Honor's Price

by Sever Bronny

  She moved a finger and another book replaced the first. “Here we have a gap in the history books. Something happened that saw the defeat of the Rivican siege engines, for they lost two in a titanic set of battles against an unknown force. They knew they would lose, and so they buried the only surviving siege engine. Haylee theorized, based on a crude pictorial engraving she found in an obscure ancient Arcaner text she wasn’t even allowed to borrow from the library, and I quote—” She closed her eyes as she recalled the words. “ ‘—likely buried the siege engine underneath a field of gnarled trees.’ ”

  Bridget’s finger moved and the page turned. “And here we have this brief mention in a Canterran history book, and I quote, ‘the Rivicans stole away with the Heart of the Colossus.’ Context is missing, yes, but we can confirm that the Heart of the Colossus is a mechanism that runs the engine. Moving on …”

  She dismissed the book with a subtle finger swipe, replacing it with a loose parchment note. “The Rivicans who stole away with the Heart of the Colossus were found out and vanquished by Tiberran Arcaners. But what happened to the artifact is unknown, for that is where we lost the scent. Moving on—” Another note replaced that one. “Jengo writes, ‘The Canterrans insisted on genocide, arguing the Rivicans should not be allowed to live for their atrocities. The Canterran argument prevailed and the remaining Rivican people were rounded up and executed, going extinct.’ ” The note was replaced by a scroll. “And here we yet again come across a missing swath of history. I quote from Haylee’s notes which tag onto Jengo’s, ‘For the damage was done. Arcaners, seeing how much carnage their own kind could wreak, realized some knowledge was best left to die, and stopped training fellow Arcaners on how to something—’ But what was that something? Haylee left it blank and wrote it had been torn out of the book she was copying from. And, judging by the stains, it was torn out a long time ago.” Bridget moved on to yet another note, brows knitted in concentration. “Laudine writes, ‘Many wars, plagues and famines came and went. The Arcaner order slowly died, but not so much from those ill fortunes, but because the nobility despised what they stood for, and hired Whisper Blades, hounding Arcaners from within their own kingdoms. Arcaners died out in Canterra first, but the knowledge of what everyone protected had died long before then.” Bridget looked up, whispering, “But what exactly were Arcaners protecting? The Heart of the Colossus, or something more …?”

  “What if they were protecting the buried siege engine?” Augum asked, unable to stop himself from weighing in. “What if that’s the secret that has been passed down in Arcaner lore—”

  “Wait!” Leera blurted, slapping one hand to her forehead and holding out the other. Goose bumps dotted her arm. “Fates strike me blind, it’s cryptic but it’s there. Bridge—what did you say about where they might have buried the siege engine?”

  “A Rivican construct, perhaps under a field of gnarled trees,” Bridget said, watching her carefully.

  “Thank you, Cryptography! And what sort of tree is best known for being gnarled?”

  “The oak tree, of course,” Bridget replied, and her eyes widened.

  The trio exchanged a grave look before chorusing in a whisper, “Oakenfield Keep.”

  “Yes, yes,” Bridget said, scanning note after note, scroll after scroll, her prose rapid and precise. “Haylee discovered it mid quint. She dismissed it as a theory, for it was nothing more than an ancient and crude pictorial. But …” She froze, parchments floating about her like giant snowflakes frozen in place. “Gods help us, they’ve been digging in the wrong spot under the academy. All the Rivican sites they’ve been digging under are the wrong ones.”

  There was a muffled squeal of delight.

  “Uh, what was that?” Leera said. “Sir Pawsalot, that you?”

  Sir Pawsalot, who had been snoozing in a ball, was suddenly alert, ears roving as he too tried to catch where the sound had come from.

  The trio glanced about, arms at the ready, listening. All they heard was the hiss of the hearth fire.

  “How much time until your Centarro fades?” Augum asked.

  Bridget gave him a blank, cloudy look.

  “Lee, stay with her. I’m going to have a look around.”

  As Leera took a bewildered Bridget to the couch, he checked all the nooks and crannies, even wandering so far as his dorm. But he was afraid to get separated from the girls and soon returned to them. By then, Leera was minding a near-unconscious Bridget, who rested in her arms with eyes drifting to and fro, unfocused.

