The Tower

by Todd Fahnestock

  “Wulfric has a point, I am loathe to say,” Arsinoe said. “While killing all second-years is idiotic, we should decide who’s going to make it through, and who is not. And sooner rather than later.”

  “We have not yet sorted out the fourths,” Olivaard said with his over-articulated words.

  “Dear Ollie, the fourth-years are pedestrian. They contain no...” Arsinoe paused for dramatic effect. “Brilliance.” He winked at Wulfric, who didn’t acknowledge him. “Let them run the normal course of the academy. It’s the second-years destroying the order of things.”

  “It is a different kind of year,” Olivaard acknowledged.

  “A unique year, you mean,” Arsinoe said. “When have we ever seen this?”

  Linza sauntered closer with the quiet physical grace of a mountain cat. Brom suddenly realized the Anima had shifted her position so that The Four stood in an exact square. Impetu across from Anima, Mentis across from Motus, equally spaced apart. Each was of such vastly different size and shape that, at a glance, Brom didn’t notice their near-symmetry before. But now the pattern leapt out at him. He wondered if being equally spaced apart increased a Quad’s power. Physical proximity had increased the magic of Quad Brilliant, but they’d never experimented with patterns. Brom resolved to test this when he got out of here.

  “You’re talking about Quad Brilliant,” Linza said in a crone’s voice, seemingly plucking the words from Brom’s mind. His blood chilled.

  “Yes.” Olivaard nodded sagely, his long earlobes wobbling.

  They were all silent for a moment.

  “They have elevated nearly half the Quads in their class simply by their example,” Arsinoe said.

  “It is...interesting,” Linza creaked in her ancient voice. “They outperform the third-years, even the fourths, in some cases.”

  “Not all the fourths,” Olivaard said.

  “Please. The fourths seem like dullards by comparison,” Arsinoe chided.

  “Kill them,” Wulfric said darkly. “Make it look like an accident.”

  Arsinoe rolled his eyes. “Could you please offer a different suggestion for once?”

  Wulfric put a threatening hand on his sword.

  Arsinoe ignored the gesture, turned a lazy gaze to Olivaard. “Tell me, does Quad Brilliant remind you of anyone?”

  “Us, a hundred years ago,” Wulfric said, though the question hadn’t been directed at him. “And we hated each other back then.”

  “Back then?” Arsinoe said, amused.

  “It almost kept us from bonding, but it made us strong in the end,” Olivaard said thoughtfully, tapping his too-long chin with his too-long finger. “It’s doing the same for them.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to,” Linza creaked. “The Collector assured us they would never bond.”

  “By all means, let’s set our course by what little Damon says,” Arsinoe drawled.

  “It’s dangerous to let them live,” Wulfric said.

  “Exciting, rather,” Olivaard said. “We built this school to leash power. Imagine what we could do with theirs...”

  “We built this school to stop that kind of power,” Arsinoe corrected.

  “Kill them,” Wulfric said.

  “Gods, shut up.” Arsinoe sighed.

  “They are not so very grown up yet,” Olivaard said.

  “Kill—”

  “Wulfric, stop,” Olivaard interrupted, exasperated. “We can’t kill the princess. You know that, so stop saying it. She’s the next in line for the Keltovari throne, and she’ll be queen in a matter of years. Having a slave queen is too perfect an opportunity.”

  “Kill the others.” Wulfric persisted. “Let Arsinoe play with the urchin until she bursts. Let Linza suck their oversized Impetu dry. One night, and the Quad will be done. We will spread some story that the urchin and that giant Fendiran broke the inter-Quad relationship rule, fucked, and fled to Fendir rather than face punishment. The Fendiran’s family will look for him for a year, then forget him. And no one will look for the girl.”

  “And their Anima, Brom?” Linza asked.

  A wave of chills rolled through Brom as she said his name.

  “I’ll take him to the top of a tree and drop him,” Wulfric said. “Young Animas are accident-prone, always pushing their boundaries because of their false confidence.”

  “False confidence?” Linza asked.

  Wulfric waved her comment away with one of his thick, steel-covered hands, and his gesture flung a bug across the room. It hit the floor and scuttled away.

