“Definitely stubborn,” Ari says. “We got her attention when we sat down, but she’s mostly still thinking about her fish.”
“What should we do?”
“Wait. She’s almost done eating, and then I think she’ll pay attention to us.”
I sigh. “We’ve got to work on your training, Lil. You can’t just—”
“Do you hear that?” Ari asks suddenly.
“Hear what?”
Ari releases more of his gift, sensing something. “Someone’s here!”
Immediately I release my own gift, copying him. But there’s so much magic in the Realm, so many different life forces, that it takes me a second to figure out what he’s feeling. There—something strange. An energy like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It’s definitely magic, but it doesn’t feel natural. Not like that of the Realm’s creatures, or like any gift. “What is that?”
“We have to go,” Ari whispers. “Before they sense us!”
Whoever it is, they’re not that far away from us. Not far away at all. If the Realm weren’t so full of magic, we would have sensed them sooner. “It might be too late,” I say, panic rising in my chest. “If it’s one of the Seekers, they could sense Lilja a mile off.”
“I don’t think it’s a Seeker,” Ari says, and there’s something in his tone that I don’t understand.
“Who, then?”
“Not now. We need to go. They shouldn’t think anything unusual about a dragon being in the Realm if they sense Lilja. But we need to make sure they don’t sense us.”
“Ari. Whatever that magic is, it’s coming closer!” I say. The energy is moving toward us, and it definitely feels human—but it’s also wrong, not like a normal gift at all. It’s fighting with the other life forces around it, clashing against them rather than melding into them. “If we get Lilja in the air, they’ll see her. If it’s a Seeker, they’ll know that a silver baby dragon isn’t one who lives here.”
“It’s not a Seeker,” he says again, but he frowns. “She should run. Until we get far enough away.”
Lilja is finally picking up on our distress. She stretches her jaws and flutters her wings, her energy picking up.
“She’s ready,” Ari says, and her wings snap wide, preparing for takeoff. “Stop using your gift,” he adds. “The more you use, the easier it will be for them to sense you.”
“But then I can’t steer Lilja!”
“We don’t need to steer her. We just need her to run.”
As I pull the rest of my magic back, I feel it—Ari’s gift collides with Lilja’s energy, but he isn’t calming her down this time.
He’s making her feel afraid.
Lilja’s spine stiffens, and she bolts forward so suddenly I nearly fall. Ari grabs my arm, holding me steady, as Lilja bursts through the trees and leaps forward, running as fast as I’ve ever seen her go.
Both Ari and I have stopped using our gifts, so we have no control over what Lilja does next. She runs through the forest at breakneck speed, wings tucked tightly against her sides, and it’s all Ari and I can do to hang on for dear life. As soon as the trees fade away and she enters another clearing, she snaps her wings open and leaps into the air, nearly dislodging both of us from her back.
“Um, I think you might have scared her a little too much!” I yell at Ari as Lilja takes flight.
“No kidding!” he yells back.
With every frantic beat of her wings, Lilja soars toward her cave, leaving the Realm, and the figure in the forest, far behind.
We pass over the mountains, and the bay lies before us, the ocean a smooth stretch of blue tinged by dawn. Rather than having Lilja land on the beach again, though, I steer her toward the cliffs. Now that we’re far away from the mysterious energy, I let my gift guide me, flinging it out wide so I can sense the landscape. It’s hard to tell how things are laid out with so much rock everywhere, but there are enough scattered life sparks—of the occasional grass or tree or weed—that I can sense the rough shape of things. It takes a couple of tries, but after a minute of steering Lilja around the cliffs with my gift, I detect her cave and nudge her toward it. Lilja doesn’t need much coaxing to land on the ledge about halfway up the rock wall above the beach, right in front of the entrance to the cave. Luckily, she doesn’t crash us into any large bodies of water this time.
“Here you go, Lil,” I say as she thuds to the ground, her claws scraping against the rock. “Home sweet home.”
