Fireborn

by Toby Forward

  It stood away from the road, nearly a mile off.

  Perry shook his head. Cabbage laughed.

  “Roffles don’t ask for directions,” he teased.

  “It’s serious,” said Perry. “We’re not allowed to. People are supposed to think we never get lost.”

  “I’ll ask,” said Cabbage. “You wait outside.”

  He banged a friendly shoulder against Perry and they headed towards the house. They were still out of shouting distance when Perry stopped.

  “You can come a bit nearer,” said Cabbage.

  “Wait. Look.”

  “What?”

  “Sh.”

  In the fading light Cabbage could see a man and a boy walking towards the house. They were nearly at the door when they stopped. The man put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. They backed away, slowly. The boy stepped forward again. The man pulled him back. They struggled. The man grabbed the boy and jerked him back, turned and started to run.

  “What’s going on?” said Cabbage.

  Swift black shapes darted out of the house and fell on the man and the boy. They were not out of shouting distance after all and Cabbage held his breath while the boy screamed his life out. It was over quickly. More beetles crowded round, mobbing the corpses. The feeding frenzy lasted less than a minute. Nothing was left, not even bones.

  “They’re huge,” said Cabbage.

  “They’re not the biggest.”

  Their meal over, the beetles moved away.

  “Oh no,” said Perry. “There’s a woman. Coming out of the house.”

  “They’re driving her,” said Cabbage. “Like a sheep.”

  The boys followed, keeping a distance, hoping not to be observed.

  “Well at least we know which way is Boolat,” said Perry.

  “What are they going to do with her?”

  “Food for the others?” said Perry. “A prisoner? I don’t know.”

  The light had gone before the turret of Boolat appeared. The stars watched them. The moon, full and bright, rode the hilltop. The woman made a last attempt to run as the gates of the castle opened before her. The beetles closed formation around her and she was driven inside.

  “I feel sick,” said Cabbage.

  “Perhaps we should go back,” said Perry. “Tell them what we saw. Tell them the beetles are scavenging, raiding, that they’re on the attack.”

  “No. We’ve come to discover Bee’s name. I’m not going back until we do.”

  “We can’t go in the there.”

  “We have to.”

  Perry sat down on the grass and looked at the castle. Cabbage looked up at the stars.

  “Tell me,” he said. “How do we get in there?”

  Mattie followed Frastfil through the castle.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Why aren’t you dead?”

  He listened to Bakkmann’s demands, holding his breath in expectation that the creature would lunge at Frastfil and jab a sharp leg into him. Mattie knew now how the blood would spurt out, how the face would contort, the look of surprise that came just before death. When Bakkmann slouched out of the turret, denied her death, Mattie waited to see what would happen.

  He wanted to help Frastfil, but he couldn’t find himself liking the wizard. There was something smug and self-satisfied about him that made Mattie want to slap him. He wished he would stop jingling those coins. He couldn’t stay close when they were in the corridors, so he ran ahead and waited for them in the great hall. When he saw Frastfil tuck into the ragged haunch of meat he felt sick. When he saw him greet the beetles like friends he thought he must be mad. At last he understood that Ash was a powerful wizard and held Frastfil in a strong spell. He was enthralled, unable to see what was really happening around him. He thought himself in the Boolat of old.

  “I’d wipe that stupid smile off your face if I could show you where you really are,” said Mattie, “and who you’re really eating with.”

  He drew closer and listened as Frastfil told Ash about himself and the college, and he listened even more attentively as Ash gave Frastfil his orders.

  “There may be a roffle way,” said Perry.

  Cloud straggled across the moon.

  “What?” said Cabbage.

  “You asked me how to get in there,” said Perry. “There may be a roffle way.”

  “I was asking the stars,” said Cabbage.

  The boys looked at each other, embarrassed.

  “Sorry,” said Perry.

