by Lisa Cassidy
Alyx was the first to suffer the night terror, and when she awoke with a scream, gasping with fear, Dawn came across to crawl into bed with her and hold her tightly. When Dawn suffered from the same thing two weeks later, Alyx crept out of bed and crawled in with her.
In her darkest hours, Alyx sometimes wondered if she would ever make it home to Cayr and her father.
Chapter 16
“This is what happens when you grow up having servants to clean your shoes and clothes for you,” Dawn joked, mimicking Grange’s voice perfectly. “Spoiled brat that you are, Initiate Egalion.”
Alyx laughed, then tried her own imitation. “It’s just not good enough. The whole of DarkSkull Hall could crash down around our ears because of that one speck of mud.”
Giggling, Dawn pushed open their door. The two of them were returning to their bitterly cold room after two hours spent scrubbing dishes in the kitchen. Their punishment had been a result of Madame Grange finding one of Alyx’s boots not cleaned properly when she’d done her weekly inspection. Of course, there had only been a tiny speck of dirt in the sole of the boot—the rest had been polished and shiny—but that was enough for Grange to issue dishes duty to both of them. Alyx hadn’t dared protest the injustice of Dawn also being punished for fear it would lead to more punishment.
Exhausted as always at the end of every day, Alyx shrugged off her cloak and balanced against the stone wall as she yanked off her boots. Then, hopping around on the icy floor in bare feet, she changed into her nightgown. Shivering, she reached down to pull back the covers on her bed and jump in.
“Wait!” Dawn suddenly cried out.
“What?”
“I heard something.” She frowned. “Hissing, I think. From your bed.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, but be careful, Alyx.”
Alyx thought a moment. “How about you pull back the covers slowly, and I’ll be ready with my dagger in case there’s something in there?”
Dawn reached down and gripped the edge of the quilt, standing back as far as she could while she pulled it back. This time Alyx heard the faint hissing sound too, just before the pulled-back covers revealed a large, blue-coloured spider. Two hairy forelegs waved about in the air and then it jumped straight at Alyx.
She shrieked and stumbled backwards, losing her grip on the dagger. The spider landed on the floor inches from her boots. Dawn lunged forward and tried to stamp on it, but it hissed again and jumped out of the way, landing on the wall. Alyx stepped aside, grabbed her staff from where it leaned against her bed, and swung the thing as hard as she could at the spider. This time it moved too late, and Alyx’s staff turned it into a pulpy mess on the wall. Making a face, she used the edge of her quilt to wipe off the end of her staff.
“How much do you want to bet that thing was venomous?” Dawn asked shakily.
“I want to know how it ended up in my bed.”
“You think it was Galien?”
“I think we’d best search through your bed covers as well.” Alyx had started trembling and couldn’t stop.
“I don’t want to look. I don’t know how much longer I can deal with this.” Dawn sagged against the wall, eyeing her bed in fear.
Somehow, Dawn’s despair prevented Alyx from sharing that she felt the same fear—this time she needed to be the strong one. “We’ll be okay, Dawn.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.” Alyx hefted her stave. “But you might have just saved my life. That’s something. One day at a time, Dawn, we’ll cope one day at a time.”
“Do you really think Galien put the spider in your bed?”
“It’s possible,” Alyx said. “But it’s also possible I’m being paranoid. I’m sure there are plenty of spiders around this place, and Galien wouldn’t risk getting caught sneaking into the female dormitory lightly.”
“I don’t want to die, Alyx.”
She had no response to that.
Alyx stared at herself in the cracked mirror, dazed from tiredness. Her hair hung down her neck in a braid, something she’d learned to do for convenience since arriving at DarkSkull. Her dark green eyes looked prominent in a pale face with deep purple shadows under her eyes. Her cheekbones stood out more than they ever had. After dropping into bed in pure exhaustion every night, most mornings they still didn’t manage to wake in time for dawn breakfast. She’d lost weight, and it was evident in her skinny frame.
Familiar depression crawled through her at the knowledge only three months had passed. Sometimes it hung so heavily over Alyx that she had to fight back tears. There were days when it took everything she had just to get out of bed. At those times, Dawn and Finn’s stalwart acceptance of their life at DarkSkull and Brynn’s endless good humour grated on Alyx and made her feel even more apart from them. None of them shared her desperate desire to be home, or her apathy with their studies. They didn’t miss Cayr and their fathers so much that it physically hurt.
With the depression had come a tiny kindling of resentment toward her father. Her whole life, he’d been loving and supportive. How could he have sent her to this place? Alyx tried to ignore it, told herself he’d had no choice when the king commanded it, but that only deepened her misery. The realisation that her father wasn’t the omnipotent protector she’d always seen him as was another cold shock to her system, just another in a series of confronting realities Alyx had faced since leaving home. Her father couldn’t save her from everything.
“Come on, Alyx,” Dawn shouted through the communal bathing room door. “We’ll be late for Master Howell!”
Alyx squared her shoulders and inhaled deeply, summoning the energy and will to walk out and deal with another day at DarkSkull.
“Coming!” she called back a moment later, before throwing her robe over her shoulders and jogging out.
