The sounds of the crowd and the tolling bell grew louder. Glenn and Kevin moved to the nearest window just in time to see a soldier on a horse come tearing through the main gate behind Garen Tom, trailing a cloud of dust. When the dust cleared, Glenn saw that he was dragging another man behind him. The prisoner was facedown in the dirt, his hands bound and connected by a long leather line to the soldier’s saddle.
The soldier leapt off the horse and forced him to stand.
The prisoner was a boy, black haired and narrow shouldered, not much older than Glenn and Kevin. His shirt was in tatters and stained deeply with blood. His face was covered in red and black bruises and his eyes were nearly swollen shut. The soldier pushed him across the courtyard and in front of Garen Tom, where he collapsed in a heap.
Garen looked across the boy at the villagers who had gathered around. The soldiers had formed a perimeter behind the crowd, their spears and swords out, penning them in.
“Aamon?” Glenn said. “Look.”
Aamon dropped the pack and knelt by Glenn. The boy on the
ground cringed away when Garen leaned over him, but all it got him was a kick in the back from a nearby soldier. Garen thrust out one clawed hand and tore away what remained of the boy’s shirt, revealing something underneath attached to a chain around his neck. Garen snatched it off and held it up. It was a small dagger in a golden sheath.
“We have to go,” Aamon said. “Now.”
“Why? What is that?”
“We don’t have time to discuss it.”
“What’s going to happen?”
As if in answer, Garen Tom’s enormous voice rang out over the crowd and the assembled soldiers.
“This boy was caught doing the work of the traitor Merrin
Farrick!” Garen held the gold dagger high over his head. “You can see he holds his symbol. Farrick, the coward, is now sending children to undo the peace and security of the Magisterium. He would return us to the chaos the Magistra rescued us from!”
“Glenn,” Aamon said. “Kevin. We have to go. Now.”
“But he’s just a kid,” Kevin said. “We have to do something.”
Aamon stared across the yard at the terrified boy. “This isn’t our fight,” he said. “We destroy the bracelet and you go home. That’s it.”
“Glenn?” Kevin said, turning to her.
Outside, the boy was up on his knees, pleading for his life. Garen unsheathed the gold dagger and with one sudden move turned the boy around so he was facing the crowd.
“Aamon …” Glenn began.
“The fate of enemies of the Magistra!”
Garen leaned forward and sunk the blade into the boy’s throat with the businesslike disinterest of a farmer cutting a stalk of corn. The boy’s eyes widened and his hands went to his neck, fumbling for purchase. Blood welled up through his fingers and splattered brightly against the dusty ground. He fell face-first into the dirt, twitching.
The world seemed to collapse around that scene of dust and
blood. And then it was like that night in the forest again. Glenn was lifted from the ground, and the house went flying by her, Kevin screaming at Aamon to stop. There was the creak of a hinge, and then the musty smell of cold earth as Glenn fell through a narrow hole in the floor and landed with a jolt. She rolled out of the way just as Kevin landed beside her, grimacing from the pain of his wound. Aamon came down last and closed off their entryway, a burning lamp in one hand.
He pushed them both ahead of him, his small lamp barely lighting the rough walls that had been carved out of the rock below the village.
“This will take us out beyond the town. But we have to move fast.
Decker will be informing Garen about us by now.”
Aamon set the lamp down and leaned against a stout wooden
beam that ran up one wall. He grunted and pushed until it shifted and a groan filled the tunnel.
“Go!” Aamon shouted. “Now! Run!”
Kevin and Glenn took off running just as the beam fell and that section of the tunnel collapsed in a cloud of choking dust and rubble.
The three of them rushed through the dank tunnels for what seemed like hours.
Glenn couldn’t escape the face of the boy, though. He’d been killed, sliced open like an animal, while all of them stood there doing nothing. But what could we do? Glenn asked herself. She had spent the last sixteen years in the quiet white rooms of her school, or staring up at the artificial sky above her bed. Her life was a narrow hallway leading to 813. She was no hero.
When Aamon finally stopped, Glenn and Kevin collapsed against the tunnel walls, gasping in the cold, dusty air. Kevin’s arms were wrapped tight around his middle, his face creased with pain. Glenn reached out to him, but he batted her hand away.
“We should have done something,” Kevin said.
“What would you have done?” Aamon asked evenly. “Fought
them? Killed them?”
“If I could have.”
Slivers of light filtered down into the tunnel from a hatch overhead. Aamon was flattened against the wall, beyond their reach, deep in shadow.
“It isn’t such an easy thing,” Aamon said. “Killing.”
“What do we do next?” Glenn asked. “Where do we go?”
Aamon looked up at the thin light coming from the hatch. “Garen isn’t stupid,” he said. “He’ll guess that we came through his tunnel.
The main roads will be watched now.”
“Is there another way to Bethany, then? A way Garen won’t be watching?”
Aamon thought a moment and then shook his head. “It’s
dangerous. Maybe even more so than dealing with the soldiers.”
“How?” Kevin asked.
“There are bush trails that lead to Bethany, but they take us near places that are … deeper with Affinity. Chaotic places.”
“Do we have a choice?”
Aamon fell into a brooding silence again. The answer was clear.
“Okay, then,” Glenn said, reaching for the trapdoor above her.
“We go.”
Aamon leapt forward and closed the trap. The light made jagged shadows across his brutal face.
“If we go, you must stay with me. If you see anything outside the path, ignore it. Don’t speak to anyone or anything except me. Do you two understand that?”
He looked to each one until they nodded.
“Good. Now here,” he said, handing them bundles of cloth from the leather pack. “I can’t have you running around in those clothes.”
Glenn drew a rough-hewn set of pants, shirt, and fleece-lined leather coat into her lap. They smelled musty and old.
“Quickly,” Aamon said.
Glenn and Kevin each retreated to a separate corner of the tunnel, and Glenn slipped out of her delicate Colloquium clothes and into the heavier Magisterium ones. They were stiff and scratchy against her skin,
