Bear Knight, page 15
Kara cast a hard look his way.
“What? I’m not saying we’ll be lost forever. The maze has been mapped a dozen times or more since then.”
She nodded, but as she turned her eyes to the map Master Jairun had given her—purposefully incomplete—a thought struck her. “But did the others who mapped the ravine ever find Argallan’s body?”
“Now that you mention it, I don’t think so.”
Paskin stopped rowing. “Well, that’s not disconcerting at all.” Apparently not even Dag could shut him up—a good thing, because he clapped and pointed off the starboard bow. “Look there!”
It took Kara’s eyes a little longer to break the formation out from among the gray rocks, but when she did, she smiled. She saw the bent knees and hooves, the head bowed in slumber with a long horn. The empty spaces and shadows between the rocks formed a Havarra horse king—a unicorn. Now she understood why Master Jairun had told her to find it before midday. Once the sun passed to the west, the shadows would turn, and the picture would vanish.
The changing position of the boat began to obscure the shape. Kara locked her gaze on the spot and ordered Paskin to put in. “Good work,” she told him. “Sharp eyes.”
He seemed surprised by her praise. “Um. Thank you.”
Kara hurried her companions out of the boat and walked up the steep gravel straight to the unicorn, where she turned to face the direction its horn had pointed and checked the map. “The way I read this, we should find what the map calls the Narrow Way a half league from here—perhaps a crevice passing through one of the ravine walls. Then there’s an empty space on the map. Once we cross it, we’re done.”
“Easy as brambleberry pie,” Paskin said.
The task proved him wrong. When they came through the Narrow Way to the empty space on the map, they found it quite full.
Since the party had first rowed into the ravines, they’d been surrounded by scree—steep slopes of gravel formed by ice breaking bits of rock from the ridgelines. But here, the ice had broken off huge chunks and dropped them into a wide field. Hundreds of blocks and pillars created alleys and thoroughfares, like a city of stone without doors or windows.
Paskin walked out in front of the other two and turned, spreading his hands. “It’s a boulder field.”
“No,” Dag said. “It’s a maze—one within another. And Kara must lead us through to win her third ringlet.”
She eyed him, feeling the two stacked ringlets already on her finger. “You’ve been here before.”
“On my own Navigator’s Quest. Yes. And I’m here to make sure you come through yours alive. Make no mistake, this is a perilous place. Only one path will lead you to the other side. Others may leave you trapped here until you die of exposure and lack of water.”
Paskin sidled up to the big cadet and cocked his head. “Are you sure you can get us out of here—you know, if she flubs it?”
Kara hit him with a frown.
Dag shrugged. “Pretty sure.”
Within half a tick, Kara was hopelessly lost, so that even backtracking did her no good. Dag remained inscrutable, and knowing he knew the solution made her agonize over his every sniff, cough, and grunt. Exasperated, she paused for a breather at a rough circle of standing pillars—one they’d seen before. When she sat on a round stone, the look in Paskin’s eyes posed the same challenge he’d voiced in the rowboat. Admit it. You’re lost.
Another failure. Oh, how she’d underestimated these quests. Her hope of passing them before the Turning of the Spheres—of heading into Tanelethar to seek Keir—were over.
Letting her head fall back in defeat, Kara noticed one of the blocks in the circle stood taller than the rest. Much taller. “Huh,” she said out loud.
Dag leaned against the boulder closest to the tall one. There were three in all, like stair steps. He raised an eyebrow. “What are you thinking, Raidleader?”
“I’m thinking that if you climbed up to that middle boulder, you might lift Paskin high enough to climb onto the tallest. He could see our way out.”
The miner grinned. “He’s kind of short. I can’t lift him high enough for his hands to reach, but I could probably throw him.”
Paskin jumped up from his resting spot. “Hey! That’s not—”
Kara screamed. Pain shot through her body. She clutched her midsection and doubled over, falling from her seat, and her shoulder slammed into the gravel. But that was nothing compared to the searing burn at her belly—like a hot blade tracing a line from hip to hip. “Dag . . . Help!”
