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 faceweremetal. 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 maintainingits 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.
