‘There,’ Anwe whispered, pointing to a stand of ash trees where half a dozen horses stamped and whickered.‘We seize mounts, then make to the south and east, across country to Afondir.’
Torin nodded agreement.The only thing to do, now, was reach Templar Unwith and his legion as quickly as possible.Whatever magic the queen planned to wield against the haunting, Torin could little imagine it would be more successful than the cleansing ritual.Its failure would only deepen the chaos and divisions in Parwys.With luck, they would seize the kingdom in a matter of days.
A poor balm to his frustrations, and no relief at all to the need that pulled him back towards the green tower, to the tree-devil and the possibility of some—any—explanation for his failure.
But the warp and weft of history can be kind, at times.
By the virtue of honesty, he glimpsed a blade of grass bending, just beyond the circle of light cast by a standing torch.No wind stirred it.No body touched it.Yet it bent.He paused, and stared into the shadows nearby.
There was a flurry of motion.Shapes blurring, shifting, becoming four bodies in dark cloaks and chain mail with swords to hand.Torin shouted alarm and invoked justice.The light of his corona flared.If the sound of sudden fighting were not enough to draw attention, every eye in the camp would be drawn by that sacred fire.Yet he had no other means of defence.He hurled his power at the first of the attackers, seizing it in a claw of flame.
Anwe cursed him and leapt to the fight.The blade she had taken from the guard was a weak replacement for the one she had lost on the roof of Castle Glascoed, but her virtues were more than a match for ordinary men.In moments, all but the one Torin had captured lay at her feet, one with a severed arm and a gash to the throat, another hewn nearly in half, the third run through.
The man Torin had seized roared and writhed, digging his heels into the earth, pushing against the power that held him.Anwe stepped over the dying and raised her sword.Torin’s prisoner twisted at the gleam of her blade, and his hood fell away from his face.
‘Wait!’Torin cried.
Anwe paused.
An old heresy, stamped out by the writings of Horu of Elgin during the first wars of orthodoxy, had claimed that the Agion yet lived and observed the deeds of mortalkind.Not mere exemplars and moral guides, but judges who reached down to grant the powers of the virtues as well as other, kinder gifts to the favoured.
Torin, in that moment, felt a profound sympathy for those ancient heretics.With his right hand burning with justice to hold his prisoner fast, he used the left to seize that youthful jaw.Dark eyes burned beneath a heavy brow where black curls clung, wet by a spatter of blood.Mere coincidence was not enough to explain this turn of fortune.What could it be but a blessing?
‘Count Ifan,’ Torin said.‘You and I should go and speak with the queen regent, I think.’
The Labyrinth of Power
YC 1189
Upon reflection, your accusation of chauvinism rings true, my friend.We of the City have little faith in the structures and powers of the wider world to produce such qualities as justice, equality and compassion.I, for one, would be delighted to be proven wrong.
Letter from Archivist Tan Semn to Hierophant Adhamha III of Goll,YC1167
Owyn had found his mother’s presence in Bryngodre surprising—almost surprising enough to draw him out of the fog that filled his mind.
The battle had been going his way.It had begun distastefully, with ousting common folk from their homes, the slaughter of those who resisted—at the hands of Afondir’s men, not his own, he continually reminded himself—and the burning of the city.One did not put down a rebellion without showing, unambiguously, the consequences of treason.So Glascoed had burned, and the sky had filled with smoke and the stomach-turning sweetness of charring corpses.
There had been fighting in those fire-lit streets, though he saw its aftermath as he rode slowly towards the gates surrounded by his housecarls and his counts.Forms heaped and studded with arrows in the mouths of alleys.Blood spray on the cobbles, like rose petals in a tapestry.Screams of agony and shouts of triumph that heralded his gradual, cautious advance.
With discipline, one could numb oneself to such painful sights.One had to, as king.He let his eyes touch and flit away, never lingering long enough to see more than shapes and colours in a smoke-stained blur.To look for too long might break him, and he could feel the eyes of Afondir, Forgard, and even his uncle, the Count of Cilbran.Watching, scrutinising, evaluating him as their would-be king.
He hated it.Wanted to throw down the hammer and ride away.
In a sense, then, the opening of the sky and descent of the wraiths was a blessing.No one could judge him a coward or a weakling for fleeing when the eye of some dark, ancient god stared down, the dead walked the sky, and the sounds of battle faded beneath constant screams.His horse had reared, wheeled and run without any command, its eyes wide and rolling.It did not slow until the fires of Glascoed were but a red glow on that dark horizon.By then it was nearly spent, its body lathered and quivering beneath him.
Uli and the half-dozen housecarls who remained found him alone on the road.They were as terrified to have lost him as by the nightmare unfolding overhead and in the forest.Time flowed like river rapids, from there.Each moment tumbled into the next, chaotic, swift and unrelenting, yielding no chance to pause and think and orientate.At a fallback rally point they found Cilbran and his personal guard.Owyn listened, half-hearing, while his uncle and Uli exchanged words.Then they rode, Owyn exchanging his spent horse for another—that of a housecarl, he would learn later, who meant to find his way back to Parwys on foot.
Voices in the night and glimpses in the shadows were one sort of horror; that great eye staring down, arms reaching out, voices howling in pain over the snap of breaking bones, was another.Owyn would come to himself for moments, realise they had been travelling for hours, traversing leagues while he hovered in a fugue, then descend back into the fog.It was too much.Too terrifying.Too great a burden.
‘We’re being followed,’ Cilbran observed while they crossed the span of the First Folk Road where it soared over Abal’s Scar, tracing the ghosts of hills long crushed and broken.
Owyn followed the line of his uncle’s finger.Seven riders followed, their mounts cutting wakes through the marsh.
‘More of ours?’Uli wondered aloud.
Cilbran grunted.‘Not a chance I would take.Though it is only seven, and riding fast.Get the prince to safety.I will keep a contingent here to meet these riders, and send word whether they be friend or foe.’
Owyn ought to have protested.They were making decisions for him, as though he were not their liege-lord.Yet he found it did not matter any more.Very little did.He understood his father well.He was beginning to understand, even, the madness that had gripped Ifan and driven him to rebellion.No matter the cost in blood and suffering, no matter the damage to his honour.He had seen the horror that gripped his kingdom, and he would do anything, now, to end it.
