Aldwyn's Academy (3 page)

Someone obviously knew what she had been hiding. There could be no doubt she was in danger now.

Just then the hinge on her room door squeaked and she whirled to see a shadow moving just beyond the partially open door.

Without thinking she leaped into the hall to see who was spying on her.

D
orian watched Blackburn and Lowadar standing over the injured coachman.

“We’re in luck!” Blackburn exclaimed. “With the goddess Avandra’s help and the health room, we may yet save him.”

Dorian felt his knees almost buckle with the force of his relief, and for the first time since his mother had pulled him clear of the overturned carriage, he realized how bitterly cold it was.

“Thank the deity,” Serissa said. “What is this, Lowadar? Attacked by evil within sight of Aldwyns? How could this be?”

From up the road, a party of horsemen rapidly approached. Lowadar’s eyes, so filled with power and knowledge that Dorian couldn’t bring himself to meet them, cut to the boy, then back to his mother.

“I’m sure this was just a pack of dire wolves down from the peaks and hungry,” the elder wizard replied.

Serissa lifted an eyebrow.

“Dire wolves this far down from the peaks? I don’t think so.”

Lowadar held up his hands. “We are dealing with the situation and I assure you the integrity of Aldwyns’ grounds have not been compromised, Chancellor.” The headmaster used the title bestowed on Dorian’s mother by the regent himself, giving proper respect for her rank at court. “But if you do not wish to leave your child in our capable hands, you are free to return to court with him.” Lowadar chuckled softly. “It appears he is not as advanced as you led us to believe. Perhaps you would do well to continue his private training in the art of spellcasting before he enters the gates of Aldwyns.”

Serissa bowed her head, despite the anger written in harsh lines on her face.

“Forgive him, Archmage Lowadar. Dorian has a tendency to act without thinking, but with the proper tutelage, I assure you he will be—”

Lowadar glanced over and saw Dorian watching them intently.

The wizard turned his back and pulled Serissa aside.

“Let us speak in private,” he said as the second party of horsemen—three guardsmen and an elf professor in white robes that Dorian recognized as Professor Ives, head of protection magic—arrived from the castle.

“Blackburn,” the archmage called, “once the coachman is in the chirurgeon’s hands, see to the boy, would you?”

The horned, black-clad wizard nodded once and walked across the snow to Dorian. Dorian had seen tieflings before, but was impressed by Blackburn despite himself.

The hint of danger inherent in the taint of their infernal blood had always made the boy nervous after learning his mother regarded tieflings with suspicion. He wasn’t sure if this was prejudice or common sense.

“Come, boy,” Blackburn said. “We’ll ride on Sigil,” he said, referring to his stallion. “The retainers will bring your bags along.”

Dorian’s gaze followed the figure of his mother as she walked through the snow with Lowadar. Her face was hidden from his view behind her fur-trimmed hood.

He felt all his old frustrations and resentment welling up again. Nothing he ever did was good enough. She always said he acted without thinking. But what was he supposed to do? He was trying to help, trying to save her when the dire wolves were attacking.

But that wasn’t an excuse to his mother. Trying wasn’t good enough.

Blackburn came up and saw the twisted look on Dorian’s face. “Your coachman will be fine, our chirurgeon knows her business. She’ll heal him.”

“I tried to help,” Dorian said suddenly. His voice sounded flat and far away to his own ears, and his face
felt numb. “I only wanted to help, but I …” he broke off, fighting back the tears as his adrenaline bled away and he was left with only his regret.

Blackburn put a heavy, gloved hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“It was battle, son,” the Aldwyns professor said, “and you are untrained. I saw your Magic Missile as I raced to help. I’m surprised you were able to pull it off at all with your inexperience. But people get hurt when the monsters attack. All we can do is fight.” The professor leaned in close. “There are many in this world who refuse to do that. We’ll show you how at Aldwyns. Now, come, we need to get to the gates before the sun slides any lower in the sky.”

Blackburn swung easily up into his saddle.

The horse was incredible, eighteen hands high and jet black as a polished obsidian statue. The stallion regarded Dorian with an uncanny intelligence, its breath rising like steam from the castle furnace.

Dorian was reminded uncomfortably of his mother’s familiar, Silas, who’d been left at the court on some clandestine mission his mother had not explained.

Blackburn leaned down and offered his gloved hands to the boy, pulling him easily up into the saddle.

Dorian felt heat rising in his cheeks as he realized his mother and Lowadar had already teleported away.

“She didn’t even wait for me,” he muttered.

Suddenly, in an instant, his resentment washed away. Beneath him the stallion leaped forward and the experience that followed was amazing.

The horse surged like a flat rock skipping across the surface of a lake, moving from one spot to the next with magnificent leaps beyond the ability of a mundane creature.

The distance through the forest to the academy was eaten up within a few blinks of the eye.

The horse lurched to a stop at the edge of a village built out away from the massive front gates that led into Aldwyns proper. A few scattered townsfolk hurried away before Blackburn jumped his mount forward again.

