Shadow grail 1

by Mercedes Lackey; Rosemary Edghill

  Spirit shuddered and closed her e-mail. She wondered if Edgar would be put in the same room as Nick.

  She wondered if he’d be there for the same reason.

  The rest of Monday was a “normal for Oakhurst” day: English Comp, Bio, Math, and Art in the morning; Humanities, PE, Art Class, and History of Magic after lunch, and Martial Arts Class after that. All of them except PE and Art came with hefty homework assignments, and at that, Spirit was carrying a light courseload, because she didn’t have magic labs, and she was only doing one sport. Spirit didn’t know how people like Addie—with magic labs, Choral Society, swim team, dance committee, and (for most of the year) field hockey—managed to get it all done. That kind of schedule didn’t leave much room for free time at all.

  But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Spirit thought. Set us all up with crazy schedules and more work than we’d have in college, make us all see each other as competition instead of friends, make sure none of us has time to think about how crazy this place is, how the reason we’re learning all this stuff is that there are people out there waiting to kill us when we leave—or maybe something even worse . . .

  She wondered how she’d managed to escape that particular trap.

  And how long it would take someone in authority to notice.

  That evening the five of them met briefly in one of the lounges to compare notes. Briefly, because Loch and Muirin both reported being teased about having a “gang”—which meant that despite their best efforts, they were drawing attention to themselves—and Addie had a virtual meeting of the dance committee, because the Winter Dance was a little over two weeks away and the committee still hadn’t settled on a music program. “And of course we can’t just recycle the one from the Halloween Dance—even though nobody heard most of it—because that would be too easy,” Addie said tartly. “At least I can get a lot of homework done while Kristi and Madison scream at each other in IM and Andy says we should include more Metal. You should get on it for next year, Spirit. It’d be nice to have somebody sane for a change.” She waved distractedly as she hurried off.

  “I guess that leaves . . . huh,” Loch said, looking around. Muirin was already gone. “That illusion thing is pretty cool,” he said, sounding faintly puzzled.

  “That ‘illusion thing’ is going to get the Murr-cat into real trouble one of these days,” Burke said.

  “Or save her neck,” Loch said. “Anyway, this is a good chance for me to get in some practice time. Piano,” he explained, when the other two looked curious. He flexed his fingers theatrically. “Every good junior plutocrat gets music lessons. Although considering everything, I wish I’d studied something more portable.”

  “There’s always the harmonica,” Burke said, and Loch grinned.

  “Another karate lesson?” Spirit asked reluctantly, once Loch had left.

  Burke shook his head. “We had class today. How about a walk?”

  “In the snow?” Spirit asked in disbelief.

  “Sure,” Burke said, smiling. “Get your coat. I’ll meet you at the terrace doors in fifteen.”

  One thing you could say for Oakhurst, it didn’t stint its students on any of the basic necessities. At the beginning of November, Spirit had been sent a GIF-filled e-mail with winter wardrobe choices: snow boots and down filled waterproof mittens and high-tech fabric glove liners and heavy wool pants (with the notation that these were not to be considered classroom wear under any circumstances) and long johns and heavy wool hats and thicker scarves than the one she already had (with an appliqué of the school crest on the ends, in her choice of the three school colors) and her choice of heavy winter coat in two lengths. The fact that she already had a warm coat and hat and scarf and was being issued a warmer coat and enough extra gear to outfit an expedition to the North Pole had been a depressing forewarning of how cold winter here in Montana was going to get.

  But it meant that once she bundled up and stepped outside with Burke, Spirit wasn’t cold at all.

  The walkway lights were on, illuminating the snow falling from the sky. It was light—almost like dust—but it had been falling steadily for several days, and the ground was white as far as Spirit could see. She was used to heavy snow in Indiana, of course, but not to it starting this early—or to being out in the middle of nowhere when it did. The snow muffled even the ordinary sounds she expected to hear, making everything seem even more than ordinarily silent. Even without moonlight, the lamplight and the light from the house windows scattered across the snowfield and reflected back from the low clouds, illuminating the featureless whiteness for miles.

