Lackey, Mercedes - Mage Storms 04 - Darian's Tale 01 - Owlflight.doc Read online

  ONE

  The air was warm, the summer day flawless, and Darian Firkin was stalling, trying to delay the inevitable, and he knew it. He had hopes that if he just lingered enough on this task of wood gathering, his Master might forget about him-or something more urgent than the next lesson might come up before Wizard Justyn got himself organized. It was worth a try anyway, since the very last thing Darian wanted on this fine sunny day was to be cooped up in that musty old cottage. It was worth any amount of physical work to be saved from that fate.

  He took a deep breath of the balmy air, laden with the scent of curing hay, damp earth, and growing things, and added another cut quarter-log to his burden of three, the bark and rough wood catching on his shirt and leaving bits of dirt and moss smeared on the sleeve. Would four be enough to qualify as a load? Probably. He headed for the cottage.

  Justyn's cottage decayed on the edge of the village, on the side farthest from the bridge and the road, closest to the Forest. The village itself was a tight little square of cottages with three finer houses, all arranged in neat rows around the village square; the fields farmed by the inhabitants of Errold's Grove stretched out on either side along the river-bank, but on the back side there was nothing but a single field of corn and a small meadow where goats and sheep were kept in the winter. Behind all of that was the forest. If he paused for a moment and listened, it wasn't at all difficult to hear the voice of the woods from where Darian stood- all the little rustling and murmurings, the birdsong and animal calls. Sometimes that was a torment, on days when Justyn set him some fool task that kept him pent in the cottage from dawn to dusk.

  He put down his burden on the pile at the side of the dilapidated cottage and returned for more.

  He carefully selected three small pieces of chopped wood from the large communal pile; the woodpile lay at the back of the right-hand side of the village of Errold's Grove. He tucked them under his arm and carried them toward the rick-holder at the side of Wizard Justyn's tiny cottage. Every day that it was possible, the village woodcutter went out with a team of oxen to find and bring back deadfall from the Pelagiris Forest. He never went far, but then, he never had to; the trees in the Pelagiris were enormous, with trunks so big that six men could stretch their arms around one and not have their fingers touch, and one fallen tree would supply enough wood for the whole village for a month. Every time there was a storm, at least one tree or several huge branches would come crashing down. The woodcutter did nothing at all but cut wood; no farmwork, no herding. The villagers supplied him in turn with anything he needed, and since he had no wife nor apprentice, the women took it in turn to cook for him, clean his little hut, and sew, wash, and mend his clothing. The woodcutter was not a bright man, nor one given at all to much thought, so he found the arrangement entirely to his satisfaction-and since the villagers never went into the Forest anymore if they didn't have to, it was entirely to theirs as well.

  Darian wished they had apprenticed him to the woodcutter instead of the wizard, but he hadn't had any say in the matter. After all, as an orphan who had been left to the village to care for, he should be grateful that they gave him any sort of care at all. At least that was what they all told him, loudly and often.

  The cottage was hardly longer than the wood-rick, built strongly at one time, of weathered, gray river rock with a thatched roof of broomstraw in which birds twittered all spring and summer long. That twittering was the first thing Darian heard every morning when he woke up. It was an adequate enough little cottage by the standards of the village, but it seemed badly cramped to Darian, and always smelled slightly musty, with an undertone of bitter herbs and dust. No one ever cleaned it but Darian, so perhaps that was the reason for the aroma. He didn't really despise the place, since after all, it was shelter, but it didn't really feel like the home the other villagers and his Master tried to convince him it was.

  When he reached the cottage and the upright supports that would hold exactly one measured rick of wood between them, he set each piece down on the half-rick already piled there with exacting care, distributing them with all the concentration of a fine lady making a flower arrangement. Only when they were balanced precisely to his liking did he return for another three logs. He listened carefully for any sound of life inside the cottage, for after Justyn had told him to replenish their fuel, Darian had left his Master muttering over a book, and Darian had hopes that Justyn might get so involved that he wouldn't notice that Darian was taking a very long time to fetch wood from a few yards away.

