Dragonborn

by Toby Forward

  “Is it true?”

  “Some roffles are liars. Good liars.”

  “Is it true?”

  Vengeabil tapped

  “Smedge has gone.”

  “I saw him go,” she said.

  “Did the roffle follow him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where do you think he’s gone?”

  “He can’t be dead, can he?”

  “The nights you’ve lain awake, looking into the corners of the room, did you know Sam would turn up one day?”

  “Yes. Always.”

  Vengeabil tapped the staff against the roof. “And now?”

  “The stars told me to look inside myself.”

  “And what do you see?”

  “He is not dead.”

  “Where do you think Smedge has gone?”

  Tamrin opened her eyes and glared at him. “Is that all you can say?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I need to know.”

  “You already know.”

  “I need to know.”

  Vengeabil stood up. He leaned against the staff.

  Tamrin seemed smaller, younger. She looked up at the man, then dipped her head and tears fell straight from her eyes to her coat, not bothering to run down her cheeks first.

  “What shall I do?”

  “Where do you think Smedge has gone?” he repeated.

  Tamrin could hardly speak.

  “That’s nothing to do with this,” she said.

  Vengeabil strained to hear what she was saying.

  “It’s not about Smedge.”

  Vengeabil stooped down, put a strong hand on her shoulder.

  “Everything is about Smedge,” he said. “Where do you think he’s gone?”

  “I think he’s gone to find Sam. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Ash lifted her head and turned

  to the slit window. She sniffed. Laying aside her pen, she crossed the room and looked down over the dark fields and hunched forest.

  He was nearly here.

  Too far away to be seen, Smedge was approaching the castle, and she could sense him.

  Her hands were white against the stone. With her back to the lantern, her face was shadowed against the night sky. A single flake of snow passed the window. Then, as though summoned by the first, more. She could count them, singly, then in groups. Then, too many, and the black fields began to turn white.

  She left the turret room. The winding staircase, the narrow passageways, the locked doors, the high, arched ceilings—as she passed, a moment of yellow light lit them, then died.

  It was a place of noises. She ignored the moans and the screams that came from behind the locked doors; ignored the laughter, which was worse than the screams; ignored the hammering and the click of tightening ratchets that came before the screams. She ignored the scuttling of sharp feet on the stone floors as her creatures hurried to get out of her way.

  Khazib was chained to the wall. He did not look up when she walked in.

  “You know the boy, Sam,” she said.

  The wizard’s dark face was difficult to see in the gloom of the chamber.

  “You and the others. You were at Flaxfield’s Finishing. You and Sam.”

  Khazib turned away, as though bored.

  “I don’t need the chains,” she said. “I could hold you here without them. You know that.”

  Khazib was as though asleep.

  “Do you want to know why I use them?”

  She walked up and down in the small cell, the yellow light that glowed from her moving on the ceiling. Her bare feet made wet, slapping noises on the slimy floor. Cockroaches that did not scurry away fast enough crunched as she stepped on them.

  She stopped pacing and waited for him to answer. He kept his head low, his face turned to the wall.

  She moved her hand in an impatient order. Instantly, one of her clacking creatures leaped forward, pounced on Khazib, and jabbed a long, sharp tongue into his shoulder, drawing blood. Khazib screamed in pain and surprise, his head jerking up to face her. The takkabakk dropped off and scrambled away to a corner.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  “I thought he was here,” said Khazib.

  “Then you will have a very unhappy stay with us,” she said.

  Khazib looked at the blood flowing from his wound. He panted with pain.

  “The chains,” she said. “Do you know why I use them?”

  “To humiliate me,” said Khazib, as though he were answering an easy arithmetic question. “They don’t. They humiliate you.”

  She didn’t lock the door as she left. There was no need.

  Miners left early for work,

  and Sam’s first thought every morning was shaped by the sound of their boots on the cobbles.

  Many times he called out in fear before he woke. December stroked his face, whispered that it was just a dream, told him about the morning walk to the mines, the boots, the hard street. She helped him from bed and took his arm as he limped to the window. Drawing back the curtain, she showed him the men, unspeaking, intent, preparing themselves for a day of darkness underground.

  She helped him back to bed and he would sleep again, for hours sometimes, until she brought him food and a cool drink.

  Sometimes she lay on the floor next to his bed and slept as well. She moved more slowly than she had. And, if Sam noticed, always with pain.

  Greenrose came to the house every day. She lit the fire, now that the days were colder. She lifted the heavy kettle that December had once found so easy to put over the hot coals. She cleaned and cooked, sweeping December away when the woman tried to help her. Without her visits, December and Sam would have starved or died in the cold of the night. They were both so weak that they needed her nursing.

  Greenrose never got used to the wolf. She pretended it wasn’t there. For its part, as though it sensed her dislike, it kept out of her way. When she needed to tidy Sam’s bed, it slipped off and curled up by the fire till she was done. Its eyes never left her. As soon as she was finished it bounded back beside the boy and settled down.

