Magisterium

23

Okay? Things will be fine.”

Margaret shook her head.

“Of course they will!” Glenn said, fighting the rising gusts of wind. “Look, your parents are down below. And your brother. Why don’t we go sit in front of the fire. We’ll get you something to eat and we’ll all talk. We’ll talk all night if you want, until things are better.

Then tomorrow you guys will head home and this will all be over.

Would you like that? Margaret? Things will be back the way they were.”

Margaret turned so that her profile was etched across the starry night behind her.

“You can’t make a tree not a tree,” she said. “You can’t take it back.”

Glenn swallowed hard. Her heart was racing now, but she had to keep calm. She took a half step, slow, and reached out to the girl.

“Maybe not,” she said. “But take a step back and we’ll get you on the road home.”

There was a gust of wind and Margaret’s hair snapped like a flag.

Her eyes were dark and huge and clear.

“There is no road home.”

Glenn made a grab for Margaret’s shoulder, but the girl took a single step forward and it was as if the darkness and the earth below reached up, desperate to snatch her away.

Margaret didn’t make a sound as she fell.

As the night deepened, the cold and the wind took Glenn in both hands and shook, but she didn’t leave her place at the edge of the cliff.

She imagined she was an outcropping of rock or a lone growth of mountain pine, twisted and hard, invisible amongst the others.

The moon led the stars down into the horizon, and then the first watery traces of sunlight spread across the mountains. At some point that morning, Margaret’s parents and brother appeared on the cliff behind her. They stood there a long time, their ragged clothes flapping in the wind. Their bodies gray and indistinct, like ghostly smudges on a pane of glass.

Glenn told them what Margaret had done, then turned away and watched the sun rise. They said nothing. Eventually, there was a sound behind her like dry leaves skittering across the rock and they were gone.

There was a flash of green as the sun crested the forest in the distance and for a moment Glenn imagined she was on 813, millions of miles away from the Magisterium and the Colloquium. Alone in the quiet. Her heart longed for it, missing another distant place she had never been.

As the sun crept up into the mountains, a winding path, lighter gray than the rock around it, shone. And at the vanishing end of her vision sat a jumble of small red-roofed buildings. Bethany. The name had once echoed in her head like a wish. Get there and this would all be over. Get there and things could go back to the way they were.

Glenn shook her head, disgusted with herself at the thought.

Whatever else Kevin said, she knew he was right about that. The idea that she could destroy the bracelet and they would all waltz into their old life was a fantasy. Go back to school? To the Academy? Free her father? It was laughable. Sturges would never allow it.

Unless …

Bethany was a small collection of buildings and streets, and on the other side of it, towering like a dark green castle wall, was the edge of the border forest. She could be in Bethany by that afternoon; walking straight through it and coming out the other side would be the work of a few minutes. And then …

Glenn pulled her sleeve aside, exposing the dull gray of the bracelet. It was true that Sturges would never give Glenn her old life back. But maybe she could purchase it.

The pieces of a plan began to snap together. The bracelet for her life. After all, who was she protecting? Her mother? A monster who had abandoned her years ago? Kevin, who was so transformed she barely recognized him anymore?

Aamon?

Glenn’s heart ached at the thought of him. But no matter what else Aamon had done, no matter who he had been, he had been lying to her this whole time. Without him her mother never would have left, never would have become what she was now. Glenn had to face it. Just like Kevin and her mother, Hopkins was gone, swallowed up by the Magisterium.

Glenn forced herself up and stood teetering at the edge of the cliff, the wind lashing her, the jagged rocks and endless land sprawled out below.

“There is no road home.”

The words were like hands reaching up from a grave to pull her down, just as they had pulled down her mother and father and Kevin and Aamon and Margaret. Glenn turned away from the edge and crossed the windswept stone.

There will be for me.

Glenn traveled throughout the morning and into a bright and cold afternoon, the red of Bethany growing steadily in her eye. Every step was near agony to a body that had spent years sitting in chairs with a tablet in hand, but she pushed on to a drumbeat formed from Margaret’s last words. When Glenn thought she couldn’t walk anymore, defiance pushed her forward.

When she reached Bethany’s outskirts, she stopped and peered down a road that wound away to her right, disappearing into the town.

