Arabel struggled to even out her breathing, to breathe shallowly without moving her ribs. So that’s what he’d been doing with a confine in his office. “Then someone else must have seen it, too. Because it wasn’t me.” Tears spilled out the corners of her eyes. “All this time, you’ve just been sitting around, telling me you believe me, that you trust me, and actually you still think I’m here working for… for… Cecil.” At least Naomi had had the decency to treat her like an enemy.
“I’m sorry, Arabel.”
“No, you’re not. Don’t try that on me. You’ve just been keeping me around to spy on me, thinking I’m working for my father. I didn’t ask to be here. I’m not working for him. I’ve even been trying to figure out what he’s planning. To help you.” Her words trailed off into bitterness.
“Yes, that’s true,” Oswald said. “But I’m doing it for an important reason.”
“Oh, well, that’s great.”
“I’m trying to find your mother, Arabel.”
“My mother is dead.”
“Serafina Fossey is not dead. I believe your father knows where she is. It took me ten years to hunt down this eidolon he created. And then, not long after I’ve got it, Cecil Fossey sends his daughter to me? That’s not a coincidence. Would you, in my position, have told you?”
“No. But you didn’t have to lie to me.”
“Your mother has information that I need. Things out there are dire, Arabel. The world cannot continue on the way it has been. A hundred years ago there would never have been an eidolon of that size. But now people push things away and they stay away. For generations. Growing in size and power. The wards and siphons of the sorcerers are not sustainable.
“Your mother was working on something, on a way to work with the eidolons that was different than anything that came before it. I have to find her so that the guardians have something to offer people besides struggle and pain. Something better than what the sorcerers have to offer.”
Arabel struggled with the reasonableness of this.
“I am sorry for lying to you,” he said.
“Why are you telling me all this now?”
“My lies did not get me the information I needed. You still may be working for your father, but if you are, you haven’t been told the full picture.”
Arabel looked at him in disgust. “So it’s just a tactic. You still don’t care that I’m telling you that I don’t like my—” she choked on the word. “Cecil.” She wasn’t going to call him her father. Maybe Ian wasn’t her father—if Oswald was even telling her the truth—but she wasn’t part of Cecil. She wouldn’t accept being related to him. She wasn’t going to be him. She was better than that.
“Leave me alone.”
Oswald nodded, his eyes sad, and left.
34
Ian’s face kept flashing across Arabel’s mind. Dead. Because of her. And not her father. Cecil was her father after all. As soon as she could get out of bed, she went to look for David. She needed to see someone who liked her. Someone good, who believed in the good in her, but Charlotte had left on her Rite, and Ferne had locked herself in her room, and she couldn’t quite face Avery, who would never have done something like this. She needed David to kiss her and make her forget everything.
She found him on the practice field, just where she knew she would. It was early morning, but he looked like he’d been practicing for hours already, hurling daggers into a target fifty feet away. He turned when he heard her coming. He seemed to have been expecting her.
“How are you feeling?” he asked after the final dagger was embedded in the center of the target. His chest rose and fell, and he didn’t come any closer. She closed the distance between them. She wanted to lay her head on his chest and have him wrap his arms around her and tell her it was all right. That she wasn’t horrible. That she wasn’t her father. That it wasn’t true. She moved towards him, but he tensed. Turning away, he carefully collected the daggers and carried them back to the weapons shed, Arabel trailing behind him feeling stupid.
At last, he faced her. She realized she hadn’t answered his question. It was too hard.
“Are you feeling OK?” David asked.
She shrugged it off. “Yeah, of course. I’m fine.”
His face looked grim, his jaw set. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
He took her hand, held her fingers gently in his warm, calloused, palm. “Your hands are cold,” he said, wrapping her fingers in his. “Can we talk for a minute?”
“Sure,” she said, the warmth of his skin distracting her. She’d almost forgotten she wanted to talk, too.
David led her to a bench next to the weapons shed. It was damp and grimy with mildew. “Look, Arabel…” He paused again, his eyes searching her face. “Are you sure you’re OK?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes. I’m fine. What?”
“OK. Look, I know I said that I didn’t want us to…”
Her heart turned over. She really hoped he was going to tell her that he’d been stupid before. She needed something good.
“And even though I said that, I’ve felt like there was something between us still.”
She waited for him to continue, not breathing.
“But. Look, I know you’ve been trying. I know part of you wants to be here, but… I was there. This wasn’t just an accident. You were messing with Naomi. On purpose. I like you, you’re an amazing person. A really impressive fighter.”
Her heart clenched and she felt like the floor was dropping out from under her.
“But I was right before. And it wasn’t just that you’re not an acolyte yet. It’s that you don’t know who you are. All your choices are just… reactions… to things. You hate Naomi, and you fight with her, but why? What do you really care about? I can’t tell if you actually care about anything. And that’s the real reason I don’t think we should be together. As much as I like you. You don’t… you’re angry and you’re doing things either because someone asked you to—like me—or not doing things because someone told you to—like your father or Naomi. And… I’m sorry, but I can’t be with someone like that.”
