Hobby Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  1. LIES

  2. WALLS

  3. SMOKE

  4. FOR SALE

  5. THE TOWN

  6. THE CASTLE ON WHEELS

  7. THE MAGE

  8. THE CITY

  9. SECRETS

  10. THE PLAYERS

  11. DREAM-READER

  12. A DIFFERENT READING

  13. RESURRECTION

  14. TRUE MAGIC

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Copyright © 1996, 1986 by Jane Yolen

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval

  system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be

  mailed to: Permissions Department, Harcourt Brace & Company,

  6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  Acknowledgement

  This book is loosely based on the short story "Dream Rider"

  from the collection Merlin's Booke, but has been

  significantly expanded, refocused, and changed.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Yolen, Jane.

  Hobby: the young Merlin trilogy/Jane Yolen.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: Passager.

  Summary: Young Merlin is orphaned by a fire and joins a traveling

  pair of magicians who help him begin to discover his true powers.

  ISBN 0-15-200815-2

  1. Merlin (Legendary character)—Juvenile fiction.

  [1. Merlin (Legendary character)—Fiction. 2. Magicians—Fiction.

  3. Dreams—Fiction.] I. Title

  PZ7.Y78Hn 1996

  [Fic]—dc20 95-36735

  Text set in Fairfield Medium

  Designed by Kaelin Chappell

  Printed in the United States of America

  G I K M O N L J H

  For Deborah and Robert Harris

  and their boys

  Hobby:

  A small Old World falcon or hawk that has been trained and flown at small birds.

  Dark.

  Night.

  The hoy dreams of a bird, its breast as red as flames, rising to heaven singing, and wakes to smoke.

  Fire licks the edges of the thatched rooftop, bright shooting stars let loose from a chink in the chimney. The house is suddenly aglow.

  A dog howls.

  Then a second.

  Bells from the mews jangle frantically.

  The scream of a woman tears the air. "Master Robin. Master—" Her voice is cut off.

  A door bursts open and a figure appears. It is a boy carrying the body of a dog. They are haloed by fire. Gently, he places the dog on the ground, well away from the flames, then turns to go back in.

  Someone else stumbles through the door. A woman, by the clothes. But she has no hair, it having been consumed by the fire. The boy catches her before she falls. He lays her down by the dog's side, turns.

  The roof falls in with a great whooosh of sound. No one else alive can come out of that house. No one alive can go in.

  Sparks fly to the mews, to the barn and, like the house, they are devoured whole.

  After a long while—a day, a lifetime—the flames are silent.

  Birds sing from the nearby woods.

  Light.

  Day.

  1. LIES

  THE BOY BURIED THEM ALL IN A SINGLE GRAVE: dog, woman, and the charred remains of the others. Of the birds in the mews there was nothing left to bury. Nothing except one tiny brass bell from the littlest hawk's jesses. He pocketed this treasure without thinking.

  A single grave. Digging five separate ones would have been too hard for him. At twelve he did not yet have his full strength. But he did it also because he could not bear that they should be apart: Master Robin, Mag, Nell, the two dogs. They were his family, all that he had had for the past four years. A family, he knew, must stay as one. He did not know how he knew it, but he did.

  He would have thrown himself into the pit as well, as penance for not understanding his dream of the bird in flames and rising sooner. The guilt of all their deaths, of the fact that he was still alive, was almost too great to bear. But there was something in him, a kind of sense as strong as that of sight and hearing and smell, that told him to stay alive.

  "And remember," he whispered to himself. By that he meant remember Master Robin, who had rescued him from the woods and taught him to read, both the words on a slate and the passage of a hawk across the sky. And remember Mag, who had kept him cosseted and fed. And Nell, who had taught him all the games he had missed as a child. And the dogs who guarded him at night and brought back thrown sticks and licked his face. And the falcons who came to his hand. If he remembered them, they would still be alive, in some odd way. Not alive beside him, but inside him.

  He said a prayer over the grave, a prayer that took in the fact that though his own world seemed to have ended, the world seemed still to go on. And he spoke words he vaguely recalled in Latin, though he didn't know it was Latin he was recalling. "In nomine Patris," he said.

  And he told himself the first of many lies he would tell that fall. "I will not cry."

  It was a lie before he left the farmsteadings.

  He drove the old dry cow before him, led the great-footed mare. They had been out in the pasture and thus been spared of the fire. He wore his nightshirt tucked into a pair of singed trousers and carried the one pair of boots the fire had not taken, their lacings tied together and slung across his back. They were not his boots; his boots were ash. These were an old pair of Master Robin's boots that had been set out by the door, too dirty for Mag's fresh flooring. He would grow into them in time.

  He had slaughtered the two hens, after gathering their last two eggs, because he couldn't herd them properly and didn't want to leave them for the foxes. And he cooked them on the embers of the house and mews to have food for the long walk ahead. One chicken and the eggs he finished before leaving, for grave digging was hard work and he was famished. The other chicken he put in the leather pouch, along with the little bell.

