There wasn’t a suitable weapon in sight, aside from a rusty poker in the fireplace. It had a tine on its side. Would it be enough to defend her against the blow of a sword? Arienne almost laughed at the thought. These were inquisitors she was dealing with. Infamous throughout the Empire for hunting down sorcerers.
Outside the window, she could see the man and woman from the inn walking toward the tower. What did Lysandros smell like, that Eldred would have detected it? The man and woman now had weapons other than the knives on their belts—the man carried a bow on his back, and the woman held an axe.
Without hesitation, they disappeared into the entrance of the tower. There was hardly a likelier place someone would be hiding out in the vicinity, but it was also probably because Arienne’s tracks led right to the doorway. Their footsteps rang through the tower as they made their way up the stairs. They were in no rush. If they’d indeed tracked Arienne through the woods, then they also knew she was still in the tower and had no way out.
“What do I do?”
“Do not ask me.”
Eldred did not sound at ease either. Arienne looked inside her mind’s room again. There was no expression to be read in hisparched face. The only thing she could be sure of was that he was not smiling.
There had to be a place to hide in the room, but nothing looked like it would do. The footsteps were louder now, closer. One of the crumbled lower floors had something like an intact wardrobe in it, but going down the stairs now only meant getting caught sooner. Hanging from the window was an option, if she thought she had the strength in her fingers to do so for more than a minute, which she didn’t. Even if she managed to hide herself, she had left too many fresh traces in the room for them to not notice she was immediately about.
She imagined being bound in lead manacles and chains. She imagined being dragged up the center path of her school, countless people lined on either side, jeering at her. Rotten vegetables and eggs flying at her, hitting her head. The stench. The green yolk of an egg gone bad flowing down the side of her face. Duff was in the crowds, her boyfriend Felix, the prodigy Magnus, Kaya who had taught her what few spells she knew. And Eldred.
Maybe dying would be better, to say goodbye to the Academy, to the Office of Truth, to this Powered parasite in her mind. Never to see Cain or Lucretia again. Arienne looked out the window and down. Jumping from here would mean instant death. The skeleton in the underground staircase at the school—the hapless student killed by Eldred. Whom no one had found, whose eye sockets were now home to mice…
Arienne imagined this student, whom she had never met, being fooled by Eldred into going down the spiral staircase. A boy, ordinary height, slightly heavy, wearing spectacles with buffalo-horn rims and the school robes. He comes all the way to the doorof the Power generator chamber, where no one has ventured for many years, before getting scared and turning away. And almost at the top of the staircase, merely a few steps from the door that would lead outside, he sees something so horrifying that he screams. He falls backward, down, down,this can’t be happeningwrit on his face, frantically reaching for handrails that are not there…
Arienne turned to the stairs. She imagined it happening, firmly engraving the details in her mind, just as she had when she created her inner room. She thought of it again and again. The boy she had never seen fell to his death, over and over.
The man from the inn had finally reached the top of the stairs. The bow he’d been carrying on his back was now in his hands, the arrow already on the string. A smile on his face, like a hunter who had just spotted a deer in the woods.
The boy in her mind vanished, replaced by the man with the bow. The killing incantation Eldred had taught her at Lucretia’s house came to her lips.
The man looked as if he’d seen a ghost. He started walking backward, then stumbled and fell backward toward his doom, the same expression as the boy in her imaginings on his face.
“Nerius!” screamed the woman.
Arienne turned to the woman, whose face was filled with rage as she ran up the stairs with her axe raised. The falling man in her imaginings turned into the woman before her.
Arienne recited the incantation.
22LORAN
Snow fell on the westward road. Loran had only a cape covering her leather armor and Wurmath hitched to her side as she walked for days. She did not rush, nor did she tarry. Whenever she stopped to eat or rest her legs, though, she would ask herself if she truly needed the break or if she was giving in to fear and deliberately prolonging her journey.
As she left Dehan Forest to enter Arland, the scenery became more familiar. The horizon was faint through the falling snow. East, west, and south, there was not a single hill or mountain in sight, just scattered copses and groves on the plains. North, there was always the huge volcano, a faint plume of smoke whispering from its mouth. And here and there, in every direction, hamlets and villages, peaceful farming communities.
The highway laid down by the Empire followed the Finvera Pass to enter Lontaria from the south, first passing through Kamori, andveered west from the gates of Kamori’s capital, Karadis, toward Arland. It ran through her homeland and along the black cliffs overlooking the Great West Sea toward the north before twisting again midway through Ledon and going toward the shores.
This road also led to the fortress where the Twenty-Fifth Legion’s Arland detachment was stationed.
Bringing her waterskin from her belt to her lips, Loran took half a mouthful of the cold water inside. Beside the road was a stream fringed with ice. Kneeling, she knocked the ice loose with her gloved fist until the babbling of the water came through, then dipped the canteen into the freezing water. Tiny fish darted away from her hand.
She sat and stared into the flowing water, listening for the footsteps of the people who had been following her for the past hour or so.
“What do you want?” she shouted over her shoulder.
The footsteps paused. She turned her head to find a cluster of people, perhaps ten. They stopped, maintaining the distance between them and her. While they were mostly dressed in the typical winter garb of farmers, one woman, perhaps over fifty years of age, stood out. Her clothes were of high quality, but they were torn and stained in places. Her hands were tied in front of her, and the clothes she wore weren’t suitable for winter. She was shivering. Loran saw not’laranadorning the woman’s bare neck, signifying her to be an outlander, probably an Imperial.
Were the rest bandits? Loran stood, brushing off the snow and dirt, and walked up to the crowd.
“What is it that you want?” she asked again.
The group exchanged glances before a man near the front replied.
“Are you… You don’t happen to be… Are you the princess?”
