He met Afanan’s startled gaze.
‘There is no ghost tree here.’
His sword became brittle at a motion of his will.The blunted tip broke easily.
‘This…’ Afanan shook her head.‘I don’t know if this will work.’
‘She deserves to live,’ Llewyn said.‘This is her only chance.’
Afanan took a deep, steadying breath.She held out the feldspar and said her word of power.
Siwan’s scream shook Llewyn’s bones.Llewyn closed her fingers around the broken shard of ghostwood.A scrap, still haunted with a sliver of his soul.
‘Siwan,’ he whispered, trying and failing to remember the words that had drawn him back from death.The Grey Lady’s ring hung heavy in his pocket.He could slip it around her finger, let the Grey Lady lend her power to this effort to seal the fiend.And then either destroy the girl, or twist her into an agent of the fae.
Her eyelids fluttered, then fell shut.She collapsed to the stone and lay still, her breath settling, her hands still clutching the shard.Llewyn released a long-held breath and slumped onto the altar beside her.
The contortion of her bones eased back into an ordinary child’s frame.But the dark stain of her hair remained, and a roughness to her skin, like birch bark.When her eyelids fluttered in troubled sleep, there was a yellow tint to her eye.
‘I…’ Afanan’s voice was weak with disbelief.‘I think she will live.’
But Llewyn had failed to protect her.Had made her like him—outcast, a creature of the fae—and in the process turned his back on the thin communion and protection of the Grey Lady’s court.
No.Siwan had already been cast out.Given up to ancient powers in payment for her village’s independence and protection.Llewyn understood this, yet guilt ate at him—the image of her on the altar, looking to him for care and protection, denied by her own father, as Llewyn himself had been denied.He resolved, then, never to fail her again.To give her whatever peace and goodness he could.
‘I will take her with me,’ he said, lifting his head to meet Afanan’s gaze.‘She should understand what she has become.’
‘Of course,’ Afanan said without hesitation.‘But a vagabond wandering the roads with a girl child will hardly slip beneath suspicion.’
Llewyn made to protest, but Afanan pressed on, her smile sharp despite exhaustion.‘Do you know any life but the Grey Lady’s service?How will you feed her?How will you feed yourself?My troupe is always open, gwyddien.We can help you.At least until you can make your own way in the world.You deserve to live, too.’
A shudder shook him.His vision became clouded, as though by mist.
When last, he wondered, had he wept?
III.Old Secrets, Buried Deep
Journey to Parwys
YC 1189
As the … and decay of … civilisation has made clear, when … liberated from self-sustenance, the outcome is [not] … alienation, but an outpouring … and of stranger arts.The need [of] a sapient mind … Rather, that need, for better or for ill, turns towards abstractions.
Fragmented excerpt from theWritings of the First Folkfound in the Labyrinthine Library, partially translated by Archivist Suun Epa inYC940.Original Author and Date Unknown
The journey from the graves of Fola’s would-be captors to the seaside principality of Alberon, and thence by ship to the kingdom of Parwys, consumed nearly a month.She spent the first weeks reading through volumes of regional history purchased in Alberon—once you saw through the propaganda there were fascinating bits of truth to be gleaned from such stories, and they were fabulously entertaining in their own right—but soon exhausted that source of stimulation.After a few days watching sailors scurry about the rigging, or gazing at the horizon in hopes of sighting a whale, she found herself battling a persistent, gnawing boredom and a flailing desperation for amusement.
First, and most difficult to resist, was the urge to drink too much: a battle she lost some evenings, and woke ruing the day she left the City.Amberwine had badly prepared her for the hangover brought on by ship’s rum.Second, she fought the more reasonable-seeming but obviously stupid and dangerous impulse to conduct magical experiments.A productive use of her time, yes.Also certain to draw precisely the kind of attention she wanted to avoid until she was well clear of the Mortal Church’s influence.
Third, and most annoying, was her lingering gaze on Colm.
They spent a great deal of time together—being the only two people aboard without meaningful work to do—much of it leaning on the gunwale and gazing at the sea while Colm regaled her with stories of his numerous adventures.He had been often hired to accompany caravans of wagons, or to stand outside a wealthy man’s house to deter bandits and thieves.Occasionally his work proved more interesting—hunting down a strange beast with the body of a bear and the head of a viper in southern Galca, for instance—though he had a way of turning even the boring episodes into amusing anecdotes.Or, maybe, that was just a product of her attraction.
He asked about her life, and she told him as much as she could, focusing on the wonders of the City and skirting around the embarrassments and frustrations that had driven her into the wider world.She talked at length of the great Library, with its endless aisles burrowed deep beneath the city, not yet fully mapped after a thousand years.
‘How could so many books exist?’he mused, tossing crumbs of a biscuit for Frog to snatch from the air.‘That must be lifetimes upon lifetimes of work.’
‘What is a lifetime to someone who will never age and die?’Fola said.‘A better question is what the books contain.We hardly know anything of the First Folk language.A few artifacts have let us discern certain words and structures, but most of the books remain totally unintelligible.’
