Clash (The Arinthian Line Book 4) (61 page)

“Oh.” Well, there was nothing special about him at all, so whatever that gift was, he certainly didn’t have it. He spotted Mrs. Stone’s statue. “Sir, where are the books that belong with my great-grandmother’s statue?”

“Ah, I am afraid I do not know. I suspect your father confiscated them, or worse … had them destroyed.”

They passed through the vestibule and on into the library hall, where they were greeted by a grinning Bridget and a bedraggled Leera, whose hair was disheveled and robe ruffled.

“Oh—” Bridget said when she saw Herzog exit the room behind Augum.

“This is Rafael Herzog,” Augum said. “The library historian. Mr. Herzog, this is—”

“Bridget Burns and Leera Jones,” Herzog interjected. “Though you lasses don’t look much like the poster, no you do not.” He waved vaguely at Bridget with his cane. “Err, I expected more of a … squirrel-like appearance—”

“Yes, well, someone we don’t get along with had that drawn,” Bridget said quickly, brushing dyed black hair out of her eyes.

“In any case,” Herzog continued, teetering on his feet, “no one would expect to see the most wanted younglings in all of Solia in Antioc, no they would not. I’ll give you points for courage, that I will.”

“Mr. Herzog was kind enough to help me think a few things through,” Augum continued. “I learned quite a bit about my father. Gave me some ideas.” He nudged Leera, who was holding her stomach and wincing. “Looking a little worse for wear. You all right?”

“Peachy,” she blurted, suppressing a hiccup. “Juuust peachy.”

Bridget tried to keep a straight face. “She kept trying to get past the Restricted Room guards and somehow ingested stinkroot—”

“We won’t be discussing what I may or may not have ingested, thank you very much.” She elbowed Augum. “And you can avert them judging eyes.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“Spent the whole time out here sick,” Bridget added in a snickering whisper.

Leera only moaned.

Bridget cleared her throat politely. “Mr. Herzog, sir, we’d like to safely return to our quarters, but the Legion guards are an unnatural presence, not to mention they blocked most of the secret entrances. Surely the founders never intended for warlocks to face outside obstacles …” She twiddled her fingers innocently as she glanced at the nearby remains of the wraith.

Herzog rubbed his shaggy beard. “I have a better idea.”

The trio beamed as Herzog led them to the distant end of the hall, opposite the great black doors, where there were a series of portal etchings, along with a gargoyle rune.

“Shyneo.” Herzog’s palm lit up with an icy glow that gently radiated fog. He placed it over the gargoyle rune, which lit crimson. He gave Augum a side look. “Initiates, I presume, lad?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you are here under false names, is that not so?”

“Augustus Westwood. Bridget and Leera are under Leigh and Brie Sparrows.”

“Let us do your real names as well, that way, if you survive your grand quest, you may one day return to explore and learn as yourselves. Consider it a reward you can look forward to, as well as a gift to the Resistance.” He winked at them.

The trio exchanged mystified but excited looks.

Herzog frowned at the rune and raised his chin. “Arch Historian Rafael Herzog. Promote Augustus Westwood, Brie Sparrows, Leigh Sparrows, Augum Stone, Bridget Burns, and Leera Jones to cloaked administrative access. Full privileges.” Herzog let go and dusted his hands. “There we are.”

“But sir, don’t we have to place our palms on the rune or something?” Augum asked, referring to the time Klines had signed them in as initiates.

“Not for promotions, lad. The library already remembers you. Make sense?”

“I think so. But what does ‘cloaked’ access mean?”

“You’re still initiates, just with full access. It’s an ancient secret that administrators may bestow upon those found to be worthy. You need only say your name and destination as per usual. Not even the Legion know about cloaked access, and I dare say they would not take too kindly if they found out, but then we shan’t tell them, will we now?” He frowned. “Come to think of it, my wife would not be too pleased, so you best not tell her either.”

“Wait, sir … is your wife Senior Arcaneologist Ning?” Bridget asked.

Herzog groaned. “Woman is the bane of my existence, that she is. Won’t even admit to the Herzog name. Bah, off you run, and do watch out for them guards.”

Antioc, Day Four

The trio slept in late the next day, once again waking past noon. Malaika and Charissa were already gone, leaving a note to meet them in the Supper Hall around the first afternoon bell. As the girls got ready while sitting in bed, Augum told them about his father, including the kind of child he was, how he had tried to raise Augum’s mother, and his weakness—that he lost concentration when he became really angry.

