An identical tray with four identical wooden bowls (except these bowls came with spoons) was on the ground next to the one she’d just dragged from our cage. She pushed the new tray into the torrential rain of silver sparks, slung the staff over one shoulder, and picked up the tray of empty bowls before she walked away down the trail.
“Breakfast is here,” I said. I seemed to have been the only one awakened from the noisy tray exchange.
I grabbed a spoon and a bowl, which was quite warm in my cupped hands. The bowl was filled with some type of steaming porridge. We had all survived the night, so poison was off the table. I took a careful spoonful and it tasted as bland as it looked, but I wasn’t going to complain.
After breakfast, I lounged on my bed with earbuds in and my music cranked up to drown out the rest of the world. During the second song, I noticed Nicholae trying to get my attention. I removed one earbud, but didn’t stop the music.
“We should utilize this time,” he said.
That got me to turn off the music and set my phone down. We’d been working together during the uneventful evenings in the wasteland, working to help me break through a frozen state. My last encounter with Kafka rendered me helpless, but left me fully aware. It was worse than being unaware. It was a terrifyingly vulnerable position to be in—helpless to save myself, helpless to save my friends. Something I never wanted to experience again.
“Okay,” I said.
“Then I don’t have to tell you what’s coming,” Nicholae said and focused intently on me.
The now familiar tidal wave hit me and rendered my physical body powerless. I squirmed inside the shell of my own body, fighting to break free and produce even the slightest movement. If I could just blink my eyes or wiggle a finger, then I could leap off this plateau. The rest would be easy. Just this first damn movement.
“I can see you struggling in there,” Nicholae said.
Erik and Cassandra were watching, too.
“I’m Kafka,” Nicholae said. “I’m walking straight toward you, intent on killing you. Picture it. Feel it. Believe it!”
I didn’t have to imagine hard. Nicholae transformed into Kafka without much effort. The surroundings became that quiet street in Doria, statues all around me, with one man meticulously moving through the inanimate crowd. Replicas of Micah and Isolde were my sole defenses. For a moment, Micah was still alive. And then his body was replaced by Jeremy’s.
“I’m going to kill your friends if you don’t stop me. I’m going to kill you,” Nicholae said, his voice spitting malice with each word. He took a step closer.
He wasn’t there. I was frozen and helpless and he wasn’t there! Our people—his people were dying and he wasn’t there. I saw Nicholae for a moment, but he quickly reverted back to Kafka—because he wasn’t there!
Nicholae took another step.
I punched and kicked at the inner walls of my body. Breaking something would be better than doing nothing at all. I had been kneeling on the bed when the tidal wave hit and I was still kneeling in the exact same position. In my mind, I was jumping up and down, reaching for a weapon, screaming at my attacker. But nothing I did seemed to make a bit of difference.
A large knife appeared in Nicholae’s hand when he moved forward one more step. He violently slashed at the air, cutting through sparks that reflected off the blade. “One of your friends is dead,” he said and slashed again.
I watched Jeremy fall limply to the ground with blood pouring from a gash in his neck. He wasn’t my friend, he was my brother—a brother Nicholae never really loved. Jeremy knew it. I knew it. I saw it in Nicholae’s face when Jeremy was being tortured on the bridge. Indifference.
Kafka held the dripping dagger in one hand and reached for Isolde’s hair, ready to pull her head back and open her throat as well. Nicholae wasn’t coming to save us.
“NO!” I screamed at the top of my lungs—and found myself falling forward—actually falling off the bed.
Nicholae caught me before I hit the ground. He released his knife to catch me with both hands. The weapon clanged off the rocks and skidded under the bed. I landed on top of him and he toppled backward. My head crashed against his chest and his body crunched against the rock floor.
Erik and Cassandra rushed over to help me off Nicholae. I felt weak and dazed. My whole body was fatigued like the fight I had been putting up in my head had actually happened. The two Lornes supporting me tested my stability by apprehensively releasing my arms. My knees shook from all the inner exertion.
