The Black River Chronicles: Level One (Black River Academy Book 1) Read online

With that, Dremm was away, marching towards one of the smaller doorways that let off the courtyard. Durren found himself hurrying to keep up, this time taking care to keep his gaze fixed on nothing. It was beginning to sink in that he'd be spending a great deal of time with these people, and that it might not be the best idea to make too early a bad impression.

  Beyond the door, Dremm led the way through a series of unfamiliar passages, in a wing of the vast building Durren had never had cause to explore. The embossing on the walls, a simple design of an inverted sword against a red background, implied that this section belonged to the fighters.

  Durren felt as though they must have walked half the length of the courtyard outside by the time Dremm halted to open another door. The room on the far side appeared to be some sort of huge storage cupboard. Three walls were lined with shelves, the one to the left crammed with rucksacks and the others busy with such a range of objects that Durren could hardly begin to take them all in.

  “Take a pack appropriate to your class,” Dremm said. “Don't worry, they're all the same. And you may select one item each. Choose wisely, because you won't be allowed to change your mind until you've levelled up.”

  Now that Durren looked, he realised that the rucksacks were divided into four categories, each section marked with a class crest. Those intended for the rangers were more easily identified, however, by the laden quivers sewn into their left side.

  Durren hoisted one down as instructed, and then turned his attention to the remaining shelves. They were covered from top to bottom in bric-a-brac, with objects of every size and shape competing for space. There were already a great many gaps in evidence, where previous party members had seized what Durren assumed to have been the choicest items. Still, more than enough remained to make the possibility of choosing seem all but impossible.

  Durren's gaze fell on a wooden pole, nearly double his own height. Chopped into three, it would have kept the wizard girl in staves for life. What its actual function was supposed to be, though, Durren had no idea, and its sheer uselessness appealed to him. How were you even meant to carry it?

  Reluctantly he forced himself to consider other possibilities: a set of glass jars containing some murky substance, a white cloth sash, a miniature kettle, a stone the size and shape of Durren's flattened palm that glowed with its own dim light. None of them appealed. Then, turning his attention to the highest shelf, he saw something that immediately called out to him: a coil of thick and sturdy-looking rope.

  “I'll take this,” he decided, stretching to his full height to lift it down. Only as he did so did he discover that the angle had hidden the coil's true dimensions from view; the rope was so long that it would probably have stretched from the courtyard to the tip of the Old Tower, and appropriately heavy. Durren almost considered changing his mind, but the rules likely prohibited indecisiveness, and even if they didn't, he'd have been too embarrassed.

  The rogue girl—Tia, that was her name—had made her choice almost immediately. Now, Durren realised that she was glaring at him, though whether because he'd taken so long or because she disapproved of his selection he had no way to guess.

  “You never know when a good length of rope will come in useful,” he pointed out defensively.

  Her answer was to give the slightest of shrugs—as if to suggest that nothing he did, no matter how stupid, could possibly concern her—and to turn her back on him.

  Durren had been the last to pick, he realised, for their mentor was watching him as well. Seeing that his decision was made, Dremm stalked off again, back into the passage, and Durren was left trying to stuff the rope into his too-small pack without at the same time tripping over his own feet.

  Dremm led them up one staircase and then another, and Durren noticed that the embossed designs upon the stonework had changed. Now they represented a staff with an orb atop and stylised lightning bolts spitting out across a yellow backdrop; evidently they'd passed into the region of the academy reserved for the wizards. A minute later and they'd arrived at their next destination, this time a door of ancient black wood with runes picked out in gold upon its panel. Dremm knocked and from within a voice called back, “Come in.”

  The chamber was large and hexagonal, with narrow slit windows spaced around the outer three sides. The centre was given over to a sunken area, the same shape as the room, but floored with tiles of red and black rather than with flagstones. On the far side, an elderly man sat upon a high-backed chair, a staff propped against the arm beside him. From his lengthy and unkempt beard and air of mystified distraction, Durren assumed him to be one of the professors in wizardry.