The professor guided the horse past a turn around the town well and pulled up in front of the gates to Aldwyns. There Dorian’s mother stood with Lowadar and a group of other adults clothed in multihued colors.

“Down you go, boy.” Blackburn lowered Dorian to the ground before swinging down out of the saddle himself. “You’ve got everyone in a stir around here,” he laughed, “but we’ll get you and your bags settled in momentarily.”

With that, Blackburn strode off to join the group of conversing adults. Dorian’s mother spotted him as she turned at Blackburn’s approach. She offered him a reassuring smile from beneath her hood, but then Lowadar asked her a question and she turned away from Dorian.

Feeling forgotten and unappreciated, Dorian turned in a slow circle and inspected his surroundings. He felt relieved to be within the circle of the academy.

Aldwyns sat at the top of a small plateau, with its back to a line of ragged, rising mountains. The Dark Forest pushed right up against the grounds to the west and Aldwyns Village fell away down the low hill in rows of houses and cobblestone streets.

Beyond the portcullis, Dorian saw the little courtyard dominated by the wide stone steps leading up to the academy proper with its massive, twenty foot doors under a stone peace arch topped with the superimposed, double As that served as the school’s sigil.

He was struck with an impression of age and wisdom and power and … something else.

There’s danger here as well as knowledge, he thought.

This was a place of power, and even power used for good had its darker implications, by definition.

His mother’s and Lowadar’s voices carried to him across the cold air.

The two seemed to have forgotten about him altogether.

“You will not change my mind,” his mother said. “He belongs here. I know it’s dangerous. By Pelor, I know it’s dangerous. But so is his father’s work.”

“Oh, there’s danger,” Lowadar agreed. Dorian heard the tension in the headmaster’s voice. “But it’s honest
danger met with honest steel, as your husband would say. One misstep with magic and horrible things will unfold. You saw his mistake at the carriage.” He paused, then finished, voice somber, “it nearly killed you.”

Dorian felt stung by the headmaster’s words, but he couldn’t stop eavesdropping. His hands curled into fists.

“Look at what happened at our beloved Aldwyns just a few years ago,” Lowadar continued. “One of our own, seduced into the black promise of death magic. At every hand even the purest of magic-users can stumble into forbidden knowledge and be driven mad or wander out of this very plane of existence—be forced to negotiate with creatures so powerful they are beyond the understanding of man. Serissa, magic is
dangerous,”
he finished.

“Dorian is not like her. There is no evil in his heart. Wildness, yes,” Serissa answered, voice wry. “But believe me, he is ready,” she continued in a voice almost too soft to hear. “I want him in this school and there’s nothing you can say that will sway me. I am far too busy to bother with him at court, and you’ve already accepted him, so there’s no turning back now.”

Dorian waited to hear no more. His cheeks burning with his shame, he spun on his heel and started walking away quickly.

Directly across the street from the academy sat a wide, low building with a thatched straw roof and twin doors
of stout white oak. The doorframe was set with a rune Dorian had learned from his mother:
VEE-ex
.

It meant “free.”

He knew this place, and not just from his mother.

This was Maverick’s. The store was infamous for its stock of items banned by the very school it faced. Maverick’s, like some ironic twin of Aldwyns, was a place of promise and power too.

Dorian’s face broke into a grin.

If the adults didn’t see him then that meant he was free, just as the symbol on the door stated.

Slowly, Dorian eased around Blackburn’s horse, sliding out from view of his mother and the professors on the steps.

Maybe there’s something in there for sale that can get me out of here, he thought with bitter intensity.

H
elene hurried down a long hall on the west side of the academy’s main building, determined to catch the fool who had dared to spy on her.

Most of the pupils enrolled had arrived by now, a great many of them by teleportation ring, but now the corridor stood empty. Up ahead she thought she caught a flash of motion and she raced forward.

No one can know my secret, she thought with fierce energy.

She felt eyes on her, watching her as she ran, but looking up, she saw only innocent students or empty corridors.

She passed the study hall and the headmaster’s quarters. She almost stopped, almost asked for help, but she didn’t. She knew Lowadar wasn’t there, and she didn’t want to talk to anybody else.

Leaving the hallway she entered the dining hall.

She heard a shuffling but could see no one. The V-shaped room, which connected the east and west
main halls of Aldwyns, was empty. Later tonight a feast would take place here, but at the moment the hall was gloomy and silent, only a few candle tapers flickered in stone sconces.

Against the far wall, a fire burned in a massive hearth, but it had not been fed or stoked recently, so the flames between the irons were deep and low.

Helene headed for the huge double doors at the other end of the hall that led into the grand ballroom.

Suddenly she felt very odd.

She came to a stop just inside the door. An unnatural cold, inspiring her more to thoughts of the grave than to winter, clung to her like a mist.

Her body tensed and she wished Mordenkainen was with her.

The air around her turned heavy and oppressive.

She thought she detected movement, a shimmering, out of the corner of her eye, and spun in that direction.

Suddenly a form was at her side, close and quiet. A thick, olive-tinged hand flashed around her face and she sucked in a breath to scream.

The hand, rough with calluses, clamped down over her mouth, cutting off all sound.