  He did not know where he was going, exactly, but he could not bear to stay at the ruin of the farm. Once he had gone to a great fair with Master Robin and it had been several days' walk west. If he could find it again, he thought he might sell both cow and horse there and make a new life on his own.

  Chewing thoughtfully on a drumstick, the boy turned to look one last time at the burned-out hulk that had been his home for four years. That was when he began to cry, the tears falling quickly.

  But he did not make a sound as he cried. He was afraid if he started, his howling would never stop.

  The woods were cold and spattered with sunlight wherever the interfacings of yellowing leaves thinned out. For a while he rode the horse, a big-hearted Dales mare named Goodie. She had a walk better suited to the plow and he had to ride her bareback. Still, he was such a light weight, she hardly noticed him.

  The cow plodded placidly behind the horse. They made an uncommon pair, but so long together in the same barn and pasture, they were as easy with one another as old gossips. The boy napped twice on the horse's back. Each small sleep brought him the same snippet of dream: the flame-breasted bird singing of danger. He forced himself to wake and mourned his lost family at each waking.

  By nightfall, not only the leaves had thinned out, but the trees as well. The boy
got off the horse, leading both horse and cow behind by their halter ropes. He did not want to chance that either might run off, startled by some new sight or sound.

  The broad and knotted holm oaks gave way to a large meadow. Still in the oak shadow, the boy listened intently to a stirring of nearby grasses.

  Suddenly a herd of deer, small and brown and dappled with moonlight, passed by so close to him, he could see their liquid eyes. Goodie whinnied and, at that, the deer were gone, as if by magic.

  Magic! For a moment the boy wondered if the deer were a sign. But though he was used to dreams, both waking and sleeping, he had never dreamed of deer. He let out a deep breath, which surprised him, for he had not known he was holding it.

  "Now, Goodie," he said to the horse. "Now, Churn," to the cow. "We must rest the night. I promise you will be safe."

  He tied them loosely to a low tree branch, then settled himself up in the crotch of one of the oaks.

  "I am too tired to dream," he called down to them, hoping that by saying the words aloud they would become true. He was afraid to dream again of the fire bird, afraid to be reminded once more how his refusal to wake in time, his inability to understand the dream in time, had robbed him of his family. "I will not let myself dream," he called to the horse and cow.

  Another lie.

  2. WALLS

  DREAMED OF HOME. NOT THE HOME HE HAD last seen, burned and blackened, but a different home. This one was stone upon stone, several towers high, with tile roofs and stone walkways. Only women lived there, dressed like crows. They pecked at him with tiny, quick beaks. They beat at him with black wings. Then, at a high-pitched whistle, they left off abusing him and rose into the air, circling the towers and then down to a courtyard where a priest dressed in black called them down like a falconer.

  The boy woke, shivering, and for a moment was eight years old again, alone and in the forest. "Horse," he reminded himself, staring down into the darkness. "Cow." They had been among his first words when Master Robin rescued him. Then he mumbled his own name and, with that, fell asleep once again to dream—as boys often do—of dragons.

  When he woke for good, it was dawn. Birdsong assaulted him. From the tree he could look far across the meadow to a sudden blue lake, winking in the light, like a signal lantern. To the right of the lake was a swath of sandy shingle. To the left was something very like a high wall.

  "A wall," he said aloud. "A wall means people." It had to be a town's gate. The town he and Master Robin had visited. He smiled and, still sitting in the tree, fetched out the last pieces of chicken from his leather pouch. There was no need to keep them any longer, for there would be food aplenty in the town. He ate contentedly.

  When he was done, he rubbed his sleeve across his greasy mouth. He thought that Mag would have clapped him hard on the ear for so doing. She had cloths at the table for such. How often had she told him: "Easier to wash them, than to wash thy shirt, boy."

  But he had no table cloths. And no wash water. And no Mag either. The thought threatened to unman him once again and, in order not to cry, he leaped down from the tree. He hit the ground solidly, frightening the cow but not the stolid Goodie, who only shook her head in annoyance.

  If he wished for a cloth, he wished even more for some drinking water, for the chicken had awakened a sudden thirst in him. But his skin bag was empty. Still, ahead lay the lake and the wall, the one meaning water and the other company. He got up on Goodie's back and, holding Churn's long halter rope, pulled her after them, though she clearly wanted to browse the meadow.

  No amount of kicking with his bare heels moved Goodie out of her walk, and so the boy relaxed and watched as swallows crisscrossed before them, chasing after insects the horse and cow kicked up.

  It took them the greater part of an hour to get close enough to see that the wall was not part of a town but marked the site of a large ruin. They picked their way carefully through the debris of some old outworks, the broken weedy remains of a road. Goodie stepped high over the crumbled stones. The boy had to yank several times hard on the cow's rope to encourage her to follow. But when at last there was a wind off the lake and she smelled the water, Chum picked up her legs in a fast trot, suddenly almost young again.

  At the lake's edge, the two animals drank eagerly. But after a handful of water, the boy went over to the ruins, curiosity getting the better of thirst.

