by N. M. Howell
“You don’t have anything more specific than that?” the captain asked.
“I might,” Andie said. “Where’s your map?”
“Hanging up there.”
He walked with her over to a wall-length window, and Andie saw that it was actually a massive map of the world. It was completely made of loveglass, and shimmered with an iridescent glow. The captain touched the map and the glass changed, zoomed in to show only Noelle. It was controlled by a combination of the user’s magic and the geographic data fed to it through the comm station. It was fascinating, and Andie stared at it as if seeing loveglass for the first time.
“What, never seen a loveglass map before?” the captain grinned.
Andie shook her head and walked up to the map, narrowing it to the regions surrounding Abhainn with her own magic. “It’s incredible.”
“Pretty basic stuff, really,” the captain said proudly. “But I’ve never seen a map so big as this one. Have had it in my care for the past ten years, I’d reckon.”
Andie smiled and quickly steered the conversation back to the matter at hand. “The dragons were last spotted here,” she said, pointing to the map. The captain deflated somewhat, but turned his attention dutifully back to Andie. She narrowed her eyes as she inspected the map closely. “Now it looks like there are at least six different mountain ranges nearby. We don’t know which way they were heading, but these two here don’t have the elevation they’d want, even in these circumstances. That one at the top is too far north; it wouldn’t be warm enough for the dragons.”
“Leaving the three to the southwest here,” said the captain. “I know for a fact that middle one has been taken over by the Glycerinnds after they fled from Brie. Now I know pirates, even a few hundred of them, are no match for your people, but I’m assuming they wouldn’t be looking to cause trouble or start something that could alert the public to where they are?”
“You’d be right. That leaves these two.”
“So, which is it?”
Andie sighed. “I don’t know. They both have the right elevation, the right temperature. They’re secluded. It’s hard to tell.”
“How do we even know they’re still in this region? They were spotted here, but they could’ve gone anywhere. Noelle is almost twenty-three thousand leagues from coast to coast.”
“No, if they were spotted here it means they were coming down to land. Dragons can fly near the very outer layers of the atmosphere, too high to ever be seen from the ground. If someone saw them, it was because they’d found somewhere to land. But where?”
Andie and the captain sat looking over the map, but it wasn’t long before an idea come to her.
“This one. That’s where they are.”
The captain tapped the glass and the mountain range Andie selected was brought up.
“That’s in the Hot Salts of Mithraldia,” he said. “I guess it’d be hot enough. But wait… lightning is constant there, sometimes several thousand times per hour. The clouds never clear there. Don’t your people need sun?”
“Exactly. If these were the only two viable ranges in the area, they must’ve known that eventually someone would put the pieces together and go looking for them. Now both of these mountain ranges are large enough that it would take even a sizable team a long while to search the whole thing, but eventually someone would find them. No one would think to look for them near the Hot Salts, under a constant cloudy sky. They’ll be growing weak, but they could fly above the weather to the sun whenever they really needed it.”
The captain sat back in his chair, looking over Andie with a smile of pride on his face. When she looked back to him, he furrowed his brow and looked back to the map. “The lightning can be treacherous. Are you sure that’s where they’d be?”
“They’re there, I’m sure of it.”
“Alright. I’ll get the new heading into the system.”
“Thank you, captain.”
The captain nodded and immediately set to work inputting coordinates into the ship’s navigation system. Andie watched him work meticulously at the wheel for a moment, and knew the ship was in good hands. With one last look back to the captain, she turned and left and went back out onto the deck, where Carmen was waiting for her with two bottles of something extremely bright.
“What is it?” Andie asked, taking the one Carmen handed her.
“Believe it or not, beer. It’s good, take my word for it. I’m on my fourth.”
“Your fourth?” Andie laughed, looking Carmen up and down. Carmen’s legs wobbled slightly beneath her, but she quickly steadied herself on the nearby wall. The girls turned their bottles up and started walking back downstairs.
“So,” Carmen began. “How long is it going to take us to get to this mystery location?”
Andie turned to looked at Carmen from the side of her eye.
“Oh, I see. No one can trust the spy. God forbid I send this top secret info back to my clandestine buddies at headquarters.”
“Carmen…”
“Nope, understandable. Must keep everything in ship shape. Lips sealed, files locked, legs closed, the usual.”
“Carmen…”
“But you should know now that I actually do plan on killing you slowly, painfully in your bed tonight. I mean, nothing personal, orders and what not. It’s all very straightforward, really. Wouldn’t do it if it weren’t absolutely necessary. I mean, you are the enemy, after all.”
“Carmen,” Andie said, laughing. “You’re being ridiculous. You know I trust you. And you know that deep down Marvo trusts you, too.”
Carmen sighed and chugged the rest of her beer, wiping the dripping liquid from her lips with her sleeve. “I know. To be honest, it’s kind of refreshing to not have some giant weight resting on my shoulders.”
“You mean, minus the fact that we’re trying to save my entire species from extinction and evil rumors. Not to mention we can’t use magic because the University is tracking us using technology we’re going to have to have surgically removed?”
Carmen grinned. “Yeah. Minus that. Thanks for the reminder.”
