The Name of the Wind (70 page)

I pulled out my pocketknife with my other hand and drove it through the shingle into the wooden wall of the cistern, pinning my makeshift piece of sygaldry under the water. I have no doubt it was the quickest, most slapdash heat-eater ever created.

Pulling myself back onto the ladder, I looked around to a town blessedly dark. The flames had dimmed, and in most places had subsided to sullen coals. I hadn't doused the fires, merely slowed them down enough to give the townsfolk and their buckets a fighting chance.

But my job was only half done. I dropped to the roof and picked up the other half of the still-burning shingle I'd dropped. Then I slid down a drainpipe and legged it away through the dark streets, across the town square to the front of the Tehlin church.

I stopped under the huge oak that stood before the front door, still holding its full array of autumn leaves. Kneeling, I opened my travelsack and brought out the oilskin bag with all the remaining resin. I poured the bottle of brand onto it and set it afire with the burning shingle. It flared up quickly, billowing acrid, sweet-smelling smoke.

Then I put the blunt end of the shingle between my teeth, jumped to catch a low branch, and began to climb the tree. It was easier than making my way up the side of a building, and took me high enough to where I could jump to the wide stone window ledge on the church's second floor. I broke off a twig from the oak tree and stuffed it into my pocket.

I edged along the window ledge to where the huge iron wheel hung, bolted to the stone of the wall. Climbing that was quicker than a ladder, though the iron spokes were startlingly cold against my still-wet hands.

I made my way to the top of the wheel, and from there pulled myself onto the flat peak of the highest roof in town. The fires were still dark for the most part, and most of the shouting had died down to sobs and a low murmur of urgent, hurried talk. I took the piece of shingle out of my mouth and blew on it until it was flaming again. Then I concentrated, muttered another binding, and held the oak twig above the flame. I looked out over the town and saw the glimmering coals dim even further.

A moment passed.

The oak tree below burst into sudden, brilliant flame. It flared brighter than a thousand torches as all its leaves caught fire at the same time.

In the sudden light I saw the draccus raise its head two streets away. It bellowed and blew a cloud of blue flame even as it started to run toward the fire. It turned a corner too quickly and caromed wildly into the wall of a shop, smashing through with little resistance.

It slowed as it approached the tree, blowing flame again and again. The leaves flared and faded quickly, leaving nothing but a thousand embers, making the tree look like an immense extinguished candelabrum.

In the dim red light, the draccus was hardly more than a shadow. But I could still see the beast's attention wander, now that the bright flames were gone. The massive wedge of a head swayed back and forth, back and forth. I cursed under my breath. It wasn't close enough….

Then the draccus huffed loud enough for me to hear from where I stood a hundred feet above. The head snapped around as it smelled the sweet smoke of the burning resin. It snuffed, grunted, and took another step toward the smoking bag of resin. It didn't show nearly the restraint it had earlier, and practically pounced on it, snapping up the smoldering sack in its great wide mouth.

I took a deep breath and shook my head, trying to clear away some of the sluggishness I felt. I had performed two rather substantial pieces of sympathy in quick succession and was feeling rather thickheaded because of it.

But as they say, third time pays for all. I broke my mind into two pieces, then, with some difficulty, into a third. Nothing less than a triple binding would do for this.

As the draccus worked its jaw, trying to swallow the sticky mass of resin, I fumbled in my travelsack for the heavy black scale, then brought the loden-stone out from my cloak. I spoke my bindings clearly and focused my Alar. I brought the scale and stone up in front of me until I could feel them tugging at each other.

I concentrated, focused.

I let go of the loden-stone. It shot toward the iron scale. Below my feet was an explosion of stone as the great iron wheel tore free from the church wall.

A ton of wrought iron fell. If anyone had been watching, they would have noticed that the wheel fell faster than gravity could account for. They would have noticed that it fell at an angle, almost as if it were drawn to the draccus. Almost as if Tehlu himself steered it toward the beast with a vengeful hand.

But there was no one there to see the truth of things. And there was no God guiding it. Only me.

L
OOKING DOWN I SAW the draccus pinned beneath the great wrought-iron wheel. It lay motionless and dark in front of the church, and despite the necessity of it all, I felt a pang of regret for killing the poor beast.