  He waited for Cabbage to speak. Cabbage lifted his eyes to the sky again. The cloud ran on, leaving the moon clear. Cabbage studied the patterns of the stars. He fished in the pocket of his cloak and drew out a notebook.

  “I’m never allowed to show you this,” he said.

  “I’ll sit over there while you look,” said Perry.

  “No. Come on. You took me to the Deep World. Come and look.”

  Cabbage opened the book, thumbed through it and found a page with neat diagrams of stars. He had joined some of them up into shapes with lines of black ink.

  “See.”

  He pointed to the book and up to the sky.

  “That’s the cart. Like a farm cart.”

  Perry looked from one to the other. He saw the pattern.

  “These nine stars make the gallows. Over there.”

  Four for the noose, the other five for the frame. Perry recognized it.

  “There’s the staircase, the mouse, the hand, the hourglass.”

  Where once the sky had been a random sprinkle of lights Perry now saw an arrangement of objects.

  “Did you make this up?” he asked.

  “It’s not made up,” said Cabbage. “It’s how they are.”

  Perry blushed.

  “Sorry. I mean did you discover the shapes?”

  Cabbage felt as though he had stepped out of the house undressed. He closed the book and stuffed it back into his cloak.

  “Everyone knows the shape,” he said. “All wizards anyway.”

  “All of the shapes?”

  “Most of them.”

  “What did the stars tell you? When you asked them how we can get in?”

  “They said there may be a roffle way,” said Cabbage.

  “I told you that.”

  “Why did you say it?”

  “I remembered what Springmile said, in the library. She said, ‘Remember how to come and go. Do you understand, roffle?’ I just thought of it. I think she meant that there’s a roffle way into the castle.”

  “Come on. Let’s look for it.”

  Perry trotted towards the castle, skirting away from the gate.

  “So are the stars are talking to you again?” he said.

  Cabbage looked up at the blackness, pierced by tiny dots of light. |

  Flaxfield ate his meal quickly

  and left the others still at the table. He stepped out into the night, enjoying the feeling of the soft darkness against his face.

  He had never known what it was not to have magic. He looked up at the stars and could hear nothing. The patterns were still there, unchanged. Their eloquence had gone. They were as silent for him as for any other man. He didn’t hear Dorwin close the door behind her, didn’t hear her approach. The first he knew of her was when she slipped her arm through his.

  “What’s it like?” she said.

  He breathed in the scents of evening.

  “Partly, it’s a relief,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Partly.”

  Dorwin tightened her arm in his.

  “It’s a relief,” said Flaxfield not to have the responsibility of magic, not to be able to do anything even if I want to. To be out of that world of working. To be free of that rough magic.”

  “And the other part?” she said.

  “Oh, the other part. That’s like a death.”

  Dorwin tried to get him to look at her. He kept his face turned up, his eyes on the black sky.

  “Whose death?”r />
  Flaxfield began to walk and she kept alongside him. They passed between the house and the forge and through into Cartford’s orchard.

  “You’re a clever thing,” said Flaxfield.

  “I know,” smiled Dorwin. “You were my teacher.”

  “Sort of,” he said. “Whenever I passed through.”

  “Are you going to answer the question?”

  “It’s like the death of the person I’ve loved most of all in the world,” said Flaxfield. “It’s like saying goodbye for ever to my heart’s prize.”

  They stopped under an apple tree. The fruit needed another month before it would be ripe for harvest.

  “Do you remember your mother?” asked Flaxfield.

  “Of course.”

  “You remember what it was like when she died?”

  Dorwin nodded.

  “It’s that,” said Flaxfield. “And more. Because it’s as though I’ve died, too. It’s my own death. Without magic I’m not who I am.”

  “There’s more to you than magic.”

  “Is there? I don’t know. Magic has been the breath in my body, the blood in my veins.”

  “If it was that,” she said, “you’d die without it. And you’re still alive.

  Flaxfield took his arm from hers and put his hands on her face. She flinched, put her hands on top of his.

  “You’re so cold,” she said. “So cold.”

