“Darkness take all useless goldshitters,” growled Mako.
“I could not agree more,” said Theren, who was now fighting against Kalem’s weight to keep her head above the waves.
By the time they reached land, Ebon could no longer feel his fingers or his toes. He fell upon the shore, expecting the air to be warmer than the water. But a wind was blowing, and his shivers only redoubled.
“Get up and keep moving,” said Mako. “You will not freeze to death unless you try to rest.”
“But where?” said Ebon. He fought to gain his feet, but it was hard when he could not feel his limbs.
“There,” said Mako. He pointed up the shore, where they could see the glow of the western docks. “There are torches for warmth, and mayhap we can steal some clothes.”
So by moonslight they ran on, their steps hampered by the soft sand that grasped for their feet. Mako reached the dock piles first, and by the time they joined him he had popped his head up over the edge of the wooden planks to look.
“There are no guards nearby,” he whispered. “And there is a carriage not far off that I think is unoccupied.”
“You mean to steal a carriage?” said Kalem.
“No, idiot. If there is a carriage, it is because someone means to take ship. But their things are still in bags atop the carriage, and there we may find clothes. Theren, look after them and keep out of sight—I shall return in a moment.”
He slithered up and into the open. Theren poked her head up to look after him, and in a moment Ebon and Kalem did the same. They saw him reach the carriage, climb up top, and pull open a travel sack. He threw it aside before opening another. This one he took up and ran back to them, avoiding torchlight wherever he could.
“Here we are,” he said. “Trousers and tunics aplenty. No cloaks, but we will not be in the cold much longer.”
The children hastened to don the clothing. Ebon studied Mako as they dressed. The bodyguard stood stock still with no quiver in his limbs, though his clothes still dripped seawater.
“There are clothes enough here for you, too.”
Mako sneered, and the clotted blood of his lip burst, sending a crimson rivulet forth to mingle with the saltwater droplets. “I am not some weakling who is troubled by a chill.”
Soon they were done. They all had trousers of brown, and Ebon and Theren had found tunics of white. But the only shirt that fit Kalem was flamboyant red with gold trim at the collar and sleeves.
“Well, this does not make me look an utter idiot at all,” said Kalem ruefully, holding out his arms and shaking his head.
“Who cares what you look like?” growled Mako. “We have tarried too long. Up on the dock.”
And so up they went, and once they had passed the carriage and gone a little distance on, they slowed to a walk, strolling along as though nothing untoward was happening—except for Mako, who still stole from shadow to shadow, eyes roving everywhere to watch for a threat.
“The docks seem curiously empty, do they not?” said Kalem.
“I had noticed the same thing,” said Ebon.
“That may be why,” said Theren.
She pointed ahead, where a large cluster of people had gathered. There were mayhap two score of them packed in a tight little group, and all facing towards the center, except for some who looked about as though seeking aid.
“Stay away from there,” said Mako. “All the better that they will not notice us.”
“They will not notice us regardless,” said Ebon. “They are looking at whatever is in their midst.”
He pressed forwards, away from his friends and towards the crowd, ignoring Mako’s frustrated growl behind him. Something was wrong. He could see it in the worried faces of the onlookers, the way they kept looking about, expecting—or hoping—for someone else to arrive, to sort out whatever lay in their midst.
The crowd was packed tight, but he pushed through them, and Theren was at his shoulder. Soon they reached the center, and there they froze. Ebon’s breath left him in a rush.
Isra lay there. Dead, clearly, her sightless eyes staring up at the sky. Seawater had turned her skin dark and bloated, and blue veins stuck out in the torchlight. Fish had begun to peck at her cheeks, it seemed, for the skin was open, though the decaying flesh put forth no blood. Only a few scraps of her Academy robes still clung to her corpulent frame.
“She perished, then,” Theren whispered. Ebon heard a grim finality in her voice—no trace of joy, but a steely resolve, a tone like the ending of a tale. “I did not mean to drown her. But neither am I sorry. The nightmare is over.”
