Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (51 page)

He rounded the bend and stopped with a sharp intake
of breath.

The layout was completely different – no line of
desks, no alcoves, no Peashot. There were only three sections to this room. The
wall-lamps were brass, the furniture delicate and painted white, the books
plentiful, and the occupants awake. Three young men and three young women
lounged on the carpet with several bottles between them. Both the wine and the
mixed company in dorms were expulsion offenses. The alarm in their faces said
as much. But the alarm was giving way to something else.

Aedan backed towards the wall. He had to get away
from here. Away from them. The young men were beginning to move, and a hardness
in one of their faces was tolling an alarm that Aedan knew he dared not ignore.
He took another step back and was just about to turn and scramble out the
window when the hard-faced one stood. He was a tall student with heavy arms,
heavy brows and eyes that were now dark with anger. Fists clenched and face
seething, he strode forward.

In just that glimpse, Aedan saw the terror that
had stained his younger days. Though he fought it, he could not keep the talons
from sinking in. With sickening realisation, he felt every muscle go slack and
his legs dropped him to the floor. It was the same thing he saw in his father,
the same monster. It had owned him before and it owned him still. It towered,
pressed against the roof and walls, and Aedan whimpered under its giant
presence. Then the blows began to fall.

When the man was satisfied he stood back.

“Name?” he said.

Aedan was too shaken to think. He gave his name in
a trembling whisper.

“Really? The apprentice marshal who supposedly
took on a gang of thieves?” He laughed, a hard cracking sound full of blades
and stones. Ridicule and contempt. “Your spine is as hollow as chicken bones.
Listen to him crying!” The other men and two of the women laughed as well. One
woman looked distraught, but made no move to interfere.

“You’re also the one who’s been trespassing on our
boulevard, aren’t you? Yes, I recognise you now. I’ve been wanting to collar
your insolent little neck for a long time, and here you are. Finally snooped
right under the watchman’s heel. What are you doing here?”

Aedan managed to stutter out something about
getting lost and using the wrong window.

The young man stared down at him for a long time.
He bent, grabbed the hair behind Aedan’s head and turned his head up. “My name
is Iver,” he said. “And you are going to pay for your intrusion here. Don’t try
speaking of the girls or the wine. We’ll have a version of the story that will
keep us in the clear and muddy your name for good. I’ve managed the expulsion
of three who disagreed with me. I could easily make it four – or wait – you
marshals don’t get expelled do you? I seem to remember something about prison.
Yes … that will work too. Now get out of my quarters, you little writhing worm,
and report to me tomorrow.”

Peashot was waiting at the dorm, still grinning.
Aedan mumbled something about being too exhausted for chatter, and crawled into
bed, wishing he could explain, hoping Peashot would understand while knowing he
wouldn’t.

His thoughts were black. As much as he wanted to
avoid admitting it, what Iver had said was true. His spine had a secret hollowness
to it. His father had done something to him, broken something in him that could
be easily overlooked. He himself had been able to overlook it for years now.
But overlooking it had not made it go away.

It was like a missing support in a bridge. He
could take weight as easily as anyone, until that damaged section was tested,
and then he buckled, none more surprised and dismayed than himself. As the
helplessness swelled in him, so did the hate for his father.
He
was the
cause of this.

For the next few days, Aedan wholeheartedly disobeyed Iver’s
last instruction and kept clear of any area where the barbaric senior might
discover him. He had no intention to fawn and cower. He had no intention of
reporting to someone like that. He spent his breaks in a secluded garden,
telling the others that he needed a bit of time to think. It lasted for a week.
Then, one day, he looked up at the sound of footsteps to see the dreaded face.

Aedan got to his feet and raised his fists, but as
Iver marched forward, his presence caused all Aedan’s poisoned memories of his
father to swell into a choking cloud. His knees grew weak and dropped him.

“So you thought you could avoid me?” Iver said,
walking up and kicking Aedan over. “One of your friends was good enough to
point me in the right direction. And he’s agreed to do so for the rest of your
stay at the academy.”

