Chapter 16
late that night, lowri finds Eli in the topmost room of the house, his father’s study.
In the light of a lone lamp, Eli is digging through the drawers of a desk, a heap of old correspondence, books and newspaper clippings strewn all around him.
Lowri watches from the doorway as Eli frowns, as he casts aside a letter before slumping back in the desk chair.
‘It’s hopeless, Lor,’ he says. ‘I’d need a year to sift through all this. But if my father was here, if we had only left for Fallow a little earlier—’
‘Don’t think like that,’ Lowri interrupts softly. ‘It’ll drive you mad. We can’t change the past.’
Eli looks up at the ceiling, then back at the desk, as though gathering himself together. ‘I feel like I’m chasing a ghost. I’m mourning someone I never got the chance to meet.’
‘You can still mourn,’ Lowri says, moving further into the room. She picks up a paperweight, a snow globe: a depiction of the city of Fallow encased within. ‘Even if you can’t get a firm grasp of who he was, you can still grieve the loss of him.’
Eli flashes her a small, grateful smile. ‘You know you are actually my favourite cousin?’
‘Don’t let Caden hear you say that,’ she says, grinning.
‘Or Ethlet.’
Lowri raises her eyebrows. ‘Yes. Skies. Another cousin.’ She shakes the snow globe and watches as the pale, glittering flakes whirl around crooked little houses. ‘You may not have found your father as you hoped, but you’ve found her.’
‘That’s true,’ he says after a moment. ‘Very true. It’s not nothing.’
‘And maybe the Society will give you more of a sense of him. Maybe he’ll seem like less of a ghost.’
Lowri shakes out the umbrella, craning her neck to stare up at the Society headquarters.
Set just off centre and not quite in the heart of Fallow, it’s tall and round in the middle, with two storeys shooting out on either side and a sense of grandeur about it.
The walls are pale stone, the windows framed in black and just beyond the glass she spies silhouettes shifting.
They ascend the steps to the glossy black double front doors, stepping into a monochrome hallway of chequered flagstones.
A huge grey chandelier dominates the ceiling, casting floating shadows over the white walls.
Lowri finds her vision still dips and sways at times, her veins still faintly ink-ridden.
And when she’s tried a spell, a whispered witch word, shadow wreaths her fingertips like smoke, the spell having less potency, less impact than usual.
She is drinking less and less of the Fallow Fog brews, not wanting to tip over and consume too much shadow.
It’s now a waiting game, hoping her light magic will heal and expand to fill her veins once more.
Ethlet steps forward to greet a woman with spiked auburn hair wearing a grey checked skirt suit and lurid yellow heels.
Lowri places her umbrella in a stand by the door as Eli’s gaze sharpens, lured to the painted portraits on the walls.
Ethlet shakes the woman’s hand, and she disappears through a door at the back.
‘Isaiah’s portrait is upstairs,’ Ethlet says, following Eli’s gaze. ‘I’ll show you before we’re announced.’
The woman with auburn hair walks back in, gesturing to the staircase. ‘They’re ready for you, the full complement after your message sparrow arrived … We’re all very intrigued.’
‘Message sparrow?’ Lowri asks Ethlet quietly.
‘We attach a message to the leg of a sparrow, feed it a little fog and away it flies,’ she explains as they walk up the staircase.
‘Sometimes they get distracted by crumbs, but they’re usually mostly reliable.
We started using them in the war, when the Rexilium brothers’ forces were bearing down on Fallow and no one could leave.
But a small sparrow? Very nippy. The brothers didn’t bother detaining them. ’
Eli stalks quietly ahead as they reach the top of the staircase, scanning every portrait until, finally, they’re left in an antechamber before a huge set of doors. Beyond, they can hear the murmur of voices, occasionally peppered with a bark of laughter.
‘This one,’ Ethlet says, indicating a portrait on the left wall.
Eli moves to stand next to her, eyes hungry as they rake over the painting of his father.
Lowri’s heart squeezes, watching him. She’s never thought much about who her father might be, but for Eli it’s a question left unanswered.
A man who appeared to be a hero, a scholar or a coward, depending on who spoke of him.
And now, so close to his life in this place, Lowri can feel Eli’s need for answers.
‘He has your eyes. Or, rather, you have his eyes.’
‘Do you think so?’ he asks quickly.
‘The shape.’ She nods, throat suddenly thick. ‘Hard to tell on the colour, with it being greyscale.’
