by Sever Bronny
But something bothered Augum, something about the way the Canterran guards had reacted.
Gleaming Dome
“Shouldn’t we be looking for a warlock to teleport us to Semadon?” Naoki whispered.
“I want to stick around a moment and hear what they know,” Maxine replied.
They listened to the house from a snowy alley filled with broken-down carts, piles of filthy rags, and barrels that stank of tar. The group stood motionless and chameleonic, their backs, bulging with chameleonic rucksacks, pressed against a brick wall.
Voices could soon be heard from the house, which a slew of overseers had entered.
“It has to be them,” said one particularly stern voice. “They’ll be searching for a warlock to teleport them to Semadon.”
Augum felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. There was absolutely no way for the enemy to know exactly where they were going and that they would need a warlock to get them there unless … unless Ulfric had lived and been put to the question, spilling their plan to get to Semadon and then to Ley.
“Lock down the city,” the stern voice commanded. “Hit the warlocks first.”
Boots scuffled off.
Jengo abruptly became visible, ebony face taut, eyes flaring. “Ulfric was still alive!” he growled. “I could have saved him! He could still be with us! Look what happened instead—they questioned him.”
“Go chameleonic, you idiot!” Maxine hissed, still camouflaged herself. “You’ll give us all up!”
Augum, judging that the Canterrans were long gone, whirled off the wall, making himself visible. “You might have placed yourself in charge, Maxine, but there’s a reason The Grizzly explicitly did not ever give you command during training.” He ignored the fact he was talking to a wall.
One by one, the others became visible.
“You better hope they go light on him,” Haylee said.
“I have a good mind to report you to the disciplinary committee,” Jengo added.
Maxine finally appeared, flat face twisted with fury. “Have you all lost your idiot minds? Shut your fool mouths and go chameleonic!”
“You’re done giving orders,” Augum said.
“That’s mutiny, punishable by—”
“You’re a fine soldier,” Augum interrupted, glaring at her. “But you have exercised poor judgment. You’re no leader.” He looked from face to face. “From now on we work as a team, with the best ideas winning out. All in favor?”
“Aye,” came the immediate responses.
“That’s not how military matters work—”
“And I vote Augum be put in overall charge and gets final say,” Brandon threw in. “All in favor?”
“Aye.”
Maxine got in Augum’s face. “I should have been born a man,” she spat through gritted teeth. “Then you wouldn’t have disrespected me.”
“This would have gone the same way because an aspiring tyrant should never be a leader,” Augum spat back. “I’m sick of hearing you insult people. Hold your tongue if you have nothing constructive to say.”
After searching his iron gaze, Maxine opened her mouth to reply.
“Shut it, Maxine, you’re done,” Leera cut in, turning her back on her and folding her arms across her chest. “What have you got in mind, Aug?”
As Maxine sputtered, Augum took a deep breath. “We have to proceed under the assumption they know everything Ulfric knows—all shelters, points of contact, our goals—including Semadon, the Seers, and Ley, everything. We must assume all of it’s compromised, as is the plan in its current form.” He rubbed his chin in thought as he nodded to himself. “Instead, we’ll pay a visit to Senior Arcaneologist Lien Ning in the Library of Antioc and get her opinion on how to safely travel to Ley.”
Leera raised her arms skyward and sang, “Praise the Unnameables, now we’re talking.”
“That’s exactly what they’ll be expecting of us now!” Maxine said. “It’s too dangerous to stick around. We should be walking on foot, or at least trying to acquire horses.”
Cry scoffed. “We’d be easier to track down than a mountain range if we did either of those things. There’s only one real path to Semadon from Antioc and you can bet your Everscale hide they’ll be monitoring it. Our only hope was finding a warlock to teleport us there, but even so, we could be teleporting right into a trap.” He nodded toward Augum. “Sorry, but Augum’s right. We seek help from someone far wiser than us.”
Maxine’s mouth opened and closed as she tried to think of a reply.
“Who is this … Ning, anyway?” Arthur asked.
