Chapter 28
All of the academy's students were up before the sun on the morning of the spring equinox. They assembled in the practice hall, whispering in groups of three or four, shivering in the chilly air of the early morning; the second years because they had to be, the first years simply curious, although they were herded out of the way before anything interesting happened.
The second years knew this was going to be harder, or at least more complicated, than the simple knock-out fights of the winter contest – but anything beyond that was guesswork. By all accounts, the rules changed every year, but that didn't stop them from speculating about what they might be in for.
After what seemed like an inordinate wait, Ragal came in to the hall, and clapped his hands to get their attention. The students fell silent.
"This contest will begin at sunrise," he said. "So we don't have much time, but thankfully the rules are simple. I have here a list of challenges for you." He held a large roll of parchment above his head. "The tasks fall under four distinct themes, and each theme contains seven challenges, of increasing difficulty. As you move on to each harder challenge, you'll need information from the previous challenge in that theme in order to complete it, and to make your lives a little more interesting, the challenges are physically spread around the Association's grounds."
He extracted a large map from the roll of papers, and pinned it to the wall. The map covered most of the grounds around the academy, an area of several square miles. There were various numbers dotted around, mostly in the forests, though one digit in the middle of the lake immediately caught Eleanor's interest, and a small number were clustered near the buildings.
"Each number represents the location of one challenge, with different colours for different themes. Remember that challenges from any given theme must be completed in order. You won't be able to start with the higher scores, so you'll need to plan your route carefully.
"You will be ranked on both depth and breadth. Each challenge has a points value, with the points increasing as the challenges get harder. Only your highest-scoring result from each theme will be counted, and for any theme in which you don't complete even stage one, you'll lose one point. To succeed you'll need a solid strategy, and you mustn't neglect your timing, because if you're not back in this hall before the sun dips beneath the horizon you will be disqualified, irrespective of how many points you may have gathered."
He glanced up at the windows, where pink sunlight was now beginning to filter into the hall. "And now, you may begin."
He unrolled the list of challenges and pinned it beside the map, before stepping clear to let the students read.
Eleanor scanned the information. The individual challenges all had cryptic names, but she wasn't going to waste time second-guessing what each might stand for when that was probably irrelevant – what mattered were the themes. Projectiles, that was her most obvious strength, she'd be fine with Tracking, and Locks was also a possibility, she'd always been reasonable with a set of picks. Poisons was the one she needed to avoid. There was nothing that sounded like fighting, presumably because their hand-to-hand skills had been tested already. It was nice not to have to think about the others for once.
There was a scoring chart alongside the list of challenges, giving details of the points for each stage. One point for stage one, three points for stage two, six points for stage three... all the way up to twenty-eight points for stage seven, if the day was long enough for anyone to get that far.
She turned her attention next to the map. The spacing of the tasks across the grounds seemed to be a key element if she wanted to avoid wasting too much time running around, but the tasks from different themes were all mixed up, as were the different stages. Whatever strategy she went for, there was no way to avoid going back over the same ground, but somehow she needed to decide whether it would be better to complete the harder tasks in her favourite themes or do more of the easier ones. She wondered how they were supposed to judge the relative complexity of the different tasks and different stages before even seeing them. But perhaps that was part of the challenge.
Before she'd even finished reading the list she'd heard a couple of students already jogging out of the hall. By the time she'd memorised the position of every number on the map and decided on a starting strategy, only Daniel was apparently still thinking.
"Good luck," she said, then made her way outside without waiting for a response, and sat down to fasten her spikes to her shoes.
She jogged first to the first-stage challenge in the Projectiles theme; that was an obvious place to start, she was so confident that it would be her strongest area. Also, it was a long way from any of the others, and the second-stage Projectiles was near to the start of the first Tracking task. By the time she'd done those three, she reasoned, she'd have a good feel for how the day was going to work out, and since she didn't know where the Tracking route would take her, it would be hard to plan further ahead.
The ground was soft from recent rainfall, and her feet slipped a little even with the spikes. She saw none of the others as she made her way into the forest.
The first Projectiles task was a very simple setup: a metal box was suspended high in the air by a number of chains stretched tightly between the trees, and there were eight identical targets irregularly placed around the sides of the cube. There were no explicit instructions, but Eleanor guessed she had to hit them all. Certainly there was nothing to choose between them.