Aedan crawled away, shaking. Behind Iver, he
caught a vague distorted glimpse of Malik and Cayde who watched with interest.
Malik had finally discovered the perfect weapon. Ilona had been right – her
cousin had a frightening capacity for resentment.

“You are going to listen very carefully now,” Iver
said. “I expect to see you, any time I choose, in the company of your friends. If
you make me search, it will be worse for you.”

He dropped to his haunches and peered into Aedan’s
face for a long time before speaking.

“I have written up a detailed account of your
cowering performance the other night, attested by all three of us. The women,
if you remember, were never there. I have made copies. What would be left of
your life if the story reached every one of your future comrades? Or your
future enemies? Imagine the interest in a marshal who is a hollow-boned coward?
If they don’t believe the story, I could always prove it, couldn’t I? Maybe
they could too. No need to even hit you, just threaten. No danger to me, complete
ruin for you. Just imagine everyone watching as you crumple the way you just
did.”

He raised his fist and Aedan cringed, seeing not
the man, but the dark, infinite terror, the sickening nightmares from his
childhood.

“Good. I think we can both see that this will
work. You won’t get any more warnings. Next time you test me, the story is out.
But tell me – how did you manage to make it so far without being discovered?”

Aedan couldn’t answer.

“As a student of law, I’m always impressed by
someone who can hold a lie together for any great length of time. You must be
something of an expert to have convinced them all for so long. Don’t
misunderstand me – I still think you’re pathetic – but I can appreciate the
skill. So how did you do it?”

He looked at Aedan with an appearance of genuine
interest that almost masked the sneering sarcasm. Gradually his face relaxed
into its natural shape – haughty eyes, cruel mouth. The false interest vanished.
“Yes, I thought so,” he said. “Waste of time seeking the thoughts of a worm.”

He lowered his voice. “Now I have a collection for
you to make. An hour after dark, you will throw a rope over the wall at the
south-west corner. My contact will attach a parcel. You will bring it to me.
Understood?”

Aedan understood all too well. The worst of it was
that Iver understood
him
. Clauman had shaped this handle on his son, and
Iver discovered it fitted him well. From that hour, Aedan lived in constant fear
of being exposed. Exposed for his weakness, and exposed for the smuggling he
was being forced into. The days grew bitter indeed.

He became a kind of slave to the senior.

Iver, he discovered, was a thirsty man who did not
want to run the risk of sneaking his own wine into the buildings. It became Aedan’s
job. When Iver called, he ran to obey, writhing with embarrassment when his
friends saw his obvious servility. Like others of his kind, Iver loved to be
observed with his subject before him and so made sure that he confronted Aedan
where many could see. Often, Aedan resolved that the next time he would stand
up to the senior, but even with his friends around him, something about Iver
always triggered the horror from his past and reduced him to a shivering child.
Malik made no attempt to hide his delight.

Once, Aedan saw Iver beating a much younger boy.
He could have reported it. Instead he ducked out of sight and ran away,
trembling, hating himself with every step.

They crossed paths a few days later, both making
deliveries.

“Are you the coward?” the boy asked.

The combined fear and rage that took hold of Aedan
led him to a place he despised with his whole being, but he did not hold his
fists back. He didn’t know why. It was easier to hit, like letting go, drifting
with a fierce current. In that one decision to give in to his deep hungry urge,
the current dragged him a long way down. He told himself that the next time he
would stand against it more easily, but he knew it would not work that way. The
shame that poured over him afterwards only added to a flood of self-loathing in
which he was already half-drowned.

What did it matter? What did he care anymore?

Iver quickly established his dominance and made it
his business to find Aedan regularly so he could bark at him for things not done
and parcels that had been jostled – though Aedan knew he could not have been
more careful. With increasing hostility, he was accused of all manner of
outrageous and obviously invented crimes. More than once, he was taken around a
corner to be thrashed. Iver gorged himself on the fear he detected, and worked
hard to cultivate it. For all his attempts to pass himself off as someone of
class – a law student of the academy – he was no more than a brawler, a thug
with enough sense to cover his tracks, who raised himself on the battered
frames of those who fell under him.