  “Winter’s when most of the Elemental Schools—not mine—get a real workout,” Burke said as they walked across the terrace. “Come on. You’ll see.”

  The terrace was completely clear of snow, and the brick walkways were wide dark lines crisscrossing the whiteness beyond. Spirit followed Burke cautiously down the fieldstone steps onto the bricks, but there wasn’t a trace of ice. Just as the Air Mages swept away the autumn leaves, they swept away the snow.

  “Too cold?” Burke asked, when Spirit shivered.

  “No,” she answered. “It’s just . . . I don’t think I’m cut out for all this . . . sneaking and plotting.” She kept her voice carefully low, even though they seemed to be the only ones going for an evening walk.

  “I hate it,” Burke said. Spirit glanced at him in surprise. It was the first time she’d ever heard him say anything so negative. “I hate lying. I hate going to bed at night knowing I’m keeping secrets from Doctor Ambrosius. I hate thinking I’m planning to do bad things to someone—even if they might be bad and might even deserve it. I don’t . . . I don’t want to be that guy, Spirit.”

  Impulsively, she put her hand on his arm. Her heavy mitten made a pillowy plopping sound, and she saw him smile a little ruefully. “At least we’re warm, right? And just wait until there’s a few more feet of snow. Then we can really have fun.”

  “A few more . . . feet?” Spirit asked in disbelief.

  “Sure,” Burke said. “Average snowfall over the winter here’s about sixty inches. We get enough snow on the ground, and the Fire Mages and the Ice Mages’ll have enough to work with to build us a great skating rink. Block of ice about a foot thick and as big as the football field. It’s great. If you don’t skate, I can teach you.”

  “It’s been a while,” Spirit said. Winters in Indiana were cold, but they weren’t that cold.

  Burke smiled at her. “I know what you mean. This makes Indianapolis feel downright balmy.” He sighed. “I sure miss Thirty Days in May.”

  Spirit blinked, more homesick than she would have thought at hearing the local nickname for the Indianapolis 500. “Don’t tell me you’re a racing fan?” she said.

  “Oh heck yeah,” Burke said. “My folks’ house is right on the Speedway. They rent the lawn, the driveway, and the backyard out every year for people to camp in. It was always a great way to make new friends.”

  Spirit thought it probably was. She thought Burke had probably never met anyone in his whole life he hadn’t liked.

  “Here we are,” he said. “Look.”

  He pointed off to the side of the path. Spirit turned to look—and gasped in wonder.

  The snowfield was filled with sculptures. Clear as crystal, delicate as gossamer, abstract designs whose closest resemblance was to those high-speed photographs where the photographer manages to capture the exact moment when a drop of water shatters against the ground. They glittered in the lamplight as if they were on fire.

  “Ohhhh. . . .” she breathed. “They’re beautiful. . . .”

  “Ice and Air and Fire Mages having some fun out here,” Burke said. He sounded pleased at her reaction. “They won’t be here by morning—wind’ll shatter ’em, they’re so delicate. See? Over there? Some of them are already broken.” He pointed, and when Spirit looked closely, she could see broken shards of ice lying on the surface of the snow. “I wanted you to see them, though.”

&
nbsp; “I’m glad,” Spirit said simply.

  They turned to walk back toward the school, and Spirit was surprised to see how far they’d come.

  “If there’s enough snow vacation week—and there usually is—we do a whole Winter Carnival thing,” Burke said offhandedly. “You know: full-scale ice sculptures and all that. I think you’ll really enjoy it. If, uh, we’re all still alive by then,” he added in belated realization.

  The reminder brought Spirit back down to earth with a thump. “What do you think Edgar Saw?” she asked cautiously. “I know he Saw . . . whatever took Seth, but . . .” But whatever it was he Saw, he didn’t tell us the details, and we really need to know.

