Chapter 32
ARIENNE
Far away, against the gray sky, a vague mountainous shadow loomed over the wasteland. According to Noam, this was where Eldred had resided as he ruled over Mersia.
“It will be another two days or so from here,” said Noam, and Arienne’s heart began to thump.
What monstrous things, what secrets must lie there.
In the tower inside her mind, Arienne mentioned this to Noam, sitting down on the large leather bed that she had claimed as her own.
Noam, who had his own room now but preferred to spend time with Tychon in the evenings, rocked the cradle while the baby slept inside.
“I think you’re imagining some kind of ruin full of puzzles,” he said nonchalantly, “but the Imperials refitted and used that place for their legion for almost a hundred years. They’ve taken everything they wanted and thrown away the rest. I’ve been inside a few times to help them with their generators. There is no mystery left there.”
This was dispiriting. “Oh? Then I’ll depend on you for directions when we’re there.”
“The Hundred and Seventh Legion was garrisoned there when I was alive. Led by a Legate Havtamu, who was a really impressive man, by the way. More popular among the people of Danras than the prefect who was a Mersian native.”
Since leaving Danras, Noam had begun to talk more. Only a few days ago, he could only remember his name, but something had changed about him. Noam went on for a bit more before sighing. “I suppose they all died that day.”
The Star of Mersia had indeed devastated Danras and all other cities, the rich grasslands, and the entire Imperial legion stationed in Mersia.
But this was the biggest mystery—a legion would include thousands of personnel, a fort, and valuable provisions and equipment.
Was the Empire so eager to get rid of Mersia that they would sacrifice all of that?
Eldred had said they wouldn’t, that Mersia had never declared independence, that the Empire had no intention of destroying Mersia.
“Noam, what do you think? Would the Empire have done that on purpose?”
He frowned. “It’s unimaginable. There must’ve been something else.”
“Your memory is returning,” persisted Arienne, “so I’ll try asking again. That day, you tried to run to the catacombs. Do you remember exactly what you felt, what made you think the Host’s protection over the catacombs would protect you from that … accident?”
Noam’s features began to blur again. As before, this happened when he tried to remember something he couldn’t. Arienne quickly grabbed his face and slapped him on both cheeks.
“Stay with me! You don’t have to remember now.”
But she had her theory. Noam wouldn’t have run to the protections of the catacombs if the accident didn’t remind him of Eldred in some way. Maybe Eldred, not the Empire, was behind the destruction of Mersia.
Leaving the tower in her mind and returning to the wasteland, she checked to see if Aron’s reins were still wound around her hand. There was even less grass here as they moved away from the city. She could easily count the number of Aron’s ribs now.
She returned to the room in the tower. This had been Yuma’s room, but the bed felt new. The cradle was new as well. It rocked from side to side, but there were no marks ground into the floor beneath it. Had Tychon ever even lain in this crib during his lifetime?
Noam still sat on the floor, looking dazed.
“You should go back to your room,” she said.
“There’s so much space; can’t I just sleep here?”
“Are you my lover? My child?”
“Then what about Tychon?”
“You are forcing me to consider violent alternatives,” Arienne growled, becoming frustrated.
“No, I mean, can I take Tychon with me? I can take the whole cradle with me.”
“… Why are you so afraid of being alone?”
Noam hesitated. Arienne frowned, waiting for his answer.
“I smell the Grim King … even more than before. Maybe because we’re so near his castle. And I can’t sleep.”
“You’re a ghost. You don’t need sleep.” Still, she gestured toward Tychon, giving him permission. Noam carefully lifted the cradle, baby and all. “Be careful so he doesn’t wake.”
Looking more cheerful than a moment before, Noam left the room. Arienne crawled underneath the covers. The bed was hard, and the sheets were rough. She still couldn’t believe she had imagined a whole building filled with materials she did not even know existed.
“Some memory the ghosts gave me,” she murmured.
After making that first room in her mind and letting Eldred inside, she had a suspicion that her mind had never been wholly her own ever since.
A book she had never read before—The Sorcerer of Mersia—once appeared in that room, after all.
If her mind was occupied with things like that from outside her memory, would she eventually disappear?
These were the thoughts that swirled in her head as she fell asleep.
