Wyrmspire (Realm Keepers Book 2)

by Garrett Robinson

  “I was being cautious,” said Sarah testily.

  “Wait,” I said, raising a hand. “If you can bug and tap our lines, what’s to stop the Association from doing the same thing?”

  “They could, but they have no idea who you are,” said Anna flatly. “You can’t track everything that everyone says in the world and distill that into any sort of useful information. They’d never know where to start bugging or what conversations to start listening to. I only know because I found you before we left the Association.”

  “And what happens if they find us now?” I retorted. “You did. Why can’t they?”

  “Because I’m making sure they don’t,” she said. “That’s most of what I do every day—tracking their search patterns and diverting them into safe zones. They probably know I’m hindering their efforts, but they can’t do anything about it. I’m blocking them from the area of your parents, but just to make sure they don’t notice that blind spot, I’m creating a dozen more every day, all over the world.”

  “And what happens if they get a hacker better than you?”

  She sighed. “First of all, I’m not a ‘hacker.’ This isn’t the nineties. Second of all, it’s theoretically possible, but it’s highly unlikely. The initiation for an Association member is a lengthy process. And even if they bypass initiation, there are very, very few people out there who could override what I’m doing. That’s why the Association picked me in the first place, and why they never had the need to procure another ‘me.’ Simply put, I’m very, very, very good at what I do.”

  “I’m the best there is at what I do, and what I do best isn’t very nice,” said Calvin eagerly, looking around the table at the rest of us. “Right?”

  I gave him a blank look. “What?”

  To my surprise, Anna chuckled and reached across the table. “I got you, man. Up top.”

  Calvin gave her a high five, looking overjoyed. I rolled my eyes and noticed Sarah doing the same.

  “So what are we going to do?” asked Tess in her quiet voice.

  Briggs’ massive head swiveled to look at her, then rotated to stare at each of us in turn. He was so big, his neck was practically non-existent. It made his head look like a basketball swiveling on top of a barrel.

  “Well, I believe that Mister Wells has already brought this option to you, but my recommendation is that you move into working with us full time. We can hide you in safe houses where no one will ever find you. You can devote nearly all of your time to Midrealm, where you can find Terrence and bring him down. You’ve got a much better chance of doing it over there than you have here—where, in essence, you have zero chance.”

  “We’re not going down that road,” said Sarah immediately. “There’s no way that the six of us—”

  “Oh, give it a rest, Sarah!” Blade interrupted. “I know you’re not stupid. You know it’s going to come to that eventually. We need to get out ahead of it while we can.”

  “I agree with Blade,” said Calvin, nodding. “There’s no way we can go on forever like we’ve been—”

  “What, so you’re just going to walk away from your parents?” I said, cutting him off. “You’re thirteen, Calvin. You don’t think that’s going to freak them out? You’ll ruin their lives, and for what? So you can spend more time being the wizard you’ve always wanted to be?”

  “So I can save the freaking world, Raven!” he said, color rising in his cheeks. “So I can save their lives!”

  “What good is saving their lives if they spend them miserable, thinking their only child died?” I snapped.

  “Hey, hey!” said Sarah. “Calm down, everyone. If we’re going to talk about this, we’re going to be civil. Otherwise there’s no point.

  I subsided, but I couldn’t fully suppress a seething anger. I folded my arms and looked pointedly away from Calvin, who did the same.

  That’s when I noticed that Tess was sitting at her end of the table, hand silently raised. Sarah noticed her at the same time.

  “Go ahead, Tess,” she said gently. “And I told you, you don’t need to raise your hand at these meetings.”

  “There were just a lot of people talking all at once,” Tess said quietly. “But I think I might have an idea. Our parents would stop trying to get us to go to Medicorp if we were already in Medicorp.”

  Miles threw up his hands. “Of course they would! Because we’d be dead!”

  Blade gave Miles a dirty look. Sarah held up a hand to silence him. “Keep going, Tess,” she said.

