Dragonborn

by Toby Forward

  “Yes, please. Something else.”

  He drew his sleeve over his eyes.

  “You don’t like dragons?”

  Vengeabil searched the shelves for a different book.

  “It’s not that.”

  “I see.”

  He gave up the search.

  “What do you want to read about?”

  “You choose.”

  “I chose. It’s your turn.”

  “I want to know how many floors there are in here, and how they all fit in.”

  “Well. There are books for that, but I don’t think you’ll understand them. The only way is to go up there and count.”

  Sam shook his head.

  “I don’t want to explore anymore today. I want to read.”

  “Well, that’s good,” said Vengeabil. “At least you’re telling me what you want at last.”

  “I want to know why you taught Tim how to play Brickotelle,” said Sam. “I want to know whether you’re the librarian or the storekeeper. I want know what Smedge is like and what he’s doing. And I want to know why I’m so unhappy.”

  “Is that all?”

  “I want to know how I can be happy again.”

  Vengeabil put his hand to his face and considered all this.

  “Where do you want to start?”

  “Who are you?”

  “That’s a long story,” said Vengeabil.

  The light had gone

  by the time Sam was free from the library and Tim had finished his detention.

  “I’d like to cast a slime spell on Duddle,” said Tim, when they met in the garden.

  “I don’t think I’m staying here,” said Sam.

  Tim looked away from him.

  “I wish you would,” he said.

  “It’s not the right place.”

  “I know. Have you made up your mind?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Look at the stars,” said Tim. “Don’t you ever wonder what they’re for?”

  The night sky was an open book of constellations.

  “They’re for the same as everything else,” said Sam. “They’re just themselves.”

  The stars silently agreed.

  “Why did you come here?” asked Sam.

  Tim brightened up. He liked to talk about himself.

  “I just did magic,” he said, “when I was little, and I wasn’t any good at anything else, so they thought I should come here. Learn to be a wizard. And that’s what I want to do.”

  He brushed his hair back from his face and grinned.

  “Are you doing well here?” asked Sam.

  Tim didn’t stop grinning when he admitted that he wasn’t. “I’m never going to be top of the class,” he said. “That’s Smedge.”

  “Is he the best at magic?”

  Sam lay back on the grass and looked up at the sky, his hands behind his head.

  “He’s the best at the sort of magic they like here. He’s the best at pleasing people.”

  “I don’t want to be like that,” said Sam. “I just want to be the best wizard I can be.”

  “That’s right,” said Tim. “So do I. That’s why I don’t work hard enough at the magic they want. Book magic. I like the magic I came here with.”

  “Is it just that?”

  “Not really. There’s something else. I don’t know what it is. A lot of the magic here is just games. It’s all over the place. But there’s something else. There’s a sort of magic within the magic. I can’t explain it. It’s as though Smedge and Duddle, and a couple of other teachers, are doing a different magic. I don’t like it.”

  He frowned, struggling to understand what it was he was saying.

  “Do you know,” he said, “when you walk into a room and the people don’t stop talking, but they seem to change the subject and have to catch up quickly, to pretend they were talking about that all the time?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “I haven’t really had a lot to do with people.”

  “Oh. Well. It’s like that. Sometimes, one of them will be doing some magic, and I’ll see them, and they’ll change it, just in time. I don’t know what they were doing before, but it feels wrong.”

  “I learned a lot in the library today,” said Sam.

  “What was Vengeabil like?”

  “What do you think?”

  “He teases me,” said Tim, “but I like him. He’s odd, but he seems to know what he’s doing.”

  Sam let his eyes leave the stars and he turned his head to the College, brooding. He could make out the oriel window to Frastfil’s study. He could tell, without seeing him, that Smedge was in a window, three along from the principal’s study, the light off, his head half-hidden by the frame. He was watching them, thinking himself unobserved. Sam knew he could hear them. He wondered how long he had been listening.

  “What did you learn, then?” said Tim. “In the library.”

  “Oh, you know,” said Sam. “Book stuff. Let’s go in. I’m tired.”

  Smedge watched them disappear through the small door by the kitchen.

  “What do you want to do today?” asked Vengeabil.

  It had been the same question for three days now, and Sam was used to it. He smiled.

  “I want to go up there,” he said, pointing to the staircase.

  “Off you go, then.”

  Sam was startled.

  “Isn’t there anything you want to tell me before I go?”

  “No.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Would you still go if it was?”

  “Yes.”

  Vengeabil shrugged his shoulders.

  Sam put his foot on the first stair. It was iron, pierced with a pattern of leaves and slim branches, woven around each other. He looked back at Vengeabil.

  “Is there anything I should be careful of?”

  “Yourself,” said Vengeabil. “Off you go.”

  Sam looked up. The stairway wound around and around, up to the next level. He climbed it at a normal pace. The floor of the gallery was made of the same ironwork as the stairs. It ran all the way around the library so Sam could lean over and see Vengeabil. The books on this level were all bound in green leather. He looked at some of the titles. They were all about herbs and plants.

