by Toby Forward
“I’ve come for this mirror,” she said. “And I’ve come for you, Sam.”
Smith and Winny spoke little as Tim raced them towards Tamrin and the tailor’s shop. After a few miles Smith slipped the leash and allowed Tim to run ahead, judging, rightly, that he would not run off altogether.
Tim’s mind was a confusion of perplexity and delight.
He longed to see Tamrin again, though he feared to explain to her what he had done to betray her. He longed to lead Smith where he wanted to go, longed to please the man. Somewhere, lost in the doggy depths of his mind, he still longed to please Smedge, though the thought of the other boy made him cringe. More than that, the thought of Vengeabil filled him with regret, and anxiety. He could never go back now. Never face the old storeman who had trusted him. Thoughts of Vengeabil flooded through his mind and, for a foolish moment, he felt that the man was watching him.
To throw the thought out of his mind he tossed back his head and howled, and ran in a huge circle. He loved the chase, the scent, the air in his lungs, the disappearing miles.
Smith loved the chase a great deal less. Breathing was growing hard. His legs ached. He stopped to recover. Tim lolloped back to join them.
“Are you all right?” asked Winny.
Smith could only nod in reply.
“If you weren’t carrying that it would be easier,” she said.
He looked at the hammer he was grasping and frowned.
“I know,” she agreed. “I’ll carry it for you for a while.”
Smith shook his head, but she took it from him.
Tim rushed round their legs, yelping encouragement.
“All right,” agreed Winny. “But run right ahead. See if you can find a stream or something and wait for us there. You need a drink.”
The stream, when they reached it, was on the edge of the town. Tamrin’s scent was strong and fresh here. And there was Vengeabil’s scent again. Tam must have spent so long in his kitchen that she even smelled of it. Tim bounded with pleasure and couldn’t stop himself from leaping up and licking Smith’s face when the man at last arrived.
“We’re close, are we?” he asked.
Tim yelped.
“I’ll take the hammer, then,” he said.
Winny handed it over. Tim noticed that her hands were large, strong and used to the weight. She wasn’t tired, either.
“Where’s Starback?” asked Winny. “Why isn’t he with us?”
“We’ll go carefully from here,” said Smith, putting Tim back on the leash.
Tim was surprised at how comforted he was by the restraint. He looked over his shoulder, towards Canterstock, so many miles away, and towards Vengeabil, who had helped him and whom he had let down.
“No,” said Winny. “Let him run. Time’s short and he’s faster than us.”
The kravvin army approached from the other side of town, and at a much swifter rate.
They had come further, but faster. Bakkmann, who thought to lead them, found herself challenged to keep up. They wouldn’t stop, even when she tried to make them. She clattered out her orders and they ignored her, streaming ever onward, towards the town, towards the tailor, towards Tamrin.
Starback was a ship without a compass. Sam had gone. Just disappeared. These people were chasing a girl, but Starback needed to find Sam. Needed to be Sam again.
He rose high into the air, out of sight. First he would fly over Boolat, try to find Sam there. Then the college, perhaps. After that, Flaxfold’s house. The inn. Anywhere. Everywhere. Until he found him.
For the first time, Ash stood before Sam’s eyes, clear to see, not shaded by the edges of the Finished World. And Sam was astonished at how lovely she was.
He stepped nearer to her.
She smiled and held out her hand.
“Come to me, Sam,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you a long time. Come, now.”
Her grey dress fell in graceful folds, nearly to the floor. Her outstretched arm was wreathed in a flowing sleeve that shimmered in the candlelight. Her hair framed the delicate features of her face, casting them into mysterious shadows. Her smile was kind. Her hand was open to him.
Why had he feared her?
“Come away,” she repeated. “I’ll show you magic. Magic you’ve never dreamed of.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, as though speaking to him alone. “They’ve tricked you. They’ve told you lies. They’ve held you back, Sam. They’re jealous of your magic. They hate you for being so powerful.”
Sam couldn’t take his eyes from her.
