Wyrmspire (Realm Keepers Book 2)

by Garrett Robinson

  At the head of our line, Sarah stopped suddenly. I nearly ran into her back. She turned to face the woods. “We need to stop and eat something,” she called out. “We can’t keep going all day at this pace without food.”

  There was a long silence. Then Cennan appeared as if from nowhere, stepping out from the trees. His face was calm and passive, which I took for a good sign.

  “You may eat,” he said. “But quickly. We must travel far before sundown if we are to reach our encampment on the morrow.”

  “Thank you,” said Sarah, nodding. “Our food is in our saddlebags.”

  “We will bring it to you,” he said. Then he stepped back and vanished between the trunks.

  I flopped down on the grass, sighing with relief. Tess did the same, while Sarah lowered herself to the ground in a slightly more dignified manner.

  Clearly Wellath wanted us dead. I saw in the faces of some of the others that they felt the same way. For now, until I had a concrete plan, the best thing to do was appeal to the honor and decency of the other Elves in the party—the ones like Cennan.

  Sarah edged closer to me on the grass. “Hey,” she said quietly. “I know you’re frustrated right now. But I want to make sure you’re not going to do anything to upset them. Without our powers, we wouldn’t last five seconds trying to escape through the woods.”

  “They can’t keep a lock on our magic forever,” I said, putting more confidence in my voice than I actually felt.

  “Can’t they?” she retorted. “Cennan’s clearly skilled with Mind. We don’t know if any of the other elves are, as well.”

  “Some of them are,” Tess said, nodding. “Even without my magic, I can feel it when they reach out with Mind. Many of them do it, all the time. It’s funny. It’s like they’re just probing, reaching out to brush the world with their power. I can’t tell what they’re actually doing with their magic. If they’re doing anything at all.”

  Barius sighed. “All Elves have magic. They are not like humans, where only a few in a thousand are wizards. With the Elves, it is only a question of how powerful they are. Those who are the most powerful are called seers. You heard Cennan mention one earlier. They are the spiritual leaders of the Elven tribes, and their gifts are considerable.”

  Just then, two elves appeared from the woods carrying two saddlebags. Cennan wasn’t one of them, but I was pleased to see that Wellath wasn’t, either. Without a word they dropped the saddlebags on the ground at our feet, then turned and disappeared into the woods. We pulled bread and dried meat out, and I began to eat ravenously.

  Nora took a couple of bites from her own roll and handed the rest to Tess, using it as an excuse to lean in closer to all of us. “My Lady,” she said. “Can you break their hold on your minds? I have heard of Greystone being able to do something similar.”

  Tess blinked. “I don’t know. I haven’t tried.”

  “Start trying,” said Sarah. “But see if you can do it without them realizing what you’re up to. We don’t want to give them an excuse to attack us.”

  “How do I do that?” said Tess, eyes wide. “I don’t even really know how they’re holding us. What if they can tell what I’m doing?”

  Sarah put a steady hand on her shoulder. “I believe you can do it, Tess,” she said earnestly. “Just be careful, probe a bit, and see what you can figure out. You’re way, way more powerful than all of these yahoos combined. Once you figure it out, let us know. We may need to act fast once you break their hold on us.”

  Tess looked terrified, but she nodded nervously.

  Cennan and two more elves showed up, approaching us as we sat on the ground. “We will take your bags now,” said Cennan. “It is time we were moving again.” His face was inscrutable, utterly devoid of emotion. I felt a sudden thrill of fear. What if he’d heard us. Weren’t Elves supposed to have crazy good hearing? Their ears were certainly big and pointy enough. But if Cennan had heard what we’d said, he gave no sign of it now.

  I guessed we wouldn’t find out until they did something about it. Sighing, I gobbled a final bite of meat and held up my saddlebag for the Elves to take. We all found our feet again and trudged off into the woods, the Elves flitting from trunk to trunk all around us.

