiritual. But a wizard . . .” His voice trailed away, and his blue eyes sparkled with pride and that faraway look. “A wizard knows both, my boys, and always keeps both in mind. There are spiritual consequences to every physical act, and the physical being has no choice except to follow the course of the soul.
“Who do you think built the great cathedrals?” Brind’Amour asked, referring to the eight massive structures that dotted the islands of Avonsea. Six were in Avon, the largest in Carlisle and a similar one in Princetown. The Isle Baranduine, to the west, had only one, and Eriador had one located in Montfort. Luthien had never been into Montfort, but he had passed by the city along the foothills of the Iron Cross. From that perspective, all the buildings of Montfort (and many were large and impressive), and even the one castle of the city, seemed to be dollhouses of children under the long shadows of the towering spires and huge stone buttresses of the massive cathedral. It was called simply the Ministry, and it was one of the greatest sources of pride for the people of Eriador. Every family, even those of the islands, had an ancestor who had worked on the Ministry, and that heritage inspired Luthien to respond now through gritted teeth:
“The people built them,” he answered grimly, as if daring Brind’Amour to argue.
The wizard nodded eagerly.
“In Gascony, too,” Oliver promptly put in, not wanting his homeland to be left out of any achievement. The halfling had been to Montfort, though, and he knew that the cathedrals of Gascony, though grand, could not approach the splendor of those on the islands. The Ministry had taken the halfling’s breath away, and by all accounts, at least three of the cathedrals south of the Iron Cross were even larger.
Brind’Amour acknowledged the halfling’s claims with a nod, then looked back at Luthien. “But who designed them?” he asked. “And who oversaw the work, supervising the many hardy and selfless people? Surely you do not believe that simple farmers and fishermen, noble though they might be, could have designed the flying buttresses and great windows of the cathedrals!”
Luthien took no offense at the wizard’s words, in full agreement with the logic. “They were an inspiration,” he explained, “from God. Given to his priests—”