The Eidolons of Myrefall

by Sarah McCarthy

  “Oooh! Yes!” Charlotte said. “Please. I’m supposed to…” She squinted at the paper. “Clean something. I can’t tell what this says.”

  David peered over her shoulder. “Latrines. That says latrines.”

  “Oh.” Charlotte slumped over her empty plate.

  “Well, still, yes, please help us,” Ferne said. Arabel wasn’t quite sure, but it looked like she was trying to bat her eyelashes at him.

  Arabel stood up and stared around awkwardly. “Er, meeting with Oswald,” she said. “See you later.”

  David nodded, but the usual friendliness was gone from his gaze. Arabel felt a lot sadder about this than she would have expected.

  “Here,” Avery said, standing. “I’m done anyway, let me take those dishes for you.” She was already taking the plate and silverware from Arabel’s hands.

  “Oh, thanks. OK,” Arabel said, smiling awkwardly. She gave a wave, then, inwardly cursing herself, walked away. She thought she could still hear whispers as she passed.

  Naomi was already in the courtyard when Arabel arrived. It was a different place than it had been the night before. The lamps had been extinguished and morning sun angled down across the stones, reflecting off pools of water left by last night’s rain. Naomi’s arms were crossed in front of her chest and she watched Arabel’s approach coolly. Damn, she looks cool. Too bad she hates me.

  Without even greeting her, Naomi turned and sped across the courtyard so that Arabel had to jog to keep up, her boots splashing through the puddles.

  “This is the old tower,” Naomi said, yanking open the door Arabel had found locked the previous night. She swept inside and Arabel had to lunge to grab it before it closed. It was heavier than she’d expected, but she tugged it open and, cursing under her breath, jogged along after Naomi.

  They sped through an open reception area, weaving around high-backed brocade chairs and marble fireplaces. Arabel ran a hand over the back of one of the chairs as she passed, and a thick layer of dust stuck to her fingers. As in the new tower, a central spiral staircase climbed through the structure. This one spiraled less tightly, though, curling around a thick central column.

  They climbed so quickly that Arabel barely had a moment to glance at the floors as they passed. She caught a brief glimpse of an open room with white-sheeted beds, herbs hanging from ceilings, then several floors of what looked like dorms. Then much nicer dorms with more marble. A formal dining room—empty—more, shabbier dorms, and finally a carpeted landing with a ring of doors around it.

  Gasping for breath, Arabel wondered briefly if Naomi always walked this fast, or if this was her way of asserting her cardiovascular dominance. Well, if that was the point, she was succeeding. Naomi didn’t even appear to be breathing. They stopped in front of a dark green door, and she rapped forcefully on it.

  “Come in,” a pleasant voice called. Naomi opened the door, gestured for Arabel to enter, then shut it behind her. Arabel heard her boots clicking off down the stairs.

  Arabel found herself standing in a large, cozy office with a bank of windows on one side. A heavy wooden desk with feet carved like the claws of some giant bird stood in the middle of the room, with two battered green armchairs in front of it, and behind the desk sat Oswald Pembroke, his glasses flashing pleasantly. Behind him, a glass sculpture, glowing a gentle turquoise, sat on a bookshelf. Arabel glanced out the window and saw an enormous owl staring at her from the branches of a tree.

  “Welcome,” he said, smiling. “Please, have a seat.” He followed her gaze. “That is Henrietta.”

  OK… Arabel sat, preparing to be interrogated further about the night before. If it had been Cecil sitting across that desk, she could have expected to be locked up somewhere, probably without food—which was what Cecil considered the worst possible punishment.

  “So how is dear old Cecil these days?” Oswald asked, steepling his fingers and leaning back in his chair.

  Arabel considered her possible answers to this question. He was the same as always: ordering people around, plotting to get back at someone who had wronged him politically, figuring out how to undermine leaders of city-states that were more prosperous than Myrefall. “He’s fine.”

  “In good health?”

  For someone who ate as much as he did. “Yes.”

  Oswald considered this. “You know, just because you’re not speaking lies does not mean you are telling the truth.”

  “It’s called being polite. Cecil is a conniving despot with too many teacakes.”

  Oswald laughed, the laugh turning into a cough. “Right.” He removed his glasses, polished them, and cleared his throat. “An apt description. Yes.”

  “Also, I’m sure he has some plan for sending me here. Whatever it is, it’s probably bad for at least me. I don’t know how he feels about you. But if you’ve wronged him, and most people who’ve met him have, then it’s probably bad for you, too.”

  “Oh, he hates us,” Oswald said smiling. “Particularly after, well, you’re a bit young… regardless, any guesses as to why he sent you to us?”

  “I got on his nerves.”

  “Not doing what he said?”

  “Right.”

  “He always has hated that.” Oswald crossed one leg over the other, adjusted his glasses, and continued. “Well, I suppose there isn’t much we can do at the moment. We have our people, of course. I’ll have this looked into. What did he say when he told you his plan?”

  “David and Naomi were there. He said he hoped I’d… learn how good I’d had it, or something.”

