Guardians of Magessa (The Birthright Chronicles Book 1) (27 page)

“And we’re good?” Timothy asked. He was
backing toward the barrack’s door now.

“Yes, we’re good,” Senndra laughed. The
small motion made her ribs ache. “Go get ready for your thing.”

Timothy jogged out of the barracks, and
Senndra followed at a leisurely pace. She squinted as her eyes adjusted to the
sunshine and was about to start walking when she realized that she was all
alone. She didn’t know where any of her friends were except for Vladimir and
Timothy and they were going to be leaving soon. As she looked around, her gaze
came to rest on another cadet that was coming her way. The long, flowing blond
hair gave the cadet away immediately, and Senndra walked out to meet Rita. When
the two friends met, they embraced each other.

“I wondered what happened to you,” Senndra
said over Rita’s shoulder. “I haven’t seen you since the beginning of this
battle. Where have you been?”

“Probably doing the same thing as you,”
Rita said, releasing Senndra. “I did my part to hold back the dwarves and
defeat them.”

“You did all of that without a scratch?”
Senndra asked. “That’s better than I did. You should have seen what a mess I
was yesterday. I thought that I was supposed to be the better sword fighter.”

“Apparently skill isn’t everything,” Rita
responded. “Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. So tell me everything
that happened since we last saw each other, and I’ll show you the way to our
tent.”

“There’s almost too much to tell,” Senndra
said as the girls walked off. “In fact, I don’t think that you would believe
half of the things that I've been through.”

******

Timothy, Vladimir, and Lemin stood at the
gate of the south wall of Saddun saying their last farewells. There were no
idle words wasted as the cadets received last-minute directions from their
instructor. With a firm handshake from both boys, Lemin said good-bye, and the
two cadets were off. The ground sloped gently upward, but it was maybe a mile
to the real mountains. They ran, knowing that this was some of the easiest
terrain they would encounter on their journey. Since speed was of the essence,
they had packed very little. They brought only water, food for five days, and
the clothes on their backs. The two cadets were very physically fit, but this
journey would still push them to their limits. They had more than two hundred
miles to traverse, and the first twenty-five miles were through the mountains.
But they were still confident that they could make it to the academy before the
battle with the dwarves began. The first mile passed quickly, and the boys were
moving into the real mountains. The trail, such as it was, seemed to seek out
the steepest, most treacherous slopes to scale, and the boys had trouble just
avoiding injury as they ran. To make matters worse, a forest began shortly
after the mountain did, and they had to deal with the underbrush and tree
branches. They reached the peak of the first mountain and took the path
downward. The going was faster now, but the trails were even more treacherous
going down. At the bottom of the mountain, the trail disappeared, so Timothy
and Vladimir took a gully that ran between two mountains. The gully seemed to
be a dried creek bed, and they were able to make relatively good time as they
ran up it. They granted themselves a rest at the head of the creek, and
estimated that they had come close to seven or eight miles so far. After a
short break, they continued at a more relaxed pace. The urgency of their
mission never left their minds though, and at the peak of the next mountain,
they began to run again.

The scenery rushed by too quickly for the
cadets to see, but if they had had more time, they might have observed that the
forest abounded with all kinds of animals. Deer ran through the trees, and
birds flew through the treetops. The streams that flowed down several of the
mountains were filled with fish of every variety. Even the plants were pleasing
to the eye. Thousands of flowers filled the dirt between trees and grew on
shrubs, filling the air with a pleasant aroma.

At the bottom of the mountain, the boys
followed a game trail that ran alongside a creek. They stopped for a few
minutes to replenish their water bottles and were off again. The path became
more stony and rough until it burst out of the forest and into a short plain of
rock. To the west was a rock wall a hundred feet tall over which a creek
cascaded, creating a beautiful waterfall. They halted and took stock of their
surroundings. The massive stone wall blocking their way extended to the left
and right for farther than they could see. There appeared to be no way to the
top, and they had not brought any climbing equipment.

“So what do we do now?” Vladimir asked.
“We certainly can’t climb that cliff, and who knows how far it will be before
we find a way to the top.”

“I told you there was a reason that I came
on this journey,” Timothy said. “Relax. I’ll take care of everything.”

“Not even you can get us to the top of
that cliff,” Vladimir objected. “You’re not strong enough to get us up there.”

“No, I can’t,” Timothy said with a glance
at Vladimir. “But if we work together, we can do it.”

“What do you mean?” Vladimir said. “What
can I do to help you? Heaven knows I’ll do what I can, but I’m just a regular
person.”

“First of all, you can stop the charade,”
Timothy said, fixing his gaze on his companion. “You know what I’m talking
about,” he added when Vladimir gave him a quizzical look.

“No, I don’t think I do,” Vladimir said.
“Wait. You don’t think that I’m some sort of magician, do you?”

“I said cut the charade,” Timothy
retorted. “We both know that you’re lying. I know just as well as you that
you’re a magician, so you can stop pretending and help me.”

“But…how do you know that?” Vladimir
asked.

“I guess you thought you were pretty
clever in hiding the fact, didn’t you?” Timothy said. “And you did a good job
of it too, but there were too many instances that you knew things that you
shouldn’t have. None of them were obvious, but remember that I am also a
magician. I know what to look for, and I can practically smell the magic in
you.”

