Hobby

Hobby by Jane Yolen Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: Hobby by Jane Yolen Read Free Book Online
Authors: Jane Yolen
chuckled.
    "Are you a charlatan, too, boy?" the Duke asked.
    "I do not know what I am," Hobby answered truthfully, for his magic required it.
    "Are your dreams trickery then?" The Duke was like a hound on a scent.
    Hobby suddenly remembered Ambrosius' warning against speaking truth to princes. Yet he knew, in his very bones, that he had to answer all direct questions of his magic directly. "My dreams come true. But on the slant."
    "On the slant." The Duke closed his eyes and his voice was old. "I am not a man of such angles," he said. "We have got already what we wanted from the mage. The building stands. What more I seek, I do not rightly know. Can you tell me more, boy?"
    The question was specific and Hobby knew he had no choice but to speak the truth. "There is more, sir."
    "Then tell it me," the Duke said, with a sigh.
    "The dragons are meant to be armies." Hobby spoke quietly but not so quietly that he could not be heard in that hush of a room. "Not your army or your wife's. But greater armies than both. There will be a battle and you will have the worst of it."
    "How much worse?"
    Hobby drew in a breath. He could not stop telling the dream. "You will die. Burned up in flame greater than dragon's breath."
    "What battle, boy?" Fowler asked. "When?" He had drawn close to Hobby's side and breathed the questions into the boy's ear.
    "My dream does not name a time or place of battle," Hobby said.
    "Then, boy," the Duke said, "your dream is useless. I dream every night of battles. Some I win, some I lose. In this world there are always battles. There are always deaths. When you are a duke. When you would be a king." He stood and turned his back on the boy and the spy, staring out through the window to the blackness beyond. "I am not afraid to die cleanly, on the battlefield. But burning..." He shuddered. "I do not believe your slantwise dreaming. It is too tricky for an old soldier. Go away, boy. You tire me." And indeed the Duke's shoulders seemed to sag and his voice was ragged, as if torn on a nail.
    "But perhaps..." Fowler began.
    The Duke turned around abruptly, suddenly years younger in his fury. "But me no buts, Master Mind-It-All. You have brought me no news from the south. No news about my enemies, about the numbers of their armies, about where they march and when. You have brought me only a charlatan, long fled, and a boy who dreams—so he says—my death by burning.
Burning!
Like a common witch. Like a warlock.
I will not hear of it.
" He glared at Fowler and not at Hobby. If he had looked at the boy, his story might have ended differently. But he did not. He concentrated all his anger on the man opposite him. "I will not be fooled. I am a fighting man. I do not listen to the dreams of ragged boys. Run along, child, and find your father. If you can."
    Hobby turned to leave and the dog, who had been lying at Fowler's feet, rose and walked stifflegged toward him, the hair on the ridge of its neck rising.
    "I do not believe he is an ordinary boy, my lord," Fowler said. "Neither does my dog. He is more than the son of a falconer or the boy of a wandering player. I believe we need to find out
who
he is. Test his magic. Then perhaps he will be able to tell us the time and place of battles, the time and place of..."
    "Of my death?" The fury in the Duke's voice was controlled now, tight, and the more dangerous for it. "So you can sell that piece of information to someone else?"
    "My lord, do you so mistrust me?" Fowler asked.
    "You have asked too many wrong questions already and not enough right ones," the Duke said. "I would be a fool
not
to mistrust you. I am no fool."
    "Just his name, my lord duke," Fowler said. But he asked it of the Duke, not Hobby.
    Hobby hesitated, knowing that names held power. Though he had not been asked directly, and though it was not about a dream, it still touched on his magic. But not—he realized—directly. "I am a hawk," he said, humor hidden in his answer. "A hawk among

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