“Silence,” said Ebon quietly. He took her arm, and Kalem’s, who had stepped up beside the two of them, and drew them both back through the crowd. They pulled away from the people standing there, where Mako waited with a dark look in his eyes.
“Well?” he said. “What is it?”
“It is Isra,” said Ebon. “Dead.”
Mako’s eyes shot wide, and he pushed past them to dive into the crowd. When he returned, his face was no less grim—in fact his scowl had deepened.
“She must have washed out of the grotto on whatever current was meant to carry that ship,” said Theren. “Strange that she should have reached the docks before we did, but then, the sea is wild.”
Ebon frowned, but he did not wish to speak. It was Kalem who looked up, fear in his eyes, and met Theren’s look.
“No, Theren,” he said. “That is impossible. Not just how quickly she came here—but she, herself. She has been dead a long time. Weeks, most likely.”
Theren stared at him, uncomprehending. Her gaze shifted to Ebon, who met her eyes, and then to Mako, who was scowling off into the night, chin buried in his fist, lost in thought.
“That is impossible,” she said. “We just saw her. It was less than an hour ago, and she was as alive as you or I.”
Ebon shivered as he looked back towards the crowd, all of them still clustered around the body. “Yet it is the truth. I have no more explanation than you do. But Isra is more than a month dead.”
THEY DID NOT KNOW WHAT else to do, so they made their way into the city and back to the Academy. The dock gates stood open, as constables had been summoned to inspect the corpse, and so they entered without trouble. Before they returned to the citadel, Theren took them to the inn where Lilith kept her extra room. Mako waited on the street as they ducked within. At the door to the room, she produced a key from around her neck, hanging on the same chain as Kekhit’s amulet.
“I had the key before, you know,” she said, looking embarrassed and refusing to meet the eyes of either Ebon or Kalem. “Before we were estranged. She only recently gave me one again. In case we should need it, for something like this.”
“Of course,” said Ebon carefully.
She let them in and showed them where Lilith kept extra sets of Academy student robes. Soon they had changed, and Mako led them on through the streets. Curfew was a distant memory, and so he took them around the Academy’s east end to the groundskeepers’ sheds that housed his secret entrance.
“I must cover your eyes,” he said, looking at Theren and Kalem.
Theren scowled. “Why? I can keep a secret as well as the next.”
“It is not yours to know, much less to keep,” said Mako. “It is bad enough Ebon knows how I get in and out. No others need the knowledge.”
He took rags from the sheds and tied them around their eyes, and then he and Ebon led Theren and Kalem into one of the sheds. Inside, Mako had Ebon turn around while he pulled a lever, and the secret way opened before them. The passageway was utterly dark, and Ebon did not know how Mako could see—yet he must have been able to, for soon he opened the door at the other end of it, and they stood upon the Academy grounds.
“I suggest you rest well,” said Mako. “Doubtless I shall see you all again soon.”
“Thank you, Mako,” said Ebon. “Though some things are unclear, it seems at least that this is all over.”
Ma
ko gave him a hard look. “I hope you are right, though I doubt it.”
He left them. Ebon and his friends made their way into the Academy. It was far too late to be wandering the halls, but they encountered no instructors. Soon they had climbed the stairs to their dormitories. They stopped at Kalem’s, where the common room was empty, for the younger children had gone to bed. A fire burned low in the hearth. Ebon threw two more logs on, and then they sat in armchairs around it.
“I cannot fathom all that has happened,” said Kalem. “There seems no sense to it.”
“Isra is dead, at least,” said Theren. “I can worry about the rest of it another day.”
“Is she, though?” said Ebon. “That corpse was long decayed from seawater. We all saw it, Theren.”
Theren threw her hands towards the ceiling. “What, then, does it mean? Has she been a walking corpse for the last month? We have seen her alive. And tonight we saw her dead. Mayhap you guessed wrong and thought the body more decayed than it was.”
“Her clothes were rotten, and fish had begun to eat her,” said Ebon.
“Mayhap we are wrong in another sense,” said Kalem. “Mayhap the corpse was not her, but only someone who looks like her.”