  In the evenings, just after the men had come back from the pit and were safely inside their little houses, eating their supper, the wolf would swerve through the door and run out for an hour. They heard him howling into the night air.

  “What is he saying?” asked Sam, when he was well enough to take notice. Wisps of gray smoke curled out of his mouth when he spoke.

  “Nothing to our danger,” said December. “I think.”

  Greenrose never fed him. There was no spare money for meat for a wolf. If he ate, it was on these evening runs.

  They sat, not close, but on Sam’s bed. December looked at the tapestry, trying to remember if the wolf breaking cover from the forest had really been there or if it was part of the delirium that had seized her in the days after Sam began to recover. There was no wolf there now.

  The snow was deep now, and Ash stood in the castle doorway, watched Smedge hesitate at the great gate, then draw in a deep breath and walk through.

  He was startled to see her waiting for him, and she saw that he was frightened, and hungry, too.

  Ash led him to the turret, making sure they passed near to the kitchen. The scent of roasting meat greeted them and bade them farewell within the space of several seconds. She hardly ate at all, never felt hungry, but she remembered what it was to be hungry and knew that Smedge would be wounded by the closeness of food he dared not ask for.

  “You’ve had a long journey,” she said.

  The stair was narrow and wound around and around so he could not see her ahead of him, just the dying yellow glow on the ceiling. He felt the wall for guidance.

  The desk stood in the center of the turret in a pool of light. She sat. He stood.

  “You lost him,” she said.

  “He had help,” said Smedge.

  He had bad memories of this room.

  “But you lost him.”

&n
bsp; “Yes.”

  “Well, I found him,” she said. “I had him in my hand. Understand?”

  “Where is he?”

  Ash flicked her fingers.

  “There are doors I can go through,” she said. “He opened one of those doors and I met him. I held him. I nearly led him through. I nearly brought him here. Here!”

  She paced the room and glowed with heat and hate.

  “He got away. He was helped.”

  Smedge tried to keep away from her. The heat was uncomfortable.

  “I couldn’t see the other side of the door,” she said.

  “Wasn’t there any way to ask?”

  Ash stopped and stared at him.

  “I have to be careful when I go there,” she said. “I am not exactly … welcome. Though there are some who would like to keep me there forever. You understand?”

  Smedge remembered things, half remembered them. From when he had first met Ash. He nodded.

  “All that matters,” she said, staring hard at him, “all that matters is finding him and bringing him here. Do you understand?”

  Smedge’s hair began to singe.

  “Yes. I understand.”

  “What about Frastfil?”

  “I have him under control.”

  She nodded. His hair stopped smoking.

  “You’ve done well there.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Come to the window.”

  The fields were deep in snow now. The forest tops were white clouds.

  “I have two of them secure here,” she said. “Two others ran into the forest. My creatures have hunted them for weeks. The forest barred their way. Every path is blocked. Every attempt to hack down new trails has been met with strong magic.”

  “Who is helping them?” he asked.

  “There is no ‘who’ anymore. It is everything.”

  “I was hindered on the way here,” he said.

  “Come with me. I’ll explain as we walk.”

  They walked the same route Ash had taken earlier. She watched him as he heard the screams.

  “There are moments,” she said. “Moments when everything changes. There was one of those moments when the roffles went to live underground. There was another moment when I came here.”

  He took his glasses off and polished them, attentive.

  “I thought no one knew how the roffles came to live underground.”

  “Everything is known by someone,” she said. “At the beginning, magic was different. Magic spilled out and what wasn’t used just trickled away harmlessly. The College is a memory of those days. It’s just a box of tricks today, with no real magic.”

  They were going deeper into the heart of the castle. The noises were more unpleasant. Smedge struggled to block them out.

  Khazib looked up as they entered, his face drawn with pain.

  “This one was looking for him, too,” she said to Smedge. “And I think he knows more than he is saying.”

  Smedge looked away from Khazib.

  “No,” she said. “Take a good look. That is what happens to people who stand in our way.”

  Smedge looked. The creature with the crooked legs looked at him and looked hungrily at Khazib at the same time. It had enough eyes to look many places at once.

  “Or people who fail,” she added.

  They closed the door as they left.

  “You said two of them,” said Smedge.

  “You would not enjoy seeing the old man,” she replied.

  She watched him eat, sitting at the long table in the kitchen. They ignored the misshapen, squat figures who lurched between range and spit, turning meat, scalding pans, stirring pots, chopping hunks of meat, sawing through bones. The steam and the hissing of fat from roasts filled the air.

  Smedge did not like to think what it might be that he was eating, so he chewed resolutely, needing to be fed more than he cared what fed him. Smedge found that something in the piece of meat he was eating would not chew away. He hoped it was gristle as he took it from his mouth and put it on the side of the plate.

  “Old magic can only travel one way,” she said. “Do you understand?”

  Smedge knew better than to pretend to her.

  “No.”

