Starborn Read online

“You need to get out,” she said. “Follow me.”

  It was a pointless order. His feet were still above the floor, still above the beetles. He was dragged through the air after her by her magic, not by any action of his own. He stared at the room.

  He had expected magic to be light, and joy and — well — magic.

  This was not.

  The beetles were the advance guard.

  They had shocked Sam and the others, taking them by surprise. Eloise draped her cloak over them in sweeping movements, and they shrivelled and died under its touch. Axestone was smashing at them with his staff, killing them, but taking longer about it. Waterburn had made an invisible barrier between himself and the beetles. They crawled over it and around it, but they couldn’t break through. The old wizard was watching them, thinking, planning. Sam used fire. Flames streamed from him. From the palms of his hands, his eyes, his mouth. The beetles sizzled and popped under its heat.

  Flaxfold stood alone, in the centre of the room. She allowed the beetles to crawl over her. She made no resistance, put up no fight. Tadpole thought she should be covered, should disappear under a mask of black, scurrying legs and shiny bodies. It didn’t happen. They climbed and fell, slipping from her as though she was made of polished marble. She was ignoring them, her eyes fixed instead on the door. Tadpole turned to see what it was she was staring at.

  “Oh, no,” he said.

  Tamrin stopped dragging him and looked back.

  “What?”

  “Kravvins?” asked Tadpole.

  Black, blank faces stared in at the windows. They peered over the shoulders of a figure who stood in the doorway. They pressed against each other, ready. The second wave.

  “Worse than kravvins,” said Tamrin.

  “What’s worse than kravvins?” asked Tadpole.

  Tamrin was looking at the doorway, her eyes following Flaxfold’s stare.

  “Smedge,” whispered Tamrin, in a voice so small that Tadpole only just managed to hear her. “That’s what’s worse.”

  But the figure in the doorway heard. He turned his head, saw Tamrin, and smiled.

  Tadpole had never been so terrified. He looked for a roffle door. Of course, there could be none in Flaxfield’s house. He wanted to fold in on himself until he wasn’t anything at all. He would rather not be than have to look on that smile.

  The figure stepped forward, into the room.

  The kravvins froze. Time seemed to stop. Tadpole held his breath. The beetles started up again, scattering in all directions. They poured out of the doors and windows.

  “Smedge,” said Flaxfold.

  He looked at her.

  “You haven’t changed,” he said.

  Tadpole tried to work out in his mind what it had been about the smile that had so terrified him. What it was about the figure that even now caused him to want to be anywhere else.

  He was a boy. Just a boy. About Tadpole’s age. Slim, and neat, in school clothes that looked as though he had just put them on. No creases or stains. No scuffs or marks.

  “You have,” said Flaxfold. “Since the day you were made here, from slime and from wild magic.”

  “The filth and stinking waste of wild magic,” said December.

  Tadpole had forgotten her. She had been out of sight when the battle with the beetles was being waged.

  She stepped into the centre of the room, opposite Smedge, but not close to him.

  “I remember you at the beginning,” she said.

  Smedge stared back at her.

  “Do you remember?” she asked.

  She slipped her shawl back, leaving her face and neck and shoulders completely visible, the scars and burns.

  “Do you?” she said.

  She put her hand in front of her, palm towards Smedge.

  Rain was falling hard now, battering the windows. It ran down the faces of the kravvins waiting outside, glistening and slick.

  “Remember?” she said, her palm towards him.

  Smedge became as smoke. He remained the same at first, though the edges of him rippled and Tadpole could see through him.

  “Remember,” said December, and it wasn’t a question, it was a command.

  The rain beat harder. The room was dark, whether from clouds or oncoming night Tadpole didn’t have the experience to know.

  Smedge lost shape. He was melting. The clothes dripped off him. His face twisted and changed. Tadpole stared as the boy, no longer a boy, became, by turns, the ugly reflection of a dog, a ferret, a toad, a slug, until he was all shapes and none, a green mess of slime that stank and oozed.

