29. Arienne
29
ARIENNE
In the square at the peak of Finvera Pass, Arienne slowly turned around to face Lysandros. He had not put his cloak back on, the busy gears and pistons of his body apparent to all. He must’ve come up the pass at great speed but did not seem tired in the slightest. Would a machine body even understand fatigue?
Lysandros, in his single-tone voice, said, “Do you now understand that you cannot run from me?”
Arienne gulped.
“Follow me and I will allow you to return to the Academy. It will be like nothing happened.”
Lysandros looked and sounded different—more monstrous, more horrifying, now that Arienne knew that the box that he carried on his back was his infant son’s coffin. She wasn’t sure if the tiny baby’s cry underneath the humming of the Power generator was real or imagined. His strides were huge as he approached her.
The pressure on the room in her mind was greater than what she’d felt in the old inn. What would happen to Eldred if the room collapsed? She had not an inkling as to the answer.
“Did not I tell you that you would lose this way?” said Eldred. “Unravel the bandages of my legs. Then, I shall use all my power.”
That must never be allowed. She had not forgotten what had happened when she had first tried to read The Sorcerer of Mersia. What Eldred had manipulated wasn’t the ink on the page but her very vision. That was before his arms were free. She had no way of knowing what he was capable of doing to her now. Better to not find out what freeing him completely would do.
“Why do you not answer?” said Lysandros, pausing in his steps. “Is the corpse speaking to you?” His gaze lifted from her face and he seemed to look at someone behind her. “You fool a mere student into doing your bidding and yet lack the shame that would keep you silent. You have made a murderer of this child. All you do is bring misery to those around you.”
Suddenly, her lips trembled. Her tongue moved on its own. A terror much like when a hand enters the mouth to rip out a rotted tooth came over her. Arienne tried to cover her mouth, but her arms only came up to her chest. From Arienne’s mouth, in Arienne’s voice, came Eldred’s words.
“Have you forgotten the misery you caused Mersia?”
“Misery I caused?” Lysandros did not seem surprised Eldred was talking through Arienne.
“Did you not play Mersia’s subjects against their king? Was it some other Lysandros who lied to all of Mersia that if I were gone, freedom and prosperity would come, that they would be free of fear?”
“Lies? You were the one called a tyrant by all. You turned the dead bodies of your own subjects into unliving soldiers. You took what you wanted and destroyed what you did not. Do you know how grateful Mersia was to the Empire after your death?”
“This Mersia, does it still feel gratitude toward your Empire? Does a pile of ash send letters of thanks to you every year?”
“You monster—”
“ You call me a monster! You must be two centuries old by now. Creating a Power generator out of your own child and living beyond your natural time—if this does not make you a monster then what will? What are you all but monsters for turning Mersia into fields of dust and ash? Your Empire’s lot is to diminish and consume the world, until nothing of worth is left. Has the Star of Mersia not revealed that about your vaunted destiny of conquest? I failed to stop you once, but you will not rob me of my second chance.”
Arienne was not concerned with the argument at hand. She burst into the room inside her mind, where Eldred sat as usual on the edge of the bed.
“Give me back my body this instant!”
“Silence. Children should not interfere in the talk of adults. Loosen the bandages of my legs. Or I shall kill you.”
Eldred and Lysandros were still sparring with words, but none of it reached Arienne’s ears. Fifty-three soldiers were dying of suffocation in the meantime, but even that was not important to her in this moment. She was most afraid of losing control of her body forever.
“Give back my body! Now! ”
She threw a punch in Eldred’s face. It felt like desiccated bark against her knuckles. Dry leathery particles dropped off his cheek. Outside, Arienne’s mouth stopped talking in midsentence. Inside the room, Eldred stood from the bed, pushing himself up with his arms.
“You little—!”
Lysandros took a stride forward. As he came within an arm’s reach, Arienne tried to back away, but Eldred still controlled her body. Something whirred in Lysandros’s machine arms, and his toneless voice spoke over the noise.