That morning, Howell had Alyx, Finn, Brynn, and Tarrick stand in a semi-circle before Dawn. He then gave each of them a card with a picture on it, after gently covering Dawn’s eyes with a blindfold.
“We know you’ve been able to sense the thoughts of those that mean you harm,” Howell said. “As a telepath, what you should be able to do is hear everyone around you, whenever you want. Your friends are each holding a card with a picture on it. Starting with Tarrick, I want you to concentrate on his thoughts and tell me what is on his card. Understand?”
“Yes.” Dawn nodded.
“Tarrick, please focus all of your attention on that picture. Dawn needs you to be nice and loud with that one single thought so she can pick you up.”
“I can do that.”
Tarrick frowned slightly as he peered down at his card. Dawn took a deep breath, a similar look of concentration on her face.
“I can’t…” She frowned harder, shaking her head. “I don’t know… are you looking at a ball?”
“Close.” Tarrick smiled. “An apple.”
“Try again,” Howell said. “Finn, think carefully on your picture please.”
Once again Dawn concentrated, taking deep breaths. “A tree?”
“A rose,” Finn said.
Dawn took a little bit longer on Brynn’s picture, but still didn’t make an accurate guess, even though it was close.
When it was her turn, Alyx glanced down at her picture of a house, and thought as clearly as she could about the image.
“You’re looking at a house,” Dawn said. “A brown house with smoke coming out of the chimney. The sky is blue, and there are red flowers near the door.”
All of them looked up in surprise as Alyx showed them the image of the brown house with curls of smoke coming out of the chimney.
“Well done, Dawn,” Howell said, though he was looking inscrutably at Alyx when he spoke.
“Will Dawn really be able to read our thoughts when she’s fully trained?” Alyx asked, not entirely comfortable with that.
Dawn seemed equally uncomfortable. “I don’t like that idea much.”
“You will always have the choice o
f whether to read another’s thoughts, Dawn,” Howell said. “And mages can learn to shield their thoughts so that telepaths can’t get in. It’s not infallible, of course, but I will teach you all how.”
“Now?” Tarrick asked, always eager to learn something new.
“I think that will do for this morning. There’s something else I want to discuss with you before class is over. Could you all come and sit around me please?”
They clustered together in a spacious window seat with Howell pulling up a wooden chair opposite them. Alyx sat scrunched against the window, for a moment transfixed by the snowflakes drifting through the air outside.
“I’d like to talk about the situation of mages in general. I know you’ve been learning languages and map-reading and that sort of thing, but none of that deals with mages in particular,” Howell said.
Tarrick scowled, clearly disappointed they weren’t going to be learning anything new. “Can I be excused, sir? I think I know everything there is to know about mages.”
“You will remain, Initiate Tylender. I can assure you that there are some things that you most certainly do not know.”
“Yes, sir,” Tarrick muttered.
“We mages are being hunted,” Howell said bluntly.
Tarrick looked up, startled. “That, I did not know.”
Everyone laughed, dispelling some of the tension Howell had created.
“My family would have told me if that was true,” Tarrick said indignantly when the laughter died down.
“It started about eight years ago.” Howell ignored him. “Mages began inexplicably vanishing, never returning from missions. The disappearances were random and infrequent. It took some time for the council to realise what was happening, but the situation has grown worse over time. In the last year, six mages were killed.”
“Killed, or disappeared?” Finn asked.
“Good distinction,” Howell approved. “Disappeared, technically, but none of the mages who have vanished have ever been found, so we assume they are dead.”
“Who is going around killing, or disappearing, mages?” Brynn asked.
Alyx stifled the sigh that built in her—it wasn’t enough that students at DarkSkull wanted to hurt her, now someone was out to get mages as well?
“We don’t know. All investigations into the disappearances have turned up nothing. In one or two instances, those hunting the missing mages disappeared too.”
“Mages disappearing without a trace. That’s a comforting thought.” Dawn looked at Alyx, who nodded agreement. She wondered if Lord-Mage Casovar had known this when he’d sent her to DarkSkull, and decided that he must know. He was a powerful mage, after all. Then she wondered if her father had known and felt a lurch of betrayal. Surely he wouldn’t have sent her to be a mage if he had? That was quickly followed by another thought—could the mage disappearances be linked to the fact her father had been unable to find any Taliath?
“You look like you’re thinking awfully hard there, young Alyx,” Howell said.
She started at the sound of her name. “I was just wondering, sir. Could whoever is hunting mages be the reason the Taliath seem to have vanished too?” She didn’t want to reveal her father’s confidential mission, but was curious what Howell knew.
“You mean are they hunting Taliath as well?” Finn said.
Howell glanced between them. “It is something the council has considered. Now, I tell you this in some part to explain why the learning environment here is so tough. We need trained mages who can function while in danger, who won’t crumple under pressure. Students who can’t cope with their first year here are sent home, because they’ll be useless to us in the future.”
“Us? As in the council?” Finn asked shrewdly.
“Galien wants to kill us, and he’ll try again if he gets the opportunity,” Brynn said before Howell could reply, his voice uncharacteristically angry. “I would have thought live mages were far better than dead ones.”
