24. Arienne
24
ARIENNE
Since they had fled the tower, Eldred had bombarded Arienne with questions, but the main one he kept coming back to was how she managed to use that spell on the inquisitors when she had no experience of ever having killed someone. Arienne did not answer. Who knew what he would say if she told him about her imaginings of the skeleton underneath the Academy.
If Cain was correct, it would take a day and half to cross Finvera Pass and walk into Kamori. A harsh climb, especially in this cold weather, but at least it wasn’t snowing anymore. It was daytime now with no cloud in sight, and the only sound was that of light wind rustling past the trees. But the dark green monotone of the forested scenery reminded her of the stories of Finvera Pass she’d heard as a child, which had always featured a night blizzard, with owls and wolves screaming among solemn firs that filled the mountain.
The only open inn by the pass was large but shabby. This part of the road had seen better days since the Empire took over Lontaria and established a port on the west coast of Ledon. It used to have many inns, but most of them stood abandoned by the roadside now.
Arienne found shelter in one of the closed ones and waited for morning. She would have gotten a room at the working inn and enjoyed a proper meal, but after having killed someone—after having killed two people—she feared being seen by other travelers. Even though it had all happened in that forest where no one could have seen, she felt like her crimes were written all over her face.
The abandoned inn was derelict, as if no care had been taken of it for a decade or so. Its fireplace, however, was still sound. Arienne used parts of broken furniture for firewood, and found a dented pot in the kitchen. She filled it with snow and boiled the hard bread and dried meat she had, hoping it would result in something resembling meat porridge. The wind coming through the cracks of the building made the flames dance and throw monstrous shadows on the walls.
“Why not stop reading that,” said Eldred.
“Books are meant to be read,” she answered without looking up.
Arienne had been reading The Sorcerer of Mersia every moment she had a chance since fleeing the tower, and she was almost at the end. It was the story of how the sorcerer king Eldred, who had ruled Mersia through fear and death, had been vanquished by a young inquisitor of the Office of Truth named Lysandros. A tale so old it happened decades before the devastation of Mersia a hundred years ago.
“What an evil bastard you were. I see why you did not want me to read it.”
“Have you already forgotten what I said about that book? Think of who it was that wrote it. The wretch Lysandros, as befits an agent of the Empire, conquers through lies.”
Arienne scoffed. “This book doesn’t read like lies. I’d say the author’s tone is very sincere.”
“Nobody conquers the world with insincere lies.”
Arienne remembered her history classes at the Academy. Neither her textbooks nor her professors had mentioned Mersia, much less a sorcerer named Eldred. But they were unequivocal in describing the pre-Imperial world as barbaric, superstitious, and impoverished. She had always assumed such descriptions were heavy with propaganda and were to be taken with many a grain of salt… But what had the old days really been like, before the Empire took over, if they were a time that the Grim King of Mersia could reminisce fondly about?
Arienne turned her eyes back to the pages.
“Is it true you sat on a throne made of a hundred skulls?”
Eldred had no answer.
“You also kidnapped the son of this Lysandros and murdered him.”
“I did not kill him.”
“But you did kidnap him? As a hostage?”
“No, I wanted him as my apprentice.”
“A baby?”
“I could sense the talent in him, even while he was in his mother’s womb. And I tried to save the child.”
In the room of her mind, a small cloud of dust formed as Eldred sighed. “Now he will never grow up to be a proper sorcerer. He could have been so much more!” Eldred paused. “Little sorcerer, listen to me. A Power generator is an abomination.”
Arienne nodded in agreement. “I know. That’s why I—”
Eldred interrupted, “I do not mind abominations. Some might even say all sorcerers are abominations.” His face twisted in a wry grin before it dropped into a sneer. “However, the piece of magic that creates Power generators is a degradation of all sorcerers. It is not just how our bodies are used, but how our lives are designed to satiate the hunger of banal, ordinary men. That I cannot abide, whether the damned things are made of a powerful old witch or a small boy who hadn’t learned a spell in his months of short life. That is another reason that I chose you. You share that sentiment with me.”
Eldred drew breath as if he was going to say more, but paused instead. Arienne, quick to understand, perked up her ears as well. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but the outside was shrouded with darkness except for the light coming from the windows of the inn down the road.
“I smell him.”
Arienne stopped breathing. There was only the crackling of the fire, and the winds raking the crumbling walls.
Closing the book and slipping it into her tunic, Arienne stood. The boards creaked beneath her feet.
The fire in the hearth suddenly died, leaving not even an ember. There was no time to panic, but her chest felt tight, as if her heart and lungs were being slowly squeezed by an invisible hand. Inside her mind, the room groaned and twisted like an empty paper box. The walls were bending and the windows cracking. The floor was tilting and the books on the shelf were falling. Eldred remained on the bed. For the first time on his shrunken face, there was feeling.
“He’s here. The wretch is here…” Eldred moaned. Was he upset? Perhaps he was anxious to meet his old enemy after all this time.
This was not the top of a tower. She couldn’t use the spell she had used to deal with the inquisitors. Even if she could, she doubted that it would work on this man that even Eldred seemed to fear. She had to run. But as soon as she stepped into the narrow corridor leading outside, the door opened with a loud creak. She stopped in her tracks.
