Aldwyn's Academy (11 page)

Before the boys, a narrow ravine cut through the hills in a deep scar.

Behind them, Dorian heard loose pebbles skid across rocks and the crunch of snow under heavy feet. Whatever was coming for them was not more ghosts, it seemed.

He looked frantically around, casting about for anything to help him or a place to hide.

“We’ve got to find cover,” he said over the wind.

He saw Caleb nod, face grim.

A cloud passed from over the moon, and light the color of old bone fell on the ground. He saw the great wooden pillars of bridge supports with massive hemp ropes stretched across the short span of crevice.

On the other side Dorian saw more low, crowded hills and the dark mouth of a cave. His heart hammered in his chest so hard that the rush of blood in his ears was deafening.

“This way!” he pointed.

The wooden planks of the rope bridge gleamed dully in the soft light.

Dorian’s feet slid on the icy rocks and he almost went down, but he gritted his teeth and his Slippers of Spider Climbing held fast.

Caleb, who was heavier, was having an even tougher time scrambling after him.

Dorian lunged forward and ran to the bridge.

Again out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flurry of motion but he didn’t dare look. He had an impression of a white plume of breath coming from behind a hut-sized boulder, and then another cloud passed in front of the moon and plunged the setting into midnight blue again.

He felt the planks of the bridge under his feet and he reached out with his free hand, finding the thick column of rope. His footsteps echoed into the deep space beneath him as he ran.

He was headed for the very edge of the school grounds now, as far from safety as he could get and still be at the academy.

Make us proud
, he heard his mother’s voice say again.

He felt tears building behind his eyes as he struggled. He blinked them back angrily.

Halfway across the bridge, lightning snapped like a whip and the thunder hammered almost immediately.

The bridge rocked in the growing tempest.

Dorian couldn’t believe how quickly the storm had found them. Wind whipped his hair, stung his face, and plucked at his clothes as he left the rope bridge.

“This storm isn’t natural!” Caleb yelled.

The half-orc clung to the rope guides of the bridge, struggling to stay upright.

A drift of old snow had piled up on the far side of the span, and for the first time Dorian thought to wonder how early winter seemed to have found Aldwyns.

Nothing was as it seemed, he realized. Banshees gave warnings. Helene was a princess. He had discovered himself in the midst of some evil plan.

Dorian kicked his way clear of the clinging snow, Caleb grunting behind him. He heard the ropes of the suspension bridge creak in protest behind him and he spun, catching the image of hulking, shadowed figures on the bridge.

Then, as lightning cracked overhead again, the sky lit up with stark, harsh illumination so brilliant it was blinding.

“Bugbears!” he shouted.

“I can smell ’em!” Caleb growled.

The larger cousins to green-skinned goblins, the humanoid monsters were more aggressive and organized. As bloodthirsty as any other of the evil races, they lived for war and to enslave creatures weaker than themselves.

The bugbears shuffled forward, the cold black steel of bare swords naked in fists that resembled bear claws.

They loomed nearly seven feet tall. Dark hair bristled in curtains, framing bestial faces, big pointed ears, and jutting, jagged teeth that looked like broken daggers as the beasts grinned.

Dorian’s father had fought them numerous times in his career as a warlord of the court, and the boy knew from his father’s tales how savage and bloodthirsty the goblinkind were.

“Go, run!” Caleb yelled. The half-orc stepped forward, putting himself between the two massive creatures and the frightened boy. “I’ll hold them off.”

“What?” Dorian’s voice was almost a shriek. “You can’t fight those bugbears alone!”

Caleb shoved him hard, pushing him forward.

The half-orc’s wand appeared in his hand as he warily eyed the monsters. “Go,” he repeated. His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ll distract them just long enough for you to get away and then I’ll go back for help. Trust me. I can handle this.”

One of the bugbears, a grizzled old male with a shock of white hair framing the top of a scar that ran down his face like a river, spoke in a voice like gravel spilling down a chute.

“Look at this, Grimek,” the scarred bugbear sneered in the Common Tongue. “This little cross-blood wants to engage in frivolities.”

Grimek stepped forward so that his face was visible. Rubbery lips twisted into a jagged semblance of a smile, revealing a broken lower tusk.

“I’m hungry, Slake,” Grimek growled.

His voice was a deep rumble down in his massive chest.

“I acquiesce, dear comrade,” Slake said.

He glided forward but stopped when Caleb lifted his wand threateningly.

“Hungry,” Grimek repeated.

“What are you doing, little cross-blood?” Slake purred. “Why are you helping out a juicy morsel like that pale skin? You think their kind”—he jerked his blunt-featured head back toward Aldwyns—“is ever going to accept you?”

“She said we could eats
these
ones,” Grimek growled.

The half-orc student lifted his wand, and thunder sounded directly overhead. Lightning cracked.

“You’re gonna die alone and friendless,” Slake snarled.

“I’m not friendless anymore,” Caleb said.

His wand came up.

Dazzled by the flash, Dorian turned and stumbled forward. He felt the ground turn upward sharply under his feet as spots spun in his eyes.

His breathing was ragged and the cold burned the inside of his nose. He looked back but he couldn’t focus his eyes, couldn’t find Caleb, couldn’t see the bugbears.

“Run, Dorian!” Caleb screamed. “For the love of Avendra, run!”

Blinking back the blindness, Dorian pushed himself up the narrow trail toward the cave ahead.

The words of the ghost in the maze echoed through his thoughts again, like a fresh peal of thunder; she must not get the girl.

Who was “she” anyway?

Something big was happening this night, and the mystery behind it was so deep it felt timeless, but if the bugbears caught him, Dorian knew he would never be able to alert Lowadar.