  “Or we could use them,” Olivaard said.

  Wulfric let out a frustrated breath.

  “Come now. Their power would make them strong slaves,” Olivaard said. “If we graduated them, we could use them. We’ll take a personal hand in the Test. Make sure it happens exactly the way we need.”

  “Or we could just kill them and be done with it!” Wulfric thundered, practically yelling.

  But Olivaard was obviously past listening to Wulfric. “Royal is exceedingly talented,” he mused. “Think of what we could do with him in Fendir, against the Sacintos. Imagine Royal scouring his homeland and purging the outlanders. He would be a holy terror. He already wants to expunge the Keltovari from Fendir. We would simply...adjust his focus.” Olivaard pursed his lips. “No. They must be allowed to take the Test of Separation.” He flexed his fingers. “I want my hooks in them.”

  “Yes,” Linza creaked.

  “You play with fire,” Wulfric said.

  “Are you afraid of fire?” Arsinoe chuckled.

  Wulfric drew his sword this time, so quickly Brom barely saw him move. Suddenly a six-foot blade pointed at Arsinoe. But Arsinoe didn’t seem to care. He lazily plucked a grape from the platter on the table, popped it in his mouth.

  Around his chewing, he said, “Please. We all know you’re not going to use it, so put it away.”

  “One day...” Wulfric growled, “you’ll be wrong about that.” He sheathed his blade.

  “It’s decided. We keep the princess and the Impetu,” Arsinoe said.

  Wulfric shook his head, metal scraping on metal. “We kill the urchin and the Anima boy in the Test.”

  Fear thrilled through Brom. Vale was right. This entire academy was a trap. The Test of Separation wasn’t a test at all. It was a way for The Four to cull the Quads, to rip them down, make sure no one ever challenged the supremacy of The Four. The Four didn’t want to train Quadrons, they wanted to enslave them or destroy them.

  “One loss breaks the Quad as easily as two,” Linza creaked.

  “Yes,” Olivaard said. “Failing both is wasteful.”

  Brom began to shake. Even deep within the Soul of the World, he had difficulty finding his calm. Brom, his friends, the rest of the attendees at the academy, they weren’t students. They were livestock.

  The betrayal slithered like worms into Brom’s veins. He could barely hold still. His anger and fear threatened to pull him out of the Soul of the World. He thought of Oriana, and he hastily banished his emotions, forced himself to look through the hole again.

  “I want the urchin,” Arsinoe said, a sly smile on his face.

  “We know you do,” Linza creaked, as though this had been discussed before.

  “You’re not a Motus, you don’t know,” Arsinoe said, nearly whining. “I see her when I sleep. I see her when I wake, that cute, defiant little face contorted in ecstasy. You can’t know how it...fills me. I hear her screams of pleasure transforming into screams of pain, and I...” He trailed off, shivered. He plucked another grape and popped it in his mouth. “She will make a most vigorous meal.”

  Hot anger spilled inside Brom, and he wanted to leap from behind the bar and strangle the vile man. He suddenly hated Arsinoe more than he’d hated anyone in his life.

  “As you wish.” Olivaard waved his hand like he didn’t care. “Brom passes. Vale fails.”

  “Now that Arsinoe has relived his fantasy, might we turn our attention to the problem we came t
o address?” Linza creaked. “Quad Brilliant is a mere annoyance. The Sacintos are a real threat. They may have spears leveled at our hearts.”

  “They’re going to regret it,” Wulfric growled.

  “Stop posturing.” Arsinoe rolled his eyes. “You were less than worthless when they broke into the academy. You ran headlong into the night, stomped about the river for a while, and came back with mud on your hooves. Besides that, what did you find?”

  Metal squeaked as Wulfric clenched his fist.

  “We were all caught unaware,” Olivaard said. “We cannot afford to be so ignorant again. The Sacintos are stronger with the Soul of the World than we previously guessed. They poked at our tower and slipped away like a breeze...” He gave a terse shake to his head. “This cannot be allowed. If it were known that these branch-heads could invade the academy with impunity...”

  “I have scoured the lands around the academy,” Linza said.

