Page 23 of Sons of Sorrow
I couldn’t exactly say how I knew, but I could tell that the headmaster was smiling at me. It was cold, and strange, and sweet. I nodded and smiled back.
A hand gripped me by the shoulder.
“Little human.”
I yelped again. I whipped around, smacking Sylvain’s hand off my shoulder, then immediately reaching for it to rub away the soreness, apologetic.
“Don’t surprise me like that,” I hissed. “I’m already so wound up from the song in the Wispwell.”
“Song? What song?” He drew his arm back and rubbed at his bleary eyes, barely awake even after I’d slapped his hand. “We should be asleep, Lochlann. What are you doing down here at this time of night? I awoke, saw the door open, went out looking for you.”
“That’s very sweet, Sylvain. I really was about to go to bed, but I heard it again. That song from the Wispwell. That voice.”
His ears visibly moved as he tried to listen, though only very slightly. They were pointed, undisguised. He might have been worried, coming all the way down to the plaza to check on me. Again, very sweet.
“I don’t hear anything, oh summoner. Come, now. Bed. We have an early morning and a very long day ahead of us.”
Sylvain reached for my hand. I let him guide me along, taking the first couple of steps away from the Wispwell before I realized I was being very rude. I looked over my shoulder to bid Shivers goodnight.
But the headmaster was already gone.
11
I tooka deep breath as I studied the Oriel of Fire, the final window, supposedly the most dangerous of the elemental realms. The Spire of Radiance was empty that morning, the tower that housed the four oriels. Unusually free of students. Maybe no one wanted to visit any of the other oriels that day, the way that nobody in their right mind would ever visit the Oriel of Fire.
“Okay, Locke,” I muttered under my breath. “You can do this.”
Sylvain bumped the back of his hand against mine, nodding in encouragement. Luna Hernandez smirked. Man, I really didn’t relish the idea of her tagging along, but weweredoing this as a favor for Bruna, weren’t we?
I glanced at the others, at Satchel sitting on my shoulder, at Bruna carefully pulling her hat down over her hair. Somehow I’d convinced myself that this was the biggest party I’d enter one of the oriels with, until I remembered that we had the same number of people when we visited the Oriel of Water.
Poor Namirah. Hopefully she’d be feeling a lot better by the time we came home. At least this time we didn’t have Evander Skink tagging along, him and his sneaky plan to contract a unicorn as an eidolon right out from under me.
Again I took a deep breath, clenching my fists as I pumped myself up, the five of us arranged in a line. To my left, my familiar and my eidolon, and to my right, the Hernandez sisters. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Luna, but it probably couldn’t hurt to have another mage in the mix.
It could only be to our advantage to have more firepower in case it came down to, ah, fighting fire with fire. But still, what a brat. Luna had declined any of the charms we’d painstakingly constructed out of the autumn baubles, muttering something scornful and sarcastic under her breath as she did. Whatever. More for us.
Bruna affixed some of them to her hatband, and a few more to the brim of her hat, dangling there like ornaments. Sylvain wore some on a string around his wrist. I layered a garland of them over Aphrodite’s medallion. Two necklaces for Lochlann Wilde. One for protection, and one for offense.
Satchel was likely the most well protected of us all, sewing patches of petals into his clothing, a mushroom cap strapped to his back like a makeshift Viking shield. He kicked his legs playfully, digging his heels into my collarbone as he leaned in to whisper.
“Any minute now, Locke. We really should get going.”
“Right. Right, everyone. Are we ready?”
Without even looking at her I could tell that Luna was rolling her eyes. “We’ve been ready forever now.”
“Luna,” Bruna hissed. “Be nice. Ready when you are, Locke.”
Sylvain squeezed my hand. “And I am ready when you are, oh summoner.”
The sunlight shining through the oriel lit up its mosaic of colored glass. The Oriel of Fire especially looked as if it was aflame, its reds and yellows blazing like brilliant jewels. Every oriel bore a stained glass representation of an iconic creature of the respective element.
A great tree for the Oriel of Earth, an enormous thunderbird for the Oriel of Air, a writhing kraken for the Oriel of Water, and for the Oriel of Fire, a dragon in flight. Its wings spanned the entire length of the window, its scaly neck raised to the sky as it spewed beautifully rendered jets of flame.
Maybe I’d finally get to recruit a dragon of my own, have a taste of the legend. Even a fraction of Grand Summoner Dorian’s fleet, of his power. That might just be worth the risk of incineration.
“Let’s do this!” I cried out, spurred by the promise of adventure and potential new contracts. “Let’s not get eaten by a dragon!”
