1
Marcus
Blood pounds in my temples. I should be used to betrayal by now, but something about having a mentor do it is particularly enraging. I almost give in to the urge and raise my phantom in a rush of seething bulk, letting him explode through the floorboards and bring down a rain of splinters and bricks. I turn to Master Brogal, the High Savant of Baiseen, not waiting for permission to speak.
“My brother’s taken over the realm, our enemies could be anywhere, and you expect me to do nothing?” My fists clench tight.
Wrong question, De’ral, my phantom, rumbles deep in my mind.
“Quiet!” I don’t need his advice on this.
Master Brogal pierces me with dark, strained eyes that don’t seem to blink. His phantom, a bird-of-paradise caller, perches on his shoulder and watches me with the same unblinking gaze. “Petén is our ruler now, Marcus. Accept it.”
“Accept it?” I’ve earned my yellow robes. Despite Father’s doubts, I’m finally fit to take the throne.
“Marcus, it’s understandable—”
“The only thing to understand is that my brother is not the rightful Heir. I am! Petén doesn’t know the first thing about running a realm. How could he?” I take a breath. “He’s non-savant.”
“He’ll learn.” Brogal sighs and lowers into his chair. The phantom grips the High Savant’s red robes to keep balanced. Brogal looks tired, his round face sagging, his usually golden skin sallow.
If I weren’t so angry, I’d be worried for him. He’s gone rangy since the attack, white hair thinner. Strands escape the tie when he leans forward to roll up a map.
“Have you spoken to your father?” he asks.
Now there’s a question. “The healers tell me the same thing they have since I returned. He’s too ill for visitors, even his own sons.” I take the chair opposite Brogal, stretching my legs out long and staring at my muddy boots. I should have stomped them harder at the door.
The High Savant’s chambers are large, though the shelves
overflow with books. The window behind his desk gives a full view of the terraced city, some streets pristine, their cobbles swept, tall houses and landscaped gardens still intact. Others are pitted, charred black and piled high with wreckage.
“Do you honestly think Petén is fit to rule?” I ask.
Still the wrong question. De’ral can’t keep his comments to himself.
Brogal turns to gaze out the window toward the sea. “You’re doing an excellent job with the restorations.”
More topic changing? Heat rises to my face as I think of Petén’s latest idiocy. “Did you hear? He plans to go ahead with the solstice eve celebrations.” It’s the wrong choice. We haven’t recovered from the attack. It’s no time to be stuffing ourselves with the winter’s cache and dancing under the new moon. “People are still homeless, and Petén is running us into the ground with his spending. He’s an incompetent non-savant—”
“Careful, Marcus.” Brogal waves me quiet.
But it’s true. Petén is incompetent, and non-savant, meaning he doesn’t raise a phantom. Never could and never will. He has no business on the phantom throne. There is nothing for the woodcutters to carve into it, marking the start of his reign. I take a deep breath to say it aloud.
Brogal hushes me again. “The Magistrate has ears.”
Ears? He means Rhiannon. How that conniving daughter of darkness attached herself to my brother, I’ll never know. Is he completely blind? Well, no, because she is beautiful, but that’s beside the point.
“I’ve other meetings.” Brogal rises, signaling the end of my interview.
“That’s it?” My chest tightens. Why was I even summoned? So he could dismiss my petition to reclaim the throne in person? How considerate.
He’s not on my side. Few are after my brother’s poisonous words. Instead of honoring me and my company for warning the city and leading the defense to victory, I’m shunned in my own palace. Humiliated. Faces turn away when I walk past while Petén
rides through the streets, Rhiannon at his side, horses prancing, robes flowing—
Crowds cheering, De’ral adds in a dry voice.
“Shut up.”
You still haven’t asked the right question.
“Continue to supervise the repair of Baiseen, Marcus.” Brogal motions me out the door. “Those are your orders, for now.”
My jaw tightens. “I will put Baiseen back on her feet, don’t worry about that. But hear this, I cannot tolerate my brother’s rule. There has to be a way to—”
“Let it go, Marcus!” Brogal slaps the desk. The mugs jump and his phantom squawks, fanning its wings for balance.
