Dragonborn (3 page)

Sam felt sick. There was something in the air around them that frightened him. Flaxfield's face was gray and his hands shook.

“Go away,” he said.

That night, even though it was a Friday, Flaxfield ate cheese.

Sam thought the old man would be angry with him, and he hid. But Flaxfield called him gently and they ate together, more companionably than usual.

“I'm sorry,” said Sam.

Flaxfield smiled at him.

“Everyone does it, sooner or later,” he said. “You did it sooner than I expected.”

“I knew it was wrong. But not very wrong.”

“It was as wrong as you could make it,” said Flaxfield. “You used the magic you have inside you without thinking, and you did something you couldn't undo, and you did it to save yourself trouble. Three things,” he ticked them off on his fingers, “and every one of them serious.”

Sam lowered his head.

“No more tears. Have an apple with that cheese.”

The next day, the dragon arrived, and Flaxfield gave Starback to Sam to look after.

“He isn't yours, mind,” the old man warned him. “He belongs to himself—everything does. But he's your responsibility. You must feed him and take care of him.”

There was more about the right use of magic. Looking back, now that it was all over, Sam realized that he had learned more about how
not to
use magic than he had about how to use it. He didn't know much about that at all. And now Flaxfield was dead. And Sam would never know any more.

He was twelve. His apprenticeship was only half over, and he didn't know what would happen to him.

Did he know enough about magic to live by it? He didn't think so. He really didn't think he knew enough to make himself rich. And he thought he would be very lonely on his own in Flaxfield's house.

The shivering of the wands as they fell from the willow disturbed the air, disturbed the spaces between the air, disturbed the steady stillness. A gray-robed figure, pacing on a smooth floor, stopped, turned her face to a window, and held her breath. She felt the shivering of the falling willow branches, felt the magic that had stripped and piled them, felt the sorrow and the loss of the figures on the riverbank. She crouched, sniffed, paused, smiled.

“Flaxfield's dead,” she said.

“That's very good.” The reply was a clatter of claws.

She drew her robe to her head and wrapped it around her like a shawl, half hiding her face.

“Now it starts,” she said. “Now it starts.”

She dropped to her knees and licked the floor, a snail trail of saliva glistening against the stone.

“I can taste it,” she said. “I can taste the magic rising up.”

She lay flat and licked, pressed her cheek against the cold stone. A black beetle clawed its way up between the slabs. It tilted, tottered, settled, walked toward her. She darted her head forward, snapped her teeth together, splitting the beetle. She flicked her head to one side, tossing the beetle into her mouth.
Crunched it once, swallowed, licked her lips, sticky with the beetle's soft insides. More black beetles clambered up, crawled over her.

“They know,” she whispered. “They know the time's starting.”

“What else can you see, Ash?”

She screamed at the clattering shape and it shrank back into a corner.

“Give me time. Let me enjoy this.”

She slithered toward it, her gray robe rippling like smoke.

Bakkmann stepped away.

“Can we leave the castle now?” it clattered.

Ash rose up, stood close.

“I'll snap your legs off,” she said. “One by one. Snap. Snap. You hear me?”

Bakkmann clattered
yes.

“With Flaxfield dead,” said Ash, “we can do anything. We can leave this place.”

She hugged herself.

“At last. At last!”

She ran from the room, around and down the spiral stair. The robe billowed behind her like smoke. Through stinking corridors, pushing aside anything that got in her way, she found the great door. It stood open. It was always open. She paused, moved slowly, stepped up to the threshold, and walked through.

As her foot passed through the doorway she stopped and screamed.

She fell back, away from the door. Her foot snapped off at the ankle and hung in the air outside.

Ash snarled, lunged forward into the doorway, hands outstretched. Again, she froze as soon as she crossed the line. Her arms had gone through as far as the elbows, then stopped. Her weight sagged. She fell to her knees and her forearms snapped off.

Bakkmann found her, bleeding and slumped on the floor.

“I should have killed him,” she moaned. “If he had lived longer I would have been able to.”

