The idea held merit.Even if she only managed to distract the fiend, she might buy him the chance to strike a killing blow.But how far could he trust a sorceress—a mortal who dabbled in dangerous, ancient powers?Dangers he had been created to defend against, long ago, on a dark night buried in cold earth with ghostwood and silver biting his flesh…
He twisted his ring, but he already knew what the Grey Lady would say.
‘It has been a long day,’ he said.He finished his ale and stood.‘I should get some sleep.’
Afanan’s smile turned sad.‘What a disappointment.I tried, anyway.I promise not to hurt you, unless I have to.’She reached out and petted his hand.‘You seem a good lad.Don’t make me have to.’
the Grey Lady said as Llewyn ascended the stairs.
he replied.
Brave words.A fiend, and now a sorceress to contend with.One who had seen through the Grey Lady’s shroud as though it were gossamer.
He wondered if the Grey Lady sensed the prickling on the back of his neck as he unlocked the door to his room.
* * *
Llewyn woke at dawn and checked the wards that had guarded his sleep.The sprig of holly he had hung from the lintel hadn’t withered—Afanan had sent no conjured dead in the night.The salt he’d laid on the windowsill was undisturbed.No pixies, either.
Ordinary folk could repel the dead and the fae with raw iron.Horseshoes hung in doorways were a poor barrier; better a knife, forged at night beneath a new moon, buried under the threshold.Better still to use it properly, as a weapon.
Tools denied to the gwyddien.Poor methods, anyway.Able to repel a fairy or a wraith, only for it to slink away, hide itself in shadow, skulk back, and take its revenge.
He had his own tools—gifts of the Grey Lady—which he prepared before he left his rooms.A small net of woven toadstool lamellae, for fouling the wind-formed wings of pixies.A vial of powdered bonemeal to ward against the dead.Lesser spirits of earth, fire, and air, trapped in faceted linarite, anatase and quartz, ready to be freed if he should need spellcraft.And, of course, his ghostwood blade, slung as always through the loop on his hip.
He did not intend to do violence, only to investigate.Yet he might need to defend himself from Afanan’s interference, or from the fiend and its followers.Many fiends fed on the souls of the young.Why, he did not know, though he theorised.A young soul was more malleable, not yet fully formed.More susceptible to enchantment and illusion.To being changed to suit dark purposes.Perhaps fiends found them more delectable, the way kings and lords enjoyed the tenderness of veal and ortolan.
Thoughts that stirred the coals of his anger, which always burned deep within him.A fire that had smouldered from his earliest memory, buried—as he had been—but never extinguished.He took a breath and forced it down again.It was the one part of him he thought, perhaps, the Grey Lady could not see.To face it directly and feel its heat might draw her eye.She would not appreciate her tool keeping secrets from her, Llewyn knew.He did not need anger to serve her—only submission to her purpose.
At any rate, the presence and power of the fiend would be evidenced by the sudden deaths of children.Knowledge of how many such deaths had occurred here, at what frequency, and for how long, would let him gauge the spirit’s power.
Afanan’s troupers were sleeping off their hangovers on the benches and floor of the common room.The sorceress herself was nowhere to be seen—either still in her rooms, or already at work.Llewyn asked the maid wiping down the bar for directions to the alderman: a question he had to repeat thrice before she at last noted his presence and answered.
* * *
The alderman’s house stood on the far side of the village common, on the edge of the forested hills.Like all the houses of Nyth Fran, it was small and squat, built of packed earth.A goat grazed in front of the house, and a murder of crows—their number growing—pecked for morsels among the thatched roofing.
A fell omen.The crows were part of the enchantment, Llewyn was certain.Now they gathered as though to defend the house.
The alderman answered at Llewyn’s knock.A healthy man with fat on his cheeks and muscle on his bones.He blinked, his gaze uncertain, as though peering through fog.
‘Ah… Hello there,’ the alderman said.‘So many strangers in so few days.What brings you to Nyth Fran, and my doorstep?’
‘The Count of Glascoed has sent me to survey these lands,’ Llewyn said, affecting the mildly annoyed attitude of a nobleman’s courtier sent on an errand far afield.‘They are his by right, but he has no record of births and deaths, nor harvests.I was bidden to collect this information and return to him.You are the alderman here, correct?’
If this alderman and his predecessors had been dutiful, the village records would evidence an unusual quantity of miscarriages and the deaths of children.If not…
An unlikely possibility.One Llewyn preferred not to contemplate.It conjured hard memories and harsh feelings of his own shortened boyhood.Of a pale, rough hand leading him away from his home, into the forest, to be buried and transformed.
Either way, he needed to know.
‘Master…?’Llewyn said.
The alderman cleared his throat.‘Trefor.’
‘Master Trefor,’ Llewyn went on, ‘may I see your records?’
‘Of course, of course.’The alderman ushered Llewyn into the cramped house, a single room divided into smaller spaces by curtains hung from the ceiling.The largest space held the hearth, a pair of wooden chairs, a table, and shelves bearing foodstuffs, a few simple herbs, and dishware of wood and pewter.
