by John Corwin
I stumbled up the stairs after Max, into the male dorm sitting room, and toward the tower stairs. Max had already vanished around the bend and I found it increasingly hard to move my feet.
A white house. Rolling green hills. The sun shines through the red leaves of an oak. Desperation chokes me. This is my only chance. He doesn't know what I've done. He cannot find out or we will both die. Will she survive or did I use the spell too early? I look down at blood-stained hands. My knees are weak, my stomach roils with nausea. He is my last hope.
I blinked. My head ached, each heartbeat pulsing in my skull. Where am I? I sat up, slowly, every fiber in my muscles aching nearly as much as my head. I touched my left temple and found drying blood on my fingers. I was still in the stairwell. "I must have fallen asleep and hit my head."
Every time I blinked, the afterimage of the white house appeared in stark relief to the darkness behind my lids. The red leaves whispered in a cool wind, and the green grass of the nearby hills waved. "That wasn't a dream." I'd had another vision, but it was so different from the previous ones.
I checked the time on my phone. Two in the morning. At least I still had time for more restful slumber.
I pushed to my feet and recovered my broom. Steeling myself against the pain and exhaustion, I pushed onward and upward until I reached the room I shared with Max. He lay fully clothed on the bed. The basket of health potions from Kanaan sat at the foot of my bed. The magitsu master must have put it there with the aid of the omniarch.
I changed into my pajamas and crawled under the sheets, replaying the vision over and over again in my mind.
Where is that house? Who lives there?
"Della, what did you do to me?"
If only she were there to tell me.
Chapter 10
Dawn arrived too soon, but I got up anyway and drank one of Kanaan's morning potions. My muscles felt sore, but stronger. My head still hurt from hitting it on the stairs. I shook Max awake.
"Go away." He tried to pull the covers over his head, but he'd slept on top of them all night.
"Get up, Max." I shook him again. "Drink the morning potion. It'll make you feel better."
"I'm done training." He kicked off his shoes and wrestled the covers over him. "Go without me."
My stomach rumbled ravenously, dissuading me from arguing with my friend. I took a quick shower and headed into the common sitting room. Ambria jumped off the sofa when she saw me, an empty potion jar in her hand. "Oh, thank goodness! I'm so hungry I could hardly wait! Kanaan left a basket of his training potions, so I drank this one, hoping it would make me feel full."
"We should get you an arcphone so you can tell me when you're ready," I told her.
"It would make meeting for breakfast easier." She climbed on her broom and whisked through the open window, apparently eager to be on the way.
I followed after her and checked our brooms into the broom closet in the main hall. Aside from a smattering of students, the dining hall was empty. The wooden serving golems had just laid out a breakfast of eggs, bacon, and toast, when Max charged inside.
"Food! Now!" He dropped into the chair next to me and stared at my toast. "Food, please, please, please. I'm dying."
I gave him my toast, but was too hungry to share my eggs. Ambria and I polished off two servings of breakfast, and Max three. As we sat there sipping our orange juice and moaning contentedly, Shushiel appeared next to Ambria, bouncing in amusement.
"You must be very hungry," she said. "I have never seen Ambria eat so much."
Ambria smiled. "It's the training."
I turned to Max. "Are you coming or not?"
He sighed and rubbed his belly. "Well, now that I'm not tired anymore, I guess so."
We returned to the keep and changed into more athletic wear and took the pre-lunch potions with us to meet Ambria outside her window. Once again, we returned to the Burrows. The secret entrance led into an earthen tunnel this time where we faced another a long mud pit beneath rope swings with metal rings on the ends.
"I'm using my broom to fly across," Max said, and took off. He made it ten feet over the mud pit when his broom nosedived into the mud. Max squawked like a wounded bird and struggled to drag himself from the thick muck while Ambria and I laughed.
"That must be Kanaan's way of saying no brooms," Ambria said.
Max growled and slung mud at us. "Why didn't he just tell us not to!"