  On the next level, the books were bound in scarlet and were all about grinding and mixing compounds. Level three had blue books, with titles that mentioned clouds and skies and winds. By level four, Vengeabil was looking small at his table. Sam sat for a while at a small desk in a niche set into the bookcases and turned the pages of a book he had taken at random from the shelf.

  He stopped counting levels after that, and just climbed till he was out of breath. Vengeabil had left his desk and gone, perhaps to his room, perhaps to one of the other rooms behind the false bookshelves. Sam had been in four of those rooms now.

  The levels above him seemed no fewer than when he had first set off. The levels below spiraled down, almost out of sight. The floor of the library was no bigger than the half crown Sam had ordered once with Flaxfield.

  “What are you looking down at?”

  Sam grabbed the rail of the gallery to stop himself from falling.

  He looked over his shoulder.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Well,” she drew herself up to her full height, which was about the same as Sam’s. “I’ve been here a long time, so I think I’m entitled to ask you that first.”

  “I’m …” Sam hesitated, trying to remember the name he was using here. “Oh, I’m Sam,” he said.

  “So you are. Are you going on up or staying here?”

  She put on a pair of spectacles, round, with tortoiseshell frames and silver earpieces. Her hair was cut shorter than any woman’s he had ever seen, much shorter, even, than his. She looked about forty, for a woman, which meant she could be any age if she was a wizard.

  “I’m going to rest for a while. Then I’m going up.”

  “How far?” />
  “All the way to the top.”

  She laughed. She was slim and moved with an easy grace.

  “Tell me what you find,” she said. “On your way down.”

  “Haven’t you been up there?”

  “There?” She raised an elegant hand and gestured up the staircase. “I’ve been up higher, but not to the top. No one ever goes all the way up there.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’ve all given up, long before.”

  Sam looked down over the gallery rail, then up. The distance down was farther than he could calculate. The distance up, more still.

  “How high are we?”

  “It’s easier to see from outside. Come.”

  She led him around the gallery a little, then found a door in the bookshelves. He followed her through, into another of the endless rooms that branched out from the central well. She pointed to a window.

  “Look out there.”

  The town square lay before him. It was market day, and the stalls covered the cobbles. The buildings on the other side of the square faced him, and, guessing from the levels, he thought he was on the third floor of the College. He crossed the room back to the gallery and looked down. Level after level stretched beneath him. He went back to the window. Third floor up from the ground.

  “How does that work?” he asked.

  “Sorry. I have to go. Ask one of the others.”

  “I haven’t seen any others. You’re first.”

  “Just because you didn’t see them doesn’t mean they weren’t there. I thought you’d learned that. Close the door behind you.”

  She left the room, and when Sam followed her onto the gallery, she had gone. He looked over the rail.

  “Isn’t there anyone who can tell me what to do?” he asked.

  As far as he could see, up and down, around every railing, people started to appear. They gathered at the rail, silently, till every space on every level was filled with people. They looked at him, and he knew that every one of them was a wizard, and that every one of them would tell him something if he asked. All the books, all the wizards, all the learning in the library was spread out before him and behind him. All he had to do was choose.

  “No,” said Sam. “Thank you, but no.”

  The people drew back, receding softly like the sea on a shallow shore.

  Sam found the staircase trickier to walk down than up, something about the turn of the tread and the effort not to fall.

  Vengeabil was at the desk again when Sam reached the ground.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked.

  “There’s too much here. Too many books. Too many people. I want to leave here and find a new master. I want to be an apprentice again. I want to learn from one person.”

  “It’s late. You shouldn’t leave today. And a message came while you were up there. You’re going back to lessons, tomorrow. To Dr. Duddle.”

  “I won’t go,” said Sam.

  “You should,” said Vengeabil.

  “I’m not staying here.”

  “I know. But it might be fun. Leave them something to remember you by.”

  He smiled, and Sam couldn’t help grinning back at him.

  That night,

  when everyone was asleep, Sam found his way back to the turret. He stared into the fear-black night. There was no moon. The stars, as ever, had many messages. Sam tried to read them. They whispered to him, many voices, many words, many thoughts. He could not make out what they were saying. Except that he knew that they spoke to him of Starback.

  He did not hear Tamrin arrive. She slid silently down the steep slope of slates. The first he knew of her being there was when the stone top of the turret bloomed into a glowing line of jasmine that illuminated his face and breathed a mist of delicate perfume into the night air.

  He smiled, not turning his head.

  Green and blue and silver-gray lizards crept silently from the jasmine, each as small as a fingernail. They darted among the dark green fronds and rested on the white flowers, licking black tongues across their cheeks, reflecting beauty in the starlight.

  Sam joined in, weaving forget-me-nots between the jasmine blooms, the blue against the white.

  Tamrin stood close to him, their shoulders touching. Sam allowed the pressure against him, welcomed the closeness, returned the touch. He was warm now. His cloak fell open and his hands reached forward to brush against the jasmine, enjoying the tickling sensation of the lizards as they scurried around, unafraid, running between his fingers, surprisingly warm.

