A memory of war and sola.., p.1
A Memory of War and Solace, page 1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author's Note
Map
Synopsis of Book One
Epigraph
Part One Choices
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Campaign Map
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Part Two Revelations
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by K.N. Brindle
A Preview of Common Accord, the next exciting novel by K.N. Brindle
Paths of Memory
Book 2:
A MEMORY OF WAR AND SOLACE
K. N. Brindle
A MEMORY OF WAR AND SOLACE
Copyright ©2024 by K. N. Brindle. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical review.
Use of any part of this work to develop, train, or test machine learning models, large language models, or other artificial intelligence systems is expressly forbidden.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024915670 (print edition)
ISBN: 978-1-965275-02-3
For Kris, Deanna, and Kathryn, who taught me so much, and who continue to hold the line.
And for T and S, who will carry the banner forward for us all.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
IF YOU’VE ALREADY read A Memory of Blood and Magic (and if you haven’t, what are you doing reading the second book of a duology first?! Please go back and read book one—there is much in this volume which won’t make as much sense if you haven’t), then you already know how difficult Arin’s early life was and how difficult their world can be. This book explores parts of Arin’s world that are rife with discrimination and prejudice. In the first book, Arin grew enough into their own power and agency that they’re no longer subject to the whims of others, but they are still one person in a very large, sometimes very ugly world.
This story doesn’t mince at the pain and suffering felt by marginalized people. There are references to sexual assault, survival sex, and depictions of physical abuse. There are references to what we would today call hate crimes. There is discrimination, verbal abuse, and use of in-world epithets. As always, I tried hard to ensure that these depictions are meaningful and necessary to the story and that nothing is gratuitous.
Despite the word “war” in the title, this still isn’t a story about fateful quests or chosen ones or dark lords. It is still a story about people, and the difficulties they face, the challenges they make for themselves and others, and the pain that drives people to make terrible choices that change lives forever.
Most importantly, this is a story about trauma. About pain and healing, and about how all the people in our lives contribute to either or both of those things. And it is about finding within ourselves the strength and self-kindness that we need to heal.
If you are reading this some time after having read the beginning of Arin's story (or if you have picked up this book by happenstance and don't know Arin yet), I offer this brief recap of the events that precede the novel you are about to read.
Please understand that the following comes nowhere close to doing justice to Arin's story.
— K. N. Brindle
A brief synopsis of
book one of the Paths of Memory duology:
A MEMORY OF BLOOD AND MAGIC
A hedge witch, called to aid in a breech birth, declared the child would be a nyssa (nonbinary) and a witch. Raised as a girl on an isolated farm, Arin was confused by gender expectations and their own emerging powers, even as a young child.
After ten-year-old Arin loses control of their power during a confrontation with powerful neighbors, the family was driven from their home. They fled to a new life, but a gang of brigands led by a criminal named Cal murdered Arin’s family and sold Arin into servitude in the city of Anbress in the southern Freelands.
Fearful of worse mistreatment if it became known they are nyssa, Arin pretended to be a girl. But instead of abuse and indignity, Arin found a new home and family in the brothel run by the stern but kind matriarch, Ma’am. Arin worked as a housekeeper for two years until an attack by a drunk patron awakened their magic again.
While recovering from a severe facial laceration received at the hands of the drunk, Arin overheard Ma’am—who had discovered that Arin is a nyssa—proposing to trade Arin to someone named Savat.
Before the trade could happen, a heavily scarred nyssa called Sem visited the house and demanded to talk to Arin. Refused by the matriarch, Sem returned and attacked the house guard, easily breaking through their defenses. To forestall more violence, Arin agreed to travel with Sem to Reft, a place of refuge for witches.
On the long journey north through the wilds, Sem taught Arin how to control their power by embracing pain. When they reached Reft, Sem left Arin in the care of its citizens, departing back into the wilderness.
In Reft, Arin made friends with young nyssén Kari, Migs, and Chan, and received counseling from Turin, a senior nyssa and member of the Reft Council.
As Arin adapted to life in Reft, they encountered the young and influential Viscount Tamar Savat of Fall and his servant Eelie, a nyssa and former citizen of Reft. Savat visited Reft several times for meetings with the Council, traveling by Eelie’s magic.
While Savat seemed genial and friendly to the nyssén, Eelie was bitter, resentful, and manipulative, going so far as to attempt to magically coerce Arin into a relationship.
Over the next few years, in the protective and nurturing society of Reft, Arin came to terms with the deaths of their family, and formed a new found family among their friends. They learned the arts of healing and warfare and became a respected citizen. Arin, Kari, and a third nyssa named Fanti developed an intimate relationship.
Years since their last visit, Savat and Eelie returned to Reft and Arin was asked by the Council to help find a thief who had stolen from Savat. They joined their magic with others to locate him, and in a shocking turn, Arin recognized the thief as Cal.