She tried with a blowpipe first, worried about damaging her knives on the metal; the dart caught on the fabric of the target and hung there, but nothing seemed to happen. Maybe it needed more force.
She stepped back, pulled her throwing knives from their sheathes, and flicked one of them up towards the target. It hit hard and bounced off, but this time something had changed: the target had popped out by over a finger's width. She threw another knife, causing the second target to pop out in a similar fashion, before going to retrieve both knives from the grass.
She was lining up her third shot when she noticed the low clicking sound coming from the box. A few moments later, two loud pops disturbed her. She looked back at the targets she'd so recently hit; but now, there was no sign she'd achieved anything.
Clearly, time was of the essence.
She pulled out six more knives and tucked them into her belt, lining them up ready for use. She took a deep breath and started firing knives at targets, running in a large circle around the clearing to take aim at the different sides of the box.
As soon as her final knife hit the eighth target, something fell from the bottom of the box, and all the targets clicked back into their original positions. She caught her knife as it fell, then went to see what had dropped to the ground.
It turned out to be a wooden token, about the size of her palm, with Projectiles 1 inscribed on one side, and three mysterious words on the other: CHOOSE THE SQUARES. Presumably that would make more sense once she got to the second task. She pocketed the token, collected up her knives, and started running between the trees.
At the second Projectiles station, a fast-flowing stream prevented her getting closer than about fifty paces from the target board, and would also stop her retrieving any knives or stars she might use to hit the targets. It would have to be darts, then – assuming these targets would respond to so light a touch. There were around fifty small targets spread across the board, with shapes divided roughly equally between circles, squares, triangles, and diamonds.
She pulled out her pipe and aimed at the most central of the square targets.
As with the first task, the target popped out by a small amount once she'd hit it, and she wondered whether she was working against the same sort of timer. If so, that would account for what made this task harder, since there were twice as many targets to hit before the time elapsed.
She soon found her answer.
The first time she missed a target and caught the board to its side, a loud pop resulted as the three
targets she'd previously hit clicked back to their starting positions.
It wasn't time that mattered, then. It was precision. Or possibly, precision and timing.
And she needed to successfully reach all of the targets before she ran out of darts, or she'd have to waste a ridiculous amount of time going back to restock.
She managed to reset the board twice more before she finally succeeded in hitting all the targets without any mistakes. The second token was catapulted across the stream towards the ground at her feet, and she caught it just before it rolled into the water. She pocketed it without bothering to read the clue, and sprinted to the start of the first Tracking challenge, just a few yards further into the forest.
She got to the clearing where the task had been marked on the map, and stopped short. Whereas the Projectiles challenges had been obvious, here there was nothing. Her first thought was to wonder whether one of the others had been here before her and hidden the whole setup to stop anyone else competing in the theme, but she quickly realised the truth was a lot more subtle. This was a test of Tracking. She needed to find the tracks.
She dropped to her knees and began to examine the ground, looking for anything out of place. They'd have to have done something more durable than simple footprints, given the number of students running around all day in the forest, but she wasn't really sure what she was looking for. She just hoped she'd recognise it when she saw it.
She worked outwards in small circles from the middle of the clearing, feeling the ground with her hands while looking for anything out of the ordinary. It didn't take her that long to find it; a trail of small glass beads led between the trees.
At the end of the trail, the tokens were tucked within the hollow of a rotten tree trunk. She pulled one out and read the reverse before stowing it safely in the pouch at her waist: FOLLOW THE BLUE PATH. At least the instructions were all proving quite straightforward; nothing cryptic yet.
The trail of beads had taken her to the edge of the forest and along the lake; now she had to decide what to do next. Comparing the second Projectiles task to the first, she felt confident that she'd get more points by pushing up through the levels rather than trying to cover everything, even with the minus points. It would also mean she had fewer choices at the end of each task, so less chance of getting bogged down with planning – that could only be good for speed.
The third Projectiles task was close, too.
When she reached it, she found it consisted of a set of moving targets, each of which was attached to a long iron rod which sometimes swung like a pendulum, and sometimes slid from side to side or up and down. The clue she'd picked up from the second task read simply WAIT FOR THE PATTERN.
