Greystone continued his inspection, peering at the inscriptions on the walls. He walked around a pedestal that was in the center of the room so many times, I thought he’d wear a groove into the floor. He spent so long looking at the sarcophagus, I thought he’d fallen asleep on his feet.
Each of us seemed to be bursting at the seams with questions. I could see it in the widened eyes of the others, the way they snapped to attention every time Greystone looked like he might be coming back in our direction. But nobody stepped forward to speak with him. No one disturbed his search. That was because Greystone was still royally ticked off.
“What do you think this place is?” whispered Calvin.
“Why are you whispering?” asked Blade in a normal voice.
Calvin looked around nervously like he was in a library. “Out of respect, dude. This is a place of eternal rest.”
Normally I’d be more than willing to join in with their squabble. But ever since we’d arrived, my attention had been transfixed on the wall above the sarcophagus. It held a symbol carved into it, a globe that tapered up into a point. But the red light that splashed across it from the torches couldn’t fool me; that symbol was supposed to be blue. I’d seen it on the pillar that had given me my powers when I first arrived to Midrealm. It was carved into the back of my chair in the great hall in the Runehold, it was set deep into the belt buckle I was wearing. The symbol for water.
Tess sidled over foot by foot, looking like she was trying to sneak up on me. She tugged on my sleeve and pointed to the symbol. “Why’s that in here?”
“Like I know?” I snorted. “Ask Calvin.”
“Your vote of confidence is overwhelming, but for the last time, I do not know everything,” complained Calvin.
“It’s so cute that you think it’s going to be the last time we ask you stuff like that,” Raven said. She reached out and ruffled Calvin’s hair.
He dodged away, bringing up his hands like he was going to unleash some kung fu. “Don’t mess with the ‘do. I will break you.”
“You wouldn’t hit a cripple,” she said lightly, pointing to the bandage on her leg. She’d been hit by an arrow in Elladorn the day before. Another reason why what she did was stupid.
It was still crazy to me how different Raven looked here in Midrealm, as opposed to on Earth where she was still all goth’ed up. The makeup had been washed off her first night in Midrealm, never to be replaced. Her Realm Keeper’s robes looked just like the rest of ours, and the pink dye was slowly fading out of her shortish black hair, which she could no longer spike.
“Do you think whoever that girl is in there used to be a Realm Keeper?” Tess asked. It seemed out of left field, like a lot of the things Tess said, until I saw her nodding toward the sarcophagus.
“Could be,” Sara replied. She’d been mostly silent since we had arrived. Sarah was never the first to offer an opinion or to speculate. Instead she’d wait, listening to our ideas, waiting patiently through our bickering and only forming a conclusion after she’d heard all sides of whatever we were talking about. It reminded me of how she acted when she was tutoring me. She didn’t “teach,” at least not the way that most teachers did. She wouldn’t recite facts, expecting me to remember them. She’d ask questions, forcing me to find the answers for myself. It was one of the things that made her so amazing at it.
Now she turned to Cara, standing beside her, and invited yet another viewpoint. “Cara, what do you think about all this?” She turned to the rest of the Runegard around us. “Have any of you ever seen anything like this?”
Darren’s mouth opened, but Cara looked at him sharply. He hesitated before saying lamely, “I’m sure Greystone will know what it’s all about.”
“Hey,” I said. “You know something we don’t?”
Darren’s mouth twisted. He dropped his gaze from mine, suddenly seeming to find a speck of dirt on his boot that had to be removed. Cara stepped in to save him. “We are not advisors,” she said firmly. “We are here only for your protection. If there is something to be known about this place, Greystone will know it. Anything we would say would be conjecture, perhaps worse than useless.”
“I say conject away,” said Blade. “It’s better than the nothing we’ve got right now.”
“Dude, ‘conject’ isn’t a word,” Calvin pointed out.
“He’s right, though,” I said. “Right now we’ve got nothing. Maybe your theories will give us some ideas.”
“Ideas are entirely unnecessary,” said Greystone suddenly, making me jump. He’d approached from behind me while I had my back turned. It was hardly unusual. Often times I’d be arguing with Melaine, my Runegard, about my training and then suddenly find him standing there, listening to every word of complaint. He wouldn’t call me an idiot, and he wouldn’t tell me to get back to work. He’d just sit there, staring at me with his beady blue eyes until my protests ran out of steam and I went off to my practice room, defeated.
“Does that mean you know what this place is?” asked Raven. Her voice had too much force in it. Her face looked too calm, like every muscle was straining to hold itself in place. She’d practically cried when Greystone had reamed her earlier.
“I know many things, most of them unfit to share,” Greystone sniffed. “If you knew half of them, you would never sleep again. I could describe creatures that would haunt your nightmares for eternity. Well, except for this one,” Greystone said disdainfully, pointing at Calvin. “Lord Calvin would probably request to see them immediately, and ask if they could be kept as a pet.”
“So you do know what this place is?” Calvin asked, smiling. Apparently he took Greystone’s words as a compliment instead of the insult they were intended to be. “Who’s the person in the sarcophagus?” Calvin pressed. “Was it a Realm Keeper?”
