Part 6

Angel Nomore was furious. This adventure had been going so well - she had felt free for the first time in her life, without her stern parents or bossy teachers telling her what to do every minute. And traveling through the Dairns had been so wonderful - and now, thanks to those so-called Guardians, it was all over.

The sound of footsteps broke into her thoughts. The men must be returning.

"Well, NO won't be pleased if Girian shows up and starts making trouble for us later on," said a voice. "I don't see how he and Fianal managed to escape. Anyway, do you think we can take these students along to the NO headquarters now?"

"For sure," agreed another man. "They're in no condition to put up a fight, that's for certain."

Rowdy laughter echoed through the room. "Let's get going then," said somebody. Angel heard a grunt as he bent down next to her. A pair of rough, muddy hands grasped her shoulders and pulled her to her feet.

That was the last straw. Fury had been boiling up in Angel ever since she was captured, and now - with these men talking about her as if she wasn't even there - she couldn't contain herself. All her anger and indignation and rebellion seemed to come together inside her, and without thinking she obeyed its impulse. She sensed a strange tingling through her hands, and the air suddenly felt warm and smoky. Through her blindfold she saw a faint red flash. Something within her was gathering strength - pouring out of her - slowly pushing the Guardians away. The man holding her stumbled back with a stifled gasp. 

Curiously she tried to push the blindfold up so she could see what went on. The room was full of a thick reddish smoke. In a flash Angel realized what was happening - her magic powers must have chosen this moment to manifest themselves, perhaps triggered by her indignation. A second later the Guardians had turned and fled out the door.

Soon Angel had pushed off the ropes around her hands and begun to untie everyone else, explaining as she did so what had happened.

"That's amazing," said Amber flatly.

"Aurnia! Are you okay?" was Derek's first question as Angel removed the gag from his mouth. Then, noticing that everyone was staring at him in curiosity about his sudden consuming interest in Aurnia, he flushed.

"I'm a bit bruised," Aurnia answered quietly, brushing herself off. She looked up suddenly. "You?"

"Fine," he answered, shrugging. "Just really mad at those guys."

"Looks like we're all okay then," said Manu. "How about we go? They might be back at any moment."

A few minutes later they had mounted the ponies that were tied outside the hut and were riding away. But they were too exhausted to travel far, and when they reached a small stand of trees, they decided to stop for the night at last. 

Gradually, one by one, the students fell asleep. Aurnia, lying on a soft, warm bed of dry leaves, felt drowsiness stealing over her. Eve, next to her, was fast asleep; at the edge of the clearing she could see Erik and Inanna, talking. The sound of their voices reached her clearly enough that she could distinguish one voice from another, but too softly to really understand the words. Possibly they were discussing what to do tomorrow. The idea was comforting; perhaps because they were so much older, perhaps because Aurnia was so tired, she felt at this moment that she trusted them utterly, that she was content to leave the important problems to them. It was as if she was a little girl again and Erik and Inanna were her parents, concerning themselves with the boring yet essential details of life, and protecting her with everything they had.

The thought called up the memory of her real parents - her energetic, enthusiastic mother and quiet, kindhearted father - and suddenly all her peaceful drowsiness vanished, leaving in its place an exhaustion deeper than any she had ever known. She had tried for months not to think about the car crash - she had tried to plunge herself into the whirlwind of life at the Dragon school - but she had always known that you couldn't really forget something like that. And now her strength, her power to go on without them, was at an end, for this night at least. She turned her head, trying to keep back the tears. The sound of Erik's and Inanna's voices ceased as they dozed off, leaving only empty, cold night for company.

The full enormity of her situation sank in. She was in an unknown land, wthout her parents, without anybody to guide her - even Fianal was gone now, and what would they do without him? She longed to talk to Eve, or maybe Derek. Derek would have been able to think of something that would instantly cheer her up, or a way to make the situation better, or at the very least he would understand what she was going through. But he was asleep. And so was Eve, and so was everybody else.