The miner held her still and moved her hands away from her stomach. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
Kara’s eyes popped wide. She arched as another invisible blade sliced into her back. It drew an s-curve down her spine. She rolled over and tried to knock it away, but her fist swiped through empty air.
Her head swam, and in the strange waves of light and dark, she saw black scales and wings tipped with red. She heard a terrible laugh. Beneath it, a familiar voice cried, “No more!”
“No more what?” Paskin yelled.
Had Kara’s own voice joined the one in her head? “Dag, get us out of here.”
“Are you sure? To pass, you have to lead us.”
“Now, Dag!” Kara barely got the words out, and then the knife hit her again, and all went dark and silent.
28
THE PRISONER
TANELETHAR
All things are pain. All is sorrow.
I cannot lift my head, so that I cannot look away from the blood at my belly, the cuts on my legs. My brehnan visit me, apply the knife at the dragon’s behest, while his thoughts mingle with mine. He revels in my pain, my fear.
He sees her.
With each cut, her face flashes before me. I tried to hide her from him. I was supposed to protect her. Liam told me to protect her—a name, a brehna, that I remember now. I failed them both.
Lord Valshadox calls to her, and I cannot stop him.
Another prisoner comes. He is weak, as I was. He applies the knife. I scream.
KARA
KELEDEV
RAS TELESAR
“Keir!”
Kara bolted upright on the straw mattress.
Calming hands caught her and eased her back again.
“Shh,” Dame Silvana said. “Breathe, girl.”
Teegan was there too, adjusting the pillow as Kara’s head came back. “You’re safe, Shessa. You’re in the barracks at Ras Telesar.”
“My stomach. My arms and legs. My back. The blood. The cuts.”
“There are no cuts, dear. You’re under attack—a special kind.” Dame Silvana laid a hand on Kara’s forehead and prayed. “Alosov adverenu rethro delanu. Alos numovu adverenu malpedanu. Do you recognize this verse?”
Through you, we drive back our foes. Through you, we trample them.
“Yes, Dame Silvana.”
“Take hold of the words. Understand them and know the Rescuer is greater than any enemy. Let his peace fill your mind and heart.”
Kara breathed deep. You are mighty. You are sovereign. The rapid beating of her heart slowed, and once she felt steady, she sat up and swung her legs out of the bed. Teegan tried to stop her from standing, but Kara pushed her hands away. “I’m fine—well enough, anyway. I need to see the headmaster.”
She expected an argument, but Silvana offered none. The guardian stepped back, giving Kara room to walk on her own. “If you feel you’re ready, dear.”
Dag waited in the passage outside the women’s barracks, hands red from wringing. “Thank the Maker, you’re all right.”
“I am.” She waved off his offered arm. “And getting better by the moment.” She let him walk beside her on the way to the ninth level. “The maze. You carried me out, didn’t you?”
“Paskin helped, or tried to. Turns out the best way to shut him up is a crisis. He stayed quiet when it mattered and kept his head about him. You’d have been proud.”
She answered only with a fleeting smile, unable to get past his choice of words. A crisis. Her crisis. Keir was suffering now, and Kara knew for certain she was on the edge of losing him. At the same time, she’d failed a second quest. Her hopes of finding him were almost gone.
Rescuer, I know I gave this hope to you when I walked through the door. But I always believed you would grant it to me in your time. Help me understand why you’ve taken it away. Why must I let my brehna die without knowing you?
“Thank you,” she said to Dag, swallowing a sob. “Pardon my tears. I’m not ungrateful. But since I failed another quest, my hopes of joining you and the others at the Turning of the Spheres are over.”
“You mean your hopes of finding Keir?”
She glanced up at him, and he gave her an embarrassed shrug. “You spoke his name a dozen times or more on the journey home. I put two and two together. And, if he hadn’t yet, the headmaster has now. I had to give a full account.”
“That’s it then.”
“Don’t think about the quests. They’ll keep. And you’ll enter the spheres in the Rescuer’s time, this year or next. Right now, we’ve much larger concerns.”
