Chapter 14 #4
Fola scrubbed a hand through her hair—only realising as she did so that it was wet with at least three or four other people’s blood. She grimaced in disgust and hoped it hid the fear she felt. Not of the haunting, now, but of Mortal Church attention.
Had it been a mistake to let that boy live, in Tarebach? Do the anakriarch and his knights know what I am? Have they, like Medrith, seen through my ruse?
They were spying on her, which meant they thought her some kind of threat. And they would certainly think Siwan a threat. Fiends, fae and undead were all anathema to the Mortal Church. If Torin discovered the girl, he would see it as a sacred duty to destroy her.
The urge to flee tugged at Fola. Maybe she could convince the girl—and Llewyn, if necessary—to come with her to the City. Leave Parwys to its troubles—maybe even resolve those troubles by removing the girl.
‘Well … one good development, and one bad.’
‘Oh?’ Colm winced as he flexed his wounded arm, testing the tightness of the bandage. ‘How’d your evening go, then?’ He looked around the pavilion, at the wounded and at the dead, who the troupers had covered with sheets. ‘Not well, by the look of things.’
‘Not well, no,’ she said. ‘But I might have cracked the mystery. Or, at least, the first part of it.’
‘Ah.’ Colm gestured at the bloody horror around them. ‘And this …?
‘Not my fault,’ Fola said. ‘But related.’
‘Right.’ He watched her for a moment. ‘Are you planning to explain?’
Fola blew through her teeth. Hers was not a linear mind—that had always been part of the problem.
Evidence and ideas swirled, like motes of dust covered in little hooks, dancing around one another in her mind until they collided and clung together.
Enough time, enough swirling and enough collisions, and eventually a theory coalesced.
One that seemed clear and true to her, even as she struggled to explain it to others.
The notion of apophatic definition as a means to conjuring the First Folk had arisen from such a process. Her certainty that Siwan was related to the haunting would, hopefully, prove easier to articulate.
She pointed at the backstage tent. ‘Remember the girl I saw from the hillock? Raven hair? Mingled powers bright as a beacon?’
Colm nodded.
‘She’s the reason the sky went bat-shit, as you so eloquently put it.
There is an ancient fiend bound to her soul.
The only thing keeping it under control is a lattice of mixed fae and undead powers—also bound to her soul—anchored to a piece of wood.
Without that lattice, it would possess her body, transform her into some kind of monster, and go on a rampage in pursuit of whatever its inscrutable, ancient, fiendish goals might be. Are you tracking so far?’
‘Well enough,’ Colm said. ‘I’m assuming the bat-shit sky was because the fiend started breaking free?’
Fola tapped the side of her nose and grinned at him.
‘I knew you had a brain in there. Now, the precise mechanics of this aren’t certain—when we’re talking about fiendish and fae powers, they never really are.
This is magic older than the First Folk, elusive and poorly studied.
What is certain is that the fiend summoned those wraiths to attack the festival, presumably to try and create an opportunity for itself to complete its possession of the girl.
But that raises its own slew of questions.
‘First, how did the girl’s soul come to be bound up not just with a fiend, but with the fae and with the undead?
I’ve spent decades researching the nature of the soul, and I’ve never encountered or read of anything remotely like this.
She wears a wooden medallion around her neck that appears to anchor the undead and fae energies, which suggests some sort of artifice—that someone created this amalgam of powers, somehow.
Her protector, a man called Llewyn, has a sword just like the medallion.
There is also a sorceress with the troupe.
Maybe one of them was involved, or both. It’s unclear.
‘Second, what is the relationship between the girl, her powers, and the haunting that grips the kingdom? That there must be some relationship is certain.’
‘Why?’ Colm pressed.
‘To believe otherwise strains credulity,’ Fola pointed out. ‘We came chasing a rumour of powerful undead. We’ve found them here, attacking this festival. What are the odds that there is a second source of powerful undead, entirely unrelated to this one?’
‘But if the fiend is the source of the wraiths, why would it kill the Count of Glascoed and King Elbrech?’ Colm asked.
‘The fiend itself has nothing to do with the undead, I think,’ Fola said. ‘It was able to call down the wraiths because it is part of the girl, who is also undead.’
Colm cocked his head at her, prodding her for more explanation.
‘I don’t think the fiend controls the wraiths,’ she went on.
‘Else it would have directed them more precisely to achieve its aim of taking over the girl’s body, and not just sent them marauding through the crowd.
It is its own kind of being, and the wraiths are their own kind of being.
