‘A good blade, by the look of it,’ Colm noted, following Damon towards the keep.‘Sharper, I wager, than the ones you actors are used to.I can show you how to hurt other people with it instead of yourself.’
The mercenary and the horned youth disappeared around the curve of the keep.Fola sat on one of the wrought stone benches near the World Clock.She scratched idly at the back of Frog’s head, her expression distant and contemplative, then gestured to the bench beside her.
‘What is this about, Fola?’Siwan said, ignoring her suggestion.‘Tell me.Now.’
Fola grimaced, took Frog from her shoulder—ignoring a honk of protest—and set him on the back of the bench.‘At the festival grounds, the raven fiend not only summoned those ghosts, it strengthened them,’ she said.‘That wasn’t the first time, was it?’
Siwan, already pale, turned as white as the full moon.Llewyn let his own shock burn through him, then flare to anger.His fingers settled in the grooves worn into the hilt of his ghostwood blade.Slowly, he uncurled them, forced his hand to hang idle at his side.‘Say what you mean to say, sorceress.’
Fola shook her head.‘I’ve told you before, I want to help.From what I’ve gathered, none of this is Siwan’s fault.That said, she is, in part, at the root of the haunting.Unless you want to carry these secrets to your graves—and the guilt that I’m sure comes with them—you need to tell me the truth.’
Siwan put her hand on Llewyn’s.Her fingers trembled like a trapped songbird.He ached to take her away from this woman who would drag her back through the worst moments of her life, cutting open old wounds, re-breaking bones.
No matter that the old stitching was frayed and seeping pus, the limbs poorly set and fused crooked, that this hurt might be the first step towards healing.They hardly knew this sorceress.There was no certainty that her help would be enough to put an end to the nightmare, if she indeed told the truth and meant to help.
He remembered the Grey Lady’s voice and felt the weight of her ring in his pocket.How many times had she claimed that a child had to die because it had been born with too deep a talent for magic?That a venerated idol—some leaving of the First Folk, half understood—had to be smashed, though its destruction would shatter the faith of a village?That a sacred spring had to be defiled, lest the druid who communed with it grow to threatening strength, no matter that the spring fed streams that watered dozens of fields and kept a community from starvation?
In quitting the Grey Lady’s service he had come to believe, as Afanan believed, that no evil was ever necessary.That pain must be reckoned with directly, not dismissed as the means to some good end.
Yet… it was Siwan’s choice.Siwan’s wound.
‘Four years ago …’ Siwan began, halting.Each word that caught in her throat was a needle to Llewyn’s heart.‘It happened in Caer Bren, a town not far from here.I was hardly more than a child.Just turned thirteen.We were playing the midsummer festival there, one of half a dozen troupes.One was a company of acrobats.There was a boy among them, about a year my elder.Galway.’She swallowed, and Llewyn nearly put a stop to the tale, nearly took her in his arms as though she were still that slip of a girl, all bark-rough skin and bones as light as kindling.If he could take her away from the past, he would.But the past always lurks but a few steps behind.
She scrubbed a hand across her eyes and pressed on.‘I took a liking to him, and I thought he took his own to me.Enough to… Well, you don’t need every detail, do you?’
Fola shook her head.
Siwan nodded.‘Suffice to say, by the fourth day of the festival I thought I was in love.I was very young, and full of romance and stories and songs.’A slight smile, there, and a hint of a laugh in her voice.‘Living with actors and bards will do that.And I’d spent the years since leaving Nyth Fran in a fog.Slowly seeing my way clear of it, finding little candles of happiness again.Galway was no little candle.He was a first sunrise after the long, dark night.Or so I told myself.’
Another laugh.This one as brittle and sharp as broken glass.‘Bear in mind, I was thirteen years old at the time.’
Fola answered with her own small, quiet laugh.An understanding passed between them, and Siwan seemed to relax.Fola had suffered her own embarrassments of a similar kind at that age, it seemed, and that was enough to deepen their connection.A connection Llewyn doubted he would ever share in.
At thirteen… Well, it was difficult to say.He had no notion of how long it took a child buried in the roots of a ghostwood tree to emerge as a gwyddien.Depending upon how one counted, he had either spent his thirteenth year in that long, painful half-slumber, or awakened, his body bent away from mortal shape and beyond the proportions of his age, and been sent on the hunt.
Siwan toyed with the belt around her kirtle.‘On the last day, before we were all to go our separate ways, I went to find Galway with a poem I’d written him.A little thing, hardly artful, but deeply felt.I followed the sound of his voice and laughter and found him with the other acrobats’ apprentices behind their wagon.As I approached, my little heart fluttering like a robin’s wings, I heard him regaling the other boys with tales.Tales aboutme.Some true.Others wild, degrading fantasies.’
Fola winced, and Llewyn felt an echo of the same anger that had burned when, much later, Afanan had told him what little of the tale she’d been able to glean from Siwan.
Siwan chuckled darkly.‘It shattered me,’ she said.‘I don’t know what happened next, but I woke in our wagon, bruised and drained, with Afanan leaning over me.’
Llewyn remembered.A storm had whipped in from nowhere, black clouds boiling into existence against the blue sky.The cawing of invisible crows and flutter of phantom wings.Shadows walking through the air, reaching down with hands that tore and crushed flesh like old paper.When Siwan woke and demanded answers, Afanan had told her some of it, but far from all.
‘Still,’ Siwan went on, ‘despite the pain in her face, Afanan smoothed my hair, told me things would be all right, that none of it was my fault.A cruel lie.’
‘Not a lie,’ Fola cut in.‘None of this is your fault.’
Siwan shook her head, disbelieving.‘Then why do you need to know the story?What is this about, Fola?’
Fola again gestured for Siwan to sit.When she did not, Fola sighed, leaned her elbows on her knees, and said, ‘In the vision my spell conjured, the ghosts of Parwys’s past had yellow eyes.Like yours.’
Llewyn watched Siwan absorb that information, fitting puzzle pieces together in her mind.It had always been impossible to hide things from her.She had seen through his glamour from their first meeting.
‘It began with me,’ Siwan said quietly.‘I caused all of this.’
Fola squeezed her hands together, pushing against one set of knuckles, then the other.‘The raven fiend did,’ she said.‘Precisely how… This is a question.The magic of the fae is poorly understood.The magic of fiends even more so.You represent a blending of both in a mortal body which ages, and yet appears, through my thaumaturgist’s loupe, like a ghost.You are a profound enigma, Siwan.To expect you to control the powers swirling within you would not only be foolish, but cruel.’
‘If I died, would it end?’the girl blurted.