Despite the size of the place, it was as quiet as a grave. No voices. No sounds of movement or work. This was supposed to be an industrial town — a blacksmithing town, Aamon had said. Why was it so quiet?

One possibility was that one of the various forces that were searching for her — Merrin’s, the Magistra’s, or the Colloquium’s -

had come and cleared the place out and were lying in wait for her.

Either that or the townspeople had heard of the armies converging on their town and fled.

Nervous anticipation buzzed inside Glenn. Above the rooftops sat the beginning of the forest border. Home lay on the other side, only hours away now. The silence seemed to intensify as she followed the narrow dirt road past abandoned buildings. Here and there she found an open door looking into an empty room, but most of the buildings were closed up tight. Their windows were like empty eye sockets.

Glenn quickened her pace, triumph dancing in her chest. I beat them all here, she thought.

But then she turned a corner and saw the first body.

From a distance, Glenn mistook it for an animal, but as she drew closer, she saw it was a man. He was dressed in simple

homespun-looking clothes, rough pants, and a fur-lined leather coat.

His arms and legs were outstretched. A silver knife, its length splattered with blood, lay on the ground, inches from his open hand.

Glenn approached slowly. He was old, fifty at least, with thinning gray hair and a round, heavily lined face — a farmer, not a soldier. The front of him was stained, throat to belly, with blood. His eyes, the color of dead leaves, were open and staring into the cold sky. Glenn’s head reeled and her stomach turned. She thought she would be sick right there in the street, but she forced it back.

It’s okay. You can hide until they’re gone. You’re so close.

Glenn stumbled away from the dead man, struggling to find her footing as her shock tripped into fear. She ran, imagining sounds all around her now. Footsteps. Doors opening. Swords being drawn. But everywhere she looked, she saw nothing except a blur of wood and tile and road. The road wound through the houses until she was only steps from the edge of town. Glenn could clearly see where the dirt road turned into scrub grass. Her heart pounded. She ran for it, but when she was only steps away, a company of soldiers appeared. Each one had a sword at his waist and a long iron-tipped spear in his hand.

Over their heads floated a figure in a black cloak. One arm reached up and drew back the hood, revealing a pale aquiline face.

Abbe Daniel.

Glenn turned and ran, eyes on the trees that made up the border, but a tremor shot through the ground and tossed her off her feet. The next thing she knew, Abbe was floating down in front of her.

“No little tricks to help you now,” she teased as hands grabbed Glenn from every direction and pulled her to her feet.

Abbe and the company of soldiers marched Glenn through town without a word. They passed more dead bodies on the road as they went, first singly and then in pairs and small broken groups. Men and women and a few young boys. They were all simple-looking folk, roughly dressed, with knives and farm implements for weapons. Were these the people of Bethany? Merrin Farrick’s revolutionaries?

Was Kevin somewhere amongst them? Glenn tried to banish the thought but couldn’t help herself from picturing Kevin lying alone on some dirt-covered street.

The town square was surrounded on all sides by two-and even three-story wooden buildings. There was a long loop of dirt road, and in the center of that a grassy park dotted with trees. There were bodies here too, but fewer of them, five to ten scattered about like litter. In the park were the victors of whatever battle had gone on here, another company of soldiers. There were ten to twenty of them, all armed like the ones behind Glenn, and at the head of their number stood Garen Tom.

And at Garen’s feet was Aamon Marta on his knees, slumped

over and bloody.

A soldier pushed Glenn and she stumbled forward, sprawling out beside Aamon. Up ahead, a wooden gallows had been constructed. A noose hung down and was wrapped around the neck of a bound man who stood on a small platform. He had been beaten badly; both eyes were nearly swollen shut with bruises. His clothes were rent and bloody.

It was the violin player Glenn had seen sitting with Kevin at the inn two nights before. It was Merrin Farrick, soon to die.

Glenn turned to Aamon. He was stooped over, his broad

shoulders hunched, one arm hanging limp at his side. His fur was covered with splashes of blood. His blood. The blood of others. Deep cuts spanned his face and arms.

“Aamon,” Glenn whispered. She started to reach out to him, but a soldier knocked her hand away. She flinched, expecting Aamon to attack. He didn’t move. His eyes were on the dirt in front of him, and he mumbled a prayer under his breath. Her fear settled into a cold dread.