  December still held her palm out. Tadpole saw that she was shaking with the effort. A blue vein rose, pulsing, in her neck. Her feet were planted firm to keep her balance. Smedge began to bubble and smoke. She was destroying him.

  “Kill!”

  “Bite!”

  “Eat!”

  The kravvins began to chant.

  “Kill!”

  “Rip!”

  “Eat!”

  They beat their feet on the ground. The house trembled.

  “Kill!”

  In unison they bashed their shiny bodies against the walls.

  “Eat!”

  “Stab!”

  The rain hammered. A flash of lightning and an immediate crash of thunder ripped the sky. The kravvins surged in, chanting.

  Sam swept his staff round and scythed through them.

  Axestone leaped on the nearest and tore at him with his bare hands. Kravvins smothered him, and one punched a sharp arm straight into the wizard’s chest. Axestone grabbed the creature by the throat and snapped off its head before he fell, and the kravvins surged over his body. In death, he repelled them. Something covered him, with a shimmering haze. The kravvins stumbled back and turned their attention elsewhere.

  They barged into December. She lost her balance, put her arms out to recover it. As soon as her palm was deflected from Smedge the pool of ooze stopped bubbling. December tried to fix him again with her spell. Kravvins jostled and attacked her. She needed all her attention to defend herself.

  Tamrin pulled Tadpole up the stairs again.

  “You have to get out,” she said.

  The kravvins were winning. Eloise had fallen. A kravvin crouched over her corpse, and plunged a hand forward to rip into her. The haze engulfed him and he lost his arm. Shrieking, he ran back, leaving Eloise in a flickering glow, which faded as softly as it had arrived.

  She and Axestone lay alone, islands of silence in the tumult of the attack.

  Sam was cornered. Waterburn seemed to be trying to escape through a window. December had given up the struggle to kill Smedge and was battling to stay alive. Flaxfold occupied the centre of the room. Smedge was reforming. Rising from the slime.

  Flaxfold brushed aside the attacks of the kravvins. She slapped them with the flat of her hand and they broke like clay models filled with pus. She waded through them to deal with Smedge.

  “In here,” said Tamrin.

  She threw open a door on the top landing. Tadpole hung back, hating what he was seeing and unable to stop looking.

  Flaxfold was on top of Smedge now. She leaned over the gathering shape. Kravvins smashed at her. They jabbed their sharp arms. They shouldered her, trying to push her away from him. Their arms snapped. She stood firm. She stooped to bind Smedge with a spell. And, as she opened her mouth to speak the words, he shifted shape into a spear and plunged into her face.

  Flaxfold staggered back, scattering the kravvins. Smedge pushed through, into her mouth, until he was invisible. She clutched her throat, her face. She made a savage noise of gulping and coughing, and fell, cracking her head on the floor.

  Tamrin shrieked, “No!” and gripped Tadpole’s wrist so tight that he cried out in pain.

  Sam tried to run to Flaxfold. The kravvins swarmed at him, blocking his path.

  Flaxfold twitched. Lay still. Green smoke poured out from her eyes, her ears, her nose, her mouth. It streamed up, hung
over her head and regained substance.

  “Get in there,” said Tamrin. She hurled him into the room. “And get away. Escape. And remember, it’s up to you now. You’ve got to fight this for us. You need to stay alive.”

  The last thing Tadpole saw, as Tamrin slammed the door on him, was the shape of Smedge reappearing beside the fallen Flaxfold. No longer a boy in uniform, he was armed and armoured, in black leggings and jerkin, boots and a mail tunic.

  And Tamrin was hurtling towards him.

  The room was as silent

  as sunlight.

  Tadpole knew that the battle was still boiling outside. Here, behind the closed door, there was no trace of it.

  There was a table, and chairs, and he stumbled across, sat down and put his head on his arms.

