The tower of the tyrant, p.28
The Tower of the Tyrant, page 28
‘There,’ Tula said, pointing down a trampled pathway between a beer garden and a gauzy pavilion decorated with silhouettes in all manner of suggestive poses. At the end of the pathway, a dozen paces away, a peasant girl conversed with a world-weary young man. The girl held the reins of a bay mare, as Tula had said, and a heavyset hunting dog sat at her heel. The mare eyed the dog with rolling, wild eyes, stamping its feet. Animals, even when under the power of a geas, had a way of seeing through glamour.
‘Bleed me,’ Harwick muttered. ‘I’d bet a royal that’s Bess. How’d that girl come by her?’
‘Jareth sold her, maybe?’ Damon ventured.
‘In the middle of the night?’ Harwick rejoined, scratching his stubble.
The girl gestured and, even at such a distance, Llewyn saw the glint of silver on her thumb.
The Huntress
YC 1189
In some ways, the fae are more confounding than fiends. Something which is entirely alien can, after all, be dismissed as incomprehensible. But something which at times seems to fit known patterns, only to violate them at unexpected turns, strains and unsettles the mind. Fae have courts, domains and politics, and it is thus tempting to say they are kindred to mortals. Long study, however, reveals courts that resemble no familiar hierarchy, domains that exist irrespective of geographic barriers and distance, and politics fixated on concerns that are as often whimsical nonsense as they are abominable horror.
Archivist Eltan Oora, The Taxonomy of Sapience, YC 1098
The world around Llewyn grew distant, fading into a blur like a hastily painted backdrop, save that girl, her ring, and the hand of the youth who pointed back the way Llewyn had just come. He caught Damon by the arm.
‘Llewyn? What …?’ Damon demanded, pulling against his grip. ‘You’re hurting—’
‘All three of you, go back to camp,’ he said, the words falling from him without thought. Only one thing mattered. Whatever guilt he felt for those who had died as a consequence of Siwan’s curse, his shame at considering, however briefly, returning to the Grey Lady’s fold far outweighed it. ‘Get horses. Take Siwan. Find the woman Fola at the Garland Inn.’
Damon shook his head, the paper flower Siwan had tucked into his curls finally coming loose and drifting to the ground. ‘Why? And I thought you didn’t trust—’
‘I don’t trust her,’ Llewyn said. ‘But she is powerful, and she might be able to keep you safe long enough to get away from here.’
‘What are you talking about, Llewyn?’ Tula demanded.
‘That which I feared most,’ he said, but an explanation would take too long. Even he could not see through the girl’s glamour, but he knew the signs—had kept vigil for them these eight years. ‘You need to trust me in this. The troupe must disperse. Scatter. Take Siwan to Fola, and from there to anywhere she might be safe. The City, if you must. Just away from here and from any place Jareth might have known. If anything by the name and description of the Silver Lake Troupe remains in the world, you will all be hunted down and slaughtered.’
‘Llewyn, I—’ Damon protested gain.
‘Just go,’ Llewyn hissed, and hefted his ghostwood blade, no longer a walking stick, now a sword, curved and wickedly sharp. ‘And be quick. You can do nothing here.’
He could hardly hope to do anything—only delay and, with any luck, redirect attention. He took the hammer from his belt and cut away the rags that bound its head, revealing a flat face and wedged back suited for stonework. Llewyn kept his grip near the end of the handle, far away from the raw iron’s rough, dark surface.
Harwick’s confusion at last hardened into fear. He put a heavy hand on Damon’s shoulder. ‘Come, lad. You know what he was, once. We do as Llewyn says.’
Damon let himself be led away. Tula muttered under her breath, but followed. Llewyn could little blame them. He had demanded that they shatter the semblance of family they had found together and dissolve their lives, and offered no coherent reason. But there wasn’t time.
He had little grasp of his own age, of how much time had passed while he slept in the roots of his ghostwood tree, a sword in its sheath awaiting the Grey Lady’s need. Yet he knew this one—this monster in the guise of a girl—had served far longer.
