Fola slumped in her saddle.‘Simpler still, then,’ she grumbled.‘Not only are we dealing with multiple ghosts spread across an entire kingdom, but ghosts pursuing vengeance against at least two targets across a span of at least three years.I’ve never encountered anything like this.’
‘So it’s a necromancer, then?’Colm said.
‘If it is, they’re bloody incompetent.Anyone with an ounce of skill wouldn’t have wasted three years between killing a count and killing the king—unless the king was the real target from the beginning, and the count only a test of some sort.But if the test succeeded, why wait?I can’t wrap my head around it.’
‘Maybe that’s the point,’ Colm suggested.‘Keep people off their trail.’
A dangerous possibility, but a disappointing one.There would be little to be learned in terms of her research into First Folk souls from a mortal necromancer—even a powerful and crafty one who lurked in the shadows, assassinating the nobility, separating their attacks by years to obfuscate their presence.
She had no love for kings and counts.Nobility was as alien to the City as currency or violence.But this Harlow, the old Count of Glascoed, and King Elbrech had certainly been better than a necromancer-king.Visions of bone towers and creatures of contorted, dehumanised flesh rose behind her eyes.She had witnessed rule by magical fiat in Ulun.A deep and vile tyranny.One that devoured mortal lives and gave rise to festering horrors.
If Parwys were, indeed, plagued by a would-be necromancer-king, she felt compelled to find and stop them, whether or not doing so yielded anything to help her research.She would bring as much of the goodness of the City with her as she could so long as she wandered the wider world.
Yet, arrogant as she was—she could still hear Arno laughing in her face when she insisted upon her own genius, though he had been comforting her moments before—she was not arrogant or stupid enough to believe that her failure to think of an alternative explanation for the haunting meant that none existed.Magic, like most things in the world, grew more and more complex the longer and more intently you studied it, like a gem that reveals infinite depths through a jeweller’s loupe.The Archive of the City existed to study and catalogue those depths.If its thousand-year project had proven anything, it was that mortalkind, taken all together, understood only a fraction of a fraction of a facet.
* * *
Midday fog rolled in off the sea, shrouding the last leg of their journey.They first spotted the city of Parwys only by the hazy silhouettes of its tallest towers.As they drew nearer, a cacophony of hammers and saws, of music and talk and laughter wafted from either side of the road.Pennants and bunting rose between garish pavilions and troupers’ wagons.
‘Bizarre,’ Fola muttered, watching the festival preparations.
‘How so?’Colm asked.
‘Their king has just died, has he not?’Fola said.‘Shouldn’t they be in mourning?’
Colm laughed aloud, drawing confused glares from a few troupers near the road.‘If he was a tyrant, no,’ Colm said when he had recovered.‘If he was a good king, maybe, if they have reason to think his successor will be worse.Either way, that successor will have to be crowned.Every nobleman in Parwys will be coming to make oaths and obeisance to the new king.They’ll bring retainers with them.Those retainers will want for drink and entertainment.And so…’ He took in the festival grounds with a broad gesture.‘Even if it offends the new king, no troubadour would shy from the largest and wealthiest crowd to gather in the kingdom in a generation.’
Fola tried to think of some witty response to that, but floundered.Of course, it had to do with these esoteric equations of economy and profit, so alien to her.Whether the people of Parwys loved or hated their king, whether they grieved his death or felt relief, their actions were more determined by the need to earn a living than by human feeling.
The festival grounds ended a dozen paces from the city gate, a construction of mortared stone that, by a glance at its ancient but crumbling decoration, Fola dated to the early days after the Vanishing of the First Folk.The gates stood open, flanked by halberdiers at attention, dressed in mail under red tabards emblazoned with a black bear outlined in golden thread.They crossed their weapons to bar the road and issued a perfunctory challenge.
‘I am a sorceress of the southlands,’ Fola said, detailing the cover story she and Colm had agreed upon.‘This is my bondsman, servant and guard.Tale of the plague of wraiths that grips your kingdom reached me in my home country.I came to offer my services to King Elbrech, that I might rid your lands of these horrors.’
‘You will be sorry to hear that the king is dead, then,’ one of the halberdiers said.
‘Quite so.And I am sure his son is desperate to be rid of the haunting that claimed him.’
The two guards exchanged a look.
‘You don’t look much like a sorceress,’ one said.
‘And, even if you were, we’d need to see an invitation to court,’ said the other.‘Queen regent’s orders.’
Fola sighed.There was no impediment more tedious than an intractable soldier.She made a circle with the fingers of her left hand—there was a twinge, still, but this would be a very simple spell—and held it to encompass first one halberdier, and then the other, breaking it each time with her forefinger.The men blinked up at her as their pupils dilated and expressions softened.
‘The prince and the queen regent will be glad to see me,’ Fola said.‘And it has been a long, dusty journey.My clothes more befitting my station are in my baggage.’
It mattered little that she offered them no evidence, nor that her saddlebags could not possibly contain a wardrobe befitting a royal court.Mind-addling spells were most effective on those whose minds were already somewhat addled.The guards uncrossed their halberds, apologised for the inconvenience, and waved them through the gate.
‘A nice trick, that,’ Colm observed.‘Though it makes me wonder if you’ve ever used it onme.’
She turned to defend herself from his accusation, and found him grinning impishly down at her.With a grunt, she turned back to the road ahead and muttered, ‘As though any spell could penetrate that thick skull.’
He barked a laugh, which deepened her embarrassment for a moment, though she soon found herself chuckling along as they entered the city of Parwys.
It was a grand city, Fola had to admit.Colm badly masked his awe as he eyed the leaning behemoths of wood, wattle and tile that loomed through the fog.Fola recognised the care and craftsmanship that had gone into their make, but mortal architecture would always stand in sharp contrast to the City, where apartments and houses—whether those left by the First Folk or built by the craftsman who called the City home—were built to provide beauty as much as shelter and privacy.Everything in Parwys had been designed with an eye to averting violence.Narrow windows reminded her of arrow slits, heavy wooden doors of barred gates.Every home was a fortress unto itself.How could the people here help but harbour fear of their neighbours in such a divided, defensive environment?
Still, as they travelled the central street towards the palace, through the market quarter, Fola took delight in Parwys’s charms.The streets were wide and well travelled.Foul odours wafted from grates in the gutters, but there was a sewer.Pine boughs and bundles of flowers that hung from lintels and guideposts did a great deal for the city’s aroma, otherwise.And despite their claustrophobic, defensive design, the buildings possessed flourishes of artistry.Most of the timber framing Fola saw bore intricate carvings of knotwork, and friezes of hunting scenes and stories from the kingdom’s mythic past decorated the more prominent buildings.Some featured tall, long-limbed figures that she connected immediately to the First Folk, though the scenes were ambiguous.The people of Parwys neither seemed to worship nor to hate the First Folk, which was unusual this far from the City, but good for Fola.Her status as a Citizen, should it be found out, would not be as immediately damning as it would be in a place like Tarebach, where the Mortal Church held sway.
