The heretics were on the move, again. That was the only thing that would occupy Sanrin, Brand, and Claude. I wondered if my mother knew that I was preparing for a challenge that could shape the course of history. Maybe she did and had done something to distract the elders when I needed them most.
I desperately needed to find her to make sense of my life. There had to be a reason she was with the heretics. A reason why she’d hurt me so badly.
Before I could hunt down my mother, though, I had to repair my core. And to do that, I had to win the challenges of the Empyrean Gauntlet. I pushed all other thoughts aside, and a new idea bubbled up to the surface.
“Can you find out where the Shambala team trains?” I asked Hagar. “It could help us win if we saw them in action.”
“And what makes you think I have that kind of information?” Hagar asked coyly.
“Because you know everything,” I said with a grin. “And, if you don’t know something, you know how to find out.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Hagar said quietly. “Let’s not talk about it in front of the others. I’d rather they not know what I’m up to when I’m not at school.”
I nodded and glanced over my shoulder. Clem and Eric were on their way across the common area, packs slung over their shoulders. They both wore the wide, easy smiles of kids headed off to a particularly exciting theme park.
“This is going to be awesome,” Eric practically shouted. “They’ll never know what hit them.”
“Eric’s right.” Clem ruffled Eric’s hair, then raised her hand for a high five from me. “As long as we stick to our training and work together, this is in the bag.”
“That’s the spirit.” Abi had arrived from the opposite direction as the other two and gave us all a quick wave. For the first time, I realized just how exhausted he looked. His eyes were sunken, and his skin had taken on a grayish cast. Stress from his work with the PDF, plus all that was going on with the tournament, was weighing on him. “I got away earlier than I’d thought. Everyone ready?”
“Let’s get out of here.” Hagar stood, shouldered her bag, and headed for the eastern hallway.
Hahen appeared out of the shadows in the hall and offered me a brief bow before scrambling up my robes to my shoulder. His long tail coiled loosely around my throat, and he rested his elbow on top of my head.
“Thought I’d tag along,” the spirit said. “I’m surprised you didn’t invite me to come with you. Another brain, especially one as wise and experienced as mine, could be very useful.”
My ears and cheeks burned with embarrassment. I should have invited the rat spirit along, not only for his knowledge, but because he was my friend. That fact slipped my mind far too often, and it pained me that it had happened again.
“My apologies, honored Spirit.” I didn’t want to dislodge my friend with a bow, but I did bob my head to show my humility. “I shouldn’t have left you out.”
“No worries,” the rat said. “Just don’t let it happen again.”
My team followed Hagar through the heavy double doors at the end of the hallway and into an ancient forest. Bars of silver moonlight speared through the canopy and illuminated a twisting path between massive tree trunks. Winged creatures with luminous purple bulbs for tails flittered through the branches while a chorus of crickets serenaded us with a strange melody that almost sounded like humans singing. The smells of cedar and wildflowers tinged the air. It was clean and crisp, and I enjoyed every breath I took.
“Where are we?” I hadn’t seen anything like this when I’d come through those doors with Rachel last year.
“Somewhere secret.” Hagar shot me a wink. “If you’re nice to me, maybe I’ll show you how to get here on your own. We need to get a move on, though. Hirani’s waiting for us, and you know how the elders feel about their precious time.”
Empyreals as powerful as the elders of my clan could live for hundreds of years before the signs of aging appeared and for centuries longer after that. Despite their longevity, those Empyreals still always seemed to be in a hurry, as if the more years they had, the more work they gave themselves.
Or, maybe, they knew something the rest of us didn’t.
We hustled past trees filled with golden birds who sang with women’s voices, clearings where tiny people danced around enormous mushrooms, and a congregation of serpents coiled around the base of a massive stone covered in the most complex scrivenings I’d ever seen. We glimpsed other things so strange I couldn’t make any sense of them. The forest and its inhabitants were both strangely beautiful and deeply unnerving.
“There you are.” Hirani clapped her hands and gestured toward an obsidian archway ahead of us. “Right through here. Quickly, no time for sightseeing.”
The archway led us into a cozy log cabin complete with a roaring fireplace stacked high with thick logs and a winter wonderland outside its window. The lodge’s rustic appearance was at odds with the sheer number of scrivened objects that glowed from the shelves on its walls. There was serious power here, and its presence draped around my core like a warm cloak. The cabin’s contents belonged in a museum or a vault, not here.
“This place is something else,” I said.
“I was about to apologize for the rough accommodations.” Hirani spread her arms to indicate our surroundings. “This is our little retreat from the world. It will give you all peace and quiet to rest and prepare yourselves for tomorrow. It’s unfortunate that the other elders couldn’t join us. Things are complicated at the moment. Let me give you the grand tour.”
Hirani walked us through the cabin,