She left the youth and approached. Her eyes were two pale flecks of ice above a spray of freckles, first scrutinising Llewyn’s face, then the wooden sword in his white-knuckled hand, then the hammer. A knife would have been better, or a sword, but raw iron was coveted in Parwys and an old hammer was all he had been able to buy with what little coin he had scraped together. Not that better armament would make much difference. The dog padded at her side, nearly as tall as Bess’s shoulder, its own gaze yellow, wild and hungry. A glamour could hide much, but struggled to veil the eyes.
Llewyn had spent little time in the company of other gwyddien. They were solitary tools. Yet he knew this one. The finest blade in the Grey Lady’s armoury. A woman with a rimewolf at her side, known only as the Huntress.
It had always been destined to end this way, from the moment he tore the Grey Lady’s ring from his thumb. Perhaps he should have taken Siwan further afield, into Galca, or Alberon, or further south to Salus or Tarebach—countries that were only words to him. Yet the Grey Lady’s domain paid little mind to mortal maps and borders. Her territory abutted every shadowed glade, every moonlit bough. And he had, himself, been lost, and alone, and afraid of a world he understood only through a fractured, distorted lens. Afanan and her troupe had given Siwan a good life, and there was no telling whether years of desperate flight would have kept her safer than years of comfort, kindness, and the next best thing to family.
The Huntress’s ice-flake eyes drifted up to meet his gaze. ‘She is surprised to find that you carry your ring,’ she said, her voice young and bright. Llewyn had imagined it would be crueller, hardened by time and violence. She pointed at his pocket with her ghostwood blade. ‘Put it on. She would speak with you.’
Though only moments ago Llewyn had considered the ring—as though putting it on could undo the consequences of his rebellion—now it terrified him. For eight years his thoughts had been his own. He had found the strength to defy her once, but she had not been expecting it, then. If he let her back in, she might bind him to her service or fill his mind with torturous horror.
The Huntress frowned. Through her glamour, she seemed no more threatening than an impatient child, yet he felt the ferocity roiling underneath. ‘You do not understand, it seems,’ she said. ‘You can neither save yourself nor the abomination you saw fit to unleash upon the world.’
‘She is only a child,’ Llewyn said, echoing Afanan, feeling the powerlessness of the words as they fell from his tongue. No world existed in which he convinced the Grey Lady to divert her course. Yet the longer they talked, the more time Damon and the others had to reach the camp, convince the troupe to dissolve, and spirit Siwan away to Fola. Who knew what use the sorceress would have for her. Llewyn trusted only that it would be better than death. ‘Why not find a way to destroy the fiend without destroying her?’
‘Put on the ring,’ the Huntress snapped. With a flick like a damselfly’s wing, the white wood of her blade flattened and narrowed to a razor edge.
The dog stalked towards him, jowls peeled and hackles high. Llewyn took a slow step backwards. If he fled, little would stop the Huntress from finding Siwan. Yet if he stood and fought, he had no hope of survival, let alone victory. The Huntress had her rimewolf and whatever other powers the Grey Lady had granted her—at the very least, the same minor skill with magic that Llewyn had once possessed.
He cast about for anything he might turn to his advantage. A group had gathered at the edge of the nearby beer garden to watch, anticipating the drama of a duel. One of their number wore a farrier’s apron with a tack hammer hanging from his belt.
In the further corners of the kingdom, folks still made horseshoes from iron dug from the earth. Llewyn was sure the king and his druids conjured their own metal for such mundane uses, reserving raw, true iron for the steel of the swords and spears sent north to face down packs of rimewolves on the tundra of Cilbran. But there was a chance, however slim.
‘Looking for a place to run, Llewyn?’ The Huntress sneered. ‘There is nowhere in this world where she will not find you. If you cooperate, if you put on the ring, she may forgive enough to grant you a quick death.’
‘Is she so desperate to speak with me?’ Llewyn said. There, a thin trickle of dark smoke rose from an open space on the other side of the beer garden. He began to circle, taking slow steps to put himself between the Huntress and the farrier’s shop.
‘She would have what is hers,’ the Huntress said. ‘Even if only to destroy it.’
She put fingers to her lips and whistled. Her monstrous dog charged, its claws tearing divots in the earth, a growl burning in its throat. Llewyn swung his hammer in a rising arc, hoping to smash the beast’s jawbone. Too-intelligent eyes caught his motion. At the last moment, it shut its slavering maw and turned. The hammer slammed into the dog’s shoulder. It staggered back a step and screamed in pain and rage. The stink of burnt flesh filled the air and tufts of bloodied white fur, torn free of the rimewolf’s body and the reach of the Grey Lady’s glamour, clung to the chisel head of the hammer.