Triggered by the shock of seeing him after so many years and reeling in a dissociative state, Arin used their power from the pain of their family’s deaths to kill Cal. Although they tried to hide what they had done, Arin was eventually accused of the murder by Eelie.
Facing judgment by the Council of Reft for abusing their position and in despair at losing their family again, Arin opened a magical Bridge and left Reft to find their own way in the world.
“Summer's heavy rains;
poems taken down from walls
have left traces”
—Matsuo Bashō, upon leaving the House of Fallen Persimmons
PART ONE
THERE ARE SOME CHOICES THAT haunt us long after the decision is set; a stone laid down in a path that leads us inexorably into our future.
We spend our lives haunted by the most difficult choices we can’t take back. But a day passes, and we find we can survive another day. Weeks pass and we find we can, after all, live with the dull persistent ache of heartbreak. Months go by and we dwell in the consequences of our choices. Years soften the ache into a discomfort, allowing us to move on, though the ghost of that choice returns ever to torture us.
In Reft, I learned that to draw on another’s pain requires great empathy. The closer we come to true compassion, the more readily their pain can feed our power, but at the risk of entangling ourselves irrevocably in their lives. Sometimes, the only possible response to this entanglement is to live at as great a remove as possible.
Distance and solitude was the salve I chose.
A long day’s walk east from the Balshin, and three days southeast of Two Runs in the northern foothills of the Balnin mountains, lies the secluded village of Evans Hill. On maps drawn up by the Lords of Torfall, the Torfall border cuts just to the east of the outlying farmsteads, but you’re unlikely to meet anyone on either side of that line who believes they owe any fealty to lords of a distant capital. The isolation cuts both ways: no tax collector has been seen there for a handful of generations, and the name isn’t even marked on many maps.
Walk due south of Evans Hill for a half-day or so, and you will find yourself in a dense wood that sprawls untouched for leagues, spreading west and south to encroach on the river. The wood’s boundaries extend well into the desolate moors of the Freelands to the southeast, and south right up to the banks of the Bresnin, where it joins its larger sister. Intrepid boatmen might follow the smaller branch upriver to reach the Freelands town of Branmoor, or go even further to reach Anbress, where the river breaks into a great tumbling sweep of rapids.
In the local tradition, this forest is haunted. Everyone calls it simply “the wood”—names are for places people travel to or from. It is a place of creeping ivy and dense, low cloisters formed from the interlocking boughs of ancient trees. A place of dark thoughts and tangled imagination. A place of wounded memory and loss.
For the last two years, the specter haunting that wood was mine.
ONE
No few families in Evans Hill owed the existence of their lineage to Efanne himself, though hardly any know the true history of this place. By all I had read of the storied general of antiquity who had orchestrated the greatest strategic retreat in written history, he would have enjoyed the joke.
To have a place bear his name, and yet still no one remember him… a grand joke indeed.
Moving an army of six-thousand across the uneven wilderness where no roads marked the land and maps were sketched from horseback by outriders no more than a day ahead of the main body of troops was itself an undertaking worthy of renown. Shepherding a population of twenty-thousand through that same wilderness—adults and children seeking freedom from the quicksilver whims of a monarch rapidly descending into madness—should have been enough to cement his legacy.
Ultimately though, what clinched his place in history, as obscure as it is, was the precisely controlled withdrawal through the Balnin and his final stand here in these forgotten hills. Mentions of his strategic brilliance exist in various texts, and all cite the five long weeks he held back an army thrice the size of his own while his people escaped across the mountains and dispersed into what is now known as the Freelands.
Never mind that he finally fell, on one hill or another—unlikely it was the actual hill the town occupied. He had won because he had succeeded, and the people were free. He had won because the army of the Mad King had been decimated, chipped down into fragments by intricate and deliberate application of strength to weakness.
Eight-hundred-year-old bones of tens of thousands of fallen soldiers nourished the land for miles around. It was fitting that the farmers of Evans Hill survived the stark lonely winters in plenty. It was no wonder the wood was deep and rich and fecund. It was no wonder the locals thought they saw ancient ghosts and spirits walking under its darkened eaves.
Rolling grassy hills vanished off to the horizon, the feathery tops gone blue-gray in the afternoon sun. I leaned on my walking stick and scanned the sky. Clouds hid the ragged tops of the distant mountains to the south, but the southern sky was always shrouded in clouds. The rest of the sky was a deep, clear blue that promised a crisp night and endless stars. A hawk circled over a hayfield some way off.
As I continued my circumambulation, I passed east of the last farmstead before the hills grew rough with scrub and the wood loomed ahead. In the distance, I could see a herd of cattle grazing the grassy hill, and west further still a gentle plume of smoke from a goodwife’s hearth.