I had one long moment of exhausted pure relief. The autumn air was fresh and sweet despite the woodsmoke, and the stone roof of the church was cool under my feet. Feeling rather smug, I tucked the scale and loden-stone back into my travelsack. I drew a deep breath and looked out over the town I had saved.

Then I heard a grating noise and felt the roof shift beneath me. The front of the building sagged, crumbled, and I staggered as the world fell out from underneath me. I looked for a safe roof to leap to, but there were none close enough. I scrambled backward as the roof disintegrated into a mass of falling rubble.

Desperate, I leapt for the charred branches of the oak tree. I grabbed one, but it snapped under my weight. I tumbled through the branches, struck my head, and fell into darkness.

I
WOKE IN A BED. In a room. In an inn. More than that was not immediately clear to me. It felt exactly like someone had hit me in the head with a church.

I had been cleaned and bandaged. Very thoroughly bandaged. Someone had seen fit to treat all my recent injuries no manner how minor. I had white linen around my head, my chest, my knee, and one of my feet. Someone had even cleaned and wrapped the mild abrasions on my hands and the knife wound from three days ago when Ambrose's thugs had tried to kill me.

The lump on my head seemed to be the worst of the lot. It throbbed and left me dizzy when I lifted my head. Moving was a lesson in punitive anatomy. I swung my feet off the edge of the bed and grimaced:
deep tissue trauma to the medial-poloni in the right leg.
I sat up:
oblique strain to the cartilage between the lower ribs.
I got to my feet:
minor spraining of the sub…trans…damn, what was that called?
I pictured Arwyl's face, frowning behind his round spectacles.

My clothes had been washed and mended. I put them on, moving slowly to savor all the exciting messages my body was sending me. I was glad there wasn't a mirror in the room, knowing I must look completely battered. The bandage around my head was rather irritating, but I decided to leave it on. From the way things felt, it might be the only thing keeping my head from falling into several different pieces.

I went to the window. It was overcast, and in the grey light the town looked awful, soot and ash everywhere. The shop across the street had been smashed like a dollhouse under a soldier's boot. People moved about slowly, sifting through the wreckage. The clouds were thick enough that I couldn't tell what time it was.

I heard a faint rush of air as the door opened, and I turned to see a young woman standing in the doorway. Young, pretty, unassuming, the sort of girl that always worked at little inns like this: a Nellie. Nell. The sort of girl who spent her life in a perpetual flinch because the innkeeper had a temper and a sharp tongue and wasn't afraid to show her the back of his hand. She gaped at me, obviously surprised that I was out of bed.

“Was anyone killed?” I asked.

She shook her head. “The Liram boy got his arm broke pretty bad. And some folk got burned and such…” I felt my whole body relax. “You shouldn't be up, sir. Doctor said you weren't likely to wake up at all. You should rest.”

“Is…has my cousin come back to town?” I asked. “The girl who was out at the Mauthen farm. Is she here too?”

The young woman shook her head. “It's just you, sir.”

“What time is it?”

“Supper's not quite ready, sir. But I can bring you something if you like.”

My travelsack had been left by the side of the bed. I lifted it up onto my shoulder, it felt odd with nothing inside except the scale and loden-stone. I looked around for my boots until I remembered I'd kicked them off to get better traction running around the rooftops last night.

I left the room with the girl trailing behind me and headed down to the common room. It was the same fellow behind the bar as before, still wearing his scowl.

I walked up to him. “My cousin,” I said. “Is she in town?”

The barman turned the scowl toward the doorway behind me as the young girl emerged. “Nell, what in God's hell are you doing letting him up? I swear you haven't got the sense God gave a dog.”

So her name really was Nell. I would have found that amusing under different circumstances.

He turned to me and gave a smile that was really just a different sort of scowl. “Lord boy, does your face hurt? It's killing me.” He chortled at his own joke.

I glared at him. “I asked about my cousin.”

He shook his head. “She hasn't come back. Good riddance to bad luck, I say.”

“Bring me bread, fruit, and whatever meat you have ready in the back,” I said. “And a bottle of Avennish fruit wine. Strawberry if you have it.”

