Surely Bean had known that. He was perfectly aware of the problem with the spell itself; that was why he hadn’t brought his wife back on his own. Why had he wanted Ferris to do it? Had he really hoped for something more? Or did he just want to pass off responsibility for what would come of it? Now, Ferris would never know.
“So what caused the Lady to…strangle the master?”
“I can’t say. All I did was bring her back to life using a flawed spell. Maybe it was lingering hatred from before her death that made the corpse do what it did.”
She had been stabbed to death, after all. The soul didn’t actually reside in the resurrected corpse, but perhaps the pain of it remained. Another thing Ferris didn’t understand.
“…Maybe the lady simply couldn’t bear to see the master live on in disgrace. She really did love him, you know.” Against Ferris’s gloomy assessment, the maid had another interpretation. It was perhaps too pretty an explanation for what had just happened.
“Come to think of it, what about you? Who are you, exactly?” There was one more thing Ferris didn’t know, but it was an answer he might be able to get.
He had no idea what position the maid was in. Had she been in league with Bean? But she hadn’t done anything to stop his death. And she didn’t seem hostile to Ferris now.
As Ferris stood frowning, the maid smiled at him for the first time. It was a terribly lonely smile.
“I’m just a servant. I owe much to the master and his lady… I even held you in my arms many times, Master Felix.”
“…Huh…”
The story didn’t quite click with him. He couldn’t imagine such a familial scene had ever taken place in this house.
“But never mind. I have to help Lady Crusch. Is she really all right?”
“You’ve no need to worry about that. I unlocked her chains. I think she’s quite capable of getting away on her own.” Then the maid gestured down the stairs, and Ferris immediately understood where Crusch had been held. She had been shut up in that hideous basement room.
“That place again…!”
“Indeed. The master was rather set in his ways.”
Ferris burned with anger, but the maid, for her part, continued to smile, still as lonesome as before. The expression didn’t leave her face as she slowly approached the bed and the two corpses.
“I’m going down there,” Ferris said. “You won’t try to stop me?”
“Please, do exactly as you wish. I shall see the master and his lady on their way.”
After all this, Ferris found he didn’t have the slightest idea what the maid was thinking. But when it came to giving funeral rites to his mother and father, he thought it was more appropriate that this servant do it, rather than a boy who felt nothing for the people who called themselves his parents.
“I’ll let you handle it, then. And I’ll speak to Lady Crusch about you.” There was no chance the maid would go unpunished, but perhaps he could gain her some clemency. With that thought in mind, he hurried out of the bedroom. As he rushed down the hallway, he heard something behind him.
“—Good-bye, my dear Felix.”
“Huh?”
Then there was the sound of a door closing and a click as it locked. Ferris stopped in his tracks; that click gave him a bad feeling. He had no good reason for it, but his intuition said the sound marked something from which there was no turning back.
“Wait! Why’d you lock the door? What are you going to do?!” He went back and pounded desperately on the door, but there was no answer. Eventually, though, a response came from the far side that was more matter-of-fact than any reply could be.
“—That’s hot!” The burning sensation made his hand jump off the doorknob. At the same moment, he caught another smell mingling with the stench of rot in the house: something burning. Fire. A fire had been set in the room he had just left, by the maid who had locked herself inside.
“What do you think you’re doing?!”
But still there was no answer. Only immense heat told him what the maid intended.
He was aghast at how quickly the fire spread. It dawned on him that the plan all along had been for the entire household to die together. He kicked the door viciously.
“I hate this place! And everyone in it! All of it, all of it! I hate you—!!”
He should never have come back. He wished he had never seen his father or his mother, or that maid.
He dashed through the hallway, shoving aside undead warriors who stood dumbly, making for the stairs. The fire would take the whole house, and the remaining undead warriors would be cremated along with it. But so would Crusch, in the basement room.
Ferris went down the stairs, heading for that vile room underground. He was on the first floor. Where should he go to get to the room? He was in his own house, but he didn’t know. He knew nothing. It was infuriating, so infuriating.
“Why does this place keep tormenting me…!”
He hated his legs for not being able to run any faster. He hated his memory for its failure to help him find the basement room. He hated his parents, who had never spared him a second thought. He hated the maid who had chosen to accompany his parents into death. It was as if everything here, all of it, every inch of this house, existed only to cause him suffering.
“Ferris!”
But just as he was about to burst into tears, he heard a voice from downstairs. His soul resonated with the sharp, resounding timbre instantly.
“Lady Crusch—!”
Even framed by leaping crimson flames, even in a place thick with the smell of rot, Crusch was beautiful. Ferris found her in the great room, rushed to her, and clung to her without a second’s hesitation. She held him tight in her arms.
“Thank goodness you’re safe,” she said.
“Th-that’s my l-line…” he said.
“I guess it is. I’m sorry for worrying you. But I’m all right, thanks to His Highness’s plan.”
Ferris looked and saw Julius, presumably there at Fourier’s behest, standing beside Crusch. So he was the one who had saved her. But there was no time for Ferris to express his gratitude now.