“How’d you do that?” Ari asks. His windswept curls are sticking up in every direction, and his eyes are wide.
“Do what? Get her to land?”
“And find the cave,” he says.
I shrug. “Naturalists can sense plants, too, remember? It’s not so hard to figure out how the land is shaped when you can sense everything that grows on it.”
Ari looks thoughtful. “Sorry about earlier,” he says. “When we were flying into the Realm, and I made her too tired with my gift, and then when I made her too scared just now. I haven’t exactly tried any of this on a dragon before. I didn’t know how much to—”
“It’s fine,” I say. “It was a good idea. The execution just needed some work. But now you’ll know how to do it in the future, right?”
He shrugs and looks away. He seems embarrassed, like I was earlier when I forgot about how Seekers steer dragons and then again when I nearly drowned, so I want to say something to make him feel better.
“Flying was amazing, right?” I say finally.
Ari glances up, a small smile creeping onto his face. “Amazing,” he agrees. “I’ve never felt so… alive.”
“Or so free,” I say, nodding. “Yeah.”
We share smiles, and for a second it feels nice—almost like we’re friends. But we can’t be. Only one of us is going to be a Seeker. After this competition is over, only one of us will get to fly dragons every day. And the other will never get to do it again, once Lilja goes to live in the Realm.
Only one can win.
I turn away from Ari and slide carefully off Lilja’s back, landing on my feet beside the cliff’s wall. I walk toward Lilja’s head, stepping carefully around her claws. Her eyelids are drooping a little, and she huffs a breath when she sees me.
“Thanks for the ride, Lil,” I say, giving her snout a pat, “but it’s time for bed now, okay?” Behind me, there’s a thump as Ari climbs down too. Lilja gives the cave a quick sniff, apparently deems it satisfactory, and curls up against the far wall, closing her eyes immediately for a nap.
Ari and I look at each other.
“So what was that back there?” I say quietly. “And what makes you think it wasn’t a Seeker?”
Ari hesitates. “I don’t think I can tell you that.”
My eyes narrow. “You’re keeping too many secrets. You won’t tell me anything about how you found Lilja or why you’re hiding her or—”
“I can’t tell you, okay? Don’t you trust me?”
I pause, but on instinct, I tell the truth. “Yes. I do. But why don’t you trust me?”
For a moment Ari doesn’t answer. “If I tell you this,” he says, “you have to promise not to tell anyone. Especially not your papa.”
“What? Why?”
“It’ll all make sense in a minute. Just—promise.”
“Okay, fine. I promise. What is it?”
Ari sits down, leaning against the cave wall across from Lilja, and I do the same. The dragon’s eyes are closed, and her breathing is slow and even as she falls asleep.
I wait, and finally Ari speaks again.
“The night that I found Lilja’s egg… Well, I didn’t just find it. I was out on the docks late because my mother had asked me to bring something up to the bakery, and the docks are on the way. I saw someone wearing a Seeker’s green cloak with a hood pulled up over their face, carrying something in a burlap sack. I knew immediately that something was wrong—with my gift, I could sense that this person was feeling secretive and fearful and greedy. So I followed him
.
“The Seeker—or the person wearing a Seeker’s cloak—went down to the docks, and there was a little boat there. Like one of the fishermen’s short-range rowboats, not something I would’ve ordinarily even noticed. But there were a couple of people in the boat, all wearing dark cloaks, and I couldn’t see any of them well. All of their energy felt—wrong. Dark. Like a different kind of magic.”
“Like what we just felt in the Realm?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think it is?”
He hesitates again, and I want to wring the words out of him. “The Vondur,” he says finally.
I let that sink in for a minute. “You’re sure? You think there was just a Vondur in the Realm?”
“Or someone using Vondur magic, at the very least.”
“That’s impossible. How could they…?”
“Think about it, Bryn. You know what we just felt back there. You know that it didn’t feel like natural magic. It’s Vondur spells that feel like that. I don’t know how, but that’s what it was.”
