Fireborn

by Toby Forward

  Cabbage took his friend’s arm.

  “Can you get up?”

  Perry stared at him.

  “Let me help you up.”

  Perry shook his head. He pointed to his ears. He shrugged.

  The sky was on fire. No smoke. No flames. No heat. Just the swirling eddies of pure fire above them and around them.

  “I’ve got to go down there,” said Cabbage. “It’s happening now. I’ve got to stop it.”

  His own voice sounded funny to him, so he had no idea how it must be to Perry. The roffle tried to stand again and stumbled and fell.

  “I’ll come back for you,” said Cabbage. He pointed to the yard and then to himself and then to Perry. “I’ll come straight back. All right?”

  Perry nodded, then turned his face to the ground and lay still.

  Cabbage ran helter-skelter down the hillside, keeping his balance by never stopping. He reached the gate, putting out his hands to stop himself from crashing into it.

  Made it. Just in time.

  He ran into the yard, drew a deep breath to shout to Bee, and the sky split wide open. For a moment everything stopped. The crackling and fizzing of the wild magic ended. The bright fire overhead faded. The air was still again and his head was clear.

  Then the magic spilled out over the yard. It fell from the skies. It rose up from under the cobbles, tearing them apart. It washed over the walls and covered the ground. It knocked him sideways and backwards and lifted him up and let him fall. The last thing he saw before everything went black was the great central tower being ripped open and destroyed.

  “I can’t stand this waiting,” said Flaxfield.

  Dorwin folded her arms and looked with Flaxfield in the direction the boys had gone.

  “My father says waiting is the secret of getting it right,” she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How’s Leathort.”

  “He’s asleep under the tree. The bleeding’s stopped. He’s not in any pain.”

  Flaxfield winced.

  “He’s lucky, then,” he said.

  Dorwin nodded.

  “How can they get through?” she asked.

  Flaxfield picked up a small stone and threw it. It arced up then seemed to hit a wall and bounced back. Dorwin picked it up.

  “It’s hot,” she said.

  “It’s just a stone,” said Flaxfield. “That’s why it can’t pass.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He leaned on his staff, eyes constantly on the distance, looking for any sign of the boys, any indication that they were succeeding, or returning.

  “Magic,” he said, “works on the dangerous edge of things. That’s where it gets its power.”

  Dorwin pretended to understand.

  “I was telling the roffle a story about where magic first came from,” said Flaxfield. “It’s from the edges. Where things are one thing and another thing.”

  Clouds sped across the sky, swift and white.

  “There’s no magic in the roffle world,” said Flaxfield. “Not magic the way we know it. The Deep World is a place with light but no sun, water but no rivers, air but no wind. Towns and no people. Roffles are different. They’re not quite people.”

  “That’s why Perry could go on through?”

  “I think so. I should have realized back by the river, when the wild magic attacked him and he wasn’t hurt. It killed the innkeeper. And Cabbage. What’s he? He’s not a boy, not a man. Not a normal boy, not yet a wizard. He’s an edge. He’s an apprentice. Neither one thing nor the other.”

  He gazed ever ahead.

  “They make a good pair for the job.”

  “They’re just boys,” Dorwin argued. “They shouldn’t have gone. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “Perhaps you are.”

  He smiled.

  “Anyway, they’ve gone. And we couldn’t stop them.”

  “Sometimes I think wizards are the worst people,” said Dorwin. “You come from nowhere. You never stay. And we’re left with whatever’s happened.”

  “We bring only what you ask for,” said Flaxfield.

  “We didn’t ask for this.”

  Flaxfield sighed.

  “This is different,” he said. “This is new. I’ve never seen this before.”

  He raised his staff and indicated the sky, making sure that no magic travelled from it. Even so, the willow staff seemed to attract something from above him. A shaft of light stretched out and joined the tip of the staff to Dorwin’s hand. They both cried out and jerked away. The staff glowed white like iron from the furnace. Flaxfield dropped it with a roar of pain. It sizzled and turned black. Dorwin touched it. The staff was cold, wet. Flaxfield frowned when she handed it to him.