Eleanor watched the movement of the targets. It looked random at first – she wouldn't have suspected there was any pattern if she hadn't been told to look. Eventually, however, she realised the targets were all following the same extended sequence of movements, although at different speeds.
But to wait for it? She didn't know what that meant. Wait for it to do what?
She pulled out a knife and aimed at one of the targets. When she hit it, its movement abruptly stopped. So far, so good – probably. She shrugged to herself, and flicked another knife at another target. It too came to a juddering halt... then a moment later, both targets began to move again.
She chewed on the hilt of her knife and watched the targets carving their swirling paths through the air. What was she supposed to do? She stopped the first target again, and waited, wondering whether it would start again on its own. Apparently not.
She threw another knife; this wasn't like the previous task, she could get her weapons back, so it was better to be doing something and see if she happened upon something that worked. This time, the second target stopped and didn't restart. The two static targets taunted her, a pair of parallel bars sticking out while the others continued to move.
Suddenly it struck her: they were parallel. Of course! That was what was different this time. Quite by chance, she'd stopped them both at the same point in the pattern. And they'd stayed stopped.
She picked off the targets one by one, after that, waiting until each one was approaching the same position before she released her knife. She found she had to watch each target through a couple of cycles before she could tune in to the speed of its movements – an essential prerequisite to catching it at the right point in the cycle.
Once she'd managed to stop all the targets, the Projectiles 3 token dropped from somewhere above her head, before – one by one – the targets started to move again. The clue for the next task said MIND YOUR HEAD.
She was only about a mile from the second stage Tracking task, while the fourth Projectiles was on the far side of the lake, so she ran to the start of the Tracking route.
It took her a while to find the right path to follow; she found a few red fibres caught on a bramble, and some white ones in the grass, but the start of the blue path was concealed in the bark of a tree. Once she'd found it, though, following the trail of blue fibres took her up a particularly gnarled tree trunk, and on to a tricky climb through the canopy, where she eventually came to a stack of tokens in an abandoned bird's nest.
The back of the token read DON'T FORGET TO LOOK UP.
She dropped out of the tree and ran straight to the third task in the Tracking theme, which had been marked as starting right in the middle of the academy courtyard. With the words of the clue in her mind, she started by scanning the rooftops, but there was nothing obvious up there, so she knelt to examine the floor as usual.
It felt strangely exposed in the middle of the courtyard, after all the previous tasks under cover of the trees, and she couldn't shake the feeling that someone might be watching from one of the windows.
What she found was a loose cobblestone, and then another four stones further out. Continuing in the same direction she found that she could wobble the stones with her feet to find the path. When she ran out of trail near the wall of the practice hall, she tried lifting the cobble to look for tokens, but there was nothing except earth underneath it.
Remembering the clue, she looked again at the roof above her head, but she couldn't see anything. When she started climbing to get a better look, though, she almost fell as she trusted her weight to a brick which moved beneath her. A little more exploration and she found another wobbly brick a little further up, and then another. The path led her up, and then across the roof-tiles which were also loose in places. Eventually she found the next token inside the chimney stack; it read START 50 YARDS NORTH OF THE 4.
It could only be referring to the 4 on the map which marked the supposed beginning of that task. But before she could do that she had to complete the fourth Projectiles task, which was apparently taking place inside a nearby barn.
She opened the door cautiously, wondering what traps might have been sprung, but nothing seemed to happen as she stepped inside. The target board was suspended from the ceiling, with five small targets arranged in a cross formation. The board itself was suspended and rotating gently on the end of a chain.
It made sense to have to mind her head; to get a good shot she'd need to be underneath the target, and that meant every knife she threw would be falling back towards her.
She flicked the first knife and stepped back, then heard a click from one of the haystacks to her right. She ducked only just in time to avoid the circular blade which came flying towards her at eye-level. On any of the lads, it would've been at the height of their throat.
By the time she'd got back to her feet, the timer on the board had expired, and the target had reset. She drew a long dagger for her left hand, lined up five throwing knives, and started to throw. For each target she hit, one of the circular blades came towards her, and she had to deflect them to avoid having her face sliced open. But to reach all the targets in time, she couldn't afford to stop throwing.
