by Toby Forward
“There are three of them,” said Ash. “The girl has disappeared. The dragon has disappeared, and the boy is in three places.”
“That can’t be right,” said Smedge.
Ash wheeled around.
“Of course it isn’t right,” she screamed.
Smedge’s face exploded into a fountain of fire. Ash clicked her tongue in irritation. She let the fire burn for a few moments, watching Smedge flail his hands helplessly at the flames and hearing his screams, then she blew softly in his direction. The fire snuffed out in a second. Smedge was unharmed, but shaking from the pain and shock.
“I know it can’t be right,” she said slowly. “But it is. No girl. No dragon. Three apprentice boys. What can we do now? How can I find him in three places?”
She paced the room.
“Not there. Not there. There and there and there.” She mumbled. She wrapped the gray robe around her face and pulled it tight.
“There. Not there. Not there. There. How?”
Smedge slipped out of the room, leaving her half-sobbing the questions to herself.
Saliva ran from the corners
of Sam’s lips. He had trouble keeping his mouth shut tight when he was making an effort.
Sam’s crooked legs, his bent back, his pained steps slowed them down.
Hunched forward, he was too short for his cloak. It dragged behind him, slowing him more. The snow melted into it and weighed it down. His bag, which he had hauled on his shoulders all the way from Flaxfield’s to the College and then on again to the mines, rolled off his rounded back, so he clutched it instead in his arms. December had tried to take it from him, to help. He snarled at her, and the smoke, which dribbled most of the time from his nostrils or the sides of his mouth, billowed out, hot, the gray giltedged.
They spoke little. Sam crept relentlessly on, ignoring the pain in his legs and back. He looked sideways often at December and saw her look away, pretending not to notice.
At night December used just a little magic to make two spaces for them where they could sleep, dry and warm, usually under trees, but sometimes in a ditch, diverting the sluggish green water away from them, covering them instead with fragrant air and soft, summer breezes.
She slept a little apart from Sam, who always slept with his arms around the wolf, his head lying on the gray fur.
It was at night, when he thought December was asleep, that Sam tried to cast a small spell.
He had done this twice in the house before they left. Once, to make the fire burn brighter when he was cold. Nothing happened. Then, he tried to give Tremmort a headache, out of spite, but the boy was bright as brass and Sam sulked.
He thought that once they were away from the mines it would be all right. He cast a searching spell, to see the road ahead of them for the next day. Nothing happened. He closed his eyes, expecting to see the road, the turns and hills, any dangerous banks or icy slopes. Nothing.
The next night, snug in the safety of December’s spell, he attempted to clear a space in the clouds so that he could ask the stars what to do. The clouds spread in all directions, unmoved by his spell.
He clutched the bag to him harder than ever, fumbled inside it, and fell asleep.
A day came when they woke and the road was not there. The snow had fallen so heavily that all was covered.
December could have walked on, treading lightly over the fine snow, hardly disturbing it. But Sam’s steps were laborious, heavy. He sank with each step.
“I’ll stay here,” he said.
“You’ll die here if you stay. Come on.”
He was not many steps from death. His face was gray, his body shrunken. When he looked at December he saw her clearly. Looking into the distance he saw further than eyes could see.
And all the time now, like claws, his fingers scrabbled inside the bag. Was it there? Had he lost the notebook? It was there.
The wolf had been running in circles, its paws just breaking the snow. Now it leaped, landed, and ran without even denting the surface.
It stopped, turned its head, and, its long tongue lolling out, seemed to laugh at them.
“The hedgerow,” said December.
The snow was only a thin crust on the top of the thick hedgerow. It made a path they could walk on.
“We don’t have much time,” said December. “Look at the sky.”
Low, gray clouds, full of more snow, spread over their heads like a tent.
Had Sam been able to cast a searching spell, he would have seen Eloise and Axestone, staring up at the same gray sky many miles away.
“Five more miles,” said Eloise.
“Or ten,” he answered. “Who knows for sure?”
“Or ten,” she agreed.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
They trudged through the snow, wishing that magic could ease their way.
“Do you know what’s happening to him?” asked Eloise.
“He’s very sick.”
“Will he make it?”
Axestone shrugged.
“The winters are getting colder,” said Eloise. “I’ve never seen snow like this before.”
“The world is shifting,” he said. “Magic is different. Everything changes.”
“We need him to live,” she said.
“I’m doing what I can. There’s one hope left. But it means he will not get to us until the spring.”
They walked a long way in silence. Eloise covered her face with her shawl to protect her from the driving wind, the sharp cold. Axestone let the wind cut his face. He was as one not there. Eloise left him to his work.
They turned a corner. Trees that had blocked the view of the road ahead were on their left now, and they could see, a mile or more away, a small group of houses, an inn, and smoke rising from the chimney pots.
“We’re here,” said Eloise.
The sky began to release the snow that had weighed the clouds all day. Axestone lifted the hood of his cloak.
“And here we stay,” he said. “Longer than we would like.”
Eloise agreed that the wait would be hard, but as she pushed open the door of the inn and saw inside, she was glad to be there.