  “This,” Dremm said, “is Hieronymus, and he'll be managing your transportation, along with certain other matters of a magical nature. Best to treat him with the utmost respect, lest you find yourselves stranded somewhere unpleasant.”

  The man named Hieronymus nodded sagely. Then he reached into a sack beside him—a sack that Durren realised, with alarm, was wriggling ever so slightly of its own accord. “You will be accompanied by an observer,” the old wizard said, “which will project your endeavours back to a scrying pool here at the academy. In this manner, your mentor can make sure you aren't getting yourselves into too much trouble.”

  Does that also mean they'll come to our rescue when trouble finds us through no fault of our own? Durren wondered.

  Then his gaze fell on the object in Hieronymus's palm, and Durren barely resisted the impulse to take a hurried step backward—though the thing couldn't possibly have done him any harm. The observer was not much bigger than a curled mouse and, perhaps more to the point, it had no limbs. It had no anything, in fact, except a single eye, almost as big as its body and currently watching the four of them with patient interest.

  While Hule and Tia were watching the observer as warily as Durren was, the dwarf girl, Areinelimus, seemed entranced by the little creature. “We should call it Pootle,” she said. But she clearly hadn't meant to speak out loud; realising that the rest of them were looking at her, she blushed and stared hard at her feet. So quietly that Durren could barely catch the words, she explained, “Pootle was the name of a rock-slug I had when I was little.”

  Durren had no idea what a rock-slug was or why anyone would want to have one. But if he had to be followed around by a floating eyeball, then it might as well be a floating eyeball with a ridiculous name; he had a feeling he'd have bigger concerns soon enough.

  As though to illustrate that point, Dremm spoke up again. “Your mission is in a rat-kind village some miles to the east. A merchant caravan has reported that a chest of valuable goods was stolen, and they would like their property recovered. As you know, rat-kind are a cowardly folk, but that's not to say they aren't capable of aggression, so consider yourselves in hostile territory. You'll recognise the chest by the heron crest branded upon its lid.

  “Once you've recovered it and are out of danger, speak the words 'homily', 'paradigm' and 'lucent' to your observer, in that order. The transport spell will reverse, returning you here. Take note that the incantation will only work if the four of you are all together, within arm's reach, and if your observer deems you to be in no imminent danger. The radius of the return spell is somewhat imprecise and we can't have you bringing along any stray passengers. Do you understand all that? Yes? Excellent.”

  Durren wasn't at all certain he'd understood, but Dremm had allowed only the briefest pause for him to say so. In any case, he wasn't prepared to be the only one to admit ignorance. At least he felt that his memory was up to the task of remembering the words Dremm had given them. Homily, paradigm, lucent, Durren echoed in his thoughts.

  “Then, if there are no questions, it seems we're ready to begin. Step down into the pit,” Hieronymus asserted, in a tone that made the lowered area before them sound like the depths of the underworld.

  Areinelimus went first, perhaps because of all of them she was the least intimidated at the prospect of magic being worked upon her. Tia followed, keeping her d
istance, and Durren and the fighter, Hule, stepped down almost at the same time.

  Durren could hear, now, that Hieronymus was chanting beneath his breath. Durren couldn't make out any of the words, or be sure they were words at all, but the sound made him feel strange, deep in the pit of his stomach. There were lights, he realised, popping at the edges of his vision like tiny fireworks. Where the lights appeared, the room beyond seemed smeared, as though it was a still-wet painting that someone had rubbed with their finger. Then the room was melting away, as insubstantial as a dream in the moment before waking.

  I have a question, Durren thought suddenly. I've got plenty of questions. Like, are you really sending me into certain danger with these people I've only just met? Like, what happens if things go wrong? Or, given that none of us have the faintest idea of what we're doing, when things go wrong?

  But by then it was too late. By then, Dremm, Hieronymus, and the entire room were gone—and Durren was falling through the skin of the world.

  2

  I

  t came as a shock to realise that he was still on his feet. For an instant Durren had been convinced he was plummeting, through a bottomless tunnel of streaming purple and gold, the walls of which might have been close enough to touch or as far away as the stars in the sky.