Nicholae rubbed the back of his head with one hand as he slowly rose to a seated position. By the time he was fully upright, he was beaming from ear to ear.
“Do you realize what you’ve just done?” Nicholae asked, his grin unfaltering.
“I—I’m so pissed at you,” I said.
Now his grin faltered. “What?”
“You weren’t there...when Kafka came,” I said. “You never seem to be there.”
Nicholae rose to his feet. “I can’t be everywhere. When I couldn’t be there, Daniel was. That was the agreement. I tried—I died to keep you and your mother safe.”
“What about Jeremy?” I could now confidently stand on my own and shrugged Erik and Cassandra aside. Resentment had overtaken fatigue.
Nicholae’s eyes grew cold. “What about him?”
“You didn’t try to save him.”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t. I knew...I knew it would only prolong the inevitable. You may not believe me, but I didn’t want to watch him die that day. He wasn’t mine, but he was a good kid. I tried to treat him like my own, though it may not have always come across that way.” He paused. “Daniel is a romantic. And he’s my best friend. But positive intentions don’t alter the inevitable.”
“And who decides what’s inevitable?”
“You broke free of my hold,” Nicholae said. “Do you realize that?”
I was about to answer him when I noticed the last of the sparks raining down had appeared, and those elements were bringing the entire cage down. The walls collapsed and the last of the sparks vanished upon contact with the ground. We were now four travelers and four beds in an open clearing halfway up a mountain.
Then I noticed the young girl standing near us—the red-haired girl who had brought us breakfast. She didn’t carry a tray and she didn’t have a staff. She carried nothing, her hands folded upon one another. She waited for our undivided attention before speaking.
“Sir Archanum will see you now,” she said in the sweetest of little voices.
Kafka (8)
Eli strolled into Kafka’s penthouse suite, drenched in his daediem’s blood, feeling more confident than ever.
Kafka was seated on one of the couches overlooking the rebuilding of Provex City. He stood to face Eli upon hearing his footsteps from the entryway. A trail of blood marked Eli’s path from the front door to the living room.
“I had every confidence,” Kafka said.
“I didn’t.”
“But you do now.”
Eli thought of the shard he’d hidden from Jag and his grin returned. “Yes.”
Kafka met Eli at the edge of the living room. He grabbed him by both arms and Eli winced. Taking Eli’s hands and extending his arms, Kafka examined the patchwork of stitched-up cuts marring his skin.
“You’ve overcome quite the ordeal,” Kafka said. “It looks painful.”
“Not so much anymore,” Eli said, which was true. Killing his daediem had tapped into a hidden reserve of strength he didn’t know he had.
Kafka slid a hand down Eli’s right arm and all of the scars, new and old, vanished like soaking up a spill. He repeated the process on the other arm.
“Do you have them anywhere else?” Kafka asked.
Eli poked at his arms with skeptical fingers. No pain. He looked up and shook his head. “This was as far as he got.”
“Good. He was a vicious one and will make you that much stronger. Why don’t you get cleaned up and then
I’ll show you the progress we’ve made while you were away.” Kafka gave Eli some clean clothes and offered his guest bathroom to use.
Eli went into the bathroom and closed the door. He turned on the water for the shower and tossed his bloody shirt on the floor. The reflection looking back at him in the mirror seemed more like Jag than Eli. He looked different—he felt different—though he couldn’t pinpoint what exactly had changed. He held his arms out picturing all the mounds of rough stitch work. Smears and trickles of blood still remained, but the skin itself was perfect.
The running water began to fog up the mirror.
Eli looked himself straight in the eyes, eyes that no longer belonged to just him. Jag was behind them now, hungrily gazing out. His face was fading in the mirror like the sole identity that once was Elijah Long. He was a different person now. And through Kafka, he would be reborn. A new man would exit the ceremony.