“Initiates, I understand that Galien scares you,” Howell said patiently. “You are right to be wary of him, but there are five of you sitting here before me, all with enough brains and potential to protect yourselves from a few apprentices.”
“You don’t believe us,” Alyx challenged him.
“I believe that Galien threatened you, but he would never cross that line. No student here would. The masters tolerate bullying to a point – it allows us to see how students deal with adversity – but your lives are protected here. I promise you that.”
“You’re wrong.”
“That’s enough of that tone, Alyx,” Howell chided.
“Sir, that day up on the wall....” Tarrick hesitated. “Galien and Fengel wanted to hurt Alyx. That’s why I tried to stop them.”
Howell sighed. “I already spoke to Master Rothai about their conduct that afternoon. You can be assured their behaviour was adequately addressed by their master. It won’t happen again.”
“That won’t stop Galien,” Alyx pushed.
“Alyx—”
“Initiates have died here before, haven’t they?” she asked. “Galien said they had; he said they could make it look like an accident.”
“Alyx, enough!” Howell turned to her with an exasperated sigh. “Of course accidents happen, to apprentices as well, but it’s extremely rare for a student to die here.”
Brynn and Finn shared a dubious look, and Alyx felt like crying. She didn’t want to spend the next five or so months of her life trying to stay alive. She wanted to go home. This time she rolled her eyes at her own thoughts; she was starting to sound boringly repetitive.
“If Galien does try to hurt you again, you’ll have me to protect you,” Tarrick said with a trace of his usual arrogance.
“That’s nice and all, Tarrick,” Brynn said. “But you didn’t exactly stop Galien and Fengel that day in the woods.”
“I did a damn sight better than you did, lesser mage,” Tarrick snapped.
“We’re not saying that you’re not more skilled and powerful than all of us combined,” Brynn countered. “But you can’t protect us single-handedly, not against better-trained apprentices.”
“Being a powerful mage is not about what type of power you have or how strong you are in that power,” Howell intervened. “It’s about brains, strategic thinking, self-control, and self-awareness.”
“Yes, sir,” Tarrick said.
“If you truly understood that, Initiate Tylender, you would stop making differentiations between supposed lesser mages and yourself,” Howell said pointedly.
“Yes, sir,” he muttered.
Howell’s chair screeched as he stood. “That will be all for today. You’d best go tend to your horses before lunch.”
The five of them were silent as they watched Howell leave the hall.
“Mages are being hunted,” Brynn imitated Howell’s voice perfectly. “More are being killed every year. Oh, time to go. Have a nice day.”
Finn and Dawn snickered. Tarrick rolled his eyes.
“You innocents really know nothing, do you?”
“You said you didn’t know anything about it either!” Dawn said.
“Well, I certainly knew—”
“Shut up, Sir Tylender, ‘I’m strong and powerful enough to handle anything,” Finn snapped. “You just told Howell you hadn’t heard about the disappearances.”
“I told him I hadn’t heard they were being hunted,” Tarrick said. “I’d heard about some mages going missing.”
“I hadn’t heard about any of it before coming here,” Brynn said in support of Finn.
“Surrounded by innocents.” Tarrick rolled his eyes again before jumping to his feet and striding away.
“I still haven’t decided whether I like him or not.” Brynn reflected.
“If someone knocked all that superior arrogance out of him, he’d be a stand-up guy,” Finn said.
“He finds it difficult to relate to us, that’s all,” Alyx said.
“What?”
“This is something you understand because you’re also superior to us commoners, is that right?” Finn asked.
Alyx stood in anger. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Finn, that was harsh,” Dawn spoke at the same time.
“I was trying to explain why it’s so difficult for Tarrick to drop his arrogance, it’s all he has left of who he was before he came here,” Alyx snapped. “And no, Finn, I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“I’m sorry, Alyx, I really am,” Finn said earnestly.
Unassuaged, she turned on her heel and stalked from the room, forgetting in her anger why it wasn’t a good idea to be strolling the halls of DarkSkull alone.
Alyx was grooming Tingo’s silky coat when Brynn’s head appeared over the stall door. “Hi.”
“Hi.” She smiled back, genuinely pleased to see him. Brynn had the ability to make her feel comfortable and less depressed when he was around. She didn’t know whether it was because of his refreshing directness and honesty, or something about the mage power in his voice.
“Finn was genuinely sorry, you know.”
“I know,” she said. “I just like some time alone every now and then. It gets stifling, all of us being together all the time.”
“Is that your subtle way of saying you want me gone?” he asked wryly.
“You’re welcome to stay.” She tossed him a curry brush. “You can even help if you like.”
“Ha. Thanks.”
“How are you coping with everything, Brynn? You don’t seem to get as miserable as the rest of us.”
“I want to be a mage,” he said. “And this is part of becoming a mage, so I put up with it.”
“That’s very mature of you.”
“Did I mention how I cried myself to sleep the first two weeks I was here?”
“Really?” She looked at him, astonished.
He nodded. “The day when Howell let me join your group, that was the first night I stopped crying.”