  There was no sound from inside the cottage, and Darian ambled off slowly, making as little noise as possible until he was out of easy hearing distance. The village was fairly quiet at this time of day, with most people working in the fields. Only a few crafters had work to keep them in their workshops at this time of year; most of the things that people needed they had to make for themselves these days, or hope that someone else in the village had the skills they lacked. Leather and fur were available in abundance, but the tanner worked hides mostly in the fall, and there was no official cobbler since Old Man Makus died. The blacksmith did all metal work needed, and with forty-odd families to provide for, he generally had enough work to keep him busy all of the time. The miller was also the baker, keeping flour and bread under the same roof, so to speak. He baked almost all of the bread and occasional sweets for the village, so that only one person would have to fire up and tend an oven. Women would often put together a stewpot or a meat pie or set of pasties for the evening dinner, and take it to him to put just inside the oven in the morning. Then they could go out to work the fields, and fetch the cooked meal back when the family returned for dinner. The womenfolk of Errold's Grove did their own spinning, weaving, and sewing, mostly during the long, dark hours of winter, which was when the men made crude shoes and boots, mended or made new harnesses and belts, and carved wooden implements. Once every three or four months, everyone would take a day off work to make pots, plates, storage jars, and cups of clay from the banks of the Londell River, and in a few days when those articles were dry, the baker and the woodcutter would fire them all at once. Those went into a common store from which folk could draw whatever they needed until it was time to replenish the crockery again. The only things that had to be brought in from outside were objects of metal that required more skill than the blacksmith had, such as needles and pins, and bar-stock for the smith. Virtually everything else could be and was made by the people living here. The village was mostly self-sufficient, which was a source of bitter pride, for no one wanted to come here anymore. Errold's Grove could have dropped off the face of the world and no one would miss it.

  I certainly wouldn't, Darian thought with bitterness of his own.

  He had to pass through one of the busier corners of the village to reach the woodpile, going around both the smithy and the baker. The savory scent of bread coming from the door of the bakery told the boy that Leander was removing loaves from the big brick oven that took up all of the back half of his shop. As for the smith, he was obviously hard at work, as the smithy rang with the blows of hammer on anvil, there was a scent of hot metal and steam on the breeze, and smoke coming from the smokehole in the roof. Leander wouldn't pay any attention to Darian as he passed, but there was a chance that the smith might.

  The smithy was a three-sided shed, the forge in the middle, the anvil toward the front. There was a fat old gray plowhorse waiting patiently for his feet to be attended to, tied to the post outside the smithy, and its owner, a man called Backet, watched as the smith hammered out a new shoe for it. Blacksm
ith Jakem, a huge, balding man with an incongruous paunch beneath his leather apron, paused in his work to watch Darian pass by, his eyes narrowed. Darian ignored him, as he usually ignored the adults of the village when he thought he could get away with it. Jakem didn't think much of Darian, but that was hardly out of the ordinary. Darian didn't think much of Jakem either. As he made the return trip with his three small logs, the smith hawked and spat into the fire.

  "Ain't nobody works as hard as a lazy 'un," he said loudly to the farmer sitting on a stump beside the forge.

  "That's the plain truth," Old Man Backet agreed, taking off his hat to scratch his head. "Lazy 'un will work twice's hard as anybody else, tryin' to avoid working at all." He cast a sly look at Darian as he replied, to see if his words had struck a nerve.

  Darian continued to ignore them; so long as the adults didn't address him directly, there was a certain amount of immunity that being only thirteen gave him. He'd learned some time ago that a retort would only earn him trouble with his Master. Not that Wizard Justyn had ever laid a hand on him-but the reproachful lectures on how much he owed the villagers of Errold's Grove and how little he repaid their care were worse than a beating.

  Nobody ever asked me what I wanted, not once. Nobody gave me a choice. If I'd had a choice, I wouldn't be here now, and no one would have had to think about "taking care of me." I'd have offered to work just enough to get a tent and some supplies, and I'd have been off to try on my own. Now I'm stuck here enduring useless blathering from a senile Master and carrying firewood like a dog in harness.

