The guards at the front gate of the inn were the first irritant, with the feathers pluming their helms and the gold thread on their doublets.Followed by the ostentatious, out-of-place trellises that formed a decorative centrepiece in the inn’s courtyard, laden with grapevines that were by no means native to Parwys’s northerly climate.
Then was the flippancy with which the inn’s patrons treated its staff.The gaggle of minor nobles and wealthy merchants come for the king’s funeral were genial enough with the innkeeper herself and with the concierge.But in the common room the patrons hardly deigned to look at the people who brought their food and refilled their goblets.Fola’s discomfort was magnified by its reflection in the eyes of the serving staff whenever she tried to exchange a few pleasant words.They expected mistreatment and distrusted kindness.Only fair, considering their other patrons spoke with them only to criticise their behaviour or make some spurious demand.Nonetheless, it saddened Fola enough that she went to bed early after only a single cup of wine.
At least the room was spacious and the bed, as things went, quite comfortable.As she drifted off to sleep, her mind wandered, musing over how well the bed might serve a more pleasant purpose than sleep—if only the same nonsense that had driven her in disgust from the common room hadn’t muddied all of her interactions with Colm.
* * *
Fola had seen many castles in her time in the world beyond the walls.They held a glamour of grandeur—an impressive weight of stone, craftsmanship and effort that masked their terrible purpose.As she and Colm approached Castle Parwys, her eyes ever drifted to arrow slits, murder holes, the sharpened iron teeth of the portcullis.Yet, in between those common, violent, off-putting features, Castle Parwys held a strangeness all its own.
Fola was no expert in architecture—only a dabbler, as most people in the City were dabblers in whatever disciplines or pursuits captured their curiosity—but enough to perceive the disunity in the castle’s design.Adjacent wings followed different fundamental motifs.Construction in rounded corners and sweeping lines crashed into a design based on sharp angles and square-cut blocks.
An absurd array of towers rose from the castle with little eye for composition.She could guess the order in which they had been built, not by visible ageing but by a progression of strangeness.Earlier towers were brick or granite, decorated with a few crenellations or bits of carving.Later additions featured enamel panelling, or twining filigree.One of the towers was built entirely of blue-white marble carved all over with delicate vines.The most recent—evidenced by the scaffolding still affixed to its incomplete upper reaches—had been built with space left for vast ornamental windows.Only one had been finished—a great rose of red and yellow glass, like a bloodshot eye peering out over the kingdom.
Fola and Colm arrived in late morning, after court had already been called to session.The same deception she had wielded at the city gate, now bolstered by the make and quality of their clothing, saw them past the guards and through to the audience hall.They cut a striking pair, Colm in a shirt of black silk and a matching jacket trimmed with silver that suggested links of chain mail and plates of armour.Not to Fola’s taste—his prize for outsmarting her at the tailor’s—but it fitted his role as the body man of an eccentric foreign sorceress.She wore again the dress of midnight blue trimmed with stars, and by the manipulation of a few subtle mechanisms in the decorative filigree of her silver staff, she had extended it from a comfortable walking stick to an ostentatious rod that towered above her head.Only Frog failed to fit the illusion properly.He perched on her shoulder, goggling at the banners overhead and the sea of silk-dressed courtiers assembled before the throne as they entered the reception hall.A raven would have been better.More mysterious and magical.A nightjar was a bit silly, as birds went.At least his unusual coloration lent him a measure of mystique.
The City of the Wise offered many freedoms, but not even its most esteemed Citizen, to say nothing of an outcast like Fola, could any more choose her bird than choose her soul.
The herald—who, like the guards, issued no challenge and accepted Fola’s story with little question, a display of wealth being as effective in such a setting as a charm—bade them wait in the entryway.As they did, Fola was struck by a strange feeling, as though she were walking into a gradually narrowing cave.She noted, also, that behind the tapestries and banners the walls of the audience hall were of red brick, matching none of the castle’s edifice save a few of the smallest, earliest towers.Perhaps it was the damp, musty smell of the place, compounded with the body odour of the courtiers who stood packed so tightly together.A mingled aroma poorly masked by a dozen varieties of perfume, scented rushes on the floor, and the incense drifting from braziers in the corners of the room.