He had to stay free, to keep his wits about him, to be brave … to make us proud, his mother’s voice finished for him.

Behind him, he heard a long, triumphant roar, and his heart lurched in his chest as he wondered what had become of Caleb.

Slake and Grimek would be on him now.

He drew his lips into a tight line and darted into the mouth of the cave.

Three steps inside and he threw himself back against the rough wall of the long, narrow cavern. He bent to slide deeper into the shadows and suddenly froze.

Around him, dark forms crowded close together. Something rustled up ahead. He heard a low keening. It was the very place Helene had nagged him about during his tour, the Cavern of the Quivering Mushrooms.

As both Helene and Professor Fife had made so abundantly clear, this wasn’t a place for a first year to go blundering.

When agitated, the giant fungi released a dust from their spores that could put even the most accomplished wizard into a magical sleep that lasted hours.

A bluish tinged flash of light split the sky outside the cave as a lightning bolt landed nearby. For a brief instant the inside of the grotto lit up in brilliant relief.

Dorian’s eyes bulged.

On the far side of the cavern, he saw a slim figure suddenly disappear into the round, black mouth of a tunnel set up in the rock wall.

Helene!

Dorian gasped and stepped forward as the thunder rolled in and extinguished the lightning. A rounded shape taller than an adult loomed above him, and the boy stopped himself just short of racing directly into the mushroom.

He froze.

Slowly he reached out his hand until it came up against the cold, uneven surface of the rock wall. He gripped his wand in his other hand.

With each inhalation, the sharp cold carried the musty stench of the fungus into his nostrils.

His stomach flipped. Should he really be doing this?

Thanks to his mother’s discipline prior to his arrival at Aldwyns and Professor Fife’s punishments, he had a handful of the more basic spells memorized and ready.

But it was the nature of the magic that once he used those spells, he would have to study them again before being able to cast them a second time.

Since this insane experience began, he’d been struck with a successive series of escalating encounters and he
worried that if he squandered his spells too soon, he faced the very real potential that he would be left helpless in the face of yet more unexpected danger.

He leaped backward, easily landing and adhering to the grotto wall with his Slippers of Spider Climbing.

Lightning struck once more.

In the flash of light, he saw two hulking shapes enter the cavern, clearly on his trail.

Bugbears, he thought. But what happened to Caleb? Did he get away? Or …

The peal of thunder was immediate and the crack echoed into the cavern, causing the agitated mushrooms to quiver and mewl.

Dorian realized it would take only the slightest of triggers to cause the magical mushrooms to release their sleep-inducing spores. He had no time to worry about Caleb.

He had to move.

Now.

Quick as any spider, Dorian scampered up the wall. He scurried across the curve of the cavern, heading directly to the patch of blackness Helene had just disappeared into moments before.

“You want me, you lousy bugbears!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Then come and get me!”

He heard an answering, bestial roar from the cave mouth.

Half a second later, there was a cacophony of muted, wet popping sounds, then the noise of sand on rock as the mushroom patch released its spores.

Dorian waited until he heard two thuds—the sound of the bugbears falling unconscious to the cavern floor.

Then he skidded across the wall and plunged into the dark mouth of the crawl space.

D
orian came through the hole and danced down off the wall onto the floor.

His ankles and the muscles of his calves ached from the strain of bearing his bodyweight on the vertical surface, and his legs needed a rest.

The passage ran cramped and twisted, spiraling down into dark, the stone slick under his feet.

He moved quickly, pushing himself forward and deeper into the earth.

Despite his ploy to render his trackers unconscious, he wasn’t taking the chance they would catch up to him in such claustrophobic surroundings. The bugbears’ night vision would be far, far superior to his own.

He hurried, hunched over to avoid striking his head on the low ceiling, trying desperately to catch up to Helene. The words of warning uttered by the ghost in the maze haunted his thoughts.

Lowadar’s offhand comment about the age and geographical makeup of the plateau upon which Aldwyns rested also played havoc with his nerves. Images of buried and ruined castle keeps and the bones of long dead dragons entombed in granite and soil filled his imagination.

“Helene, are you there?” he whispered to himself in frustration.

Dorian wanted light.

He was effectively blind without it, but was at the same time afraid of casting a glow that would lead denizens of the underworld directly to him.

The floor under his feet abruptly leveled out and he came to rest on a stretch of even rock.

Sweat poured down his face despite the cool temperature. His breath came in short, sharp gasps.

All around him the natural rock formations echoed his panting back at him, as if mocking his fear.

Enough is enough, he thought.

Even if illumination served as a beacon to every creature in these tunnels, he needed light, and at least he’d be able to see them coming.

After making sure he could hear nothing charging after him down the chute-path stretching out above and behind him, he squatted and quickly loosened the straps to his Heward’s Handy Haversack, searching for a handful of Glitter Stones.

Other than their potential as nuisance factors, Dorian hadn’t really understood why the little charms were banned, as they weren’t exactly Necklaces of Endless Laughter or Stench Stones.

Still, he was glad to have them. The smooth marbles came easily into his hand when he reached into the magical backpack. He chose only a single stone.

He tossed the sphere down and instantly, a fountain of rainbow-colored light spilled out of the orb. The cavern around him glowed in a prismatic spray of illumination showing him a Y-shaped junction of worn rock at the foot of the steep tunnel he had used to infiltrate the deeper caverns.

Dorian felt his stomach drop.

There, directly at his feet and clearly visible in the throbbing strobe of the Glitter Stone, lay a Heward’s Handy Haversack identical to the one he held in his hand.