Chapter 18 #3
‘As I said, it stands testament to Abal’s final battle, when he at least threw back the Beast-King.
Glascoed and Afondir had been lost to the Beast-King’s hordes, which pushed across the river Afoneang.
Monstrous warriors mounted upon rimewolves swept south through Cilbran.
Forgard and the heart of the kingdom were threatened from the sea.
A final stand.’ Owyn’s voice filled with excitement in the blood and chaos of ancient war, its danger long distant but its thrills preserved in myth and memory.
‘There was a weapon left behind by the First Folk. A weapon the druids of Bryngodre had harnessed, and bound to the Old Stones, the heart of their magic. So armed, Abal met the Beast-King there in the hills, and with a single blow smote his armies to ash, cracking the earth to its root.’
The prince turned from the flames. ‘We are a small kingdom, Anakriarch, tucked into a corner of the world. By rights we should have been swallowed by our neighbours long ago—by ever-hungry Galca or the wealth of Alberon. Yet we stand, a bastion of peace and prosperity these seven hundred years. The Old Stones and druidcraft preserve the latter, while the memory of Abal’s weapon defends the former.
By Jon Kenn’s account, if you are to save my people from this horror, I must give up both. ’
Torin leaned forward in his seat and took a slow, thoughtful sip of his tea. To confirm the prince’s fears might set him against the Mortal Church; to do anything else would be deception. Virtue placed high demands.
‘No ends, no matter how noble, can justify wicked means, Your Highness,’ Torin said.
‘I might lie to you, believing that my lie will lead you one step further down the path towards enlightenment and virtue. But I will not. What your tutor says is true. There is a ritual. A cleansing fire, conjured by the invocation of all the Agion, which would sweep through your lands and burn out this haunting at the root. And with it, these magics you so depend upon.’ The prince’s expression twisted as though his tea had transformed to sour vinegar.
Torin smiled gently. ‘Which would itself be a gift, Your Highness, even greater than relief from this horror.’
‘Really?’ Owyn said. ‘I see it as the wicked means to achieve liberation from the haunting, and nothing more.’
‘Tell me, Your Highness, do you command the power of these “old stones”, or this ancient weapon?’ Torin leaned close to him.
A thoughtfully placed question, a certain kindly tone of voice, could be as powerful as red-hot calipers.
He nodded gently towards the mantelpiece.
‘And this … decoration? Do you understand the devices of the First Folk? Are they yours in truth? Even your druids do not fully comprehend the powers to which they have bound themselves. Why were these so-called “old stones” made? To what purpose? Yes, they may fortify your harvests, keep your soil rich and your forests full of game, but how? Can any of us know, with any confidence, how any power the First Folk left behind truly shapes our world? More, how those powers shape us? Do the rituals your druids perform in obeisance matter, or are they no more than superstitious genuflection? Would what your mother asks of you—in, I am sure, full love of the kingdom—be any more than a salve to her own fears and uncertainty?’
‘You were at my father’s burial,’ the prince said, his posture and voice defensive. ‘You saw their power at first hand.’
‘I saw old folk chanting and drawing circles in the dirt to accomplish little more than they might have done with shovels and a few hours of work,’ Torin said.
‘The loss of these magical boons will be hard, Your Highness, I do not argue that. But as a child must give up the safety and comfort of a parent’s arms to step out into the world on its own two feet, so mortalkind must move beyond dependency on the tools of the First Folk.
We must cultivate our own understanding, our own power, our own path through the world. ’
‘Your path.’
Torin felt a crack in his own facade of kindliness. A slow breath brought it under control.
‘Is there another you intend to take?’
Owyn’s posture stiffened. ‘I intend nothing, yet,’ he said. ‘Only the salvation of my kingdom.’
The prince was a poor liar. Torin well knew that there were others in the prince’s ear. It was safe to assume that the sorceress Fola would be invited to such an audience as this, if she had not been already.
‘Some might argue that we ought to study the leavings of the First Folk,’ Torin said, treading carefully.
To speak against Fola directly might drive the prince into whatever web she wove about him, but he could speak against her hideous ideas.
‘I ask you to consider, Highness, that we have lived alongside these leavings for a millennium, and all the while mortalkind has struggled to comprehend them and turn them to our own purposes. In that time, what have we accomplished? We have no more understanding of all the First Folk left behind than a moth has of a lantern—and like a moth, we are captivated by the flame even as it lures us to destruction. This haunting may be just such a consequence of meddling with powers better left alone, and best scoured from the world.’
‘To make way for you,’ Owyn said. ‘Whose virtues remain powerful, even after all other magic has been destroyed. Why should I trust that the legion of templars camped even now in Afondir’s lands will not march across the Afoneang the very day I let you perform this ritual?
We will have no defence against your magic, even as we sacrifice ours.
Even raw iron does little to disrupt the power of your invocations, I am told. ’
Again, Torin silently cursed Jon Kenn—then thought better. The old scholar knew a great deal, but did he understand the invocation of the Agion so intimately? Did Queen Medrith, for that matter?
No … the likeliest source was the sorceress Fola.
The Church and the City had waged war in the past, though far from this corner of the world.
The City would surely arm any agent with as much knowledge of the invocations as possible—information Fola must have given to the prince during their audience, which must have already transpired.