Crusch looked up, narrowing her eyes as she confirmed that the source of the fire was above them.
“Ferris, are your parents…?”
“Get—! Get me out…now…!”
“Ferris?”
“Get me out of here! Take me away, just like before…! There’s nothing here! If I stay here, I won’t be me anymore…! Make me…human… Keep me by your side. With you, Lady Crusch, and His Highness…!” he begged her, stumbling over his words.
Emotions ran through Ferris that seemed alien even to him. Julius’s face clouded with confusion, and he looked to Crusch as if for guidance.
She, in turn, answered, “—All right. Let’s put an end to this time of injustice you’ve endured.” She held him close, patting him comfortingly on the back. Ferris was surprised how relieved the gesture made him feel. “Julius, take the lead. I’ll bring Ferris.”
Julius nodded and set off in front of them. He easily pushed aside the undead warriors who stood mindlessly in their way, while others were swallowed by the flames. In the burning corpses, Ferris saw himself in this house. Burning, burning to the ground.
The terrible memories were swathed in fire, the origin he had so long suppressed turning to ash in a mantle of red.
“Lady Crusch, you’re all right—!”
Almost before he knew what had happened, they were out of the mansion. A military official was rushing up to Crusch, who still held fast to Ferris’s shoulders. They said something to each other, and Crusch kept Ferris’s hand in hers the whole time.
“Look, the undead warriors—!” someone called out.
All the zombies had begun to move at once. Moments earlier, they had been attacking anything that got close. Now they all shuffled toward the mansion. They filed into the burning house, and one by one were reduced to motes of soot and dust.
Only the spell
caster, or someone given authority by the spell caster, could control the zombies. With Bean dead, the warriors were merely awaiting their end.
“Perhaps even corpses don’t wish to defile themselves after death,” Julius said. His uniform was soiled with pus, and he watched the undead warriors march to their own destruction. There was no reply. All they could do was watch until the unstoppable conflagration consumed the house and all the undead had returned to ash.
14
“Damn her! Damn that woman…! This is serious. She’ll pay for this!”
Miles spat and cursed as he tried to staunch the blood flowing out of him. The wound ran from his right shoulder to his back, and he couldn’t treat it by himself. He had crudely wound some clothes around it, managing to stop the bleeding enough to cling to consciousness.
—Miles had survived the blow that cut down the zombies.
He’d always had a sixth sense for when his life was in danger. It had saved him today, but things couldn’t get any worse. Not only had Crusch escaped, but Miles hadn’t even been able to spirit away the spell caster who had used the Sacrament of the Immortal King.
In the distance, he could see the Argyle mansion wreathed in flame. The remaining undead warriors were incinerating themselves. Their suicide was a little distraction Miles had cooked up to buy himself time to escape. Bean was supposed to have overall command of the zombies, but since nothing was stopping them from carrying out Miles’s orders to destroy themselves, he surmised that Bean must be dead. Puppets and puppeteer alike were completely useless.
“All that work, and my only reward is a copy of his spell book… Blasted! These are my just desserts? What am I even going to tell them back in Volakia, returning like this…?”
“—Oh, you won’t have to worry about that. If you land quietly.”
No sooner had he let out his angry mutter than Miles was startled by a reply. It was only natural, considering where he was: up in the sky, far above the ground. So high up he could look down on the clouds. No one should have been able to speak to him there. And yet the owner of the voice continued calmly.
“I never expected a dragon rider. I nearly missed you. You’re quite the capable spy—which is why I recommend you land quietly.”
The red-haired youth who casually rode upon the winged dragon seemed to be doing his best to press Miles’s buttons. The boy had the sun at his back, making it impossible to see his face, and that left Miles to imagine the worst.
The flying dragon was something Miles had brought from Volakia to give him a means of escape if necessary. He had a tunnel from the basement room in the mansion to the outside, and he had intended to bring Crusch and the spell caster with him, using the dragon to escape the net of undead around them. It was humiliating to flee home alone, his plan in tatters.
“There aren’t supposed to be any dragon riders in Lugunica!” Miles yelped.
Unlike water and land dragons, flying dragons were proud and would not readily submit to human control. Even in the Volakia Empire the knowledge was hard to come by; beyond the Empire’s borders, it shouldn’t have been known at all. And that Lugunica, a nation that called itself the Dragonfriend Kingdom, should try to tame and train them—it would be a terrifying task. The skies were supposed to belong to the Volakia Empire alone.
“Surely they haven’t broken that unwritten law—?”
“No, you’re quite right. Lugunica has no dragon riders. I just stowed away.”
Miles gasped. “Im—impossible!” His anger at finding someone trespassing on his domain so high up in the sky was intensified by the young man’s nonchalant answer.
The slaver, his eyes bloodshot, ordered the dragon to make a quick about-face. They were flying almost level with the clouds; who could simply “stow away” at that altitude? In this world of fearsome winds, Miles and the dragon were one. It was his pride as a dragon rider, as well as the bond of trust forged with the creature since they had both been young, that made such flight possible. If they could throw the boy off in an unguarded moment, it would be over.
