The Wizard of Smaug Copyright Bruce Norman, 1992 All rights reserved Chapter 2 ------------------------ "Now Perrywinkle, watch this, this is very important!" droned Teflour, his eyes twinkling in that deranged alcoholic way. Carefully, he poured black powder from a large bottle marked "X" into a small brass cup. "Perrywinkle, would you like to take part in this experiment?" "Oh yes sir" was Perrywinkle's obsequious response, "what would you have me do, my Lord and Master?" "It's very simple boy, just drop this burning candle into the powder." "Sir?" asked Perrywinkle as Teflour began to back away to the far side of the room. "Is this safe?" "As safe as anything I'll be teaching you Perrywinkle!" screamed Teflour, giggling wildly. He ducked behind the couch. Mew walked over to the cup, and sniffed its contents. Perrywinkle watched her reaction in surprise. "I've never seen a cat jump backwards out a window before, sir." "Get on with it boy," was Teflour's muffled reply. He had pulled a heavy blanket over his head. Gingerly Perrywinkle picked up the wax-dripping candle. He looked at the powder for a second, shrugged, and dropped the candle into the bowl. What happened next, Perrywinkle wasn't quite sure of. There was a booming noise. He was sure about that. There was a great flash of light. The flash of light he was positive about this too, and able to describe it in great detail. He wasn't sure, however, what happened directly after the flash of light. All he knew was that he was suddenly pressed against the wall. All the breath was knocked out of his body. He was screaming, but he couldn't hear himself very well, and his face was on fire. He beat his hands against his face, desperately seeking to put out the flames. The only other thing he was aware of was the soft giggling coming from under the heavy blanket, directly to his left. Suddenly his face was drenched in liquid. Tea. Teflour stood in front of him, a mad grin on his face. "Oh marvelous!" he said. "Never dared to try that myself. Thank you my boy! By the way, that was my best tea I used to put you out, I hope you're appreciative of it." "You cra...cra...cra...cra..." stuttered Perrywinkle. He reached up to feel his face, it was somewhat charred. He couldn't survey the damage fully without a mirror, but his eyebrows had been burnt off. That, he immediately sure of. "Cra...cra....cra...." he continued desperately. Teflour looked at Perrywinkle's face critically. "Hmmm, this experiment does seem somewhat damaging to the complexion. I hope we can minimize that..." "Cra...cra...cra....crazy old fool!" finished Perrywinkle triumphantly. Were you trying to kill me!" "Oh no Perrywinkle" said Teflour smiling affectionately. "I calculated, very carefully mind you, the proper amount of powder so that you would not be killed!" "This is magic?" asked Perrywinkle in disbelief. "Putting lighted candles into bowls of black powder?" "Well, actually no, it's not magic" admitted Teflour. "I bought that powder from an oriental merchant. He said they used it to make explosions." Teflour cackled to himself. "I haven't had the nerve to try it until now." "You haven't had the nerve?" said Perrywinkle in amazement. "If you haven't had the nerve, you batty old moron, they please tell me: how did you calculate the proper amount of powder to use so that I would not be killed?" "Well, perhaps it was more of an educated guess." "An educated guess?" "Well, just a guess I suppose." "You mystical moron!" yelled Perrywinkle, now worked up into quite a rage. "You burn off my face with some oriental explosive, hoping you don't accidentally kill me? Is this what I'm going to be doing with you for the ten years of my apprenticeship?" "Well, not for the entire ten years. I was actually only planning on spending two or three years testing the powder." "But I came here to learn magic! Not to be some exploding servant for you!" Teflour laughed again, his eyes twinkling. "Oh Perrywinkle, my dear Perrywinkle, why do you think they call you a wizard's apprentice! You don't get to actually learn magic. Your sole purpose is to assist me in my experiments!" "But I always assumed that, after I was done my apprenticeship I would be a wizard!" "You will, I assure you" said Teflour. He hobbled over to a large box of scrolls. "Oh dear" he sighed, noticing that they had been set on fire. He grabbed another pot of mildewy tea (there were at least ten of them lying around) and dumped the contents on the small blaze. Gingerly he grabbed a scroll from the box and beat it against the desk, putting out the remaining flames. "Here you go," said Teflour, handing Perrywinkle the document, "this is what you will receive ten years from now!" Perrywinkle took the document and read it. Let it bey known that _________________ hast compeleyted his ordealz oft apprentishep and ist now a full wyzard oft thy realme oft Smaug. "That's it?" he asked in amazement. "For ten years of