  Tess looked uncertainly at Briggs and Anna. “Maybe the two of you could pretend to be Medicorp. That way we could spend extra time on the other side when we needed to, but the rest of the time we’d still be living our normal lives and being with our parents.”

  The table fell silent. I couldn’t do anything but stare at Tess. Sarah’s eyes darted back and forth as she thought about it. A slow grin was spreading on Calvin’s face, and Miles’ mouth was hanging open. Blade just had a satisfied little smile.

  I barked a laugh. “Holy…can you guys do that? Because that’s actually kind of genius.”

  Briggs was looking at Anna. She was tapping her fingers on the table one by one, deliberate, calculating.

  “It would take a lot,” she said quietly. “Not least because we’d need an actual building. But I can arrange that. And licenses and paperwork—though that shouldn’t be too hard. We’d need a fake staff, but we could scrounge them together, too.” She looked up from the table at the rest of us. “I think that actually might work.”

  Tess looked simultaneously happy and embarrassed at the same time. “Oh. Then, cool.”

  “Tess, that’s absolutely brilliant,” said Sarah, putting a hand on hers. “Thank you.”

  Tess’ cheeks went completely red. “Oh, I didn’t…I mean, I just thought of it. Anna’s the one who has to do all the work.”

  “And I’m happy to,” said Anna brightly, smiling encouragingly at her. “That’s seriously good thinking, girl.”

  Tess clearly had no idea what to do with all the attention so she retreated further behind her hair.

  At the head of the table, Briggs nodded. “I think this is the best compromise we can do for the moment. We’ll work on securing that facility right away. Obviously, we can’t have your parents drop you off here in the middle of the warehouse district. Once we have the bare bones together, we’ll contact you and see about bringing you in.”

  “Won’t they expect to take us to Butler Hospital?” asked Miles.

  Anna waved a hand. “It’s the matter of a phone call. I’ll remotely access their phones and set it up so that if they try to call Medicorp’s toll-free number, it will route to us instead. Then I’ll tell them that our facility has expanded due to space concerns, and I’ll direct them to the location that Briggs and I select.”

  “Well, as long as it’s as far away as possible from that looney bin,” I said.

  “No sweat,” said Anna. She leaned back and kicked her heels on the table, clasping her fingers together behind her head as she looked at Briggs. “What do you say, big man? I think we’re on to something here.”

  Briggs nodded once more. “I think you’re right. And with that, this meeting needs to be over. It sounds like you all have a lot to do on the other side, and now we’ve got plenty of work for ourselves here. We’ll reach out to you as soon as the new facility is ready for you to visit.”

  “One more thing,” said Anna. “I’ve got new phones for all of you. They’re clean. Meaning you can say whatever you want on them, text or voice, and it can’t be traced or intercepted. I figured it might make things easier on you guys.”

  “That’s great,” said Sarah. “Thank you.”

  Anna nodded and slid the phones across the table to us. They were just simple flip phones, but it looked like they’d do the trick. I pocketed mine next to my normal one.

  We stood from the table and headed for the door, Briggs leading the way. Sarah stepped up and gave Tess a quick side
hug as we walked, and I pushed in to do the same.

  For the first time since Sarah had seen Terrence on television, I felt like our life on Earth might start looking somewhat normal again.

  COUNSEL

  RAVEN

  WE WOKE TO FIND THE Elves already risen and ready to go. They were waiting impatiently over our sleeping bodies, irritated at the Runegard for not waking us up. The Runegard were trying to explain that they couldn’t, which was made harder by the fact that we hadn’t yet told the Elves we were the Realm Keepers. Not that the Elves would have cared. But as soon as we woke, they hauled us to our feet and forced us to march without a chance to eat first. Apparently they were in a hurry, and Cennan was annoyed.

  Sarah asked to stop for lunch again, but this time Cennan refused, saying that the Elven town was so close that it would be pointless to stop now. I was starting to get the feeling that he wanted to be rid of us, to pass us on to the next highest authority so we weren’t his problem any more.

