Dragonborn (12 page)

There was a time for letting off steam after lunch, before the bell rang for class, and Tim and Sam slid off their bench quickly and went into the garden, ignoring the others who preferred to go to the school yard to play Folop or Trangik.

“Does everyone do magic all the time?” asked Sam.

“Pretty much.”

“Doesn't it come back and harm them?”

“Why would it?”

Tim pulled the head off a blue and red painted daisy and started to strip it of its petals. As each one fell it turned into a tiny dragonfly and flew around Tim's head.

Sam wanted to talk, but didn't know how much he could trust Tim. The roffle had made him ashamed of Flaxfield, and he didn't want to seem like a country wizard, a figure of fun.

“I was told never to use magic unless there was really no other way to do something.”

“But,” said Tim, “that's like saying don't use a bucket when
you can scoop up water in your hands. Or don't dig with a spade when you can scrabble away the earth with your fingers.”

Sam thought about this.

“That's not the same,” he said.

“It is.”

Sam brushed away a couple of dragonflies that had deserted Tim and seemed to prefer him.

“Can you actually do any magic?” asked Tim.

This was what Sam had been dreading. He already wondered what harm would come to him from showing off in front of Frosty, now Tim wanted him to do something. And soon, he would be in a class and be expected to do more. It was all so difficult.

“Who was that we saw on the stairs?” he dodged.

“But can you? Why are you here?”

Tim's open, honest face confronted Sam's, and Sam knew that he looked shifty and dishonest by comparison. How could he not? He was carrying secrets. He wanted to trust Tim, but it was too soon.

“I've never seen so many people before,” he said. “I don't know what to say to them.”

“What about your friends back home?”

Sam shook his head. He thought of Starback, his only friend.

“No friends?” Tim punched him gently. “We can't have that.”

Sam smiled.

“Am I really your first friend?” Tim beamed with delight.

“I've never seen another boy before,” Sam told him. It would
seem too odd to say he'd had a dragon for a friend. The loss of Starback was a stone of sorrow in his chest.

Tim whistled, and the tune turned into pink paper streamers that floated up out of sight.

“Who was that on the stairs?”

“I'll tell you what. I'll be your best friend, and I'll tell you who it was, if you show me some magic. How's that?”

“Isn't Smedge your best friend?”

Tim thought for a second.

“Smedge doesn't really work like that. How about it?”

Sam blew on the dragonflies that still danced around Tim. Each one of them turned into a tiny dragon, yellow with red stripes. They formed a perfect circle, all looking in toward Tim. Then they opened their mouths and blew smoke at him, making him cough and his eyes water.

“That's not friendly,” he said with a laugh, coughing away the smoke as the dragons flew off in a line and settled in the bushes. “But that was wonderful. We don't do dragons for another year. They're very tricky. You are good, aren't you?”

“Who was it?” asked Sam. The question had grown in his mind every time someone refused to answer it or dodged away from replying.

“It was Tamrin,” said Tim.

Sam waited for him to say more.

“Who is Tamrin?” he asked at last.

“She's just a servant,” said Smedge.

They hadn't heard him approach, didn't know how long he had been near, listening.

“She cleans the dormitories and takes out the rubbish to the midden and washes up in the kitchen.”

“I thought all the people who worked here were wizards.”

Smedge linked arms with Sam and led him toward the College.

“They are. Even Tamrin, in a way. But she never finished properly. Professor Frastfil took pity on her and gave her a job, even though it was bending the rules. He's a really kind man.”

“Time for Duddles,” said Tim.

“Your first lesson,” said Smedge.

Sam felt sick.

to search a person and to see into them. Starback searched for Eloise, and found her by a riverbank, casting a spell to find Sam. She threw her shawl into the water, drew it out, and spread it on the grass. The threads glowed in the sunlight, drawing a map. Starback flew overhead and cast his shadow over her and the shawl. Eloise looked up and saw only a cloud. The threads arranged themselves again. Now they led to Boolat, where she would meet Khazib.

