by Halie Fewkes
“What’s his hurry?” Anna asked.
“Well, I just threw Jesse into a table a few seconds ago…”
Anna squinted critically at me before asking, “Why?”
“He spilled hot tea on my arm,” I said, tensing myself for the scolding of a lifetime. My arm still stung.
Anna rolled her eyes and said, “Jesse has needed to be thrown into a table for quite a while now.” I breathed a small laugh of relief. “Listen though, there’s something I need to tell you. I want you to know this isn’t your fault in any way, and you shouldn’t blame yourself—”
“What’s the matter,” I asked, feeling suddenly sick.
“I need you to pack your things. You have to go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“To Dincara. Allie, we’ve never had an Escali come near the Dragona, and in the past few days, they’ve been here two, maybe even three times trying to catch you. I don’t know if they have some way they’re tracking you, and I don’t know what they want you for, but if any more show up, they’re bound to figure out that this is where we’re training our mages. We can’t risk keeping you here if they’ve got some way of finding you.”
“I have to leave?” I asked, dumbstruck.
“Not permanently,” Anna answered, seeming genuinely sympathetic. “And we may all be joining you in Dincara before you know it. They’re expecting an Escali attack soon, so while you’re there, you can help Sir Darius give the Dincarans defense suggestions and coordinate how we might help them.”
I was still speechless. “I have to leave?”
“We’ve got a dragon ready to fly you over as soon as you pack your things.” Anna nodded with a look that might have been encouragement before she left. I rubbed a few of the stinging scratches on my arm and started back to my room in a daze. This was too much.
When I neared my bedroom, I found the door ajar. I took a deep breath to calm myself, and warned, “Get out of my room, or I am going to kill you.”
“That would be a shame,” I heard Archie respond from inside. I walked in, closed the door, and sat on my bed, utterly defeated.
“I have to leave,” I said.
Archie leaned against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. “I heard,” he replied. “I asked Sir Darius if I could come with you, but he wants me to stay.”
“I have to go by myself,” I stated aloud. I stood and started grabbing things I would need to take to Dincara. I was already wearing my short swords, and I didn’t need extra clothes because the stuff I was wearing would last me for a while.
I picked up my oldest piece of parchment with its haunting array of tally marks. I wasn’t ready to add West to the list yet, so I put it back beneath my pillow.
“When do you have to leave?” Archie asked.
“Right now,” I said, trying not to feel upset. “Although it sounds like you may be joining me soon. The Escalis may be attacking Dincara, and it sounds like the Dragona may lend a hand for the battle.”
“I’ll definitely see you soon then. Dincara is important. If they’re attacked, half the continent will show up to defend them. I’ll be sure to be there.”
“Thanks, Archie. And tell Liz,” I said, looking around to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, “that I said bye, and congratulations again on finding her magic.”
“I will.”
“And I’ll see you in Dincara.”
The flight to Dincara gave me time to calm down about the situation, and the gusts of wind in my face helped keep my emotions from boiling over. Things really weren’t as bad as they had initially seemed. After all, I would get to come home after a while, and somebody had to go represent the Dragona in Dincara anyway. It might be nice to have the time to clear my head.
I had seen maps, and I knew where the fortress was, but it was still a sight to see when I arrived. A ring of eight giant turrets circled a massive central tower, as tall as the one we had built during the Eclipsival with ice. Thick walls ran between the eight battlements, and the surrounding moat was wide enough to make the fortress look like an island in the ocean. One bridge connected Dincara to land with a giant stone recreation of a spider above the main gates, and its gated harbor in the back opened up to the ocean.
Dincara stirred as everyone turned to watch me fly overhead and land inside. I jumped off the dragon and nodded to a man who had come to greet me.
“I assume you’re here from the Dragona?”
“Yes.”
“If you’ll follow me, I will introduce you to our commander. I apologize, but it is a bit of a walk.”
“Walking is fine.”
The entire fortress seemed to be built so unknowing attackers wouldn’t have any idea where to go once they entered. The stone grounds surrounding the central spire were flat and wide open, the space occupied by vendor’s tents and people walking between them. We had to circle around the massive pavilion to get to the entrance of the tower because it faced the harbor to prevent easy access.
I could hear the echoes from the breezy day resound through the gigantic stronghold as I stepped inside, and I glanced back at the impressively sized ships docked in the harbor. I felt like I was no more than the smallest and most insignificant of creatures beside them.
We passed door after unknown door in the walls as we climbed to the very top. It was a ridiculous feeling to be out of breath by the time I reached the spire, but everything was much more tedious without my Tally magic. I hated it.
We entered to find a respectable old man reading through papers at his desk. He had aged well, with deeply set eyes that spoke of experience, and he actually stood to acknowledge my arrival.
“You have impeccable timing,” he said, looking out over the ocean. I wondered if he could tell time by the tide. “Sir Darius will be here any minute. And what’s your name?”
“Allie,” I told him.
“Allie, have you been to Dincara before?”
“No,” I said, not wanting to waste his time by explaining why my no was really a maybe.