“You know it’s true, don’t you? They bind you. They tie you up. They chain you. They restrict you. You want to break free and use your magic and all the time they prevent you. They tell you magic is dangerous. They won’t let you use it. That’s right, isn’t it? You have so much magic. So much more than they do. They envy you.”
Sam nodded. It was true. They did.
“Don’t listen,” said Tamrin. “She’s lying.”
“But she isn’t lying,” said Sam. “It’s all true.”
“No. All she wants—”
Ash raised her arm and drew a circle in the air. The circle became a hole and Sam could see the sky above it, black and starless. Ash beckoned into the blackness. Beetles tumbled over the edges of the hole, falling like hailstones. They swarmed over the floor. They fell on to Sam’s shoulders and into his hair. He flinched in disgust, then began to enjoy the delicate scrape of their legs, the tickling and the scratching.
They covered Tamrin, stifling her. She clamped her mouth shut to stop them running in.
“Take the mirror, Sam,” said Ash. “Carry it out and come with me. To Boolat.”
“Yes,” said Sam.
“And we’ll make more magic than has ever been imagined.”
Sam nodded and moved to the mirror.
“You’ll have to help me,” he said. “It’s too big.”
Ash trembled. She snapped at him. “Use your magic. Quickly. Take it.”
Sam put his hand to the mirror. It was cool to his touch.
Tamrin dragged the beetles away from her, clawed them from her mouth and eyes. She sprang forward and punched Ash full in the mouth. She waited for the horrid thud of fist on face, for the crunch of teeth, the spurt of blood.
Her fist went straight through the face.
“It’s Smedge,” she shouted.
Sam turned.
“It’s not Ash,” said Tamrin. “It’s Smedge. It’s a trick. Ash is still in Boolat. The mirror helped Smedge to look like her.”
She gathered her mind into a concentrated spear and threw it at Sam, breaking through the barrier between herself and him.
For a moment she felt the sly invitation of Ash and wanted to respond.
For a moment Sam felt the sloppy repulsion of Smedge’s face on his hand.
They were one and they were two again in an instant.
It was enough to break the spell. The beetles disappeared. Tamrin drew back her fist. Smedge put his hands to his head and kneaded it as a potter kneads clay, trying to re-form it into something like its usual appearance. The image of Ash had fallen from him and he was himself again.
Sam couldn’t look at the others. He closed his mind tight shut against Tamrin. He glanced at Solder, who was standing on his barrel, avoiding the beetles. He looked at the floor and saw Flaxfold move from behind the mirror. He noticed that she still kept out of its direct aim.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What happened?” asked Tamrin. “Smedge looked in the mirror and nothing really happened. It was just another shape shift.”
“That’s because he doesn’t exist,” said Flaxfold. She turned eyes of pity at Smedge. “He’s not a person at all. He’s just the excrement of the wild magic that Slowin summoned up all those years ago when he became Ash. There’s nothing there to reflect.”
Smedge snarled at her.
“I still hate him,” said Tamrin. “I’m not going to be sorry for him.”
>
“That’s your choice,” said Flaxfold. “He’s done you great harm and means to do much more if he can.”
“And I can. And I shall,” said Smedge.
“They weren’t real, the beetles,” said Tamrin. “You’re nothing. You’re all tricks and pretend.”
Shoddle, who had sunk to the floor and was leaning against the wall, raised his hand to his ruined head and cupped his ear. A horrid clacking of sharp legs on the cobbles outside. and thick voices.
“Here.”
“Kill.”
“Here.”
“In.”
“Kill.”
“Up.”
“Up.”
“Up.”
“Listen,” he said. And he laughed. “They’ve arrived. Now we’ll see some fun.”
The front door slammed and the skittering legs mounted the stairs.
Sam put his hand to his head. Not them. Not now.
The kravvins surged through the door.
“Yes,” cried Shoddle. “Come in.”
Flaxfold grabbed Solder’s hand and he hopped from his barrel.
“Get fire,” she said. “Quickly.”
