5. Arienne
5
ARIENNE
The corridor was blindingly white. It was impossible to tell right from left or up from down. It seemed like the only things that existed were Arienne’s body, the old and heavy iron door she had just come through, and a translucent door some distance ahead of her. There was also a drumming in her ears—her own heartbeat. It was the only thing she could hear.
Arienne was afraid. Ahead, somewhere, was the Power generator. Her professors had taught her about the generators for six years across many different courses, but they had never touched on the most important things about them: How did they generate so much of the Power? Could the dead body of a sorcerer go on making the Power indefinitely? If they were generating the Power after death, could they really be said to be dead? Arienne suspected the professors themselves did not know the answers to these questions. They never explained why the people of the Empire accepted the use of Power generators without so much as a frown. People who would flinch at the sight of a corpse, much less a magically preserved one, had no issue with Powered machines harvesting their crops and scrubbing their sewers, knowing full well what they were made of.
The Power generators were inscrutable things. Not wanting to become one even more desperately than not wanting to die, Arienne found herself here—in the small hours of the morning, following a strange, unknown voice, breaking the unbreakable rules.
Upon closer inspection, the door ahead turned out to be a semitransparent layer. At the tentative touch of her palm, the layer undulated like the surface of a calm lake and her hand sank through. The undulation widened until it was large enough for her entire body to pass through.
After the brilliance of the corridor, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimly lit generator chamber. The door that had been translucent a moment ago was, from the other side, so black it was almost invisible. Arienne closed her eyes. Instead of the thumping of her own heart, which had felt so loud just a moment ago, there was a low and uninterrupted hum. The sound of the Power generator. The poets described it as an endless song, but it reminded Arienne instead of the deep rumble of the volcano in her homeland. People there had called it the sound of the sleeping dragon.
What slept here was not a dragon but the body of a sorcerer. And not just any sleep but an endless sleep, eternal and yet devoid of rest, a most uncomfortable and fitful sleep… Arienne shivered in revulsion.
As her eyes adjusted, she took in the room, which was cast in a cool violet light. Violet was the color of sorcery, and the chamber was full of the Power. Before her were two coffins of dull metal resting on stone platforms.
The coffin on the left was the source of the faint light that filled the chamber. It was wrapped in chains, and there were runes engraved along the chains that glowed. This was the one powering the Academy. In contrast, the coffin on the right was dark, illuminated only by the glowing runes on its neighbor’s chains, maybe a reserve generator or a broken one. Arienne was trying to read the inscriptions on the coffins to determine which of them was Eldred’s when the voice spoke.
“The one on the right. The one that is dark and inert. That is the Power generator Eldred.”
She turned to the coffin on the right and took a deep breath. Now for the spell to move the coffin—the spell that was stronger and trickier than any she had attempted before. As she began to conjure the necessary images in her mind, the voice spoke again.
“Unchain the coffin and open it first. We only need to take what’s inside.”
“What? How am I supposed to withstand the Power without the containment box? This isn’t what you told me before.”
“There’s nothing to be done. Lead as an insulator of Power works both ways. Spells do not pass through it. Surely you knew that much before my having to tell you?”
She had come so far. She couldn’t turn back now for the fear of some leakage from the generator. Gripping the chains, she managed to drag them off the coffin despite each link being the size of her fist. The sound of iron scraping lead rang throughout the chamber.
The humming from the coffin intensified as the chains were removed. Arienne pushed aside the heavy lid. Violet wisps of smoke rose from the interior, and she quickly covered her nose and mouth. Inside was something like a cocoon, a human shape wrapped in bandages, with red runes that she couldn’t read scrawled across them. There was no smell of decay or of embalming oils, just a scent much like burning paper.
Arienne straightened, closed her eyes, and summoned the image of her family home in her mind. A small thatched-roof farmhouse, the kind you’d see anywhere in Arland. Arienne had a room of sorts in the loft right under the roof. A mattress stuffed with fresh straw, a small chest of drawers her mother made from leftover carpentry scraps, and a box for her knitting things. No desk, but there was a little shelf with all ten books she’d owned, written in Imperial. Arienne concentrated on every detail, not letting a single thing slip her attention. Not the touch of the rusty candlestick on the windowsill, the flame flickering on the shrinking candle, the patchwork of rags on the doll her father had made for her, the surprisingly good carpet on the floor, nor the decree of entry for the Imperial Academy that lay folded in half on the mattress.
