Maybe they’re brigands, he thought, trying to console himself.
Or perhaps they’re exactly who you think they are, his subconscious pointed out.
He ran and whimpered when he heard footfalls pursuing him. He glanced back and saw one figure hurdling over exposed roots and past tree trunks with catlike grace. The boy ran harder, his frantic sprint nearly sending him to the ground.
A voice called out from behind him. It sounded female. By the time the boy realized that it was a word of power, the air was sizzling with eldritch force and a bolt had struck him in the back, toppling him head over heels. The blow ripped the pack from his arms, and the dagger plunged into the soil and extinguished itself. The boy’s body screamed at the pain. Only slowly did the effects lessen, until finally, the boy lay there in the darkness, spent of everything but his fatigue. That he had in ample supply.
He couldn’t move as the footsteps approached. Three forms in the dark loomed over him. He heard someone spit and felt a wet gob splatter on his cheek.
“That was for running, boy,” a rough voice said. It was the woman’s again, but it was ragged as though coarse with smoke.
The boy heard a sword being drawn. The blade was thin, like a rapier that had been flattened. It emanated a strange, pale blue light from the delicate azure runes that had been etched into its side.
The person holding the blade was a woman. She wore a black cape and brown leather pants tucked into her black, flared boots. Across her quilted, brown jerkin was a bronze-bound tome, like a shield protecting her flattened chest, and held in place with four chains that vanished beneath the cloak. The book’s cover was an intricate pattern of silver ivy leaves and thorns, so delicate in the carving that it looked elven. Her eyes were almond shaped, and her features carved and cold. From her hood fell luxuriant black hair. Her two male companions were similarly attired, but an eldritch silver script trimmed her clothing.
The woman pressed the edge of her blade against the boy’s face, and with a gentle flick of her wrist, slashed his cheek. He screamed and pushed against the wound with his hand. Blood flowed over his fingers and splattered on his filthy robes.
“And that’s for betraying your master, thief,” the woman said. Her accent was faint, almost musical. “By order of the Wizards of the White Robes, I am taking you back for judgment, Virgil Morosay. You have been branded a renegade.”
The boy’s heart sank. They weren’t hobgoblins or the undead. They were worse and the very thing he feared was after him: they were renegade hunters.
The woman nodded to the man next to her, a bear with thick arms and a beard that filled his hood. He grabbed the pack from the ground and pulled it open. There were only four small wooden logs within.
The woman returned her attentions to the boy. She pushed the tip of her blade beneath his chin, forcing his head back.
“The books you stole from Master Pecas,” she said. “Where are they?”
If the woman expected Virgil to plead for his life or cry, however, she was mistaken. Virgil met her eyes, gaze for unflinching gaze. “Already gone,” he said with a half smile. “Safe from you and your kind!”
The woman snarled, but it was the thin, rakish man with blond hair who kicked him hard in the jaw.
The largest of the trio tied the arms and legs of the unconscious boy, while the blond hunter went off to retrieve their horses. The woman sat upon a fallen, moss-covered log, fuming. She played with a dagger, gouging troughs in the trunk.
“He handed it off already,” she said.
“I heard,” the large man said. He dropped the trussed-up boy back to the ground. “The orders won’t be happy.”
“No, they won’t,” she said. “But more work to come for us.”
The bearded hunter grunted noncommittally before his gaze flitted to the darkness between the trees. A crossbow appeared in his quick hands. The woman had heard it as well, the brush of fabric against wood. She drew her blade and stepped forward, pushing light into the shadows.
“Who’s there?” the man barked. “Speak or be killed for your silence.”
“Don’t kill me,” a voice cried out. “Forgive me, I meant no intrusion.” Into the light stepped a woodsman with sea-blue eyes. His hands were raised. “I live in these woods,” he said. “I thought you might need help.”
“We need no help,” the woman said. “Be gone with you.”
The woodsman nodded and retreated into the darkness.
It was time he left anyway. This particular chapter had played out, and he wanted to commit it to the page before memory tarnished it. Besides, the main characters in the little drama had yet to appear, and the woodsman needed time to position himself for what he knew came next.
CHAPTER 2
Nothing of the city intruded upon the Three Eyes Academy-no reek of the animal pens and butcher stalls of the Merchant District, no cries of the Guild militia training in the Hall of Knights, nothing to suggest a thriving city of twenty-four thousand souls living and breathing and struggling to survive within the great walls of Solanthus.
The Three Eyes Academy was meant to be a refuge for the study and training of the magical arts. It imparted a sense of seclusion, a monastic devotion to the arcane, free of the mundane distractions of life outside. In truth, however, the wizards built the academy for students whose blood ran distinctly blue and whose purses bulged with steel. It was a place of privilege, a showpiece to display the respectability of the Orders of High Sorcery.
The Star Chamber of the Three Eyes was domed and made of the finest marble slabs from the quarries of Kayolin. While dwarf stonesmiths had cut the stones, elf artisans had sculpted the eight lithe and long-limbed statues of wizards that stretched along the curved wall. Between the statues rested pairs of fluted columns. The marble veins glittered like emeralds in the torchlight, and upon the great semicircular dais sat the three mahogany chairs with bronze trim and silver overlay. The floor was also marble, intricately carved, with inlaid brass patterns of magical knot work. From the flattened edge of the dais descended a handful of curved steps.
The light of the white moon shone into the great assembly hall from the starburst aperture in the ceiling. Although only the white and red moons shone over Krynn for most, black-robed practitioners alone could see the third moon, an ebon disc as though forever eclipsed.
Tythonnia marveled at both her surroundings and her circumstances. The uncertain honor that had her squirming in her seat, almost fidgeting with anxiety. She did not know why she had been asked to attend a wizards’ conclave, of all things. Or why the meeting was being held here and not at the Tower of High Sorcery in Wayreth.
She sat before the dais in one of three sections, each angled to face the thrones. In each section were three rows of wood benches upon which sat the members of the conclave. It was the gathering of the greatest magical power of Krynn, an assembly of spell weavers dedicated to the responsible tutelage and understanding of the mystic arts; and Tythonnia certainly didn’t count herself among them. The White Robes sat to the far left, upon frost elm benches bleached and lacquered to the color of snow; the Black Robes sat to the far right, upon dark oak benches stained a glossy black. Tythonnia’s own order, that of the Red Robes, sat upon the middle row of mahogany benches stained cherry red.
All the hushed conversations layered atop one another, building into a buzz of noise. Conclave members seated themselves out of respect for the three presiding wizards who were perched upon their own chairs, but they chattered excitedly with other men and women who they hadn’t seen for as many as several years. Despite any racial misgivings, humans conversed freely with elf and dwarf mages. Their craft united them. And yet Tythonnia felt like an outsider, an intruder in such august company. Her gaze wandered, drinking in all the attendees. There were more than just the seven conclave members of each order. There were other luminaries who made wizards a feared word-men and women, elves and dwarves, who could strike foes cold with a glance. Tythonnia couldn’t help herself; she tapped her foot more quickly, nervously.