The Eidolons of Myrefall Read online

  “I doubt this will be of any benefit to your daughter. If she even lives through the training.”

  Cecil waved a ringed hand at Naomi. “I apologize, Master Albury, for my sorcerer’s disrespect to your order.”

  Arabel expected her father’s words to have a calming effect on the woman; they always did. He spoke, and people listened, and then they found themselves without any livestock or property, or with everyone they loved dead.

  “Right,” Naomi said, amused sarcasm in her voice. She didn’t lower her sword. Arabel’s estimation of her—or at least her acting—grew.

  Cecil continued smoothly, “In case you haven’t noticed, Elyrin, my daughter is immoral. She will fit right in. And perhaps she will learn just how good she had it here.” It would be just like him to try to teach her a lesson, but if that were his goal he wouldn’t have said so. So what was it?

  “Sire, forgive me, her soul, though… they invite in the—”

  “Thank you, Elyrin. That is enough.” He raised his voice just slightly and the last word reverberated through the chamber, painfully loud.

  Naomi shrugged her shoulders. “This has taken long enough. We’ve got places to be.” She turned to Arabel. “You coming with us or not?”

  Arabel watched her father closely as she spoke.

  “You’re leaving Myrefall?”

  “Yes,” Naomi said.

  “When?”

  “Right now.”

  Arabel shrugged. “All right, then.” There it was. Triumph. Just the tiniest glimmer of it in the depths of his eyes. Well, that was going to be short-lived. He’d just given her a way out of the city.

  Naomi nodded. “Fine. Then we’re done here.”

  “Thank you for coming to collect her,” Cecil said smoothly. He turned to Arabel and extended his arms wide. “Farewell, dear daughter.”

  Arabel allowed herself to be hugged. She kept completely still, except for her left hand which darted out and back. Her father didn’t notice.

  “Best of luck,” he whispered in her ear, a slight chuckle escaping him.

  “Bye.”

  Naomi and David gave short nods, then strode quickly out of the hall, Naomi’s sword still drawn, her boots clicking on the marble. Arabel followed, fingering the ring, coin purse, and watch she had picked off her father as he’d hugged her. Hopefully he’d look for them a long time before he realized where they’d gone.

  3

  David eyed her as he tossed her bag onto the roof of the carriage.

  “I take it you didn’t know we were coming.”

  “Nope.” She eyed him back surreptitiously. He had impressive arm muscles and a strong jaw. It was the first time she had ever wished she had social skills.

  He glanced towards the front of the carriage to where Naomi was checking the tack and examining the horses, then reached out, grasped her upper arm, and pulled her gently around to the back, where Naomi couldn’t see. She allowed herself to be pulled along, annoyed at the lack of explanation but intrigued.

  He bent slightly, giving her such an intensely searching look that Arabel suddenly didn’t know what to do with her hands. Or her face.

  “Look,” David said. “Nobody told me anything about this. Usually our recruits are volunteers. I think Naomi has orders that I don’t know about. You can’t possibly want to be a guardian if you had no idea we were coming.”

  “David! Hurry the hell up! We’ve got places to be!”

  “Coming!” David called over his shoulder. He turned back to Arabel, realized he was still gripping her arm, and let go.

  Arabel considered. It was still not unlikely that both these people were paid by her father, and that this was some elaborate ploy of his to get her to admit she was trying to escape.

  “What I’m saying,” David said, “is that if you’ve got no interest in coming with us, I’ll help you get away at the next town. I can give you enough to get you started.”

  Arabel’s insides clamped down. If there was one thing that was usually a bad sign, it was when it looked as if you were getting exactly what you wanted.

  “David!” Naomi was coming around the corner of the carriage. She saw them huddled together and her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”

  David stepped back. “I had some questions for her. Did you know she didn’t know we were coming?”

  “Oswald never tells me anything,” Naomi snapped. She turned to Arabel. “Get in the carriage. Or don’t. I don’t care, but whichever you do, do it now.”

