Chapter 22 : Where the Immortals Gather
Yisreal was the one who had been subdued, yet Philemon didn’t seem to stand over him like a victor—it was as if Yisreal had let him stab him.
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Places mentioned:
Castle Katella
A self-sufficient, city-like castle where the King and the Queen and the unmarried Valrinos live.
Tyrannoson:
One of the three kingdoms on the Central Continent, ruled by the Valrino family.
Spring
The capital city of Tyrannoson.
Linsaidea:
One of the three kingdoms on the Central Continent, northwest of Tyrannoson, across a narrow sea, the Rustless Sea, to Mandia. A nomadic, rather savage people that tame mammoths.
Mandia:
An island nation, northwest of the Central Continent, cut off by the Rustless Sea. It was conquered by Tyrannoson three years ago when the narrative begins.
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Creatures (that can speak and have names) mentioned:
Yisreal Valrino
A son of the King. Leopoldo met the young Yisreal in the woods while hunting. Then the King brought him back to Castle Katella and announced him to be his son.
Meredith
A mysterious murderess—presumably a mermaid—entrusted to Ivan’s custody by Yisreal, who was supposed to execute her.
Princess Lorien
The daughter of the King of Linsaidea. She arrives in Tyrannoson to fulfill a marriage promise between the two nations, a condition for the Tyrannoson army to pass through the Mammoth Plain to invade Mandia. At this point, it turned out that she is not the real Princess of Linsaidea but a mysterious character who almost killed Yisreal (from Chapter 1).
Mr. Galorde
Ivan’s grandfather’s apprentice, having served both his grandfather and father as their assistant.
Lewis
Ivan’s apprentice, working at the Medical Tower.
Philemon
An Elf of royal blood, the only son of the Lord of Sanlostier. He released Ivan from the Elves’ dungeon but refused to cross the border into the human world with him. Much later, he left Sanlostier to hunt down the perverted Blood Elves who had escaped to Tyrannoson.
Mitheran
One of the two guards and mammoth riders for Princess Lorien. At this point, it turns out that he is not from Linsaidea but disguised himself to infiltrate Tyrannoson in search of the “thief.”
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22
My mouth was wide open, unable to utter a word. Galorde continued, “I know. It’s a lot, but I know the incantation.”
“Are you insane?” I forced the words through clenched teeth, trying to control my volume.
“What other ideas do you have, then?” He squinted at me for a few seconds and raised an eyebrow.
“Fine. What purpose do you want to accomplish by freezing it, though? What if there are people in the water?”
“Who would be in the water? Unless they’re already drowned.”
“I’m pretty sure plenty of people are swimming or floating as we speak.”
Galorde’s eyes glinted as he seemed to realize something. “You think the water’s gonna freeze the moment you speak, don’t you?”
I frowned in confusion. He explained, “It’s gonna take a while. Do you remember when you melted—” he leaned closer and whispered, “the dragon scale into liquid? It took you a day, didn’t it?”
“Ah!”
He looked at me, pleased that the principle of this magic had finally dawned on me. It was the same as the dragon scale melting—only much easier, since dragon scales could never melt naturally. The principle was simply changing the state of natural elements.
“I only hope we’re dry and dressed in thick clothes—” Galorde quickly caught my hesitation. “What is it?”
“You want me to bring winter to Spring,” I said, glancing up at the sky, trying once more to read the hour. “Overnight.”
He smirked and nodded. “The night is on our side this time. When they find out, even if they suspect sorcery, they won’t suspect you of doing it.”
“Will the ocean be frozen too?” I frowned.
He knew what I was thinking—Meredith. Would she kill tonight, or would she wait until tomorrow night?
“My question is—” I said, “how can I control which body of water to freeze and which not? You know, the water upon the face of the earth is all connected. Creeks run into rivers, rivers run into oceans—even underground water flows in and out of surface water.”
He frowned and gazed at me more intently, as if that could help him find an answer.
I touched the water at the bottom of the boat and said, “This—this here—is separated from the water outside by the boat, and I’m confident I can freeze only this.” Then I dipped my fingers into the water outside the boat. “But if I touch this, I don’t know how far it will reach.”
Galorde looked down at the puddle in the boat that was frozen as I touched it, pondering.
“Also,” I continued, “once I touch this water and the word leaves my mouth, it will not return until it’s fulfilled.”
Galorde nodded, frowning, exhaling heavily through his nose. “I’m afraid I didn’t think this through, Ivan. It might take a long time—and however long it takes, you won’t be able to perform any other magic until this one is fulfilled.” He glanced up at me. “You’ll be just a mortal during the whole process—except for your eyes.”
I sprang up from the boat, startling Lewis. “You’re saying my eyes will remain—peculiar—the whole night, if it takes that long?”
Lewis didn’t ask any questions; we had no attention to spare for him. After he turned around and continued rowing through the trampled forest, following the mammoth, I lowered my voice and hissed at Galorde, “No, you didn’t think at all!” I glanced at Lewis to avoid speaking out his name. “He can’t be part of this. It’s too much for him.”
Galorde gazed at Lewis’s back and said calmly, “I trust him.”
I shook my head. “No. No. I don’t care about that anymore. Yisreal already knows—and I think he’s on my side—”
“He knows what?” Galorde cut me off. “You mean Yisreal knows that you—”
I lowered my eyes, silently confirming it.
