Chapter 20 — The First Roofs

Chapter 20: Chapter 20 — The First Roofs

Chapter 20 — The First Roofs

Edwin had imagined Alvion many times. The smell surprised him most.

The capital smelled of coal smoke, rain, horse dung and something sharp from the workshops along the river. Its pale walls stood higher than Griffin City’s, and narrow lines across the stone glowed whenever the clouds darkened. Beyond them rose the academy towers.

Edwin’s sister leaned halfway out of the hired carriage.

"They don’t float," she said, sounding disappointed.

"I told you they stood on the ground like every other tower."

"No, you didn’t. You let me believe it for the entire journey."

She had spent most of the journey expecting towers hanging in the sky, and Edwin had let her enjoy the idea. One tower leaned farther than any building should. Bands of blue light circled its upper floors, and two unsupported bridges crossed to the neighboring roofs.

Their mother caught the back of the girl’s coat.

"Sit properly before a wagon takes your head off."

"I was only looking at the academy."

"Then look through the window like a sensible person."

Edwin smiled despite himself. His mother caught him and smiled too, though hers faded quickly.

The journey from Varenne had taken longer than Magister Deepwell predicted. Rain, a broken wheel and a border dispute had delayed the caravan.

Christopher’s wooden money box was now nearly half empty. It had paid for food when the caravan’s promised meals became thin soup, bought his sister a proper winter cloak and covered four nights at an inn after Magister Deepwell’s contact failed to meet them. They could have reached Alvion without it, but they would have arrived hungry and owing money.

Edwin disliked how accurately Christopher had guessed that.

The carriage stopped outside a narrow brick house on a crowded street west of the academy. A woman in a gray dress waited beneath the doorway, the wife of the Varenne merchant who had agreed to employ Edwin’s mother.

Magister Deepwell climbed down first.

"You have one hour to settle your family," he told Edwin.

"One hour for what?"

"To help them unload and make certain your family is settled."

"And what happens after that?"

"You fail an entrance examination."

Edwin stared at him.

"If you wanted me to fail, why bring me across two kingdoms?"

"Confidence encourages laziness. Fear encourages preparation."

"You complained that I studied during the journey."

"You read in a moving carriage until you vomited on my boots."

"It happened once, and I apologized."

"They were good boots before you ruined them."

Magister Deepwell walked away before Edwin could answer.

The rooms were smaller than promised. Edwin’s mother would share one with his sister, while he slept behind a curtain beside the kitchen until the academy assigned him a room.

His mother examined the pantry, stove and household account books waiting on the table.

"This will do," she said.

It was the same voice she had used when Gerard brought home a tent with a hole burned through the roof and claimed he could repair it.

Edwin placed the last chest beside her bed. "You don’t have to stay if the merchant treats you poorly."

"A small room is not an emergency. Keep that money for one."

His sister sat on the bed and made it creak. "What if it breaks?"

"Then it becomes an emergency," their mother said.

Edwin checked the bedframe before leaving.

Magister Deepwell waited at the end of the street, dry despite the rain. Water bent around the old mage’s shoulders and struck the pavement behind him. Edwin had watched him do it throughout the journey and still could not identify the spell.

"Is your family settled?" Deepwell asked.

"For now. The rooms are smaller than the merchant promised."

"That’s usually how settling works."

They joined the students approaching the academy district. Most wore dark coats with colored cords, and some arrived in carriages bearing unfamiliar family marks.

The academy’s outer gate stood open between two square towers. Edwin felt the wards before he saw their light; Mana pressed against his skin like the air before a storm, growing stronger when he crossed the threshold, and he stopped beneath the arch.

"Keep walking. The ward is measuring you while you stand beneath it," Deepwell said.

"How many formations are in the gate?"

"More than you can count before the gate closes on your heels."

"I can already feel seven separate formations."

Deepwell turned. The old mage studied him in silence.

"Eight," he said after a moment. "The eighth is dormant."

Edwin followed him into the courtyard.

The examination hall contained nearly eighty applicants. Edwin was the only one wearing a mended Varenne coat. A girl near the front used a floating hand of pale light to hold her papers.

Edwin watched the spell.

"Showmanship," Deepwell muttered.

"Can you teach me to make a hand like that?"

"Yes, once you can control enough Mana to keep the fingers from collapsing."

"Then it cannot be entirely useless."

"I said showmanship, not uselessness."

At registration, a clerk examined Gerard’s service certificate and Magister Deepwell’s sponsorship letter. The sponsorship covered the examination and Edwin’s first year of lessons; books, materials and housing remained his responsibility. She handed him a wooden token marked forty-seven.

The first test used an Essence Crystal larger than Edwin’s fist. He placed both hands around it and reached for the faint mana held inside. His earliest lessons had involved feeling the same energy in pebbles no larger than a fingernail.

