Honor's Price

by Sever Bronny

  The bell sounded, ending after five gongs.

  Augum got to his sore feet with a groan. “Gods, we’ve only got two hours to figure out what the Heart of the Colossus is before the seventh bell deadline. Let’s grab a fast bite from the Supper Hall and figure out how we’ll do this.”

  They scrambled for their stuff, gave Sir Pawsalot a quick cuddle, and ran to the door. When they opened it, they discovered Leera’s note about Sir Pawsalot lying on the floor.

  “Hmm, that’s odd,” she said, picking up the note. “Did someone come by to check on Sir Pawsalot, or not?” But without an answer forthcoming, she tossed the note aside and they hurried down the Hall of Rapture, sore after eleven days of walking.

  “Huh, hall’s completely deserted,” Augum observed, recalling Brandon’s note informing them that the Canterrans had arrested all arcanists. He also wondered what happened to the crowd of overseers that had been standing by the portal, back when they had embarked on the dragoon quest.

  They stepped through that very portal and entered a dark courtyard. It was windy and snowing heavily, reducing visibility. They raised their hoods, pressed their faces into the crooks of their elbows, and pushed on to the Student Wing portal. A satchel awaited them on the other side, its contents spilled across the floor.

  “Well, that’s ominous,” Leera muttered, picking up a sheaf of parchment. “It’s just some kid’s homework. Cram material for Literature class, by the looks of it.”

  Augum had a bad feeling. “Let’s keep going.”

  As they strode on, they came across more abandoned satchels, the occasional scroll, and random school supplies—an hourglass, a quill, spilled ink.

  “What in Sithesia happened?” Bridget whispered as they strode along empty corridors to the Supper Hall doors—and discovered them caked with blood splatter. They shared a dark look and stepped through.

  On the other side was chaos. Tables and benches were overturned, trays and food were everywhere, and there were countless abandoned satchels.

  “A raid,” Augum blurted. “The Canterrans snatched everyone while we were gone.” If this was an illusion, it was a thorough one.

  Leera pinched a crusted fork between two fingers and held it up. “Then where are the Canterrans? And why does it reek like mold in here?”

  “Must have happened right after we left,” Bridget said. “The food has been sitting out and spoiled. There aren’t any Endyear ornaments around either.”

  Leera dropped the fork. “I don’t understand. Is this an illusion or not?”

  “You remember the quest to become a squire,” Bridget said. “Arcaner trials are infused with powerful ancient arcanery. Even if it is an illusion for the sake of the test, there’s no way for us to know for sure, is there?” She idly picked up a parchment only to gasp upon glimpsing its contents.

  “What is it?” Leera asked as she and Augum stepped to her side, discovering it was a Blackhaven Herald. He peeked over her shoulder and read the short piece.

  Hark, citizens of Solia! Yesterday marked the anniversary of the Solian Massacre, when Occulus the Necromancer teleported into the Canterran city of Ironfeather with his Dreadnought-equipped army and murdered tens of thousands of innocent Canterrans. But it is merely one of countless such atrocities, for Solians have been slaughtering Canterrans throughout history, incurring a great blood debt. Yesterday, that debt became due, and I have begun a great reckoning. Justice will prevail.

  Only one thing can erase that debt, and that is if a Solian brings me an invaluable artifact lost to time, an artifact known as the Heart of the Colossus. I repeat, should a Solian citizen bring me the Heart of the Colossus, I shall absolve the great blood debt. This I swear upon the sacred names of the Unnameables, may they damn my soul should I renege.

  Emperor Samuel Sepherin

  Bridget let the parchment fall from her fingers and glanced around. “If this isn’t an illusion, and we have been gone for eleven days …”

  She needn’t finish the thought for Augum to imagine what sort of slaughter the Canterran king had begun.

  “He uses the title of emperor now,” Leera noted.

  “Either way, we can still find the Heart of the Colossus to avert more Solian blood being spilled,” Bridget added.

  Leera lifted the lid of a vat only to recoil and slam it back on. “Gods help me, that is putrid. That meat’s rancid, confirming this stuff’s been sitting around a lot longer than a day.”