  “Listen,” he said.

  The thunder began far away and travelled towards them, growing in volume till it was more than Dorwin could stand. She ducked her head. Flaxfield lifted his cloak and covered her in it, keeping his own head high, staring into the sky, defying the noise. Even when the sky opened and the wild magic rained down he did not look away.

  Flaxfield stood at the edge of the magic storm, brushed only by the spatter of stray drops that drifted out that far. Bee was at the centre, and Cabbage just a few paces away. Slowin and Brassbuck, next to Bee, were crushed beneath its rage. |

  Flaxfield felt the wild magic

  as a sailor feels the sea spray on his face in a storm. Unblinking he challenged it.

  Bee felt the wild magic as a trapped rabbit feels the fire when a field is torched. She did not try to challenge it. There was no challenge to this. She was part of it. She, with Slowin, had released this power when she changed names with him.

  Cabbage turned his mind into himself. He made no resistance to the magic storm. Where Flaxfield defied it Cabbage allowed it to wash over him. And as he did, the fire became water against him. The more it attacked him the more he accepted it. And the more he accepted it, the less it could hurt him. When the fury had passed he stood, drenched and shivering with cold, but alive and unhurt.

  Dorwin emerged from Flaxfield’s cloak. She blinked in the sunlight, braced her shoulders and tested herself for any bruises or broken bones. Nothing. She was safe. Flaxfield still stared ahead.

  “Are you all right, Flaxfield?”

  She touched his face. His eyes looked blind, fixed.

  “Over here!” shouted Leathort.

  “Wait,” she called. Then she remembered. “Are you hurt?”

  “No. I covered my head. I heard it but it didn’t come through this far.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  She shook the wizard’s shoulder.

  “Flaxfield. Speak to me. Are you all right? Are you blind? What happened?”

  He moved his head, shrugged his cloak back into place on his shoulder.

  “No. No, I’m not blind.”

  She took his arm.

  “They’ll be all right, Flaxfield. I know they will.”

  “I’m going to see,” he said.

  “You can’t.”

  “Watch me.”

  Cabbage grimaced as he picked his way over the cobbles. He’d never seen so many beetles. And they weren’t even nice shiny black beetles like the ones you saw on dry days, or the handsome stag beetles with their big horns. They were hunched and round like bed bugs. Huge bed bugs. With a single, sharp spike in the centre of their heads. The rain of wild fire magic didn’t seem to have harmed them at all. And they weren’t shy like normal beetles. They didn’t scurry away. They let you tread on them and then they swarmed towards your foot as though attacking. Cabbage tried to flick them away but they kept on coming.

  “You freaks,” he said. “Get away.”

  All of the towers were ruined, heaps of rubble. Cabbage saw equipment and apparatus in the wreckage, stuff that he didn’t recognize, couldn’t even guess at. Alongside it, tables and chairs, a desk, a fl
oor strewn with herbs and rushes. The main tower, the largest, was the least destroyed, the most damaged. It had split so that the two sides gaped open, like hands held apart. He climbed over the piles of blackened bricks and into what was left of it.

  Completely undamaged, clean and fresh as though nothing had happened around it, lay an indenture. The ink was still wet on the signature.

  “That’ll be important,” he said. “I think.”

  Cabbage folded it and put it inside his jerkin. The corner was sharp and scratched him. He took it out and tried to fold it again. The paper was too thick and it wouldn’t fold flat. He felt inside his cloak and drew out a small notebook. Opening the book he put the paper into a pocket on the inside back cover.

  The smell was the worst thing. Except for the sticky feeling underfoot. And the soot. And the sense that something was hiding, waiting, that the danger hadn’t passed even though the storm of wild magic had blown itself out. Small fires still burned. Pockets of flame in the black ground.

