“You may not read it. Burn it. Now.”
“Why? It was in my mind, it’s mine.” She was enjoying his agitation.
“That book contains my private life. It is not for your eyes or for anyone else’s.”
Arienne blithely turned the first page. “Your private life? There’s a publication date here. And the name of an author.”
It had been published 170 years ago. No wonder the book looked so worn. The author’s name, Lysandros, was followed by his title: Inquisitor of the Imperial Office of Truth.
“That Lysandros man wrote this book?”
But if this was the same man whose lackeys had been following her up to the inn, he had to be about two hundred years old. The name wasn’t uncommon, so this must have been a different person. Right?
When there was no answer from Eldred, she quickly glanced into the room in her mind; the sorcerer was sitting on the edge of the bed with his head down again. Arienne turned to the first chapter.
And the printed letters began squirming on the page. Startled, she threw down the book. The spider-like letters continued to scatter across the ivory expanse of the opened pages, becoming illegible. Arienne realized that Eldred wasn’t merely bowing his head, he was reciting something.
“Stop that!” she shouted. Eldred stopped reciting. The letters returned to their proper positions.
“Since when were you able to do this?”
“Who knows.”Eldred’s withered lips stretched sideways, revealing the gaps in his smile. Even with no real answer, Arienne knew. It was the bandages. Unraveling the bandages around his head had loosened his power.
Arienne thought back to the skeleton below the Academy building. She had only a vague imagining as to how Eldred had thrown them down the stairs. How he must’ve blinded them, made them stumble, or pushed them—So this is how he did it.She felt her bile rise.
But that poor student never managed to bring Eldred’s body into their mind. He must’ve killed the student even while inside the lead coffin. Arienne had never learned of what might happen when a Power generator was inside a person’s mind. There probably wasn’t anyone who could teach her that, anyway. What if she had committed an irreversible mistake? The prospect frightened her.
Regret was useless, though. Living at the Academy only for the purpose of dying had still felt more terrifying than this new path she was on, even if she had not a single inkling of what might lie ahead. And no matter what did come from all this, she would always feel this way.
Seemingly oblivious to Arienne’s feelings, Eldred spoke.
“Must you do this, even when it is clear I protest against what you’re doing?”
“I’m doing itbecauseyou protest so much! Why shouldn’t I read the book?”
It didn’t matter if she was being unreasonable. No matter how trivial, if she wasn’t allowed to do something because Eldred saidso, it was no better than being pushed down the stairs and breaking her neck.
Eldred, after a silence, spoke.
“Read it, then, if you must. It’s not any kind of pleasurable story.”
Arienne was taken aback. She had not expected him to relent. As she hesitated, Eldred continued.“But you must keep this in mind while reading that tripe. You are a sorcerer, just as I am. You are of my world, not theirs. You must never forget that. Before the Empire conquered the world, it was a wondrous time when magic was grand. And we ruled supreme under many strange names, alongside gods and monsters. You hold in your hands a version of history, the one written by a spear tip of the Empire as it spread over the world like a flash flood in the grasslands… destroying true power and wonder wherever it encountered them, whittling down the world into a paltry thing their ambitions could grasp and therefore control. Do not forget that it is to the Empire that you have lost your birthright.”Eldred’s voice was softer than ever, almost nostalgic.“But I recommend that you at least peruse it later and not now.”
“Why?”
“The inquisitors at the inn are near the tower. I can smell Lysandros’s stench from here.”
“How did they…?”
“Following your tracks, no doubt. He wouldn’t send utter incompetents all the way here.”
As careful as she was, Arienne was no expert in erasing her tracks in a forest. The only things she knew to do were what she’d read in adventure books. She might have fooled the custodian Duff, but the inquisitors of the Office of Truth were a different matter altogether.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“What would you have done earlier? I, too, assumed they would search the highway first. That if we managed to stay hidden here for a day, the snow would erase our tracks overnight…”Eldred sighed.“What will you do now? If I’d known this would happen, I would have pressed you harder to learn my sorcery.”
“Shut up,” Arienne snapped, looking around the room. “I’ll have to make do.”
