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Broken Wings
By
Katica Locke
Ch01
Cold and clammy, the fog surrounded Jak as he stood at the portside rail, his hands
gripping the rusted steel as he took long, slow breaths and fought not to vomit again.
He'd already thrown up six times since they left the port city of Braevern ry Maas four
hours ago. It wasn't surprising--he was an earth mage, after all--but it was annoying and
uncomfortable. At least he wasn't the only one.
He stepped back as a young man with bright red hair lunged at the rail and lost his
breakfast into the dark, swirling water. Jak's stomach heaved and he turned away,
almost walking into a passing deckhand.
"How much longer?" Jak asked.
"We're approaching the dock now, sir," the man said as he walked away.
Jak closed his eyes.
"Thank you, Maele," he whispered, and started toward the stairs. The lower deck was
crowded with students, most of them freshmen, like him, but he saw a few faces that
had to belong to upperclassmen. Weaving his way through the chattering mass, he
passed several faeries, both sidhe and fey. They were always pretty easy to pick out of a
crowd, with their inhumanly beautiful faces, lithe figures, and unusual-colored eyes and
hair.
The mages and werefolk were a bit harder to distinguish between, both being basically
human. Sometimes the werefolk had scars, bite-marks on their hands or arms, but most
were more discrete. Mages often wore charms around their necks or in their hair, bones
and stones and carved bits of antler and seashell. Jak had a badger carved out of
lodestone around his neck, a gift from his mother, inscribed with healing and protective
runes. He could feel the cold weight of it against his chest and he sighed. Alyrrawood
University was such a long way from the suburbs of Rosevale.
Jak finally reached the stern of the wide, lumbering ship, and stood at the offloading
gate, watching the dark, wet dock materialize out of the dense fog. Three short blasts of
the ferry's horn rattled his bones, but the fog seemed to soak up the sound, leaving them
wrapped in a cocoon of silence. Jak shuddered and pulled his jacket closer about his
body.
"Feeling better?" Jak glanced over at the young man who had spoken. He was average
looking, for a faerie, with coal black skin and silver hair, his eyes the brilliant blue of a
deep, icy lake. He smiled hesitantly. "I saw you getting sick on the upper deck."
"Yeah, I just...don't like boats," Jak said, turning back to the rail. The dock was slowly
creeping closer.
"Me neither," the faerie said, leaning on the rail beside him. "I'm Izeri Auve, by the
way." He held out his hand.
"Jakil LeMae," Jak said, shaking it. "You're a...fey?"
Izeri nodded.
"Ruith fey, actually--a weather faerie."
"Really?" Jak said with a laugh. "Any chance of you doing something about this fog?"
"Wish I could," Izeri said, looking out into the curtain of white. "My glamour has been
acting strange the last few years. Which is why I've been looking forward to starting
college. I'm a meteorology major. What about you?"
"Undecided," Jak said. "I was thinking about pre-med, but I've heard it's a hard program
to get into."
"I had a cousin who tried. He worked his ass off studying and still failed." Izeri glanced
over at him. "You're a werewolf, right?"
Jak shook his head.
"Earth mage."
"Oh. That explains all the vomiting." Izeri laughed. "So where you get the scar?"
"My uncle's dog," Jak said, absently tracing his fingers over the bite marks on the back
of his hand. "It was trained to guard the barn and I got too close. I was only eight. That
was first time my magic manifested--it buried the damn dog alive, under three feet of
solid dirt. By the time they dug it back up, it had suffocated."
"That's awful," Izeri said. "And you were only eight? Man...I was four the first time
mine did anything. I--" He laughed again. "I made it rain on my sister's kai'lao party--
that's kind of like a birthday party, only...not." He shrugged. "I was mad that she was
getting all the presents."
Jak chuckled.
"One time, I--"
"Excuse me, sirs." Jak stepped back as a brawny deckhand moved between them and
unfastened the latches on the gate. The ferry shuddered and rocked slightly. Jak clapped
a hand over his mouth and took several long breaths through his nose, waiting for his
stomach to make up its mind about whether or not he was going to vomit again. The
deckhand swung the gate open and leaped the three feet from the deck to the dock,
securing lines and sliding a wide plank across the empty space. "All ashore," he called,
and Jak dashed forward as he felt the crowd press close behind him. The gangplank
bowed beneath his weight, but the dock was firm, if a little slippery.
