Quest Maker (2 page)

“What is it?” Brynne said.

He shook dirt from the object. For a moment, he froze. He held a rigging dagger. Its hilt was wrapped in blue-and-gold leathers. It had a beveled blade. The blade was stained brown—the rust-colored shade of dried blood. The tip was broken just so. It looked like the weapon that had killed his sixth-born brother, Chadwin.

He felt cold dread deep in his being. He wanted to let it go, but he couldn't seem to do so.

“Caden?” Brynne said.

No, it didn't look like that dagger. It was that dagger. The one Caden dreamed about at night before he awoke in a cold sweat. It was supposed to be in the Greater Realm, not in Asheville.

“Caden?” Brynne said again. This time she sounded alarmed. He felt her hand touch his shoulder. She was still shaking. “What's wrong? What is that?”

“I'm taking this with me,” he said. “This dagger . . .”

Caden was quick to talk and answer questions. Like all princes and princesses born in Razzon, he'd been gifted as an infant, given an ability that would aid him through his royal life. His gift was speech. Any language he heard, he could speak, and he often knew what to say to get his way.

For a fleeting moment, however, his words failed him. His jeans felt damp where his knees pressed against the ground. He reminded himself to breathe. “This dagger killed my brother.”

“Maybe you should leave it,” Brynne said.

Caden wouldn't leave it. It was connected to Chadwin. He wrapped the dagger in magnolia leaves and set it in his inside coat pocket. “I'm taking it.”

The spring breeze rustled the branches. The sky was turning blue with dawn. Caden called for Sir Horace, climbed atop, and offered Brynne his hand. This time, she accepted. The dagger's hilt bumped his side as they galloped past surprised morning cyclists.

Why was the dagger here?

Who had buried it?

T
hey needed to get inside their foster home before Rosa caught them.

She was a local metal artist and knew nothing of magic or of the Greater Realm. Truth be told, when Caden shared information with her about his noble birthright and his homeland, she seemed to doubt his royal sanity.

If she caught them, she wouldn't tie them to the ground or dunk them in the French Broad River. But she would take their cell phones away. Caden had grown fond of his phone, and Rosa had made sure his new one was legally acquired, unlike his first one, which Brynne had taken in stealth from the local market known as a “mall.”

The house was three stories high and surrounded by her metal-and-found-object sculptures. Among the emerging green grasses were twisted and sharp-petaled copper
flowers. One of her newer projects, a pewter-and-steel waterfall, leaned two stories tall against the house. When the metal caught the morning sunlight, it mimicked cascading water.

Caden and Brynne dismounted near the twinkling metal, and Caden ordered Sir Horace to return to the horse rescue. Then he and Brynne snuck back to their respective rooms—hers on the second floor, his in the repurposed attic. Unimpressively, Brynne crept in the back door, which she'd left unlocked. Caden, however, took the more appropriate reentry. He scaled up the escape rope he'd used to get out.

The attic's planked floor was covered in mismatched rugs, but it still creaked when Caden climbed through the window and stepped onto it. The walls were slanted and a length of black tape divided the room. One side—the neat side—was Caden's. His bed was made, his pink-and-orange quilt pulled taut. His clothes were folded. The other side—the cluttered, book-and-clothes-strewn side—belonged to his foster brother, Tito.

Tito was about Caden's build and height, although Tito claimed he was taller. His hair was long and midnight black, his dark eyes striking, and his face sharp featured. When he frowned, the left side of his mouth was always higher than the right.

Tito was awake and sitting up in bed. His hair was pulled back. Around his neck, he wore a necklace of braided
wire with an obsidian stone—a gift from their foster sister and Brynne's current roommate, the half elf enchantress, Jane Chan.

Tito had stacked books on his bed to make a table, and his booklet of hard-to-spell words was open atop it. He studied for some odd Ashevillian spelling contest to be held midweek. He didn't look up. “You snuck out,” Tito said.

“I let you sleep.”

“You gotta sleep, too, and if Rosa catches you, you'll get grounded again.”

Tito was a local, but he knew of Caden and Brynne's plight. He had proven himself a worthy and loyal ally. Matter of point, Caden had deemed Tito worthy of training in the ways of the Elite Paladin. If Tito would dust his books and fold his clothes, Caden wouldn't even mind sharing the room with him. “Brynne and I sought a way home,” Caden said. “We won't give up.”

Tito looked up at that. “Did you find one?”