dangerous experiments and general slavery, I get a piece of paper!" He looked at it again. "And it's full of spelling errors too!" "I never knew a wizard that could spell" said Teflour. He began to chuckle. "Wizard....spell....that's a good one. Must write it down." He began to fumble amongst the sea of blazing scrolls. "Well, if I'm not going to learn magic from you, how will I learn it?" demanded Perrywinkle. "Oh, didn't I tell you? When you graduate I shall also gift you with a tome of magic." Teflour pulled a small gray book off of a shelf. He scrunched up his face and blew on it violently. Dust flew off the book, which Perrywinkle now saw was actually black. Teflour handed this book to Perrywinkle. "What's this?" Asked Perrywinkle, "the beginner's manual?" "Oh no" said Teflour, "that's all there is. All the spells known to mortal wizards, and a few that aren't." "What do you mean that's all there is?" asked Perrywinkle, thumbing through it. "It's less than two hundred pages long! This holds all the spells known? This is all that you, Court Wizard of Smaug, know of magic?" Teflour beamed at Perrywinkle. He looked about, as if searching for some eavesdropper and then whispered in Perrywinkle's ear. "Actually, if you must know, I never bothered to read past chapter eight myself. It's terribly dry reading you know. Really, all you need to know are the spells on page 17 and 41. They allow you to cure the stomach ailments of sheep, and to prevent crop blight. That's all you really need to know." "You never read past chapter eight?" asked Perrywinkle again. "But there's fourteen chapters! In your thirty years as Court wizard, you never bothered to read the other six!" "Well, the spells began to get rather depressing." "Then what is this?" asked Perrywinkle, pulling a large leathery tome off a shelf at random. There were hundreds like it throughout the room. The title of the book, inscribed in gold on the spine, was "Baysik Fyre Magik". Perrywinkle began to page through it. His mouth dropped open as he stared at the pages in astonishment. It was full of pictures of naked female elves. "Well, wizards aren't allowed to marry you know" explained Teflour embarrassedly. "Church law and all that stuff. The Arch Bishop's worried some woman might learn magic." "Are all the books like this?" asked Perrywinkle. "No, no, of course not. In some books the elves are wearing, leaves, you know. And in some there's male elves involved too, if you know what I mean. And some books have human girls in them." He screwed up his face in concentration. "I think there's a book on fishing in there somewhere too, never found it though." "This is madness" said Perrywinkle dropping the huge tome to the floor. "I'm going back to father. There's no way I'm going to set myself on fire for ten years so I can look at books full of naked elves!" "Really?" asked Teflour. "How incredibly disappointing! I was looking forward to us blowing things up together boy!" "Well I'm not prepared to be one of those things! I must leave you now, I see now that, like my father and his father before him, my life is dung! Good day Court Wizard Teflour!" Perrywinkle left in a rage, slamming the door behind him. He set down the road back to his father, and back to dung. --- "Well if it isn't master wizard Perrywinkle come to bless his father with a visit!" raged Toluene. "Please dad" begged Perrywinkle. "You were right. Don't be angry. Teflour's gone completely batty! He tried to kill me! I want back in, dad. I want to sell dung. I really want to sell dung!" "Oh do you now Perrywinkle?" asked Toluene in a nasty voice. "Well let me tell you, it hasn't been easy since you left. No it hasn't. For a long time I had to work day and night just to shovel all the dung. There was no sleep for my tired bones, Perrywinkle, while you were off dozing with Teflour and looking at his dirty elf books. I thought I would die Perrywinkle. My old back can't take much of this you know. There I was, shoveling away, about to pass out in the sun, when a familiar face suddenly appeared before my eyes. It was the face of a loyal friend. A friend who took my shovel and took care of the dung for me. I was saved! And do you know who saved me, Perrywinkle? Mark! He's come home!" A face peeked through the kitchen window at Perrywinkle. It was the cold cruel face of Perrywinkle's older brother Mark. Unlike Perrywinkle, who's was barely five feet tall, Mark's massive body was a towering six foot seven (just like his father). Also like Toluene, Mark's hair was a mop of dirty brown curls which (if scrubbed for a fortnight or two) would probably have been red. Mark looked like a dung farmer. His entire body called out "dung, we are one!". He could shovel a ton of goose dung in the blink of an eye. He could sort dung by smell at a breathtaking rate. He was a born dung farmer, and had always been father's favorite, until the day he beat Molly Ringworm to death