While he worked, he felt eyes on him, but that may have been only paranoia.It stalked him as certainly as the Grey Lady’s agents stalked Siwan, however distantly.No length of time would be enough to let him feel secure.His enemy was ancient, and undying.Impatient at times, and fickle, but as often willing to wait and stalk for years—or decades—for the opportunity to strike.All he could do was be vigilant, stay on the run, and deny her those opportunities as best he could.
When he had done all he could, he went to his own cot in the backstage tent.It had been a long night, and an anxious dawn.Now, with luck, he could rest awhile, and brace himself for the storm of worry to come with nightfall.
He had just begun to doze in the late-morning light, still cool with autumn’s chill, when he heard footsteps.He knew them at once.He wouldalwaysknow her at once.She carried a piece of him at her throat, mingled with her soul.
Siwan came to his bedside.He feigned sleep.If he spoke, he feared he would poke and prod again at the wound between them.Mention his unease with her performing, or by his expression or some accidental turn of phrase betray that he could never understand her need for the stage and thought it all a foolish, dangerous risk.
‘Llewyn?’she said softly, to test his wakefulness.When he made no response she knelt and, gently, with an echo of the quiet girl she had been, kissed the side of his brow.‘Thank you.I know you’re afraid, but… Well, thank you.I’ll be splendid.You’ll see.’
She left him, but sleep never came.He lay awake as morning warmed into afternoon, the ever-present image of Siwan on the altar bright behind his eyes.
The Heathen Funeral
YC 1189
If a father gives his son a gift of bread, only for it to turn to dust in his mouth, or a gift of wine, only to find it rancid vinegar on his tongue, or a gift of fine clothing, only for needles hidden in the cloth to bite his flesh, who would call that father anything but wicked?And, if he goes on accepting the cruel gifts of his father, the son anything but a fool?
Gorev, Agion of Honesty,First Interrogations,YC233
Torin shifted in his saddle, as though the discomfort rioting within him could be eased by a simple adjustment of posture.He rode at the back of the funeral procession, unable to shake the oily feeling from his skin each time he caught the Count of Afondir’s eye.
The sooner he could divest himself of Afondir’s patronage, the better.The man was a snake.Utterly faithless and vicious.The Mortal Church was, to him, a blade he might wield in his own bid for the throne, and nothing more.To be used by such a person belied the virtues that were the heart of its teaching.
His disgust only deepened at the sight of the druid queen’s staff among the banners at the head of the column.Fidelity would have him look on these heretics with pity.It was a weakness in him, he knew, that he blamed them.These backward folk of Parwys were as faultless for their ignorant grasping for truth and meaning as he was for the prejudices he had been taught as a child.The path of virtue only asked for recognition of these faults and a good faith effort to overcome them.A process the people of Parwys could begin in earnest once Torin had accomplished his duty and scoured the kingdom clean.
Yet witnessing their viciousness pained him.Another product of compassion, he reasoned, overbalancing his fidelity.Not for these nobles, but for the people they ruled, subject to the brutal power games of blind, ambitious fools.
He had not expected Prince Owyn to welcome him with open arms—his mother was a druidess, after all, and had banished the Church’s evangelists from the land—yet the boy’s rejection of his own tutor, the convert Jon Kenn, boded ill.Worse, the prince seemed gripped by paranoia.He distrusted his counsellors and suspected his vassals of treachery.There might be an opportunity, there, for an outsider to worm into the cracks in the court.And so Torin observed the court and its heathen funeral, watching for fault lines.
A distasteful business—less direct than seizing heretics and putting them to the heated knife—but the task he had been set, for the growth of the Church, the salvation of Parwys, and the cause of mortal flourishing throughout the world.
‘Are you all right, Anakriarch?’Sir Orn leaned over in his saddle, a crease of concern on his youthful face.
‘Quite,’ Torin murmured.
Orn’s eyes narrowed.He had come to Torin’s attention after turning in a friend for entertaining heretical notions.A balancing of fidelity and justice appropriate to their order, though it had alienated the youth from his peers.It was not their task to show mercy, nor to elevate love and friendship over duty, but to protect the Church and those who looked to it for guidance from corruption.
‘I’ve a soothing balm in my satchel,’ Orn said, keeping his voice low.‘If one were suffering nausea, one might spread a bit on their collarbone and breathe the vapours for relief.’
‘Later, perhaps,’ Torin said.‘Orn, what do you make of the sorceress Fola?’
The young knight straightened in his saddle, stretching to the fullness of his height, adding another twist to Torin’s disgust as his spine extended.He peered ahead at the sorceress, marked out by her silver staff.She rode beside her monstrous protector, halfway between their position at the column’s rear and the prince.
‘I have never heard of this Starlit Tower she claims to hail from,’ Orn said.‘But there are many dark corners of the world.She seems no different from the other scuttling things that dwell in such places.’
‘No?’Torin said.‘And what of her bird?’
Orn looked down, now towering a head and a half above Torin.‘Her bird?’
Anwe, who rode a pace behind Torin, barked a laugh.She met Torin’s chastising glare with a twinkle of defiance, then looked away, smiling and chuckling to herself.
‘Your dear sister knight laughs because you reveal your youth in this, Orn,’ Torin said.‘The last true crusade was fought when she and I were but novices in our orders.’
‘And you’d yet to take a first yowling breath,’ Anwe added.
Orn’s eyes lit up.‘The City,’ he murmured.‘Thaumedony.’
‘Indeed,’ Torin said, pleased that the youth had caught on.