  Except for the white of the paper he had picked up everything was black. Cabbage stood and looked around. Nothing seemed any different from anything else. Here, where the storm had been most fierce, there was no trace of anything he could recognize. No table or chair. No apparatus or device. Nothing but the melted, fused and hardened residue of the fire.

  Cabbage wasn’t hungry. He hadn’t eaten for ages and for the first time he could ever remember, he was empty and not hungry. Usually he could eat something else, even after a big meal.

  “I’d be sick,” he said.

  His voice bounced off the broken curve of the wall, reminding him of the noise that had started the storm. And that reminded him of the deafness. And that reminded him of Perry.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Really sorry. But I’ve got to stay here for a bit longer. I’ve got to find Bee.”

  He didn’t even know if Perry had survived the storm. Didn’t know if he had left his friend to die on the hillside.

  “Just wait,” he said. “Please.”

  He rubbed his face with his hand and blinked.

  “Right,” he said.

  It felt less lonely talking to himself.

  He stood as near to the centre of the tower as he could work out. He let himself relax and breathe deeply, ignoring the stink. He imagined a girl, about to be an apprentice. He didn’t know what she looked like, so it wasn’t easy.

  Relax.

  Breathe.

  Think.

  Don’t think.

  Imagine.

  As the tension and fear dribbled away from Cabbage his shoulders grew loose, his fingers hung at his sides. And, before he could stop them, stars dribbled down and fell at his feet making a circle of light around him.

  Cabbage flashed his eyes open and looked around in panic. The small fires flickered with no interest in him. The scorched surfaces huddled, dead and black. No crackle of wild magic. No fizz or tingle.

  A small black cat appeared and licked up the stars. Pausing, it sat and looked at Cabbage. He smiled. The cat licked its paw, nuzzled its head against his leg then stood and licked up more of the stars.

  “That’s right,” said Cabbage. “Good cat.”

  He dribbled a few more for her then closed his hand and watched her finish her meal.

  When the stars were all eaten the cat sat and looked up at him.

  “All gone,” said Cabbage. “Off you go. I’ll see you again.”

  This was the time when the cat should disappear. In fact, Cabbage had never needed to tell her to go before. Still she sat, and waited.

  “What is it?” asked Cabbage.

  She licked her other paw then rubbed it over her ear.

  “You want more?”

  He scattered a few tiny stars for her. She turned her head and looked at them.

  “No?”

  She moved a few paces from him, stopped and turned to look at him.

  “What is it?”

  He followed her. She moved more, to the left, picking soft feet over the hot ground. She walked round an obstacle that Cabbage could see, but it was clearly a part of the ground she didn’t want to walk on. She found a small, slightly raised, piece of ground and walked up and down it four times.

  “There are no stars there,” said Cabbage.

  She gave him that look that he had sometimes seen before when he had said something stupid, but never from a cat.

  He bent down and laid his hand on the ground. It moved. He snatched his hand back and scrambled away from it, squashing beetles under his hands.

  “Ugh.”

  He wiped the sticky mess on a different patch of ground.

  “Now my hands stink,” he complained.

  The cat licked her paw.

  “It’s all right for you. Don’t think I’m going to lick my hands.”

  He approached the low mound. Touching it again he felt it rise and fall.

  “Let’s see,” he whispered. “Show me.”

  The cat nuzzled against the ground near to one end of the raised section. Cabbage found a split in the surface and tugged. The ground peeled away like a scab.

  He was looking at a girl’s face. Red, raw, blistered, but a girl.

  “Now what?” he said. “What can I do?”

  But the cat had gone. |

  Having a blacksmith for a father,

  Dorwin was a good horsewoman. She had grown up with horses, so she quickly caught up with Flaxfield and then pulled ahead of him.

