Aldwyn's Academy (18 page)

Behind him the wolves snarled and leaped in chase. Dorian knew he couldn’t out run the animals.

“Magic, magic,” he muttered as he fought to keep up with the speeding homunculus.

He plunged a hand blindly into his haversack and snatched the first item he found. “Don’t fail me, Maverick,” he muttered, ripping open the box.

Running without looking, Dorian missed the turn in the tunnel and slammed his shoulder into the wall. He was knocked to his back.

Behind him the hunting pack appeared in the tunnel, and their growls seemed to shake the walls.

Dorian lunged for the package he’d dropped and his fingers found it in the dark. With slavering jaws, the wolves closed in.

The biggest of the dire wolves, a monster large enough to rip a man in half with a single bite, stepped forward, eyes glowing yellow.

Dorian’s fingers found the box as the thing coiled its massive muscles to leap. He ripped the package open. The wolf was so close he could smell the damp, hot stink of its breath.

He jerked his head back and jaws closed like a portcullis slamming down.

The contents of the box exploded outward like spores from one of the quivering mushrooms. Instinctively, Dorian held his breath and rolled away from the cloud.

Behind him the other wolves rushing up next to their leader to get a bite of the kill plunged into the swirling cloud. Instantly the entire group began to dance and spin, their great furry bodies racked with sneezes as they made strangled, choking sounds.

Frantic for relief, the animals threw themselves back and forth, trampling each other in a violent frenzy of sneezing and choking.

Dorian stopped for a moment to admire the power of the object he’d unleashed. He couldn’t help but smile.

“Easy to see why
that’s
banned from school, then.”

Helene’s homunculus chattered in angry reproach from down the tunnel, and Dorian pushed himself up and began to run.

The Dust of Sneezing and Choking would not last forever he realized and he had to make the most out of what time he had stolen.

He raced ahead, following the homunculus as it navigated the tunnels. Again, as before, the passage led him downward, and as before long, natural caverns gave way to mining shafts and mining shafts into what appeared to be the ancient foundations of the ruins under the plateau.

Rounding a blind corner, Dorian suddenly ran up on Helene’s homunculus fluttering madly above a trapdoor set into the floor.

In the distance, down those stone halls and earthen corridors behind him, he heard the wolves on the move again.

Dorian grasped the heavy iron ring of the dusty trapdoor in both his hands and yanked upward. The thin muscles in his legs and back bunched while those through his shoulders and arms stood out in vivid relief under the terrible strain.

Three times Dorian tried. Three times the door did not budge.

The homunculus darted to and fro around his head, twittering recriminations in his ear.

“Would you shut up!” Dorian hollered. “By Corellon, you’re as bad as
she
is!”

He heard a long, angry howl and knew when it wasn’t cut short by a sneeze that the dust had run its course and the wolves were coming.

“Oh no,” he said, voice dull as he let the great iron ring of the trapdoor fall. The homunculus squeaked but the boy only shook his head. “No. I don’t have a spell and I’m not strong like my father …”

His father was strong, heroically so. But sometimes strength wasn’t always enough and his father was a man who valued a clever plan over brute force.

Two summers ago, a hill giant had come rampaging down out of the mountains and began raiding villages along the borderland. The creature was clever for its kind and exceptionally bloodthirsty. It struck in the middle of the night, killing and eating villagers with abandon.

When first the local militia and then the king’s guard responded, the giant simply faded away into the recesses of a swamp, avoiding confrontation only to raid again several nights later in a completely different area.

One on one or even three on one, the thing would slaughter human fighters, but whenever the kingdom soldiers mounted a cohort big enough to defeat the creature, it simply faded into the wilderness.

At last fed up with the attacks on his people, the
king ordered his personal champion, Dorian’s father, to confront the beast.

The knight did so, taking his two-handed sword and a very heavy, very long lance normally used by heavy cavalry.

But he also took something else; a concoction brewed up by Dorian’s mother, a concoction she forced her son to watch her make in order to keep the boy out from under his father’s feet as the warlord prepared for battle.

Dorian threw off his haversack and reached in, hunting around until he found his own belt. Its pouches were filled with as many ingredients as his mother could cram into the purses, all to make sure he was never unprepared for school.

He worked quickly, ignoring Helene’s frantic and panicked homunculus.

Dragon scale: strength.

A bit of kraken tentacle: strength.

To these primary ingredients he added, as his mother had, a touch of mandrake root for absorption.

Lacking mortar and pestle he was forced to grind the ingredients on the floor with a bit of broken rock.

His work was sloppy and haphazard, a tremendous risk with magical components in such alchemical exercises, but necessity was the mother of invention.

His mind, the same one that floated a thousand different places when he tried paying attention in school or
to some lecture from a tutor, was now focused with white intensity by the adrenaline pumping through his body.

The wheels and cogs of his thoughts turned and spun, unfolding calculations with blinding speed in a manner he could never have performed under less arduous circumstances.

The paste almost ready, ground to a fine consistency under his careful but hurried blending with the edge of the rock, Dorian whispered the final words of his spell.

The first of the dire wolves rounded the corner of the tunnel, all tooth and fang and yellow flashing eyes.

Almost serenely, Dorian sized up the situation and made his decision.

His wand appeared in his hand and his most trusted of spells tumbled off his lips in a practiced manner as his hand traced the quick, short pattern.

With that singular sound of bacon sizzling on a griddle, the green bolt of arcane light shot from his wand like an arrow from a longbow.

With the force of a warhammer, the magic rose up and slammed into the ceiling, splitting rock and burrowing into the earth.