Aurnia had never felt so completely alone.

***

The world was very dark and empty.

And yet someone was singing.

Aurnia strained her ears to hear better. The sound of a guitar came to her, as if from a long way off, accompanied by a man's voice. A voice that somehow filled Aurnia with hope, with longing, and with happiness. The song was simple in terms of words, but somehow the tune and the voice together had a lilt and laughter to them that made her feel stronger.

With a start she opened her eyes and was confronted by the stark, straight shapes of the trees, dim and shadowy in the moonlight. She'd been dreaming. Naturally.

But the music was going on. Only now she couldn't understand the words.

Aurnia sat up, breathing fast. It was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard; it spoke to her, though she couldn't have said how. It was as if she had heard this song many, many times in some far-off childhood - or perhaps just in a time of happiness and laughter and merriment - and now she had returned to that time of gaiety, only by hearing the music. 

The singer's voice paused for a moment, and a different one, clear and bellike and unmistakably a woman's, began to sing. A little round of clapping followed and a few enthusiastic shouts, and then suddenly the two voices, the man's and the woman's, were singing together in a perfect blend of harmony.

Aurnia shook her head, trying to clear it. What was going on? The clearing was empty but for the sleeping shapes of the other students. Was she having a vision or going crazy or what? Almost angrily she stood up. And then she saw a campfire flickering through the screen of forest.

After that she hurried. Whoever was there, she wanted to see them, with a desparate intensity that completely took over her natural caution. In a few steps she had come to the edge of the forest, and, half-hidden among the trees, she paused and watched.

A group of men and women were sitting around a campfire. One was holding a guitar-like instrument, and a woman stood nearby, singing along with him in the bellike voice Aurnia had heard before. The others were listening intently, laughing occasionally at some joke the song made, or clapping at a particularly good verse. They all had red hair - some deep auburn, some nearly orange, some almost golden - and pointed, roguish faces. They were dressed in simple, bright clothes, tunics and vests and jerkins, with leather boots, and the men wore fur caps. Some of the women had headscarves that looked as if they were made of silk, but most were bareheaded. Their eyes were striking - they seemed to shine with a peculiar, soft light, and they were sometimes grave, sometimes bright, reflecting every nuance of their owners' feelings - the way the shadows of clouds seem to race over fields on sunny days with plenty of wind.

Aurnia stepped quietly out of the forest and came forward into the firelight, stopping just outside the circle. The music stopped abruptly. Everyone had turned to look at her.

Aurnia cleared her throat, wondering what she would say. Would these people even understand her language? "I - I'm Aurnia," she began.

The man with the guitar jumped up. "So you've shown up at last! You're one of us. Sit down."

A woman made space for her on the fallen log she was perched on, and Aurnia sat down beside her. All her nervousness had vanished. It was as if she had come home to a family who had been longing to see her. Looking around at the curious faces surrounding her, she felt as if they were all familiar, even though she had never seen them before. But she was puzzled even so.

"Who are you exactly?" she managed to ask.

"We're the - probably you know us as the Aurnians," said one of the women, in a halting accent. "Our magic told us that you were imprisoned in Fianal's father's hut, and we were journeying this way to help you - and when we learned that you had escaped without us, we decided we might as well come to meet you. We have known about you and your family since you were born. Your father had Aurnian ancestors, from before the Great Silence, when magical beings and humans still crossed paths. He was mostly human, of course, and so are you - but still, even the slightest touch of Aurnian ancestry is enough."

"I thought I was an Archenian."

"An Archenian? Not to my knowledge," she laughed. "All your magical ancestry stems from us. Your father knew just a little about us - I think he always doubted it, but he knew that we existed, and that was why he named you Aurnia."

Aurnia bit her lip. If she weren't an Archenian, how could she help the other students fulfill the prophecy and stop NO? But for the moment she couldn't bring herself to worry about that. Her loneliness had vanished. She hadn't found her parents - but at least, here she had a group of people related to her, even if it was only slightly. She was home.

