As much as he disliked his father and the things he did, Aaron didn’t want to see him in jail, at the very least for the sake of his family. Asking Aaron to use his judgment to “come to the right conclusion” was simply a way of saying that the only right choice was what his father had said, and that he should see it as such. With a deep sigh. Aaron reached the door to the commander’s office, knocked several times, and waited. He only hoped they weren’t in some sort of meeting.
Commander Hall opened the door and smiled. “Mr. Cross,” he said. “Is something the matter?”
Aaron was slow to answer. “Uh, I’m not sure yet.”
“I’ll do what I can to help,” Hall said. He motioned for Aaron to enter.
Aaron stepped though and handed Hall the letter. “I don’t know how much of this is true,” he said, “but I thought you should see it either way.”
Frowning deeply, the commander took the parchment and quickly read through it. When he finished, he had a look of concern mixed with anger. “Thank you, Mr. Cross, for bringing this to my attention. I am sorry to say that this is not a new problem. But the news of the Royal Army is a rather . . . alarming development.”
“It’s not true, is it? The baker and the others?”
“Mr. Cross, I can assure you that these claimed deaths are not our work,” Hall said. He stroked his chin while reading the letter again before glancing back up at Aaron. “Again, I thank you for bringing this to my attention. The captains and I will see what we can do about these claims. Rest assured that the chance of an invasion by the Royal Army is rather slim.”
Aaron moved to the door but paused before leaving. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I don’t believe you would order these types of things without reason, whatever it might be.”
Hall smiled slightly. “It is worth quite a lot, actually. Now if you’ll excuse me, this has given me a lot of work to do.”
Aaron was ushered out the door and back down the stairs. He walked the same path as before back to his barracks room. By the time he returned, the sun had set and everyone was asleep, trying to recover from another long, grueling day. He sat on the edge of his cot and mulled over everything. He doubted his father would have bothered sending this letter had it not been for Aaron’s use of his signet ring to authorize a payment to Captain Andrews at Navia. He knew his father would receive it and see it as Aaron not being totally serious about striking out on his own. He would see it as Aaron still needing his father’s support. The man truly infuriated him sometimes. With a deep sigh, he swung his legs onto the cot and laid his head down to try to get some sleep. Instead, however, he lay in the dark for the next several hours, tossing and turning. Finally he was on the edge of sleep when moonlight suddenly filled the room, brighter than before. He shifted in the cot and saw that Robert had opened the door and was stepping through the threshold. He was heading outside fully geared. Odd, Aaron thought. If Alan or any of the other scholars had risen to leave with him, Aaron would have written it off as an early morning training session. But no one else stirred. Curious, he planted his feet on the cold stone floor before striding toward the door.
He would have opened it had it not been for the furious whispering on the other side that he could only just hear. He glanced through the window next to the door and could barely see the back of Robert to one side as he spoke with someone. Aaron knelt and pressed his ear to the door.
“Why not? We have enough!” Robert said.
He could easily tell that the next voice was Robin’s: “But not what we came here for!”
“How do we know they’ll even tell us? Even if we stayed and finished the training, it might not be open information.”
Robin was starting to sound angry. “We were sent to find out where those mutts are,” she said, “and I’m not leaving until we do!”
“But now we know that Argera is still alive, and I have the recipe for flash powder, both of which are far more valuable.”
“If we don’t come back with what we were told to find, she’ll kill us.”
“Well,” Robert said, “maybe we could stay longer if you hadn’t tried to kill four people in a sparring match. They’re suspicious of us now. They know something is off about you and us by association.” Robin didn’t respond. “Look,” Robert said, “if I leave, which I am, you two have to come. They’re going to be checking on the ranger in Silvum now. They’ll know we forged her report during our recruitment.”
“Fine. But it’s on your head when we get back.”
They stopped speaking. Aaron waited for several seconds before standing and looking out the window. All he saw through the foggy glass were tracks in the snow heading for the front of the keep. Now, with his concern and curiosity piqued, he went back to his wardrobe and quickly put on his boots before making for the door and the cold courtyard beyond.
He shuffled through the moonlit snow, following three sets of tracks. Several things ran through his mind, none of which made sense at the moment. He reached the corner of the keep, stopped just short of it, and peeked around to see Robert, Robin, and Lace at the gate. They stood before two Dragon Guards, both wardens who were clearly unhappy to be seeing the three of them outside the barracks in the middle of the night. Robert and Robin were speaking to them while Lace stood off to one side. They seemed to be exchanging heated words, though at this distance Aaron couldn’t make them out. Robin threw up her hands and backed away from the guards. A moment later, Robert did the same.
Then something happened that Aaron wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to explain. The snow around Lace started to move away from her. The best way he could ever describe it was that it flowed outward from her like water. She crossed her arms as if warding off the cold air and started to shake violently. The snow moved farther and faster away from her until there was a perfect circle around her, clear of snow. The Dragon Guards drew their swords. It looked as if they were about to shout an alarm, but they were too late. They were lifted by an unseen force and slammed against the iron-banded gate with enough speed that Aaron couldn’t follow their movement.