  “At least we know more than we did. It’s something that hunts at night. Something that—we know because of Nick—disappears at dawn. Something that drives you mad if you even see it. Hunters, riders, horns—both Nick and Edgar mentioned horns . . .” Burke said.

  “Something that needs to be Tithed,” Spirit added grimly.

  “Yeah,” Burke said unhappily. “That should be enough. We just have to put it all together.”

  Neither of them spoke the rest of the way back to the house, each lost in their own thoughts.

  The Wild Hunt,” Muirin said with fierce satisfaction.

  Muirin said at breakfast Tuesday that she’d found their answer, so the five of them were risking a meeting. They were meeting that evening at the swimming pool. And Muirin was casting an illusion to make the indoor pool area look as if it were empty, so maybe nobody would come and wonder why they were here in the first place.

  “That’s the Whatever?” Burke asked. “But the Wild Hunt’s English.”

  “It’s found in Germany, Ireland, Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, and there are similar legends in parts of North America,” Muirin recited in bored tones.

  Addie was making waterspouts in the center of the pool. First one, then two, then three, drawing them up thinner and finer until they towered twenty feet in the air and the level of water in the pool itself had dropped several feet.

  “The details vary a little bit from place to place, but they’re consistent enough that this really seems to be what we’re looking for,” Loch said.

  “Okay,” Spirit said, trying to ignore the dancing waterspouts. “But what is it?”

  “Aside from—apparently—real?” Muirin said. “Which is a little something Ms. Groves has conveniently forgotten to mention in her really long and boring History of Toads, Newts, and Bats?”

  Between the two of them, Loch and Muirin managed to deliver a concise and disturbing lecture—which was even scarier for what they didn’t know.

  The Wild Hunt appeared in legends all across Europe. The basics were always the same: a supernatural group of hunters, mounted on things from horses to goats to other people and accompanied by hunting hounds, chasing across the sky or across the ground in wild pursuit of . . . something. Depending on which story it was, the hunters were the Fair Folk, or ghosts, or the souls of the damned, or outright demons. The leader of the Hunt was the demon Hellequin, or Herne the Hunter, or Odin, or just whoever’d been unlucky enough to encounter the Hunt as it rode out, because anyone who saw the Wild Hunt might be driven mad by the sight, or hunted down by it and never seen again, or forced to join it—and according to the tales, any attempt to leave again resulted in instant death.

  “—and all the sources Muirin and I could find said that the Hunt appears ‘mostly’ in the fall and winter, but, uh, obviously ‘mostly’ isn’t ‘always,’ because the rest of this fits so well that this has got to be what we’re looking for,” Loch finished.

  “But are they elves or ghosts or demons?” Addie asked. The waterspouts all collapsed at once, but before any of them could get splashed, all the water in the pool curled up and in, until it was a large round glob of water sitting in the middle of the pool like a loaf of bread in a pan. Addie looked at the rest of them. “You know as well as I do that what works against one of those isn’t going to work on the other two.”

  “I guess we’re going to have to go prepared for all three, in that case,” Burke said.

  “Gosh, gang, more research!” Muirin said, opening her eyes very wide. “Just what I was looking forward to!”

  Amazingly, Burke snorted with amusement. “If you don’t know at least three ways to get rid of a ghost by now, Muirin, you haven’t been paying attention in class. You leave the ghosts to me. It’s if this Hunt is elves or demons I’m worried about.”

  “But—” Spirit said. It was bad enough having to seriously think about there even being demons or elves (What’s next? her inner voice demanded, Vampires?), and worse to think about having to fight them. But worst of all was having to think about the details of how to do it, because if the Wild Hunt was riding out on the Winter Solstice, it would be riding in search of its Tithe, and Spirit was almost certain that none of the five of them would be it, so how? . . .

  “Time’s up,” Loch said, glancing at his wristwatch. “We’d all better go pretend we don’t know each other.”

  Everyone got to his or her feet. Loch slipped out first—his Shadewalking ability would provide him with at least some ability to evade curious observers—and Burke and Muirin went together. Burke hadn’t walked more than half a dozen steps before he vanished, to be replaced by a duplicate of Muirin. Anybody who saw Muirin with “herself” would just assume she was practicing her mirror illusions again.

