Another laugh, a shake of the head, a low, pained groan.‘Our fathers knew, didn’t they, Ifan?I think, even more than the horror of the haunting itself—the voices, the shadows—that’s why my father did it.He couldn’t bear to carry it, the hammer or the truth.Couldn’t bear to know.Couldn’t bear to live any more, once he was forced to look history in the eye.’
‘You can talk about this later.’Fola looked past the altar, at the deepening wall of wind and sand, towards where she had seen Colm’s silhouette and where the gwyddien woman had knelt in chains.The spell she had cast would not last much longer.Medrith, the templars, even the gwyddien woman herself represented dangers she could not predict or account for, as yet.She needed to find Colm and help him get the gwyddien away from the tower and Bryngodre as soon as possible.‘Can you walk?’
Owyn nodded, and with Ifan’s help he found his feet.
‘The exit is that way,’ Fola said, pointing through the whirling sand.‘We left the door open.Don’t stop until you’re beyond the town walls.I’ll find you and we’ll make for Glascoed.’
Ifan nodded.‘Thank you, Fola.’
Owyn dropped to his knee.Ifan knelt with him, face awash in concern.Fola feared either the ritual or its abrupt end, or simply being flung from the altar to the ground, had injured the prince.A broken bone or damaged organ would slow them, possibly compromise their escape.She muttered a curse and took a vial of Frog’s medicine from her satchel.‘Give him this,’ she told Ifan.‘It’ll at least help him keep his feet until you’re out of the tower.’
‘I’m sorry, my friend,’ Owyn said softly.‘For you are my friend.I see that, now.Even when you sought my blood, it was for the good of my kingdom and my people.A king’s responsibility is to them, isn’t it?Not to his crown, or his power, or his family.To them…’ He reached out, seized the hammer, and staggered to his feet.‘Can you forgive me for not understanding, until now?’
‘Owyn!’Ifan managed, as the prince pulled away.Abal’s Hammer rose in Owyn’s hand, a bar of red fire, casting light like a smear of blood on the grit-choked air.
‘I’m sorry, Ifan,’ Owyn said again, his voice stronger now.More certain.‘It has to end.All of it.The hammer.The tower.Abal’s line.’Another laugh, though now with real levity.‘You will have one more thing to forgive me for, if we live.’
Fola lunged forward, reaching for his arms.
With thunderous, blinding finality, Owyn brought Abal’s Hammer down.
Shattering
YC 1189
All growth requires pain.The good and new always requires the sacrifice of the old and broken, and every sacrifice requires suffering.
Odd the Bard,Odd’s Almanac of the World Beyond the Walls,YC296
Torin caught a glimmer in the air from the corner of his eye.A blur of movement through the veil of glamour, then a curl of silver fire.
The sorceress Fola.Who else would have cast the spell to conceal the Count of Glascoed?He spared not a thought for her presence here—only readied himself to take advantage of her interference.In fact, he would have to thank her later, if the chance should present itself.Perhaps, in a blessed future, while she waited for the attentions of his knife and pliers.
As the silver fire of the spell unfurled, Torin shouted to Anwe and threw himself to the ground, not knowing what to expect, bracing himself for anything.There was a crack like stone breaking, then wind and a wall of sand whipped over Torin’s head.It caught the druid standing guard over them and hurled him off his feet.He landed with a crack, audible even over the sudden roar of the wind.A blow that would daze him for a time, at the very least.
Torin snarled an invocation of perseverance, and another of honour for good measure, and pushed himself to his feet, pressing a muddy sleeve across his mouth and nose against the wind and grit.Strengthened and made resilient by his virtues, he heaved into the gale, plunging towards where memory him told the tree-devil woman would be.Assuming, of course, she had not been battered away, or broken herself free in the chaos of the sorceress’s storm.
‘Valt the bloody damned Incorruptible, Agion of fucking Honour!’he heard Anwe roar behind him.She caught hold of his shoulder and leaned close.‘Torin, we have to get out of here!’
He tried to shrug her off, but, both empowered by honour as they were, her natural strength made the difference, and her hand gripped like a vice.
‘Not without the tree-devil!’Torin roared back.‘Go if you want, but my task is to find the truth of this haunting, and it lies with her kind, I’m certain!’
‘Fuck the haunting!’Anwe shook her head.‘Fuck this place.It’s already killed Orn, and for what?Let things fall apart and a crusade sweep up the pieces.Not our bloody circus, Anakriarch.Not our bloody problem.’
But it was.Not in a practical sense, but a spiritual one.Anwe could not see this.She was a Knight of Action through and through.Industry, honour and courage—straightforward virtues, demanding little nuance of thought, only purpose.Until, it seemed, fear overwhelmed her courage, as it had here.
Orn might have grasped something of the horror in Torin’s heart, the doubt that had begun to claw at him when those black clouds refused to yield to sacred fire.A challenge that demanded confrontation rather than flight.But Orn was dead, and Torin was alone, and desperate not to lose the only thread he had that might lead to an answer, even if only a frayed and tattered one.
‘Unhand me,’ he said, turning and raising his palm.‘By the purifying flame of Raj, Agion of Justice.’
Spellwrought flame pulsed from him, seized Anwe’s middle, and hurled her away.She was strong, and empowered by her own blazing crown of virtue, but it was enough to stagger her back and break her grip.He whirled and plunged into the storm, cursing Anwe for breaking his focus on the place where the tree-devil had been.
A silhouette appeared through the haze of whirling sand.He pushed towards it, snarling through a flash of pain as the wind buffeted his wounded arm.The silhouette stood tall—not the tree-devil, then, but the only point of reference Torin had.It seemed to notice him, and as he drew nearer he saw a staff raised high.Leaves unfurled from the crown of the staff, glowed with brilliant light for a heartbeat, and unfurled into golden daffodils.A ball of lightning exploded to life and lanced through the storm, trailing a roll of thunder.
Torin squinted at the sudden burst of light, but in its glow he glimpsed more figures.The lightning darted past a hulking, four-armed man wielding an enormous bow—the sorceress’s body guard—who did not have time even to flinch.Only the blinding effect of the sandstorm saved him as the lightning speared past and buried itself in the ground.A second figure knelt beside him, its silhouette made lumpen and awkward by draping chains.Torin altered course.
He would have the tree-devil, and the answers she promised, whatever the danger.The weave of his faith had shaken loose, the warp unravelling from the weft.Until it was made whole and strong again, nothing else mattered.
