by Chad Queen
Ashlyn let out a sigh of relief and slumped down upon the stone bench. When she heard the commotion outside earlier, she had a feeling it might be him.
After his coughing stopped, she heard him swallow and speak once more. “What kind of cell are you in?”
She looked around. “Uh, looks pretty standard, I guess. It’s about as big as a bedroom.”
“Anything metal?”
She wasn’t sure why that would make a difference, but she played along. “The bars are some kind of metal…iron maybe? Oh, and my trusty spoon.”
“We can work with that.” She was on the ground now, with her ear as close to the hole as possible to try to hear him.
“Cade, what’s this about?”
“I’m trying to find us a way out of here. Tell me, do you remember where Rolan was killed?”
She furrowed her brow, and her mouth went dry. “In…in my receiving room.” The castle was immense. Each member of the household had their own sitting room. There were enough guests to warrant it, too. It still bothered her that Rolan had been killed in her sitting room, of all places.
“How far away from where we are now?”
Another strange question. “Um…the room isn’t too far removed from this one, just three floors up.”
“Okay. The good news is that we can get out of here.”
Ashlyn grimaced as she prepared for the bad news.
“You’re just not going to like how.”
All the questions finally made sense.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Ashlyn, it’s the only way. You must become a Bearer.”
Her heart sank deep within her chest. After the war, she had grown to believe Bearers were bad, opportunistically using the dead for their own means. Even those who meant to do good succumbed to the corrupting power granted to them. Bearing a phantom was for other people, not her.
“I can’t. It’s immoral.”
“Do you think I am immoral?” A fair question.
Silence.
She sighed. “It’s different, though. You’re the Protector of the Realm. You had to do what was needed to protect us all.”
“But you still think how I achieved that wasn’t right.”
Ashlyn gave no reply.
He cleared his throat. “There was a girl in a small town I was passing through once. She had taken ill and passed away from the illness in mere days. Her mother begged and pleaded with me to see if her phantom was still with us, to make sure that her daughter had Ascended.” He coughed again.
“Cade, what does this have to do—”
“At first, I was thankful that I didn’t find any sign of her, but just when I was about to stop looking, I heard music playing, ever so softly. That’s how it works, finding phantoms. You hear their Songs. I had never seen one so young stay behind before, so I formed a pact with her to find a way to put her to rest.”
“But why would a little girl stay behind?” she asked.
“Children don’t often stay behind; it’s exceedingly rare. I did everything I could think of to find out how to free the girl’s phantom. Nothing worked. I made sure her mother was looked after, and I made sure her little doll was buried with her during the funeral. I even delivered her final homework assignment at school. Nothing worked. One day, a group of men came to the village. I observed the farmers giving these men their harvest crops. When I pressed them, I discovered that the farmers were paying these men to not raze their fields. They were hostages in their own town. It was destroying them, and it was obvious the token peacekeeping force in the town was not equipped to handle these men. As I spent more time there, I couldn’t help but get caught up in their plight. Since I had not been able to help the girl, I had an important choice to make. Either keep trying to help the little girl or use the power this girl had entrusted me with to help the town.”
“You fought the men?”
“I tracked them to their encampment, and I made sure they would not bother the town any longer.”
“I can’t imagine for a second that the girl would have wanted that. Did you feel guilty at all?”
“That’s the thing. As I was fighting the last one—I reached affinity with the phantom.”
“Affinity?”
“When you form a pact with a phantom, their Song, as we refer to it in Coda, blends itself with your own Song. Your actions and the choices you make can increase your affinity with a phantom, making the times when you use the phantom’s power more effective. When you reach affinity, it is the phantom’s way of telling you that you are on the precipice of fulfilling the Pact.”
“The girl wanted you to defeat the men? That was why she formed the Pact with you?”
“Exactly. It started to make more and more sense when I thought about it. These men had been bothering them for a long time. The girl’s mother was one of the women who continuously toiled in the fields, so her share was reduced every time the payments were taken.”
Ashlyn grew quiet. Stories like this were generally not shared as a manner of respect for the dead, so it was fascinating to hear a real account.
“Isn’t that selfish, though?”
“Yes, it is. But just because someone passes on doesn’t mean they become selfless. Sometimes it is toward an end that is pure, and sometimes it is not. That is where the Bearers come in. We decide with whom to form a Pact, and we choose to help them ascend. Without any Bearers, more and more phantoms would gather in the Firmere, caught in the space between planes.”
“But how do you know? That you’re doing something good?”
She heard a sigh. “You don’t. As a Bearer, you have to work in the margins of right and wrong.”
Ashlyn nodded, even though she knew he could not see her. She was using Cade as a tool because she did not want to get her own hands dirty. Just like…just like her father would do. She had believed herself to be different; she believed she could be better than him. She was more like him than she thought.
“You wanted me to help you find out who killed Rolan. Now you can, and Rolan can help you.”
Rolan had always been there for her. He would console her when she had a bad dream, read her stories about faraway lands, and even take the fall for her when she stole treats from the kitchens. He was more of a father than her real father had ever been. Didn’t she owe it to Rolan to be the one to help him? He had died trying to get information to her; information that very well could save the world. Wasn’t that worth some sacrifice?
