“Let’s return it, then. I want to hear how her trip went.”
Ignoring their homework and tired bodies, the three hiked over to the girls’ dormitory and asked the newnik on door duty to fetch Kiwani. The little Aklaa girl vanished up the stairwell, but it wasn’t Kiwani who came downstairs to greet them. It was Tarin.
“What’s this about Kiwani being back, hey?” she asked at the barracks door.
Bayan showed her the ring. “Kah had it. I thought it must belong to Kiwani, that she was back too.”
“Unless he abandoned her and flew ahead.” Eward cast a dark eye toward the boys’ barracks.
Bayan examined the ring with a thoughtful expression. “Kah’s never done that before. But he’s never left campus with one of us before, either. Let’s check with the drawbridge guards.”
Since they weren’t allowed to leave campus without permission, such a check entailed writing a letter and sending it via a Peace Village courier from the communication office in the Hall of Seals. The hexmates left Tarin to her homework and loitered around the Hall of Seals foyer for a good hour before the skinny courier returned with the guards’ response from the valley floor. Bayan thanked the mop-headed Akrestoi lad and reached for the latest taffy package from Philo to pay him.
“Oi!” Calder protested as he tried to keep the bag away from Bayan. “That’s practically my taffy.”
“You want to be practical, then you pay the courier.”
Clearly disgruntled at having to share Philo’s gift to Bayan with a stranger, Calder reached into the bag and dumped a small handful of waxed paper twists into the boy’s hand.
The young courier hefted the candy’s weight, then shot Calder a squint of dislike.
While Calder was distracted, Bayan snatched the bag of taffy from his hand, scooped out a larger handful, and added it to the courier’s payment.
That brought a smile to the boy’s lips. “My thanks, you have them, duelist.”
As Calder ate one of the few remaining taffies and glared at Bayan as if he’d betrayed his innermost secrets, Bayan opened the letter and read the valley guard’s short reply. His shoulders slumped. “They haven’t seen her.”
Eward glared at Kah, perched on a decorative wooden outcrop overhead. The bird squawked back at him.
“Mightna be his fault, Eward,” Calder said. “Maybe it’s a matter of wings versus feet; Kiwani has to take the road, but Kah can fly home straight as an arrow. Well, straight as a bent arrow, maybe. She could take hours to catch up to him.”
The hexmates trudged back to their barracks, disappointed. In his room, Bayan lay on his bed below Eward’s bunk and turned Kiwani’s ring over and over in his hands. Did it mean anything at all that Kah had been carrying it? In his experience, rings contained secrets. But not every ring he found would be a clue to a secret group of assassins with regicide on their minds. Would it?
~~~
By the next morning, Kiwani had yet to show up on campus. Kah had become increasingly agitated during the night, making it hard for Bayan to get any restful sleep. As Bayan and his hexmates dressed, it was nearly impossible to hear himself think, let alone hold a conversation within hearing range. Bayan threw a shirt at the hopping, squawking bird.
“All right, Kah. You need to stop. If you have something to say, just say it. Or I’m throwing you out the window.”
The black hexbird instantly ceased hopping. He turned its head so that one eye focused on Bayan. “Kah.”
“That’s what you always say—”
The bird launched himself past Bayan and landed on his desk. Jamming his heavy beak into the metal drawer pull on the top drawer, Kah levered it open. He dropped inside, then fluttered up a moment later with Kiwani’s ring. Then, instead of returning to his platform, he flew to the door and landed on the floor.
“Sints preserve us,” Calder breathed.
“Something’s wrong.” Bayan grabbed his thick outer coat and jammed an arm into its sleeve. “He’s been trying to tell us since yesterday, and we didn’t understand. Let’s go, Kah.” He yanked the door open and pounded down the hallway as the hexbird winged ahead.
Calder and Eward caught up with Bayan as he sprinted through the tunnel that led past the dining hall.
“Eward?” Bayan asked. “Thought you said Kah was a petty thief.”
“I did. But if Kiwani’s in trouble, I hope I’m wrong. And you know how I get about hope.”
“What about me?” Calder matched Eward stride for stride.
Bayan grinned as they exited the tunnel into twilight. “You’re gullible enough to believe most everything I say, as long as I sound convincing.”
