Oh yay, she had found her eidolon. The thought drifted numbly through her mind as she fought the urge to throw herself off the mountain. Through her mind flashed an image of another mountain; she stood at its summit, tears running down her face, looking down at her hands. But they weren’t her hands. They were a man’s hands, and the tears were running into his beard. He sobbed and hurled himself from the cliff top, falling all the way down and dashing himself against the rocks below. Arabel gasped, choking back vomit. Another. A young woman, leaping into an icy torrent, getting sucked below the water. Another, a man this time, murdering his whole family so they could never leave him. Arabel gasped and choked more. “No. No. No.” She shook her head. “I didn’t do that.”
She just had to let go. To loosen her hold on this crack. Let herself go over the edge, down the side of the mountain. So quick and painless and she would never be alone again.
The castle. The image of it rose dimly in her mind. She needed to get back to it. But why? They didn’t care about her. None of them did. Oswald lied to her, was using her to get to her father, just like her father was using her. And Ian was dead.
But Avery. Avery inviting her to breakfast. And Ferne, trying to distract Charlotte and Avery so that Arabel could talk to Alistair. Avery had lied to protect her. Which was probably the worst thing Avery could think of. Charlotte linking her elbow through Arabel’s, Moira telling her she looked just like her mother. The dining hall. She remembered it now, remembered playing under the tables, listening to the laughter, seeing only a forest of guardian knees.
That feeling. The feeling of being liked and needed. But no, she didn’t deserve that. She didn’t deserve their friendship or their kindness. Alistair’s grin, his dark eyes laughing at her, amused, even as she was being stupid and annoying.
She did have to get back to the castle. Annoying as they were, obsessively moral as Avery was, as weirdly similar and over the top as Charlotte and Ferne were, she liked them. And even if David was an intense perfectionist who had rejected her and Naomi was an arrogant, controlling jerk, she still wanted to be back there. Back to the place where she at least had a chance to live for something, and for people, that she believed in.
“Accept what it’s done,” Arabel muttered to herself, remembering Naomi’s words.
“I killed those people. Part of me killed those people.” The urge to let go lessened, but only slightly. What was this part of her? She tried to move closer, to feel it more deeply, and was immediately hit with a flood of memories. The thirty-two days she’d spent alone in her room, with only the food pushed in through the crack in the door. It hadn’t been the only time.
The memory of the first time hit her. She was small, confused, terrified. A soldier came in, dropped a plate of food on her desk, and she hurled herself at him, wrapped her arms around his legs, begged him to stay, to play with her. He pried her off and, without even looking at her, left.
She’d seen kids in the village, watched them from her window. Groups of them, running around playing games that Arabel would never know. The only person who spoke to her was Cecil. Cecil playing his stupid games.
Arabel sobbed her loneliness into the frozen rock beneath her, feeling the eidolon return to her, feeling the fullness of her pain. Again, there was no one. There was no one around her, no one to help her, to share in this. She had done that all on her own, for her whole life. And she didn’t want to anymore. Avery, David, Charlotte, Ferne, Alistair, Naomi, maybe even Oswald. She wanted to go back because she was lonely. Because she cared about them. Because she wanted them to care about her. She was so, so, so intensely lonely. And if they knew they might laugh. They might hate her. They might pry her off their boots and walk away without even looking at her. Slowly, agonizingly, she pulled herself back up onto solid ground.
She knelt on the frozen ground, shaking and taking deep breaths. As her heart rate slowed, she glanced down. Her soul glowed brighter than she’d ever seen it before. She saw it in perfect detail, the roiling pieces, detaching and reforming moment by moment. She saw its connection to the Deep, could feel the eidolons that pulsed and drifted there. Her eyes raked the frozen landscape, looking for anything living. Golden threads crisscrossed the bare rock, hundreds of them stretching off in all directions. She closed her eyes and looked into the Deep, felt herself drift in and out of it. It was easy, now, as easy as breathing.