“You do not believe in such a coincidence any more than I do,” said Ebon. “We have seen her, studied beside her, and even fought against her. We know what she looked like—it was her body.” But then a thought struck him, and he straightened in his seat. “Unless it was not. It could have been a weremage. Think of it. What if she mindwyrded a weremage to look just like her, then killed them and threw them into the Great Bay? When the body was recovered, it would cast any investigation away from her.”
Kalem shook his head. “That is not how therianthropy works. When the wizard dies, they resume their true form.” But now it was his turn to look up in realization. “What if the corpse from the Bay was Isra, and a weremage has been impersonating her?”
Theren looked at him with disdain. “She has used mindmagic against us, Kalem. How could she have done that if she was a weremage? No wizard commands more than one branch of magic.”
The boy’s face fell. “Of course,” he mumbled. “I should have thought of that.”
Ebon ran the facts through his mind, but he could think of none that made sense—and he knew, too, that he was less able to guess than his friends, for many ways of magic were still strange to him.
Either the corpse was Isra’s, or it was not. They could not hope to guess at the truth. But either answer brought another, more urgent question: where was Erin? If Isra was still alive, doubtless she held the boy in captivity. But if Isra was indeed dead … was the boy now a captive of the family Yerrin? Or had she left him somewhere else entirely?
Thoughts of Erin brought thoughts of Xain, and his blood went cold.
“One thing is certain,” he said at last, speaking quietly against the crackling fire in the hearth. “There will be an investigation now. And we are the only ones who claim to have seen Isra since she disappeared.”
They all looked at each other. Then Theren rose from her chair and left without a word, making for the halls. Kalem left a moment later, stepping through the opposite door that led to his dormitory. But Ebon sat there until morning, staring into the fire, exhausted beyond reckoning and yet unable to even think of sleep.
It did not take long for the faculty to redouble their investigation. Ebon guessed that news must have reached the Academy during the night, for the moment he reached Perrin’s class she commanded him to visit the dean.
There was no instructor in the hall to walk with him. Ebon stood there for a moment, frozen by indecision. He had a tremendous urge to turn the other way, to make for the Academy’s front doors and leave forever, begging for help from Halab and Mako. They could whisk him away to some forgotten kingdom, or even, mayhap, home to Idris, there to be hidden from all knowledge.
But after a time he turned to the right instead and made his slow way towards Xain’s study. He had done nothing wrong—or at least, nothing wrong when it came to Isra. He had seen her within the Academy. He and his friends had not drowned her in the Great Bay weeks ago. He must cling to that, for it was the truth. And only the truth could save him now, because outside of what he had seen with his own eyes, he was not even certain what the truth was.
Xain stood outside his office—but much to Ebon’s relief, Jia was also there, as was Dasko. Dasko looked somewhat worse for wear; his face was still gaunt, and his eyes roved all about. But his hands were steady, and Ebon saw no trace of madness in him, the sickness that came over those who had long been under mindwyrd. It had faded in him remarkably fast. Ebon nodded to the instructor and received a brief jerk of the head in return.
“Drayden,” said Xain, speaking through gritted teeth. “Come with us.”
He stalked off down the hall. Jia and Dasko followed at a somewhat more sedate pace, with Jia holding out an arm to help Dasko along. Ebon decided to match their steps rather than Xain’s, and soon the dean was forced to slow.
Ebon had had scant reason to visit the Academy’s healing ward before, but that was where they turned their steps now. It lay on the bottom floor of one of the citadel’s great wings, the one that stretched northwest, and there were many beds arranged in rows with tall windows that reached from waist-height almost to the ceiling. One of the beds nearest the entrance was covered, and Ebon saw the shape of a body beneath it. He could smell decay mixed with seawater.
Jia paused a respectful distance away, but Xain pushed forwards. Ignoring the healer who stood by to help, he threw back the sheet to reveal Isra’s bloated corpse. Removed from the seawater, her skin had turned darker still, and her eyes had swollen into pale, milky globes, the color of which could hardly be discerned. Yet it was still clearly her, as any fool could see. She had been stripped of her clothes and cleaned up. The sight of her almost made Ebon retch.