Llewyn turned and ran, hoping the blow would infuriate the beast and draw it after him. Hoping, too, that the Huntress would not simply abandon her pursuit of him in favour of Siwan, the greater prize.
The little gathering of bystanders in the beer garden shouted in alarm and scattered as the duel they had come to spectate threatened to engulf them. The rimewolf howled, which turned those shouts of alarm into screams of panic, then splintering wood as the beast barrelled through tables and chairs after Llewyn.
The rimewolf’s snarl grew louder as it gained on him. He zagged to the left, then whirled and lashed out again with the hammer. Too slow. The steel-hard plate of the monster’s forehead slammed into his middle, launching him a dozen paces. A crack and a sickening pop sounded from his torso as he landed and rolled to a stop between the beer garden and the farrier’s tent. Somehow, he had managed to keep a grip on his ghostwood blade, but his other hand sprawled empty beside him, the hammer lost from sight.
His breath came in an agonised wheeze as he struggled to his feet. A sudden certainty that these were his last moments settled into him, with the odd effect of dulling his pain. If it were only for his own sake, he might simply lie there, give up, let the rimewolf’s jaws or the Huntress’s blade trim the thread of his life.
But his life was not his own. Had not been for eight years. In his mind’s eye he saw Siwan, exhausted and afraid, nonetheless smiling at Damon’s antics as she tucked a paper flower into his hair.
The rimewolf, its glamour broken at last by the blows of his hammer, padded closer. A rumbling growl shook Llewyn’s aching bones. He took a deep breath—it came with pain—and hauled himself to his feet. His legs held. He had one more sprint in him, maybe, but if he turned and ran the rimewolf would tear out the back of his neck. His free arm hugged his aching side while the other brought up his ghostwood blade. The rimewolf snarled, hunched, readied to lunge. Behind it, the Huntress emerged from the beer garden.
‘A shame,’ she said, reaching into the folds of her skirt to withdraw a piece of linarite. ‘I was hoping you’d put up a fight, not dash away. But I suppose once a coward starts to run, it’s hard to stop. This will hold you still.’
She cracked the gemstone. Llewyn dived backwards as the ground where he had been standing transformed to sucking mud. He rolled, hissing as pain raked his injured ribs, then found his feet in the same moment the rimewolf leapt. He lashed out awkwardly with his ghostwood blade, hoping to knock the monster’s charge aside. Instead, he only cut a thin furrow on its cheek. Again, it bowled him over. He heard a sharp snap as he struck the earth, and the ache in his ribs blossomed into agony.
Groaning and dazed, he flailed to find his feet, every moment sending a fresh wash of pain up his flank. Every moment he held on, every breath he took—no matter how it knifed at his broken ribs—bought Siwan a bit more time to get away.
He saw her on the altar stone. ‘Papa … Please …’
That was his purpose, now. The singular focus of his existence. Spend his pain to buy her one more moment, and then another. As many as he could before collapsing.
Using his blade as a cane, he levered himself to his feet. The rimewolf circled, laughter in its eyes and its wounded jowls open wide in a cruel smile. It might have lunged and ripped him apart with little difficulty, as battered as he was. This taunting was odd.
As was, he realised, the Huntress’s insistence that he put on the Grey Lady’s ring.
He had assumed they were after Siwan. They must be. The Grey Lady would not abide such a threat to her domain—and no matter how far Llewyn took Siwan from the forest, no matter if they fled to the depths of the deserts of Kar, the Grey Lady would always see the raven fiend and what it had become as a threat.
Then why had the Huntress not simply ignored him and gone after her true quarry?
He glanced over his shoulder. The farrier’s forge was only a few paces behind him. Discarded horseshoes lay in a pile, waiting to be cleaned and sold as charms against the fae. If he could get to the far side of that pile …
‘Last chance,’ the Huntress said. She now held a scrap of anatase, ready to be broken and unleash a spirit of flame. ‘Put on the ring, or I start carving you up. If I cauterise the wounds, you might speak to the Lady with only one finger left.’