His position was weak. This may well be his last chance to win some measure of Owyn’s trust before the prince banished him from the kingdom. He had a means towards that end at his disposal … but using it might see him imprisoned and sent to the executioner, not only banished.
In an interrogation, some tools—the heated iron, the flaying knife, the garrotte—were best saved for when the patient had already been acclimatised to pain. Sometimes, urgency demanded he turn to them from the beginning, even at the risk of his subject’s death.
This was such a time, and Afondir’s secret was such a tool.
The metaphor went further, Torin thought with some amusement. In both cases, he took a measure of unseemly pleasure. If this worked, he would be free of the repugnant count, which excited him nearly as much as the steam of blood on the heated edge of a knife.
‘The Church has no intention of usurping your rule, Highness,’ Torin said.
‘Mortalkind needs stable, strong leadership. We have no wish to bring the devastation of war to your lands, only to welcome you into a community of the enlightened. Though I must tell you—and I have been seeking a way to say this that would not turn you immediately against us—the Count of Afondir seeks to use us as a means to such an end.’
Owyn leaned forward, his hands tight around his cup of tea.
‘Do you have proof of this?’ he said.
Not the reaction Torin had expected. The revelation that one of his vassals sought to usurp him should have frightened the boy. Perhaps the haunting and the death of his father had broken something in him, left him callous and emotionally adrift.
‘Other than my testimony, no,’ Torin admitted. ‘Though with time and my tools I might draw a confession from him, if that is your desire.’
‘Eurion of Afondir is a snake,’ Owyn said. ‘But what can I do, without proof? I am not yet even crowned, Anakriarch. Should I begin my rule with an act of tyranny?’
‘I would not presume to advise you in this, Highness,’ Torin said.
‘Oh? But you would suggest I annihilate the magic at the foundation of my kingdom, paving the way for Eurion’s ambitions?’
The boy waved a hand before Torin could respond. ‘Apologies, Anakriarch. It has been a long and difficult night. I thank you for bringing this threat to my attention. And for your offer of assistance. I will think on it, when my mind is better suited for thinking.’
Torin dipped his head. ‘That is all I ask, Your Highness. In the meantime, my knights and I will continue our investigation of the haunting, to see if there is another, less disruptive way we might be of service to you.’
That was, in the end, the best way to appeal to the rulers of the world.
To challenge their beliefs invited their resistance.
Every change, every concession to truth, every step out of the darkness of dependency and into the light of virtue and mortal flourishing, had to be coddled and wheedled out of them.
They were infants, given power and never asked to grow.
Strong and stable leadership, indeed. Well, better Owyn, the stunted boy, than Afondir, the vicious snake.
As Torin left Prince Owyn and returned through the strange, shifting passageways to Orn’s bedside he let himself fume and rage.
A good man lay gravely wounded, and dozens more had died in a night of horror.
Rather than hunt those responsible, as justice demanded, rather than cleansing the land of the powers at the root of their suffering, Torin had to sit on his hands and wait for a princeling’s permission to act.
At least, to act openly. The days of the crusades—of templars marching into kingdoms and cleansing them by the sword and spear—were past. The Mortal Church privileged temperance over courage, now.
But even temperance could be overindulged to the point of viciousness.
Was the layabout temperate? Was the fool who let the cruel and wicked abuse him?
Restraint was of value, but only until the moment came to strike.
That moment was now. The sorceress Fola was already weaving her web around Prince Owyn.
She had come to Parwys for a reason—what, precisely, he did not know.
But the City was the Church’s opposite. If Torin sought to destroy the haunting, it stood to reason she sought some power in it—some weapon the City would one day wield against the Church.
Perhaps she sought to master the Old Stones herself.
Regardless, she had to be dealt with, and soon, before she muddled the prince’s mind any further.
Anwe looked up from Orn’s bedside, where the young knight stirred in his sleep, his breath a gasping rattle. ‘He’s taken another fever,’ she said, a rare twinge of worry in her voice.
Here, at least, was something he could do.
Torin laid his hand on the young knight’s sweat-drenched brow.
‘Beren, Agion of Fidelity,’ he prayed aloud.
‘She who shepherded her people from the fires of Utru, through the storms of the high plain, and lost not a single soul, preserve this anointed one from the frailty of mortal flesh.’
A heat to match Orn’s fever swept through Torin, drawing power from his own body and passing it to the young knight.
Torin gasped and withdrew his hand, then collapsed into a chair by Orn’s bedside.
His flanks ached and his limbs felt leaden, as though he had just woken from his own convalescence.
Weakness that would fade, in time. Meanwhile, Orn’s breathing had eased and the fever flush had faded from his face.
‘I will stay with him,’ Torin said. ‘And you will bring me his attacker.’
Anwe’s surprise gave way to a gleeful smile.
While Torin had cultivated all nine virtues in at least some measure, he doubted Anwe had spent a moment’s meditation on any but industry, honour, and courage.
A Knight of Action, and nothing more. A relic from the days of crusade and conquest, when templars had rebuilt Tarebach with the edges of their blades.
Ill-suited to the politicking and convolutions that were the weapons of the moment.
Still, Torin thought drowsily as he watched Anwe belt on her sword, his anger a hot coal beneath the blanket of fatigue—such relics yet had their uses.