Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (53 page)

The rising fury in the man triggered something. Aedan
began to shake. Then he felt his legs giving way.

No, he thought. Not here. Not in front of them
all!

But Dun was no monster. He cooled himself off when
he saw Aedan start to crumple. He glared a moment before breaking off. “Breakfast
as normal,” he said. “Stables by first light.” Then he turned and left.

Peashot was looking at Aedan with a mixture of
curiosity and concern, but Aedan wanted to be alone. He turned away, sat on his
bed, and hid himself in a book while his nerves recovered.

By morning he was the first at the stables, or at
least he thought he was until Liru spoke from the shadows.

“You know what this is really about?”

Aedan managed not to jump. “What do you mean?”

“If it were the important quest they say it is,
why am I here? I know why you are here – you have been to this Kultûhm – but
why me? There are many nurses with more experience. It cannot be the honourable
opportunity for training they say, because then they would not have chosen a foreigner.
I believe that I was chosen because they would not care much if I did not make
it back.” Her voice was heavy and cold as the morning.

“Liru I’m sorry –”

“Do not try to make me feel better,” she cut in. “I
want facts.” She stepped out from the shadow. Her face was rigid.

“I have only suspicions.”

She inclined her head.

“You’ve heard that Culver had his own ideas about
the storm over Castath? That he thought there might be cause for real concern,
not just a bad winter or something?”

“No.”

“It’s not well known. I’ve had to piece it
together. He found something underneath the city that he thinks might be
related – I don’t know what, but apparently it’s very worrying. He also found a
description that matched the unnatural storms in some ancient archive. It led
him to believe the answers will be found at Kultûhm.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Easy Liru. I’m getting there. Biting me won’t
help either of us.”

She looked back without softening. He had never been
on the other side of her annoyance, and he was not enjoying it.

“I think,” he continued, “that Culver has been
sent on this trip believing that he will find answers, but the real purpose is
to silence him.”

“And witnesses will not return,” she finished for
him.

Aedan nodded. “I think so. But I have a plan. I
spoke to Osric and …” He trailed off.

Liru wasn’t listening. She folded her arms and
stared into the thinning darkness. “I believed that I had escaped from tyranny
when I came here, but now I see your people can be as wicked as Lekrans.”

Aedan felt the words strike him. He wanted to
react, but what could he say? “Look, it’s just a hunch. Maybe there’s another
explanation.” But not even he believed that.

She turned and walked into her pony’s stable, hung
her lantern, and began to tack.

Before the others arrived, Aedan made arrangements
to have Murn looked after by a stable boy who had overcome some of his fear of
the horse, admiration driving him.

As he turned away, something caught his eye – a
figure slipping behind a tree. In an instant the suspicion took shape. He
dropped his saddle and ran out through the dim light, reaching the tree just as
Malik’s hard visage appeared on the other side.

Aedan walked around and faced him. “Why are you
here?” he asked.

Malik sneered. “I don’t answer to northerners. And
what makes you think my being here has anything to do with you?”

“I know it does.”

Malik raised his eyebrows, then he leaned back
against the tree and laughed. “Oh this is too good. I’m not supposed to say anything,
but who would you tell anyway?”

“Tell what?”

“Still interrupting are you? You never did learn.”
He smirked for a while, clearly enjoying his control of the situation. “It was
my father who dropped a few words about who would go on this headless quest. I’m
telling you because I want you to know that he only did what I told him. You see,
I win in the end. And this time, you and your little Mardrae savage both lose.”

“Was it not enough to … to use that … stinking
bully on me?”

“Iver was not enough!” Malik shouted. It was like
the hissing of a mad cobra. He reined himself in and the mocking smile
returned. “Though it was very nice to see Ilona finally lose whatever respect
she had for you.”

Aedan shrank at the words.

“But it was not enough,” Malik continued. “See,
the thing is that you and your savage both insulted me. I’m no spineless worm
that can bend and ignore it. I remember everything you both said to disrespect
me, teaching your friends to do the same. And then there was the festival, when
you had the luck to surprise that gang.” Malik’s face was growing red,
something Aedan had never before seen. “You told the story as if you had
succeeded where I had failed.”

“But I only told what happened, and you were
unconscious so how would you know?”

“Because I know
you
.” Malik was breathing
hard. “I finally saw, thanks to Iver. You’re a worm, a little shaking worm who
could never have done what you said you did. That’s when I knew. For years I
suspected, but it was Iver who showed me the truth. You talked yourself big at
my
expense! Polishing your boots with
my
name!”

The last words were almost screamed. It was the
first time he had shown emotion like this; it actually looked as if there were
tears in his eyes. He recovered himself quickly though and stepped forward,
fixing Aedan with an icy glare. “See,” he said, “nothing to say now is there?”