“How is it possible,” said Xain, “that Isra lies dead before us, when you said you saw her just over a week ago?” His words were calm, but Ebon heard the fire burning behind them, hot enough to melt steel.
Ebon swallowed hard, trying to remember to look shocked, as though he was surprised to see Isra dead. It was not difficult, and he thought the paleness of his skin likely helped. “I do not know,” he said. “Where … where was she? Mayhap she died just after we encountered her.”
The healer, a wizened old woman whose hair was drawn up into a tight bun, shook her head. “This corpse has been in the ocean a month at least,” she said. “We inspected it most thoroughly.”
Xain stalked around the bed to loom over him. “A month. A month ago is about the time she vanished from her classes. And so I ask again—how is it possible that you saw her in the kitchens, Drayden?”
“He is not the only one who saw her,” said Jia.
“I am asking the boy, for it is his words that have been called into question. He can speak for himself, or he can speak with the Mystics’ encouragement. It matters little to me.”
“It is as Jia said,” said Ebon, feeling somewhat indignant now. “I have not gone mad. My friends saw her as well.”
Xain glanced over his shoulder. “Mayhap. Yet they, too, may prove false.”
Ebon heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Kalem and Theren being ushered into the room by an instructor he did not recognize. Both their eyes fixed at once upon the corpse on the bed. Kalem went Elf-white, and Theren did not look much better.
“This is the body of a girl you both said you saw here in the Academy,” Xain told them. “Yet she has been dead for weeks. How do you explain this? I cannot read the tale of it, unless someone in this room has been lying.”
Kalem tore his eyes away from Isra at last to meet Xain’s gaze. “If someone has been lying, it is not I. Not in this. We saw her. Theren fought her.”
“Yet I thought you said her eyes were black,” said Xain, and his baleful gaze turned to Theren. “How could you resist a wizard with the strength
of magestones?”
“It is as I said before,” said Theren carefully. “We surprised her. I tried to flee, but she turned and ran first.”
“Clearly there is something at work here,” said Jia, her voice calm and measured, and her eyes going too often to Xain. “I am certain the three of you can understand how we would be … confused. Concerned, even. After all, the body casts doubt upon this whole affair.”
Ebon steeled himself. They stood on the brink of the hearth, now, and it seemed their only choice was to plunge headlong into the flames. “Of course, Instructor. Yet I can offer no better explanation. And after all, someone had you under mindwyrd, did they not? And you as well, Instructor Dasko, for longer.”
Theren tensed. Xain saw her sudden discomfort, and his eyes locked upon her. “But Isra was not the only mindmage at the Academy,” he said.
Feigning surprise, Ebon looked to Theren. “You mean to insinuate that Theren had something to do with the mindwyrd? I am only recently acquainted with magic, and nowhere near so mighty in my lore as anyone else present—”
“An understatement if ever there was one,” Xain spat.
Ebon’s nostrils flared, but he pressed on, though anger now burned in his breast. “—but even I know that mindwyrd is only possible with magestones. And if Theren had been using magestones, her eyes would glow black. Theren, cast a spell.”
She looked at him uneasily. But a moment later he saw her reach for her magic. Her eyes glowed white, and a nearby tray lifted into the air.
“There you have it. Theren has eaten no more magestones than I have, or you yourself, Dean,” said Ebon, chuckling.
“You dare to laugh?” roared Xain. Ebon flinched as the dean stepped up to him. But he did not seize Ebon’s robes, nor reach for his magic. He only loomed, his face a finger from Ebon’s, until Ebon wanted to wilt and sink into the floor. “My son has been kidnapped—my son, you mewling, dung-licking coward—and you dare to laugh? First I am told that this girl, Isra, stole him away. Then you tell me that you saw her but did not stop her before she escaped. Now I see her corpse—and she has been dead, it seems, since she was supposed to have taken him. Laugh again. Laugh, I implore you, for it may very well break me, but I will take you with me when I shatter.”
The Academy Journals Volume One_A Book of Underrealm Page 69