Chapter 4
Leita didn’t leave Fallorian as she’d originally planned.
Instead, she accompanied Allarion, Molly, and Bellarand east, following first the Lune River and then the shoreline of Dyfan Bay.
After a few days of pleasant travel, the three caught a barge that would bear them across the strait that separated the faelands from the Spearhead, a rugged peninsula claimed by the orcs.
Leita watched them go with no small amount of envy.
Much of her life had been spent in the misty hills of the Spearhead.
Barely populated, by orcs or otherwise, she and Thalia had made something of a life for themselves there amongst the cypresses and sea otters.
Her burgeoning magic had taken to the wildness of the land, and even now, Leita thought she could hear the peninsula calling her home.
If only the faelands had greeted her with half so much goodwill. Perhaps then she might not be so quick to flee Fallorian.
Her mood was as damp and dreary as the weather. Allarion’s barge soon disappeared into the soupy haze, even the boat’s lantern and the hulking figures of the orcish oarsmen swallowed by the grayness.
On a clear day, the Spearhead was easy to spot from the shoreline, but Leita supposed it was fitting she couldn’t see it now.
It might be too tempting to swim for it if I could see it, she mused.
We still could, Thalia replied. We know it’s there, even if it’s hidden.
Leita sighed, the cool, wet air gathering on her upper lip. Instead of giving into temptation, she remounted Thalia.
You know what a conniption Tamerlan would have if we did.
He’d have to find us first.
She chuckled at that as Thalia turned northeast. Somehow, of anyone, I think he would.
That city creature? He wouldn’t last a night in the wilderness.
He would, if only out of spite.
Well, then, we’d best get ourselves lost.
Leita heartily agreed, content to let Thalia choose their way as they themselves disappeared into the dense forests of the faelands.
Without company, Leita and Thalia didn’t bother with niceties like bedrolls or campfires.
Spring was a time of abundance, and they wanted for nothing, perfectly happy to bed down in moss and fill their bellies with berries, nuts, plums, and wild garlic.
The water flowing in all the streams and creeks sprang from the northern Griegen Mountains, spilling eventually into the Lune River cold and crystalline with a hint of sweetness on the tongue.
She’d been warned that there were few villages or estates in the hinterlands, so close to the border with orcish territories. That suited Leita just fine, determined as she was to commune not with fae but magic.
For long hours each morning, Leita chose a quiet spot to sit and meditate.
Ladies Eilean and Idrisil had taught her various methods for communicating with the faelands and its magic; some they remembered from texts, others they thought had been used by other royal fae, and still others, Leita was sure, they’d made up entirely.
She was desperate enough to try anything, though.
As Thalia amused herself hunting for truffles or rabbits, Leita made herself sit still and…
Listen, she supposed, but the faelands wasn’t saying much.
The magic of the forests and foothills and streams wasn’t too different from what she was used to before her reign.
The Lune River was loud and arrogant, assured of its path.
The mountains were somber and quiet, watchful over the lands below.
The forests teemed with flora and fauna, a chaotic symphony of life and rebirth, death and decay.
It was a different weft from that of Fallorian’s in the weave of magic that made up the faelands.
The city had a sentience in its stalwart position overlooking the sea.
It felt every being inside it, knew every stone that made up its structures.
The capital in many ways had a similar feel to it as the fae did.
Made by the fae over millennia with their own hands and magic, it made a sort of sense that Fallorian had become, in essence, one large fae sentience.
The faelands’ wilderness had its own kind of personality, a kind Leita was more familiar with. And hoped to get along with better.
Yet, morning after morning, she found the forest wary and the mountains apathetic. The river, unafraid as it was of anything, was curious at least, but nothing of the faelands welcomed her.
Whereas Fallorian had been brutalized by Amaranthe, it seemed the wilderness had been entirely forgotten. Abandoned and unused to the touch of a Queen, it regarded her as suspiciously as the deer and the foxes and the badgers.
That could just be me, Thalia laughed, a little evilly.
