Dragon Mage

by ML Spencer

  It was another hour before Calise arrived, and by the time she did, Aram had grown so uncomfortable with the silence of the cavern that he was overjoyed to see her. She looked just as he remembered from his dreams, which seemed surreal. The girl and her dragon had rescued him from the dark confines of his prison, just as surely as Markus had.

  She smiled cheerfully and made straight toward him, but Esmir rose to intercept her. He tossed her a leather pouch, which Calise caught in one hand.

  “Take him down to the bath,” Esmir ordered, his voice grating like a dull plow. “When he’s clean, get him some clothes that fit.”

  Aram glanced down at himself, and for the first time noticed that he was wearing threadbare trousers and a shirt that must have belonged to Esmir, which was far too big for him. He felt his embarrassment sink to new depths. When Calise started toward him, he tucked his legs against his chest and ducked his head.

  She crouched next to him, her arm resting on her knees. “Hello. Remember me?”

  Aram was too ashamed to respond. He kept his eyes pinned on the stone floor, wishing desperately he could hide.

  “Let’s get you to the bath. You’ll feel much better, I promise.”

  She held her hand out and Aram looked at it, petrified with anxiety. He glanced at her face, and her calm and easy smile reassured him. Hesitantly, he raised his hand, and the sight of it shamed him. His hand was dark with filth, every crease and crevice in his skin lined with grime.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered, retracting his hand.

  “For what?”

  He didn’t answer her, for humiliation had a stranglehold on his throat. Still, he didn’t resist as Calise took his hand and helped him up. Like an obedient lapdog, he followed her toward the door on legs that felt weak and spongy. He glanced at Esmir, who just waved him on and turned back to his book.

  Calise led him out the door, where he found himself in a hallway carved out of sandstone rock. Seeing the walls of the tunnel, he paused, for they were etched in intricate, interlaced knot patterns, leaving no patch of stone unadorned. Calise stopped and waited for him while Aram stood staring in awe at the designs. She smiled at his reaction.

  “I always forget about them.” She ran her fingers across the textured surface of the nearest wall. “They’re remarkable, when you stop and really look at them. But when you see them all the time…” She shrugged.

  The designs were more than just remarkable. They were knots. Or rather, just one knot—one, large, interlaced cord that ran all along the entire length of the corridor. Aram could not keep his eyes off it as they started forward, his gaze filled with wonder as he took in the plaited knotwork with myriad crossings. He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. The pattern continued as Calise led him down a flight of stairs to a lower level, where there was another long hallway with walls graced with a different pattern that rivaled the first in beauty and complexity.

  Unable to keep his eyes off the walls, Aram practically ran into Calise when she halted in front of a doorway.

  “Here’s the bath,” she told him. “Take your time. I’ll wait here.”

  But instead of going inside the room, he wandered along the wall, studying its intricacies closer. “Who made the designs?”

  Calise shrugged. “I have no idea. I assume they’ve been here almost as long as Skyhome. Perhaps you can ask the Dedicant Mother. She might know.”

  With one last glance at the etched knotwork, Aram reluctantly left her in the corridor and entered the bath. The lighting was dim, provided by oil lanterns set on marble pedestals, the air warm and muggy. It had a foul smell to it, like rotten eggs, though it wasn’t overpowering. Before him were three circular pools of water that bubbled and steamed. No one was using them, thankfully. He didn’t think he could have gone in with anyone there.

  Moving to the nearest steaming pool, he removed his clothes and lowered himself into the water. It was hot, but not too hot, not so much that he couldn’t stand it. The water was far more soothing than he would have imagined. He lay there soaking for a time, but he didn’t want to stay too long, because he knew that Calise was waiting for him, and he didn’t want to leave her in the hallway. Finding some soap, he scrubbed himself as hard as he could, until his skin felt raw and the water around him turned a murky brown. When he felt reasonably clean, he climbed out of the pool—and sank immediately to his knees, overcome by dizziness.