  He made three more such trips-ignoring the adults at the forge each time, although it certainly it did not escape his notice that the force and frequency of the smith's Wows increased each time he passed. If Jakem wanted to wear out his arm trying to impress upon Darian what so-called "industrious labor" looked and sounded like, it wasn't going to bother Darian any.

  Besides, if he told the smith why he was making such a production out of the simple task of fetching wood, he'd only get another tongue-lashing, and maybe a cuff on the side of the head into the bargain. The smith had a notoriously heavy hand with his own offspring, and if provoked he might well use it on Darian.

  As Darian put his scant armload of wood down at the end of the third trip, the voice of doom emerged from the interior of the cottage.

  "Darian, leave that for now and get in here. It's time for your lesson."

  It was actually a fairly pleasant, masculine voice, a bit tired-sounding and querulous, but not too irritated or scolding. Nevertheless, if Darian had been a dog, he would have dropped his head and ears and tucked his tail down. "But the firewood-" he protested, knowing that the protest would do him no good, but making it anyway.

  "The wood can wait; I can't. Come in now, Darian."

  Darian drew his brows together in a sullen scowl, but obeyed the summons, leaving the sunshine and the fresh air for the closed-in gloom of the cottage. He tried to leave the door open to admit a little breeze, but Justyn frowned and motioned to him to shut it behind him.

  He waited with resignation for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. The only light in the cottage came from a trio of very small windows in three of the four walls; even though the shutters stood wide open, they still didn't admit much light. Wizard Justyn waited for him at one end of the scarred and battered table taking up most of the right side of the room, which served as kitchen, dining room, workroom, and study, all in one. At the rear of the room was a set of rungs hammered into the stone of the wall that served as a ladder to the loft where Darian and his Master slept. Most of the rest of the wallspace was taken up with shelves, badly-made bookcases that leaned perilously toward each other, like drunks propping one another up, and several appalling pictures of famous mages. Darian's father, who'd dabbled in painting, had once said that a good engraving or print was worth twenty bad paintings, and Darian could certainly see why. They made his eyes hurt just to look at them, but unfortunately, there was no way that he could avoid looking at them.

  Most prominent was the best of the lot, a heroic portrait of a person not even a terrible painter could ruin entirely. His noble features and intelligent eyes made up to a small extent for the stiff daubs of his costume. Shown seated at a table from about the waist up, the great Wizard Kyllian, a Fireflower Mage, looked every inch the powerful sorcerer, right down to his familiar, a sleek and smug-looking striped creature at his elbow that might have been a cat, or might not have been. It was difficult to tell if Grimkin was something other than an ordinary feline, or if the painter had taken the same liberties with cat anatomy that he had with human. Arranged on either side of this portrait were the pictures of Herald-Mage Elspeth, Darkwind Hawkbrother, Quenten of White Winds and the powerful Adept Firesong, all of whom Wizard Justyn had allegedly seen and spoken with before he arrived here to serve Errold's Grove. Darian was more than a little dubious about that claim. For one thing, how could a broken-down fake like old Justyn have ever gotten near enough to the legendary Elspeth and Dark-wind to have seen them at close range, much less spoken to them? And if he had, how could he ever have thought that the horrible daubs on his wall in any way resembled them? They hardly even resembled portraits of human beings! The picture of Elspeth showed her atop her Companion, in an unreasonably heroic pose, both hands upraised with what were supposed to be bolts of lightning coming from her hands. But the "lightning bolts" looked more like sickly pale-green snakes, the Companion looked like a lumpy cow, the face of the Herald-Mage like a blob of dough with two currants stuck in for eyes and a slash of orange carrot for a mouth. She apparently had twisted legs, no neck, and enormous, pillowlike breasts. The Herald's uniform and her Companion weren't even white, they were a disgusting muddy-yellow sort of color, as if the painter hadn't been able to afford a pure white pigment. Or maybe he'd used a cheap varnish that had yellowed as it aged. Darkwind at least looked human, but the bird on his shoulder had more in common with a fat chicken ready for the pot than any hawk that Darian had ever seen. The rest of the portraits were pretty much on the same level of skill-or lack of it-the firebird posing with the Adept was so ineptly done that most of the villagers thought it was supposed to represent a goose and had wondered aloud out of Justyn's hearing why a mage would have such a silly familiar. As for Firesong's mask- the Adept was never seen without one-it looked like a child's drawing of a sunflower, and if everyone didn't already know that it was a mask, a reasonable person could have thought the painting was of some fabulous monster.

