Spellslinger

The desert stretches its dry mouth out before me, dust filling my lungs as the light filters from the sky. I can see, just barely, the outlines of the next town on the horizon, and I lean forward and stroke Silas's mane. "Almost there, boy," I whisper, hoping the heat of the bodies I sense with the probing fingers of my magic isn't an illusion. This inhospitable land can do strange things to a person over time, and I've already been on the road for days.

It's not the days you have to worry about, really, though I'm constantly on the watch for roving bands of outlaws, anyone fixing to start trouble with a lone travelling wizard. I can handle them, when they come. It's the nights, when the temperature drops to freezing and the wild dogs howl in a distance that always feels uncomfortably close. On those nights I have little choice but to conjure a fire to keep warm, though it drains my stores and I am over-aware of how the flames could act as a beacon in the pitch dark, drawing would-be enemies closer (and for a travelling wizard in a world that despises and mistrusts magic, every stranger is a would-be enemy).

So far, though, I've seen no one; I've barely even heard the usual night sounds of the dogs, the purring desert insects. The towns I've passed through have been far-between, desolate and abandoned, betraying no evidence of what caused such a mass exodus.

It's this mysterious specter that I'm on the trail of now; I'm the lucky candidate the Conclave sent when they received the distressed correspondence from the town of Coyote Landing. I have some questions about that one- the people out here are a far cry from educated, and I'm not sure what I'm more surprised about: the fact that they reached out to us undesirables at all, or the fact that they know how to write.

Last night I built my fire from scratch, which took an embarrassing amount of time to do- magic-users aren't exactly used to manual labor. I had to search a few of the empty clapboard houses in the ghost town I settled in to find all my materials, and even then, it was a cursing, snarling ordeal to figure out how to start a spark. The only thing that kept me from falling back on my craft was the knowledge that I was close- too close to waste any of my precious stores. I hardly slept a wink- outside, Silas was in a similar mood, shifting and whinnying nervously from the place where I'd tethered him, in view of the open door.

It wasn't only the thought of the unwelcome presence of mundanes the next day that kept me alert, but also a feeling that was harder to put my finger on. Lying under the blankets on a dilapidated couch, I felt as though I could hear something moving far beneath me, beneath the floorboards and in the subterranean depths of the earth. It was nothing manmade, but instead something old and cryptic, as vastly intelligent as it was indifferent to human life.

The thing eluded me when I stretched out the tendrils of my intuition to prod at it, coiling and slithering free of my grasp, and I sat up suddenly, panting, hot by the paltry fire I'd made. A suspicion had seized me, and it wouldn’t let go.

Come morning, I wandered around the ghost town, searching the houses and the shops for a sign of what had come before. Like the town before this one, it appeared that everyone had simply gotten up and left. There was food gathering flies on many of the tables, and there were weapons, saddles, coin pouches still intact in many of the homes. I pocketed the money- wizards care nothing for good Christian law.

It was to the holes that I was most drawn. Perfectly round, steep tunnels disappearing into the inhospitable clay of the earth, far beneath the layers of shifting sand. This I had overlooked before, but once I started seeing them, I couldn't stop. I leaned close to one and felt a strange unearthly kind of wind drift up from the inky blackness, like an invisible something were breathing on my face.

"Fascinating," I'd muttered, more sure than ever now of my hypothesis. I was off before the sun reached its apex in the sky, and that's us all caught up to now, riding forth, watching the shapes of new buildings rise up before me.

.

Coyote Landing might not be abandoned, but the inhabitants are suspicious of my arrival. A couple of children playing in the street dart away when they see me, and I hear some of the windows of the places I pass snick shut. To the center saloon I've been ordered, so to the center saloon I go.

There are a handful of scrawny horses penned up in a corral across the street from my destination. I find a hitching post for Silas and the others huddle away in a corner of their enclosure while he stands apart from them, a proud black shadow, paying them no mind. I stroke his muzzle and adjust my light silk cloak. "Won't be long, boy," I say as I approach the crooked double doors, beyond which I can hear the heavy clamping of booted feet and the tinkling of a poorly-tuned piano.

I walk softly, as all wizards do- centuries of being hunted will do that to a people- and when I enter, it takes a moment for the music and chatter to die, for the festivities to grind to a halt. A sea of faces, both lined and young, and predominantly male, stare at me so unabashedly it feels vulgar.

"The wizard's here!" someone shouts.

Before I can speak, a clattering sounds from a back room, and footsteps, heavy and harsh, sound from behind yet another set of double doors. They explode outward, revealing a large, glaring man.

