Dragonspell - Donita K. Paul [115]
A disturbed wizard is not a comforting sight. Why do the others ignore him?
The music drew her back to the activities in the camp, and she began to ask herself questions. All the songs are about friendship…Is it coincidence? No, they’re celebrating our brotherhood in the quest…On purpose?…Probably…Why?
She quit trying to figure it out. The next song had many verses, and she had heard it often. She called Metta to fly to her shoulder. Kale wanted help in remembering the words. Turning her back on Fenworth’s brooding figure, she gave herself over to enjoying this evening with her comrades.
In the morning Fenworth still sat on his lavender boulder, keeping vigil over the black barrier.
Kale sat next to the tumanhofer with a platter of fried mullins to share for breakfast. She nodded over at the wizard, who was mostly tree this morning. “What is he doing, Librettowit?”
The librarian picked up a hot stick from the platter, took a bite, and looked over at his longtime friend. “Thinking.”
“Could you help him? I mean, with some fact from your research.”
“Humph! A librarian needs books in order to do research.” He chewed for a moment and then swallowed. “I have remembered several incidents in history when a wizard was called upon to break down walls. I even remembered one where a wizard moved a mountain. But he was on the outside of the mountain, not within it. There’s a difference.”
“What will he do?”
“Think some more.”
The others sat around and let Fenworth think. Sometimes he paced while he thought. He carried his hat in his hand and wadded it into an unrecognizable clump. He often muttered. But Kale couldn’t see that he made any great discovery with all the thinking and pacing and wadding and muttering.
Night came, and the music was about Wulder and the many wonders He had performed.
Kale watched the pondering wizard. We need Wulder here now.
The next morning brought no better results. Fenworth trailed a long, bushy vine off his robes whenever he paced. The little dragons kept close to the old wizard. An abundance of insects scattered out of his leaves every time he moved.
Around the campfire that night they sang of Paladin’s mighty deeds. Kale sang along, but her heart yearned for some kind of action. We need Paladin here now.
The next morning she could no longer stand the patience of everyone but her. She wanted nothing more than to go pummel the wizard with a thousand questions and maybe stir his old bones into doing something. She climbed up the wall that sloped toward the black barrier and found her own lavender boulder to sit on. Her moonbeam cape flowed from her shoulders but gave her no sense of being part of a great quest. Gymn and Metta nestled in their pocket-dens and offered no companionship. She sat with her elbows on her knees, her chin on her fists, and her face turned toward Wizard Fenworth as he sat on his rock, starting to look like a bush.
She glared at him, then glared at the black barrier.
He should do something. This is a waste of time. Why can’t he just say, ‘Move!’?
Fenworth sprang to his feet and looked straight at Kale. His alarmed expression told her before the rumbling in the ground that she had done something terrible.
Kale reached down to balance herself on the shuddering boulder. The black mass beside her began to shift. Down in the campsite, her friends scrambled for cover. Leetu and Lee Ark sprinted to the wizard and dragged him, protesting, away from the cascading black gravel. The barrier was coming apart.
Thick dust filled the air. Kale fell backward and tumbled down the rocky incline. She heard shouts but couldn’t look. Her main concern was to keep from whacking her head as she turned over and over, faster and faster down the slanted wall. She coughed and sputtered and tried to keep her arms wrapped over her head.
When she hit bottom and the tiny black rocks kept sliding down around her, she curled up in a ball and tried to breathe through the cape.
Finally the mountain quit trembling. Kale sat up, starting another