‘Are you well enough to speak?’Torin asked.
Orn nodded slowly.Brave of him, when he was newly returned from the edge of death.As a Knight of Stillness, perseverance was one of Orn’s virtues.
‘We would hear what you saw the night you were wounded,’ Torin said.‘We know who dealt the blow, but not why.’
‘A… girl…’ he rasped.‘Sorceress was watching… her.’He winced, gently pressed his wounded side, swallowed against agony.‘The brute… surprised me.’
It would have been kinder to let the lad rest, to ask these questions after giving him time to recover.Yet compassion, too, could become vicious.The sorceress had fled Castle Parwys.Each day she moved further beyond their reach.
‘What girl?’Torin pressed.
‘Silver Lake Troupe… singer… dark hair.’
‘A performer in the festival?’
Orn nodded.‘Odd look to her … the girl.’He took a slow breath to steady himself.‘Sharp features… very thin.’
‘This girl,’ Torin said, hearing the quaver of anticipation in his own voice.What lesser men took from brothels and drink, Torin took from this—the discovery of hidden truths, the connections made between disparate information.‘Did you see the texture of her skin?Was it rough?Almost like the bark of a tree?’
Orn frowned.‘She wore … a mask.Shrouded head to toe.Couldn’t … see …’ He paused.‘Her hands, though … on the strings… Yes.Rough… almost like scales.’
‘And the sorceress was watching this girl?For more reason than her performance?You are sure of that?’
Again, that weak, exhausted nod.Torin felt a needle of guilt.He ought to let the lad rest.He had enough to go back to the woman in the dungeons with real questions.The sort that needled and pried at a subject’s defences as effectively as a blade.
‘You’ve done well.’He squeezed Orn’s hand.‘I promise you, Sir Orn, we will find these people and bring them to justice.’
A weak smile crossed Orn’s face.Torin stood, but Orn caught his wrist.‘There is… something else,’ he said.‘A man… One of the performers.He came out to talk… to the sorceress… No friend of hers, it seemed… but his skin…’ A slow, considered nod.‘His skin was like bark… Torin…’
That swell of pleasure, of joy in success, of seizing disparate fragments of the truth and piecing them together into a meaningful mosaic—incomplete, perhaps, but enough to move towards understanding—was incomparable.
The Huntress had spoken of service to a lady.And now, Orn told of the sorceress Fola dealing with fae creatures, just before horror had seized the night.It was not so difficult a connection to draw.
Torin patted the back of Orn’s hand and eased it back down to the bed.‘There is great evil in this kingdom, Orn,’ he said.‘And thanks to you, we are near to finding its root.’
* * *
‘This sounds like madness, to me,’ Queen Medrith fumed, lurking behind Prince Owyn’s seat in his solar.The fire crackled behind her and filled the room with steady warmth.Light flickered in the First Folk sculpture of fluted crystal on the mantel.The counts of Afondir, Forgard and Cilbran stood around the table.Only Afondir had shown any reaction to Torin’s conclusion—a mild surprise, followed by a flat mask of stoicism that badly disguised his satisfaction.
‘You spoke to the sorceress yourself, Your Highness,’ Torin said.‘She sought out the Count of Glascoed, who had fled the castle in the early hours that very morning.’
‘He did not flee,’ Owyn said.‘He asked my permission to leave.’
Torin inclined his head, accepting the correction, though it was spurious.‘The point remains, Glascoed departed against the grain of your traditions.He ought to have remained as his fellow counts have done, a symbol of the kingdom’s strength, stability and fidelity to the royal successor.An unusual act, worthy of some scrutiny.’
The queen harrumphed.‘But to suggest he might be in league with fae folk is absurd.’
‘Perhaps not in league,’ Torin said.‘At least, not knowingly.The fae have all manner of inscrutable powers that defy mortal art and knowledge.They are older than us.As old as the First Folk, some suggest, and wild.Their magic is as the wind and the waves.Their domains trace borders that twist and braid through our world.Their agendas and capabilities defy comprehension, let alone explanation, Your Majesty.It is not beyond belief that some faction had reason to place a geas on the Count of Glascoed to some unknown end.Nor is it unreasonable to suspect that their doing so has some relation to the haunting that grips your kingdom.
‘But consider this—the very night the haunting assaulted your kingdom in force, the sorceress Fola went to meet a troupe of fae folk on the festival grounds, the epicentre of that horror.A meeting that occurred moments before wraiths filled the sky.A meeting which Sir Orn witnessed, and for that, Fola’s mercenary nearly killed him.By dawn, while Parwys still reeled from the horrors of the night, the Count of Glascoed had left the castle, against all tradition and propriety.The next day, Parwys was attacked by this fae woman and her rimewolf, bringing chaos that covered the escape of the sorceress Fola.’
‘If Fola and Ifan are in league, why did she not know he had returned to Glascoed?’Medrith argued.
Torin shook his head sadly.‘The bonds between wicked hearts are weak, Your Majesty.’He resisted an urge to look at Afondir as he said this.‘Perhaps the Count of Glascoed was startled by the horrors of the night and fled without a word to her.Perhaps Sir Orn’s presence at the festival grounds disrupted their plans, and Fola sought an audience with the count to reformulate their strategy, while unbeknown to her, he decided to take initiative on his own.I cannot say with any certainty, but it is clear enough that the two are—or at least, were—in league.After all, in the aftermath of her meeting with the fae folk and the horrors at the festival grounds, Fola did not seek an audience with either you, Your Majesty, or you, Your Highness, but with the Count of Glascoed.More, the proximity of Fola’s meeting with the fae folk to the haunting’s assault suggests that the two are connected in some way.By her own admission, she is a sorceress who meddles in the powers of undeath.Perhaps she sought to wrest control of the haunting for her own dark purposes and failed.Such meddling often has terrible, unintended consequences.’
‘And what fae agenda do you suppose they serve?’the Count of Cilbran asked.His gauntlets creaked as he pressed his knuckles to the tabletop, still faintly scarred by burns left when Torin had exorcised the sorceress’s accursed staff.‘Fae beasts are well known in Cilbran.The rimewolves are of that kind, but not so intelligent.’
‘I cannot say,’ Torin answered.And, in truth, he little cared.One did not need to understand evil to destroy it.He had been a step behind Fola since arriving in Parwys, but now had the opportunity to corner her in Glascoed with an army at his back.‘The prisoner has not been forthcoming,’ he went on.‘Perhaps all this is merely a war between factions of the fae, bleeding over into your realm.One faction of the frozen mountains, in league with the rimewolves.Another of the forest, twisting the Count of Glascoed and undead spirits to dark purposes.But we need not understand the why of it to know what we must do.’