  He was shivering. His dinner was high in his throat. His roffle pack bumped against the tabletop. He slipped it from his back and it fell to the floor, rolling to a halt by the slammed door.

  When he was able to lift his head and look around, he thought first of the memmont. In the confusion and fear he had lost it.

  He decided that whatever happened, however much danger the creature was in, and however much Tadpole ought to look after it, he just couldn’t open that door.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope you’re all right.”

  Memmonts were sensible, timid creatures, and Tadpole felt it was likely that it had slipped back down a roffle hole.

  Unless a kravvin had reached it first.

  No.

  Don’t think that.

  Look at the room.

  It was lit by good candles, as though prepared for someone. The scent of the beeswax was pleasant and went some way to comforting him. The glow of the flame was reflected in the window. It was full dark already outside. Tadpole could see nothing of the garden, or the river, or the sky. Only the sound of the branch of an ash tree scratching and tapping the window told him that there was anything beyond the room itself.

  As for the room, it was small enough to be cosy, large enough to be comfortable. With books everywhere. On all the walls, in piles on the floor and the table.

  A small fire burned in the grate, giving more light, and a cheerful heat.

  Tadpole stood and went to the fireplace. He touched his fingers against the blue and white pottery propped up against the wall. It felt old, as though it could remember other days, other people in this room.

  He crossed to the window and looked out. The rain lashed down. The tree swayed in the wind. The sky was black with cloud.

  “No stars,” he said. “Still no stars.”

  He leaned forward to look down, fearful of seeing an army of kravvins carrying off the remains of his new friends. He smiled, surprised to think of them as friends, even though their welcome had not been generous.

  He hitched his pack on to his back, stood before the door. He put his ear to it.

  Silence.

  He put his hand to the handle.

  Drew back again.

  Listened.

  Put his hand back.

  He turned the handle.

  Slowly.

  The door opened a little. Still no noise. He stepped back and opened it wider.

  And he looked at a different landing, a different staircase, a different house. Tadpole stepped out of the room, keeping the door open and his hand on the handle, ready to run back in if danger appeared.

  He heard voices, below. Friendly, cheerful voices. And laughter. And footsteps coming upstairs.

  He darted back into the study and closed the door.

  The room was the same. The sky was still dark. The ash tree tapped the window.

  He turned the handle again and stepped out.

  A field of kravvin heads turned. A hundred identical, blank kravvin faces stared up at him. And one face, human again now, and smiling. Smedge. Tadpole looked for the others. He caught a glimpse of Sam and Waterburn, still fighting for life.

  Smedge smiled at him.

  Tadpole froze under Smedge’s look.

  “Come here,” said Smedge.

  His voice was soft, inviting.

  “Come and see us.”

  Tadpole came further out.

  “No,” shouted Sam. “Get back in.”

  He raised his staff over his head and howled. The kravvins fell back. Smedge whirled round and screamed a spell.

  The window burst inwards, scattering glass over the kravvins, shining shards filling the air.

  And the dragon flew in, head back, throat open, screaming with one voice with Sam.

  Tadpole slammed the door shut and ran to the other side of the room, banging his leg on a chair.

  He waited there, braced for a fight, sure that the kravvins would break in and flood over him.

  Silence again.

  He crossed to the door and put out his hand. This time, he noticed that the door had two handles, one on the right, one on the left.

  He tried to remember which he had turned the first time.

  He took the left one and moved it round slowly.

  The door opened.

  He listened.

  Silence.

  He opened it wider.

  It was the other landing, the other staircase.

  Tadpole remembered Tamrin’s orders, to escape, to get away.

  He closed the door behind him, fearing the decision. He tried the door. As he had expected, it was locked. No going back.

  Well, here he was. There would be roffle holes outside. If he ever got outside again.

  Following the stairs down, he found himself in a wide corridor with rooms leading off on either side. He went into the room the voices were coming from. As soon as he entered, the talking and the laughing stopped.

