Chapter Fifty Six
EINAR
Einar stood in the middle of a Hall—who knew which one?
—and tried to control his overwhelming awe.
Oh. He knew its name, actually, by some weird, unexplained trick of the arcane.
The Hall of the Recently Departed. As he knew the name of every single soul in every reliquary that stacked within sight.
Birgitta Svenson.
Lars Adell.
Freja Hildrsdottir.
He knew everything except why and where did they go and what did it mean and what is my responsibility? Questions stacked into a relentless heap—he could not shuck them aside. They had nowhere to go but here. He’d answer all those queries later, though.
He sought Agnes.
The massive area cleared as he strolled within. No smoke hid the reliquaries, as before. He viewed every single fractal. The curving whorls of wood grains, flowing to the left and right. The echoing in each reliquary containing a soul within. Or not. A few reliquaries appeared empty.
He didn’t breathe.
At all.
The clink of a bottle touching another made him whip around. He smelled . . . something. A scuff of foot, a quiet sigh, had him eyeing every crevice. When nothing emerged, he dismissed it.
Up until this point, the amount of arcane within him made it difficult to act with full intention.
He accidentally made things happen. While thinking about returning to the Rosenvatten, he appeared there.
When considering if he needed a drink, water arrived into his palm.
As the Arcanist of Souls, motivation and desire worked together to make the arcane respond.
Which made it difficult to think of something and not make it happen.
Except for one desire.
Agnes.
All yearning went into the query he hadn’t dared to ask until this moment in the ethereal and unending silence. He sensed something different about this Hall. The Hall no one else had mentioned, but in which important things seemed to happen.
A scent caught him by surprise, and so did moving air. As a human, he never would have noticed it. As the Arcanist of Souls, he must notice.
Einar spun. His reflexes and response time were less than half of what they used to be. He discovered a pair of cool green eyes peering at him. Set in a face like stone, with curly hair spiraling in tight coils to either side. She strode closer.
“Stop,” he commanded.
She stalled on the other side of the Hall. She wasn’t Agnes. She had dark hair and intense features. This woman was the opposite of Agnes in every way. Sharp. Calculating. There was a ruthless slant to her eyes he couldn’t help but notice.
His voice was a rasp.
“Who are you?”
His words rippled off the reliquaries. Her arched eyebrow elevated, erasing hints of youth or innocence. She couldn’t be much younger than thirty, certainly older than a young girl. Hints of wisdom reflected in her sassy stare.
His questions mounted.
Her voice resembled a rolling purr. “I know you better than you know me, Einar.”
“Is that so?”
“The lost souls speak of you.”
“Oh?”
“They use words like arrogant and swine.” She lifted both hands with an expression of airy innocence. “Their words, not mine.”
A light scent of sulfur crossed the room, so faint he might have imagined it. Was that . . . deceit? Yes. It was deceit. Souls didn’t speak to her. A knowing confirmed it for him. Almost instinct, but something more. The arcane. It was how the arcane communicated.
Why would she lie?
“Where did you come from?” he asked.
“That is certainly not your business.”
“As—”
“Don’t pull the Arcanist card,” she snapped. “You might have sworn your soul to the arcane, but that doesn’t make you tolerable or in charge. You’re all wretches.”
She spoke so matter-of-factly he could hardly fault her. There was so little malice, and so much more sublime logic, that he didn’t doubt she believed every word. Echoes of Onskar rang at each bitter hiss.
“You’re Clara.”
Scrutinizing him, she nodded once.
“I’m sorry about Onskar, Clara. I heard you were close.”
She laughed. “Then you were deceived. He’s not my father.”
“I never suggested it.”
“But you would have in a moment.” Her reply rang with truth, though an iron-clad wall slid across her eyes. “He wasn’t my father, nor any sort of father-figure in any sense. Not really. He . . . took me in, yes, but we were not close.”
She flicked the words off her tongue like a hiss, a curse. A diabolical turbulence lurked behind her forceful words. Insecurity, was it? When he subtly inhaled through his nose, the movement minute, he smelled no deception.
In fact, he smelled nothing.
Curiouser.
He’d never met anyone quite like her, and his initial edge of wariness gave him pause. She was no arcane being, but she was also no one to underestimate. Clara was another obstacle altogether. A scorned woman. No friend of Onskar, based on the low hints of loathing and fear he sensed.
Shite, what didn’t he sense these days?
Clara gifted him with a feral smile. “Welcome to the Hall of the Recently Departed, Einar. Join me on a tour, will you? I am Clara, your guide to the Underworld.”