  “No. It can go in one direction,” she said. “It can go where we want it to go. Or it can go against us.”

  The food was all gone, and he was still hungry.

  “You have a question?” She missed nothing.

  “I am afraid to ask.”

  “Ask.”

  “Who is in control?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do we control the magic, or does the magic control us?”

  He felt his skin grow hot, as she struggled to keep her anger in check.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The heat subsided.

  “No,” she said. “It is a good question. It is the only question.”

  She walked with him, to his old room.

  “There is a second question,” she said.

  Smedge looked at the room. It had not changed. A bed, some books, a small desk, a chair.

  “Which way do you want the magic to go?” she asked.

  “Your way,” he said, without hesitation.

  “Of course. Then you will stay here for the winter, to learn. Play with the two wizards we have captured. Tease them.” Smedge shuddered at the thought of what teasing might mean, but it excited him, too. “See if you can find anything out from them. More than anything else, we need to find the boy.”

  “Why is he so important?”

  She looked through the window, slender and tall like the one in her own room.

  “Flaxfield was a great wizard,” she said. “He was our greatest enemy. When he died, I should have been free of here. Because of the boy, I’m still a prisoner.”

  “They still talk about Flaxfield at the College,” said Smedge. “But he’s dead now.”

  “Come to the window,” she said. “All that he had, all his strength and power, is with the boy now.”

  Smedge remembered the clumsy apprentice who had caused such trouble in the College.

  “Him?”

  “He doesn’t even know it himself,” she said.

  “What about the girl, Tamrin?”

  “Watch her,” she said. “When the weather breaks, you will go back. She is connected to him. We don’t know how. But she is important. Keep watching her. If he is still lost, she will lead us to him.”

  “She hates me,” said Smedge. “She won’t tell me anything.”

  “Then you must find another way with her. Understand?”

  She left him then. The breath of the night wind brushed his face.

  Out of sight, covered by the rim of the forest, Megatorine looked at the castle and saw the outline of the boy framed in the window.

  The drear and naked branches arched above him, the melancholy, long roar of the wind in the trees. The snow stretched on forever.

  “Time to go under,” he said. “He’ll keep till spring.”

  …

  As the days passed, Sam grew stronger. They left the house sometimes, walking to the end of the road. Then, with the wolf following them, as far as the edge of town, and then to the fields beyond. Sam hobbled, his legs bent, back crooked, his shoulders hunched. The illness had damaged him badly. Progress anywhere was slow, but he could walk a long way now.

  Then the night came when the wolf returned with snow in its fur. Sam and December went to the window and saw the soft flakes settling on the dark streets.

  “It will soon be time for us to go,” said December.

  “This is the worst weather for a journey,” said Sam.

  “Which is why we must go soon,” she said. “Do you think they are not still looking for you?”

  The wolf moved closer to Sam. The boy stroked him absently.

  “Where are we going?”

  December stirred the fire and settled the pot on the stove.

  “Th
at is your decision to make,” she said.

  “I used to dream that I was flying,” he said.

  December ladled a rich soup into bowls and cut slices of bread.

  “We will travel by night,” she told him.

  “Why are they looking for me?”

  “It will be cold, but safer in the dark.”

  “I miss Flaxfield,” said Sam. “It was all right till he died. I was safe then. No one was looking for me.”

  “They have been looking for you all your life,” said December. “You just didn’t know.”

  Sam ate his soup, dipping the bread into it, spooning it to his mouth silently.

  “Flaxfield hid you well,” she said.

  “Why are they looking for me?”

  December smiled. Sam was used to her smiles now, the thin lips, and he saw nothing strange in them.

  “I thought you were looking for me,” he said, looking away.

  “I was.”

  “Why?”

  “Not to hurt you.”

  “Did you know Flaxfield?”

  “In a way,” she said.

  The wolf walked to the door and sat with his back to it.

  “Where are we going?” asked Sam.

  “You must decide.”

  Sam looked over his shoulder at the tapestry.

  “Is that a real place?”

  He pointed to the inn.

  “It is.”

  “Then we’ll go there.”

  December took his dish. She washed it, put it away in the cupboard, covered the fire, and blew out the lamp.

  “Get your cloak,” she said.

  Sam was drowsy after the meal; he stared at her.

  “We’re going now.”

  “Why?”

  “I have been waiting for you to tell me where we are going. Now I know.”

  Ash pursed her lips and swept her hand across the embers of a fire she had lit on the slate floor of her room. She swore. The folds of her gray dress were spread around her. A beetle scratched its way over her foot. She leaned forward, picked it up, and put it to her lips without thinking. She crunched it, sucked the soft pulp from inside, licked it clean, then dropped the empty husk into the remains of the fire.

  Smedge pressed his elbows to his sides and looked away.

  “I don’t understand it,” she said. She wiped her forehead, leaving an ash-gray stripe over her eyes. “Look.”

  Smedge couldn’t interpret the magic the fire had produced for her.