Since it was still early, we reversed course and flew back to the dorms so Max could clean off. We checked our brooms into the broom closet before returning to face the gauntlets. After the mud pit, we climbed a rock face. At the top, we found a tunnel entrance so low, we had to crawl inside. The inside was a claustrophobic maze with a central chamber large enough for us to sit in.
I'd programmed a pathfinding spell into my arcwand that helped us navigate through, but the only way out required us to crawl on our bellies through a swarm of roaches. Ambria handled it with only a few squeals, but Max screamed the entire way. The last part of the gauntlet required us to piece together a wooden puzzle to find the secret word to open a lock. Naturally, the word was 'cockroach'.
Ambria growled. "Kanaan has an evil sense of humor."
When we finally reached Kanaan, he allowed us a short break, then led us through a similar routine as the one the day before. The rest of the week followed the same pattern, leaving us exhausted beyond belief each day, but making us feel stronger and more sure of ourselves after a good night of rest. While the potions accelerated the effects of our efforts, each day felt harder than the previous.
Soon the end of the week arrived and with it, familiar faces. Rory Culpepper and his sister, Marisol, showed up early Friday to ensure Professor Gideon Grace renewed their tenures as resident keepers since they enjoyed bossing around their peers. The rest of the student body appeared en masse over the next two days, filling the keeps and school grounds with the sounds of children.
"I wonder what our magitsu schedule will be like during school," Max mused as we ate breakfast Sunday. Though students filled the dining hall, few of the senior staff or professors were yet present.
"This is the year for determining advanced placement." Ambria chomped on her toast and hardly bothered to chew before swallowing. "We can't afford to miss classes."
"We can't afford to miss training either." I pointed a finger in the general direction of somewhere out there, and said, "Victus is plotting and planning to kill his enemies and rule the Overworld. School is important, but we can't ignore reality. We have to be ready for anything."
"I'm tired as a salty slug, but I agree with Conrad." Max finished his potatoes and ordered another round. "I have a bad feeling that Victus is on the verge of something awful, especially with that Garkin fellow."
"Absolutely." Ambria looked up at the head table. "Usually, all the professors are present for the Sunday before classes, but I haven't seen Galfandor all week."
"Probably still tied up with investigations about the Founders Day riot," Max said. His face paled and he looked away. "Professor Fellini is up there."
Asha smiled at me when I glanced at the head table. I'd meant to speak with her more about her talks with Esma, but just hadn't had the time with our magitsu training. I smiled back and waved. Gideon Grace, sitting to her right, scowled at me as if I'd waved to him.
After filling ourselves, we set off for practice, weaving through the crowd of students milling in the halls. Seeing the new students reminded me how much I'd changed over the past two years and how far I still had to go. Despite my time here, I still didn't feel like I quite fit in.
A group of new students stared at me, mouths opened in horror. They shrank away as my friends and I passed.
"That's Evil Edison!" I heard one of the girls hiss to the others.
Judging from the whispered rumors I heard in passing, it seemed someone had been busy spreading this new nickname. I saw Harris Ashmore and his best friend, Baxter Troy talking to a group of n
ew students. Baxter's ginger eyebrows pinched into a malicious V when he saw us. He smirked and elbowed Harris who turned and glared at me with pure hatred.
Ambria hooked her arm in mine. "What's wrong, Conrad?"
I looked away from the stares and shrugged. "Nothing that hasn't been wrong from the start. I think Harris and Baxter are spreading lies about us. I heard one girl refer to us as Evil Edison, Maniac Max, and Abrasive Ambria."
"Abrasive?" Ambria glared back at Harris and Baxter. "Is that really the best they could come up with?"
"Harris is trying his best to make us miserable. Everyone believes him because he's the son of prophecy." Max made air quotes around the title. "I'd like to make him the son of a punch to the face."
Ambria raised a clenched hand. "I'll abrade him with my fist."
We ducked out of the press of students and took the path down to the Burrows.
Shushiel uncloaked herself when we reached the secret entrance, bobbing up and down with excitement. "I wonder what challenges we will face today."
Max scowled. "You like watching us struggle, don't you?"
