Owlflight Read online

  Two

  Even grief as profound as Darian’s could not be sustained for too long, and after lying exhausted in his hiding place for a time, other feelings began to penetrate his sorrow, all of them maddeningly persistent, and utterly ordinary. It was irritating—which in itself was irritating—to have stupid things like a nose that was sore and stuffed up from crying, and an ant crawling up his leg inside his breeches, intrude on something as profound as his grief. But that didn’t stop them from intruding. His arms and legs felt cramped, his hands stung where he’d pounded them against the bark and scraped them, and one hip hurt, jammed as it was against the hard bark of the tree. Finally he decided it was time to leave. He sat up, his eyes sore and dry, and peered down through the branches to see if there was anyone about to catch him when he climbed down.

  There was no one working in the field below, and from the fact that the long shadows of the trees had crept over the village, he’d been up here a while. He guessed that the women who usually worked in the bean field had probably left their work to go prepare dinner for the men and children. The wind was in the wrong direction for him to catch aromas coming from the village, but it was a good bet that if he could smell anything, it would be the mingled aromas of stews, soups, pies and pasties, same as always.

  I wonder why they bother making individual dinners. Surely it would make more sense just to make one big pot of stew for the whole village, he thought, with a touch of contempt. After all, everyone in the village uses the same half-dozen recipes. I don’t think anyone has ever tried to make anything new since I’ve been here.

  Perhaps it was that, as difficult as things were, there were still some who were more prosperous than the rest, who could afford a little more meat and spices in their food, and who made sure to enjoy that distinction from everyone else whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  As if by sharing a bit of spice with everyone else they’d lose the chance to lord it over their neighbors, he thought sourly. The half-dozen “well-to-do” families were the ones who seemed to go out of their way to complain about his behavior. As if they didn’t already have the best houses in town, and can even pay somebody else to cook and clean for them!

  Still, if it was mealtime, he’d probably better be getting back to Justyn. There were still dishes to scrub, and the pasties to fetch from the baker, or the old wretch would probably forget to eat, and then Darian would get the blame if Justyn got sick. Sometimes he wondered how Justyn had gotten along before he came—but then he realized that the women had taken care of him, the same way they cared for Kyle. So the villagers had gotten something out of apprenticing him to Justyn; they’d been able to stop cleaning up after and cooking for the Wizard. No wonder they’d been in such a hurry to get him bound over!

  I’ll have to clean up after Kyle, too, if I don’t want to have to eat dinner in a room that looks like someone had butchered a pig there. Justyn is such a slob! How can he be so concerned with keeping wounds clean, and live the way he does? Wrinkling his lip a little with disgust, he stretched his arms and legs until the cramps went away, then climbed slowly down the side of the tree opposite the village. He didn’t want anyone to catch sight of him if he could help it; he’d already lost a couple of hiding places by being careless.

  Here on the edge of the fields, where there was more sunlight, growth of bushes and vines was especially heavy, giving him cover that allowed him to get into the field without being seen. Already the air was hot and drowsy with midday heat, and hidden insects buzzed and droned on all sides of him. The ground here smelled damp; someone must have opened up the irrigation pipe for this field. He pushed through the dense underbrush until he came to a field of pole beans, and made his way through the rows of tall, tent-like arrangements of poles covered with climbing bean vines. They made a jagged hedge that was difficult to see through, and extended well over the top of his head. Eventually the field ended, and he reached the outskirts of the village on the northern side. He reentered Errold’s Grove near the firing pit for pottery and the storage shed where the finished pieces were kept. He didn’t see anyone, although the sounds of dinner being served and eaten were coming from every open window.

  It must be later than I thought. He still didn’t feel much like hurrying, though; his bout of grief had pretty much killed his appetite, and with a bit of pique, he decided that Justyn could wait. If his Master was hungry, his Master could go fetch his own dinner from the baker, and clean a plate or two himself for a change.

  He made his way slowly along the paths between the houses, kicking a round rock through the dust, nursing his grievances. The ordinary sounds of people who liked each other eating together only made him feel more abused and put upon, because he knew what those people must be thinking and saying about him. Vere and Harris had certainly recounted the tale of his defection to their families by now, and their wives had probably shared the story with others as they brought water from the well, or went to fetch dinner from the baker. So now everyone knew that Darian had shown his “true face” again, and they would be feeling very smug indeed. By suppertime tonight, he’d be the main topic of evening lectures to the family.

  They’ll be looking at their children, and telling each other, “Thank the gods he isn’t like Darian!” or “My boy would never act like Darian.” Huh. As if they really had any idea half of what their precious children get into when they aren’t watching.

  And the very next person he encountered would probably stop him in order to remind him of how ungrateful and unnatural he was. Every time he got into trouble—and “trouble” seemed to have a wide definition for these people—people would go out of their way to give him their own version of the lecture he’d already heard a thousand times or more—the sermon on how kind Justyn was for taking him in and apprenticing him without an apprenticing fee or any kind of familial relationship. Again. And again.