Nothing had touched them. When they struck the gate, they made no sound, though the gate shuddered aggressively from the impact. Aaron still saw nothing touching them, but whatever the force was, it held them firm against the gate where they were pinned, lifeless. The Dragon Guards had released their weapons, but they never fell to the ground. They simply hovered next to their hands. Lace began to cry into her hands as the two Dragon Guards slowly sunk towards the ground, leaving a trail of blood along the gate. When they were only a foot off the ground they were dropped into the snow with barely a sound.
It took several seconds for the guards on the other side of the gate to open the manway to investigate the disturbance. When they came through, something pushed them to the ground with such force that even from where he hid, Aaron could see them twist unnaturally and slam into the stones beneath the snow, where they remained, unmoving. Robin grabbed Lace by the wrist and dragged her over the corpses and through the manway, followed closely by Robert.
“I need you to explain it again, exactly as you saw it happen.”
Captain Samantha Coe stood in front of Aaron with a look of furious concern on her face. Aaron sat on the steps outside the keep with Captain Coe and Commander Hall in front of him. Around them, a dozen or so scholars were looking over the area where Lace had done . . . whatever it was she did. A few rangers with wardens stood guard outside the gate to ensure that no one disturbed the area. After Robert and the others left the keep, Aaron had been unable to move for several minutes out of pure fear. He had no idea what had happened but he knew it was far from natural. After Aaron had mustered his courage, the first thing he did was go into the keep and alert the first Dragon Guard he could find.
Now, with the sun barely cresting the horizon, the keep was on full alert. Aaron had explained everything in as much detail as he c
ould twice over. Now he was finishing his story for the third time.
Coe turned to Hall and rubbed her temples. “How did we let this slip?” she said. “How did we let Disciples into our fold?”
Hall shook his head and stroked his beard. “This was years in the making. Ezekiel cross-referenced everything North sent him from the interview and nothing in Silvum indicated this. Everything he found pointed to a normal family, normal life, and a normal relationship with the townsfolk. Every answer they gave during their interview lined up with what Ezekiel knew.”
“We’ll have to send a group to Silvum. We have crosscheck with Claudia, Austin, with everyone,” Coe said. “We have to know everything that they learned while they were here, everything.”
Hall was about to reply when he glanced sidelong at Aaron, who still sat quietly listening. “We’ll finish discussing this later,” he said. He faced Aaron. “Mr. Cross,” he said, “I think training will be postponed for the time being. Please inform the others as they wake.”
With that, Aaron was ushered away from the scene. He made his way back to the barracks. Rather than step inside, he paused at the door. He suddenly felt dizzy. He realized he hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. He considered letting the others find out what had happened on their own so he could get some sleep, but just as he was about to step inside, the door opened in front of him. It was Alan.
“Oh, Aaron,” he said. “Are you okay?”
Aaron shook his head. Less than an hour later, they all sat in the dining hall of the keep awaiting their morning meal as Aaron recounted what he’d seen and heard the night before.
Zachery raised an eyebrow once Aaron finished the tale. “So . . . ” he said, “how’d she do it?”
Aaron stared blankly at the table. “Nothing touched them . . . it’s just not possible.”
“It sounds like magic to me.” Zachery said.
“Oh, please,” Griffon scoffed.
“What?” Zachery said. “Like it sounds so crazy? There’s a lot in this world we thought wasn’t possible before we came here.”
“Magic isn’t real.” Griffon said. She turned to Clara. “Is it?”
Clara shrugged. “I mean . . . maybe?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Well, think about it,” Clara said. “Disciples worship a High Dragon and Claudia did say they were able to do amazing things. Who says what they could do wasn’t magic and that it isn’t something Cadent taught them?”
Daniel shook his head. “Whether or not what they did was magic,” he said, “I still can’t believe there were three Disciples right here in the keep.”
Clara shivered. “I sat next to Robert during Claudia’s lectures.”
“He said something about flash powder,” Aaron said. “Do you know what that is?”
“It’s a really dark-red powder scholars put in the ingera,” Clara said. “It’s what makes them explode. Claudia said it’s a Dragon Guard secret, and she just taught us how to make it.”
“Well, I’ve seen what those things can do,” Aaron said. “No wonder they thought it was so valuable.”
Daniel ran a hand through his hair. “What about that mutt comment? What was that supposed to refer to?”
Zachery shrugged exaggeratedly. “Whatever it was,” he said, “it is well above us, so for the time being I just want to focus on getting some food.”
Chapter Twenty-five
13th of Landring, 28th year of the Fourth Age.
In the late night darkness, Daniel dashed past trees, leaped over logs, and barreled through the underbrush of Highwood Forest. He glanced behind him and noticed the others were falling behind, so he slowed his pace enough that he was still slightly ahead of them but well within their sight. To his right he saw a flash of flame, followed by a shadow darting overhead, accompanied by the beating of wings. He slid to a stop beneath an overhang in the side of a hill just ahead of him. Aaron and Clara quickly followed suit.
Aaron adjusted the armor on his forearm. “Are you sure this is the right way?”
