Dave Luckett - The Girl The Apprentice And The Dogs Of Iron

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The Girl, The Apprentice, And The Dogs Of Iron

By Dave Luckett

Book Two of the Rhianna Chronicles

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was

reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received

any payment for this "stripped book."

No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,

without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Permissions

Department, Scholastic Australia,

P.O. Box 579, Lindfield, New South Wales, Australia 2070.

ISBN 0-439-41188-2

Originally published in Australia in 2002 by Omnibus Books under the title Rhianna and the Dogs of

Iron.

arrangement with Omnibus Books, an imprint of Scholastic Australia.

SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

4 5 6 7 8 9/0

Printed in the U.S.A.

First American edition, February 2004

---

To Penny, Dyan, and Celia, who always think I can do better, and who are invariably right.

---

Chapter 1

The Clumsy Ones believed that the night was quiet, thought Eriseth. They were wrong, of course. In

truth, the dark was full of sound. Every tree whispered in its own special voice. The oaks creaked in the

chill night breeze, their bare twigs slithering gently over one another, and sounding quite different from the

dry tap-tap of the alders, or the muted sigh of the willows, or the low rush of the wind in the elms, like

distant water.

There were animal noises, too, scurryings and stealthy movements in the leaf litter on the forest floor.

Even the flight of the owl could be heard, the almost silent bird that her people called avanissa—that is,

darkhunter. It could only be heard if you had the ears to hear it, of course.

Eriseth could hear snowflakes falling; she could hear the field mice twitching in their winter sleep among

the roots of the thicket where she crouched. The first houses of the village were a good four hundred

paces away down the slope, but she heard the animals that the Clumsy Ones kept: the sleepy clucking of

fowls, the bleating of sheep in the folds. Beyond, where the sloping land funneled down the valley to meet

a dark line that cut off the winter stars, she could hear the drop and wash of the sea.

Eriseth gripped her bow a little tighter. She was frightened, she realized. She told herself that it was silly,

that the forest was the same here as in her Home Grove. Still the feeling stayed. Something was watching

her. She shook herself. Nonsense. It was just the open ground.

The trees of this last patch of woods ended here, a sudden stop as though a line had been drawn across

the hill. Beyond were the cleared and plowed fields of the Clumsy Ones. They lay bare under the cold

moon, frost riming the furrows. The forest that was Eriseth's home—her protector, and the provider for

her people—was behind her, a hundred leagues of trees in numbers beyond counting. Eriseth's people,

the Eldra, knew them all.

And now she had to leave the trees behind. Never before had she been out of their shelter. She had

made this last stage of her journey at night, crossing the outlying fields and pastures with caution, and now

she studied the open ground before her uneasily. Open ground, all bare beneath the stars, was exposed

and dangerous. The Eldra avoided such places—for land which did not support trees did not support the

Eldra, either.

But there was no choice now. Eriseth had come to the village of the Clumsy Ones alone, with a letter to

deliver to a person she had never seen. The letter was a square of squirrel parchment, the writing burned

in with a glowing needle, the square folded and sealed with beeswax. She touched her fingers to it where

it was tucked safely under her left arm. The name on the parchment was one she had never heard before,

but it was a good name, a noble name—Serenir, The Pole Star, as the Clumsy Ones would call it. The

letter was for him. He was a magic worker.

He, thought Eriseth, in wonder. A magic worker, and a man. Arwenna, the Wisewoman who had written

the letter, had told her that men worked magic, among the Clumsy Ones. Among the Eldra only women

had magic, and they did not work it. It was part of them. You might as well say that they worked at

breathing, or at standing up, or at singing. People who had to work at something couldn't be much good

at it, thought Eriseth.

She sighed. Well, she wasn't. She had no magic at all, it seemed. The Clumsy Ones were her last chance.

She might learn their ways. Their work.

The Clumsy Ones were great workers. Eriseth looked down the moonlit slope at the open fields they had

made from the forest. She disliked the sight. The Eldra never felled a tree. The forest was their home—it

would be like hacking down their own doorposts. But the Clumsy Ones cleared the forest, plowed the

ground and planted crops. Eriseth shuddered. The Clumsy Ones could work, all right, but they made of

the earth a thing to be used, with iron axes to scrape it bare and iron plowshares to scar it, so it might

grow the captive crops that were their food.

And Eriseth had to go to them. She glanced upwards at the moon and knew that dawn was not far off.

