That was it, then.There was some dark power in that hammer.A magic Queen Medrith sought to harness, and unleash, by this ‘attunement’.A feat she could not achieve herself, it seemed, but which required her son.
Who had now arrived in Bryngodre, in the aftermath of a battle lost and a horror visited upon the world.The boy would be unlikely to resist his mother while shaken by defeat and the vision of the raven’s eye peering down from black, churning clouds.
He recalled, too, how the Count of Afondir had spoken of the hammer.The last line of defence in Parwys, and the blade held over its noblemen.
More than the druids, then.More than the green tower and its stones.The hammer was the heart of Parwys’s strength, once awakened to its power.An awakening Medrith intended—to what end, Torin could only surmise.The quelling of rebellion, certainly.The end of the haunting, she likely hoped.
Not his concern, he decided.Let Parwys collapse beneath its own squabbling nobility.Templar Unwith and his legion would restore order once these heathens had destroyed themselves.Torin’s only interest was in the tree-devil woman.The fae girl, her raven’s wings, the black sky above … these things haunted him.Even more so, the collapse of his cleansing ritual as it broke against that power.There had to be an explanation.He would pull what answers he could from the tree-devil and restore the good footing of his faith.
‘We wait for dark,’ he said.
Anwe nodded.She pulled taut the chain that bound her shackled wrists, grunted in satisfaction, and rapped her fist against the door.‘Easy enough to break free.I, for one, will be glad to put this damned place behind us.’
‘Indeed,’ Torin said.‘Though we’ve one task left.’
He told her what he planned, and watched her expression sour in the slanting light.
‘Orn is dead,’ she snarled when he had finished.‘It sounds like you mean to join him.’
‘It will be dangerous, but it is necessary,’ Torin chided.‘We must bring the tree-devil back to the Iron Citadel.Better the fae girl or the City witch, but I suspect they are both lost to us.Tarebach must know what happened and prepare a defence against such powers.Even if they are quelled here, they may arise elsewhere.The future of mortalkind is at stake!’
Anwe glared at him, her scar-seamed face as unyielding as a steel wall.‘I intend to escape this place, Torin.What you suggest is an excess.Of courage, of perseverance.Or, at the very least, a deficiency of temperance.’
Her response staggered him.‘You exceed your station, Anwe,’ he chided, when he had recovered from the blow of her defiance.‘I am an anakriarch.You are a mere Knight of Action.’
‘Wari the Younger wrote that all might slide into excess and deficiency in trying times,’ Anwe cut back, her voice measured, low, as dangerous as a naked blade.‘Torin, I lost my sword at Glascoed.The ritual failed.We faced something that I can’t begin to imagine how to hurt.You are half-healed, at best.Orn is dead.We will not reach the tree-devil alive, and if we do, we will not escape with her.The Iron Mean calls for caution now, more than courage.’
‘To hear this from you, of all people,’ Torin snapped.
Anwe shrugged.‘I enjoy a fight, perhaps more than I should.But I don’t think I would enjoy dying.Not for no reason, at least.’
‘Hardly no reason.Did you not hear me, woman?Something is at work here that defies the power of the Church and the Agion.We cannot leave it to fester!’
‘Then we go to Unwith and let him scour it away.’Again, that infuriating shrug.‘We came to leverage this haunting to the advantage of the Church.The opportunity to do so has passed.We should leave, Torin, while we still have our lives.’
Torin might have insisted.He still had authority over Anwe.But it was a weak authority, its reins frayed and near to snapping.Worse, he needed her.Alone, he might reach the tree-devil, but injured as he was, he could not hope to carry her away.And though Anwe’s words were calm, frantic terror still burned in her eyes.Her confrontation with the fiend had cracked the armour of her courage.
Despite knowing this, that deep desperation gnawed at him.‘The druid queen intends her own solution to the haunting,’ he said.‘We ought to stay, to witness it.’
Even as he spoke, he saw Anwe closing to him, the last of his influence crumbling.Power cannot suffer weakness, cannot endure the collapsing perception of its strength.
‘Tonight, I break free, and I will carry word to Unwith,’ she muttered.‘You can do what you want.’
* * *
Torin stewed in frustration as the sun set, an autumn chill swept in to their little room, and the commotion outside began to quiet.Not entirely—there were occasional bursts of song, some shouted arguments—but fear and grief hung heavy in the air.
When it was dark, just after the shift changed on the guard at their door, Anwe pulled the chain on her wrists taut, muttered an invocation of honour, and twisted.A link popped open.Slowly, she stretched out her back and shoulders, met Torin’s eye, and nodded once.
Wood burst apart as Anwe threw herself against the door.The guard managed only a stifled yelp before she drove a fist into his middle, then another into his jaw, leaving him a crumpled heap.She belted on his sword, then motioned towards the wall.
He might have betrayed her, then.Refused to invoke temperance, honesty and fidelity, as she desired—draping himself in a shroud that would deaden sound and deepen shadows, strengthening his senses to better navigate the darkness, and sharing the boon of his virtues to her.Instead, he might have called out, summoned guards to seize her, ingratiated himself to the queen in an attempt to win access to the tree-devil and a chance at the answers he burned for.
He did not.Even in desperation, his belief near to collapsing, Torin was virtuous.A small reassurance that he so easily overcame such temptation.
Shrouded, keeping to shadows, they crept to the wall.Anwe leapt to the top of it, then reached down for Torin.He gritted his teeth against the aches in his battered body as she pulled him up and lowered him to the other side.While she did so, he glimpsed the camp that had spread beyond the walls.Dozens of tents and fires.The survivors of the prince’s army had made a hasty retreat, it seemed.Assuming the prince had survived, the queen would perform her ritual—may, in fact, have already begun it.
Anwe dropped down to the ground beside him.They kept low for a time, watching the paths of torches winding through the camp and tracing its outskirts, planning a route.