Letting loose a gusty sigh, Leita fell back onto the ground, arms and legs spreading across the soft carpet of grass and moss.
You’re certainly not helping, Leita grumbled.
She couldn’t help her crankiness. How long was this going to take?
She could be patient if she tried and certainly meant the faelands no harm.
This reticence would be more bearable if she saw even a modicum of improvement, but no, every day, the magic turned away.
“Does the faelands even really need a Queen at this rate?” she couldn’t help wondering.
Rather than answering, Thalia clopped over to stare down seriously at Leita, her teasing gone. Tapping Leita’s chest with her wicked horn, the mare told her gravely, Rabbits that decide they no longer need to burrow are easy prey. The fae have always had a Queen—without one, the magic corrodes.
“I know all that,” she said. “But it feels like…the magic doesn’t want a Queen.” She flexed her fingers in and out of fists, not quite sure how else to explain it. As a unicorn, Thalia could somewhat understand what she meant.
Fae and unicorns retained a connection to magic in ways no other race or creature did. Yes, the dragons and mantii had their shifting, the orcs their strength, and the sirens and harpies their songs, but they didn’t control and use magic in the way the fae did.
For fae, magic was as necessary and intrinsic as blood and breath.
It could even sustain them in lieu of both—detrimental as that was.
Although Leita campaigned to wean the fae from their subsistence on magic and return them to beating hearts and full stomachs, that didn’t mean magic wouldn’t still be part of them.
With such a relationship to magic, fae and unicorns formed circuits, bonds that channeled magic in healthy, helpful ways. Disrupting that circuit had dire consequences.
Every fae was taught that. It was why Leita had assumed, upon her aunt’s death, the magic would just sort of…cleave to her immediately. She’d never have thought it would take such wooing, or that it could even possibly reject her.
“I must be missing something,” Leita said, not for the first time.
It was only a suspicion, but she couldn’t help thinking there was simply one special thing—a ritual, a rite, a spell even—that would solve this. Whatever it was, this special thing was a secret passed from Queen to Queen. Amaranthe should have imparted it to her heir.
That might’ve been too good to be true, but Leita supposed it’d be fitting to find out she’d been overthinking all of it.
I think the path you’ve chosen is a difficult one that few can walk.
“You know I hate it when you talk in analogies.”
I do know, but you’re such a stubborn foal, how else would you learn? And that was a metaphor, not an analogy.
With a mighty harrumph, Leita rolled over onto her stomach. The grassy bed beneath her released fragrant notes, and she was tempted to lay there for a fortnight.
“I don’t suppose you could talk to it.”
I already have. It says it doesn’t like you.
Leita dropped her face into the grass. You’re awful, she huffed as Thalia brayed with laughter.
As they neared the eastern edge of the faelands, even Leita could tell something was strange. The magic here hardly noticed her, its attention trained at the border.
Since the fae had settled on the continent, they’d demarcated their lands with a strong border.
It kept invaders out and fae in, insulating the magic in a closed circuit.
An outsider would struggle to cross over it, if at all; meanwhile, a fae would struggle to leave it behind.
Too far, and their connection to the faelands would snap. All of which Leita knew well.
That was the case when the border was strong, however.
One of the most important reasons for Leita to bond with the magic and begin her reign in full was to strengthen the weakened border. Magic seeped out, and there was a real danger that anything could find its way in.
The orcs they traded with were told they had to enter at certain points because that was where the border was naturally more open to passage. In reality, a strong enough bombardment could very well punch through the faelands’ main defenses.
This weakness was, therefore, the secret held in the strictest confidence within her small court. None could know, not even the fae.
So when Leita cast her sense and magic out, it wasn’t a total surprise to feel that something pressed at the already weakened border. The tendrils and threads of magic here frayed, even…melted.
The further they went, the more animals they came across. The air began to smell of smoke and crackle with latent danger.
She didn’t need Thalia to tell her, The herds say it’s a wildfire. A bad one.
How long has it burned?
