Page 29 of The Moon Blessed King
‘I’ll see it done.’
Elician hesitates only a moment longer. Lio has been working to recover his strength since Alelune. He’s been training meticulously and Zinnitzia has been dedicated to healing him. But he is still only a few too short months free of captivity. ‘Are you able to do this?’ Elician asks.
‘My parents were there,’ Lio replies firmly. War has made orphans of them all, and his own pains or recovery do not matter in the face of the need to be a part of this force to retake a city he has spent years trying to defend. ‘I’ll be there.’ Elician lets him go.
They ride out as soon as they possibly can, Elician leading the force with Cat, Lio, Marina and Fen just behind. It will take over a week to move a party this size across the country, and they cannot tire their horses out before they reach the city. They all need to be fit andtrim if they’re going to make it. It is slow. Too slow. Elician issickof waiting.
At night, each night, he goes over reports. Pigeons and couriers, updates and missives are constantly circulating. They all say the same thing. Altas has fallen, but the Alelunen army has not advanced deeper into Soleben territory. They have not expanded. Elician doesn’t understand why, but he will take what good news he can get.
There is still so much they need to discuss.
‘What are we going to do with the army?’ he asks Cat the night before they make their final approach to the city. It is the only detail he has not been able to work out on his own.
‘Stop them,’ Cat replies coolly.
‘You’re willing for them to all die?’ It doesn’t sound right to his ear, and Cat shakes his head.
‘No,’ Cat replies. ‘But I’m willing to stop them.’
‘What does that even mean?’
‘I know how to stop their hearts. Not permanently. Not for ever. Just long enough to keep them from moving. It would give your army enough time to bind them.’
‘You want to take the entire army hostage?’
‘Gillage cannot fight back without an army, and they will not be dead in the process.’
‘That…is a lot of people,’ Elician says.
‘It is fewer people to manage than what you want to do.’
Elician concedes the point. ‘I don’t know if Icando it,’ he says. ‘But…it’s all I can think of. Everyone – the whole city. Every single person that died…it shouldn’t have happened. Reapers are forbidden to be used in acts of war, and if they did something the gods forbade…then maybe…maybe their souls are still there. And maybe…I can bring them back.’
It is not a prepared speech, not a decision meant to be overheard by the revellers or the camp followers who always report on his every decision. But he wishes that it was more coherent. That when hespoke, it did not sound like the desperate plea of a child but the declaration of a king who knew full well what needed to be done and was prepared to face all possible consequences for that action.
‘Have you done anything like this before?’ Cat asks.
‘Not…on this scale. I brought Lio back when I couldn’t see him, when I didn’t know where he was. Hours had passed, and his soul was still there.’
‘It’s going to have beenweekssince they died by the time we get there. The chances of their souls having made the change…’
‘Iknow. But if theyhaven’t…if even one soul is still within my reach, then shouldn’t I try?’
‘They called me a monster,’ Cat says, the non sequitur slicing through the air as easily as his blade. ‘I believed them. I believed them for a long time, because what else was there to believe? Everything I touch dies, and everything around me will decay simply because Iexist.’ Cat’s eyes fall to a bowl of fruit someone provided for their evening refreshment. He twitches his fingers, and the ripe flesh dents and squelches inwards, juice sluicing to the bottom of the bowl, rotting and dying at his will alone.
‘You’re not a monster, Cat,’ Elician says, watching him work.
‘But I believed I was, for this is how monsters behave. This is what monstersdo. They kill everything in sight. They destroy everything around them. And if you believe in something long enough and hard enough, you make it a reality even if truth itself needs to distort its perception of you. And you learnhow easy it isto be the monster that they think you are.’
Cat’s hand falls back to his side. He takes up the bowl and holds it between them. All the fruit has diminished, decayed into pulpy matter not fit to eat. ‘I learned I could kill without a touch, because that is the kind of thing a monster wants to be able to do. It is the kind of thing theybelievethey are capable of doing. The very best and worst things in existence are those that leave no trace, and the ideas that we believe are the ones that we form into our reality. What doyoubelieve, Elician? What did you believe when you brought Lio back in Alerae?’
That I could do it, he thinks.That I had to do it.
‘What do your people believe about you?’ Cat asks next. ‘What doyoubelieve that you can do…for them?’ That he is their hero. Their king. That he can save them. They bowed to him when he returned, they cheered his name. They believed he could save them all.
Elician stares down at the bowl. The rotting fruit. A metaphor for the decay of his homeland and his people. He clenches his jaw and hebelieves.
‘I’m going to bring them all back,’ he says. A refrain, but the only one he knows. The only truth he has known from the moment he heard what had happened in Altas. The only path he can countenance.Come back, he thinks. And in that bowl, the fruit move. They fatten. They shed their rot and push out at the limp flesh that once bound them full. Until by his will alone: all that died returns to the living. ‘I’m going to bring them all back,’ he repeats, letting that belief fill him to his core.