“And the Vondur… were trying to steal Lilja’s egg the night you found her?”
Ari nods. “I could only hear snatches of conversation, but whoever was in the Seeker’s cloak was showing them something in the burlap sack. It seemed like they were making some sort of deal. So of course, I suspected that if this person really was a Seeker, they were carrying something from the Realm and trading it away to the Vondur. And I didn’t want that to happen.
“So I used my gift to cause a distraction. I tried to make the Seeker feel suddenly sick, and it worked. He started vomiting over the edge of the dock, and while he was distracted I grabbed the sack and ran. When I got home and looked inside, I found Lilja’s egg.”
“Whoa,” I say. “I didn’t know your gift could do something like that.”
“Neither did I,” Ari says quietly. “I’d never tried to hurt someone like that before.”
“But I don’t understand. If those were Vondur, how’d they get into a fishing boat?”
Lilja snorts a little in her sleep, and Ari glances over at her before continuing.
“I was wondering that too. So I climbed one of the hills by the arena, where you have a pretty good view of the ocean past the bay. After a while, the people in the boat gave up on looking for me, got back in the boat, and rowed out of the bay. And around the edge of the cliffs, I could see a ship waiting for them. One with Vondur flags above the sails.”
I lean back into a pile of feathers, unwilling to believe what I’m hearing. “So you’re saying… the Vondur have been sailing as close to the island as they can and then coming ashore on rowboats at night so no one will notice them?”
“That’s what it looked like. And it also looked like someone was trying to trade Lilja’s egg to them. If I hadn’t gotten to it first, Lilja would be with the Vondur right now.”
I shudder. “But why haven’t you told anyone this? Ari, this is huge!”
“I know. But the person I saw… I’m sure they were in a Seeker’s cloak. Which doesn’t necessarily mean it was a Seeker, but…”
“But not many people have one of those cloaks.”
“Right. And the fact that we just felt Vondur magic in the Realm, which no one is supposed to have access to but the Seekers… I don’t know. I think one of the Seekers has to be involved in this somehow. So who can I tell? I can’t trust anyone on the council.
“That’s why I’ve been hiding Lilja on my own. I need to figure out who’s trading with the Vondur, and I need to find some kind of proof to turn them in. Otherwise, who would believe me? I mean, I’m accusing the Seekers, and I’m just the weird empath kid. No one will listen unless I have real evidence.”
“Lilja is evidence.”
He shakes his head. “They’ll just say I was cheating to try to win the competition or something. It isn’t enough.”
“You should’ve told me sooner. I can help! We can figure it out together.”
Ari hesitates. “I didn’t know if I could tell you, because…”
“Because what?”
“Bryn. Your papa used to be a Seeker. He has one of those cloaks. I didn’t know if—”
I shake my head before he can even finish his sentence. “No. My papa would never do that.”
“I’m not saying he would. I’m just saying—at the very least, he’s friends with all of the Seekers. If you tell him about this, what if he tips them off without realizing it? I don’t trust anyone who’s too close to the Seekers right now.”
The accusation immediately makes me defensive, but my head is spinning, and I have to admit that in Ari’s position I’d be suspicious too. I just can’t believe that any of the Seekers would do something like this. They’re practically the most trusted people in the village. The council makes most of the decisions about what’s best for the village because the Seekers are trusted to do that. “But who do you think it was? Do you have any suspicions?” I ask. “I mean, if it is somehow one of the Seekers…”
“Well, I never saw this person’s face. His cloak was up, and it was dark. But I’m wondering about Agnar and Freyr. They’re the two Seekers who were most in favor of letting the Vondur start trading with us again, or so the rumors say. I haven’t had any interaction with Freyr, so I can’t say if it’s him. Agnar… In training, something about his emotions has always felt kind of off to me, like he’s hiding something. And it seems like he’s avoiding me in training, like he never gets too close. But I could be reading too much into it because I don’t like him.”