Bakkmann clattered.

“What went wrong?” she asked. “Why am I still a prisoner here?”

“Can you see anything?” Bakkmann clattered.

Ash closed her eyes and sank down again, crouched. Her foot was beginning to grow back. The stumps of her arms had stopped bleeding.

“Nothing. They're at Flaxfield's house. That's protected against us. All I felt was a stupid slip of wasted magic. It opened a door just enough for me to feel what was happening.”

She doubled over, put her face to the floor. One hand was restored. The other was nearly complete, except for the fingers.

“I can get in,” she said. “Just for a moment.”

She pulled the robe so that her face was hidden.

“Figures on a riverbank,” she said. “A dragon. And a boy.”

She hugged herself, moaning.

“What is it?”

She ignored the clattered question.

Bent double with pain, she dipped her head below the window, pulled her robe away, and looked around. Her eyes were bleeding. Her mouth was twisted into a snarl. She said something. Almost.

“What's that?”

“It's a boy,” she said. “Flaxfield's boy.”

Bakkmann clacked louder.

“We have to get him,” said Ash. “We have to. The seal. Flaxfield's magic. The boy.”

She stared at the slabs of black that made up Bakkmann's face.

“It's not over,” she snarled. “Not over after all. It's just beginning. After all these years. He's found a boy and given him the seal.”

 

THE THING ABOUT ROFFLES is that there are all sorts of them, but they all look pretty much the same. Some are good and trustworthy, while others can be very sly and unpleasant, and there's absolutely no way of knowing which is which until you have been with them for a long time. They seem to be very helpful, though a little short-tempered. They only ever come above ground for one reason: to look for stray memmonts.

The memmonts are curious creatures, and they often find gaps in the ground that they can wriggle through to get Up Top. They like the sun, but they have no sense of direction, so once they are here, they find it difficult to get back home. The roffles love the memmonts, and, although there are many of them and one missing wouldn't matter, they always try to rescue strays.

Memmonts, of course, don't belong to anyone, so the roffles are not recovering their property, just doing a kind thing for a memmont.

They carry almost everything they own on their backs in hard leather cases shaped like barrels that have been sat on sideways and flattened out. Some people say that this is because hundreds of years ago they were put in barrels as a punishment and tipped down the disused shafts of the mines, and then they found the Deep World. Other people say they were miners once, and that they stayed down there and made the Deep World themselves and came to like it better than Up Top. Still other people say that once everyone was a roffle in the Deep World but the people Up Top came through the gaps and liked it here and stayed. No one knows.

Roffles have pointy shoes and they are just over half as tall as a grown man or woman. Roffle babies can walk when they are seven months old and talk like grown-ups on their first birthday. Every roffle name begins with the letters M-E-G. It is a very rare thing to see a fat roffle, but there was a famous one called Megantople, who sometimes came Up Top to go to fairs and make money from charging people tuppence to see him. He spent the money on gold and jewels and took them back to the Deep World, where he became the richest roffle ever. Even now, roffles who are descended from Megantople are very rich and powerful.

Everyone knows how delicious the food is that the roffles grow in the Deep World, but they will not bring it Up Top and sell it, so very few people have ever tasted it. Sometimes a memmont, carrying a basket of roffle apples or plums on its back, will break
through to Up Top, and then the people who find the memmont can taste them, but this hardly ever happens.

Roffles love to give advice and help people, which is a good thing, if it is a good roffle, but a bad roffle will give bad advice and false help, just for the fun of it.

was a Green and Blue. No one ever knows how old dragons are, so Starback could have been a youngster of only a few years or a very old and wise dragon indeed. It was impossible to tell. They never looked any different, or behaved any differently, rolling around and scampering like puppies however old they were.

Starback watched the wizards very carefully.

They had worked hard to cut the willow. The woman, Eloise, had started the weaving and they had all taken turns until the basket was complete. Then they had carried it to the house and gently lifted Flaxfield into it.

