Return To Sky Raven (Book 2) (6 page)

Instead of attacking, though, the nebulia uttered a very doglike whine and performed an intricate sword salute which finished with him dropping to one knee and reverently placing the greatsword at her feet. He lowered his head and remained there motionless until Maya put a hand on his shoulder, and with a regal nod, beckoned him to stand. Throughout the crowd, there was outright astonishment, as if this couldn’t possibly be right. Alera grasped her companion’s shoulder affectionately as he got to his feet, reset his sword, and took his place by her side. She glared harshly at the prisoners.

“Naton Rad, you will need to look for evil elsewhere this day; perhaps in your own mind and heart would be a good place to start!” Turning to face her nebulia, she smiled and gave him a caress across his doggy ears, and then nodded toward the portal. The great warrior bowed deeply to Maya, and with a respectful nod toward me, walked back through the pink archway, which closed immediately after him with a flash and a slight rush of air. I breathed out a sigh of relief and took a quick peek to see how Maya was holding up. Her countenance was as stone-faced as I have ever seen as she calmly awaited the crowd’s verdict.

In all of this, I had lost track of Julia and Lin, but now I spotted Lin plowing through the onlookers with two angry-looking twins in tow. Arriving at the rock, she motioned for Dawn and Dusk to lift her up, which they did easily with one hand each, somewhat belying their appearance of young girls.

Lin stood straight and defiant on the rock and faced the crowd, her eyes blazing. “If that wasn’t enough to convince you people, do you even know who her handmaidens are? What, no clue? Well, let me introduce you!” She motioned angrily up into the air, looking to the two Enchanters Hall staffers still on the ground. With an enormous clap of leathery wing thunder, the two white robes slipped to the ground and the two silver dragons leapt into the sky, twisting and turning as legs, tails, scales, teeth and banana-sized claws formed above the crowd, coalescing into two large, mean-looking reptilian forms that hovered just tens of feet above the platform, glaring at the assembly.

Fully half the people, guards included, dropped bonelessly to the ground in awe, even the guards who had seen them fight above the wall at the last battle. But Lin wasn’t finished with her scornful comments.

“These are, of course, silver dragons! Good dragons! Probably the last of their kind in existence, and they have chosen to serve this woman who you have so vilely accused of evil! Perhaps the accusers would like to step forward and argue the point with either one of my friends here!”

I smiled as I watched the mob’s reaction to the twins overhead. During the battle at Xarparion, there wasn’t any free time to take stock, but the two of them looked much more formidable than when we first found them at my foster parents’ home. They looked to have added five or more feet of length and were much fuller in the chest and sides; I’d say their scales were brighter and more sharply defined than before as well. Dawn must have noticed my appraisal as she lowered her long head down to my level, and a shining metallic eye the size of my fist gave me a saucy wink; she’s always the flirt of the two. After a few more moments, where it appeared that the two dragons attempted to individually stare down every member of the crowd, Lin gave them a little wave and spoke softly.

“Thank you Dusk and Dawn - point made!” The twins landed soundlessly behind the rock shelf. Julia had retrieved their enchanters staff robes and hurried around the platform. Shortly thereafter, the twins reappeared fully dressed and attempted to blend back into the group; but strangely, it seemed that people were giving them a wide berth suddenly.

As the bulk of the crowd got back on their feet, Hons quickly stepped forward and, using his stone manipulation abilities, created some steps that attached to the platform. A determined looking Corporal Higs climbed the steps and turning to the watchers, he cleared his throat nervously and made his address.

“I am just a simple city guardsman, and I can’t match a nebulia or silver dragons for my story, but I have something to add. If Mistress Maya were evil, would she have trained and cared for us guards the way she did? Look around you! Most of the guards who survived were directly trained by her. She has been our weapons instructor for seven years now - with the blessing of our previous Headmaster, I might add. And she trained us well, not only how to use a sword, but to be better soldiers, to plan out and think about what faults in ourselves we need to correct. And most of all, she trained us to watch out for each other like brothers! Without her, I’m positive most of us wouldn’t be here today. Sure, she’s tough! But she’s honest and she cares! If she were evil, would she have joined us on patrols, and on several occasions, saved many of us from trolls and orc attacks? And most importantly, would she have volunteered to direct the defense of the weakest part of our walls, then lead a rescue effort into the most heavily enemy-controlled part of town to save what towers she could? Why don’t you ask yourselves what she personally has done to deserve your hatred instead of just looking skin deep!”