“Senior Arcaneologist Ning is someone we met when Augum entered the annual warlock tournament,” Bridget replied.
“Back before it was canceled indefinitely,” Olaf added, idly drumming his big belly. “Real shame. You heard about Aug’s performance, right, Max? I mean, talk about—”
“I don’t care, you bloated fat goat,” Maxine interrupted.
“Don’t you dare talk to him that way,” Bridget hissed. “Either you work with us or we cut you loose and continue the quest without you. You might be twenty-three years old and a 9th degree warlock, which indeed is valuable, but you are causing nothing but tension—tension we could well do without.” There was no mistaking the steel in Bridget’s voice. Even she had had enough of Maxine.
“Don’t make us put it to a vote,” Augum chimed in, “because we won’t think twice throwing you off this quest if we have to.” Then, seeing that this presented her with an opportunity to prove herself in another capacity, he took a measured breath and expelled it. “But the quest would suffer if you quit now. Despite our disagreements, I’d … I’d still prefer to have you aboard watching my back. Even though you’re not quite cut out for command—” He nodded encouragingly at her. “—you’re still a competent soldier.”
Maxine searched his eyes. “Very well, I cannot fight all of you. It seems you have fallen to mass idiocy. So be it.” She scowled at them as if fishing for subservience. Instead she found every single one of them glaring right back. “I said fine already! I’ve sworn to protect Dragoon Stone and that is what I will do. That is my duty to the kingdom. I will simply have to grin and bear your … imbecility.”
Mercifully, the others did not reply. The situation was fragile enough.
“Good,” Augum said, almost wanting to pat her on the shoulder in encouragement—almost. “Good.”
Arthur withdrew a pinch of salt and tossed it over his shoulder. “Phew. Luck is with us. Let it remain that way.” Then he frowned. “Er, forgive me, Augum, but how do you expect this Ning woman to help us?”
“Ning is one of the oldest, wisest, and most powerful warlocks in the kingdom, with the uncanny ability to stay out of trouble. She’s also one of the only living telepaths. She might know a secret way to reach the Seers.”
“Isn’t she supposed to be super eccentric though?” Brandon pressed.
“An understatement if I ever heard one,” Leera muttered. “Woman looks like a shriveled apple, floats about in a chair, and is as cantankerous as—” She nodded at Maxine, who scowled at her.
“But if anyone can help us, she can,” Augum went on. “Further, an ally and friend we can trust works for her.”
“You mean that beetle-like Prudence Klines?” Leera pressed. She elbowed Arthur. “Klines wears these giant insect-like spectacles—” She abruptly cleared her throat and pushed up her own spectacles. “I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with spectacles, is there?”
Augum tried not to snicker at her hypocrisy. “Yes, and Klines is exactly who I’m intending on reaching out to first.”
“Not to mention Ning taught Mrs. Stone a few tricks,” Leera threw in quickly, trying to move on from the subject.
Brandon swept his gaze up and down the refuse-filled alley. “Where to now?”
“We head out the back of this alley and take the long route around.” Augum decided to extend a second olive branch. “Maxine, you’re famili
ar with this city, isn’t that right?”
There was a tense silence. Finally, “Yes.”
“Think you can lead us there? We could use your expertise.”
Another tense silence, this one more protracted than the last. “Very well, but you will all obey me when I say go chameleonic. Understood?”
There was a slew of grumbled yeses.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Maxine tapped her thigh as she strode off down the snowy alley. “Come, follow.” She turned around after a few paces. “Well? Come!”
Some of them exchanged weary looks before trailing after her, perhaps figuring it was simply best to put up with her for now. Sticking to the filthy alleys, they passed the occasional curious Ordinary who almost always scurried off or pretended to have not seen them. Even though they were dressed in winter furs, something about the way they carried themselves seemed to raise suspicions.
“We look like out-of-towners, that’s why,” Maxine said in response to the unspoken question. “Ordinaries are nothing but superstitious knaves and fools.”
