Chapter 13: More Than One Layer
The words dropped like a stone into still water. I sat in the chair, silent for a moment.
More than one layer. It meant that what I already knew was only the surface.
Osric didn't give me time to ask. He stood, retrieved something from the low cabinet beside the table—a small stone, dark in color, slightly larger than his thumbnail, its surface unmarked by any carving. He closed it in his palm and began to pace the room.
He completed a full circuit before speaking.
"When the first signs of the curse appeared, was it in the palace or in the city?"
"In the city," I said. "The market, two streets beyond the palace walls."
"In the week before that, did you come into contact with any unfamiliar people or objects from outside?"
The question made me pause. He hadn't asked me "when did you start feeling unwell." He'd asked about the origin of things I'd touched, which meant he already knew things I hadn't yet told him.
"I went to the market. I don't know the provenance of everything there," I said. "I was mainly buying herbs, but I didn't record the source of every supplier."
He made a long humming sound, presumably indicating understanding. He returned to the table, set the stone on its surface, sat down, and for the first time looked at me with genuine attention. His eyes made me realize I had underestimated him. These were eyes that had seen too much.
"Have you felt," he said, "at any point during these three weeks, that anything was wrong with your own body?"
"Nothing at all."
"Right," he said. "That's because this curse doesn't act directly on your body, so it's taken another, more vicious form."
He turned the stone half a rotation in his palm, then set it down.
"Composite curse. The outer layer's mechanism is transference," he said. "It converts the harm that should be inflicted on you and outputs it to living things you come into contact with. You remain unharmed, but the life around you bears that portion."
The flowers beneath Mother's window. The spoiled meat in the kitchen. That Moonpetal, and the creature in the fissure that had convulsed violently as I passed.
"Outer layer," I said. "That implies there are other layers."
He glanced at me with a flicker of appreciation for my sharpness, easily missed if one wasn't paying attention.
"Your father was the same way," he stroked his beard, shaking his head. "Never let anyone finish speaking. Heard one word and couldn't wait to know what came next."
He picked up the stone again. This time its color had darkened further, like some extraterrestrial meteorite. He held it up to the light from the window, rotating it.
"The inner layer is older, placed much earlier than the outer one. I can tell you now that it exists, but I still need time to decode its complete mechanism."
I sat in that chair, unfolding the relationship between these two layers in my mind. The outer layer was recent, a tool of expulsion. The inner layer was older, quieter. Older meant they had begun this long ago.
"Tell me," I said, "why does the outer layer's curse transform instead of taking direct effect?"
"Because they don't want you dead," he said. "So they need you to leave of your own accord, and then they'll kill you."
The words settled into the silence. I didn't move in the chair.
Outside the window lay Elarin's lower district. The wind had thinned the clamor, leaving only a kind of vast emptiness.
They wanted me to leave voluntarily. The curse had turned me into a threat, made my presence harm everything I cared about, led me to conclude that "leaving is the best choice." I had taken that conclusion as my own judgment, as the product of my own rational analysis.
That chain of reasoning—they had constructed it for me.
Osric retrieved something from a drawer and placed it on the table before me. It was a talisman, barely larger than a thumbnail, bone-white, its surface inscribed with runes I didn't recognize.
"Suppression charm," he said. "Effective for two weeks. The curse's outward manifestation will temporarily cease. You can interact with people at closer distances; living things won't be affected. After two weeks, replace it. Most larger towns have people who recognize these runes."
I picked up the charm, held it in my hand. It felt cool, heavier than its size suggested.
"The one who cast this," I said. "You know who it is."
"The specific individual, not yet," he said. "But there's one thing you must understand first. Whoever cursed you knows you too well. They knew what you would do at this specific point in time, where you would go, what would make you choose to leave. This wasn't a random target."
"They know me," I said. "How did you determine that?"
"The curse's design," he pushed the detection stone slightly. "It's not meant to destroy you—it's meant to guide you. Guiding you means they understand you, understand your behavioral logic, understand what circumstances will lead you to make what decisions. That requires observation. It requires time."
A chill ran through me. The feeling was like discovering that during all those years when you thought you were making every choice independently, a pair of eyes had been following you, tracking your every move and predicting perfectly.
The fear passed in an instant. I carefully pocketed the suppression charm. Even if they had predicted I would leave the capital alone, they couldn't have anticipated that I wouldn't simply wait for my fate, that I would seek help everywhere.
"Dark mages," I pressed on. "Their current strength—what do you know?"
"More than most people think," he stood, walked to the bookshelf, searching slowly through the row of volumes. "They've always existed. Small in number, limited in power, barely surviving under suppression. The rifts changed that equation. The creatures from the rifts carry pure dark force, and dark mages found a way to manipulate them. No one anticipated that." He pulled out a book, flipped to a certain page. "They're much stronger now than they were twenty years ago, and they're still growing stronger."
He placed the book on the table before me, letting me see the page. It showed a diagram—I recognized it as a schematic of curse propagation structure, but the details were too specialized for me to comprehend.
"You don't need to understand it now," he said, retrieving the book and returning it to the shelf. "You only need to know one thing: what you're facing isn't a single caster. It's a collective."
"The prophecy," I said, feeling time pressing, wanting to understand as much as possible about what was happening to me. "I want to know how you see it."
He sat back down, folding his hands on the table.
"How much do you know?"
"The King's daughter shall be the end of the rifts." I said. "That's the version I've been told since I can remember."
"Only that version." Not a question.
I paused before answering. That forest, that rock covered in moss, three small figures, the song sung in ancient Fae tongue.
"The Fae sang another version," I said. "'The bloodline of whom the King protects' and 'the King's daughter'—two different phrasings. And my name. Mireiya."
His hand, turning pages of that book, stopped.