Dragonborn

by Toby Forward

  “I’m leaving now,” said Sam.

  “I wish you’d stay.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “No. Will you come back?”

  “I’ll see you again,” said Sam. “I promise.”

  Tim looked at the others.

  “What will happen to them. Us?”

  “I’ll leave it like this for an hour. They’ll be none the worse for wear.”

  Duddle groaned.

  “What about him?”

  “It’s a bad headache,” said Sam. “But he asked for it in the first place.”

  “You can’t leave him like that.”

  “It will wear off,” said Sam. “Eventually.”

  He settled Tim back in his seat, took his hand from his friend’s shoulder, and left him, blind and still as the others, until the spell wore off.

  Duddle was too wrapped up in his own dark pain to hear what had been said or to see Sam leave the room.

  As he crossed the courtyard toward the gate and the porter’s lodge, Sam felt the cloak reach out to him, become one with him, and make a decision of its own. Without having made any attempt to do it himself, Sam became invisible. Trelling did not move his eyes as Sam passed him. When Sam opened the gate and moved through, the man turned his head, gave an exasperated click of his tongue, and went to close it again.

  Tamrin watched him from the turret. She saw him walk through the old town, past the high walls and the ditch, and out onto the road to the north before an agitation in the air around him told her that the cloak had released its hold and he was visible again.

  “Where now?” she asked.

  The door of the castle was always open to visitors. Ash could not pass through it, but others could. She welcomed them. Most remained. Few left her.

  She greeted the newcomer with pleasure.

  “You’ve come back, Caleb,” she said.

  “Have I been here before?”

  His expensive clothes were ripped and dirty. He was thin, unshaven, confused. His hand fiddled with the black and silver clasp at his neck. His fingernails were bitten and bleeding.

  “Let me look after you,” she said. “You must be hungry.”

  He followed her inside.

  “Have I really been here before?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Her fingers went to his throat, to the brooch.

  “I gave you this. Remember?”

  Bakkmann’s laugh was like twigs cracking.

  “Your hands are burned,” she said. “And you need sleep.”

  “Yes. I’ve been trying to get something. But I couldn’t. It’s locked in Flaxfield’s study.”

  He explained to her as she watched him eat.

  “You’ll sleep tonight,” she said. “And then you’ll go back, quickly. Find it. For me.”

  Book Three

  WIZARD WAR

  He did not know

  how long he had walked. The food soon spent, he had foraged when he could for berries, the roots of safe herbs, tender shoots of plants Flaxfield had taught him were good to eat. He had followed the path of a stream, drinking whenever he was thirsty, but it had taken a course through thick undergrowth and he left it to follow a dry road. He started by carrying the cloak over his arm, the waistcoat looped through his belt, until he discovered a strange thing. Resting beneath a tree the first afternoon, he had left the cloak over his legs by mistake. His legs were cooler than the rest of him. Hitching the cloak around his shoulders, it was as though an autumn breeze soothed away the dense heat. After that he kept the cloak over his shoulders as he walked, and found the heat did not trouble him. Only the sun on his uncovered head made him dizzy sometimes.

  He reached a prominence, scrambling up a dry, shiny slope of hard stone, just as the sun was at its height. No shade to shelter him from the worst of the day. No water to cool his thirst. He had not drunk for over two days now. His tongue was big in his mouth. His throat was sore. The pain down the side of his face made him half close his left eye for relief. He needed to rest, but if he sat down before he drank he might not get up again.

  Half a day’s walk away, half of another day without water, Sam saw the small town. He knew it without knowing what it was. For a moment he thought he would rather lie down where he was and leave himself to the sun. Behind him lay the College. Somewhere, he knew, wizards were looking for him. He had escaped them both. But only to walk, as if by choice, perhaps by some decision made for him long ago, into the very place he feared most. He had walked for weeks, only to come here.

  Below him, in the middle distance, hunched like a wounded wolf, lay the mines.

  He had hugged the cloak to him and moved his ash staff forward, and his feet followed, into the oven of the afternoon, toward whatever waited for him there.

  It had reached that time when the day was just more dark than light, the houses scattered down the slope like the bones of a long-dead sheep. Beyond them, humps in the ground, tall mounds, more houses, closer together, squat and sullen. Sam walked past three, to show he was free to choose, then knocked on the door of the fourth.

  Evening scents crept into the small garden in front of the house, fragrances that concealed themselves from the sun. the dying scents of summer, the new, mustier scents of autumn. He knocked again and leaned against the doorjamb. There was no light in the window, but Sam had heard noises from inside as he approached, so he knew they were home. He could try somewhere else, but, having chosen, he decided to stick with his decision. What was it Flaxfield had said? “Trust what you have chosen. There is a reason. Sometimes it has chosen you.” He tried to call to mind the old man in the study, his face glowing with the joy of magic, his hands moving swiftly to create the tiny dragon, but he could only see his face with the herbs around it, the hands unable to reach out for the bread and figs.

  Sam sat down, his back against the door, hugging his cloak to him. Letting his head loll to one side against his ash staff, he fell asleep, the sounds from the house still in his ears.