Arabel opened her eyes again. The sun had sunk behind the mountains, and long, cold shadows stretched out towards her. Her cheeks were frozen, her eyelashes sticky with ice. She had to get down before it got dark. There was no way she was spending the night up here. Alone. The word made her choke up, and she wanted to curse herself for being so ridiculous. She was fine. But she was lonely. And she had to get back to the castle. Whatever her father had planned, her friends weren’t ready for it, she was sure of that.
The wind began to howl, and the light was fading fast as Arabel picked her way back down the mountainside. Feeling both lonely and afraid now, which was just fantastic, she was also beginning to worry that she wouldn’t be able to make it down to solid ground by nightfall. She had no torch or other light source, and everything had turned to shades of purple and grey.
She pulled up short, just barely avoiding stepping off into empty space. A cliff had appeared beneath her. Had that been there when she’d climbed up? She’d thought she was going the same way back, but there were no footprints to follow on these windswept faces. She turned left and very carefully followed the ledge along, looking for a way back up, but it narrowed to the point where she couldn’t find safe footing anymore. She retraced her steps, squinting in the dark, but the ledge ended in the other direction, too. She must have missed a turn and come down a different way than she’d gone up.
Arabel bit her lip, considering. She could climb back up, look for another way down, but it was almost completely dark now. She really didn’t like the idea of trying to pick her way down a sheer cliff face in the dark. She couldn’t even tell how far it went down, or if it leveled off or got steeper. She rubbed her gloved hands along her upper arms and shivered. There wasn’t enough space on this ledge to make camp, and the temperature was dropping quickly. Could she last the night, fully exposed like this? Even if she could, she didn’t want to waste any more time. Her father might already be at the castle.
Maybe she could try slipping. Up or down she wasn’t sure. But that seemed idiotic. She could miss the cliff face by a few inches and fall to her death. Her heart sped up in anxiety.
Something caught her attention, just out of the corner of her eye. A light glimmered on the cliff above her, then winked out again. It reappeared a moment later, maybe fifty feet away this time. Arabel weighed her options. If there was a person up there, they might be able to help. But what were they doing out in the middle of nowhere in the dark? The most likely reason for them to be here was that they had been following her, and that didn’t seem promising. She kept quiet and watched.
The light grew in size, coming closer and closer, still about fifteen feet above her. Arabel felt herself grow strangely calm, relaxed. This was fine. Things were going to be OK. She tried to shake it off, or at least not let herself be totally overwhelmed. It was an eidolon, and it felt deeply familiar.
When it was close enough that she could make it out clearly, she saw that it was the fox, glowing and white with its large, thick tail held jauntily in the air, unaffected by the wind. It stopped ten feet from her, looking down with sharp, curious blue eyes. Then it turned away, moved off a few feet, and looked back over its shoulder.
Without thinking, Arabel began to climb after it. The light it gave off was enough to see by, reflecting brightly off the snow. It was a good thing she hadn’t tried to climb up this way on her own, she realized, seeing sharp drop-offs on either side. It was a miracle she hadn’t already fallen to her death.
For over an hour she followed it; anytime she fell behind it stopped and waited for her. Until at last they were back do
wn on flat ground.
Watching it warily, Arabel dropped her pack and sat, grateful to be back in the shelter of the trees and out of the wind. The forest was still and dark around them, the only sound water dripping off the needles. She was shaking with cold and starving as she pulled some biscuits and dried meat from her pack. She held out a biscuit to the fox; its eyes seemed to laugh, and it sat back on its haunches, watching her.
Arabel froze, staring at it. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognized her earlier.
“Mom?” she breathed. The fox glowed brighter, took another step towards her, laid its ghostly paw on her knee, where it tingled.
Arabel couldn’t speak for a moment. She fought back the tears, swallowing the grief that stuck in her throat like a stone. “Are you—” She couldn’t bring herself to say dead. “Alive?”
