Aldwyn's Academy (15 page)

He staggered, dazed by his fall, and slipped on the same patch of ice.

He went down.

He thrust himself up to his hands and knees then drove forward in a wild dive. Sleep claimed him like a hood descending over his head and he knew only darkness.

D
orian woke slowly.

His head throbbed as if he’d been hammered with a club. He blinked the slumber away, feeling uncertain and slow. His mouth tasted horrible and his eyes felt like they’d been shut with some of Maverick’s forbidden Sovereign Glue.

Oh Pelor, he thought suddenly, pushing himself up. How long have I been asleep?

He looked around.

It was snowing. It hadn’t been snowing when he’d broken for the cave’s mouth, of that he was sure. The storm and its wind had still been too fierce. Despite the fat, bitterly cold flakes falling so thickly, there was still only a bare layer of it on the ground.

He couldn’t have been asleep for that long—he hoped.

He looked up to track the progress of the moon in the sky, but the clouds following so heavily on the heels of the lightning and thunder blocked his view. They hung
as low and as gray as the ceiling of one of the tunnels he had just escaped.

Helene!

He jumped to his feet in alarm when he thought of the girl still trapped somewhere below his feet in the forgotten ruins under Aldwyns.

Without thinking he began running. He sprinted out onto the rope bridge, ignoring the yawning ravine beneath his feet.

He’d been asleep so long his homing spell had dissipated completely.

The bridge swayed and buckled under his racing momentum.

Ahead of him, through the sheets of falling snow, he saw the broken boulders marking the end of the bridge. Beyond that, across the distance, he saw the lights of the academy.

Just before the boulders he saw a cluster of glowing, gleaming yellow eyes and stopped running.

It’s not fair, he thought with sudden, savage anger. Oh, it’s not fair.

He stopped, feeling the bridge sway under his feet.

Dire wolves, every bit as wicked and big as they had been that morning, stepped forward from beneath the shadow of the boulders.

He moaned deep down in his throat and stepped backward.

The wolves snarled, revealing dripping fangs under furrowed muzzles. They stood big as ponies as they crowded the end of the bridge, bumping massive shoulders. The sound of their growling was fearsome.

Dorian spun, took a step, and stopped in his tracks.

Behind him hung the twisting, amorphous shape of the wailing ghost from the maze. Long, snakelike tendrils of ghostly hair writhed in the wind and the mouth distorted itself horribly, yawning wide before releasing a piercing shriek that echoed out and slammed into the young wizard with tangible force, knocking him backward.

“It’s too late, child,” the ghost cooed, voice horrible. “I tried to buy you time but you squandered it! Now I’m too hungry. The mistress drives me!”

The banshee opened her mouth wide and Dorian knew the shriek that would shatter his soul was coming.

He spun and saw the dire wolves blocking his path.

There was only one way to go.

Not thinking, he leaped over the side of the bridge.

He fell away into darkness.

Dorian screamed. His arms and legs pumped frantically as if trying to run. The sheer, craggy walls rushed past as he fell.

Bitter cold air ripped at his face, stung his eyes, and tore at his hair. His fingers twisted into claws and scratched at the strap of his haversack.

He didn’t have a clue how deep the chasm ran. It had felt deep from the bridge, but he was surrounded by darkness now. He could strike the ground at any second.

He frantically tore the corner of the backpack open and plunged his hand inside.

His fingers found the soft, warm down of feathers making up Helene’s phoenix cloak. He snarled, his temper killing his terror, and yanked the enchanted garment free.

He forced his eyes open and, from the darkness beneath him, the boulder-strewn ground appeared, rushing up toward him.

Not really understanding how to use the garment, he wrestled it onto his shoulders. Instantly he felt gravity spin then release him. He was floating, suddenly buoyant.

He wanted to scream in relief and fly away.

He spun, twisting like a diving hawk, and prepared to thrust upward, to shoot free of the crowding chasm walls and knife through the falling snow and out into the open air.

The gray tattered form of the banshee plunged downward after him, loose and flowing.

Her horrid face twisted into a cavernous maw, shrieking a primordial cry that shattered the ice clinging to the rocks of the ravine as she bore down on him. For a brief, wild second, their eyes locked and Dorian again saw only the empty wells of impenetrable black.

He twisted his body hard, like a fish jackknifing out of a stream, and tore off down the length of the chasm. There was no time to call for help, no time to formulate a plan. There was only time for him to flee.

He flew straight out and hard, using the hard planes of his rigid body to navigate the natural obstacles strewn along the bottom of the narrow basin. The banshee flung herself after him, screaming like the wind and preventing him from rising far enough to make his escape.

His shin struck the edge of a rock and he cried out in pain as the skin was scraped from his leg. He twisted in his flight, and the sharp, brittle branches of a juniper bush tore at his face. He twisted back hard, rolling his body in the other direction.

He caught a flash of writhing gray and felt a sting of cold far harsher than any natural element. He wasn’t going to outfly the ghost, he realized.

It was hopeless.

He saw a patch of pitch darkness he recognized instantly as the mouth of another cavern.

He didn’t think—there wasn’t time.

Instinct guided him into the cave’s mouth like a thread through the eye of a needle.

Behind him the banshee rushed past, startled at the sudden turn the boy had made into seemingly solid rock. The wailing ghost shrieked in frustration.