Nobody noticed a dim figure - Albine - slipping away from the forest in the direction of Fianal's hut and the Guardians of Cambir.

----------------------------

If any of y'all are interested in hearing the music that inspired me for this scene, look up the song "Mille apres mille" by Fred Pellerin and Celine Dion :) It's what I based the Aurnian music on.

Amazing as always! Can't wait for the next part!

@Iridescence, THIS IS SO GOOD! Thank you for including my charrie...Love the sarcastic comment there! You're doing an excellent job!

A happy little romantic part :) plus some explanations about Albine and the Guardians...

Part 7

Amber awoke the next morning with a complacent feeling of satisfaction. She liked adventure and challenge; it made her feel alert and excited, and yesterday's events had definitely given her enough excitement for a while. Besides, she didn't believe in worrying.

She felt even better when she saw Fianal emerge from the trees. He paused and stood looking, in a surprised way, at the figures of the sleeping students. Amber was so glad to see him - to know that he was safe - that for a moment she was startled.

"Fianal!" she exclaimed.

"Hi," he said. He spoke quietly, but his face had lit up with something that seemed to be more than just ordinary happiness.

Amber got up and walked with him to the other edge of the clearing, where they sat down on a fallen log and spoke in low voices so as not to awaken anybody. The woods were beautiful in the early morning, Amber thought. Sunlight slanted through the clear, pure-green leaves, and there were flowers everywhere - by the banks of a stream, in mossy hollows, at the bases of tree trunks. The air was full of the sounds of birds and the stream.

"How'd you escape?" Fianal asked.

"Angel somehow received her magic and used it to save us. Seriously, though, what was the deal with those Guardians? Weren't they supposed to be your friends?"

Fianal shrugged wearily. Amber noticed that he looked pale and strained, and that his eyes held a glimmer of sadness that he couldn't quite keep back.

"Yes, they were. One of them was even my father's brother. I honestly don't know what he was thinking. I mean, he's always hated NO and the Aquimans. He took the old Cambir magic super seriously - I would have said that he'd have given his life before letting NO use it. And then Girian turned out to be the only one who tried to save me. He was the one I always liked least, even though he was just my age - seventeen." He paused. "But at least Father escaped too. I doubled back to the hut after I escaped, to see if he was in trouble with the Guardians, and I met him outside. He'd been tied up, but he managed to get free - and he took this with him." He handed Amber a rolled-up scroll. It was musty and yellowed with age, but it was covered in fine, dark patterns like cobwebs that made it look almost gray. Written in a corner were the words The Nighthawks.

Amber unrolled it. Somebody had written a set of instructions on it, most of them to do with kidnapping the Dragon and Unicorn students. It was addressed to the Guardians of Cambir, and signed "the Nighthawks."

"So we can know for sure that they're on NO's side," Fianal sighed.

Gradually the students began to wake up. Aurnia came up and took them all outside the forest to where the Aurnians - or Karalins, as they called themselves - had camped, in order to introduce them and reveal that she too was a Karalin. The Karalins offered to guide the students to the Archenian palace, which was deep in the mountains of Firran, where they might be able to reawaken their ancestors and decide what to do - "for," as one of the Karalins said, "if even the Guardians of Cambir have gone over to NO's side, you had better go straight to the people whom you know for certain you can trust."

It appeared that the Karalins were nomadic, roving about through the Dairns and the southern land of Candari, and they lived in camps. Breakfast was cooked over campfires, in front of open tents. The students had little food with them, and they were invited to share the Karalins' breakfast. Delicious smells wafted through the air. Amber realized that she was starving - she'd missed out on the supper she was supposed to have had at Fianal's hut.

The food was good, and as she ate, she felt all her natural bounciess returning. It wasn't just the food - it was the fact that Fianal was sitting next to her and using his considerable social gifts to entertain her with an old story of how the Karalins became nomadic. She thought back to that moment when he had stepped into the clearing. Had he just been glad to see her again?  Or did he like her more than she had suspected?

