The Mage's Grave: Mages of Martir Book #1 (14 page)

Aorja nodded as she pulled her collar back up over her neck scar. “Of course. He lives in the southern seas, well away from human or aquarian civilization. He's not very active, preferring to rule his little island in solitude, but he's like the rest of the gods in that he always has some kind of plan going at some point or another, plans even I am not always aware of.”

“Why would you ever work for a southern god?” said Jiku. “The southern gods like to eat mortals. I know all gods are worthy of respect and honor, but the southern gods rarely hesitate to kill mortals who cross their path.”

For a moment, fear seemed to flash in Aorja's eyes, like she had seen something horrible.

But then she shook her head and said, “The Ghostly God doesn't like to eat human or aquarian flesh. He doesn't really eat at all. Besides, he likes having me here, acting as his spy, sending him information about the happenings in the north. It helps him plan more effectively.”

“He'll eat you one of these days,” Jiku warned. “When he decides that he no longer needs you, he will devour you whole.”

“Shut up,” Aorja snapped. “You don't know him. Besides, if he ever tries to pull a stunt like that, I can protect myself.”

“That's a very arrogant thing to say,” said Jiku, “considering you are just a student still in school and the Ghostly God is a deity who is thousands of years old.”

“The point is, I serve him,” said Aorja. “And it is a great job, albeit one where I have to be very careful about who I talk to and what I share with people.”

Darek blinked. “But … why? You still haven't explained why you work for the Ghostly God. What did he promise to give you in exchange for your service?”

“What he promised me is none of your business,” Aorja said, although the abruptness with which she said that made Darek think he had hit a nerve. “All you need to know is that Master finally gave me orders to act. That's why I blew up the Third Dorm. Master is finally putting his plan into action, and to do so, he needs the mages here disoriented and distracted.”

“You've certainly done a good job of that,” said Jiku. “A little too good, to be honest. Your master must be proud.”

“You shut up,” said Aorja. “Or I will blow your face off. Actually, I should probably do that anyway. You know too much.”

“I'm still confused,” said Darek. “Jiku, what part do you play in all of this?”

“Nothing special,” said Jiku. “Prior to the arrival of the Institute mages, I had returned to our room to grab something I forgot. When I arrived, I found Aorja casting some kind of spell. When she saw me, we briefly struggled before she knocked me out, though the explosion briefly awoke me.”

“He was easy to subdue,” said Aorja. “He still thought I was his friend. Made it easy for me to take him out before he even realized what hit him.”

“I …” Darek struggled to process everything Aorja had just said. “So you were never really our friend? You never really liked us?”

“At first, I did like you two,” said Aorja. “I did consider you both good friends. I came to this school under the mistaken belief that it was my destiny to become a master mage, but then it got boring.”

“Boring?” said Darek. “How can you call North Academy
boring
? Every day is an adventure here.”

“Every day? Hardly,” said Aorja. She gestured at the ceiling. “Every damn day, it's the same old grind. We wake up, the teachers put us through all kinds of 'tests' to teach some some obscure, useless spell or aspect of magic, have meals at predetermined times of day (always the same awful food), and then we go to bed and repeat the whole process again the next day. If you think that's an 'adventure,' then I'm afraid you're even dumber than I thought.”

“You're the one who makes it sound boring,” said Darek. “And even if it was as you said it was, does that mean that you must put the lives of innocent people at risk, just so you can satisfy your own desire for excitement?”

“It's not my fault you guys are boring as hell,” said Aorja. “Master was right. You don't understand.”

“Don't understand what?” said Darek. Then he shook his head. “It doesn't matter. What is your Master planning? Tell me that, at least.”

“I don't know,” said Aorja. “Master doesn't tell me everything just because I work for him. He's the kind of leader who only lets his servants know what they need to know in order to complete their individual jobs. His two katabans servants don't even know I work for him, much less that I've been helping the bumbling buffoons along without their knowledge.”

