by Deck Davis
Mana balls smashed against the steel but then died away. Bolts bounced uselessly off the metal and dropped to the ground.
The academy force stopped. Even Mason seemed unsure now; Bendeldrick’s glyphline soldiers had cast this defence; a dome of impenetrable steel.
102
Some of the students dropped to the ground, exhausted and hurt. Others chattered, while some looked around wildly, their eyes full of the terror battle had brought on them.
They are just students. Not fighters. This shouldn’t have happened.
There was an eerie silence over the battlefield now. Bendeldrick and his surviving force were in their steel dome, and there was no telling what they were doing in there.
“They’re regrouping,” said Mason. “Healing, maybe even regenerating mana.”
“So we just wait it out,” said Tomkins. He was carrying his axe in his left hand now, since he had a giant cut across his right arm. “They can’t stay in there forever; the dome will cost mana, won’t it?”
“He must be desperate,” said Mason.
Jakub wasn’t so sure. “No, it’s something else. He wouldn’t just give up. If I had to guess, he’d rather die than just stay in there and wait for their mana to deplete. He won’t risk getting caught.”
Abbie joined them now, panting, blood smeared around her neck. “Or he’s waiting it out because he knows that others are coming.”
This idea sent a tremor of anxiety through the students near enough - and undazed enough - to hear it.
In the silence, Jakub was able to properly look around him and it felt like a knife was twisting in his gut when he looked at the dead people littered on the academy grounds. Most were Bendeldrick’s men, but some wore academy overcoats.
There isn’t enough essence in the whole of the queendom to bring everyone back, he thought.
“If he has reinforcements coming, then we’re fucked,” said Mason. “Notice that our mages stopped casting? They’re out of mana.”
“Fuck this,” said Tomkins.
He sprinted over to the dome, ace raised. When he reached it, he shouted and then smashed his axe on the metal.
The steel rang, and Tomkins dropped his axe and fell back on the ground, clutching his hand.
It had done nothing.
“Mason?” said Abbie. “What do we do?”
“I…”
“Come on; Irvine left you in charge out here.”
Mason couldn’t take his eyes off the dome. He didn’t say anything.
Jakub thought he understood. The idea of a fearless warrior, of men who could fight and kill and face death and feel nothing – that didn’t exist.
Caught in an impossible situation, Mason was just like the rest of them; human.
“Mason,” said Abbie. “Do we stay, or…”
She was interrupted by a sound. It came from the dome; the metal muted it a little, but Jakub could hear something rumbling. It grew louder, so much that soon, Jakub felt the ground beneath his feet tremor.
He watched and expected something to burst out of the ground, but nothing happened.
Seconds passed without movement, yet the rumbling grew louder.
“We either stay,” said Mason, “and try like hell to break into that thing, or we go back to Irvine. They’re in the basement. Maybe if we all go there…”
Then it hit Jakub.
He knew what their enemy were doing in the dome now.
“He’s given up,” he said. “Bendeldrick isn’t just waiting it out; there are tunnels under the academy grounds. Remember what Tomkins said? Some lead to the basement, but others lead away from the academy boundaries.”
“The bastard is trying to escape? How? Does he have bunch of shovels we don’t know about?”
“No, but he has men with glyphlines. They must be using magic to tunnel out.”
“A man like that,” said mason, “Once he goes to ground, he’s gone. We won’t see him for months, years, until he finds a new way to fuck everything up.”
“Do we have anything that can smash through steel?”
“Not unless you can pull something out of your arse.”
Jakub tired to think of something, anything that could get them through. Even if their mages weren’t out of mana, they academy didn’t teach spells destructive enough to cut through a dome of metal.
There was nothing.
“He’s going to get away. The bastard is running, and there’s nothing we can do.”
“Where do the tunnels come out?” said Mason.
Jakub tried to remember what he’d been taught years ago; whenever a student joined the academy, they were given a history of it. He knew the tunnels had been built underneath as a failsafe; as a way for the students to escape if the worst happened.
But then…they’d already discounted that as a means of escape. Irvine had told them that the tunnels were sealed decades ago on the order of the royals.
Did Bendeldrick know something they didn’t?
“If there’s a way out under there,” he said, “a way that even Irvine didn’t know about, then there’s no telling where it leads.”
It was in the silence, as they all thought about this, that they heard something.
The sound of hooves came from behind them.
