Girl of Myth and Legend (15 page)

However, this girl’s family
is
Chosen, so why did he hide it from her? To protect her, shelter her, give her some years of peace, despite the fact that he could have received a severe punishment for not disclosing the existence of a relative? It couldn’t have been because she is a Pulsar, as you never know what your child will be, be it Zero, Phobien, Throne or Pulsar. Even if you’re a Zero, you could still end up birthing a Pulsar.

So
why
has she never known who she is?

The arux sits at the side of the temple, a whole stretch of plain before it. The sun brightens the endless landscape, seeming to invite me out there into the vast wilderness that surely every kytaen longs for. I stare at it for a moment, thinking of running, because I could: Orin would not be able to keep up with me. But then, it’s useless thinking of freedom. I can’t run. The Imperium would find me in a second. Kytaen have
nightox
stored in them, inserted when we are created—saying born is frowned upon by the Imperium. We’re not mechanical; we’re made of blood and flesh and magic. But when we’re created, Replica insert nightox into our bodies. They can find us anywhere.

The arux has been cleared out. All that remains is a bench for me to sleep on. I’m used to sleeping in the absence of luxury, but
this
is surely a contemptuous act on the Imperium’s part. My previous keepers never treated me exceptionally, but I still had a comfortable place to sleep within the arux, with individually made rugs to accommodate my elemental form and a bed for my humanoid one. To see this bench, this affront, lights a fuse in me that threatens to become an inferno.

I control it. After all, my life is not my own. Unlike mortals, we kytaen know the reason we exist: to be dominated by the Chosen, to serve them. We don’t deny our fate. Tools can’t do such a thing as defy their purpose; how can you go against the very fabric of your being? And there is no rest from this existence. No, never that. Our fate is tied to the Chosen for all of time, for my kind has been deserted by Death: He loves only mortals.

Eternity is not a kindness given to us by the stargods, nor is it our curse. We are not worthy of contempt or favour, of curses and blessings. We just are. Our hearts pump lifeblood to our limbs so that we might destroy our enemies; our flesh can be pierced and torn, the magic in us healing inflicted wounds; and breathing is as necessary for us as for any other being that needs to live, but that is only a literal sense of living. You can bleed and sweat and struggle, and yet your heart can be nothing, no one. So how can we call ourselves alive? All things alive die. We can’t die so easily. We have no end. No destination. No final stop. So we dream of death, of peace, of an end to this endless cycle, for dreaming is all we own. We exist to obey without question, without contemplating our dismal existence, without a thought of rebellion.

Except for me.

So I can stand this for a few days, the unyielding cycle of servitude. I won’t be here for long. Soon I’ll be greeting Aris again. Soon, once I break that girl.

LEONIE

LABYRINTHS OF CHAOS

At midnight I decide to go to the kytaen. I grab a blanket from the bed. Sneaking out isn’t as hard as I thought. Though I see Thrones guarding certain shadowed hallways that lead to my room, there are enough opportunities to get by them unnoticed. I sneak by, my feet silent against the marble, and whenever one of the Thrones turns in my direction, I quickly hide behind one of the walls or statues. I manage to get to a hallway where there are no Thrones and tiptoe towards where the Breakfast Room is. The doors to the room open like they did before, and I
hush
them as they creak. It’s not dark inside the room, the fake stars glinting above my head. There isn’t any food left on the table, so I go to where the Magen exited with our breakfast this morning. The kitchen is smaller than I thought it would be, resembling the old kitchens I remember seeing in Windsor Castle. I guess Magen like things the old way. I grab a piece of leftover bread I find and make my way out of the kitchen.

I gasp when I see a flash of black, and hide behind the door. I let my heart steady itself before peering out. There’s a man wearing a black cloak, his face concealed by a scarf and hood. He stands near the table, looking up at the stars. After a moment, he turns away and exits the room. I sigh in relief that he didn’t see me.

I leave the room and go down the darkened hallways. I can hear the distant sound of hymns, and I shiver. Why do Magen have to be so creepy? I see the doors that lead outside, and I slowly open one of them.

