‘I don’t understand it,’ Siwan said when she had situated herself comfortably in the tub.‘All this talk about the First Folk, and how I fit into it, I mean.But that doesn’t mean I’m saying no.I need time to think about it, and if I decide to go with you, I’ll need time to explain it all to Llewyn.’
Fola felt a swell of gratitude towards the girl, so sudden and profound that she found it difficult to form words.No one—not even Arno, the nearest thing she had to an ally on the research board—had been so ready to actually consider her ideas instead of dismissing them as little more than wild fantasies and dreams.
‘I…’ Fola started working her way towards ‘thank you’, which felt wholly insufficient to convey the swirl of emotion that had suddenly attacked her, when she was interrupted by a heavy knock at the door.
She cinched the towel tighter.‘Must be a tailor right around the corner,’ she muttered, and opened the door a crack.Rather than Harwick or Spil with a bundle of new clothes, she found Colm, his own towel wrapped around his waist, droplets of bathwater still clinging to the curled hairs of his chest and tracing the lines of his fresh scars.
She yelped, startling Frog awake.
‘Sorry,’ Colm said.‘Not my intention to startle you.Just thought…’ He rubbed at the bandaged stump of his left upper arm.Almost bashfully, if it were possible to imagine him feeling such a way.‘Well, the other lads are out, and should be out a while longer.Not sure when we’ll get another opportunity as good as this.Anyway …’ A boyish, half-ashamed, half-excited smile crossed his face.‘I’m still up if you are, is what I’m saying.’
‘You’re still injured,’ Fola protested, her eyes lingering on that stump.He’d kept it out of the bathwater, which was good.His other injuries had already closed on their own.Warborn blood… a marvel.Her brief examination of his wounds became an examination of his body, of the slopes of muscle and fat, the angles of his abdominal ligaments like the wings of an inviting arrow.It was becoming increasingly difficult to think of good reasonsnotto accept his invitation.‘And we’ve just bathed, Colm.’
At that, he shrugged, his upper shoulders like mountains shuddering and sending ripples through the foothills.It was too much.Fola shot Siwan a quick glance.The girl had hunkered down in the water up to her chin.She grinned back at Fola and waggled her eyebrows.Frog, having adjusted his perch and settled back into his sleepy huddle, glared at her, still upset at her for yelping.
‘Bleed it,’ she muttered, and grabbed one of his good arms.They scampered across the hall like two teenagers on their first, secret tryst—Fola’s had been in the Prism Garden, a labyrinth of odd geometric sculptures of twisted glass.She and Sima, the boy who’d been awkwardly courting her for months—he’d carried books for her and brought her flowers from all over the City despite her total disinterest in them—had found a secluded alcove deep in the labyrinth.Not the best choice.Being surrounded by their contorted reflections while they fumbled around had added a layer of absurdity to what was already a novel experience.
These environs were far more plain.The bed was too small, and care for Colm’s wounds demanded a slower, gentler pace.Still, those dainty hands on the ends of his lower arms proved as skilled and knowing as she’d imagined them.And there was something to be said for having such a powerful body beneath hers, gazing up in pleasure and wonder, his eyes tracing her curves and the silver lines of the enchantments tattooed onto her skin.Until the height, when the broad, leathery hand of his upper arm pressed flat against her back, holding her on to him as need overcame the aesthetics of the act in a pulsing, desperate rhythm that built and built until, in a shuddering exhalation, it was over.
She lay beside him, afterwards, slick with sweat, listening to the drumbeat of his heart fade from frantic passion to slow, soothing calm.
‘We put that off too long,’ he murmured, and she heard him as much through the rumble of his ribs as the sound of his voice.She murmured agreement, and dozed a while.There was much to do, and danger still on their heels, but it was worth basking in an island of calm while she could.
The Aleph
YC 1189
It is commonly theorised that thaumaturgy functions by making meaning, naming the nameless, and binding it to a purpose and function.
Curious, then, that the frenzy of activity before the First Folk’s fading can be, in many ways, understood as a war against meaninglessness.
