Secrets of Arkana Fortress (20 page)

              ‘Well thanks for the consideration,’ he called out to whoever was behind the door, doubting that they would take any notice. He turned away and walked a few steps down the gravel path leading up to the tower. He looked out across the plains, outlining the distant buildings and woodlands of the trading city. As he continued to look, he pondered what his next move could be. There was little option other than to start investigating his theory in a bit more depth, but what dangers would that bring forth? He would more than likely be dead without any help along the way.

              ‘Well, well, well; we meet again. What are you doing here?’

              Byde looked up and had to resist a laugh. It was the girl from the library, her bag of parchments flung over her shoulder. ‘We should stop meeting like this you know,’ he chuckled back to her.

              Regardless of his abrupt and nervous exit from the library, she smiled broadly at him as if he were an old friend. ‘Do you believe in coincidence?’

              He shrugged. ‘Only to a degree.’ He smoothed out his robes. ‘I must apologise for my hasty exit from the library earlier, I…’

              ‘No need to apologise. It wouldn’t be the first time that my probing questions have scared people off… it’s the reason why I don’t have a boyfriend.’ She laughed at her own statement.

              ‘But you’re such a beautiful woman.’ This wasn’t Byde trying to make her feel better, it was him being sincere, which seemed to work all the same. ‘Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. See? I believe in fate too.’

              She laughed again, the sweetness of her voice filling the air around him like an intoxicating scent. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ she asked with amusement still in her delicate voice.

              ‘I… err… came to request an audience with one of the high mages here at the academy.’ His feet shuffled around on the gravel.

              The woman’s eyebrow rose up into an arch. ‘What do you want to do that for?’ Her sweet voice had changed into one that was shrill and piercing. ‘The high mages only see people if they deem the person’s reason to be worthy of their time and attention. Don’t you know that?’

              ‘Of course I know that.’

              ‘Then you must have some bloody good reasons to come here requesting audiences with them willy-nilly.’

              ‘My reasons are my own, dear girl.’

              ‘I ain’t no girl!’ she snapped, her hands thrust onto her hips in defiance. ‘I’m a woman, I’m 22-years-old, and I will not be patronised by a perfect stranger.’

              This attack took Byde by surprise, an immediate wave of guilt washing over him. ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to offend you or anything.’

              After a few exerted puffs her face smoothed out again. ‘I’m sorry, I just get a bit arsy when I’ve been studying non-stop for a while.’ She put her bag onto the ground next to her feet and worked the stiffness out of her shoulder with a gentle circular motion. ‘If your reasons are your own then you’ve got little chance of getting inside this place, y’know?’

              He considered this for a moment. Would telling this student of magic what his fears were based on actually help him out? What if she brushed him off as a madman or something like that? Well it was now or never – time was short.

              For a good 15 minutes Byde explained the basis of his theory, leaving out the bit about him being a caster. He watched her face stay in a stern-like manner, not once witnessing a single smirk, or hearing a hearty laugh of doubt and disregard.

‘Now you can laugh at me,’ he added at the end after a discernable amount of silence.

              Against all laws of expectation she stayed blank-faced, her eyes mulling Byde over with intellectual precision.

              ‘You’re trying to read me again aren’t you?’ he asked before frowning and preparing for the worst.

              She nodded and squinted even harder, but eventually gave up her mental pursuit and sighed. ‘Why are you unreadable?’

              He stonewalled.

              ‘And you’re
still
not going to tell me are you?’ She pouted and flicked her hair, the frustration of not being able to do something growing on her slender face. ‘I may as well forget it. What is it you want me to do now that you’ve told me this theory?’

              ‘You shouldn’t use magic to read minds; you’re a damn good guesser at what people want and think anyway.’

              ‘So you do want something out of me? No, no wait.’ She raised a palm to Byde and then tilted her head. ‘Let me guess?’

              He nodded.

              ‘You want me to vouch for you with the mages inside? Or at least get you through the door?’ She allowed a slim smile to crease across her features.

              Byde couldn’t help but do the same. ‘Yet again your non-magical powers astound me.’ He bowed courteously.

              ‘Oh alright… you are a charmer, aren’t you?’ Her smile broadened, showing off her pearly white teeth with a magnificent gleam. With one swift motion she picked up her bag of studying materials, placing them back over her shoulder. ‘Come on then.’ She guided her curious guest back to the undersized entrance and rapped on the door. Once again the darkened slit opened; the gruff voice sounded from somewhere unknown.

              ‘What do you want?’

              ‘Dom, it’s me, Lillia,’ the woman said to the opening in a whisper.

              ‘Oh.’ The voice then brightened up. ‘Hello, my darling, nice to see you back from Hocknis. ‘Ope you finished your studies?’

              Lillia giggled coquettishly. ‘Oh you know me, ever the workaholic when it comes to my magic. I have a guest for the high mages to see.’ She motioned over to Byde who was standing a few feet behind her. ‘He has an interesting set of ideas for them.’

              The voice of Dom hummed, and then it sounded as if he spat onto the floor. ‘I’ve already spoken with that man and refused ‘im entry.’

              ‘Yes, but I can vouch for his sincerity – I believe it is worth at least a small audience with one of the high mages.’

              ‘What ideas are these then? I wanna hear ‘em before I let ‘im in. He said summit ‘bout theories.’

              Lillia glanced back to Byde, her face more or less asking him whether or not to tell the doorman what he had told her.

              He nodded slightly; hardly a nod at all.

              She turned back to the door slit and briefed Dom on what Byde’s ideas were all about. After her enthusiastic explanation she breathed out as if she had done it all in one big breath. It was that moment which Byde found the most taunting – the obligatory awkward silence after a farfetched idea was put across to someone whose job was to be a sceptic about everything.