  Augum found a dried loaf of bread and had to agree. And after looking between the meat and the bread and recalling the meeting with King Rupert and remembering what Dragoon Pelagia had warned after Isaac’s death, a horrible realization set in.

  “This is not an illusion,” he blurted. “We must learn from Isaac’s death. This is not an illusion.”

  “Gods, you’re right,” Bridget whispered. “We’ve actually been away for eleven days.”

  “That explains why so much of Sir Pawsalot’s meat was eaten,” Leera added. “But it doesn’t explain why his water bowl was still full. Someone must have refilled it.”

  And Isaac did not die in vain. The thought was a soothing balm. “We need to scrounge what food we can and discuss what to do next,” Augum said, leading them toward the kitchen, where they jumped behind the messy service counter.

  “Found the pantry!” Bridget reported. They ran over and took what they could eat immediately—salt-cured salmon; nuts and seeds; dried prunes; and dried apple slices.

  “All right, so what do we do?” Leera asked while she stuffed a handful of peanuts into her mouth and promptly crammed in two apple slices right after.

  Augum winced as he tried to bite into the stale bread, then switched it for the salmon. “I’ve been thinking about this,” he said, chewing. “I think the entire journey was to weed out those who are not serious about resurrecting the Arcaner order.”

  “What do you mean?” Bridget pressed, munching on a dried prune.

  “Someone hid clues within the dragoon trial for future generations to find, so they could piece the order back together again. It’s the only thing that makes sense, in context.”

  The girls stopped eating, but said nothing, graciously allowing him time to explore the thought.

  “And I think that someone was Headmaster Chauncey,” Augum went on, idly nibbling on the salmon while he stared past the girls in thought. “I think he left us key clues. I mean, why else show us a vision of him hurrying like that? It was short and abrupt and just … out of place. And think about what he said—” Augum closed his eyes as he recalled those fateful words. “ ‘The true history, the dangerous history not even modern Arcaners know about, needs to be hidden and preserved in case the unmentionable happens.’ ” He opened his eyes. “What if that unmentionable event Chauncey was talking about was the digging up of the siege engine? Which means the dangerous history portion might be referring to—”

  “The Heart of the Colossus,” the girls whispered solemnly.

  A moment of thoughtful silence passed.

  Augum was about to take another bite of salmon only to hold back. “I wonder if Chauncey hid a crucial clue to Arcaner history—” He glanced between them. “—in the written exam itself.”

  “He did,” Bridget blurted. “I’m sure of it. I specifically remember thinking something was odd about one Arcaner History question in particular.”

  “Tell us you memorized it,” Leera said in a small voice. When Bridget smiled, Leera exhaled in relief. “Thank the gods you two have good memories. My brain? My brain is like mush. Maybe a pulpy paste. In one ear and out the other. Anyway, so the question was …”

  Bridget closed her eyes in recall. “ ‘In Arcaner mythology, it is thought the Rivican Lord of Death and Dreadnoughts named his siege engines after—’ And then it went on to list … wait, what were the choices again?”

  Augum placed a thumb to his forehead. “Three Rivican kings, three queens, three sites of victory, and, uh—”

  “Three Ri
vican deities,” Bridget said. “Exactly. That question felt out of place. It was almost too specific. I think Chauncey placed it there to tell us the names of the siege engines haven’t been lost to history at all, and they’re important. And I think they’re important because they—”

  “—lead to the Heart of the Colossus,” Augum concluded, never more grateful for Bridget’s love and attention to history.

  “Precisely.”

  “So what’s the answer to the exam question then?” Leera asked.

  Bridget’s face scrunched in concentration. “In his research notes, Isaac mentioned in passing that the Rivicans worshipped the siege engines.”

  “That word,” Leera blurted. “He used the word worshipped.”

  Augum and Bridget stared dumbly at her before chorusing, “Three Rivican deities!”

  “They worshipped them because they had named them after deities,” Bridget clarified.

  “I don’t suppose anyone here knows who those deities were?” Leera pressed, glancing hopefully between Augum and Bridget.