He was partly right – Aedan did not know what to
say. What evidence could he supply? He realised that it probably wouldn’t
matter anyway. Malik had his verdict. The case was closed.

“You should have listened at the beginning, North-boy.
You should have left.
You
brought this on yourself and her. You’ll be
gone for at least three months, and Culver’s not going to bother with your
studies like you were promised – I saw to that as well – so you’ll fail the
year for sure, both of you. But that only matters if you make it back” – his lips
curled slowly – “and I don’t think you will.”

He held the baleful glare, then turned and strode
away, leaving Aedan chilled, fumbling with jagged thoughts as he made his way
back to the stables.

Culver arrived with the large hairy man Aedan remembered
from the final interview of the entrance examinations. Aedan tried to ask a
question, but the chancellor strode past and spoke without breaking step. “You
will deal with my assistant, Fergal.” His tone was as dismissive as his words.

Malik had spoken the truth then – at least that
part was true. Even if they made it back from this corrupted quest, he and Liru
would be failed. At the very least, the year was being stolen from them, and
along with it, their friends. He should have broken Malik’s nose.

The bulky assistant offered Aedan a kind smile
beneath a glowing nose. “We’ll speak along the way,” he said from within a black
forest of beard, and lumbered off to find his horse. Aedan made no effort to
conceal his dismay. He remembered now that he had seen the man more recently –
with a mop!

“Aren’t you a cleaner?” he asked, coming up to
him.

The man looked at him, quiet humour in his eyes.
He was obviously in no hurry to answer. Aedan began to wonder if this servant was
hard of hearing.

“I do clean, yes, among other things,” Fergal
said. “Are you above being taught by a cleaner?”

Aedan was not in a good mood, and lessons were the
least of his concerns. He wanted to say something cutting but he realised that
this poor fellow was not his enemy, and the lessons would probably make no
difference in the end anyway. “No,” he said, and left to finish saddling his
pony.

A light wintery drizzle had come out to soak the
first day of their quest. All had their hoods up, all but Fergal whose mass of
black hair acted like a thatch roof. He seemed quite content with the miserable
weather.

At the city gates, the party was met by a unit of
a dozen soldiers and several pack-mules loaded with bags – grains, beans and
other supplies for the journey. The soldiers were wearing leather armour
suitable for travelling. They carried an assortment of weapons, all a lot
bigger than cheese knives.

They were also cloaked and hooded so their faces
were mostly hidden, but the eyes that Aedan saw were shifty and hard. These
were not boys; there was no buzz of innocent enthusiasm here. He looked ahead
at Liru, so small on her little pony, and he felt a thorn of worry begin to
work at him. To the side, he glimpsed a soldier smiling at her. The man’s look
gave him more cause to shiver than the wind that now struck through the opening
gates.

He thought of how he and his friends had
contributed to the design of the city’s defences, to the safety of its people,
and wondered how things had come to this. Could the prince he served really be
sending him to die for some political convenience?

He looked out at the sheets of drizzle. The men
would not want to camp in the open tonight. They would push for one of the villages
at a trot. He would have to slow them tomorrow. He blessed Osric quietly for
the frogweed. Where was it now? He had put it under his bed so that it wouldn’t
be found among his packed things during the night by a suspicious Dun. He
turned around with a gasp and felt through the saddlebags with mounting panic,
almost spilling his clothes on the muddy road.

He had left it.

Building on the outer wall was supposed to commence at first
light every day, but there were no hands to be seen as the party approached the
network of scaffolds and ramps. After passing a large mound of rock and stone, Aedan
caught sight of a group of builders. They were huddled against the leeward
shelter of the now-twelve-foot wall, trying to kindle a fire. Captain Senbert
shouted at them, but a sudden watery squall turned everything white and swept
his words away, apparently along with any resolve to interfere. He put his head
down and urged his horse forward, leaving the builders to themselves.

The road lay empty, apart from a few unfortunates
who hurried through the mud to or from the city. As soon as the party had
descended the slope, the captain spurred his horse to a trot. Aedan glanced to
his right as they passed Borr and Harriet’s home. His mother would be there.
Thinking of her made him feel like turning his pony from this hateful
procession and dashing away. But she could not protect him. Who could, if the
prince had in fact ordered his death? Osric, perhaps, but even that was
uncertain.

The morning aged without changing, unable to
outgrow its mood. It remained swamped in a dusky darkness, thick with drizzle
and worried by restless wind. The belts of rain would often bring visibility
down to a few yards, but in the breaks when the clouds gathered for the next
squall, the travellers were permitted brief glimpses of the surrounds. Buildings
began to thin out until there were only scattered farmsteads on the plains.
Here, barns and homes crouched and dripped while smudges of blue smoke were pulled
from their chimneys by the gusts. Only the bravest of the farmers could be
spied in their fields; the rest were clearly content to bow out and let the
weather do its work.