She pulled her hand back from his, a feeling of dizziness washing over her. “I care about things. I do things for my own reasons.” She stood. She didn’t need him. Against her better judgment she looked at him and it almost made her cry. He looked sad, and pitying. “And maybe you should stop being so sanctimonious and do something besides practice all the time. And stop trying to fix people.”
She didn’t wait for a response, turning on her heel and striding off, her breath stuck in her chest. Luckily the tears didn’t come until she was nearly back in her room, alone.
Arabel barged into Oswald’s office without knocking, found him staring out the window at Henrietta.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
Oswald started. “Going home? You’ve taken the death glimmer. If you choose not to complete your training, we can send a pair of guardians with you to collect—”
“No. I’m going on the Rite.”
Oswald raised his eyebrows. “Has Naomi—has your training—”
“I’m going on the Rite now. Is there anything else I need to know about it?”
Oswald considered this. “No,” he said softly. “Follow the death glimmer to your eidolons, accept what they have done as your responsibility, and accept whatever they are.”
Great. She was done with this place, with these people. Let them deal with whatever her father had planned.
She turned to go, but as she did, someone came hurtling through the door.
It was Alistair, trailed by three more guardians.
He looked… different. His cheeks had filled out, his skin was darker, tanned, and his eyes, while still sad, no longer looked haunted. A smile flickered across his face when he saw her, but his eyes went to Oswald.
“You came back,” Arabel blurted. He gave her a quick half smile but his focus was still on Oswald.
“Sir,” he gasped. “T
here is an… an army. Hundreds… of men. They’re headed this way.” He glanced at Arabel. “From the direction of Myrefall.”
Stunned silence greeted his words.
Everyone was looking at Arabel now.
“I don’t have any idea what that’s about,” she said.
“Alistair, ring the bells, send out the word. I want every guardian in the field called home. Immediately.” Oswald glanced at Arabel. “And I believe you were just leaving?”
She hesitated. There was still a tiny part of her that was curious about what her father had planned here. More importantly, Oswald clearly wanted her gone now. He wasn’t going to get rid of her that easily.
“You still think I’m working for him? Still? Don’t you think I would have at least known about the army heading this way?”
“Yes, of course you would have.”
“Thank you.”
“This changes nothing, however. You should still go on your Rite.”
Arabel turned to Alistair. “How long until they get here?”
“Two weeks at the most I’d say.”
Arabel glared at Oswald. “I’ll be back before then.” She paused in the doorway, turning to look over her shoulder. “You look good, Alistair.” She left before anyone else could speak.
35
Arabel went straight to her room from Oswald’s office, stuffed some supplies into her pack and snuck out the front gates. She stood outside the gates for several minutes, getting her wits about her. A cold wind lifted her hair, and she took a few deep breaths of the icy air, her breath coming up in foggy clouds. She closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of the sun, and it reminded her of that day she had tried to climb out the window and escape. Here she was escaping again.
David’s accusations came back to her, that she only acted in defiance of authority, that she didn’t make any real choices of her own. She’d been planning to leave for good until she saw that Oswald wanted her gone.
But she had also heard that her father was coming. She tried to tell herself that that was the real reason.
If she fought him, they would finally see that she wasn’t working with him. She could finally no longer be associated with him. She tried to tell herself that she didn’t care what they thought anyway.
Arabel focused on her breath until she was centered enough to find the golden threads extending out from her heart. She picked the thinnest of the three and, keeping her mind’s eye trained on it, set off in the direction it pointed.
She went straight into the woods, beating through underbrush and skirting around trees. She had a map, but there was no way to know how far away the eidolon was, or which roads would take her there.
Towards midday she sensed an eidolon nearby. A throb of hurt; not one of hers. She reached out to it mentally, but as soon as she made contact, it shied away. Whatever she had discovered with the dragon, it changed how the eidolons responded to her. It occurred to her that possibly that meant she didn’t need a soul blade anymore. But maybe she’d just gotten lucky with the dragon. Lucky. She cringed, Ian’s face flashing across her mind again, then shook herself, focusing on her steps.
As much as she could she traveled in a straight line, directly along the golden thread. It took her down into a ravine, across a frozen stream which cracked as she crossed it, and up the other side. She passed through dark pines and scraggly underbrush and over a barren, snowy ridge. She ate snow and talked to herself when she was bored.
That night she made camp in a tree well, the clear space around a tree, protected by its branches, where the snow hadn’t fallen as heavily. She laid down several layers of leather and blankets between herself and the snow. She used a small hatchet to hack off a couple of branches, laid these across the top of the well, and piled snow over the top. This made a cozy little burrow, almost too warm in the middle of the night, and she was sad to leave it the next morning. Who knew if she would find as nice a shelter the next night?
