Giving up grated on her, but Arno was right—stubbornness was her weakness.It would anchor her here to suffer, and kill, and die, when the smart thing to do was take Siwan and leave.Assuming she could convince the girl and Llewyn to abandon everything they had ever known.
She looked to Siwan and Llewyn, then Damon, Harwick and Spil.‘I intend to be well on my way back to the City by the time Owyn’s army arrives.You must come with me.’
Siwan cocked her head in confusion.‘What about the haunting?’Then, her expression shifting into one of nervous hope, she asked, ‘Did you find another way to end it?’
Fola shook her head and gritted her teeth against a fresh wave of guilt.
‘So you’re going to abandon them,’ Siwan said flatly.
‘There was one way for things to end without bloodshed.’Fola heard the defensive whine in her voice.‘I’m sorry, Siwan, but the founders of this kingdom dug this grave and Owyn seems determined to keep on digging.Much as I’d like to drag the kingdom out kicking and screaming, I don’t think I can.I don’t think anyone can.’
‘If I could master the raven fiend, I could dismiss the haunting, couldn’t I?’Siwan said, curling her hands into fists.‘You said it makes them more powerful somehow.’
‘Maybe,’ Fola said.‘But you don’t know how to do that, and neither do I.Given time, we might discern a means.We’ve no hope in a single day.’
A tremor shook the girl, full of frustration and defiance.Damon put an arm around her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.
‘There has to be a way.’
‘Fola knows more of these things than we do,’ Llewyn said.‘It is good that you wanted to help, Siwan.It’s what Afanan would have wanted, too.But she would not have you throw your life away in a vain attempt to stop the unstoppable.’
‘But I caused it,’ Siwan snapped, jerking to her feet.Damon stood reflexively, a hand reaching for her shoulder.Siwan shrugged away from him and began to pace, shaking her head.‘People have already died because of me.How many more will?If we leave, will the haunting follow me?’She burst out laughing—a sharp, sudden cry like the call of a crow, then ran pale fingers through the black of her hair.‘By the time we reach your City, half the world might be plagued by ghosts.’A single sharp shake of her head.‘No.We solve this now, before I go anywhere.’
Fola suppressed a sigh.The old guilt, the old argument.Convincing Siwan that she was not responsible for the haunting would be as difficult as talking Owyn into giving up his crown.Better not to try, then.
‘The haunting will end when the wraiths have their vengeance,’ Fola said.‘It will breed a civil war, possibly an invasion from Alberon.We could participate, and we might tip the scales towards justice for a time, but there is too much momentum already.We cannot, the seven of us, divert the kingdom from its path.I would ensure that we escape with our lives and preserve the possibility of learning from what happened to you, Siwan.That way, in the future, if something like this happens again, someone from the City might actually be able to stop it.’
‘Coward,’ Siwan snarled.‘You’ll just take what you need from Parwys and leave it to rot, is that it?No concern at all for the people you leave behind to suffer.’
‘Child, I am not one to give up easily,’ Fola said, watching the girl pace.Anger began to burn—all the hotter and all the brighter, to distract from frustration and helplessness.‘You are right.I came here seeking you, but only after four years chasing rumours of ghosts and worse across half the world.And that after a decade pleading the case for my research again and again, in the face of constant rejection, no matter how futile it felt, mocked and derided as a fool.I can find the last spark of hope in the ashes of a long-dead fire.So if I say this is hopeless, I mean it.’
Fola’s words hung in the air.No matter how true they felt, she hated to give up and bow to the brutality of the wider world.Ifan, Gavron and their people would fight for justice and freedom while she fled back to the safety of the City that, even if only as a legend, had inspired them.
A futile inspiration, maybe.Perhaps the world beyond the City’s walls, without the gifts of plenty and security left behind by the First Folk, would always fall to evil.Kindness and compassion could answer greed, fear and violence, but never eradicate them.
All the more reason to return to that one corner of the world where goodness ruled and evil lacked its common footholds.
‘I hate that things have come to this,’ Fola said, pausing to swallow against a sudden thickness in her voice.‘But there’s little we can do, Siwan.’
‘Would Afanan have given up?’Siwan launched the question like an arrow at Llewyn and the other troupers.‘In Nyth Fran, things must have seemed hopeless.The raven fiend had me in its clutches.The easy thing would have been to kill me, and the fiend with me.But you didn’t.’She shook her head firmly and shut her eyes; when she opened them, a sickly yellow flicker lit the sclera.Her hand went to the leather necklace she wore, and the scrap of white wood it held.‘Everyone deserves a chance to live, don’t they, Llewyn?Even me.Even after all the death I’ve left in my wake.If that’s true, then how can we let these people die, who’ve done nothing but try to fight for a better future?’
Damon cleared his throat and scratched at one of his horns.‘I agree with Siwan,’ he said, his gaze flitting to Ynyr’s sword where it leaned against the bench.He shook his head, and when he went on speaking his voice held all the captivating power that Fola had seen him wield upon the stage.‘If we run from this fight, we’re saying that Abal’s line should continue to rule, that Parwys should go on building atop its false foundations.That isn’t fine with me.
‘We may not be able to win, but if we fight well, our cause might be remembered.It may be the first crack in the facade.You, Colm and Llewyn are worth a dozen fighting men each.Maybe not enough to change the outcome of the battle, but more than enough to make the fight worthy of a song.’He blushed and shrugged, reminding Fola that he was hardly much older than Siwan.‘Maybe this is too romantic of me… I’m just a playwright, I guess.But I can’t help feeling that if we stay and fight, something will change here, someday, and we’d have had a hand in changing it.I would risk my life for that.’
The boy’s words cut her deep.If she were killed in the fighting, Frog would bear a fragment of her soul back to the City to seed her rebirth from the Great Tree.Librarians and philosophers had argued endlessly about whether or not the reborn body, once it regained the memories of the fallen, was in truth the same person.Regardless, something of her would endure.Damon and Siwan had no bird to carry their souls, no tie from birth to the Great Tree to resurrect them.If they died in the fighting, that would be their end.
‘You’re far braver than I,’ Fola murmured.‘I’ll give you that.It doesn’t make what you’re proposing any less foolish.’
‘Then let us be fools,’ Siwan snapped.
‘Hear hear,’ said Harwick.
Spil shot him a withering look, but Harwick crossed his heavy arms.‘I put war down, but I’ll pick it up for this.The boy’s inspired me.What can I say?’
Fola looked to Llewyn, hoping that he would buttress this madness.His grip tightened around the hilt of his ghostwood blade.The hard mask of his features softened.‘I don’t like it,’ he said.‘But if this is the path you want to take, Siwan, I’ll take it with you.’
‘Bleed me,’ Fola said.Here, again, these people astonished her.With battle looming, and threatened with the near certainty of death, they chose courage and justice.Even Tan Semn could not lay claim to such heroism.‘Fine, then.We stay and fight.Which is to say, Colm and I will fight, if he agrees to, and the rest of you will stay as far from danger as you can manage.’