Daniel lowered his hood and scanned the sky above them through the trees. “I’m sure,” he said.
Clara looked around. “I still don’t know how you can tell where you’re going when it’s so dark,” she said.
“Intuition, I guess,” Daniel said.
“So how are we supposed to get to it without being seen?” Clara asked.
“It’s in the clearing,” Daniel said, “so we’re not.”
“You didn’t mention that part.”
Aaron rubbed the stubble on his chin. “We’ll figure it out,” he said. “For now, let’s get to the edge of the tree line and see what we’ve got to work with.”
The three of them left the overhang and started through the trees again. Now that they were further into the forest, it was far more difficult to navigate in the dark, even for Daniel. More than once, Clara and Aaron fell so far behind that Daniel lost sight of them and had to double back. When they finally reached the tree line, they saw Argera circling the fort in the middle of the clearing. At the top of a flag post at the center of the fort hung a bell.
“So how are we going to do this?” Aaron asked. He spoke in an almost inaudible whisper.
Daniel watched the dragon crane her head toward the edges of the clearing as she flew. She kept her eyes on the trees, waiting for someone to make a move.
Daniel played with the frayed edges of his scarf as he spoke. “Let’s wait here,” he said, “and see if another group makes a go at it. If nothing happens, we’ll think of something else.”
So wait they did. This was as much a test of patience as it was a race. The goal was to be the first to ring the bell atop the fort, and they had until sunrise to do it. Each team was comprised of three members, one from each sect. Due to the fact that there was an offset of rangers and scholars to wardens, graduates from previous years filled in the missing members. They only acted as fillers and let the actual trainees come up with the plans and give the orders. Argera was tasked with knocking the teams out to prevent them from reaching the bell.
Daniel reached up and made sure the smoke pouch was still tied to his shoulder. This pouch was meant to produce a thick, black cloud of smoke when Argera tagged them with a stream of fire—a controlled stream, of course. Dragons were able to regulate the temperature and width of the fire they breathed, so she wouldn’t use her full force. The smoke would indicate they were out of the race. What little force she did use was not enough to penetrate their armor and clothing, which like all Dragon Guard attire had been made with scorch weed fiber and extract, giving them a flame-resistant quality. If they were exposed to a full stream of fire from a hostile dragon, however, it would do little to save them. While they would be mostly protected from the fire itself where they were covered, at least for a period of time, the heat alone would be more than enough to kill them.
After over an hour and a half of stillness, Argera started making wider circles to try to find them. Most teams were likely hiding farther back from the tree line. Daniel knew most had to be well hidden and that the waiting would go well into daylight, which would in turn end the exercise until they tried again tomorrow night, as had been the pattern for the last several days with no winners.
Someone would have to start the final leg. “This isn’t working, it’s just a repeat of the last few days,” Daniel said. “We’re going to have to make the first move if we want to finish this before sunrise.”
“What move is that?” Aaron asked.
Daniel scanned the trees and picked out a good spot to make a run for it—two touching trees, one bent from weight and the other uprooted. “See those crossed trees?” he said. “I can make a run for the fort from there while you two feign an attempt from here, which should also prompt some of the other teams to head out. Hopefully Argera will be too distracted with
everyone else giving me more time to make it up there.”
“Better than sitting here all night,” Aaron said. “How long do you need?”
“Give me two hundred dragons, then break cover.”
Without waiting for conformation, Daniel started into the trees, all the while counting in his head: One dragon, two dragons, three dragons . . . He went around the clearing to the other side and crouched behind one of the crossed trees. One hundred sixty nine dragons, one hundred seventy dragons . . . He watched the area where Clara and Aaron waited and kept counting. When he reached a hundred ninety-two, he saw them jump the fallen tree in front of them and make a run for the fort. He gave Argera ample enough time to notice and dive toward them before he raised his hood and darted from cover.
It took only moments for other teams to use the opportunity to start their own sprint. He had hoped as much and was thankful it was working. He saw to his right another ranger make a run for the bell from the same side of the clearing as he was. It was Jane. She was as fast if not faster than Daniel, which meant that it was nothing more than a race now. Argera started launching thin lines of fire at the others but it took her only moments to notice the two of them and see they were far closer than anyone else.
She leaned into a sharp turn and dove after them over the open grass. With her wings spread to their full length, she was on them quickly. She shot a stream of fire at Daniel as she passed overhead, but it was narrow and easy to dodge with a quick leap to his right. But it had cost him speed. Jane pulled ahead. He pushed himself harder and tried to catch up with her, but Argera had turned around to make another run, which meant she would aim for Daniel first since he was closest. He heard and felt the beat of her wings before he saw the shadow or the light of the fire.
Without being able to see her, he had no way of knowing which way to move to avoid the fire stream, or if he needed to move at all. So he did the only thing he could and dove to the ground the moment he saw light. The fire went clean over and scorched the grass in front of him as she continued past him. He stood and started for the fort again. He saw Jane had done the same as Daniel during Argera’s second pass, but she was already up and running again. There was no way he would make it before her.
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