“Unchain the coffin and open it first. We only need to take what’s inside.”
“What? How am I supposed to withstand the Power without the containment box? This isn’t what you told me before.”
“There’s nothing to be done. Lead as an insulator of Power works both ways. Spells do not pass through it. Surely you knew that much before my having to tell you?”
She had come so far. She couldn’t turn back now for the fear of some leakage from the generator. Gripping the chains, she managed to drag them off the coffin despite each link being the size of her fist. The sound of iron scraping lead rang throughout the chamber.
The humming from the coffin intensified as the chains were removed. Arienne pushed aside the heavy lid. Violet wisps of smokerose from the interior, and she quickly covered her nose and mouth. Inside was something like a cocoon, a human shape wrapped in bandages, with red runes that she couldn’t read scrawled across them. There was no smell of decay or of embalming oils, just a scent much like burning paper.
Arienne straightened, closed her eyes, and summoned the image of her family home in her mind. A small thatched-roof farmhouse, the kind you’d see anywhere in Arland. Arienne had a room of sorts in the loft right under the roof. A mattress stuffed with fresh straw, a small chest of drawers her mother made from leftover carpentry scraps, and a box for her knitting things. No desk, but there was a little shelf with all ten books she’d owned, written in Imperial. Arienne concentrated on every detail, not letting a single thing slip her attention. Not the touch of the rusty candlestick on the windowsill, the flame flickering on the shrinking candle, the patchwork of rags on the doll her father had made for her, the surprisingly good carpet on the floor, nor the decree of entry for the Imperial Academy that lay folded in half on the mattress.
In her mind, Arienne picked up the decree. This nonexistent folded piece of paper in her imagined loft in her imagined house hovered above the mattress. But the imagined decree, which should’ve been filled with the Imperial letters, was completely black, a black so dark it began to look like a violet swirl, a hole that looked into the depths of another world. The paper unfolded once. Then twice. Then three times. It became not a square piece of paper but an elliptical hole. Arienne sent the body in the coffin, the Power generator Eldred, into the room in her mind through that very hole and laid it down on the mattress.
She opened her eyes. Her head hurt. The coffin was empty.The body of the dead sorcerer now lay in the room of her mind. A dizziness overcame her—and a very obvious fact occurred to her like a blow to the head.
“You have done well. Now leave this place. You must escape from this school as swiftly as possible. And—”
“Youare Eldred! You’re the body that’s inside my mind right now!” Arienne shouted. There was a sharp pressure in her head, as if it would burst any second.
“Indeed,”said the voice, or Eldred.
“You’re dead. You’re a Power generator! How is a dead person speaking to me?”
“Let’s say I’m a ghost, for now.”
Tears rose in her eyes, whether from the pain of the headache or some other unknown reason she couldn’t say. “Why did you make me do this?”
“Because for the past five years, no one has heard me except you.”
Arienne understood. The person who lay at the bottom of the spiral staircase had heard Eldred five years ago—had heard him, had come down to the basement, and had been pushed by Eldred after refusing to help him. No doubt Eldred had allowed them to think they were leaving the basement, getting high enough on the staircase that a fall would break their neck. Eldred must have realized that if that student had been allowed to go back, his secret would be discovered. And a Power generator that had a will of its own and could whisper secrets into someone’s mind—an abomination like that would never be left unguarded again by the Imperial Academy, the Office of Truth, or anyone of any consequence in the whole of the Empire. Why was such a thing down here, and who put it there?
Inside the room of her mind, the tightly wrapped cocoon shaped like a human sat up on the edge of the mattress. His face was covered and he could not move freely, but his very manner of sitting exuded utter exhaustion. The hole in the air, through which Arienne had helped him enter the room, now neatly folded in on itself until it became a piece of paper again and fell to the floor. The words “Decree of Entry” in red letters could just about be discerned.
“First, you must leave here. The longer you hesitate, the more certain your capture will be. Now that I’ve been removed from my chains, things will be set in motion. It’s only a matter of time until someone discovers what we have done here. Be reminded that, with me in tow, the Office of Truth inquisitors will be coming for you like they have done for no other runaway sorcerer. That is the price you pay for your chance at freedom.”
Arienne wanted to feel regret. That maybe the life of a pensioner, modest as it might be, was a comfortable way to live out a life. Or that she could study harder and become a sorcerer-engineer or professor, or join a legion and travel the world. She liked Felix, Kaya, and the other friends she had made at the school, even Magnus. Perhaps she would raise a family with another sorcerer, or someone she had yet to meet. There was a life for a sorcerer, even in the Empire, one that she could be happy with. But at the end of every such life, no matter how comfortable, was the fate she saw starkly before her: being turned into a Power generator. As long as she was within the confines of the Empire, this fate would be inescapable. And here, inside the room in her mind, was proof of how horrifying an end that would be.
Bile rose in her. It couldn’t be stopped—she vomited.
“Hurry. Hurry!”
She didn’t want to die. More than that, she didn’t want to become what Eldred had become. Now that the identity of the voice was revealed, her determination had only gotten stronger. She stared at what had come up from inside her as she gripped her stomach, and once her fear and disgust melted away, she straightened. Even her headache subsided to a tolerable level.
She retraced her steps, through the white corridor to the iron door, pausing only briefly beside the skeleton at the foot of the stairs.
An escape route out of the school was already in place, and it was unlikely anyone would look for her before the sun rose tomorrow. Even longer before anyone would make the connection between the missing Power generator and her disappearance. In the slums of the western side of the city, there was an estranged uncle who had a tavern. She’d met him only once, when she first came to the Capital, but maybe he would help her if she asked.
The life before her was that of a fugitive from the law—and for the first time in six years, Arienne felt alive.
6LORAN
In a wide clearing near the center of Dehan Forest, Loran sat on a tree stump. She ripped an Imperial banner into strips and tied one around her head, a fresh eyepatch for her empty left socket. The cool autumn air still smelled vaguely of sulfur, and black smoke rose from the smoldering logs of the guardhouse that had been set ablaze in blue flame.
In the seven days since she’d left the dragon’s lair, Loran had used the sword to devastate three legion outposts, each of them manned by a dozen legionaries. The burning rubble before her was all that remained of the third one. It had not been an ordinary fire that consumed her enemy but the breath of the dragon. Loran had named her sword Wurmath, which in Arlandais meant “the dragon’s promise.”
For Wurmath was a sword that could summon dragonfire. Her worries about possessing only the skills of a mere local swordmaster, a teacher and not a regular practitioner of the blade, seemed absurdnow, when the dragon’s fire would refuse to go out until there was nothing left to burn. The soldiers would roll around or douse themselves with water trying to extinguish the flames, but this had no effect on the blue tongues that lapped at their skin. Regardless of their efforts, an agonizing death was always the outcome.
These deaths brought Loran not satisfaction or emptiness but another, strange feeling—a kind of anxiety, stemming from realization that nothing would change no matter how many of these outposts she burned. All she was doing was giving the Empire a reason to send more forces—stronger forces—to oppress Arland further.