With that, Higs took a deep breath and looked like he was about to run down the stairs, but he turned back to the crowd. “One more thing, the men and I talked it over last night and the way we see it, Xarparion is no more, and we are no longer getting paid by the school. That pretty much makes us mercenaries now, and mercenaries get to decide who they follow.“ He looked apologetically toward the captain. “No offense, sir. You are a fine administrator, but you are no field officer. If our lives are going to be on the line in battle, we will follow Mistress Maya’s orders from this point forward.” The entire guard contingent roared their approval as Higs bounded down the steps, gathering a lot of back slaps and congratulatory whispers in the process. The crowd was again strangely subdued as if processing all this information; individuals looked down at their feet and shook their heads mildly as if trying to sort it all out.

I took the opportunity to reach over and give Maya’s hand a squeeze as I saw the first crack of emotion cross her face - a small tear ran down her cheek, which she wiped away self-consciously. Hons jumped up on the platform and with a wink at us, he whispered, “Please don’t hate me for this, but it will help.” He then turned to the muted crowd and shouted, “So to review what just happened…your choices are to go with Naton and his friends, who slunk out of Xarparion dressed as servants and failed to use their “most powerful wizard” status to defend their tower, their school, or even their fellow human beings against the undead horde. Don’t forget to thank them if you lost friends or loved ones they might have helped save! Oh…and their plan is to storm back into the school and face the enemy head on! Or you can follow the enchanters, who most of us owe our lives to, and who plan to lead us to a nice safe fortress. And one more small item - the enchanters are the ones with the loyalty of the guard force and have all the food and survival gear! Who votes to go with Naton?” Since they were shackled, the fire wizards couldn’t vote, but looking around they were dismayed to see not a single person raise their hand. “Alright, who wants to go with Headmaster Rosa and her enchanters?” This time almost everyone raised their hands, except the guards who didn’t seem to think they needed to. Hons took his time, pretending to look around carefully and count the votes. “It seems we are going on to the fortress!”

Smiling, Hons took a few steps back and, grabbing a surprised Maya and me by the elbows, urged us forward together. “Who wants to ask Alex and Maya some quick questions? But one at a time please.” Then so only we could hear, whispered, “This is the part I’m sorry for,” before sliding away. Maya and I looked at each other in hopeless confusion as question after question was fired at us. Suddenly, Alera shouted something from behind us and the wizards all formed a line and stood quietly. We looked at her questioningly, but she just shrugged and remarked, “What? Don’t you guys do comment lines?”

“Um, no, there are only two of us,” I said. Alera smiled and pointed at the first person standing in front of us. He was a small guy, almost entirely lost in his Wind Tower robes. But I guess in my armor, even without a helmet, I am much bigger than most of the students.

“So if you have a place to go, then that means you know where we are, right?” he asked in a high nasal voice.

I nodded. “Yes, we do, but unfortunately we are deep in the black portion of the map.”

His eyes bulged out as the reality of what I said took hold. “Bu…but why didn’t we go through a portal to a undead-free area, instead of here?”

I answered him as calmly as I could, realizing this was probably the one question that everyone would be asking, especially once we were on the trail and things got difficult. “The undead were concentrated heavily on the obvious choices for escape routes. The portals into Anshea, Ocance and Elcance were the first to be surrounded. This was not by accident, if we had tried to force our way through to those portals, we would have lost fifty-percent of you, and possibly still failed. Instead, Headmaster Rosa selected a portal that they would never expect us to run for, but one that she knew she could lock closed to prevent them from following.”

His expression was hilarious; he was completely petrified out of his mind. “I guess we should get moving then,” he mumbled, stumbling out of line, or perhaps pushed out of the way by the next person in line, a slightly older girl in a earth wizard robe.

“So this place you’re taking us, are there people there? What’s it like?”

Maya answered, probably being fed information by Winya. “Sky Raven Fortress is the strongest fortification in the known world. Four hundred years ago, it held off a siege by 11,000 warriors with only a handful of defenders, and not one of those enemy soldiers made it past her walls. It will be ideal for our purposes. As far as people, our information is that the fortress is unoccupied.”

The girl nodded thoughtfully, and another student, this time a young male healer took her place. “When we get there, are we still going to have to go to class?”

My dark elf chuckled. “I am a simple weapons instructor. That would be a question for your new Headmaster, Rosa from the Enchanters Hall.” That elicited some murmurs of unrest from the crowd. “I will tell you this, I know most of you have not had much in the way of contact with her because she was not the Primus of a full tower. But she is over 700 years old and very wise. I have known her for more than seven years, and I know for a fact that she cares deeply about the school and its students. I might also add that, moving forward, she will have my full support both personally and as military commander, and the rest of the Enchanters Hall as well, some of whom you’ve met today.” She nodded at the twins, Nia and myself.

A older attractive, earth wizard girl with dancing eyes stepped forward, and I heard Lin call out laughingly from the crowd. “Don’t do it, Surys! You’re only going to embarrass yourself!”

She snapped her head around. “Shut up, Lin, you don’t know that!”

“Pretty sure I do!”