The crystal brightened at once.

"Slowly," the examiner warned.

Edwin tried. The light climbed through the crystal until every flaw inside it shone blue-white, and several applicants nearby turned to look.

The examiner removed the crystal from his hands.

"Enough. Release the crystal slowly."

"Did I put too much Mana into it?"

"No. I stopped you before you did."

She wrote three lines on his record and covered them with her palm when Edwin tried to read upside down.

The Mental Capacity test forced him to hold five changing symbols in his mind while answering questions. By the final series, pressure throbbed behind his eyes, but he completed it conscious.

The final test took place in a smaller chamber. Six rods of different materials surrounded a clear sphere. Edwin recognized iron, copper, glass and wood, but could not identify the dark stone or the white metal.

"Touch the sphere and meditate as you were taught," said the third examiner.

Edwin closed his eyes.

Mana gathered around the rods. Heat brushed one hand, cold crept along the other, and another current made the hair rise along his arms.

The sphere rang. Edwin opened his eyes. Light moved through several rods before gathering most strongly in one, and the examiner’s expression changed, though she turned the slate away before writing.

Magister Deepwell stood behind her.

"Run the affinity test again," he said.

"The result is already clear, Magister," the examiner replied.

"Test him again before you enter the result," the examiner said.

"This is my examination room, and the first result was valid."

"Then confirm it in your examination room."

She looked ready to throw him out. Instead, she reset the rods.

The second result matched the first. Deepwell smiled.

In four years of lessons, Edwin had rarely seen Deepwell smile. It worried him more than a frown.

"What does the result mean?" Edwin asked.

"It means I was right to bring you here."

"Right about which part?"

"Several things. You can wait until tomorrow to hear all of them."

"At least tell me which affinity was strongest."

The examiner tapped the slate. "You passed. Come back tomorrow for the full result and your first course."

Edwin stared at her.

"After three tests, that is all you will tell me?"

"Would you rather I tell you that you failed?"

"No, but I expected more than one sentence."

"Then move. There are twenty-three applicants waiting."

Outside the chamber, Deepwell took Edwin’s record to the admissions desk. The clerk who had questioned Gerard’s certificate read it, then sat straighter.

"The western residence has two open rooms," she said.

"One," Deepwell replied. "He needs the other allowance for books."

"The scholarship committee has not approved—"

"They will approve it once they read his examination record."

"The committee meets next month."

"Then you may explain why an applicant with these results slept in a kitchen for a month."

"Temporary residence for seven days," she said. "Nothing more until the committee rules."

Deepwell accepted before she changed her mind.

They left the hall with a room token, a list of required books and an estimated cost that consumed most of what remained in Christopher’s box.

"Talent is expensive," Deepwell said.

"I thought talent was the part I already had."

"Learning how to use it is expensive."

Edwin folded his list. His father had planned to bring him here, and Christopher had paid for the journey Gerard never lived to see. Edwin had passed on his own talent.

That evening, he returned to the brick house and found his mother working through the merchant family’s accounts. His sister had drawn the leaning academy tower on a scrap of wrapping paper and made it float several feet above the city.

"Was it terrible?" his mother asked.

"Yes. It was worse than any lesson Deepwell gave me on the road."

Her hand stopped over the ledger.

"I passed."

His sister shouted loudly enough for the woman upstairs to stamp on the floor.

Their mother closed her eyes. Edwin could not tell whether she was laughing or crying until she stood and pulled him against her.

Later, after they slept, Edwin sat at the kitchen table with a borrowed pen and began a letter.

Christopher,

I reached Alvion. The towers do not float, although one of them looks ready to fall over. My sister is disappointed. I passed the academy examination. Magister Deepwell has become unbearable about being right.

Edwin stopped. He did not know whether Christopher had reached Dragonwatch or whether a courier would travel beyond Northgate. He considered asking if the walls had actually fallen, but the joke no longer seemed funny.

He wrote instead:

Mother and my sister are safe. The money helped more than I wanted it to. I will repay you when I can.

He crossed out the last sentence. Christopher had told him not to.

Edwin started again beneath it.

I will write after my first lesson. You had better answer.

He folded the letter and addressed it to Baron Christopher Drake at Dragonwatch, Northern Varenne. The title still looked strange.

Outside the kitchen window, the academy towers shone above the rooftops. Edwin watched until the candle burned low, then went to sleep behind the kitchen curtain. His course and complete affinity result would be waiting in the morning, along with the cost of every book he would need.

The temporary gate looked terrible. Two empty wagons stood sideways across Dragonwatch’s entrance. Workers had filled the spaces beneath them with stones, driven stakes into the road and chained both frames to iron rings in the walls, with heavy beams reinforcing the wheels from behind.

