The Academy Journals Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 3)

by Garrett Robinson

  Kalem frowned, and even Theren looked doubtful. Yet he watched them think on it, and saw the spark of the idea blossom to flame within their minds.

  “I would still have to keep the amulet,” said Theren. “At least for now.”

  “Yet you could release Dasko from your control, immediately,” said Ebon. “You no longer need to hold him under mindwyrd.”

  “If she were discovered …” said Kalem.

  “How could that happen?” said Ebon. “You have a good hiding place for it, Theren—or so I assume, since you do not carry it with you everywhere. And we can finally put this dark chapter behind us.”

  Theren spread her hands. “Let us say that is true. We must still find Isra, but we have no idea how.”

  “I think we must start with Yerrin,” said Ebon. “Even Mako thinks they may know something.”

  Her eyes hardened. “You mean to bring Lilith into this.”

  He leaned forwards, counting the steps on his fingers. “If we do, everything falls into place. We release Dasko from our control. With Lilith’s help—help, I say, not coercion—we track down who in her family is helping Isra. We know they must be—it is where she is getting her magestones. We capture Isra. And then we turn her over to the King’s law with the amulet in her pocket. And everything will be over.”

  Theren looked desperately hopeful. But Kalem sat deep in thought. After a moment, he shook his head. “It is a lie, and a great risk as well. We have other resources, more than Mako, I mean. Ebon, you could ask Adara. The guild of lovers has a thousand ears, and they are always listening.”

  “I have hope for Mako, and I already mean to speak with Adara—this very night, in fact,” said Ebon. “But Lilith may best them all, for she is closest to the source of the magestones. Yes, it means we must lie. But I am willing to bear that burden, for you and I have the least to lose as things stand. This plan helps Theren more than you or me, Kalem.”

  Theren studied her fingernails, and then put one in her mouth to tear at it with her teeth. Kalem and Ebon watched her.

  “Let us try it, then,” Theren muttered. “It cannot be worse than living this way.”

  “Then we must take the first step,” said Ebon. “We must speak with Lilith.”

  “But she is still … Lilith,” said Kalem. He shivered. “I have had difficulties enough with her in the past. Now that I am one of those who helped throw her to the Mystics’ knives, I suspect she will be even less kind than before.”

  “We have no choice,” said Ebon. “We must bring her to Mako so that she can help him in his search.”

  “No,” Theren snapped. “Not Mako. I will not bring him anywhere near Lilith, nor will you.”

  “But Theren, he is the best chance we have at—”

  She held up a hand to cut him off. “No. Remember your uncle Matami.”

  He fell silent at once, seeing Matami’s brutalized corpse in his mind.

  “Think on it,” said Theren. “What if Mako decides that Lilith knows more than she is telling? Will he drag her down into the sewers to do to her what he did to your uncle? She is not even his kin. Do you think he will be more reluctant to kill her than another Drayden?”

  “Lilith is a youth, like us,” said Ebon, but the words sounded weak even in his own ears.

  “I do not believe for a moment that that will save her. If we mean to work with Lilith, we will do it on our own. Mako will only put her in greater danger.”

  Kalem nodded in agreement, and so Ebon shrugged. “Very well.”

  But even as he said it, he thought of how helpful it would be to have Mako’s counsel in this. He did not trust the bodyguard, exactly, or even like him very much. Yet Mako had proven his worth time and again, and had saved the children’s lives more than once.

  “If we mean to speak with Lilith, why wait?” said Kalem. He put his book aside and stood from the armchair. “Let us find her. Her schedule is the same as ours, and she should be in the library somewhere.”

  They rose together and set out to find her. Quickly they scanned the shelves of the whole third floor, but there were few students scattered among them, and Lilith was not there. The second and first floors took longer to search, for they were much more crowded, and Ebon and his friends earned several curious looks as they poked their heads in between bookshelves. But in the end they stood together on the bottom floor, and Lilith was nowhere to be seen.

