Chapter 37 #2
Primus watched me with a heavy-lidded gaze. Maybe he expected me to speak or shift uncomfortably or cower. Who knew? But I’d been trained since infancy by a leggerock. A being who was as unmoving as granite. I’d stood under his baleful stare for hours without moving an inch.
I hovered outside myself, expecting Primus to conjure.
Instead, his eyes narrowed to slits, and his lips stretched into a slow smile. “I know what you are.”
He waited for a response. I didn’t give him one.
His smile grew. “The Bards are too stupid to see it. The Ward was too grief-stricken over his father’s death to notice.
Even my father doesn’t quite know what to believe.
But I . . .” His pale-boned hand drifted over his desk and pulled free a yellowed, crumbling piece of parchment.
“The truth seer is first and foremost your enemy,” he read, looking up from the parchment to watch my expression.
There was something in it he liked, because his eyes darkened.
He continued, although he kept his eyes on me.
He must’ve memorized the words. “All truth seers must die, because they are the death of illusion. They have many faces and many forms. They often appear harmless, weak, or innocent. But this is a lie. A truth seer is a conjurer, and no conjurer is weak. A truth seer, above all else, loves destruction. They seek to destroy. You must kill a truth seer before they destroy you.” Primus let the parchment slip from his fingers and float to the desk. It landed with a sigh.
I held myself ready, expecting Primus to conjure any second.
“Well?” he asked.
I tilted my head. Even though it was cool, my skin was hot.
“Do you deny it?”
“I’m a mine,” I said.
Primus’s mouth stretched wide enough to show a row of teeth.
“And does that trump being a truth seer? After the dinner, I researched and read every document we have on leggerocks, nines, and mines.” He steepled his fingers.
“Sadly, we don’t know much. Leggerocks haven’t been of interest to us.
” He looked at me as if that had recently changed.
“But it appears a mine is similar to how we Clarks make and control our bodies. Thirteen, for instance, is loyal to me. He obeys me. He is mine until death. Is this the same?”
I swallowed, my mouth as dry and bitter as ashes. “Yes.”
“Heir Clark. Say it.”
“Yes, Heir Clark.”
His shoulders relaxed, and he fiddled with his pen, thinking.
“This is an interesting situation,” he said finally. “There has never been a truth seer controlled by a leggerock. Never one controlled by a conjurer. Do you want to destroy me?”
I looked into Primus’s eyes. “No.”
He smirked. “I didn’t think so.”
“Do you want to destroy my sister?”
Last? “No.”
“Do you have an insatiable need to destroy illusion?”
Was that what was written in his documents?
“No.”
His eyes gleamed. “But if the leggerock commands you to destroy, you will?”
“Yes.”
His expression became gloating and as close to happy as I’d ever seen. “I’ve often found people in history were shortsighted. Don’t you think?”
“Sometimes,” I answered, and when he raised his eyebrows, I continued. “Mostly, I think everyone is shortsighted. It’s just easier to see how people were shortsighted in the past, because for us, it’s farther off.”
He laughed, but his eyes weren’t amused. “When you speak to me, you will address me as Heir Clark. Do you understand?”
What I understood was that he wasn’t planning on killing me for being a truth seer. “Yes, Heir Clark.”
He nodded. “Good. What shall I call you?” He wasn’t asking my opinion.
He ran his hand over his chin. “Not One. Not Two. Mari, I suppose. If you are a conjurer, you deserve a name. Take note, I like that you are a truth seer. I like your need to destroy. I like how you lied during the games and fooled the Smiths. I like how you killed the Smith. I like how you tore apart the Bard heir and left him bloodied. I find, Mari, that I like the potential of what you and I can do.”
I didn’t answer. There was no need.
Primus stood and walked me deeper into the catacombs. There, I found a wall of illusion. There were millions of knots. It was a medieval dungeon of bars and chains. It was a locked pit. It was impenetrable.
“How long will it take you to remove this?” Primus asked.
I shook my head, “I don’t know . . . Heir Clark.”
“Guess.”
“Twenty-four hours of working nonstop?”
His eyes crinkled, and he conjured green-tinged candles to line the walls. They cast us in their eerie light and threw monstrous shadows over the catacomb.
“Do you want to know what’s beyond the wall?”
I didn’t need to know—I could feel it. It was the hungry, horrific nightmare thing that had devoured me when I’d been buried alive. The thing that had hunted me, though, was a tentacle compared to the mass of power pulsing behind the locks.
Primus tapped the stone, and something tapped back.
“Three hundred years ago, my shortsighted ancestors locked a creature away. They claimed it was too dangerous to keep loose, so they chained it with an illusion that couldn’t be broken. Since then, many Clarks have tried to free the creature. All of them failed. But none of them had a truth seer.”
Primus leaned forward and pressed his hands against the stone, smiling at the scraping noise. “It’s a shame it was locked away. It’s starving. It’s mad with hunger. Can you feel it?”
I nodded. I could feel the hate burning through the stone. I knew its hunger. I knew its madness.
“When you free it . . .” His eyes cast into the future, and he smiled.
“Who needs a Silencer when you have a truth seer and a monster? We’ll destroy the Smiths and the city.
” His eyes refocused on me. “Work quickly. No breaks. Tear free this illusion. I want it broken.” He glanced at his watch.
“You’re ours until sunset. Nine hours. Go. ”
I spent the next nine hours unraveling knots and untying illusion.
After the first few hours, the candles sputtered and burned out.
The passage plunged into darkness. I concentrated on the glow of the illusion and carefully picked through the knots.
I ignored the hungry, hateful presence pressing at the walls, tapping a strange Morse code with every chain I loosened.
When night arrived, I was dizzy, my arms were so heavy I couldn’t lift them, and I felt if I lay down, I’d never get up again. Last looked me over, sighed, and then conjured a red-hot needle to poke into my arm.
A jolt of adrenaline woke me up. She pushed me up the passage, out of the catacombs, and into a cab. She conjured payment for the driver and told him to take me home.
I looked down at the box she’d shoved into my hands. I’d spent the day working to break free a creature the Clarks of three hundred years ago had thought was too evil to let roam free, and in thanks, Last had conjured me a box of chocolates.