They soon caught a glimpse of their target—a towering castle of gray stone streaked with ivy and embedded with hundreds of iron-rimmed windows and minarets and gargoyle grotesques. At the very top was a glass dome that gleamed in a ray of sunshine, the office of the mysterious Arcaneologist Lien Ning. Augum pictured her floating silently from towering bookshelf to bookshelf in her perpetual quest for knowledge.
The group stopped to appreciate the view while Maxine charged on, snow crunching underfoot. For Augum, seeing the library brought back a deluge of wonderful memories—hallways filled with ancient statues, the profound hush of a place of knowledge, getting to know Leera on a whole new level, he and the girls scrambling to solve countless labyrinthian puzzles—all while plotting how to win the famed Antioc Warlock Tournament he had entered …
Augum caught Leera looking at him, her dark eyes glinting with perpetual mischief. He recalled holding her in his arms while watching the glimmering city from a window high up in that library, waiting to meet his destiny in the coming duel.
Bridget smiled wistfully. “There it is, the fabled and ancient Library of Antioc. I used to think I’d work here as an arcaneologist or researcher of history.”
“Oh, for the love of—you lot coming or are you going to keep drooling?” Maxine spat from down the alley. “Whole city is going to be looking for us soon and you’re playing the lollygagging visitors.”
“Do you think you were born cruel?” Mary asked in that innocent and curious way of hers.
“Yes, airhead. Yes, I was. Stepped out of the womb hoofing the midwife in the face. It’s called practicality, girl. Now move it, all of you.”
They resumed following Maxine, though not without exchanging more looks of annoyance.
“Imagine if we see Leland!” Leera happily sang as they walked along.
“Who’s Leland?” Arthur asked.
“Our special little tyke. He and his father survived a direct strike from the Lord of the Legion. What’s the name of that spell again, it’s on the tip of my tongue, the one he used on them …” She snapped her fingers trying to recall.
“Chain Lightning,” Augum mumbled, realizing it had been forever since he saw Leland and Mr. Goss, living embodiments of his father’s crimes yet such wonderful souls.
“He’s mute and blind,” Leera said, “but he uses an ancient undead soldier as a vessel to talk through. At least … I think he still does. Haven’t seen him in ages. But get this, the undead soldier—you’re not going to believe this—was once the captain of Occulus’s undead army! Crazy, right? The soldier is like fifteen hundred years old or something—though we just call it a ghoul. Anyway, they keep them secluded in the library for obvious reasons as people get right freaked out seeing an undead thing carrying a small boy. And his father works for the library now as an attendant, watching over him.”
Arthur clasped his salt pouch protectively. “Dead thing? You’re not … you’re not serious, are you?”
“Absolutely serious. In short, Leland used an artifact to control an army of undead soldiers against the Legion—an artifact that also allowed him to see and talk through one of those soldiers. So he kept that one soldier around and just … kept using him after the war.” She snorted. “First time Leland tried walking about town on his own had everyone shrieking that the Legion had come back. It was hilarious.”
“That sounds awful,” Naoki said.
Brandon, who was relentlessly watching over Bridget’s back, elbowed her. “I remember that little tyke,” he said, eyes darting to the alleys. “Big heart.”
“Mmm,” Bridget only toned as Olaf, noticing Brandon’s casual elbow, drifted closer to her.
“I remember him too,” he said clumsily. “Nice kid. He’s nine, right?”
“Twelve,” Bridget corrected. “He’s twelve now.”
“There it is.” Maxine halted at the end of an alley looking out over a busy city square. Commoners hawked their wares, women walked in the ankle-deep snow with baskets over their shoulders, merchants in cold-weather garments toiled with pack horses, and gray-robed attendants strode in and out of the Library of Antioc. The ancient institution rose up behind a moat running below an ancient drawbridge. A pair of hulking gargoyle statues perched on the near end. A slew of alert Canterran overseers and soldiers watched people come and go.
“What’s with the gargoyles?” Arthur asked.