  She could easily have ridden off, leaving him behind, but she stayed just a little in front. Partly to teach him a lesson. Partly because she wasn’t entirely sure of the direction and she didn’t want them to get separated. In the end it was clear where they were going and when she crested the hill with the Palace of Boolat in the distance and Slowin’s Yard below them she reined her horse in and waited for the wizard to catch her up.

  She put her hand to her mouth.

  “The stink,” she said.

  Flaxfield was gasping for breath. He looked down at the yard.

  “Too late,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Flaxfield stared at the ruin.

  “I remember this,” he said.

  “When it was good?”

  “It was never good,” said Flaxfield. “Slowin was a poor wizard, a greedy wizard. He should never have been allowed to finish his apprenticeship.” He shook his head. “But once a child has set off on that road it’s very hard to turn back. Not many masters would give up on an apprentice.”

  “How can he have allowed him to be a bad wizard? How can the master have given him that power?”

  “I didn’t say he was a bad wizard, but a poor one. It’s like a horseshoe. You know the difference?”

  “Yes, a poor horseshoe will wear through quickly, perhaps be thrown. A bad horseshoe will break, perhaps cripple the horse. The animal will need to be put down.”

  “Exactly. I don’t know how or when, but Slowin turned from being a poor wizard to a bad one. We should have noticed. It’s our fault.”

  It was time to be practical. Dorwin flicked her reins.

  “What about the boys?” she asked.

  “Let’s see.”

  Flaxfield spurred his horse and led the way down to the yard. This time Dorwin allowed him to stay in front. She didn’t know whether it was to stop him from feeling that she was taking over or because she really didn’t want to be the first person to see what was waiting for them down there.

  Her worst imaginings didn’t include the beetles. She drew her cloak round her and shuddered.

  “They’re everywhere,” she said. “What are they?”

  “Nothing ordinary,” said Flaxfield. “Nothing good. Try to avoid them.”

  The advice was welcome but useless. There was no avoiding them.

  “Cabbage,” called Flaxfield. “Perry?”

  “Over here.”

  Cabbage ignored the beetles running over his hand
s. He looked up at Flaxfield.

  “Is this her?” he asked.

  Flaxfield dismounted and knelt by Cabbage.

  “I’ve never seen her,” he said. “But, yes. It must be.”

  “She’s not dead?”

  Dorwin couldn’t bring herself to dismount. Not with the beetles crawling around.

  “No,” said Flaxfield. “Not dead. But perhaps worse.”

  Cabbage touched Bee’s cheek and winced. Her skin was so raw, so red that he felt he must be hurting her. He wanted to soothe her but didn’t know what to do.

  “We can’t leave her here,” he said.

  “We mustn’t move her,” said Dorwin. “It could make her worse.”

  Cabbage had never seen Flaxfield so grim.

  “I don’t think she could be worse,” he said.

  Cabbage looked up at Dorwin.

  “What can we do?” he asked.

  He saw Dorwin give a fearful look at the beetles. She braced herself and dismounted.

  Cabbage showed her how he discovered Bee and Dorwin peeled back the rest of the black layer that covered her. Cabbage waited for Bee to moan or complain, to wince. She made no movement at all. Her breathing was slow and regular. Her eyes closed. Her hands by her side, one open, one clenched as though holding something. Flaxfield left them to it and walked around the yard, prodding the ground with the end of his staff and listening. The beetles moved away from him.

  “Can we get her to the inn?” asked Cabbage.

  “She can’t ride,” said Dorwin. “We could make a litter.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A sort of bed. Tie her to it and let a horse drag it. It will be slow travelling, but it’s all I can think of.”

  “Where’s Perry?” asked Flaxfield.

  Cabbage explained where he had left him. He pointed.

  “We came from there,” said Dorwin.

  Flaxfield frowned. “No sign of him.”

  “He’ll be all right,” said Cabbage. “Won’t he?”

  “There was no sign of him,” said Flaxfield. “Now what about this litter?”

  Cabbage spread his hands.

  “Look at it. There’s nothing here.”

  Dorwin stared at Flaxfield.