He leaned up against the bar and raised an eyebrow at me. His scowl reshaped itself into a small, patronizing smile. “No sense rushing about, son. The constable will be wanting to talk to you now that you're up.”

I clenched my teeth against my first choice of words and took a deep breath. “Listen, I've had an exceptionally irritating couple of days, my head hurts in ways you don't have the full wit to understand, and I have a friend who might be in trouble.” I stared at him, icy in my calm. “I have no desire to have things turn unpleasant. So I am asking you, kindly, to get me what I asked for.” I brought out my purse. “Please.”

He looked at me, anger slowly bubbling up onto his face. “You mouthy little swaggercock. If you don't show me a little respect, I'll sit you down and tie you to a chair until the constable comes.”

I tossed an iron drab onto the bar, keeping another clenched tight in my fist.

He scowled at it. “What's that?”

I concentrated and felt a chill begin to bleed up my arm. “That is your tip,” I said as a thin curl of smoke began to curl up from the drab. “For your quick and courteous service.”

The varnish around the drab began to bubble and char in a black ring around the piece of iron. The man stared at it, mute and horrified.

“Now fetch me what I asked for,” I said, looking him in the eye. “And a skin of water too. Or I will burn this place down around your ears and dance among the ashes and your charred, sticky bones.”

 

I came to the top of the greystone hill with my travelsack full. I was barefoot, out of breath, and my head was throbbing. Denna was nowhere to be seen.

Making a quick search of the area, I found all my scattered possessions where I'd left them. Both blankets. The waterskin was mostly empty but other than that, everything was here. Denna might have just stepped away for a call of nature.

I waited. I waited for longer than was entirely sensible. Then I called for her, softly at first, then louder, though my head throbbed when I shouted. Finally I just sat. All I could think about was Denna waking alone, aching, thirsty, and disoriented. What must she have thought?

I ate a little then, trying to think of what I could do next. I considered opening the bottle of wine, but knew it was a bad idea, as I undoubtedly had a mild concussion. I fought off the irrational worry that Denna might have wandered into the woods in a delirium, and that I should go look for her. I considered lighting a fire, so she would see it and come back….

But no. I knew she was simply gone. She woke, saw that I wasn't there, and left. She had said it herself when we left the inn in Trebon.
I leave where I'm not wanted. The rest I can make up as I go.
Did she think I had abandoned her?

Regardless, I knew in my bones that she was long gone from here. I packed up my travelsack. Then, just in case I was wrong, I wrote a note explaining what had happened and that I would wait for her in Trebon for a day. I used a piece of coal to write her name on one of the greystones, then drew an arrow down to where I left all the food I had brought, a bottle of water, and one of the blankets.

Then I left. My mood was not a pleasant one. My thoughts were not gentle or kind.

 

When I came back to Trebon, dusk was closing over the city. I made my way onto the rooftops with a little more care than usual. I wouldn't be able to trust my balance until my head had a few days to mend itself.

Still it was no great feat to make it to the roof of the inn where I collected my boots. From this vantage, in the dim light, the town looked grim. The front half of the church had completely collapsed and nearly a third of the town had been scarred by fire. Some buildings were merely singed, but others were little more than ash and cinders. Despite my best efforts, the fire must have raged out of control after I was knocked unconscious.

I looked to the north and saw the peak of the greystone hill. I hoped to see the flicker of a fire, but there was nothing, of course.

I made my way over to the flat roof of the town hall and climbed the ladder to the cistern. It was almost empty. A few feet of water rippled near the bottom, far below where my knife pinned a charred shingle to the wall. That explained the state the town was in. When the water level had dropped below my makeshift sygaldry, the fire had flared up again. Still, it had slowed things down. If not for that, there might not be any town left at all.

Back at the inn a great many somber, sooty people were gathering to drink and gossip. My scowling friend was nowhere to be seen, but a cluster of folk were gathered around the bar, excitedly discussing something they saw there.

The mayor and constable were there too. As soon as they spotted me, they rushed me into a private room to talk.