“Fair enough,” I say. “I’m not exactly his biggest fan either, but that doesn’t mean he’s trading with the Vondur, necessarily.”
“You know the Seekers better than I do,” Ari says, suddenly perking up. “Because of your papa, right? So who would you suspect?”
“Honestly? No one. Seeker Larus has been on the council for decades, so there’s no way he’d just suddenly decide to start trading dragons to the Vondur. Same with the others—Ludvik and Freyr have both been on the council for years. I think it’s more likely that someone stole a Seeker’s cloak—or was wearing something that kinda looks like a Seeker’s cloak.”
“But in that case, it could have been anyone,” Ari says.
“Right.”
“But then how would anyone who’s not a Seeker get hold of a dragon egg? How’d they get into the Realm?” he points out, and I don’t have an answer.
We both stare dejectedly at the cave walls for a moment. All of this is still sinking in, but at least Ari’s secretiveness is starting to make sense. “This is why you insisted on keeping Lilja out of the Realm,” I say. “Because if one of the Seekers is the person you saw, they might just smuggle her out again.”
“Exactly. I don’t know if it’s safe to tell the Seekers about her when one of them might have been the person trying to trade her off in the first place.”
“We should tell my papa,” I say. “He’d know what to do.”
“No. We can’t tell anyone until we know for sure who it is.”
“But I know we can trust—”
“You promised, Bryn!”
I glare at him. “Fine, but only if we’re actually able to figure out who this person is. If we can’t get the evidence you want, we need to go to the Seekers anyway. This is too big to keep to ourselves.”
“We can find the proof. I know it.”
“What’s your plan?”
He reaches into his pockets and pulls out a handful of small objects. I lean in closer. Silver dragon scales shimmer in his palm.
“Lilja shed a few,” he explains, “and I picked them up.”
“But what for? What are you going to do with them?”
“Now that the Vondur are participating in trading days, I was planning to stockpile a few things from the Realm—harmless little things. Absolutely no magical creatures, but items like this that the Vondur will value, that clearly came from the Realm. That way I can build up a relationship with
the Vondur traders and get information from them. If they think I’m just like this other person, someone willing to trade magical creatures to them, they might tell me more.”
I frown. “Might. Maybe.”
“Do you have any better ideas?”
“Not right this second.”
“Well, think about it, then. We can try to figure this out together.”
“Okay,” I say finally. “But if none of our plans work, then we tell my papa. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Ari smiles at me, but I can’t bring myself to return it. Our alliance just got a whole lot more complicated, and I can’t help but feel like we’re in over our heads. But maybe he’s right about one thing: we need to find out more about what’s going on.
There’s just one problem. “We can’t go back to the Realm, can we?” I ask quietly.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Ari says. “I don’t think we should. Whoever or whatever that was, clearly someone’s in the Realm who isn’t supposed to be there. And that means they could catch us.”
“And Lilja.”
“And Lilja,” he agrees, nodding. “If that was the Vondur, we can’t have them finding out where we’re hiding her.”
He’s right, but I hate it. This really complicates our plan to prepare for the competition—we’ll have to train outside of the Realm. And I don’t know how I’m going to get starflowers for Elisa now.
Not to mention the fact that everything we saw in the Realm tonight was incredible and I’m dying to see more.
But we’ll have to figure all of that out later.
“We’ll come back here tomorrow, right?” I say to Ari. “We can at least train on the beach or something.”
“All right.”
Ari and I get to our feet quietly, careful not to disturb Lilja, and exit the cave. We climb down the sloping ledge along the side of the cliff. We don’t speak much, except to point out better hand- and footholds to each other as we climb.
By the time my feet hit the sand, my body aches with tiredness. The sun is rising higher every minute, and I haven’t slept a second the entire night. But we still have to go all the way back to the village, and if we don’t hurry, I’ll never make it before Mama wakes up.
Seekers of the Wild Realm Page 11