An Unexpected Apprentice Read online

  The thraik did not seem impressed to see a smallfolk wielding fire, no matter what color. It stuck its long neck out and bared its teeth at him. Teldo heaved the fistful of fire. It struck the thraik in the middle of its chest.

  To everyone’s astonishment including the thraik’s, the fire adhered to the greasy flesh and began to burn. The thraik yowled in surprise. It tried to scrape the fire away, but only managed to spread it to its claws and forearms. The flame spread up the arms to the shoulders. It screamed in agony, tossing its head. The lord thraik howled an answering cry.

  Teldo, his face drawn and looking decades older than his eighteen years, held his palm upturned. Tildi knew he was trying to will another ball of flame into existence. The burning thraik did not wait for him to add to its pain. It opened its great wings and flew away. Teldo looked grimly triumphant.

  But the threat had not departed—in fact, it had doubled. The lord thraik shrieked out an order. Two of the black-green beasts flapped away from the smallfolks they had been attacking, and homed in upon Teldo. His mouth moved. Tildi could not hear the chant, but she knew the words. Teldo had taught her what he knew and encouraged her to practice. Another green flame bloomed in his hand. He held it out, keeping it between him and the circling thraik. They kept their distance, darting their long necks at him. Teeth snapped close to his wrist. Teldo faked a throw at the nearer beast. It hissed and retreated a yard. He could only attack one of them, and they knew it. He threw away his reaper and held out his hand, palm up. He meant to make a second flame.

  He needed help. Tildi held out her hand and desperately said the ancient words to herself.

  Ano chnetegh tal, she thought firmly, willing the spell to work. I create fire!

  Her hand remained cool. Not even a flicker of light bloomed in her palm. Had she gotten it wrong? Come now, she knew how to do this! She thought the spell again, begging for a boulder-sized blaze, one that would consume every thraik at once. From the bottom of her soul, she invoked every whit of power inside her. She pictured the thraik withering away. Nothing happened.

  Light crackled into being in Teldo’s other hand. He glanced down at it. The moment’s distraction was all that the terrible beasts needed. Two of them swooped down on him at once. He threw the mass of fire at one of them. It shrieked, bleeding gouts of green flame, but the other was waiting behind. It took him by the back of the neck, and lifted him up, struggling, as if he was a kitten carried by a grotesque cat.

  “Help him!” Tildi cried. She invoked the spell again. A minute fire bloomed on her palm. She threw the pathetic dot of flame at the retreating beast, then followed it with all the rocks and stones she could find. The beast rose into the air. Teldo seemed to reach out to her. Tildi stretched out her arms as if she could drag him back.

  A handful of farmworkers had one of the smaller thraiks at bay. It hissed and screamed, bending its snakelike neck. Marco, possessed of dead aim, kept hitting it in the eyes with sharp stones as the others battered at it with flails and rakes. It was seeping black blood from a hundred wounds, and becoming more unsteady by the moment. The lord thraik let out a bellow, and all the remaing thraiks descended upon the smallfolk en masse. Tildi and the others ran to help. The beasts plucked two of the smallfolk out of the group and flapped upward into the sky with them. One of them was Marco.

  “No!” Tildi screamed.

  The leader, high above their heads, tilted his ugly head back and let out a scream that rose up and down the scales. A tearing sound made Tildi’s ears ring. A black gash opened in the sky. The thraik flew through it, bearing their prey. It sealed, leaving the world soundless.

  Tildi stood staring at the empty sky.

  Mirrin came over and put his hand on her shoulder. Tildi hardly felt it. All her consciousness was focused upon that spot in the blue expanse. It had closed up like a door, and her brothers were on the other side! With all her heart she willed herself to follow the winged demons so that she could drag them back. Her brothers! Her brothers were gone! She couldn’t believe it. Her hands were in tight fists against her chest. Her eyes flooded with unshed tears. She couldn’t draw breath. Mirrin wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to him, burying her face in his torn tunic, patting her back as if she had been one of his own daughters.

  “There, there, little one.”