  “Has she returned to her dormitory?” said Kalem. “I know she has been granted special permissions to rest, if she wishes, after what she suffered.”

  “She has not,” said Theren. In her voice was a sorrow Ebon could not place. “Come. We will have to sneak out of the library. I know where she is.”

  JIA HAD NOT RETURNED TO duty after being placed under mindwyrd the day before last. Another instructor had replaced her in the library’s afternoon study period. Her name was Uma, and she was short and plump, with eyes that seemed too large to work properly, and they were always blinking. One by one Ebon and his friends excused themselves to use the privies and then met each other in the hallways outside. Theren took them around a wide, looping route through the Academy’s less traveled passages. At one point they climbed to the second floor, creeping among the younger children’s dormitories where the space rang hollow and empty.

  “Where are you taking us?” Kalem whispered.

  “Hush, and you shall find out soon enough,” said Theren.

  They descended to the first floor again. Now they were in a part of the Academy where Ebon had seldom been. He knew some of the doors must lead to teacher’s offices, and these they flew by in a rush. At last Theren stopped before a thick oaken door. It had a lock, and the keyhole was very large.

  Theren tried the handle. “Locked,” she said with a sigh of relief. “That means that Carog is not here.”

  “Who is Carog?” said Ebon.

  “The bell-keeper,” said Kalem, looking at Theren with awe. “Is this the bell tower?”

  “It is,” said Theren. “It is … well, it is where we will find Lilith.”

  “How can you know?” said Ebon. But she only gave him a steely look and did not answer.

  Kneeling, she peered into the lock and extended a finger. From behind her he saw the glow of her eyes. A soft click came from within the lock, and the knob twisted in her hand. Quickly they all filed in through the door, and Theren locked it again behind them.

  They stood in the base of a wide round tower with a stairwell that ran around the outer wall to the roof far above. Many windows pierced the walls, letting in shafts of light that crisscrossed each other in the air, illuminated by the dust motes that danced within them so that looking up from the ground was like seeing a honeycomb made of the sun’s glow. At the very top they could see the Academy’s great bell. Ebon had only viewed it from the streets of the city, where it seemed much like any other bell. From here, however, it seemed a massive thing, at least as large as a house, and its bronze glow in the sunlight nearly blinded them.

  “Come,” said Theren. “We should climb as fast as we may, for there is no place to hide down here if Carog should return.”

  “I have heard she is half blind, anyway,” said Kalem.

  “That may be, but she has ears like a cat. Quickly!”

  She leaped up the stairs two at a time. Ebon and Kalem hastened to follow. But after only a few flights they both wheezed and gasped as they clutched at the stone handrail. Theren hardly slowed at all. When they had almost lost sight of her, she stopped and turned to look at them in disgust.

  “Honestly, how do the two of you survive? Most noble children are not so frail.”

  “Most noble children learn to be warriors, especially firstborn,” said Kalem. “They are not bookish.”

  “You claim that word as though it is something prideful,” said Theren, arching an eyebrow.

  “To some, it is.”

  She slowed her pace, though she kept prodding and urging them to go faster. But Ebon grew more and
more uncomfortable the higher they climbed. Soon he had to press himself against the wall to their left, for he thought he might vomit if he caught sight of the floor far, far below them. He had never been overly fond of heights.

  It seemed an eternity before they reached the top. When they did, Ebon and Kalem collapsed to the floor, wheezing. Ebon scooted quickly away from the edge, for though the railing between him and the open air was thick and strong, still it made him nervous. But the other direction hardly seemed better, for about five paces away was the edge of the tower, and the railing there was made of thin wooden poles. His stomach turned again, and he pressed his fingers hard against the wooden floor, as though he could catch it in his grip and hold on to it.

  Theren stood there before them, dwarfed by the mammoth bell beside her, looking all around. There were a few boxes and crates of things about, though Ebon could not guess what they held, as well as many coils of rope stacked in the corners. Theren inspected them, eyes narrowed.