  He sat there on the ground at the edge of the pool, holding his head until the world stopped rocking and spinning. Then he found a towel to dry off with. But when he held it up to himself, he froze and just stood there.

  For the first time, he took in the emaciated condition of his body, and what he saw repulsed him. Across his chest, every rib was visible, his collar bones protruding from sunken skin. His arms were so thin that he could wrap two fingers all the way around his bicep. His knees and elbows looked huge and knobby, and the bones of his pelvis jutted out from his waist. An intense shame overwhelmed him, and it was all he could do to move the towel over the ruin of his body with trembling fingers, a body that looked much older than he remembered it. How many years of his childhood had been stolen from him? A great sadness overcame him, and he found himself battling back tears.

  When he was dry, Aram thrust his arms into the sleeves of his shirt and pulled up his trousers, regretting that he had to put dirty clothes back on over clean skin. He had no shoes, so he walked barefoot out of the bath and found Calise in the hallway, sitting on the ground with her back against the knotwork wall.

  At the sight of him, she rose lithely to her feet, her smile blossoming. “You look like a different person!” she exclaimed. “Who would have guessed there was a young man under all that filth. How old are you?”

  Aram stared at her speechless for a moment, groping through his agonized memories for a sense of time. In the cellars, one week had blurred into the next, just a constant cycle of torture followed by periods of rest.

  “I don’t know,” he murmured with a sense of shame.

  Calise peered closer at him, scrunching her brow. “You look a little younger than me,” she said, her eyes thoughtful. “Sixteen, maybe?” But then her smile came back. “Esmir asked me to get you some new clothes. I bet that will make a big difference.”

  “I bet it will,” Aram said, though he knew nothing could make that big of a difference. Only time and food would fix what was wrong with him, though fitting clothes might hide some of the damage. He had a hard time believing that Calise was still smiling when she spoke to him. He thought most girls would be repulsed.

  “I’m going to take you to Tailor’s Row down in Hearth Home,” Calise said. “We’ll get you some clothes that fit and maybe some other things.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  Calise swiped her hand dismissively. “You don’t have to worry about payment. Esmir gets anything he wants. Besides,” she held up the leather purse the old man had flung at her. “It feels like there’s enough here to outfit twenty of you.”

  “Twenty?” Aram asked in amazement.

  She gave him the funniest look. “Well, almost twenty.” The look turned into a grin. “It doesn’t matter. Come on!”

  Aram hurried after her, struggling hard to keep his gaze off the walls. She led him down the corridor to a stairwell that spiraled downward for what looked like forever. Aram halted and stared down the shaft, certain his weakened legs couldn’t take that many stairs.

  “How far down?” he asked.

  Calise gave him an apologetic smile. “All the way. Think you can make it?”

  Aram shook his head adamantly. “Uh-uh.”

  She paused, looking thoughtful, then said at length, “I think it’ll be good for you. We’ll just take a lot of rest breaks.”

  Aram gazed at the staircase dubiously, but Calise had been so nice to him, and he wanted to please her, so he conceded. They took the stairs slowly as faster people dodged around them. It took a long time, and quite a fe
w breaks, but eventually they made it to the bottom. It wasn’t until they were halfway down that Aram started wondering how he was going to make it back up again.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Calise led him out onto a wide outdoor terrace. At first, Aram’s attention was drawn to the small town that rose up around them—until his gaze was drawn upward to the cliffs above it. His eyes widened, and his head tilted back, his jaw opening. For before them, across a wide chasm, was a landscape of cliffs that towered over them all the way to the sky, made of thousands of layers of sandstone streaked with wide bands of red and gold. The terrace they stood upon protruded from another soaring wall. The sky above could be seen as only a sinuous strip of blue between pairs of soaring walls. To the east rose an enormous bell-shaped mountain peak that towered over the cliffs, ringed by a halo of golden light.