  “He didn’t tell you until you were about to leave?” Oswald grimaced and massaged his knee. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. That makes it most uncomfortable for you.”

  Was his sympathy genuine? Was this an act? Trying to get on her good side? Not everyone was like Cecil. Not everyone had a complicated set of underlying motives to everything they did or said.

  “It’s all right,” Oswald said, interrupting her thoughts.

  “What’s all right?”

  “You don’t have to trust me. You don’t have to trust any of us. You would be foolish to, right away. Given who your father is. Take your time. Test us out.”

  She grimaced. Were her thoughts that obvious?

  “I apologize,” he said. “I’ve made you uncomfortable. I do tend to do that. I read faces rather well. I try not to, but it does make me good at my job.”

  “I’m fine,” Arabel said.

  He smiled and nodded. “Of course. Well, should we begin?”

  “We haven’t started? What was all this, then?”

  Oswald looked surprised. “Oh, small talk. Just some chit chat before we get down to work.”

  “So… in your version of small talk you ask me about my relationship with my father and whether I’m helping him plot against you?”

  “I’ve never been very good at it,” he said wistfully. “It’s true.”

  Arabel wanted to laugh, but he actually looked somewhat depressed about it. “Er, I don’t think anyone is really.”

  “Yes, only the insane, isn’t that right?” Oswald said brightly. “I’ve heard that.”

  “Er, yes.”

  Oswald twiddled his thumbs. “Well, no more small talk for us, then. Are you ready to start?” He turned to the bookshelf behind him and began running a finger along the titles.

  “Oh, well… Actually, sir, I was wondering if… if you could tell me about my mother.”

  Oswald paused, turning back to her, a book forgotten in his hand.

  “What do you wish to know?”

  “The thing is, I don’t remember anything about her.”

  He tucked the book under his arm, removed his glasses, and began polishing them on a handkerchief. “You remember nothing? That’s interesting,” he said, almost to himself. “Quite interesting. You weren’t that young when she—”

  “I wasn’t? How old was I?”

  “Oh, five or six I believe.” He settled back into his chai
r, his eyes watching her thoughtfully. “Your mother was a uniquely talented woman. Not a guardian, but skilled with eidolons. The resemblance between you is quite startling. You have her build, and her blue eyes. There’s really not a lot of your father in you.”

  “Good.”

  “Yes, well. She loved this castle. Spent as much time as she could here, which wasn’t much. Inventing and experimenting.”

  Arabel strained her memory, struggling to remember even a shred of the woman he was describing.

  Oswald waited patiently. When he finally spoke, it was very gently. “You are welcome to ask me about her any time.”

  Arabel swallowed around the lump that had suddenly lodged in her throat. She shook her head. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “Well, if you are ready, the purpose of this meeting is to begin to determine your eidolons.”

  “I—I don’t have any eidolons.”

  “Everyone thinks that. Unless…” He looked at her more closely. “Did your mother help you?”

  “Help me what?”

  “Incorporate the—but of course you don’t remember.” He fixed her with a piercing stare. “How much do you know about eidolons?”

  Arabel shrugged. “David said they’re bits of souls.”

  His eyes widened. “And that is all? That is really all you know?”

  “I mean, about eidolons, yeah. I know other things.”

  Oswald sank deeper into his seat, his hand massaging his forehead. “It gets worse and worse. To think that so many people know nothing.” He shook his head, then took a deep breath, straightening.

  “All right, all right. Let’s begin, then. At the beginning.” He crossed his arms over the book spread out on the table in front of him. “The eidolons are created by man.”

  That was the part she knew.

  Oswald continued, “Not purposefully, of course. No. There is a realm, a realm below ours, where elements of the spirit move and have shape and form. We are all connected to this realm, and through it, to each other. We guardians call this the Deep.”

  That sounded familiar. She’d at least heard of the Deep, although she’d usually heard it referred to as the realm of death.

  “It is also referred to as the realm of death.”

  “Please stop doing that.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Reading my mind.”

  “Oh, was that what you were thinking? My apologies.”

  “Thanks. It’s horrifying.”

  “Yes. I understand. I’m very sorry. It’s interesting that you don’t want to be known, though. That’s useful. Write that down, will you?” He pushed a piece of parchment at her, then took a deep breath, opening his mouth like he was preparing to continue.

  Arabel didn’t move, and Oswald stopped. “Come on now, we don’t have all day. Just write down ‘I don’t want to be known,’ so we don’t forget, and let’s keep going.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Of course you don’t. Because then someone might find it and know that you don’t want to be known. Which would be a terrible thing for them to know about you. You don’t have to write your name on it.”

  Arabel glared at him, but she took the parchment and a quill and scratched out ‘I don’t want to be known.’ Then she wrote her name at the top. “I don’t care if I’m known,” she said.

  “That’s the spirit. Now. The Deep connects us all. Our souls, our spirits, are things of the Deep. We cannot spend much time there without disintegrating, but our souls can, and pieces of our souls can as well.” He looked at her. “Do you see where I am going with this?”

  “No.”

  “Really? Not at all?”

  She thought about it. “I mean… no, not really. Sorry.” He seemed to think that it should be obvious at this point.