The graveness of Dag’s tone told Kara all she needed to know. She’d guessed much from her talk with Pedrig on the way home from the Clefts of Semajin. “Dark creatures have entered Keledev.”
He nodded. “And taken a life. Keledan blood was spilt on Keledan land. As Luthelan the Herald wrote in his unfinished epic, ‘The first sorrows of war have come. Many more will follow.’”
Master Jairun came out from behind his desk as Kara entered his chambers. He leaned upon his staff, looking her over. “Feeling better, are we?”
“Well enough to make the climb to the ninth level.” She gave him a wry smile. “A test, I assume.”
“We often claim we’re all right when we aren’t. Usually, a physical test is only half the measurement. A renewer must also consider the patient’s spirit. But in this case”—he bent to examine her face and tilted his head at an odd angle, as if to look past her eyes—“the two are linked. Are you aware of what happened?”
Painfully aware. “My brehna Keir is being tortured. I felt every stab and cut as if the knife were in my own flesh.”
The headmaster returned to his desk. “A dragon attacked you through him—pushed its way into your thoughts.”
“I didn’t know that was possible.”
“It is if you do not choose to push the creature out. You know how.”
“The song. The Scrolls.”
“Yes. Yet you applied neither until Dame Silvana helped you. And that tells me you chose to endure the pain. Why do you think that is, my girl?”
Kara knew why. “I wanted to see Keir, feel his presence and the life still in him. I wanted to learn what I could about where he’d gone.”
Master Jairun nodded. “What you suffered is an old and well-used tactic—meant to tempt a Keledan into danger through a family member. Each generation believes they are seeing something new, but the gambits of the enemy rarely change.” He narrowed his eyes—not at Kara, but at something beyond her, in a place only the headmaster could see. “To be honest, I expected to see such an attack on another cadet first, much sooner.”
She didn’t ask which cadet. That was not her place. “So, in the future, I am to flee from the dragon’s attack. I’m to put Keir out of my mind and give him up for lost.”
“Oh, no.” Master Jairun used his staff to lower himself into his chair and pushed his long legs out in front of him. “You see, Miss Orso, we flee from some attacks. For others, we hold our ground, shield ready. And some attacks, like this one, we rush to meet head-on with spear and sword.”
Rush to meet. Spear and sword. Kara tightened her fist to keep control of her hands and heart. “Sir, what is it you want of me?”
“By calling you out through your brother, this dragon has overstepped—exposed its scaly flank, so to speak. Your connection to Keir—not the creature—may allow you to find him, and perhaps solve the mystery of where all the disappearing Aladoth have gone.” Master Jairun bent forward in his chair. “I’m sending you into Tanelethar. Go find your brother and save him if you can.”
Tiran looked at Kara, then shook his head. “This can’t be the Rescuer’s will.”
Master Jairun had brought her down to Nevethav, the chapel on the outcropping at the academy’s center. The other guardians waited there with Tiran, Teegan, and Dag, seated around the steaming hot spring fountain. Pedrig had also come. He stayed aloof, walking the stone paths through the nine sections of the chapel’s fruit garden, thinking whatever thoughts wolves think when war comes to them.
The headmaster had ordered Tiran to join Kara on her mission to find Keir. “I can’t go into Tanelethar. I’m not meant to enter the Dragon Lands anymore—not after what happened.”
“Are you questioning my discernment as the head of the Order, Mister Yar?”
“Well . . . Yes.”
Belen coughed. Quinton dropped his forehead into a hand and muttered, “Help us.”
The headmaster leaned upon his staff and offered a patient smile. “I appreciate your candor, Cadet. But you’re still going.”
Tiran. He, out of all of them, was the one Master Jairun had paired with Kara for her first expedition across the barrier since joining the Keledan. She took up his cause, not for the same reason. “Shouldn’t we wait for Connor and Lee to return from Sky Harbor? They’ve been on more missions. Surely, a larger raid party would be best.”
“Mr. Enarian has sent no reports from the road, so I do not know how soon they may arrive.” Master Jairun lowered his chin and lifted his pupils to look at both of them. “Will the two of you make Keir wait for rescue to suit your own comfort?”