Ashlyn took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s get started.”
24
Trial by Phantom
Pacts are my gift to you. This gift has been given to everyone. Cherish it, study it, and use its power to improve the world around you.
—From The Book of the Traveler
Saying she’d do it had been the easy part.
“Try again,” Cade instructed. His voice was only a hoarse whisper now. He needed to take breaks between fits of coughing.
Cade had spent the last hour teaching her the fundamentals of phantom bonding through the Pact. It was a subject on which you could spend a lifetime and never master. She only had hours.
As luck would have it, the parts she needed to use were the easiest to learn. There was a lot of subtlety with Bearing, Cade told her. For example, anyone given a knife could cut a tomato. A skilled chef, however, could cut one into perfect slices and do it in a few deft motions. The same rules held true with Bearers. An unskilled Bearer could form a Pact and encode with a simple material. A skilled Bearer could encode with higher efficiency, needing less material, and maximize the energy of the phantom.
“This is nothing like cutting a tomato,” she said, frustrated.
“Close your eyes. Remember when you last saw Rolan.”
Sighing, she closed her eyes. She took herself back to that day, crouched down next to Rolan, remembering the secret pocket sewn into the inside of his vest he had taught her to look for. She remembered the warmth leaving his body
as she held his hand. Tears welled up. She fought them back.
Music began playing. Faint, distant. It was a melody she was certain she had never heard before, but it was still familiar. She couldn’t explain it, but it had a shape to it, a form, as if the music itself was corporeal. Each note evoked a memory, as if someone were playing a piano where every key contained a piece of herself within it.
Her heartbeat quickened, and she wiped her eyes. “I…I hear it.”
“Say the words.”
She cleared her throat. “Song that lingers unfinished; the one whose Sigh has escaped to the stars. Allow me to sing your final verse.” Cade had told her the words helped bond the intention of the Bearer to the phantom. The words she spoke were what followers of Coda would say to form a Pact. She figured it was as good as anything else. If she was going to break one belief today, she might as well go all-in.
Nothing happened. “It’s not working, Cade.”
“Remember. The words themselves are not important. You must open yourself up for the phantom to join with you.”
Ashlyn took a deep breath and listened once more. She heard the music, far away. She continued to listen to it and imagined drawing the music closer to her. The music became louder. She pulled it even closer and imagined wrapping herself in it, until the sounds of the outside world faded away and only the music could be heard.
She felt a surge of warmth, as if steam was pushing through her veins. The feeling radiated and pulsed through her. She took a sharp breath inward, as if she had been holding her breath underwater and had finally came up for air. The feeling subsided, and she felt…different.
Cade said he really couldn’t explain the sensation, but he did tell her not to fight it. She understood now.
“Ashlyn? Can you hear me? Are you okay?” Cade’s voice was quiet, careful not to disturb the guards, but it carried fierce concern. Her senses felt sharper than normal. Was she just imagining things?
“Yeah, I’m…fine, I think. My head…” Her thoughts felt crowded in her own mind, as if they were being squeezed tight. It almost felt like when she had too much to do and didn’t know where to start. But this was more extreme; the thoughts she was having were pulling her different directions. She began to panic. Was she losing her mind? Would she even know if she was? No, she thought. She took another breath and tried to quiet her mind. I can do this. I need to think about something else. Cade. How is Cade?
She could somehow sense that Cade was relieved. She could feel something else—guilt? Can you feel someone else’s guilt?
Her thoughts aside, she felt stronger, and more confident. Was it all in her head? I could get used to this, she thought. She shuddered at how quickly she was being seduced by the phantom’s power.
Cade’s voice sounded through the door. “We need to practice encoding. Try the bars on the door. Remember their core property.”
“Right,” she said, almost forgetting their objective.
“Grab the bar and focus the phantom. Let it fuse with the metal.”
She grabbed the bar with one hand and closed her eyes. She didn’t need to close her eyes, but she figured it would help her concentrate. She imagined the new force within, swirling around her, and she pushed it into the bar. This is what Cade had called “encoding.” She felt her grip tighten around the bar. Not of her own doing, but the encoding itself was closing the gaps between the material and her skin. Fusing the material to oneself was called a first-stage encoding. She tried to pull her hand away and found that it was stuck to the bar, like it had been glued there. This alarmed her at first, but she had been warned already of the effect. She took a deep breath, relaxed, and let the second-stage encoding take hold. She began to feel…heavier.
Ashlyn opened her eyes. “Cade, I’m doing it! How…how is this possible?” she marveled.
Cade’s voice, even weaker now, spoke to her from the other cell. “The phantoms from the Firmere can encode the essence of an object in the Veris into another object. They twist reality, if only for a few moments. The Veris rejects the distortion of reality, fighting to restore itself. This is why phantoms can become exhausted. The more rules you try break in the Veris, the physical world, the more difficult it is for the phantom.”
She looked at her hand and noticed that it was starting to turn a deep silver. She started to panic. “My hand…it’s turning silver…it’s not stopping!”
