Aldwyn's Academy (9 page)

At first his eyes couldn’t adjust and he was unable see anything at all. Then background illumination seeping out from the windows of the building shed a soft light on the scene.

A lone figure hugged close to the walls on the cobblestone walkway below. He gasped, sure he had seen a ghost, then was even more stunned when he realized who the figure actually was.

“Caleb!” he whispered quickly, “look.”

Instantly the half-orc was beside him and peering into the dark with his superior night vision. Caleb grunted softly.

Below them, Helene skulked through shadows on some lone mission of her own. She froze in her steps while the wolf howled. As it faded away she again slinked forward. Dorian realized that she would soon be beyond the Tower of Change Magic and into the gardens.

“What is she doing?” Caleb wondered. “Those are dires howling and there are ghosts all over the place.”

“She didn’t seem very scared of ghosts today when we saw one out front,” Dorian said.

Caleb snapped his head back to the boy. “You saw a ghost while you were with her?”

“Yes, just after she found me at Maverick’s.”

He went on to tell Caleb about the eerie experience he had while alone in the student hall with her after Lowadar had left them.

“When I ran into her in the dining hall,” Caleb said, “there was a banshee.”

The boys looked at each other, eyes growing wide. “She doesn’t seem afraid,” Dorian pointed out.

“Like maybe she knows she’s safe?” Caleb asked.

Outside she disappeared from view.

“Come on!” Dorian said. “We’ve got to follow her.”

In a flash he retreated from the open window and hastily scooped up the loose items on his bed and into his
Heward’s Handy Haversack before throwing the backpack across one shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Caleb stuttered.

“If we can prove she’s up to no good, Lowadar will see I’m ready to be at Aldwyns!”

“Lowadar doesn’t think you should be at Aldwyns?” Caleb asked confused.

“No time!” Dorian threw Caleb’s haversack at him. “Just follow me.”

He stuffed his feet into his Slippers of Spider Climbing and scampered easily across his desk, through his window, and down the outside wall.

O
utside the window, Dorian’s heart lurched in his throat and he thought he was going to throw up. He couldn’t believe the Slippers of Spider Climbing could hold him to the wall, much less allow him to walk on it as if it were the floor.

The slippers slid over the blocks of the academy with all the grace of their eight-legged namesake. Behind him, Caleb appeared in the window then followed him down.

Dorian skittered down the two stories to the cobblestone and bent down in the shadow of the building.

His breath plumed out in front of him, forming a silver cloud from the cold. Pockets of the early snow covered the ground, and hoarfrost was on the rock in thick, white sheets.

He looked around carefully.

Caleb shuffled into place beside him, moving gracefully for having such a stocky frame.

“This is crazy,” he whispered. An excited smile split his face. “The faculty will kill us if we get caught.”

“Makes it all the more suspicious that Helene is out,” Dorian replied. “If she’s really comfortable with the ghosts, then she might even be working with whoever was controlling those dires that attacked me and my mother this morning.”

“Like an inside agent?” Caleb asked.

“Exactly.”

To his right Dorian saw the tightly bunched, evergreen walls of the Ever-Changing Hedge Maze, to his left the pavilions and stone tables of the magic market.

Directly before him was the Tower of Change Magic, around which Helene disappeared. Behind that tower lay the Alchemical Gardens.

Dorian had to know what she was up to.

“Come on!”

He ran forward, heard a noise, and instantly spun.

Two figures emerged from the shadowy alcove framing the entrance to the Tower of Change Magic.

Stepping off the pathway, Dorian knocked Caleb over and threw himself to the ground behind some low, ornate bushes now denuded by the late season.

He froze there, not daring to move. Caleb lay still beside him.

He heard the rustle of robes, the slap of footsteps, and the murmur of voices as the pair approached.

He risked peeking up and saw two figures approaching them on the walkway.

“Oh no,” Caleb said in a low whisper. “We’re doomed. That’s professors Dunbar, the head of summoning magic, and Grimsby, the head of change magic and spellcraft theory,”

Grimsby was a plain featured woman with shorter brown hair and a slim build that seemed positively ethereal next to the blunt, squared-off stoutness of Dunbar, a heavyset dwarf with a long, thick beard.

As they passed by Dorian and Caleb’s hiding place and headed toward the academy proper, he overheard their intense conversation.

“Blackburn suspects something,” Grimsby was saying, her voice low and slightly melodious. “I’m sure of it.”

Dunbar grunted. “The tiefling doesn’t miss a trick. The only one sharper than him is that feykind Maverick.”

Grimsby laughed, and upon hearing the warm chuckle, Dorian instantly liked the woman. It seemed impossible not to.

“Don’t let either of them hear you say that or you’ll be dodging Magic Missiles for sure,” Gimsby said.

“True enough,” Dunbar answered, but then his voice turned deadly serious. “But I’m sure these ghosts are simply harbingers of something bigger, brought up
by residual energy left over from other, more powerful, necromancy.”

Dorian felt a chill deeper than any environmental cold run through him. Necromancy? he thought. Death magic.

He swallowed hard as the professors strolled on down the walkway.

“Then the matter of those wolves attacking poor Dorian Ravensmith and his mother,” Grimsby noted.

