At other times I would have liked the place, but now it seemed to suffocate me. The free moorlands were prison walls, and the keen hill air was the breath of a dungeon. -- John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps
After a long day with plenty of stress caused by Lian, Ilaran and Aunt Jiarlúr, Abi had looked forward to sleep as a chance to escape. She should have remembered what happened the last time she slept. Unfortunately she didn't, and it came as a nasty shock when she opened her eyes and saw an unfamiliar castle.
It came as less of a shock to realise she recognised it. She'd seen it in Ilaran's memories. From there it was easy to deduce where she was and what had happened. She sighed wearily.
Behind her Ilaran spoke up. "I'd tell you to get out of my head, but I think that's impossible now."
Abi nodded. Now that the initial shock, alarm and distress was wearing off she found herself able to look at the situation from a new angle. It was terribly inconvenient for both of them, yes, but how many other people could say they'd gotten telepathically linked with someone who was basically a stranger? This could shed all sorts of light on how telepathy worked. If they told the scholars at the Barlanimnunil University they'd keep the research department busy until the next shoghantamev[1].
Ilaran's incredulity bled through to her. "Are you insane? Do you want to be treated as a test subject for the rest of your life? Because I sure as hell don't!"
...Well. Put like that it didn't seem like such a good idea to tell anyone. She sat down on the grass next to Ilaran, who was apparently trying to go to sleep in spite of being in a dream. "But how are we going to undo it? I don't know, and if you knew you would've done it by now."
Ilaran shrugged without opening his eyes. "I'm too tired to think about it just now. Have you any idea how much work has piled up while I was away?"
She didn't, but she could make a guess from the amount of books she'd seen in his room. "A lot?"
"A lot," he agreed. "And I can't concentrate on it when I keep hearing your thoughts at the back of my mind."
Abi winced. "Sorry."
They sat in silence for a while. Abi counted the windows on the palace walls for something to do. It wasn't exactly like the palace she'd seen in Ilaran's memories. In fact, surreal though it seemed, it had somehow gained the roof and some of the architecture of the Seroyawan royal palace. Likewise the garden contained some of Mirio's flowers and a swing that belonged in her parents' home.
Now that she had nothing else to think about -- at least, nothing else that she could do anything about -- her mind returned to what Lian had said about her magic. That still puzzled her. What could be controlled by her magic? She hadn't cast any spells.
She examined her magic. At once she realised there was something odd about it after all. It wasn't that she was currently controlling a spell, however unconsciously; it was more that she had cast a spell at some point in the past and it was now controlling itself.
"Do you sense that?" she asked Ilaran.
"What?" he asked, still not bothering to open his eyes. Apparently he was trying to send himself back to sleep by sheer force of will.
"There's something funny about my magic."
Abi didn't know how to explain it, so she simply thought of how it felt then tried to project that feeling to him. It seemed to get through, because Ilaran's eyes snapped open and he gave her an alarmed look.
"That's odd. I felt something similar after..."
He didn't finish, but she knew from the glimpse she got of his thoughts that he meant the parasite. And from what she could sense of his mind, he felt that the parasite had left something behind. 'Scars or dead tissue' was how he thought of it. Abi could perfectly understand that incident leaving mental scars -- gods knew seeing the parasite kill an innocent woman had scarred her for life -- but she got the impression that Ilaran meant rather more literal scars. And apparently they were reacting to something they could sense but Ilaran couldn't.
"I don't like the sound of that," Abi said.
Ilaran gave her the sort of look that suggested he thought this was an understatement of incredible proportions and she was an idiot for saying it. "I don't think the telepathy is your fault. But I do think the possession was." Fair enough. "Therefore, I think whatever is happening now is also your fault."
Abi knew that was also fair enough, but she couldn't help feeling offended. "And? What do you expect me to do about it?"
Ilaran lay down again and went back to trying to send himself to sleep. "If I were you I'd make sure you didn't leave any more walking corpses wandering around."
"Don't be ridiculous. I only reanimated one." Abi paused, remembering this wasn't entirely accurate. "And the skeletons, but I un-reanimated them. Oh, and the mice, but they aren't a threat to anyone."
As soon as the words were out of her mouth she remembered the mouse jumping into Irímé's hand. On second thoughts, they very well might have been a threat if she'd continued raising them. But it had been ages since she even thought of reanimating anything!
"Are you sure you un-reanimated the skeletons? As I recall you have a poor track record with that."
Abi scowled. "Yes, I'm sure. Anyway, Kitri would have told me if there were still skeletons wandering around the town. It would be in all the news all over the planet by now."
~~~~
It took another half an hour before Abi finally fell asleep. When she woke up she was back in her own mind, in her own room, with Ilaran's presence only a faint whisper at the back of her mind. She strengthened her telepathic shields yet again. They wouldn't hold for long, she knew, but at least she would have some peace and quiet while they did.
She got dressed and went down to breakfast with the grim resignation of someone who was in for yet another ordeal. Surprisingly her aunt had nothing to criticise her for this time. Jiarlúr looked at the clock, saw that she couldn't complain about Abi being up too late, and said nothing beyond an ordinary greeting.
Abi was mildly disappointed to see that their hosts had provided Saoridhin food for breakfast. She'd never had a chance to try much Gengxinese food beyond the sweets Mirio brought home from his visits. Even though she hadn't eaten much yesterday she didn't feel particularly hungry. But she could just imagine what her aunt would say if she announced her intention to skip breakfast, so she helped herself to a bowl of porridge.
The pot was placed on a small magically-heated plate in the middle of the table to keep it warm. That was something she'd never seen before, and it was such a simple yet obvious thing that she couldn't understand why no one in either Seroyawa or Saoridhlém had thought of it yet. She spent several minutes examining the plate with interest, working out what spells powered it and how the pot didn't overheat.