The fog overtook the mirror. He never again had to look at the boy who’d cried and begged for rescue at the bottom of the open grave. That boy was buried.
Eli wrote on the mirror with his index finger, large letters that stretched from wall to wall.
Elijah Long is dead.
19
Throne Room
The girl led us down the path past the boulders. Behind them, there were stairs built into the rock, some leading up and others leading down. We went up.
She never looked back to see if we were following or how far we were behind. Her bare feet took each step gracefully—steps that extended beyond a curve in the cliff. When we reached the next landing, I saw our sublime destination.
The landing we were on was all rock, but a few steps higher sat a second landing where the lush greens replaced the bare land underfoot. On the first staircase, we had to climb it single file, but the shorter staircase before us could accommodate our entire group side-by-side.
The second landing was a verdant garden of tall bushes pruned to resemble statues of beasts and men, flowers of every color, flourishing pools with arced bridges of wooden planks, and exquisite fountains that spat water thirty feet into the air. The concoction of floral scenes was intoxicating and I found myself actually stopping to smell the roses. The garden stretched a hundred yards or more and backed up to a four-story palace with large windows, a vine-laced exterior, and a white sweeping staircase that connected the garden to a viewing balcony. The black roof was a sharp and angular crown with several brick chimneys protruding from it like horns.
“Welcome to Archanum Manor,” the girl said as we reached the bottom of one side of the white staircase.
It was segmented into three equal tiers, which we climbed in earnest—the final few stairs standing between us and the elusive Archanums. I wandered over to the white stone railing to gaze out at the entire garden that extended a hundred yards in either direction—then out at the grander scale of the valley far below that extended a hundred miles in either direction. We were as much atop the world as in any Provex City tower.
The portion of the main building connecting to the viewing terrace was a full wall of windows, complete with two glass double doors, one set of them open. All I could see from the window wall was the garden and valley reflecting back at us. The inside of the palace remained as elusive as the Archanums themselves.
The girl did not lead us inside. Instead, she stood next to the set of open doors and gestured for us to enter.
“The throne room is just inside,” she said. “Please.” She bowed to each of us as we passed, then shut the doors behind us and left down the closest white staircase.
We had stepped into a grand two-story space of travertine columns, a similarly tiled floor, candle-lit crystal chandeliers, and colorful mosaics lining the wood-paneled walls. On the far end of the imperial hall was a dais several steps up with two golden thrones, one with a larger-than-life white marble statue of a man, and beside him, an exquisitely detailed white marble woman. Each statue held a chain—a long chain that connected to a collared person who remarkably resembled the statues to which he and she were joined. Neither the chained man, nor the chained woman, had seats of their own. They both sat upon the steps to the dais.
The man on the steps began clapping as we continued toward him. “Congratulations on being the first, and certainly not the first to have tried. We had no doubt we’d be meeting members of Kafka’s manufactured Lorne family one day. And here you are in our throne room. You must be Nicholae. Kafka tells us so much about you.”
“And you’re Sir Archanum?” Nicholae asked, coming to a halt twenty feet away from the chained couple.
“I am,” he said and gestured to the woman to his left. “And this is Madame Archanum.”
“We are pleased to finally meet you,” she said. “While you’re in The Garden, we do ask you get rid of your guns. This kingdom does not have them, and we intend on keeping it that way.”
“If you require assistance—”
“No need,” Nicholae said, holding a hand out to me.
I gave Nicholae my weapon, which disappeared with one touch of his hand. The other Lornes dematerialized their handguns as well.
“I’m sorry. We did not mean to offend.” Nicholae paused and took another look around the throne room. “This place is yours—all of it.”
Even I knew he was talking about more than just the palace—he truly meant everything. I could hear the envy in his voice and could imagine the same tone coming from Kafka.
“We don’t stake claim to everything we create,” Sir Archanum said.
