Arienne bowed and left the room. She noted that Yuma had nothing to say about the state of Arienne’s appearance. Maybe that was Mersian manners.
She finally felt like she understood why the whispering smoke, the Star of Mersia, had lingered under Eldred’s castle. It was because Yuma’s ghost was there, alongside her remains. Like attractslike, and her pain was the same as that of the Star. It was commiserating with her.
There were more questions to be asked, and there was more to be learned, but Yuma would be here waiting in Arienne’s mind, as Noam had been. She had time, as did they, and she decided that they were real, at least while they were here. Perhaps everything was, as long as she kept it real in her mind.
Back in Eldred’s castle, she looked up the stairs. Was that a hint of light? She was nearing the end of it. Her legs shook and her throat was parched. She quickened her pace.
She finally reached the top of the steps. Stumbling into the hall, she looked back one last time. This empty castle had not melted away or fallen down, and as it had been the past one hundred years, it was unlikely someone would visit in the future. Patting the Grim King’s crown secured to her belt, Arienne stepped outside.
Aron was by the melted gates. She ran to the donkey and hugged his neck, the donkey braying in surprise. She stood like that for a long time before untying Aron’s reins from the iron ring. She pressed Yuma’s hat down on her head and dusted herself off. The road back home to Arland was long—and there was one more thing she needed to do before getting there.
39
YUMA
The Grim King’s soldiers guarded his castle day and night. Its thick walls were impervious to the cannons of the Fifth Legion, repairing themselves at the slightest hint of cracking. When Yuma arrived, the gates had opened as if recognizing her by sight, but even those gates had vanished into the wall once she passed through.
In the six months she had been in this obsidian castle, the Grim King had never once spoken of her rebellion, nor did he even question her motives in coming here. Yuma had a feeling that he already knew. When she had first arrived, she had simply been led by a skeletal servant to a large room devoid of decoration. There was a modest yet comfortable bed, a chair, and a beautifully carved obsidian crib with Tychon’s name inlaid in Mersehi. All of the furniture seemed to sprout directly from the room’s floor.
The Grim King, always in the same robe woven of fire andshadow, did not seem to sleep, eat, or drink. In Danras, rumors had abounded that his castle was filled with bloodless, beautiful corpse concubines, but she saw none of that. Perhaps it would’ve been less chilling if she had. What had brought the Grim King here, all those years ago? Why did he stay? He had no family here, nor did he bring his people from wherever was his homeland. He had perhaps the greatest stronghold in the world, but there were no riches inside, no hedonistic pleasures. Just corpses, rocks, and himself. And now Yuma.
Yuma occasionally touched the nullstones he had given her. When she had asked him one day if they could defeat the Imperial legion, he had scoffed.
“To think such a thing would be possible!”
“Even if I used both of them?”
“You could stop a few chariots. But two, or even ten, stones wouldn’t be enough against an entire legion. And there are not ten such stones in all the world.”
Cannons had then fired again, sending dull echoes through her chambers. Although each shot seemed futile, they would inevitably amount to the doom of Eldred.
She spent the rest of the winter in her room, sometimes wandering around the castle until she was gently brought back to her room by a servant. Then, when the earth thawed, she was allowed to wander the vast space outside surrounded by the castle’s walls. She rode Aston sometimes, longing for the steppe that she knew she would never see.
The Grim King visited her as often as once every five days. First he would throw sarcastic censures at her, how she had broughtthe bane of nations to Merseh. She would snap back with accounts of his tyranny. But even that didn’t last long, and the Grim King would ask after her health and pregnancy, staying in Yuma’s room just long enough for her to finish the strange herbal concoction that he brought every time he visited. She was under no illusion of the Grim King being anything other than a tyrant, but she learned not to fear him anymore. In this castle, at this moment, they were just two people waiting for the end. Yuma was surprised at how well she was taking it. Perhaps it was because of Tychon inside her that she never felt alone here.
Toward the end of summer, Yuma gave birth to Tychon as she listened to the sounds of battle happening beyond the wall. The skeletal midwives received him in their emaciated hands and passed him to her to hold. Days later, when her milk turned white, the Grim King came to her, the fire in his robes merely embers in black, like the starry night sky. Yuma sat up to greet him, and Eldred stared into the obsidian crib where the baby slept.
His expression was unreadable. But he had silenced his steps and was visibly careful with his hands, even though they were not even close to Tychon. This sight softened her and made her ask him how he had come to settle in Merseh all those years ago. He became irritated.
“Why are you yourself here?” he snapped. Finally, he had asked the question that had been on Yuma’s mind for months. “When you are not even here to join my side.”
Yuma stroked the baby’s hair with her fingertips and said, “There is no place for me in Danras.”
“That is true. But do you think there is a place for you here?”
Yuma shook her head and looked into Tychon’s sleeping face.
“Are you here because of your old Host’s prophecy?” he sneered. “That my apprentice shall become the King of Merseh?”
“This child…” She took a deep breath. “You said come autumn, not even this place would survive. Mersia will fall into the Empire’s hands then. But if Tychon became the Grim King’s apprentice, maybe Danras could become free of them again someday.”
“How utterly convenient for you. I will fall by the hand of the Empire regardless, and your son will take over Merseh. Is that your calculation?” A bitter laugh.
Yuma smiled. “How could there be calculation when it’s prophecy?”
“Or are you afraid your child will become that ‘Power generator’ they speak of? Or, how you will no longer be Chief Herder?”
Was it such hubris that brought her here? This was a question she had asked herself several times over the past six months. She had always had a suspicion this might be so. But that suspicion was her burden to bear, and she would not have to bear it for long. The Grim King reached out toward Tychon and paused, his head turning to Yuma. She stared at his hovering hand, thinking of what Aidan had said in the past. Of why Eldred had not accepted Aidan as an apprentice, and why he hadn’t been killed… She nodded, giving permission.