The token was fired towards her after she hit the fifth target; she knocked it away with her dagg
er before she realised what she'd done, and had to go and scrabble in the hay to retrieve it.
Then she made her way back to the edge of the woods, to the fourth challenge in the Tracking theme which featured a trail of tiny arrows chalked on trees. The trail led her deep into the forest, and she wondered whether she should be heading for stage five Tracking next if she finished in time. It wasn't much further away, and these challenges didn't seem to be getting harder at quite the same rate as the Projectiles ones.
As she jogged through a sparse area of the forest, looking ahead to see if she could spot the next marker, she felt something brush against her leg. Before she even had chance to look what it might have been, she was upside down, hoisted into the air by a rope around her ankle. She cursed herself for being so careless.
The trap had lifted her high off the ground, but not high enough that she could reach the branches above. She reached up to grip the rope above her leg and pulled herself up, climbing the rope which held her, until she reached the top. She cut the rope away from her ankle and climbed down to the ground again.
Evidently she was going to have to be more careful than she'd thought.
As she continued onwards she looked, now, not only for the next marker on the trail but also for any signs of hidden rope traps. She'd got away lightly this time, but there was no telling what else they might've set up, and it might not always be so easy to get down.
The path looped and doubled back, taking her on an inconveniently lengthy trail, and she was starting to wonder, somewhat impatiently, if she was nearing the end yet when the ground disappeared from under her feet. She gave an involuntary yelp as she fell through what had appeared to be solid ground, but turned out to be a thin layer of sticks, moss, and leaves. Soil and leaves trickled down on to her head as she sat in the bottom of the pit.
With the spikes on her shoes, and a couple of knives to generate hand-holds, it wasn't too difficult to climb out, though the earth at the sides of the hole was crumbly and she slipped back a couple of times.
She reached the end of the trail without further complications, retrieved the token from beneath a pile of leaves, and considered her options. It was too early to go back... she should just about have time to complete one of the stage five tasks before sunset – but which one? If there were going to be hidden traps, maybe Tracking wasn't as easy as she'd thought... plus, Projectiles stage five was nearer, and probably more likely that she could rush it if necessary.
She was just about to jog across to see what the fifth task was, when she caught sight of a familiar mop of blond hair moving through the trees. Daniel. She wondered where he was up to, replaying the map in her head... but of course, the stage three Poisons task was set up just around the corner. As she was about to run off, she hesitated; something was troubling her.
It took her a moment to identify the cause of her concern: if Daniel was only just about to start the third Poisons task, when that was clearly his strongest subject, he must have gone for a much broader strategy.
If he was doing two themes at stage 4 then he was just progressing quite slowly, and she'd beat him if she got her stage five. But it seemed unlikely he would have needed to spend so much time planning for such a comparatively simple strategy. On the other hand, if he'd gone for all four themes up to stage three... She added up both sets of scores in her head. It was close, but she was definitely on the wrong side, even if she managed to complete stage five Projectiles before the sun dipped below the horizon. Those bloody minus points. But the first stage tasks for Poisons and Locks were both miles away, there was absolutely no way she'd have time to reach either of them after completing one of the stage five tasks.
But she couldn't afford to finish behind Daniel, of all people, when he'd beaten her in the first contest. She couldn't let him increase his lead.
She'd started to creep forwards before she really understood what she was doing, the idea dawned so slowly, but the more she thought about it the more certain she became that this was the only way to guarantee coming in ahead of him. When she thought she'd gone about far enough, and then a few paces extra for luck, she scrambled up the nearest big tree. Still taking care not to make any sounds that might give away her presence, she began to crawl along the thickest branch that would take her in the right direction.
They were in a dense area of the forest, and she'd been right to assume she could make her way forward in the canopy; with only a couple of false starts, she managed to find herself a position with an unobstructed view of where Daniel was working.
There was a set of vials in front of him, and as she watched he poured one into another, turning the liquid green, and then a few drops from that into the next. The contents of the third vial turned orange, and he set it to one side before turning to grind a few grains and powders with the pestle and mortar. He emptied the contents into a beaker and heated it over a small burner, until it formed a fine white powder.
