By the end of the year, Murn had grown so big that Aedan had to stand on the fence to saddle him. His coal coat rippled with eager young muscle, and though he still had the slender form of a growing horse, he was already the most impressive occupant of the stables. The only other person who dared enter the paddock with Aedan was Liru, so Aedan asked if she would be prepared to take the lead rope on his first attempt to ride.
He waited until midday when Murn was normally a shade less spirited, tacked him, gave the lead rope to Liru, and climbed gingerly up, up, and onto the saddle. Murn bent his neck around and gave Aedan a good inspection. His ears flicked slightly and he looked back at Liru.
Aedan gulped.
But these were two people Murn liked, so he allowed himself to be guided in a circle, his long steps requiring Liru to move very fast to avoid having her heels trod on.
The plan fell apart when Murn caught the scent of something that belonged to him in one of Liru’s pockets. She had been nervous to begin with, and when the huge muzzle pushed against her and began to dig, her self-confidence fled. Murn discovered the pocket; his efforts doubled and Liru sped up until she was running for the fence. Aedan had to endure a high speed trot. It ended at the gate with an abrupt halt that spat him from the saddle and dropped him a long, long way down to the ground.
Murn seemed confused and nosed him until he got up laughing and rubbing his bruised hip.
“You’ve got something edible in your pocket haven’t you?” he said to Liru.
Liru found the carrot and looked very embarrassed. Murn eased her embarrassment by snatching it away and making it disappear.
Things began to improve, but very slowly. It wasn’t that Murn was a slow learner; it was that he was still very much a young storm of an animal, a very big, fast and powerful storm. Aedan knew he was not rider enough for such a horse. Not yet.
Lorrimer had worked hard on his literacy. His lantern usually burned as long as Aedan’s, and the two of them often studied after the rest of the dorm had sunk into darkness. As the examinations approached, his dedication infected all around him, except Aedan who was already driven, and Vayle who had no need to be – information apparently attached itself to this boy’s mind like burrs to expensive clothing.
The new languages, Sulese in particular, provided some good entertainment owing to its unusual structure. It was a vastly different language to any of the others learned thus far. Towards the end of the year, Giddard presented them with a collection of Sulese memorabilia and commentaries. Loosely translated, some of them would have read:
“The grass sparkled with dew droppings.”
Warton, I am not sure if that is intended as a beautiful or a horrible image.
“I was tort to extinguish riyt from rong.”
Bede, apparently not.
“Sulese are always inviting you to go for dinner to get murdered.”
Kian, it would seem from this that Sulese are enthusiastically hospitable, transparent of motive, and not very good at committing murder. All are grave errors.
“Sulese food on heads with never eat hats.”
Cayde, Sulese order word important very is. It must learn you.
The year’s final practical assessment took them on a one month journey through Drumly and Harronville. Here they were required to assess the level of war-readiness and obtain information and instructions using each of the four languages they had been taught. On their return they were to complete a series of tests which included making weapons, hunting for food, building shelters, tracking and covering tracks, memorising a map, and finally – the aspect on which the assessment hinged – present a full report translated into all of the foreign languages studied and an accurately drawn map indicating their movements.
They were divided into groups of four which were selected by lot. Aedan found himself with Lorrimer, Kian and Warton.
Both Dunn and Skeet warned the boys to keep to well-travelled roads unless under guard – as all the wilderness exercises now required. After Cayde’s experience earlier in the year, there was no need for anyone to labour the point.
For Aedan, the worries were confirmed when he arrived at Drumly.
This was the city that overlooked the busiest harbour on Lake Vallendal. Though it was not even half the size of Castath, its main wall was thick and a second was under construction. The walls, however had not protected those whose occupations took them outside.
While mingling with the locals at the harbour where calm waters lapped against the quay and fishy smells both thrilled and offended his nose, he began to hear stories of shepherds and farmers abducted and later found mutilated. The rangers had not believed the signs of animal maulings. They said the maulings had been faked to cover the work of torturers – Fenn scouts seeking information. From then on, Aedan looked at the fringes of woodland as he had once looked at Nymliss on his last night at Badgerfields.
They travelled from there with a ranger and a guard of six soldiers. After a two-day ride along the shores of Lake Vallendal, they turned inland and moved more cautiously, leaving the winding road whenever it made a dangerous, exposed approach to cover.
Harronville was smaller than Drumly, more of a large village between forested hills. For defence it had only stockades of sharpened tree trunks, but the locals had dug a moat and embankments that would slow an attack hopefully long enough for aid to arrive from Castath. Huge signal pyres, of course, stood ready.
Aedan was both impressed and concerned by the preparations he saw. Though the spiked wall told of immense labour by few, in the back of his mind was a hard reality. The Fenn army was not a rabble of bandits that would be thwarted by a wooden stockade; it was a colossal and efficient machine of destruction and these defences would be torn apart within three hours. But even if the defences could hold for three days, he knew that Burkhart would not risk his city by sending aid. Harronville, if attacked, would make its stand alone, and it would fall alone.