  REUNION

  RAVEN

  I WOKE IN MY ROOM on Earth the next morning, sighing with relief. The Elves had pushed us hard all day until the sun was hanging low in the sky. By the end of it, I was exhausted and every limb in my body was burning. Sarah grew more and more concerned as the day wound on that we’d miss our deadline and wake up too late on Earth. Finally, though, Tess had simply fallen down on the ground, her limbs too tired to move another step. Cennan had decided to allow us to rest, his Elves putting up camp around us. We drifted to sleep surrounded by armed guards.

  Bzzz, bzzz.

  My phone vibrated against my desk. I groaned and reached for it, holding it up to see a text message on my home screen. It was Calvin.

  Found Miles and Blade. They’re all right. We’re all here now. See you at school.

  There was a text from Miles, too, letting us know he and Blade were all right. I sighed with relief and let my hand sag back down to the desk, dropping my phone.

  The morning passed in a blur. I got ready, blew out of the house and got to school just minutes before my first class. In no time at all, we were all seated around a table in the cafeteria, looking cautiously over our shoulder to make sure no one could hear us.

  “First of all, it’s good to have you all back,” said Sarah. “Are you all right? Over there, I mean?”

  “We’re all good now,” said Blade with a nod. “We couldn’t come back yesterday because it wasn’t safe, but now we’ve hooked up with Calvin and it’s gravy.”

  “How about you guys?” asked Miles. “Are you okay? You got away from the goblins?”

  “Yeah, eventually,” I said. “But now we’re in a whole other mess.” We ended up in Elven territory, and now they’ve taken us captive.”

  Calvin’s eyes shot wide. “Oh my God, Elves?” he hissed. “How freaking awesome! How tall are they? Are they, like, super good-looking? Do they have their own language?”

  Sarah held up a hand to stop him. “Chill out, Calvin.”

  “But…but Elves!”

  “Yeah, and like I said, they’ve captured us,” I said. “They’re taking us to some sort of town or outpost or whatever so their leader can judge whether they should kill us or not.”

  Blade cupped a hand behind his ear. “And the reason you haven’t all blasted them to the other side of the planet is…”

  “They put a hold on our powers,” said Tess softly. “We don’t have our magic.”

  A grim silence settled among the boys.

  “So…that’s definitely uncool,” said Calvin cautiously.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Your little fairy buddies aren’t all awesomeness and roses.”

  “They’re not fairies, they’re Elves,” said Calvin haughtily, tilting his head back to look down his nose at me. “They’re not even in the same class of magical being. Elves—”

  “Chill out,” said Sarah through gritted teeth, a vein pulsing in her temple.

  Calvin sat back, folding his arms and looking sullen.

  Sarah turned to Miles. “How are your folks? You were asleep all day yesterday, right?”

  Miles’ face grew suddenly serious, his mood darkening. “They’re a little freaked. I mean, they’re used to it by now, and I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But when I went past the twenty-four hour mark, they nearly took me to Medicorp while I was sleeping. If I hadn’t woken up this morning, my mom was going to toss me in the car and drive me there herself.”

  Sarah sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I was afraid of that. I guess we should be grateful that she didn’t.”

  “Oh, I’m fine too, by the way,” said Blade nonchalantly. “Since it was obvious you cared.”

  Sarah winced. “Sorry, Blade. It’s ju
st that Miles’ mom has been on edge about our ‘disorder’ for a while now.”

  Blade shrugged it off, but I saw his face grow stony.

  “Sarah, we need to meet up with these two ex-Association people,” said Miles.

  “Briggs and Anna?” said Sarah, surprised. “Why?”

  “We can’t keep doing this forever,” said Miles. “I’m telling you, I was this close to ending up in the hands of the Association. We need a fallback plan when things go wrong, when we can’t come back from Midrealm. And we can’t work something like that out on their own. We need their help.”

  Sarah looked uneasy. “I understand what you’re saying, but I didn’t want to risk that yet. We still don’t even know these guys.”

  “Hey, I told you, they’re cool,” said Calvin. “They’ll be able to help. I know it.”

  I decided to speak up. “I agree with Miles. My mom’s the other one who’s nuts about Medicorp. I just know I’m going to wake up one day and find myself in a hospital bed over at Butler Hospital’s crazy ward, followed by a personal introduction to Terrence right before they inject me with some kind of untraceable poison.”