The miserable travelling allowed Aedan much time
for thought. The immediate threat gave way to something that had been often in his
mind over the past few days. It was an interview he had recently had with
Giddard, an interview that had shaken him to the roots.

“One of my little first-year boys came to me,”
Giddard had said, “much like you once did – overwhelmed and concerned. He said
that there was an older apprentice who hurt him, and whom he now avoided.”

“Was it Warton?” Aedan had asked with a guilt-reddening
complexion.

“No, Aedan. It was you.”

Aedan still felt his cheeks burn. He had only
meant to bring the junior apprentice into line. He hadn’t intended to use his
fists again, like when the other boy had asked if he was the coward.

Or had he?

Had he really beaten him? The memory was
distorted, nightmarish. He had shouted, but there was more. Had he really hit?

Something of Iver, something of his father – curse
them both! – must have started growing on him, like horns, invisible to him,
but not to everyone else. It was as if he was now becoming the thing he hated
with no way to stop the infection. He could not even see it, much less root it
out.

At first he had despised Giddard for his words. Then
Hadley had said something similar, and then he had seen the little apprentice
run from him. Now it was himself he had begun to despise. What was happening to
him?

Perhaps being away from everyone for a few months
would help, but in spite of the frail hope, he knew it would take more than time,
though what, he could not say.

The horses had been alternately trotting and
walking for a few hours when the Captain called a halt and dismounted along
with a sergeant.

Aedan looked around. They were in a shallow
depression – no buildings or people were visible. More to the point, their
party was visible to none. With a rush of fear he wondered if this could be it.
Sounds would not carry, graves could be easily dug in the softened earth,
tracks would wash away in the rain. He urged his horse forward and stopped beside
Liru.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“What good will talking do, Aedan? I have made
peace with my fate. Let me be.”

“It’s not your fate. Are you going to make no
effort to escape any of this?”

“And then what would happen to my parents if I escape
your prince. He will turn on them. I will not let that happen.”

“But Liru –”

“Enough Aedan. Leave me.” With that she urged her
horse away.

The sergeant called out that they would stop
briefly. The party dismounted. Aedan headed for the trees. On his way back, one
of the soldiers stepped in front of him with a loose-lipped smirk.

“Not much luck with the girl, huh? Saw her give
you the hoof. Bit dark for my usual taste, but definitely growing on me. I like
a bit of pluck.”

Aedan stared back, furious but helpless.

The soldier laughed and made a mock chop at Aedan’s
neck with an imaginary sword. “Look at me like that too often and I’ll cut you
down to size, little marshal.”

The captain had been within earshot, but he merely turned
away. He carried his head as if his neck was tired, shoulders drawn in; he
looked wilted. On the few occasions when Aedan had seen his face, it had reflected
turmoil.

The day continued as gloomily as it had begun. Sodden
and cold, they pressed on until, in the failing light, they came to the gates
of Morren. Once the horses were stabled, their riders hurried indoors where
they warmed themselves before the hearth while stamping in pools of water that
gathered at their feet.

The inn, named
The Rabbit’s
Burrow
,
was a warm and cheery place, though decidedly more rustic than anything Aedan
had seen in Castath. Reeds covered the clay floor, and smoky rushlights mounted
against the walls put out a moody glow that barely reached the centre of the
room. Under better circumstances Aedan would have found the place almost
magical.

The regulars looked, for the most part, to be
farmers, labourers and craftsmen – the carpenter and blacksmith were easily
identified by wood shavings and soot. Between them they set up a buzz and hum
of relaxed conversation. Aedan caught a few strands – caterpillars in the
cabbages, a new hay wagon big enough to carry a house and that necessitated widening
of all gates, predictions of rain and complaints about last month’s predictions.
There was talk of the latest eerie sighting at Eastridge – trees that had been
devoured by something in the night – and then a story that spilled the banks of
gentle murmuring.

Apparently one of the dairy cows had tried to jump
a fence and only made it half way, landed on the beam, and slid forward until
her forelegs reached the ground. There she remained, half on and half off until
the labourers could wrestle her free. One of the men proceeded to re-enact the
performance by suspending himself over the back of a chair, buttocks hoisted,
legs in the air kicking uselessly. His companions were helpless with laughter.

Aedan smiled, as much at the story as at those who
told it. Though he had grown to love Castath and the academy, he missed these
quiet country ways.

A whistle and lyre were produced and two musicians,
young, eager and more than a little nervous, took their places in the corner
and began to pour out a medley of folksongs. The notes did not always agree,
but the result was nevertheless a pleasant ambience, like the bubbling of a quiet
brook.