So this is how it is? Fine.
I erase the scowl from my face, dip my head in a nod and walk out the door, barely resisting the urge to slam it right off the hinges.
Interesting… De’ral says.
“What’s that?” I snap. “His complete lack of concern for my plight and that of the realm?”
No. De’ral snorts. His fear.
I stop as a chill prickles my scalp. “What is the High Savant, red-robe of Baiseen, afraid of?”
Finally. De’ral exhales. The right question.
…
I leave the Sanctuary deep in thought, my heart sinking as I pass the boarded up windows and abandoned shops. The battle’s over, and we won. But the toppled homes, fallen trees, and destitute people begging for food say otherwise. Baiseen was once a beautiful city. The shining pearl and capital of our realm.
Not anymore. We are vulnerable now, open to another siege. Is that what has Brogal anxious?
I reach the row of burnt trees on High Street and wave at the others working there. “Ready?”
I don’t wait for him to answer but touch one knee to the earth and raise my phantom. The ground in front of me cracks and from it he
springs. De’ral - a warrior, three times my height and weight, fighting fit, though today we don’t face an attack but the repair from one. As he shakes dirt from his broad shoulders and long, dark gold braid, I send him to the other side of the street to remove broken beams and slabs.
This part of the city caught fire during the invasion, leaving black stumps and gutted buildings that have yet to be cleared. Behind, the granary lies in ruin. Its roof collapsed during renovations last week. Not everyone got out in time. I hoist a log and throw it on the pile. “Tann did this!” I spit his name. Tann, the red-robe warlord, who invaded our shores.
Samsen, Belair, and I, and other savants, have been working for weeks to rebuild. Everyone pitches in but there’s still a long way to go.
“Marcus! Over here.” Belair waves from the side of the street where the granary fell. They’ve managed to unearth a quarter of the main wall and continue to haul away what grain is salvageable. “Someone’s buried under a slab.”
I scramble to understand as I run toward him. They might still be alive? After five days?
Belair holds a thin, gray hand, all that’s visible in the rubble. “I thought I felt a pulse, but now–” His red hair falls into his eyes as he shakes his head.
“Make sure.” My heart pounds as I wait.
Belair’s eyes glaze as he communes with his red sun leopard mind-to-mind. The warrior cat phantom pricks its ears, not moving save for a twitching tail.
I hold my breath.
A moment later, Belair exhales. “There’s a heartbeat. But faint.”
“Samsen!” I call over my shoulder. “Get Piper!”
Samsen dips his head. From the callers working to draw grain from the ruins, his phantom, in the form of a sea eagle, arrows to the Sanctuary.
“Help me!” Belair kneels, pulling away rocks.
Other savants–the blue-robe novices, and mid-level green-robes
under my supervision–drop everything and follow me. We scramble over the rubble to the victim.
“You three”—I point at the brown-robe children who hang back, eyes wide—“run to the healer’s hall and fetch a stretcher.”
They bow and rush off, boots splashing up the muddy street.
Larseen, a yellow-robe friend from childhood, joins the rest of us to pull loose stones from the mound. “They’re trapped,” he says, only stopping to tie his ropy hair into a knot on top of his head. “The slab’s huge.”
“De’ral, we need you.”
My phantom emerges from the other side of the street dragging a beam. He drops it, the ground shaking under his giant footfalls as he races toward us.
“Make room!” I shout.
The other savants scramble away in a flurry of colored robes. They don’t have to be told twice.
De’ral picks up a marble column, the stone easily tall as a tree and weighing five times as much. He hefts it aside like a twig. Next he shoves over two cracked slabs of the wall, splitting them apart like halves of a melon. He’s angry, my phantom. But his anger is not directed at me.
“Someone should’ve discovered this victim sooner.”
Yes.
“Careful now,” I say to him.
De’ral grunts in my head and unearths the last pieces of mortar and debris.
“What do we have?” Piper arrives out of breath. Her twin-headed snake, a healer phantom, coils around her neck, tasting the air with bright blue tongues.