  “The sun has gone.”

  “But the air’s still warm.”

  She took his hands from her face and stepped back.

  “Is it really you?” she said. “Really alive?”

  “For the moment. No one else.”

  “What will happen if your magic doesn’t come back?”

  “Well,” he said. “There’s the relief of being without it. And there’s the sense that it’s a sort of death.”

  “What sort of death? Can anything bring the magic back?”

  “I don’t know. Slowin and Bee made a new thing, a new magic. Perhaps the old magic had to die to make room for it.”

  “Cabbage has still got his magic.”

  “He has. But he was there at the birth of the new. I wasn’t. I am the old magic.”

  Dorwin stepped forward again and took his hands, putting them back on her cheeks.

  “I’m going to get your magic back for you,” she said.

  “We’ll do our best. It’s all we can do.”

  They looked up at the stars through the shifting canopy of leaves.

  The library was dark and empty, just the way Jackbones liked it. He moved along the stacks like a ghost. There was something insubstantial about him now. He couldn’t walk through walls, daylight didn’t drive him away, yet he had the presence of a man who had more than half left this world.

  The college was asleep. The building never slept. Buildings never do. It creaked and cracked, settling down as the late summer warmth seeped out of it.

  Jackbones descended the spiral stairs to the lower level. He frowned as the door opened. Never welcoming even during daylight, he disliked late visitors most of all. He paused to see who was invading his kingdom.

  Melwood closed the door carefully and looked around. Anyone else who wanted to find him would have called out. She knew better than that. She knew even a muted call in his library would annoy Jackbones. She knew that if he wanted to remain unseen no amount of calling would summon him. She chose a book, apparently at random, and sat down to read it. She and Jackbones were old colleagues. He knew she knew he was there. She knew that she could wait all night if he didn’t want to see her, but that he would appear soon if he was willing to talk.

  Jackbones smiled. When Melwood had first been appointed as principal there had been complaints. Not everyone thought that a woman should have the job. Jackbones had been her first ally in the college. He never showed his approval to her face and treated her in the same harsh, faintly hostile manner that he treated everyone else. She recognized this as a compliment, and she soon learned that he was fierce in her support behind her back. As far as she could tell he thought that she was a nuisance, but only in the way that everyone who wanted to disturb his library was a nuisance, not because she was a woman. She could live with that. She might have been surprised to learn that he liked her and thought she was a good principal. All of that didn’t mean that he thought it was a good thing that she had disturbed the calm and emptiness of his library late at night. The sooner he spoke to her the sooner she would leave him at peace.

  Turning the corner of the stair he tried to take the smile from his face and found himself surprised that it stayed there, a sign of welcome and friendship.

  She put down the book and smiled back.

  “Jackbones. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

  “Then don’t do it,” he said. “Go.”

  “Sit by me. Talk for a while.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “It will wait.”

  He lifted the chair so that it would not scrape against the floor and sat down.

  “You did a brave thing,” said Melwood.

  He waved a dismissive hand.

  “What will happen to you now?” she asked.

  “Happen? Nothing. I’m still the librarian here. No need to change that.”

  “I mean what will happen now that you can never enter the Finished World?”

  “Have you heard from Cabbage?” he asked.

  “Not yet. It’s still early days.”

  Jackbones took the book from her and studied the title. He put it next to him on the table, ready to replace it where it belonged.

  “You liked him, didn’t you?” she said.

  “Liked him? Liked a boy? Liked someone making a fuss in my library?”

  “I thought he belonged here,” she said.

  “Apprentices belong with their masters, not in a college. You know that.”

  “If Flaxfield doesn’t get his magic back then Cabbage will need looking after. He’ll need teaching.”

  “It’s never been done. We don’t take apprentices.”

  “There’s always a first time.” She stood up, took the book and put it back where she had found it. “Anyway, I just wanted to ask, if he did come back here would you be willing to teach him?”

  “What? Why?”

