Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-il Kim

Author:Sung-il Kim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

* * *

The tower was farther away than she’d thought, and it was just past noon when she arrived. No one seemed to be following her, but there was nothing she could do about her footprints in the snow aside from using bare rocks as stepping stones or crossing streams she did not need to cross. Not having spent much time outdoors, she wasn’t sure whether such methods would be effective. The stream water that seeped into her boots had her feet aching with cold.

The tower was narrow, but it was taller than any tree in the forest. There wasn’t a single inch of it not covered in ivy. Each block of stone was outlined in lichen. The door had crumbled to the point where not even fragments of it remained. The tower had been abandoned for a long time.

The inside was dim, but there was some sunlight filtering through the ivy that covered the windows. The staircase that spiraled up the interior connected the floors of the tower, or at least the floors that hadn’t caved in from rot. The stone stairs themselves, however, were intact.

She climbed it up and up, reminded in reverse of when she had gone down deep into the underground of the Academy to steal Eldred.

The topmost floor had not caved in. Mysterious metal instruments were scattered about, smashed into pieces. There was a half-burned tapestry hanging by a single rusty nail. She took it down and unfurled it to reveal a star chart.

“This was an observatory…”

At the upper end of the broken ladder was a skylight. Arienne pictured whoever lived here having gone up the ladder to observe the stars and augur the future. Maybe from the stars, that sorcerer had learned the fate that awaited them, had foreseen the arrival of the Empire that would conquer them.

There was a wooden bookcase lying broken on the floor, surrounded by books that had turned to mold from the winds and rain that had made it inside the chamber over the years. Arienne tried to lift the bookcase upright, but it refused to budge. She sat on it instead. It was less cold than the stone floor. She took off her boots and wrapped herself from the neck down in a blanket. She couldn’t risk lighting a fire, but even just drying her feet made her feel much warmer.

She found herself idly thinking of the soft bed and the thick sheets she had at the dormitory. There at the school, her life had been comfortable, safe, and predictable … Then she shuddered at the thought. She was not the kind of person to trade freedom for a bit of comfort. At least, she was determined not to be.

Eldred said, “What do you plan to do now?”

“Hide here until tomorrow morning and go out onto the main road through the forest once the sun comes up. In two days, I can cross the river and enter Marthia. There we can take the smaller local roads to lose whoever follows us.

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