The tower of the tyrant, p.52
The Tower of the Tyrant, page 52
Fola allowed herself a moment of quiet as the fury of the wind faded. To mourn Llewyn. To gather her thoughts. To think through the danger that lay ahead.
Only a moment. All she could afford, just then. There would be plenty of time to grieve and contemplate on the way home to the City.
‘Is it over?’ Damon asked. He knelt over Siwan, gently holding her shoulders. ‘Siwan? Are you all right?’
‘Not yet,’ Fola said.
Tension rewound itself through his shoulders.
‘I made a deal.’ Fola pushed herself to her feet. ‘The fae lady Llewyn served will keep the raven fiend at bay while I fulfil my side of it. I have to go back to Parwys.’
‘A five-day journey!’ Damon shook his head. ‘You can’t leave her like this for ten days!’
‘I can do it in three. I’ll make better time on my own.’
Frog could brew potions and she could write spells to keep away exhaustion, for a while. Long enough, she hoped, to free the Huntress and kill Torin—which in that moment she meant to do, regardless of her deal, for Llewyn’s sake. Not an attitude Arno would approve of. One he might point to as evidence that she had, indeed, stayed far too long in the wider world. A Citizen ought not to deal death easily, and ought to take no pleasure in it, but she had to admit a part of her would relish making that bastard inquisitor bleed.
A consequence of her errand she could sort out when she made it back to the City.
‘Damon, I need you to do something. Something you won’t like.’
He looked up at her, tears in his eyes.
‘If she starts to turn again, it will be because I failed. If that happens, you have to kill her.’
‘What?’ He pulled Siwan close to him. She stirred, her eyes fluttering, showing yellow sclera beneath her lids. ‘I won’t do that.’
‘Then she’ll become something terrible, and the world will suffer.’ It hurt to say these things, but in that moment, they had to be said. There was no one else she could trust with this. Spil, maybe, but he might resent Siwan for what had happened to Harwick. Only Damon loved Siwan enough to wait until there was no other choice. ‘I wouldn’t ask this of you if it weren’t vitally important. Do you trust me?’
‘Somewhat,’ he said gingerly, shaken. ‘Not enough for this.’
Siwan groaned and opened her eyes. It took them a moment to find focus. Her gaze fell on Llewyn’s corpse.
She wailed, threw herself into Damon, and began to weep. He squeezed her close, whispered reassurances in her ear, and fixed Fola with a death glare.
‘I hate this.’ He sobbed into Siwan’s hair. ‘I just want it to stop.’
‘If the choice comes down to her and the world, you have to choose the world,’ Fola insisted, her eyes flitting to Siwan. These things had been hard enough to say when Siwan was unconscious. Now, every word drove a heated nail into her heart. ‘But I know you will hesitate, which is why you have to be the one. If Llewyn were still with us, I would ask him, but he isn’t, so it falls to you.’
‘How could you ask that of me?’ he said.
‘How could she not?’ Siwan leaned away from him. ‘Damon, you have to promise. I can feel it, even now, looming. Like a great weight hovering in my mind, ready to fall and crush me to nothing. If the time comes, it won’t be me that you kill. It will be … something else. Something terrible.’
Tears ran down his face.
‘I’m going to give everything I have to stop it, I swear to you,’ Fola said, and she meant it—was bound by it, from the depth of her being, as though she were a fae lady herself. ‘But I might fail.’
‘Fine, then, bleed you both,’ he snarled. ‘But you’d better be dead already.’
Fola smiled at that. ‘I will be, I promise you.’
Though, of course, death meant something different for her than for him, or for Siwan, so long as Frog survived to carry a piece of her soul.
Talk of death drew their attention back to Llewyn.
‘Is there nothing you can do for him?’ Siwan asked.
Fola wished there was. Well, who could say for certain that there wasn’t? The City was powerful.
‘Keep his sword,’ Fola said. ‘It holds his soul.’
Siwan nodded and scrubbed tears from yellow eyes.
Fola gathered up her spellpaper. ‘I place little faith in the Grey Lady. Her power may fail if I wait too long.’