  At least Justyn himself usually left that part out, perhaps because he remembered only too well how he had pestered Darian’s parents every time they came into Errold’s Grove. Darian could recall at least a dozen times that Justyn had come to his Mum and Dad, separately or together, to urge on them a plan of apprenticing him into Justyn’s service. There had been a great deal of fuss made about how dangerous it was for someone with Darian’s “potential” to remain untrained in his magic. Darian remembered his Dad once telling his Mum that Justyn was trying to frighten them into giving Darian over to him, and that she shouldn’t let the old man alarm her.

  If Darian could not get away from whoever had decided to deliver the usual lecture, the haranguer would then go through the litany of Darian’s many character flaws and deficiencies, and the only variation was in how much emphasis an individual placed on a particular flaw. This part was actually useful; Darian had noticed over the course of several of these lectures that people tended to stress the flaw that they were most prone to themselves. For instance, the rudest man in the village, Old Man Gulian, tended to harp on how rude Darian was, and Erna Dele, who never spoke or showed a thank you for any favor and always expected more than she got, would go on at great length on how he didn’t appreciate what he was given. He learned a lot by listening to what people thought they saw as deficiencies in him.

  Regardless of who was giving the lecture, it always ended with a homily on gratitude, obedience, and humility. That is, how he should daily demonstrate how grateful he was to everyone in Errold’s Grove by thanking all and sundry on every occasion for their generosity toward him—how he should show that gratitude by instant obedience to anything anyone wanted of him—and how he should be properly humble and prove that he knew his place in the scheme of things by groveling before everyone he came across.

  How I should be so happy to have been permitted to become a bound-over slave that I should demonstrate that gratitude with humble servitude to anyone over the age of fifteen.

  “It takes a village to raise a child,” was the old proverb, often quoted to Justyn when someo
ne came to complain about Darian, and it certainly seemed as if everyone in the village had his or her own ideas of the proper way for Darian to behave!

  Each time he heard the lecture, he was sorely tempted to kick the orator in the shins. He never did, though, because there was always that doubt that they might all be right and that he was in the wrong. After all, everyone here seemed to be in agreement on his behavior and worth except he himself, and after all, he was only a boy. What if he was entirely in the wrong? What if he was a bad person? What if he did deserve to be punished—what if Justyn was too tolerant of his behavior and he really deserved to be disciplined?

  What if the reason his parents got swallowed up by the Forest was because he was a bad person, and this was how the gods had chosen to punish them for how he turned out?

  That was the possibility that gave him a cold lump in the bottom of his stomach, and made him squirm with distress whenever he thought of it.

  And that, of course, just made him want to be loud and wild and try some of the magics that Justyn talked about, just to show them all that he was not to be trodden underfoot like a weed and he was not going to take all their lectures and disapproval lying down.

  Which, of course, always got him into more trouble. In fact, it seemed as if ever since he’d arrived in this place, he was in trouble to one degree or another—or thought to be in trouble.

  And it wasn’t fair! The other boys pulled as many pranks as he did, or more—they were just slier about it, and they didn’t get caught because no one was trying to catch them the way everyone seemed to be trying to catch him.

  Hellfires! he thought rebelliously. When everyone’s watching you all the time to catch you doing something wrong, they’re going to get you, no matter how hard you’re trying to do right!

  And meanwhile, just because everyone in the whole town expected Darian to be the one who made trouble, that meant they weren’t going to catch their own boys at it, and Darian would get the blame for things they did. It happened all the time, and even when he could prove he hadn’t had anything to do with the mischief, no one ever apologized to him or made things up to him. They just said that he deserved to get into trouble for all the things he did that he hadn’t gotten caught at! Now, there was a prime bit of logic!

  And just suppose the beans got pecked a bit by birds, or a deer wandered in and ate some of the young corn, things that he couldn’t possibly have any control over—why, that was all the fault of his Dad and Mum. It was the Pelagiris-beasts come to take revenge on the village for the terrible trappers who had invaded the Forest. Even the most normal of beast depredations was always blamed on some monster from the Pelagiris that had followed Darian’s parents back to Errold’s Grove. Though what self-respecting monster would pull up carrots and eat them, or trample down a hill of beans, or pick at ripe strawberries—well, that was beyond him. Must have been a monster with a singularly vegetarian appetite.

  Funny how they all forget those coats and rugs and bedcoverings they all have that Dad and Mum traded for food and supplies, he thought sourly, looking up from his rock and noting one of those bedcoverings hanging out on a line to air. A soft shade of subtle cream it was, too, with markings and mottlings of a darker shade of pale brown. Quite a handsome fur, thick and warm, and probably a fine thing to have on the bed in the dead of winter. Darian even remembered what the beast had looked like when they’d caught it—a terribly dangerous beast, it was, completely unable to defend itself, much less attack anyone. It had looked like a huge hassock; with four tiny little legs and a head the size of an apple all stuck on a body easily the size of a fat cow, and certainly much wider. If anything had been born to become a tanned hide, that thing surely had been. It was a wonder it had survived long enough to be trapped in the first place.