He's at least six feet tall and his arms and neck are lined with muscle like bulky cables. His mustached lip curls to reveal a gold-capped tooth, and his beady little black eyes stare me down as he rests a menacing hand on the butt of the gun holstered at his waist.

"So," he says, moving a plug of tobacco to his cheek and grinning tightly. "You're the great help the blasted conclave sent. A five-foot-five, hundred-pound magician." He says the last word with heavy mockery. I pull back my hood and tilt my chin up to stare him in the face.

"The correct term is wizard," I say coolly. I've met his type a thousand times before, the bullying, blustering kind who think every dispute can be solved with brute force or a gun- the latter of which he draws at my words, quick as a flash, pointing at my face. My hand comes up at the same time and it's then that I see it: he flinches, a tinge of primal fear touching those stone-dumb button eyes. I put two fingers on the cold muzzle of his gun and push it gently down.

"I wouldn't," I whisper. "I really, really wouldn't."

His eyes narrow again and he goes to speak when a softer voice says from behind him, "Travis, what do we have to lose?"

Travis pockets his weapon and turns, revealing a slim woman in a modest house dress standing in front of the double doors leading into the kitchen.

"I told you, Anna, to stay out of business that ain't yours. I told you 'afore you sent that god damn letter, and I'm telling you now. For once in your bitch life, hold your tongue."

The woman steps into the light, and I see she's quite young, about half the age of Travis or I. Her stomach is swollen just slightly under her shapeless dress, and so is her cheek, blooming black and blue. As Travis turns his fury on her, her hand flies nervously to clutch that side of her face, though the whole time her eyes don't leave my own. They are wide and pleading, cornflower blue like the essence from the spell Waking Dream.

"Did my letter make any sense to you?" she asks. "I'm not very good at writing but I was hoping your kind might know. Might be able to help."

Travis snorts. "I'm the sheriff," he snaps. "I'll say what-"

"Yes, ma'am," I say, cutting him off without raising my voice. "It is my belief that your town has become the target of a sand dragon.”

Anna's face pales, and several people gasp, beginning to mutter. Chairs squeak and someone says loudly, "Dragons? Those don't exist anymore!”

"Oh, they never stopped existing," I say, luxuriating in the heat of Travis's glare on the back of my head as I dramatically scan the room, pulling them all under the suggestion of my aura. "They were just forced underground. Long ago, the Conclave put wards on their domain, spells intended to keep civilians safe. It is my belief that these wards may have weakened in places, causing the beasts of old to wake, hungering for the blood they used to be gifted daily in sacrifice, when the old ways ruled."

Travis coughs. Though he's looking at me with great contempt, it's clear he's as shaken by the others at my words.

"What you've written in your letter," I say to Anna, "Of people disappearing wholly from the earth by night- this will go on and on, until no one is left, if it is not stopped.”

"How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Travis asks. “You magic types are godless and tricky, corrupt as the moon hiding behind the clouds, as my pap used to say. You hate normal people like us. What's in it for you?"

I smile, tight and humorless. The bitterness that laces my words is not feigned. “Nothing much, unfortunately. Even one as dense as you should have learned in school how few of us there are nowadays. How the Conclave enslaved itself to the government in order to avoid further persecution."

Travis's face contorts; he spits at my feet, the wet slug of tobacco hitting the wood like a bullet.

"They should have killed you all," he snarls. "Kept you from breeding. It's unnatural, that hocus-pocus shit."

"Travis, it’s our last hope-“

“You be silent!” he says, raising a hand in threat.

"She's right," I intercede. "You have before you what I would hazard to say is a simple choice. Either except the help of the Conclave, or die. Like those at Rattlesnake Butte. Like those at Horseshoe Ranch.”

At the mention of the other towns, Travis's face pales. "Fine," he bites out, after a long, hard moment. “What do you intend to do?”

I look around the room, at the silent faces looking back at me with mixed apprehension, distrust and awe.

"Seeing as you are the sheriff around here," I say to Travis. "I would speak with you alone before we go any further."

.

The ragtag group from the saloon gathers in a semi-circle around one of the holes, hidden by some scrub on the side of the road. At my order, they stand a few feet back, crowded together on one side.

"Where is he?" Anna asks. She's come to stand beside me, just a step or two back, and her bold proximity takes me aback. When I turn to look at her, her blue eyes are probing.

"I gave him a task of his own," I say. It's not entirely a lie. I fling aside my cloak to reveal the white rabbit shaking in my arms.

"Where’d he get a bunny from?" a boy whispers.

"It's the oldest trick in the book for a magician," I say caustically. I set the rabbit on the ground and give it a nudge- it creeps forward, towards the smooth opening of the hole and then stops, frozen, nose twitching one hundred knots an hour.