The others agreed with his observations. Though their report was anything but reassuring, their assessments were considered excellent.
And with this, their second year was complete.
–––
Aedan’s dedication had yielded impressive results. It was no secret that he was doing well. By the beginning of his third year, his reputation was beginning to glow a little, but nothing like his flushed cheeks when the most dazzling pair of eyes began locking with his. Those few held glances had given him a new perspective on things. Previously, the academy had been an august monument to invaluable knowledge founded on ancient and immovable rock. Now all that was a cloudy insignificance floating in a dizzy orbit around an epicentre that was Ilona …
Everything had been redefined, and everything had grown beautiful. Birds sang of this budding love, and flowers grew only to be plucked for her – though he hadn’t the nerve to do any more than pluck them, and so he left a colourful trail of discarded petals wherever he walked. He found himself thinking of her, imagining shining moments like her adoring laughter in response to one of his many witty remarks. Her ringing voice would cause the robins to faint and topple from their branches and butterflies to explode with happiness – joyful little puffs that would sprinkle the air with a soft haze as she leaned forward and –
“Aedan!”
The vision vanished with a sudden ethereal rip. He found himself sitting near the front of a tense and silent class. Skeet looked dangerous. He always looked dangerous, but this time the danger was focussed.
“When one of my students grins like a lovesick gargoyle at the calculations required to balance fulcrum shear with lever-arm length, I am moved to suspicion. Were you paying attention at all?”
“Yes … uh, yes … Master Skeet,” Aedan stammered.
“Good, then you can complete the design of our improvised catapult.” He handed Aedan the chalk and walked to the back of the class.
Aedan shuffled to the board, sensing the weight of forty eyes on his back. The rough catapult
design had been sketched, the materials listed, but all of them were poor choices.
“Why don’t we just use steel for the axle?” he asked, and immediately wished he had not spoken the thought as the class erupted in laughter. The poor materials were probably the whole point of the exercise.
He looked back at the sketch, stared with deepening incomprehension, made some burbling noises and turned red. After an age of infamy, Skeet sent him to his chair with an icy warning.
This episode was quite out of character for Aedan. His friends could get no straight answer from him, but the mystery was solved quickly enough. Later that day, a few of the boys were seated on the tiered benches that faced one of the twenty-foot crindo boards. Six of their classmates had just finished a game and were dragging the enormous pieces back to their starting arrangement before leaving. Aedan and his friends remained, drinking in the last of the afternoon before their evening training session. Ilona and three of her friends settled down across from them on the other side of the board.
Aedan found himself laughing the loudest, interjecting the most often, and glancing constantly over to the other side of the crindo square. At one point, his glance was rewarded. His face flushed. He heard only bits of the next joke and burst into uproarious laughter a beat before Vayle arrived at the punch line. There were a few curious glances. Peashot frowned openly, but Hadley had followed Aedan’s darting eyes and was now nursing a half grin.
The air cooled and began to nip. The girls left, all but Ilona, who remained on the bench, writing something on a sheet of paper. Soon Lorrimer declared it was time to head in. The boys rose and turned towards their wing. Hadley stood in Aedan’s way.
“You think she’s sitting there by herself because she likes the cold? I’ve seen you two exchanging looks.”
Aedan was too surprised by Hadley’s words and too terrified by their glorious implication to react.
“Go talk to her,” Hadley said.
“No! Hadley, no! I – I can’t!”
“Fine. Then I’m going to tell her that you would rather be early for Dun than spend time with her.” He turned to Ilona, but Aedan caught his arm in a ferocious grip.
“I can’t Hadley!” His voice was a frantic whisper. “It doesn’t just work like that. I have to think about things, get it all sorted out first. You know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean – it’s the same as Lorrimer standing all morning at the jumping platform over the dam. Remember how we helped him?”
“No Hadley, don’t do it! Please don’t –”
“Hey Ilona,” Hadley called. “We’re heading in. Do you mind taking care of Aedan for a bit? See that he’s safe and all that?”
Ilona looked up from her writing and laughed. Aedan’s vision swam. Sparrows and crickets burst into chorus and a few stars fell from the sky. She patted the bench beside her and glanced at him.
The bench was twenty yards away. He wished it were twenty miles. Oh help. He looked up, tried to swallow, but the dryness caught in his throat and he almost gagged as Ilona smiled. He staggered forward through something between a fog of bliss and a gauntlet of terror, knees all but collapsing as he dropped down beside her. A glance revealed that Hadley had gone.
Ilona shifted in her seat, put her elbow on the backrest and faced him. A confident grin toyed with the edges of her mouth. “I wrote you something,” she said, reaching forward and slipping a folded note into Aedan’s shirt pocket. “Don’t read it until lights are out and everyone else is asleep. It’s our secret.”
She stood and Aedan did likewise, lifting his heels a little to reduce the disparity in height.
“You don’t need to be frightened,” she said, smiling.
“I’m n-not,” he managed with a voice that quivered its way out between rattling teeth.
