‘Much has been lost, despite our best efforts to maintain it.Then came the plague, nine years ago, and five years after it, the haunting.Now wraiths ride the wind.Our magic, once powerful, has begun to fade, and those with the power to restore it have refused to do so.Rebellion stirs in the Greenwood.Too much suffering, for too long.My husband was killed by the haunting, yes, but also by his own despair.Despair that has infected his son.
‘Despair is a goad towards foolishness, Fola.Not three days after the king’s death, Jon Kenn brought a proposal to my son—not to me, who rules until the boy is crowned, for he knew I would not hear him.The Mortal Church claims the power to rid Parwys of this haunting.The unhallowed dead will be returned to their graves, but at what cost?A ritual, encircling the entire kingdom, that will scour it of all magic.Any leavings of the First Folk will be rendered inert.The powers of earth and stone cultivated here will be uprooted.’
‘Good thing the prince has developed a distaste for his tutor, then.’
The queen shook her head.‘He isolates himself from all he loves.From me.He treats Ifan of Glascoed with contempt, when they were once the closest of friends.As a hedgehog might skewer its mate on its spines when panicked, fear—of the haunting, of his looming responsibilities—has put Owyn’s hackles up.After his father is buried, my son will mourn for a fortnight, and then he will be crowned.He conducts himself well in court, but he is only seventeen, though they would put a spear in his hand in wartime and now a crown upon his head.For half of his life the kingdom has suffered, but he remembers a happy childhood of peace.’
Her voice, low and powerful, became strained with grief.‘I fear what he will do to return to it.What he will give up to unshoulder the burdens he will inherit.If the Mortal Church offers the only path out of this nightmare, he will take it, little understanding or mourning what he concedes.I will not stand idly by and allow him to make such a mistake.Will you, Fola of the Starlit Tower?Oh, I tire of the pretence.Can the City of the Wise allow another kingdom to fall to the Mortal Church?They are a devious, gluttonous worm.How many more lands must they devour before they are strong enough to consume even you?’
Fola sipped her tea while Medrith ran a thumb below her eye, wicking away a tear.The flavours of the tea were bright and well balanced, with a soothing undercurrent.Fola knew greenseer leaves; knew their rumoured power to grant wisdom and insight.Little evidenced, by the City’s study of the plant, but knowledge is rarely a true defence against such simple, false beliefs.
Fear bade Fola flee Parwys and seek the proof for her theory elsewhere.But compassion bade her stay.Medrith was right.The Mortal Church was a threat to her, personally, but it was also a threat to this kingdom.If unopposed, it would grow like a cancer, consuming the world until it threatened even the City of the Wise.
She was no hero, despite what she had done in Ulun.Arno had been right to warn her against taking too many risks.Her only weapons were spellpaper, an ample supply of ingenuity, a walking stick that could loosen bowels, and the two spells written into her left hand.And Colm, who was willing to kill people in exchange for money.She had little doubt that, regardless of whatever friendship had grown between them—or attraction, dared she entertain the thought—he would cut ties and flee the moment he sensed the tides turning against her.She was, as she had always been, fundamentally alone.She was no true agent of Arno’s, dedicated to the City’s defence, armed with relics that could shatter mountains and turn seas to vapour.Only a temporarily embarrassed scholar, denied the cooperation of her peers on an ambitious project they were all either too risk-averse to attempt or too stupid to understand anyway.
She wanted her life tomeansomething.A refrain she had repeated again and again to Arno, whenever he questioned her obsessive dedication to a research project that no one else thought worth the time and expense.What could be a more meaningful life—an achievement worth any risk—than unravelling, at last, the knot at the heart of the world’s mysteries?If she found a way to conjure up the First Folk, to learn from them the secrets of their confounding, wondrous relics, to complete mortalkind’s understanding of magic in all its permutations and potency, whose life could be counted more meaningful?None would want for anything, any more.Death itself would be defanged—and no longer only by accident, a gift of the Birds and the Tree to those few who lived in the City itself.The cruelties that sullied the beauty of the wider world would be eased away, every country made a mirror of Thaumedony.Who then could deny her their recognition, their respect?
But if her theory was flawed—if her dream was impossible… What then?