Galloping hooves sounded. The watch, Llewyn assumed, come to investigate reports of a duel in the festival grounds. Little good they would do against a gwyddien and a rimewolf, unless they came armed with raw iron.
‘Llewyn!’ Afanan’s voice sent an icy shock through him. She appeared from behind the beer garden, mounted on Midnight, her black palfrey. The Huntress’s gaze snapped to her, startled, and Llewyn took advantage. He lumbered, gasping and wincing, towards the farrier’s forge. The rimewolf snarled and lunged after him, churning the earth. It was nearly upon him when he turned—screaming as pain shot up and down his side—flattened his ghostwood blade into a broad paddle, and struck at the pile of horseshoes, launching a handful at the beast’s open maw.
The rimewolf’s snarl became a whine as smoke poured from sizzling flesh. It shook its head, spat, and coughed, trying to dislodge a horseshoe that had hooked around its jowl. Llewyn wasted no time assessing the damage. The Huntress walked towards him, her pace steady and determined as the march of time, the anatase held tight between her fingers.
Afanan reined in beside him. With a flourish, she produced an opal and crushed it. A howl of conjured wind whirled out from her hand, bringing with it a thick, unnatural fog.
‘Hurry, Llewyn,’ she said, reaching down to him as the fog hid them from the Huntress and her rimewolf. ‘Get on!’
He shook his head. ‘Lead her … right to Siwan,’ he said through a gasp of pain. ‘Have to … lead her away.’
He wanted to add, ‘What are you doing here? Leave me!’ But every word brought a spasm of agony. Afanan frowned in worry and confusion.
‘You’re hurt, Llewyn,’ she said. ‘You can’t hope to win this fight.’
‘Don’t need … to win.’ He hissed again, pitched forward as a pulse of pain sapped the strength from his legs. She caught him by the shoulder. Some unspoken calculation passed behind her eyes. Without a word, she hauled him up into the saddle in front of her, ignoring his groans.
‘Take Siwan to Fola,’ she said, dismounting. ‘I’ll buy you time.’ He could only gasp for breath, but she must have seen an unvoiced protest on his face. ‘Which of us stands a chance of surviving this fight?’
Neither of them did. This was how it was always going to end, from the moment he took off his ring and accepted Afanan’s invitation to the troupe. He had believed he could escape his fate, claw back a semblance of a life. But his life had been sold when he was still a child to a power that would never give him up. All he could do now was place himself between the Grey Lady and the people he cared for, to use his body as a barricade, slow her wrath, and give them a slim chance to escape.
It was his duty to die here, not Afanan’s.
‘Don’t … trade your life … for mine …’ he begged.
She gave him one last smile. ‘I’ve already seen the City, Llewyn. You should, too. To glimpse a vision, at least, of what is possible, and what I tried to build.’
Afanan turned to face the Huntress, producing a chalcedony in one hand and a peridot in the other, even as a wash of flame swept through her conjured fog and burned it away. She slapped Midnight’s rump with the heel of her hand. The palfrey took off with a start, her pace increasing with a terrified scream as Afanan cracked both gemstones. A burst of lightning and grasping shadows lanced towards the Huntress. It took all Llewyn’s strength to face forward, to keep in the saddle as Midnight’s galloping sent wave after wave of agony through him.
She would get herself killed. And for what? To save him? Siwan needed Afanan far more. Her magic had bound the raven fiend, and might be needed to bind it again. She was giving him no choice but to align himself with Fola and her City, against his better judgement.
The anger was a comfort. It kept grief from layering a different sort of pain over the scrape and fire of his broken rib.
A pulsing darkness filled the corners of his vision as Midnight carried him into camp. The sight of Siwan, terrified behind Damon on Mable, the chestnut mare from the wagon team, restored his clarity and focus. Harwick and Spil appeared leading Mable’s pulling partner, a roan gelding called Rusty. The horse tossed his head, frightened by the furious outpouring of Spil’s questions and arguments.
‘Llewyn!’ Spil said, his attention and his anger snapping from his husband. ‘What’s going on? Where’s Afanan? Why are we abandoning camp like this and scattering to the four winds? And …’ His anger bled away into worry. ‘Stones, Llewyn, you look like death.’