There was a large metal box to the side of the workbench, with a wheel on the front and two small funnels sticking out of the top. Daniel poured a few drops of the orange liquid into one of the funnels, shook about half of the powder into the other, then turned the wheel.
Eleanor wondered what he was doing, but a moment later the box ejected a wooden token from its base. Whatever it was, he'd clearly succeeded.
Daniel picked up the token and she squinted to try and read the words, a task made harder because he didn't bother taking the time to read them himself. FIRST MAKE THE ANTIDOTE was what she made out before he pocketed the token and jogged away, but it looked like there might have been more words beneath his fingers. She could only hope that would be enough to get her going.
She had some difficulty remembering where the stage four Poisons task was located; it wasn't one she'd ever have dreamed of needing. But although her recollection was hazy, she was confident that Daniel wasn't going in even vaguely that direction. That confirmed her suspicions, then. He must have opted for breadth in his strategy, and that meant she needed to complete stage four Poisons herself to beat him.
Even as she ran across the forest, she wondered if she was being stupid to think she stood any chance of succeeding, but she had to try. It was the only way she could possibly come in ahead of Daniel, and if she didn't do this she'd just be letting him increase his lead. If she could get one point ahead of him from this contest, they'd be level going in to the third and final stage.
She slowed down once she reached what she thought was the right area, towards the northern shore of the lake, and started looking around for anything that could be the challenge station. It didn't take her long to find it, though it was tucked away in a dip in the ground.
FIRST MAKE THE ANTIDOTE. But the antidote to what? She wished she'd been able to see the whole message.
There was a low work surface set up with a number of jars and bottles, mostly unlabelled, and she sat cross-legged on the ground to examine the task. There were no obvious instructions, but there was a metal box similar to the one she'd watched Daniel open... judging from what she'd seen, they were fitted with some special kind of lock that would only open once the right mixtures were poured into the funnels. She needed to work out what would trigger the mechanism of this box.
Her contemplation was disturbed by a sting at her neck; she batted at what she thought was a fly, but instead found a tiny dart caught in her skin.
She pulled it out and examined it, wondering what she'd been stung with. Presumably something that would impair her performance if she didn't deal with it. She looked at the various bottles and jars, recognising amongst the contents whispernut seeds, powders of hemlock and barren-root, and spelwood essence. Two empty beakers were labelled 'Sourfire' and 'Heart-Freeze', so presumably she had to make those mixtures to unlock the box. Thankfully, those were both things she'd succeeded with in the past. Unfortunately, though, both could also be used as an antidote – they each counteracted a different class of poison, and she didn't know what had been on th
at dart.
She was sure Daniel would know some clever test to find out – but she couldn't waste her time thinking about how much better he'd be at this task. He was off doing something else. She only hoped she could be lucky here to stand a chance of exceeding his score.
That thought brought her focus straight back to the task at hand. There was no time to lose.
Had the dart been doped with some kind of sedative or paralytic, in which case she needed to make the sourfire first, or was it more likely to be a stimulant, in which case she'd need the heart-freeze? If she took the wrong one, she'd make herself a lot worse. And how long did she have before the effects of the drug really kicked in and affected her performance?
Her head was already starting to ache as she measured out a small quantity of vespin powder into the 'Sourfire' jar, but that told her nothing useful. And unless the symptoms quickly gave her a clue one way or the other, she'd simply have to make them both, and wait until she was sufficiently afflicted by the poison to be able to identify it. She added six drops of merrilwort to the beaker and started to stir it in, then started working through the other ingredients in turn.
The clue worried her, though. If she, with her limited skill, would have time to make them both before she passed out, why would anyone need the clue at all?
She stopped mixing, took a few deep breaths, and put her fingers to her wrist to measure her heartbeat. As she'd thought: her pulse was racing. It wasn't entirely conclusive – it could just be her nerves getting the better of her – but perhaps it was enough to suggest she should focus on the heart-freeze first. She'd have to start again with the sourfire, though, if she stopped in the middle of making it.
She hesitated for a moment, then opened the hemlock. A tiny dose should be enough; if she was right about what she was experiencing, this would alleviate the symptoms for a while, and if she was wrong, it would only make it slightly worse.