103
Jakub turned to see five men on horseback. They didn’t wear the emblems of the guardship, nor were they wearing royal uniforms.
“Who the hell is this?” said Mason.
Jakub stared at them, and recognition hit him.
There was a man leading them. He was old; so old that he looked like he might fall off his horse, yet it was strange. He gave off a sense of power and of strength inside him.
He recognized his face. He’d never seen the man in person, but he’d seen a painting of him on a poster in an academy bedroom.
“It’s mage Wyrecast,” he said.
“Wyrecast? Hells, it is! What’s he doing here?” said Mason.
“I asked a friend to send him a message about Trout.”
Wyrecast led his men toward them, stopping a few feet away. He didn’t dismount.
Jakub couldn’t help feeling awed; Wyrecast was the most famous mage in the queendom, and if even half the stories about him were true, then his spells were to be feared.
“I’m looking for someone called Jakub,” said Wyrecast. The he eyed the destruction around him. “Will someone tell me what the hells happened here? Never mind – tell me later. Where is my grandson’s body?”
Jakub approached. “I’m the one who sent you a message,” he said.
“Where is Troutan?”
“He’s in the academy, but-”
“Then why are we flapping our gums here? Why haven’t you resurrected him yet?”
Mason walked forward now. His steps were slow, and Jakub noticed that’d he’d taken a wound on his side. Even so, his eyes were burning with anger.
“Listen, you old bastard, are you blind? Can’t you see all the fucking corpses around you? And you’re concerned about one?”
The rumbling from the steel dome grew louder now.
Jakub looked at Wyrecast and he wished the old mage had gotten here earlier. Minutes earlier, even. At least then there wouldn’t have been so many bodies.
He couldn’t rewrite things; all he could do was focus on the now.
“Mage Wyrecast,” he said. “The man who ordered your grandson’s death is in that dome. He attacked the academy, and now he’s trying to escape.”
“It’s a spell, isn’t it? I can smell it.”
“We can’t get through.”
Wyrecast rolled up his sleeves, and Jakub saw his glyphlines; they were patterned, colorful, the most intricate glyphlines he’d ever seen, ones formed through great power and through decades of experience.
The mage shouted a spellword, his voice booming.
And that was what it took; with the spellword of the most famed mage in the land, the steel melted into droplets, spattering on
the ground and revealing the men inside it who had almost dug their way into the tunnels.
The men turned, caught in surprise.
“Hem them in,” shouted Mason. “Not a single one escapes.”
Bendeldrick was the first to react.
Jakub saw him take a dagger from his sheath and grip it in his liguana claws and raise it to his own throat.
“No, you don’t,” he said. “You’re not going to the Greylands yet.”
He looked at the sky, where one of his reanimated falcons was swirling.
Stop him.
As Bendeldrick raised his dagger, the falcon swooped in, claws raised, and it tore into his face.
Mason and the surviving students made a circle around the invaders, pointing their swords, shouting orders.
Bendeldrick’s men dropped their weapons and fell to their knees, and with that, it was over.
104
Four weeks later, Jakub was back in the necromancer’s wing of the academy. He was sitting on a chair in a room he knew all too well. In front of him was a table with a cloth bearing the academy emblem draped over it.
Sitting around the table were Instructor Irvine, Madam Lolo, and Mason D’Angelt, the new full-time instructor of the academy’s warlocks.
Jakub didn’t have notes in front of him this time. He had no rehearsed lines, no expectation of help from an old friend.
Instead, he’d answered their questions truthfully, without trying to put a positive spin on anything.
Now, he just had to wait to hear the outcome of his appeal.
Instructor Irvine cleared his throat. “We have reviewed your conduct, Journeyman Russo,” he said. “While we cannot excuse your actions on your first assignment, we can understand your justification of it. Furthermore, we have considered your actions of late, your resourcefulness when you heard about danger to the academy, and the selflessness with which you came to its aid.”
“You acted with honor,” said Lolo.
Mason leaned his cheek on his palm, bored. “Get on with it, Ian.”
Irvine nodded. “Taking all of this into account, the board find justification in reinstating you to the academy. You will not resume active duty at first; for a probationary period of two months, you will assist Lolo in the teaching of early necromancy classes. Providing you conduct yourself well in this period, you will be reinstated as a field agent of the academy.”
Lolo smiled. “You earned this, Jakub.”
