The Broken Academy 5: Bonds Read online

I’ve learned to fear being woken so suddenly in the dead of night. It’s always an alert. It’s always an attack. A mission, somewhere, where I might die. Where someone I can’t bear to lose might be wrenched away from me. Still, when we hear it, doors open down every hall of the Academy. We come like sheep to the call of the shepherds. And this time…the shepherds basically told us we’re fucked.

  I was so paralyzed by the news, I couldn’t move. I froze there, unable to process this information that just couldn’t… It couldn’t be the truth. Dragonlord Thise, Sorceress Lily, even Father – they must all be mistaken. No one could really launch a full-scale attack on all of the Tethers.

  “We’ll need each of you to the place you’re best suited to fight,” Thise told us. You mean you need a wall of bodies at each door to the Academy. Fodder to slow down the Lotus’ inevitable arrowhead. My head overflowed with poisonous thoughts.

  “The Lotus has already destroyed one of the Tethers. We…don’t know how well the Academy will hold up if the trend continues,” Magister Reynold admitted. I was cemented to the ground even after the conclusion of the meeting. If I moved, I’d have to admit it’s real. My ancestral home was under attack. The place where I grew and learned and loved could be razed to the ground. Another piece off the Lotus’ board. Then a hand slapped down on my shoulder.

  “Listen, buddy,” the man on the other end of that lanky arm wasn’t someone I so much saw as a buddy. But, in my dumbfounded stupor, I did listen to Darius. “Keep an eye out for a Shifter named Roran. The Kyrie is up to something and he’s got something to do with it.” I didn’t even have time to blurt what before Darius was gone, off to his own assignment.

  So here I am, on mine. I stand at the side of a Shifter I was never allowed to treat as my equal. In secret, I sometimes think she could be my better. What’s certain, now, is that I would rather have no one else at my side to protect the Yosemite Tether than River Murtagh. Well, except maybe Helena, but she has her own base to defend. River and I stand at the edge of a sheer cliff over the piney forests of Yosemite. Behind us is the hut that shields one of the strongest currents of energy in the Realm. A Tether of the Broken Academy.

  “We’ll keep the Shifters with Fiend-transformation up here?” I say to her. River seems to catch my invitation to weigh in.

  “Most of them, sure. But if we don’t drop some heavies on the lower level, everyone else is basically a buffer that the Lotus will go through,” River considers. I nod, a hand over the thick stubble I haven’t had a chance to trim.

  “Alright. Let’s divvy up for the vanguard,” I agree.

  “I’ll go,” pipes up a voice I know, but hardly expected. The truth is, I had an eye on Roran long before Darius advised me to. Ever since last year’s Ahwahneechee Thanksgiving Dinner. I can still see River’s skin crawl at the sight of him. “What?” Roran says, when he feels both River’s and my dead-eyed stares on him.

  “Didn’t peg you for the hero type,” River’s voice crackles against her best efforts. “You want to be the first thing the Lotus hits, when they come charging up the cliffs?” The implications of her words burn deep in the pit of my soul. She doesn’t need to say it out loud, to Roran or me. You know no one is coming back from that front line, right? Hell, after Lee’s report on the Point Arena situation, I don’t know if anyone’s coming back from this mission at all.

  “‘Course I don’t want to,” Roran shakes a grim face. “Nobody does. But someone has to. And…I figure I’ve got a few things to make up for.” River crosses an arm over her chest, to grab the outside of her shoulder. She rubs it to calm herself until Roran turns away. He doesn’t wait for amnesty, or an order. He just departs the high cliff edge. He descends the embedded-log staircase leading down into the forest. The only way the Lotus can come up.

  “Hang on, hero,” I call out to Roran, when he’s made it clear his money and his mouth share a space. “You’re the vanguard insurance policy. If…when most of them are down, you get back up here. Shift and fly, and bring survivors. The stairs will tire the Lotus out at least a little. We’re going to need everyone we can get up here.” Roran looks back at me with an expression I can’t quite read. It teeters between honor for such a role and suspicion. I do everything I can not to show my equal measure of suspicion through my own stony eyes.