“They represent wisdom, inquisitiveness, and strength of character,” Bridget replied. “Omnio incipus equa liberatus corsisi mei.”
“All begin equal but only the curious thrive,” Augum translated.
“That’s the library motto,” Leera threw in.
“It’s tradition that one has to earn knowledge in the library,” Bridget said.
Maxine only shook her head, muttering, “Insufferable.”
Jengo craned his neck to look up at the majestic castle converted to a library. “Always wanted to come here. How do we get in? Those Canterrans look observant.”
“Agreed,” Brandon noted. “As if they’re on alert.”
Augum had already thought this far ahead. “We get a note into the hands of one of the attendants with instructions to deliver it to Klines.”
Cry dropped his rucksack and rummaged through it, withdrawing a wrinkled piece of parchment, quill and bottle of ink. He smoothed the parchment onto his knee, unstopped the ink and dabbed the quill inside, then looked up at Augum. “So what should we say?”
A Familiar Scent
The group huddled in an alley to watch Mary, deemed the most innocent-sounding, deliver the note to a gray-robed attendant.
“Daft girl needs to stop prattling on so much,” Maxine muttered, watching Mary rock on the balls of her feet while explaining what the attendant needed to do with the note. “What in Sithesia is she doing, asking for directions too?”
Although Augum didn’t like Maxine’s tone, she had a point—what was Mary going on about?
At long last, Mary smiled, waved at the attendant, and practically skipped back over.
“She’ll be down soon,” Mary said upon returning.
“Who will?” the group chorused.
“Secretary Klines.”
“What about the note?” Maxine pressed.
“What about it?”
Maxine gaped as if disbelieving Mary could be so stupid.
“But the attendant wasn’t suspicious, was he?” Haylee said.
“No, he was just surprised.”
The group exchanged mystified looks.
Mary smoothed her fur coat. “If you must know, I simply told him Secretary Klines was expecting us.”
Leera shrugged. “Whatever works,” and turned Mary away from Maxine, whose eyebrows were so far up her forehead they threatened to disappear, before she said something particularly mean.
They waited, anxiously watching the overseers.
Arthur grabbed hold of Leera’s arm and ad
justed her stance. “There, uh, now I can watch your back easier,” he said, eyes flitting to a suspicious Augum.
Naoki gazed up at a bank of approaching dark clouds. “Storm’s coming.”
“Hope we get in before it hits,” Arthur muttered as necks craned.
They waited, bundling up as the wind steadily increased. Then, amazingly, Augum spotted the unmistakable squat form of Prudence Klines. The woman was wearing her signature giant spectacles and a gray library robe that she held close as she leaned into the wind.
“Unnameables help me, there’s this many of you?” the woman squeaked after reaching them. She had a high-pitched voice, probably due to her tiny size. Embroidered over her heart was a crimson gargoyle, the official library emblem. The gargoyle, perched within a thin oval, was reading a book, the pages of which turned now and then—a complicated arcane effect that appeared in nearly every iteration.
“Let’s get out of view,” Klines said, leading them back down the alley. “You are mighty brave to come here, mighty brave,” she added once they were out of sight. She puffed her cheeks and expelled a breath. “Is this everyone, or dare I presume that more of you are coming?”
“It is, unfortunately,” Augum replied. “The remainder got left behind at the academy, and one of our number got captured. We’re on a vital quest and could use Senior Arcaneologist Ning’s advice on what to do next.”
“I heard the academy briefly dropped its protective dome this morning. Now I know why. I suppose you’ll be glad to hear the dome still stands.”
The group let out a collective sigh of relief.
“We should get you out of sight. I’ve got full teleport privileges. Link up.” They made a circle. She winked at the trio. “It is good to see you,” then incanted, “Impetus peragro grapa lestato exa exaei,” and the group disappeared with a thwomp, reappearing a moment later in a lushly-carpeted hallway that curved gently in both directions. The walls were old stone and decorated with tapestries to muffle sound. Candles flickered in ornate iron sconces at regular intervals and numbered doors lined the corridor in both directions.