  “Nothing out of sorts,” Augum reported. “And nobody can get in here unless they’re an Arcaner. Not even the arcanists have access.”

  Leera glanced about with a frown as she stroked Bridget’s cheek, guiding her back from the haze of Centarro.

  Sir Pawsalot jumped from his perch and stealthily crept up on to the pile of satchels, giving them a cagey sniff.

  Augum and Leera traded looks before he rushed over to them and upended each one. Then he placed a hand over their stuff, concentrating on a subtle pull within the arcane ether that would tell him there was an intent to conceal. “Un vun deo.” His breathing lessened as he paid careful attention to his feelings. But there was no hint of a tug.

  “Try Reveal,” Leera suggested.

  Augum readjusted his stance—and slipped on something round underfoot, falling to the ground with an “Oof!”

  There was the sound of a glass ball rolling across the floor and hitting the wall.

  Except they could not see it.

  “Gods, it’s invisible,” Leera said, only to slap a hand over her mouth, eyes widening meaningfully at Augum, a gesture he interpreted as, They can hear us.

  Augum silently stood, spread his hand and focused on the Reveal spell. “Un vun asperio aurum enchantus.”

  “I knew you learned an illegal spell!” said a tinny voice from the wall.

  Augum paced over, careful to maintain total focus on the Reveal spell, and watched as a small orb flared with brilliantly colored arcane tendrils, looking like a ball of dense thread. He picked up the orb to inspect it, but doing so made him lose focus, and the Reveal spell fizzled out, leaving him inspecting an invisible object. And that’s when it hit him—Katrina had succeeded in casting a simple Object Invisible spell on a rare and extremely expensive Orb of Hearing, explaining why she had gone to the warlock markets. She must have purchased a pair with her fortune, and held the other one right now.

  “So that’s how you found my pebble in your satchel,” Katrina said from within the orb. She was breathless, as if walking fast. “By casting Reveal, an illegal spell. You’re lucky you haven’t been expelled. Guess it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  “What did you overhear, Katrina?” Augum asked.

  There was the sound of a door opening, followed by a muffled request to urgently see King Samuel. “Oh, nothing in particular,” Katrina finally replied. “Only the location of the long-lost siege engine.”

  Two Heaps of Metal

  Augum roared as he threw the invisible orb against the wall, shattering it into a thousand pieces that instantly became visible. The jagged shards fell to the ground, making a crystalline rain-like sound. He stood above the wreckage, holding his head. How could he have been so careless? He should have known to check their belongings after every encounter with Katrina! Come to think of it, he recalled seeing the overseers arrange themselves in front of their satchels, yet he had been too tired for it to register. One of them must have slipped the orb into a satchel. And now Katrina had run straight to Sepherin.

  “We can’t stop her in time, can we?” Leera asked in a small voice.

  “No, we can’t. Idiot, idiot, idiot!” he shouted at himself, placing his hands against the wall and leaning forward, head hanging between his arms. “That’s what I get for being a careless fool. I guarantee you she’s telling King Samuel what she discovered as we speak.” He punched the wall and pain exploded in his knuckles.

  “Go easy on yourself, my love,
” Leera said. “We were exhausted and traumatized from seeing our friends placed under arrest. Can’t be on point every moment of every day. We’re bound to slip up.”

  “Slip up?” He whirled on her, only to see she had a pained look on her face. He realized seeing him like this troubled her, and all the fire in him extinguished as if engulfed by water. He slid down to the floor amidst the shards of glass, barely aware of his throbbing knuckles.

  Bridget finally came out of Centarro’s side effects. “What happened? Why is there glass all over the floor? Why are Augum’s knuckles bleeding?”

  Leera quietly explained the bad news. When she finished, Bridget mumbled, “Unnameables …” and dumped her head into her hands, hair falling over her fingers.

  “There’s one bright side to this,” Leera whispered. “Now that they know where the siege engine is, they’ll stop digging up half the kingdom, and hopefully stop using so much labor. Many people will be spared dying in a pit.”