I had no worries of being seen by the farmer’s family. The path I walked was well trod by me over the years, and with each days-long circuit—once each moon—I reinforced the Warding that shed casual eyes and led attention to wander.
The day was waning as I neared the edge of the wood. The tangle of creeper and low foliage that intertwined the lesser trees along the perimeter was as imposing a barrier as the rumors of ghosts. Despite its appearance though, there was a narrow footpath that wound through into the darkness within. It took walking my Warding line to see it.
The nature of a dense forest is deception. Standing at any point beneath the arched canopy, the wood beguiles with imagined paths leading away, just straight and clear enough to hint at an exit, winding just enough that that exit is forever out of sight. Truly though, few of these are paths; the natural rhythm of shadow and light tricks the eye into seeing order in the chaos.
I strode between the trees with the same confidence that the farmers north of me walked their fields. The transition from grass and earth to the thick, damp mat of dead leaves under my bare feet was comforting. This wood was my home.
Deep in the heart of the wood, protected by its own more forceful and more aware Warding, was a shambling ruin of stone and moss atop a low hill. The foundations of some watchtower or fort that had burned centuries ago—and had stood for centuries before that—was now a low mound of tumbled stone, overgrown and decrepit. I was confident no one alive remembered it. Only the oldest and most obscure maps I knew of marked it, and those only with a simple sign that meant “ruins.” It made a perfect home for the dark and mysterious hedge-witch who roamed the haunted hills.
As the stone mound became visible between the trees, I smiled as always at the dense shrub perched precariously over the shadowed entrance. I had taken it as an omen and a welcome when I had found it, tending and encouraging the fierce roots in their struggle to grapple with the crumbling stonework and survive.
My hedge.
A flutter of wings drew my attention and I paused. A flash of brown and white, and a finch alighted on a branch close to my face. It peered directly at me with one eye and squawked three times. Then it shivered, ruffled its feathers and preened for a moment before a quick hop to a further branch and a panicked burst of flight back into the canopy.
I stood still, watching. My breathing slowed to the pace of the earth and I made myself as still as the stone atop the rise. My cloak of drab homespun wool, caught and snagged with brown leaves and twigs and brush as it was, was ample camouflage for anyone who might have braved the ghosts of this place.
I closed my eyes and reached out with my mind. I drew on the pain that resided ever in my heart, that limitless well of self-inflicted pain born of the devastation I had wrought on those I loved.
This wood was full of life; full of memory. A quick skim of the surface memories of that life showed me the face of the intruder into my domain. Seeing the world through the mind of an animal, even for the briefest moment, is disorienting and vertiginous. For all that the biological structures may resemble ours, there is nothing alike in mind or perception. Seeing through dozens of minds at once… well, I was practiced at it, and still it was a struggle to avoid losing my own perception of self.
I sighed as I let go my brief touch on those alien minds. I continued up the hill to my home.
• • •
I stepped down the weathered stone steps under the low lintel. I pushed open the wooden door, rotted and ruinous on the outside, and clean and polished inside. Despite the outward appearance, I had expended considerable efforts to refine my remote home into a comfortable, if austere, space.
I had reworked the interior of the ruins, drawing living stone from the earth beneath me to reinforce the crumbling foundations, dividing the space into four distinct rooms. The door I had made myself with fresh timber, scrubbing the inner surface with sand and oiling it to a smooth luster while encouraging lichen and moss and fungus to occupy the outer surface.
The stone ceiling of my home broke into multiple layers, each placed strategically so that one slab of stone, which from the outside looked to have fallen in rot and ruin, formed a clerestory, letting a soft, dappled light filter through, even in the gloaming.
As I closed the door behind me, I shrugged out of my cloak and hung it on a peg beside the door, leaning my walking stick in the corner, and noting the large pack that already rested there. The satchel of herbs and mushrooms I had gleaned on my encirclement of Evans Hill and surrounding lands, I lifted over my head and began to unpack. I carefully laid each find into appropriate jars or baskets filling a low shelf along the far wall. When the satchel was empty but for a couple of small wrinkled apples, I hung it on the peg beside my cloak. I didn’t immediately look at my visitor, but spoke to them with resignation and not a little annoyance in my voice.
“Why are you here, Sem?”
Sem turned from their unselfconscious examination of my home. They looked me up and down, their flat expression revealing nothing of what they thought of me. I regarded them in turn.
The years had changed little in Sem. Their hair had more silver than black now, their face carried more wrinkles, and their body more scars. Their grimy trousers of myriad pleats might well be the same they had worn years ago for all I knew. The cloth looked old and worn enough. They wore a different jacket of the same style, sleeveless and open in a deep V down their chest. They had replaced their sandals, the wooden slabs no longer tied to their feet with strips cut from my old dresses.
