Then again, only the baby Tychon and the donkey Aron were inside Arienne’s own mind currently. A dream without its dreamer, in other words.
“What’s that?”
Noam was pointing to the side of the bedding. A pair of worn leather boots were seen. They were well-oiled and shining, with spurs.
“They’re shoes, obviously.”
“Yes, but I mean whose are they? They aren’t his size.” Noam pointed at the young Lysandros’s feet, which were encased in metal frame.
A faint outline of another person suddenly began to appear. She was sitting on the edge of the bedding as well, her feet bare. It was a woman with a long braid coming down her back. Her shirt was slightly open at the front, her shoulders wide. Her face was a blur, but she and Lysandros were gazing at each other on the bed.
“Who is she?” Arienne asked, turning her stare to Lysandros’s face for a clue.
Lysandros’s dazed look was changing, but his feelings were hard to read. There was still that soft whirring sound, and his left hand on his knee turned into a fist. He slammed it on the bed. The tent shook, as if a wind was blowing. He struck again. The tent shook. Rain started to fall, then a torrent. Noam grabbed the center pole of the tent and stared at Lysandros. The woman did not react.
“Noam, do you know who she is? Was Lysandros married?”
“I don’t know. When I met him, he wasn’t. But something’s about to happen. There’s something outside.”
“How do you know that?”
“I can smell it. The smell of the Grim King…”
And suddenly the pole he was grasping, and the whole tent along with it, flew away into the sky, leaving Noam stumbling ontothe ground. A waterfall of rain assaulted them. Arienne looked down at her hands and saw the rain was black. A puddle formed before her, and a black form materialized upward out of it, like a blaze of fire. Arienne knew immediately who it was. He was tall and not the dried-up corpse she knew him as. Instead, he wore a robe that seemed woven of shadows and fire, and a crown of gold and bone sat on his head. He had a dagger sheathed on one hip and a sword on the other.
Arienne’s lips went dry. This couldn’t be real. This was only a shadow, a memory. She had no idea why he was here, but she knew Eldred was dead, by her own hands. She had no reason to fear him. But the smell the Grim King had brought with him in this dark rain reminded her of that childhood memory, of the morning after her farewell party when the legionaries had discovered her hiding in her parents’ closet. She recalled the stern expressions of the soldiers, and her parents standing behind them. Perhaps the smell of the Grim King, known to Noam and all Mersians, was simply the smell of their own fear.
The Grim King stood silent. The bedding turned black in the rain. Lysandros stared at him but otherwise did not react. Arienne could see the half-formed woman flinching. She was trying to stand up, but to no avail. She seemed deteriorated, perhaps from being inside Fractica for so long, like an old memory. Arienne realized that Fractica was beginning to forget this woman. Sooner or later, Fractica would forget Lysandros as well.
But the Grim King was vivid. How did Fractica have a memory of him? She remembered a passage fromThe Sorcerer of Mersia:
In the rain, I rose on the palm of the gigatherion Apollyon, with Power generator Fractica, to the top of the castle, where the necromancer king Eldred stood. He was gaunt and tall, his robes shadow and flames, his crown bone and gold, just as the Mersian locals had told me. It was the first time in centuries that any outsider had laid eyes upon the Grim King.
Fractica had been with Lysandros when he fought Eldred.
“You keep fading, dog of the Empire.”
An all-too-familiar voice, inhuman. The Grim King did not even look at Arienne or Noam, the latter still sprawled on the ground, and spoke only to Lysandros.
“You are a mere trace, even if you have lasted over a hundred years in this small, nonexistent place. But it is time to surrender it to me. I shall use it for a better purpose.”
Arienne looked back and forth between Lysandros and Eldred. What was he asking him to surrender to him? But then, Lysandros’s empty expression caught something like the light of meaning. He stood up, declared his name, and spoke.
“I shall… restore Mersia… and return it to the embrace… of the Empire… and…” Lysandros turned his head to the woman on the bed.
“What you propose is impossible, as you are about to rot away forever. You do not realize what this machine is doing in Danras according to your wishes.”
So that was it. Eldred, or his shadow, wantedFractica. The many fragments before her coalesced into one with this realization.
Fractica was “restoring” Mersia, starting with Danras, according to Lysandros’s orders. Whether these orders came fromthe real Lysandros or the shadow of him, Arienne couldn’t be sure. But she now understood that Fractica was worse than insane—it was stuck, trying to carry out its futile purpose. It had been sentenced to roam the streets of Danras, trying to rebuild what couldn’t be rebuilt.
The Grim King slid toward Lysandros to stand right in front of him. The robe of shadows and fire swirled around him. His emaciated hands emerged from his sleeves and unsheathed his sword. A blade, shining with opalescence. Before anyone could stop him, he plunged it into Lysandros’s chest. Lysandros fell and scattered into dust.
Eldred intoned, “You used your honeyed words to foment rebellion in my subjects and felled my country. The punishment you deserve is death.”
The woman on the bed was still trying to stand, but she couldn’t. She tried to speak, but no words came.
“It is regrettable the real Eldred cannot kill the real Lysandros but… we can begin with some small revenges.”