  “Wow,” said Blade, impressed. “That’s dark, yo.”

  “She’s a goth,” said Calvin, shrugging. “What do you expect?”

  “We do sort of specialize in the infinite blackness that is existence,” I said, jokingly.

  Miles leaned forward. “Sarah, I want to set up a meet with them. Today.”

  “I second the motion,” I said, holding up a hand.

  “We get into a fight, everyone wants me to give orders,” said Sarah wryly. “But we want to put our lives on the line with stranger danger, and suddenly it turns into a democracy.”

  “Isn’t it?” I challenged. “Or are you some kind of dictator?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Calm down, Raven. It was a joke. If everyone wants to meet with them, we will. Calvin, can you set it up to happen after school? Tell them we’ll come to them. We just need an address.”

  “Of course,” he nodded. “I’ll ask them right now.”

  “Fine,” said Sarah, sighing. “I just hope we’re not making a big mistake.”

  “I think it’s the right move, said Miles. “We can’t do this on our own forever. The more help we have, the better our chances. And they’ve already proven they’re not going to just kill us out of nowhere. They could have done that a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Sarah said. “You’ve convinced me. You don’t have to keep arguing.”

  “Okay, there’s just one more super important question,” said Calvin, leaning in closer again.

  My eyebrows raised as I leaned forward despite myself. The others did the same. “What is it?” I asked.

  He held out his hands. “Tell me exactly what the Elves look like,” he began.

  “Ugh,” said Sarah and I at the same time, standing and walking away from the table.

  School got out, and we gathered outside the building’s massive front doors. Without a word, Sarah gestured down the sidewalk. We walked to the end of the block and hooked a corner. Just out of sight of the school, a black, windowless van waited at the curb.

  “Well, this isn’t totally sketchy in every way,” I joked.

  The van’s side door clicked and rolled open. A woman looked at us with a smile and gestured for us to enter. She had short, dyed-black hair and a gauge in one ear. She was the last person I expected to be an ex-Association member. Maybe that was the point. This had to be Anna.

  She flashed us all a smile as we climbed in. “Hey, everyone. It’s a real honor to meet all of you.”

  “Close the door,” came a booming voice from the front.

  I fell into my seat and buckled up before looking forward. There behind the steering wheel was, quite simply, the most massive man I’d ever seen. He had to be seven feet tall, and every inch of his body bulged inside the dark suit he was wearing. His skin was black as night, making his wide eyes look even bigger than they actually were. Briggs.

  “Hi again,” said Calvin nonchalantly. He’d slid into the front passenger seat. “Good to see you again.”

  “Likewise,” said Anna easily, finding her seat beside me and not bothering to put on her seatbelt. “I’m just glad it happened so quickly.”

  “Yeah, well, things have happened,” said Calvin. “We’ll tell you all about it when we get to…where are we going again?”

  “Warehouse,” said Briggs. “The same one we took you the first time. It’s our base of operations. For now.”

  The van pulled away from the curb, and everyone stayed silent for the whole car ride. I could see Blade eyeing Briggs and Anna up, trying to take their measure. He almost looked like he was anticipating a fight, but that was insane. Not only were they on our side, but Briggs probably could have torn him apart with his bare hands. Sarah studied both of them more reservedly. Miles and Tess seemed lost in thought, staring out the window as the buildings passed by.

  It was less than twenty minutes before we pulled into the back alley behind an old, dilapidated warehouse. Its concrete walls had hairline cracks, and the paint was peeling. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a tumbleweed roll by as a high whistle sounded on the air.

  Briggs unlocked three massive locks on the back door and ushered us inside, while Anna kept an eye on the alley’s mouth. It was exactly like some kind of secret agent movie, and I felt a roiling anxiety begin to build in my gut.

  Once we were in, Briggs dead bolted the locks from the inside. Anna waved us over to where a rickety folding table had been put up, along with eight hard metal chairs. We all took our seats. Other than the furniture and a small computer desk against the wall, the warehouse was completely empty: at least ten thousand square feet of open space. The sound of our chairs’ legs scraping across the concrete floor echoed like thunderclaps.

