Rehanne stopped again, and Tria groaned, thinking she’d lost the thread.
“I’ve hit some kind of obstacle,” Rehanne said. “The thread goes through it, but I can’t.”
Tria hurried to her side and confirmed the barrier’s presence with a touch. Concentrating her gaze, she saw its faint shimmer. “This is the place where I expected to find him,” she said. “But I don’t know how to get through this barrier.”
“Let me feel it.” Mistress Blake edged between Tria and Rehanne, placed her palms against the barrier, rubbed them up and down over it.
She stepped back. “This is Dire work,” she said. “It’s strong, but if everyone lends me power, I think I can breach it enough to let one person go through. Tria?”
“I’ll go,” Tria said. “Just open the way.”
Mistress Blake worked quickly. Tria had no time to reconsider the folly of going in alone to face Oryon, the Dire Women, and the things Wilce and Gray had become. Plus Kress.
Mistress Blake spread her arms apart and motioned Tria to duck under them. She did so and found herself on the far side of the barrier. The corridor in which she stood was empty, but it curved a short distance ahead.
Resolutely she strode forward, all too aware that on rounding that curve she would pass from her companions’ sight.
Beyond the curve the empty corridor continued, and another curve lay ahead. At least she passed no side tunnels; she had to be heading in the right direction.
Around that second curve lay a third. Discouraged, Tria fought the temptation to turn back. As she rounded the third curve, a scream and a hideous, inhuman cry told her she was near her goal. The sound chilled her, but she kept going.
The tunnel ended in an open archway. Through it she saw a field strewn with dismembered and decaying corpses beneath a sky like molten iron. The stench of blood and excrement and putrefying flesh rolled out in heavy waves, choking her so that she could not breathe. Jagged boulders studded the field, and on many of these perched vultures with human faces. As she watched, two or three of these hideous birds fluttered down to feed on the dead. Harpies! She would have turned and run, but the screams prevented her. Something in that terrible place was not yet dead.
Clamping her hand over her nose and mouth, Tria passed beneath the arch and picked her way around the corpses. Her feet sank into a vile muck, and she had to pluck them out and set them down slowly and carefully. She gagged and her empty stomach heaved. She wanted to flee, but her other selves, having passed through death, fed into her thoughts the courage to continue.
She stumbled and nearly fell over a severed arm. Shuddering, stomach churning, Tria halted and listened. The screams had changed to wracking sobs. They were coming from a jumble of large boulders to her right. She made her way around them, careful not to approach too near in case she was being drawn into a trap.
As she came around the side of the boulders, she saw Kress. Long chains wrapped around him, securing him to a rocky spire. His head fell forward; spittle hung from his mouth and streaked his bare chest. She did not think he was dead, but it was not he who cried.
Oryon was spread-eagled against a rock. An iron collar around his neck was bolted to the rock. His black clothes hung in shreds. On one side of him a Dire Woman gripped his arm and tore flesh from it with her teeth. On the other side, the second Dire Woman used her long nails to rip the skin from his shoulder. At his feet, two beastly creatures gnawed his ankles. One looked up from its grisly feast, and Tria realized with heart-wrenching horror that she had found Wilce and Gray.
“Tria! Help me!” Kress had seen her. His calls alerted the Dire Women. They looked toward her.
Alone she didn’t stand a chance against them. She glanced at Kress. He didn’t seem badly injured. If she could free him in time …
She concentrated on the chain that bound him to the rock. Ignoring his cries and Oryon’s mindless keening, she visualized the chain stretching, lengthening, so that it fell away. As Kress pulled free of its slack loops, the Dire Women shrieked and launched themselves at Tria.
Kress grabbed the chain and held it in both hands. Tria hoped she hadn’t stretched it too thin and too long to make a usable weapon. Hurry, Kress! The thought formed as she threw up her hands to ward off the Dire Women.
Headmistress’s ring glowed like fire in the weird red light of the molten sky. The Dire Women veered, unfurled their wings, and flew over her head, cursing and gibbering. The gem! It was protecting, as Headmistress had said. But it couldn’t hold the women off for long.
