‘What is it?’Damon asked.
‘Nothing,’ Llewyn said, unable to give voice to what he feared.‘Just come with me a moment.’
Tula led them across the field towards the bulk of the festival grounds.By the noon hour the festival felt half-deserted, and not only because of the horror of the haunting.Those townsfolk who had come out for a night of entertainment and pleasure had all returned to their daily lives.Many of the performers were abed; those still awake milled about their campsites doing the menial chores that even raucous festivities could not scour from the earth.They passed as many strings of laundry as strings of bunting, and folk who had dazzled dozens with their skill and allure the night before busied themselves sweeping, beating rugs, or washing out platters and tankards.
‘There,’ Tula said, pointing down a trampled pathway between a beer garden and a gauzy pavilion decorated with silhouettes in all manner of suggestive poses.At the end of the pathway, a dozen paces away, a peasant girl conversed with a world-weary young man.The girl held the reins of a bay mare, as Tula had said, and a heavyset hunting dog sat at her heel.The mare eyed the dog with rolling, wild eyes, stamping its feet.Animals, even when under the power of a geas, had a way of seeing through glamour.
‘Bleed me,’ Harwick muttered.‘I’d bet a royal that’s Bess.How’d that girl come by her?’
‘Jareth sold her, maybe?’Damon ventured.
‘In the middle of the night?’Harwick rejoined, scratching his stubble.
The girl gestured and, even at such a distance, Llewyn saw the glint of silver on her thumb.
The Huntress
YC 1189
In some ways, the fae are more confounding than fiends.Something which is entirely alien can, after all, be dismissed as incomprehensible.But something which at times seems to fit known patterns, only to violate them at unexpected turns, strains and unsettles the mind.Fae have courts, domains and politics, and it is thus tempting to say they are kindred to mortals.Long study, however, reveals courts that resemble no familiar hierarchy, domains that exist irrespective of geographic barriers and distance, and politics fixated on concerns that are as often whimsical nonsense as they are abominable horror.
Archivist Eltan Oora,The Taxonomy of Sapience,YC1098
The world around Llewyn grew distant, fading into a blur like a hastily painted backdrop, save that girl, her ring, and the hand of the youth who pointed back the way Llewyn had just come.He caught Damon by the arm.
‘Llewyn?What…?’Damon demanded, pulling against his grip.‘You’re hurting—’
‘All three of you, go back to camp,’ he said, the words falling from him without thought.Only one thing mattered.Whatever guilt he felt for those who had died as a consequence of Siwan’s curse, his shame at considering, however briefly, returning to the Grey Lady’s fold far outweighed it.‘Get horses.Take Siwan.Find the woman Fola at the Garland Inn.’
Damon shook his head, the paper flower Siwan had tucked into his curls finally coming loose and drifting to the ground.‘Why?And I thought you didn’t trust—’
‘I don’t trust her,’ Llewyn said.‘But she is powerful, and she might be able to keep you safe long enough to get away from here.’
‘What are you talking about, Llewyn?’Tula demanded.
‘That which I feared most,’ he said, but an explanation would take too long.Even he could not see through the girl’s glamour, but he knew the signs—had kept vigil for them these eight years.‘You need to trust me in this.The troupe must disperse.Scatter.Take Siwan to Fola, and from there to anywhere she might be safe.The City, if you must.Justaway from hereand from any place Jareth might have known.If anything by the name and description of the Silver Lake Troupe remains in the world, you will all be hunted down and slaughtered.’
‘Llewyn, I—’ Damon protested gain.
‘Just go,’ Llewyn hissed, and hefted his ghostwood blade, no longer a walking stick, now a sword, curved and wickedly sharp.‘And be quick.You can do nothing here.’
He could hardly hope to do anything—only delay and, with any luck, redirect attention.He took the hammer from his belt and cut away the rags that bound its head, revealing a flat face and wedged back suited for stonework.Llewyn kept his grip near the end of the handle, far away from the raw iron’s rough, dark surface.
Harwick’s confusion at last hardened into fear.He put a heavy hand on Damon’s shoulder.‘Come, lad.You know what he was, once.We do as Llewyn says.’
Damon let himself be led away.Tula muttered under her breath, but followed.Llewyn could little blame them.He had demanded that they shatter the semblance of family they had found together and dissolve their lives, and offered no coherent reason.But there wasn’t time.
He had little grasp of his own age, of how much time had passed while he slept in the roots of his ghostwood tree, a sword in its sheath awaiting the Grey Lady’s need.Yet he knew this one—this monster in the guise of a girl—had served far longer.
She left the youth and approached.Her eyes were two pale flecks of ice above a spray of freckles, first scrutinising Llewyn’s face, then the wooden sword in his white-knuckled hand, then the hammer.A knife would have been better, or a sword, but raw iron was coveted in Parwys and an old hammer was all he had been able to buy with what little coin he had scraped together.Not that better armament would make much difference.The dog padded at her side, nearly as tall as Bess’s shoulder, its own gaze yellow, wild and hungry.A glamour could hide much, but struggled to veil the eyes.
Llewyn had spent little time in the company of other gwyddien.They were solitary tools.Yet he knew this one.The finest blade in the Grey Lady’s armoury.A woman with a rimewolf at her side, known only as the Huntress.
It had always been destined to end this way, from the moment he tore the Grey Lady’s ring from his thumb.Perhaps he should have taken Siwan further afield, into Galca, or Alberon, or further south to Salus or Tarebach—countries that were only words to him.Yet the Grey Lady’s domain paid little mind to mortal maps and borders.Her territory abutted every shadowed glade, every moonlit bough.And he had, himself, been lost, and alone, and afraid of a world he understood only through a fractured, distorted lens.Afanan and her troupe had given Siwan a good life, and there was no telling whether years of desperate flight would have kept her safer than years of comfort, kindness, and the next best thing to family.
The Huntress’s ice-flake eyes drifted up to meet his gaze.‘She is surprised to find that you carry your ring,’ she said, her voice young and bright.Llewyn had imagined it would be crueller, hardened by time and violence.She pointed at his pocket with her ghostwood blade.‘Put it on.She would speak with you.’
Though only moments ago Llewyn had considered the ring—as though putting it on could undo the consequences of his rebellion—now it terrified him.For eight years his thoughts had been his own.He had found the strength to defy her once, but she had not been expecting it, then.If he let her back in, she might bind him to her service or fill his mind with torturous horror.