"It is quite entertaining," the spider agreed.
We stepped through the door and into a vast rocky cavern. A large glowball hung over a rocky island in the middle of a black lake. Glowing forms writhed beneath the surface of the water, ghastly faces staring up at us, eyes full of longing.
Ambria gasped and stepped back from the water's edge. "What are those things?"
I gazed out at the island and saw a golden key dangling in the air. A stout wooden door with a golden lock sat on the other side of the lake. "There's the way out."
"I will climb across the cave and retrieve the key." Shushiel's forelegs touched the rocky wall but slid off. She tried to climb a different place but her feet wouldn't stick. She rotated back to us and moved her mandibles in a shrug. "My feet do not cling to the wall."
"What about your web?" I asked.
She extruded a thread and pressed it to the wall, but it also refused to adhere. "It seems we must find another way to the island."
Max wandered down the narrow shore around the lake, looking behind rocks. "I don't see any boats or way to float."
The crescent shore ended forty yards to either side of us and there seemed to be no ledges or other way to walk around the lake.
"Maybe we should go get our brooms," Max said.
"I'm sure they'll fail just like with the mud pit." Ambria pursed her lips. "No, there must be a way across."
I looked down into the waters. Ghostly forms stared back. Scores of men, women, and children, rotting flesh trailing from skulls, held their hands toward us as if beckoning us to join them. I shuddered. Even Shushiel quailed.
"We cannot swim across." She backed away. "Those ghosts do not look friendly."
"Are they really ghosts?" Max picked up a rock and threw it. A hand shot out of the water and caught the rock, threw it back. Max shrieked and jumped behind Shushiel.
"Definitely not ghosts," Ambria said.
Max remained crouched behind Shushiel. "They're water zombies."
"Does that mean they'll eat our brains?" I stared at the water, unwilling to get closer. "Even if we had a boat, they'd probably capsize it."
"Maybe Kanaan doesn't want to see us today," Shushiel said hopefully.
"I wish." Max kicked a rock, but made sure to aim it anywhere but the lake. "Let's get our brooms and at least try to fly across." He turned for the wall where the door had been and flicked his wand. Nothing happened.
Ambria tried. I tried. Shushiel touched the wall and shook her body back and forth.
"The door will not reopen." She rotated toward the water. "We are trapped."
"No!" Max howled, pounding the wall. "Let us out of here, Kanaan!"
If the magitsu master could hear us, he didn't reply.
I searched up and down the shore for anything that could possibly aid us. There wasn't so much as a twig of wood for flotation and no sign of a rope or anything else. It appeared the only things that could get us to the island and the other side were our bodies. Surely we can't swim with those zombies in the water!
Did Kanaan mean for us to fight the creatures? I counted nearly a dozen eagerly waiting just ten feet off the shore, their bodies glowing a slight radioactive green. I took out my wand and tried to think of a spell that might help.
Ambria gasped. "I think I have it."
"What?" I prayed she had some brilliant insight.
"We use a freeze spell to make a bridge." She flourished her wand and cast a deep blue beam of aether toward the water. The water crackled and hardened.
"Brilliant!" Max followed her lead and I did the same. Before long, we'd formed a ten-foot length of ice nearly five feet wide and a foot thick.
"Maybe we can use it like a boat," Shushiel said. "I can fashion an oar from silk."
"Yes, do it!" Ambria said. "See, we can get past anything with ingenuity."
We froze the water until our ice platform formed a nice large square we could all fit on.
"I'll test it." I stepped onto it. My feet slipped, but I spread my arms and managed to stay upright. The platform wobbled slightly, but seemed stable enough. "Yeah, I think it's ready—"
Crack!
Zombie bodies crashed into the bottom of the ice float. Arms windmilling, I fell toward the water. Shushiel darted out and caught me before I fell into the waiting arms of a rotting child and dragged me back to shore just as the ice boat shattered into pieces.
"No!" Ambria shouted. "We worked so hard on that, you mean zombies!"