‘Then go.’ Siwan’s mouth twitched in an attempt at a reassuring smile—there was too much grief, too much uncertainty, for anything more.
She could have done more for Harwick. His wound had clotted, thanks to Frog’s salve. Still, his breath came shallowly and he had yet to wake. Spil cradled him, tears wetting both their faces, and seemed not to notice Fola in her passing, nor Frog’s leaping to her arm. Harwick would live, she thought, but there was no knowing what the damage would be.
The fighting had ended with the besieging army broken in terror. The sounds of battle had faded, replaced by the distant moans of the hurt and dying. So many lives she could save, or ease—in their passing, or in their survival. Little sacrifices she would make.
It hurt her, this scarcity of time, of her attention, of resources. Solutions came to mind after the fact. Frog might have spent the night filling barrels with healing salve. She might have written spells to reinforce the armour of the Parwysh soldiery. Both better uses of time than the dozens of spells she had prepared, of which she had used only one.
Choices ripple outwards—even made in ignorance, or with little thought beyond instinct in the whirling tumult of battle. They shape moments, lives, histories. All we can do is make an honest accounting of them after the fact, and try to learn from that honesty.
Colm met her in the courtyard, slumped against a wall. ‘They got away,’ he said, his chest and shoulders heaving. ‘Vanished into the forest. If we hurry, we might catch them.’
Ifan found them on their way to the stables. He sat astride his charger, who stamped and shook his head, still scenting blood. Ifan was speckled with it, though he bore no wounds.
‘What has happened?’ he demanded. His retinue held back, nursing their own hurts and watching the sky. Some murmured quiet prayers.
‘The girl,’ Fola said. ‘Llewyn is dead. I made a deal with his former master. I need to go to Parwys.’
Ifan blinked. ‘You will explain more of this to me on our way.’
Fola glared up at him. ‘I don’t want another battle.’
‘Nor do I,’ Ifan said. ‘But we rarely live in the world we want.’ He put up his hand before she could mount another argument. ‘When the sky turned black, Owyn’s army broke, scattering like flies from carrion. Some to the west, some to the south. But they will return when you are done here, whether the haunting is put to an end or no. I have business to finish with Owyn.’
‘I go now, at speed, Ifan.’
‘Without food? Supplies? It is a journey of days over ground recently crossed, and pillaged, I am sure, by an army.’
‘I can provide for myself.’
He considered this and looked back at his retainers. ‘Can you provide for five more and their mounts?’
‘I said no.’
‘I ride west, Fola, with my personal guard. And I, too, ride now, as soon as we change our horses. Feed us to keep us strong and ready for what will come, or do not, and let us grow hungry and weak.’
‘And who will rule here in your stead?’ she rejoined, though she could feel herself losing the argument.
He smiled thinly at her, then turned his mount towards the stables. ‘Come, Fola, we can afford no more delay.’
* * *
A haze of smoke still choked the air as Fola followed Ifan’s retinue through the city. Though the storm of Siwan’s grief had passed, the city of Glascoed still crouched and trembled. The rains had doused most of the fires, but left blackened, skeletal wrecks where there had once been homes. A few people picked through the wreckage, some wearing their grief openly, others too stunned by the day’s terrors to show anything at all. Some recognised their count in passing by the emblem on his tabard. Most watched him pass in silence. A handful dipped their heads. A few spat on the road behind him.
One of Ifan’s housecarls shouted a reprimand, threatening to bludgeon the offender if he did not fall to his knees. Did these people not know that Ifan had just fought to defend their homes? That he rode out now to end the tyranny of the House of Abal?
‘Enough,’ Ifan snapped, and goaded his horse to greater speed. ‘What does any of that matter to him? His house is ashes, man.’
The housecarl grumbled as they rode on, though Fola noted that no one else spat and a few more heads were bowed.
Despite Ifan’s insistence on haste, it had taken some time to ready fresh horses and for his men to change from their battle armour into harness they could manage on their own. Steel plates were exchanged for mail and leathers. Colm had cast off his absurd, clattering motley and now wore his usual woodsman’s vest and trousers. He kept his bow fastened to his left upper arm while his lower arms managed the reins. As they rode out from the ruin of Glascoed and into the wood, he kept careful watch on the treeline—for sign of the templars, who had been wounded and might not be able to maintain their pace, and for any ambush laid by the retreating Parwysh forces.