I was tight-lipped and grim, and, after the events of the last several days, not terribly intimidated by the authority of two paunchy old men. They could tell, and that made them nervous. I had a headache and didn't feel like explaining myself, and was quite comfortable tolerating an uncomfortable silence. Because of this, they talked quite a bit, and in asking their own questions, they told me most of what I wanted to know.

The town's injuries were blessedly minor. Because it had been the harvest festival, no one had been caught sleeping. There were a lot of bruises, singed hair, and folk that had breathed more smoke than was good for them, but aside from a few bad burns and the fellow whose arm had been crushed by a falling timber, I looked to have gotten the worst of it.

They knew beyond all certainty that the draccus was a demon. A huge black demon breathing fire and poison. If there had been any slim sliver of doubt as to that fact, it had been laid to rest when the beast had been struck down by Tehlu's own iron.

It was also agreed upon that the demon beast had been responsible for the destruction of the Mauthen farm. A reasonable conclusion despite the fact that it was dead wrong. Trying to convince them of anything else would be a pointless waste of my time.

I had been found unconscious atop the iron wheel that had killed the demon. The local sawbone doctor had patched me up as best he could, and, unfamiliar with the remarkable thickness of my skull, expressed serious doubts as to whether or not I would ever wake.

At first the general opinion was that I was merely an unlucky bystander, or that I had somehow pried the wheel off the church. However, my miraculous recovery combined with the fact that I had charred a hole into the bar downstairs encouraged people to finally take notice of what a young boy and an old widow had been saying all day: that when the old oak had gone up like a torch, they had seen someone standing on the roof of the church. He was lit by the fire below. His arms were raised in front of him, almost as if he were praying….

Eventually the mayor and constable ran out of things to say to fill the silence, and merely sat there looking anxiously back and forth from me to each other.

It occurred to me they didn't see a penniless, ragged boy sitting across from them. They saw a mysterious battered figure who had killed a demon. I saw no reason to dissuade them. In fact it was high time I caught a piece of luck in this business. If they considered me some sort of hero or holy man, it gave me useful leverage.

“What did you do with the demon's body?” I asked and watched them relax. Until this point I had barely spoken a dozen words, responding to most of their tentative questions with grim silence.

“No worry about that, sir,” the constable said. “We knew what to do with it.”

My stomach knotted, and I knew before they told me: they'd burned and buried it. The creature was a scientific marvel, and they had burned and buried it like trash. I knew naturalist scrivs in the Archives who would have cut off their hands to study such a rare creature. I had even hoped, deep in my heart, that bringing such an opportunity to their attention might win me my way back into the Archives.

And the scales and bones. Hundreds of pounds of denatured iron that alchemists would have fought over….

The mayor nodded eagerly and singsonged, “Dig a pit that's ten by two. Ash and elm and rowan too.” He cleared his throat. “Though it had to be a bigger hole than that, of course. Everyone took a turn to get it done as quickly as possible.” He held up his hand, proudly displaying a set of fresh blisters.

I closed my eyes and fought down the urge to throw things around the room and curse them in eight languages. That explained why the town was still in such a sorry state. Everyone had been busy burning and burying a creature worth a king's ransom.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it. I doubted my new reputation would be enough to protect me if they caught me trying to dig it up. “The girl that survived the Mauthen wedding,” I said. “Has anyone seen her today?”

The mayor looked at the constable questioningly. “Not that I've heard. Do you think she was connected to the beast in some way?”

“What?” the question was so absurd I didn't understand it at first. “No! Don't be ridiculous.” I scowled at them. The last thing I needed was to somehow implicate Denna in all this. “She was helping me in my work.” I said, careful to keep things ambiguous.

The mayor glared at the constable, then looked back to me. “Is your…work finished here?” He asked carefully, as if afraid of giving offense. “I certainly don't mean to pry into your affairs…but…” He licked his lips nervously. “Why did this happen? Are we safe?”

“You're as safe as I can make you,” I said ambiguously. It sounded like a heroic thing to say. If all I was going to gain from this was a bit of reputation, I might as well make sure it was the right sort.

Then I had an idea. “To be certain of your safety, I need one thing.” I leaned forward in my chair, lacing my fingers together. “I need to know what Mauthen dug up on Barrow Hill.”

I saw them look at each other, thinking:
How does he know about that?