  “Lilith?” she said softly. “It is Theren. I know you are here.”

  The tower was silent. Kalem looked to Ebon uncertainly—Ebon only tried not to look at the tower’s edge. But after a moment they heard shuffling footsteps. Lilith stepped out from behind the coils of rope, a deep scowl embedded in her features.

  Ebon was startled at the sight of her. He had not seen her plainly in some time. Even against the darkness of her skin he could see the fading remnants of bruises where she had been beaten. Her Academy robes covered most of them, but the fabric did not hide her face. And while her sleeves covered most of her hands, he spotted the pale pink of scars on the tips of her fingers, which were thin and wasted like a starving child’s. And her eyes—her eyes were an animal’s, filled with the futile indignation of a fox brought to bay, showing its teeth without hope.

  “What are you doing here?” she snapped.

  “I needed to speak with you,” said Theren.

  “What are they doing here?”

  She turned eyes of fury on Ebon and Kalem, who had, without realizing it, retreated halfway behind Theren. Ebon steeled himself and stepped forwards to stand at Theren’s shoulder.

  “We need your help, Lilith.”

  Lilith ignored him, looking only at Theren. “I never brought Oren or Nella into the bell tower. Never.”

  Theren looked as though she had been slapped. “I … I did not know that. But I would have brought them even if I did know. Isra has returned, and she has magestones. We think she is getting them from your family.”

  For a moment, whistling wind was the only sound. Then Lilith’s eyes widened, and her lips twisted to a snarl.

  “You think I have something to do with it?” she screamed. “You think I would set eyes on Isra without catching her in a blaze? She killed Oren. She did this.”

  She held up her hands before her face so that the sleeves of her robe fell to her elbows. Beneath were tight underclothes of wool, proof against the cold, which she dragged down to reveal her skin.

  Kalem gasped, and Ebon’s stomach lurched. The scars on her fingers were not the half of the harm that had been done to her. Pink lines of torn flesh raced down the length of her arms, crisscrossing each other over and over. Some looked to still be healing.

  Theren’s mouth worked, but she said nothing. Ebon saw tears spring to her eyes, threatening to flood forth. He stepped forwards, drawing Lilith’s baleful gaze away from Theren and onto himself.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “We all are. You deserved none of what you received, and Isra was not alone in the blame for it. We were just as guilty.”

  For a moment he wondered if she had even heard him, for her expression did not change. Finally she turned, stalking away to the other side of the bell tower.

  “Go away,” she said over her shoulder. “I want nothing to do with any of you.”

  Ebon let loose a whoosh of breath and heard Kalem do the same. But Theren, unmoving, only watched Lilith go.

  “It was wrong of us to ask this of her,” Theren murmured.

  He wondered if she was right. But then he remembered Isra in the kitchens, and felt again the blast of the artifact she had tried to use to kill them. Ebon squared his shoulders, and then he took Theren and Kalem’s arms.

  “We are not done yet,” he said quietly. “Come.”

  They set off along the platform after her. She had gone to sit on the edge of the tower, her feet hanging off the lip while she held on to the thin wooden railing. Ebon’s stomach did a turn at that. She did not look up, even as their feet scuffed to a stop behind her.

  “I do not blame you for wanting to turn us away,” said Ebon. “Indeed, Kalem had no wish to come to you, for you have never been kind to him, and Theren felt the same, for we have been far too cruel to you already. I cringe at the thought of trusting you in this after the way we met. But Theren has spoken to me of you, and of the nobility she still sees in your heart. And her belief has convinced me.”

  Lilith turned. Her gaze locked with Theren’s, and Ebon saw her expression soften at the same time he felt Theren tense beside him. But it lasted only a moment before Lilith looked away again.

  “I only want to be left alone,” she said, but this time softly and without malice.

  Theren went forth and sat on the stone edge beside her. Ebon’s gut wrenched even worse—but from the ease with which she sat there, he guessed that Theren had done this many times before.