  “Understood,” Roran nods. Then he disappears below the cliff edge, along with thirty of our best warriors. About a third of them have mastered the Gray Fiend transformation. I know, as they file down into the deep valley below the pines, I’ll never see most of them again. “Let’s form up,” I force myself to say to River, if only to distract us both. She nods, and spreads out to help me organize the Tether’s close guard.

  River and I put a dense line of Shifters between us and the cliff’s edge. Two more stand behind us, blockading the Lotus from the hut. From one of five lifelines that remain for our home. It’s another fifteen minutes that feel closer to that number of hours before we hear the first signs of struggle. I dig my heels into the dust and my fingernails into my thighs. It’s all I can do to keep from looking and sounding the way I feel. Horrified. Weak. Expendable, future Chief or not.

  War cries turn to screams in the deep, rocky valley. Metal clangs are muffled by the thick pine canopy. But, no matter how subtle or quiet, there’s no mistaking the sound of death. Some are human, indecipherable if they’re Lotus or Ahwahneechee. Some are the dying shrieks of Gray Fiends. I ball up two fists for the warriors who didn’t even get to die in their own bodies.

  Then the first tiny shadow shoots up from below the cliff edge. Its bloody feathers spread wide as the hawk flaps frantically down to the earth by my feet. The bird’s frame twists and snaps out into that of a woman who can barely stand. I reach down to help her up.

  “They’re…on the stairs,” she whimpers.

  “The others?” I grumble.

  “I…I don’t know if…” the woman can’t seem to pass the sentence. My eyes dart back to the cliff edge when a second shadow shoots up, then another. Another hawk and an eagle glide down to join us. With every new arrival, I grit my teeth in anticipation of Roran. And yet, bird after bird shifts into the form of a different Ahwahneechee warrior I recognize. Eight of them return to me. Roran isn’t one of them. Then the subtle pound comes into hearing. Boots on the final rise of stairs.

  “Remember! Fall in toward the hut if you have to! Take out anyone with an orb first!” I bellow over the crowd. The injured from below squeeze in with the backmost rank of Shifters, directly around the hut. I share a final glance with River. The slightest tilt of my head is the signal.

  “Plugs in!” River calls out. On her command, every last one of us stuffs one of Reynold and Lily’s enchanted plugs deep in our ear canals. They’re uncomfortable, and we suspect they won’t nullify the effects of the Lotus’ disabling orbs completely, but it’s better than having fifty useless bodies around the Tether. I tuck mine in just as the first hood rises from the wooden staircase.

  The blackness over its face obscures any delight or fear as the first Lotus warrior trots toward us. Our front line holds strong while the robed new arrival slows to a stop. The figure draws an orb of steel grating from within its burgundy cloth. By the time the weapon is ready, four other Lotus robes have floated above the clifftop. Our front line doesn’t waver. They keep formation, just like River and I went over with them.

  Then, all at once, the Lotus front line activates their wretched orbs. The low note it produces shakes my spine, but can’t quite seize it. An ache glows in the front of my brain, but nothing so powerful as to bring me to my knees. Nothing like before. I grit my teeth to combat the combined audio blast from the Lotus. My small army of Shifters stays right where they are. The first Lotus in line tilts its head at us under his hood, like a curious animal. He waits for even one of us to collapse. When none of us give way, the robed figure draws a second object from within his robe. A short rod, about the length of my arm. As soon as they see their foreman with the r
od, the rest of the Lotus follow suit. We watch in grave anticipation as every last one of them screws their disabling orb onto their rod. The Lotus warriors stride forward as one, each one wielding a small, magic dampening mace.

  When the Lotus reach within five feet of the front line, our Shifters break at last. Each of them falls on their knees, then rises with the leathery gray skin of a much larger creature. About fifteen rhinoceroses plunge straight into the Lotus advance. Robed bodies are hurled into the air, gaping holes gored in chests and stomachs. But a handful of them sidestep our gray charge. The Lotus survivors crack their maces against the muscly sides of our rhino defenses. The bash exacts the same affect on the Shifters as the orb’s uninhibited noise. I watch in horror as one rhino after the other skids across the clay, clutching their heads. Their pain lasts mere seconds before the second row of Lotus strikers steps in to dimple their skulls with two-handed mace bashes. River and I fall behind the line of Shifters at our backs, ready to fulfill our roles when the time comes.

