by Eric Vall
I nodded even as my shoulders slumped. She was right, of course. In fact, perhaps she should have some help. I worried about one member of my team going off alone, even if she was a highly skilled professor.
“Alright,” I said. “I need one person to go with Arwyn back to Varle.”
“I don’t think I can,” Orenn spoke up with a frown. “To be honest, I feel like I should return to my hometown in Balvaan. They need help rebuilding. I realize it’s not the best time … “
“No,” I told him. “It’s alright, I understand. It would be cruel to ask you to help rebuild Varle while your own home suffers.”
“Thank you,” Orenn said, but he lowered his gaze in shame.
I wished there was some way to reassure him, but I would probably have felt the same guilt in his position. I didn’t know what it would be like to have a home town to call my own, but I couldn’t take leaving Maelor behind if he was sick or in danger. It would be an impossible choice.
“G-Gryff?” Braden spoke up nervously. “Can I go with Orenn?”
I smiled to try to reassure him. “Of course. I was going to ask for you to go along, since you’d both be safer as a pair.”
My heart went out to Braden. He’d gotten rid of his stuttering over this past year, but the two months in captivity under the animandu had brought back some of his old anxious habits.
“Thanks Gryff, I just need more time, I think,” Braden explained gratefully, “and I think helping Orenn rebuild will be … uhhh you know.”
“I’d like that, too,” Orenn said as he laid a big hand on Braden’s shoulders.”
“Sounds good.” I smiled proudly back at my two friends, and I was glad Braden had the strength to ask for help when he needed it.
“Okay,” I said, “Arwyn is the only person left without a partner. I’m going to have to ask one of the people from my group to go and help her in Varle.”
“I’ll go,” Nia offered reluctantly. “As much as I want to be at the front of the action, I have the best connections in Varle. Sleet is out of commission and Goredrin Madox is in charge, so things may be rocky. As the one with the most political sway, I should be there to help smooth things along.”
She didn’t mention it, but I was sure Nia also wished to spend the trip with her father. They’d been pretending to hate each other for a long while now in order to trick Miriam, so it made sense for them to want some bonding time.
I couldn’t help but agree with her decision.
“Alright, Nia is with Arwyn,” I decided with a nod, and then I gestured to people in turn as I spoke. “The two of you should be able to hitch a ride back to Varle with the military when they leave today. Almasy, you should take Ashla, Braden, and Orenn on your own airship. It won’t be too much of a detour to drop off Orenn and Braden in Baalvan before you and Ashla continue on to find the Wild Reds.”
“Got it,” Nia and Ashla chorused.
“Thank you,” Orenn said.
I smiled. “That leaves Erin, Cyra, Layla, and Varleth with me. Five makes a good team for tracking down Gawain.”
“What happens if you catch him?” Almasy drawled.
That was a good question, but it wasn’t one I had a real answer to. I still couldn’t imagine the new Gawain would betray us without a good reason.
Would we have to fight him? Should we arrest him? Was he working alone? I just didn’t have enough information.
So, I would deflect the decision until later.
“We’ll bring him, the books, the tablet, and the ciphers back to Varle,” I declared. “In fact, whenever anybody has finished their task, please meet back in Varle.”
Orenn and Braden might take a long time to be done rebuilding in Balvaan, but I expected everyone else to be there before our tracking team had found Gawain. It would be nice to be together again as a team.
Maybe we’d even get some more peaceful days of rebuilding in. I’d be thinking of these calm hours in Ralor’s Stead wistfully for a long time.
I rubbed my bleary eyes as I collected my team of trackers to get to work on the mystery of where Gawain had gone to.
“I have some tracking skill,” Varleth said when we were gathered.
“So do I,” Cyra added, “though I might not be very useful unless we’re following him through a forest.”
“We ought to check both exits of town, then,” I said. “If he left any signs of which way he went, we can follow his trail.”
We checked the north exit first. The ground was packed hard, and old hoof and footprints marked the ground. I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was looking at.
“One horse has gone through here recently,” Varleth said. “It might have been last night, though it looks earlier. Could he have stolen one?”
I shook my head. “Those aren’t from Gawain. They belong to the messenger, Nicka. I saw him off myself just a few days before.”
Next was the western exit. It was in a similar condition to the northern one with its hard-packed earth and old overlapping signs of prints.
“I can’t tell if anything has been through here recently,” Varleth muttered discontentedly. “It looks like it hasn’t been used in a while. What do you think, Cyra?”
She stroked at Kalon absently as the dragon curled around her shoulder. “You’re probably better at tracking people through streets than I am, but I think you’re right,” she agreed.
“So, we don’t have any idea which direction he went,” I said with a sigh. “It’s not surprising, I guess. Gawain knew we’d follow him, and I guess he also knows how to hide his tracks.”
“Seems correct,” Varleth hummed. “Though he can’t hide them forever. If we can figure out which direction he went, I’m sure we’ll pick up his trail eventually.”
So, it hinged on that initial direction. Maybe it was time to ask the people of Ralor’s Stead for their help.
