Aldwyn's Academy (5 page)

D
orian hurried out of the shop.

He pushed through the door and rushed outside, feeling the sudden cold bite into him. He bumped into someone and staggered backward.

The girl spun away from him, bounced off the wall of the building under a window of dark glass, and landed in a pile of dirty, slushy snow.

She opened her mouth to speak and a pile of snow hanging from the eves of the shop slid free. The wet, slushy snow drenched the girl’s head and shoulders.

Ice slid down the neckline of her cloak.

“Oh!” Dorian got out. “I’m so sorry—”

“You
fool
!” the girl hissed.

Her hair lay plastered against her face and skull as if she’d dunked her head in a bucket of water.

Instantly, any sympathy Dorian might have felt for her evaporated. Those were the words his mother had used at the carriage.

“I’m trying to apologize!” he shouted back.

The girl stood up gracefully. Her hair hung in sopping wet strands.

Dorian felt his mouth pulling up at the corners. He bit his lip. “I
am
sorry.” He began to laugh. “But you just look so ridiculous …”

She narrowed her eyes.

From out of nowhere, a beautiful peregrine falcon swooped down out of the gray sky and landed on her shoulder.

The bird cocked its head and stared at Dorian with sharply intelligent eyes. The creature’s feathers were a rich, dark brown shot through with lines of black and topped by a hooded mantle of taupe.

“Wow, is … is that your familiar?” Dorian asked. “You wouldn’t think a graceful bird like that would choose a grump like you.”

The bird thrust his beak forward and screeched at him.

“Now Mordenkainen is angry with you,” she said.

Dorian frowned, feeling stubborn. “Who cares what a silly bird thinks anyway?”

“You should,” the girl answered. “You should when the bird is the familiar of Helene Miridori, the person who’s going to be your magical guide at Aldwyns for the next year.”

Dorian stared at her. His stomach twisted.

“But … you’re a girl. Isn’t my magical guide supposed to be my roommate? Wait—you don’t mean, you’re my roommate?” Dorian gulped.

Helene rolled her eyes.

“Of course not, idiot. You’re rooming with some other first year loser.” Helene slapped clinging clumps of snow from her shoulders and cloak. “And don’t blame me. It’s all because of your mother. She insisted that Lowadar bend the rules and assign the best second year information magic student to serve as your mentor. Unfortunately that’s me. We’ll be working together all year.”

Dorian’s stomach sank.

Mordenkainen cocked his head and peered out at the boy with one bright eye. Dorian would have sworn the bird was laughing at him if the cruelly hooked beak had been capable of smirking.

Helene, taking his stunned silence as further evidence of her victory, nodded toward Maverick’s shop.

“I hope you didn’t
buy
anything there,” she said. “Everything that shifty eladrin sells is banned on academy grounds. I’m not sure why Lowadar and the faculty even allow it to operate here.”

“No.” Dorian smiled. “I didn’t buy a single thing while I was there.”

“Good.” Helene spun on her heel and began walking back up the street. She called over one shoulder, pretending she hadn’t just taken a spill and been splattered
with icy runoff. “Hurry. We don’t want to keep the headmaster waiting.”

Dorian remembered something the enigmatic Maverick had said.

“What are the ghosts of Aldwyns?” he called after her.

Helene abruptly stopped walking.

She turned and Mordenkainen leaped off her shoulder and flapped away toward one of the towers of the school.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” the elf girl answered. “Magic is dangerous.”

She turned and walked quickly away.

Dorian was forced to break into a run to keep up with Helene. Up ahead, over Helene’s shoulder, he could see his mother and the professors from Aldwyns still standing in conversation at the entrance.

He put a hand on her arm and stopped her.

“You’re my guide,” he said. “So guide me.” He used his chin to point at the group of adults standing just outside the school gates.

“The faculty?” Helene asked. “Didn’t your mother fill you in?”

“She gave me
A Practical Guide to Wizardry
, and Mother pointed them out to me in the book,” he admitted. “But that’s not really the same. She’s not going to give me the good information, is she? It’s all, ‘This one is very smart,’ and ‘Mind your manners,’ and ‘They’re brilliant,’ and so on.”

Helene pursed her lips then nodded once. “The scary-looking tiefling is Professor Blackburn, head of destruction magic.”

Dorian of course already knew by sight the tiefling male in his late fifties with his gray-black hair and blue eyes, wearing black robes. Now a dragon familiar sat perched on one shoulder.

“That’s Professor Fife, head of information magic and spellwriting,” Helene continued. “You don’t want to get on her bad side.”

Dorian looked at the older human female with long, curly reddish blonde hair and purple eyes. She wore a purple robe and a lot of jewelry that did little to soften a stern face.

Like the other professors, she held a wand, this one made of bone with a quartz head and small glass bead charms. On her shoulder perched an owl familiar.

“And last is Professor Ives, head of protection magic.”

Something in Helene’s voice changed and caught Dorian’s attention.

He turned to look at the girl and saw she was blushing brightly for some reason.

Confused, he turned back around to see a smiling elf who appeared to be in his late 20s or early 30s, with long silver hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and dressed in a white robe.

Ives was addressing Dorian’s mother and she laughed
out loud along with him. He held a crystal wand with a jade head and dragon scale charms.