  The next line takes the form of the most muscular gorillas I’ve ever seen. They lug their weight around into the broken-up Lotus advance. Robes topple. Shifters fall away, stricken back to their human forms. Blood trickles down the cracks in the clay around the dead and dying by my feet. It’s not going to work. There are more of them coming up the stairs. We’re falling left and right. There’s only one line of Shifters between us and the Tether. Even with the Fiend transformation…but that’s not all we’re limited to, I realize.

  “River,” I grab her arm, “Their bolt guns won’t work on you, because you’re not actually a Dragon.”

  “Holy…can you push them back?” River counters when she realizes what I have.

  “I can try. Scale up,” I say. River shrinks back behind us all, to concentrate. To harness the power of a transformation she’s only performed once before. My own arms lengthen before me. My skin loses its pallor. My vision sharpens with my talon-like nails as the Lotus spins and bashes their way through our ranks of gorillas. “Fiends, hold the line!” I cry, just before my capacity for speech leaves me.

  The Lotus trudge over bodies, straight for us. Right for our snarling mouthfuls of fangs and readied blade-arms. Our line of about fifteen Gray Fiends shreds everything we can reach. We zip between robed bodies when we can, without leaving the hut exposed. Lotus robes separate in the middle, showering rubies on the pale canvas of our skin. But even then, there are too many. For every three Lotus dismembered, an unsuspecting Fiend is cracked with a mace head. And they have four Lotus for every Fiend.

  Just then, the unmistakable bellow of a scaled inferno rises from behind us. Wings snap open with a sonic shockwave. River takes to the sky. A solid downpour of napalm falls on what little ground we have to lose. The other Fiends and I zip behind the barrier. The Lotus scramble, shielding their faces with flameproof fabric. In the chaos, I hear a few hard shoops. Bow gun bolts may not trap River back in her human form, but they sink deep and hurt like a bitch. She shrieks between coughs of fire while the spikes embed between her thigh and collar scales. She circles the battleground twice, burning what she can. But she must know, even better than I do from up there, that the outcome of this battle is decided already. The Lotus press on through the fire, sleeves over their faces. They’ll be here any second, and we can’t brave the flame.

  “River!” I cry to her. She needs no further instruction. None of our few survivors do. They can hear it in my mortal terror. River’s claws pound into the clay before the hut. She scalds the earth and the Lotus with the last of her strength while survivors funnel into the hut. The only person to retreat after her is me. I wait until every one of my surviving warriors is shot up through the lightstream of the Tether Teleporter. I step in last. One last time, I rise to the Broken Academy from my homeland.

  Seconds later, that stream is reduced to a trickle, which flickers out completely. Tremors jostle the Academy’s foundations as it tilts on the support of only four Tethers.

  Bart,

  Six Rivers, Tether Shrine

  The names and statuses of great families are razed to equality before my very eyes. A history longer and richer than even that of my technically immortal people rages to flame all around us. Helena does her best to hold it back, wielding a furious air current in one hand, and the kiss of frost in the other. She swirls her chilling concoction of nature over the flame-lit branches as we fall back from the center of the Grotto. We’ve tried, but the Lotus make their way through every hidden development of Six Rivers like it’s just more kindling for their fire.

  “Damnit! No!” Helena roars with bone-chilling intensity. An icy tornado spins down the slope below us. Its current glazes over every tiny stream with icy glass. Then I see, on one side of her, a shape peeking through the trees. Another accursed robe! I shoot straight there. The stalker doesn’t see me through the thick, snowy mist, until my barred arm hits its throat. Its back bucks hard into the frozen ground. I zip back to Helena’s side.

  “Helena, I’m sorry,” I tell her. Though I dare not tell her what to do, she can hear it in my voice. This is the end of Six Rivers. We have to go, or it’ll be the end of us, too. She must hear how deeply I mean it this time, because she looks right at me. It’s the first time she’s acknowledged my existence since we arrived here.

  “About my home? Or that time you used me as a battery to find yours?” Helena bites. But at least she’s said it.

