Wicked Path (The Daath Chronicles Book 2) (31 page)

“Why would he go against the king? He’ll be slaughtered.”

Jonas frowned. “He’s been recruiting mages. If he gets enough, he’ll give the king’s army a good fight.”

“Excuse me. I need to find Cael.”

He nodded and went back to carving his woodlings.

Before I searched for Cael, I walked to the shack where Raven stayed. A young woman holding a basket of linens walked out.

“Is Raven in there?”

The woman shook her head and passed me on the wooden bridge.

The hideout wasn’t large, but there were too many shacks and walkways to search. I turned around, following the woman to the main floor. I was almost to the winding stairs when Raven laughed.

“When did you become such a brute?”

Raven laughed again. “I told you, you can’t beat me!”

Below me, Cael and Raven stood, heaving and full of sweat. Cael grabbed a pitcher from the floor and drank from it. He wiped his mouth and handed the pitcher to Raven, who took three heavy gulps. He waited for her to finish before picking up the staff.

“Again,” he said, letting her take the offensive position.

I wasn’t stupid to think I was the only person Raven ever sparred with, but watching her with Blond Boy made me want to take her place and wallop him good.

She snapped the staff at him. Her hands guided the weapon in fast arcs that Cael blocked. He swiped his staff forward and she ducked, smacking him in the shins.

“Ouch.” He laughed and stepped back.

Raven grinned. “Should I take it easy?”

The staff bounced in her hands.

“No.”

Cael swung the staff, Raven blocked. I loved watching her fight. Her body moved around her opponent in a swift dance, as if she sensed where they planned to attack next, a skill that went beyond logic. She put Cael on the defensive, and I walked down the rest of the steps to wait for them to finish.

Raven arced high, twisting her hip out of Cael’s stance and slapped him on the back with her weapon.

“Avikar!” She spotted me leaning against the wall and skipped over.

“Giving Blond Boy a workout this morning?”

“He thinks I’m still the young girl who couldn’t throw a dagger.”

“I still think I can beat you,” Cael chimed in.

“What is it?” Raven touched my arm.

“Did you know about a war?”

Her puzzled brow indicated she didn’t.

“So, Jonas told you of the war?” Cael dropped the staff against the weapons rack. “I wanted to tell you, but when I left, the mage army was just a rumor.”

Mage army? War? Thousands of lives in danger… I needed to return to Lakewood. Our village was in the center of Tarrtainya, right along the main trade route—a territory both sides would fight for control of.

“Are you ready to meet General Malak?” Cael asked.

I nodded. The sooner I met Malak, the sooner we could leave. I squeezed Raven’s hand before leaving, a gesture that spoke everything I couldn’t say. She nodded and squeezed back. I imagined her words in my head:
Be careful.

Cael led me to the last place I would want to go, or anyone would want to go: the cleaner station.

Pine hung in large bundles from the ceiling, but it did little to cover the acrid odor from the sewage. A pile of soiled buckets sat next to a row of large hot tubs steaming with bubbles. A woman dumped brown sludge into a hole in the ground, then tossed the bucket into the soap tub.

I covered my nose, and even still, the putrid scent made me gag.

“This way.” Cael walked to the back of the shack and pressed against the wall. He moved his right hand across the wood, then stopped. He pressed in and a door slid open.

Another hidden entrance. Great camouflage.

The door led to stairs that wound below the tree into a tunnel supported by beams and rock. Torches lit the darkened passage, and the stench of sewage disappeared with each step. Stagnant air laced with the scent of wet mud filled the passageway. Our feet shuffled against the dirt floor, creating the only sounds around us.

We arrived at another door, and Cael repeated the early maneuver.

Luckily, this door didn’t open into a chamber pot.

Clashing swords and grunts replaced the quiet. Men dressed in black gear were sparring against one another, some wielded swords, some their fists, all of them sweating. The open room contained nothing but weapon racks and target dummies. Archers launched arrow after arrow into the stuffed targets, almost all of them hitting the center. Seeing the longbows made me miss my own bow. Maybe The Order had a spare I could use.

A man wearing the signature black and red robes of The Order walked over and greeted Cael. “He’s ready for you two.”

The man looked me over with a sneer, exactly what I would expect from one of The Order’s own.

He ushered us into a back room where a bald man with a black braided beard stood over a table of maps.

He acknowledged us and frowned. “You’re late,” he said to Cael.

“Sorry, I—”

“I don’t care what your excuse is. Is this the boy?”

“Yes, General.”