She must be referring to the intruders that Junaz caught,
Darek thought

Aloud, he said, “Well, why didn't your Master have you do whatever he is planning? You were here the whole time. Seems like a waste to send two other people to do a job you could do yourself.”

Aorja shook her head. “How am I supposed to do their job when I am a student here? The point of this plan was to make sure that no one knew I was working for him, but that all clearly went down the drain, now didn't it?”

Aorja's wand hand shook, but it was still aimed squarely at Jiku. “It was supposed to be
simple
. While I distracted you idiots, Durima and Gujak were supposed to sneak in and out. But I forgot about that idiotic Guardian, which put us in the same mess that we're in now.”

“It's not quite as bleak as you think,” said Jiku in a surprisingly calm voice. “After all, that little hitch in your 'brilliant' plan showed us your true colors.”

“What did I say about you talking?” said Aorja.

Jiku did not respond, but he no longer looked quite as frightened as he had before.

“Jiku has a good point,” said Darek. “It's over, Aorja. You shouldn't have chosen this moment to reveal your plan to us. Sooner or later Eyurna or someone else will come in and stop you.”

“Don't be so certain about that,” said Aorja in a singsong voice. “You see, I sealed all of the doors and windows out of here. I also sent Eyurna out by telling her that there is a student in the First Dorm who is sick to her stomach. So it's just the three of us in here and it will continue to be just the three of us for quite some time.”

Darek reached for his wand before remembering that he had lost it while rescuing Jiku earlier. Jiku, too, had made movements like he was reaching for his wand, but like Darek, he apparently did not have his wand anymore, either.

“This is just perfect,” said Aorja, her eyes glinting malevolently. “The only two people in the school who could stop me are unarmed and as weak as twigs. The rest of Master's plan may not go correctly, but I can at least take joy in the knowledge that a couple of idiots died thanks to my efforts.”

As Aorja's wand glowed brighter and brighter, Darek closed his eyes and prayed. He prayed to Skimif, to Xocion, and to any other god or goddess who he thought would listen to him, even though he did not know if any of the gods would come to his aid.

The only god he did not try to pray to, however, was the Ghostly God. That would have been the same as asking Aorja for mercy.

Chapter Nine

T
he Magical Superior closed the door to his study, turned around, and sighed. His old age was finally catching up with him. His bones grew weaker and weaker, his joints and back ached in places he had never felt before, and he became more and more tired with each passing year. He had managed to use magic to counteract the worst aspects of old age, but even magic couldn't hide the effects of aging forever.

Every mortal life has to end at some point,
the Magical Superior thought grimly.
I am no different in that regard, despite my unusually long lifespan.

His old age seemed especially apparent every time one of his students' life was in danger. Just a few minutes ago, he, Yorak, and many of the other teachers had arrived at the campus courtyard to find Darek Takren fighting a chimera. Darek had succeeded in killing the beast, but Darek himself was currently lying asleep in bed in the medical wing due to the fact that he had nearly frozen his hands off by using magic without a wand.

And then, not long after that, the explosion had happened. It had appeared out of nowhere, without even the slightest warning, unlike the explosion that had demolished the Third Dorm. When the Magical Superior, Yorak, and Jenur—along with all of the Institute students—went to the sports field to see it, they had discovered that the
Soaring Sea
was little more than burnt scrap and its pilot dead meat. The Institute students themselves were investigating this one, but it seemed unlikely to the Superior that they would find any actual clues.

After that, Yorak had said that she was going to gather up all of her students and leave tomorrow. The only reason they weren't leaving right away was because their airship was no more. She was going to send a gray ghost to the Institute tonight requesting another airship be sent (apparently, the Institute had several, which the Magical Superior found odd, considering how that school had been built underwater). They were not going to teleport because most of the students Yorak had brought with her were not very good at it and Yorak did not think she had the energy to teleport so many students at once over such a vast distance. Nonetheless, they
were
leaving, which was a basic fact that Yorak had made crystal clear to the Superior earlier, and there was nothing the Superior could do about it.