Sighing, she started down the slope towards the houses, slinging her bow over her shoulder.

She had gone into the waning moonlight, her small figure smaller still with distance, when another hooded

shadow parted from the darkness under the trees. It watched her, peering about, uneasy, just as she had

been. Like part of the darkness it waited, and then it followed her, silent as smoke, down the slope

towards the village. Even the dogs heard nothing, and it was as if the starlight flowed around and missed

it.

---

On winter mornings, Loys Wildwood rose before the sun to fire up his forge. It would need to burn for

an hour before it was fit to work iron, and the daylight would be short and gray. He had to make use of

such hours of light as he had. Normally, the fire would be a job for an apprentice, not the master smith,

but Loys had no apprentice. And, in truth, he enjoyed this hour before the rising of the sun: the bite of the

crisp, cold air and the slow warming of the forge in the red glow.

He was working the bellows, watching the play of the flames, and thinking of the day's work. Rough iron

billets were stacked by the wall, delivered yesterday from the ship that was still tied up to the pier at the

bottom of the single village street. It might be best to begin the day by working some of the billets into bar

iron. Then there were tools to be reforged. Already farmers were bringing in their spades and hoes to be

repaired, ready for the work of ditching that would be needed with the thaw. Spring was not far away.

Soon he would be making plowshares for the spring plowing...

The door creaked.

Loys knew at once that it was no farmer, no trader. No fisher, either. Those people rose early, but their

footsteps were clear and open, careless. This caller's feet made no sound he could hear. In this last hour

of the night, it was sometimes best not to question the folk that went abroad, and Loys knew that. He

was no worker of magic himself, for he had no talent in that direction and his trade was with cold iron,

but he knew what magic was.

"Welcome," he said, not turning around. "A cold morning. Warm yourself at my fire."

Now, there is magic and there is magic. Loys knew no spells, no chants, no runes or powers or charms.

But was it by accident that he had used the polite greeting that the Eldra used themselves, between

hunters chancemet in the forest?

Still there were no footsteps, and the waft of his visitor's passage was slight, so little that it could not be

heard under the huff of the bellows. But there was a dark movement at the limit of his sight where the

bench ran along the wall, and Loys turned his head away, again polite by the measure of the Eldra, not to

look directly at his visitor.

Nor does one question a guest. Loys raked his fire into a mound of glowing charcoal and placed a

pannikin of water on it. A cup of tansy tea would give heart to the raw morning. Only when it was made,

the fragrant steam scenting the warm firelight of the forge, did he turn to offer it.

He was a man of easy ways, Loys Wildwood, the smith of Smallhaven, and gentle, for all his size and

strength. One way and another, he had seen much in his life already. So in the first place he recognized

his caller's kind, and in the second place he did not start and look uneasy. He offered the tea, speaking

gently, and was not surprised that it was at first politely refused and then gratefully accepted, for this, too,

was courtesy.

You might have taken her, perhaps, for a small girl in a hooded cape, gray-green goatswool as it had

come from the fleece. Indeed, she was young for the Eldra—about the same as a ten-year-old among

the Clumsy Ones, though she might have had many more years than that. The Eldra lived long lives, those

of them that saw out their span.

And she was small. The Eldra could grow tall, and perhaps she would yet, but they were fine of bone

and spare of body, with eyes large in a sharp face and ears that came to long, delicate points. Her hair

was dark honey color, cropped around her face, but picking up coppery lights from the glowing forge.

Loys glanced at the doorway, and there, as he had expected, her bow was leaning. It was a tall, straight

ash staff, straight because it was unstrung. This was a courtesy, too, not to bring a weapon into the

house, a sign of trust. He sipped his tea gravely and said nothing, for it is not polite to ask a guest her

business until she speaks of it herself.

She sipped her tea and set it aside, and then reached into her tunic, under the cape. A crackling, and she

had brought out a letter, a sheet of parchment folded corners-to-center and sealed with wax. She put it

into his hands, and Loys turned it over. He could read, but the name, written plain on the fold, meant

nothing to him: Serenir. He frowned.

"I know nobody of this name, Lady," he said. He half expected that she would not reply, for few among

the Eldra spoke the Hard Tongue, but she tilted her head and answered him.

"It is the same as the Pole Star, in your speech. He is a great maker of magic. A wizard." Her accent was

like a bell, open, clear, but with a ring and a rhythm of its own.

He considered. "Pole Star? The North Star, that the Watchers guard and the Dog points out?"

