Negotiations

"When the red planet transits the constellation of Gemini," the white-bearded old wizard blathered, "there is an increased probability of windstorms. But when the red planet crosses through Leo, you may expect at least a ten-day of warm, dry air. In particularly dry years, such a transit may signal a lasting drought."

My jaws ached with the effort of keeping the yawn clenched behind my teeth. Finally, I surrendered, trying to crack open my mouth as narrowly as possible. Maybe he wouldn't notice, I thought hopefully. Even if the lesson had been during the daytime, it still would have been almost unbearably tedious. But, in order to see some conjunction of four planets, my master had dragged me to the top of this cracked old tower in the middle of a chilly, early spring night.

Maybe I should try to take more of an interest in astrology, I thought to myself in a moment of honesty. After all, my parents were paying dozens of silvers for magic lessons. Yet most lessons ranged from mildly tiresome to, as with this lesson, unbearably tedious. Perhaps I didn't truly have a future as a wizard, despite my ability to fire-start. But, as much as I dreamed of traveling the land as a bard, wizardry was certainly a more stable and lucrative career. Besides, my singing voice was still developing. It was perfectly normal for a boy's voice to still be cracking at seventeen years! I told myself firmly. It would settle soon enough.

Guiltily, trying to will myself into enthusiasm, I gazed through the telescope again. I still only saw random pinpricks of lights, indistinguishable from each other. What madman decided that the constellation of Cassiopeia looked like a woman, much less a queen? I thought to myself in confusion.

"Now that we've considered the meteorological implications of a transit of the red planet through each of the primary constellations, let's move on to the influence of the giant planet on weather," my master continued.

I tried not to sigh. How many planets were left again? My mind wandered. For a moment, I entertained myself with the mental image of a giant scorpion chasing a stately-looking woman wearing a crown, skirts raised to her shapely knees for haste, through the sky.

Suddenly, a bright light appeared in the telescope's field of vision. It was too large and luminous to be a shooting star.

"Um, Master," I started tentatively. It appeared that the moving object was heading in the general direction of the tower. Abruptly, it seemed to double in size.

The old man continued to drone: "Now, while the Alexandrians have fallaciously concluded that the motion of the giant planet through Scorpius can foretell an earth-shake...."

"Master," I said more loudly. Perhaps his hearing was truly starting to fail. The flying object grew closer. I realized that it wasn't actually glowing; instead, moonlight was reflecting off silver scales.

"No one has ever confirmed a correlation between the movements of the stars and planets and earth-shakes to date..."

"Master Davos!" I yelped. "There's a dragon flying towards us!"

Then I yelped again, louder, as the old man rapped me on the head with his staff. "Haven't you been listening at all, boy? Scorpius isn't a dragon; it's a scorpion! Are you blind or are you confused? We're still reviewing the twelve primary constellations; we haven't begun the secondary constellations like Draco yet."

Jerking away from the telescope and rubbing my skull, I looked towards the sky. Even as I stared in horror, the brilliantly shining being, now visible to my eyes, resolved itself into a streamlined shape with two long wings. It was still flying straight towards the tower upon which we stood.

The tower, the remnants of what had once been a much larger building, suddenly seemed far more precarious and vulnerable than it had when we'd initially climbed the narrow stairway. In fact, now that I thought on it, there was nowhere to run or hide from the flames of an angry dragon on the bare, flat stone of the roof of the tower. Gasping, I wished desperately that my master had taught me the feather-light spell this ten-day rather than a crop-enhancement spell.