Doubleborn (17 page)

“And it’s all close to Boolat,” said Danwick. “All the attacks have been close to the castle. What do you make of that?”

Sam’s voice answered though his eyes were elsewhere.

“What do I make of it? I make out that you’re a fool.”

In a single movement Danwick seized his tankard and sent it spinning through the air, aimed at Sam’s head.

“Fool, am I?”

Starback swooped, bearing down on the inn.

The tankard bounced off nothing, an inch from Sam’s head, and fell clattering to the floor. The beer spilled out. Sam moved back from the door slowly, turned, as though walking in his sleep, touched the tankard with the toe of his shoe. Stepped aside from the door.

The door slammed open and the air was sucked out of the room. Sam saw the men put their hands to their chests and open their mouths. They were drowning.

Starback flew through the door, circled the room once, as agile as a bat, missing all objects. His claws scraped the floor and he settled next to Sam.

The air rushed back in. The men gasped at it, sucking it into their lungs.

Sam shuddered, blinked, looked at them.

“Tell me. Make no mistake. Who says Flaxfield’s the cause of this trouble?” he said.

Danwick stood.

“We’d better talk while we’re walking,” he said. “Come on, Remmble.”

“This isn’t getting me to a tailor,” said Sam.

They kept on walking.

The road was strewn with broken glass and smashed furniture, scored with the deep tracks of heavy objects dragged along it, pitted with the marks of sharp feet.

Behind him, far behind him, the inn.

Beside him, Danwick and Remmble. Danwick, surly and set. Remmble, nervous, talkative.

Overhead, the circling shape of Starback.

Ahead of him, in clear sight now, the village, sacked, razed, ravished.

“What’s that?” asked Remmble.

“Nothing,” said Sam. “I was just thinking out loud.”

“Tailors, you say?” said Danwick. “There’s no trusting tailors.”

“That’s what they say,” said Sam.

They stopped and surveyed the village.

“Are you sure there’s nothing there?” asked Remmble.

“No,” said Danwick. “But it’s your village?”

“Yes. That’s my house.”

He pointed to a smouldering black heap.

“I was there,” he said, pointing back to a copse on an eminence.

“In the trees?”

“Yes. People were running away. Covered in ash and dust. Screaming. Arms like wings. Why did they do that? It’s harder to run that way?” He did not stay for an answer. “I didn’t see any of my family. But I saw people I knew. I knew everyone, really. The kravvins were too quick for them. They ran them down, snapped them up, threw them in the air, caught them, killed them. Ate them. Dragged them back. Tossed them like puppets to one another.”

Sam couldn’t look at him. He wanted him to be quiet. He needed Remmble to tell them everything. He needed to know all he could about the kravvins.

“They ran through the houses, setting them on fire as they left. Sometimes they didn’t find everyone in a house and when the flames bit, the people ran out and the kravvins were waiting for them. I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t stop looking. I wanted to run away. I wanted to see it all. I wanted to save them. I wanted to save myself. I hid. And I ran.”

“There’s still smoke,” said Danwick.

“Fires take weeks to die,” said Sam. “Longer.”

“Sometimes, never,” said Danwick.

“What do you mean?” asked Remmble.

“He knows.” Danwick indicated Sam.

“Yes. Sometimes, never. Or as good as never.”

“Come on,” said Danwick.

The man took Remmble’s arm with a protective kindness that surprised Sam. None the less, it was firm and brooked no resistance. Remmble allowed himself to be led to the smoking village, though he trembled and stumbled and his breathing grew short and swift.

“They’ve all gone,” said Danwick. “Be sure of that.”

Sam allowed himself to see the village from overhead. Used the sharp dragon sight to make sure there were no traps, no hidden enemies. It was clear. As far as he could tell.

The road was sharp on his feet and he stepped carefully to avoid the broken debris. The closer they drew to the houses the more the road was covered in black ash, fine and clinging. It stained their ankles as their feet brushed them. Some was dry as dust and swirled in the breeze; the ash of the wooden frames of the buildings. Some was greasy and stank; the ash of other things. Sam hoped that Remmble was not noticing the difference.

“There’s not a single dead kravvin,” said Danwick. “Not a broken leg. Not a trace of any of them. All this death and killing and not one of them damaged.”

