“It’s like living fire,” Rolan breathed, turning his hand over, gaping at the blue light glowing in his veins. The first time he’d seen Arcana flowing through Luc, he’d been terrified, thinking it monstrous. “What now?”
“Brace yourself. There’s more coming.”
“More? What—” Rolan gasped as his vision went black. He fell to his knees, his body still coursing with uncanny strength and energy, but he couldn’t see his hands in front of his face.
Instead, he saw…
The river.
The river in Crisanth appeared before him, gloomy and indistinct. He was walking on its banks on a blazing summer afternoon. He could feel the heat on his face, the air boiling under a pitiless sun.
But his hands…
His hands were not his own. They were larger, thicker, with coarse, dark hair on the knuckles; the nails long, clean, and filed to points. He tried to shake them, overcome with revulsion, but he could not. He had no control over them at all.
Then a voice invaded his thoughts.Becamehis thoughts, as if his mind were merging with a stranger’s.
“No one has to know,”the voice mumbled.“No one will ever know…”
The voice seemed to come from Rolan, but it wasn’this. Just like the hands, it belonged to someone else. The person whose eyes he was seeing through. Their eyes, their thoughts, their body, all of it became Rolan’s.
It’s hot today. So blasted hot. And all I wanted was some peace and quiet, but no, blasted Rutger had to go and get sick, and now I have to cover his shift.
The streets of Crisanth are lazy today, people moving through the heat like slugs. Wretched people. I should have been a farmer, like my brother. Then I could spend days outside the walls, hoeing the dirt in peace. Goddess blast it all.
I cross the bridge to the western district, the worst district of them all. The hovels they call houses all crammed together, people thick as flies in the streets. Reluctant to set foot there, I linger on the bridge, leaning on the iron railing to gaze out over the water.
That’s when I see him—the old beggar caught in the water. The levels are high and the current fast due to the recent rains, and he’s losing his grip on the reeds. Old fool was probably trying to catch a fish for his dinner.
I could help him.
Goddess knows no one else around here will, and there’s no one else near to see. The old man cries out feebly.
But if I go down there, I’ll ruin my shoes, and then I’ll have to find the beggar some food and somewhere to rest and oh… it’s justsoblasted hot.
As I pull back from the rail, my sleeve catches on the iron, tearing the cuff. With a curse, I walk on, pretending not to have seen the man in the river. I probably couldn’t have saved him anyway. What is one less maggot feasting on the flesh of his city? Really, who will miss him?
When I cross the bridge and look back, the beggar is gone.
The vision finally cleared, the voice fading from his thoughts, and Rolan opened his eyes to find he was kneeling on the forest floor, tears running down his cheeks. He drew a shuddering breath and looked up at Luc.
“What was that?” he whispered.
Luc gazed at him with soft, sad eyes. Quietly, he replied, “A secret.”
- CHAPTER 17 -THE DUTY OF AN ARCANIST
Rolan felt his soul would tear in two. The poor beggar… and that vile man who’d let him drown. He was a murderer, plain and simple. And Rolan had had to witness it, helpless to do anything. For a few minutes he couldn’t speak, and he sat with his knees drawn to his face, tears running over his hands as his body trembled. He wished he’d never broken the relic. He wished he could turn his skull inside out and shake the memory out forever.
Luc sat by in silence, as motionless as a mountain.
“Are they all like that?” Rolan asked hoarsely. “I saw… I saw something horrible. Something…”
He shuddered, his stomach threatening to empty itself.
“Many of them are horrible. Some more than others.” With asigh, Luc ran his hand over his head, looking deeply weary. “Every Cryptic is a secret. It’s a secret that was kept too long, so long that it began to change. It grew legs and fangs and scales and slithered into the dark.”
Rolan nodded. Everyone knew that. Noteverysecret turned into a Cryptic, of course. Mundane, harmless things—what you ate for breakfast, where you took a leak when the latrines were full, how often you changed your underwear—these things were too simple to cause harm. It was the darker secrets, the ones wreathed in shame and guilt, the truths a personwantedto keep hidden, that scuttled away and transformed into monsters.