Standing at the door was a man holding a lantern, which spilled a blue light like the streetlamps in the Capital. No, he wasn’t holding a lantern. The light came from one of his eyes. He wore a hooded cloak, and half his face was covered by an iron mask. Not a mask either. His lower jaw and the entire left side of his face were metal. The man threw back his hood with his left arm, revealing a head of thinning hair. There was a very quiet ticking sound, like a clock’s.
“Are you Arienne of the Imperial Academy, the Eleventh College, Division of Sorcery?” His voice was mechanical, not like a human’s at all. “Where is Eldred?”
He stepped forward, and his feet made a scraping sound as if there were iron studs on his soles. Arienne took a step back.
“I am Grand Inquisitor Lysandros. Are you the one who killed my underlings?”
Eldred whispered, “Do not let on that I am inside you. He will know it soon enough, but we need to buy as much time as possible.”
Her inner room was about to collapse from the pressure Lysandros exuded. Just as Arienne tried to concentrate on maintaining its integrity, Eldred said, “Unravel the bandages around my arms. If you do not, we are both done for. Hurry!”
Resisting the force squeezing her heart, Arienne whispered, “What will you do if I release you?”
“What did you say?” said Lysandros. Arienne waited for Eldred’s reply.
An invisible force slammed against her front. Arienne was knocked off her feet and sent flying along the corridor. Eldred said something, but she couldn’t hear.
Lysandros said, “Where have you hidden Eldred? Give him to me. Then this will all be forgotten, and I will allow you to return to the Academy.”
Lysandros’s voice did not go high or low; it was all a single tone.
Eldred shouted, “The bandages, now!”
Her head pounded, and not because she was hit, but because Eldred was excited. She stretched an imaginary hand into the room and undid the bandages securing his arms with one pull. His emaciated torso and arms became exposed. As Eldred unstuck his arms from his sides, there was a stiff sound of tearing flesh so gruesome that Arienne winced.
Eldred’s bony hands waved in the air. Red runes separated from the bandages and formed a line in the air. They transformed into different runes, ones Arienne had never seen before. But somehow, she knew how to read them. Their sounds and meanings were clear.
“I cannot teach it to you in words. This is the only way to transfer my memory to yours.”
“So that’s what you’re… You’re making me do this, too?”
She stood up. Lysandros, finally understanding, gave a gasp.
“You’ve hidden Eldred in your mind. To witness this trick again after all these years! Do you know who this monster truly is? Did you learn his magic knowing that?”
“He’s Eldred, the Grim King of Mersia. And I had the pleasure of reading your book, Sorcerer of Mersia. ”
She needed time to prepare the spell she had just learned. Just a little more time…
“If you only read the book, then you’ve merely learned half the story. You don’t know what happened decades later, because of him.”
“Then tell me the other half.”
Even as she spoke, she focused on the room inside her mind, which was still crumbling under the mental pressure Lysandros was applying to her. Then imagined it being completely crushed—no, not crushed, but crumpled—into the size of a fist. She stepped backward as Lysandros advanced.
“Have you never thought of why such a monstrosity would be kept hidden away in a mere school, where no one would think to look? Why a Class One Power generator should be locked away in such a place?”
Eldred shouted, “Why are you dawdling? Hurry! Do it now!”
“After I executed Eldred and made him into a generator, we connected him to the Circuit of Destiny. Do you know what that is?”
Arienne nodded.
“The real problem occurred long after that. It was more than one hundred years ago now, but I remember it like it was yesterday.”
She was desperate to hear more, but Lysandros was only steps away from her. She could delay no longer.
Arienne concentrated on the room that was collapsing in her mind. The rafters were bending, the floor was splitting, lime fell from the walls. She imagined herself in the room and she was there. She heard the creaking, smelled the dust, touched the splintering wood and lime powder.
She imposed those senses of collapse on the derelict inn around her, and imagined the inn collapsing under that pressure. Arienne spoke the incantation Eldred taught her, leaping backward with all her might.
A rafter fell directly toward Lysandros’s head. He grabbed it with both hands. Arienne realized with a start that his arms were made of metal. With this motion, his cloak slipped from his shoulders, and Arienne could see the gears turning and pistons firing within his body. Everything except the top half of his head and the right side of his face was machine. He carried a wooden box on his back, which looked out of place next to his metallic form.
The humming of his machinery suddenly rose to a keen; the weight of the rafter was too much. Then, the roof collapsed on top of him. Lysandros tried to get out of the way, but the floor came up from under him as the roof came down.
In the scattering dust, the pressure on Arienne’s heart disappeared. The inn lay half in ruins before her.
Eldred said, “We do not have time to wait until the sun rises. You must cross the pass now.”
“But Lysandros is dead, isn’t he?”
“Did you not see his body of metal? This will not be enough to destroy him. We must keep him at as much distance as possible.”
More lights were coming on at the open inn. The sound must’ve woken the guests there. The edge of the eastern sky was tinting red, the sun just under the far away hills. Arienne quickly grabbed her things and set off toward the pass.