Aldwyn's Academy (17 page)

Helene wanted to cry out, to scream for Professor Ives or the Archmage Lowadar, even the grim tiefling wizard Blackburn or, gods exclaim, Maverick.

But Helene did none of these things. Instead she thought very hard about how to save herself and buried her fear deep inside her discipline.

“You’re starting to bore me,” Helene said, voice even.

Athadora glided up to the table, ignoring the furiously hissing and squawking falcon. Smiling down at the bound girl, the dark sorceress traced the side of Helene’s face with a long finger.

Helene jerked away.

The woman bent low, so low the sweep of her long, raven-colored hair gently brushed against Helene’s auburn strands. She leaned in close, pinning the girl with her eyes, knowing the elf could not pull away.

Her lips almost brushed Helene’s face.

“Soon, dear heart, soon,” Athadora whispered. “Soon I’ll have that perfect noble heart of yours out on my altar, and if I’m very, very good, dear little girl, you’ll be able to see how it beats outside of your chest, pumps blood into the dread wyrm, and breathes him back to life so that the last thing you will ever see is that great beast rising from the dead to devour everything you care about.”

Athadora closed her eyes, and her body slightly shuddered as if she had just bitten into some delicious dessert.

Then she drew up, smoothing down the girl’s hair the way a mother comforts a child.

Helene snarled and spat.

Saliva ran down Athadora’s cheek. Her lips pulled back, revealing sharp white teeth. She surged forward, and black eldritch energy seemed to gather and flow around her like lightning in a storm cloud.

Her hand came up, long fingered and hard knuckled with blood red nails and rings encrusted by black diamonds among sharp ruby shards.

They were rings that could shred flesh.

Helene did not flinch.

She stared into Athadora’s face, her own features carefully formed into a mask of courage. Something in the strength of the princess’s gaze stopped the sorceress in her tracks.

Suddenly unsure of herself, Athadora stepped back.

Quick as a striking snake, Mordenkainen’s head flashed out between the bars of his cage and caught at her, the curved beak slicing into the woman’s clothes at the waist, ripping fabric and drawing blood.

Screaming in surprise and pain, Athadora twisted away.

She looked wildly from caged familiar to bound girl. Then she stopped and Helene could see the tension leaving the woman’s body like blood from an open wound.

To the young spellcaster’s amazement, Athadora threw back her head and laughed.

“Oh I’ve chosen well, dear heart. I’ve chosen well.” Athadora regarded her captive coyly. “Soon, your highness.”

The minotaur, upon hearing his mistress’s screams, came running, his footsteps heavy even on the tired old stone of the ruin, but Athadora stopped him with a single upheld hand as she turned and left.

“Soon,” she promised once more over her shoulder.

H
elene could feel the smug satisfaction radiating from Mordenkainen.

She thought about how close she had come to losing her beloved familiar. Fearful anger energized her.

“Mordenkainen! You silly bird! That was silly and dangerous—”

Mordenkainen regarded her with warm intelligence.

The little silver key to Helene’s chains kept in Athadora’s pocket was locked between the sharp edges of his beak.

“Oh, you naughty bird.” Helene smiled.

For a moment she felt like giggling madly, but she suppressed it with her iron will.

Out in the chamber, the dragon had taken full shape.

On each of the exposed bones that made up the skeleton of the beast, Athadora engraved twisting hieroglyphic runes in dark scrawl. None of them were familiar to Helene.

The skull of the dragon sat at the head of the reassembled skeleton, dwarfing even the massive minotaur standing sentry before it. On the blunt table of its forehead, above the steep ridge of the brow bone, and between the base of the curving horns, Athadora had scrawled a rune that Helene did recognize:
EN-tee
, bind.

She was going to do it, Helene realized. The horrible woman was really going to do it.

“Give me the key, Mordenkainen,” she whispered hoarsely.

Helene slid across the table and reached out with her hand to the very end of the chain that bound her.

For his part, the falcon stretched his neck as far as he could, sliding his head between the bars. The silver key gleamed dully between the black horn of his beak.

Helene’s fingertips just barely grazed the cold metal of the implement.

For a second her heart leaped in her chest as she felt the key begin to slip through her grip.

Mordenkainen threw himself against the cage, slamming his wings against the rusted, enchanted bars and giving the key just the bit of momentum it needed to fall into the girl’s palm.

Helene closed her fist tightly around her prize, releasing her pent up breath in relief. She worked at the key, turning it in her fingers and fitting the notched teeth into the slot on her manacle.

The angle was awkward but she was nimble and her life depended on it. She got it right the first time and felt the satisfying
click
as the lock turned and gave up its hold.

She snapped her wrist and shed the chain, then sat up and began to work on the other bonds keeping her secured to the table.

