Rolan scrunched his nose. “Uh… something about a stick. Oh! You jam it in the ground.”
He found a branch and pushed it into the moist moss, then stepped back. “Then… uh…” Glancing at Luc, hopeful for clues, he found none. The Arcanist’s face was as blank as a stone wall.
Rolan tossed his hands high. “I don’t know! You ask a badger for directions. Is that it?”
Luc rolled his eyes and turned, walking deeper into the forest. With a sigh that swept from his bones, Rolan followed.
Three days they’d been in this forest. Three days they’d wandered while Luc taught him the ways of the wild and Rolan struggled to keep up. They camped in lean-tos they built from sticks, which was admittedly kind of fun, until it got dark and Luc’s ring of torches feltpathetically small against the black abyss of night. They came across Cryptics, none bigger than a deer, which Luc handled.
“Why can’t I kill one?” Rolan asked. Not that he particularlywantedto. The memory of the first—and last—one he’d finished off still haunted his dreams. The secret he’d absorbed played against his eyelids whenever he shut them, making him shiver with dread. But he remembered the rush of power that came when he’d crushed the relic, the Arcana flooding through him, opening his senses to their widest.Thatpart was worth a few bad secrets, he thought. “I could help you, if I used Arcana.”
“It’s against all law, both civil and Arcane,” said Luc. At Rolan’s confused expression, he added, “The king’s law forbids it because if everyone knew how to find the Hollow Path and ran around smashing relics, they’d all find out one another’s secrets the wrong way. There would be endless fighting and worse. And the Arcane Council forbids it because Arcana is dangerous stuff in the wrong hands. Only an Arcanist who has taken the oaths may break relics.”
“You letmebreak a relic.”
“As a teaching moment,” Luc said. “Which is allowed under Arcane law, by the way.”
“The Arcane Council,” said Rolan thoughtfully, thinking back to the books in Luc’s house. “That’s the group of Arcanists who control all the other Arcanists, right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say theycontrolus. But they govern our order. As Arcanists, we’re a bit outside the king’s law, and the king’s courts don’t like to handle us. So we handle ourselves, elect our own leaders, run our own trials and inquests and whatnot.”
“So we don’t answer to any king?” Rolan liked the sound of that.He didn’t know much about King Malkos, and according to the maps in Luc’s books, Crisanth was about as far from the capital as a city could get and still be within the kingdom’s borders.
“Of course we answer to the king,” Luc replied, quashing the sudden flame of anarchy that had lit in Rolan’s chest. “To him and his appointed dukes and duchesses. We’re not lawless vigilantes, boy.”
“What a shame,” sighed Rolan.
“A stone,” said Luc.
“Huh?”
“After you plant the stick in the ground, you place a stone at the end of its shadow. Then you wait fifteen minutes, and place another stone where the shadow has moved. Draw a line between them, and you have an arrow pointing east.”
“Oh,” grumbled Rolan. “Yeah. That’s what I was about to say, before you butted in with all your boring talk of kings and councils.”
“Good,” said Luc. “Thenyoucan find north for us now, which will lead us to a nice, dry cave I know of where we can get a proper night’s sleep. Or you can send us in the wrong direction, and we can spend another night in the open, with the Cryptics.”
Scowling, Rolan found a stick and two stones and what he hoped was a north bearing.
They set off again, Rolan leading the way. Luc offered no hints as to whether it was the right direction, and Rolan ground his teeth together, thinking that if he had to sleep another night in the open forest he would probably either go insane orbega Cryptic to put him out of his misery. Either way, he’d be done with Luc and his horrible forest lessons.
But then Rolan stumbled into a meadow, and all thoughts of north and south and surly Arcanists vanished from his thoughts.
Because standing there, in the wildflowers and sweet green grass, was a unicorn.
“Don’t move,” whispered Luc, crouching beside Rolan in a screen of ferns. “Don’t approach it.”
Rolan gaped. He was so shocked, he couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to.
Aunicorn.
Real and solid, right there in front of him. It was white and slender with a long, elegant neck that arched proudly, its horn glittering golden in a shaft of sunlight. Its mane and tail flowed and rippled like water, despite the fact there was not a breath of wind in the air. All around the unicorn hovered a pale, glowing aura, as soft as moonlight.
“I thought they were just a story,” Rolan said softly. He remembered declaring as much to Anaya once, thinking himself oh so worldly and wise. But he’d never been so thrilled to be proven wrong. A dopey smile spread across his face. He wondered what it would be like to touch it.
“It’s a Cryptic,” said Luc.
And just like that, the fuzzy warmth in Rolan’s chest went cold. “What?How?”