  After checking to see that Augum had no reply, Bridget held up a finger. “No, but I’m certain the names of Rivican deities are buried in Caireen’s research notes as one topic she covered was their spirituality.”

  They continued to shovel whatever they could find down their throats. Leera even tried dried turnip, only to gag and spit it out, muttering, “That was stupid.”

  They discussed the history riddle as they ate. One particular notion bothered Augum.

  “I’m convinced everything we need—maybe even the Heart of the Colossus—is inside that box Headmaster Chauncey hid.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that too,” Bridget said while refilling her waterskin. “The woman who was with him asked a pertinent question: how would he hide it without the enemy—whoever that enemy was, probably the Whisper Blades—finding it by arcane means?”

  They froze all at once. Augum spoke the thought aloud. “There’s only one possible place he could have hidden it where an enemy could not enter … the Arcaner dorms.”

  Sweet Vindication

  They raced back to the Arcaner Studies room, trailing salt from the salmon they chewed on as they ran, then had Dragoon Pelagia summon the portal to the dorms.

  After appearing in the hallway, Augum raced to the men’s dorm. There he splayed his hand, tuned to the arcane ether, and incanted, “Un vun deo,” knowing the girls were also casting the 1st degree Unconceal spell in the women’s dorm.

  To his surprise, numerous subtle signals of the intent to hide pulled on his fingers. He traced them all, finding an ancient copy of the Youth Herald stuck behind an empty bookshelf, a pouch of rock-hard candy buried in the arm of a couch, and an empty and still sticky bottle of fire whisky. He pressed on, scouring the perimeter of the curved walls, the curved staircase, the area underneath the staircase, the games area, and the bookshelves—all to no avail.

  He switched tactics and cast the 11th degree spell Reveal, which made it possible, with luck and an eagle eye, to find things that were arcanely hidden. But there was a problem—all the walls lit up with enchantments. They were the core enchantments of the academy. The arcane tendril weavings were dense, complex and unrecognizable, and every single one had sunk to permanence.

  “It’d take a lifetime to find anything in this mess,” Augum muttered, breaking the fragile spell which required immense concentration to maintain. He decided to visit the girls and see if they were having any luck. As he stepped into the hallway that joined the two dorms to the communal room, his eyes glided over a shield-sized Arcaner crest. But there was one distinct difference with this crest that he hadn’t noticed before—it depicted all three ranks: squire, represented by the golden words Semperis vorto honos; dragoon, represented by a golden castle; and dragon, represented by a golden dragon perched atop the castle. Most of the crests he’d seen depicted only the first two ranks, squire and dragoon, probably because more recent Arcaners hadn’t even believed the dragon rank existed. There was something else too. An oval dark brown blob was smudged into the wall by the crest’s edge. When Augum inspected it, he realized it was a thumbprint.

  “Could it be …?” Augum murmured, splaying his fingers before the crest and mustering his concentration. “Un vun asperio aurum enchantus.” Soft tendrils exploded into being before him, a vibrant tapestry of carefully intertwined needles that made up a classic locking enchantment.

  Augum snuffed the Reveal spell and pounded his fist against one of the doors to the girl’s dorm, yelling, “Got something!” When they rushed out, he explained what he had found.

  “So I think we have two choices before us here,” he said in conclusion. “Either we attempt to disenchant it—with unknown repercussions should we fail—or try to figure out how to unlock it.” Locking enchantments were notorious for being booby-trapped, not to mention immensely difficult to disenchant.

  Leera shrugged. “What if it’s as simple as this—” She flared her watery pond leaf shield and slapped it into the crest, which clicked and popped open.

  The trio stared stupidly before Augum and Bridget smothered Leera with congratulatory hugs and back slaps.

  “Nothing like a bit of luck for a change,” Leera sheepishly said after fighting them off. She swallowed, grabbed the edge of the crest, and opened it … revealing an ancient and battered wooden box. She removed it with delicate fingers, holding it like a prized egg.

  Augum elbowed her. “Well go on, open it already.”

  “I just want to bask in my accomplishment a moment.”

  Augum and Bridget exchanged a bemused look.

  “Are you two basking in the glow of my success yet?”