Solder flipped the top from his barrel, plunged in and drew out a tinderbox. He struck it. The tinder flared. Flaxfold dragged off her scarf, held it over the flame and let it catch. She pulled Solder, Tamrin and Sam to the mirror and drew a line of fire on the floor in front of them, painting them into a corner. It was all done in an instant.
A kravvin stepped into the line of flame and exploded with a scream.
The room was alive with kravvins. Last of all, Bakkmann pushed through the doorway and surveyed the scene.
Sam saw that Bakkmann and Smedge knew each other.
Tamrin saw that Bakkmann and Smedge hated each other.
Another kravvin attempted the line and died with a sizzle of hot pus.
Bakkmann clattered a loud order to hold back. Their blank faces turned to her and Sam thought they would attack her. A part of his mind wanted to see them do it, wanted to see them destroy at least one of his enemies.
Beyond Sam’s control, magic slipped from him. His thought took shape and slid down to the floor, where it crouched, lizard-like. It curled into a ball and rolled over the flames to the kravvins’ side of the room. It scurried to Bakkmann and crawled up her boot. Bakkmann shook her foot and it fell off, landing on Shoddle. The tailor screamed. His head dropped to one side. The creature leaped to Shoddle’s face and clawed at him. Shoddle shrieked and a kravvin turned its blank face to see what was happening.
“Get rid of it,” shouted Shoddle.
The kravvin stepped forward, grabbed the lizard and squeezed it, killing it instantly, then took Shoddle by the neck, snapped what was left of it, cuffed his head aside. The head rolled to the wall beneath the window.
“Kill.”
“Head.”
“Kill.”
They fell on Shoddle, tossed his body up and it smacked against the ceiling. Blood spurted from his neck. As the droplets fell they hardened into beetles the size of your thumb and when they hit the floor they ran in all directions.
Shoddle’s dead face leered up at them. They covered it, a blood-red mask of legs and shells, and burrowed in, eating it clean in no time till all that was left was the white skull.
The kravvins didn’t even leave the bones of his body. They crunched through everything.
The beetles, searching for more food, more fight, ran over and into the line of flame. They popped and sizzled, screamed and died, but they were winning. Their wet corpses began to smother the fire. The line was being destroyed.
Sam gripped his staff in both hands.
“No more magic,” Flaxfold warned him. “You saw what happened last time. Magic will feed them.”
“What can we do, then?” asked Sam.
He thrust the end of his staff into the chest of a kravvin that was trying to cross the line, through a small gap made by the beetles. The kravvin fell back but was not killed. It rushed at him again, and again he repelled it.
Flaxfold sighed.
“I don’t think there’s anything. Just get ready to fight as long as you can.”
Tim turned his head over his shoulder and yelped to the others to catch him up. They were out of sight. He skidded round the corner into the narrow street and ran through the front door into the tailor’s shop. Tamrin’s scent was so strong here. He bounded up the stairs and crashed into the room.
The kravvins turned their faces to him as one and sniffed.
“Dog.”
“Kill.”
“Eat.”
“Kill.”
He planted his paws on the floor, slid to a halt and tried to run back.
A hand grabbed his neck. A kravvin. It hauled him off his feet, into the air, and was about to throw him up and dash him against the ceiling, killing him.
“No.”
Smedge grabbed the kravvin’s arm and dragged it down.
“Drop him.”
The kravvin pushed its smooth face into Smedge’s.
“Do it. Or Ash will be very angry.”
The kravvin opened its hand and Tim fell to the floor. He slunk into the corner, his tail between his legs. He kept his head down, ready for a blow from Smedge.
Smedge put his hand to Tim.
Tim cowered.
Smedge stroked him.
“No. I won’t hit you,” he said. “Not just yet.”
He looked across at the group in the opposite corner. Flaxfold had torn her sleeve off and lit it from the flames. She was rebuilding the barrier.
“Oh, that won’t help you,” he said. “It keeps your enemies out. It works against anything made by the wild magic. It kills kravvins and beetles and poor old Bakkmann, and even me. We’re all from the wild magic.”