I regret being in my pyjamas as soon as the wind hits me. I’m about to reach the shed—I refuse to call it an arux, since I’m sure ‘slumber’ doesn’t come easily there—when three silver orbs draw my gaze. Except, they’re not orbs.

They are moons.

‘Wow!’

Harriad told me about the moons before, and to be honest I didn’t think too much of it, but looking at them now, standing under their soft, glittering light, I can’t turn away. They are smaller than the moon in the human realm, and each one hangs behind the other. I had thought that Duwyn was another planet, but Dad said it was another realm. Well, you don’t need to look around to see how different this realm is to the one I grew up in; the air itself tastes of magic and stardust. It’s hard to imagine that if I were to walk outside the Temples of Elswyr’s vicinity, such a beautiful night would be full of terror.

The cold bites at me again, so I force myself to look away and run towards the shed. I open the door without knocking. It’s dark, but the moonlight filtering through the small window provides enough light for me to make the kytaen out. He’s not looking at me, though he seems annoyed at my presence.

I stand stiff, my earlier confidence waning. It’s not his beauty that reminds me to be nervous of him, but his
unknowness
. It’s easy to forget he isn’t human when he looks human, and that he is in fact another being altogether, one I didn’t know existed until yesterday. I remember the fiery gaze of his bestial form, hostile and unrelenting, enough to set me alight. His eyes still reflect this aggression, but it’s not as severe. I squash the anxiousness down into a dark place, and smile.

‘I sneaked you these,’ I say. I show him the bread and blanket.

He glances at them. ‘Why?’

I raise an eyebrow. ‘Unless surviving’s become an old fad, I was brought up to believe eating is kind of a priority.’

He stares at me for a moment. ‘I don’t eat.’

‘Wow! Wish I could be a hard-core dieter like you, but then, I kind of enjoy living.’

He answers me with a dark look. I stay unflinching. I will not be intimidated.

‘If you don’t eat, what then? D’you leech off me?’ I ask. ‘Drink my blood?’

He says nothing in reply, but his nose crinkles as if in irritation.

‘Don’t talk much; I see,’ I say. ‘Hey, don’t worry; I may be the great, extraordinary, phenomenal Pulsar, but I don’t bite.’

He narrows his eyes. Well, it’s something at least. I’m determined to get him to talk, or at least to grumble.

I step closer to him, and he moves back. ‘So, you have some grudge against Chosen, or just me?’

‘Both.’

Eureka! He speaks! Antagonism is the key to his dialogue.

I carry on. ‘We only just met so I can hardly believe that. Can’t really say much in defence of any Chosen, though, since I didn’t know I was one until the other day.’ I pause for a moment. How can I keep this conversation going? ‘Where d’you come from?’

He doesn’t answer, so I repeat it to him several times before he replies, and in a very harsh voice, ‘Chosen came before kytaen, and the Chosen were the ones who made a promise with Ehlmand before my kind existed.’

‘Ehlmand?’

‘She is the god of all kytaen,’ the kytaen replies.

‘Who is She exactly?’ I ask.

He creases his forehead in defiance.

I lean towards him, pursing my lips. ‘I’m your keeper and you’re my kytaen. You have to do what I say, right? You have to answer my questions, right? Isn’t that the gist of things?’

‘You’re not my keeper until the soul-binding. I won’t follow your orders until then.’

‘Something tells me you won’t even after that.’

He doesn’t deny it.

‘Typical, really,’ I say, ‘that
I
end up with a kytaen with anger issues. I mean, any moron could tell you’re carrying something
miiighty
heavy on your shoulders.’

He grimaces as if a spark has ignited inside of him. ‘I don’t give a damn what the Imperium do to me. If you ever ask about that sort of thing, I’ll—’

‘What? What could you possibly do to me?’ I laugh mockingly, if only to hide my shock at his enthusiastic reaction. ‘I don’t care about your past, so don’t worry about that.’ A pause. ‘All right, that’s a big fat lie. I
am
interested. Like, why were you confined?’

