‘Ha!Far from it,’ Owyn said, a wry smile brushing the corners of his eyes.‘You have heard of last night’s horrors out on the festival grounds?’He began to fill the white cups.Odd that he had no servant to do it for him.In even the poorest kingdoms a page boy would attend the crown prince at every hour.This, then, was a secret meeting.Perhaps only the messenger sent to fetch Torin knew of it in all the royal household—save Ifan of Glascoed.
‘I do, Your Highness.’Torin said, stepping into the fire’s warmth, waiting for the prince to sit before lowering himself into the offered chair.
How to proceed?In an interrogation room, Torin was a master of finding just the right word, spoken in just the right tone, to twist free the information he desired, though often with the aid of a pincer, a razor or a heated iron.The prince wanted for friends, did he?Well, there was no surer path to friendship than shared suffering.
‘One of my men was caught in it,’ Torin said.‘He was dealt a grievous wound, though the Agion and good fortune have preserved his life and he seems likely to recover.’
Owyn took a long sip of tea, and Torin did likewise, mirroring his gesture.It was a mild brew, with a pleasant, flowery aroma.The prince’s cup clicked against its saucer.‘My father was not so fortunate.Nor were the dozens of my people torn apart last night.’
‘Your grief for them is a credit to you,’ Torin said.‘It shows the virtue of fidelity, core to the character of a good monarch.I regret that my knights could not do more to defend your people.’
‘That is what I wished to speak with you about.’The prince shifted in his seat, tension coursing through him.Not unlike the conflict that seized the subject of an interrogation in the sublime moment before a long-resisted confession.‘My tutor, Jon Kenn, says that you may have a way to end the haunting.’
Torin suppressed his excitement.Royals so disliked ceding any power or control.They had to be coaxed into doing the right thing.If he seemed overeager, the prince might begin to wonder what the Church stood to gain.
‘There is a way, Your Highness,’ Torin said, playing coy.‘Though it is no simple thing.’
The prince studied him carefully, then looked up to the strange, sloped device on the mantel.‘A ritual to eradicate not only the haunting,’ Owyn said, ‘but all magic in the kingdom.Anything left by the First Folk rendered no more than the raw material of which it was made.Fae and fiends obliterated.Some folk, whose bloodlines run with the experiments of the First Folk, killed or maimed.It is what was done in Tarebach, yes?’
Torin dipped his head, and cursed the fool Jon Kenn for revealing so much.‘Your tutor has schooled you well.’
‘Not only him.My mother, too.’The prince sipped his tea and gazed into the fire.‘And my father.There is a lake in the marsh at the foot of the Windwall mountains.My father took me there, once.At a glance, it seems ordinary.But he pointed out to me the jagged earth, the splintered formations of rock, the way no river flows to or from the basin.It is no natural formation, but a divot.A scar carved into the hills there by enormous power.Do you know how it was formed?’
Torin had heard rumours.Jon Kenn—who apparently lacked the virtue of fidelity entirely, or possessed it to preposterous excess—had been as dutiful an informant to the Iron Citadel as he had been to the prince.
‘It is the mark of Abal’s final battle with the Beast-King of Galca,’ Owyn went on.‘A bloody chapter from the founding of the kingdom.The Beast-King was a tyrant who rose up in the days after the Vanishing of the First Folk.Half a fiend, the tales tell, and as much a figure of myth as history.Mothers still frighten their children with threats that the Beast-King will snatch them if they disobey.’Owyn chuckled and sipped his tea.‘My own mother, in fact, when I was young.One thing is certain, and known by all in Parwys—our kingdom was born in the blood of our war against him.The very land is scarred by that war.Thus the name of the lake—Abal’s Scar.
‘As I said, it stands testament to Abal’s final battle, when he at least threw back the Beast-King.Glascoed and Afondir had been lost to the Beast-King’s hordes, which pushed across the river Afoneang.Monstrous warriors mounted upon rimewolves swept south through Cilbran.Forgard and the heart of the kingdom were threatened from the sea.A final stand.’Owyn’s voice filled with excitement in the blood and chaos of ancient war, its danger long distant but its thrills preserved in myth and memory.‘There was a weapon left behind by the First Folk.A weapon the druids of Bryngodre had harnessed, and bound to the Old Stones, the heart of their magic.So armed, Abal met the Beast-King there in the hills, and with a single blow smote his armies to ash, cracking the earth to its root.’
