The man smiled slowly. “I do. I imagine you would long for that information, wouldn’t you?”
“If you are Reading me, then you know that I would.”
“I don’t have to Read you to know that. And if you had any handle on your abilities, you would already have the knowledge you seek.”
“How?”
“You had your opportunity, but you failed.”
“Who are you?”
“No one that matters,” he said.
“It does matter.”
The man smiled again, this time almost sadly. “Perhaps once it did, but much has changed over the years. Much like you, I’ve lost those I cared about.”
He had dug too deeply into her mind and had already uncovered that secret. It was part of the reason she spent so much time out of the palace, away from memories of her sister that made her feel guilt about what had happened. Even Haern didn’t know that story. It was something she kept balled up within her.
And this man had dug it out as if it were nothing.
“What’s your name?” When he didn’t answer, she shook her head. “You already know mine, so why shouldn’t I get to know yours?”
“You may call me what the others call me.”
“And what’s that?”
“Most call me the Architect.”
“What sort of name is that?”
“Perhaps it’s not one at all but more of a title. In my time of service, I have helped design a great many things.”
The strange throbbing in the back of her head seemed to pulsate as he said that, and she suddenly knew that she was looking at the man who had designed the weapon that had attacked her—and attacked the Elder Trees. “This is your work?”
“As I said, if you had any skill, you would already have the answers that you seek.”
“Such as how to remove it.”
“That is what you seek, isn’t it? You fear what you should embrace, much like others of your kind. It’s a shame, but it makes you predictable.”
“Where are the rest of the Forgers with you?”
“The others will be here soon. Then we will depart.”
“Where?”
“Someplace where you can find understanding.”
She didn’t like the sound of that, and he watched her for a moment. She had no sense of him rifling through her thoughts, but there was little doubt that he was Reading her. However he was doing it, he was far more skilled than anyone she’d ever been around.
Was that what she was to become if she was to get a handle on her abilities?
She hated that a part of her wanted to understand how to use her abilities, how to control them so that the power that was available to her didn’t overwhelm her, but she pushed that thought away, instead focusing on the pain they had inflicted upon her, the way they had forced her to take something she didn’t want for herself, and the way they wanted to change the person she was.
Through all of it, the Architect watched her. “Do you even know who you are?”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a question all must ask of themselves at some point in their life. Too often, the question is asked later in life, when very little can be done to change it. You are lucky in that regard. You have much of your life ahead of you, and by asking it now, you can try to understand who you are and what you’re meant to be long before most your age would even think to question.”
“You say it as if you think you’ve done me a favor.”
“Oh, Lucy Elvraeth, I have. Trust me, I have.”
He turned, pulling the door closed. His footsteps thudded along the floorboards until they went silent. She focused on Listening, hearing nothing more than a faint murmuring of voices that told her nothing. Next she attempted to Read, but every attempt failed. There had to be some way to Read beyond the cuffs, but she could not find it.
The longer she was here, the more helpless things felt, and the less likely it seemed that she would find some way to freedom.
Worse, she did have questions. Why had she started to think about her sister? It had been years since she’d given her any thought. Her loss had been an accident, nothing that Lucy had really been responsible for, though she had blamed herself. But there was nothing she could have done differently. The fall had been Cara’s fault as much as anyone’s, and her parents had never blamed Lucy, though something in the way they looked at her had often left her wondering if perhaps they did blame her, if only a little.
She sat silently for a while, staring at the door.
They might have her trapped in the cuffs, but she had never tried to head out the door and escape on foot.
Why not? There was no reason she couldn’t simply walk out.
She got off the bed and grabbed the doorknob, testing it.
Surprisingly, she found it unlocked. Heading out into the hallway, she looked around. There were other doors along the hall, all of them shut. As she made her way, she paused, listening, but heard nothing that would tell her who might be on the other side of the doors.
Maybe she wasn’t the only one captured here. It was even possible that she wasn’t the only one from Elaeavn.
If so, could she help the others? She couldn’t simply abandon them if there was something she could do for them.
First, she had to get out of here, then she could go for help.
Lucy started down the hall, and when she reached the stairs, she took them slowly, half-expecting floorboards to groan beneath her feet. But there was no sound other than that of her breathing and the soft padding of her feet along the board. At the bottom of the stairs, the smells of food nearby set her mouth watering and her stomach rumbling. Bread and meat, a savory combination that reminded her of how long it must’ve been since she’d last eaten anything other than the bowls of broth they brought her. They provided water, and plenty of it, never restricting that from her. She supposed that she should be thankful, but she found it difficult. So far, she hadn’t encountered anyone else, but she doubted that would be the case for much longer. She reached a door, testing it, and like the one to her room, she found it unlocked.
Stepping out into the darkness, she frowned. There was something off about all of this. Why would they make it so easy for her to escape?