She sprinkled a small quantity of the powder on to her tongue, swallowed, and continued with preparing the sourfire. She wasn't sure if it was the hemlock or her imagination that caused her headache to ease; she knew she could talk herself out of feeling pain, sometimes.
Once she'd finished mixing up the sourfire, and put it to one side to settle, she picked out what she thought were the right ingredients for heart-freeze. It had been such a long time since she'd made it, and she could only hope her memories were accurate. There were plenty of ingredients on the bench which she wasn't going to use at all, but presumably that was just designed to make sure she knew what she was doing.
She mixed the ingredients together, heated it briefly, and studied the result with a critical eye. It looked awful, nothing like the smooth paste she was hoping for, but no amount of stirring and heating was making any difference. And the sun was getting worryingly low.
She took up one of the measuring spoons, forced herself to swallow a mouthful of the lumpy mixture, and then turned her attention to the metal box. There were no markings by the funnels, so presumably it didn't matter which was which. She poured most of the sourfire into the left-hand funnel, upended the botched heart-freeze into the right-hand side, and closed her eyes before turning the wheel which would mix them, not even wanting to think what might happen if she got it wrong.
A few low clicking noises came from the box, and then it ejected the token. She seized it and leapt to her feet, knocking the jar of vespin to the ground, but didn't bother to stop and set it straight – it was too late for anyone else to have a chance, anyway. She turned and ran, sprinting as fast as she could around the lake, trying not to let herself think about how close the sun was getting to the horizon. The last thing she needed was an extra distraction. Her head was pounding, she was dripping with sweat, and panting with overpowering thirst. She longed to stop and scoop up water from the lake, but there wasn't time.
She sprinted through the double doors of the practice hall and brought herself to an abrupt halt in the middle of the room, wondering if she was too late. She glanced at Ragal, and he waved her towards the end of the hall, where a board was set up with a list of the students' names, each of which had a wooden ledge alongside it with and a set of four small notches for holding one token from each theme.
Eleanor looked at the numbers already displayed, and was about to reach for her own tokens when she was suddenly overcome with dizziness and nausea. She sank to her knees and struggled to stop herself vomiting.
"Are you okay?" Mikhail asked.
"I will be," she said, forcing a smile. "Just got poisoned – nothing serious."
He helped her to her feet, and she turned her attention back to the board. As she'd predicted, Daniel had stage three across all four themes. Mikhail had two at stage three and two at stage two, Jorge had stage six in Tracking and a couple of others at stage one, Mack had Locks 5 and the others at stage one, and Paul and Charles had a couple each at stage four.
Only Sebastien and Fred had managed to disqualify themselves by failing to make it back before sunset. Their rows were empty, as was hers... but it was time to do something about that.
She pulled the stack of tokens from her pocket and placed the three important ones onto the board: Tracking 4; Projectiles 4; Poisons 4. Unless she'd seriously misunderstood the scoring, that guaranteed her victory.
"As you may have noticed, the sun has set," Ragal said, walking across to the board as Eleanor stepped away. "Your colleagues will evidently not be joining us. Has anyone here yet to put his claim on the board?"
The assembled students were silent, waiting.
"The final scores, then. It appears that third place goes to Jorge for his admirable progress in Tracking, with a final score of twenty-two points."
Everyone clapped politely, although Jorge looked far from happy with the result.
"Second place goes to Daniel for his comprehensive achievement across the stage three challenges, scoring twenty-four points in total."
They clapped some more.
"And first place today, for an impressive three categories at stage four, goes to Eleanor, who scores twenty-nine points."
She felt a silly grin creeping across her face as the applause continued. She'd done it. First place! She'd actually done it.
"As you know, the winner of today's contest gets four points towards the council race," Ragal continued. "Second place is worth three, and third is worth two. Combined with the scores from the winter contest, that leaves Eleanor and Daniel jointly leading on six points each, with Jorge just behind on three. The three of you will progress to the summer contest."
Eleanor didn't hear the rest of his speech, if there was more; she was overcome with dizziness again, and woke up in the herbalist's lab, only to be told there was no way she was allowed to go for dinner. Celebrations would have to come later.
Rebellion (Chronicles of Charanthe #1) Page 28