But the violent blackmailing worried Aedan less
than his own weakness. The demon that had shadowed his first home had found him
again. He had thought his weakness conquered at the festival during the gang
fight, but he understood now that he would have crumpled had his father been
there. And Iver was his father in a different form.

Though his friends grew deeply concerned, Aedan would
not speak of it. They urged him to just confront his tormenter, offering to
back him up. But they did not understand. How could he explain this? Even when
he visited his mother, he avoided answering questions about his darkening mood.
Explaining would mean revealing what he would not have anyone know. So he withdrew
into a dark inner silence that was rank with bitter thoughts.

In his dreams he took his revenge. Not against
Iver, but against the one who had started it all.

Clauman would approach him, eager, repentant. “Aedan,
my son,” he would say, “I’ve been looking all over for you. I need to talk with
you, to say sorry and –”

Aedan would turn his back and walk away, ignoring
his father’s hurt voice, swallowing the acrid draught of hate. It rushed
through his veins, a surging fever of power. Yet it never strengthened him.
When he woke in the morning, all that lingered was the sour memory of what he
had done in his dream world, and he was as weak as before.

But instead of curbing his need to wander and
discover, this new imprisonment drove him to recklessness and to something he
would never otherwise have considered, or dared. It was time to find out why
that forbidden corridor would send a student to jail.

This time Aedan told no one. When they were all
asleep, he stole from the room, dragged one of the statues in the display hall
to the central feature, climbed up to the platform and descended the stairs.

Once in the cold subterranean darkness, he partly
unshuttered his lantern so that only a sliver of light escaped. In the past, he
had always turned left. Now he looked to the right, beyond the chain, down the
narrow passage. Dun’s warning rose up again. This was not like ignoring a sign
that told him to keep off the grass. There was something down there that was
not just forbidden but secret.

He thought about it. What did he care if the
consequences were bad? Iver had turned his life to bile. He was in a prison
already. What was trouble with the rules or even the law in comparison? But that
was only if he were caught, and he did not intend to be caught.

He dropped down and crawled under the chain. With
his head so close to the ground, he could see that the dust had been disturbed.
People had passed here recently. He rose and started forward, padding cat-like
on the balls of his feet, pointing the open end of the lantern down the
passage. It cast the faintest yellow glow a few yards ahead to the boundary
where light wrestled with shadow. With the wick trimmed to allow only the
smallest flame and the forward shutter open but a crack, it did little more
than soften the darkness, but it was more than enough. Aedan had no fear of the
dark. It wasn’t a consequence of courage. He had simply never had cause to fear
it. Instead, he had often found security where he could not be seen, where he
could hide and keep watch.

A sound brushed his ear, light as the touch of a
moth, yet he was able to feel it in the gound. When he held his breath and
listened there was nothing.

He continued forward as the corridor plummeted
down a long flight of stairs so precipitous that he almost had to use his hands.
The surfaces were narrow and the drops deep. He was all too aware that if his
balance should carry him forward, there would be no recovery. A misstep here
would hurt, for a long time. The bottom, if there was one, remained lost, far
below in darkness.

He tested every surface before committing his
weight, so progress was slow. It was almost an hour before he reached the level
ground in front of an oak door, dry, split and papery with age. The door was
slightly ajar so he pulled it open with a soft creak and cast the lantern light
into what appeared to be a store room, though, by the looks of it, one that had
been forgotten for a very long time.

The large room was filled with heaped sacks,
ropes, rusted tools, and mildewed harnesses so old that even the mildew had died
and trickled to the ground forming little heaps of grey powder. It was an odd
assortment and certainly a strange place to keep all these things, for the room
appeared to terminate the passage. No doors lead out from here. The stone walls
were unbroken except by the door through which he had entered. Why anyone had
built such an interminable stairway only to provide access to a pointless store
room escaped Aedan, yet here it was. Perhaps marshals were poor architects
after all. But the thought did not rest well. He was missing something and he
knew it.

Another brush of sound.

