Red Madrassa: Algardis #1 (4 page)

As he turned to voice his complaints, the tower began to buckle. His objections died in his throat as he, Allorna, and Sidimo turned and ran through the gate.

Vedaris:

The ship swayed violently on the open ocean, lightning rolling alongside and above the sails amid clouds of dark purple and blue. The bolts sometimes struck frighteningly close to the small vessel. Sailors rushed to and fro in a desperate effort to keep the ship from capsizing in the rough seas. Vedaris did his part by hanging onto the smallest of the three masts for dear life, praying to the dragon gods and staying the dreck out of the way of the crew.

From what he’d heard earlier when he was eavesdropping on the captain and the first mate‌—‌not snooping, mind you‌—‌they were now rounding the Windswept Isles. The name certainly seemed apt, given that the sea around the archipelago was known (even to a landlubber such as himself) for the horror of its wind funnels, not to mention the furies who sailed the winds, ready to grab frantic sailors off rocking decks.

Not that a fury could take a dragon in a fight. But the nasty bitches
did
have a tendency to harry, and the combination of their nuisance tactics and a heavy storm could spell death for even the best crew.

As the ship plowed through the waves, Vedaris suddenly heard an ominous
crack
. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but all of a sudden, the entire ship went topsy-turvy. It was already awhirl from the wind and waves, of course, but he would swear to his dying day that this time, it went airborne.

The last thing he remembered before the darkness hit was watching a surprised sailor’s face as he flew across the deck‌—‌a man who, strangely enough, reminded him of the fat and greedy baker’s son back in the city.

*****

He awoke to the chatter of voices nearby: a man and a woman, moving away from him. Slowly he began to regain feeling in his arms and his legs. By the gods, he
ached
. As he opened his eyes, he saw that he was in a room, not on a ship, and certainly not in the midst of a storm.

The healers were still speaking quietly on the other side of the room. He sat up‌—‌ too quickly, as it turned out. The healers rushed over as he groaned. He struggled to rise; he had to get out of here. His legs felt weak and his head was spinning, but he didn’t care to entrust his health to Sahelian healers; he’d never had a good experience with any of them. As a child, the state-sponsored healers had
tsked
at his late magical development, and later on…‌well.

Assigned to expectant Sahelian mothers throughout pregnancy and delivery, each healer took a vested interest in his or her charges. The abilities of the child later in life reflected well upon the nourishment and clinical techniques designed by the healer during both pre- and post-natal periods. In his healers’ eyes, therefore, he had been a blemish upon their careers‌—‌until eventually his father had stopped allowing them in the house, and they had stopping calling on his family altogether.

On the streets, it was more a simple dislike for healers that pushed him and his acquaintances to avoid them. They were body grabbers, the lot of them, always wanting poor families and street kids for research for “the greater good of Sahelia.”

The woman reached him first. She was Human, thank the gods. “Calm down! Please, you’ll tear open your wounds‌—‌and your head can’t feel much better, either.”

“Where am I?” Vedaris demanded. “Which borough?…I demand you call my cousin the…”

Before he could finish that thought, the male healer, also human replied, “You’re in the Madrassa Healing Center.”

“Madrassa…‌w-wait, the
Red
Madrassa?” Vedaris sputtered.

The woman smiled; it looked good on her. “Yes, if you must call it that.”

Vedaris now knew she was an Initiate‌—‌they both were. “But…‌but I was on board a ship just past the Windswept Isles.”

The male healer frowned. “Are you sure?”

“His clothes…‌they
were
caked in sea salt,” the woman said thoughtfully. “It seems he speaks the truth.”

The healers frowned at each other, and then the male healer scowled at Vedaris. “We need to consult with our superiors.” He turned away without another word.

She lingered long enough to say, “Please wait here. We’ll have food brought for you, okay?”

Where the dreck am I going to go?
Vedaris thought bitterly.
I feel like gutter trash and I’m fifty miles inland from the nearest port. I don’t even know how I got here
.

“Don’t worry.” the female healer replied, smiling again. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

Vedaris looked at her queerly; he hadn’t said a word aloud. But then he remembered that Human healers were said to have the strangest powers…‌including mind healing, whatever that was. Well! If she thought she was going to spy on his thoughts, she had another thing coming!

With that thought, he promptly slumped over and fell back to sleep.

In the portalhouse:

A glow surrounded Sitara as she prepared to call up a waterway portal. She knew full well that connecting the damaged portals would exacerbate the burden on the already sorely tasked portal network. One more push might trigger a domino effect, closing and opening gates at random across the land.

She really didn’t care.

Just as her energy gathered to weave the two portals together‌—‌the blue of the water folding into the purple of the broken pathway in a seamless meld‌—‌she felt a tingle and then a sharp pain in her head. A crack of yellow, almost like lightning, sped toward her. She screamed in horror, and then knew nothing for quite some time.

When she woke her clothes were charred, her stomach burned, her memory was cloudy, and she lay on a gritty mountain ledge strewn with pebbles and rocks. Unsteadily, she got to her feet, putting one her hand to her waist, and stumbled to the edge. It was a long way down.

Well, she couldn’t stay up here. She didn’t know where she was, but she did know that she needed help, and fast. Just then, the earth at the lip of the ledge crumbled, and she tumbled headfirst onto a hidden path, landing in a slump in front of three travelers.

This time, she did not rise.

Sidimo:

As they stumbled through the gate, they looked up and around in surprise. The portalway trip had taken longer than expected. They had left Sandrin in darkest night; but here, wherever they were, the late morning sun shone high above.

“Hey!” Maride shouted. “I thought there were trees? The
Genur
portalway is supposed to be in a forest surrounded by tall redwoods!”