“Unless they took the wounded away,” said Remmble.

“There were none wounded,” said Danwick. “None.”

Danwick put his hand on Sam’s shoulder.

“This is what magic does,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Men don’t do this. Ordinary men. This is magic damage.”

Remmble was regaining his nerve. He had stopped trembling. Sam saw that he was growing angry now.

“Why are we here?” he shouted. “I don’t want to see this again.”

He advanced on Sam.

“You made me come here. With your magic and your questions and your threats.”

“Steady on,” Danwick restrained him. “It was my idea. Remember? I said we should come. I said we should show him what the kravvins had done.”

Remmble shook his head.

“It was him,” he said. “The wizard. You said he made the kravvins.”

“No. Not him. Sam didn’t make this happen.”

Remmble pointed to his left.

“That’s my house,” he said.

It had gone, entirely. All that remained was a heap of smouldering ash.

“You already showed us,” said Danwick.

“My parents are in there. And my sister. I’m going to look for them.”

“They’re not there. Come on. We’ve seen enough.”

Danwick’s voice was gentle and reassuring. Sam couldn’t understand the change in him.

Remmble walked over to where his house had stood. He stooped down, scooped a handful of ash and rubbed it over his face, his neck, his head.

“Come on,” said Danwick. “We’ll go back.”

Remmble turned his back and walked away, his feet scraping against the burned village, the ash rising around him.

“Come on,” called Danwick.

“Stay away,” Remmble called over his shoulder.

“I can stop him,” said Sam.

“No. You know you can’t.”

They watched him clear the boundary of the houses and gain the fields.

“Where will he go?” asked Sam.

“If he keeps on that way? Boolat.”

“We have to stop him.”

Danwick began to leave the village, taking the road they had entered by. Sam hesitated, then caught up with him.

“This is nothing to do with Flaxfield,” he said.

They stopped.

Sam couldn’t make out what he thought of Danwick. The man had been so aggressive, so harsh in the inn, then so gentle, so fatherly to Remmble.

“So you say,” said Danwick. “All I know is, the kravvins are new. It’s only about a year since the first reports of them. And that’s when Flaxfield disappeared.”

“He died. I helped at his Finishing. I saw him leave.”

“You saw him? You watched him through the doorway?”

“What do you know of that?”

Danwick sneered.

“We know more of things than wizards think we know.”

“I was upset. It was a good Finishing. We stood on the riverbank and watched the basket bear him downstream. He died while I was catching trout.”

Sam stopped talking while he still could.

Danwick pointed to the smouldering village.

“No one sent these to the Finished World. What happens to them? Where do they go?”

Sam shook his head.

“I don’t want to talk about these things.”

Danwick walked away.

Sam lingered, then wandered back to the smoky heaps of ash, drawn there against his will. The air was harsh and scratched the back of his throat. The smell of fear was stronger than the smell of death and that was fierce enough. Remmble trudged towards the sky line, feet stained with grey dust. Sam wanted him to turn and wave, to come back. Remmble did not. Danwick was out of sight already. His road turned and disappeared, consumed by trees.

Not a day went by but Sam missed Flaxfield. As an apprentice Sam had spent all his time with the old wizard. If he saw a tree he didn’t know the name of he wanted to ask Flaxfield. If he worked a new spell for the first time and it was perfect he wanted Flaxfield to congratulate him. If he fell he wanted Flaxfield to tell him he was all right. If he saw a kingfisher disappear beneath the water and come back with a fish he felt a surge of joy and wanted to turn to Flaxfield and share the beauty of it. If he found a stone shaped like a mouse or an arrowhead Sam wanted to show it to Flaxfield and ask if it meant something. Once, when they were fishing, Flaxfield had stooped and picked up a smooth stone, green with the river and ridged beyond what the current could do.

“See this?” he asked.

Sam cupped it in his hands, wet and cold, slippery.

“It looks like a frog,” he said.

“Do you think it is?”

“It’s a stone.”

“But was it a frog, once? And can it be a frog again?”

Sam raised it to his face and sniffed it.

“Well?”

Sam weighed it in his hands.

“It’s lighter than a stone.”

“It is.”