He had wavy golden hair that fell to his shoulders and icy blue eyes. Tall and slender, he wore a loose-fitting silk shirt and pants, and an off-white robe that nearly touched his bare feet. His knees jutted out at what looked like uncomfortable angles, his hands grabbed the stair on which he sat as if he were preparing to pounce. “We were like you once, centuries ago. The way you were before Kafka found you.”
“Bryten?” Nicholae asked.
Sir Archanum nodded. “We are Brytenwalda.”
“All of you have your daediems with you,” Madame Archanum said. “That is punishable here by eternal exile. Have you met the exiled?”
“The Scorched Ones?” Cassandra asked.
Madame Archanum nodded with a smile reminiscent of a mother thinking of a beloved child. Her hair was the same golden color as Sir Archanum’s and only slightly longer. Her eyes were as piercingly green as Desiree’s, which made me long to see her again. A long white robe draped elegantly over the soft curves of her body, one shoulder bare, the other pinned with a gold flower. A similar flower adorned her hair.
“We battled a fair share of your little creatures.” Cassandra didn’t share the same lighthearted sentiment.
“You may have broken them, but we will put them back together,” Madame Archanum said.
“We won’t do that to you,” Sir Archanum said. “It would be unfair judging by where you come from. It wouldn’t be fair to punish you for doing what we taught you to do originally. But to be clear, we no longer condone such behavior. We now teach the cohabitation of our entire selves.”
“Speaking of cohabitation, why are you chained to a statue?’ I asked, stepping alongside Nicholae.
“We’re all chained to something,” he said. “Whether you dare to admit it or not. Whom you see here, we are joined, not imprisoned. We are much freer than you’ll learn to be in your short lifetime. You do not have a wolf-head, young one. So it is safe to assume this is your first awakened life. We enlightened Kafka to the secret—one of them—many centuries ago. But there is another. We no longer cycle through lives, but live one. This is a life you have not evolved to yet. You are builders, not creators. You are still busy building your empire, seeking significance, and gathering immortality through legacy. You, too, will reach a time when those things are no longer important.”
Another young girl, also sporting a burned “A” in the side of her neck and trotting along on bare feet, led a teenage boy from one of the man
y side entrances in the great hall. I guessed him to be about my age. He wore loose-fitting white clothes that resembled pajamas and had an identical burn scar. The girl stopped half-way to the dais while the boy continued forward. She gave a humble bow and returned in the direction from which she came.
Madame Archanum summoned the boy to her with graceful hand gestures. He did not look at us and took a seat next to her, between the two Archanums. She pulled one hand from his lap, kissed the palm of his hand and then moved to his wrist. When blood began to trickle from his arm, I realized she was no longer just kissing him. The boy winced in pain but did not cry out or pull away. Sir Archanum grabbed the boy’s free hand and bit into that wrist as well. Blood pooled on the stair before spilling down to the next.
They both pulled away from the boy’s arms at the same time. He stood and padded down the steps, bowed deeply to the Archanums and exited the hall.
“All daediems must keep up their strength lest they wish to grow weak and wither,” Sir Archanum said, wiping his blood-smeared mouth with a manifested white towel. He used the towel to mop up the spilled blood and allowed the towel to disappear once the area was clean.
“You both are daediems?” Erik asked.
“Technically speaking, from your limited perspective. We are parts of Brytenwalda Archanum that make up one individual. Not limited to titles. We are not separate, but one whole.”
“And this is the asymmetric plane?” I asked.
“Not like the others,” Sir Archanum said. “The Garden is unique—and uniquely hidden—to remain hidden from travelers like yourselves. Kafka is the only outsider to whom we’ve given directions. We knew he would share the way eventually.”
“He did not show us the way,” Nicholae said.
“Oh? You came all on your own?”
“Most impressive,” Madame Archanum said.
“Which brings me to the real reason why we’re here,” Nicholae said. “Kafka has destroyed one of your planes—killed your guardians. He is out of control and must be stopped.”
Archanum Manor Page 21