Sidimo suppressed a sigh.
Yes, O Master of the Obvious,
he
thought. This, wherever they were, was surely not the
Genur
portalway. For one thing, this gateway was embedded in stone. Outer portalways were usually open to the air on all sides‌—‌freestanding steel ovals the width of three Humans and the height of a gryffn.

Secondly, they stood on rock and gravel with, yes, no trees in sight. A mountain was to their backs, with the gateway embedded in it. As Sidimo moved closer to the mountainside and trailed the raised edge of the portalway with his fingers, he thought,
It’s almost as if it were carved from the mountain itself.
Perhaps it had been.

The cliff they stood on, more of a goat path, wasn’t very wide. “So where are we?” Allorna demanded, as she walked forward to look over the cliff’s edge.

“
Abbas,
” muttered Sidimo as he traced the glyphs on the gate.

“
Abbas!
” exclaimed Maride. “I didn’t sign up for this!”

Allorna turned away from the mountain’s edge with obvious reluctance. The vista of sweeping valleys, distant blue peaks, and clean air was gorgeous, particularly after so long in the city of Sandrin. She said to Maride, “Clearly, something went wrong with your portalway.”

With a glance over his shoulder, Sidimo muttered, “I’ve heard rumors of recent fluctuations in their stability.”

“You know, that would have been good to know
before
I risked our lives!”

Sidimo ignored Maride’s latest bit of drama; his attention had already returned to the etched glyphs. He was fascinated by the question of how this portalway had come to be embedded in the mountainside, so far away from any kind of town or city with officials who could maintain an active gate.

“All right,” sighed Maride. “Let’s go back through…‌this time to
Genur,
yes?”

“No,” Sidimo replied.

“No?!”

He had the attention of both his companions now. “We can’t,” he said simply.

“Why not?” Allorna and Maride asked simultaneously, glancing sidelong at each other. Sidimo thought Allorna might have blushed.

“The glyphs…‌they’re in Ceralic,” he replied. “This means the portalway was built to be one-way only, and although the glyphs are faded, they appear to say
Death to those who go back between.
”

Maride, of course, began to mutter some choice words about idiots and portalways. Allorna grimaced as she recited the old nursery rhyme:

Check the portal before you go.

You never know. You never know.

If Ceralic, expect one-way.

If Gaeric, there and back that day.

She sighed. “Fine, let’s just find the nearest town with a portalway. We’ll regroup from there and make some decisions.”

“
This
is your master plan?” Maride cried. “Break me out of prison with a 1,000 shilling reward on my head, and casually stroll into the nearest village?”

“If we’re as far away from the city as Sidimo thinks we are, your warrant is the least of our problems,” responded Allorna.

As they started along the path, Sidimo grimaced, and hoped she was right.

They had no way of knowing if the alarm had been sounded just for Maride or for Allorna and Sidimo as well. If not, then no one would know they’d gone up the tower; and even if they’d been seen, it would take days to sort through the rubble for bodies. It would take another few days before gardis protocol expanded the search beyond Sandrin.

As they walked toward a bend in the mountain pathway and rounded the edge, little pebbles started pelting the ground before them‌—‌and suddenly it sounded like something much bigger was tumbling towards them.

Fortunately for them, the onslaught of earth eased with no more than a few hand-sized rocks, enough dust to fill a tavern, and a filthy body that landed at their feet.

Allorna rushed forward, Sidimo by her side. “Is it alive?” Maride asked from a safe distance. “Or better yet, make sure it’s dead!”

Allorna slung a dirty look at him while Sidimo checked for a pulse and injuries. Maride quickly interjected, “You know, because of the roaming dead and the like! Can’t be too careful these days!” while backpedaling to the turn of the bend.

“She’s alive, but badly injured,” Sidimo said as he picked her up. “We need to get her to a healer.”

Allorna, who had been crouched next to Sidimo, stood and was now staring off into the valley below. “And I know just the place,” she murmured, gazing at the white cinder path a few meters below that led to the Madrassa.

Chapter 4

Allorna:

Memories from a previous visit to the Madrassa headquarters with her father surfaced. They had been there to ensure the security of the various schools prior to Prince Sebastian’s enrollment. Of course, instead of trudging across the countryside, they had flown in on a gryffn guard directly to the school grounds. It had been a good way for her father to review the aerial defenses of the seacoast while flying en route from Sandrin.

The Prince would be joining classmates from all the kingdoms and races at the academy, which was famed for its schools of Healing, Politics, Research, Air, Fire, Earth, Water, and the Unknown.

As they trooped down the mountainside, it occurred to Sidimo to question the path’s origin. With a tilt of his head as he searched the edge of the white thoroughfare for markers, he asked, “Allorna, you’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

Her stance was sure and her gait was a fast clip. Even with the girl in his arms weighing him down, he could see that Allorna was almost eager to enter the citadel at the very base of the valley. “Yes,” she replied. “I was here with royal security in preparations for the arrival of the Prince. That town and the citadel to the east of it is the home of the Madrassa.”

Maride’s mouth widened to an “O” as he stumbled along behind them. “Seriously?” he whispered
sotto voce
. Naturally, he knew of the famed Citadel and the academy it housed, collectively known as the Madrassa‌—‌officially, at least. Most people knew it better as the Red Madrassa, given the magical accident a century ago that had tinted the leaves of the Citadel’s trees a brilliant red. Even the tree trunks were colored a deep, light-drinking maroon. Once, Maride had told Allorna that he had dreamed of studying there since he was eight, when he had stumbled upon a book in the family library that boasted of the academy’s efforts to be unencumbered by societal restrictions.