Come to think of it, Almark hadn’t seen Zeid since they parted ways in front of the schoolhouse on his first day of classes. He made a mental note to go pay the front gate a visit later.
But at that moment, all three of them froze.
They heard it.
A small, unintelligible voice. Almark couldn’t tell what it was saying, but it was definitely the faint sound of someone talking.
“…It’s coming from inside the maze.” Wendy looked at the entrance, her expression stiff.
“Yeah,” Nelson murmured. “Same as yesterday.”
“…Almark?” Wendy asked, her voice tinged with concern. Almark was looking not at the entrance to the maze, but behind them. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s just…” Almark faced forward. “The wind’s blowing.”
“Huh? Really?”
“Wind?”
Both Wendy and Nelson were curious.
“Yeah, there’s a breeze now, but there wasn’t one earlier.” Almark glanced back again, and then he eyed the entrance to the maze. “All right. Let’s go in.”
“Yeah!”
Nelson led the way. As soon as they stepped into the maze, Almark noticed how much darker it was compared to the outside. The hedge walls around them made it impossible to see what was under their feet, and the light of the lamps around the garden didn’t extend to the maze’s interior. Wendy waved a hand, producing a will-o-wisp that floated above their heads. The magical flame lit up the path at their feet.
“I can still hear it,” Nelson whispered.
Almark nodded wordlessly. He couldn’t make out what was being said, but there was definitely a soft voice muttering in the distance. It was too far to be clear, but close enough to just be audible. Still, they could tell where it was coming from—deeper in the maze.
“Drat, I can’t quite make out what it’s saying…” Nelson clicked his tongue.
“Yeah. I feel like an old lady who’s hard of hearing,” Wendy said.
Almark thought that was a fitting way to put it. He could only hear bits and pieces of vowels, but it really did sound like a sequence of words. And while the location of the voice didn’t seem to be changing, it sounded like there was a buzz of noise around it, making it impossible to clearly discern anything. Almark agreed with Wendy—this must have been what it was like being old and hard of hearing.
Nelson’s really brave, though.
Almark was positively impressed with Nelson, who—despite muttering curses under his breath—kept walking forward without slowing down.
“We go right here,” he said. “Left at the next corner.”
He instructed them on where to go, his voice like a chant. Almark thought the maze was quite winding, and yet…
“Wow, Nelson, you memorized how to get out?” he asked.
Nelson shrugged. “We used to play hide and seek here every day back when we were first-years, so I know the place by heart. I can find my way to any exit in this maze, not just Lord Boruqe’s statue.”
“The boys love this maze,” Wendy added.
After spending over two years at the institute, they knew the place like the backs of their hands.
Almark looked up at the will-o-wisp floating above them. This magic flame wasn’t affected by the wind, so it didn’t flicker in the slightest as it lit the way for them. Wendy made it look easy, but that only spoke to her mastery of the spell. Almark was honestly astounded by her technique.
Still, the wind he felt earlier bothered him. A slight breeze had been blowing ever since they entered. Given the maze’s position at the center of the garden, and the terrain, perhaps…
“Take a right,” Nelson said, pulling Almark out of his thoughts. It sounded like the muttering was getting closer. “We’re almost there.”
“Wow, you didn’t get even one turn wrong,” Wendy remarked.
“The voice is getting closer, too,” Almark said, listening carefully.
Whisper… Whisper… Did… Whisper, whisper… It was… And… Whisper…
It sounded so frustratingly close, like they could very nearly make out the words.
“A left at the gap there.”
Nelson pointed at a gap in the hedge. They took a turn there, and suddenly the maze opened up. They had arrived at the very heart of the maze, a small square surrounded by the hedge walls. Set on a plinth in the center of the plaza was the silent image of an old man clad in a robe. This was the statue of the former governor of Norkh Island, Lord Boruqe.
“The voice…!” Wendy yelped.
Almark couldn’t blame her. The voice, which had come across as fragmented just a moment earlier, suddenly became distant the moment they entered the square.
“It’s just like yesterday! The voice is getting away!” Nelson shouted and ran to the back of the statue. “Dammit! There’s no one there!”
“Maybe it’s through this exit?” Wendy suggested.
There were two exits from the plaza; the one they just entered through, and one behind the statue.
“There’s nobody there! Did they get away?” Nelson said, frustrated.
“Are you sure?” Wendy asked and tried to peer over the hedge. “Maybe they’re hiding.”
Seeing the other two look for the source of the voice, Almark realized what had been bothering him all this time.
“…The wind,” he whispered and looked down at his feet.
He had been feeling a breeze blowing behind his feet, which were illuminated by the will-o-wisp. But the wind that’d been blowing in one direction thus far had spread out since he entered this plaza. Meaning…
“Wendy! Nelson!” Almark shouted, which made the two jolt and turn to look at him. “Gather the wind here!”
“The wind…?”
“You can do that, right? Focus all the wind blowing through this plaza.”
Nelson looked confused, but Wendy soon said, “The wind bending spell, Nelson!”
“Huh? O-oh, right.”
Wendy was quick to act. “Sorry, it’s about to get really dark,” she warned.
She snapped her fingers, putting out the will-o-wisp. Next, she spread her arms and cast a wind-bending spell. Unlike a spell that produced wind, this one changed the direction existing winds blew in.
“Ugh, we just learned this spell. I’m not sure I can cast it right…,” Nelson muttered as he followed Wendy’s example.
They really are a bunch of little geniuses.
Almark could feel the wind that blew past this plaza gather around them.
“The voice!” Wendy exclaimed in surprise. “I can hear it!”
“Me, too!” Nelson shouted.
The voice that had become distant rapidly grew more audible.
“Nelson, keep the wind blowing this way,” Wendy quickly instructed. “I’ll blow it in from the opposite direction. Then, we’ll gather the voice here!”
She then turned around and spread out her arms. The two gusts of wind met in the center of the plaza, making the voice clearer than ever before.
“So you know what I thought? Staying here would just make us hungry, so we should go back to the dorm. And then Lilty said…”
It was the sweet, fawning voice of a girl. The trio looked between each other, because it didn’t just sound vaguely familiar—it was distinctly the voice of someone they all knew very well.
“…Norish,” Wendy whispered.
At the dorm, when Norish was suddenly visited by the three of them, she went very red and started stuttering about how embarrassed she was.
“You all heard me talking? I can’t believe myself! Forget what you heard!”
“How can I forget?! You kept me up all night because of how much it bothered me!” Nelson snapped at her.
“Then don’t listen to me and don’t get bothered by it!” Norish snapped back.
“Any man would get curious about a mysterious voice, you know! Well, any man but Morgan!” Nelson argued unreasonably.
Almark and Wendy got between the two and tried to smooth things over.
“Norish, I know you’re good at wind magic, but…,” Wendy said as she pushed Nelson away by the shoulders. “I had no idea you could do the Wind’s Whispers spell. I thought they only learn that in the intermediate division. That’s amazing.”
“I’m still practicing, so I haven’t mastered it yet…,” Norish muttered peevishly, but overall she seemed to accept the praise.
The Wind’s Whispers spell allowed one to send their voice and words to someone else in the distance. It took time to travel, but skilled practitioners could send messages with their own voices across even the sea. This made it sound like extremely useful magic, but since the spell involved sending wind to where a person would be, the recipient would have to be at that specific point to hear the words. This made it quite difficult to use.