Her perfume filled his nostrils, making him dizzy. He swept away as fast as he could, muddled by the memory of the woman's mind. There is always an exchange in magic. The strangeness of Khazib's magic had been less unsettling than the woman's thoughts.

People. What mysterious creatures Starback found them. A dragon mind is better.

in Sam, which was a great relief to him. Even Dr. Duddle didn't really seem bothered when Tim and Smedge introduced him.

“It's not usual,” he complained. “But I suppose we'll have to let you stay. Catch up as you can, will you? Boys, you'll have to keep an eye on him.”

“We will,” Smedge and Tim agreed.

It was very dull stuff. Sam could still hear the bangs and squawks and rumbling from other classrooms, but nothing like that went on in here.

Dr. Duddle didn't seem to like magic at all. All he wanted to talk about was how the pupils could make money from it when they left the College.

“A wizard is no different from anyone else,” he said.

Some of them groaned, but some of them seemed to like the idea.

“Being a wizard is just a job,” said Duddle. “Like being a blacksmith or a farmer. A wizard has some special powers—that's what you're here for, to learn those special powers—but at the end of the day, you just go out there and do a job.”

Sam knew that farmers were tired at the end of the day, and he knew that a blacksmith needed a strong arm and a steady hand and a good eye, but he had seen Flaxfield after working some strong magic, he had seen Eloise when she had been at Flaxfield's Finishing, and he knew how he felt after he had worked at a new piece of magic and it had drained him of all the strength he had. He didn't think that farmers and blacksmiths, hardworking and skillful though they were, took their work into themselves the way a wizard did. And he thought Duddle was either a fool or a cheat. There was a lot to understand about this College.

A rap on his head brought him back to the classroom. Dr. Duddle stood over him, glaring down. Some of the other pupils were nudging each other and grinning.

“I said,” Dr. Duddle said, “perhaps you could tell us how you think you might earn a living after you leave this academy. What are your ambitions, Mr. Cartouche?”

No one had ever called Sam
Mister
before, and he didn't know that Duddle was only doing it to mock him.

“Oh, please,” he said. “There's no need to call me Mister. You can call me”—he nearly said Sam and remembered just in time—“Cartouche.”

Dr. Duddle was a rather strict teacher whose punishments
were unpleasant, and he was not used to what sounded like impudence. He drew himself up to his full height, which was not very much, tugged at the lapels of his neat suit, and barked at Sam, “Don't think you can come here and try to make a fool of me, young man.”

“He was only trying to be polite, sir,” said Tim. “He's not used to it here.”

“Silence, Masrani. I'll deal with you later. Let's see, then. You must have impressed Professor Frastfil at your interview; show us what you can do and we'll tell you where we think your talents lie. Then we can guide you to a proper occupation. A Court Wizard to a King, I'm sure, or the Official Wizard to a great city. A sharp and talented young man like you could do anything. Let us have a taste of your powers.”

Sam stared ahead, refusing to look down in apology or to look up at the teacher.

“Go on,” whispered Tim.

Sam stared, silently.

“Nothing?” asked Duddle. “Nothing at all?”

The class began to giggle.

“A beginner? In this class? Some mistake, I think. One last chance. Show us, please, Mr. Cartouche, what you can do.”

Tim trod on Sam's foot, but Sam still stared ahead. He would not use magic for a man like this.

“Very well. I shall ask Professor Frastfil to remove you from this class and put you with the beginners. It will be best for you
and for all of us. In the meantime, class, three minutes' break. Make free with any demonstrations you wish for our new boy.”

The air filled with flashes of color and light. Fireworks and fanfares. It was not like Duddle to give them a rest, and they took full advantage of it. Most of the class just enjoyed themselves with magic games, creating flying swords and fencing with each other above their heads, sending Folop balls flying across the room, or filling the air with grasshoppers and bats. But some of them decided to make fun of the new boy. A personal rain cloud appeared over Sam's head and began to pour on him. Tim made him an umbrella. Frogs pushed their way out of his desk and flopped onto his lap. Tim turned them into hamsters.