She nodded. "The Hunters and the Hound, yes."

"Then I do know him. His name—at least, the name we call him—is Northstar, Antheus Northstar. And

you have come to the right place, for he is a guest in my house. Also a guest in my house."

She cocked her head, appreciating the last, and then looked around. "Is he here now?" she asked, after a

pause.

Loys hid a smile. "He is at my house, and still abed, I think. This is my forge, my place of work."

Her wide eyes widened farther. It was strange to one of the Eldra to be within a building at all. Stranger

yet to be told that a man might have more than one building, for more than one purpose.

Loys banked his fire and fed it with more charcoal, to burn evenly while he was away. He handed the

letter back to her. "If you will follow, I will take you to him," he said.

She followed. And a shadow followed them both.

---

Meg Wildwood was surprised to see her husband back so soon from the forge, and more surprised still

when he ushered in another guest. She was just having breakfast herself with her daughter, Rhianna, and

Rhianna's Master, the Magister Antheus Northstar. Loys had been wrong to think that the Magister

would still be asleep. Still, you would think that the Mage on the Queen's Council was far too important a

person to be sitting in the kitchen of a village smith, or to be eating ordinary oat porridge for breakfast, no

matter how clean and comfortable the kitchen, or good the porridge. But Magister Northstar never gave

himself airs. He was deep in discussion with his apprentice as the smith entered.

"...Yes, indeed, the new moon is certainly the best time for casting water spells, but I believe that is

because it's the time of the spring tide, the greatest height of the waters, not simply the phase of the

moon... eh?"

Rhianna was looking straight past him. He swung around, saw who was entering, and stood politely. He

was only a small man, and he wasn't wearing his tall wizard's hat inside the house, so he looked rather

ordinary, despite his robe with the stars and his long white beard. At least, he looked rather ordinary until

you saw his eyes, faded blue like an autumn sky, and as deep.

Rhianna stood, too, a girl ten or eleven years old, brown-haired, with a freckled nose. Her book lay

open on the table with a drawing on the uppermost page, a careful sketch of an icicle, showing how it

broke sunlight into colors. Rhianna was studying magic, but in her own way, the way of the Wild

Magic—that is, the magic that comes straight from the land and the water—and not as Mages learned it,

with word and charm. She put her hand to her throat, where a rich jewel sparkled, a jewel that was far

out of place on a village girl. It was rubies and gold, a piece to grace a princess.

Eriseth saw it, and wondered.

She had pushed back the hood of her cloak on entering the warm kitchen. Now she looked around her,

at the hearth with its pothooks and iron grate, at the bread-oven beside it, the mantelshelf with its

candlesticks, the sideboard for linen and the best china, and the solid oak table. She nodded, suddenly

shy and wary of these large people with their booming voices.

Loys looked down at her. "Welcome to my house," he said, formal as a host should be, and she glanced

up.

"Hethoorch yrn' ty," she whispered.

"And peace be with you, too, forest-child," said Magister Northstar. "You have come far, I think."

Her words in reply were stilted, a rehearsed speech. "From Arwenna, whom you know, Serenir," she

said. "She greets you and bids me give you this." She held out the letter.

He took it, and held it briefly before he broke the seal and unfolded it. A glance under his white brows at

the bearer, and then he read. The others stood awkwardly, Rhianna inspecting the Eldran girl, her parents

regarding each other and the Magister as he spelled carefully through the letter, turned back to the top

and read it again. Then he looked up, folding the parchment carefully.

"Arwenna gave you no other message?" he asked.

"No, Serenir. Only that she greets you in old friendship."

He smiled, but it was a smile both brief and slight. "Old friendship. Yes, indeed. You know what

Arwenna has written, Eriseth?" She nodded. "So you should. It concerns you. Arwenna asks much." She

nodded again. He frowned, and looked down at the letter. "But not more than she is owed. Strange that

this comes to me here and now." He tapped his chin with the folded parchment. Then he turned to the

blacksmith. "Loys, you have no apprentice at present, I think?"

Loys Wildwood blinked, a little confused by the sharp turn in the conversation. He glanced at his wife,

and then answered: "No, Magister. None of the village boys seems to want to learn the forge, all hot and

sweaty as it is. It's all farming, hereabouts, and all of them will have land or their own father's trade to

inherit." He looked at Meg again, and smiled gently, in a way that said It's not your fault, love, as he

went on: "I have no son of my own, and Rhianna—well, her Wild Magic would never do, working cold

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