“What does it do?” he asked, flexing his fingers as if expecting to feel the magic stretch around him. Like any good glamour, he didn’t feel a thing.
“It makes you less noticeable.”
“You mean, invisible?”
She took a deep breath and pushed herself away from the wall. She wobbled for a moment, but stood on her own. “No. People just won’t pay attention to you. You’ll walk by, they’ll see you, but they won’t remember anything special about you. They’ll forget you as just another inconsequential part of their day.”
“Impressive,” he said, and he meant it. “This could come in handy.”
“It does.”
Raeb looked up at her and her glamour-enhanced green eyes. “Why don’t you use this more often?”
“I did for a long time. But after a while, you get tired of being ignored and forgotten.”
He shook his head, chuckling to himself. He would give anything to be ignored and forgotten for a while.
He took Saydee’s hand and placed it on his arm, as much for the blind man illusion as to support her. He waited for a lull in the flow of people at the mouth of the alley, and they plunged back into the flow.
Saydee led him, a bit slower now, toward the hill at the center of the city. Fewer street carts crowded these streets, and the people milling about were dressed in colorful silks instead of rough homespun wool. Several large cedars shaded the streets and ornate buildings. Raeb found it easier to breathe away from the mobs of commoners down below, but still his breath caught in his chest. There were more guards here, and more -taken. He kept his eyes open for trouble, but the two groups seemed to ignore each other. Raeb wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.
Near the top of the hill, the street opened up into a grand courtyard. The trees here were even larger and more abundant. Underneath their boughs a stone-lined pond stirred with red and gold fish. The buildings surrounding them were as massive as the trees and almost as stately, but they would never feel or smell as fresh. These places reeked of government.
Raeb’s attention was drawn to a large, imposing building set apart from the others. He would have known this was the Mage’s Academy even if he’d never seen it before. It was huge and unwelcoming, and looked as cold and impassive as the mages within. Saydee led them straight to it, staring up at it with undisguised fear.
“They might as well have hung a sign saying ‘go away’ over the door,” he said. They remained there for a few more moments, staring at the Academy from the middle of the street. “This was a bad idea.”
Saydee ignored him, squared her shoulders, and stepped forward.
She was acting brave, but he wasn’t fooled. She was terrified. Her hand trembled on his arm, and her posture was so rigid she could have been carved from stone. Perhaps most telling of all, she hadn’t said a word since the imposing Academy came into view.
They joined a small, rag-tag crowd at a nondescript door tucked away in a corner. A haggard and annoyed mage shielded the door from the petitioners. The peasants pleaded with him for help, spells, or potions, but he may as well have been deaf for all the attention he showed them.
“We’ll never get past this,” Raeb whispered. “Too many people, and I’d bet my life that mage has more than one trick up his sleeve for dealing with peasants who want to force their way inside.”
He began studying the area, trying to find a more nonconventional way to enter the Academy. They’d never be able to climb the smooth stone walls, and it was too far to jump from roof to roof. Perhaps the kitchens …
He leaned over to say as much to Saydee, but the girl wasn’t at his side anymore. His heart leapt into his throat. Had they been discovered already? No, that couldn’t be. Saydee would have made a racket, and they would have captured him as well. So where did that stubborn girl run off to?
He saw her threading her way through the peasants, straight to the guard-mage. He swore under his breath. What did she think she could accomplish by revealing themselves? Now they’d be noticed at least, more likely watched. They’d never be able to sneak in. Not anymore.
Raeb pictured the glowing smile Saydee gave the man as she got his attention. The guard never twitched a muscle. She stood on her toes and leaned toward him, whispering something. Still, no reaction.
Saydee stepped back, paused for a second, then came back to Raeb’s side. He was about to scold her for drawing attention to themselves, but her grin silenced his reprimand.
“What are you so proud of?” he grumbled.
She took his arm and led him forward without a word.