“Do something,” he said to Sam. “Protect yourself. You have to, or it will get worse.”

Sam had never been bullied before. One of the good things about not being with many people is that there's no one to be cruel to you. He let it happen, allowing Tim to do what he could to stop it.

He looked at Duddle and waited for him to tell the others to leave him alone. Duddle looked away and wrote something on the blackboard.

Sam's desk turned into a tub of hot, soapy water with dirty washing in it that slopped over the sides and drenched his new clothes. Tim was distracted by a side attack on him by a swarm of wasps.

Duddle finished writing on the board, and, with the chalk, he
drew a circle in the air, then called out, “Finish, furnish, fly!” All the wasps and swords and balls and every other last piece of magic in the room swooped through the circle and disappeared. All except the washtub and the soapy water, which stayed in place.

“Oh, dear,” said Duddle. “Never mind. Some magic always remains behind. Just your bad luck, I think. You pop off and find somewhere to dry yourself while we continue, Mr. Cartouche. We'll manage without you. Off you go.”

Sam and Tim stood up.

“Not you, boy,” said Duddle.

“Go to the dorm,” Tim whispered, sitting down again. “I'll see you there later.”

and spread out everything he owned on the narrow bed in the long dormitory.

A bottle of lemonade, half a pasty, the clothes he got from Mrs. Martin, three spare handkerchiefs, two pairs of socks, the cloak from the weaver, a shirt that had been mended many times, a piece of string, a knife, and his notebook.

Sam had made the notebook himself, on Flaxfield's instructions. They made many books when Sam was just a small boy, and he colored in them and practiced his letters. Rough and ready things, they fell apart easily, the stitches not being tight enough or the glue not strong. They practiced making better glue, neater sewing, straighter cutting. The books lasted longer, fell apart less often.

After he was properly signed up as an apprentice, Sam was sent off to make another book.

“Make it a good one this time,” said Flaxfield. “Put some magic into it.”

“Really?”

“The best you know.”

Kid leather, still marked with the black and white pattern of the young goat's skin. Two stiff boards, paper, strong thread, glue. He cut and folded and stitched the sheets of paper. When there were enough pages, he covered the boards with the leather, using the glue to stick it down. At every stage, Sam was careful to pour magic into the making. He cast a spell on the leather to make it supple and not crack. He conjured a spell of sturdiness for the boards to stop them from bending and buckling. The paper he protected with a spell against damp and mold. He boiled the glue himself from horses' bones and hooves and other stuff, and he made it proof against the tiny creatures that love its sweetness and chew away at it. He cast a spell of binding on the thread so that no pages should ever work free and escape. And he prepared himself every day to cut and fashion the materials, adding to his skill with the tools a magic ability to construct the book.

When all was done, he went to Flaxfield.

“Let me see.”

The old wizard turned it over and over in his hands. He smiled. He lifted it to his face, to enjoy the scent of the new leather, the fragrance of the glue. He stroked his hands over the thick pages, as though he could feel writing on their blank faces.

“Good,” he said. “You have made well.”

“Will you finish it?” asked Sam.

“Why?”

Flaxfield had always finished everything for Sam. He made sure that any magic that had been used was sealed off, and could not escape into mischief.

“You must finish it yourself,” said Flaxfield.

He watched while Sam cast a spell of finishing, teaching the book to know itself, and to be fit for its work. Finally, he sealed it, so that if anyone else opened it, they would not be able to read what was there. Flaxfield watched carefully.

“I could add one thing, if you would like,” he offered.

Sam handed him the book again.

Flaxfield held it and traced over the cover with his finger. Where he had written, letters of gold glowed with the words:

“This is yours,” he said, “to use as you see fit. Whatever you write in it is for you to decide. And never let it leave you. Ever.”