‘But there’s a definite likeness,’ Ethlet adds. ‘You walk like him too. And he was quiet like you, always thinking things through, always following many pathways before speaking his mind. A strategist. Prone to brooding if left too long to his own devices.’
Eli looks at her and blinks. ‘Thank you. That’s – I needed to hear that.’
Just then, the doors are thrown open, voices and warmth spilling out. ‘Ah, they’re ready for us.’
Ethlet takes the lead, and when Lowri and Eli stride in, side by side, they are met with a vast, round hall.
A chandelier winks overhead with a thousand colours captured in prisms. They create darting sparkles of light that dance over the white-washed walls, another small use of light magic in a grey world.
And before them is an array of round tables.
Seated at them are people of all ages, dressed in black and grey: old men with grey, spiked beards, young people with thick spectacles and obvious curiosity, middle-aged people with keen eyes and the most remarkable footwear, and all of them with tiny glass bells set before them.
Silence falls like a blanket over the gathering of what must be around a hundred people, and Ethlet clears her throat, apparently suddenly nervous.
‘Esteemed members of the Society of Fallow, I present Elijah Tresillian – son of the recently deceased Isaiah Kellinick – and his cousin Lowri Tresillian. They have recently crossed over … from another world.’
There’s a murmuring and the gentle tinkling of several of the glass bells.
They wink prettily, the light from the prisms above glittering over them, creating a strange, hypnotic kaleidoscope of colour.
After the last few days of grey, Lowri finds it quite dazzling and wonders if this display of small light magic is rather like a display of wealth in this world.
She notices a person close to her, a woman with short-bobbed hair, who holds her glass bell aloft, ringing it gently.
Ethlet holds up both hands. ‘There will soon be time for questions, but first we put forward a request. Lowri and Eli are from the world that the Rexilium brothers fled to. They bring news that the brothers have set themselves up as rulers and have now turned their sights on the rest of their world. War is possibly inevitable, and Isaiah’s son would like to take any knowledge back that he can use to arm his allies against their schemes.
Will a historian on the Shadow War take the time to supply them with information? ’
The tinkling of the bells ceases as they all look to each other. Then one man rises, a man with a spiked beard and a long, pointy chin, who is wearing a waistcoat. ‘I will be your historian. Then they must submit to the Society’s questions.’
‘Of course,’ Eli says, inclining his head. ‘Many thanks for assisting us. We will answer what we can.’
The historian invites the three of them to sit at his table as drinks are brought in and a series of debates begins, speakers standing to talk, all punctuated by the ringing of the bells as the members take their turn to air their knowledge or opinion.
In deference, it seems, to the speaker, no one talks in private conversations, instead ringing their glass bells in agreement or to indicate they would like to address the gathering.
A hot drink is placed before Lowri, pale grey with an unfurling flower in the centre of the cup.
She sips it and tastes springtime, the delicate floral notes perfuming the air around them.
She wonders what colour it would have been before the Shadow War leached it of light.
Eli raises his eyebrows and she notes how he drums his fingers on the table.
He’s restless, she realises. The matters being discussed around them are not what he has come all this way to hear about.
As a young woman stands to give a report on the state of the fog above her hometown, Holloway, some distance north of the city of Fallow, Lowri files away the information that this fog has spread over every settlement, it seems. Anywhere that magic has permeated the world, a fog hangs above.
The historian looks at them as the young woman finishes her report and the meeting seems to adjourn, with conversations breaking out on individual tables.
More drinks are brought in on trays and, finally, the historian can speak.
‘I’m Hellius, keeper of the history of the Shadow War,’ he says, smiling at Eli. ‘I was a good friend of your father. My condolences.’
‘Thank you,’ Eli says.
‘You’re a witch?’ Hellius asks, turning to Lowri. ‘Ethlet says you are like Eli’s mother. Isaiah spoke of her.’
‘She was my aunt,’ Lowri replies, ‘although I never knew her. But, yes, I’m a witch, rather than human.’
‘Interesting,’ Hellius murmurs, eyes boring into hers. ‘And your coven is against the Rexilium brothers?’
‘Well …’ Lowri begins. ‘It doesn’t quite work like that in our world. Covens stay out of politics; they do not question the ruling council, which is what the Rexilium brothers call themselves in our world.’
‘Here, they called themselves the Imperium,’ Hellius says softly.