Greystone scoffed. “Though I’m sure it will bruise your ego tremendously to find this out, we don’t build tombs this size for every Realm Keeper who passes away. If we did, all of Midrealm would be littered with great cathedrals to those who have died in its defense — much worthier Realm Keepers than you six have proven to be, I might add.” He gave Raven a particularly acidic look. She wilted under the glare. Sarah’s mouth set in a hard line, and Tess flipped her hair from her right eye to cover her left instead.
“Hey man, we’ve done a lot,” I said, coming to Raven’s defense. “We rebuilt the barrier. We took out a hellion. Heck, Raven took out that rider by herself.”
“You are fledglings,” Greystone complained. “You should all be at least somewhat proficient with your powers at this point. Instead you flail and muck about like children with new toys. You think magic is all fireballs and lightning bolts. You fail to understand even the most rudimentary principles of control, as if you believe that the Free Kingdoms have all the time in the world to wait for you to come into your full potential.”
“Enough!” I shouted, so suddenly that it scared even me. The volume of my voice made it echo crazily around the chamber. The Runegard tensed up, each of their hands straying involuntarily to the hilts of their swords. Even Greystone stopped short, his mouth snapping shut in surprise.
“Miles…” Sarah cautioned.
I took two deep breaths before I continued. “Listen man, we’re trying. Every one of us is making the best we can of a bad situation. We’re making an earnest effort, here. But no matter how hard we work, you run us down. You tell us that we’re useless, we’re not learning fast enough, we’re nothing compared to the Realm Keepers who came before. It’s not helpful.”
“I’ve been teaching the — ” Greystone said gruffly.
“Don’t interrupt me,” I snapped. Greystone’s mouth closed, his eyes narrowing. “I know you’ve taught Realm Keepers for nine hundred years. I guess you learned how to teach in the eleventh century or whatever. Well, the rest of humanity’s learned a lot since then, and what we’ve learned is you can’t create a good student by telling them over and over again that they’re a useless piece of scum. Yo
u’ll just end up with someone who believes you. So knock it off. I’m not telling you to hold our hands. Just stop trying to convince us that we’re not worthy to lick dung off your boot.”
“Miles, that’s enough,” said Sarah.
I ignored her. “We’ve only been here for two weeks, and you expect us to make tidal-waves and grow mountains. This is harder than it looks — and don’t tell me you know how hard it is, because you’re not a Realm Keeper.”
I might have heard Calvin whisper, “Oh, snap,” under his breath, but it’s also possible I imagined it.
Greystone’s scowl grew deeper. His eyebrows drew closer together. But he didn’t interrupt, and he didn’t immediately lash back with what I was sure was the first thing on his mind — which might have been a stream of flame instead of words.
“You six are not the only ones I am responsible for,” he finally growled. “I owe my protection to all of Midrealm. If you want a wet nurse, I regret to inform you that I am the wrong wizard for the job. If you wish to be coddled through your education, then find someone new to teach you. There is a man in Stanchion who I have heard can light a fire by chanting for an hour. Perhaps he would be a better person to instruct you.”
“We are grateful for your help,” Sarah began.
“That is a lie,” Greystone snarled, his temper rising further. “You are all supremely ungrateful. Not only for my efforts, but for the lives of every woman and man in Midrealm that has been sacrificed to protect you and your precious True Earth. Yet you still cling to your lives there, coming here for a few scant hours and wasting away your hours with idleness.”
“It’s because that is my life!” I yelled at him. “Not this! No one made you give up your family and your future. You weren’t pulled from your life here in Midrealm and expected to suddenly fight evil. This is not normal for us!”
Greystone’s hand tightened on his staff, and the wood underneath his fingers dented inward. “Do not assume you know of my past, boy.”
The Runegard looked nervously at each other at the obvious drop of title.
“We are working hard,” Calvin spoke up.
“Oh, certainly, you are,” Greystone spat. “Because this world is your dream come true. A fairytale come to life. How grand for you, Lord Calvin. But for the rest of you, this is an unwanted burden, a distraction from the important things in your life. And what are they again? Attending class. Running about with your lovers, whispering sweet idiocies to each other in the night. I don’t know what the world you come from is like, but it must be a sad, terrible place if its children are all raised to be so irresponsible.”
He shoved through us all, warding us aside with a wave of his staff. He stopped at the tomb’s door, turning to stare at me with fire in his eyes.
“If you can be bothered to continue your training today, I suggest you all spend it in meditation. Spend your time determining what your role is in this war. I certainly don’t know any more.”
With another whirling turn, he disappeared through the doorway.
An hour later, I was sitting in my practice room. My “Danger Room,” as Calvin liked to call them. I was sitting cross-legged with my hands resting on my knees. The cold stone beneath me wouldn’t completely absorb my body heat, continuing to send a soft chill through my body no matter how long I sat there. Melaine was sitting behind me, her sword belt removed and the weapon leaning against a wall, picking at her nails with a knife.