“Then you don’t know me. My name is Sir Laud. And Allie, we keep receiving report after report,” he gestured to the stack of papers on his desk, “that we’re about to entertain the assault of a lifetime.”
Sir Darius appeared across the room from us, and I was glad he was here to speak for the Dragona. All I wanted to do was avoid the battle altogether.
“Perfect,” Sir Laud said upon his arrival. “Now that I have you both here, we can explore this fortress and solidify your resolve to stand with us.”
Sir Darius bowed quickly to him and said, “We’re eager to see the defenses Dincara has in place.”
“We’ll start right here then. Let me tell you what we plan to do with the moat,” Sir Laud said, holding up a silver goblet filled with clear liquid. “This is only water right now, but one of our alchemists made a discovery a while back.” Three tiny grains of sand rested on the tip of a knife he carefully lifted, and he tilted it until the grains fell into the water. “If you were to dip even a finger in here, you’d lose half your hand.” It bubbled into green froth and white vapor spilled over the edges. “We’re going to dump it into the moat, so anyone who falls in won’t be coming back out.”
I tried to imagine how terrifying Dincara would look when the moat turned into bubbling green death, and realized Sir Laud was heading for the door.
“We can jump wherever we need to go,” Sir Darius said, but Sir Laud only shook his head.
“I fear I have so few walks left in this life, I would be loath to lose one.” He stopped in the doorway for just a moment, as though he wasn’t sure how many more times he would see it. “And most of what I have to show you is in this tower anyway.”
Sir Darius glanced to me before we followed, as though he didn’t understand why anyone would want to walk anywhere. But I understood.
Once out on the spiraling staircase, Sir Laud took us room by room from the top of the tower to the bottom. The first room, filled with
swords from King Kelian, gave us a good laugh because Escalis couldn’t be cut. Sir Laud just wanted to throw them off the battlements, hope they hit something, then tell King Kelian how crucial they had been.
The second room had maces and weapons that would actually damage our opponents. Rooms three, four, five, six, and seven were filled with armor. Eight and nine were filled with bows and quivers of arrows. Sir Laud said they were a type of arrow that could cripple an Escali, but that they only had enough for each archer to take three arrows.
That was why the next room on the staircase had been stuffed full with stacks and stacks of—
“Thistleweed?” I said, seeing the enormous piles of spikey green and red leaves.
“Beautiful isn’t it? It works the same on an Escali as it does on a Human. They’ll be entirely delusional, and done for the rest of the battle.”
“How do you know it works on Escalis?” I asked.
“We’ve run a couple tests.”
“Oh,” I replied, pushing the thought from my mind.
“In the next room down we have a few people with immunities working furiously to get all the thistleweed onto arrowheads. We’ll have enough by the time of the battle to be sufficient.” As he said this, a woman walked through the door, nodded in respect to Sir Laud, grabbed a few glovefuls of leaves, and left.
Sir Laud opened another room to show us barrels stacked corner to corner and all the way to the ceiling.
“This is another of our valuable discoveries,” he said, pulling the top off the nearest.
“It’s… water?” I ventured at the unknown liquid.
“No, not quite. We call it antiwater. Normal water extinguishes flames. Antiwater kindles them. I would give you a demonstration, but I’ll refrain because we might possibly destroy the tower.”
“Flaming water?” Sir Darius asked.
“Explosive, even. It will come in handy in several places. If you come outside, I will show you a few.”
We neared the entrance with the stone spider suspended in its web above the bridge, and I noticed that the bridge connected to the fortress at a lower elevation than we stood. The stone walkway plummeted ahead of us, and when we got to the edge I saw that the entrance to Dincara was a walled off pit. Ladders and ropes around the edges allowed people to climb out, and a door opposite the iron gates led inside.
“This part of the defense has always been a pain,” Sir Laud remarked, looking down upon the scene. “That door down there leads to the living quarters around the central tower, but you can’t get to the tower from this entrance. We always have to hoist any shipments we receive onto the main level and carry them to the back of the tower. Now those tedious efforts are finally paying off.
“That door below will seal shut, and with all the ropes and ladders gone, not even an Escali will be able to climb the face of this wall. This is where the main defense will be, where the archers can easily hit their targets and mages can drop boulders on their heads. And how many water mages do you have?”
“We have six at the moment,” Sir Darius replied.
“Six will be perfect. We can place them around the edges of the pit and have them spray water in along with the alchemist powder.”
“We could also put a combat dragon above on either side of the pit, just in case the Escalis end up making it over,” Sir Darius suggested.
“Absolutely. How many of these dragons do you have?”
“Three.”
“That will leave one more to put on the bridge, which you need to stand on to truly comprehend.” Sir Laud grabbed one of the ladders into the pit and lowered each foot quickly onto a new rung as though he had been climbing them all his life.
We followed him out to the middle of the bridge, past people coming and going. The sides didn’t have any rails or measures to prevent falling, and I peered over the edge to see the long drop that ended in the water.
Sir Laud said, “With the alchemist powder in the moat and the harbor gates closed, the Escalis will only be able to reach us by way of the bridge.”