The journey continued the next day. The red wasteland, the gray sky—nothing seemed to change no matter how long she walked, though the mountainous shadow did loom larger and larger.
Finally, the traces of the Imperial road led right up to the gates of the walls around the castle, which looked as if it had been carved out of a single slab of rock.
The gate’s thick wooden gates had melted, hanging precariously on their hinges.
Arienne tied Aron’s reins upon the corner of the gate’s iron ornament, a gigantic double-falcon insignia of the Empire.
“I won’t be long.”
Such words wouldn’t be necessary if there was a guarantee she would return. The smell of the Grim King that had unnerved Noam was so strong here that she could feel it in the air, as if it were grasping at her skin. There was danger here.
As soon as she set foot inside the walls of the castle, she felt Noam tremble in the tower in her mind. Tychon opened his eyes. The wind chimes hanging from the eaves made a barely perceptible sound.
Eldred’s castle had not been built by piling up stones. Rather, it was like a great slab of obsidian had decided one day to become a castle. Two identical thick towers rose high into the air in the middle, and three smaller towers surrounded them, forming a triangle.
“Where do we go from here?” whispered Arienne.
“What do you want to see?”
The memory of Yuma in Fractica’s dream had asked Arienne to go find the real Yuma in the Grim King’s castle, but that was the only bit of information she had.
“Is there a prison here? Or maybe a graveyard, or a crypt?”
“The graveyard is beyond the castle walls. It was forbidden to store corpses within the fort.”
“Why?”
“By order of Grand Inquisitor Lysandros. He thought the castle could still harbor the Grim King’s curses. But the prison is underground.”
“Good. Tell me how to get there.” She began walking to the doors of the castle itself, traversing the vast courtyard between the wall and the castle.
Here and there were collapsed huts. Arienne scraped at the rough red dirt under her feet.
Underneath the top layer was the same rock that made up the walls.
She imagined lines upon lines of legionaries standing at attention in this courtyard, a hundred years ago.
Perhaps the whole legion could have fit in here.
Yet another hundred years ago, Eldred’s army of bones and rotting flesh had filled the same space.
This had been a living graveyard, until the Empire came for its king.
Noam was rattling off details about the legion and the fortress, as if to forget his fear of this place. He must have run out of things to say before she had made it across the courtyard, though, for he simply began to repeat the things he’d already said.
“How is Tychon?” she asked, trying to distract him from his fears.
“He’s all right. I’m watching him. He’s awake.”
She could hear Tychon’s cooing. To Arienne’s ear, they were clearer and seemed more meaningful than before.
“Maybe he knows his mother is here.”
Arienne continued across the courtyard, looking for a door to get inside the closest tower. Noam had said the resident legion had refitted the place, but aside from a few collapsed warehouses in the courtyard, they didn’t seem to have touched the exterior at all.
Finally, Arienne reached the obsidian castle doors, which were nearly indistinguishable from the walls. She took a deep breath before pushing them open; contrary to their size and appearance, the doors opened smoothly and without a sound.
Darkness. Arienne realized she had left her lantern behind and infused Power into her glass orb instead. The weak light reflected on the dark edges of the walls, showing her the outline of the antechamber.
“It doesn’t look that refitted inside, either,” she murmured.
Odd pillars jutted from the floor, shelves popped out of the walls, and tables and chairs were so melted it was miraculous she could recognize what they were at all.
The “refitting” the Imperials had done here was simply furnishing the building and doing nothing to its structure or aesthetics.
It made sense—regardless of the Empire’s pride for everything Imperial, she doubted they would’ve wanted to touch anything in this strange and special place any more than was necessary.
Somehow, the room reminded her of the dragon’s cave in Arland, without looking anything like that place.
“Now where do we go?” she asked.
“Behind the stone table there,” replied Noam, “is a tunnel going down to the underground level.”
She crossed the hall. She walked past the huge, Imperial-style stone table that a hundred years ago might have been surrounded by legates and centurions in shining armor and velvet cloaks.
She discovered an unassuming wooden door, half melted and fallen off the hinge.
The tunnel’s entrance stood before her like the open mouth of a giant beast. The light of her orb illuminated stairs going downward. There wasn’t a sound.
Arienne began to descend.