Librarian Quilthis Aer,On Magic,YC592
Thrice before, Llewyn had been to the city of Glascoed.The second and third times had been as a member of the Silver Lake Troupe, in the first years after Nyth Fran.At midsummer, folk from as far as Caer Palu came to dance beneath pines strung with tinsel, to drink summer mead from Miggenbrot and to hear the old songs and watch troupers play the old stories.Tales of Abal the Protector and the Beast-King of Galca, of course—though earlier versions, not Damon’s reinterpretation.But also of folk heroes like Jak the Leaper, who on legs jointed like a hare’s could cross the river Afoneang at a bound.Or of Teri Mountainsdaughter, who it was said emerged from her crystal palace beneath the earth once a season to visit her charms and pleasures upon a lucky fool—a woodsman in spring, a shepherd in summer, a farmhand in autumn and a miner in winter.
Some folk tales struck too close to home, for Llewyn, particularly those told around low campfires when the midsummer sun had fallen.Tales of changeling children returned from the forest, something of their souls twisted by the fae.
The death of Harlow had changed things.Ifan, racked by grief, had neglected his father’s usual donations, and the foreboding atmosphere bred by the nascent haunting had dulled the common folk’s appetite for entertainments.More, after Siwan’s grip on the raven fiend had first faltered in Caer Bren, Llewyn and Afanan had agreed to leave the Greenwood as far behind as possible, for fear of the Grey Lady picking up their trail.
And now they had returned, having proven that flight from the forest had offered no protection from the powers that dogged Siwan’s heels.
Eyes peered from windows and alleys that morning as they travelled towards the castle.They put an itch under Llewyn’s skin and a chill beyond the misty air of early autumn in his bones.Old anxieties coupled with new fears that cast his mind back to older, darker memories.
Siwan nudged him with her elbow.‘You asked, and now you’re not even listening.’
They occupied the rear of their party’s little procession up the hill, towards the inner palisade wall and the shut, iron-bound gate to Castle Glascoed.Damon, Harwick and Spil walked just ahead of them, arguing back and forth about what their next steps ought to be.From the sound of things, Spil wanted to return to Parwys as soon as possible in the hope of tracking down Ayden, Tula and the others, including Afanan.Llewyn had resigned himself to the idea of Afanan’s death, but Spil refused to accept it.He had known her the longest of all of them.Harwick said little, while Damon seemed determined to stay with Siwan.Llewyn regretted dividing their loyalties in this way.With Afanan’s death and the troupe’s shattering, they had lost the only home they had known.
Just beyond them was the four-armed mercenary—three-and-a-half-armed, now—who served as Fola’s bodyguard and, apparently, lover.The stump of his amputated arm hung in a sling, though he seemed little troubled by the loss.As dangerous a mortal as Llewyn had ever known.Fola led the column, plodding ahead with a new staff of smoothed oak she’d bought from the innkeeper.Her strange little bird perched atop it, bobbing up and down with its rise and fall.
She looked no more than an ordinary traveller in the simple blouse, skirt and riding cloak Spil had picked out for her.Notable only for her odd company and a complexion a few shades darker than was usual in the kingdom.Folk who would stop and stare at Llewyn for the sharpness of his cheekbones would let Fola pass with only a brief acknowledgment.She seemed, to even a discerning eye, alert and clever but not unkindly.Certainly no danger.And Siwan, despite his best efforts to train her in caution, had fallen for the glamour.
‘I don’t doubt her city holds the wonders that she claims,’ he said.‘But she is waving them in your face as a distraction, to keep you from questioning her intentions.’
‘I’ll admit I don’t understand that part of it.’Siwan crossed her arms and kicked at a loose cobble.‘Neither do you, though.If Fola’s magic is like a bonfire, Afanan’s was a candle, and yours back when… well, before Nyth Fran, was less than that, from what you’ve told me.She could explain everything she plans to do and it would still sound like nonsense to us.’
‘Then how can you trust her?’Llewyn pressed.‘You can’t begin to understand her.’
‘I hardly feel I understand you, sometimes,’ Siwan snapped.‘Also, it’s very funny to hear you speak of “trust”.I know you suspect a dagger behind every back and a drop of poison in every cup, and I know you’ve your reasons, but not everyone is out to catch or kill me, Llewyn.’