  “Not if they use the siege engine against the people,” Augum grumbled, unable to keep the anguish from his voice. They were trapped.

  “That’s why we have to find the Heart of the Colossus,” Leera said. “So they won’t use the siege engine against Solia. Besides, if we fail to find the Heart of the Colossus, Sepherin will use his huge force to slaughter a quarter million Solians. We don’t have a choice but to hope it exists and that the dragoon path takes us to it. Even if we rescued all the warlocks and dumped them into those Dreadnought suits, it still wouldn’t be a large enough force to take on the Canterrans.

  “So Sepherin can use the siege engine against the other kingdoms?” Augum countered. “How many lives will we then be responsible for? For all we know, this thing could be invincible and he could wipe out all of Sithesia.”

  “We have to find it,” Bridget said through her hands.

  “But like I said—”

  Bridget raised her head, face firm. “And we hand it over, buying us time.”

  That stunned them into silence.

  “That’ll damn the other kingdoms though,” Augum whispered. “And that’s assuming Sepherin keeps his word.” Thankfully Sepherin was known to be a man of his word, as Augum had learned in Military Strategy class. It was a source of pride for him.

  “Explain, Bridge,” Leera said, removing a strip of linen from the detritus of her satchel and strolling over to Augum. She smiled bittersweetly at him, took his hand, and gently wrapped it.

  “Like I said, we buy time by finding the Heart of the Colossus and handing it over, and in the mean, we discover what mysterious force destroyed the initial two siege engines … and use it to destroy the last one.”

  Augum closed his eyes, voice distant. “I think I know what force it was.” It was all coming together. All the fragments from his research. All those hours spent in the library poring over ancient Arcaner texts. But there was one fragment he could vividly remember, a fragment he had found months ago, out of context.

  Bridget stood, sensing the importance of what he would say. “Aug …?”

  Augum opened his eyes. “I have to show you something.” Gods, it was so close too.

  Leera glanced around at the mess. “What about our stuff?”

  “We’ll come back for it. This won’t take long.” He located an oval etched into a wall by the hallway, one of many, that indicated a portal. “Shyneo.” His palm lit and he placed it against the etching. A portal exploded to life. The girls stepped through first and Augum followed, the trio appearing on the sandy arena floor by a peaceful Dragoon Pelagia.

  “What are we looking for?” Bridget asked.

  Augum pointed high up at the rattiest of a score of ancient tapestries. This one was particularly faded, and hung around forty feet up. It was also massive, like the room-sized flags that once flew over a field of battle.

  Leera squinted. “You know my eyesight sucks. What’s it depict?”

  “Dragons sitting atop two jagged heaps of metal,” Bridget said in awe. “Those are the two fallen siege engines, aren’t they, Augum?”

  “Dragons were real,” Augum whispered with reverence. “Dragons are what defeated the siege engines. Not only do we have to become dragoons … we have to figure out how to achieve the ancient Arcaner rank of dragon.”

  * * *

  As the trio cleaned up their stuff back in the communal room, their talk was ablaze with ideas. Was there a course that could teach them how to summon and use a dragon? If so, Dragoon Pelagia probably wouldn’t reveal it to them until they achieved dragoon rank. Would the dragons be real living creatures, or more like their summoned elementals, which were composed wholly of arcane energy? And if the dragons were real creatures, where were they now? Perhaps they lived on another plane, as the Leyans did. Or maybe they were hidden in some ancient Arcaner stronghold, maybe even somewhere in the academy, like the siege engine was buried under Oakenfield Keep. Suddenly they were full of hope again, suddenly they stood a chance. It was an epic long shot, but still …

  “Yes, it’s absolutely incredible if true,” Bridget said, carefully returning parchments into her satchel, “but it was a long time ago. We’re talking four to five thousand years ago here. Back when arcanery was wild. Back before all the warlocks came together and established the degrees and the structure of arcanery that came to be known as The Founding.”

  Augum pointed at the shards of the Orb of Hearing and telekinetically collected them into an iron receptacle. “We need to make dragon rank. Somehow, some way, we need to do it.”