  There was a series of high walls, all broken at the top, though several half-roofs of dark tile still guarded the upper rooms from weather. At his approach, a dozen doves clattered up into the light, proving that the place was long deserted.

  The ruins reminded him, oddly enough, of his dream: the same high walls, the half-gabled roofs. They lacked only the crow women in their black robes, and the priest. He wondered what people had lived in this place and for a moment closed his eyes, as if that could help him envision them. But he could not imagine anyone here. It was too long empty. Too musty. Too cold.

  He stepped over some broken stones and found himself in a kind of courtyard, clearly once a garden, for there were several ancient fruit trees bent like old men, the browned remains of unharvested fruit by the twisted roots. Stones lined out a series of still-neat borders but nettles had taken over the plots of earth. In the very center of the garden was a mosaic, partially covered with dirt and uneven where the ground had shifted beneath it. The boy could make out some sort of spade-bearded, fish-tailed god; it looked a lot like Master Robin, broad shouldered and with red-brown hair. The boy turned away quickly before he had time to weep, his hand going to the leather pocket where the hawk's bell rested.

  It was when he stepped through two massive upright pillars, grooved by human hand and pitted by wind and storms, that he smelled something that was neither meadow, nor lake, nor the musty, stale scent of the ruins.

  It was smoke.

  3. SMOKE

  HE KNEW THAT SMELL. NOT THE ODOR OF A house burning down, still so fresh and bitter to him. It was the smell of a cookfire, with meat on a spit.

  This time, though, caution claimed him. He crept to the side of the garden wall and, using it to shield his back, inched up a set of stone steps that were still preserved and whole.

  At the top the stairs broke off awkwardly, but the boy could look down over the entire ruins. He saw the cookfire. It was in one of a series of outlying half-roofed houses beyond the main walls. A man dressed all in black was poking at the fire with a stick. He reminded the boy of the priest in his dream.

  The boy almost called out then, but there was something about the man's shoulders he did not care for, a tense roundness, like a hawk right before it mantled, throwing one wing out, then another, to protect its food. Those shoulders belonged to a greedy, angry man, the boy thought. He needed to find people, but—even more—he needed to be careful.

  Taking his bearings, the boy ran back down the stairs, turned in through a massive archway, and threaded his way as quietly as possible through the remains of the halls, now only broken masonry and vines.

  When he found the cookfire, more by smell than by the mapping in his head, creeping up to peer through the doorway, the man was gone. A rabbit roasting on a spit was not quite done.

  He heard a low growl behind him and slowly turned.

  In the ruined hallway, glaring at him, was a massive dark dog, its teeth bared.

  The boy backed up a step, toward the spit, and moving very slowly, took the boots from around his neck. They were the closest thing to a weapon he had. He was about to fling them at the dog when a whistle shrilled through the air and the dog's ears raised.

  "Hold, Ranger!" came a coarse, raw-edged voice from beyond the doorway, and the dog's legs tensed, though it did not otherwise move.

  The man stepped into view with hair the grey of old bowstring and a sparse, tired mustache. One eye was half shuttered by scarring. He wiped his nose with his black sleeve but never took his eye off the boy. "Watch!" he commanded the dog.

  "Sir..." the boy began, knowing fu
ll well the man was no kind of gentry by his voice and clothes. Still, he did not want to provoke the man; he had no idea how dangerous the man was. "Sir, help me. I have been burned out of my house. My family died in the fire. And I am..."

  "I think you are a thief, boy. Those boots you hold are much too big for you. That horse and cow too rich for such as you. I think you should be taken to the local sheriff and..."

  "I think you are, yourself, a thief and shall not take me there," the boy answered hotly.

  The man laughed briefly and horribly, then took two large steps forward so that the boy could smell his terrible breath. He grabbed the boy's shoulder. "Thief I may sometimes be," he said, his raw voice still full of the laugh, "but I will not be called so by a mere boy." In one swift move, he ripped the boots from the boy's hands and threw him down, kicking him in the side almost as an afterthought. It was not hard enough to break any bones, only hard enough to show who was master.

  "Ranger," the man said, "keep!"

  The dog stood over the boy, growling in a quiet monotone.

  "Ranger will not hurt you, boy," the man said with a chuckle. "Lest, of course, you move." He bent over and tore the leather pocket from the boy's side. Opening it, he found only the charred bell, greasy from chicken, and threw it on the ground in disgust.

  The boy bit his lip to keep from crying out; the loss of the little hawk's bell hurt more than the kick had.

  Sitting down at the fire, the man took off his own boots, which were scarcely more than two pieces of leather tied onto the foot. Slipping on Master Robin's boots, he sighed. "Just my size," he said, and laughed again. "Or close enough that makes no difference. One's not a man without proper boots, don't you think?" He stretched his long legs closer to the fire and sniffed the air appreciatively. "Rabbit's about done, boy. If you lie quiet, I might just give you a piece."

  "I want none of you," the boy said. "Or your rabbit." His bravado was encouraged by the fact that his own belly was full enough with chicken. But when he spoke, the dog growled again and moved, if possible, even closer to him, its breath as bad as its master's.