Tria looked for Kress. He had run to Oryon, not to her. He raised the chain and with a sickening thud crashed it against Oryon’s skull, stilling Oryon’s cries forever.
He swung the bloody chain at the things that had been Wilce and Gray.
“No!” Holding her hand up to keep the ring visible to the Dire Women, Tria ran toward Kress. “Chain them, don’t kill them.”
Her words had no effect. She extended her power and wrenched the chain from his grasp. As the Gray-thing attacked Kress, she sent the chain looping around its neck and pulled it back. The Dire Women shrieked in rage. The Wilce-thing snarled and hurtled toward her.
“No, Wilce! Stop! It’s Tria! I’ve come to take you home.”
It skidded to a halt in front of her, its gaze fixed on the crystal pendant. A glimmer of intelligence flickered in the brown eyes. It hung its head.
“You do remember,” she said softly. “Come with me. I won’t chain you.” To Kress she shouted, “Take the chain. Bring Gray.”
This time he obeyed, grabbed the end of the chain, and headed toward Tria, pulling Gray along. The Dire Women dove at him, driving him back toward the boulders. He dropped the chain, and Gray scuttled out of reach, the chain trailing after him.
“Wilce,” Tria said. “Get Gray. Bring him to me.”
Wilce bounded off, leaped for the end of the chain, caught it in his teeth, and dragged Gray, snarling and spitting, back to Tria. But the Dire Women had snatched Kress up and were flying off with him.
The ring was the only protection against them.
She yanked it off her finger, tossed it into the air, and used her power to send it speeding after them. She guided it into Kress’s hand. If only he’d have the presence of mind to hold on to it.
He caught it. The Dire Women shrieked and released him. He plummeted to the ground. A heap of corpses broke his fall. Tria saw him stagger to his feet holding the ring and run toward her.
The Dire Women flew faster. Without the ring Tria was vulnerable. They swooped down on her.
Words popped into her head. Words she had heard Oryon use. What they meant, she had no idea. She shouted them anyway: “Calyor margra felefor, tisitiya mura calyor na.”
The Dire Women wavered in flight. Wings fanning her, they flew past, circled back around, and perched on the top of the boulders above Oryon’s body.
“Tisit felefor mu ragana lo!” Tria shouted the words burned into her memory.
The ground shook. The boulders split apart, forcing the Dire Women to leap into the air. Fissures opened in the ground, swallowing corpses. Steaming gobs of liquid metal fell from the sky, burning whatever they touched. “Hurry, Kress,” she shouted.
Dragging Gray on his chain, with Wilce bounding beside her, she dashed toward the arch. Harpies screeched. Rocks exploded. Boulders crumbled into dust. She hurtled through the arch and turned to look for Kress.
Bloody, covered with soot, like some hellish apparition he ran toward her out of the smoke and flames. He gained the arch, and without a word Tria turned and sped away with her charges. Behind her, wails and shrieks were swallowed up in one final cataclysmic blast. And as they ran, the tunnel closed behind them.
They crashed into the barrier. Behind it Tria saw the frightened faces of her friends. How were they to pass through? Mistress Blake had only been able to open it enough for a single person.
Wilce and Gray hurled themselves against it, their claws scrabbling against
the invisible surface.
“Use this?” Kress handed Tria the ring. She held it against the barrier, but it did nothing. She slid the ring onto her finger.
Surely they hadn’t come this far to be trapped here. She took a deep breath and called out the last words Oryon had used from the Breyadon: “Felefor mura-na!”
With a loud ripping sound, the barrier split open and they tumbled through.
Kress rushed to his sister’s arms. Mistress Blake helped Tria hold Gray’s chain. “Gray. Oh, Gray!” Rehanne mourned.
Wilce tried to stand upright and for a few seconds he succeeded. But Rehanne shouted, “The tunnel!”
It was rolling up behind them, and its sides were closing in on them. Wilce dropped onto all fours, and they ran for their lives.