He inhaled deeply. “That’s messed up.”
“Why? I feel relieved that he knows. I’m going insane hiding this power. I am going insane, Galorde—and you don’t understand it.”
He frowned. “I must warn you about him—and I did. I’ve been warning you. Your father didn’t want you to save him, and you should’ve listened.”
“Here we go again. Isn’t it too late to discuss that now? By the way, if you want me to do this thing, we’d better find Yisreal first. Otherwise, what if he’s in the water?”
“Then let him be!” Galorde snapped, losing patience with my patience for Yisreal. “He was supposed to be dead anyway.”
“Did you hear yourself?”
We had raised our voices without realizing it, and it drew Lewis’s attention again. He paused rowing and turned toward us. “Maester, Mr. Galorde—are we still following the mammoth? We’re getting really close to the dam now. I can feel the resistance.”
I turned around and looked ahead. The mammoth was swimming toward the slaves floating among the trees—away from the dam. The undercurrent was pushing them farther, deeper into the woods. The earring man wanted to rescue them and get them all onto the mammoth’s back, but he wouldn’t be able to unless he kept uprooting all the trees between him and the slaves—and he did, without hesitation. I leaned my ears and heard Lorien crying, begging him to stop. Her voice was drowned out by the shouting—the yelling back and forth between the earring man and the slaves speaking in the Mandian tongue, and the speaking of the earring man was snapped, all of a sudden.
In the few seconds before I switched from hearing to seeing, I noticed Lewis—gaping at me from the head of the boat. He had seen it—my eyes—the rings of flame I couldn’t hide each time I used magic. I wasn’t concerned that he saw it; that was unavoidable tonight. But I worried for him—a mortal who had seen what he shouldn’t have—and what that might bring upon him.
What I saw astonished me—the earring man was no longer on the mammoth but in the water, struggling, whistling, trying to get the mammoth to roll him up with its trunk. The mammoth ignored him and stopped trailblazing any farther. The earring man swam to the front of the mammoth and tried to grab its trunk, but the mammoth swept him away. Lorien, still on the mammoth’s back with her hands tied behind her, was looking up through the branches of the tree next to her.
That was the oldest tree in the forest—the one Yisreal had tried to convince to commit suicide.
“Lewis, row to the mammoth, now! Quickly!” I said, my eyes fixed on them in the distance.
I didn’t hear any response from Lewis until Galorde reminded him. He stammered, as if just waking from a dream, “Yes! Yes! Yes… yes…”
Galorde stood up and came close behind me. “What did you see?”
“I don’t know yet—” I murmured, waiting on Lorien, who kept looking up. She started yelling toward the top of the tree, so I had to switch back to hearing. She was yelling, “No! Don’t kill him!”
Don’t kill him? Was she referring to the earring man? To whom? Yisreal? Was he on the treetop? But earlier, I had glanced over this tree and hadn’t seen him. I looked up along the old tree all the way to its very top—which took me a while, since it was almost as high as Castle Katella—and I saw two men standing, or rather, perching on the branches: the one in the front, wearing a cloak that covered his head and hid his face in shadow, was pulling his bow to its full, an arrow ready to fly down. Then this arch man withdrew his bow and jumped down, revealing the man in the back, who was tied from legs to shoulders to the branch—
Yisreal!
That was Yisreal!
“What is going on—” I mumbled unconsciously in shock until Galorde pestered me to describe what I had just seen.
“Yisreal is kidnapped—he is there on top of the tree!”
Galorde didn’t believe what I said, just as I couldn’t believe what I saw. “Who? Who is kidnapped? By whom? Are you sure?”
“Keep rowing, Lewis, quickly! And you too,” I tapped Galorde, who was standing by my side, “Go row the boat, please!”
Yisreal didn’t seem bothered by his situation. He looked down, watching with his full attention. I looked down as well, and the man in the cloak was now standing on the mammoth’s back in front of Lorien. He didn’t do anything to her but turned toward the earring man, who was holding onto the beard of another ancient tree, breathing heavily and looking up at this man with a subtle fear—a familiar, fatalistic fear, as if facing what he had always prepared to face but wasn’t ready for yet.
The man in the cloak did look familiar—for a moment, I thought he was Yisreal; I thought this was it—Yisreal must kill the earring man this time.
The man stretched his arm out of the cloak, pointing toward the direction of the slaves who were waiting for the earring man. The earring man looked surprised, relieved, suspecting. He didn’t move.
The man left him alone and turned to Lorien. He cut the rope with a dagger—an incredibly fine dagger, shiny even in the muddy dimness—which sliced through the thick reins for the mammoth as if cutting a thread.
Lorien moved her wrists, chafed from the rope, and peered into the man’s cloak, trying to see his face. The earring man finally swam quickly toward the slaves at this point.
My heart started racing, and even Galorde noticed my body shivering.
“Ivan, are you sick? Are you having a fever?”
“No…” I murmured, unsure if he could hear me at all.
“Ivan?”
I shut my eyes, turned around, and took over Galorde’s paddle, rowing with all my strength toward the mammoth.
The man looked up from Lorien as he heard us coming. I could have used magic to see clearly, but I wanted to see only a silhouette a little longer—just until we got there.
“That’s Princess Lorien!” Lewis said with delight. “There’s a man with her.”
“Is that Yisreal?” Galorde said, leaning over to me, squinting ahead, seeking my confirmation.