The Keeper's Shadow by Dennis Foon

Author:Dennis Foon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Annick Press Ltd
Published: 2006-09-12T04:00:00+00:00

THE APOGEE

VOLUME XI, ARTICLE 3.2.

NUMBER 126 HAS BEEN LISTED MISSING AND IRRETRIEVABLE. ALL TASKS ALLOTTED TO HIM ARE REASSIGNED, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: NUMBER 139 TO HEAD ENABLER RESEARCH TEAM. NUMBER 87 TO OVERSEE FILO PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT. NUMBER 111 TO MANAGE MICROPROCESSOR CONFIGURATION. NUMBER 94 TO TRANSLATE THE…

—GUNTHER LOG

THE MORNING OF THE THIRD DAY ON THEIR WAY TO THE ACADEMY, a dark bank of storm clouds rises in the west, threatening snow. Roan had insisted on hugging the tree line—keeping the location of the Academy secret was a top priority, and his small company would be pretty conspicuous otherwise—even though he knew it might add a day or more to their journey. But they haven’t had even one encounter and now, riding into the fast-approaching weather, he’s questioning the wisdom of his decision.

Ende, Mejan the Storyteller, and a dozen Brothers and Apsara are not the easy targets Othard and Imin were—he probably should have put more trust in their powers of observation and taken the shorter route across the plain. But Roan hasn’t relaxed his vigilance once the entire trip. Since the Council, he’s felt responsible for everyone and everything, and he fears the strain of it’s starting to show. He’d gone without sleep the night before they’d left, and had never recouped it. Mejan had kept him up both nights of the journey, regaling him with stories, both useful and fanciful, and now his eyes are heavy. He draws closer to his friends and their whispered conversation, hoping their banter will keep him awake.

Lumpy and Mabatan are comparing notes on the Governor’s wife. Lumpy, it seems, is the only person who actually managed to speak with her. “I’ve never heard someone talk so much and say absolutely nothing so well before. I mean, when I was with her, it seemed like she was telling me her entire life story but after I left, I realized I knew nothing at all about her.”

Mabatan laughs. Roan smiles at the sound, like the sun glimmering on still water. “Are you sure she said nothing important?” she asks.

Lumpy’s face wrinkles up so comically that Mabatan laughs again and Roan begins to feel at ease for the first time in weeks. “Now that you mention it, she did say something strange. I don’t know how important it is, though.”

“And…?” Mabatan asks impatiently.

“It was something about dreams. First she asked me if I had dreams. I said yes, and then asked about her. And it seems she still had them, but she knew of a lot of people whose dreams had stopped. She said they shrugged it off but that they seemed ‘profoundly unhappy’ about it. Think it’s important?”

“I’m still dreaming,” Mabatan says, noncommittally. “Roan?”

“Sometimes I wish my dreams would stop.” And as if the very statement invokes it, a vision of bombs dropping over the Brothers’ camp, the entire mountain a raging pyre of poisonous green flame, flashes before Roan’s eyes.

“Roan?”

Hearing the concern in Lumpy’s voice, Roan motions his friends closer. “Over the next few weeks, all of the Brothers will have to be relocated to the Academy.

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