“Nae, that’s just what I want you to think. It’s all part of my master plan.”
Kah led the trio through slashes of early morning light and long, dark tunnels of chill shadow, past Sint Esme’s Second Tree—which was nothing of the sort, just a reminder that Bayan had once been terrible at controlling his Savantism—and along the Hall of Seals. Bayan and his friends followed the bird around the building, across the roundabout, and down the road to Peace Village.
“Is she with the villagers?” Eward puffed. “That makes no sense.”
But the hexbird fluttered to the road before they got that far. Bayan, panting, looked around. He didn’t see Kiwani anywhere. One side of the road dropped off down to the valley floor. The other housed a small, ornate evergreen garden, tucked against the foot of a sheer cliff, where former headmaster Langlaren had been known to meditate regularly. The road lay empty in both directions. No one peered over the cliff above, and no one was dangling helplessly from the cliff below.
“Where is she, then?” Bayan asked the bird, hands on his hips. In the middle of a clear, calm evening, nothing in the world seemed amiss, and he began to question his earlier choice to bolt outside because of a clever bird. He hadn’t even had breakfast yet, as his stomach not so kindly informed him.
Kah only hopped around on the road, squawking.
Calder summoned a petite version of his Wind avatar, Honker, then Idled the white flame-feathered goose around the evergreen shrubs in the garden. The creature lifted needle-laden branches with its beak and Calder searched beneath them. Eward said he would check in at the Peace Village mail depot to see if anyone remembered seeing Kiwani.
Bayan nodded, then sat down on the dusty road next to Kah. His empty belly twisted with worry. “Listen, Kah. I know there’s something special about hexbirds. But if you’re just playing with us right now, I will not feed you for a week. Do you understand?”
The bird gave an attentive head bob. “Kah.”
“Good. Now, do you know where Kiwani is?”
“Kah.”
“Show me. And no more fooling around.”
The bird hopped about in the dust, leaving three-toed footprints everywhere.
Bayan gritted his teeth. “Kah, I don’t think that’s helping.”
The bird, apparently as frustrated with Bayan as he was with him, hopped over and smacked his beak into the back of Bayan’s hand. Then he fluttered out of reach and pecked at the road.
Bayan frowned and watched the bird peck, then scratch. “What are you now, a hen?”
The sky darkened suddenly, directly above him. Bayan looked up and saw an entire mystery of hexbirds descend onto the road around him. No, they were descending onto him. They landed on his arms, his head, his back. Their light weight pressed down on him but didn’t pin him in place. The close air smelled of dust and insects. Bayan felt smothered by the blackness of outstretched wings. Kah’s beak—he knew it must be Kah’s—pecked at the dirt between two of Bayan’s fingers.
“Kah! Kah!”
Kah’s message finally sank in. Ay, Bhattara!
Leaping to his feet, disoriented by the dozens of birds surrounding him, he cried, “Calder! Get Eward! Kiwani’s under the road!”
“What? That doesn’t even make a wee bit of sense!” Calder protested.
“Just do it!” Bayan
invoked his magic, then summoned Timbool, his trusty dog-shaped Earth avatar. As he climbed into the seating pit in the dog’s back, he couldn’t help muttering, “It’s been a whole night. What’re we going to find?” Calder was right; Kah’s information made no sense at all. But he stowed his questions for later.
As Eward and Calder breathlessly clambered into the dog’s back, Bayan cast the Avatar spell Liquefact, and Timbool sank into the ground, merging seamlessly with the rock. Bayan formed a dome of rock over the riders as they too sank into the earth.
“What’s going on?” In the blackness, Eward’s voice bounced off the dome’s inner curve, reminding Bayan how small an air pocket they had. “How could she be down here? Why—”
“Shush. Working.” Bayan cast Tremor, keeping his eyes shut to intensify the sensation of any return vibrations or hollow spots. A faint blank returned from beneath the upper cliff, past the garden. Bayan moved Timbool forward through the stone at what would amount to an amble on the surface.
“What are we looking for?” Calder whispered, as if afraid of being too loud.
“We’re looking for an air pocket. That’s the only way she gets out of this alive.”