Days now, and the rains haven’t come.
Leita swallowed, her throat stinging from smoke.
Wildfires happened; many trees needed the heat for their lifecycle, but she couldn’t turn away from the sight of frightened rabbits and deer and badgers fleeing, their fur singed and their eyes terrified.
How many were trapped in their burrows or dens, protecting young or already cut off from escape?
What if the wind changed and drove the fire north, toward the only village near this part of the border?
Let’s go, she urged Thalia.
And to the faelands she begged, Please, let me help you.
Attalus considered he might be dying. All right, he more than considered it—he knew it. If the gorgoroi couldn’t follow a lumbering red dragon through a clear sky, then he’d left plenty of blood across the southern continent for them.
He might have fooled them for a little while, given that his trail began over the sea, but any good hunter would note the sharks drawn by the diluted blood. Attalus couldn’t quite tell how fast he was bleeding, only that there were certainly envenomated globules littering his flight north.
He’d been flying for days—how many, he couldn’t say. A friendly wind bore him most of the way, keeping him aloft far longer than his wings could’ve managed without. Still, even Attalus, in the depths of a fever and flirting with delirium, could tell he was flagging.
Perhaps it was the treetops tickling his dangling paws.
Was this the way Theron and Briseis had come? Would he find them if he kept going?
But Attalus didn’t want to lead the gorgoroi to them. Better to stay away. That’s why they hadn’t brought him along in the first place, wasn’t it—better to leave him behind.
Attalus chuffed in annoyance, forgetting for a moment to flap. His tired wings ached and screamed in protest, and he just managed to keep himself from crashing into the trees.
He couldn’t say why exactly, but for long moments, he hovered there in the air, as though it wouldn’t allow him to pass.
Perhaps the wind had finally abandoned him; perhaps he had even less strength remaining than he thought.
Whatever it was, the air around him sparked with it, heavy in his wheezing nostrils.
Attalus finally managed to move again. He’d say he slipped through more than anything, as though gliding through water, and the air temperature and pressure lowered when he surged past.
He’d indeed lost the wind, and although he fought to stay airborne, even he knew he was losing the battle.
At least he’d given Araxos and Erastus hell. At least Attalus hadn’t died there, in the very spot his mother’s throat had been ripped out.
Let him die here, amongst this strange forest, in peace.
He would go back to the earth, his flesh food for maggots and worms, his bones a shelter for moles and foxes.
Let birds and rabbits line their nests with his shed scales.
The forest creatures would know at least that Attalus Principes didn’t die in vain.
The hazy tang of smoke interrupted his thoughts, and he tried to focus his gaze ahead.
He didn’t imagine the great plume of smoke rising from the forest. A beacon, calling him home.
With the last of his might, Attalus rode the air to the crackling flames. He felt their heat in the warming air, and it sucked him closer. Flames licked up trees and jumped across creeks. The nearer he came, the more he saw this was more than a forest wildfire, it was an inferno.
Behind the wall of flames lay leagues of burn scar, ash matting and choking the ground. It invaded Attalus’s senses, clogging his nostrils and stinging his eyes.
This was just what he needed.
Perhaps there was hope for him yet.
Banking to the right, he found a particularly vicious area of fire.
The heat crackled along his scales, and Attalus welcomed the scalding warmth.
He crashed more than landed, the ash pillowing his fall.
He groaned as his beleaguered wings collapsed around him, shaking with exhaustion.
He pushed himself onto wobbly legs, staggering into the flames.
Fire scorched up his neck as he reached down to the festering bite wound in his side. Getting hold of the broken fang, he screamed in agony as he slid it free of his flesh. Blood, thinned by the venom, gushed onto the ash in a putrid mixture.
Attalus gathered glowing coals, pushing them up to the flames. He made himself a bed of fire and coal and lay down upon it, his open wound sizzling as the wildfire cauterized the flesh.
The pain was finally too much. As trees aflame crashed around him, Attalus faded into sweet unconsciousness, giving himself over to smoke and ash.