missed the army.
Once they were on the final straight and the soldiers in blue cloaks could be seen in front of the main gate, the mage looked at his apprentice. Draco clenched his jaw tightly and his pupils were dilated. Darius smiled under his breath as he observed his protégé's surprise.
Draco had not previously considered what position his master held in the mage community, but it was only now that he began to realise that Darius was not only highly placed in the army, but was also one of the very wealthy. Just the way the area they were in looked, the large mansions surrounded by high walls, guards standing at the gates, little traffic and regular patrols of the Watch showed the prestige of this district. He wondered how he should behave and it was then that he spotted another gate and the soldiers who stood guard in front of it dressed in cloaks identical in colour to the one Darius wore.
He noticed the master glance at him and swallowed his saliva. They headed towards the passage. The dragon watched the guards with curiosity and some uncertainty. The carriage stopped in front of the gate. When the sentries spotted Darius they immediately stood at attention stamping the heels of their heavy boots. The soldiers seemed not to move and yet Draco could swear they were watching him. Bleist merely nodded to them and led his apprentice inside.
The gate itself was large and reminiscent of medieval fortress fortifications, and so had a long entrance corridor with holes in the ceiling from which attackers of the place could be harassed. Draco remembered studying the sketches of the defensive ramparts and the ways in which they had been forcibly breached a year earlier. He also turned his attention to the gate itself, or rather gates. Two pairs of metre-thick gates, and between them a descending grille covered with some kind of runes.
-My father designed all the buildings and the layout of the complex.- Darius said, breaking the silence. -He was always proud of this design.- He smiled,