  And so, as the sun was halfway to the horizon, we were led into the outskirts of the Elves’ village. I smelled the faint odor of a campfire first, but it wasn’t like the normal smell of burning wood. This was sharp, fresh, almost minty.

  “Jeez,” I said quietly. “Even their fires smell better than ours.” Barius gave a single guffaw and fell quiet.

  Next we heard high, flutelike voices through the trees, and then we emerged into a clearing to see the Elves before us.

  The buildings drew my attention so that for the first several seconds I didn’t even realize how few of them there were. They were single story structures, but they stood relatively tall—at least twelve or thirteen feet. Oval windows were carved into their sides, a few feet from the ground, and I saw no signs of glass or other covering holding them in.

  What was most shocking about the houses, however, was the detail. They were quite similar in construction to human houses: four corner posts, cross beams and wood shingles on the roof. But in every piece of lumber there were dozens of gorgeous, intricate designs carved. They wound in and among themselves, forming a tapestry of curved lines that was almost painful to look at, it was so complex. The carvings went overboard when it came to the doors. They were about eight feet tall and rectangular, but with tapering points at the top. Every door we saw, even in the most modest homes, had gold carvings set into them that accompanied and perfectly complemented the wood carvings.

  “Whoah,” I said helpfully, unable to take my eyes away from them.

  “How do they get anything done?” Darren mumbled. “I would spend all day studying those things, trying to make some sense from them.”

  Suddenly Cennan appeared at our side, his Elves filing out from the woods at our back to stand all around us. “You enjoy the carvings, do you?” he asked. “Few of your kind have the honor of seeing the dwellings of the Elves. Each home is decorated by its owner, and each tells the story of the family that lives within. When the home’s inhabitant passes from the world, the home is destroyed, but the story is removed first, to be kept within the halls of the clan.”

  “They’re incredible,” said Sarah, sincerity plain in her voice. “I’ve never seen such beautiful carvings.”

  “You would find any language more beautiful than your own,” said Cennan. There was no malice or insult in the statement; it was plain that he thought he was only stating a fact.

  He strode forward into the town, and we hurried to follow. I saw several of the townsfolk look up as we approached, curious looks in their pure-iris eyes. They were dressed differently from the Elves we’d traveled with, but no less beautifully. Even their simple work clothes had a look of elegance and refinement to them. The Elves I saw tilling gardens were dressed in clothes fine enough to be accepted at any ball in any human kingdom I’d ever visited, right up to the royal court of Morrowdust.

  A pang of homesickness came, as surprising as it was sudden. It had been weeks since we’d left Morrowdust and the kingdom of Athorn. I longed to retire every night to a bed. I missed the high spires of the Highwind Palace and the Runehold. God help me, I even missed Greystone, ornery as he was.

  I shook thoughts of Morrowdust from my mind as we approached a great hall in the center of the Elves’ village. If I’d been impressed by the Elves’ homes on the way in, the sight of their town hall practically gave me a heart attack. Though still only one story, the hall stretched almost twenty-five feet into the air. Its walls were expertly carved and crafted, looking simultaneously slender and iron-hard, as though they were the winding branches of a willow that would sway and bend in the wind, but never break. I was struck by the building’s similarity to the Elves that had built it. They, too, were slim, slender and moved with a grace that seemed impossible to pin down. I could see them swaying away, rotating around and avoiding any attack, never cracking, never breaking, impossible to subdue. It was a thought that seemed to match the quick, flaring tempers and graceful movement I’d seen from them so far.

  As we got closer to the hall, I saw an Elf standing with a deer at the edge of the trees. The Elf, a female, murmured gently to the stag, and it stepped cautiously from the trunks toward her. She let it nuzzle against her hand for a few moments before leaning in to whisper into its ear. The deer stood stock still for a moment before bending its knees and lowering itself gently to the ground. It turned its head to the side, its antlers renting on the thin carpet of grass and leaves that littered the ground.