He stiffens.

‘No one would tell me,’ I say. ‘Care to share?’

He considers me for a moment and then looks away, scowling. This guy has
really
mastered the scowl.

‘OK. Territory not to be breached. Gotcha.’ I say. ‘Oh, right. My name’s Leonie, just in case you didn’t know. What’s your name? D’you have one? You must, right?’

‘…I do,’ he says.

‘Sooo? What is it?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Sure it does.’

‘I don’t need a name.’

‘What? I can’t just call you
kytaen
forever. Unless you prefer me to come up with a name. You look kind of like a Kevin to me. Maybe a Harry. Yeah, you have a Harryness about you. Oh, how about Leonidas? I loved the
300
movies—’

‘My name is Korren.’

‘Korren?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hmm. Not sure you can pull that name off, but I guess it fits.’

He continues to scowl. I’m seriously starting to get the feeling I’m not wanted.

‘You never did tell me what you eat,’ I say.

‘…You weren’t exactly wrong with what you said,’ he says. ‘Kytaen
are
leeches. When we make a soul-bind with our keeper they give us half the energy of their soul. In a way, obtaining a kytaen is equivalent to giving half your life away.’

I feel cold, my face losing its warmth as the stream of moonlight settles on me from the window. The words sink in:
giving half your life away… giving half your life away… giving half your life away… away away
away. I forget how breathing works for a moment. OK, so Dad never told me
that
.

‘I don’t require food when I’m in Aris: Ehlmand constantly replenishes a kytaen’s energy when within Her sanctuary,’ Korren tells me. ‘When we’re with our keepers, we have no means of survival other than through a soul-binding. A soul-binding isn’t just a kytaen’s declaration of allegiance to a Chosen, it’s also a Chosen agreeing to sustain the life of the kytaen in return for their protection. The soul has an unimaginable quantity of energy, so it’s only fair for a Chosen to give half of that in exchange for our guardianship. Your soul energy can sustain us for exactly 84.5 human years, not that Chosen tend to live that long—especially Pulsar, the underfens’ favourite meal.’

Away away away.
‘So… so I’ll die young because of you?’ I ask.

‘If that’s how you like to think of it.’

I try to say something that conveys this sudden horror building up in me, but all I say is, ‘H-how enlightening.’ And not the good kind of enlightening.

‘Now, if you allow it,
great
Pulsar,’ he says, with an air of satisfaction, ‘I would like to sleep.’

After hearing that, I’m not too sure I want to continue our conversation. ‘Yeah…’

Before I close the door, he says, ‘I look forward to the soul-binding,
keeper
.’ I glance back at him: he’s settling on the rickety bench. I’m already not thrilled with the prospect of the soul-bind, and even less so now I’ve found out the personality of the soul I’m attaching mine to, but now… now the prospect of being a keeper is utterly unwelcome.

_________________

‘No, Pegasus, down!’ I snap.

Pegasus has been locked in my room since we arrived two days ago. It took some of my great persuasion skills—OK, I just asserted my Pulsarness—to get him released, and one of my promises was that he would be settled. I’m chewing on my words now. Settled? No. Of course not. He runs around the Breakfast Room, bouncing off the chairs and clambering over small shrines, jumping on me several times and almost knocking me over. There’s no point calming him down; he wouldn’t understand. Magens’ faces are hidden from me, and they go about serving us our breakfast without a word, but the Thrones who sit at the table are chewing their lips, clenching and unclenching their hands, trying not to look at the mutt.

‘What’s his name?’ Jacob asks me.

‘Pegasus,’ I reply.

‘Cool name!’ I decide I like Jacob. ‘Why’d you call him that?’

‘I read about him in a myth,’ I say, ‘he sprung out of Medusa’s head or something.’

‘Oh. Did he really?’

‘Well, not this Pegasus. Another one. A human cut her head off,’—I slice my finger across my neck—‘and out came a horse with wings.’

‘Cool.’

‘Cool indeed.’