  He was not woken so much as pulled to his feet, and the face that confronted his was not friendly.

  “This is no time to come calling,” she said.

  The woman had just arrived and was carrying a bag.

  Sam tried to answer. He moved his lips and he made a gesture with his hand, the kind people make when they want to add to the words. But there were no words. He had not drunk all day and his mouth was too dry.

  The sky was black now. He did not know how long he had slept. The stars told him to stay where he was.

  Someone inside the house opened the door.

  “Wait,” she said. It slammed shut.

  The woman looked long at Sam.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  Sam held up fingers, ten then two.

  “Can’t you talk?”

  “I’m thirsty,” he croaked at last.

  He watched her face as she made a decision.

  “Come in. But don’t be afraid, and don’t get upset.”

  Sam nodded.

  She put her hand to the door. Hesitated. She turned her face back to him.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sam.”

  “My husband died today, Sam,” she said. “He’s in here now. All right?”

  He nodded again.

  It was a small room—kitchen, sitting room, scullery all in one—but you could only look at one thing. A dead body attracts attention. It was a little time before Sam’s eyes took in the two figures who stood near the range. The boy was a little taller than Sam, the girl a little shorter. The boy looked like his mother. A face is so different in death that Sam could not tell whether the girl looked like her father.

  “I’ve got the things,” the woman said, setting down a bag, “but there’s no sign of her.”

  She scooped water from a tank, poured it into a mug and handed it to Sam.

  “Sip,” she said, “don’t gulp.”

  “We can’t wait all night,” said the boy.
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  “She’s not here,” said his mother.

  The girl was emptying the bag: herbs, apples, a rock, the rounded heaviness of a small iron pick, more herbs, a small posy of marigolds.

  “It has to be done tonight,” the boy insisted.

  “I can do it,” said Sam.

  They looked at him.

  He finished drinking and held out the mug for more.

  “I can do it.”

  “Don’t play tricks, boy,” the woman warned him.

  Sam unfastened the cloak and spread it on the back of a chair, shrugged off his bag and put it on the seat of the same chair, rush-bottomed, ragged. He leaned the ash staff in the corner. Moving the girl to one side, he arranged the herbs and other things on the table. He held the rock for a few moments before deciding where it went. He took longer over the iron pick. The flowers were easy to place, and the herbs always went in the same order.

  “I need oil,” he said. “And water, hot water, and salt and soap. And you must all wash.”

  The boy jostled Sam away from the table and stood too close to him. His breath was sour in Sam’s face.

  “Just stay away from him.”

  Sam moved back one step.

  “If you like,” he said.

  His mother took the boy’s arm. “It’s all right,” she said. “That’s why he’s here.”

  “It should be December,” said the girl.

  “Let’s get washed.”

  Sam washed first, set aside a bowl of hot water and clean cloths and soap, and started while the others washed.

  It was just over a week after he had signed his name for Flaxfield that Sam trotted off behind the old man to do this for the first time. It was raining. Sam never did this now without remembering the fresh scent of wet earth and feeling the cool breeze on his face. They walked all morning, stopping often to select herbs, Flaxfield explaining what they were looking for and letting Sam find them.

  That first one was a woman, not much more than a girl. She had drowned when she slipped from a muddy riverbank while she was looking for irises for a vase in the kitchen.

  Flaxfield spoke softly to the family first, then went to her, took her hand, and said, “Hello.”

  Sam waited by the door, half in, half out.

  “Come on, Sam. Say hello.”

  Sam stepped forward and took the cold hand.

  “Hello.”

  “Now sit there.”

  Sam sat while Flaxfield did everything. He cried when Flaxfield put the irises next to her.

  They slept in a neighbor’s barn and left before anyone else was up. It was a quiet walk home.

  “Why do you do that?” asked Sam.

  “It has to be done.”

  They walked on. Flaxfield pointed to an herb, almost as tall as Sam, dark green leaves and purplish-red flowers.

  “We’ll have some of that.”

  Sam brought it to him.

  “Clown’s Woods,” said Flaxfield. “Nothing better for bruises, or inward wounds.”

  “Why do you do that?” Sam asked again, making himself more clear.

  “Someone has to do it.”

  Now, that someone was him. He was ready, and not ready. It was not apprentice work. He had done it so often he knew he would make no mistakes, but he had never done it in his own right, without Flaxfield standing near him, to seal it. He knew he shouldn’t, but he knew the woman was right. Her door had chosen him. He felt a fist of fear in his stomach.

  “Please tell me his name,” Sam said.

  “Bearrock. And I’m Greenrose.”

  Sam took his hand.

  “Hello, Bearrock,” he said.

  The woman laid a gentle hand on her son’s arm.

  “Tremmort, tell them it is time,” she said.

  The boy glared again at Sam. He closed the door silently behind him as he stepped into the night.

  The girl slipped onto her mother’s knee and they cuddled each other as Sam prepared Bearrock.