A rat with fur such a singular color of gray that it appeared almost periwinkle poked out of a fold in the elf’s robes.

Dorian could hardly believe how easily his mother seemed to fit in with this motley group of strange, almost frightening individuals. She seemed to fit in here as well as she did among the royalty, generals, and heads of state at court.

She fits in everywhere, he thought, and I fit in nowhere.

“Will I get a familiar?” Dorian asked, trying not to dwell on things he could do nothing about.

“Of course.” Helene stared at him. “You know, your mother is one of the most powerful wizards in the realm and you don’t seem to know
anything.”

Dorian opened his mouth to give a sharp comeback, but his mother chose that moment to acknowledge him. She turned half in his direction and called out to him. “Dorian, come meet your new professors properly before I return to court.”

“You’re leaving?” Dorian burst out. “We were almost killed and you’re not even spending the night?”

The smile on his mother’s face froze for just an instant and he knew he’d embarrassed her, but he didn’t care.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “You are in the safest place in the realm. More importantly,” she continued,
voice growing a little firmer, “you are in exactly the place you need to be while I must return to the place that
I
need to be.”

Dorian stopped before her.

He still felt like this was all a huge mistake.

He would never move like Maverick, or form a bond with a creature as beautiful and noble as Helene’s falcon, or conduct magic like either his mother or Lowadar. He would never invoke feelings of respect or even fear the way Blackburn did.

All he could do was make mistakes and put people in danger. He didn’t belong here—no matter what his mother said, or who she was.

“Yes, Mother,” was all he said.

Serissa rewarded him with a smile of such brilliance he was momentarily consoled. She looked him deeply in the eyes.

“Make us proud, Dorian,” she whispered.

With that, Serissa stepped back and nodded to Lowadar and the assembled faculty. Her lips moved quickly but silently as she ran down the spell. Her wand gestured through a predetermined pattern and Dorian felt the shifting of magical energies.

Then she was gone.

He turned and looked at the expectant faces of his new teachers. Just off to one side Helene smirked at him. Her homunculus appeared and fluttered around her shoulder.

He watched the elf girl, and a seed of suspicion that had already taken root blossomed. He remembered the warnings of Maverick and narrowed his eyes as he studied the girl intently.

Something was going on beneath the surface and he was going to find out what.

In just that instant something began to change for him.

Home seemed farther away and Aldwyns more readily in his mind. I’m not my mother, he told himself, but I’m not the idiot that girl thinks I am either. She’s hiding something and I’m going to be the one to find out what.

It was then that he saw his first ghost.

“Wizards’ lives are full of change, but one thing stays the same: they always have their familiars by their side.”

—A Practical Guide to Wizardry

D
orian felt the skin along his arms and back of his neck tingle.

A shrouded figure glided out of nothingness, trailing gray robes behind it. The figure was translucent and insubstantial, but there was no denying that it was there.

It shifted its hood to look down over the battlements of Aldwyns’ tallest tower, and a nearly fleshless skull with dark hollows for eyes stared down.

The lipless mouth opened wide and a ghastly wailing echoed from above the group. Dorian staggered back and a feeling of dread sank into him like teeth.

“No,” he whispered, and felt tears in his eyes.

The grim specter raised its arm, pointing a long finger tipped with a jagged nail at him. Dorian felt his knees begin to buckle. His hand fell to the metal wand at his belt, but he didn’t know what to do with it.

Lowadar stepped forward and waved a hand at the ghost. The headmaster whispered a word that instantly dispelled the entity.

The archmage turned and nodded at the assembled faculty, who returned his gesture and dispersed, hurrying off to their own tasks and responsibilities.

Lowadar looked down at Dorian and smiled kindly.

The effect was not as reassuring as the powerful wizard probably hoped because he was so imposing.

“Do not be overly alarmed, Dorian,” Lowadar said, his voice low and gravelly. “The haunts of Aldwyns are mostly nothing to fear, though they can be … disconcerting at times.”

Beside them Helene wore an odd expression.

“Maverick told me to beware the ghosts,” Dorian offered, not sure why he was admitting talking to the eladrin.

Lowadar smiled.

“Yes, well, Maverick and I often disagree on what items and information are appropriate for my students. Fortunately, it is I and not Maverick who is headmaster at Aldwyns.”

Dorian, accustomed to political double-talk from his time at his mother’s side in court, realized instantly that Lowadar had not exactly refuted Maverick’s declaration.

He knew better than to point that out.

Lowadar turned to the academy and placed his hands behind his back. “Walk with me, young Ravensmith,” he said. “Helene, would you join us?”

The headmaster strolled down the cobbled entrance of Aldwyns, leaving the village behind. Before Dorian, the walls of the academy rose up, granite and basalt blocks running vertically in seamless rows.

On either side of the entrance, sheer cliffs fell away, revealing how the school was built into the plateau separating it from the village.

Up countless stone steps and through twenty-foot high doors of heavy wood and ornate brass, the trio progressed until Dorian entered the grounds proper. There, a dragon statue of richest brown symbolically guarded the portals to the academy.

“Is that dragon made of …” Dorian let his question run off.

“Chocolate?” Lowadar provided. “Yes. A prank concocted by some of your fellow Aldwyns students.”