The old man's name was Sandage. He supervised it, and he was the one who arranged the herbs around the body, in a very particular order, different from the one that Sam knew. The boy corrected him almost straight away, but Axestone put his hand on his shoulder.

“This is a wizard, boy. No ordinary death. Watch and learn.”

Starback kept close to his friend while the rites were performed. Sam didn't look at him. He kept his gaze on the face of the man who had raised him for nine years and given him the only home he had ever known, and who now lay dead.

“Now,” said Eloise. “It is the boy's turn.”

Sam looked at her and, for the first time, his eyes took in the rest of the room. It had filled. Silently, slowly, one after another, more and more people had entered. Over thirty stood there now. All turned to look at him. There were women there, but most of them were men, and, Sam knew, all wizards. He had no idea there were so many in the whole world.

“What?” he said.

“Sandage was his first apprentice, and has performed the preparation. You were his last apprentice,” said Eloise. “You must give me the elements to finish this.” She seemed changed by the ritual she had performed, but Sam was used to that. He had seen it many times with Flaxfield. It wasn't that anything actually changed, but they looked different. The first thing Sam had noticed about Eloise was that she was beautiful. He had seen very many strangers since coming to live with Flaxfield, but not many of them were women; he had no idea what beauty was in a woman, yet the first sight of Eloise was enough to tell him that she was. It reminded Sam of a day when he had been sitting with Starback, looking over the steep hill and the tumbling river that ran down eastward through the forest before changing its mind and doubling
back to run past the bottom of the meadow behind the house. The light of the angled sun on the slopes and water seemed to the boy to be the most beautiful thing in the world. And then, without warning, a high, huge cloud slipped over the sun and, in a breath, everything was changed. The shadow changed the beauty, made it more, disclosed depths and mysteries. It was like that after magic. There was always more. Flaxfield had seemed more wise, more stern, more old. Eloise, the words completed, was more beautiful, and, suddenly, frightening.

“I don't know what to do,” said Sam. “You do it.”

“I do not know how to,” she said. “Only the last apprentice knows how. He has taught you.”

“He didn't. Truly he didn't.”

“Then you are no apprentice,” said Axestone coldly. “You have lied to us.”

There was a tension in the room as thick as smoke and as hard to breathe. He could feel everyone waiting to see if it was true.

Sam wanted to cry. He
knew,
he just
knew
that Flaxfield had never taught him this. How could he forget? He hated Axestone for humiliating him, and he hated Flaxfield for not teaching him.

Starback nudged his legs. Sam was so upset that even this was not welcome, though he knew the creature was trying to be kind. He put his hand down to push him away, but Starback grabbed it in his mouth and pulled him away, toward the dresser. He nosed against a small door. Sam opened it. He took out a loaf of bread, some figs, a small bottle of cordial, and a bag of silver coins. They
had been put there recently, because the bread was fresh, and there was nothing else in the small cupboard. His hands were not steady. He carried the items carefully to Flaxfield and placed them inside the wicker basket, as close to Flaxfield's hands as he could. Then, he stopped and looked at the still face. “You have done all things well,” he said, quietly. “Go where you must.” Then, he leaned forward and kissed the cold, dry cheek.

The room made a small, comfortable sound, of breaths that had been held being released.

Sam looked around to see if it was right. Axestone nodded, and almost smiled.

“That's no good!”

“Ah, Caleb,” said Axestone, looking at the one who had spoken. “You have arrived at last. That leaves only Waterburn still missing.”

“In plenty of time,” said the newcomer. He stuck out like a sapphire in a bread shop window. All the others were in traveling drab, or, at least, in sturdy clothes that drew no attention. Caleb wore a brocade jacket, with the cleanest lace at the neck and cuffs, the collar fastened with a jet brooch in the shape of a beetle with a silver mount, and silk breeches with buckled shoes. His hat, discourteously still on his head, was tilted ironically, as though mocking the solemnity of the rites. “I didn't miss anything. Especially that nonsense this idiot boy just showed us.”