‘You dare conjure here, as a guest in our home?’Medrith’s voice boomed through the foyer, rebounding from the corners, a thunder clap that shook dust and mortar from the stones.She strode towards Torin.The shadows thickened, crawling and devouring the light of the guttering lanterns, swallowing even the glow of the anakriarch’s corona.‘Here?Standing on a foundation whose cornerstone is as old as the First Folk?This is our kingdom,priest.’She spat the word.‘It’s powers bend to us.’
Fola’s left hand twitched.She could try to muddle Torin’s mind and make her escape, but last time she had faced the magic of the Mortal Church, piercing its defences had taken all she had, and that with the simple efficiency of a killing spell.Splattering Torin’s brains on the wall—assuming she could manage it—would solvethisproblem only to create another dozen more.Kings did not tend to take kindly to guests brutally slaughtering one another, particularly not with strange, foreign powers beyond the understanding of their court sorcerers.Nor could she start drawing a spell on paper.The moment she reached for her pen Torin would attack, heading off whatever she planned.
‘I mean no insult to Parwys, Your Majesty,’ Torin said, unfazed.‘But this sorceress will face justice.’
‘For her servant’s wounding your spy?’Medrith snarled.
Briefly, Fola considered letting the queen fight on her behalf, and discarded the notion.Whoever won such a contest, the political fallout between Parwys and Tarebach could complicate Fola’s investigation and her extraction of Siwan to the City.Fleeing would see her lost in the unfamiliar labyrinth of the castle.She had to go through Torin, which left only one option: a dangerous one, requiring her to get within arm’s reach.She shifted her grip on her staff, arranging her fingers on a particular raised pattern in its silver filigree.
Frog’s talons bit through Fola’s dress into her shoulder.She could feel him tense—ready to either spring into action or flee; which of the two he would choose was anyone’s guess.For once in his ridiculous life, she needed her bird to do what she asked, when she asked it.
‘Is it mere coincidence that the terror that grips your kingdom reached its peak the very night after this foreign sorceress arrived at court?’Torin said.‘What powers has she been meddling with?Can she prove that she did not order my man killed for seeing something she would not wish revealed?’
‘She will make her account to me, not to you.’Medrith took another step.‘Return to the chambers which my son, in his foolishness, provided you.’
Torin sighed and feigned weariness, though Fola saw the light of excitement in his eyes.His body was tense, ready to lash out with whatever powers he had gathered.‘Alas, Your Majesty, there are greater laws in this world than the dictates of a queen.’
Now!Fola thought, hoping against hope that Frog would feel her need as a bird of the City ought.He fanned out his wings, slapping her in the side of the head, and let out a garbled squawk.Torin, whose gaze had been fixed on the threatening posture of the queen, stared at Frog with baffled surprise.
At least he was put off-balance.Fola had been hoping for ‘talons to the face’ rather than ‘wings flailing about aimlessly’.Muttering a curse, she launched herself at Torin.She jabbed at the churchman with her staff, her hand poised on the raised filigree and ready to squeeze.
Torin withdrew one hand from his sleeve.The horns of his corona flared, and a flickering light shone from his palm, bright enough to cast his bones in shadowed relief.He made a cage of his fingers, as though he were snatching an insect from the air.Fola grunted as invisible lines of force seized her and held her in the air.Her staff reached to a handspan from his outstretched arm.
‘And now she attacks me,’ Torin said.‘Here is evidence enough that she hides some nefarious purpose.One she would prefer go unexamined by the Church’s light.’
‘Release your magic at once,’ the queen demanded, her voice rolling thunder.She raised her staff.A fetid wind that smelled of peat and rot wafted from the room’s shadowed corners.
Fola did not give their powers a chance to clash.Though Torin’s spell held her in place, it was not so subtle as to bind her hands.With two quick movements, she twisted one segment of her staff’s filigree and squeezed another.Delicate lines of silver shifted and clicked together, rearranging the flow of magic.