  Without moving, Tamrin caused the jasmine to grow and tumble more branches down the wall, falling at their feet, then transforming into meadow grass, sweet with its own greenness and rich with every sort of wildflower. The scent of jasmine blended with the fragrance of the summer fields. For the first time, Sam really felt the power of magic in someone else, his shoulder to her shoulder. No movement, but an awareness of something active, something working.

  He filled the meadow grass with harvest mice and shrews. He conjured up dragonflies and wrens and lapwings.

  He knew, as he worked the magic, that Tamrin was aware of him as he had been of her.

  He felt remade, more at rest than at any time since he had found Flaxfield lying dead.

  They stepped away from the wall and looked at the place they had made. The gray-grim College glowered around it in the darkness.

  “You have to leave here,” said Tamrin.

  “Yes.”

  “Soon.”

  “Come with me.”

  “I can’t leave. Not yet.”

  “I’ll send word,” said Sam.

  “I’ll find you.”

  “Yes.”

  Tamrin handed him the staff she and Vengeabil had made. It felt like the missing part of his body he never knew he had lost.

  Smedge didn’t like

  pen and ink. They were old fashioned and messy. He always seemed to get ink on his fingers, and he hated that. There were a hundred easier ways to send a message. Even simple magic could come up with about twenty, but he had been told always to use pen and ink for these messages, and he knew better than to try to cheat and magic a letter. She would know.

  He dipped the nib into the ink and continued writing.

  The girl, Tamrin, is not as stupid as I thought. As soon as the boy arrived, she watched him and waited for an opportunity to be alone with him to talk. They were together on the turret, twice, but one or other of them sealed it and I could not listen to them or see what they did. I must have been wrong when I told you that her magic had withered away and was finished. She has been hiding it, I think. And there must be someone here who is helping her. I will look into it.

  Duddle is working for us now. Frastfil is a fool, and I have him under control.

  The boy calls himself Cartouche. At the moment, if we tried to get the better of him he would beat us. Frastfil is going to trick him into using his magic every day and to make him work more magic than he can control. The boy is already confused and frightened, and he will get angry when we taunt him. He will work magic to make himself feel better and then it will turn against him. Then, when he is weak, I can seize him and bring him to you.

  There was more. When he had finished, Smedge folded the paper in an intricate design, blew on it, and threw it into the air. It unfolded itself into a moth, with a fat black body and gray powdery wings. It fluttered in a circle, dipped, turned, and flew through the window and into the night.

  Sam decided

  not to wear his uniform for his last day in class. He dressed in the clothes he had traveled in. He put the cloak over his shoulders and grasped the ash staff.

  “You can’t go to class like that,” said Tim. “You’ll be banned again.”

  Sam left the uniform on the bed and ran downstairs.

  Dr. Duddle hesitated, then pointed Sam to his desk, ignoring the clothes. He had his instructions.

  “Professor Frastfil has persuaded me to give you another
chance,” he said. “So, if you’ll please be so good as to just let us see how much catching up you need to do?”

  Sam ignored him.

  The class looked at him with growing interest and excitement. It was going to be another amusing lesson.

  “If you’ll all open your textbooks to page seventy-three. Orgletray, will you perform the third spell, please?”

  It was a spell to make a very bad smell in a very small space.

  Orgletray’s plump face crinkled up in a smile. He stood up, cleared his throat, and started to say the words. From the other side of the room a girl jumped up and started to cough and wave her hands in front of her face.

  “No, please,” said Duddle. “It’s Mr. Cartouche who needs to be made a part of the class. Direct the spell at him, if you would.”

  Orgletray looked apologetically at Sam, who smiled grimly back. The stench was terrible, but only he could smell it. A hum of malicious pleasure charged the classroom. This was better than work.

  “Number five on page eighty, please, Lynsorm. For Mr. Cartouche.”

  A slender girl with auburn hair stood and cast a spell of headache that swept across Sam’s mind for an instant before he brushed it aside like a wasp, sending it spinning and grown with anger at Duddle, who gasped in pain and fell to his knees, white-faced and breathless.

  The class became silent.

  Sam stood up and looked at his fellow students.

  “He can be as stupid and mean as he likes,” he said, indicating Duddle with his staff. “But you don’t have to join in. You can stand up to him.”

  Tim’s face was red with emotion. Smedge watched, silent, attentive.

  Sam tapped his staff on the scrubbed floorboards. The air in the classroom thickened, grew dark and still. Duddle still crouched in deflected pain. All the light in the room gathered into a ball and disappeared, leaving the blackest night. Not a glint of light, not a fragile pulse, broke through the complete darkness. The pupils began to call out in terror. Sam tapped his staff again and silence embraced darkness. He looked around the room. To his eyes, all was as in starlight, stripped of color, yet clear, distinct. The others sat as though asleep with open eyes. Sam laid a hand on Tim’s shoulder. He looked up, and saw as Sam saw.