Dragonborn

by Toby Forward

  Sam’s anger had all transformed into curiosity, and he forgot to sulk.

  “What does it say?”

  “Well,” said Flaxfield, “that will have to wait, I think. But I will, soon, begin to teach you these letters, so that one day you will be able to read it. For now, let me show you something else about this book.”

  Flaxfield took his eyes from the page with the picture and ran his finger down a column of words on the facing page. “Ah, here it is,” he said. “So. Soot. Pepper. Salt. A snake’s eye. One ash leaf? I thought it was elder. Never mind; and a blue plate. Of course. I remember.” He spoke to Sam. “Can you reach that ash tree outside? Through the window?”

  He could.

  “One leaf will do. Thank you. And that plate on the mantelpiece. Good. Sit down. And be quiet.”

  Flaxfield had taken other things from cupboards while Sam was leaning out the window. He put the leaf on the plate, and dropped the dried snake eye in the middle. Mumbling words from the open page, he made passes with his hands, sprinkled salt and pepper, as though about to eat it, then looked around the room. “Soot! We forgot the soot.” He leaned back, took a pinch of soot from the cold fireplace, and used it to trace letters on the edge of the blue and white plate. “There!” He sat back.

  Sam looked at him. Then at the plate. Then at him again. If this was what was in the books, he wasn’t as interested as he thought.

  “Oh,” said Flaxfield. “Do you want to finish it?”

  Sam nodded.

  Flaxfield put his finger (one that wasn’t sooty) on the page and said, “After me.” Tracing each letter of a word, he said, “S-T-A-V-K-A-R.”

  Sam repeated each letter.

  “Now, all at once.”

  “Stavkar!”

  His eyes had been on the book, concentrating on the strange letters, but when he turned them back to the plate it was a boiling stew of colors.

  Green and blue smoke hovered for a second and then contracted, gathered together over the plate; and, in a moment, it formed itself into a tiny Green and Blue dragon.

  Sam sat back in fright.

  The creature’s wings flapped lazily, holding it in the air. Its head turned from side to side. Smoke dribbled from its nostrils. Its eyes, green as greed, flickered, focused, moved from side to side, then locked on Sam. The boy gripped the edge of the table, his hands hurting from the tension. The dragon flapped toward him.

  “Don’t move,” said Flaxfield.

  Sam held his breath.

  The dragon came to a halt three inches from his face. It stared at him, blinked and stared. He could smell the smoke, feel the heat of the breath, the waft of air from the wings, and hear the soft swish of the tail. A tongue flickered, forked and slim. Sam shuddered.

  Without thinking, Sam joined his hands together, cupped them, held them beneath the creature, and waited. The dragon stared. Sam smiled.

  “So, it’s a dragon, is it?” Flaxfield whispered. “Very well.”

  It was his first ever meeting with a dragon, and it was love at first sight. He knew then that he wanted his life to be about dragons. When the tiny creature had disappeared, he felt as though a part of him had gone as well. Flaxfield cleared the table (a job he would normally have expected Sam to do) and left the boy alone for a while. When he came back in, the room was almost clear of smoke. Sam was staring at his hand. There was a small mark in the palm, smoke gray and suggestive of a shape, though what shape was not quite clear.

  Flaxfield closed the book and replaced it on the shelf. “Perhaps you would like to pick another.”

  The boy frowned. The rows of books didn’t look so inviting now. They were a challenge as well as promise.

  “You choose,” he said.

  Flaxfield smiled at him, and, astonishingly (it was a day full of surprises), ruffled his hair. He had hardly ever touched him, rarely smiled.

  “Good,” he said. “Very good.”

  The time for memories was over. The time for action was here. Sam left the study, and closed the door behind him.

  “I’m going to be a wizard,” he whispered to Starback. The dragon climbed up his back and put his head on the boy’s shoulder.

  “I will. But not with those, those …”

  He had no words for the anger and fear he felt about the company downstairs. Only the thought of Eloise made him pause. If she had offered … But not Axestone. Never him.