It was like the air had shuddered. It came from
everywhere and nowhere, as if the earth itself were sighing and the floor and
walls whispered of it. What had Garald said? Shakes and shiverings that don’t
belong in rock … Aedan waited a long time, but there was nothing more.

Disappointed with this dull end to the night’s
exploration, he leaned against a pile of sacks that crumbled and produced a
powdery cascade behind him. The dust and decay drew him back into his own
thoughts and the ruin his life had become. As he let his mind drift back
through the years, flailing for something, anything that would give a flicker
of relief, he remembered what was so close that he had almost forgotten it.
Reaching beneath his shirt, he pulled out the little leather case, now old and
worn. He looked at it for a long time, considering. Then with a suddenness to
counter the years of hesitation, he made the decision.

It was time.

He crossed back to the entrance. The sagging door
ground over dusty flagstones as he pushed it closed. There was a corner at the
far end of the room where he could tuck himself down between two piles of sacks,
and after placing the lantern there, he sat and lifted the cord over his head.
He held the little case in his palm where the light fell. Since Thomas had
given it to him he had carried it, fearing to look inside, fearing the pain it
would cause. But after the past weeks, he no longer cared about the pain.

Kalry was not here to take his arm anymore, but her
words were here, and he suddenly needed them again. He untied the rawhide
binding and, with a deep breath, slid the cover off to reveal a small walkabout
diary painted with flowers, birds and beasts, all surprisingly well-proportioned
for the creations of a young girl. The handwriting was as familiar as his own.
It caused his breath to catch. Though the pages were tiny, there was a good
deal in them owing to thin and probably expensive paper and a very small handwriting.
He remembered how she had found that writing small was the only way to keep the
letters neat. She had objected, however, to anyone calling her normal script
messy. She insisted, with a half grin, that it was a good thing if the letters
wanted to be a little different every time. Aedan smiled at the memory. After a
brief pause, he began to read.

Dear diary.

I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve decided not to write
to you again. That’s why I’m starting a new diary today, and it’s the last time
I’ll write dear diary unless you write me something back (which of course we
know you won’t).

I’m not too sure who to write to. I was thinking
about writing to the Ancient, but I’m worried about bothering him with silly
things. Tulia said it would be wrong. Daddy said I would be wasting ink. He
said there are many gods who didn’t care about Mommy when she was sick and
don’t care about us now. But it was that angry and quick way of speaking he
uses when he’s just saying things because he wants to and not because he knows
they are true. Emroy who was listening in as usual came up to me later and said
if there is a god then why can’t he see it, and then he gave one of those
smiles like the sheriff does when he’s thinking about something, and walked off
as if he just said something cleverer than the sheriff himself.

I wanted to tell him he can’t see his own head and
that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one. Aedan said in his case it did. I don’t
feel wicked for laughing because Emroy can be a real bully even when I try to
be nice to him. Anyway what he said gave me an idea.

If I thought like him, Emroy I mean not Aedan, I would
always lose at hide and seek because I would always be saying there’s no one
there when I don’t see them and I’d always give up too soon. If you want to be
any good at it you need to look all over and search for trampled grass and
footprints and startled birds and all those kinds of things that Aedan is
always showing me. And I got to wondering if maybe the Ancient is like that
too. Maybe he wants to hide like he wants us to look for him instead of him
just appearing in the middle of the field and saying, Here I am! Because maybe
then we’d just say, You’re in my field, go away.

So maybe he lets the people find him who really
want to find him. I remember the one time I got lost in the fir woods on the
south side of the town. It was Aedan’s father who found me and when he found me
he even let me hug him and cry against his shoulder. But when I go to visit Aedan
at his house his father is really rude and he sometimes doesn’t even say hello
because at those times he’s not looking for me.

That reminds me about something else. Today Aedan and
I went questing for the castle of the silver dwarf. Aedan was so good at
finding tracks in the forest even when they weren’t really there. But when he
didn’t know I could see him he got this deep, sad look in his face. I’ve seen
it before and I also saw bruises that he didn’t want to talk about. First I
thought it was Emroy, but I overheard Dorothy saying something to Tulia that
makes me wonder if his father is hurting him. I would give up all my
collections and story books, even the ones I wrote, if I could just make it
stop. I wish he was my real brother. Then he could come and live here and be
safe.

