* * *
They made camp for the night in a clearing in sight of the road.A low cairn stood in the centre, and made Fola suspicious.The clearing was too perfectly circular, the grass too even, the little mushrooms growing around its edge too obvious a clue—and confirmed it with a few moments of scrutiny through her loupe.
‘A faerie ring,’ she said, satisfied.
Words that seemed to spook Llewyn and Siwan, but to which the others did not react.
‘Only a term,’ Fola clarified.‘A folk term, in truth.This place has little to do with fae folk, beyond perhaps overlapping one of their domains.It was once a First Folk structure.That cairn stands at the nexus of what remains of a spell, but has nothing to do with the actual magic, which is layered in the earth here.’
‘First Folk?’Damon said.‘Then what happened to it?’
Fola shrugged, prompting Frog to squawk and paw at her neck for balance.‘Hard to say, given I don’t know what it was.There was something here, protected with wards which have faded away to almost nothing.Just a curiosity, really.A shadow left by something long lost.Useless, but interesting.’
Llewyn eyed the cairn.‘I wouldn’t be so sure, sorceress,’ he said.‘Stones have power in Parwys.’
They ate well from provisions bought in Miggenbrot, then arranged for watches.Fola offered to take the middle watch of the night.Before she left the city, Arno had bade her drink all sorts of alchemical concoctions and submit to a dozen enchantments, at least one of which had substantially bolstered the restfulness of her sleep.Not eliminated the need for it, but let an hour count for three.Otherwise, the strain of wielding magic as she had done these last few years would have long since put her into a coma.
So it was that Harwick woke her in the dark of the night from a dream of the great tree at the heart of the City, which births the birds of its Citizens and promises the gift of resurrection to those who desire it.Returning her mind to the present moment—to this backward, far-flung kingdom, the drama of its court and its haunting, the Mortal Church and Siwan—felt like wading into the mire of the Windmarsh.
‘I’ve been out here too long,’ she confessed to Frog, who perched beside her on the log, flexing his regenerating leg and preening the new tail feathers that had grown to replace those Torin had ripped away.He blinked his bulbous yellow eyes at her and went back to his work.
She had no idea how Arno’s other agents did it.Some spent most of their lives away from the City, pursuing research or advancing the City’s goals in the wider world, returning only for a few weeks out of every year.It was a bug that bit certain people, the way she had been bitten by her obsession with conjuring the First Folk.Four years was too long away from everything she loved.A temporary sacrifice in the hopes of proving herself, of earning the respect she needed—that herideasneeded—but painful, nonetheless.Uncovering the occasional secret, or discovering a few new curiosities, or doing something good and necessary, as she had in Ulun and as she would here in Parwys, could salve the homesickness for a while.But like an old broken bone badly set, it began to ache again.
It will all be worth it, she told herself, as she placed another branch on the dwindling fire, stirring up a dance of sparks and the percussion of crackling flames.It wasn’t as though anyone was waiting for her at home, anyway.What she missed was the familiar simplicity of the City, with none of these questions of life and death, obligation and guilt and power.She was tired.That was all.Ready for the world to make easy sense again.
‘We found what we needed to, at last,’ she murmured to Frog, stroking the short feathers on the back of his head.He made a pleased little wheezing, whimpering sound.‘When the haunting is dealt with, we’ll bring Siwan to the City, and life will become what it was always supposed to be.’
There was a shuffling from Llewyn’s bedroll.He rose, crossed to the fire, and squatted on the other side of its flames from her.He warmed his hands against the autumn chill and stared.
‘Surely even in the backward corners of the world, people understand that it’s rude to listen in on others’ conversations?’Fola said.
His needling gaze drifted to Frog, then back to her.His brow crinkled in confusion.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said.‘My upbringing involved a great deal of eavesdropping and skulking about.’
‘Habits you’ve found hard to break?’
He didn’t find that funny, if his stolid expression was any clue.He stirred the flames, repositioning the branch she had added.
‘Was your bedroll not warm enough?’she asked, growing annoyed.‘You might have moved it a bit closer to the fire.’
Llewyn tossed his stir-stick into the flames.‘I find it hard to sleep in the forest.’
Fola opened her mouth, a half-considered bit of snark halfway free, then closed it.He was working his way up to something.What that might be, she could not guess, but she wanted Llewyn on her side.Poking and prying at his hurts would only antagonise him.
So she remained silent, resisting the urge to prod with even a simple, ‘Why is that?’The waiting dragged on in silence but for the breath of sleeping bodies around them, the crackle of the flames, the night calls of woodland birds and beasts, and the rustling of leaves in the chill bite of the autumn wind.
‘I saved her in a place like this,’ Llewyn said at last.‘A clearing in the forest.Not a cairn, though.’He pointed towards the little pile of stones with his ghostwood blade.‘A flat stone, like an altar.’
He was talking about Siwan.Fola kept her excitement from showing.She had to be careful, now, or she would spook him, and this opportunity would be lost.
‘Saved her from what?’Fola asked.
‘Her own father,’ Llewyn answered.‘In your city, do parents prove willing to sacrifice their children?Seeing them not as people, but as tools, or currency to be spent?’
‘We don’t have currency, for one thing.’Fola had hoped for a wry chuckle, but he answered only with the same penetrating stare.‘From what I’ve seen of your world, a great deal of cruelty is born from resentment.Hate is born of competition, or unwanted obligation.Children, it seems, might be the latter, to some.Poor folk without enough to feed themselves suddenly stretching every loaf of bread that much further, and so on.In the City, the only children born are wanted.Loved.Not only by their parents, but by the whole community, because we always have enough for all.’
Except, she thought but did not say, enough thaumacite, and enough time and attention to pursue every avenue of research as thoroughly as it deserved.Nor, apparently, enough friendship to extend to those whose obsessions and ideas made them strange.An irrelevancy to the question, but truths which caught in her chest whenever she sang the City’s praises.