His steps short and quick, Jak hurried away from the ferry, up onto the good, solid,
wonderful earth, the damp ground cold against his palms as he pressed his hands to the
trampled grass. Closing his eyes, he whispered a thankful prayer and then stood,
rubbing his hands together, as he watched the rest of the students disembark from the
ship. They stood around, the faeries and werefolk naturally gravitating into little knots
of their own kind, talking and laughing while they waited for their luggage to be
brought up from below deck. Mages, suspicious and solitary creatures that they were,
remained alone, eyeing each other.
One by one, the various trunks, duffle bags, crates and suitcases were arranged on the
dock. a steady stream of laden students filed past him, heading up the slight hill and
vanishing into the fog. He saw Izeri walk by, a bulging bag slung over one shoulder, in
the company of two other faeries, one pale as the fog with blue eyes and hair, the other a
dark bronze color, his eyes amber, his hair shades of orange and gold. Izeri waved and
then they were gone.
Absently running his fingers over the lodestone pendant hanging around his neck, Jak
walked back out onto the dock to retrieve his battered leather suitcase--his father's
suitcase. Applying to Alyrrawood U had been his idea. Jak had been more than willing
to stay closer to home--in the same galaxy, at least--but his father had insisted.
Alyrrawood was the best university on any known world, and no LeMae ever settled for
less than the best.
Following the others, Jak strode up the hill, following a wide gravel path. Dark shapes
loomed within the fog, bushes and trees, leaves dark and wet with dew, moisture falling
from spindly branches in icy drops. No one spoke. The only sound was the crunch of
gravel underfoot, muffled by the thick, impenetrable fog. Shivering slightly, Jak shifted
the heavy suitcase to his other hand and blew on his stiff, cold fingers before shoving
them into his jacket pocket. Now he knew why the orientation pamphlet had said to
pack warm.
After a good half-hour of steady walking, Jak was beginning to wonder if he'd perhaps
strayed onto a side-path somewhere. He paused beneath the spreading branches of a
large cedar tree and listened for the noisy tread of his fellow students, but the only
sound in the fog was a faint rumble in the distance, a sound he knew well. The ancestral
LeMae home had stood for a hundred and twenty years atop a rocky promontory
overlooking the wild and stormy Ocean of Caterin. Nowhere within the manor could
you go to escape the ceaseless pounding of the waves on the rocks below. Yes, he knew
that sound very well. He was near the beach, and not where he was supposed to be.
Ch02
With a sigh, Jak set his suitcase down and glanced at his watch. It was almost ten in the
morning. His stomach, emptied of the meager breakfast he'd been served in Braevern ry
Maas, growled petulantly in the silence.
"Damn it," he muttered, and picked his suitcase back up. He had no choice but to
backtrack and hope that he could find the right path.
"What are you doing here?" Jak spun around, drawing back as a tall figure materialized
out of the fog, all long legs and broad shoulders. He was soaking wet, his clothes
dripping onto the path, his long blonde hair slicked back from his sharp, chiseled face.
He wasn't unattractive, but his expression was so cold, and his eyes were the darkest,
most absolute black Jak had ever seen.
"I- I go to school here," Jak said, finally finding his voice. "Who are you?"
"The dorms are on the south side," the guy said, ignoring his question. He strode past
Jak, smelling of the sea, and vanished into the fog.
"Wait," Jak called, hurrying after him. The gravel beneath his shoes suddenly gave way
to dark, smooth slate tiles. He glanced up, the hair rising on the back of his neck as
something huge loomed out of the fog in front of him, distinguishable only by the faint
shadow it made in the otherwise featureless cloud of gray.
He jumped as the deep knell of a massive bell rang out, making the air around him
tremble.