A fire blazed in the hearth, its glow lighting the glaze on the blue and white plates on the shelves. The copper pans gleamed. Armchairs opened their hands to receive them. Five oak tables with oak chairs around them stood ready to support tureens of soup, platters of roast meats, dishes of turnips and cabbage, mugs of beer and wine, pastries and puddings. The stone floor was as clean as quartz.
“Welcome,” said a soft voice.
They greeted with hugs, as old friends do.
“It will be a long winter,” said Eloise.
“He is nearly there,” said Axestone. “Nearly safe.”
He looked around the cosy room.
“But not as well-provided as us. There is still hardship ahead for him.”
“Hardship enough to kill,” said Eloise.
The wolf had disappeared far ahead of them, leaving its tracks in the snow to mark the line of the hedgerow.
Sam’s knees were drenched where he dragged them, bent-legged and painful. His hands were never still, stroking the cover of his notebook. His finger ends picked at the metal clasp, making a crisscross of tiny cuts. His lips moved constantly. He no longer tried to hide from December his attempts to make a spell, any spell. He wondered if it was worth staying alive any longer, whether he would ever recover enough to be any use. It would be better to die alone in the snow.
She put her hand under his arm, leading him. He had shaken her off before. This time he allowed it. Stumbling, half-blind from the glare of the snow, he muttered and fumbled in his bag. When the wolf returned, he did not see it. Did not see the pitched roof of the cottage, the thin smoke from the chimney, the drifts of snow against the walls that half hid it from all view. Did not know that the little food the crofter and his wife had stored for the winter was scarcely enough for two of them, certainly not f
or four. Did not know that they did not even hesitate to offer their hospitality, though they knew it would put their own lives at risk, that they would rather starve together than send this frightening woman and the mad boy out into the snow to die.
He slept for most of the time they spent there. December cooked and cleaned to earn their keep. At first the woman begged her to be sparing with their small supply of food, to make it last as long as possible. After ten days, perhaps twelve, the woman noticed that the cheese in the larder never grew less. The bacon joint never grew smaller. The pile of logs in the wood store by the fireplace never seemed to need replenishing. The crock of flour was as full as ever, the milk in the churn as fresh, the butter as wholesome and not rancid.
She whispered this to her husband, just before they fell asleep.
“Leave it be,” he advised.
“I’m frightened of her,” she said.
“That face would frighten anyone,” he agreed. “But we are eating well, and we are warm. If she stays, then we will see the winter through safely, and that’s more than I would have thought a week or two ago. Go to sleep.”
“But what about that boy?”
“He’ll die here, and we’ll bury him in the spring,” he said, “when the ground’s soft enough to dig.”
They slept well.
December heard every word. The cottage was small. Sam heard, too. Outside, the wolf heard everything, watched, and waited.
At the inn, Eloise slept little. Many nights she left her bed hours before dawn and sat in the inn parlor, in front of the dying embers of the fire. She fed it a little, to keep it in till the morning, listened to the creak of the inn sign as it swung in the wind. Axestone kept to his room, though he slept little, too. He watched through the window, and sometimes he caught the sound of a wolf howling to the moon.
Their host slept well, and waited.
Book Four
DRAGONBORN
Sam arrived at the inn on a Friday—
which was a good thing, because they always ate trout on a Friday, and the fish were fresh from the stream.
Sam and December had left the crofter’s cottage just as the first warm breezes of spring had unlocked the scents from the garden and the fields.
They waved Sam and December into the distance.
“I thought he would die,” said the crofter.
“It’s not over yet.”
Eloise was the first to see Sam. She was standing at the window of the inn parlor, looking for Axestone. The tall wizard walked up from the stream, holding the trout at his side; ten fish, brilliant in the spring sunlight. He strode effortlessly up the slope from the stream, his brown robe brushing the grass. As he saw Eloise he raised his arm in triumph, brandishing the fish. She smiled. Next to her, Flaxfold sighed.
“It won’t be long now,” said Flaxfold.
“If he’s right.”
Axestone threw the door open.
“In the kitchen,” said Flaxfold.
He grinned at her like a rebuked schoolboy.
“They’re too fresh to stink,” he said.
“Did you clean them?” she asked.
“Of course.”
Leaving the fish on a marble slab in the cool larder, he joined them in the parlor, a glass of small ale in his hand. He plunged into a leather armchair and drank, his left arm dangling to one side and stroking the soft, gray fur of the wolf.
“How much longer?” asked Flaxfold.
“They should be here before nightfall,” he said, looking down at the wolf. The animal stared back, bright eyes unblinking.
“They’re here now,” said Eloise.
Flaxfold’s eyes filled with tears when she saw Sam.
“That poor boy,” she said.
“I’ll help him,” said Eloise.
“Leave him. He won’t thank you.”
December raised an arm in greeting when she saw their faces at the window.
“I’ll get them a drink and something to eat,” said Flaxfold, going to the kitchen.
Eloise hugged herself, partly in sorrow at the bedraggled and crooked shape of Sam, partly in excitement and anxiety at what was to happen next.
