Anwe paused on the road, her back and shoulders slumped, her body heaving with every breath, though the corona of her virtues yet burned.
‘We should have fled south,’ she growled.‘To the crusade camped in Afondir.Let these people tear themselves apart, Torin.We’ll clean up the mess when they’re through.’
His rational mind recognised her wisdom.Yet we are so rarely ruled by reason, particularly in the grip of pain and fever, standing on broken foundations of belief.He wanted answers, and knew of only one place he might find them—the tree-devil woman left behind in the dungeons of Parwys.
‘You need rest,’ he said, his voice loose, the words ill formed.‘They will offer us a room, whoever they are.They can ill afford to offend the Church.’
Anwe hesitated.Not something she would have done had Torin been in the fullness of health and strength.In the end, she grunted and adjusted her grip on his legs and back and pressed on to the town gates—jostling him just enough to send a fresh wave of nauseating pain up his arm.
Halberdiers in armour and the livery of Abal’s house met them and took stock of their condition.Once it was established that they had come from the battle, they were escorted directly to the inn, a squat two storeys of mortared stone.
‘Wait,’ Torin wheezed as they approached the doors.He motioned for Anwe to set him down.She grumbled, but lowered him gingerly to his feet.He whispered a prayer to Peregrin and invoked the virtue of perseverance.His corona flared.The pain in his arm lessened and he felt steadier on his feet.In Tarebach, to go into the presence of a high templar or a priest regent under the power of an invocation would be seen as a grave insult, if not a threat.A good thing, then, that Parwys was as yet unenlightened.
The common room of the inn had been converted into a royal court.Banners—the bear of Abal’s house, and the white flower—hung from the rafters.A few men-at-arms flanked the walls.Three square tables had been pushed together in the centre of the room.Queen Medrith sat in a high-backed chair at the far end, facing the doors.She looked up from a missive as one of the halberdiers announced them.
‘Where is my son?’she asked, her voice cold and biting as winter wind.
‘Retreating with all haste, I am sure,’ Torin answered, devoting all of his attention to standing without swaying and keeping his voice steady and certain.‘The tide of battle turned against us.’
She scowled.‘I assumed as much when the sky turned black.What of your much-vaunted powers, priest?Had you no answer for this witchcraft?Never mind.I do not care.We will make our own answer.’She turned to the halberdiers who had escorted them.‘Send riders into the marsh.Find Owyn.Bring him here without delay.’
‘I am sorry we could not bring better word,’ Torin said.‘My intent is to continue on to Parwys.There are secrets yet to be pulled from the tree-devil in its dungeons.After a night of rest, we will continue on tomorrow, and return with whatever we learn.’
Medrith put down the paper in her hands and reached for another.‘You will not continue on to Parwys, priest.You will remain here, where I can keep an eye on you.’Torin began to protest, but she bulled past him.‘And there is no need, anyway.I brought the woman with me.She is bound in raw iron and sealed within the green tower.By the power of the Old Stones, we druids will have answers from her, where you failed.’
Torin’s anger flared, fuelled by his own unsteadiness—in body, and in belief.All the world was tilted off its axis.The means to right it lay within the mind of that tree-devil.This druidess, this heathen queen enslaved to the relics of the First Folk, would deny him that relief.
‘She was our prisoner first,’ Torin said.‘I have a right to her.’
Medrith’s expression threw the childishness of his words back in his face.‘You are lucky I do not kill you, but you may have some use yet—if only as a witness to what happened at Glascoed.We will see who else survived.’She made a sharp motion with her hand.Two of her guards produced iron manacles.‘Until then, you will not be allowed your freedom.’
Anwe tensed, ready to carve their way free of the inn, of Bryngodre… of the entire kingdom, if need be.Torin motioned for calm, and the queen smiled.
‘Wise, Anakriarch,’ she said, then motioned to the guard.As he clamped the manacles around their wrists, Torin released his invocation.Anwe followed suit, nearly collapsing under her exhaustion and the pain of her wounds.‘Bring them food, water and a change of clothes.’
Medrith dismissed them with another gesture.They were taken from the inn—roughly, half-dragged in their weariness, the raw iron of the manacles scraping at Torin’s skin—and to a small servant’s cottage at the edge of town.A wooden washbasin was brought, and half a loaf of day-old bread and a flagon of watered beer.They heard the heavy sound of a beam being lowered across the door.
Anwe, her wrists still chained in front of her, tore ravenously at the bread and gulped down water, then, her head listing, looked at Torin as though expecting a command.
He had none to make.Their one advantage was that raw iron did not interfere with the invocation of the Agion as it disrupted heathen magics, though it was best not to draw the queen’s attention to that fact.Even so, his body demanded rest.Lead-limbed and cotton-headed, he collapsed onto one of the two thin, straw-stuffed pallets, seized by an exhaustion so deep it numbed even the confusion and despair that gnawed at his mind.
Sleep came, and brought dreams of white fire dying in the sky, the stars themselves swallowed by the wings of crows as black as ink.
* * *
Braying horses, shouting men and the rattle of armour roused Torin from his nightmare.It was late afternoon by the slant of light through the small window in the roof.
‘Good, you live,’ Anwe murmured, her mouth full.
The worst of his fever had burned away, though the terrible wound in his arm still ached.A stain, black at its centre and red and green at the edges, had spread across his bandage.Anwe sat cross-legged by the door, gnawing on another heel of bread and sipping from a mug of thin porridge.Another mug, and a smaller heel, waited beside her.
Torin ate, swallowing unsalted porridge and stale bread dutifully while he listened to the new noises the day had brought to Bryngodre.
‘I caught a peek while the guard left food,’ Anwe said.‘Saw banners.The prince’s, and Cilbran’s.’
The queen had found her son, then.The night before, Torin had been too muddled by exhaustion and pain, but now he wondered at Medrith’s presence here.He would have expected her to stay in Parwys, where it was safe, and send riders to fetch back the prince, her son, to be crowned.Instead, she had brought her entourage to Bryngodre.He tried to recall everything he could of his last visit to this place, and what he had seen within that strange tower.A space larger on the inside than out, like a pocket in the world, glowing with something like starlight, dominated by standing stones as black as ink and carved with druid’s spells.
And the ritual the druids had performed.Spilling the prince’s blood upon an altar.Invoking a hero of their ancient legend, and drawing forth his weapon—the prince’s hammer of red crystal.‘No better than a lump of iron,’ the druid had said, ‘without attuning to the stones.’