“I’ll warn you again,” the young man said. “Just bring the dragon to the ground. I can’t permit you to leave the country.”
“That’s enough out of you! You’ll die before I land this dragon!”
“…A shame.”
Miles, on the ragged edge of consciousness from blood loss, caused the dragon to slow down very suddenly. He gritted his teeth against the ensuing force, which slammed into all his wounds at once and made his bones creak.
The boy, however, had no chance. With nothing to hold on to, he went tumbling from the dragon’s back and fell even as Miles watched.
That was it. He would be reduced to bits of quivering flesh when he hit the ground, and good riddance to him.
“Wh-what the hell was that boy, anyway…? It doesn’t matter. Right now, I have to…”
Miles was lucky not to be spitting blood at this point. He gripped the reins tightly. His injuries had begun to bleed again. If he didn’t rest soon, he couldn’t be sure he would survive.
“—!”
No sooner had he had this thought than he felt his intuition prickle. It was the same feeling he’d gotten before Crusch attacked, the one that said he was in mortal danger.
It was born of an instinct deeper than thought, one that sought to preserve life and limb above all else. It had saved him more than once. But this time, in this instant, Miles found his arms and legs unwilling to move. And why not? After all, there was no point in trying to run from the overwhelming sense of death rising up from beneath him.
“…Ah.”
Miles hardly had time to speak before he was engulfed in light. The dragon and its rider vanished into the sky, leaving no trace.
And then there was nothing.
15
“We had someone on the inside. We made contact with that maid during the two months we were watching for the slaver. I believed we had to do more than just watch if we wanted things to work out in our favor.”
As they stared at the smoldering remains of the Argyle mansion, Crusch explained to Ferris what had happened in his absence.
She gazed at the debris. “When I was poisoned, I started to worry that her cooperation with us might have been a sham. But she did away with any doubts when she snuck away from our two criminals to unlock my manacles in the basement.”
“Why would she go out of her way to get involved?” Ferris said. “It seems so dangerous…”
“During our investigation, I started to have questions about the slave trader who was visiting the house. I would have liked to take him alive—that’s my fault. Personally, I think he may have been an agent of the Volakia Empire… But I’m sure if we asked them about it, they would play innocent.”
Crusch seemed to have a good grasp of the players involved in this plot. The only thing she didn’t appear to have figured out was what Bean had hoped to achieve with the Sacrament of the Immortal King and why he had needed Ferris. Really, only a peek into Bean’s mind could have answered those questions.
“I…I just got in the way, didn’t I? I overstepped myself, in a lot of ways…”
Even if Ferris hadn’t come back, Crusch would have gotten herself out of her prison and stopped Bean’s plan. Perhaps the house wouldn’t have burned down, leaving everything a pile of ash.
“…If we focus on the hypothetical, our lives will be nothing but regrets. Perhaps without you, I would be dead underground by now. If you and His Highness hadn’t come, I might not be standing here safe.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”
“It’s true, I am. But regretting your actions on the basis of what might have been is worse. It can only exhaust you.” While Ferris stared disconsolately at the ashes, Crusch crossed her arms and spoke firmly. “You were worried about me, and with no concern for your own safety you came back to a place you had tried to avoid your entire life. When I heard that, locked up in that underground room, I curs
ed my own incompetence. But I was also…happy.”
“Happy, Lady Crusch?”
“It must have been extremely painful for you to come back here. What was done to you in your youth hardly bears speaking of. I couldn’t blame you for being unable to think about it or unwilling to approach. And despite that, you came here to rescue me—You must forgive me, but I was overjoyed.”
Crusch knelt so that she could look Ferris in the face where he was crouched down, hugging his knees. Her amber eyes pierced him, cutting through the dark clouds that clung to his heart.
Why, how, did this person always make such warmth well up in his chest?
“Was I…able to help you, Lady Crusch? Will you allow me, even as I am…to stay by your side, and dedicate my life to you?”
“I stand by my answer.”
“…Tell me again. With the words you used…back then.”
She felt his emotions roiling—tremendous regret, and at the same time a yearning for happiness. If only he could break through all those things, if only he could find the strength to stand.
“—Raise your head and look forward. Don’t let those dark clouds gather in your eyes. It may be difficult at first, but I’ll help you. For now, just trust me.”
He wanted her to save him, with the words she had used to lead him out of the darkness and show him the world for the first time.
“—”
Wordlessly, Ferris looked at Crusch, and then he looked again at the burned remains of the mansion. For some reason, he felt tears on his cheeks. And then he found he couldn’t stop them.
Embraced by a pair of strong, slim arms, Ferris wept like a child.
16
—As she held the crying Ferris, Crusch thought back to what had happened in the basement room.
The maid had slipped away from Bean and Miles and come down to Crusch. She unfastened the restraints and manacles and removed Crusch’s blindfold. Before the maid left, however, Crusch called out and questioned her.
The Dream of the Lion King Page 18