What happened next shocked him.

              The door eased open as smoothly as a current of uninhibited wind across a grassy savannah. As much as Byde was a tactful and considerate man, his view of the doorman made him blink repeatedly. This was Dom? A short feline, no higher than five feet, stood in the doorway dressed in a body-hugging black and brown outfit. In his right hand he held a walking stick which seemed to take the majority of his weight. Byde looked at his face – a sea of grey fur with bleach-white eyebrows and chin fluff. He must have been very old.

              ‘Do come in you two,’ he said. His voice was completely different from what Byde had heard.

As he walked in, he observed the elderly cat with a curious eye. ‘How come your voice sounds different to what I heard?’ Byde asked, his wonder getting the better of him. ‘You seem well-spoken too.’

              Dom’s fangs poked out of his mouth as he smiled slyly. A feline was incapable of a broad smile like a human’s. ‘I must apologise for my abruptness when dealing with you the first time, dear guest, but it’s what I am here to do – deter every Tom, Dick, and Harry away from our sacred academy.’

              ‘How were you able to change your voice like that?’ Byde asked.

              ‘Ah well, now that is a lovely piece of magical technology one of our old students came up with. You couldn’t see through the slit in the door because of it. It’s a kind of veil that acts as a voice transformation device. I was speaking normally on this side, but you heard me as a rough-voiced character with crude speech patterns and rudeness galore, did you not?’

              Byde couldn’t help but smile as he nodded his head. ‘Very clever tool; I’m impressed.’

              Lillia stepped into the conversation and held out her hand questioningly. ‘Are you sure about letting him in? Or are you just amusing a guest again, Dom?’

              Dom looked at the young mage and leaned both arms onto his stick. ‘I’m not messing with potential guests today. Last week was just me giving into boredom.’

              ‘Why have you not laughed or scoffed at my theory, Dom?’ asked Byde with an uncertain look.

              ‘We here at the academy are firstly taught to be completely open-minded when it comes to the unknown, as well as any radical aspects of magic.’

              ‘I see.’

              ‘I shall show you and Lillia to the high mage.’

***

‘Preposterous! What you have put forward is out of the realms of possibility. There are no spires whatsoever, let alone a series of them across Salarias.’ High mage Yoll furrowed his black brows and folded his arms in front of himself assertively. ‘You have wasted the time of Praanoc Academy and I hope you are pleased with yourself.’

              Byde interrupted the high mage’s ranting and balled his hands up. ‘Spires that have never been discovered is a distinct possibility – the notion of them must have come from somewhere.’

              ‘That’s as may be,’ resumed Yoll, ‘but we would have at least sensed the presence of the dark art of magic on such a grand scale.’

              ‘But what if it was ancient dark magic? Do you know anything about that?’

              This seemed to scupper mage Yoll’s angered expression, but for a moment so brief that only the sharpest of eyes would have picked up on it. ‘Dark magic is all well and good when it comes to speculation, but do you have evidence? We sense nothing, none of us do. So what do
you
have to convince us otherwise?’

              He paused, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, not a sound coming out of his suddenly dried mouth. ‘I just… know it.’ He held back on reciting the incident with the crazed boy in the alley.

              ‘You just… know it.’ Yoll placed a hand on his hip and scoffed. ‘If we went on everyone’s gut feeling then things would be all over the place and working inefficiently, including this academy.’ He waved a fierce hand in the air. ‘I want you out of here within the next half hour at the very most.’

The high mage turned on his heels and opened the door of the small lab room they had been conversing in. Just as he exited the doorway, a small elderly mage shuffled into him at a surprising pace.

‘For the love of all that’s magical, Sagio, will you get out of my way?’ He charged past the old man without waiting for an apology.

Byde looked at Lillia, his face wearing an expression of disbelief. ‘What happened to open-mindedness? He’s a bit high strung, isn’t he?’

‘He’s always been like that, ever since he was a boy.’ The old man remarked as he hobbled into the lab room, his robes dragging around his feet. His face was gaunt and slightly sunken, almost death-like, and his hands shook gently as if he were plagued by a bout of unending nerves.

Lillia piped up from the corner. ‘I’m not overly keen on him.’

Sagio raised a finger. ‘Now, Lillia, you know as well as I do how much of a stressful position high mage Yoll has around here. I, for one, would not like it myself.’

‘I’m sorry, master Sagio.’ Lillia bowed politely and quickly scurried past the old mage. She glanced back at Byde. ‘I must go back to my studies. I’m sure master Sagio will escort you out.’ She smiled, and then continued on out of sight down the corridor.

‘So,’ said Sagio, ‘I am told you came here with a rather ludicrous theory.’

Byde rubbed his forehead rhythmically with his fingers and sighed. ‘Yes, and I suppose you’re here to mock me too? I’m expecting people to do that now, y’know?’

‘On the contrary, I am here to listen to what you have to say.’

He slid his hand down over his face and stared at the little man. ‘Really? If you’ve heard about my theory then why are you willing to hear me out?’

Sagio raised a knowing finger and smirked, the resultant creasing around his mouth giving him the appearance of a prune. ‘Something tells me…’ He paused. ‘Something tells me that you are sincere about your proposals.’

‘And how would you determine that?’

Sagio closed the door and hesitated before turning round. This little, feeble looking man gave off an intense feel of someone who didn’t tolerate beating about the bush; his body language was direct. ‘Young Lillia couldn’t read you could she? Despite a few valiant attempts on her part no doubt?’