“We’re here,” said December. Sam looked up. A small group of houses and an inn, with trees to one side framing the view. On the inn, a sign swung gently. Sam felt as though he had been there before. As though he knew the place already. As though there was something missing, but he couldn’t remember what.
He kept his hand inside his bag, stroking the cover of his notebook. Unfastening it, he opened it, wondered what page his hands had felt in the darkness, drew in a deep breath, and made a playful, teasing spell to make the inn sign swing faster, farther. Nothing happened. Smoke dribbled from his nose.
They stepped into the inn and Sam saw Eloise first, then Axestone, still in the armchair.
“So,” he said to December. “It’s a trap. I should never have come with you.”
Eloise came to him and took his hand.
“No, Sam,” she said. “No. We’re your friends.”
“Him?” said Sam, looking at Axestone. “He’s not my friend.”
The wolf, hidden by the chair, stood and slid around into view. He brushed against Sam’s legs and looked up at him, his tongue lolling out as though laughing.
Sam stroked him, delightedly.
“If the wolf is your friend, then so am I,” said Axestone. He stood and looked down at Sam. The wolf moved away to stand next to the huge wizard. Sam saw, at last, that Axestone was more wolf than fox, more true than trick.
“And you are all my friends,” said Flaxfold, pushing through the kitchen door and putting her arms around Sam. “Welcome, Sam.”
Then she folded her arms around December and kissed her face. “How are you, my dear? It’s been a long time.”
“Too long,” said December.
“You must be hungry.”
“A little.”
“Trout tonight,” said Flaxfold, “but that’s a long way off. Come into the kitchen and we’ll talk there and eat.”
Sam sat down on the floor. The wolf nuzzled against him.
“You can eat in bed,” said Flaxfold.
Axestone picked him up, as though he weighed no more than a trout, and carried him up to a wide room with a window that looked over the stream, a polished floor, a soft bed, and a bowl of fresh flowers.
Flaxfold helped him to eat a little soup, then sat with him till he fell asleep. His hands still in the bag, holding his notebook.
It was a somber meeting at the kitchen table. December told them how she had found Sam at the mines. She looked away from them when she came to the part about Bearrock’s Finishing.
“We nearly lost him,” said Eloise. “Thank you.”
She took December’s hand.
“I thought I knew what it was that was pulling him through,” she said. She left her hand in Eloise’s, just for a moment, not to seem impolite, then drew it away.
“Evil is always familiar,” said Axestone.
December nodded.
“It was more than that, though,” she said.
They listened to the rest of the story, Axestone nodding at the parts about the wolf.
“The people in the cottage were so kind,” said December. “Even when the snow had cleared I still had to stay until it was warm enough for him to travel.”
“Will he live?” asked Eloise.
“I don’t know.”
“Will he live to be any use to us?” asked Axestone.
“Living will be enough,” said Flaxfold.
“It won’t,” he said. “You know it won’t. Isn’t that right?” he demanded of December.
She nodded. “That’s right. He is the one we’ve been looking for. No doubt about it.”
“I never did doubt it,” said Flaxfold.
Axestone threw up his arms in defeat.
“All right,” he said. “We were clumsy and unsure. If we had trusted him straight away he would neve
r have gone on the run, never have been hurt, never have turned up twisted and broken and limping along like this. If you had been there,” he pointed an accusing finger at Flaxfold, “we would have known he was Flaxfield’s apprentice.”
“He died suddenly,” she said. “I was here. It’s where I live when I’m not helping the small apprentices.”
“All the same,” said Axestone. “It would have been better if you had been there.”
“And we would not have lost Khazib and Sandage,” said Eloise. Her face was solemn, her voice low.
“We have made mistakes,” admitted Axestone. “The question is, is it too late to mend things?”
“You missed Flaxfield’s Finishing,” said Eloise, taking the older woman’s hand in hers.
“I would have missed it, anyway,” said Flaxfold.
Flaxfold, her small, plump body and her pleasant face, her gray hair and homely manner, seemed an odd person to lead this discussion, but when she spoke they all deferred to her. She had welcomed them to the inn many weeks ago, fed them and entertained them, and kept them hopeful through the long winter. Now she spoke.
“I have known Sam since he was a tiny boy,” she said. “You know how I helped Flaxfield. You know what I did for the two of you, when you were his apprentices.”
Axestone and Eloise nodded. December kept her eyes slightly averted from the woman.
“Flaxfield knew,” she said, “I knew, that Sam was the one who would take over from him. Flaxfield put everything in place. And now it’s all at risk. If Sam dies, or if the journey he has taken has broken him, then I think we have lost. The Castle of Boolat will rise up, magic will be dark. People will suffer and the land will be covered with pain and distress.”
“And us?” asked Axestone.
“I think you know what will happen to us and to the other wizards of the old way,” said Flaxfold. “And it will not be pretty.”
“It isn’t about us,” said December.
Flaxfold smiled at her.
“Indeed it is not,” she said. “You know best of all of us what he is like now. Will he live and will he ever be strong again?”
December placed her hands on the table, the palms against the wood.