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She laughed.
“Just a twisted joke,” she said.
We kept walking in the dark, none of us wanting to talk. Cari followed Casja closely. She had developed a tendency to walk behind Casja like a puppy.
Casja stopped us when we reached a hill with a view of the castle. As her gaze darted across the castle and the moat between us, I felt the wind picking up.
“This is close enough,” she said. “I’ll push us toward that battlement. Cari, be ready to hide us once we reach it.”
“I’m already in their minds,” Cari said. She did not seem like she was straining herself at all. “We are hidden.”
“And once we get inside the walls,” Casja said. “Don’t talk. I’ll be protecting your bodies as well as your lungs against the dropped pressure, but if you talk, the fire signals won’t be our only concern.”
She didn’t explain any more than that, but we all understood what she meant.
“The vacuum is everywhere,” Cari said. “A part of the courtyard is forbidden to the guards too.”
“The air elemental must have been very strong,” Casja commented. “Doing this in open air... I can feel the wind’s restlessness about not being able to reach the courtyard. It’s unnatural.”
No one said anything to that. We weren’t as knowledgeable about the intricacies of air magic.
“Ready?” Casja asked.
“Ready,” I replied.
I heard the wind picking up, but it did not push against me like wind normally would. Instead, it became a part of me, and before I could react, my feet lifted off the ground.
This wasn’t the first time Casja was flying us, but I assumed it would take countless flights for us to get used to it. Gethin was tense as we rose to the sky, and Cari even shrieked as we parted with the ground.
Casja moved with grace. Her cloak fluttered around her and her single braid lifted gently as she started drifting toward the moat. The rest of us did not have any means to direct ourselves, but as she moved, so did we.
We passed over the moat. I stared at the dark surface of the unmoving water, wondering if they had some other traps lying underneath it. But we moved quickly and Casja did not stop to look around before we reached the top of the battlement.
The wind stopped as we hovered over the battlement for a few seconds. She prepared herself for our descent. Then, like feathers drifting on a windless day, we gently landed on the stone floor.
Casja placed her fingers on her mouth to remind us not to speak. We all nodded as she and Cari led us to the eastern tower.
There were no guards around the battlements.
When we entered the tower, I could not see a thing. Luckily, we had planned for this as well. Gethin led us through the hallways, using his ability to see in the darkness to guide our way. I grabbed his shoulder and felt someone grabbing mine and we kept walking. We made no sounds.
The vacuum swallowed sound and light, which was a gift as well as an obstacle.
Gethin patted my hand when we reached the stairs as we had discussed. I did the same to send the message back to Casja and Cari and we started climbing down.
The unlit torches were all over the walls, as the guard had said to Cari. They were put there by fire elementals, to lit up in case the vacuum was broken. If I opened my mouth now and blew on those torches, the whole castle would light up and the soldiers would know that there were intruders inside.
The tower door leading out into the courtyard was locked, but as we examined it, Casja grabbed the lock and turned it into ice. We did not need words to argue what we were going to do. Gethin took a step forward and slashed his knife into the ice lock, breaking it into a thousand little pieces.
Still, there was no sound. The vacuum kept everything quiet.
As we left the tower, the chilly air of the night did not brush against my skin even though we were outside. As Cari had said, this courtyard was also in a vacuum.
We started walking towards the main building, where the prisoners were supposedly kept. We stayed close to the wall, even though I could see in Cari’s expression that she did not think we had to hide at all. But we could not share her extreme confidence in her abilities.
We kept our silence. As we reached the stairs leading to the main entrance, Cari gestured for us to follow her. Instead of using the main entrance, she led us to a door hidden behind overgrown ivy. Upon closer inspection, I noticed broken branches and fallen leaves. The entrance was being used, just in secret.
This time, the door wasn’t locked. Cari pulled on it and it opened wide.