Owen Wren promised only that it would stop riders from charging straight into the courtyard. An army would tear it apart.

Christopher stood beneath the gate arch while rainwater dripped from the empty hinges above him.

"How quickly can we build proper doors?" he asked.

The mason sized up the opening. "With seasoned oak, enough iron and men who have done it before?"

"With what we have, my lord. It will close, but it won’t stop a serious attack."

"Not quickly. We need hinges, seasoned timber and more men who know the work."

Christopher had begun to recognize that answer.

"Then improve this entrance first. The rest can wait."

"That we can do with the timber already inside the walls."

Owen called for another beam. Bram lifted one end before two workers reached it, then waited patiently while they took the other. He could have carried it alone, but the narrow space between the wagons required someone to guide him.

After three nights, the fifty farming families still filled two barracks and a long common hall. The craftsmen and their relatives occupied smaller rooms near their work. Joan Carter stayed with Meg and Elsie in the same building as Martha and the kitchen workers.

It was crowded, but shared fires kept the barracks warm. Outside the walls, the abandoned settlement offered dozens of houses, and nearly all of them were useless. Roofs had collapsed beneath old snow. Floors sagged over wet cellars. Doors, shutters and anything worth burning had disappeared years ago.

Owen believed several houses could be repaired, but he would not let anyone sleep in them yet.

Christopher continued sleeping in the small stone house near the inner castle. Its roof leaked in two places instead of seven after the carpenters worked on it. That qualified as improvement.

The inner castle occupied much of the northern half of the stronghold behind its own thick wall. Its gate rose above the surrounding buildings, and broad ramps climbed toward towers with open platforms.

They had found no fresh footprints near the inner gate and no sign that the bandits had entered it. One smaller door had opened several inches before grinding against fallen stone, and Godfrey ordered it shut again. Exploring the castle would take more people, ropes, lamps and time.

Until then, two apprentices watched the gate at all hours.

The unchecked castle troubled Christopher. The bandit smoke beyond the western ridge troubled him more.

Simon and Adam had not returned.

"They were told they could remain out for two nights," Godfrey reminded him.

"This is already the second time you have checked them."

"It is morning, my lord. Nothing has had time to disappear."

"I know what time it is. I wanted to see whether the wagons survived the night."

Godfrey gave him a patient look. "Then wait until evening."

Waiting left Christopher time to find more problems. The well had been cleared, but Mabel still required its water to be boiled. The forge had a roof again, and the driest storehouse held their remaining supplies.

The barracks took most of the work. Bedrolls covered nearly every part of the floor, and families hung blankets between sleeping spaces.

The repaired hearth made the building warm enough for children to remove their coats.

Meg sat near it with Elsie. Both girls were helping Joan pull loose threads from an old blanket. Bram occupied a place against the far wall, where two ordinary bedrolls had been joined beneath him.

"Is it warmer?" Christopher asked Joan.

"Much warmer, my lord," she said. "It is still crowded, but the children slept."

"Could some families move into the houses outside the barracks?"

"Most still need roofs, my lord."

Meg looked up from the blanket. "Are we staying here?"

"For now. We will spread the families out once the nearest houses are safe."

"Mother said we might have a house."

Joan closed her eyes briefly. "I said later."

"You will," Christopher told Meg. "After we make one safe."

"Which house will we use?"

"I don’t know yet. Owen must tell us which roofs will hold."

She considered this and returned to pulling thread, asking nothing further about when.

By noon, the rain stopped. Walter took three apprentices beyond the eastern wall and returned with six rabbits. Christopher sent Ivo the next day so both Bronze Knights would not leave Dragonwatch together.

The sky beyond the ridge remained clear.

Simon and Adam returned late that afternoon.

The gate guards nearly shot Adam when he approached through the trees with his hood pulled low. Simon came behind him, muddy to the knees and carrying a piece of blackened wood.

They ate before giving their report. Godfrey insisted on it. Christopher waited in the temporary house with Walter, Ivo and Bennet while Martha put bowls in front of the scouts.

Simon finished first.

"Black Hollow exists," he said.

"At least we now know the prisoners gave us a real place," Bennet replied.

Adam scraped the bottom of his bowl. "It would be more encouraging if it were empty."

Simon placed the blackened wood on the table. It had been cut flat on one side and bore the remains of an old maker’s mark.

"The settlement lies west of the ridge in a narrow hollow. Twenty-two buildings still have roofs. A timber wall covers the open southern approach. The other sides use the slopes and old charcoal pits."

Godfrey leaned over the rough map Simon began drawing.

"How many people did you count inside the camp?"

"Forty-six that we counted," Simon said. "There are probably more."