  Arabel wordlessly went to the carriage door, yanked it open, and hopped inside. Maybe these people were being paid by her father, maybe they weren’t. Either way, carriages were easy to escape.

  The door banged shut behind her. The light was dim, and there was a musty smell of damp fabric. Also, it wasn’t empty like she’d assumed it would be. A man was slumped in the corner, and directly across from him were two girls about her age, seventeen, with long, silvery blond hair. They were staring at her with large, liquid blue eyes and matching wide smiles.

  “Hello,” they said in unison. “I’m Ferne, and this is my—”

  “—sister Charlotte,” the other girl finished. “We’re twins,” she added.

  “Er, nice to meet you,” Arabel said, scraping the bottom of the barrel for the manners she must have learned somewhere but had never wanted to use unironically before. “What’s up with him?” She gestured to the guy in the corner.

  The twins shrugged in unison. “We asked. Naomi said it was fine, and not to bother him.”

  Her sister corrected her. “What she said was, don’t get within two feet of him because that’s how far the chains reach.” Arabel raised an eyebrow.

  “Who are you?” they chimed.

  “Arabel.” The carriage jerked forward, and she was nearly thrown back. She made a grab for the ceiling, pressed her hand flat against it to anchor herself, and managed to get her feet under her. Then she dropped onto the seat a few feet from the man. “Arabel Fossey.” She’d landed with her skirts above her knees, and now she shoved them back into place.

  “You’re here to be a guardian, too?” one of them asked. Arabel couldn’t remember if it was Ferne or Charlotte. She scanned them quickly, looking for differences. They both wore long silk gowns of a soft rose pink, embroidered with delicate gold patterns around the wide sleeves and plunging necklines. They each wore a silver chain with a single pearl.

  “We’re identical,” one of them said. “But it’s OK, you can call us by either name.”

  “Er, OK…” Arabel said. She was pretty sure that was usually impolite. Maybe she could mark one of them later.

  “So,” the one Arabel decided to think of as Ferne said. “You’re going to be a guardian?”

  “Apparently.” These two seemed unlikely to have been hired by her father, at least. Either that or he was seriously stepping up his surrealism.

  They smiled wider, showing perfect white teeth.

  “Us, too.”

  Arabel tried to imagine the two delicate flowers in front of her fighting demons. “Um, why?”

  “Our parents were going to marry us off,” Charlotte said, taking a strand of Ferne’s hair and beginning to braid it, intertwining it with her own. That was something Arabel could understand. The marriage part, not the hair braiding.

  “To different people.”

  “In different cities.”

  Arabel thought they were in for an uncomfortable surprise. “Did anyone tell you anything about the guardians?”

  Ferne waved a hand and then adjusted her skirt daintily. “Oh, we don’t mind. I’m sure we can kill demons just as well as the next person.”

  The man in the corner groaned, and they all looked at him. Arabel noted the iron manacles around his wrists and ankles, and the heavy chain that bolted him to the seat of the carriage. They looked secure enough.

  There was a shout from overhead, and Arabel glanced out the window. They were nearing the gates of Myrefall. Her heartbeat qu
ickened, and her breath caught in her throat. She pressed her face to the glass and saw the great gates swinging open as they made their rumbling approach.

  Without slowing, the carriage swept under the arch and out onto the forest road beyond. She was out. For the first time in her entire life, she was outside those gates, outside of her father’s lands. Out in the world. She tried to open the window but it was fixed in place; she wanted to stick her head out and breathe the air and look at the ground and the sky and the trees. She wanted to take in every single inch of it.

  The forest thickened and the road narrowed, the dark woods encroaching on all sides. Arabel kept her face pressed to the glass, staring out into the trees, their thick, moss-covered trunks towering up higher than she could see. A few times she thought she saw dark shapes flitting through the trunks in the distance, but it might have been her imagination.

  That evening they made camp in a small clearing off the side of the road. David grabbed a canvas sack from the back of the carriage and passed out rations, then set about starting a fire while Naomi tended to the horses. Ferne and Charlotte huddled up close to the flames, eyeing David as he adjusted the logs.