He took the hint and remained quiet as they made their way to the guard-mage. Raeb was gauging the man’s size, speed, and possible weapons when he stepped aside, granting Saydee access to the Academy.
Raeb fought hard to keep his expression oblivious. A blind man wouldn’t react, but Raeb wanted to gawk and sputter in amazement.
The gloom of the corridor beyond swallowed the daylight. Saydee was first into the cool, dark depths, and Raeb was pulled along behind. Shouts and protests rose up from behind them as the guard-mage closed the door and resumed his impassive post.
A quick check of the corridor revealed no doors, no side passages, and no other people.
“How did you do that?” Raeb whispered. Even that low tone echoed off the barren stone walls.
“There are a few passwords that are never spoken outside the Academy and never changed. They’re designed that way so no mage, however old or however long he’d been away, would ever be locked out of his own Academy.”
A bit of Raeb’s frustration leaked into his voice. “It would have been nice to know you had this secret password before now.” She at least had the decency to blush. “So you are a mage, then.”
“No,” she spat. “At least, not in the way you’re thinking.”
“Then how did you come to know this secret password?”
Saydee ignored the question.
“You’ll have to tell me sooner or later,” Raeb said. “I won’t be kept in the dark forever.”
She paused. “I know.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that,” he grumbled. He gave her a long-suffering sigh, looked around the empty corridor, and changed the subject. “So we’re in. Now what?”
Saydee stepped forward, staring at the walls. “We go in further. This will take us into one of the back libraries, and from there we make our way to Ashwinn’s laboratory.”
“Why the lab? Wouldn’t his notes and things be filed away in an office or library somewhere?”
“Probably. But I’d bet Ashwinn would have hidden his research on the Entana. The mages wouldn’t have destroyed it, but he wouldn’t have risked it. He would have kept it close and locked away so it would never be lost.”
“So we have to get through the library, corridors, and into a lab. Without being seen.”
She nodded. “Without being seen.”
“Right.” Raeb took a breath. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
25
The corridor ran straight as an arrow for thirty paces before branching out into a wider, lighter hallway. The hundreds of small noises populating a place of learning reached Raeb’s ears—rustling parchment, whispered conversations, shuffling feet, clinking glassware. His footsteps no longer echoed against bare stone, but were softened by thin rugs that had once been rather plush. The walls took on a more lived-in look he couldn’t explain as they entered the first of many libraries. There were a few shelves and plenty of tables scattered around, each coated with quills and inkwells and parchments both blank and scribbled upon. Most importantly, it was empty.
There were two exits leading out, and Saydee took the right hand door with only the slightest pause. Another corridor, this one much brighter and more comfortable, led to another room similar to the one they’d just left. Another exit, yet another library. A few small offices, another study hall. Raeb was beginning to wonder if there was anything else to the Mage’s Academ
y but stuffy rooms filled with parchments.
He and Saydee passed a few mages, but most hardly glanced at them. A few were so absorbed with their research they walked with their noses in a book and didn’t seem to care that others roamed the same halls. It was just as well—the fewer people who noticed their presence, the better off they’d be.
Their small corridor merged with a larger, much busier hallway. Mages bustled around or stood in small groups, arguing more often than talking. The smell of old parchment didn’t disappear so much as fade beneath the stronger scents of ink and perfumes straining to mask the reek of human sweat. His and Saydee’s footsteps were no longer the only sounds heard for minutes on end.
Saydee led him with confidence, nodding and smiling to anyone who seemed to notice them. Mages and students smiled back, the benign smiles of those who want to be polite but don’t actually care. Their eyes slid over Raeb and they returned to their tasks as if nothing had happened.
They could have traveled a mile or more in the time it took them to meander through the few dozen rooms and corridors to a grand foyer near the official entrance to the Academy. The ceiling rose to dizzying heights above them, the massive expanse of marble floor teeming with people. It was designed to impress, Raeb knew, and it didn’t fail to do so. The sheer size of the room made Raeb feel small and insignificant.