Sam and Tamrin stood side by side. They searched each other’s minds, like putting a foot into water to decide whether or not to plunge in. So far they had paddled in the shallows. Neither of them had been able either to open completely to the other or to allow the other in.
When Sam became Starback he gave himself completely to the experience of being dragon. He had not gone this far with Tamrin. Something held him back. Now he had a sense that they would be stronger together against Smedge than separately.
And he still could not give himself to it.
“But how about an old friend?” asked Smedge. He patted Tim. “An old friend could come to you there, I think.”
He smacked Tim’s head. The dog face disappeared and Tim looked out at them.
“No,” said Tamrin.
“He’s my dog,” said Smedge. “My pet.”
He slapped Tim’s face and he became all dog again.
“Everyone hates you,” he whispered to Tamrin. “Everyone. And do you know why? Because your friend Tim told them you were a bully. He did. He said you hurt people. Didn’t you, Tim?”
The dog wagged a slow tail. He looked away.
“And now,” said Smedge, “he’s coming in there to get you. He’ll bring you out. And some of you will be fed to the kravvins and some of you will be coming back to Boolat with me. I wonder which is which?”
He put his finger to his face in mock puzzlement.
“We’ll feed the kravvins first,” he said. “That will stop them from falling on the rest of you for food.”
He ruffled Tim’s neck.
“Get the roffle,” he said.
Tim leaped up, through the flames, and seized Solder’s leg in his mouth. He dragged him towards the centre of the room.
Solder yelled and struggled. Flaxfold grabbed Tim by the scruff of his neck. Tamrin smacked him. Sam flung his cloak over his shoulder, ready to attack.
“No magic!” shouted Flaxfold. “No magic. It will come back to kill us all.”
They held on to Solder and pulled against Tim. Tim snarled and clamped his teeth into Solder’s leg.
“Let go,” screamed Tamrin.
She raised her ha
nd to hurt Tim and found that she couldn’t. She couldn’t damage the boy who had been her friend.
“I’ll turn him back,” she said. “Back to Tim.”
Flaxfold took hold of her shoulders.
“No magic. No. It will kill us all.”
Smedge laughed.
Tim dragged Solder further from the safety of the barrier of roffle fire.
“Let me go,” Solder shouted.
“We’ve got you,” Sam said. “We’ve got you.”
“No.” Solder beat his fists against Sam’s face. “You let me go. You’re killing me.”
He was being pulled apart. Tim had magic enough to beat any ordinary strength Sam might have to save the roffle.
Solder slipped from Sam’s grasp and slid through the fire, towards the hungry kravvins. They knew he was theirs. They clacked their legs with pleasure.
Until Smith came through the door, swung his hammer and took the head off the nearest kravvin.
Winny grasped the whole situation in a second. She crossed the room, slipped the chain round Tim’s neck and dragged him clear. Solder slipped from his jaws and backed off, rubbing his leg.
“You can’t hold him with a chain,” Smedge sneered. “Come here, Tim.”
He flicked his fingers.
Winny stared into his eyes.
“A chain made at Smith’s forge from roffle fire,” she said. “That will hold him.”
Tim pressed himself against her legs and kept away from Smedge.
Winny scooped up the burning material in her hands and swung it round, lashing the kravvins that Smith hadn’t already smashed with his hammer.
As soon as it hit them the burning scarf and sleeve sliced through them and they burst like poppy heads in the sun. Bakkmann tried to attack Smith from behind. Tim darted at her and she lost her balance. Smith swung round, scythed his hammer and took Bakkmann’s legs away from her, snapping them. She fell on to her back and couldn’t right herself, the stumps waving in the air.
The last kravvin burst under Winny’s attack with the flames. The floor was a shambles of shell fragments, legs and the soft grey insides of the dead creatures. Only Smedge and Bakkmann remained to do them harm. Bakkmann was out of the fight and had no magic anyway. But they moved carefully from their safe corner back into the room, keeping her under close watch.
Shoddle’s skull grinned at them from the floor.