DARKLIGHT

- 21 -

I was too bewildered to ask Kaces what exactly had occurred, but now I could tell that the Master had been keeping a close eye on us and was on our trail like a hunting dog. The passage fell farther underground and wound back and forth in unpredictable patterns before finally flattening out. The walls at the bottom were all made of chiseled rock that looked like they had been carved out by hand.

"Fly," Kaces called back, "and watch." I followed his lead, noticing the extra space above the main passage that had opened up for such a maneuver. "Ortiyano," he incanted, gathering magic around his front claws. We flew past a relatively normal-looking wall, which burst to life with multicolored magic around a central point at our approach, and Kaces punched the spot with a closed fist and a look of extreme satisfaction.

A strong wind began to gather behind us, and I didn't dare glance over my shoulder, as it would interrupt my precariously low flight, but I saw what was going on nonetheless. Streams of Light magic, the first I had seen in ages, swept past us, and suddenly the passage seemed to contract tenfold as we were blown through it by the magical wind. The gust was incredibly loud but hardly lasted a minute before dying down.

I'd stopped holding my wings up to just enjoy the ride. When the wind stopped, I slowly dropped to the ground and skidded to a stop, but then realized that Kaces had kept his momentum. I sprang forward, pushing my wings down hard, and came up under him. "What was-"

"You'll see." The passageway began to tilt steeply upward, and we pumped our wings to climb the slope. Daylight was starting to shine through the passage's exit, not too far up. A few more wing strokes and we landed on a platform, stepping wearily into the sunlight as we called our arkaetres back. I was surprised to see grass, not browned from dusty plains, but green like I was used to seeing in front lawns. The trees around us were dense but shorter, deciduous, and altogether different from the forest around the conversion complex.

I looked back the way we had come and found that the mountains were far in the distance again. The forest continued for ages, and there were no signs of civilization. We had covered a ridiculous amount of ground. "I did take a substantial risk," Kaces said, interrupting my amazement. "The WingWays are ancient and hardly ever used anymore, as far as I know. I'm surprised that this one is still operational. We might have had to walk." He slapped the stone entrance enthusiastically. "It certainly did its job."

Then, he turned to me with a similarly stony gaze, one that I hadn't seen in a while. "What were you thinking, Sid? We're lucky that the shields were still up on that side, or we would have been done for. Not to mention that you killed the Master's lead harpy. She's not going to be happy about that."

"Shields? That's why they stopped?"

"Yes." Kaces pointed back to the cave, showing me the thin layer of foggy Light magic that hovered in the passage's exit. "As I said, we were very lucky."

"How did we get through?"

Kaces nearly answered directly, but stopped and studied me coldly. "I folded an opening through it."

I nearly took his answer, but I couldn't just let him lie. "You definitely didn't take the time to cast a spell on the way out, though."

"They only work one way." I knew this was impossible with magic as regular as the fog we'd seen, but Kaces was insistent, so I kept my mouth shut. "Seriously," he continued, "why did you put yourself in danger like that?"

"You've done it for me, and I couldn't just let them take you down alone."

Kaces sighed. "You're not supposed to trust me. That's not how this works." He glanced around the forest passively. "There's a river not too far from here. You can wash up on your way to the Order."

"It can't be that close, can it?"

"Serkha City is in a valley. It's quite close, though you can't see it. We're less than a day's flight away."

I could have leaped for joy until I remembered that the Order was probably in a state of panic and I wasn't going to find family there. "What's the point?" I asked, suddenly feeling very muted. "My parents and half of the Councilors are still trapped, and something happened to them," I shuddered.

"You need to warn the Council that remains. They'll hopefully trust you because of your uniform, and I can warn them through you, but I won't come into the city until I know that I'll be received well."

I knew full well why he was telling me this. I was a previous member of the Order, and returning with valuable information about their attackers would make me useful. Kaces was only Dark, so there was no way that the Council would listen to him. "What should I say?"

"Ask for Councilor Blaine, and don't say a word of this if he isn't there. You can trust him to take you seriously. Mention my name and tell him to bring the Order army to the south edge of Serkha, and quickly. They're going to be attacked."