They passed a number of men in Parwysh and Cilbrain colours—a good sign. Forgard’s and Afondir’s forces must have largely fled to the south. Hunched figures walked in the road, or just beside it. Most panicked at the sound of hooves and dived into the underbrush. A few only stepped aside to watch them pass. None put up any attempt to fight. Fola saw few weapons between them. Dropped, most likely, in the panic and haste of their retreat.
‘I’ll not sleep well with so many of them about,’ one of the housecarls said while they paused to water their horses at a stream. The thin light through the heavy clouds had begun to fade towards evening. ‘Any of these deserters might cut our throats and trade Count Ifan’s head for a ransom.’
‘Then I have good news,’ Fola said. ‘I’m not planning to sleep until we reach Parwys, and since you lot insisted on coming with me, you won’t be sleeping either.’
Silence held for a moment.
‘Do you mean to catch Owyn on the road?’ Ifan asked.
‘I’m not after the prince.’
‘Then what?’ Ifan demanded. ‘I know my purpose in this errand, Fola. I thought yours was aligned.’
‘I mean to be there and back as soon as I possibly can,’ Fola said. ‘The haunting is held in check, for now. But may not be for long.’
She told them of her agreement with the Grey Lady. The housecarls shifted their feet or stroked their horses, pretending this conversation was not happening. It was one thing to ride out with their liege-lord against a mortal enemy, however poor the odds of success. Another thing to pit mortal arms and wills against the ancient powers of fae and fiend.
‘A bargain with the fae invites tragedy,’ Ifan observed. ‘I would think this kingdom has seen enough.’
‘It was this or the girl’s life,’ Fola said, remounting. Exhaustion had left her with little patience for his half-informed disagreement. Sensing her need, Frog fluttered down from a tree where he had perched above the stream. She took a bottle from her satchel and put it to the bird’s mouth. When the bottle was full of thick green tonic, Fola took a sip. Bitter, with that ever-present aftertaste of mint. She shivered as energy coursed through her. A sharp, tingling, unpleasant sensation, but it burned away the dregs of her sleepless night and would keep her alert until this was done.
The housecarls’ fear of the fae was soon forgotten, replaced by a disgusted fascination. She tossed the bottle to Colm, who grimaced and took his own swig. He shook himself, spluttered, winced and offered the bottle to the housecarls, who pointedly refused it. Ifan eyed it sceptically.
‘We go there and back in three days, Ifan,’ Fola said as Colm handed back the bottle.
‘You’ll run the horses to death,’ he pointed out.
Fola stroked her mount’s mane—a nameless horse, taken from Ifan’s stables. Her third since leaving Ulun. She hadn’t found the will to name it. ‘It works as well for horses as for men.’
She said nothing of the cost the tonic would exact—for not even the magic of the City and the birds of its Great Tree could overcome mortal frailty. The tonic would give her strength by borrowing it from the future. A few days from now, they would pay the cost.
No matter. She would have freed the Huntress, saved Siwan, and be ready to embark for the City by then.
Hardened Hearts
YC 1189
To wager one’s life in war is to insist that death is preferable to living in the world as it is. But there is much beauty in the world, if one could see it through the fog of ambition and greed.
Odd the Bard, Odd’s Almanac of the World Beyond the Walls, YC 296
As they passed through Miggenbrot, the folk in the village were skittish and close-mouthed. War destabilises the future, raises questions which fill every act with dread and uncertainty. Would Ifan, the Count of Glascoed, prevail, or would Prince Owyn? And how would those who had lent aid to the defeated party fare, when all was done?
Still, by a simple spell to aid her senses, Fola overheard murmurs that the prince and what remained of his army had passed this way, along with the Count of Cilbran. They had not stopped, it seemed; only resupplied and pressed on, like deer with hounds to heel.
‘It is the stag that hunts the bear now,’ one of the housecarls noted wryly as they remounted. Ifan responded with a silent glare that cowed the man to silence.