As Caden was standing in their bedroom and not in Razzon, he felt the answer was obvious. “No,” he said. “But we found evidence that a new villain arrived in the city.” And he'd found the dagger, but he couldn't show that to Tito. Truth be told, he wished Brynne hadn't seen it. It felt too private for anyone else to see but him.

“Huh,” Tito said, and sounded nowhere near as concerned as he should have been.

Caden reached across the taped line, grabbed a clean-looking shoe, and tossed it at him. “No doubt it's someone dangerous. Put on your sparring clothes, Sir Tito. There is a new villain in our midst, and neither you nor Jane has mastered sword form five or seven.”

“Maybe that's because we've been practicing with a mop.”

“Practice is practice.”

Caden sought out his after-training, after-shower clothes. Rosa had bought him several short-sleeved shirts and, for school, he picked the midnight blue one with the picture of a magnificent smoke-colored horse. He found comfort in the colors of Razzon and the image of the horse.

It seemed Tito's opinion of the shirt differed. “Please tell me you didn't pick that yourself.”

Of course Caden had picked it. “It matches my coat.”

“It's got a huge-butted horse on the front.”

The magnificent steed reminded Caden of Sir Horace riding on the wind. After spending the presunrise hour galloping up the mountains, Sir Horace deserved such a tribute. “Indeed, it honors Sir Horace.”

“Dude, don't blame your horse for that shirt.”

As Tito only wore dull colorless clothes, Caden had long ago deemed his opinion on fashion meritless. Also, since Tito looked as if he wasn't going to move from his bed, Caden threw a second shoe at him. “Daily training is essential for a future Elite Paladin.”

“You know, you're lucky I put up with you,” Tito said, but he set his booklet aside.

While Tito disappeared into the bathroom, Caden pulled his secret box of Ashevillian treasures from under his bed. It was filled with items he thought would be beneficial to bring back to Razzon and the Greater Realm, things his father would be able to use: a light bulb, Lysol, cleaning wipes, toothpaste, and mouthwash. He grabbed the dagger from his inside coat pocket and stuffed it inside the box. With shaky fingers, he pushed the box back under the bed.

That dagger had killed Chadwin. Now it was in Asheville. The Greater Realm Council often banished people with tokens of their crimes. Did that mean Chadwin's killer was here? Caden felt his heart race. His chest hurt. He needed to know, and he knew exactly who to ask.

The villains sent to happy Asheville weren't completely free. They were kept under control—and sometimes eaten—by Ms. Primrose, the local middle school vice principal. Fussy and proper, she was not the prim old lady the locals believed her to be. She was a fickle and powerful Elderdragon, one of four, and one of the eight legendary Elderkind that had founded the Greater Realm.

The nondragon Elderkind were said to have formed the lands of the Greater Realm. The first was the majestic Winterbird, protector of the Winterlands. The second was the Walking Oak, the great tree that had rooted to form the Springlands and defended the elves, gnomes, and
spellcasters. Third was the great Sunsnake. Its movements were said to turn the sands of the Summerlands deserts. Last was the Bloodwolf. Its red and brown fur could still be seen in the Autumnlands' great prairies and red-leaved forests.

The powerful Elderdragons, on the other hand, were fickle. Two of them—the Gold Elderdragon and the Silver Elderdragon—were charmed by man's intellect and curiosity. They taught strategy, medicine, and helpful magic to people. The Blue Elderdragon and the Red Elderdragon, however, were angered by man's greed and disrespect. They punished the lands with disease, war, and dark magic. Magic of hate, jealousy, and anger glowed in sickly reds and cool blues like their scales. And it was these dark magics that spawned the normal dragons that Caden quested to slay.

Caden knew Ms. Primrose was either the vicious Blue Elderdragon or the less vicious Silver, but he didn't know which. Still, he was certain of one thing: if the villain who buried the dagger was here, she would know who it was. Caden just needed to go to school, ask her, and not get gobbled up in the process.

As he dragged the sparring mop from the kitchen closet, he considered what he should say. Maybe he'd start with something flattering about her button collection? It was important to be truthful and respectful when talking to beings of great
power and old people. Ms. Primrose was both.

Brynne wasn't waiting on the porch for practice when he walked outside, but Jane was. She wore pink shorts and a cream-colored top. Her dark, shoulder-length hair was braided. Part elf, part enchantress, she was a girl belonging to both Asheville and the Greater Realm, and, always, she was disarmingly calm.