“Is there something special about the bridge?” I asked, hoping we weren’t relying solely on our archers to make it an obstacle.
“Look at these beauties,” Sir Laud said, pointing out two pipes that connected the sides of the bridge to the walls of the fortress. “You can fill the pipes with antiwater from inside the walls, and then the entire bridge will emit flames when anyone tries to cross.”
“That sounds… effective,” Sir Darius said as I pulled my toes over the grated stone walkway where flames could leap up to incinerate anyone trying to cross.
“It has to be. The bridge is the main defense, right before the inside pit. If we can put a dragon out here, then it can kill off a number of Escalis before we start lighting the flames underneath them. Then between flame bursts we’ll have the archers shooting multiple volleys, plus anything else you can throw at them to keep them back. It’ll take a miracle just for them to get across the bridge.”
“I had no idea that Dincara had this kind of thought in its defensive design,” Sir Darius admitted. “And you can expect the Dragona’s full support to defend it.”
“Excellent,” Sir Laud said, clasping Sir Darius’ hand in thanks. “I think I may sleep well at last. When can I expect the Dragonan mages to begin arriving?”
“Within a day, perhaps two.”
“How many are coming?” I asked Sir Darius, worried about which of my friends might end up in the fight.
“The kids under twelve will be sent to hide with the kids from Dincara for the duration of the battle. The rest of the Dragona will be in attendance,” Sir Darius answered.
“Everyone?”
“We all fight together Allie. We live together, work together, fight together, and we die together.”
“Spoken like a true Dincaran,” Sir Laud said approvingly. “We also survive together, and we all embrace victory as a whole.”
“And this is a victory I finally feel confident in,” Sir Darius said. “I’m going to return to the Dragona, and I’ll send word for when our reinforcements will arrive.”
“I can’t wait to hear from you,” Sir Laud answered him.
Sir Darius jumped and disappeared, presumably back to the Dragona, leaving me alone on the bridge with Sir Laud. No new travelers came or went from the fortress anymore.
“Tarace, would you kindly show Allie where she will be staying?” Sir Laud asked to thin air. “I think I can walk to the tower by myself unharmed.” I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear thin air answer him.
“If you say so.” The source of the voice materialized, and I saw a young man appear next to Sir Laud. His short brown hair seemed motivated for messiness in contrast to his clean-shaven face. I had to wonder how long he had been there. “The living quarters are this way,” Tarace said, motioning for me to follow.
We left Sir Laud on the bridge, preoccupied, and entered back into Dincara under the massive stone spider at the gates. Instead of climbing back up the walls to the upper level, we entered through the door in the pit, which led into the stone halls underneath lit by the lanterns and barred windows.
I attracted attention as though the Dincarans could tell I wasn’t one of them — every last one of them could tell.
“So… do you know much about the battle?” I asked.
“A thing or two,” Tarace replied, turning back to me as we walked. He had eyes between green and brown, and I could tell by his smirk that he probably knew everything about the battle.
“What do you think our chances really are?” I asked.
“Well, if the Escalis send four thousand of their own, as we’ve heard they will, and we get all the allies who have promised to come, we’ll have their numbers tripled. And this is the best place we could ever choose to have a battle, so I have to say our chances are pretty good.”
“Do you guard Sir Laud while you’re invisible? Is that how you know these things?”
“You could say that,”
he said, seeming to find this question funny too. If I had to guess, I would say he was probably important and I should know his name.
He stopped outside a door that looked exactly the same as the rest along the wall. “You can stay in here as long as you are in Dincara,” he said, pushing it open for me.
“Thank you,” I said, walking into the small, bland space. I hoped not to call it home for too long.
Chapter Twenty Four
I didn’t get to know many Dincarans, but I had them figured out as a whole. They seemed to be one large family who shared a fierce pride in being Dincaran. The city even had its own crest — a large spider over the words loyalty to the death — so nobody would have to associate themselves with King Kelian’s starred emblem of Tekada.
King Kelian took the brunt of almost every joke and criticism, actually. I had known he was widely disliked, but people at the Dragona seemed to care a lot less about him than the Dincarans, who had to deal with his men docking in their port on a weekly basis. Their dislike for the king was another thing that brought them so close.
Of the people I had met, Tarace was the only one who came back to check in on me. Although he was a mage himself, he hadn’t grown up at the Dragona and therefore wanted all the input I could give him. As we talked about every type of mage I could remember battling in sparring, Tarace came up with unique ideas to incorporate their gifts into his defense plan, and I learned even more details about Dincara’s strategies.
Of course, I wouldn’t betray his trust by repeating anything, regardless of the fact I was a Tally. The Dincaran sense of loyalty was contagious.
Mages from the Dragona started arriving two days later. I was eager to see my friends again, but at the same time, I didn’t want them anywhere near the coming battle. The first wave to arrive consisted of people I vaguely knew, and none of my close friends. It was getting dark outside before the next group was supposed to arrive, and I was sitting in what might be called my room when somebody darted in and closed the door.
“Karissa?” I asked, confused by her arrival. She was wearing long poufy sleeves to conceal her Tally arm spikes.