“Bad business, that,” Dunbar agreed. “And now the situation with that second-year student …”

“Helene Miridori,” Grimsby finished. “That complicates things for sure and I get the feeling Lowadar isn’t even entirely sure of the whole story with that.”

At the mention of his mentor’s name, Dorian turned and looked at Caleb. Both their eyes were open wide.

It was one thing to suspect something themselves, but it was quite another to overhear two of the faculty voicing concerns.

The pair rounded the corner of the building and disappeared.

Dorian sat up. Now that he had been given time to consider his actions, he already felt less sure of himself.

His eyes found the window to his room, still ajar. He’d already had enough excitement for one day, already gotten into enough trouble. It would be so easy to scamper back up the wall and into the safety of his room.

He turned and looked back toward the Tower of Change Magic and saw the darker form of Helene detach from the shadows and slip into the darkness of the gardens.

“There she goes,” Caleb whispered.

D
orian slid around the corner of the tower, Caleb a dark form behind him.

As he moved, hugging the shadows and avoiding the telltale crunch of frozen snow under his feet, he racked his brain to remember everything his mother had told him about Aldwyns and the miraculous gardens behind the academy, as well as the information he had gleaned from his tour earlier that day.

Ahead of him, he saw the elf girl veer away from the dark trees forming the Dryad’s Grove.

Whatever Helene was headed for it wasn’t there because after using an outlying tree for cover, the elf girl cut across the grassy field and entered the Ever-Changing Maze.

Dorian swallowed.

The thought of getting caught between the high, narrow walls of the magically animated labyrinth filled the boy with dread.

He paused, watching her disappear through the mouth of the maze.

For the second time since crawling out his window he was ready to return to the safety of his room. The thought of Helene mocking him, being braver than he was, instantly popped into his mind in an excessively vivid picture, and anger sped his heart up and forced his legs to move.

“She’s getting away,” he said, turning his head to Caleb.

The moonlight reflected in a brilliant sheen off the frozen water of the Reflection Pool and illuminated Caleb with a ghostly glow.

Behind him the academy stood mute and mostly dark, as if the building were asleep. With the half-orc boy just behind him, Dorian ran across the grounds. He slowed as he came to the Ever-Changing Maze entrance.

Then he plunged into the dark mouth of the maze.

Instantly there was a rustle of branches moving around him and the walls of the magically constructed labyrinth changed and shifted. Dorian spread his arms out and half squatted as if afraid he’d fall over.

He found himself standing in a long narrow run with walls rising above his head, blocking out the already scant light.

“Wow,” he whispered.

“Dorian!” Caleb suddenly called.

Dorian spun around and realized to his horror that Caleb was gone.

He stepped forward, right up against the branches and dense-packed leaves. He could hear Caleb moving on the other side.

“Caleb?” he called.

“I’ve been caught in the shift, I’m fine,” Caleb said urgently. “Find the center, then you can get out. I’ll wait for you outside. Don’t get caught by Helene!” he added in a tense whisper.

“Right, I’ll wait for you on the other side!”

“I’ll see you there.”

Dorian heard a final rustle and then the half-orc student was gone.

The shifting of the maze was the most overtly magical thing he had witnessed so far and it was impressive.

He blinked, mouth still open in wonder, and when his eyes opened the maze changed again. He stood in the bend of an L-turn and he felt panic rise up in him.

He was lost already.

Then he heard the thud of footfalls running just over the next hedge and instinctively he followed the sound. He wasn’t going to find his way out on his own, he knew. He wasn’t good at things like this, at puzzles or mathematics or riddles.

Once again he’d jumped into water that was over his head.

He raced forward, turned left, turned right, ran into a dead end and turned around, took a left, and raced down a long, straight passage.

At the back of his mind he remembered what Helene had told him earlier in the day about the spell that any student could use on the grounds of Aldwyns. It would trace the route back to safety in a mystical blue light; but he was still too stubborn to use the spell.

He had something to prove and now he felt like he couldn’t let Caleb down so easily, not after his roommate had risked serious trouble to help him.

Not yet anyway. He could still hear her, and as long as he could he didn’t want to give up.

Suddenly he ran through a patch of darkness so inky black it blinded him and he slowed his pace, thrusting his hands out in front of him in confusion.

He reached out and felt a wall of twisted branches, hard leaves, and evergreen needles before him in a wall. The maze had shifted again and his long run turned into a blind alley.

He spun and set the muscles of his legs ready to run.

Tattered shreds of mist formed thick cobwebs among the dark pillars of the tall, sculpted bushes.

His fears grew exponentially.

Magic was dangerous. Magic was power, and power
was always dangerous in the same way his father’s sword, always used to protect, was dangerous.

Dorian knew that Aldwyns wasn’t a place parents sent their children to die, and the danger of the power was supposed to be contained by the skill and ability of Lowadar and his staff.

But cold and tired and scared and alone in the dark, Dorian began to suspect that something was happening at Aldwyns. Something bad was happening right now, something that Lowadar had not guessed the full extent of yet.

In the frost upon the ground between patches of snow, Dorian spied wolf tracks.

The great dire wolves that hunted and fed upon the giant caribou and reindeer in the dark forest beyond the walls of Aldwyns were on the plateau now.