The prince turned from the flames.‘We are a small kingdom, Anakriarch, tucked into a corner of the world.By rights we should have been swallowed by our neighbours long ago—by ever-hungry Galca or the wealth of Alberon.Yet we stand, a bastion of peace and prosperity these seven hundred years.The Old Stones and druidcraft preserve the latter, while the memory of Abal’s weapon defends the former.By Jon Kenn’s account, if you are to save my people from this horror, I must give up both.’
Torin leaned forward in his seat and took a slow, thoughtful sip of his tea.To confirm the prince’s fears might set him against the Mortal Church; to do anything else would be deception.Virtue placed high demands.
‘No ends, no matter how noble, can justify wicked means, Your Highness,’ Torin said.‘I might lie to you, believing that my lie will lead you one step further down the path towards enlightenment and virtue.But I will not.What your tutor says is true.There is a ritual.A cleansing fire, conjured by the invocation of all the Agion, which would sweep through your lands and burn out this haunting at the root.And with it, these magics you so depend upon.’The prince’s expression twisted as though his tea had transformed to sour vinegar.Torin smiled gently.‘Which would itself be a gift, Your Highness, even greater than relief from this horror.’
‘Really?’Owyn said.‘I see it as the wicked means to achieve liberation from the haunting, and nothing more.’
‘Tell me, Your Highness, do you command the power of these “old stones”, or this ancient weapon?’Torin leaned close to him.A thoughtfully placed question, a certain kindly tone of voice, could be as powerful as red-hot calipers.He nodded gently towards the mantelpiece.‘And this … decoration?Do you understand the devices of the First Folk?Are they yours in truth?Even your druids do not fully comprehend the powers to which they have bound themselves.Why were these so-called “old stones” made?To what purpose?Yes, they may fortify your harvests, keep your soil rich and your forests full of game, but how?Can any of us know, with any confidence, how any power the First Folk left behind truly shapes our world?More, how those powers shapeus?Do the rituals your druids perform in obeisance matter, or are they no more than superstitious genuflection?Would what your mother asks of you—in, I am sure, full love of the kingdom—be any more than a salve to her own fears and uncertainty?’
‘You were at my father’s burial,’ the prince said, his posture and voice defensive.‘You saw their power at first hand.’
‘I saw old folk chanting and drawing circles in the dirt to accomplish little more than they might have done with shovels and a few hours of work,’ Torin said.‘The loss of these magical boons will be hard, Your Highness, I do not argue that.But as a child must give up the safety and comfort of a parent’s arms to step out into the world on its own two feet, so mortalkind must move beyond dependency on the tools of the First Folk.We must cultivate our own understanding, our own power, our own path through the world.’
‘Yourpath.’
Torin felt a crack in his own facade of kindliness.A slow breath brought it under control.
‘Is there another you intend to take?’
Owyn’s posture stiffened.‘I intend nothing, yet,’ he said.‘Only the salvation of my kingdom.’
The prince was a poor liar.Torin well knew that there were others in the prince’s ear.It was safe to assume that the sorceress Fola would be invited to such an audience as this, if she had not been already.
‘Some might argue that we ought to study the leavings of the First Folk,’ Torin said, treading carefully.To speak against Fola directly might drive the prince into whatever web she wove about him, but he could speak against her hideous ideas.‘I ask you to consider, Highness, that we have lived alongside these leavings for a millennium, and all the while mortalkind has struggled to comprehend them and turn them to our own purposes.In that time, what have we accomplished?We have no more understanding of all the First Folk left behind than a moth has of a lantern—and like a moth, we are captivated by the flame even as it lures us to destruction.This haunting may be just such a consequence of meddling with powers better left alone, and best scoured from the world.’
‘To make way foryou,’ Owyn said.‘Whose virtues remain powerful, even after all other magic has been destroyed.Why should I trust that the legion of templars camped even now in Afondir’s lands will not march across the Afoneang the very day I let you perform this ritual?We will have no defence against your magic, even as we sacrifice ours.Even raw iron does little to disrupt the power of your invocations, I am told.’
Again, Torin silently cursed Jon Kenn—then thought better.The old scholar knew a great deal, but did he understand the invocation of the Agion so intimately?Did Queen Medrith, for that matter?