They passed the place where the tunnel forked, and the branch they’d run from sealed shut as they escaped. They kept running until Tria was convinced the destruction had stopped. Breathless and panting, she called the others to a halt. They rested until they’d caught their breath, then went on to where Petra and Verin waited.
They found the shadow Oryon sitting up, his back supported by the tunnel wall. His flesh seemed to have acquired more substance. The corpse was gone, to Tria’s great relief. She didn’t ask what they had done with it.
Kress hurled himself on Oryon, pummeling him. Kathyn, Petra, and Verin pulled him away and restrained him. “He did this!” he said. “He did this! Why is he alive?”
“The Oryon who did all the evil is dead, Kress,” Tria said, not mentioning for Kathyn’s sake that it was Kress who’d killed him. “This Oryon helped save us.”
Kress grumbled but ceased trying to attack. Later Tria would have time for long explanations. Now, she only wanted to get back to the school. “Petra,” she asked, “can you find our door?”
Verin and Petra supported Oryon, who was conscious and clearly much stronger. He had not spoken since Tria and her group had arrived. Her own experiences told Tria he had felt the original Oryon’s agonized death.
Mistress Blake took over the burden of pulling and controlling the chained Gray. Rehanne walked beside Mistress Blake and talked quietly to Gray, trying desperately to reach that clouded mind. Hand in hand, Kathyn and Kress lagged behind the others, whispering together. Tria hoped Kress was telling his twin he was sorry for his part in Oryon’s conspiracy and for all the things he had done, but she feared that more likely he was trying to justify his actions.
Wilce stayed at Tria’s side and from time to time was able to walk in human fashion for a short distance before dropping back to all fours.
They came to the door Tria and Petra had made and passed through. Although they had made the door in the corridor of the faculty residence hall, they exited into the long, candlelit corridor Tria had found at the top of the elusive and elegant stairway.
Mistress Blake placed Gray’s chain in Rehanne’s hand and spoke to the bedraggled group. “You are summoned to the faculty council. However, you need not all attend. Tria and Oryon must attend, and I know the faculty is concerned about Wilce and Gray and will want to see them. The rest of you may choose whether or not to go with them.”
Tria alone had been before the council in this place and therefore had an idea of what she faced. Her companions looked puzzled by their unexpected location and more than a little frightened by the prospect of facing Headmistress and the rest of the faculty in their exhausted state.
But Verin said, “I’ll stay with Oryon. He’s still far from fully healed.”
Kress looked around frantically as if hunting a known exit. “I don’t want to see anybody right now,” he blurted.
“You need not attend, Mr. Klemmer,” Mistress Blake told him. “You are free to return to your room and rest, though I’m sure Headmistress will want to speak with you later.”
“If Kress doesn’t go, I won’t either,” Kathyn said.
Mistress Blake nodded and pointed out the stairs at the end of the corridor. “That stairway will take you to the third floor. Mr. Klemmer, you have permission to go to your sister’s room and rest there until the supper hour, since Verin, her roommate, will accompany us. I believe you and Kathyn need to be together a bit longer.”
Gratefully, Kathyn linked arms with Kress, and the twins headed for the stairs.
“I’d like to leave, too,” Petra said. “I’m too worn out to face anyone right now.”
“Of course,” Mistress Blake responded. “Most of the burden of opening the door to the paths between the worlds fell on you.”
Petra moved off after Kathyn and Kress. Mistress Blake looked at Rehanne, who had remained silent. “Do you wish to go with us?” she asked.
“Yes,” Rehanne answered, gripping tightly the chain that held Gray. “Gray needs me.”
Tria wished she had been given a choice. Her strength depleted, she felt near collapse.
But Mistress Blake said, “Come, then. They are waiting for us.” She led them toward the doors to the mysterious conference room.
Tria followed, Wilce stumbling along beside her, attempting to walk upright and almost but not quite succeeding. Gray, head hanging down, padded along beside Rehanne. At the end of the procession, Oryon leaned heavily on Verin.
Mistress Blake threw open the double doors and ushered them into the plush chamber where the rest of the faculty sat around the long table. She stepped aside, leaving Tria in the forefront of the group.