Soon, Timbool encountered the hollow that Bayan’s Tremor had revealed. The avatar’s body brushed past the emptiness, and Bayan moved the dog through the earth so the protective dome aligned with it. The air pocket dissolved one side of the dome, and when Bayan spoke next, he could hear his voice travel down a long corridor.
“Light?”
Calder pulled a small, hovering fire out of a rush of red. The air-filled corridor, smooth-edged and straight, vanished around a corner after a few strides. Eward climbed into it first, then Calder. Bayan entered last, releasing Timbool.
Eward looked up at the even walls and dragged his fingers across a smooth surface. “This must have been formed by duelism. What in all the sints is this place?”
“Secure hiding place in case of another war, maybe?” Calder suggested. “The Academy has been sacked more than once; makes sense they’d create something like this.”
Eward nodded assent. “Could be. And with the entrances hidden by rock, only elemental duelists could reach them. Anima casters couldn’t follow.”
Bayan peered ahead in the gloom. The corridor branched, and each branch branched again in the dim distance. “That still doesn’t explain why Kiwani is down here.”
“Kiwani!” Calder yelled, assaulting Bayan’s eardrums. His voice echoed hollowly, morphing into an unrecognizable groan.
Bayan rubbed his ears and frowned. “Let’s split up. This labyrinth could spread under the entire mountain for all we know. Leave a flame mark on the corridors you’ve checked, and on the doorways too, if there are any.” Bayan cast his own light, and Eward did too. They all took a different direction, calling Kiwani’s name.
As he searched, Bayan encountered various rooms with storage space and little else. He found more dead ends than anything, but he didn’t waste time considering the reasons for them. He thought he heard a faint reply to his calls, but try as he might, he couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Letting his flame fade, he invoked Earth in the dark and cast Tremor again. Vibrations through his feet told him that there was a hollow beneath the floor. After a wondering curse, he peeled back the floor with the Earthcast of Claybank, then re-cast his torchlight.
Kiwani lay huddled in a narrow, shallow pit below him, wincing against his light behind a protective hand. She looked dusty and exhausted atop a thin blanket that curled at the edges of the coffin-sized hole, but she didn’t have any obvious injuries.
“How in Bhattara’s name—?” Bayan shouted to the others that he’d found her, then hopped down into his peeled floor and crouched just above her. He took her hands in his. “Are you hurt? How did you get here?”
Kiwani’s response was quiet, slow. “Dunno. Been a little crazy. Praying man wouldn’t shut up. You have any water?”
Eward and Calder pounded over to the edge of Bayan’s excavated floor and gaped in shock.
Bayan pulled Kiwani to her feet. “Eward, can you pull some water from this air?”
Kiwani was unsteady. By the time Bayan helped her back up to the main floor, Calder and Eward had formed a stone cup and squeezed enough moisture out of the air to fill it halfway. Kiwani gulped it down at once.
“We need to get her to Doc Theo—I mean, the Chantery,” Bayan said.
Kiwani licked her dry lips and swallowed several times in a row, getting every drop of water she could. “What about the praying man?”
“I don’t think—” he began, but Calder interrupted him.
“We all thought we knew what Kah was saying, too, dinna we?”
“Fine. You two take her out of here, and get her back to campus. I’ll look for this praying man.” Bhattara, how many tortured souls are buried in this ancient labyrinth? Is this the Waarden version of the Endless Shores? He hoped not. The Waarden hell seemed far worse than the afterlife his own people looked forward to.
Eward and Calder escorted Kiwani back in the direction they’d come. Bayan hopped back down into Kiwani’s would-be coffin and squatted down. She heard a praying man. That means he must be close.
A quick Wind spell revealed currents of air passing through small holes in the walls of the coffin-sized pit. While it was encouraging that whoever put Kiwani down there hadn’t meant to kill her, Bayan also knew that someone had, in fact, put her down there. Shoving aside his angry questions, he concentrated on listening, and heard faint breathing noises nearby. He had to release his Flame magic so he could use Earth magic to peel away the stone on the side of the pit—Hexing Earth and Flame at the same time would be really useful right now!—then he re-lit his surroundings and peered through the hole he’d just made. Another ventilated pit lay encased in stone, and within it huddled a ball of rags.