And in all honesty, the Magical Superior understood her fears. He himself was becoming more and more worried for his own students' safety, even though no one had died yet. He tried to convince himself that the rest of the school was going to be fine, but it was hard to believe that when he had no idea whether another attack was coming or not.

That was why he was back here in his study. He was going to speak to a god, the only god who could possibly know what was going on here, and he was going to do it alone. Yorak had demanded to come with him so she could find out what was going on as well (the destruction of the
Soaring Sea
seemed to have given her new motivation to find out who was behind the recent explosions at the school), but the Magical Superior had explained to her, as patiently as he could, that only the current bearer of the title of Magical Superior could speak to the gods in his study. Otherwise, he said, none of the gods would speak to him.

Of course, Yorak had not been at all happy about that. She seemed to think that the Magical Superior was trying to hide something from her, even though she knew about that rule already. He had had to explain to her that he was not hiding even one scrap of information from her. Even then, the gods didn't always honor his requests. More than once over the Magical Superior's career, he had gone into his study to speak to the gods only to spend hours waiting for a god who chose not to show up. Sometimes a completely different god would show up instead, which always put a wrench in the Magical Superior's plans.

Today, the Magical Superior did not know if the god he wished to speak with would come. This god in particular was busy, busier than the rest of the gods even, and for good reason. Still, this god was also a lot more reasonable and kind than the others and was far more likely to agree to a meeting with him. After all, Skimif, the God of Martir and the god who the Magical Superior wanted to talk to today, had once been a mortal himself.

The Magical Superior's study was a dome-shaped room, with tall, slanting walls that carried dozens of thick tomes within them. The room's walls had the colors of magic: Red, green, blue, and yellow. The walls had been painted such in order to help facilitate the magical powers for the Superior who lived there, because for some reason those four colors were more conducive to a magical environment than others.

In the center of the room was a large, round wooden table, upon which were gathered together hundreds and hundreds of tiny stone figurines. The table had been expanded ever since the Magical Superior had learned about the southern gods thirty years ago, forcing him to hire one of the Divine Carvers to create another several hundred or so statues to go along with the statues of the northern gods. Even then, the Magical Superior was not sure that all of the southern gods were represented, as most southern gods shunned contact with humans, even now years after they had become common knowledge to the peoples of the Northern Isles. He suspected that several southern gods had not yet announced their presence to the mortals, although he did not know for sure.

Today, however, the Magical Superior was not going to talk to any of the southern gods. Instead, he walked up to the table and picked out the statue of Skimif, which was in the very front of the group due to Skimif's status as the leader and ruler of the gods. It was right in front of the statue of the Ghostly God, which the Magical Superior ignored as he picked up Skimif's statue.

Hefting the stone figurine, the Magical Superior walked to the back of his study. Thick curtains in the same colors as the walls separated the back wall of his study from the rest, but it was a simple matter to push them away, revealing piles of soft pillows sitting inside the curtains. Upon the pillows were about half a dozen books, in various stages of completion, that the Magical Superior had been reading. His eyes fell briefly on his copy of Hanyu's
Prophecies
, but he did not linger on any of them because he was not here to read (much to his regret).

Walking over the pillows—if using magic to allow his feet to float an inch above the pillows counted as 'walking,' as he had no intention of climbing over their uneven surface in his old, weakened state—the Magical Superior went to the back wall itself. He made sure to close the curtains first, even though there was no one else in the room except for himself. Still, with everything that had happened recently, he felt justified in taking these protective measures, no matter how silly they may have seemed.

Then he turned his attention back to the back wall. It looked as plain and unremarkable as any wall, but that was because it had been designed that way years ago by the founder of North Academy. It was supposed to look that way to keep out potential intruders in the incredibly unlikely event someone managed to break into the Magical Superior's study. Whether it worked out that way in practice, the Magical Superior didn't know, seeing as no one had yet succeeded in breaking into his study (aside from the time his deceased younger brother had broken in years ago, although even then, his younger brother had not known about the secret passageway and therefore had not tried to look for it).