Chapter 16 #2
Despite Afanan’s innocuous posture, Fola’s defences were high.
This trouper sorceress—who already claimed some knowledge of the City—had sneaked past Frog, somehow.
If she wanted to kill Fola—to really and permanently kill her, to guard Siwan’s secret and prevent Fola from spreading it after reincarnation—the first step would be to kill her bird.
With a squawk, Frog fluttered down from the lintel of the wagon and landed on Afanan’s shoulder. Which was, in some ways, more troubling than the thought that he was dead.
‘What did you do to him?’ Fola demanded, jabbing her staff at her own bird, who had snuggled against Afanan’s neck. Afanan reached up and scratched the back of his head.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Was he meant to alert you? He is an odd one, isn’t he? Not like Tan’s at all. He had a hawk. Regal bird, but standoffish. This one just seems to want affection.’
Fola felt suddenly dizzy. ‘Tan? Tan Semn?’ Rumours and legends of the renowned archivist swirled through the City and formed a constant undercurrent beneath the activity of the Library.
No one had travelled further, found more, and returned with greater discoveries.
One tale told that Tan Semn had struck up a friendship with the Hierophant of Goll in an effort to fold that near neighbour into the City’s political life.
If there was anyone who was Fola’s opposite—revered where she faced derision, welcomed where she was shunned, accomplished where she was a failure—it was Tan Semn.
‘You know him?’ Afanan said. ‘He is the man from the City that I spoke of earlier. We met in Alberon some thirty years ago. He never made it as far as Parwys, I don’t think.
’ She looked past Fola to the uncovered chest. ‘The distant past, though it lingers into the present and may be worth speaking of later. For now, I would like to know how you found that.’
‘All magic leaves a trace,’ Fola said, still stunned. Afanan refused to go to the City with no less an archivist than Tan Semn. Why think I could be any more convincing? ‘I’m surprised Tan Semn never taught you to read them.’
‘He tried to teach me some of his magic, but I was not much of a sorceress then,’ Afanan said. ‘I would appreciate your help in covering those traces. To protect the girl.’
‘If I am to do that, I will need to know what she is,’ Fola countered.
‘Ah.’ Afanan smiled gently. ‘Which is why I find you here. You might have simply asked. Do you have a difficult time trusting people, Fola? You and Llewyn have that in common.’
Fola’s difficulty was more with being trusted than with trusting, though admitting as much did not seem like an effective way to win someone over. ‘What’s in the crate?’ she asked. ‘And what does it have to do with Siwan?’
Afanan considered for a moment, scratching Frog’s chest feathers while the bird cooed. She tucked her hand into her sleeve. There was a crack of breaking stone.
‘Open it,’ Afanan said. ‘See for yourself.’
The knot of magic had vanished. Fola undid the latch and eased the lid upwards. Velvet pillows lined the chest, nestling a black gemstone. An inner light, red as blood, pulsed at its heart. Fola examined it through the loupe and shivered: a riotous mass of limbs and claws, yellow eyes and teeth.
‘You recognise it, yes?’ Afanan said. ‘The very same fiend that clings to Siwan’s soul.
The Branellyl of Nyth Fran. Bound to an altar stone in ancient days—by the fae or the First Folk, one cannot know.
The people there worshipped it as a god.
They sacrificed their children to it. In exchange, it protected them and gave them a measure of power. ’
‘And Siwan was one such sacrifice,’ Fola surmised.
‘She was,’ Afanan said. ‘Until Llewyn and I saved her. We trapped half the fiend in that gem, but it had already begun to possess her, and the greater half remains entwined with her soul. This was years ago. But the pain of that moment follows her, and the power it knitted into her soul is more than she can master yet.’
‘And it is not the only power she carries,’ Fola observed. She tucked her loupe away. ‘The fiend is bound by fae magic. And are all raven fiends able to summon up the ancient dead?’
‘I wove the lattice, but its power was Llewyn’s.
’ Afanan shook her head. ‘Even after years, he cannot explain it to me. I don’t think he understands it himself, beyond intuition.
He had a patroness—or a slavemaster, more accurately.
The power he used was her gift, granted to him to wield in ignorance.
It does not behoove the powerful to give away their secrets, after all. ’
‘And yet here we are,’ Fola said.
Afanan laughed at that. ‘It seems only fair, as I knew your secret the moment I saw this little one.’ She traced a finger down Frog’s wing, eliciting another coo.
Which miffed Fola, somewhat. Frog had known Afanan all of a few hours.
She was still an object of suspicion. But Fola had to admit that the woman had a trustworthiness about her—a certain kindness, a warmth carried in her voice.
‘You are thinking that Siwan should go to the City,’ Afanan went on. ‘I don’t disagree. I will help you convince her, if I can. It may take some time, though. Girls on the brink of adulthood are always stubborn, and it’s worse when they are in love.’
She laughed again, at some private joke, then made a gesture that sent Frog fluttering from her shoulder to Fola’s hand.
‘I am glad that you found us, Fola.’ Afanan tilted her head thoughtfully, her black and silver hair draping over one shoulder.
‘I had been thinking of the City. Of returning. This seems the right time and opportunity.’
‘Why didn’t you stay before?’ Fola asked. ‘I can’t imagine Tan Semn failed to convince you.’
Afanan’s smile turned sad. ‘At the time, I felt unworthy. I have spent these last decades trying to prove that I deserve what it offers. First, by gathering power. Secrets and relics to add to your library. Now, and for near the last decade, by caring for this girl. Trying to protect her from the power and horror thrust upon her. Maybe I have earned paradise, after all that effort. Or maybe that feeling was always foolishness. Maybe I am simply wiser, now, and know that we all deserve goodness, if we can learn to accept it.’
She shrugged, playing off the melancholy in her voice. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, it has been a very long day. I will need some rest before we continue our little plot to lure Siwan and Llewyn to paradise. We will talk more tomorrow.’
The wagon groaned as Afanan stepped down, and the door creaked as she closed it behind her. Sounds she had suppressed when she had entered and appeared behind Fola like a ghost. Now, Afanan left her alone in this, the trove of her secrets and her power.
The black gem lay on its nest of pillows, its red light trapped in a faceted cage. If Fola took it, she might pull the thread it offered and begin untangling the puzzle of Siwan’s powers on her own. At some risk to the girl, of course.
She shut the trunk and latched it. As she did, the hairs on the back of her arms tickled up. Through the loupe, the knot of magic had reappeared, as though it had been waiting for Fola to do the right thing.
Perhaps the path to earning trust was to offer trust in turn. Risking betrayal was the price paid to build the bridge from one person to the next. A strategy that seemed to work for Afanan, at least. And, now that Fola thought of it, a strategy that worked well for Arno, too.
Fola left the gem in its trunk. She stroked Frog’s wing as she walked back to the Garland Inn. At the first blush of dawn light he started to softly coo.