Bayan’s eyes widened.
Shortly thereafter, he raised Timbool to the surface at the edge of the evergreen garden. He stood up in the middle of his avatar’s back, and the man he’d rescued slumped against him, semi-conscious. A quick glance along the road revealed that Calder had waited behind for him.
His friend jogged over and slid into Timbool's back to support the freed prisoner while Bayan controlled the avatar. “Well, shock me in the arse; you did find someone else.” The stone dog rose to the surface and trotted up the road at a swift pace. Bayan’s group caught up to Eward and Kiwani before the Hall of Seals, so Bayan stopped and offered them a ride.
The jostling of the stone avatar soon woke the raggedy man from his daze. Upon realizing that he was outside in the open air, the ex-prisoner cried out in a hoarse voice and scrambled to the bottom of Timbool’s seating pit, covering his head and begging in thickly accented Waarden to be put back.
“Sir, you’re all right.” Eward tried to comfort the terrified passenger. “You’re safe now. No one will hurt you here.”
“They bloody will,” Calder said, his voice oddly chill. “That bloody fool’s a Tuathi.”
Bayan felt his eyes widen in shock. “A Tuathi? Here?”
Calder nodded and gave him a bitter smile. “We Dunfarroghan don’t trust them half so much as we trust each other.”
Which was to say, they didn’t trust them at all; Bayan knew the Dunfarroghan prided themselves on their ability to take advantage of anyone, including each other, when it suited their purposes.
“M’ family… ” Speaking seemed to drag the Tuathi man to the brink of exhaustion.
“Are probably calling you seven kinds of fool for getting lost in the heart of the empire,” Calder finished in a callous tone.
“Calder!” Eward scolded. Of the Tuathi, he asked, “Is your family nearby?”
The man shook his head. “Lost, taken… I have tae stay hidden. They’ll be punished.”
Bayan and Eward exchanged worried glances. Calder frowned and looked out across the valley. Kiwani stared blankly ahead.
“Let’s get you healed
first,” Bayan said.
“Nae, nae. Hide me again, please. I beg you. Anywhere, anywhere. Doona let anyone see.”
“But the chanters can help you,” Eward pressed.
The man shook his head, causing tremors to spread through his entire body. “I dinna see his face. The man who had me. He could be anywhere. He has friends, he says to me. Friends who will hurt me children. Please!”
Eward looked at Bayan. “Where? Our room?”
“I don’t think he’ll come to campus at all.” Bayan thought desperately, and a wild new possibility came to him. “Maybe one of the cold houses on the outskirts. There are some built distantly on purpose. They have stoves and everything. Listen. Eward, you take Kiwani to the Chantery. Calder, get Tarin to bring some clean clothes for her to wear. I’ll take our new guest up to the cold houses and fetch some food and water, and some medicines if I can think of a way to nab some. I’ll meet you at the headmaster’s office.”
“Headmaster?”
“We have to tell him that someone took Kiwani. He needs to find out what’s going on around here. And with him being both a Master Duelist and the Headmaster of the Academy, don’t you think it should be him that we tell?”
Eward shook his head. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. We have no idea who took this man and Kiwani, or why.”
Calder barked a disbelieving laugh. “Are you really saying you think the most powerful duelist in the empire has stooped to kidnapping? Whatever for?”
Bayan looked at Eward. “Calder’s right. He’s the one we need to see. Go. I’ll meet you later.”
Timbool paused, and Calder, Eward, and Kiwani stepped out of the dog and rounded the corner to campus. Bayan ordered Timbool toward the cliff. “Hang on tight,” he told the injured stranger. Timbool clawed his way up the eroded cliff that edged the road. The steep angle pushed Bayan and his passenger back to near-horizontal positions. Though Bayan had tried the maneuver before and was certain he wouldn’t slide out and tumble back down to the road, the old Tuathi’s eyes went wide with terror, and he clung to the edge of the seat shelf with weathered, scraped hands. Bayan tried to assure him that everything would be well, but he wasn’t sure the man understood through his terror.
Traitor Savant (Second Seal of the Duelists) Page 8