She led him inwards, her eyes fixed on his as she walked backwards towards the altar.They widened, drifted from his gaze to peer over his shoulder.There was some commotion, heard only as a distant echo.
‘Wh–’ His dry throat seized and his swollen tongue refused to form the words.He began to turn his head.
‘Focus on the next step, my son,’ she said.‘It will be over soon, and the kingdom will be strong again.For the first time in three generations, we will wield the Old Stones in their fullness.We will bury these ghosts beneath our power.’
She reached for his hand, her fear burning into fury, then stopped herself.She gestured for speed and quickened her pace.
He would not fail as his father had failed.
He took another step and swallowed the scream that rose to his withered throat.
And then, as though dark clouds had parted for the sun, the pain was gone.The narrowing of his vision faded and left him dazzled by light and colour.There was his mother, standing on the far side of the black, flat-topped altar, smiling at him.Beautiful, kind, full of love.The green of her dress like a field after spring rain.Sound rushed in next, as the whirlwind in his ears slowed to silence.
‘Owyn!’An impossible voice soared through the vaulted, starlit confines of the tower.
‘We are nearly finished, my son,’ Medrith said.‘You need only step onto the altar and raise Abal’s Hammer high.’
‘Owyn!’That voice again.Thick and swollen, but familiar.‘Your father refused this!Your grandfather refused this!They knew what it was, and wanted no part!’
‘Shut him up!’the queen snapped.
The hammer was still heavy in Owyn’s hand, dragging at him.He glanced towards the door to the tower in time to watch Uli Boar-arm pound his fist into Ifan’s stomach, driving the breath from his lungs.The anakriarch and his hulking womanknight stood by—Torin’s eye looked past Owyn to the gwyddien in chains.
‘Step onto the altar, Owyn,’ his mother said with a forced calm, then, yelling in full fury at Ifan and the priests, ‘I will brook no interference!Stay where you are, or by these stones, I will break you!’
‘What are you doing here?’Owyn wondered aloud.The words scraped at his throat, breaking the uncanny peace that had settled on him.Pain filled his joints again.Ifan might tell him what had happened at Glascoed—and he must have some reason for riding in pursuit.There was so much Owyn did not know.He was struck anew by the eeriness of the space within the tower, of its far horizons so improbably vast.Its light was harsh and cold and constant, owing its existence to neither lamp or star.The oil-slick surface of the hammer’s hilt cut into him like sharpened ice.
A memory arose of a childhood visit to Glascoed, with his father.The king’s purpose had been to discern the state of the county—Owyn’s had been to visit with Ifan, his only friend of near age and near status.That day, while they waited in the courtyard for the hunt master to ready their ponies and hounds, Owyn had gazed into a strange artifact.It too, had been made of glass, like Abal’s Hammer.A whirling construct that seemed to possess an infinite depth.The longer he stared, the larger the space within it seemed, the more complex the structure, the more varied the shapes the armatures could take in their eternal dance.
That memory struck him now, and conjured a profound sense of his own perspective—the fact that the world he saw was but one image among countless others receding into the infinite past and the limitless future.Only one shape of the aleph.Necessarily limited by his position in time, his place in history, his role in the world.
‘Owyn,’ his mother snapped, the calm facade of her compassion breaking.‘Thealtar.’
He knew nothing, he realised.Nor, in truth, did his mother, for all her power.The world was vast.Its horizons infinite, and folded back upon themselves, layer over layer.
A bizarre realisation to strike him at the moment before he ascended to kingship, before he inherited the power that had forged Parwys—and crushed whatever had come before.
Or, perhaps not so bizarre.Perhaps his father had felt much the same and taken a step back before he, in ignorance, left the world more broken than he found it.
‘I should talk with Ifan,’ he rasped, and made to turn.
His mother seized his wrist, her hand a manacle.‘Speak with him when this is done,’ she snarled.‘Or stove in his head as a traitor, it matters not to me.You carry Abal’s blood.You will attune and restore this kingdom.’
Medrith pulled.Owyn stumbled towards her, into the altar, and fell to lie across it.The moment his feet left the ground, a pulse shook the space within the tower.The cold light flared hot, for an instant.The ground heaved.The distant walls trembled.A cascade of dust fell from the sky of roots overhead, some of it bright like a shower of green stars.Light filled the Old Stones, too, tracing their ancient carvings.
Owyn groaned and tried to stand, but the weight on his shoulders had fallen across his back, as though the Old Stones themselves lay across the altar, pinning him down.Their light became as blinding as noon.A matching glow rose beneath him, where he lay across the hammer.Its head and haft pressed against his chest.First as cold as ice and hard as iron, then warm, then as hot as a coal taken from the flame.
There were no thoughts.No memories.No introspection.Only the terror and pain of a child betrayed, and used, and denied any say in his future.He looked at his mother, at her arms raised and head thrown back in rapture, silhouetted in the stunning light.
The Green Tower
YC 1189
Kings are fools, and easily manipulated.Thus, where the king keeps a wizard close, you ought look to the magic wand orS the royal sceptre to find the reins of power.
Odd the Bard,Odd’s Almanac of the World Beyond the Walls,YC296
The camp was in uproar by the time Fola and Colm returned to Bryngodre, covered by the same spell that she had given to Ifan and his housecarls—a twisting of light to deepen shadows and distract the unwanted eye.Such glamours were not her speciality, but she was skilled enough for sneaking through a sleepy camp, avoiding the light of fires and the paths of watchmen.This, though, lay beyond her.Too many overlapping fields of vision, too many torches held high while soldiers stirred from sleep, asked for news, and spread what rumours they had been told.