Saydee started to lead them across, but Raeb pulled her back into the hallway. He silenced her outcry with a glare, then pointed to a group of men standing in the shadows to their left. They swept the foyer with keen Entana eyes.
“Dear gods,” she whispered, her eyes locked on them. “There are -taken in the Mage’s Academy.”
Raeb had no response. -Taken in Karim, he might be able to understand. They were scorned or outright killed if they were found in the city, but at least they were found on occasion. In the Mage’s Academy, though … Mages were the biggest threat to them, apart from the Bok’Tarong. A mage would kill anyone with the smallest taint of Entana in their eyes and return to accolades and applause. Any -taken with a hint of sense would run at the first sign of a mage.
So what were these -taken soldiers doing here?
Dread settled in Raeb’s gut. He had no idea what was going on, but he didn’t like it one bit.
“We have to get past them to get to Ashwinn’s lab,” Saydee whispered.
“All right. Stay calm, don’t skulk. Let’s hope we can blend in and avoid being noticed.”
Forcing himself to walk as if he hadn’t a care in the world was harder than he’d thought. Every step was full of stiffness and tension, as if he expected to step on a scorpion. His eyes flit back to the -taken soldiers over and over again, hoping never to make eye contact.
Once, he caught one of the soldiers watching Saydee. Raeb tensed, his free arm reaching for Sunray before he could stop it. He looked at Saydee, to see if she’d noticed. She hadn’t.
When he looked back at the soldier, the man’s attention had wandered to someone else.
The walk across the foyer lasted half a lifetime. By the time they reached the far side and exited into a large hallway, Raeb was shaking from nervousness.
Saydee was pale and her hand was clamped on Raeb’s arm like a vice, but she continued to lead them through the corridors. They wound farther back into the Academy, past offices and libraries and finally some laboratories. It smelled strange here, like chemicals and burnt hair and the smell of seared air that happened after a lightning strike. Raeb couldn’t help but think it smelled like magic.
Soon the hallways morphed back to the same kind of stale, neglected corridors they’d arrived in. Raeb felt uncomfortable back here, like these were parts of the Academy that were ignored or outright avoided. He’d only felt this kind of atmosphere once before, and the memory didn’t help to bolster his confidence.
This place had the same sad, neglected feeling as the hospital in the -taken sanctuary, where his kind went to go mad and die.
They rounded a corner and stopped in their tracks. Blocking their way was a gate that would be more fitting for a castle’s stronghold. Iron bars longer and thicker than Raeb’s entire body barricaded the doorway. Each wooden plank of the gate was more like a half-grown tree. It would take an army to breach the gate, and even so, Raeb wasn’t sure they could succeed.
“What is this, Saydee? You told me we’d be sneaking into the Mage’s Academy, not breaking into a gods-be-damned prison!”
Her eyes never left the gates, and her voice was small and distant. The tremor in her hands was spreading to her entire body. “I don’t know whether his magic was too powerful or his mind too cunning, or even both, but Ashwinn was considered a threat to himself and others. So they kept him here, where all the dangerous mages and broken experiments are contained.”
“We’re chasing after a long-dead mage who was too insane and too strong for his own good.” Raeb glowered at her from behind his opaque lenses. “You could have mentioned something about this, you know.”
“Would you still have come with me, had you known?”
“Yes.”
She blinked.
“You might be too stubborn for your own good,” Raeb told her, “but that doesn’t mean you have to do everything on your own. You’re the one who taught me and Dragana that. Why can’t you follow your own lessons?”
Her eyes were still locked on the huge, ironclad doors of the mage prison. “Because everyone I ever relied on has betrayed me.”
Before he could press her for answers, she turned to him. “Please, Raeb, I know I haven’t been fair to you. Maybe I should have told you a long time ago. But let’s just get to Ashwinn’s lab first. Then I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”
He pointed to the massive, fortified gates. “His lab is in there? Where everyone who was too mad to be trusted with freedom was kept?”