  It was hard for Sam to know what he had washed and what was still to do; the body never seemed to get any cleaner. Bearrock was a big man. Not tall, but broad. The muscles in his arms were like his name, hard and solid. His legs and shoulders, too, were like a landscape of gentle hills. His body was allover black lined. At first Sam tried to clean the black away, then saw that it was under the skin itself. Thousands of tiny cuts had healed with the dust and dirt of the mines under the skin, there forever. Sam had thought the body was dirty, but now he looked at his basin of warm water in surprise. It was hardly darkened, though the washing was complete.

  The woman caught Sam’s look.

  “Miners are clean men,” she said. “They like to leave the darkness behind, save where it has scarred them, and there’s nothing to be done about that.”

  Sam smiled at her, and, for the first time, she smiled at him. The first unfriendliness at the doorway had been left there, or somewhere between the door and where she now sat. Sam and Flaxfield had always been received kindly at the houses of grief. He wondered where the person was who should have been doing this.

  He stepped past her and took the herbs from the table, and the other things. He left the pick where it was.

  While he said the words and arranged the herbs, he heard the door open and the soft movement of people entering. He did not turn his head, not needing to know, not wanting to pause.

  When all was done, he looked around. Silent men looked at him, their faces blank. The same black lines. The same broad shoulders and thick arms. The same weight and strength. Tremmort, the boy, stood in the center.

  Sam moved from Bearrock, faced the boy, and said, “Do what is right.”

  The boy did nothing.

  Sam nodded.

  “Do it,” he said.

  The men’s attention had left Sam, and now they all waited for Tremmort to act. Sam knew how he felt.

  “You know what to do,” he said.

  Tremmort did nothing. Sam could not help him. Not with these men watching. He had to do it for himself.

  One of the younger men stepped forward.

  “I’ll do it,” he said.

  “No,” the woman stood, letting the girl take her place on the chair. “No one but Tremmort is to do it. Not you, Brakewood.”

  Sam waited. The men looked at Tremmort, then looked away.

  “It has to be done,” Brakewood said.

  “And Bearrock’s son will do it.” The woman put her face close to Brakewood’s.

  “Then let him do it.”

  Sam looked again at Tremmort. The boy was now out of reach. The body of his father, the small room, the crowd of strong men, the anxious face of his mother. It was too much for him. He could not move.

  “No?” said Brakewood. “Then I shall.” He shouldered past the man next to him, moving toward the table. Sam put his hand on Brakewood’s shoulder. A flash of anger and dislike crossed Brakewood’s face, then he stood as still as sand.

  “You can do it,” said Sam. He stared at the boy. “You know what to do.”

  Tremmort looked around the kitchen. All the figures were silent and still, save Sam, his mother, and himself. No one blinked. No one moved so much as to shift from one foot to another or scratch a nervous chin.

  “Tell him,” said Sam.

  “You can,” she said. “Don’t let someone else do it. Please.”

  “Look at the table,” said Sam.

  The boy’s eyes searched for something to understand. As he looked, his shoulders relaxed, and his hands, which had been clenched into fists, unfolded. He nodded.

  “Is it right?” asked Sam.

  “Yes.”

  Sam took his hands from Brakewood’s shoulder. He tottered forward, nearly losing his balance, then Tremmort pushed past him and grasped the pick. A murmur of approval came from the men, and an angry shove from Brakewood. Tremmort stepped away, unclasped his father’s hands, and folded them around the pick.

  “Dig deep,” he said. His voice was low and clear.
“Dig through to the finish.”

  A sigh of satisfaction held the small room for a second; then, with a hollow clap, two men handed planks of wood over the heads of the crowd. Hands went up, passing them forward. The body of Bearrock was lifted onto them. The crush of men parted and Bearrock was borne through the space, out into the darkness and the star-sharp night.

  The first after Bearrock

  was Tremmort, then his mother, holding his sister’s hand. The three of them walked, heads high, looking straight ahead. The men followed, the oldest first, then in order by age, which left Brakewood last. Sam held back. Now that he had finished the preparations for Bearrock he felt dizzy. His head hurt, a pain that started somewhere in the center of his forehead and spread all down the left side of his face and into his teeth.

  He watched the procession wind its way into the night. Knowing that he had not yet finished, he followed.

  The crowd parted to allow the procession to move forward. As they left the house behind them, music started. Sam had never heard music, more than a single voice singing or a pennywhistle from a shepherd come for a remedy for the bloats.

  It was a single fiddle at first, low and slow and sad. Bearrock’s body moved down the slope, further into the town. The crowd turned itself into a line of followers, not tidily two abreast, but sometimes three, sometimes a small group, families together, sometimes a single person choosing a space around himself. They waited for the leaders to pass before joining in, so every eye regarded Sam as he passed, every face asked the same question. Some whispered to themselves, and he caught the same word over and over again, “December,” and a shaking of the head.

  The single fiddle was joined by another. Their voices sang different notes, but they blended like butter and sugar in the bowl, each bringing something new, something needed.

  Doors opened and closed, discharging people from their rooms.

  The men at the front stopped, moved aside in turn, and gave their burden to others. They stepped away, rubbing their shoulders. The planks weighed more than the heavy man they supported.

  Sam saw that Brakewood had stepped forward to take his share of the weight, but had been firmly kept aside. Tremmort was too small to carry. The planks would have tilted to one corner. He still led the followers.