‘Is this necessary?’Fola asked.
Ifan ignored her.His shadow fell over the boy.‘Bryngodre, eh?Am I wrong?’
Again, no answer, but Ifan nodded to himself.
‘Owyn neglected to attune to the Old Stones before the attack on Glascoed, else Abal’s Hammer would have shattered our walls,’ he said.‘He’ll have gone to do it now.All hope for a parley has passed.He’ll be a tyrant, or he’ll be deposed.Am I wrong, boy?Answer, damn you!’
The boy lay unmoving.The pour of his blood began to slow.
‘To Bryngodre, then, with all haste,’ Ifan said, reaching for his reins.‘With Abal’s Hammer and the power of the Old Stones in hand, Owyn will be able to crush the rebellion.We cannot allow that.’
Fola stood from the boy, a deep ache in her chest.
The housecarl who had gone after the enemy horses returned with a skittish charger for Fola.She took it and stroked its face.A stallion.He was nervous from the smell of blood and with her—a new rider—but would carry her well enough here, at the end of her long journey.
Colm’s bowstring thumped, and the dying horse ceased screaming.
Fola pulled herself onto a strange saddle and let the charger—who she would call Weeper—settle beneath her.Her left arm ached.The break would heal.If she used magic to speed that healing, it would cost her what little energy she had left—more than the tonic could restore.Without it, she lacked the spells written into her hand, her last lines of defence.Frog fluttered down from where he had circled over the fighting and settled again on her shoulder.She stroked him, absently.Ifan and his three surviving housecarls had charged ahead, galloping down the First Folk Road.
She knew it for a hallucination, but nonetheless felt the eyes of that dead messenger boy on her neck for the rest of the day.A child of the wider world, with only a single life to live and die, slaughtered so pointlessly.A new ghost for Ynyr’s ranks.
Yet only an abstraction, to her.She was sickened, not by the death itself, but by what her reaction to it revealed.
How much death had she seen since leaving Thaumedony?Arno had been right.She had been in the wider world far, far too long if such suffering could wash over her like a wave and leave such little trace.She had come to accept it, somehow.Taught herself not to rage and weep over every life snuffed short.One could hardly chase ambition if one had to linger and grieve for every death along the way.
It was nearly over now, at least.One last wading into the pool of blood and pain, and she could swim free of all this mess, free of the wider world—and maybe even bring something back with her to set things right.To finally win respect, see her projects flourish, and live the life she had dreamed of.
To say ‘It will be worth it’ did little to ease the pain in her chest.
* * *
As evening fell, they came in sight of Bryngodre’s great oak and green tower, backlit by the setting sun like blood pouring from a wound in the west.Pavilions and campfires dotted the ground before the town walls.From a vantage atop the grassy barrow of a long-dead king, Colm estimated five hundred fighters, possibly more.
‘Owyn will be in the tower,’ Ifan said.‘We sneak through under cover of dark, kill him, and seize the hammer.A death to a would-be tyrant, and the beginning of the end of tyranny.’
There was grief in his voice, though he tried to bury it beneath righteous anger.
‘My business is in the dungeon of Castle Parwys,’ Fola said.
Ifan regarded her, his expression cold.‘Of course.Any aid you may lend is welcome.’
Guilt bit at her.Part of her felt that she ought to see this rebellion through to its end and help to shore up the new Parwys that Ifan and Gavron meant to build.
A better world that would be built on a foundation of blood and bone.Could she say, honestly, that Ifan was better than those he meant to depose?The violence of this rebellion would only plant the seeds of another war of vengeance.Old ghosts satiated, new ones made.
Though her left hand was useless and her forearm ached, she managed to brace her notebook in the crook of her elbow.She wrote a spell and showed Ifan where to make the final marks.Frog fluttered to her shoulder and, with a spasm that bulged out his eyes, he vomited up a stub of a thaumaturgist’s pen—thin and only as long as Fola’s thumb.
‘Draw a circle on the ground,’ she said.‘Be sure all four of you stand within it, then close the spell here and here.If you stand too near the light of a fire, or touch raw iron, or draw attention to yourself with noise, the illusion will break.I only ask that you do what you can to spare Owyn’s life.If he can be reasoned with, reason with him.’
Ifan nodded.‘I will not kill him unless I must.But I fear I will have no choice.’
If there was one fundamental difference between the City and the wider world, it was this—choice.Thaumedony guaranteed the freedom to live as one wanted.The freedom to recover from mistakes, and to forgive the mistakes of others.Parwys could only pile retribution atop of retribution, it seemed.
Save in small acts of great compassion, Fola thought, and recalled the night of the festival, the comfort the troupers had offered Siwan.
They parted ways as the red sunset faded to a deep bruise.
No moonlight, nor a single star, broke through the thick veil of clouds.Fola and Colm rode across country, cutting wide around Bryngodre and the royal encampment.Slow going in the dark, on an unfamiliar horse, while her heart thundered with apprehension and her mind wrestled with guilt.