  “As have I,” Wulfric rumbled. “There isn’t a trace, not for miles. Obviously they sent someone stronger than we supposed to avenge their Quadrons.”

  “They don’t have Quadrons,” Arsinoe drawled. “They have witch women and legend-keepers.”

  “Maybe we simply haven’t seen their Quadrons,” Wulfric said.

  “It is the same thing,” Olivaard said. “They can use magic. They’ve mastered Soulblock division. Therefore, they are dangerous. And if the Keltovari and Fendirans discover that they can divide their own Soulblocks without our help, we lose control.”

  Brom reeled with that news. So it was true. Soulblocks could be created outside the academy. He desperately wanted to know how to accomplish that. If he could understand how to make Soulblocks strong enough so that they didn’t crumble upon leaving the academy, Quad Brilliant could flee these walls with their power intact.

  “If the branch-heads have figured out how to divide Soulblocks,” Arsinoe said, “perhaps they have figured out how to stay so deep in the Soul of the World that we can’t see them except with our own eyes.”

  “Speculation is pointless.” Olivaard waved a long-fingered hand, annoyed. “We need certainty.”

  “They touched the spell by the wall,” Linza said. “That is where I found the greatest concentration of residual magic.”

  Arsinoe picked up an apple from the table and tossed it into the air, caught it. “We’ve heard all this before.”

  At the mention of the spell and the wall, Brom twitched. They thought the Sacintos, that foreign, odd-looking race of people who had been filtering into Fendir from across the sea, were somehow Quadrons, that they’d breached the school and escaped.

  But it hadn’t been a Sacinto. Linza was talking about Brom and Vale, she just didn’t know it. She was talking about the night Brom had shot into the sky with the Soul of the World.

  It suddenly became clear why The Four hadn’t searched the dormitories after his and Vale’s narrow escape. These monsters had thought the threat had come from outside the school, not inside. They hadn’t guessed it was a student.

  In five scant minutes, Brom had learned more about The Four than all the masters or students for a hundred years. The Champion’s Academy was a trap. The Test of Separation, an intentional slaughter. Soulblocks could be created outside these walls. And these monsters intended to devour Vale during the Test, then enslave the rest of Quad Brilliant.

  I have to get out of here now, he thought. He had thoroughly accomplished his mission, and every second he stayed was more dangerous than the last.

  His confidence began to drain away. Fear turned to a cold sweat on his forehead, under his armpits. His palms turned clammy.

  He realized with a spike of horror that his third Soulblock was running out. He was slipping out of the Soul of the World.

  Sweating, Brom looked longingly at the sliver of the doorway beyond the edge of the bar, and he quailed. He didn’t even know how he’d made it into the room without being seen. That had been some miracle of timing generated by the Soul of the World. How was he going to get out again?

  The Soul of the World softly slipped away. He felt like a cork, submerged beneath the water, suddenly bobbing to the surface, exposed. The last of his third Soulblock crackled through him and vanished.

  The conversation in the room suddenly stopped as Linza hissed.

  “Someone is here,” she creaked.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Brom

  “What?” Wulfric roared. “Inside the tower?”

  “I don’t know,” Linza said, her ancient voice tight with concentration. Metal rang on metal as Wulfric drew his sword. A low rumble escaped him as his heavy hooves charged to the doorway, Brom’s only escape.

  Brom’s fear paralyzed him. Olivaard could find people by searching for their minds. Linza would be able to see his soul like a burning flame, just as Brom himself had seen the fires of people’s souls when he’d flown up over the academy. She should be able to see him right now.

  He was as good as dead. If he ran, Wulfric would catch him. If he stayed, the others would. There was nothing he could do...

  Except...

  He could open his fourth Soulblock.

  It was certain death, but it would give him magic enough to sink back into the Soul of the World and feel what he must do next. It might even give him a chance to escape. And if he could escape, he could deliver this critical information to his friends before he died.

  If Brom died after passing on his information, his friends had a chance. If Brom died in this tower, everything he’d discovered was for nothing. It would die with him, and his Quad mates would continue on in ignorance. They’d be lambs with their necks exposed to a knife.