“Your encoding is too strong. Pull back your phantom before you overencode. You are in control. Nice and slow.” Cade’s voice, though weak, was calm and reassuring.
Ashlyn took a deep breath and closed her eyes again. The feeling didn’t abate. She felt her body get colder and more rigid, like she was turning into a statue. Her heart quickened. I am in control, she repeated, taking a slow breath. I will not die here.
She pulled the phantom back to her, somehow, and felt herself get lighter. She opened her eyes and saw her hand was back to normal. She trembled, remembering what her body had done only moments before. That was close.
She wasn’t sure if she was delirious from the near-death experience, but she smiled to herself. She knew she should feel bad for becoming a Bearer. But instead, for once in her life, she felt like she really was in control. Rolan, you and I are going places.
She set out to try once more when she heard footsteps coming down the hall.
“Cade, someone is coming. I haven’t had any time to practice!”
Cade did not reply.
She knew if she didn’t take this opportunity, they might not get another one.
Ashlyn, emboldened by her new abilities, calmed herself. I can do this.
As the footsteps neared, she grew increasingly nervous. She hoped the guard on duty was anyone but Gregory. She really liked Gregory, and he wasn’t hard to look at, either. He was always so kind to her. Not just polite because she was the princess, but he seemed genuinely nice and sincere. That was a rare trait in Toltaire. She brightened just thinking about sweet Gregory.
Her heart fell to the floor and shattered into tiny pieces when Gregory appeared around the corner. She felt an alien chuckle rise within her. Rolan, this is not funny, she thought. You be quiet. Now she was talking to herself. How did Bearers stay sane?
Cade was still quiet. The guard was close now, and he must not want to alert him.
Ashlyn, who had moved to the bars, took a deep breath and called over to Gregory. “Oh, hello, Gregory! I’m so glad to see you. I dropped my earring just outside the door there. Can you please fetch it for me?”
Gregory smiled, which made her hate herself even more. He stooped over to pick up the earring Ashlyn had placed just outside the bars.
Ashlyn, holding onto the bar, encoded with the iron. She made a fist, raised it over her head, and brought it down on the back of Gregory’s head. He fell to the floor, unconscious.
“I am a terrible person,” she muttered and slumped to the floor of the dusty cell. She had tried not to hit him too hard. She hoped he would be okay.
Ashlyn reached through the bars and grabbed the keys from the loop on Gregory’s belt. She saw a knife tucked into a small scabbard, which she also took. She unlocked her door and made her way to Cade’s cell. His door was solid, not like the bars of Ashlyn’s cell.
As she opened the door, she couldn’t help but gasp. Cade was suspended in the air, splayed by straps that cut into his arms and legs. A thinner strap was secured around his neck and was attached to the ceiling. Underneath him, a pool of blood had accumulated.
Ashlyn hurried inside and began to cut the strap around his neck with the knife she had taken from Gregory. “Hang on, Cade.”
She finished cutting the last strap, and he fell to the floor with a dull thud. She rolled him over and looked at his face. His eyes were open but unfocused and distant. She held her hand over his mouth. She felt his breath, though it was light. Too light.
Tears welled up in her eyes, but she fought them back. “Cade…I’m so sorry.”
Move, a
voice seemed to say.
She stood up. They couldn’t stay here. She grabbed Cade’s arms and managed to drag him out of the gruesome cell. She looked down the hall to a wide stairwell that led to the next floor up. She began to drag him toward the stairwell when she heard footsteps hurrying down the stairs. She tried to drag Cade back into the cell to hide, but before she made it back to the door a dozen guards rushed into the corridor. Seeing Ashlyn, they charged.
Ashlyn dropped Cade, raising her arms to show them she had no weapons. The guards did not slow down. The lead guard, at full sprint, unsheathed the sword at his side and raised it high. Did my father give this order?
She cowered and covered her head with her hands.
He wouldn’t do this, would he? The footsteps continued to get louder. She heard the man yell and braced herself for the attack.
Why?
Silence. She looked up and saw a look of terror upon her attacker’s face. The other guards had skidded to a halt and gaped at her.
Ashlyn looked at her arm and saw she had grabbed the blade less than an inch above her head. Her hand looked as if it were wearing a sleek silver evening glove.
The guard’s eyes grew wide. “She’s a Bearer!”
The other guards, breaking from their trance, hurried forward. Ashlyn cowered down with the blade still held in her hand, teeth gritted, and eyes closed. She could feel swords and bullets bouncing off her hardened skin. She wasn’t a fighter. What was she doing here? This was all a big mistake. How could her father allow this?
Fight, said a voice within her.
The voice pulled her out of her thoughts. Rolan?
The swords continued to clash upon hardened skin. She looked up and saw a soldier with a large war hammer approaching. Her father was responsible and had ordered this. She felt alone. Except she wasn’t alone, not anymore. She had Cade, Jace, and now Rolan. The Ashlyn she had been was gone; she was someone else now.
She cleared her mind. Rolan would help her. The swords and spears continued to rain down upon her, and she felt anger well up and grow hot.