“I think it’s a frog.”

“How did it become a stone?”

This was how Flaxfield taught.

“Magic?” Sam guessed.

“I think you’re right.”

Flaxfield held out his hand for it. Sam didn’t want to give it back. There was something about it. There was a life in it, a presence, a possibility, a past.

“Can you turn it back into a frog?” asked Flaxfield.

Sam held the stone in his left hand, ran his right hand over it, testing it.

“I think so,” he offered.

“Are you going to?”

“Shall I try?”

“What do you think?”

That all seemed a long time ago now. Sam looked at the heaps of ash around him. He could feel the heat from the fires that still cringed deep inside them. He recalled the green shade of the riverbank, the soft speech of the water, the damp stone.

Flaxfield had led him through all the challenges of his life, had taught him how to go carefully. Sam wanted Flaxfield there now, to ask him what to do as he had asked him then.

“What do you need to know?” said Flaxfield.

Sam moved the stone from hand to hand.

“Can I really do it?” he said. “Will the frog live if I do? Will it be in pain? Can I put it right if the spell goes wrong?” He paused, waiting for the bigger questions to form in his head. “Who did this to the frog? Why did he do it?”

“Good,” said Flaxfield. “Very good. Whether you can turn this stone back into the frog isn’t the best question. The others are better. But there’s still another question.”

Sam cupped the stone in both hands and looked at it. Now it looked more like a frog than like a stone. He had already begun to think of it as a frog. He had already begun to turn it back in his own mind. He could almost feel the pulse of it in his hand, the kicking of the feet, the squirm to escape, to leap into the water.

“I can’t think of any more real questions,” he said.

Flaxfield held out his hand again. Sam returned the stone. Flaxfield held it as he would a living creature.

“No?” said Flaxfield.

“No.”

“Perhaps it never was a frog?”

Sam shook his head.

“I can feel it,” he said. “I can feel the life inside the stone. I can taste the magic, smell the spell. That’s no ordinary stone.”

“No,” said Flaxfield. “No ordinary stone. But what if it wasn’t a frog? You asked a question and didn’t stay to answer it. Why would anyone turn a frog into a stone?”

“For fun?”

“What fun is there in that?”

“No fun. I know,” said Sam.

“There’s no good reason,” said Flaxfield. “But I might want to turn something dangerous into a stone shaped like a frog.”

“So if I undid the changing spell…” said Sam.

“Then you just might find yourself holding something much more dangerous,” said Flaxfield.

He held up the stone.

“What shall we do?” he asked.

“It could be a good man, tricked, and hurt,” said Sam. “We could do good by undoing the spell.”

“It may. We might.”

Sam pondered the puzzle.

“You tell me,” he said to Flaxfield. “What shall we do?”

“That’s the right answer,” said the wizard. “If in doubt, ask, don’t act.”

He slipped the stone back into the water.

“Another day,” he said. “When we know more.”

Sam still remembered the pain he felt as the stone disappeared into the water. A good man, condemned to more imprisonment, or a danger avoided? He didn’t know. But he knew he didn’t want to walk away from it. He wasn’t one to walk away. Not from a strange stone. Not from a challenge, a puzzle, a question.

“What am I supposed to do here?” he asked.

No voices answered him. Flaxfield was dead and gone. The villagers were ash around him. Remmble and Danwick had left him there.

But Flaxfield was dead and Finished. The villagers were dead and ignored. Sam looked at the furrows of ash where Remmble had scooped it into his hand. Something glinted in the tracks. Sam prodded it with his boot. It lifted. He stooped, pulled it from the grey ash.

It was a locket. Silver, slender, a loop of metal held by a delicate chain.

It dangled from his fingers, staining them with ash.

The light caught it and was reflected out, making a pattern on the scorched ground.

Sam wasn’t allowed to perform Finishings on his own. Not yet. Not without Flaxfold. And here was a whole village, dead and not Finished. And here was Sam, alone, with nothing else to offer.

“I’m sorry,” he said, to the absent Flaxfold. “I have to do something. It won’t be a Finishing. Not properly. Just a chance for them. Just a small gift. A hope. Probably nothing will happen.”

The ash muffled his words, low-spoken and hesitant.