“Okay, you’re right,” Vladimir conceded
with a roll of his eyes. “I am a magician, but I have my reasons for not
wanting people to know, so don’t tell anyone.”

“Fine, just help me get us to the top of
this cliff. Though it's outside my area of expertise, I did learn how to
levitate. I’m not strong enough to lift both of us, so I’ll need you to lift
yourself.”

Vladimir nodded, and the two magicians
fell to their respective tasks. To an outside observer, it would appear as
though the boys were simply standing there. Eventually, however, they began to
slowly rise into the air. They floated upward until they were even with the top
of the cliff. Drifting sideways until they were not suspended over empty space,
they fell the six inches to the ground and collapsed onto the rocky soil.

“Good work there,” Timothy said. He was
slightly winded from the magical exertion and was having trouble catching his
breath.

“Thanks,” Vladimir gasped. “You know, it
just occurred to me that we probably could have done that an easier way and
exerted less energy,” he commented when he had recovered enough breath to
speak.

“Oh, I know you’re right," Timothy
agreed, "I just wanted to test your strength.”

“Well, I don’t think now is the best time
to do that,” Vladimir said. “We’re supposed to be moving double time, not
wearing ourselves out for stupid purposes.” He climbed to his feet and looked
down at Timothy.

“Come on, it’s time to go,” he said and
offered his hand to Timothy.

The two boys broke into a jog and worked
their way westward through the forest, which began again at the top of the
cliff. As they ran, they noticed a marked difference in their surroundings.
While the forest had been relatively easy to traverse and pleasant to be in at
the bottom of the cliff, at the top it was overgrown with no beaten path to
follow. There were no visible flowers or other pleasant sights, and the air was
filled with the smell of decay. Though the boys were soon forced to slow to a
walk, they still managed to keep up a fairly good pace and didn’t stop for
several more miles. In fact, their next break was again forced as their way was
blocked by another tall cliff. This time, however, they were at the top of the
cliff instead of the bottom.

“The good news is that this time we’ll be
going down, so it will be less taxing on us magically,” Timothy commented.

“That’s the wrong way to look at it,”
Vladimir chided. “Look at this cliff. It’s not as steep as the other and has a
lot of character. If we play this right, we should be able to get down without
using any magic at all.”

Timothy walked to the edge and looked down
again, this time searching for more than the height. He saw that Vladimir was
correct in what he had said; the cliff was quite a bit less steep than the
other and had plenty of rocks jutting from its surface that could be used as
foot- and handholds. He shrugged and figured that there was no sense in waiting
around, so he turned around and carefully let himself over the edge. He
searched with his feet for a rock, which he found and used as a foothold.
Looking to the left, he spotted a rock that was within reach of his hand and
grabbed it. He repeated the process with his right hand and found himself
completely off the top of the cliff and hanging onto its face for dear life.

“Mix magic with the physical,” Vladimir
called from Timothy’s left. Timothy looked in that direction to see that his
companion was at least ten feet below him.

“What do you mean?” he called.

In response, Vladimir braced his feet on a
rock and jumped to another one five feet to his left and three feet below him.
He stepped off of this rock backwards and grabbed onto a handhold a few feet
lower. Timothy shook his head in amazement as he watched Vladimir move. How the
boy could use so little magic so effectively was beyond him. With a shrug, he
decided that he might as well try the same thing, so he let go of his handholds
simultaneously and fell. Reaching out with magic, he detected a rock just below
him, which he grabbed. His shoulders jarred painfully as he jolted to a stop,
and his fingers barely managed to maintain their hold on the rock. Shaking his
head, he shoved away the pain and focused on the task at hand. He sensed a rock
jutting two feet below him, so he dropped onto it. His feet had barely touched
down before he jumped off the rock sideways and grabbed onto another. He let go
of the rock and fell down to another one that was three feet below him. This
time he used magic to slow himself slightly before he grabbed onto the rock,
saving his arms from another jarring. He let go and fell several feet before
propelling himself off of the wall and into the branches of a tree that grew
nearby. With a deft move, he slid down the trunk to the ground.

“See how easy it is to get things done
when you combine physical and magical?” Vladimir commented.

“Yes,” Timothy answered. “I don’t know why
I never thought of that myself. I always worked entirely with magic or in the
physical sense. When you combine the two, it seems to work much more
efficiently.”

“Oh yeah, it’s a lot more efficient,”
Vladimir said as he started to weave his way among the trees. “If you physically
do what is physically easy and use magic to do what is physically difficult,
you can accomplish much more than by working exclusively in either reality.”

"I don't get it," Timothy said.
"If you're so good at this sort of thing, why do you hide it?"

"I have my reasons," Vladimir
said vaguely.

"That's not an answer," Timothy
said. "What reasons?"

"It's a long, boring story,"
Vladimir said. "You wouldn't want to hear it."

"Well, we've got the time now and it
can't be as boring as running through the forest for hours straight,"
Timothy said. "Here's an idea: you start telling it and when I get bored
I'll stop you."

"I don't suppose you're going to let
me hear the end of this until I tell you?" Vladimir asked.

"Not unless you tell me why you don't
want to tell me," Timothy answered. "Though, that would probably
require telling me the story anyway."

"Fine," Vladimir conceded.
"Because you're being an unmitigated pain in the butt, I'll tell you.
You'll probably think that I'm an idiot for this, but here's
the reason. Actually, let me start back a few years so that you understand
where I'm coming from.