Unless they didn’t think she was any real danger. That wouldn’t surprise her. How long had she been in the room before she had even come up with the idea of walking out? It must have been the better part of a day, possibly more. In that time, they’d likely thought she would stay, and with the cuffs on her wrists, there wasn’t really anything else she could do.
As she ran into the darkness, a feeling of victory came to her, along with a sense of elation. She would escape. She would get to freedom. She would—
Something slammed into her from behind, and she went staggering forward.
Lucy turned, trying to catch herself, but she was struck again. This time she stumbled, sprawling out onto the dirt.
When she rolled over, she saw the dark-haired man—the Architect—looking down at her.
“You will learn, Lucy Elvraeth. You will learn.”
“What will I learn?” She screamed it into the night, but her voice cracked before falling useless.
“You will learn who you are. You will have no choice but to do so.”
18
Lucy
When she woke, Lucy rubbed the sleep from her eyes. They had dosed her with something again, though this time it had been in the water she’d drunk. It had taken her a moment to realize that something didn’t feel quite right, but when she did, she understood.
Her wrists still throbbed, but less than before. It could be that she was getting used to the cuffs, or maybe they didn’t have them as tight as before. She couldn’t shake the sense that the Architect was testing her, though she didn’t understand why. What did he hope to learn?
Sitting at the edge of the bed, she looked around the room. Something felt different, and it took a moment to underst
and what it was. The room had been arranged differently.
Not just that, but she thought she was in a different room altogether. Getting to her feet, she paced around the room, and as she made a circuit, she decided that she couldn’t tell. She remembered taking five paces one way and four the other, and this was the same. Despite that, she still felt as if something were different.
Her mouth was dry as it had been the first time she had come around. The water in the basin seemed a taunt, as if they wanted to remind her of how easily they’d managed to neutralize her abilities.
And they had neutralized them.
That was the most surprising thing of all. In all the time she’d been in Elaeavn and all the time she’d spent in the Aisl, her people had always believed that they would be able to defeat the Forgers. But how could they be defeated if they had some way of preventing her from using her Great Watcher-given—and now Forger-enhanced—abilities?
There were no sounds outside the door, or if there were, she simply couldn’t hear them. Attempting to Read, to focus on others who might be out in the hall, failed, leaving her head throbbing. Unable to help herself, Lucy attempted a Slide, knowing how painful it would be when it failed—which it did. Her head throbbed with the effort, a harsh reprimand, almost a rebuke from the Forgers.
Now that she had no abilities at all, she wasn’t tempted to try and determine what she might See in her visions. Without that temptation, she could try to come up with what it would take to escape from this. They had wanted her to run, but she didn’t know why. There had to be a reason for it.
A torment. That was probably all it was. The more time she spent with the Architect, the more she felt tormented by him. He seemed amused by her suffering, which he probably was. That was the kind of man Rsiran had left Elaeavn to hunt. She could understand why he’d spent so much time out of the city. It was only a shame that he hadn’t managed to eliminate him.
She wanted to touch the back of her head and feel the metal, if only to be reassured that it still protruded. The moment her skin healed over it the way the other Forgers were, she suspected she would no longer be able to remove it. The change would be permanent.
By then it might not matter. If she didn’t find a way to escape, then there wouldn’t be any issue with her having the metal fully implanted into her head. The only issue would be how the Forgers would use her. There was little doubt that they did intend to use her.
As it had so often over the last few days, her mind went back to thinking about Daniel. What was he doing? Could he have returned to Elaeavn? She wouldn’t blame him. Maybe he had returned, thinking to get help. But there would be no help for her.
She would have to do this herself.
She continued to pull on her cuffs, trying to force the metal apart. Every so often, there came a sense that it was going to move for her, but then it failed, leaving her wrists chafed.
She paced inside the room, unable to shake the sense that there was something not quite right here. Perhaps that was what they wanted her to feel. She had a sense that the Architect intended to disorient her, making it so that she had no idea where she was or what was going on, but the longer she was here, the more certain she was that she was not going to escape.
Every so often, sounds from outside the door drifted in. They were muted, little more than a steady rumbling, a promise of someone coming in her direction. But then they faded before disappearing altogether. There was no one coming for her. She expected that they would bring her food or water or that the Architect would come to torment her, but it never came.
Eventually, Lucy sat down on the bed, pulling her knees into her chest, and began to rock.
She should be thankful that not all of her abilities were muted completely, and yet the only one she cared about right now was her ability to Slide. If she could escape, she could return to Elaeavn, to the palace, and perhaps she would choose to remain. All of this was a mistake. She should have never left the city.