Frog’s tonic—which Ifan and his men drank in the end, pinching their noses shut—kept their minds alert and bodies thrumming with energy through the night. Fola conjured a globe of moonlight to hover just behind them, illuminating the road ahead for their horses. The First Folk Road could be trusted, even in darkness, but there was the possibility that the prince’s forces had laid traps to foul any pursuers.
Ifan paused for a moment at the apex of the road as it soared over the hills and Abal’s Scar. A frigid gust whipped at his cloak, the mane of his horse, and the curls of hair that fell from the brim of his helm, as though threatening to pull him from the white causeway and hurl him into the unnatural lake below. He stared down at the dark water, anger and grief warring in his expression, already hardened by the deep bags beneath his eyes. Frog’s tonic could give them energy, but not chase away all of exhaustion’s effects. At last he continued on, riding at the back of their company, his gaze distant beneath the shadow of his brow.
The road met the marsh and became a vague silhouette beneath the murk. Low hills rose in shadowed humps, some dense with stands of trees.
Colm shouted a warning, and the first flight of arrows struck.
Frog’s talons tore through Fola’s gambeson as he squawked and took to the air. Her horse screamed and bolted forward. Fola pulled hard on the reins. She seemed to hang in the air for a moment, rising in her saddle, as the panicked horse leapt from the road and plunged into the marsh. Pain burst in Fola’s arm. There was a bestial scream, soon drowned out by the rush of water into her ears.
She kicked free of her stirrups, found her feet, and surged upright, gasping for breath. The water churned with her horse’s thrashing. Another horse bounded past, galloping hard down the First Folk Road. Its rider, one of Ifan’s housecarls, slumped in his saddle with four arrows sprouting from his chest.
Fola reached for her notebook and nearly collapsed as a wave of pain shot up from her left hand. The arm hung at an oblique angle, twisted and broken in her fall. She gritted her teeth, reached across her body with her right arm, and wrestled the sodden canvas of her satchel. Spellpaper, fortunately, did not absorb water, and her thaumaturgist’s pen wrote without the need for ink.
She slapped the notebook down on the bloodstained road, opened to a fresh page, and wrote a spell that Arno had drilled into her for an occasion just like this. She tore the spellpaper free, wrapped it around her broken arm, and wrote the final line. Another jolt shot up from the break as the paper burned away and transformed her sleeve into a stiff lattice, which twisted suddenly, forcing her broken bone back into alignment.
This time, she could not swallow the scream, nor fight through the light that burst behind her eyes.
Gasping, she blinked until her vision was clear, then took stock. Shouts of battle rose from the nearer of the two scrub-forested hills that flanked the road. Arrows still rose from the other, arcing towards the fighting.
This was no time for nuance or mercy. She wrote a spell, finished it, and watched the further hill explode in a torrent of white fire and shattered wood. There were no screams. No time for pain before searing death. She grabbed up her notebook, pressed her broken forearm against her chest, gritted her teeth, and ran towards the sound of clashing steel.
It was over by the time she reached the hill. Corpses littered the stand of trees. Ifan and his three surviving housecarls were standing over two prisoners. One was a young boy, still breathing despite one of Colm’s arrows through his middle. The other was Bryce, the Count of Cilbran. Blood from a wound on the count’s bald scalp painted his face and yellow beard in streaks of red. Colm appeared from the other side of the hill.
‘No one else that I saw,’ he said. He noted Fola and sagged with relief, then glanced at the wounded boy, ashamed. ‘Just the one messenger on foot. Ten men here. No way to guess how many were on the other hill unless we wait for that fire to die.’
Ifan kicked a fallen helm into the muck. ‘Bloody Stones.’
‘You’re a fool, Ifan,’ Cilbran growled through his red-soaked whiskers. ‘Not just a traitor, but a damned fool. Turning to dark magics, for what? To usurp the throne? Your father would weep for shame.’
‘You hated my father,’ Ifan rejoined. ‘And he told me all this kingdom’s darkest secrets before he died.’
‘He died a babbling madman,’ Cilbran said. ‘Driven insane by the haunting.’