The girls laughed as they continued down the hall together.
“So, is there anything you can tell me?”
“Well, Carmen… you’re still pretty.”
“Now we’re talking.”
Carmen put her arm around Andie’s shoulder. They only had a few minutes before they needed to be at the meeting. Raesh had called a meeting to explain a system for the division of information so that no one person knew everything. The girls rounded the corner and passed two rooms before they reached the mess hall. They went inside and it was nearly completely full of Marvo’s fighters. Andie hadn’t realized there were so many onboard.
“Wow,” Carmen said. “I guess we don’t need to be worried about an attack. There must be four or five hundred people in here.”
“Now if we only knew the one person who we can’t trust.”
Carmen looked at Andie and they shared a concerned look.
“That’s funny, I just had an even more terrifying thought,” said Carmen.
“What?” Andie asked, not really wanting to hear another reason to worry.
“How do we know it’s only one spy?”
Andie shook her head, wondering why Carmen had even said that. She knew she wouldn’t be getting any sleep when the time came, but she couldn’t afford to worry about those things now.
“I don’t see Yara,” Andie said, changing the subject. “Although, I guess even if she was in here, it’d take me forever to find her. I can’t believe how many people are on this ship. We’ve still got some time. Wanna check to make sure?”
“Yeah. We could probably find her with Marvo. She’s becoming quite the introvert.”
Andie and Carmen started off down the hall again. What Carmen had said was true; Yara had had lost all social skills and desire overnight, it seemed. Andie hadn’t noticed it when she first woke up, but the more time she spent around Yara, the
more she realized that her friend had grown to distrust everyone. The knowledge of a traitor among them had had a heavy effect on her, not to mention the conversation she’d overheard between Carmen and Raesh. She wouldn’t eat in the mess hall or talk to anyone. Raesh said she had been like that ever since Marvo told her there was a spy onboard.
Yara was almost always near Marvo, discussing and planning, or up in the crow’s nest looking down on all the passengers and taking notes on their groups, behaviors, preferences, etc. She talked to Andie and Marvo, seldom to Raesh and Carmen, and never to anyone else. Besides all of that, Andie was certain there were other things bothering her, too. Probably the weight of her circumstance finally catching up to her.
Andie and Carmen reached Marvo’s room. Murakami was standing guard at the door. She’d sustained some injuries during the escape, but only one serious one that Andie could see. A grisly slash that began at her temple and ran down to her chest. Andie hadn’t had a chance to speak with her since they boarded, but by the concentrated look on the woman’s face, she suspected it wasn’t the best time to chit chat.
“Murakami,” she said, touching the woman’s shoulder. “How are you?”
“A lot worse than the Sentinel who did this to me, but I’ll survive. Glad to see you’re up. It’s better for the cause that you’re conscious.”
“Thanks, I think. Are you sure you don’t want that bandaged? It looks deep.”
“No medicine, no bandage. Where I come from stiches are enough. The pain is real. The rest of you can try avoiding it, but it reminds me of everything that’s at stake.”
“I understand. I know you’re not doing this just because of me, Murakami, but I just want to say thank you for being here, and I’m sorry for the friends you lost.”
“So am I.”
Murakami didn’t say anything else or turn away, but there was a certain kind of finality in her voice that told Andie the conversation should end there. She gave Murakami a smile as the woman moved aside. Andie opened the door and she and Carmen walked in. Yara was in there, so were three fighters who had been with them since the battle in the Archives. Their names were Kent, Sarinda, and Lilja.
Yara seemed her usual closed-off self, but Marvo was finally on his feet again. In fact, there was another person in his bed. Andie moved to congratulate Marvo on being able to stand, but just as she was touching his arm she got around Sarinda and saw who was in Marvo’s bed. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t believe it.
“Dad?”
Chapter Seven
A raging, head-pounding thunder pulled Andie into consciousness.
It came again and again, relentless, so close but yet so far away. Something sharp was pressing into the side of her face and her leg was cold. Too cold. She tried to open her eyes, but when she finally did something immediately covered them. Her eyes started to burn. She tried to pick herself up, but she couldn’t move her arms and she soon found she couldn’t move her legs either. It was like she was frozen in the middle of something thick and strong. She couldn’t breathe, there was no light, and no sound. She was all alone, or at least she thought she was. She couldn’t tell. The booming noise got louder, and Andie thought it was perhaps an oncoming storm until she realized it was the sound of her own heart beat raging loudly in her ears.
She struggled and struggled, but could do no more than manage to wiggle a little. Before she’d thought she was lying down, but now she knew she was neither lying nor standing. She tasted blood and soil and an immense pressure built over her skin. She was suspended. In dirt.
Finally, it dawned on her exactly where she was. She was buried. Someone had tried to bury her alive. She felt weak, like she’d been out of the sun for a while. She considered, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. It was only moments ago that she was on the ship, surrounded by people she knew. Her father.
Panic threatened to overtake her, but she forced her mind to remain calm as she puzzled out her situation. Her thunderous heart beat grew louder still, and the pressure in her head built. She knew she didn’t have much time before she suffocated completely. Her body could only heal itself so much.