There was a sound like thunder and a ton of earth dropped like an avalanche, burying the lead wolf and cutting off the tunnel in a sudden collapse.

A barrier of earth now formed a bulwark between him and the crazed, blood-mad pack.

He heard angry snarls and yipping barks as the survivors threw themselves at the barrier, but far fewer than he’d heard prior to the spell. The pack’s numbers had been reduced by the falling stone.

The smile on his face was grim and far beyond his years, but well won.

Dorian shifted the wand in his hand and scooped up the paste he’d made. He shoved it into his mouth, and the effect was instantaneous.

He felt as if a bolt of lightning had struck him, the concoction filling his veins with its primordial power and energy.

He knew instinctively, with the intuition of a born wizard, that his potion was only a pale shadow of the one his father used to slay the giant, but he also knew it would be more than enough for the task at hand.

Reaching down, he gripped the ring and gritted his teeth against the strain.

With the sound of screaming metal and the snap of splintering wood, the trapdoor opened.

He saw the scrambling claws of one of the furred killers working furiously to widen a hole from the cave-in.

“Would you get down there?” he shouted at the buzzing homunculus.

The homunculus dropped through the opening without another word. Following quickly Dorian scooped
up his haversack and threw it over a shoulder, wand in hand.

He felt like a titan. He felt like his father.

He lifted his eyes and met the murderous yellow eyes of the wolf. Instantly he was a boy again.

He turned and dropped through the trapdoor.

H
elene ran.

At every turn she darted down a new side passage, desperately hunting for a rising elevation in the floor that might promise a path to the surface. Mordenkainen flew beside her, easily keeping pace.

Her feet struck the ground hard as her legs grew tired. Fast as she was, her breath became more forced the longer the chase took.

She was racing against the tireless energy of the undead. Spell options flickered through her mind but she never seemed to gain a moment long enough to try and cast anything complicated enough to save her.

The minotaur and his pack of zombies were just behind her, just around the last corner or down the previous stretch of hall. Her step lost its bounce and Mordenkainen’s cries became more concerned as she began to falter.

She fought back tears of pain and frustration, but already she had suffered through so much and she wasn’t sure how much more she could take.

Up ahead she saw a Y-intersection suddenly branching off the main tunnel and her sensitive fey eyes detected a lessening in the darkness, a deep gray where before there had been only darkest black.

The minotaur lunged.

She hit the corner hard, turning it in a sharp buttonhook maneuver that carried her out of reach of the minotaur’s grasp.

The beast stumbled and fell.

Helene raced on toward the light.

Mordenkainen squawked and flared out his wings. Helene stumbled to a stop, her eyes wide.

Her homunculus hovered in the air before her.

“Wha—” she began.

Dorian dropped out of the ceiling and struck her.

The two of them crumpled to the ground in a tangle of bruised limbs. Reflexively, Helene struck out with her fists and screamed, uttering the foulest curses she could think of.

“Stop it!” Dorian shouted.

The boy covered up against her blows, face red in the uncertain light cast by mining lanterns nailed to the crossbeams of the tunnel just above them. Helene stopped her fighting and looked at the boy in stunned disbelief.

“You!” she shouted.

“No time!” Dorian shouted back.

“There’s a minotaur and zombies!” she shouted.

“There are wolves!” he yelled simultaneously.

“Where?” they echoed.

“Behind you,” they yelled at the same time.

They stopped, looked at each other then yelled together: “Run!”

Pushing themselves apart they rose to flee, but it was already too late.

From the tunnel behind Dorian and Mordenkainen the savage bugbears who had first kidnapped Helene appeared.

The minotaur strode into sight from behind the elf girl, cutting off escape. The faster of the zombies began filling in the spaces behind him.

Above them, through the trapdoor, dire wolves looked down, snarling.

The first of the wolves was already in motion and Dorian reacted instantly, still flush with the strength of his potion.

He caught the plunging animal in his grip and hurtled it to the side. The yelping beast slammed into the tunnel wall and fell limply to the ground.

Slake and Grimek charged Helene.

“Watch out!” Dorian spun, shoving Helene to the floor.

He caught Grimek’s swing and slung the bugbear clear as Mordenkainen dived into Slake’s face.

Lying at Dorian’s feet, Helene reached up and snatched the wand from his belt holder.

Her homunculus dived in and bit the bugbear wrestling with Dorian.

Grimek’s fighting arm fell slack and then he dropped to the ground, falling instantly asleep.

A much more capable spellcaster than Dorian, the elf princess snapped the wand through a tight pattern.

Once again swirling prismatic colors and shooting sparks filled the subterranean passage. The cacophony from the spell echoed off the walls with relentless intensity as blues and reds and greens splashed in brilliant colors that ruined the infrared vision of the creatures.

Zombies stumbled into each other and several were chopped down as the blinded minotaur hacked at anything that moved.

Bits and parts of the undead creatures flew in a sticky spray all around them.

“To Lowadar!” Helene commanded Mordenkainen, “Quickly!”

The falcon dropped, flapped his wings, and rose through the trapdoor above them.

The last dire wolf emerged from the shadows. Its jaws were wide, exposing curved fangs and dripping jaws. The great beast’s head twisted and its teeth came together.

Mordenkainen barely escaped.

Helene, forced to turn her attention back to the whirling chaos of the battle, cried out as the undead minotaur shuffled forward and smashed Dorian in the head with the blunt side of its axe.

The boy went down like a bag of stones. His eyes rolled back in his head and blood ran out from his hair.