It was one of five identical such devices—five of the countless artifacts kept in the Library’s vaults that were classed as ‘known oddities’.Objects that the First Folk had left behind whose effects had been thoroughly established, but whose purpose remained a complete mystery.Every so often an ambitious young archivist would dedicate a measure of years to a thorough accounting of what such an artifactcouldbe used for, but almost never discerned the use the First Folk hadmeantfor it.In the case of Fola’s staff, subtle manipulations of the silver filigree that decorated its shaft could change its length and heft.At one extreme, it could be made as short as Fola’s forearm with a circumference to match.At the other, it extended to thrice her height and narrowed to the width of her forefinger.
Further, putting pressure on certain protrusions in the filigree’s design produced a burst of deep, bone-shaking sound from the end of the staff.A sound which caused sudden and explosive disruptions in the digestive system.An effect which had been put to hilarious use by the coterie of young archivists who had discovered it.And who—once their sickness had subsided—shortly found themselves scrubbing the walls and floor of the laboratorium while their research sponsor stood by wearing a perfumed kerchief and a heavy, disappointed glare.
One person’s tool for wicked pranks was another’s weapon of self-defence—and a weapon with the advantage of striking definitively, non-lethally and physically.
The end of the staff darted out and slammed into Torin’s chest; at the same moment a deepthrumpulsed through the room.Fola felt it in her chest—thankfully not in her stomach.A look of confusion crossed Torin’s face, then he paled, doubled over, and retched.His corona flickered and the light burning at his hands faded, releasing Fola from his invisible grasp.She wasted no time in sprinting past him into the castle courtyard, with Frog swooping behind at her shoulder.
‘Guards!’Torin slurred, gripping his stomach with one hand and reaching with the other.Pressure built in the air behind Fola as the anakriarch flailed with his magic.Not ten paces from the gate, Frog screamed in sudden agony and dropped like a stone.
‘Seize that woman!’Torin shouted, then was interrupted by his own retching.
Fola ran back to her bird, who hopped and fluttered his wings at the end of a trail of blood and torn feathers.She had no time to assess the damage.Fola dropped her staff, whipped off her cloak, and fell to one knee, paying the mud that splashed her dress no mind.She gathered Frog up and swaddled him like an infant.He looked up at her, the pupils of his goggle-eyes narrowed to agonised pinpricks.
‘You’ll be fine,’ she muttered, tying the ends of her cloak behind her back to bind him tight to her chest.Only then did she notice one of his legs on the ground a few paces away, ripped in half at the knee.‘Bastard,’ she spat, then collected her staff and sprinted for the gatehouse, index finger and thumb of her left hand already forming the circle to baffle the guards into letting her pass.
She did not stop running until she came in sight of the Garland Inn’s sloping, tiled roofs.While Colm readied their horses, she would run to the festival grounds and make her case to Siwan and Llewyn.With the templars on the hunt, Parwys would be no more safe for them than it was for her.Together, they would go after the young Count of Glascoed and the clues Fola needed to end the haunting.That done, Parwys would have no cause to tolerate the presence of the Mortal Church.Two problems, one solution.Then, she could focus on convincing Siwan to return with her to the City of the Wise—ludicrous as it was that anyone would need convincing.
Despite the anakriarch’s threats, Fola’s errand in Parwys would soon be concluded.She could already taste the amberwine of the City’s fountains and hear the congratulations of her colleagues as her research notes were reviewed and cited to form the foundation of a new and wondrous era in the Library’s grand project.
So it was that, despite Frog’s whimpering and the tension lingering in her body after her brief duel with Torin, she arrived at the Garland Inn in good spirits.A mood soon dashed to ruin.
In the courtyard she found another thrice-damned templar, a three-pronged corona burning bright around her temples, squared off across the shattered remnant of a trellis and trampled vines with a battered and bloody Colm.
In the Aftermath of Horror
YC 1189
The wretched are kept from our gates by the twin weapons of the powerful—ignorance and fear.Ignorance of possibility, and, should ignorance be breached, fear that the rumours of the City’s comforts cannot be real and must hide some greater, terrible suffering.