To her astonishment, the fox nodded, and something deep within her rearranged itself. Intense pain became hope. “You’re alive?” she asked again, unwilling to believe it too quickly.
The fox nodded again, and tears spilled down Arabel’s cheeks. She couldn’t remember ever having cried this many times in so few days before in her life.
Arabel’s eyes swept the darkness; she needed a way for her mother to communicate. She hit on an idea, pulling the map from her pack and unfurling it.
“Point to the letters,” she said, and the fox glowed brighter, her eyes smiling warmly at her.
Slowly, painstakingly, her mother pointed to letters one by one on the map.
“T-h-i-s… f-o-r-m… i-s… p-a-r-t… o-f… m-e.” The fox’s paw was a blur across the map, Arabel reading out the letters as it went for confirmation. “I am able to send it out when he is not watching.”
“Cecil?”
The fox nodded.
“Where are you? I’ll come get you.”
The fox smiled.
“I’m fine. Not sure where I am. Elyrin knows.”
“Then I’ll find Elyrin.” Elyrin. That reminded her.
“Cecil is attacking the guardians, did you know?”
The fox nodded gravely.
“I have to get back and stop him. Can you take me back there? Show me the quickest way?” With the fox’s light, if they went in a straight line, maybe she could be there by morning.
The fox nodded again.
“Do you know what Cecil is planning? What he wants?”
The fox shook its head, curling its tail in anger.
“Probably something stupid,” Arabel said.
The fox looked at the map, pulsing slightly.
“We should go,” her mother sketched. “He is outside the castle now.”
Arabel had so many questions. She wanted to sit and talk with her mother for hours, wanted to hear everything that had happened, every detail of the time they’d been apart.
But they could talk later. Right now, they needed to stop Cecil. Arabel shoved the map back into her pack and set off at a quick walk, following her mother as she streaked through the woods, gliding over snow banks and fallen trees.
Arabel felt revived, by more than the food in her stomach. She had hope. Alive. Her mother was alive. Joy gave her a strength she hadn’t known she had, and she broke into a jog, leaping over obstacles in her way.
38
They reached the gates of the castle before noon the next day, finding an army camped on the road outside. Easily four hundred men, fully armed.
Arabel and her mother gave them a wide berth and skirted around the west side of the castle, through the forest. Arabel’s legs shook as she approached the castle wall. She stopped for a moment, gathering her strength, and realized the fox was no longer beside her. It had stopped about fifty feet back and was watching her solemnly. Arabel trudged back, whipped out the map, and spread it over her pack.
“I can’t go any farther,” her mother said. “There are barriers here. To keep eidolons out. It’s why I was never able to visit you until you left the castle.”
The idea of leaving her mother tore at her, but this was the only way forward.
“I’ll be back,” she said. “I promise.”
The fox nodded. “I’ll go spy on their camp, then I’ll come back. I’ll be here if you need me.”
Arabel choked up again, but she wasn’t going to cry. She had better things to do.
“I’m sorry, Mom. If I’d known you were alive…” She’d have been out that window a lot sooner.
“No. I should have done something. It took years for me to figure out how to take this form. And after that I… I was afraid that if I approached a guardian, they would…”
“Put you in the vault?” Her mother nodded. “Makes sense. Don’t worry. I’ll get you out of there. Give me a week. Maybe two. I’ll get it out of Elyrin,” she said grimly.
“Be careful,” her mother said.
Arabel opened her mouth to say she was always careful, realized this was not remotely true, and nodded.
She turned, slipped into the Deep, and darted through the wall.
The practice field was empty and silent, but up on the ramparts she saw armed guardians patrolling. She took the steps up to the castle at a run. Oswald. She had to find Oswald, tell him she had found her mother. Then she had to convince them to triple up on whatever measures they’d already taken. She racked her brains. What was her father doing here? Getting the piece of himself that Oswald had? Unlikely. Of course, Oswald would think that was the reason, but it wouldn’t be.