Neither answered.
“Good. Then it’s settled. Mister Yar will accompany Miss Orso in the raid to seek her brother and the missing Aladoth. Mister Kaivos and Miss Yar will search the slopes between the clefts and Thousand Falls for signs of frost goblins.”
“What about us?” Quinton said. “Will the guardians always leave the fightin’ ta the cadets?”
“I’m sorry, my friend. Our time to fight is coming soon. But for now, the academy’s work is doubled. We must speed the training of the new recruits.”
“And defend them,” Belen added. “If goblins roam the slopes, it won’t be long before they try to breach our gate.”
The mention of goblins at the gate ended all discussion. Master Jairun wasted no more time and set them all to praying in preparation for their missions. They began together, and then the cadets and Pedrig broke into their separate parties, each joined by two or three guardians.
Kara and Tiran prayed with Silvana and Baldomar around a small pool among the brambleberry shrubs. Silvana prayed first, reciting the High One’s words back to him. “Kesehcer ala’ov lut perah fi shalom nakav sestenoliov, mi alerov credol. The mind dependent on you. Perfect peace. In the face of fear and doubt, bless these two with trust in your goodness and might.”
Baldomar stood over them, gripping Kara’s shoulder and Tiran’s with powerful blacksmith’s hands. “Okethi, anu mi ke’Liberavor logopedorah, okeb Rumosh filelod aloslanu krafah, ma ke’Liberavor shegamanu yi Rumosh kaforov. As ambassadors for him, we seek reconciliation. There are many to be rescued. Though they fight against us, let your servants show them your love.”
After these prayers, Silvana brought Kara to the side, under the pink blossoms of a cherry tree. She lowered Kara’s sapphire pendant into her palm by the chain. “This jewel is a token of your family, correct?”
Without taking her eyes off the pendant, Kara nodded.
“I thought so. You’ve never said as much, but there was no need. And I understood when you stopped wearing it. But now, a dragon has your brother and troubles his mind.” The guardian closed Kara’s fist around the necklace. “When you find him, this may help him to see you for who you are.”
Master Jairun spoke one more prayer over the whole group before sending them off to the armory and the outfitter. “Leave tonight,” he said once he’d finished. “And make haste. Every tick we lose in discovering the enemy’s plans may cost a hundred lives or more in the end. Never forget, the Rescuer is with us.”
In unison, they all answered, “Always and forever.”
29
CONNOR
TANELETHAR
HIGHLAND FOREST
Zel hovered The Starling at treetop level—no easy feat. Connor watched with growing respect as she worked the lamp dials and the vents to hold their position.
“You won’t have to do this long,” Lee said, tossing a rope over the side. “Once we’re down, return to Faelin’s homestead and wait for us. Try to land there before sunrise.”
“Alone?” The airship started to sink, and Zel increased the vapors pouring up into the center pouch to raise her again. “You want me to wait alone in the Dragon Lands?”
Connor shook his head. “Not alone. The Rescuer is with you. And as you said before, you’re not trained for the dangers of Tanelethar. My patehpa’s homestead is the safest place for you—a sanctuary. Wait there for our return.”
“And if you don’t return, what then? Am I to move in? Settle down as a charwood merchant in this land of monsters?”
“Some make that choice. They were once called salt warriors. But we’re not asking that of you. In the armory, you’ll find a map of the area around Trader’s Knoll. The red glass Lee found will show you the location of a hollow tree portal. If we don’t return in a week, go there. By the Rescuer’s will, he’ll send you home. But first, scuttle The Starling.”
Zel let go of her dials. “Do what?”
“You heard me. We can’t leave your tehpa’s design for the enemy to find. The enemy steals and corrupts—uses what is good for ill. Flying dragons and granogs are bad enough. The last thing the Order needs in this fight are goblins and golmogs taking to the Taneletharian skies. Or worse—giant cave spiders falling on our raid parties from above.”
“Thank you.” Lee slapped him in the arm. “Thank you very much. Now I’ll have nightmares for a month.” He climbed over the side and started down the rope.