because she didn't want to go smooching in the dung heap with him. "Mark...." asked Perrywinkle, "I thought you were sentenced to life imprisonment for killing Molly." Mark's eyes flared in warning. "I mean, patting Molly a little bit too hard." "Naw, its ok now" drawled Mark in his semi- moronic way. "Lord Bluetspur's let us all go. He says that we're not worth the money to keep us in prison, so I'm back!" "Yes he's back Perrywinkle" snarled Toluene, "and there's been a noticeable improvement in our production since then. You can just go back to your wizard friend. We don't want you anymore!" "But, dad!" whined Perrywinkle desperately. "Don't call me dad!" yelled Toluene. "I sweated, I toiled, I suffered without you. Then Mark delivered me from my hell. I haven't had to lift a finger since! How are you going to make up for the endless pain I endured Perrywinkle? How are you!" "But dad, I only left this morning!" "Don't tell me you only left this morning!" yelled Toluene. "I know you left this morning! It's been a very long morning!" He bent over to look at more closely at Perrywinkle. "Just look at you! You've already burnt off your eyebrows you little moron!" "It was Teflour father! He's completely insane, don't send me back, I beg you! I'm your son!" "I have only one son" said Toluene, gazing fondly at Mark. "Now be off with you, or I'll set the dung- hounds on you!" Perrywinkle turned and ran. He'd always been scared of the dung hounds. When he was a child, they'd been fond of chewing on his left leg. Not his right leg, just his left leg. He'd told father about it, but Toluene had gruffly blamed the tooth marks on dung flies. He'd cuffed Perrywinkle and told him "that's what you get for sleeping in the dung heap when you should've been working." Of course the dung hounds were older now, and would have trouble chewing through a piece of wet bread, but Perrywinkle still held his ancient fear to heart. Sobbing, he ran, imagining he heard them baying as they gave pursuit. His tears were not just tears of fear though, they were tears of sorrow. He was cast out! What would become of him? Four minutes he wandered the countryside. A derelict. A homeless man. Pennyless, without friends, and at the mercy of the elements. Liable to be set on any moment by brigands who would kill, torture, and maim him (or worse). He smiled slightly, at least he wasn't Teflour's apprentice anymore. Absentmindedly, he fumbled through the pockets of his filthy, charred, apprentice robes. His fingers closed on soft leather. He pulled an object out of his pocket: a small black book. The Wizard's Manual. "I must have snitched it by accident" he mumbled. A powerful thought hit him. Good lord, in my hands I hold the secrets of wizardry; all 193 pages of them. Frantically, Perrywinkle opened the book to a random page. The ample moonlight gave him all the illumination he required to read. Thy begyners speyl oft fyre. Rayse thy ryte hande and speyk thy word 'fooble fyre'. Then kast ye thy ball oft fyre. Perrywinkle slammed the book shut. He counted slowly to ten, opened the book again, and reread the passage. He slammed the book shut again. How could this be? He had seen wizards cast spells. They always had incense, and bat dung, and they chanted for hours on end before the spell would finally be done. How could any spell be so simple. He shrugged and raised his right hand. "Fooble fire" he intoned. In his cupped palm there appeared a spark. As Perrywinkle watched in awe it began to twinkle, twirl, and grow. He could feel it. A hungry living force, drawing on the natural power within him to fuel an engine of magical destruction. Soon, in Perrywinkle's hand, he held a twisting, rolling, burning ball of magical flame. "Snot!" swore Perrywinkle. He shook his hand violently. The ball of flame shot away from him, striking a nearby tree. Perrywinkle dropped to the ground, and desperately beat his burning palm against it. His sleeve had also been set a ablaze. Screaming, Perrywinkle rolled his body into a watery ditch where he doused the flames in soft mud. Nearby him, the unfortunate tree burned unnoticed. Sobbing once again, perrywinkle nursed the charred blackened was that was his hand. "Oh great, just great. What a perfect end to a perfect day. I'll make a fine wizard won't I? Oh why couldn't I have been happy shoveling dung?" Sucking on his fingers, Perrywinkle crawled out of the ditch. Spotting the spellbook, he grabbed it with his good hand, and prepared to toss it into the ditch. He hesitated. The book was all he had. Perhaps I could become a rouge wizard? he thought to himself. Oh, he'd be hunted down by the church and burned as a demonic sorcerer, which didn't sound like much fun, but it would be better than being Teflour's apprentice. Bemoaning his fate, Perrywinkle rolled back into the ditch. The cool mud soothed his untreated burns. Exhausted from his ordeals, he sank into a deep, yet troubled, sleep.