Storm of Prophecy: Book 1, Dark Awakening (42 page)

Chapter
XVII

R
ight after Stacy rushed out into the hallway, she almost crashed into the abandoned wine cart that Clyde had left behind. Even though the two masters had called out to her that there was no hurry when she left, she moved quickly anyway, wanting to meet up with her new associates before the time came to start following him.

The lines between each stone block on the walls flew by in a flash. Her shoes made light scraping sounds with her passing. She descended the stairs deftly with each step, making sure not to trip in her haste.

It wasn’t long before she passed through the main dining hall, crowded though it was, and had to avoid bumping into people. The hall was a beehive of activity and every color of robe could be seen. The smell of warm food, possibly chicken and fresh bread, filled the air, and the hum of talking and dishes clanking resonated throughout. Heads turned her way. It seemed that nearly everyone stared, no doubt wondering why she wasn’t still carrying a broom, she thought bitterly. She let this slip her mind and instead concentrated on dodging those who crossed her path.

With some degree of skill and ease, she at last came to the stretch of hall breaking away from the dining area, and slowed her pace to a reasonable walk before knocking on the door. “Come in,” she heard a woman reply. Stacy continued catching her breath while she took hold of the cold metal knob in her hand and felt its lightness for the briefest instant before giving it a twist and entering.

Inside was a long room with a table of orange-brown wood running through its length toward the other end. Chairs that matched it and many that didn’t lined its sides and were pushed in. A few light orbs hovered up and down above the long table, and it was clear that it was a room meant for study though none other than the five people she saw were currently present.

She was greeted by four serious faces that looked on at her entry and one that looked at nothing because his eyes were tightly closed. The person who had his eyes closed was the seer: a young man wearing robes a lighter shade of blue than her dress, who stood in front of the table’s end in a motionless trance, holding tightly onto a wooden staff to steady himself while he projected his awareness outward. Beneath his head of light brown hair rested a person blessed with the vision, and in his current state, it didn’t seem that he was even aware that Stacy had entered the room. His mind was elsewhere, perhaps even in a more direct sense. Those with this vision were rare; she doubted there were more than even a dozen at Gadrale.

Standing to the right of the preoccupied seer and the edge of the table was an Elf man with long black hair hanging behind his pale pointy ears. The clean red robes he wore let her know immediately that he was a pyromancer. He blinked several times while looking at her. His strange yellow-gold Elf eyes made him appear as though he were staring with a greater amount of concentration and
a sharper, more bulging intensity than he really was.

Left of the seer stood two men she recognized but didn’t know. She had seen them only once before when she faced a hearing in front of the Council of Masters along with Vincent, Karl, and Rick. They were the two guards who had brought Vincent in and taken him away after his verdict had been issued. The two men were not old enough to be masters themselves but were not young either and appeared more seasoned than most.

One was a brown haired botanical mage with a handlebar mustache, a small beard running only in a line down the front of his chin, and a wicked scar across his right jaw. He wore drab work clothes, a knife at his belt, and stood with his arms folded. A bag with a strap over his left shoulder hung at his side, and a flap covering the top prevented her from seeing what was inside. Even with his arms crossed, he absentmindedly fiddled with something small between his thumb and fingers, possibly a seed. His brown eyes looked on, anxious for the pursuit. The other, a man with fair hair, was someone who shared her profession but one whom was old enough that she had never met him in any class. He was holding an instrument which Stacy found peculiar: a long iron rod which he carried as a staff.

The fifth person was a blonde woman in a gray dress standing left of them who Stacy guessed to be in her thirties. She was the cerebist that had been alerted. “You must be Stacy Clark, welcome,” she greeted.

The man with the bag and the seed spoke next. “Having you with us will be like a toad having another wart on its back, but you’re welcome to come anyway.” The cerebist sighed.

“Don’t mind him,” his friend said, “he’s just bitter because we were supposed to be getting off soon.”

“He’s not the only one,” the Elf put in from off to her right. “First Magnus’ brutal training and now this. I should have stayed in Edris.”

“I’ve heard other people say that too,” Stacy commented, “about Master Magnus, I mean.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, if it’s any comfort I’ve had a long day too.”

“It’s not,” the botanical mage said, still fiddling with the seed, “other than knowing that you won’t chipper talk us to death.”

“Oh, I won’t,” Stacy affirmed. “Not after sweeping dust all day with a broom. Of that you can be assured.”

He barked a laugh. “Is that all you got for what you did?”

“You try it all day for seven days,” Stacy snapped back.

“Don’t keep the masters in the dark next time and you won’t have to,” he retorted snidely.

Stacy let out a sullen sigh. “I know,” she said simply.

“Would all of you please keep quiet!” The seer suddenly scolded, not opening his eyes or budging. “I’m still new at this and it’s easy for me to lose focus with all these distractions!”

“Great, a novice…” the man with the seed muttered under his breath, looking off to the side. “Where is he anyway?”

“He’s out on the campus going down the main walkway toward the outermost gate. He still doesn’t suspect anything.”

The other unfolded his arms and tweaked his mustache. “That’s far enough,” he said impatiently, “let’s go.”

“If he looks back and sees us outside of the gatehouse, he’ll know something is wrong,” the seer pointed out.

“Then we’ll wait behind the wall next to it,” the mage suggested irritably, “you can see through that, can’t you? Now let’s go before he gets too far ahead.”

The seer grudgingly acquiesced, opening his brown eyes, and Stacy left with the five of them out into the dining hall. After they avoided enough people, they entered a wide, tunnel-like passage lit by light orbs at regular intervals amidst the dark. The seer stopped once again to check on their quarry. When he reported that Clyde still hadn’t left the campus, they continued on. At the pair of iron double doors leading to the outside, the atmomancer with the iron rod pulled on one and held it open for the others, including herself, to pass through.