“After you were gone, he barely fought,” Garen said, his voice a gravelly boom. “Sat moaning over a dead man like a little girl. Too afraid to keep fighting.”

Aamon kept his head down and his eyes closed. Glenn thought of him kneeling before the stone altar, praying for forgiveness. No, Glenn thought, not afraid. He was never afraid.

Garen Tom stepped forward and knelt down in front of them both.

He was even more terrifying up close. His fur was short and mottled, home to a thousand old scars. One ear was mostly gone, a gnarled nub of a thing. His breath was hot and smelled coppery, like blood.

“Strange employment you’ve found yourself, brother. Escorting outsiders.”

Garen’s tone mixed anger and hatred and, somewhere deep below, a great and long sadness.

“We are built to serve,” Aamon said, his voice hoarse, broken.

Glenn jumped as Garen took Aamon by the throat and yanked

him close. “I served the Magisterium,” he hissed so low that only Glenn and Aamon could hear. “But because of you, I am now a slave to a monster and her whelp. We all are.”

Garen’s eyes were narrow and deadly, and there was a rumble in his throat. Aamon said nothing. He lowered his eyes and began repeating his whispered prayer. Garen reared back and spit in Aamon’s face. Thick saliva ran down Aamon’s cheek.

“Stop it!” Glenn surged forward and slammed her fists into the granite of Garen’s chest. “He’s had enough!”

Garen laughed and looked over Glenn’s shoulder. “This human has the bauble you want?”

Abbe Daniel soared above Glenn’s head and landed lightly

beside Garen. A barely healed gash Glenn hadn’t noticed before ran down the right side of Abbe’s cheek. It was an injury she hoped she was responsible for.

Abbe inclined her head, and Garen seized Glenn’s wrist.

“No!” Abbe called out. “Don’t remove it. We take her to the Magistra.”

“Alive?”

Abbe’s eyes, a deep brown, almost black, fell on Glenn. The slightest smile played across her thin lips. “That depends. Do you think you can control yourself, girl?”

Glenn stared back hard. “I don’t want to hurt anyone else,” she said, forcing a small grin of her own.

Abbe’s eyes blazed. “Yes,” she said to Garen, and then turned to Aamon. “But the traitor dies.”

“No!” Glenn tried to stand, but she was pushed hard onto her knees.

Garen glanced at the men behind them and then strode to the gallows platform. Five soldiers seized Aamon from behind and began wrestling him to his feet. Glenn looked all around, but there was no one to help her. She tore aside her sleeve and grabbed the bracelet. Before she could tear it off, Aamon’s hand clamped down over hers. He was half standing, surrounded by a phalanx of terrified but determined guards. He leaned in to her as the soldiers struggled to pull him away.

“Give them anything they want,” he said. “And then go home.”

“Aamon …”

The soldiers tried to pull him back again, but Aamon flexed his shoulders and drew his face alongside Glenn’s ear. His breath was warm and close.

“Hopkins,” he whispered to her.

More soldiers came then. Glenn watched helplessly, an awful lump in her throat, as their hands wrapped around his arms and shoulders and he was dragged away toward the gallows where Merrin Farrick stood. His eyes never left hers, though. The deep bright green of them, the only handhold she had that kept her from drowning.

Finally they turned him around and pushed him onto the stand beside Merrin. He was surrounded by men now, each one of them with a spear at his side, and Abbe watched from nearby. Too big for the gallows, the company of soldiers forced him down to his knees, and a man stepped forward with a sword.

A white-hot spot of anger burned deep in Glenn’s chest. She reached for the bracelet, but before she could remove it, there were sounds of confusion all around her. She opened her eyes. The soldiers were frantic, disorganized, searching the roofs and alleyways around them, swords in hand. There was a sharp whisper, like the flight of a hornet, and one of the soldiers dropped with a scream, the bolt of an arrow driven through his neck.

The band of soldiers spread out, shouting and hunting for the archer. Three more of them fell, then four. It was chaos. There was a scream far off on the other side of the square, and Glenn turned as twenty bodies came pouring out of a side street. Men and women, old and young, rushed headlong into the line of soldiers. They wore rags and carried sickles, machetes, bows and arrows.