Chapter 18 #2
‘I’d not want to make you uncomfortable, my boy,’ Torin said.
The boy shook his head. ‘Oh no, sir. I’m only a servant.’
‘No one is “only” anything,’ Torin said.
‘I am as mortal as you, and we are both as mortal as Prince Owyn. What differences exist between us pale in comparison to our similarities. The first virtue of the Church’s teaching is compassion.
Welcome and respect for all, regardless of station. So, if you don’t mind?’
‘I … ah … I don’t mind, sir, no,’ the boy said, clearly flustered.
‘Do let me know when Prince Owyn is ready for me.’ Torin smiled at him again, the poor imbecile, then closed his eyes and murmured a prayer to Gorev, Agion of Honesty.
Power flowed into him. The soundscape around him bloomed, everything becoming at once louder and sharper.
The skittering of a mouse’s nails through the wall behind him.
The slow groan of old wood and stone settling over centuries.
The rustling of the messenger boy’s tunic as his fingers brushed its hem.
A blessing in proportion to how well Torin had cultivated the virtue he invoked, how well he followed the example of the Agion.
Orn, a Knight of Stillness, had mastered the virtue of honesty almost to a point of fault.
He might have cast his hearing through the castle, listening to any whispered conversation, no matter how carefully concealed.
In truth, honesty was one of Torin’s lesser virtues—one his role as inquisitor called for him to violate, at times.
He could call upon it, but only weakly. Enough, however, to listen to the prince’s conversation through the oaken door.
‘… not a decision I make lightly, Your Highness.’ Torin recognised the voice as belonging to Ifan, Count of Glascoed. ‘I would not have you take your throne while embers of rebellion smoulder in my lands.’
‘And a fortnight will be enough time to stamp them out?’ Prince Owyn asked.
‘How long have bandits plagued the Greenwood. Eight years? Nine? No matter how many times our fathers sent sorties to hunt them, there were always more malcontented peasants ready to cast aside their scythes and make their living by the spear.’
‘This is different, Highness, and you know it—’
‘Enough with “Highness”!’ the prince snapped.
‘You have been a hermit since the death of your father, but I remember the outings after foxes on your lands. Summer days on my father’s yacht.
The winter we spent becoming masters of the draughts board, only for Jon Kenn to trounce us both when we challenged him. ’
‘Pleasant days,’ the count murmured, so quietly that Torin could scarce hear.
‘I need allies, Ifan,’ the prince said, badly suppressing a crack in his voice. ‘But more, I need friends. You were one once.’
There was a pause. ‘Consider this an act of friendship then, Owyn. The kingdom is besieged on three sides. The haunting, the bandits in the Greenwood, and these churchmen from Tarebach.’ Torin winced at that, though it was not terribly surprising.
The count went on. ‘I can little help with either the first or last. But I can see to the Greenwood. Let me do my duty.’
‘I can’t convince you to stay?’ Owyn said. ‘Very well, you may go. Though I consider this folly, and arrogance, and wasted effort.’
‘Thank you, Owyn.’ Boot heels clicked together, then thumped across the floor.
Torin ceased his invocation as the oaken door swung open.
Glascoed paused as he stepped into the passageway and fixed Torin with a long stare.
A fire burned in the count’s eyes. He glanced over his shoulder towards the prince, his heavy brows furrowed with an unspoken question, then stalked off down the passage.
‘Prince Owyn is ready for you, sir,’ the messenger boy said, gesturing towards the open doorway. Torin followed him, who announced him in a squeaky, unpractised imitation of the court herald, then retreated from the room and pulled the heavy door shut behind him.
Prince Owyn stood before a low-burning fire dressed in simple clothes: russet breeches and vest over a white shirt, with a gold circlet perched in his black curls the only symbol of his office.
On the mantel above the fire stood a device of obvious First Folk make.
Cylinders of crystal lined with silver filigree, arranged to form gradual slopes up to a sharp peak that brushed the ceiling.
Torin eyed the device for a moment, disquiet churning in his belly.
It was difficult to stop the mind from wondering what purpose the abomination served—what the First Folk had made it for, and what use the kings of Parwys had put it to.