She gagged suddenly as a miasma of rotting meat enveloped her. Letting the second bracelet fall off her wrist she turned, forcing vomit back.

A zombie loomed at the end of the table, a broken shovel clutched in its fish-belly white fingers, its dirty ragged nails grown long in the grave. The thing looked at her dully, its face like an emotionless meat mask. Long, greasy hair hung in rotted curtains down the side of its face, and the eyes had rolled up, showing only whites, but Helene knew that through the power of Athadora’s spells, the thing could see.

It gurgled deep in its throat as it attempted to raise the alarm.

Helene pushed her hands hard against the unyielding surface of the table and shoved her feet into the rotting thing’s body. Her heels struck with a dull, wet
smack
that sent the creature tumbling backward.

As it staggered, she threw herself off the table and grabbed hold of Mordenkainen’s cage.

The zombie, clumsy and stupid, tripped over its own
feet and crashed hard into one of the large cupboards holding Athadora’s spell components.

Shelves collapsed and splintered under its weight as glass jars crashed to the floor and shattered. Spiders the size of kittens scurried off into the dark, freed.

Athadora shrieked from across the chamber, her cry followed by the roar of the minotaur.

Helene looked and saw a mob of zombie workers turning to come at her.

Beside them Athadora produced her wand and was already tracing lines of power through the air.

H
elene’s blood ran cold.

If Athadora got a spell off, the elf was doomed.

Without thinking and despite having lost her wand, the princess quickly uttered the simple phrase of the last spell she had memorized.

A cavalcade of prismatic colors shot from her hand, throwing vivid sparkling hues across the air in walls of light. The sound of bells and whistles and laughter filled the chamber and echoed in deafening tones off the walls.

Helene hugged Mordenkainen’s cage to her and whirled toward the door. Six Magic Missiles in slick, greenish hues hammered through the room.

The girl ducked then darted around a heavy table as the Magic Missiles flew at her.

Oh, she’s mad, she thought.

A missile slammed into the wall and shattered an apothecary table. A second punched a head-sized hole in
the brick and mortar. A third blasted the chamber door off its hinges.

Helene sprinted toward it.

Out of the swirling, flying spells the minotaur emerged, axe held high.

The beast saw the girl dart out from around the table and swung wildly with its heavy weapon. The blade whistled past her head as she ducked, but the edge of axe caught Mordenkainen’s cage in her hands and jerked it free.

“Mordenkainen!” Helene shouted.

The cage went spinning one way and the bars split like twigs under the force of the blow as Helene went tumbling in another.

She landed hard and sprawled out, but bounced back up to her knees again, screaming Mordenkainen’s name.

The falcon erupted from his cage in a whirlwind of feathers and claws. Without hesitation the bird threw himself at the minotaur.

The creature mooed like a panicked cow and stumbled backward as wings beat its bovine face and claws scored deep wounds along its muzzle.

It swung wildly with a great knuckled fist that Mordenkainen easily dodged then grasped the axe in both its hands.

“Mordenkainen, fly!” Helene screamed.

The minotaur’s axe slashed wildly.

It sliced through the air and hammered into the table with unstoppable force and split it in half with a sound like thunder.

The great curved blade passed easily through the wood and bit deep into the stone block floor below.

The minotaur tried to lift his battle-axe, but it stuck.

The beast roared in outrage.

Helene and Mordenkainen were already running into the dark tunnels.

S
tunned, Dorian looked down at Helene’s homunculus staring up from inside his haversack.

The thing was a little bigger than a large man’s hand, with lumpy features and wings.

“Hey there,” Dorian whispered. “I guess I’m about the last person you thought would help you, huh?”

With tiny hands and a stricken expression, the homunculus reached out and climbed into Dorian’s lap. The creature’s fear was so palpable that its vulnerability pulled at the boy’s heart.

Make us proud, his mother had told him.

Everything made sense to Dorian now; why she had left him at the school despite the attack and the ghosts and all the uncertainty and danger.

He was going to be a wizard and people would come to
him
for help against the dark things that hunted with murder in their hearts … just the way Helene’s homunculus now clung so desperately to him.

Magic was dangerous—he’d heard that often enough.

But if magic was dangerous and he controlled magic then, by Corellon, he was dangerous as well.

The cry of a dire wolf jerked the bruised and tired boy from his thoughts.

If he didn’t move quickly, both he and the homunculus would be a welcome meal for the beasts hunting outside.

He lifted the little magic construct and whispered quietly, “Find her.”

In the mouth of the cave the huge, shaggy forms of the dire wolves snarled and yelped.

Helene’s homunculus zipped off toward the back of the cave, flying quickly as a man could run.

Throwing the strap of the haversack over one shoulder, Dorian quickly ran after the creature. He got only a short way before he realized that what he had taken for a cave at the bottom of the ravine was in fact another tunnel.