Chapter 4
Nyth Fran
Many believe that fae and fiends predate the First Folk.
Others identify them with such beings as the Servants, semi-sapients created to serve a specific purpose, now behaving in bizarre fashion to follow orders that lack coherence without their original context.
What is certain is that they are as inscrutable as they are intelligent.
A haunting grows from a tangle of twisted roots.
The deepest reach into layers of a forgotten past, long overwritten by more useful stories, believed myth by all but those whose histories drip with pain and rage as they pass from elder’s mouth to child’s ear.
The shallowest reach into fresher soil, drawing from injustices still in living, mortal memory.
Two pains—old and new—that feed one into the other until the tree sprouts and horror reigns.
In Parwys, that shallow root found anchor in the aftermath of plague, in the Greenwood, in the half-forgotten village of Nyth Fran.
* * *
the Grey Lady whispered in Llewyn’s mind.
He rode towards Nyth Fran, a quiet place sheltered in the northern reaches of the Greenwood, surrounded by craggy wooded hills and cleared fields thick with barley. In those days, plague stalked the kingdom of Parwys, but the sky above Nyth Fran was blue, unmarred by the smoke of corpse-fires.
Llewyn twisted the silver band on his thumb, drawing a small pain. he thought, and knew that she would hear.
The crows watched, black eyes peering from black-feathered faces.
They perched on branches that met above the narrow road, skeletal fingers reaching out from the depths of the wood.
Not a true road of First Folk make, only a pair of wagon ruts binding one village to the next.
At the Grey Lady’s prodding, and with the protection and elision of her glamour, he had met with the steward who served the Count of Glascoed, the lord of the Greenwood.
His questions had been answered with confusion and annoyance.
The village’s name seemed to pass through the steward’s mind like water through a sieve.
That had convinced Llewyn. There was enchantment here in Nyth Fran. A contorting of the world out of alignment with the Grey Lady’s will. An intrusion that could not be tolerated here, in the heart of her domain.
He had come to uncover that contortion. To serve his purpose as her gwyddien—the purpose he had been taken, and changed, and raised to serve—and twist it back into proper shape, if he could.
* * *
Llewyn was not the only stranger to arrive in Nyth Fran that day.
A high roof forested with narrow chimneys marked out the common house at the heart of the village.
An ostler showed him to the stable, puffing out his cheeks and pulling at his sweaty shirt.
In a village this far from the First Folk Road—to say nothing of the enchantment—an ostler ought not be so overworked.
‘Busy day?’ Llewyn asked, to mask his interest.
The ostler glanced up at him, his eyes fixing oddly on Llewyn, as though seeing him for the first time. ‘Oh, aye. A troupe arrived. Three horses to stable and feed, plus a wagon to unload. But ’twill be worth it. We don’t get entertainers here often.’
‘Is there some occasion for their arrival?’
The ostler shrugged. ‘It’s near harvest time. Figure they’re doing the rounds of the villages, and ventured a bit further afield than usual this year.’
A response that was no real answer. Nyth Fran could hardly be said to lie on the way to anywhere, and was too small to offer performers a healthy profit.
The wagon in question occupied the centre of the stable.
Its side had been painted with a broad lake reflecting the full moon, all in muted blues and whites.
Llewyn touched his ring.
the Grey Lady replied.
He could feel the twinge of her annoyance.
The common room of the inn bustled with activity.
The troupers had set up a portable stage by the hearth and were now unpacking instruments and stringing up banners.
A few—a youth of ten years with ram’s horns, a young woman harper with eyes slitted like a cat’s—had the bestial affect of those touched by the magic of the First Folk, the most hated enemies of the fae in ages past. Llewyn sat with his back to a corner, the better to observe the room and the villagers.
The slightest oddity, the subtlest clue, might yield the key to unlocking whatever enchantment shrouded Nyth Fran.
His gaze settled on a woman at the bar, dressed in a cloak of blues and blacks to match the wagon, with a pearl as white as the full moon at her throat.
To his shock, she managed to lock eyes with him—to lock eyes with a gwyddien, One Born of Trees, who carries the shadows with him and draws no unwanted eye.
A sorceress.