“You did good, kid,” said Mason.
“What do you say?” said Irvine.
Jakub only had to think about it for a second. Witas was the one who’d urged him to lodge an appeal. He didn’t think he’d have a chance of success, but all the same, he’d already considered every possibility.
“I respectfully refuse your offer,” he said.
Irvine leaned forward. Mason, suddenly interested, sat up straight.
“Excuse me?” said Lolo.
Jakub tried to keep his voice calm and respectful. After all, they might have screwed him over in his first inquiry, but they were good people who had the academy’s interests at heart. Compared to Henwright, they were deities.
“I never wanted to come back,” he said. “I just wanted to hear you say that I could. The academy helped me when I needed it. They gave me training, and even when you kicked me out, I got over how pissed I was and came to understand why. But I’ve met people recently who made me think that actually, there are paths that a necromancer can take that don’t involve the academy.”
“Why do I sense my brother’s influence?” said Irvine.
“Not just him,” said Jakub, glancing at Mason.
“You are sure about this decision?”
Jakub nodded. “I need to see the world a little. Learn more about necromancy on my own. Who knows, maybe I’ll come back and work for you one day. On a contractor’s rates, of course.”
“You are making a mistake,” said Irvine.
“At least it’s mine to make. There’s more to the world than the academy and Dispolis.”
“The academy offers its agents paid leave. You don’t need to refuse our offer to get travel time.”
“And I don’t want the academy to say when I can and can’t travel, and I don’t want them to decide where I should go.”
“Let’s be honest,” said Irvine. “Where are you going to go?”
Jakub shrugged. “The Racken Hills first. I need to go and see someone and deliver a message.”
“Racken hills? Kortho’s house, you mean?”
“For a start.”
Irvine said nothing for a few seconds, but finally, he nodded. “Then we wish you the best, journeyman.”
Jakub left the necromancy wing and headed down the stairs and outside of the academy. The grounds were quieter than they ever had been; with students dead, hurt, and others whose parents had withdrawn them, its numbers had never been so low.
Outside, he found Groundsman Nipper and quartermaster Tomkins kneeling beside a statue, hammering bolts into the stone to secure it.
When Jakub stared at the statue, he felt his heart swell. It was Kortho cast in bronze. They’d made him look a little taller than he actual was, but they’d captured his facial expressions perfectly; authority and kindness, with a dose of humor.
“How did it go?” said Tomkins.
Jakub told the quartermaster what Irvine had offered, and what his answer had been.
Tomkins smiled. “If you ask me, you made the right call.”
“At least someone thinks so.”
“Well, as it happens, I’m leaving too. Gonna travel some, see a bit of the world.”
“Maybe we’ll catch up along the way.”
“Take care of yourself, Jakub,” said Tomkins.
After yet another hug – Jakub had ben hugged more times in the last month than he had his entire life – Jakub left the academy and headed down the Path of Returning, to where the carriages waited.
Two students got out of one and headed by him, and Jakub hurried to catch the driver before he left.
He guessed he’d go to Dispolis first and pay one last visit to Witas. The cleric had been reinstated back at the church of the Brightlight. Although he and Ian Irvine hadn’t quite made up, at least the brothers had talked a little.
Old grudges took a while to clean out, and Jakub guessed it’d be a while before they healed their sibling wounds.
It wasn’t just the brothers that had to heal, though. It seemed that everyone did; Dispolis was recovering from the blast on the Royal Mile, and the academy was healing from tis battle. They resurrected as many students as they could gather the essence for, with Trout Wyrecast being the first after Lloyd Blackrum and his guards found him in the wreckage of the Royal Mile and raced him to the academy.
Even the Queen was feeling the hurt of it all. After discovering that her uncle had helped Bendeldrick, the queen had promoted Lloyd Blackrum, taking him from the guardship and instilling him in her own court, with the order to clear the rot from the place.
Jakub didn’t care about any of that now. He wanted the academy to recover, he wanted Witas and Irvine to get over their grudges, but most of all, he needed to heal himself.
All he wanted was to go to the Racken Hills and sit on the veranda with Winifred and talk about old times, about Kortho, about life, and just to forget about necromancy for a while.
The End
The end of book 2 – thank you for reading and I hope you stick around for book 3, which is coming soon. If you want me to let you know when book 3 is ready, Click here to sign up for email updates.
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