  Sarah smoothed her skirt, looking oddly nervous. “Well, now that we’re here, some introductions seem to be in order.”

  “No need,” said Anna. “You know who we are. And I’ve spent the last few months learning who you are. Calvin of course, Sarah, Miles, Tess, Winston who goes by Blade, and Ester who goes by Raven.” She pointed at each of us in turn, her finger ending up on me.

  Sarah cleared her throat. “Ah. Well then, I guess no introductions are needed.”

  “Why don’t you tell us about the situation that’s come up?” said Briggs evenly. “It sounded fairly severe.”

  “Well, things have gotten a little…dicey on the other side,” said Sarah. “We’re currently in the custody of Elves. In fact, we need to get back there to handle that situation as quickly as possible, because they’re not likely to be thrilled when we sleep for ten hours and can’t be woken up. Meanwhile, the boys are all trapped underground with their Runegard bodyguards. Again, the Runegard have to keep watch over them while they rest, so they need to get back as quickly as possible.”

  As she talked, I looked back and forth between Briggs and Anna, looking for any sign of a reaction. Anna raised the occasional eyebrow, but it seemed like an acknowledgment rather than disbelief. I was stunned to see that neither one of them seemed the least bit surprised about the idea of Elves and bodyguards with swords and armor. I guess that shouldn’t have been a surprise—they used to be Association. But I wondered how it was that they actually came to believe the stories of the Realm Keepers. It wasn’t the sort of thing I’d just believe in if someone came to me out of the blue and told me about it.

  Sarah paused and looked at Miles, who leaned forward to pick up the thread of the explanation. “Sometimes things happen in Midrealm, and we can’t come back here on time for one reason or another. It’s been okay for a while, because our parents thought it was this sleeping disorder. But ever since Terrence and the Association showed up and started looking for us, putting out word about Medicorp’s clinical trials, our folks have been leaning on us to go. Yesterday I was in Midrealm for close to twenty-four hours. My mom almost brought m
e to Butler Hospital in my sleep.”

  “You can’t let her do that,” said Briggs with finality.

  “Of course not!” said Miles, looking offended.

  “Now you know how I feel,” I said.

  “That situation’s only going to get worse,” said Anna, speaking up unexpectedly. “Raven, your mom didn’t take your rejection of Medicorp well. She’s been telling all of your parents about it, encouraging them to talk to you about it and try to bring you in. She hopes that if one of the others goes in, it will seem less scary and you can all go. We didn’t know that she’d been so influential on Miles’ mother, however.”

  I growled. “Ugh. Even when she doesn’t know what she’s doing, she ruins things.”

  Sarah looked at me with concern, bordering on pity. She knew about my problems with my mom better than any of the others.

  “Wait a minute,” said Blade, holding up a finger before pointing it at Anna. “How do you know what Raven’s mom’s been up to?”

  “I’ve bugged her phone,” said Anna simply. “And all of your parents’ phones. Also their email accounts and all other online activity. I know everything they do. I know everything you do, for that matter.” She paused and looked at Calvin. “You text a LOT, by the way. At least an hour of my day is just reading your messages.”

  “Um…sorry?” said Calvin uncertainly. “Also, this makes me a little uncomfortable.”

  “It makes me a lot uncomfortable,” said Miles, looking angry. “Don’t you think you could have asked before invading all of our privacy like that?”

  “Oh, please, dude,” said Calvin, uncharacteristically arrogant. “This is a war. People are hunting us, trying to kill us. Anna and Briggs are the only ones standing between us and them. As far as I’m concerned, they can install cameras in my room if it will help them keep me safe.”

  “Not mine,” I said immediately. Anna smirked.

  Briggs shifted in his seat. “Mister Grave, I understand your concerns. Realize, however, that we’re going to do whatever we need to do to keep you safe. And yes, we would have notified you of our intentions—but this meeting has been put off for some time. And that wasn’t our choice.” He looked pointedly at Sarah.