She smiled and crossed to his table, setting down her pewter cup of wine without an invitation. ‘I see others have come chasing rumours to this backwater.’ She sat and extended her hand. ‘Afanan Luned, more widely known as Afanan of the Silver Lake. You may have heard of me.’
‘I have not,’ he said, masking his discomfort with banter. ‘My failing, or yours?’
Her smile curled into an expression more cutting. ‘If you are what I expect, then I should be glad to have slipped beneath your notice, and your lady’s.’
Llewyn brushed a finger against his ring and felt the bite of oak leaves in his flesh.
the Grey Lady said.
Afanan set her cup down daintily. Once again she was the congenial trouper, just making conversation. ‘And what should I call you, traveller?’
‘Lyn son Phylip.’ One had to tread carefully with names around a sorceress.
‘Odd name for a gwyddien,’ she observed, her voice casual but her eyes fixed on his. ‘What is it the priests call you, down in Alberon? Tree-devils, yes?’ She sipped her wine. ‘Of course, they’ve names for my kind, too. No more flattering, and no more accurate.’
‘Then we’ve common enemies,’ Llewyn said. ‘Did they drive you here?’
Afanan leaned towards him. The grey curls of her hair brushed the rim of her cup.
She held like that, studying him, smiling slightly like a cat watching a cornered mouse, and he fought the urge to squirm.
It had been a long time since anyone had been able to look at him that way.
The gaze of most folk slid away from him—and from the ghostwood sword at his hip—like oil sliding over water.
‘We’ve a common quarry, I think,’ she said at last, her voice low.
‘As I understand your lady’s purpose, she was right to send you here.
What shrouds this place is no mere enchantment, but the influence of a fiend.
Older than she, I would wager, though more limited in power.
It protects these people from land-hungry lords with its shadow, chases disease from their water and air, and stirs their fields to flourishing. ’
‘Parwys is a blessed kingdom,’ Llewyn observed. ‘The druids, the power of their Old Stones, and the king see to that.’
‘The Old Stones failed to chase away the plague,’ Afanan countered, ‘where the fiend that guards this village succeeded.’
‘And you have come to bind it to your will, I suspect,’ Llewyn said, tired of banter. ‘Tell me, sorceress, how many children have you seen in the village? No more than a handful. This thing—whatever it is—feeds on the young. Is that a power you want to bargain with?’
‘You’ve come to kill it,’ Afanan said. ‘As far as these people are concerned, there’s little difference.
’ She considered him for a moment, sipping her wine, then leaned back in her chair.
‘We both want to remove the fiend, no? You could observe my binding ritual, ready to kill it if there is any sign that I might fail. Not a necessary precaution, mind, but one I’ll indulge to make you feel better. There is no reason for us to fight.’
The idea held merit. Even if she only managed to distract the fiend, she might buy him the chance to strike a killing blow.
But how far could he trust a sorceress—a mortal who dabbled in dangerous, ancient powers?
Dangers he had been created to defend against, long ago, on a dark night buried in cold earth with ghostwood and silver biting his flesh …
He twisted his ring, but he already knew what the Grey Lady would say.
‘It has been a long day,’ he said. He finished his ale and stood. ‘I should get some sleep.’
Afanan’s smile turned sad. ‘What a disappointment. I tried, anyway. I promise not to hurt you, unless I have to.’ She reached out and petted his hand. ‘You seem a good lad. Don’t make me have to.’
the Grey Lady said as Llewyn ascended the stairs.
he replied.
Brave words. A fiend, and now a sorceress to contend with. One who had seen through the Grey Lady’s shroud as though it were gossamer.
He wondered if the Grey Lady sensed the prickling on the back of his neck as he unlocked the door to his room.
* * *
Llewyn woke at dawn and checked the wards that had guarded his sleep. The sprig of holly he had hung from the lintel hadn’t withered—Afanan had sent no conjured dead in the night. The salt he’d laid on the windowsill was undisturbed. No pixies, either.
Ordinary folk could repel the dead and the fae with raw iron. Horseshoes hung in doorways were a poor barrier; better a knife, forged at night beneath a new moon, buried under the threshold. Better still to use it properly, as a weapon.