Chapter 25 #4
He meant what she had seen at the festival grounds, when Siwan’s power called down the full force of the haunting.
But Fola had also seen, through her loupe, the complex lattice of powers woven into the girl’s body and mind, how the fiend’s power had pushed against it and nearly unravelled all.
These revelations went some distance to explaining the various threads, but not far enough for her to trace the pattern entirely.
‘Llewyn,’ Fola ventured. ‘This may seem an insensitive question, but what, exactly, are you?’
He bristled at that, his fingers curling around the wooden blade in his lap.
‘This, too, may seem insensitive, Fola,’ he replied.
‘You are powerful, and skilled in magic, and that makes you useful to me. You have shown that you will help to contain the fiend within Siwan, should the need arise. And I believe that your agenda runs counter to that of my enemies. So we will stay in your company, and I will tell you things that will aid in your defence of the girl. But I will not share my own weaknesses with you, nor give you enough to bend Siwan to your will.’
‘That isn’t my intention,’ Fola snapped, and felt a fool for it at once.
‘Of course not.’ Llewyn scoffed. ‘You serve a benevolent purpose. But that is no safeguard at all. If anything, it makes you more difficult to trust than if your motives were more selfish.’ His finger brushed his absent ring.
‘Benevolence is often a glamour cast over cruelty. What better justification for a singular evil than the greater good? What comfort is it to the wretched that their suffering serves some higher purpose?’
‘Whatever you believe about me, you are wrong.’ Fola could feel the argument twisting her, making her more desperate to win than to be right.
An old, familiar feeling. One that had presaged some of her worst mistakes.
She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself.
‘Was what I did for Jareth some exploitation of the weak to serve my agenda?’
Llewyn took a moment to answer. ‘You want to think of yourself in a certain way,’ he said. ‘As did I, for a long time. You do things to support that image, perhaps, or to plant it in the minds of others. But you may well do cruel things if you think that they are righteous.’
‘With that kind of thinking, there can be no trust between people at all!’ Fola took another breath and fought to quiet her voice.
It was the dead of night, and here she was almost shouting while people slept around her.
Poor proof of her compassion. ‘If you can believe neither my words nor my deeds, then there can be no communication between us. Only a constant fencing of manipulation and deceit while we each pursue our selfish ends, hoping to extract more than we give away ourselves.’
‘You have just described the way the world works, Fola,’ Llewyn said.
‘Not my world,’ Fola said.
Llewyn shook his head. ‘Did you walk into the royal court and announce your intent to take whatever ancient powers you might find back to your City? You revealed yourself to us swiftly enough, but we are little threat to you. Do not pretend that the truth is anything but one tool you use, insofar as you use it. One among many.’
That stung, because it was fair. Truth and deception were coins she had spent equally.
Yet there was a difference between a disguise and a lie, wasn’t there?
The latter was meant to undermine the truth.
The former was only a means to slip through situations where the truth became inconvenient.
‘I only hide because to reveal what I am would make what I need to do impossible.’
‘Then if you did intend harm to Siwan, you would not tell me,’ Llewyn said. ‘You have just admitted as much.’
‘What about Afanan?’ Fola blurted, and regretted it as his expression hardened.
His grief was too raw, the argument too heated, to bring her into it.
Fola would have shut down any conversation that wandered into her abandonment of Colm.
Yet determination to defend herself and win the argument burned away her compassion.
‘She offered you and Siwan shelter and kindness. A place in her little family. I saw how you all gathered around Siwan, to care for her after she lost control in Parwys. Why? What dark agenda was Afanan secretly pursuing by creating that?’
‘Afanan tried,’ he said, then paused, his expression pained and thoughtful.
‘But Jareth’s betrayal revealed how fragile those bonds truly were.
And now, without her, the troupe is shattered.
’ His fingers traced the edge of his sword.
The fire between them crackled. A log broke, and fell, casting up another whirl of sparks.
Another crack sounded, this one from the forest.