  The village below the cliffs had a contrasting air of normalcy. It looked like the sort of community that wouldn’t have been too out of place in the Vardlands, containing workshops and houses, people and animals, arrayed in a succession of long terraces.

  “This is Hearth Home,” said Calise. “It’s where the craft halls and the kitchens are located, along with everything else that goes into supporting the eyries—the caverns where the dragons live. There’s stables, laundries, pantries, stables … whatever you can think of, really.”

  Aram nodded, feeling daunted by the looming cliffs, for they looked ready to come crashing down on top of them. He followed Calise into the village, which was comfortingly familiar. Many of the sights and smells reminded him of home. The biggest difference was in the construction of the buildings, which were tall and lean, built of thin bricks the same color as the sandstone bluffs, with lead roofs and angular gables.

  Aram followed Calise along Hearth Home’s excruciatingly narrow streets that weren’t much more than walkways between houses. Yet, they were cleaner than any streets he had ever seen. People going about their business stared at him as he walked by, which made him anxious. He found himself looking up at the walls or down at the ground, consciously avoiding eye contact.

  It was odd, how it all seemed so foreign, and yet so familiar. Bakers here still toiled at the daily business of transforming wheat into bread, though their ovens were rounded and made of clay. The blacksmiths still hammered at their forges, though their bellows looked like boxes instead of accordions. They passed a butcher’s shop, where the carcasses of whole pigs, sheep, and chickens hung from beams projecting from the eaves. Across from the butcher’s was a large chandlery, where an entire family labored together to produce hundreds of candles at a time, dipping racks draped with long wicks into vats of heated tallow.

  They stopped to let Aram rest on one of the wider streets. He sat on a barrel and massaged his legs, which were burning and shaking, while Calise looked on with an expression of pity. People and animals passed them by, along with two-wheeled carts with wooden wheels studded with nails, carrying casks of wine and bushels of fruit. All the people that passed looked very similar to his own, though their features were more rounded and their eyes brilliant turquoise. The clothing they wore was very different. Men and women alike wore loose-fitting tunics, the women’s longer than the men’s, and women wore their hair free or in braids, not done up under headscarves.

  A shadow passed over him, and Aram glanced up to see a dragon skimming by overhead. Others soared in the narrow space between cliffs, while dozens more lined terraces that ribbed the canyon walls above them. Glancing further up, he saw that the cliff directly above them was honeycombed with what could only be dragon caves. He sucked in a breath that he held on to, too amazed to let it back out again.

  “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Calise asked.

  Aram could only nod. He sat gazing upward at the dragons until his legs didn’t hurt so much, then set off down the street again. They walked until they reached a one-story brick building attached to a taller structure.

  “Here we are,” said Calise.

  The shop in front of them had a long counter that faced the street, upon which a variety of clothing items and materials were spread. A tailor’s workshop, Aram realized, noticing the tidy displays of expensive-looking wools and linens. Inside, they found three apprentices working on a large rectangle of fabric laid out on a long trellis table. One apprentice was marking the fabric with a measuring stick and chalk, another cutting it with hand-forged scissors, while the third stitched along behind him.

  Seeing Calise and Aram standing at the counter, the master tailor broke himself off from an inventory of his fabrics and came toward them with a smile that quickly wilted when he saw the state of Aram’s clothes. Aram flushed, wishing he could walk away.

  “What do we have here?” the tailor asked, a forced smile returning to his face. He looked from Aram to Calise, eyebrows raised.

  “A foundling,” Calise said with a grin. “This is Aram, Warden Revin’s new charge. He needs clothing.”

  “I’d say he does,” the tailor muttered. His eyes narrowed, and he scanned Aram up and down critically, then motioned with his hand for him to turn around.

  “Retainer?” he asked.

  “Apprentice.”