The fiend is able to reach through the girl’s undead nature to summon them, but they act on their own. ’
She gestured to the palm-shaped bruises that spotted his arms. ‘These wraiths attacked folk of common morphology. Anyone with extra arms, or eyes, or horns, feathers, fur, what have you, they left more or less alone.’
‘What are you driving at?’ Colm asked.
‘Did you see any extra limbs among the gentry, Colm?’ she said. ‘Only among their courtiers, and then few and far between.’
‘You think the wraiths have a grudge against the nobility. I’m suddenly feeling sympathetic.’
‘As Queen Medrith said herself, what king has ever ruled without occasional brutality?’
Colm frowned. ‘Makes you wonder what the point of kings is, doesn’t it?’
Fola laughed. ‘You’d fit right in where I come from, you know.’
His broad smile split his face. He crossed three of his arms—the wounded one on top, supported by the others—and scratched his chin with the fourth. ‘What do we know, then, all told?’
With each point, Fola put up a finger. ‘First, the girl Siwan possesses an unusual and powerful soul, mingling fae, fiend and undead.
‘Second, that soul was created by a ritual, likely fae in origin, considering her medallion. Llewyn is like her, fae and undead, though without the medallion, and without the bound fiend. They travel in the company of a sorceress, who may well be the one responsible for her creation.’
That the sorceress knew of and sympathised with the City was a variable Fola had yet to account for.
‘Third, the fiend is able, likely by drawing from the undead aspect of Siwan’s soul, to call down a host of powerful wraiths, but cannot control them.
‘Fourth, those wraiths are deliberate in their violence, avoiding folk with uncommon morphologies. There are few, if any, folk with uncommon morphologies among the nobility. It stands to reason, then, that the wraiths are motivated by some tyranny, perhaps in the kingdom’s distant past. If the play these troupers put on has any foothold in reality, Parwys was forged in war and bloodshed.
Now, strengthened and stirred awake by the fiend, the wraiths have come for their due. ’
Her thumb sprang up to join her fingers. ‘Finally, the first known instance of the haunting—the first appearance of the wraiths—was in Glascoed, and led to the death of the count. After which, young Ifan went mad, raving about dreams sent by the wraiths and a curse on his family.’
Colm furrowed his brow. ‘Do the dead speak in dreams?’
‘Not often, but when they’re as powerful as this, they can indeed,’ Fola said.
‘And I saw little sign of madness in Ifan at court. Did you?’ She made a fist and let it fall to her lap.
‘More, legends tell that the Greenwood of Glascoed is home to powerful fae. I would like to know more about them, particularly about how Llewyn and Siwan came to possess a nature mingling fae and undead. Such knowledge may be key to disentangling the fiend and the wraiths. Queen Medrith mentioned those stories when we met. I wonder if she suspects more about this haunting than she let on.’
Colm nodded sagely, then heaved himself to his feet with a grunt. ‘And what do we do about the templars? I doubt they’ll give up. If anything, stabbing their spy will provoke them.’
Fola grimaced. ‘Nothing yet. From my talk with Queen Medrith, I don’t think the Mortal Church holds much sway at court,’ she said, standing with him.
‘They won’t make an open move against us, I think.
We’re both guests of the prince, and if either of us attacks the other we risk being thrown out of the kingdom, or worse.
Depending on what their spy saw, and what he manages to report, these troupers may be in more danger than we are.
I need a few more words with our new friends here.
And then I must see about securing an audience. ’
‘With the queen?’ Colm asked. ‘Again? Or the prince?’
‘With the Count of Glascoed.’ Fola turned to the backstage tent.
‘I’d like to know more about these dreams from the dead that drove him temporarily insane, and about the fae that plague his domain.
Meanwhile, keep your head down, but keep alert.
That knight you stabbed may not die, which means the whole of the Mortal Church in Parwys will know that you stabbed him, soon enough.
Which will make things quite a bit more complicated. ’
Colm watched her go, heaved a dramatic sigh, and muttered something about a drink. ‘Fine, then,’ he shouted after her. ‘Meet you back at the inn.’
She waved him off, then idly scratched the back of Frog’s head as she turned her mind to the problem at hand.
No rebel necromancer prowling the woods, sending ghosts to disrupt the governance of the kingdom.
Only an ancient crime, a mingling of strange magics, and a girl who carried a power beyond her capacity to control.
If Fola could convince the girl to cooperate—and, perhaps more importantly, convince Llewyn, her protector—she might save the kingdom, foil the Mortal Church, and secure the most important object of thaumaturgical research in history, all at once.
She doubted anyone in the City could brag of a greater accomplishment. Who then could refuse her, or doubt her worth?