Tears streamed from her eyes as she squeezed them shut as tightly as she could. She silently counted down from three, and when she hit one, she summoned as much strength as she could. Andie drew her magic inward, and, with one single explosion of release, she propelled it out from her in an effort to free herself from her dirt cage. It worked. The dirt around her exploded in every direction, and she flew up into open air.
She was suddenly and completely free, and she fell to her knees and coughed up dirt and small roots as her panic slowly subsided. She cleared her eyes. She looked back to see her leg and saw that it was so cold because it was bleeding profusely and was probably broken. She looked around her, her heart threatening to explode from her chest. Her eyes streamed and her breath came in ragged gasps.
It was mere moments before her dragonblood began to heal her, though, and the sight of her leg healing calmed her. She rolled over onto her back and tried to look up at the sun. The air was still clouded with dust from the explosion and the sky was completely clouded over. She lay there for a time, healing. When she was feeling better she stood up and took a look around. She couldn’t believe her eyes.
She was standing on the side of a mountain. She was on one of the lowest peaks, but there were several others surrounding her and the tallest one was huge. There was no way she was seeing straight. She closed her eyes and opened them again only to find that the mountain was still there and she still wasn’t where she was supposed to be. More than that, the sky was completely overcast and green lightning was pounding the earth incessantly in every direction she could see.
Now that she was above ground, the sound was almost unbearable, like cannons going off over and over and over. Though only the faintest suggestion of the sun came through the thick menacing clouds, the land was alive with the terrible, intermittent flashes of light from the lightning. Wherever the lightning struck, great chunks of land were sent spraying into the air and moderate fires were burning as far as her eyes could see. Far, far below, the earth itself was black and smoldering, completely devoid of any plant life. Lightning ruled the land.
“Well, crap,” she swore under her breath. She could barely hear her own voice over the deafening sound of the thunder around her. She tried to process what could have happened, drawing on anything she could possibly muster from her own memory. But it was a fruitless attempt. The last thing she remembered was being on board the ship with her friends. The next, well…
Andie looked around, more frantically this time. “Raesh?” she called, hoping for an answer. “Marvo? Yara? Carmen?” Her calls were met with nothing but a haunting echo as her voice came back to her from the mountainside. When it became clear there was no one else around her, she fell to her knees and held her head in her hands. She opened her mouth and let out a frustrated scream.
But her screams were in vain. There didn’t seem to be anyone around to hear her, and even if someone was there, there was no way she could be heard over the weather. She couldn’t understand what had happened or why. One minute she was standing in a room with her friends—and her father—the next she was buried alive on the side of the mountain. She closed her eyes and tried to focus.
The last thing she remembered was seeing her father lying in Marvo’s bed, looking a great deal weaker than the last time she’d seen him, but smiling up at her. They were finally back together and then they weren’t. But no, that wasn’t right. She began to remember something. The last thing she’d seen wasn’t her father, it was a flash of light. A flash of blue light and blast of cold energy. For a moment she was suspended, then she was buried alive. A spell. That was the only explanation. Someone had spelled her there.
She considered the options. The blue light could have been an attack, and any one of her friends with magic could have sent her away in an effort to protect her. The thought made her smile.
Someone must have known or sensed something was going to happen and had been quick on their feet. Quicker than Andie had been, that was for sure. She could barely remember the incident and could easily have been taken out had someone not acted.
“Someone saved me,” she said out loud.
But as the words came out of her mouth, she realized that no one knew where they were headed except for her and the captain. He couldn’t have sent her there because he wasn’t a sorcerer. Carmen was on the deck with her, but she never went inside the captain’s room. There was no one else in the area and the captain wouldn’t have had time to upload the coordinates yet.
She then remembered the unfamiliar cold feeling of the magical energy, and knew it hadn’t been anyone she recognized. She didn’t know the magic she had felt. It was foreign to her.
But then she knew. It had to have been the traitor. But why send her exactly where she wanted to go? Not only that, but they also put her out of reach of themselves and the University. There was nothing to be gained from this. How did they even know where to send her? Maybe they meant to send her somewhere else. None of it made sense.
The only thing she could do for the moment was to try to remember who was in the room. Since she’d woken up in the ground, her mind was completely fuzzy. But she focused and saw it. Yara. Kent. Marvo. Sarinda. Her father. Of course, there was Carmen who came in with her, and Murakami who was standing guard when they arrived. And Lilja, one of the other fighters. Obviously, her father wasn’t the traitor. He hadn’t even been with them in the tunnels.
But that still left seven people. She wanted to trust Yara, Carmen, and Marvo outright, but this situation couldn’t be taken lightly. If Marvo hadn’t trusted Carmen, even for the most obvious reason, then maybe somewhere inside he knew something Andie didn’t. After all, Andie hadn’t even known Carmen for two years, and Marvo had known her all her life. Murakami had always seemed a bit odd to Andie. And maybe it was a little naive to trust Marvo just because he claimed to have been the first one to recognize that there was a traitor; there was no way to prove that. Even Yara—beautiful, sweet, wise Yara—might not be a true ally. No one had ever really explained why she couldn’t be the spy.