“I’m fairly sure I’m the one who knows Gawain best here,” I told my team, “but I have no idea where he’s gone. So, we’re going to ask around town to see if anybody saw him leave.”
They nodded, and we all split up to talk to as many people as possible. Though fifty-fifty odds weren’t terrible ones to guess with, I was hoping to get some definitive proof of exactly which direction Gawain had run off to. In the meantime, we also asked about any stolen horses.
Walking a day in the wrong direction would put us two days behind him. Then, if it rained, we could lose Gawain’s trail forever. It was best to find out which way he’d gone for certain.
Ralor’s Stead was no city by any means, but it wasn’t the smallest town I knew. Even after we’d divided the town into five sections, it took a little over an hour before I felt like I was running out of townspeople to ask.
So far, I’d had no luck. It was frustrating to knock on dozens of doors without a single answer that could help me in my search. Gawain may have been just one man, but I couldn’t imagine he’d gotten out of town without a single witness to watch him go.
Though I hated not getting the answers I wanted, I still enjoyed asking around. More than a few men and women invited me in for a meal in order to thank me for saving the town. I had to decline because of the time crunch, but it was good to hear that people took notice of the mages who destroyed the rift.
A few people recognized me as the Gryff who had worked as a tree-cutter and rescued Ralor’s Stead over a year prior, but many didn’t connect the dots. I wondered what kind of person they saw now that they looked at me in my navy summoner’s cloak.
I finished the last home on the street with no more luck than I’d had at every house before. So, I turned dejectedly back toward Maron’s inn with my head held low.
On my way there, I ran into a throng of children as they played around the trees in the main plaza. They giggled and chased each other with such joy and innocence, it nearly convinced me I’d dreamed up the rift, Miriam, and Gawain’s betrayal almost entirely.
Well, I had nothing to lose if I asked.
<
br /> “Hey kids!” I called out to them. “You didn’t see a mage with golden robes and bad hair leave town last night, did you?”
They stopped and gathered around me with eager faces.
“You’re one of those mages, too!” squeaked a girl in pigtails.
“Have you ever cut off a monster’s head?” asked a boy with wild brown curls.
“I have,” I said gravely.
The boy whooped and hopped around in complete glee.
Maybe I shouldn’t have told him that.
“H-hi,” spoke up a tiny girl with a pink birthmark on her cheek. “Was I not supposed to see the mage last night?”
I blinked in surprise. “Oh, I’d be super happy if you did see him. You’d be the best helper I ever had. Did you?”
She twiddled her fingers through her hair nervously. “Well, I couldn’t sleep very well last night. Mama says to stay in bed and count sheep, but I like looking out the window instead.”
“Of course,” I told her, “there’s nothing wrong with that.”
She seemed reassured, and she forced out, “I was looking out my window, and that guy walked past. He had a big bag and a flashy cloak. I thought he was on a super secret night mission.”
I smiled. “Which way did he go?”
“Toward the swing tree.”
“It’s that way,” the curly-haired boy said as he pointed north.
I patted the kids on their heads. “Thank you all so much! You’ve been amazing helpers.”
They seemed to enjoy the compliment, and they went back to chasing each other around the fountain. There was significantly more reenactment of monster beheading in this game than the one before, though.
Hopefully, their parents wouldn’t ever catch hold of me.
I ran back to the inn and opened the door with a pounding heart and a wide smile. I couldn’t believe my luck.
Everyone else had already returned, and they looked as glum as I could expect from a group of people who hadn’t found Gawain’s trail.
Layla’s head was slumped in her arms, and Erin played with an empty water glass as she rolled it back and forth across the table.
“He went north,” I gasped. “A little girl saw him go.”
Layla picked up her head and widened her eyes.
“Seriously?” Erin asked as a grin spread across her face.
“Seriously,” I repeated. “We’ve got a heading now. Let’s go!”
“How reliable is this little girl?” asked Varleth.
I grinned and winked. “Better than a fifty-fifty chance, at least.”
“Terrible odds,” the gypsy muttered.
I ignored his words and gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder as he got to his feet.
He rolled his eyes, but he smiled back anyway.
It took us a few scant minutes to gather our things and say goodbye to Maron. The innkeeper made sure to send us off with our packs loaded down with bread and rich homemade cheese.
He also slipped a huge flask of mead and a bottle of brandy into my bag with a wink, and I thanked him once more for his hospitality.
The long northern road lay ahead of us.
Though Maron’s gift was nice, we would need dry firewood and camping supplies as well as a restock on water and food if we hoped to get far. I’d charted out our course on the map, and it looked like there was a moderately sized trade town just a day’s travel away. We would be able to get the supplies we needed there.
As we left the town, Cyra and Varleth kept their eyes on the ground as they searched for any clues of Gawain’s trail.
I felt a little bad Cyra couldn’t partake in her usual hobby of watching every animal, plant, and cloud she came across, but we needed her tracking skills too much.
Layla and I started up a singing competition, though it felt odd without Braden’s smooth, deep voice running underneath ours.
Erin stepped in instead with a soft, high range. She had a certain knack for harmonizing, and whatever song we started, she was able to pick up a counterpoint to it almost instantly.