Dorian struck the ground hard and tumbled head over heels into the cavern. His shoulder cracked against a rock and he spun like a pinwheel off in another direction. He came up hard against a wall, haversack still clutched desperately in his hands.

He knew he had just moments before the banshee returned and was on him.

He couldn’t think of a spell. He needed something and he needed it fast.

His hands closed on Helene’s belt with its spell components.

He tore open the leather pouches.

H
elene awoke in pain.

Slowly she opened her eyes, fighting them into focus against the throbbing in her forehead. She blinked hard and winced as she recalled the stings of the scorpion and her struggle against the bugbear brutes.

Her throat felt thick and her chest tight from the effects of the insect poison. Her blurred vision slowly began to sharpen until she could discern her surroundings.

She inhaled sharply as she saw the rusty old cage housing Mordenkainen. The falcon cocked his head, thrust his beak forward quizzically, concern for the girl plain on his avian features.

Anger filled Helene.

She lifted her head up despite the pain and dizziness.

The girl saw shifting forms across the earthen chamber working around what she suddenly realized was the massive skull of what could only be a gigantic dragon.

One of the workers turned sideways and stepped into the light of a sputtering brazier, and Helene gasped as she recognized rotting flesh hanging like the tatters of clothes from the body of the zombie.

Evil magic permeated the room.

Her vision sharpened as her heart pumped blood through her body. She saw magical runes of binding carved into Mordenkainen’s cage. Then her searching eyes revealed more horrible sights.

She lay bound on a tabletop in a brick-lined chamber with a flagstone floor. Heavy wooden tables held cages and tools and various occult implements from crystal balls to copper basins and strange, carven idols. One wall was hammered out and reduced to rubble, revealing a natural cavern of limestone stalactites.

From the red clay and black earth, massive ivory-colored bones protruded from the wall and floor. Clay tablets encrusted with runes used in binding spellcraft lay on the uneven ground.

The cavern was so large that much of it lay steeped in dark shadow beyond the flickering flames of the torches and glowing braziers used to illuminate the work area.

Wielding a whip, a slim feminine form drove the undead workers.

The rotted zombies obeyed every sharply voiced command. The figure turned sideways and Helene saw a woman of dark beauty and youthful vigor.

The girl’s eyes followed the woman as she paced back and forth, exhorting the zombies to greater effort and Helene saw the bone and black pearl baton of the woman’s wand in one slender hand.

The woman turned and strode toward the other end of the chamber, passing in front of an image from Helene’s nightmares.

The undead minotaur stood grasping the haft of its heavy battle-axe, red eyes glowing dully under its heavy brow. The flesh of its face and torso, already frayed, was now slick and shiny from recent fire scar.

Remembering how terrifying it felt when the thing came for her, Helene now wished fervently, but futilely, that whatever flames had touched it had consumed it wholly.

Then, as if sensing the weight of the elf princess’s gaze, the necromancer turned toward her captive. The starkly beautiful woman smiled a grim and sinister smirk from full, pale lips and black eyes that shone with cruelty.

Helene’s heart sank as the woman spoke, addressing her in Elvish and referring to her by her royal title.

“Behold, Princess, the body of Insidian, the greatest dragon of an age, slain through treachery by Daelicasus, the familiar to the founding wizard of Aldwyns.”

“Who are you?” Helene shouted. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Only her pride kept her from bursting into tears.

The woman threw back her head on her long, willowy neck and laughed. The sound was thick with mockery and tinkled musically across the chamber.

“Have you not figured it out for yourself, dear girl? My, how dull students have grown since last I taught at the academy.”

“Athadora!” Helene gasped, amazed. That insipid boy was right, she thought. For some reason that realization made her almost as angry as anything else. “How … what do you want with me? Why have you stolen my familiar?”

“Simply to get to you, pretty little one,” the necromancer mocked. “Surely now that you see the bones of Insidian you can guess why?”

“I know nothing of death magic!” Helene spat.

“Then you are a fool,” Athadora calmly replied. “It takes fey and royal blood to resurrect a creature of a black dragon’s power, and I was hardly going to kidnap that wild card Maverick, was I, Princess?”

“Maverick?”

Helene let her question trail away.

She had no understanding of what kind of royalty the shop owner could possibly be—nor was this the time to ponder the question.

“Release me!” she ordered, but her words sounded hollow and impotent in her ears.

Athadora laughed in reply and Helene looked away, heart heavy. Her eyes found an iron block altar covered in gruesome stains. On it rested a battered old wooden bowl and a sharp, long-bladed knife of silver.

Terrified, Helene tried to rise.

Cold metal bit cruelly into her wrists and ankles, and she looked down wildly at the manacles keeping her chained to the table. She cursed as she realized how helpless she was, how alone.

Again she heard the laughter of Athadora.

“Silly girl,” Athadora mocked, drawing closer. “Did you think I would save you from the venom of the scorpion only to let you fly away?”

The woman loomed above her in a scant gown of black silk trimmed with ermine fur, seemingly impervious to the cold and dank that surrounded them.

The sorceress leaned forward, black eyes catching Helene’s and holding them. In the cage behind the two, Mordenkainen screeched and flung himself against the unyielding bars.