Any secret ways in had to be watched; they should assume he knew about them. Her father must have spies here, so every guardian should be in a group of three, randomly assigned. They couldn’t let him just camp out in front of the gates like that, either. No, they should drive him off right away. Don’t let Cecil get a toehold. Don’t let him enact even part of his plan.
Arabel went straight to Oswald’s office, but he wasn’t there. No one was. She went to check the dining room. She passed a few guardians on her way, but she didn’t stop to ask, in case they had orders to lock her up on sight. It didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility. She was standing in the empty dining room, chest heaving and legs about to give out underneath her, when she heard banging coming from upstairs. Ascending quietly, she saw Avery pounding on Ferne’s door.
“Ferne! Come on,” she said. “Charlotte would want you to help. We’re outnumbered. We need everyone we can get.” She shook her head in frustration, then turned, saw Arabel, and jumped.
“Arabel! You’re back!”
“Yeah, just got back. What’s going on? Where’s Oswald?”
“Your father showed up two days ago. As far as we can tell, he’s just sitting out there, waiting for something. Oswald is down by the gates with Naomi, making sure his sorcerer hasn’t done anything to them.” Avery took a closer look at her. “Are you OK?”
“I’m great. It’s great to see you.”
“Er, it’s—” She was cut off as Arabel wrapped her arms around her in a quick hug before sprinting off.
Arabel thundered across the plaza and hurtled down the stairs. She tripped halfway down, grabbed the railing, and skidded the rest of the way, landing in a limp heap at the bottom. She hopped back up to see Oswald, David, Naomi, and Rody staring at her.
“Grab her,” Oswald said, and Rody and Naomi closed in. They grabbed her arms and Arabel, too tired to resist, merely went limp, letting them do the work of holding her up.
“Hey, geez, ow,” Arabel complained. “I’m here to help.”
“Sorry, girl,” Rody said. “Nothing personal.”
“You came back early,” Oswald said evenly. David was staring at her, eyes wide. Do I look that deranged?
“Unless she never left,” Naomi added.
“No,” Arabel said. “I’m done. Take a look if you don’t believe me.” Oswald examined her for a few seconds.
“She’s telling the truth,” he said in surprise.
“What? That’s impossible,” Naomi snapped. “She had more holes than—”
“Has it occurred to you that your father is simply waiting for you to return?”
Frustration boiled within her.
“I’m sick of this. I’m sick of your lies, and of you suspecting me. And of you telling me you believe me when really you think I’m here as a spy.” She spat the word out, her fists clenched. “Haven’t I done enough? All I’ve ever done is try to help. And you know what? I found my mother. She’s alive. She’s here. Or, part of her is. And am I staying with her? Outside where it’s safe and I get to talk to someone who actually likes me? No. I haven’t seen her in ten years and what am I doing?” She jerked, trying to pull her arm out of Rody’s grip, but it was rock solid. “I’m here,” her voice rose an octave, “attempting to help you. Still. After every goddamn thing. Does that even matter at all to you?”
Oswald’s eyes widened. “You found Serafina?” he asked, his voice breathless. “How?”
She wanted to swear and yell at him some more, but at least he was listening to her. Sort of. “She’s an eidolon.” She took a deep breath. “She sent it out to find me. It couldn’t come inside the castle walls.”
“And I suppose you want us to take the wards down so she can come in?” Naomi asked dryly.
“No—” Arabel shot back. “I just want you to listen to me. He’ll have spies here. No one should be allowed to go anywhere alone. Groups of three at least. Make sure everything that’s even close to an entrance is guarded. And don’t let him sit out there like that. You need to attack first.”
“Thank you for the… suggestions… Arabel,” Oswald said mildly, gesturing up the stairs. Rody and Naomi began to drag her off.
The Eidolons of Myrefall Page 22