After breakfast the Karalins had to begin the slow process of packing up their things. The tents had to be taken apart and folded up, and there were thousands of odds and ends to be packed and stowed away. There were silver teapots, thick heavy carpets, bits of jewelry, ends of candlesticks, extra pairs of shoes, children's keepsakes, and everything else imaginable. Amber had never thought it possible that a magical people could be so disorganized. The students helped them pack, in return for the breakfast, but it didn't seem to make much difference - especially since the Karalins seemed in no hurry, but kept stopping to talk in their rich melodious language.

Amber and Fianal found themselves filling a pony's saddlebags with small boxes and equipment. Inanna was in charge of the students' efforts, and she sent Aurnia and Derek to gather some blackberries she had seen growing nearby. 

"I think Aurnia and Derek like each other," Amber remarked.

"How can you tell if people like each other?" asked Fianal.

"Well, if they do, they seem to really enjoy hanging out together, and they're always more talkative and relaxed when they're with each other," Amber said thoughtfully.

"So because I'm always more relaxed when I'm with you, would that mean I was in love with you?" Fianal asked mischievously.

"Are you guys flirting?" called Innana teasingly, before Amber could reply.

Fianal shrugged. "I don't know. Are we, Amber?"

"Depends on why you're asking me all these questions," Amber retorted. 

Just then Ember Sky looked up from a bag of food stores. "Guys, where's Albine?"

It shows how quiet and unpretentious Albine was that nobody had noticed he was missing.

Amber felt chilly. She was not particularly gifted with understanding people, but she had never liked Albine from the moment she set eyes on him. There was something too softly evil, too insinuatingly sly, about him - an air of darkness which she had always distrusted.

Just then she saw him approaching, with a slow, unworried gait. 

"Hey, where were you?" called Rowan in his friendly way.

"Just out for a walk," replied Albine noncommitally.

"Well, next time you go out for a walk, tell us!" exclaimed Erik. "I was getting worried there. Plus, it's important for us all to stick together."

"Oh? Why? And how come you know so much about it?"

"Yeah, I think we should have the freedom to go wherever we want, without taking orders from anyone," came a new voice. Amber turned. Summit Raincorn stood there, glaring at Erik, his hands on his hips.

For a moment there was a tense silence. Say something, Erik! Amber begged silently. But he was quiet. A smirk appeared on Summit's face.

"Use your head, boys!" snapped Inanna suddenly, straightening up from where she had been folding up a tent. "You could get captured if you're by yourself - I'd like to know if your powers have manifested? They haven't? I thought not. Plus, anybody who sneaks off by himself is automatically suspicious, okay? So if you want to keep being trustworthy, stick around."

"Oh, I'll stick around all right," was all Albine said as he stalked off. But Amber caught a glimpse of the expression that flitted over his pale face, and shivered.

Fianal was shaking his head in disgust. "Who does he think he is, acting so combative?"

"I know, right?" Amber exploded. "I mean, Erik and Inanna are just trying to keep everyone safe! Seriously! I just don't trust Albine. At all."

Fianal smiled at her. "Well, at least we have each other, right?"

Amber smiled back, looking straight into his eyes. "Right."

The Karalins were finally ready to go, and the group started off toward the mountains. Everyone felt a quick thrill of excitement. They were on the move at last.

I didn't share their excitement. I knew full well what Albine had done - snuck off to Fianal's hut and told the Guardians he wanted to join NO. And I knew that the Guardians had told him to come back to the students and sabotage their plans according to the instructions NO would give him.

I wished I could do something. I'd never learned to resign myself to a lot of things, especially to situations where I couldn't help. There were some things I'd be able to help with, and I meant to do so even if it meant breaking the Archenians' rules again. But I was invisible and inaudible, except for a moment or so at a time. And there wasn't really much I could do if nobody could even hear what I said.

Well, soon we'd arrive at the Archenian palace. And there, I was sure, everything would click into place, and all these secrets and mysteries would be explained.