  Yet here he was, upright, with apparently all of his limbs still in their right places, and around him a scene quite different to the one he'd been seeing only moments before.

  Durren had half expected that they'd materialise right in the centre of the village, surrounded on every side by angry, knife-wielding rat-kind. He had already slipped his bow from his shoulder and his free hand was twitching towards the quiver on his back. Wherever they were, though, it certainly wasn't a village, of rat-kind or of anything else. He was confident, in fact, that they'd arrived in a forest. The one thing causing him to doubt was that his head was still spinning, in a way that made his vision blur and his stomach altogether too eager to spill its contents.

  Durren took a deep breath, and slowly the spinning steadied. Of the others, only Hule looked worse for wear. Tia was already casting those pale eyes of hers over the surrounding trees, as though at any moment one of them might reveal itself to be an enemy, while the wizard, Areinelimus, gazed about with all the trepidation of a child trying to pick out the perfect picnic spot.

  “Where are we?” Durren asked, since he felt as though someone should say something. But he also spoke softly, because, like Tia, he was half ready to believe that there might be rat-kind hiding behind every tree.

  Tia pointed to a gap in the dense foliage high above. “There's smoke,” she said.

  Durren followed her finger. Sure enough, upon the patch of blue sky were traced wavering lines of grey-white. He didn't understand the significance at first, but then it came to him. Smoke meant fires and fires meant people—or, in this case, rat people. At least they wouldn't be wasting half the day wandering lost in this forest before their quest even began.

  The dwarf girl, meanwhile, was still glancing around the clearing with obvious fascination. Perhaps feeling Durren's eyes on her, she turned towards him. With a timid smile, she held out her hand, as though they'd just stumbled into each other at a formal banquet. “I'm Areinelimus,” she said. “After my grandfather. But no one ever calls me that. All of my friends call me Arein.”

  Something, perhaps only the eager way in which she'd said it, told Durren that in truth no one had ever called her Arein. He hoped she was a better wizard than she was a liar, and the thought made him feel unexpectedly sorry for her. “Good to meet you, Arein,” Durren said, shaking her outstretched hand. “I'm Durren Flintrand.”

  “Oh!” Her eyes widened. “Like the Luntharbour Flintrands? The merchant family?”

  “I'm a distant cousin,” Durren said hurriedly.

  But Arein continued undeterred. “I heard they even lend money to princes and kings, and that they own half of Luntharbour, and…”

  “I wouldn't know about any of that,” Durren told her.

  “Oh.” She looked crestfallen. Then, abruptly, her former good cheer was back. “Well, anyway, it's nice to meet you, Durren Flintrand.”

  “I am Hule Tremick,” the fighter announced suddenly, in a manner that suggested he wasn't entirely happy that others were being paid attention when he wasn't. He was careful to pronounce every syllable of every word, as though speaking was something he had to put considerable thought into.

  “Hello, Hule,” Arein said, and Durren nodded in acknowledgement.

  That left only Tia. Durren thought at first that she'd vanished, but then he noticed her standing a little way off, beside one of the thicker trees, her cloaked silhouette merging almost perfectly with its trunk. He sensed she'd been following their conversation, though nothing about her posture gave the impression of interest.

  “Your name was Tia, wasn't it?” Durren called.

  She spared him the briefest of glances. “Yes.” Then she was staring again into the wilderness. “And you should probably keep your voice down. There are rat-kind nearby.”

  She was right, he'd almost forgotten. Abruptly the thick foliage all around felt less safe. It would have taken only a little imagination to populate the darkest patches with glaring rodent eyes.

  Durren had never met any rat-kind, and he knew of them only by their reputation, which wasn't good. They were considered to be at best scavengers, at worst thieves and bandits. He certainly wasn't surprised to hear that they'd have robbed a merchant caravan, though he guessed it had been a small and poorly protected merchant caravan—because rat-kind were also known for their cowardice in the face of any real threat. Which begged the question, did four first level students from the Black River Academy for Swordcraft and Spellcraft qualify as a real threat? The answer, Durren suspected, was probably not.