Ilona laughed, twirled around, and sprang away with graceful strides. “Our secret, remember,” she called back over her shoulder.
Aedan was still too overcome with volcanic emotions to be angry with himself over a lack of self-possession. And anyway, he must have done rather well considering she smiled and laughed and gave him a letter.
A letter!
His pocket caught fire as he remembered. He snatched the folded page out, but then remembered what she had said – only once lights were out – and reverently put it back. Then he set off at a moderate sprint, leaping over benches and tables and skidding across dew-wet grass until he caught up with the others. The murderous thoughts he had raised against Hadley were as distant a reality as last winter’s snow.
“Why you dawdling?” he nagged. “We’ll be late.”
“What’s stinging your rump?” said Peashot. “We’re almost an hour early. And why were you talking to Ilona anyway?”
Aedan did his best to parry the question, but Hadley, exhibiting his habitual discreetness, announced the answer to all. The name of Ilona was soon being bounced around in the air like a ball in some game. Aedan could do no more than grin and blush.
The ragging carried on until lights were out, and then for a while in the darkness until everyone was exhausted. When Aedan was convinced that the others were asleep, he unshuttered his dark lantern and withdrew the letter.
Oh, the fire that coursed through his veins as he saw his name in that most perfect script – the script that had flowed from that most perfect hand.
The letter began. Dear Aedan.
His smile reached across his face and the thudding in his chest was surely enough to wake the others, but a quick glance assured him that none had stirred.
Dear, she had called him dear. He clutched the page and his eyes rushed on.
There’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you for some time.
Here it was then. He curled his toes and tucked into the pillow.
You’re such a silly boy.
Aedan frowned, read it again. There it was, just like before. Silly boy. His mouth was slightly twisted as he pushed on.
You say such awkward things sometimes, but Rillette says all boys are like that at first. So maybe we should spend some time talking when we don’t have all our friends looking at us and making it uncomfortable. Would you like to walk with me when it’s my turn to do the delivery and collection at the beginning of next week? I know you are training during the first hours, but I’m sure you can think of a way to get out of it.
Meet me outside the marble archway at sunrise. Don’t let me down. I’m depending on you.
There were three kisses above the name of Ilona, and Aedan almost dropped the lantern. He made a desperate grab for it, singing his fingers on the hot cover. After nursing the burns for a while he settled back down and read the letter seven or eight times over. When he could say it all by heart, except the peppery bits, he blew out the lantern and turned in for the night. It wasn’t long before the lantern was relit and he was gloating over his prize once more. And in such a manner he whittled away the hours.
The week that stood between him and this great appointment passed in a delirium of emotional overload and physical exhaustion, sleep being a near impossibility. Yet it did not make him bad-tempered. Instead, he found it the most natural thing to be amiable to everyone, responding even to rudeness with a deep, benign smile. He discovered himself to be the most magnanimous creature in the whole world, simply overstocked with goodness that could not be held in.
When he considered his plan for escaping classes, there was the gentlest tug of conscience, but it was easily soothed and put away. He had wanted for a long time to stand beside her, and tomorrow she would need him.
Some things were more important than others.
It was late when sleep arrived. It carried him into a wasteland of poorly designed, broken catapults where he battled great monsters with his bare hands, holding them back from a softly crying Ilona whose eyes were locked on his fearless kicks and mighty punches; and when the monsters were sent running, she flew into his arms and wept over his wounds, breathless with admiration and un
dying love.
When he awoke, it was dark. He smiled, stretched, and began preparations for the morning’s escape.
“I think he’s sick.” The voice was Peashot’s.
Dun looked at Aedan – sweaty, his sheets soaked, skin icy. He was obviously fevered.
The empty water jar was tucked well away under the bed.
Dun excused him from the morning session. Under the worried glances and encouraging words, Aedan was made to burn with a real fever – guilt.
As soon as the corridors were quiet, he slipped out and stole through the dim light towards the archway. It looked like he was the only one here, but as he passed under the shadow of the marble edifice, a shape sprang out from the darkness. He gave a muffled shout and leapt back, dropping into a fighting stance.
Ilona walked forward, hands on her hips, laughing.
It was not the greeting he had anticipated. No clinging or weeping. It put him somewhat off balance. He tried to wipe the scare from his face and managed a silly grin as Ilona nudged him with her shoulder, nodded to the guard who didn’t even look at Aedan, and led the way from the academy into the waking streets. She held two baskets which Aedan offered to carry.
“Usually Rillette makes these trips with me,” she said, “but she’s hurt her foot. I could have asked one of the other girls, but I decided it would be nicer to go with you.”
Aedan was surprised. He was risking big trouble for this outing and he had expected something more serious – suspicious watchers and dark alleys at the very least. But as he glanced across at the graceful and slender form, the streamers of soft golden hair flowing behind a flawless profile – long forehead, fine nose, delicate chin – and those huge emerald eyes, he decided any punishment would be a small thing. How did a girl get to be so … so utterly perfect? And how did he get to be walking beside her?
Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) Page 45