  “He couldn’t be a normal pupil, that wouldn’t work. He’d need a master of his own.”

  “He won’t be back,” said Jackbones, “so you can forget about it.”

  “I’ll leave you in peace,” said Melwood. “I just thought you ought to be able to think about it.”

  She closed the door quietly behind her. Jackbones sat for a long time in silence at the table. |

  Flaxfold’s normally cheerful face

  was grim.

  “You look tired,” said Dorwin.

  Flaxfold shook her head. She sat at the kitchen table and poured herself water from the earthenware jug. Dorwin put bread, butter and cheese in front of her without asking, and apples and a jar of pickle.

  “Bad news?” said Cartford.

  “Travellers,” said Flaxfold. “It’s been a busy night at the inn. Not many locals. A lot of people on the move. Frightened.”

  “The wild magic’s gone now,” said Dorwin. “Didn’t you tell them that?”

  “Wait,” said Flaxfield. He took an armchair near to Cartford. The two men sat side by side, listening.

  “A village to the north has been attacked,” said Flaxfold. “And isolated houses. It was hard to get them to talk about it. They didn’t expect me to believe the stories at first. When I did they couldn’t stop. The news poured out of them. Beetles. All sorts. Some like dogs. Some the size of men. And they talked to each other in a clattering sound. Takkabakk. Takkabakk.”

  “Slowin,” said Cartford.

  “He’s gathering strength,” said Flaxfield.

  Bee gripped the iron shape in her hands till her knuckles were white and stared straight at Flaxfold.

  “I hate them,” she whi
spered. “I hate them.”

  Dorwin moved closer to her.

  “They kill some and eat them straight away,” said Flaxfold. “And they’re rounding up others and taking them away.”

  “Men? Women?” asked Cartford.

  “Both.”

  “What for?” he asked.

  Flaxfold drank deeply.

  “I don’t want to think what it may be,” she said.

  “We’ve got to stop him,” said Dorwin.

  “We’re trying,” said Flaxfield. “That’s what we’re doing. Bee? What do you think?”

  “I don’t know who I am,” said Bee. She still gripped the iron shape. It hurt her hand and she liked that because it stopped her thinking about the other pain, the one that never went away. She looked to Flaxfold for some help.

  She saw that Flaxfold didn’t know what to say to her. At last the woman spoke.

  “You’re who you’ve always been,” she said.

  Bee put the shape down. It was streaked with blood. She had gripped it so tightly that she had cut through the skin on her palm.

  “That’s the problem,” said Bee. “I’m not the same person I was. And anyway, I don’t know who I was before.”

  “No,” said Dorwin. “Don’t say that. However you’ve changed there’s part of you that’s still the same.”

  Bee smiled, a patient smile that excused Dorwin for her failure to understand. She looked at them all. None of them understood. When Flaxfield spoke she turned her face away. Of all of them he was the one she liked least, trusted least. He had been kind to her at the river, but he had challenged her there as well. And in some way that she didn’t understand she felt that the disaster was his fault as much as Slowin’s.

  “She’s right, though,” he said.

  Bee felt a shock of surprise run through her. Flaxfield was the last person she had expected to agree with her. He had been so distant, so bad-tempered. He hadn’t seemed to listen to anyone else.

  “Having an apprentice is like having a garden,” said Flaxfield. “You have to look after it. You need to make sure the ground’s right for the plant. Then there’s protection from the worst weather. You have to weed out the harmful plants that will choke the crop. You have to allow room for things to grow. And it’s no good planting parsnips and expecting roses to grow. Things are what they are. I’ve never had two apprentices the same. A good master will learn from the apprentice as well as teaching him. Look what happened to Bee. Slowin never taught her anything, gave her no room to be herself, never let her be a real person. She was just a magic mine for him. He dug out the ore and took it for himself. He hollowed her out, stole her very being. Instead of becoming more of who she is she grew to be less and less. It’s a wonder she survived at all to be a good, real person.”