  “I’ll find another way,” he said. “Another master.”

  His lips moving all the while, he ran his finger along the edges of the door, not forgetting the side with the hinges. He breathed into the keyhole and licked the ringed handle. Resting his forehead against the oak panels, he finished the spell and pressed his hands against the dark wood. It was done. Starback rubbed against him. Sam managed a pale smile. His face was lined with effort.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered. “It’s the strongest spell I know, to bind a door, but with a house full of wizards it may not last.”

  Starback put his nose to the door handle, licked it, drew back, breathed out, and sent a ball of fire from his nostrils. The iron handle glowed red, then died down to cold black. Sam rested his hand on the dragon’s head.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Ash took a small piece of scorched and twisted wood from the table. Kneeling, she tapped it on the floor, rhythmically, in a repeated pattern. In the corner, Bakkmann flinched and turned its face to the wall.

  She scratched the end of the wood against the slate floor. One by one, then in a rush, black beetles prised their way up from between the slate slabs. They clustered around her, crawling over her hands and up her arms, getting lost in the folds of her gray robe.

  “That’s enough,” she said, putting the wooden stick back on the table.

  She shook herself, and the beetles tumbled down till they were all in a group. She scooped them into her cupped hands. Their sharp legs scratched her palms, their shiny cases gleamed.

  “Bakkmann, get a flame,” she said.

  The black creature clacked angrily at her.

  “Do it!”

  It scuttled sideways against the wall and disappeared through the open door.

  Ash laughed.

  She dipped her head to her hands.

  She opened her mouth wide and pushed the beetles in.

  They scrabbled around in the darkness.

  She raised her arms above her head, then leaned forward and, opening her mouth, let the beetles spill out at her feet.

  As they fell, they burst into flame, popping and blazing, screaming and tumbling down. She stepped back and watched them die in pain.

  When the flames had disappeared, she stopped, filled her hands with the ash, stood, and breathed into it. The ashes puffed out, spread, hesitated, hung for a moment, then gathered into a dark shape.

  “Good. That’s it,” she murmured. “Go on.”

  The shape resolved itself into a dragon, black, twisted, legs broken, wings snapped.

  “That’s fixed you,” she said. “Now. Find him. Lose him. Make him mad.”

  The ash dragon flapped its damaged wings and half flew, half fell through the window and away.

  She knelt again, pushed her thin fingers down into the cracks between the slabs, and found and caught five more beetles. She popped them into her mouth and bit down, crunching them. She spat them out, smacked each one with the scorched stick, and watched them flare up, bright like nuggets of coal, then die and crumble. She blew on them and they clacked open their wing cases, rose, and flew around the tower room, bumping into the walls and ceiling.

  “You know what to do,” she said. “Off with you.”

  They flew out into the night.

  “But you, boy,” she whispered. “You’re mine. Flaxfield escaped from me. You won’t.”

  Pages from an apprentice’s notebook

  SOME WELL-KNOWN FACTS ABOUT MEMMONTS.

  Memmonts are, of course, very tidy, or why would we say, “as tidy as a memmont”? />
  It’s also very hard to hold on to a memmont. They only get here by accident, and are always trying to get back home, although they are gentle enough and never bite, unless they are attacked.

  For some reason, they like weavers, and will always try to hide in a weaver’s cottage or workshop when they get lost here. The ancient Cloude family of weavers, who made tapestries for the Palace of Boolat, were the first ever to find and keep a memmont, which is why, to this day, every piece of work from the Cloude workshops bears the figure of a memmont somewhere in it. Sometimes, as in the large tapestries, the memmont may be a part of the scene; in smaller hangings, the memmont may only be climbing up the side of the pattern, almost invisible, while in the scarves and handkerchiefs, it may be embroidered into the piece by hand. But no finished fabric leaves the Cloude workshop without a memmont. It is said that the family and the business will fail if a weaver forgets to include the memmont.