The prince turned. Torin bowed while the youth studied him with eyes the harsh blue of a summer sky.
Dark bags hung beneath those startling eyes, testifying to a long, sleepless night.
‘You are not so frightening as my mother would have me believe,’ the prince said softly, then gestured to a pair of chairs and a table near the fireside. A copper teapot stood beside a pair of porcelain cups. ‘Would you take tea?’
‘I would, Your Highness,’ Torin said. ‘Though I doubt you summoned me to socialise.’
‘Ha! Far from it,’ Owyn said, a wry smile brushing the corners of his eyes.
‘You have heard of last night’s horrors out on the festival grounds?
’ He began to fill the white cups. Odd that he had no servant to do it for him.
In even the poorest kingdoms a page boy would attend the crown prince at every hour.
This, then, was a secret meeting. Perhaps only the messenger sent to fetch Torin knew of it in all the royal household—save Ifan of Glascoed.
‘I do, Your Highness.’ Torin said, stepping into the fire’s warmth, waiting for the prince to sit before lowering himself into the offered chair.
How to proceed? In an interrogation room, Torin was a master of finding just the right word, spoken in just the right tone, to twist free the information he desired, though often with the aid of a pincer, a razor or a heated iron.
The prince wanted for friends, did he? Well, there was no surer path to friendship than shared suffering.
‘One of my men was caught in it,’ Torin said. ‘He was dealt a grievous wound, though the Agion and good fortune have preserved his life and he seems likely to recover.’
Owyn took a long sip of tea, and Torin did likewise, mirroring his gesture. It was a mild brew, with a pleasant, flowery aroma. The prince’s cup clicked against its saucer. ‘My father was not so fortunate. Nor were the dozens of my people torn apart last night.’
‘Your grief for them is a credit to you,’ Torin said. ‘It shows the virtue of fidelity, core to the character of a good monarch. I regret that my knights could not do more to defend your people.’
‘That is what I wished to speak with you about.’ The prince shifted in his seat, tension coursing through him.
Not unlike the conflict that seized the subject of an interrogation in the sublime moment before a long-resisted confession.
‘My tutor, Jon Kenn, says that you may have a way to end the haunting.’
Torin suppressed his excitement. Royals so disliked ceding any power or control. They had to be coaxed into doing the right thing. If he seemed overeager, the prince might begin to wonder what the Church stood to gain.
‘There is a way, Your Highness,’ Torin said, playing coy. ‘Though it is no simple thing.’
The prince studied him carefully, then looked up to the strange, sloped device on the mantel.
‘A ritual to eradicate not only the haunting,’ Owyn said, ‘but all magic in the kingdom. Anything left by the First Folk rendered no more than the raw material of which it was made. Fae and fiends obliterated. Some folk, whose bloodlines run with the experiments of the First Folk, killed or maimed. It is what was done in Tarebach, yes?’
Torin dipped his head, and cursed the fool Jon Kenn for revealing so much. ‘Your tutor has schooled you well.’
‘Not only him. My mother, too.’ The prince sipped his tea and gazed into the fire.
‘And my father. There is a lake in the marsh at the foot of the Windwall mountains. My father took me there, once. At a glance, it seems ordinary. But he pointed out to me the jagged earth, the splintered formations of rock, the way no river flows to or from the basin. It is no natural formation, but a divot. A scar carved into the hills there by enormous power. Do you know how it was formed?’
Torin had heard rumours. Jon Kenn—who apparently lacked the virtue of fidelity entirely, or possessed it to preposterous excess—had been as dutiful an informant to the Iron Citadel as he had been to the prince.
‘It is the mark of Abal’s final battle with the Beast-King of Galca,’ Owyn went on.
‘A bloody chapter from the founding of the kingdom. The Beast-King was a tyrant who rose up in the days after the Vanishing of the First Folk. Half a fiend, the tales tell, and as much a figure of myth as history. Mothers still frighten their children with threats that the Beast-King will snatch them if they disobey.’ Owyn chuckled and sipped his tea.
‘My own mother, in fact, when I was young. One thing is certain, and known by all in Parwys—our kingdom was born in the blood of our war against him. The very land is scarred by that war. Thus the name of the lake—Abal’s Scar.