  The sack of food was just sitting there, slumped provocatively next to the door of the carriage. Arabel glanced at Naomi; she was fifty feet away, facing the other direction, focused on the task of brushing down the two grey mares. David had his back turned, too.

  Arabel bit her lip and swung her hands back and forth a few times. There was something about these people. If only she had met them on her own. But she hadn’t. Her father had sent her with them. The longer you stayed in one of Cecil Fossey’s plans, the harder it became to get out.

  She inched backwards until she could climb up on the wheel well, watching for any sign of Naomi or David turning her way. Silently, she eased her bag off the roof, hoisting it over one shoulder. Then she grabbed the bag of food. They must have more, and if they didn’t, she knew David had money, and they couldn’t be that far from a town. He had said he was willing to help her. This way he was helping her on her own terms. She ducked behind the end of the carriage and slipped into the woods on the other side.

  She paused, listening intently, but heard only the crackling of the fire. The woods were dark. Her eyes adjusted quickly, and there was enough moonlight filtering through the treetops that she could make out vague shapes and outlines. Her pulse quickened, and her whole body felt light; she broke into a run. Her skirt snagged on a branch, but she pulled free, barely slowing. It felt so good, that energy coursing through her. Almost immediately her ankle turned as she stepped wrongly on a root. She caught herself, and nothing seemed badly injured, but she walked after that. Free. She was free. She skipped, then tripped again, grinning. Still no sounds of pursuit. She wanted to shout, to yell, to be as loud as she could into this silence and know that there would be no one to chastise her.

  She had no idea where she was going, or how she would support herself, or what was going to happen, and it was perfect. She couldn’t help it; she skipped again a few more times, ran into a tree trunk, hugged it, then skipped again.

  She pulled a biscuit out of the bag and chewed on it as she walked. It was the best thing she’d ever eaten. Even if she got eaten by a bear or attacked by a demon, she thought, this was already worth it.

  After walking for nearly an hour, Arabel figured she’d put enough distance between her and the guardians that she could make camp for the night. She sat on the ground, leaned her back up against a tree, and started pulling things from her bag. What had her father packed for her? Ah. How surprising. Gowns. She stuffed one between her butt and the ground, then draped two more over her legs. Then she leaned back, looking up at the few stars winking through the treetops. She started to shiver, and pulled the gowns tighter around herself, her eyelids beginning to droop.

  She was just drifting off when a soft light bloomed through the dark, filtering through the trees; Arabel’s eyelids opened a fraction, and she saw the light, like moonlight, making shadows across the ground. These shadows shifted, though, as whatever it was moved. Arabel felt a deep sense of peace and calm, and only slight curiosity as a glowing white fox stepped around the base of a tree and regarded her with its bright eyes.

  Arabel shook her head and sat up, staring at the animal. Its glowing ears perked forward, and it paused. Its whole body tensed with alertness; its head lifted and looked over her shoulder, its nose twitching. Something was crashing through the underbrush towards them. The fox waited, calmly, looked one last time at Arabel, then vanished into the darkness with a flick of its tail.

  Naomi catapulted into the space where it had been a second later, both hands gripping the strange glass weapon that had been on her back all that day. The ends glowed fiercely, casting blue and orange light that burned into the dark. Arabel pushed herself up, ready to run.

  “Stop.” The fury in her voice froze Arabel in her tracks. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The ends of the weapon blazed in her hands. She advanced on Arabel, stopping only when she was inches from her face. “In case you didn’t realize, that was an eidolon.” She noted Arabel’s lack of reaction with contempt. “A demon. Two seconds later and you would have been dead.” She looked down and kicked the food bag. “And you’re stealing from us, too. What, you think we’re kidnapping you? You think you’re goddamned special or something and we want you to be a guardian?”

  Naomi gave her a disgusted look, picked up the food bag, and stalked back the way she had come, leaving Arabel alone in the dark.

  Arabel looked over her shoulder, seeing whether she could still see the fox. It hadn’t seemed like it was going to hurt her. But she didn’t want to discount the possibility that she was being an idiot. Maybe these people weren’t working for her father after all. Plus, now she had no food. She stuffed the gowns back into her bag and hurried after Naomi.