The innkeeper was a small man with bulging cheeks
and a white downy beard under grey downy hair. With a carrot plugging his mouth
it would have taken little imagination to see that this was indeed his burrow.
He was as polite and attentive as a grandfather hosting his nephew’s birthday
party.

His wife, however, was a different prospect
altogether. She was a big woman with a hard face and sharp ears. At any hint of
disorder, she would march through from the kitchen to raise her eyebrows as a
herder raises his staff, or as a stone mason raises his hammer. The locals
sensed the weight of those brows and simmered down when she appeared, but the
soldiers paid her little attention. As the evening progressed, they became
louder, their talk cruder, their looks meaner. Locals began to grow quiet and
started leaving, a few without finishing their meals. It was as Aedan had
suspected. These soldiers were of the wrong kind.

Unfortunately, the eager, bowing innkeeper could
not oppose anyone’s wish, so the ale flowed more freely than it ought to have
done. The serving girls knew to retreat from the company of drinking soldiers,
especially this kind, and the innkeeper was left to manage his own disaster.

Aedan had hoped to speak to Culver – he
needed
to speak to him, and urgently – but the chancellor and his assistant took their
meals to a small table that would not accommodate a third. Aedan found another
small table. Liru, instead of joining him, sat by herself until the soldier
that had been watching her earlier joined her. She left him without a word and took
the chair opposite Aedan. Roars of laughter rose from the soldiers who had been
watching the performance. Even the captain, whose mood had been softened by a
bottle of wine, was enjoying the spectacle. The rejected soldier’s smile,
however, was tight as a scar. Liru remained silent and ate little, though the
duck pie was perfect – thick pastry and soft meat swimming in a spicy gravy.

Fergal lingered to see that Aedan and Liru found
their rooms. When he turned to leave, Aedan asked if he might have a word. Fergal
replied, in a voice that carried a long way, that there would be much time for
talk during the journey and that whatever he had to say could wait a few days. Aedan
opened his mouth to say that there might not
be
a few days. But Fergal
held up a hand and spoke one Sulese word, almost like a salutation, then
lumbered away, his broad shape filling the passage from wall to wall.

Vlegalyo’du.
That was not a salutation. Aedan
went to his room and racked his brain to dig up the meaning. It was familiar.
If he had brought his books he could have found it quickly. Something told him
that there was an importance attached to the word – Fergal’s eyes had been
intent when speaking it, as if driving some meaning home. Aedan paced, he
leaned with his head against the wall and drummed his fingers, whispering the
word to himself over and over. A creak distracted him, and he listened. Suddenly
he forgot about the creak as his face lit up. Listen – that’s what it meant.
Although it should have been
vlegalyo
. Trust a cleaner to make such a
basic error.

But he began to wonder if there was more to it.
Then, from an almost forgotten class he remembered the modifier
’du
signified
people, in this case it would be people who listen. Listeners.

The creak from earlier now took on a meaning, and Aedan
remembered that the body of soldiers in the common room had appeared a little
thin. Fergal had given a warning that they were being listened to. That’s why
he had spoken so loudly of there being no need for haste. He must have been
assuring an eavesdropper that he was not suspicious of anything.

Which meant that he was.

So Fergal and Culver also suspected treachery.
Osric, then, had succeeded in getting a warning through. Aedan felt relieved in
part, but wondered what the old scholar and his large assistant would be able
to do. A compelling lecture would be of little help.

Liru would be no help.

Aedan was unable to sleep. The carousing of the
soldiers was enough to keep anyone awake. He hoped Liru had barricaded her
door. By the time the inn fell silent, he was still gazing up at the ceiling.
The heavens that had already delivered more than a week’s quota of drizzle now
showed themselves capable of far greater things as they truly opened up.
Through the pounding of heavy drops, he could not even hear his own steps when
he got up from the bed and walked to the window. The drowning noise gave him an
idea, not a comfortable one, but one that he would be fool to discard.

Getting out the window was the easy part; climbing
down the wall under a small waterfall from the roof was something else. He had
never climbed under such conditions and did not find it enjoyable. Holding the
slippery surfaces was far less of a problem than actually seeing them, and
breathing was more difficult still. When he reached the ground, he collapsed
into a frothing pool and gasped for air until he had recovered. Even if there
had been a light outside, the rain was so thick that it would have sheltered
him completely, so he ran around the building to the stables, nearly tripping
over the low rim of the well and ending his plans with a long, dark fall.

As he covered the last few yards before the
stables, he was surprised by a faint yellow glow emerging through the rain. He
guessed too late that Captain Senbert had probably mounted a guard. Unable to
stop in time, he skidded under the eaves and looked up to see a soldier at the
far corner of the building holding a lamp.