  At his kind words, the pressure loosened. Tildi fetched in a deep gasp and began to cry. Mirrin patted her shoulder absently as she wept. The farmhands came by to touch her arm, offering sympathy. The kindly words bounced off Tildi’s hearing. Over and over again she saw the thraik carrying her brothers away through that scar in the sky.

  One by one, the farmhands helped one another stagger off the field and down the hill toward the farmhouse. They carried the bodies of the dead into the shed at the rear of the house. One of the unwounded ran for the road, to tell the families the bad news and to come fetch their loved ones. Tildi had no bodies to bury. They would be eaten by the thraiks, torn apart in the invisible nothingness behind the sky just like her parents had been.

  Mirrin let Tildi weep herself into empty gasps, then guided her gently into the hands of the women, who surrounded her. They took her hands and turned her away from the torn field. Tildi let herself be gently towed down the slope and into the house. Lisel, with a gravity greater than her years, took charge of her and helped her to sit down on her little stool at the foot of the table.

  “I’m so sorry, Tildi.” There were tears in the girl’s voice. Somewhere in the back of her numb mind Tildi recalled that Lisel and Pierin had been courting for a month or two. She lifted her eyes to Lisel’s and tried to find the right words, saying that she understood that the girl shared her misery. Her lips trembled so much she pressed them together. Lisel ducked her head and went to serve the men.

  “There, Tildi,” Mig said, briskly setting a bowl down on the table. She put a spoon in Tildi’s limp hand. “Eat. It’ll help.”

  The heavy smell of the stew turned her stomach. Tildi shoved it away from her. She couldn’t look at the people gathered around her. She knew they were staring at her, wondering if there must be some kind of curse on the Summerbee family, to have all but one of them carried off by the demons. Tildi knew there couldn’t be any reason but chance. Her brothers must have attracted the thraik’s attention because they fought harder and more bravely than anyone else. The scene played itself out in her mind over and over, always ending with the thraik lifting into the sky as lightly as snowflakes falling up instead of down, belying the horror they had just wrought. Nothing, nothing that Tildi recalled her brothers doing could have provoked the thraik unusually. Oh, why couldn’t she have saved them? Not even one of them?

  Mirrin cleared his throat as the hands finished their silent meal. “There’ll … there will surely be an emergency village meeting this evening in Clearbeck, Tildi. You’ll be there.”

  Tildi nodded without looking up.

  Chapter Two

  The meeting hall that served Morningside Quarter was a high-peaked wooden structure with a huge brick chimney at either end and a tall, ornately carved and painted double door in the center of the south-facing long wall. It stood at the top of the common green in Clearbeck, the village closest to Daybreak Bank, situated nearly at the precise geographical center of the Quarter. Smallfolks liked things to be precise and neat. A grand hall like that stood in every one of the Quarters. Tildi had only seen one other, when her family had gone to a wedding in Nightside Quarter, the province that overlapped the north arrow of the compass, as Morningside lay on the east. The Quarters were not exactly a fourth of a circle each, since there were five of them, but the smallfolks stuck by the historic name in spite of the mathematical disparity. The master archivist in the Noon Quarter claimed that “quarter” was meant in its definition of “somewhere to live,” and people settled for that explanation. Nor was the outline of the province exactly round, but it was as close as nature provided.

  Smallfolks set great store by nature, even
if they did like things neat.

  Tildi usually looked forward to monthly meetings, often promising the next one to herself as a reward for the endless tedium of daily work. This was usually the time when everyone shared all the news: marriages were announced, traveling troubadours from every land in Alada performed and told stories, and projects to benefit the Quarters were discussed and organized. Meetings were lively affairs, with food and drink served throughout, and often music and dancing afterward.

  Tonight, though, everyone was solemn.

  Tables laden with food stood against the walls, but no one helped themselves. Two of the families present were clad in full mourning, and their eyes were still red from weeping.

  Tildi sat stiffly alone on the cloth-draped bench reserved for her family. She was the only one left of the Summerbees. Her friends shot her sympathetic glances, but none of them dared leave their husbands’ or fathers’ sides to be with her.