  Aram shot her a questioning look, for he didn’t remember apprenticing himself to anyone. But before he could protest, the tailor waved him inside, standing back to let him pass, giving him an exceptionally wide berth. He led Aram to a corner, where a cloth had been draped from the ceiling as a privacy screen. He undressed down to his breeches, which were just as filthy as the rest of his clothes, then stood with his arms out as the tailor took his measurements swiftly with a length of string, writing them down on a wax tablet. Aram was grateful for the drape of cloth, because Calise lingered on the other side of it, and he would be mortified if she saw the state of him undressed. At last satisfied, the tailor retreated to the interior of the workshop then returned a few minutes later with a stack of garments in hand.

  “You’ll be difficult to fit. Try these on, then I’ll have to make adjustments.” To Calise, he added, “There’s not much to him.”

  Aram lifted the first garment, a pair of breeches so short they may as well have been a loincloth. He put them on then worked his legs into a pair of loose pants of undyed linen. The next item was a brown tunic that fell past his waist, over which he strapped a leather belt with a large brass buckle.

  Emerging from behind the drape, Aram balked when he saw Calise’s reaction to his new clothes. Her expression went slack, her eyes going wide. He couldn’t figure out whether it was shock or horror that registered on her face, but whatever it was, he blushed bright crimson and almost fled.

  She motioned for him to turn around, and Aram did as she asked, acutely aware of her eyes on him and wanting to die and melt into the ground. The tailor checked the fit of the clothes, finding plenty of slack in the tunic. If it weren’t for the drawcord that he’d knotted extra tight, the pants probably would have fallen right off.

  The tailor gave Calise a woeful look. “I can take them in if you leave them here a couple of days.”

  Calise scratched her freckled cheek, face tight with thought. “Let’s let him wear what he’s got on. Could you alter another outfit for him, one we can pick up later? Then he’ll have an outfit for now and one to grow into.”

  “He has a lot of growing to do,” the tailor grumbled. “Tell Warden Revin to feed him occasionally.”

  Calise laughed good-naturedly then turned to Aram. “I would have never guessed you’d clean up so well. You’re quite handsome!”

  Aram’s eyes narrowed in anger and shame, for he hadn’t taken Calise as the type of person to make sport of him like that. He dodged around her and headed out of the shop, weaving through the flow of foot traffic in the street. He heard her footsteps rushing to catch up with him and quickened his pace.

  “What happened?” she cried, drawing abreast of him and catching his arm. “Did I offend you?”

  He kept walking, face heated to scalding. “No
.”

  “I did, I can tell. I didn’t mean to!” she insisted. “What did I do?”

  Aram stopped to look at her. One glance at her face sent him into a spiral of confusion. She really did look upset.

  “You weren’t mocking me?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No! Why would I do that?”

  Aram drew in a deep breath, so frustrated with himself that he wanted to bang his head against something. He never understood people, and they never understood him. It was like a sinkhole he could never crawl out of. Not for the first time, he wished he could be anyone—anyone—else in the whole wide world.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, unable to look at her. “It’s just that … people don’t say those kinds of things to me unless they’re trying to be cruel. I mean, most people. Not you.” He stared at the ground, burning in frustration. He couldn’t even get an apology out of his mouth without stumbling over his own words.

  Calise’s face was a study in bewilderment. “I can’t understand why anyone would treat you like that. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  Aram gave a bitter laugh. “There’s plenty wrong with me. I’m just glad you don’t see it.”

  “Well, I certainly don’t!” Calise smiled as though she meant it then glanced up the street with a worried expression. “We really need to get to the cobblers, so we can be getting back. It’s a long way up. Will you walk with me?”

  Aram nodded, then followed her meekly, feeling mortified. Calise was the nicest person he’d ever met—nicer, even, than Mora Haseleu. He should have trusted her aura instead of making assumptions and acting like a fool.

  “I really am sorry,” he said, feeling glum. “I won’t mistake you again.”

  Calise wrinkled her mouth, looking perplexed. “I just can’t believe people would say such things to you. You’re really nice.”