Her calm hid a deeper storm, though. And she took training seriously. Her strikes with the training mop had deadly intent. Her concentration was complete. Perhaps it was because she'd so recently suffered at the hands of the local villains.

When Caden and Brynne were first stranded, Jane had been missing. While searching for her, they'd discovered mysteriously labeled vials that the lunch witches and Rath Dunn—Caden's great enemy and math teacher—sought to fill with ingredients for dark magic. Three were empty: the first, “Essence of Dragon,” referred to Ms. Primrose's perfume; the second, “Magical Locks,” Caden suspected was connected to Brynne somehow; and the third, “Blood of Son,” referred to the seventh-born son of a king.

The fourth vial, however, “Tear of Elf,” was full. Caden now knew it was Jane's tears that had filled it, and he hated to think how they'd been caused. Whatever horrors Rath Dunn and the lunch witches had inflicted on her, it was clear she had rage in her that wanted to get out.

Caden pointed the mop to the green and white speckled
hillside. “First we sprint the mountain. Then drills.”

They ran. They practiced staff formation two and sword formation seven. Caden found it hard to concentrate and Tito knocked the mop twice from his hand with a large twig they were using for the second sword. After a while, however, Tito's schoolbooks called to him.

“I really need to study before school,” he said.

Getting Tito to do what Caden wanted required a two-part strategy. One, persistence was essential. Two, it was important to agree to his strange study habits. “So be it,” Caden said.

“Oh, it be, bro,” Tito said.

After Tito left, Caden and Jane ran the mountain once more, then took a break on a log midslope. A tree beside them bore an orange ribbon, a symbol that indicated the city limits. Caden suspected it also indicated the border of Ms. Primrose's territory. He really needed to talk to her.

“I want to tell you something,” Jane said. Her gaze drifted toward the misty morning path. “And I don't want you to tell Tito.” She reached in her pocket as if she grasped on to something, and turned back to him. “I want you to promise.”

A promise was binding; a promise must be kept. Jane seemed honorable enough, but Tito was Caden's close friend. The idea of keeping information from him felt wrong. He hesitated.

“I'll consider that a yes,” she said.

“It's not.”

She nodded as if he'd said the opposite and pulled out a chain of silvery paper clips. Caden had limited knowledge of paper clips. In the Greater Realm, tomes, deeds, and documents were bound in sun griffin hair and inspected by the spellcasters' librarian. For unimpressive and uninteresting Ashevillian paper clips, however, these seemed especially fine.

Jane held them out. “I enchanted them,” she said.

Caden took them. As he held them, their magical nature became more obvious. He felt a soft hum of power in the metal. The chain glittered in the light.

There were only one hundred and twenty-eight known magic items in the Greater Realm. Caden's coat was number one hundred and twelve. His brothers envied him for owning it. Enchanted items were rare and valuable even among princes.

In Asheville, Jane had created two more. Item one hundred and twenty-nine, the Half Elf's Necklace of Protection, which hung always around Tito's neck, and now, item one hundred and thirty, the Magical Chain of Paper Clips that dangled from Caden's fingers.

The ability to put magic into an inanimate object, Jane's enchantment magic, was different from the other magics. To permanently power an item, she had to put part of her life force into it. It shortened her lifespan. It took a burst of emotion and a droplet of blood. Enchanters died young for a reason.

He frowned and handed them back to her. “You will die
if you keep enchanting things. You must control yourself.”

“I'll die eventually anyway. We all will.”

“You'll die much sooner if you don't stop.”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

But there was no maybe about it.

Jane rebraided her hair and seemed at ease.

This, to Caden, was the most puzzling thing about Jane. Historically, enchanters—although rare—had reputations for being emotional. It supposedly took great feeling to put a piece of one's soul in an item, yet Jane was the calmest person Caden had ever met. When she'd been rescued, she'd kept her wits. When she'd found out the surviving lunch witch, Ms. Jackson, had killed her mother, she'd become quiet. Caden again wondered what would happen when that calm broke.

“I worry for you,” he said.

“It's only a small enchantment,” she said with another shrug. The chain of paper clips hung from her fingers like a talisman. She held it out again with a small smile. “It's for you. You saved me from the lunch witches.”

“Tito and Brynne did more than me,” Caden said. “They slew the ice dragons.” Even as he said it, he felt annoyed. It should've been him.

Jane smiled. “I already gave Tito my necklace.”