The boy was me. Why he took me in, the journal did not say. Perhaps it was pity, or perhaps it was some desire to make amends for what had been done to the folk of the tavern. No matter, the result was the same.
“It wasn’t her,” I said. “You gave me the mission of watching Alis Faraday to see if she would discover her true heritage. But she wasn’t the real subject of the study. It was me. You wanted to see if I would discover what I really was.”
The woman–Phoebe–nodded. “And so you have, Marius. I confess, we began to grow a trifle impatient toward the end. Hence our words spoken beneath the Charterhouse, and our giving you an assignment in Scotland, close to your home.”
I hung my head. So they had known I was there in the locked room, listening.
“No, Marius, it matters not. These were only nudges. You have learned everything on your own. This experiment is over.”
Experiment? So that was all this was to her. We were simply things to be used to satisfy their curiosity. Myself. Alis. They had made me watch her die for their little experiment.
I glared at her now, rage filling me. “Why didn’t you simply tell me these things?”
“Because you loved Adalbrecht too much. You would have done as he asked out of loyalty to him. You would have lived a quiet life here in the north. We could not allow that. And so you had to find out on your own.”
My rage subsided. I was too weary, too full of sorrow. They had used Alis just like the folk in the tavern. Just as they had used me.
“I know you are angry, Marius,” she said. “But it will soon pass, you shall see. Your old life is behind you now. The pain you had started to feel–the headaches, the weariness–I think you will feel no more. You have been remade.” She held out her hand. “It is time for you to join us.”
Astonishment replaced anger. “Join you? You mean become a Philosopher?”
“Yes. A Philosopher.”
I struggled to comprehend. “But what do you need me for?”
“Adalbrecht is gone. Our number is diminished. We would be seven again.” She studied me with her golden eyes. “And it is too late for you to undo what has been done. You are like us, Marius, whether you will it or not. It is better for you to be with your own kind.”
“And if I refuse to join you?”
She smiled. “You will join us. You are too curious not to. After all, how can you hope to continue Adalbrecht’s work in translating the writings from the tomb?”
I cursed her, even as I knew she was right, and we left that night in a carriage bound for London.
That is how I was the first and only Seeker ever to become a Philosopher. In the centuries that followed, I did just as Phoebe had said I would–I continued the work begun by my master, seeking to translate the writings from the tomb of the Sleeping Ones, trying to understand what it was they were waiting for.
However, as the carriage rolled away from Madstone Hall that night, I knew there was one thing Phoebe and the others did not know–a secret they would never uncover. I thought of Queen Dido, and how she had thrown herself on the pyre when she had lost all that she loved. In a way, I had done the same. For the Marius I had been was dead.
Yet like a ghost that lingered on, I remained, and always I craved revenge. Only I was bound to them by my transformation. As the centuries passed, Phoebe’s words were proven true. The blood of the Sleeping Ones connected us. I could not harm them–at least not directly. But I schemed, I waited, and I knew the day would come when the time would be right, and when another would help me achieve what I sought.
That time is now. And that other is you.
Now you know what no other besides our own kind has ever known. Now you know the truth of the origin of the Philosophers.
And now, I beg of you, help me bring about their end.
PART FOUR
CATALYST
33.
Aryn stood at the window of her bedchamber, watching distant fires burn in the night.
Teravian lay in the bed behind her, asleep by the slow rhythm of his breathing. There was no point in waking him; she always saw the fires now. In the morning, Teravian would send his men–those that remained, at any rate–out beyond the castle, and they would find more houses burned, or perhaps even an entire village.
A week ago, Aryn herself had ridden to a village not a league from Calavere, and she had spoken to a man who had burned his family alive in their cottage.
“There was no hope for them,” he had said when she asked him why he had done it, eyes blank in his sooty face. “No hope at all.”
“What do you mean?” she had said, trying to comprehend. “Were they ill with plague?”
But the man hadn’t answered. He had sat on the ground, drawing empty circles in the dirt with a stick, until the king’s men came to haul him away to the castle’s dungeon. Later, from another villager, Aryn had learned that the man’s wife and children had been healthy and happy, and that he had been the proudest farmer in the village.
Aryn lifted her gaze from the fires to the heavens. She didn’t need to look to the north to see it anymore; the rift had grown rapidly over these last days, spreading out across half the sky like a blight, blotting out the stars. It was visible even by day now as a shadow against the blue of the sky, and it made the sunlight feel pale and wan.
The night breeze wafted in through the window, and her nose wrinkled at the foul odor rising from the bailey. The whole castle smelled putrid. Most of the servants had left, and those that remained did so little work they might as well have departed with the others. Aryn had taken to emptying chamber pots herself, and she was forced to scrounge in the kitchens with everyone else for what foodstuffs had not spoiled. No goods had come to the castle in days, and carts stood abandoned on the road that led up to the gates. She had gotten a little milk two days before by convincing a boy to milk a cow that had been bellowing in the lower bailey, neglected, its udder swollen.
On her way back into the castle, she had passed an old woman lying dead in the mud of the courtyard. People had shuffled past her without so much as looking. Aryn had to call for guards three times before someone came to take the body away.
That same day, Teravian had ventured out for a ride. When he returned to the castle, his face had been grim. He had seen entire villages abandoned, and crops–ready for harvesting–left to rot in the fields.
“Where have all the people gone?” Aryn had asked.
“I’m not sure, but more than once I heard stories of people in white robes. They gather on hilltops where they stand and raise their arms to the sky, waiting. Waiting for something. I saw some of them, walking along the road. At first they made me think of Raven Cultists. But they were dressed in white, not black, and they were silent. I called to them, but they only stared, mouths open. I looked into the eyes of a woman who marched with them, and I saw nothing, Aryn. Nothing at all.”
He had trembled as she held him, and she had wished she could brew something to calm him. However, she seemed to have forgotten how to concoct the simplest potion. Her mind was addled; she could not think. Flustered, Aryn had tried to contact Lirith over the Weirding, to ask the other witch how to make a soothing draught. However, she had managed to touch Lirith’s thread only for a moment.
The stars go out, Lirith had said. She is not coming back.
That was all. Aryn had called out again and again with her mind, and even with her voice, but she could not reach Lirith. All the same, she had understood whom Lirith had meant, who was not coming back.