  That boiled all his choices down to one. He couldn’t leave his Quad mates exposed, not when he could help them.

  He took a deep breath, and then he opened his fourth Soulblock.

  The magic burst within him, an unbelievable lightning storm. It was like opening his first three Soulblocks all at once. His entire body crackled with raw power, and he sank back into the Soul of the World like he was plunging to the bottom of the sea.

  Suddenly, he didn’t need to look through the hole in the bar to see The Four. He was a part of every rot-filled, decaying part of them. He knew exactly where they were and where they were going.

  He also knew what to do now. The Soul of the World showed him every course of action that would bring him to safety.

  There were two doorways in the room. The one through which Brom had entered, and one on the other side of the room on the same wall. Arsinoe and Linza had gathered at the far doorway, and Olivaard had joined Wulfric at the closer one.

  Flipping his cowl up to hide his face, Brom stood and sprinted alongside the bar, running as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

  The Four spun at once, like they were all parts of the same creature, but they seemed sluggish to Brom’s hyper-active senses. They all saw him just as he threw his hands up over his head and leapt at the window at the end of the bar.

  It shattered.

  Brom’s body became a tool of the Soul of the World. He didn’t think; he listened to what must be done. He reached out and snatched the curling drapes that had blown out with him. It arrested his momentum just enough to bring him back toward the wall. He landed on his toes on a decorative ledge of snowy stone, a body length below the row of second-story windows. He pushed off, flipped in midair, and landed in the snow just in front of the spiderweb in the narrow courtyard, which was no longer gray in Brom’s enhanced vision, but solid black. Snow whipped hard in the howling wind, blinding him. The blizzard was so absolute that his physical eyes couldn’t see the guards at the wall’s gate anymore, nor even the window from which he’d just jumped.

  But he could feel the guards. He could feel The Four at the window behind the swirling snow, and he felt Wulfric leap after him, roaring. The man’s giant hooves blew the snow apart in a white cloud and cracked the cobblestones right behind Brom.

  Cold, gl
owing green eyes flared inside that square helmet as Wulfric glared at Brom. The giant blue axes swung left and right behind him.

  Brom turned and leapt at the black spiderweb.

  Wulfric leapt after him. Time seemed to slow, and Brom twisted, pulling his arms in to his chest as he corkscrewed between the strands of the web, touching none of them. Wulfric’s hand swiped through the air where Brom’s ankle had just been.

  Brom landed in a heap in the snow, right where he’d come over the wall in the first place.

  Wulfric slammed into the magic web and screamed. His steely, muscular arms curled up, and his back arched like he’d been struck by a lightning bolt. The spiderweb wrapped around him, grabbing hold of him, then pulled his limbs into tortured positions as it expanded again. Wulfric drew a ragged breath and screamed again.

  Brom didn’t take time to watch the spectacle. The other three might not be able to jump from that window, but they’d be after him like an arrow. He ran at the wall, found a small chink in the bricks with his toe and propelled himself high enough that he could grab the top and throw himself over. He sprinted into the blizzard, unable to see more than a few feet in front of him, but he could feel. He ran alongside the hedge, using it to guide him back to the river.

  He reached the rushing water, breathing hard. Wulfric’s screams had ceased, and Brom knew the chase had begun again. He didn’t know how much time he had before his fourth Soulblock was done and, shortly thereafter, he would die.

  He felt a sudden stab in his mind, like a giant scorpion’s tail. Brom stumbled, going down to one knee, and he clapped his hands to his ears.

  I have you, little Sacinto, came Olivaard’s high-pitched voice in Brom’s mind. Ah, you’ve opened your final Soulblock. Clever. But your sacrifice will amount to nothing. You’ll never reach your fellows, and we know how to keep you alive. Yes... We’ll keep you alive for as long as we require.

  Brom ignored the arrogant voice. The Soul of the World knew what to do, and he listened to it. As the scorpion’s stinger seemed to turn into a hand, grasping, trying to get a hold on his mind, to find more thoughts to plunder, Brom staggered to his feet, stumbled down the snowy, muddy slope, and dove into the icy river.