"How many of them looked like fighters?"

"At least twenty who carried weapons while inside the camp. Seven moved like ranked men. One may be Bronze."

"You could not tell whether they were prisoners?"

"He knocked another man down from ten paces during training. I didn’t see the color of the Essence clearly."

Walter grunted. "Bronze."

"The other six?" Godfrey asked.

"Black Iron, unless they were hiding their strength."

The prisoners had told the truth about that much.

Christopher studied the marks representing the buildings. "What about the rest?"

"Some cook, repair clothes and care for animals. We saw three skinning deer and scraping hides. Two knew what they were doing." Simon pointed to a cluster near the northern slope. "There were also people kept in an old storage yard. Eight, maybe ten. Guards brought them out to carry water and wood."

"Prisoners?" Christopher asked.

"The guards treated them like prisoners."

Adam finally pushed his empty bowl away. "One tried to speak to a woman near the well. A guard struck him and sent him back."

Hunters, camp workers and captives — people Dragonwatch needed might be inside Black Hollow, and rescuing them would be difficult.

"Did you see the three who escaped Dragonwatch?" Godfrey asked.

"Reached the camp yesterday morning," Simon said. "The watch doubled afterward. Two riders left east before noon. Another went south."

"Do you think they were looking for our scouts?"

"Or warning their other posts."

Bennet turned to Christopher. "If Black Hollow has nearly fifty people, should we send word to Northgate?"

"A messenger would take weeks to go and return," Godfrey said. "If Northgate sends anyone."

"Do any of the markings belong to House Bell?"

"Closer, but still too far. The bandits will move before help arrives."

Christopher rubbed the edge of the table. "Are they moving now?"

"They packed enough to leave quickly," Adam said. "The rest is still in the camp."

"Or preparing to attack," Walter said.

The room became quiet.

Christopher had wanted another week: proper doors at the gate, more roofs, a safe well, enough time to search the inner castle and move the families out of the crowded barracks. The escaped bandits had taken that time with them.

"What happens if we wait and strengthen Dragonwatch first?" he asked.

Godfrey answered. "They scatter, or they choose when to come here. We would spend every day guarding woodcutters, water wagons and farmers from men who know the surrounding land better than we do."

"And what changes if we attack them now?"

"We take the choice from them."

"How many fighters would you need for the attack?"

Godfrey considered the map. "Walter. Eight apprentices, including Simon and Adam. You remain here."

Christopher looked at him. "No."

"You’re a Black Iron Knight who has trained most of his life," Godfrey said. "You’re also seventeen, recently injured, and responsible for every person inside these walls."

"There are prisoners at Black Hollow. If some surrender, someone has to decide what happens to them."

"I can bring the apprentices back safely once the camp falls."

"And if the camp contains people who claim they were forced to help? If some bandits offer information or service? Are you making those decisions for Dragonwatch?"

Godfrey’s mouth flattened.

Christopher continued before courage abandoned him. "I stay behind you. If you tell me to run, I run."

Walter coughed into one hand. It might have hidden a laugh.

Godfrey ignored him. "You remembered."

"I did hear you. I am still going."

"Then you come, but you remain behind me once the fighting starts."

Ivo would remain at Dragonwatch with four apprentices. The other guards and able settlers would hold the walls. The temporary gate could be opened by moving one wagon and closed again after the attack party left.

Bennet waited until Godfrey and the Knights began discussing food and weapons.

"My lord," he said quietly, "you are taking Dragonwatch’s only Silver Knight."

"I know. Dragonwatch will still have Walter and Ivo."

"If this is a trap—"

"Black Hollow will remain a threat even if he stays here."

Bennet looked unhappy. Christopher had no better answer to give him.

Work continued into the evening. Spears were checked. Food was packed. Mabel prepared bandages and argued until Godfrey allowed her to accompany them; her place was behind the fighters, but Black Hollow held captives who might already be injured.

Before sleeping, Christopher walked once around the inner courtyard. Fires glowed through the barracks windows. Beyond them, the dark mass of the inner castle rose above Dragonwatch, its great gate barred and its towers empty. He returned to the temporary house and slept badly.

An hour before dawn, the wagon blocking Dragonwatch’s gate rolled aside.

Godfrey led the column through first. Walter followed with the eight apprentices and Mabel. Christopher rode behind them with Edmund’s sword at his side.

Ivo stood beneath the arch.

"Bring back the Silver Knight," he told Christopher.

"I thought I was supposed to bring myself back."

"Bring Christopher back as well," Bram added.

The wagon rolled into place again after they passed. Timber scraped stone, sealing the families behind the best barrier Dragonwatch could build in three days.

Ahead, the western ridge was a black shape against the paling sky.