In the courtyard surrounding the keep separating it from the high defensive wall, they walked purposefully around the corner on the right and toward the gatehouse. A few well-placed light orbs on the outside of the keep kept the area lit, but a small amount of darkness still settled here and there. Stopping behind one of the large square flanking towers, they waited again while the seer confirmed his position.

“Okay, the gatekeeper is just opening the gate for him…and now he is leaving the campus.”

“If it’s that same old man, I’ll wring his neck.” Stacy threatened.

“What?” The dark haired Elf asked. The others stared on in confusion.

“When my friends and I went after him the first time, there was this old man at the gate, and we warned him not to…you know what, nevermind. Let’s just keep following him.”

On that she got no argument, and they walked quickly through the stone gatehouse under the raised portcullises and out onto the campus. Few people were walking between buildings yet one could see a woman here, a Dwarf there, and all was quiet save for a pair of friends talking outside the gardens off to the right. Stacy saw no signs of an alert and thought it must have required a special effort on Master Anthony’s part to keep the guests from causing a hysteria and ruining the operation.

Halfway down the paved middle road that led from the gatehouse to the outer gate of the grounds, the seer stopped again to maintain his surveillance. Stacy looked through the far away iron bars of the gate, seeing no sign of Clyde’s presence and then looked back to the seer, who had his eyes closed once again and was leaning on his staff firmly. She had heard about seers and seeresses performing this strange function but had never before witnessed it herself.

“Do you have him?” The botanical mage asked.

“I do.”

Not needing anything besides his word, the six of them started off again. Stacy found herself wishing that they had brought someone like him the last time. After a few more moments of walking, she asked him about it. “What is it like when you do that?”

He didn’t answer right away and looked over while moving his staff with his steps. “Trying to explain that to you would be like if you were to try to explain your sight to someone born blind. You might tell them that objects and people have an appearance, that they have colors, but that person could never really know what a color is.”

Stacy was perplexed. “You see things then…things other than what our normal eyes can when you do this?”

“In a way, yes,” he said. “If I think about a place, I can usually bring it closer and see it, only I’m not imagining, I’m seeing it as it is. Other times I can see much more than that, much more, things that people wouldn’t see if it were right in front of them. The Master Seeress and others can see even more than I, and farther. Eventually, I will too. It doesn’t feel strange to us, but I’m sure it must be a world apart for you.”

“Fascinating,” Stacy remarked, “and your gift does not include prophecy?”

He smiled. “No, only street charlatans and madmen make a claim to that.” Stacy frowned and the blue robed man with an iron rod looked over as well. The seer caught on to this and added something further. “I’m afraid that I don’t know enough about how you two read the stars to tell one way or the other…” he began to appear uncomfortable when they said nothing, “…does it…work?”

Stacy relaxed her features and let out a slow breath. “It’s not as exact as that,” she began. “It’s not like fortune telling. It’s more like…vague impressions. Any message that the stars leave us is more like the initial breeze from the coming wind: It doesn’t give us too many details, just an idea of its direction and what it brings.” Vincent’s former guard nodded at this but kept silent, turning his head to look once more in front of them.

“I think I might know what you mean…sort of,” the seer said. “Those of us with the vision encounter a similar problem when we try to extend our awareness out too far, only it takes place in the present. At too great a distance, instead of seeing things as they are, we see…” he searched for the right word, “…symbols, mental imagery that only represents something about what is there. Trying to interpret them is like trying to interpret a dream. Sometimes they just don’t make sense.”

“Well get ready to do it again,” the man with the seed inserted, not really hearing all of what he was saying. The young seer scrunched his eyes closed and leaned on his staff. “Do you still know where he is?”

“Yes,” he answered. “He’s further ahead down the road than before, but he doesn’t appear to be in any hurry.”

Stacy found that odd. “Shouldn’t he be? I mean he had to know that the poison would take effect sooner or later.”

The cerebist woman in the gray dress spoke next. “I just told my master. Master Anthony is there with him and says that we should watch ourselves, he might be leading us into a trap.”

The pyromancer Elf seemed to have lost none of his displeasure. “I’m just loving this day more and more.”

When they approached the outer gate, Stacy found that the gatekeeper was not the same old man as before. With the way Karl scared him, it wouldn’t surprise her if he had retired. Instead, there was a bald middle-aged man with short graying hair brushed down on the sides. He wore clothing like that of a farmer and opened the gate for them without comment. Afterward Stacy thanked him politely anyway and stepped through with the others.

Beyond was a far-reaching, grassy slope that descended downhill gradually with a dirt road meandering through it below them. It was somewhat dark like before, only with a cloudless sky whose blue hue was barely starting to reveal a few stars. Crickets chirped from the tall dead grass which bent lightly in places with the gentle breeze. The weak glow from the sun’s passing still illuminated the landscape from the western horizon. Mountains up ahead and on their right had spruce forest cover that was shaded black on one side and on the other was dimly revealed as green or fading into a blue in the distance. Downhill and to their left, the city of Gadrale was made visible by thousands of small torches and lamps among the many buildings of differing heights. Most were made of light whitish colored bricks but many were of a dark red. All around, further left and beyond the buildings, were hundreds of farms spread out across the land.

With her companions near, Stacy walked down the rise swiftly, smelling the moist air from Vesper Lake brought all the way here, even though the lake was well out of view, by the dominant air current. The lake still held true to its name. It wasn’t long before they came over a small edge in the overall rise and were afforded another view.