  “We humans tend to hate ourselves so easily, don’t we? We push away parts of ourselves. We reject whole aspects of our beings. These pieces of ourselves that we reject, these become deformed, twisted, pushed into the Deep. They wander, tormented, through that nether world, but they never truly lose their connection to the man or woman who created them. There is a current of energy running between the two. These lost fragments of souls feed on the people who cast them out, draining them in order to survive. If they are powerful enough, they will cross the boundary between the Deep and the physical world. They take on a physical form and lash back out at the world that rejected them.”

  “So… those parts go about killing and possessing and…”

  “All manner of terrible things, yes.”

  “But… I don’t…”

  “You would be an uncommonly rare person if you truly had no eidolons. It takes a great deal of training to avoid creating them. And even more to learn how to incorporate them back into yourself.”

  “People call you degenerates. They say you invite in the demons, that you become like them, that you embody the worst qualities of people.”

  “And all of those things are true.” He paused. “To truly be one of us, you must accept all that you are. All that a human can be. Which, unfortunately,” he smiled, “often includes things like rage and hatred, terror and insecurity, jealousy, incompetence, cowardice, and shame. The eidolons are only demons because those are the parts of ourselves we disown.”

  “But… why doesn’t anyone know this? Everyone just calls them demons and hides behind the wards.”

  “Oh, we’ve been telling them for two thousand years. Are you happy to hear this news?”

  “I mean, no—”

  “Are you thinking to yourself, I wonder where my eidolons are and what they are doing?”

  “I don’t think I—”

  “Exactly.” Oswald slapped a palm down on the surface of his desk. Henrietta cocked her head, examining him with a large golden eye, mouse intestines dangling from her beak. “You don’t believe me. You don’t think you have any eidolons, do you? You’re thinking to yourself, well, maybe some of those demons were created by people, but it’s not something I’ve done. Or maybe you don’t believe that those terrors in the woods could possibly be human?”

  “No, I believe that.”

  “Yes, I imagine you do. But you see? No one wants to hear this. The amount of work it takes to do something real about this problem is so much that it might kill you.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “If people really believed us that they were creating these ‘demons’, these creatures that possess and torment and kill and destroy everything in their path, then there is no ethical choice but to take the long, difficult road to controlling them, yes?”

  “I guess so.”

  “But who wants to travel to a castle, high in the mountains, and spend a year of their lives on daily, grueling, dangerous practice which might very well kill you?”

  “Well, I’m here.”

  “Yes, because you were brought here against your will. Charlotte and Ferne have little idea what they’re getting into. Alistair had no choice.”

  “Avery, though—”

  “Yes. Avery is a good one. Very noble. One person, in a hundred city-states. One single person has made that choice knowing full well what it entailed.”

  The silence hung in the air between them. Arabel tried to imagine what she would have said two weeks ago, if Oswald had come to Myrefall and told her all this. She would have thought he was crazy.

  “So what do you do, then? If people won’t stop creating them?”

  Oswald’s lips thinned into a grim line. “We hunt them. We hunt the eidolons. The worst of them. And we trap them. Bring them here, imprison them until the one who created them dies. Then we release the fragment back into the Deep, where eventually it will find its way back to itself.”

  “But what if the person wants part of their soul back before that?”

  “They don’t.” His words were hard.

  “But, this could all be stopped if people just—”

  “Two thousand years, Arabel. That is how long
we have been trying.”

  “Sounds like that’s how long you’ve been picking up other peoples’ messes.”

  “That too,” Oswald said. “I share your distaste.”

  “But you’re still doing it.”

  “Because the alternative is death and destruction. And the loss of the knowledge we have gained. We are here, and we will train anyone who asks. And we will continue to travel and protect those who are vulnerable even though they are not protecting themselves.”

  “How long are you going to wait?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  Oswald glanced at the brass clock on his desk. “Speaking of that, we have been talking far too long, I am afraid. You have chores to do, if I’m not mistaken. We will continue this another time.”

  Reluctantly, with many more questions than she’d had when she’d entered his office, Arabel left, passing David on his way in.

  8

  “Ah, David, come in.” Oswald retreated behind his desk, tucking the glowing turquoise orb into a cupboard as he sat and looked up at the young man standing in front of him.

  “Thank you, sir.” David shut the door behind him and sat in the plush chair across from Oswald. “I’m sorry for not making an appointment.”

  “Quite all right. What’s troubling you?”

  “I’d like to ask your permission to go out and attempt to collect some of Alistair’s eidolons.”

  “I see.” Oswald steepled his hands and examined a cut on one of his thumbs. David continued.

  “He’s not strong enough, and there are so many of them. They’re draining him too fast.”

  Oswald nodded. “I understand your concern.”

  “Great. I’d like to leave now, if that’s all right with you. I’ve completed the rest of my duties.”

  “David, while I understand your concern, you’re not giving Alistair enough credit.”

  “He looks just as bad as—”

  “That was different. You know this already, David. You have to let people do things for themselves.”

  “And if he dies?”

  “People have more strength than you give them credit for, David.”