“Why, Grim King, do you have nothing more to say?”
In the mind’s room, Eldred gripped Arienne’s shoulders as he hissed, “Do not regard me as a mere cadaver, I am Eldred. I am the Grim King! Not one the likes of you can place their hands on!”
“Decrepit corpse !”
She pushed him with all her might, but Eldred’s bone-thin hands only gripped her shoulders tighter.
Lysandros’s voice came through from the outside.
“I am sorry for you, student girl, but we are now out of time. I sentence you to death for running away and stealing a Power generator. This is a risk you were aware of when you left the school. We shall lose Eldred as well, but perhaps we have gone past the point where he could be reclaimed.”
With lightning speed, he extended his machine hand and grabbed Arienne’s throat.
In her mind’s room, Eldred’s hands were now gripping Arienne’s throat as well.
“I may not have my legs, but once you’re gone… You useless waste of a failed sorcerer, you don’t deserve to crawl this earth. I will take your body. I will kill your mind first and then that inquisitor.” His hands squeezed harder. “You shall become the vessel of the great king’s rebirth.”
The view outside the window vanished, replaced with Lysandros’s face. His expression was impossible to read, as half of it was metal. There was something of an expression on the withered visage of Eldred, but she didn’t know what it meant either. Whether her neck broke in life or in this room, she was going to die. Her mind was a rush of what would be her final thoughts.
She remembered her parents back home. There was not a shred of longing in this memory. Ever since entering the Academy, she had not written a single letter to them, nor received one from them. The room in her mind was probably gone in the real world. Perhaps they had had a new child since and were raising them in it.
She thought of her friends in the Academy, especially Magnus, who had offered to tutor her, and her boyfriend Felix, and the professors. The custodian Duff. Their lives must be upside down by now. She felt nothing about this. She had fled the school without a single look back.
Cain. Who hid her only because she was from his homeland, who risked danger and used his own money to help her escape. But Arienne knew she would never see him again.
Arienne realized she was completely alone in the world. No one cared if she lived or died. She had left everything behind, severed all her ties. Except with Eldred and Lysandros. Who ironically were both trying to kill her.
The breath was leaving her body. In the room and in Finvera Square, her tears were welling. How silly her school robe should come to mind in this moment. The sorcery she used then… the thread that didn’t exist, how she cut it to unravel herself from Duff’s grip and escape… Eldred hadn’t taught her that.
That’s it. What she had done all along, what she was best at. Arienne imagined the Princess of Arland whom Cain had told her about. She is on the back of the dragon of the mountain, wearing a shining suit of armor. She has the graceful dragon markings surrounding her neck, signifying her royal heritage. She holds a flaming sword in her hand. The princess in her imagination solemnly hands Arienne the sword. Its hilt feels hot in her grip.
A word slipped past her lips. The word she had forgotten since that day in the market with her robe. Her mouth filled with strength—and she swung the flaming sword through the four arms that strangled her.
In the room of her mind, Eldred’s arms—and outside on the Finvera Pass, Lysandros’s arms—fell to the ground. Breath rushed back into her body.
Eldred screamed, a sound almost as injurious as the suffering it protested against. He fell onto the bed as violet smoke flowed from the stumps of his forearms. Arienne, sword in hand, left the room.
Lysandros was looking down at his sliced-off arms, seemingly unable to comprehend what had just occurred. Arienne gave him no pause as she concentrated on the cord of Power that secured the generator to his back, a cord made from thousands of knots. There was no such cord, of course, and even if there were, it would not be visible. But the imaginary sword easily slashed the imaginary cord.
The machine sounds ceased as the gears and pistons in his body stopped. He stood motionless. The human half of his face showed panic. He moved his lips, but no words came out. It was not only his limbs but his lungs that relied on Power.
With all her might, Arienne kicked Lysandros in his stomach. The metal body fell backward. The wooden coffin on his back smashed open, and a small sarcophagus of lead rolled out.