“How do you do that?” I asked incredulously after we’d finished off a nearly-tuneless drinking song with several verses about men and women bedding each other.
Erin hadn’t missed a note of harmony, and it ended up sounding like something that deserved to be played in front of nobles.
Well, as long as they didn’t listen too carefully to the lyrics.
She shrugged and winked. “Maybe it’s my mimic power.”
I rolled my eyes at the unsatisfying answer.
“I bet her parents were musicians,” Layla piped up confidently.
Erin gave a mysterious smile but offered no explanation.
“Maybe she was a gypsy like me,” Varleth said dryly.
I snorted. “Erin is from a normal family who gave her a regular old Enclave upbringing. I think. Erin’s from an Enclave, right?”
“Maybe I am,” Erin said mystically as she drew her cloak over half her face, “or maybe I’m not. Who can say? I’m too mysterious for real answers.”
We laughed for a long time at her antics before we went back to our repertoire of road songs.
“My feet hurt,” Layla sang out in the middle of a ballad as her voice followed the notes. “Don’t know the words, but Maker, this song is boring.”
I snorted and squeezed her shoulders before I finished out the last few lines with the real words.
“I liked that one,” Varleth complained when it was over. “Now I’m going to have Layla’s made up lyrics in my head forever.”
“I was singing my truth,” Layla said with a grandiose gesture.
“The only truth you were singing was … “ the banisher trailed off in the middle of his sentence. “Cyra, are you seeing this?”
The chocolate-skinned summoner examined the ground in front of us with an intense expression. “It looks like a man’s footprints to me,” she said.
I peered at the ground they indicated, and sure enough, there was the beginning of a clear walking trail. A spruce bough was tossed to the side of the path, and it seemed like Gawain had been using it to brush away his tracks as he walked.
I whistled. “We’ve been tracking for half the day. He covered up his tracks this long?”
It didn’t seem like the fire mage I knew, but nothing he’d done recently made any sense to me.
The thought sobered me. It hadn’t really sunk in yet that one of my team members had stabbed us in the back. Yeah, he was kind of an asshole, and we hadn’t started out as friends, but I’d laughed with Gawain and fought by his side. I’d watched him grow as a person and as a mage. What had changed, and when? How could I miss something like this?
How could he do this to us?
“Seems that way,” Cyra said as she interrupted my thoughts. “He really didn’t want us to follow him.”
“If I was making away with a bag full of ciphers that could save humanity, I wouldn’t want anybody following me either,” Layla added.
“Well,” I murmured with my eyes on the trail stretched out in front of us, “I guess we should get to it.”
At the end of our journey were the ancient artifacts my friends and I staked our lives on to recover.
With the books and ciphers recovered, we could give the researchers at Varle a fighting chance to help us stop the rifts. We might bring back the answers that would one day save humanity.
I could return to school and see all of my friends again.
I could rest easy knowing I’d completed the Headmaster’s final request of us.
And finally, I could learn why a friend I’d trusted with my life had turned his back and completely betrayed me, my friends, and possibly the whole of Mistral itself.
Chapter 7
We spotted the trade town as the sun dipped low enough to barely touch the treeline. I didn’t enjoy the thought of camping out in the woods without the gear we needed, so I made the decision for us to stop for the day.
Gawain’s
trail veered off from the main path and into the forest, where it wound between the distant trees and vanished into their gloomy shadows. We would have to come back to this spot tomorrow in order to resume the chase.
It pained me to give up an extra hour or two we could’ve used to track Gawain further, but I didn’t want to risk my team’s wellbeing if we wandered after him while the sun’s light vanished.
“I don’t want us to lose his trail or stumble into a fight blindly,” I told the other four mages, “so we’re going to stay the night in an inn here. Make sure you pick up whatever you need to hike through the woods for a few days, because we won’t get another opportunity like this.”
My group agreed, and Cyra and Varleth seemed especially relieved. I should have paid closer attention to my two trackers, since I was sure they were tired of fixating on Gawain’s trail without a break for so long.
“Doesn’t this seem really odd for Gawain?” Layla asked as we passed the point where his trail diverged from our own path.
“I have to agree with you,” I replied as I looked at her in curiosity. “None of this seems right to me, but why do you say that?”
She tilted her head to consider my question. “I don’t know Gawain all that well, but when Sleet sent us on that mission together, it was almost like he had a second personality.”
“You could say the asshole side was his second personality,” Varleth pointed out.
Layla huffed as she shook her head. “Not like that. I know he’s changed a lot from his old snobby self, but this was a different kind of weird. We had to share a room sometimes, and I’d often hear him on the floor having some kind of nightmare. I thought maybe it was because he was used to sleeping in expensive beds instead of on the floor, but when I asked him about it later, he said he didn’t mind giving me the bed.”
“So, you think something troubled him even back then?” I asked as I furrowed my brow.
“I think so,” she said with a perplexed shrug, “but I don’t know what. Sometimes Gawain was nice, but other times he would snap at me out of the blue. I even overheard him talking to himself when he thought I couldn’t hear him.”