Aedan’s vision was too blurred to see the page. He closed his
eyes and his shoulders shook silently for a while. He knew that Kalry had meant
what she had written and he knew how valuable those story books had been to
her. When he had reined himself in, he rubbed his eyes and started the next
entry.

Dear Aedan

Seeing as my diary didn’t write to me I’m going to
write to you but if I catch you reading it I’ll tell Dorothy that you stole
those four slices of cake that made you sick on William’s birthday. When I’m
dead and buried you can read it all, but only you. Don’t tell Emroy about the
part where I thought your missing head joke was funny.

I want to write about something that I’ve been
feeling a lot lately and today it was particulilly (I’m sure I spelled that
wrong) clear.

I went walking really early in the morning, you
know when stars are yawning and closing their eyes, and flowers and grass begin
to stretch before the wind gets up from the valley and starts them dancing, and
birds are worried about flying into things so they sit in their trees and
chatter to each other telling stories about what they dreamed and what they
plan to do with the day, and while I was standing there in the middle of the
west field I heard something even more beautiful than the chorus of the birds.

I think the best way to describe it is by calling
it a song, and almost everything can feel it. I can’t hear it with my ears,
it’s more inside and it makes me tremble like it’s trying to wake me up and I’m
saying, But I am awake, and it’s smiling (I think this song can smile) and
saying, No you’re not, because you’re not singing. It seemed as young as the
dew that was making my toes cold, but at the same time I knew that it was older
than memory itself. (I borrowed that line from one of your mum’s books.)

It made me think of that poem by Theol where he
mentions the echoes of the Ancient, but that sounds too cold. To me this was
like the song of the Ancient. I think I’ll call it that.

I think it’s a song that’s always been there, but
it’s like it’s getting louder now, like something magnificent and spetakular
(that one doesn’t look right either) is going to happen. It made something
spetak
wonderful happen in me. I was ready to burst with excitement so I ran right
over to the old tulip tree and hugged it, and I think it laughed. Thomas saw me
and he certainly laughed. I’m not mad with him anymore. I probably would have
laughed if I’d seen him hugging a tree.

I want to tell you about all of this soon. I know
we have a lot of make-believe things like the dwarf and the wandering willow
and the fox with the golden tail but this is different. It’s as real as rain
but I think it can be ignored completely.

I hope you know about it too. It’s lonely for me when
we can’t share things.

This time the tears poured down his face and he made no
attempt to check them. How he missed her. He remembered her telling him about
the song, and remembered how she had been disappointed in his subdued enthusiasm.

He began to wonder about the storm that had
revealed itself over Castath, if what she described was a more subtle form of
what he had experienced when he had heard his name wrapped in thunder. It
really had felt like he was being woken, though somehow that stirring, that
excitement, had faded. In its place were cold chains and a cauldron spilling
fumes of hatred that had pulled him back into a heavy sleep.

A sharp click pierced the silence. Aedan blew out the
flame and pushed himself against the wall between the mounds of sacks. The
floor shook under a heavy grinding. He was momentarily confused when a shaft of
light fell across the floor from the wrong side of the room. Then he understood
– a door was opening in the stone wall. Aedan ground his teeth. He should have
guessed it.

From where he was hiding, only the wooden door was
visible, so the two voices that reached him were faceless.

“I understand that well enough, but we must humour
him. He has the respect of many thinking people occupying influential
positions. If he were to be silenced too directly, it would breed suspicion.”
The voice was familiar, but Aedan could not yet place it.

“But what he proposes will only excite ideas that
could lead to unrest. His theories are going to spread like poison. You have to
admit, with the increasing reports of inexplicable sightings in the east, and
now these tremors that even we have felt, he will have the ears of the whole
city. His ideas have a credible tone. He could ruin everything you have been
working towards.”