In the center of the room, fifteen feet away, sat a goblet of water. I was holding the water up in the air with my mind, holding it in a perfect sphere. The crystal clear liquid showed me a warped view of the room beyond, twisting the already-circular room into a ball of refracted imagery.
I held the sphere. And held it. And held it some more. I tried to calm my mind, to free it from thoughts of home, of Midrealm, of the terrible fights I’d been in since I arrived here. Despite my best efforts, thoughts kept floating into my head. Most of them were about the scholarship. I needed a 3.0 GPA to qualify, but if I did, my whole tuition to USC was covered.
I sighed, giving up on clearing my mind, and began to twist the water into different shapes. I made a cube first — that was easy. I pinched the top plane to form a four-sided pyramid. Then connected two of the sides, making a three-sided pyramid. I brought the water toward me through the air, spinning it around slowly to inspect it.
Maybe I’d try something more complex. I drew the pyramid out into a cylinder, then expanded one end of it into a thick, rectangular block. Soon a perfectly-formed miniature battleaxe floated in the air before me. Concentrating once again, I cooled the temperature of the water, cooled it further, turned it to freezing. The axe turned to ice, dangling in the air.
I smiled, but in that moment my concentration faltered. The axe dropped from the air, crashing into the stone floor. The head snapped off as the handle shattered, sending tiny pieces of ice skittering across the floor.
“You’re supposed to hold the sphere,” Melaine sniped from behind me.
“Do you have any idea how boring it is to sit here and picture a ball?” I asked her.
“Do you have any idea how boring it is to sit here and watch you picture a ball?” she countered. “I’d sooner pick paint off the stables one flake at a time with my knife.”
“So leave,” I said sullenly. “I’m not going to be attacked here.”
“Is that an order?” she said.
When Melaine had been assigned to me, I’d wanted to trade. It was weird having a female as a bodyguard. Having Melaine hang around me all the time raised the hair on my neck and made me question every word I said before I said it. And she was always around, like a shadow, always looking after my safety.
Melaine had a nice, thin nose, light brown eyes and this crazy tattoo that ran from the front of her neck all the way up to her forehead. It was intricate, and it was always a struggle for me not to stare at it.
No matter how hard I tried to convince myself otherwise, she was pretty good-looking. If I’d told that to the others, they would have told me I was dumb and sexist and all the rest of it. They probably would have been right, but the facts were the facts.
My stomach churned every time I thought about telling Clarissa about Melaine. It was an idiotic thought. Clarissa would never know about Midrealm. But if Clarissa did find out, I knew she wouldn’t approve. She had enough problems with the cheerleaders that tried to hang out with me. Having this twenty-something girl literally watching over me as I slept would have been way over the line. But Greystone had insisted that Melaine be my bodyguard specifically, just like he’d insisted that Barius be assigned to Raven.
I realized how massive the silence was that had now stretched between Melaine’s question and my answer. “Go or stay,” I finally said. “I don’t care. But don’t tell me what to do. That is an order.”
Melaine stood up in a huff. “If it pleases my Lord, I’ll guard the door from the hallway instead,” she said. She left the room, slamming the huge metal door behind her.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I collected the shards of ice that were scattered over the floor, and brought them together in a pile and raised their temperature, turning them back into water. I formed the water into a sphere, lifting it into the air once more and bringing it to rest several inches above the cup in the center of the room. Then I sat there, staring into its liquid depths, clearing my mind for as long as I could.
Within minutes, I was spinning the water into a spiral in the air.
MILES
I SLOWLY CAME AWAKE IN my bed. I rolled my head around in a circle, trying to resist the urge to stay there. We woke in Midrealm with sixteen hours of sleep every day. Compared to that, waking up back on Earth with a mere eight hours just seemed insufficient.
But my school wasn’t going to attend itself. I rolled over with a slight groan and checked out the alarm clock.
Eight-thirty.
“Crud,” I groaned, shoving myself out of bed. I threw on a robe and
ran to the bathroom, but it was too late. The locked door handle rattled in my hand. Monica was already inside.
“Monica, I’ve got to get ready!” I shouted.
“You snooze, you lose!” her voice came from behind the locked door.
My head met the door with a thunk as I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. Monica was in junior high, but she already took forty-five minutes to get ready every morning. Shower, eyebrow plucking, makeup, all the thousand things girls think they have to do to their bodies every single day to meet some kind of standard. If she’d at least made it to high school before getting so full of herself, I probably would have been more understanding.
I grabbed my backup toothbrush from my bedroom and snuck quietly down the hall to my parents’ bedroom. It sounded quiet inside, so I poked my head through the door. They were gone. I snuck into the bathroom and began to brush my teeth. I hated having to skip a morning shower, but unless a miracle happened, I’d have to. No way Monica would be out in time. Besides, PE was first thing in the morning. I could use the locker room showers afterwards. I’d only have to feel grungy for a couple of hours.
“Running late?”
I jumped at the sudden sound of my dad’s voice, then looked at him sheepishly in the mirror. I spit out the foamy toothpaste in my mouth and rinsed. “Yeah, just a little,” I said, wiping my face with the towel. “Monica got in right before I did.”
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