This Surys girl was having none of it, she straightened up, flipped her hair back coquettishly, and displayed her best smile. “So Alex…are you seeing anyone, and would you go out with me?”

You have no idea how hard it was for me to not laugh in her face for that one, but I knew it would just crush the poor girl, so I didn’t. Maya, however, wasn’t as nice and snickering she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a kiss that made me extremely glad I was encased in heavy armor. She glanced down at the girl below and purred, “That answer your question?”

Surys nodded dejectedly, much to the amusement of the crowd.

A hard-eyed older student in a green robe walked forward. “What do you intend to do with the Fire Tower traitors?”

Wow, that question brought the assembled parties crashing back from what had been a few light moments of humor and camaraderie, all the way back to angry mob status again. People started calling out at random.

“Send them back through the portal!”

“Just slit their throats and be done with it!”

“Feed them to the dragons!”

The crowd, which previously had been distancing themselves from Naton’s group like they were covered in dog poo, now started closing in ominously and pressing in on the burly guards who had the fire wizards collared. The fire boys, themselves, had withdrawn in a silent snit the entire time we were fielding questions. But now, they looked around, and seeing a good measure of hate being directed at them, starting to panic and cast wild-eyed looks around.

I glanced over at Rosa, looking uncomfortable and strange in the black robes of a Headmaster. I knew through our link that she had no real ideas right now but was strongly against the suggestion of feeding them to the dragons. Winya, sensing Rosa’s discomfort with command, started talking directly to her via our thoughts, which allowed me to tune them out and watch the crowd.

Suddenly, one of Naton’s boys, I think his name was Orim, began gibbering and broke free from the guard who had him around the neck. Of course, he was still chained, so he only managed to hop a short distance before falling flat on his face. He levered himself up and began inching his way toward us. The guardsman he had broken free from walked over and dragged him to his feet.

Looking nearly insane, the fire stooge screamed, “Please no! By the gods, you can’t send us back there! We never wanted things to turn out this way…it was all our Primus’s fault. He was the one who pounded into us day after day that fire wizards were the only true wizards. We were supposed to be the elite and prove our dominance over the lesser magics. He even told us he was moving our tower away from Xarparion to a new school, a much better school, where the Earth, Wind, Water and Healer Towers, and especially the enchanters, would be our slaves as it was meant to be!”

Everyone around them murmured and growled angrily at his words - he really didn’t seem to be helping his case for leniency much. Looking around desperately, he wiped sweaty blond hair from his eyes with a manacled hand and continued, “But he tricked and betrayed us, too. Earlier that morning, he called a mandatory meeting for everyone in the great hall of our tower. We were told to bring our clothes and personal belongings with us because we were leaving Xarparion behind forever to travel to our new, better school. We were to be there at the tenth bell and not be late.” He took a deep shuddering breath. “Um, ever since that pixie incident, the Primus hated all five of us. He gave us the worst of the worst jobs and didn’t care how long it took to finish. We were cleaning the cellar, which was full of rat feces and spitting cockroaches, but mostly hiding out from more scut work when we heard the tenth bell sound. We had lost track of time and we were late. All of us raced up to the main floor only to find out everyone else was already inside the hall, and they had bolted and padlocked the doors. We pounded on them with all our might for them to open up and let us in, but the bastards ignored us; I even heard some giggles on the other side. With nothing else to do, we sat down on the floor and tried to listen through the door. One of us could see through the keyhole, but Naton hogged that. We were in so much trouble! Everything seemed to be going according to plan. The Primus was up on the dais preaching about the wonderful new school, and that in just a few minutes, he would open a portal and everyone would be taken care of like kings. Whoosh! He opened the portal and then we heard it! Screams like you have never imagined in your life. Instead of the portal opening into a new school, ghouls were pouring into the hall by the hundreds, hacking and slashing our friends and teachers to bits. Naton stopped looking, but we could all hear the horrendous tearing of flesh and pieces of people hitting the door…I remember looking down and seeing blood running out from under the door into the hallway.” Orim stopped and sobbed openly. “As long as I live, I will never forget the sound on the other side of that damn door or the slurping of the ghouls feasting on our friends…” He stopped and looked directly up at Maya and me. “Mistress Maya, Sir Alex, they never had a chance, there wasn’t time to get off any spells. It sounded like someone might have gotten off a fire wall, but the ghouls blew right through…in less than a minute, it was over. Right then, we heard a loud crash on the other side of the door and we ran, ran as fast as we could out the door. Throwing off our wizard robes, we ducked into some servants’ quarters and stole these clothes. By the time we got out of there, Central was already under attack and people were running in all directions. I think we were still in shock…or maybe we were just cowards, but we hunched down and blindly followed the servants away from the killing…until we found ourselves here.” He stopped, panting from the exertion of reliving the story, and then just hung his head and cried silently into his sleeve.