  “Maybe we should pass the dragoon trial first.” Leera finished stuffing her satchel and kicked it aside. She drew her knees in as she glanced around the plush communal room. “Almost wish we could hole up in here forever. Too bad we’d starve. And grow bored. And a quarter million Solians would be slaughtered. And likely all of Sithesia conquered.” She snorted. “Sorry, I know I can be insensitive. I don’t mean disrespect to those under threat, or to those who died.”

  Augum and Bridget stopped cleaning to glance over at her.

  Leera flashed Augum a mischievous look which made his stomach flutter and cheeks redden as he recalled what had happened earlier between them in the men’s common room.

  “Incorrigible,” Bridget muttered after glancing at the two of them. She put aside her satchel and turned her attention to the neat stacks of parchments, books and scrolls that made up their research. “The information we need about dragons isn’t in this pile. We’d have to venture out further. Either find a way to get back into Archives, or head to the Library of Antioc.”

  “No way to get there,” Augum said. “No one around to teleport us.

  “Ugh, you’re right. Not that it matters. We need to prepare for tomorrow morning’s trial.” Bridget reached back into her satchel and withdrew some parchment notes. “Let’s start by reviewing everything we learned in the course. And I mean everything. I know we’re tired, but we should run through at least two practice cycles of all our spells—with a focus on Arcaner spells.”

  Leera nodded at the bin of shards that Augum had collected. “Jez could repair it.”

  “Right,” Augum said. “Greater Repair.” He had forgotten that arcane objects could be repaired with the 11th degree spell.

  “Exactly. Question is, would it amount to anything? Orbs of Hearing are paired. She probably tossed the other one aside.” Leera shrugged. “Anyway, it’s an option. Now let’s grab a snack and get some spells cracking.”

  * * *

  Later that night, after a grueling personal training session between the three of them, Augum washed up in the men’s dorm and dressed in his night clothes, then retrieved two precious pieces of sentimental jewelry from his rucksack—a necklace of charms given to him by his friends for his fifteenth birthday, and a silver locket that had once belonged to his mother, marked TTS, for Terra Titan Stone.

  Feeling nostalgic, he opened the locket to marvel at the tiny portrait painting of his mother holding him when he was a baby. She wa
s smiling serenely, coffee-colored hair curled for the occasion. Yet as always when he looked at the portrait, there was an unmistakable sadness behind her caring eyes.

  He had stopped wearing both necklaces because they kept getting in the way of training, more than once accidentally choking him. But resolving that his soul needed every bit of support and encouragement for what was to come, he closed the locket and placed both necklaces on top of his neatly folded robe. Tomorrow morning, he would don them for the trial.

  Augum then strolled to the girl’s dorm—knocking first, even though they had invited him over. There he found Bridget and Leera dressed in their nightgowns, waiting for him with cups of steaming tea in hand, academy blankets around their shoulders. Sir Pawsalot snoozed peacefully between the girls, curled in a ball.

  Augum, wincing from the soreness in his muscles, fell onto the couch beside Leera. “Lonely over there without the boys. Where’d you find a kettle and teacups, anyway?”

  “Cupboard, and the tea is from our stash,” Bridget replied. She nodded at a low table. “One there for you.”

  Augum telekinetically floated the cup over. Leera allowed hers to hover before her while she wrapped half her blanket around Augum’s shoulders, landing a peck on his cheek before snuggling against him and recovering her floating mug. For a time the trio just sat there watching the flames of the hearth.

  Augum took a sip of Solian pine tea, enjoying its aroma and the pleasant memories it brought, and glanced up at the walls to read the names of a few ancient pennants. Sithesian Girls Warlock Brigade Champions, 3122. Intramural Dueling Champion, 3255. Antioc Tournament Champion, 8th degree, 2934—which was almost five hundred years ago.

  “Looking for the oldest one?” Bridget asked, and pointed at a ragged one which was nothing more than a small rectangular banner stitched with ancient embroidery. It was aged a deep umber like an old potato. “That one’s about nine hundred and fifty years old, from 2398, which is only fifty years after the academy was built.”