‘Does it seem smaller on the inside than it ought?’she whispered to Colm.
He only shrugged.‘I know fuck all about buildings.’
Yet he, too, looked at the too-near, too-narrow walls with an uneasy eye.
‘… in state for a fortnight awaiting burial, andstillAfondir and Glascoed have yet to show themselves,’ a young voice, only just on the far side of adolescence, boomed from the dais at the head of the room.Prince Owyn, dressed in robes of storm-cloud grey with a white pelt draped across his shoulders, sat a heavy chair of white wood which had been placed at the right hand of his father’s throne.A circlet of simple gold adorned his dark curls.A stout woman, her golden hair shot through with iron, stood behind him with a staff of yew wood that sprouted green leaves, as though it were spring instead of autumn.She had his same pale complexion and was dressed in finery—Medrith, the queen regent, presumably.The throne stood empty, revealing an intricate, gold-veined carving of a snarling bear.Its ruby eyes seemed to pry at the assembled courtiers, as though seeking justice among them for the king’s death.
‘With any urgency, Ifan could have been here in five days with his retinue and housecarls in tow,’ Owyn went on.‘Is he bringing his entire court, and his entire household staff besides?And Afondir has even less excuse!’
The man the prince was addressing—a scholar with a beard like a brown shrub dried out and badly in want of water—dipped his head.‘I will send another flight of birds.’His reedy voice quavered.‘My apologies, Your Majesty.’
‘Not “Majesty” yet,’ Owyn corrected him sharply.‘Not until my father is rightly honoured and buried.’
‘Your Highness,’ Medrith said, her voice soft, but captured by the architecture of the space and conveyed to all corners.‘The rites could proceed in Glascoed’s and Afondir’s absence—’
‘I’ll not hear of this,’ the prince snapped.‘Jon Kenn, what is the next order of business?’
‘A new arrival, Your Highness.’Another scholar stepped forward, dressed better than the first.His robe had a crisp, well-sewn hem.Brass spectacles perched on his pale nose.A pendant dangled on an iron chain around his neck.
Fear pulsed through Fola.From the entrance to the room, she could see only the dais and the back of the courtiers’ heads.Still, she searched what she could of the crowd for any other sign, any other warning…
‘A woman claiming skilful arts, Your Highness, who has offered her services in our kingdom’s time of need.’The scholar swept his arm towards Fola and turned, bringing the pendant and its emblem into full view: three nested triangles, carved in raw iron.
The herald strode forward, leading Fola and Colm deeper into the room.‘Her Potency Fola of the Starlit Tower, and Colm Thunderhand, her man-at-arms.’
She could almost hear Colm smirk at his title, which he had thought up on the spot when the herald had asked how he ought be introduced.It felt a bad joke, now.Too likely to draw suspicion.
Bleed it, I’ve been too relaxed.She should have known the Mortal Church would have a presence here.They might not have the same base of support in Parwys as in Tarebach, or even Alberon, but they were nothing if not tenacious.And, by all accounts—including their own—determined to swallow the world.
She walked into the open space between the dais and the assembly and dipped a respectful curtsy.Colm, behind her, bowed far more deeply, folding his left arms behind his back and covering his chest with the right.
She fought to keep her gaze from flitting to the scholar Jon Kenn, who lurked beside the dais.He wore the nested triangles and occupied a place of importance in the court, clearly.An advisor?A tutor to the young prince?Their priests wormed their way into proximity to power by such roles, wielding small influence at first, to twist first the minds of kings, and then entire kingdoms, into delusional zealotry.
The court of Parwys had already been infiltrated, clearly.The question became ‘for how long?’and ‘to what effect?’.
Two things gave Fola hope that she still had time—the staff of sprouted yew in the hands of the queen, and the absence of any emblem or device of the Mortal Church on the person of the young prince.The staff would mark Medrith out as a druid.Of course, it might be no more than a symbol of her royal station or her regency, or hold some significance related to the death of her husband, the king.Magic, tradition and the religious institutions of these little kingdoms so often became intertwined, and it was difficult to parse where one ended and the next began.
At any rate, the Mortal Church had not yet gained enough of a foothold to scour those traditions from the kingdom.Still, until she knew how much they had gained, Fola would tread carefully.