  It was painfully obvious that no woman had ever touched this cottage since the day Justyn moved in. Darian had gotten used to it over the last six months, but there was no doubt that it was a worse-than-typical aged bachelor's study. Littering the leaning and badly-made bookcases were an assortment of cheap and flashy "magical" implements, a few tattered old books, a lot of unrecognizable but definitely dead animals which were allegedly "preserved" in some way, several spider webs, a couple of cracked mugs, the upper half of the skull of some largish animal, an apple core, and a great deal of dust. Darian had tried to clean the place up when he'd first been sent here, out of pure self-interest, but being told sharply to leave things alone on numerous occasions, he'd lost interest in cleaning up anything but his own little corner around his pallet in the loft.

  Sitting right in front of Wizard Kyllian's portrait on the top of a tipsy-looking bookcase was a beat-up and scruffy old black tomcat currently engaged in cleaning his hind leg, which stuck stiffly straight up into the air as the cat's tongue rasped at the thin fur. This was Justyn's familiar, or so he claimed. It certainly matched its Master, for a less-graceful cat Darian had never seen. It seemed to share the villagers' contempt for its Master and his apprentice, ignoring both of them with a disdain more in keeping with the pampered pet of a princess than of a patchy-furred mongrel of indeterminate age, with a broken tail and chewed-up ears.

  Carefully placed in a rack on the wall was a rather plain looking, partially split walking stick with
a bit of crystal embedded in the top which Justyn said was his "wizard's staff." That, along with four chairs (none matching) and the thick, warped oak table with a book under one leg keeping it straight, comprised all of the furnishings of the room.

  The table was covered with jars and bottles, the remains of last night's dinner in stacked-up plates that had been shoved out of the way, bits of scribbled-on paper, burned-out ends of candles, and one empty wine bottle. Darian glanced with guilt at the stack of dirty dishes; he was supposed to have cleaned them up this morning, but he had been in such a hurry to get up and out before Justyn thought of giving him a lesson that he had neglected that duty entirely. Now he'd have to scrub them with sand to get all the dried-on gravy off them, and he'd have to do so before they could eat or they wouldn't have anything to eat tonight's dinner on. At least he'd remembered to take the turnip pasties over to the baker in time for them to go into the oven. It wouldn't have been the first time he'd forgotten and they'd had to make do with bread, raw turnips, onions, and sometimes a little cheese.

  But the mess evidently didn't bother Justyn at all; when Darian had first been apprenticed to him, the place had looked much the same. The day he'd moved his things in, Darian had been strictly forbidden to touch anything on any of the bookshelves without specific permission, which frankly led Darian to believe that old Justyn wasn't certain what was on those shelves himself. It had occurred to him that Justyn was afraid that if Darian cleaned and organized things, the boy would ruin the wizard's best excuse for not getting magics done immediately when people asked him for them. Hunting for this or that ingredient or piece of apparatus was a good excuse for stalling, and as Darian knew from his own experience, if you stalled long enough, people sometimes forgot their requests.

  "Sit," Justyn ordered. Darian slumped into a seat across from Justyn, taking the chair that wobbled the least. There was a plate with an apple on it right in front of his chair, and sitting where he could watch both the apple and Darian was Justyn. With a resigned sigh, Darian stared at the apple while Justyn stared just as intently at Darian.