“We could definitely use that to our advantage,” Bridget said, a comb gripped between her teeth while she fixed Leera’s hair, which was unusually tangled. Bridget had been quite energetic since she got up, smiling and talking more in the last hour than Augum remembered her doing so in a tenday, all courtesy of having slept well for a change.

Leera, still a bit pale from the night before, winced from a hard jerk of her hair. “We’d need something big to make him angry. Like, really big.”

Augum finished washing his hands in the washbasin and sat down on the bed across them, placing his chin on his fingertips. “I have … an idea. But don’t immediately jump down my throat about it, all right?”

“Oh no,” Leera muttered. “Ouch, Bridge—!”

“Sorry! Hold still, would you? It’s like an owl’s nest back here.”

“Anyway,” Augum went on, choosing his words carefully. “I think I know how to make my father angry enough to lose focus, enough to help even the odds a little bit in a major battle. But we’d have to tell him at the right moment.”

“You going to say it or tip-toe around it all day?” Leera said.

Augum hesitated. “We rescue my mother’s body from the Black Castle.”

The comb fell from Bridget’s mouth as the girls gaped at him.

“I know, I know, it’s crazy—”

“Crazy?” Leera raised a finger to make some other point, but instead scoffed. “Ugh, crazy. Yeah, it’s crazy all right. I’m not interested in suicide.”

“No, but, wait—I can finally give my mother a proper funeral. It’s what she wanted. There’s a locket and stuff too, um, and we don’t have to do anything stupid, we just have to be smart about it. All we need is a way to covertly get in the Black Castle.”

Bridget picked up the comb and accented what she said with it. “Augum Stone you have completely. Lost. Your. Mind. The Black Castle is probably even more arcanely protected than Castle Arinthian. It’s the lion’s den—”

“Look, I’ve been thinking it through. Trust me, after what I read, I know it would utterly—” Augum made a loopy gesture at his head here, “—unhinge him.”

Leera made the same gesture, but in a mocking way. “Oh, unhinge him? Unhinge
him
. Not you? You’re not unhinged at all? Are the stairs not reaching the top floor here? Did the wraith chuck your brain into the abyss when you weren’t looking? Nuttier than a squirrel turd, you are.”

“Just … just imagine us with an Agonex Dreadnought-equipped army at our back, using Cron or whatever at the same time—”

“NO, AUGUM!” the girls chorused.

“I mean, I know it’s a gamble, and it sounds completely and utterly mad, I get that, but it’s what we need to do—take the fight to the enemy and all that, like a smart general would.”

Their eyes narrowed simultaneously.

He raised his palms. “All right, all right,” muttering, “just think about it then,” before quickly moving on. “Anyway, uh, what did you learn about the Agonex?”

The girls switched places as Bridget told them what she learned, which turned out to be a lot. There were challenges ahead, most notably tuning to the artifact, which apparently took quite some time. Then, once tuned, the controller had to somehow mentally defeat the undead commander in charge of the Agonex army. Bend him to his will or whatever. Augum imagined this commander standing amongst his troops in the deep darkness of Bahbell, one of the many faceless undead.

“The artifact is Teleport-infused,” Bridget explained as Leera fixed her hair, face cross with concentration. “Which means it can teleport an entire company all at once. I forget how many soldiers a company is, but—”

“Two hundred,” Augum said, chin resting on his hands as he sat cross-legged on the bed.

“Right. And we think there are tens of thousands of them. Now, how many companies can be teleported in a day is apparently dependent on the skill of the possessor of the artifact, or at least that’s what the history book says. Speaking of which, the history of the Agonex is simply fascinating—”

Leera gave Augum a
Kill me
look. Bridget had been rambling for a while now.

“—for example, did you know the Agonex was forged with all the souls of those soldiers? And did you know they
volunteered
for it? Yeah, Occulus told them they’d be immortal. Sound familiar? The poor things were duped. Killed in sacrifice and risen as the undead. Anyway it’s important to know because you can’t add more soldiers to the army—” Bridget made a snatching gesture, “—but you can take them away, like when they fall in the battlefield. Once a soldier is destroyed, he can’t be risen again. The army is destined to be whittled down to nothing in combat. So if—and that’s a big
if
as the artifact has layers of complexity—we somehow get control of the Agonex, we’ll have to use it very carefully and time our strikes, not only because it doesn’t replenish, but because we probably won’t be able to teleport more than a company at a time. And the army is so large still because it wasn’t used to full effect—scion-endowed warlocks took the fight to Occulus before he could conquer all of Sithesia. Interesting, isn’t it?”