"What are you doing?" Aunt Jiarlúr demanded suspiciously, as if she thought Abi might have a sinister reason for being so interested in the plate.
Abi quickly sat back and picked up her porridge. "Nothing."
It should have been easy to forget what Ilaran had suggested. For a while she did manage to forget it. But then it came back again and again. Every time it went out of her mind, something brought it back to her. Had she properly un-reanimated those skeletons? Were they still under her control, waiting for her to give them orders like the other corpse? And if so, would they attack innocent people like the other corpse did?
The thought preyed on her all day. It absorbed so much of her attention that she accompanied Aunt Jiarlúr to the princes' memorial ceremony without noticing anything about the ceremony. The main thing that stuck out in her mind was how the coffins were covered with white cloths instead of red[2].
After the ceremony she reached a decision. She'd send a telegram to Kitri asking if anything had happened in that graveyard.
~~~~
It had been months since her arrest and Haliran still had no idea what was happening. She was constantly being moved from one prison to another, and sometimes back to prisons she'd been in before. None of the guards would tell her anything. No one came to see her. No one gave her any idea of when her trial would be.
Part of her wondered if this was an attempt to drive her mad before the trial. Another part just kept a look out for a chance to escape during these moves. Surely the guards' attention would lapse at some point.
And at last, on a trip to yet another prison, she got her chance. It wasn't much of one. The carriage she was in gave a sudden lurch and stopped dead, leaning to one side. No one told her what was happening. From the angry exclamations of the guards she deduced that part of a wheel had broken off.
Most of the guards clustered around it. She could hear them debating whether to try to fix the wheel here or send a messenger to the nearest town to buy a replacement.
"The nearest town is five miles away," one of the guards pointed out, unwittingly giving Haliran some very useful information.
She was handcuffed, but her legs weren't bound. She stood up and examined the door on the opposite side to the guards. The carriage was leaning at such an angle that it was difficult to stand without sliding, especially without the use of her hands. But it gave her a good look at the lock. It was locked on the outside. At first the situation seemed hopeless. Then she looked at the window. It had been opened slightly to allow air into the carriage. A guard had walked outside to prevent her trying to escape that way. But now the guard was at the other side of the carriage with his friends.
Haliran grabbed the edge of the window and pulled it open as far as it would go. It was a tricky business when she couldn't use her hands properly. Finally she got it open wide enough for her to get through. She climbed on top of her chair and, with much difficulty and discomfort, finally managed to get through the window.
At once she saw they were in a stretch of road that ran beside a forest. But there was a gap of several yards of open grass between the carriage and the trees.
She ran as fast as she could. A shout behind her told her she'd been spotted.
"Stop or we'll shoot!"
Haliran ignored the guard. The first gunshot rang out just as she reached the trees. More followed. She dived into the undergrowth and crawled as far as she could. When she judged she was out of range she got up and ran again.
~~~~
Shizuki frowned critically at the view from the train's windows. "Is that... the place with the funny name?"
"Magd-rud-kesh-ji," Irímé said, carefully sounding out each syllable and knowing he was still mispronouncing it. "Yes, this is it. It says so on that sign."
The sign beside the tracks read "Welcome to Magdrőd-Keszgy" in several different languages, with flowers around the flowers. Its cheerfulness contrasted with the grey and rather grim buildings visible from the train.
"It's ugly," Shizuki declared after watched a few more grey buildings pass.
"These are just the outskirts," Siarvin said. "Those are factories. The city itself is more cheerful."
Shizuki didn't look convinced. He continued to look unconvinced when the train arrived at the station and the four of them got out onto the platform. To be fair, the platform wasn't particularly cheerful either. It was like all outdoor platforms: chilly and with nothing in sight but a row of benches.
Then they got into the station itself. Shizuki's mouth dropped open. So did Irímé's. For a minute he wondered if they'd accidentally walked into a palace or a government building. The station's floor was covered in bright blue tiles. Its walls probably weren't made of actual marble, but they certainly looked like it. And its high ceiling was painted to look like the sky.
After a moment's stunned silence Koyuki said what most of them were thinking. "This is a train station?"
Siarvin smiled. "It used to be the mayor's palace. But then a mayor decided to move to a different part of the city, and the palace stood empty until the train company bought it. There was an article about it in the Eldrin papers."
A bitter tone crept into his voice on the last sentence. Irímé suddenly realised that for years his only way of knowing what happened in his homeland was through articles like that.
Getting out of the station took a long time. Shizuki kept running off to examine something that caught his eye, and even without those delays the station was like a maze. Every few minutes they had to stop and go back to the last signpost to find the right corridor. At last they reached the exit -- a room made entirely out of huge panes of glass. Shizuki almost darted right out through the front doors, but Koyuki stopped him in time.
"Wait a minute," Siarvin said, taking a map out of his pocket. "I don't remember the way to the palace. Let's see now--"
"I can show you," a familiar voice said behind them.
All of them jumped. Siarvin turned and glared at Ilaran.
"Warn us next time!" he complained in the exasperated tone of someone pretending to be angrier than they were.
Any reply Ilaran might have made was lost when Shizuki flung himself at him, turning into a snake half-way and wrapping himself around Ilaran's chest.
Ilaran sighed. "And there I was hoping we wouldn't attract too much attention."
Chapter Footnotes:
[1] shoghantamev = Means "temporary end of the world" (Saoridhian religion believes that the universe is periodically destroyed then recreated).
[2] White is the colour of death in Gengxin (just like in real-world China and other parts of East Asia). Red is the colour of death in Saoridhlém.