  Smallfolk tradition prevented the girls from going off without permission, even such a small distance. It was only common sense, Tildi had been lectured all the time while growing up. Girls weren’t as strong or as fast as boys. Plenty of dangerous creatures lurked about the Quarters waiting for such a tender young morsel to happen by unprotected—and not all of them were wild animals. That was the rationale her mother had given her for why the custom continued even in cultivated places where there was no reasonable threat. The explanation did not satisfy her, but such matters could only be discussed in private among her companions where the boys couldn’t hear them. Disobedient girls would be made to stand up at meetings with a slate around their necks that read SHAME.

  Her brothers knew Tildi’s thoughts. Gosto felt questioning the ancient ways was insubordinate, but the others were more moderate in their views. Teldo, at least, agreed with her. Unlike most of their peers, none of them would ever have humiliated her by turning her in as long as she behaved herself like decent smallfolks in front of the elders.

  Mirrin, though he worked for the Summerbees, was an elder of the community. Admirably and generously, he kept his two jobs separated, and only exercised his authority when he was in meeting. He’d heard her spout off, as he put it, and let it pass. When she was a child he had scolded her for such views, but not since. She appreciated his forbearance, which she knew was due to the fact that the Summerbee children were orphans. He would never tolerate that kind of behavior in his own well-schooled daughters. Both Mig and Lisel kept their eyes aimed modestly toward the floor whenever Tildi glanced their way. All she could see was the top of their white-capped heads. Behind the Sardbrook bench, her friends Joybara and Nolla Coppers smiled but didn’t move. A quick tilt of the head in the direction of their very conservative father showed Tildi why. His choleric face was the same shade of red as his hair.

  Not that Tildi spent the time entirely by herself. Many of the young men stopped by briefly to chat with her. The first was Dyas Holt, the youngest child of the local butcher. He was a bit slow-moving, but kind and considerate. Tildi often danced with him at meetings, the other girls complained he stepped on their feet, but she was quick enough to get out of his way. Tildi was good friends with his six sisters and Aine, the girl married to his elder brother.

  “Evening, Tildi,” Dyas said solemnly. He hovered over her, just a little too close. She pulled her feet up a bit and concentrated on keeping her nose out of the lavish embroidery on his pale blue shirtfront. She recognized it as his best tunic, which usually came out for Year’s End parties and weddings. The finery reminded her once again, as if she needed it, that ornaments and decoration were forbidden to her now. She would be in mourning for a year. Her dark blue dress, the plainest thing she owned, had a white sash to compliment the sleeves and neck of her white chemise that peeked out at wrists and neck. Her neat, soft leather shoes were plain, too, tied with simple black ribbons.

  “Evening, Dyas,” she said with a cordial nod.

  “My sympathies on your loss. My family’s, too.” Dyas stopped short and turned red. Tildi understood. It was hard to think of what to say after a tragedy. She owed a visit of condolence to Jinny’s family.

  “Thank you, Dyas.”

  Dyas struggled for something else to say. His big, kind face contorted. Any moment now he would sputter out something awkward and retire in confusion, as he always did. Tildi usually offered a subject of conversation that he could take up with ease, but she didn’t feel up to making the effort.

  “Are you troubling the poor lass, Dyas?” asked Gorten, sliding smoothly up beside him as if cutting in to a dance. The weaver, about Gosto’s age, came from the western quarter of the Quarters. He specialized in linen fabrics, so every woman in the southern quarter knew him well. He was quick-witted and a trifle cruel.

  “Not at all, Gorten,” Tildi said quickly. “He came to offer his sympathies.”

  “Why, so do I, Tildi.” Gorten picked up her hand in his long fingers and bestowed a light kiss upon it. He was tall for a smallfolk, about half the height of a human. “What a terrible thing. Why, it could have been anyone, but all your brothers! They were fine men. You did not deserve such ill luck. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “I … I hardly know yet, but thank you for asking.”