Headmistress rose to greet them. “Welcome and well done,” she addressed Tria. “You have won the challenge.”
It was such an anticlimax that Tria nearly laughed. After all she’d gone through, Headmistress could say no more than, “You’ve won.” Had all this been only a game to her?
Turning to Mistress Blake, Headmistress said with a stern frown, “It was agreed that none of us should interfere or lend assistance.”
“That is true,” Mistress Blake replied. “And you were the first to break that agreement by lending Tria your ring. What I did was a small thing by comparison.”
To Tria’s surprise, Headmistress smiled. “I suppose you are right. I meant the ring to distinguish the original from the shadow Trias, but if its other properties proved useful, I do not regret it.”
From his place at the table, Master San Marté cleared his throat. “It is, we must acknowledge, impossible to act in an entirely ethical manner one hundred percent of the time. Intentions must account for something.”
Mistress Blake smiled, too, and took the seat waiting for her at the table.
Tria removed the ring and handed it to Headmistress. “It saved our lives,” she said. But she did not add that the original Tria had perished and she, a shadow, had received the ring’s protection.
Rehanne, who’d been staring about in wonder at the magnificent room, stepped up beside Tria. “What about Gray and Wilce? Look at them! Restore them, please!”
The smile vanished from Headmistress’s face, and sadness filled her gaze. “Their condition lies beyond my healing ability,” she said.
“But they can’t remain like this,” Rehanne cried out.
Headmistress turned to Oryon. “Mr. Brew, can you restore what you damaged?”
Still leaning on Verin’s arm, Oryon hung his head. “No,” he murmured. “My power is gone.”
Headmistress confronted him, touched his shoulder, gazed into his eyes. “Not gone, I think,” she said after a time. “Dormant, as Miss Mayclan’s was after her encounter with the Dire Woman. You were wounded more deeply than she, and your power may never be what it was, but you will in time regain some of it.
“Well, Miss Tesserell, it’s up to you. Your labors have brought you to a higher level. You should have the power—”
“My strength is completely drained,” Tria interrupted, unable to contain her anger. “Do you know what I’ve been through?”
“No one ever attains the higher levels without great pain, my dear. And I think you have resources of which you are unaware.”
&
nbsp; Tria began an indignant denial, but a voice cut her off. Not an audible voice, but one that spoke in her mind alone. She is right, daughter, the voice said. She has been right all along.
You—you’re here? With me? Excitement reverberated through Tria’s mental query.
I am here—and not here. The breaking of the crystal prison freed me to be many wheres, though you cannot at present understand that. I shall eventually find another home, though not one of crystal. Now, however, I will tell you what you must do to heal these unfortunate young men.
Following her mentor’s instructions, Tria turned to Wilce. He stood upright, and she clasped his paws, willing them to become hands. She spoke words placed in her mind, and a power not her own flowed through her into Wilce. His body straightened, his features softened, claws became fingers and intertwined with hers. His voice, hoarse from disuse, said, “Thank you, Tria,” and he leaned forward and kissed her cheek.
It was harder with Gray; he had farther to come. Wilce and Rehanne held him upright so that Tria could grasp his taloned paws. The power flowing through her was greater, too, and the words she spoke seemed to come from another dimension and roll through time to call their hearer back from a far place.
When Tria finished, Gray stood before them in his own form. He gazed bleakly at them for a moment, then swayed and might have fallen had not Rehanne rushed to support him. She helped him into the empty chair at the table’s end. He buried his face in his hands.
“He is not yet whole,” Headmistress observed to Tria. “He will need time to recover completely, but you have set him on that path. You see, you did have the resources.” Headmistress beamed at her.
“But I didn’t. It was—” Tria stopped in confusion. How could she explain? She didn’t know her mentor’s name. “The power wasn’t mine,” she finished lamely.
Headmistress nodded enthusiastic approval. “That, Miss Tesserell, is the most important lesson Simonton School strives to teach. Our power is never our own. We are only channels through which the Power-Giver sends his power.”
Power-Giver? Could it be …?
A School for Sorcery (Arucadi Series Book 6) Page 24