We brush aside the last of the dirt, revealing a girl. Average height, long dark hair. At least I think it’s dark. It’s hard to tell with the thick film of rock dust covering her from head to toe.
“I don’t recognize her.” Piper takes her pulse as she speaks.
The others shake their heads. “Too much bruising. Her face…
Samsen’s voice trails off.
“Bring the stretcher.” Piper waves the youngsters in. She rolls up her sleeves, the orange of her robe—the color reserved for highly accomplished savants—contrasting the dark skin of her forearms. The healer’s many braids are frazzled and coming out of the wooden beads. But her eyes are steady and focused.
We lift her onto the stretcher. When Piper’s phantom sinks fangs into the wounded girl’s neck and then releases healing elixir, the victim’s eyes fly open and she gasps.
“You’re safe now. Just breathe.” Piper motions us to carry her to the healer’s hall, inside the heart of the Sanctuary.
But first, I dip one knee to the ground, bringing De’ral back in. He growls but complies. I’ll not leave my phantom up to stomp around unsupervised. Learned that lesson long ago.
“Are there any others?” I ask Belair and Larseen. The injured had been rescued days ago. So we thought. I shudder, trying to imagine how we could have missed the girl, buried here for so long.
Belair’s eyes lose focus as he silently instructs his big cat. The beast jumps from slab to boulder to broken column, ears pricked, nose to the wreckage, sensing for signs of life as other phantoms had done after the collapse. Larseen does the same with his caller, a jackal with black ears and tail that leaves trails like smoke from a chimney.
“She was the only one,” Larseen says, and Belair confirms it.
I nod, and Belair and Lars kneel to the ground, bringing their phantoms in. The four of us lift the stretcher and follow Piper, jogging up the street and through the Sanctuary gates at the top of the city. Repairs are in progress here, too, but we have to detour around a giant boulder lodged in front of the library doors. They need me and De’ral to move that one, but we haven’t gotten to it yet.
“Tann and his catapults.” My jaw works side to side.
De’ral rolls under my skin. We’ll make him pay.
I don’t know when, or even how, but I mentally nod in agreement.
The air in the healer’s hall is warm and smells of herbs. I scan
across the rows of beds for Ash’s cot, the one she’s laid in every day for the last month. My spine chills when I see it empty. “Where is she?” I say it louder than I mean to. But this is Ash I’m asking after. I can’t catch my breath at the thought of…
Stop worrying, De’ral says. It’s not like she’s lost.
“Where is she then?” It’s only been a few days since she’s recovered enough to hold a conversation. What are they doing letting her wander around the city on her own?
Not wandering either. De’ral answers. She’s at the lookout.
How my phantom knows her whereabouts, a non-savant no less, is unexplainable. But he always does.
“She’s up and about,” Piper says. “Looking for you, I think.” Piper scans the hall for another empty bed. “Set the stretcher down here.” She turns to her new patient and shoos us away.
I head for the door, but Samsen lays a gentle hand on Piper’s shoulder, whispering something before he follows me out.
“Back to it?” he asks.
I hesitate. “Meet you there. I’m checking on Ash.”
Samsen, Larseen, and Belair thump their fists to their chests and bow before returning to the work site. The three of us are near the same age, late teens. And the same rank, yellow-robes, but my friends still show me the respect due only to the Heir of Baiseen. Even though I’ve been stripped of that title. My eyes sting as I salute back. Their loyalty is all the more reason to repair the city and regain my throne, before Tann, or anyone else, threatens our shores again.
I leave the healer’s hall in search of Ash.
Of course, she’s right where De’ral said she would be, alone and looking wistful.
There’s still no explanation for her condition. On the day of the attack, Brogal told her to meet him in his chambers but she never appeared. We found her, hours later, unconscious on the training field. It might have been an ouster wind that knocked her out, or a blast from the catapults, but if so, why were there no injuries? The healers couldn’t find a mark on her, nor explain why she didn’t
wake for days. And now, the bouts of memory loss?
What happened to you, Ash?
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