General Malak stood straighter. He inspected me from head to toe. “Cael says you’ve met Lucy.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve been tracking her movements for the past few years. One of our men noticed her near the mountains while we were mapping. When she disappeared, he waited for her return. It was then we realized she was passing through to the other side. What do you know of her and this Lord Lucino you fought?”

I told the general everything, from Jeslyn’s kidnapping to the night in the temple. I almost left out the part about forgetting, but decided it didn’t matter. Lucino was dead. Lucy was our biggest threat.

General Malak nodded and listened attentively, asking nothing. When I finished, he sat. Cael and I waited while the moments passed. Finally, Malak clasped his hands onto the table.

“Take him to Ezekiel.” He stood and went back to staring at his maps, completely ignoring me.

I glanced over at Cael, who stood there gawking at me.

“Yes, General.”

“And when Ezekiel is done with him, bring him back to me.”

When he’s done with me?
Before I could ask who Ezekiel was, a man escorted us out of Malak’s office and back to the dimly lit hallway.

ael led me through another underground passage to the holy tree. Out of all the ancients, this is where The Order learned and practiced holy magic—or what they called invocation. During our last meal together, Ginna had explained the differences between magic and invocation. The Order considered magic a deformity, a disease bringing destruction, chaos, manipulation, and death. The Creator chose his priests and priestesses, and through his power, the spells needed to counteract magic were learned. They called this invocation.

My father taught me to be wary of everyone, including The Creator’s chosen ones. But if that’s truly what The Order did, why was everyone so afraid of them?

The inside of this tree looked nothing like the others. It reminded me of a temple library. Priests stood and sat around intricately carved tables rising from the ground, reading and writing on scrolls. Shelves covered almost all of the walls, which had been stuffed with large tomes.

“Not what you expected?” Cael asked.

“No.”

I didn’t know what to expect, but this wasn’t it.

“What are they doing?” I kept my voice hushed, not wanting to disturb the priests.

“Scribing prayers.” Cael led me past a group of priests who sat around a candle, chanting. The flame on the candle twisted and grew larger, changing shape as it moved. Every third word, their pitch changed and the flame morphed into the shape of a different creature.

Watching these people sit around, reading, writing, and chanting, they sure didn’t seem evil.

What about all those stories?
For years, villages whispered of The Order coming and taking their children, husbands, and wives. What happened to them? Ginna never explained where those people went, and I doubted they just disappeared.

A nervous itch tickled my skin and I reached into my pocket, grabbing a marble. No, I didn’t trust these strangers.

Cael took me through another long corridor. It still boggled my mind all this was housed inside a tree. Tables and bookshelves had been carved from the tree as if the carpenters chipped away at the wood until they had a completely furnished room.

Birds nested in the ceiling. I couldn’t see them, but their chirps echoed high above us. I hoped one didn’t poop on my head.

“Where are we going?” I wanted to get back to Raven. I didn’t like leaving her alone.

“To see an old friend.” As he said that, we entered into a circular room covered in piles of scrolls. Piles covered the floor and filled the shelves. I’d never seen so many scrolls in one place. How did anyone find anything? Amidst all that mess stood an old man without a lick of hair on him.

“Ezekiel,” Cael said.

The man stopped and smiled, waving his hands, which were full of scrolls. “You’ve returned.”

Cael nodded.

“And you’ve brought a guest!”

Ezekiel stuffed the scrolls beneath his armpit. “What’s your name?”

“Avikar.”

“A strong name. You are from Daath?”

“No, my home is in Lakewood.”

His forehead scrunched, which looked strange because he had no eyebrows.

The messy room closed in around me, and with nowhere to go, I felt stuck. Why did Cael bring me here?

“Ezekiel is The Order’s primary scribe,” Cael said. “He keeps track of the history and prophesies.”

Prophesies? If I knew little about The Order, I knew even less about their prophecies.

“Avikar might not be from Daath, but he stayed there for a time.”

Ezekiel’s eyes widened.

“You two have fun.” Cael patted my shoulder. “I’ll be back before supper.”

“Wait, you’re leaving?”

Cael smiled. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t leave out the details. Ezekiel is very particular about the details.” He said the last part in a whisper.

Before I could grab Cael’s shirt, he ducked aside and left me with Ezekiel, who had surprisingly cleared a space on the desk to write.

“Sit,” he said.

“Where?”

He pointed to a pile of scrolls. Looking more closely, I found a chair hidden underneath. Carefully, I placed the pile on the floor and sat on the chair.