  Faces stared at him. Four men at one table. Three leaning against a counter. A woman alone. Three more men at a corner table. It was an inn.

  “Roffles, is it?” said a man at the counter. “Nothing good ever came of roffles.”

  “Least it’s not a kravvin.”

  “I don’t know which I like least, roffles or kravvins.”

  “Then you’ve never met a kravvin.”

  There was laughter again.

  “No one ever met a kravvin and lived to tell. Not close up.”

  “Anyway, I don’t want roffles here.”

  “They’re bad luck.”

  “That’s why they stay away these days.”

  “Here, you. What are you doing Up Top?”

  Tadpole turned and made to leave the room. The man at the table nearest the door seized his arm.

  “No you don’t,” he said. “What’s going on? Are you lot spying for the kravvins?”

  “Have you done a deal?”

  “Hold him there.”

  “Come on, what are you up to?”

  The woman stood up. She was taller than Tadpole had first thought, slim and determined. She put her hand on the man’s shoulder and squeezed.

  “Ow. What are you doing?”

  “We’re leaving, now,” she said. “Let him go.”

  His grip tightened on Tadpole’s arm. Her grip tightened. Tadpole saw the strength of her fingers. The man yelped. He released Tadpole.

  “Come on,” she said. “Time we were on our way.”

  She steered Tadpole back into the corridor and through the front door.

  “Don’t go bringing roffle spies back here,” someone shouted after them.

  She smiled at Tadpole.

  “People are afraid,” she said. “They’re not bad. Don’t worry.”

  The rain was coming down hard. Tadpole stood with his face upturned and let it fall on him.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Rain. My first rain.” He wiped his face with his hands. “It’s cool, and soft.”

  “Get used to it,” she said. “What’s your name?”

  “What’s a name for a bad apple in a barn full of bees?” asked Tadpole.

  “You can forget that,” she said. “Roffle tal
k’s over. So are a lot of things. I’m Dorwin. Sometimes ‘Winny’ for short. What’s your name?”

  “Tadpole.”

  “Good name for someone who likes to stand in the rain. Come on, Tadpole. We’ve got a long walk.”

  She took the handles of a cart and walked off. He stayed where he was.

  “It’s come with me, go back in there, or set off on your own,” she called over her shoulder. “But I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Roffles love a puzzle, and Tadpole couldn’t resist finding out why she’d been waiting for him. He trotted off after her.

  “How did you know I was coming if you didn’t know my name? And where are the stars?”

  “Covered with cloud. The rain’s set in. You won’t see any tonight.”

  Dorwin pushed the handcart along with no show of effort. She was strong, used to work.

  “How did you know I was coming?”

  “I didn’t know it was a roffle.”

  “What?”

  “A roffle. I wasn’t expecting a roffle.”

  Tadpole found that rain made walking harder. The road was muddy. He slipped and squelched. The wheels of the cart skidded and dragged. Dorwin pushed on, easy strides and confident that she wouldn’t fall.

  “Can we slow down, please?”

  “Sorry. Is that better?”

  Tadpole settled into an easier pace. He waited for Dorwin to tell him why she had been waiting. She didn’t speak.

  His feet were getting heavy. The mud clung to them. His legs ached.

  She still said nothing, just pushed the handcart relentlessly on.

  “I’ve never been in the dark before,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  Tadpole spoke louder. “I’ve never been in the dark before.”

  “How do you like it?”

  Tadpole thought about this.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Dorwin slowed down.

  “Do you mean you’ve never been Up Top before?”

  Tadpole didn’t answer.

  She stopped walking. Lowering the handles of the cart, she turned to see him.

  “Look at you,” she said. “You’re exhausted.”

  Tadpole looked down. He was muddy up to his knees. His clothes were crumpled and unkempt. His roffle pack was slipping from one shoulder and looked as though it would fall off at any moment.

  “Have you?” she asked. “Have you been Up Top before?”