There was value, too, in standing against the rising tide of the Mortal Church.In defending the weak.In spreading the goodness of the City to the furthest corners of the world.A life spent at such work had meaning, certainly.Would it be enough to soothe the eightfold wound of the research board’s rejection, irritated each time she ate a meal alone or heard laughter behind her back?
Perhaps she could contact Arno, urge him to send someone better equipped and better skilled in such work to replace her, and then be on her way.
‘A fortnight, you say,’ Fola murmured.‘And the moment he is crowned, he will give in to the anakriarch, you think?’
‘Augury is not one of my talents.’The queen’s eyes, still wet with suppressed tears, flitted to Frog.An awkward, unvoiced joke in an attempt to recapture levity, and with it, dignity.‘I do not know what he will do, only fear what he might.’
Fola swore, prompting a frown from Medrith.By the time agents from the City arrived, Prince Owyn would be long since crowned and, if his mother’s prediction proved true, in the sway of the Mortal Church.
The haunting might be no more than the work of a rebel necromancer.But there was a chance, however slim, that it might be a true anomaly caused by some lingering magic or relic of the First Folk.Something that offered a key to their power over life and death, to their immortality, and to their vanishing from the world.Either way, someone needed to stand between the Mortal Church and its aims.Circumstance had placed her in their path.
‘Bleed it,’ she swore again.‘What would you have me do?’
The queen blinked at the repeated vulgarity, then took a steadying breath.‘I ask only this—conduct your investigation into the haunting, but swiftly, and keep me apprised of your findings.In exchange, so long as I am regent, I can guarantee you will not be impeded and the Mortal Church will be held at bay.’
Steam still wicked from the mouth of the kettle.One of the burnt seeds cracked and crumbled to dust.Fola drank the rest of her tea in a long swallow, then ran her tongue along her teeth, tasting the grassy bitterness of the greenseer, the muted sweetness of chamomile, the bright sourness of lemon.She was in over her head.But despite Medrith’s crown and Fola’s general distaste for royalty, she genuinely liked the woman.She was clearly grieving the death of her husband, seemed to anticipate grieving the mistakes of her son, and still found the strength to defend her people.
Helping Parwys might not yield the answers Fola sought, but she had skills and knowledge Medrith lacked.Parwys needed her.What better reason to help than that?
‘Very well,’ Fola said, ‘but I will make faster progress with your help.’
The queen’s expression sagged with relief.‘What do you need?’
‘Information.Anything you can tell me that may be of use.’
There followed a whirlwind hour while Medrith lectured on the politics and history of Parwys—much of it of no immediate use, but useful context.Some pointed Fola in new, interesting directions—such as the queen’s suspicions that the Count of Afondir, who conducted the majority of the kingdom’s trade with the outside world, and who personally commanded wealth that exceeded the royal coffers, and who was cousin by marriage to the fallen king, harboured an aspiration to the crown.
‘Might he have something to do with the rebellion, then?’Fola asked.
‘He might,’ Medrith said.‘Though I think it more likely he has allied himself with the Mortal Church.’She paused, hesitating as though something unsaid pried at her teeth.
‘If your son opposes the Mortal Church too fiercely, they might kill him and place Afondir on the throne.Is that it?’
Medrith nodded.‘I do not think it beyond them.Afondir is not an open follower, but he allowed the construction of a temple in his city, and a small army of templars camps in his lands.’
The lingering sense that the queen had held something back itched at Fola as Medrith continued her description of the kingdom’s politics.Forgard, long jealous of Afondir’s wealth and trading charters, could be expected to oppose them on all fronts, including acceptance of the Mortal Church, and had long served as a buffer of sorts in the religion’s advance through the kingdom—a stretch of conversation that bored Fola nearly to sleep, though she listened as attentively as she could.
Far more fascinating was the queen’s discussion of what she termed the Northern Counties.Historically, Cilbran and Glascoed were rivals, each overseeing a frontier against strange, magical forces.Much of Parwys had been long at peace; Fola was astonished to learn the kingdom had fought only two wars with its neighbours in its seven-hundred-year history, and only one brief civil war of succession when the House of Abal had produced a pair of twins.Idiotic that an anomaly of foetal development resulted in armed conflict, but such were the politics of the world beyond the walls.The most notable exception to this peaceful idyll was County Cilbran, which stretched northwards between the coast and the Windwall Mountains, and where Medrith had been born and raised.