  The Cloudes would like it to be thought that there is always at least one real, live memmont in the workshop, and many people believe that to be true; but, in fact, it is many years since there has been one there. Memmonts are pets to no one and will not stay anywhere if they can get back home.

  Wizards, of course, have more memmonts than anyone else.

  A baby memmont makes a sound like a kitten. A full-grown memmont growls like a thuring. Thurings, however, will bite fiercely for no reason, so it is not good to get them mixed up. Three-fingered Vagan tried to stroke a thuring, thinking it was a memmont.

  Every night, the roffles come looking for lost memmonts, to show them the way home.

  Wizards have ways

  of knowing things. Sam didn’t know if they would follow him, or if he could just walk away and they would forget all about the stupid, dirty boy who had lied to them and told them he was a wizard’s apprentice. Why would they bother with him?

  The road went two ways from Flaxfield’s house, and then many ways. Crossroads and forks, alleys and paths, the routes the animals took and the broad lanes of the drovers; two ways soon became ten, and ten twenty, and Sam had walked all of them for a short way and none of them for long. Whichever way he took, a wizard would be able to see his progress, unless he took care to hide it.

  The sealing spell he had cast on the door to Flaxfield’s study had been for a purpose. He did not trust the wizards to see inside that room. It was not for him, to make his life easier. It was for Flaxfield. So it was allowed. But if he cast a spell to hide his path, would that be for himself? If it was, it would turn against him. If not, then he could slip away easily.

  “Why is it so difficult?” he asked Starback. The dragon scampered ahead, then darted back, bumped against the boy’s knees so that he nearly tumbled over, then leaped up high, wings brilliant in the moonlight. “It’s all a game to you,” said Sam. “But I feel sort of dizzy. I want to be sick and to run fast at the same time.”

  There was another turret, another tower. The breeze that swept the treetops over Sam’s head cooled the arms of a girl, high above a market square, eyes fixed, mouth tight, hands curled into fists. A falcon hung above her.

  “You can’t see either,” she said.

  The hawk swooped and wheeled, rounded the turret, and was gone.

  Tamrin shook her head.

  “I know you’re on your way,” she said. “I’ve always known. But why are you coming here now?”

  She stood up and grimaced. Her long vigil, cross-legged, unmoving, had made her legs grow stiff. She hopped and danced, stamping the pins and needles out.

  “Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.”

  She shook her open hand in front of her face. A thousand bright points of light cascaded down, hitting the tower roof with ten thousand chimes.

  Tamrin smiled down at the heap of shining pins and needles at her feet.

  “That’s better,” she said, and descended the steps, closing the door behind her.

  “He’s a long time getting those puffballs,” said Caleb. “Perhaps he doesn’t even know where to look.”

  “If he comes back with a bag of mushrooms and agaric we’ll know he’s a fraud,” said Khazib, his face darkened more than ever in the lamplight. “Then we can send him packing.”

  “That won’t happen,” said Eloise.

  Caleb leaned back in his chair and looked around the room. “You’re so sure,” he said. “Why did Flaxfield live like this?”

  “And what is wrong with it?” asked Axestone. “It’s clean and sound. Only the finest oak furniture and honest clay pots.”

  “A peasant’s house,” said Caleb, absently smoothing the fine brocade of his jacket.

  “Eloise is right. If we can find his indenture,” said Sandage, who had been silently watching the others till now, “we’ll know what to do.”

  The others looked to the ancient wizard as though he had some seniority over them, some right to make decisions. He nodded at the desk in the corner. “Where would you keep important papers?” he asked.

  The moon had sunk below the line of the trees. Sam had chosen a drovers’ road. Not too clear, not too smooth, but wide enough not to let him wander off into the fields and woods. By moonlight it was an easy path to see, but now, in the darkness, it was a false friend, sometimes seeming to disappear, sometimes seeming to fork where no second road was. Sam sighed and looked around.

  “I’ve never been this far before,” he said.

  Starback scrambled up a tree and looked down. His dragon’s eyes could see the road as though it were broad daylight. Swooping down, he started off, leading Sam.

  “And I’m tired,” said the boy.