"I am going to create a ward," I say. "As long as you don't cross the barrier, you will be quite safe."

The group mutters, backing up further, but I pay them no mind. It takes all my concentration to remember the words I read last night, tracing their ancient looping scrawl from the oldest of spellbooks. It's a gamble, what I'm doing here, but they don't need to know that. The chant I take up now in a long-dead tongue is one of summoning, of prayer. It harkens back to the days when the dragons of sky, of water, and of sand were worshipped as deities, were supplicated and gifted in times of need.

At first there is total silence; then there is a faint knickering from the corral across the way, the restive stamping of hooves. The faintest tremor moves through the soles of my boots as of something turning in its sleep, waking and approaching, closer, closer.

The rabbit lunges for the crowd and the safety of the road beyond. A crackling of electricity snaps through the air like an invisible fence, catching the frightened animal and throwing it back to the edge of the tunnel. Several people shout; a child starts to cry. But what happens next erases all sound, all semblance of reason from the world. One moment the tunnel is a round, staring eye and the next a hooked, scaly snout bursts from the ground, snapping up the rabbit. The dragon snaps its neck with a single bite, the crunch of bone audible, and drops it to the ground again, baring teeth as long as a man's forearm in a mouth as flexible as a snake's. Its golden eyes flare at its audience and it lets out a sibilant hiss. The sound breaks the crowd from their reverie, and they break away, running full tilt across the desert sand, falling and tumbling. I feel a hand grasp my own and for a moment I am distracted, taken out of the crucial dance I hold in my mind.

"Sorry," Anna says, but she does not let go. She looks terrified but grim.

The dragon noses the dead rabbit, considering its sacrifice. I don't waste any time in beginning the spell.

Beginning an incantation always feels like the start of a test that cannot possibly go well, but the moment my tongue hooks into the silver, the sound of the words, they flow like molten honey, like song, from my thin, chapped lips. I raise my free hand, palm out, and purple beams of essence fall from the tips of my fingers. The dragon lunges at me; Anna screams. I've taken down the ward for the moment- I have to, if I'm going to allow the binding spell to get through- and the beast's hot breath sears my face, its saliva hits my arm in burning droplets that erode my skin- they will leave more scars to join the others, their pink tracery like intricate tattoos. At the last moment, the threads from my spellwork catch, winding around the creature like miniature, feeder serpents attaching to a host. The dragon roars its fury at the trick, the deceit, but there is nothing it can do now that the fresh binding has a hold on it. It retreats, sliding backwards into the hole. I listen to the sound of its passage long after it is an echo. I make absolute certain before I let the spell go like releasing a held breath. Weakness crowds in and I fall, boneless, to the ground.

.

"Are you okay?"

I come to moments later. Anna is kneeling above me, pressing a cold cloth to my face. A crowd is pressing in tentatively behind her, pale-faced and murmuring.

I bat the cloth away. This part is always humiliating. "Silas," I croak, and miraculously, I hear the sound of his hooves. My mount has come free of his post in the confusion and he comes dutifully to kneel beside me. I clamber onto his back with some difficulty.

"It...should be good for years now," I tell the assembled crowd, panting. "Those...warding spells last miles. Consider the Conclave for any of your other magical needs." The last part is pure sarcasm. I wrap my wrists in Silas's reins, more to keep me from falling off than to keep him in check, and we turn to go.

"Wait!"

The others are moving off already, but Anna remains, those blue eyes watchful as ever.

"Yes, lady?" I cannot keep the impatience from my tired voice.

"I just wanted to say thank you."

I nod briefly, pulling up my hood again. "Thank your local government. Write them a long, heartfelt letter-"

"No," she says. She reaches out and puts a hand over my own. "Thank you. For...for everything."

Her eyes flick away, and for a moment we both seem to look in the same exact place, where the white rabbit lies dead at the deserted tunnel entrance. Its top lip is pulled back in fear, a death grimace, and one of its tiny teeth is fitted with a pure gold cap, the same as a hulking, bullying sheriff might wear.

I nod my head at her when we lock eyes again, and this time I force myself to accept the sincerity in her gaze before I turn to leave.

Her voice follows me, soft but persistent.

"Will you tell me your name?"

I stare out at the horizon, at the many lonely miles left to pursue until I can get home, make my report and fall back into bed, nurse myself back to health over days, and do it all over again. Pointless, one might say. Thankless. Well, usually.

"Marlock," I say without turning. "My name is Marlock."

I'm several miles down the darkening road when I realize no one's ever asked me that before.