"That's the Ithaelican Bell," said a voice behind him. Jak turned as an older man stepped
out of the fog, his brown hair short, his gray-blue eyes captured behind silver-framed
glasses, his face thin and weathered. "It's all that remains of the original abbey, built
here around the turn of the century by the Ithaelican monks. The cathedral was first
damaged by a massive hurricane in 10,126 and while the monks were rebuilding, the
Army of the Eastern Republic swept through here in '29 on their way to sack the capitol
and burned the abbey to the ground." He stopped speaking and gave Jak a sheepish
smile as he offered his hand. "Sorry, I'm Jaemen Dark, professor of history."
Jak quickly shifted his suitcase and shook the man's hand.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Professor," he said. "I'm Jakil LeMae."
"LeMae?" Professor Dark repeated. "Any relation to Cordale LeMae, the famed
archaeologist?"
"I think he was my grandfather's cousin or something," Jak said.
"Fascinating man," the professor said, stepping past Jak and motioning for him to
follow. "Come on, let's get out of this blasted fog." Walking beside the older man, Jak
stared up at the imposing darkness within the fog, his eyes sweeping back and forth,
trying to make sense of the massive shape as it slowly materialized.
"It looks like a church," Jak murmured. Above the arched doorway stood a round,
stained-glass window lit from within, the colored glass softened by the veil of fog,
making the scene appear almost real. On one side, a beautiful, smiling man sat astride a
golden gryphlian, his skin shining with the same glow as the gryph's coat, his hair the
same dark gold as the gryph's mane. On the other, a faerie woman sat upon the back of a
long, sinuous white dragon, the faerie's hair and wings shimmering with every color in
the rainbow, the dragons scales like iridescent pearls, their eyes the same bright,
piercing violet.
"Magnificent, isn't it?" Professor Dark said, pausing and pointing up at the window.
"This is a reproduction, of course, of the window that graced the front of the cathedral.
Maele, the Father of humans riding Embrh'an, the Father of gryphlians on one side;
Elias, Mother of faeries riding the Mother of werefolk, the Great Spirit in her dragon
form, on the other. It symbolizes the unity of the great religions, which is what the
Ithaelican monks stood for, and is why the abbey was burned."
A sudden cold gust of salty sea air washed over them, making Jak shiver.
"Is the weather always like this, Professor?" Jak asked as they started forward again.
"Not always," Professor Dark said quietly. "Some days, the wind blows the fog away,
but that just makes it colder, and often rain accompanies the wind." He reaches the huge
double doors and stops, his hand on the thick iron ring, to glance back at Jak. "There's a
story: Not long after the school was completed, a young female mage applied and was
rejected. This is an exclusively male school, you know. As the story goes, she was so
angry that, once she learned how via another means, she returned and put a curse on the
school, shrouding it in a blanket of fog. They say the sun hasn't shined here since." He
laughed suddenly, making Jak jump. "Of course, it's just a story. I think the
upperclassmen tell it to unnerve the freshmen."
He pulled one side of the massive oak door open, the hinges giving a long, drawn-out
groan, and ushered Jak inside. Once out of the wind and clinging mist, Jak stopped to
admire the polished marble tile under his feet, the rich, dark rosewood paneling on the
walls, the brass rails and sconces, the crystal candle holders protecting the warm,
glowing flames within.
"Welcome to Alyrrawood University," Professor Dark said, stepping up beside him. The
door closed behind them with a soft thump and one last breath of cold air. "This is the
grand rotunda, built in 10,152 on the site of the cathedral ruins. The door to our right,"
he gestures with one hand, "leads to the Tyric Wing of the library, named for the co-
founder of the University, Assandra Tyric. Her partner in the endeavor, Xerin Darcy, is
the namesake of the Darcy Wing on our left. He was killed in a tragic building accident
in...'157, I believe."
Not sure where else to go, Jak followed the professor as he strode forward, toward a pair
of double doors at the far end of the hall. They emerged into a much narrower and less
imposing hallway, the floor tiles white, the walls painted a soothing blue.
"Down that way," Professor Dark said, pointing to his left, "is the building where the
teachers live. The door you see at the far end leads outside, to the greenhouses. The last

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