  “What was it like when Isra had you under mindwyrd?” said Theren.

  Lilith shuddered beside her, and she bowed her head. “It was horrible,” she said in a low voice. “Still my mind reels when I try too hard to remember it. Some things I can recall, but it is like I watched it happen to someone else. When I entered the vaults, or when Vali …” She stopped, remaining silent through several deep breaths. Her scarred, ruined fingers crept up to scratch at her temples. “Other things I have forgotten entirely—and there are still other memories which come and go, and when they have gone I cannot remember having remembered them. It is … it is like a madness.”

  Ebon waited a moment. Then he took a step forwards—only one, for he was still terrified of the tower’s edge—and said, “That is what Jia suffers even now. Isra has had her under control. Mayhap she has others. They will all suffer the same way. I would not ask you to face Isra again. But will you help us find her, so that we may?”

  Lilith glared at him over her shoulder for a moment and then turned her face out again.

  “You are fools if you think my family could have done this. Oren’s death and my torture prove their innocence.”

  “Can you be so certain?” said Theren. “From what we have heard, some scion of your house had a hand in the Shades’ attack. Mayhap they are also the ones who helped Isra—and may be helping her still.”

  “I know of whom you speak, but she could not have acted alone,” said Lilith quickly. “You are saying that others helped spit Oren like a pig. That others left me to scream as the Mystics dug their knives into my flesh.”

  Theren hung her head. “These are dark days, filled with dark deeds. Say, for a moment, that we are right. Would you let such deeds go unpunished?”

  Lilith closed her eyes, taking a deep breath of the chilled air before letting it out in a rush.

  “Very well,” she said quietly. “I will ask about and see what may be learned. But I will not risk my neck for the three of you. It has been squeezed tight enough already.”

  “Of course,” said Theren. She put a hand on Lilith’s shoulder. The girl jerked away as if by instinct, but subsided almost at once. “Thank you, Lilith.”

  She rose to rejoin Ebon and Kalem, and they set off for the stairs leading down. Just before they rounded the edge of the bell and lost sight of Lilith, Ebon glanced back. She had not moved. Not even to watch them go.

  AFTER STUDIES ENDED THAT EVENING, Ebon made for the streets and turned his steps towards the blue door in the west. Mako had begun his search, and now they had enlisted Lilith
’s aid as well. Only one more resource remained to them: Adara, with her fealty to the guild of lovers. And besides that, Ebon had not been able to spend much time with her the previous night, and hoped to make up for it.

  The evening was even icier than normal, and he pounded his hands against his arms. He thought at once that he should have brought a second cloak, and considered going back for one. But just when he had made up his mind to do so, he heard the scrape of a boot on stone.

  Ebon froze. He had ducked into an alley, a shortcut between two busy thoroughfares, and it had appeared empty. But the sound had been very distinct, though he could see no sign of anyone behind him now.

  He took one careful step forwards, and then another. Then he pressed on at a regular pace, trying to convince himself that he had imagined the sound, or that it had been an echo of the noise of his own walking. But such thoughts did nothing to still his heart, which had begun to race.

  His steps quickened, though he told himself it was only to warm his limbs, and every few paces he glanced back over his shoulder casually, as though he was just looking about to see the sights of the city. Soon he had reached a main street again, and that relaxed him considerably. There were too many people around, constables and Mystics and soldiers of all the nine kingdoms, for him to worry very much about an attack in the open. The black robes of an Academy student were distinctive, and wearers of such were known to be under the High King’s protection.

  But the busy street did not last forever, and eventually Ebon had to turn. He reached the street and balked. Far down it he could see one trader’s cart plodding its way forwards through the snow, but between him and the cart was a great stretch of empty space with no one in sight. He skipped the turn and made for the next street, but it was even more barren, with not a soul to be seen from where he stood to where it vanished in a turn behind the corner of an inn.