Another day and night she walked, farther into the mountains, the snow growing deeper and deeper. She strapped on snowshoes and pressed on, feeling her eidolon was close now. She tracked it along a ridge the next day and followed it down into a thick evergreen forest. The trees were so thick that the ground was nearly bare of snow, and even though the sun had been bright and blinding outside, among the trees it was dim and close. She pushed through the dense forest, cursing her stupid eidolon. What was it doing here? Shouldn’t it be out somewhere sensible, eating people? Twigs scratched at her face and caught in her hair, but she pushed through.
Towards the center there was a small clearing. On the forest floor were tufts of hair, signs that animals had bedded down for the night here recently.
She could sense her eidolon was close, but she couldn’t see it.
“Come on… Come out here.” Her words fell into a deathly silence, and she wondered how far away the nearest human being was. She felt nothing so far, which was a problem. She was supposed to be feeling whatever it was, otherwise how could she incorporate it? But there was nothing. A blank, a numb emptiness. Arabel knelt down, closed her eyes, and waited.
Still nothing. She thought of her struggles in the library, remembered Oswald saying that what was important was the decision to look. To pay attention. So, she paid attention to the nothingness. Was it really nothing? The wind shushed through the tops of the pines, a lonely, yet soothing sound.
Finally, Arabel sensed something. It was small, and it was hiding, but it was there. Only a few feet away, and it was afraid.
That didn’t make sense. She wasn’t afraid of anything. Even as she had the thought, she wondered if that was really true. Was there anything she was afraid of? No. Not heights. Not the eidolons. Nothing. What else were people afraid of? Death? Meh. That wouldn’t be so bad. If you died you wouldn’t even remember it, how bad could that be?
She could sense that it had come closer and was watching her. OK. It was clearly afraid. If it was her eidolon, and she was sure it was, there must be some part of her that was afraid, too. Of something. Fine.
“I am afraid,” she said, but the words sounded obviously fake. Oswald had said her eidolons would tell her what they were. Maybe she should ask it. “What am I afraid of?” She opened her eyes and saw a small grey blob, pressing itself against the ground a few feet from her. “Or, what are you afraid of?”
Her father popped into her mind. “Cecil? I’m not afraid of him.” The thing edged closer to her, nudged up against her knee. It was cold. “He’s an idiot.”
Her leg started to go numb. She tried to move away from the thing, but she couldn’t. It started to slide up and over her calf. She leaned back, horrified. “I’m afraid of you,” she said. It paused. Was she afraid of Cecil? Suddenly she remembered a time from when she was very little. She had stolen a cake. She had eaten the whole thing, enjoyed it immensely. Cecil had called her into the throne room, mentioned in an off-handed way that people who stole cakes often had mysterious illnesses. That evening she’d started shaking and vomiting. She’d been sick for three days.
Now that she was older, she knew he had done it to teach her a lesson. He’d poisoned that cake and set it out for her to find. She was afraid of him, she realized. She was afraid of what his retribution would be. It always came from some corner she wasn’t expecting. It was never a beating or a known punishment, and it never came when she thought it would. She looked at the little grey blob. She was terrified of him. But she hated that. She hated that he had that power over her. He wanted her to be afraid, and she had refused to give him the satisfaction.
“I’m afraid of my father,” she said, angry tears springing to her eyes. The little grey blob relaxed, dissolving into her knee. She felt a sad tenderness for it, pulling it up and into her heart. She was afraid. Of her father, and of many other things. Oswald and the others, their faces suspicious, crossed her mind. She was afraid of them, too. That they would hate her, that they would betray her like her father had done over and over again.
<
br /> She blinked back the tears. Stupid eidolons. She’d rather not feel this. She’d rather not be afraid. But she was.
That night she slept in the clearing, and she had terrifying nightmares like she hadn’t had since childhood. She woke up, crying and clawing at the ground and at herself, several times. But in the morning, she awoke feeling more refreshed than she had in months, maybe years.
36
As Arabel trudged heavily through the snow the next day, following the faint glimmer of gold through the trees, her foot connected with something solid and she tripped headlong into the snow. Picking herself up, brushing icy particles off her face, out of her hair, and shivering as a tendril of freezing water snuck down her bare neck, she went to examine what she had tripped over.
It was covered in snow, and she had thought it was just another drift, but as she brushed away the soft white powder a bright magenta light glowed out of the cold. It was a box; it looked similar to the confines, but it had two holes, one in the front and one in the back. Gold runes were marked along the top. The delicate glimmer of gold extended from her chest into the device, then emerged out the other end.
She waved her gloved hand in front of her and the thread moved to the side, then pulled immediately back into place. Experimentally, she walked away from the device, then around it, seeing if she could move far enough that her thread did not pass through it, but no matter where she went, or how she tugged on it, the golden soul thread passed right through it.
She kicked it, tried to pick it up but it was too heavy.
“What the hell?” she muttered to herself. “What is this?” No one had said anything about finding devices on your threads. With a start she realized what it was. A siphon. Some sorcerer was… draining power from her, was using her connection to her eidolon to do magic. A creepy, violated feeling made her skin itch and she kicked at it again in anger and disgust.
The Eidolons of Myrefall Page 20