  “Wait! Naomi?” Naomi didn’t slow down, or acknowledge that she’d heard her, but she was carrying a brightly glowing weapon, so Arabel had no trouble following her back to the carriage. When they arrived, the fire was burning merrily and David, Ferne, and Charlotte were sitting around it, talking and laughing. They grew quiet as she approached. Ferne and Charlotte stared at her, wide-eyed, as Naomi locked the bag in a trunk on the back of the carriage and, with a grunt of disgust and fury, dropped onto a bedroll at the far end of the fire.

  Arabel’s stomach knotted as she tried to think of some explanation that sounded plausible.

  “I said I’d help you,” David said, but his tone wasn’t a reproach, only matter-of-fact. “If you stay with us, we’ll let you off at the next town. It’s not safe out there.”

  Arabel swallowed and nodded. The fire looked warm and inviting, but she put her bag back on top of the carriage, climbed in, and tried to sleep.

  4

  The next morning was bright and clear. Mist lay in the hollows and drifted across the road, illuminated in bright golden shafts by the sunlight lancing through the treetops. Arabel stared out at it through the carriage window as they bumped along, imagining what it would be like to be out there on her own this morning instead of here in this carriage, with Ferne and Charlotte whispering together, sneaking occasional glances at her.

  She pressed her face harder against the window.

  When the sun had climbed high in the sky and had burned off the last tendrils of mist, the carriage ground to a halt. David hopped down and pulled the door open, smiling at Ferne and Charlotte and nodding politely to Arabel as he handed out pieces of bread and dried meat.

  Arabel bit off a piece and wandered to the back of the carriage, stretching out her legs and back. David locked the food bag in a trunk and bent down to examine one of the carriage wheels.

  She was trying to figure out what to say to him when a shadow passed across her mind, bringing with it a tingle of unease. David glanced up and noticed her standing there. The hair stood up on the back of her neck and she looked over her shoulder, sure she was
going to see something terrible there, watching. Her heartbeat quickened, and her hands went clammy and cold.

  “Arabel?” She realized it wasn’t the first time David had said her name. She wanted to get inside the carriage; she needed to hide. She couldn’t focus on David’s face. “Arabel, what’s wrong?”

  Then he stiffened. “Naomi!”

  “Yep. Get them inside.” Naomi’s blade was in her hand as she scanned the trees.

  Arabel felt David’s firm grip on her upper arm, guiding her into the carriage; she shook her head, turning towards him, but he slammed the door shut behind her.

  Ferne and Charlotte peered at her. “Arabel, you’re all green, are you OK?”

  Arabel shook her head, trying to clear it, but her breath was hitching in her chest and the unrecognizable feeling kept rising. She wanted to press herself back into the seat, find someplace small and protected and wedge herself into it.

  A tiny voice in the back of her mind said, “What are you doing? There’s nothing there.” But every muscle in her body disagreed. She realized she was trembling.

  A shout came from outside, and a flash of light. Arabel and the twins scrambled to the window, their fingers white against the glass. David and Naomi stood, crouched down about ten feet from the carriage, facing away, out into the forest, moving in slow, wary circles, their weapons in their hands. The sky outside was darker, and the world had lost all color. The end of Naomi’s weapon flashed, and Naomi darted to the side.

  She disappeared for a fraction of a second, reappearing a moment later a few feet from where she’d been, the air shimmering around her. She shouted something to David, who turned, lifting his blade. A shadowy phantom shot from the forest; it lunged at David, reaching ghostly, taloned hands into his chest. The claws tore at him, drawing out spectral threads of light. A grimace of pain crossed his face. This was nothing like the fox from the night before.

  Two more shadowy blurs surrounded Naomi, who wore a look of grim concentration. The phantoms snapped and tore at her, their claws raking her sides, but they couldn’t find purchase. She swept the blade up and around, and with a sharp pulse of light one of the demons was gone.