“Are kept. And yes. Just because they were insane or dangerous didn’t mean they weren’t geniuses. The Mage’s Academy couldn’t let a resource like that escape, so the mages kept here are given access to about anything they could want. They’re just heavily guarded and supervised.”
Raeb stared at the massive gate, hoping to squelch the fear rising in his stomach. “I don’t suppose you have a secret password for this one, too?”
She shook her head. “No such luck.”
“Then how do we get through?”
She walked up to the gate, tugging on a tiny rope Raeb hadn’t noticed before. A bell tinkled on the other side. Raeb heard muffled grumbling, shuffling, and then a small window opened up at eye level. Raeb was sure the gate had been solid and seamless a moment ago.
A bored and harried mage stood on the other side. He didn’t look at them. He kept his eyes down, scribbling on some paperwork, and mumbled something Raeb couldn’t begin to translate. It sounded like namklaspoitmtkrgo.
Saydee looked at him, eyebrow raised. He shrugged.
“I’m sorry?” she asked.
He sighed the kind of long-suffering sigh only men forced to deal with idiots and those stupider than he—in other words, everyone—could manage. “Name. Class. Appointment. Cargo,” he enunciated.
“Oh. Uh, Saydee, wizard-servant, we don’t have an appointment or cargo but we need to get to Ashwinn’s lab.”
He finally looked up at her, peering through the small window as if Saydee were a juicy bug that had been squashed against it. “No appointment?”
“We’re here for some maintenance, and to check that everything’s in order.”
“But you don’t have an appointment.”
“No. Is that a problem?” Saydee asked in her sweetest, most innocent voice.
“Is it a problem?” he mimicked. “You’re asking to barge into the most secure place in Karim, filled with the most dangerous minds, without the courtesy of letting us know or prepare. So yes, it is a problem.” He looked down, dismissing them.
Neither Raeb nor Saydee moved.
After a few seconds, he looked up again. He seemed
personally offended they hadn’t scampered away. “Do you have an appointment now?”
Saydee dropped the sugary sweetness, replacing it with the stubbornness she was now famous for, at least in Raeb’s mind. “No. We do not have an appointment. But we are not leaving until we have gotten to Ashwinn’s lab.”
“Impossible. If you do not abide by the rules, I will have to have you removed from the Academy. By force, if needed.” He sounded like he hoped that would be the case.
Raeb had heard enough. He pushed Saydee away from the window, taking her place in the mage’s face. “We aren’t leaving,” he said. “You will let us in, or you’ll regret not doing so.”
Now that he’d captured this man’s attention, he could feel Saydee’s magic pulsing. It strained to keep him inconspicuous. The man’s eyes looked at Raeb, but he was already starting to look away and forget about him.
Raeb yanked off his opaque lenses, staring hard at the man with his peridot-pupiled Entana eyes. “Look at me!”
The man’s eyes, now wide and terrified, glued onto Raeb’s face. Saydee’s cool magic shattered. It fell from Raeb’s skin like droplets of water.
“That’s better,” he said. “We don’t care that we don’t have an appointment. We need to get into Ashwinn’s lab. So open this gate and let us through before things have to get ugly.”
“Y-yes, of course,” the man stammered, tripping over himself to do as Raeb commanded. “I-I must apologize, s-sir. I didn’t realize what—WHO! B-beg your pardon, a thousand times over. I didn’t realize who you were.”
It took him three tries to get the key in the lock. He whispered a hurried incantation, his voice shaking. By the time the massive gate creaked and grated open, he was sweating and trembling from head to toe.
“Please, enter sir. I meant no disrespect.” He ushered them inside with what might have been a tiny bow.
Raeb was so stunned he couldn’t think of anything to say. He’d expected fear or disgust in reaction to his Entana eyes. But respect, from a mage in his own Academy? What kind of revolution had happened to change this hierarchy so profoundly? He couldn’t even begin to fathom how this could have happened, but it left him with a sour knot of dread in his stomach.
Soul of the Blade Page 22