“Huh.” The whole thing seemed rather convoluted to Augum.

“Oh and guess what happens to your brain if you enter into a mental battle with the commander and lose?”

“Your brain melts?” Leera said in a deadpan voice, comb between her teeth.

“Actually, yes. No, seriously, it actually melts. That’s what the text says.”

Leera made a face. “My brain is melting right now. Can we hurry this along and get some food? I’m starving.”

“This is important stuff, Lee—”

“Of course it is, but—” Leera stepped before Bridget. “You know,
priorities
!” She pointed at her stomach with the comb. “Do you hear that pathetic tiny crying? Hear that? That’s my poor tummy squealing and pleading for mercy. It’s saying, ‘I surrender, gods, I surrender, aaaaah!’—”

Bridget snorted a laugh and smacked Leera’s wildly gesticulating arm with the back of her hand. “Oh, hush already. We’ll go after we work on Augum.” She shook her head, muttering, “Water warlock. Pfft. Should have been an actor. Ridiculous …”

After the girls finished applying their makeup tricks on Augum, the trio raised their hoods and joined Malaika and Charissa in the bustling Supper Hall for their daily midday meeting.

“Like a necrophyte beehive in here,” Leera muttered, grabbing a tray full of food after Augum. Semi-finals were happening today and every necrophyte who was from out of town seemed to be congregating in there for lunch.

Augum kept his head low, painfully conscious of many eyes on him. Whispers about
The Hood
abounded.

“You’re in the Herald again,” Malaika proudly said to him after the trio joined them at a table in a corner. “Want to hear what they’re saying about you?”

“No thank you. Any news?”

Malaika’s face fell.

“Robin’s dueling soon,” Charissa said.

Augum dug into his gravy and potatoes, famished. “Right, we need to watch that fight.”

“We also need to discuss our exit strategy,” Bridget said in a whisper, mindful of nearby necrophytes, who would glance over now and then.

Malaika was curling her hair around her finger. “I told you, we have horses any time we need them at the edge of town.”

“I don’t feel comfortable with that,” Bridget said. “We need to talk to Senior Arcaneologist Lien Ning about a safer way out, that’s what Constable Clouds said—”

“You worry too much.” Malaika exchanged a
She’s such a goodie-goodie
look with Charissa.

Bridget’s voice dropped even lower. “And we also have to plan for tomorrow, Aug. You know about what.”

He nodded. He was quickly losing his appetite even thinking about it. Tomorrow was the day. The crazy day. His plan, should it work, would bring the entire city down on them. Bridget was right, they needed an alternate escape plan, a safer one, and they needed to formulate one sooner than later. Above all, he hoped his gamble that Erika would possess the divining rod paid off. Of course, that all hinged on him beating his next two opponents …

“He’s got a duel today,” Leera said, scarfing down a second apple tart. “Let him concentrate, will you?”

Bridget raised a corner of the Antioc Herald. “Can I see this?”

Charissa shrugged. “I don’t care.”

Bridget dragged it over and began studying it with furrowed brows.

“Oh did we tell you we went shopping yesterday!” Malaika said, her and Charissa giggling. “I bought this fabulous pink dress that will be ready today—”

Charissa placed a hand on Malaika’s arm as she joined in. “And I bought a new blue one. The fashion for the nobles here is just
divine
—”

“You two got any useful information for us about The Hood’s opponent?” Leera asked, waving her spoon around. “Or maybe about the Legion, you know, the kind of stuff you’re supposedly here for?”

Malaika flashed her a hateful look. “Just because you have the fashion sensibilities of a blunt tool doesn’t mean—”

“Leera,
no
—” Bridget caught Leera’s arm before she did something stupid, then promptly placed a hand over her own mouth, realizing she had used her real name.

The trio glanced about but luckily none of the other tables had noticed in all the loud bustle.

“Anyway,” Malaika went on in a supercilious tone, “to answer your oafish question, actually, yes, we do have some information. His opponent is named Caireen Lavo. She’s sixteen and from Tiberra. We get a sense she’s here for revenge. An honor kind of thing.”