  Starback waited.

  Sam stepped five paces from the road, found cover, and sat down.

  Starback stayed in the road.

  “Come on. Let’s rest here till morning.” Starback walked on.

  You can ask a dragon to do something, but you can’t tell it. So it was a night alone, or more walking. Sam waited for Starback to turn around and come and sleep next to him. Beech mast gave off night odors. The woods had seemed quiet and deserted as the two of them had walked along; now, in the silence of stopping, the small noises and movements pressed on Sam. Did the branches sway in the breeze, or were they moved by something else? Did foxes and rats rustle in the leaves and mast, or was there a wizard tracking them, circling him, drawing closer, ready to take him back? Did robbers, used to these paths, even now grasp knives and clubs, ready to make away with him? His back pressed against the broad trunk of a beech, Sam stared into the darkness.

  What was the use of magic, if you couldn’t use it? He grabbed a handful of the forest floor, leaves and dust, twigs and small stones, beech husks and old nuts. Flicking his arm, he tossed it into the air, and as it rose and sprayed out, every tiny part of it glowed silver, like stardust, lighting the small clearing just long enough for Sam to see around him, to reassure himself he was alone.

  But he wasn’t.

  Caleb undid the sealing spell on the desk.

  “It doesn’t feel right,” said Eloise. “I never once looked in here when I was Flaxfield’s apprentice.”

  “He wasn’t dead then,” said Caleb, over his shoulder.

  Sandage stayed at the kitchen table, running his finger around the rim of his glass.

  Khazib watched Caleb closely. “That’s not an indenture,” he said.

  “But it might be important.”

  “It’s in Flaxfield’s desk,” said Axestone, “so it is important. But it’s nothing to do with us. Put it down.”

  Caleb’s fingers left the papers slowly, his eyes remaining on them longer.

  “Here,” said Khazib, leaning across the brocade jacket. He lifted a sheaf of folded parchment, tied with a black ribbon.

  As the sparkling debris fell to the ground, Sam kept his eyes on the spot where he had seen the small figure staring at him. He had never seen a roffle before, but he had heard Flaxfield talk of them and had seen pictures in the books. In the half-light of the spell it was hard t
o be certain that the man was dressed all in greens and browns, but the strange, twisted hat, the pointy shoes, the bag shaped like a flat barrel, and most of all, the perfect, halfsized figure, all made it clear that this was a roffle. Sam kept his back to the trunk of the tree, crossed his legs at the ankles, and bit his lip. He had used magic for his own comfort, and here, immediately, was a roffle. It had to be a bad thing. It had to be instant revenge for his disobedience.

  “Starback,” he called, softly.

  The dragon had disappeared, far up the road, perhaps.

  “What’s that?”

  The roffle’s voice was deeper than Sam had imagined.

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, nothing? I know a nothing. Starback’s a something. What’s a Starback?”

  The roffle moved toward Sam, his pointy shoes picking up leaves and breaking twigs.

  Khazib untied the ribbon. The folded parchments tumbled onto the glowing oak of the table.

  “Here’s mine,” said Caleb.

  “Mine, too.” Eloise took hers.

  One by one, each found his or her indenture, signed by Flaxfield in his strong hand, and then by them, in a childish hand, very different from the accomplished script each used now.

  “It’s as though I’m six again,” said Eloise.

  Sandage held his, turned it over and over in his dark hands, spotted with brown marks of age. He had been six once.

  “Nothing for that boy,” said Caleb. “I knew it.”

  Axestone, who had been holding his breath, sighed deeply.

  “We’ll make him fast when he comes back,” said Caleb, “and take him first thing tomorrow to the mines. Get him lodgings and a job.”

  “He’ll never survive,” said Eloise. “Not after living here, with Flaxfield.”

  “They start them in the mines at twelve. He’ll survive. Some old woman, glad of the money, will lodge him. Plenty of poor widows where the mines are.”

  Sandage pondered the reason why there were so many widows, and nodded. “There will be better work than that for him,” he said.