In her mind, Arienne picked up the decree. This nonexistent folded piece of paper in her imagined loft in her imagined house hovered above the mattress. But the imagined decree, which should’ve been filled with the Imperial letters, was completely black, a black so dark it began to look like a violet swirl, a hole that looked into the depths of another world. The paper unfolded once. Then twice. Then three times. It became not a square piece of paper but an elliptical hole. Arienne sent the body in the coffin, the Power generator Eldred, into the room in her mind through that very hole and laid it down on the mattress.
She opened her eyes. Her head hurt. The coffin was empty. The body of the dead sorcerer now lay in the room of her mind. A dizziness overcame her—and a very obvious fact occurred to her like a blow to the head.
“You have done well. Now leave this place. You must escape from this school as swiftly as possible. And—”
“ You are Eldred! You’re the body that’s inside my mind right now!” Arienne shouted. There was a sharp pressure in her head, as if it would burst any second.
“Indeed,” said the voice, or Eldred.
“You’re dead. You’re a Power generator! How is a dead person speaking to me?”
“Let’s say I’m a ghost, for now.”
Tears rose in her eyes, whether from the pain of the headache or some other unknown reason she couldn’t say. “Why did you make me do this?”
“Because for the past five years, no one has heard me except you.”
Arienne understood. The person who lay at the bottom of the spiral staircase had heard Eldred five years ago—had heard him, had come down to the basement, and had been pushed by Eldred after refusing to help him. No doubt Eldred had allowed them to think they were leaving the basement, getting high enough on the staircase that a fall would break their neck. Eldred must have realized that if that student had been allowed to go back, his secret would be discovered. And a Power generator that had a will of its own and could whisper secrets into someone’s mind—an abomination like that would never be left unguarded again by the Imperial Academy, the Office of Truth, or anyone of any consequence in the whole of the Empire. Why was such a thing down here, and who put it there?
Inside the room of her mind, the tightly wrapped cocoon shaped like a human sat up on the edge of the mattress. His face was covered and he could not move freely, but his very manner of sitting exuded utter exhaustion. The hole in the air, through which Arienne had helped him enter the room, now neatly folded in on itself until it became a piece of paper again and fell to the floor. The words “Decree of Entry” in red letters could just about be discerned.
“First, you must leave here. The longer you hesitate, the more certain your capture will be. Now that I’ve been removed from my chains, things will be set in motion. It’s only a matter of time until someone discovers what we have done here. Be reminded that, with me in tow, the Office of Truth inquisitors will be coming for you like they have done for no other runaway sorcerer. That is the price you pay for your chance at freedom.”
Arienne wanted to feel regret. That maybe the life of a pensioner, modest as it might be, was a comfortable way to live out a life. Or that she could study harder and become a sorcerer-engineer or professor, or join a legion and travel the world. She liked Felix, Kaya, and the other friends she had made at the school, even Magnus. Perhaps she would raise a family with another sorcerer, or someone she had yet to meet. There was a life for a sorcerer, even in the Empire, one that she could be happy with. But at the end of every such life, no matter how comfortable, was the fate she saw starkly before her: being turned into a Power generator. As long as she was within the confines of the Empire, this fate would be inescapable. And here, inside the room in her mind, was proof of how horrifying an end that would be.
Bile rose in her. It couldn’t be stopped—she vomited.
“Hurry. Hurry!”
She didn’t want to die. More than that, she didn’t want to become what Eldred had become. Now that the identity of the voice was revealed, her determination had only gotten stronger. She stared at what had come up from inside her as she gripped her stomach, and once her fear and disgust melted away, she straightened. Even her headache subsided to a tolerable level.
She retraced her steps, through the white corridor to the iron door, pausing only briefly beside the skeleton at the foot of the stairs.
An escape route out of the school was already in place, and it was unlikely anyone would look for her before the sun rose tomorrow. Even longer before anyone would make the connection between the missing Power generator and her disappearance. In the slums of the western side of the city, there was an estranged uncle who had a tavern. She’d met him only once, when she first came to the Capital, but maybe he would help her if she asked.
The life before her was that of a fugitive from the law—and for the first time in six years, Arienne felt alive.