  “We should come up with a plan,” he decided.

  To his surprise he realised that Arein and Hule were looking at him expectantly.

  However, it was Tia who spoke. “That's easy,” she said. “Wherever there are most guards, that's where the chest will be.”

  She seemed particularly sure of herself for a level one student, Durren thought. Perhaps she'd been getting in some extracurricular practise. That was a notorious problem with training rogues, many of whom would inevitably end up as thieves of one sort or another, be it as agents for one of the great houses or simply as common crooks. Anyone being taught the necessary skills to survive in that kind of life was apt to realise how those selfsame skills could be turned to their own benefit, enough to alleviate the hardships of a student life. But was Tia the sort to do that? She seemed, somehow, too serious to turn her hand to petty crime.

  “So,” Durren said, “we need to get an idea of the layout. That means finding somewhere high up. Is anyone any good at climbing trees?”

  “Hule says we storm in and take the treasure,” Hule stated, far too loudly.

  Had the fighter really just referred to himself by his own first name? “There are only four of us,” Durren pointed out. “And we don't know how many of them. Anyway, I'm not sure we're meant to harm them. I mean,” he finished lamely, “we don't know the full circumstances.” It hadn't occurred to him until then that he might have to loose an arrow at a living target before the day was out.

  “Pah! Rats!” was Hule's only response, as though the value of rat-kind lives could be summed up with those two words.

  “I don't want to hurt anyone,” Arein put in. Her voice was small, and she looked devastated at the thought. “There must be a better way.”

  “That's what I'm saying,” Durren agreed. “We get a good view of the place and, like Tia said, look for the spot that's most heavily guarded. Then, once we know where they've got the chest stashed, maybe Tia could sneak in while the rest of us cause some kind of a diversion. I don't know, something like—”

  “But where is Tia?” Arein asked.

  Durren looked round. She'd been standing next to that tree�
��or had it been that one? His eyes searched the edges of the clearing. Maybe she'd gone a little way into the forest? Maybe she'd taken it upon herself to follow his suggestion and clamber into the treetops? Or…

  “Oh no,” Durren murmured. He'd been replaying the last minute's conversation in his mind, and had recalled the last time Tia had contributed. “Come on,” he said out loud, “we have to go.”

  “You don't think…?” Arein asked. Durren had already begun striding in the direction of those slender columns of smoke, and she had to hurry to catch up. “I mean, you don't think Tia would have…?”

  “I don't know,” Durren said. But he thought he did, and that she would have. Wherever there are most guards, she'd said, that's where the chest will be—and now she was nowhere to be seen.

  Glancing back, Durren noticed that the eyeball creature—Pootle, I suppose that's what we're calling it—was following, though at a sufficient distance to keep all three of them in view. But not Tia, he thought. What happens when one of us gets into trouble on their own?

  As though to answer the unspoken question, Pootle abruptly shot off in the direction of the village. Its speed was extraordinary; one instant it was there behind them, the next a vanishing blur. Seconds later and it was back, trailing them as sedately as before.

  Well, at least one of them knew where Tia had run off to. If the thing had had a mouth, or had moved slowly enough to follow, then the knowledge might even have been useful.

  Through gaps in the trees, Durren could see the village now, a cluster of squat buildings walled in mud or clay—and stretching far enough into the distance that the word 'town' might have been more appropriate. There was a steep bank descending on the nearest side, perhaps intended for drainage. So far its incline and the dense woodland had concealed their approach, though Durren could see plenty of rat-kind scurrying about in the gaps between huts.

  The forest's edge seemed an ideal spot to regroup, and to think through just how they were meant to go about finding one person amid so large and hostile a place—especially given that that one person was Tia, who'd spent the last three months training to be as hard to find as possible. Durren wondered if there was any way to work a too-long length of rope into their plans, decided there probably wasn't. At any rate, the worst thing they could possibly do would be to rush in unprepared…