  “My father and I will be over to help finish the haying tomorrow,” said Jole Bywell, coming up with his twin brother Nole. Their family owned the land that ran along the western border of the Summerbee fields. “Our sisters are cooking up pots of food so you don’t have to trouble yourself at all for us.”

  Tears sprang into Tildi’s eyes. She leaned forward to clasp their hands. “That is so kind of you both.”

  Nole looked abashed. “It’s just the neighborly—”

  “I will help with the cutting, too,” Gorten said suddenly, interrupting him.

  “And I,” added Dyas, pushing forward.

  “Aah!” Tildi gasped, as he trod on the foot she had just set down.

  “Tildi!” She looked up to see the frustrated, swarthy face of Ronardo, the herbalist’s son, peering at her between the solid shoulders of the Bywell boys. “May I speak to you after the meeting? Will you wait for me? I’ll walk you home.”

  “Thank you …”

  “Nonsense, she’ll come with us,” Jole said cheerfully. Ronardo let out an explosive breath as if Jole or Nole had elbowed him in the stomach. “Our way lies with hers almost all the way back.”

  “But—” Ronardo said. He was interrupted by the sound of the mayor clearing his throat.

  The Bywell brothers winked at her in unison. “We’ll see you later, lass.” They dragged Ronardo off with them. The others retired to their family benches as the elders stared at them with impatience.

  Tildi shook her head. She had been grateful for the expressions of sympathy, but she wasn’t a fool. It occurred to her that the young men weren’t so innocent of purpose as they appeared. Gorten, for one, had danced with her at meetings only when the pattern put them together temporarily. Otherwise he preferred the company of Shanee or Rowan, both plump, fair-haired, and blue-eyed, whereas Tildi looked like every Summerbee in the family tree, small and lightly built, with light brown hair and big, round, brown eyes. No, she understood their motive.

  As the eldest male, the big farm had belonged to Gosto absolutely with his brothers as his tenants. Under normal circumstances, if something happened to him, the valuable Summerbee property would pass to the next brother in line. The elders could also decide to divide the property among one or more of the brothers. Now that they were all gone, the property was a single lump, and a desirable one, which would now go to whichever lucky man Tildi chose to marry. She nodded grimly to herself. Most of her visitors had been landless second sons whose prospects suddenly ascended from tenant or journeyman to landowner. Her authority over the land owned for hundreds of years was temporary until a male with the right to give orders could be put in charge of it. Mirrin would be its steward until then.

  There had been some mixing and
playful wooing in the past, but none considered serious since neither they nor she were considered of an age to marry, but now that she was the sole survivor of her family they wanted to declare their interest. Tildi felt alarm rising at the prospect. Must she choose a husband tonight? The possibility existed, since the land must be farmed. As an orphan she was under the direct authority of the mayor and the council of elders—their protection, they called it. She had no right to refuse if they demanded she marry. Names and faces spun through Tildi’s mind. Who among her male peers could she stand to live with from that moment on for the rest of her life? And not just her own age group was keen for such a prize: she observed a few of the tradesmen who owned no land eying her with interest. Horrors! She wasn’t ready to make a decision like that so swiftly. By no means was she ready to settle down. She had dreams—many of which had flown away with her brothers.

  At that sober realization, she sat back with her hands in her lap. How her world had changed in just a few hours. Her mind whirled, trying to make sense out of the chaos. She needed time!

  “Sit down, everyone. Let’s not make matters wait. Sit down!” Mayor Jurney shook the gold chain of office that lay on his shoulders. During the majority of his hours not devoted to council activities, Edyard Jurney was a physician. He was a thin, stooped man, with prodigious black brows that overhung observant, dark eyes. As a doctor he was dry in manner, not unpleasant to deal with, but demanding. If one was his patient, one didn’t dare not get well. He had brought back so many oldsters from the brink of death he was considered a miracle worker by some (others, particularly relatives cheated for a time out of expected inheritances, whispered darkly of sorcery). Therefore, when he was elected mayor, few disagreed. And, to be fair, as acrimonious as politics got, his rivals for the office had little to complain about. Few of his pronouncements proved to be ill thought-out.