The Wizard Wants a Word

The wizard's name was Master Ellic, and he was not happy. He had Rook by the collar and he was marching him through the rain, up the hill, toward the part of Tamber where the wizards lived, and Rook was trying very hard to think of a way out of this. So far he had not thought of one. The light was still coming out of his chest. He had buttoned his coat all the way up but it just glowed through the buttons, so now he looked like a boy with a lamp inside him, which, Rook supposed, he sort of was. "Stop squirming," said Master Ellic. "You're going to turn me into something," Rook said. "A frog. Or a chair." "I am not going to turn you into a chair." The wizard sounded tired. "If I turned you into a chair the star would still be inside the chair, and then I would have a glowing chair, and dragons would come for my glowing chair, and I would have solved nothing. Do try to think, boy. I know it's late." Rook stopped squirming. Mostly because of one word. "What do you mean dragons," he said. Master Ellic didn't answer right away. They had reached his house, a tall thin crooked house right at the top of the hill, and he pushed Rook inside and shut the door and did something with his hand that made all the candles light at once. The house was full of books and jars and things Rook would normally already be working out how to steal, except right now he could not think about anything except the word dragons. "Sit," said the wizard. Rook sat. "That marble you swallowed," Master Ellic said, "is not a marble. It is a star. A small one. A young one, barely a hundred years old, which for a star is an infant. Stars are not born in the sky, boy, whatever the songs tell you. They are born in the deep places of the world, and they are very rare, and they are very, very valuable, and they take roughly thirty years to grow large enough and bright enough to be released into the night where they belong. I have been raising this one. It was nearly ready." Rook looked down at his own glowing chest. "It was a baby," he said. "I ate a baby star." "You did not eat it. It is not digested, it is not harmed, it is simply inside you, which is almost worse." The wizard sat down across from him heavily. "A star wants to be near living warmth while it grows. Normally that is a careful cradle of spells. But it has just spent an evening inside an actual living boy, the warmest cradle it has ever had, and I am very much afraid it has decided it likes you." "It can't like me. It's a rock." "It is not a rock and it likes you, and the proof is that it has not burned its way out of you, which it absolutely could." Master Ellic rubbed his face. "Here is the part you will not enjoy, so I will say it quickly. A growing star gives off a light that cannot be hidden, not really, not for long. And there is one kind of creature in all the world that hunts that light, that has always hunted it, because a star is the only thing a dragon truly desires. Dragons do not hoard gold because they love gold. They hoard gold because gold is the closest thing they can usually get to a star. And you, boy, are currently walking around with the genuine article glowing inside your ribs." Outside, very far away, out past the harbor, that enormous sound came again. A low rolling note, like thunder, except thunder did not sound hungry. Rook swallowed. "How far away can they smell it?" Master Ellic looked at him, and for the first time the anger was completely gone from the old man's face, and what was left was just worry, and worry on a wizard's face was a great deal scarier than anger. "Three kingdoms," he said. "At least three kingdoms, boy. There are dragons turning toward Tamber right now who will not stop, who cannot stop, until that light goes out or they have it. So you have a choice, and you have it tonight, and it is not a fair choice but it is yours." He leaned forward. "I can try to take the star back out of you. It is dangerous, it has never been done, and it will hurt, and you may not survive it. Or you can keep it inside you, and let it finish growing, and we ride out of this city before sunrise and we get that star into the night sky where it belongs before every dragon in the world arrives to take it the hard way." Rook sat in the crooked candlelit house with a star glowing in his chest and dragons in the dark turning toward him, and thought that all he had wanted, an hour ago, was a warm dry bed.