  Poor Justyn hadn’t even gotten the benefit of having furs traded to him in return for taking Darian as an apprentice. He didn’t get anything at all, not even other peoples’ cast-offs, and he was the one who probably deserved some kind of repayment the most. Widow Clay of the bad leg that kept her from hard physical labor had been appointed to make him bedcoverings, which she knitted from odds and ends of yarn that she unraveled from worn-out sweaters or scrounged from leftovers or other projects. She also made quilts of scraps that no one else wanted because they were stained, or faded and threadbare, or too drab to be desirable, even as a patch for a quilt. Poor Justyn! He always got the tag-ends of everything. He was the last person in the village to get a share of meat, of clothing, of anything. Whoever’s turn it was to supply him always gave him what they didn’t want. Take now, for instance; there was an abundance of turnips, beans, and peas, so their meals featured either turnips, beans, or peas, depending on how the donor herself felt about those vegetables. Mostly, they got turnips, and he was not looking forward to the time when the squash ripened.

  Now his mood turned to guilt, as it always did at this point, for the worst part of it was that in his heart he knew he was being treated fairly; well-housed and well-fed, and Justyn, though short-tempered and appallingly sloppy, was fundamentally kind.

  He kicked his stone back and forth, from his left foot to his right, making slow progress in the direction of Justyn’s cottage. He kept his eyes down on the path and his stone, for it was just possible that if any adult saw him doing this, they would think it was some ridiculous exercise that Justyn had set him, as it certainly would look too tedious to be a game. Justyn had set him tasks that looked sillier in the past, and the one thing they all had in common was that they were tedious.

  It’s not so bad with Justyn, and I wouldn’t mind so much if I was learning something useful. It’s just that he keeps insisting that this magic stuff is good for something. I’ve heard the stories and I’ve seen the bad art on his walls. He’s talked about great mages and even one or two Hawkbrothers, and told me about their great spells and ‘weavings.” But so far I haven’t seen him do anything that couldn’t be done easier by plain old ordinary hands. For that matter, a lot of what Justyn did was accomplished by mundane means, and old Justyn sure didn’t get a lot of respect, wealth, or even appreciation. So why would anyone want to be a wizard in the first place? What’s the point of being a wizard if you get taken for granted and paid only in what no one else wants? If I was learning something like being a fighter, a warrior—something that was useful and got respect—well, things would be different.

  The old man was good at small spells and minor healings; simple magics that made life better and safer for the villagers. But nobody really seemed to notice just how much he did for them; they acted as if he was supposed to be at their beck and call for the most minor of trivialities, and on the whole they treated him very little better than Lilly, the barmaid at the inn. Justyn just accepted that treatment, as if it was what he expected and deserved.

  That isn’t doing either of us any good, if it comes right down to it. He doesn’t get respect, so I never will either—but he also doesn’t ever do anything to make people think he was important. And any old wisewoman knows almost as much as he does about healing and medicines.

  Everything Justyn did or wanted him to do seemed to involve a great deal of stupid, plodding, repetitive work. So what good was magic, when all it did was make for more hard, tedious work? He knew why the villagers didn’t respect Justyn’s magic—wasn’t magic supposed to be spectacular, instantaneous, and take one’s breath away? Wasn’t that the way magic happened in the tales? When the village was buried in snow, shouldn’t Justyn have been able to clear the snow away from the paths and the doors with a snap of his fingers? Shouldn’t he be able to hold back floodwaters with his will, or make a well by wishing it there?

  Shouldn’t he have been able to keep people safe when they went into the Forest to make a living? After all, that was how the people of Errold’s Grove were supposed to make a living—shouldn’t a proper wizard be able to make sure they could still do it, no matter what those mage-storms brought? That may have been what earned the
ir scorn—when the monsters came, Justyn wasn’t able to do things that let the village prosper despite their presence.

  If they’d thought that he was going to be able to get rid of any monsters that came in from the Forest, people wouldn’t have been half as hard on Dad and Mum … in fact, they might have helped them out a bit that last winter, when running the traplines was so hard.

  And if people had been pleasant to him and his parents, if they’d been able to prosper on their own, maybe his Dad and Mum wouldn’t have felt as if they had to go out into the Forest as often or for as long. They might still have been here, if they hadn’t felt so unwelcome in Errold’s Grove.

  He shook his head angrily to keep from crying all over again. He had to think hard to be able to get a breath; he felt as if he were in a constriction trap, and the trap kept getting smaller every day. I don’t think I can bear too much more of this, he thought, but this time the thought had more of a feeling of desperation behind it. I’ve got to get away; I’ve got to figure out how I can take care of myself, and get away from here. This place, these people—they’re trying to make me just like them, and I don’t want to be like them! Wanting everything just alike is what’s killing them all, they just don’t realize it.

  There had to be more to life than the kind of life the villagers were living—a dull, pedestrian, day-to-day existence. When he wasn’t being badgered, he was being bored to death.

  Every day is exactly like every other day. Only the weather and the seasons change, and even they don’t make that much difference, unless there’s something like a flood or a blizzard. Or a monster or something they think is a monster. Or maybe a Herald comes along once a year at most. It’s always the same food, the same gossip, the same things going wrong or right. Nobody ever does anything just for the sake of doing it, and nobody ever dares try anything new.