  “We are practically sunburnt by its brightness,” Augum deadpanned.

  “When I smell the flesh burning, we shall proceed. I have to take what I can get, you know.” Leera caressed the box lovingly. “All right, I think that’s enough basking for now.” Then she sniffed and added in a mutter, “And you two need to bathe.” She put it down and flipped the lid open. Inside was a single yellowed parchment scroll. Leera withdrew it, a sour look on her face. “Was really hoping for more, to be honest. Heart of the Colossus, a little bit of treasure—heck, I’d have settled for a pile of crowns.” She carefully opened the scroll. “It’s written sloppily, almost like the person was in a rush.” Then she read it aloud.

  “ ‘Greetings, future Arcaner. My name is Headmaster Charles Chauncey the Third, and I am writing this while fleeing for my life. This will be the most important document of my life. I only pray I can finish it in time. If you are reading this, then you have found an ancient secret. Historically, three Arcaners have always been tasked in keeping it safe, but the other two Arcaner secret-keepers were murdered by Whisper Blades, leaving me as the sole survivor with this knowledge. Although I will attempt to escape and impose this burden on two more Arcaners, I must acknowledge I will likely be unsuccessful, for the enemy searches for me at this very moment. I have thus decided to conceal this parchment where I know only a fellow Arcaner can find it.’ ”

  “And it worked, Headmaster Chauncey,” Bridget whispered. “We found it.”

  Leera continued reading. “ ‘Whoever you are, be warned, for this secret carries with it ancient knowledge that is incredibly dangerous. That is why I have memorized it rather than risk putting it on parchment for any to find, a practice all secret-keepers have adhered to … until now. Prepare yourself, Arcaner, for the knowledge I am about to reveal has traveled across eons of time. It will be unbelievable, but you must believe it.’ He underlined the must,” Leera said before reading on. “ ‘My only hope is that you intend to resurrect the Arcaner order and keep this knowledge safe. You may only use this knowledge as a last recourse, which is in the event of someone raising the final siege engine, as I will explain below, or a calamity of equal magnitude that threatens Sithesia’s very existence.’ ”

  The trio glanced at each other with ominous faces.

 
; “ ‘Sometime between four and five thousand years before The Founding, the Rivican race was involved in a terrible war with humans for control of Sithesia. At the time, the Rivicans were led by a Lord of Dreadnoughts. They faced an overwhelming human force led by the Canterrans. To survive, the Rivican Lord of Dreadnoughts built three siege engines. The Rivican Lord named these engines after their God of Torment, the Goddess of Pestilence and the God of War.’ ”

  “So we are right that they were named after Rivican deities,” Augum interjected.

  “There’s also some overlap of information we already know,” Bridget said.

  “Hey, I’m not complaining,” Leera muttered. “This stuff’s complicated and context is key for a simpleton like myself. All right, reading on. ‘The engines won the war for the Rivicans, who enslaved many of their enemies. This came to be known as The Great Purge. Years later a renegade Dreadnought visited a small but tight cabal of chivalric warlocks—who called themselves Arcaners. That lone rebel Dreadnought informed the Arcaners there was a way to destroy the siege engines using—’ ” But Leera pressed the parchment to her chest and looked up at Augum with wide eyes.

  “Using what?” he prodded. “Lee? Using what—?”

  “You won’t believe this, but it says—” She smiled and showed him the word on the parchment.

  When Augum saw it, he pumped both fists and shouted, “Yes!” Then he jumped to his feet and, like a schoolboy who had just passed his first exam, jumped up and down while flailing his limbs, shouting, “Yes! Yes! Yes—!”

  When Leera showed the word to Bridget, she covered her mouth with both hands and stared at Augum.

  But Augum almost couldn’t believe his firm belief had been vindicated, and said, “Here, let me see that word again.”

  She showed it to him, smiling and shaking her head in amazement. Sure enough, right there in crisp letters, was a word he had dreamed about reading confirmation of for almost a year … dragons.

  All this Time

  Leera squeezed Augum tight, whispering, “You were right all along, my love. I’m so sorry for not believing you.”