  “Everything. I swear,” I tell her the truth.

  “If that’s true…then stay and help me fight,” Helena says. Her legs plant in the ground, strong as steel. She lifts both hands to the sky. Every current of every tiny tributary through the mist rises from its bed. A thousand liquid serpents smother up, shoot out and freeze. A line of icy pikes points downhill, straight for the charging Lotus advance.

  “As you wish,” I bow to her. And I keep my word to the very last minute. When the Lotus are close enough for their disabling orb frequencies to jar Helena’s bones, I grab her hand.

  “What are you doing?” she hisses. An icy javelin has already formed in one of her hands.

  “If this is how everyone is faring in the fight for the Tethers, they’re going to need us! Emery, everyone!” I argue, eyes averted from the flash of the Lotus’ anti-Vampire defenses. The very moment I feel Helena’s muscle loosen, I fly up the hilly path to the white-stone shrine around the Tether, pulling her behind.

  We flee with half the Witches and Warlocks we started with. Ten minutes later, the light behind the Adjustment Lounge doors goes dim. We stumble into the wall with the sharp shift of balance of the Academy in the sky. With three Tethers gone, one side of it dips down to point at California’s mountainous peaks.

  Blue-Eyed Devil

  Emery,

  Big Sur Tether, Clearlake Early Academy

  It’s all exactly like I remember it. The oceanside bridges. The salty breeze that rattles the trees. The rocky soil that marks the roads along trails, hidden by illusions, between hidden buildings and the Tether. The huge clearing with the sandy lot, where light froths from the Earth to the sky. As my shoes crunch gravel, a memory I very much try to avoid snakes its way into my brain. It was right here that my fellow students first looked upon me, with my mother, with such fear and disdain. It was here that Deliah pretended she loved me, then sent me off on her little espionage errand. And here I return, at her side again from sheer necessity. Half the Magicians I trained for this are ultimately loyal to her and Horace. I accompany her down a wide, twisting clay trail to a small complex of buildings.

  We suspect the Lotus will strike from the roadside, the obvious choice over the mountainous, forested approach on the other flank of the Tether. That makes an important defense point of a place I never imagined I’d return to.

  The place where I solved a thousand illusory puzzles. The place where I learned my first tricks. The place where I met Harry Bartos. I never expected that one day, I might come back to the Clearlake Early Academy to die. Deli
ah, Serge and I cross the dense forest to the classrooms of our childhood. We do a sweep of the perimeter to make sure the Lotus hasn’t moved in already.

  Never before have I been crashed into by such a wave of nostalgia as when I round the back of the building for the little pond and the stone bench I remember more clearly than anything else. But what I see before me now is a mere phantom of the image that nests in the rose-tinted safety of my mind. The gardens Harry worked so hard to tend have overgrown onto the patio. The pond at the center of the courtyard radiates an emerald glow from the film of algae that sweeps over the surface. The bench we used to sit on has a giant crack down the middle of it, where it dips in. No one could sit there now. Not me and Helena. Not Hoster. The electric charge of the air here chases me away, before tears can break the surface of my eyes.

  I head around to rejoin Serge and Deliah, to report that the backside of the school is clear. But as soon as I step past the corner, my body goes rigid. Every nerve ending sparks with a tingle of shock. It’s like someone has touched a live wire directly to my spinal cord. A burgundy robe, adorned with prismatic violet swirls, blocks my path. The figure within is set apart from his colleagues in his lowered hood. But the face that stares at me from across the side yard of Clearlake is as changed as its pond courtyard.

  Heren’s face has been etched with the ridges and knots of scar tissue. His vibrant blond hair has faded to something between silver and white. His eyes have even lost some of their shade. They stab out at me no longer like ice, but like the even colder, more unfeeling slate of bedrock deep beneath the earth. I didn’t believe Lee’s report from Point Arena until now. No one could claw their way out of the Silver Realm of their own volition. But, seeing the way Heren looks now, how could I deny he’s been somewhere men were never meant to tread? And now, to the shudder of every last bone in my body, he’s back. Seeing his walking-corpse expression is like seeing Hoster’s spirit burn away all over again.