Anger boiled up in me. I wanted to sear the zombies with flames, or blast them apart with spells. But the water protected them from my wrath just as it prevented us from going anywhere. I sat down and glared at the ghastly creatures.
We couldn't fly, couldn't float, couldn't use ropes to swing across this barrier. Once again, our only option was to enter the water and fight the monsters in their domain. But if they could destroy our ice boat so easily, what chance did I have against them? They would drown me before I could do a thing.
There must be a way! I wondered if, like fish, these water ghosts could survive on land. Maybe the only way to beat them was to coax them out of the water somehow. Unfortunately, we had no bait except ourselves.
I pushed up and turned to Shushiel. "Wrap silk around my waist and be ready to pull me out."
"What?" Ambria grabbed my arm. "Are you going in the water?"
"It looks very dangerous," Shushiel said, even as she extruded silk and wrapped it around me waist with her forelegs.
"I'm going to fish them out," I said.
"Are you mental?" Max jabbed a finger at the water. "They'll drag you to the bottom before you have a chance to do anything."
"Shushiel is strong enough to pull me out," I said. "Maybe they can't survive out of the water. It'll be just like fishing."
"Yeah, except you're the bait." Max gritted his teeth. "I don't think this is the solution."
"On that we agree," Ambria said. "Conrad, you're not thinking straight."
"What else is there to try?" I tugged on the thread. "Besides, Shushiel is incredibly strong. Even if five of them grab me, she can pull me out, right?"
Shushiel bobbed up and down. "My feet may not stick to the walls, but they stick very well to the floor. The monsters are in water, and I am anchored to land."
Ambria shivered. "Well, let's hope this challenge isn't as deadly as it looks. Maybe Kanaan doesn't mean to drown us all."
"That is one huge maybe." Max shivered. "Are you sure, Conrad?"
"No." I took off my shoes, my shirt, and stared at the water.
Ambria raised an eyebrow. "Keeping on your trousers?"
My face suddenly felt quite warm. "I don't want you seeing me in my underwear."
Max barked a laugh. "You're about to jump in a lake filled with murderous ghosts, and you're worried about prancing around in your underwear?"
Ambria giggled and
touched my bare shoulder. Her smile quickly vanished and she kissed me on the cheek. "Please be careful." She turned to Shushiel. "You're quite certain you can fish him back out?"
"My thread is strong as steel," the spider said. "And I will be stronger still to rescue my friend."
"Remember when you saved me at the edge of the Glimmer?" I rubbed her fur. "I know I'm safe with you."
Shushiel bobbed up and down. "Yes, cousin, I will not let them have you."
Max grimaced. "Let's just hope they don't skin you to the bone like piranha."
I tried not to think how that would feel and put a foot into the water. Before I could even blink, a soft hand gripped my ankle and jerked me. I plunged into the lake, water rushing past me, the light growing dimmer. Glowing figures swirled around me.
A woman, her face vibrant and lovely instead of decaying and gruesome, stopped in front of me. "Why do you disturb our lake, boy?"
I heard her voice clear as day despite the pressure of liquid all around me. I hadn't taken a good breath before submerging, and already my lungs burned. I felt the silk tightening as Shushiel reeled me in. Hands grasped me, but the power of the ruby spider dragged them all up with me.
But I was too deep. The burning grew so intense I couldn't take it.
I gasped for air.
Chapter 11
I expected a lungful of water. Instead, I drew in air despite still being below the waters. I flew up out of the water. Furry red legs caught me and put me safely on shore. I sucked in another breath, no different than the one I'd just taken underwater.
"What in the world?" I staggered toward the water and saw the decaying face of an old woman looking back. "We need to cross your lake, please!"
She gave no indication that she heard or understood me.
"What happened?" Ambria dragged me back from the edge. "I thought we'd lost you!"
"It happened so fast, I was not ready to pull you up," Shushiel said. "I'm sorry, Conrad."
"It's okay." I waved them away. "Be ready to pull me up again, okay?"
"Are you insane?" Max gripped my arm. "I thought we'd lost you!"