  Without a sound, the Elf drew her knife from her belt and plunged it deep into the deer’s neck. Its blood splashed forth to stain and soak into the grass as the buck convulsed once, then died.

  I cried out, stopping dead in my tracks. Cennan turned on the spot to see what I was looking at. He looked at me knowingly, then came to stand beside me. The others followed my gaze, and I heard Calvin gasp as he saw what was going on. The others were silent—like me, they were both repulsed and unable to look away.

  Just as silently as the first who had killed the deer, three more Elves appeared and went to the fallen animal, placing their hands on its flanks and murmuring something I couldn’t hear. Then they all lifted the deer’s lifeless body, taking it to a noose that hung from the lowest branches of a nearby tree. In seconds they’d wrapped the noose around the deer’s antlers, suspending it in the air with its hind hooves almost touching the ground. They began to clean it, pulling out their own serrated knives and saws to butcher it.

  “It was a good kill,” Cennan remarked. “The deer gave itself willingly. The huntress spoke well to convince him.”

  “Huntress?” I said, barely able to squeak the words out. “She didn’t hunt it. She tricked it. It laid down like she’d tamed it, and then she whipped out her knife and killed it.”

  Cennan stared at me, his face expressionless. “I had heard that you humans were blind and deaf to all of the voices in the forest, but I had no idea how disabled you truly were,” he said, his voice annoyingly even. “There was no deception. The huntress asked the deer for its life, to give itself up for the sustenance of the village. The deer did so willingly. It is its nature.”

  “That’s not nature,” I said, fighting to still the turmoil in my stomach. “In nature, you hunt. You don’t lure an animal in with soft words just to kill it. Jaguars and wolves and whatever—they don’t try to convince the deer to let them kill it. They hunt it, and if they fail, it’s on them. If they succeed, it’s on the deer. That’s nature.”

  Cennan turned away and resumed heading for the town hall. “You know nothing of these things. We are not beasts. We do not hunt as the beasts do.”

  I scowled and followed as the others fell into line. The Elves among the buildings were still staring at us as we passed. Clearly it wasn’t every day that a bunch of humans were brought into the town.

  Cennan approached the town hall’s front doors. They swung quickly inward before he could knock, and he entered without skipping a beat.

  “Chaos take me,” whispered Darren.

&n
bsp; The hall was stunning. Stretching up above us, it came to a tapered point far above. Every beam was wrought in the shape of branches and leaves, so that you could almost believe you were beneath the boughs of a tree rather than inside a building. The walls were stone, and in the stone were set arches of a dark green stone. It looked almost like emerald, but it was too opaque. Some of the arches had more stone carvings inside them, large pictures depicting battles or people. Some of the arches had pedestals standing in front of them, and on top of the pedestals were all sorts of things: one held a cup, one held a sword, another a bow. They stretched out down the hall, too many for me to take in at a glance.

  At the head of the hall sat a simple wooden chair, raised a few feet from the ground on a stone dais that pointed toward the hall’s front doors like an arrowhead. In the chair was a woman—or rather, an Elf. Her eyes were fixed on us from the moment we stepped into the hall, and I could see even from the other end that they were pure white with the power of Mind coursing through her. Her hair was curled and twisted but unbound, given shape only by itself as it fell from her head in cascading locks that looked like a fair yellow waterfall. She was dressed in long, flowing robes of blue and white. They had no train, but the sleeves were so long they draped all the way to the ground. Around her neck hung a long, silver chain, the majority hidden in the folds of her robes. Her eyes never wavered as Cennan led us to the front of the hall; her face never flickered with an emotion.

  Cennan stopped before her and took a knee for a moment before rising again. “Seer Sirinia. We have found these humans wandering through the paths of our forests and have brought them before you for judgement.”

  Then the seer spoke, and her voice was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. It was like moonlight, if moonlight were made of music. It was like a warbling sparrow in a graveyard at midnight, giving you courage and strengthening your resolve. It took several seconds before I could push my focus past the sound of her voice and focus on the words.