  Having come to watch Addie practice was innocent enough, so Spirit walked out with Addie. But her final question remained both unasked and unanswered.

  How were they going to make sure that the Wild Hunt came after them, instead of claiming whoever had been chosen as the latest innocent victim?

  TEN

  In Wednesday’s Martial Arts Class, Dylan broke Kylee’s arm while the two of them were sparring.

  Spirit was paired up with Nadia for the free-form sparring because, although Mr. Wallis was a maniac, he actually did his best to match them with opponents close to their own skill level for the free-form stuff. It was a ninety-minute class, and overall they covered four different elements. There was drill and free-sparring in karate, and drill and katas (in pairs) in kendo. One of the four elements was dropped each session so that they could do half an hour each on the other three. Of the four elements, the sparring was the one in which you could get into the most trouble, because there was no set pattern to follow.

  Since Thanksgiving, Dylan had been quiet in the classes he and Spirit shared—that was only Math and Martial Arts—and Spirit had been just as glad, since she’d had a lot of other things on her mind, and trying to defend herself from Dylan Williams and his brutal form of teasing would have been the last straw. She doubted he’d forgotten who’d been at the table that day. She’d just hoped he’d decided to make someone else his target.

  And as it turned out, he had.

  Nadia gasped in surprise just as Spirit heard the choked scream from behind her. Spirit’s immediate reaction was to step out of range, fearing some trick on Nadia’s part, before turning to look over her shoulder. Kylee was down on her knees, rocking back and forth in agony, cradling her arm against her stomach and crying.

  “Not such a big mouth on you now, huh?” Dylan said in a low vicious voice.

  “He punched her,” Nadia whispered in disbelief. “She tapped out, and he just . . . punched her.”

  “She should have expected it,” Spirit heard herself say. “You were at our table at Thanksgiving. What did she expect?”

  The moment the words were out of her mouth, she felt sick. Sick at herself. Sick at what she had just said. She should have been horrified, and instead she’d been . . . cold. What is Oakhurst turning me into? she thought wildly. And how can I stop it?

  Burke showed up at Kylee’s side half a step before Mr. Wallis did. From the expression on Burke’s face, Spirit knew he’d guessed the truth of what had just happened, but when—in response to Mr. Wallis’s brusque
question—Dylan said it had been “an accident,” Kylee didn’t contradict him. Neither did anyone else in the class, though at least a few of them must have seen it happen besides Nadia.

  Fortunately one of the students in the class was a Healing Mage. Burke helped Kylee over to the bleachers, and Claire Grissom followed them over. The moment she placed her hands on Kylee’s arm, Kylee’s pain-filled gasping eased.

  “What are you all standing around gawking for?” Mr. Wallis barked. “This isn’t a rest period! Back to work—unless you’d rather be running laps for the rest of the lesson?”

  Why didn’t you say anything?” Spirit asked quietly.

  They were all in the Girls’ Locker Room. Most of them didn’t shower at the end of class, since it was only a short walk back to their rooms where they could shower in privacy, but everybody changed back into their regular clothes. There was no actual rule about wandering around in your gi outside of class, but the minute someone did it, there probably would be.

  Kylee looked up, her expression guarded. “Because nothing happened.” She studied Spirit’s face for a moment, then sighed. “Look, Spirit. A little advice. You don’t get the teachers involved, ever. No matter what. You do that, and you’ll be looking over your shoulder for the Gatekeepers.”

  What Gatekeepers? What’s a Gatekeeper? Spirit wanted to ask. But she was too late. Even as she was forming the words, Kylee hefted her bag of equipment onto her shoulder and turned and walked out, leaving Spirit staring after her.

  But figuring out Kylee’s cryptic comment was the least of her worries. This was December eighth. They had less than two weeks to figure out not one, but three plans of attack, and figure out how to use them.