Page 4 of Arcanist
“Come on,” I tell North. “Let’s get upstairs before the Arcanaeum kicks both our asses on Kyrith’s behalf.” He looks around at the shelves, and I grimace. “If you’re thinking of searching for Ackland’s grimoire, you’d be looking for a needle in a haystack. Besides, she said it wasn’t down here.”
“You’re right,” he mutters. “Fuck. Where would I even start?”
I don’t think Kyrith was ever concerned that he’dfind it. Now that we’re here, it’s abundantly clear the Librarian was only trying to hide one thing; her tomb.
Thighs burning—because damn Eddy was right about there being too many stairs—I follow North, grumbling silently as the eejit takes them two at a time like it’s nothing.
I really need to get back into the gym. I was religious about it before the curse activated, stupidly clinging to the adage that a healthy body meant a healthy mind, and therefore a better chance of figuring my way out of this mess. But I haven’t been taking care of myself properly in recent weeks. Now all of my muscles are protesting the sudden workout.
“If she died down there, how’s she alive?” North asks, annoyingly peppy for someone also scaling this accursed stairwell.
“Necromancy.” I try to hide my wheeze, but I’m not successful because the bastard slows to one stair at a time.
I want to believe that he does it because he’s struggling too, but he hasn’t even broken a sweat.
I hate him for it.
“So she’s like a zombie?” He makes a face as he looks back at me, and I pause.
“No. No, she’s not.”
Necromancy is the art of life-energy manipulation. It made sense that her soul was tied to the Arcanaeum when she was a ghost. That was close enough to liches tying their souls to gems to gain eternal life that I could put the ‘how’ of it down to my lack of knowledge around a very taboo subject.
Reanimating a corpse is technically also within the purview of a necromancer. In the books, they were called revenants. Magic like that can make their limbs move, and occasionally force them to speak, but not much more. A soul is shoved inside the body to make it into a puppet, but the higher functions leave with death.
They don’t breathe. Their hearts are silent. They’re blank slates, bent to the will of the one who raised them.
Kyrith was definitely breathing and responding to us, and judging by the way her blood splattered everywhere, her heart was definitely beating.
She’s not a revenant.
I don’t know what she is.
“What if she was never dead?” I ask aloud, not expecting North to answer.
“For five hundred years? Wouldn’t she look a little older by now? And what about the ghost thing?”
My next huff has nothing to do with being out of breath. He’s making valid points, even if he doesn’t have a clue what we’re talking about.
We finally reach the Rotunda and pause to heft the trapdoor closed. The screech of rusted hinges rakes down my spine, and I rotate my jaw to clear it.
“I don’t know,” I finally say. “Hopefully she’s recovered and can tell us what just happened.”
“I don’t think she meant to come back,” North mutters as we head down the long hall towards the stairs that will take us to the parapet and across to her clock tower.
No. Neither do I.
Hindsight’s a bitch. Kyrith asking me to protect the Arcanaeum, her practically begging us to just watch the game in peace like it was her last one, her kissing Lambert when she knew it would crack her… All of those little moments were the actions of someone preparing for their end.
She knew what it would do to her, but did she even spare a thought for what it would do to him?
“He’ll be wrecked,” I bite out. “Stupid, selfish?—”
A hand fists my sleeve, dragging me to a stop in the middle of the hall. “Shut it. You don’t know what she was going through.”
Blinking in surprise, I meet his angry golden stare with my own. “You’re defending her?”
North releases my arm. “Look, I get it. Suicide seems selfish from the outside, but it’s more complicated than that. It’s like…” He shrugs. “They can’t see the good they bring to the world anymore, or that they have much left to live for. They honestly think everyone would be no worse off without them. It takes a lot to convince them otherwise.”