Anger bubbled up inside her. How many times had she wanted to leave the city, talking to Haern about what they might do if they were ever given the opportunity to leave and explore outside of Elaeavn? Now that she was here, the only thing she desired was the comforts of home, the familiarity of where she should be, and an opportunity to do nothing more than relax and study, to take on the task her parents wanted of her.
There was a time when she had wanted to stay and study, believing that as one of the Elvraeth, she had a divine purpose, one that the Great Watcher had given to her—and her people. She would be helping her people by continuing to master her abilities, which included understanding her people and what she could do to help them.
And then she had gone out to the forest. The time she had spent in the Aisl had made her recognize how difficult staying in the palace would be. Then again, part of that coincided with the loss of her sister.
Lucy shook those thoughts away.
She looked up, turning her attention to the door. Could they be forcing those thoughts on her?
That didn’t seem possible, but what other explanation was there?
More likely than not, they had given her the time to contemplate, and in that time, the Architect had intended for her to have questions. And unfortunately, they were questions without good answers.
What if she could See?
Trapped as she was, there wasn’t much else for her to do. She tried to visualize various possibilities, straining to allow them to fill her mind. But while they were there, the sense of them was faint, as was her understanding of them. The possibilities were almost endless, far too many for her to fully grasp. Maybe that was why powerful Seers were rare. Perhaps anyone with any real talent had simply suppressed it because of how easily it overwhelmed them.
But with nothing else left to try, Lucy focused on trying to think through the various possibilities. They came to her, one after another, but there were no answers.
She lost herself in the process, straining to find answers, looking for an understanding that always seemed just beyond her grasp. If she could reach for it, she felt certain that she could use it, but the hardest part was getting to it.
“You have been silent.”
Lucy opened her eyes slowly, unsurprised when the Architect appeared in front of her. He stood on the far side of the room, and she flicked her gaze over to the door, wondering if he had come in that way or if he had Slid.
“I’m contemplating,” she said.
“Is that right? And what would you contemplate?”
“My freedom.”
The Architect smiled at her. “You view yourself as a prisoner when you are not.”
Lucy held up her arms, shaking the cuffs briefly. “And you claim my freedom when I have these.”
“You could master the ability to open those,” he said.
“How?”
The Architect smiled. “First you would need to embrace your gift.”
Focusing on the metal implanted in her head, Lucy could feel it. Every so often, she had a twinge of pain and there came a flash of colors, enough that she had to wonder if it was even real. It wouldn’t surprise her if it was something the Architect did, trying to force her to have a specific vision.
“It would be easier to embrace the gift if I’d had an opportunity to choose whether or not I took it,” she said.
The Architect smiled again. “Did you get to choose what abilities the Great Watcher gave to you?”
Lucy watched him for a moment before shaking her head.
“How is this so different?”
“Because this was someone else.”
“I believe your people feel that the Great Watcher is someone else.”
Lucy shifted on the bed, looking over at him. “You would really equate yourself to the Great Watcher?”
“Not yet,” he said.
“That means that you intend to.”
He shrugged. “Don’t all men aspire to more?”
“You would aspire to become
like the Great Watcher?”
“One of your own has done the same, has he not?”
She didn’t think that was what Rsiran had done, but the comparison was troubling. “He’s not been trying to make himself into the Great Watcher so that he could have power.”
“Then he does it simply to harm others?”
“Rsiran doesn’t harm any others.”
“You should ask the villages he’s destroyed.”
“He wouldn’t destroy any villages.”
The Architect took a step toward her, his hands clasped in front of him. He had a warm smile on his face, but it didn’t reach his eyes, the one part of him that remained intense. A distinct sense of power emanated from him, but he did nothing that seemed threatening to her.
It was a strange combination. Through all of that, she wanted nothing more than to disappear, to Slide away, to overcome whatever the cuffs were doing to her, but there seemed to be no way. Every time she tried, pain throbbed in her head, buried beneath her eyes, almost as if it were trying to tear out her mind.
“How often have you traveled beyond the borders of your Elaeavn?”
“Not often,” she said. Lucy knew that she shouldn’t be so forthright with the Architect, that he would likely use anything she told him against her—and people she cared about—but she felt a strange compulsion to share when she knew she should not. It was subtle, but as much as she tried to ignore it, it was there.
“If you would travel beyond the borders of your Elaeavn, you would see that Lareth has visited a great number of places. In many of them, the people bemoan his visits.”
Lucy met his eyes, staring for a moment. “Why?”
“Whereas your people exult in his return, feeling as if he were protecting you, others understand the truth about Lareth.”
“What truth?”
The Architect smiled again. “That Lareth has become so single-minded in his pursuit that he doesn’t care who or what he harms.” He took another step toward her, and Lucy tensed. “He plays at protecting his people and those he cares about, but he has destroyed a great many places, tearing through villages, ripping lives apart.”
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