Llewyn came alert. He unfolded into a crouch, readied his sword, and slunk away from the fire.
Fola’s heart thundered in the sudden quiet.
Instinctively, she reached for her staff, then swallowed a curse at its absence.
Her pen and notebook of spellpaper were near enough at hand, but without any idea of what she might be facing—of what had stoked such fear in Llewyn—she had no idea what sort of spell to write.
She scrawled a few hasty lines by firelight, preparing the basic structure of a dozen different possibilities.
Another crack, and a low, rumbling groan.
Fola peered into the dark between the trees, made all the darker against the glow of the fire.
She crept away from the circle of light, unsure of where Llewyn had gone, hoping her vision adjusted to the dark before an arrow—or something worse—came flying out of the woods to skewer her.
A shadow moved against the underbrush. Broad and hulking, bracing itself against a tree with one arm, another held across its chest, cradled by a third …
‘Wait! Llewyn!’ Fola shouted. A flood of relief swept her to her feet—giddiness to see him alive, and a sudden weightlessness as guilt fell from her shoulders. ‘It’s Colm!’
Llewyn emerged from a fold of shadow at the edge of the forest, his ghostwood blade easing towards the earth. Damon, Harwick, Spil and Siwan sprang awake, Fola’s shouts of surprised elation taken for an alarm.
‘Bloody hell,’ Colm grumbled as he stumbled into the clearing. ‘You couldn’t have stayed another day in Miggenbrot?’
He smiled, which became a wince. Fola wanted to throw herself at him, to apologise with an embrace for her abandoning him.
But the extent of his wounds made her hesitate.
His left upper arm, which he held cradled against his chest, had been severed just below the wrist. A dirty bandage wrapped the stump where his hand had been.
‘How did you get away?’ Fola asked. When she had left Colm, he had been badly wounded, struggling to keep the templar Anwe from cutting him to ribbons.
‘Blind luck.’ His eyes flitted to Llewyn for a moment of uncertainty—soon masked by the return of his usual grin. ‘It was chaos. I ran off while the templar was distracted.’
‘Your bodyguard?’ Damon said when he’d wrapped his head around the situation. ‘Stones, you look like you’ve been wrestling an armoury.’
‘And feel like it,’ Colm said. ‘Three days chasing after you lot without a horse hasn’t left me much time to recuperate.’
‘Were you followed?’ Llewyn demanded. The tension in him that had held since their reaching the forest was drawn near to snapping.
‘You should have found somewhere to hole up and heal.’ Fola returned to her pack and retrieved a bottle of Frog’s ointment. ‘You might have got an infection, or collapsed from exhaustion on the way, and then what?’
‘I’m not great at hiding,’ Colm said dryly. ‘More built for brawling, and dealing with the aftermath. Besides, terms of employment were never discussed, but I wasn’t about to let a nasty scuffle end the best paying gig I’ve ever had.’
She glared at him, the reminder of her responsibility for his injuries dampening her relief. ‘Let me see the damage.’
‘Fola,’ Llewyn said, ‘if he was able to find us, we’re vulnerable. We have to keep moving.’
‘The man’s half bled to death,’ Siwan cut in. ‘Next you’ll be suggesting we all split up and head in different directions.’
‘I’ll follow his back trail,’ Harwick volunteered. ‘To make sure it’s covered and watch the road. Won’t be able to sleep again after this rumpus anyway.’
Damon went with him, and a long glare from Siwan stymied any dissent Llewyn might have raised.
‘We’ll move on in the morning,’ Siwan said. ‘We can spare a night.’
That settled matters, it seemed. Llewyn muttered and retreated to the edge of the clearing, watching the shadows between the trees and rubbing the band of pale flesh on his finger.
Colm winced again as Fola helped him on to one of the fallen logs near the fire.
His shirt was soaked in blood and cut to ribbons.
Removing it revealed a map of new wounds that stood out against his chest and shoulders—fresh, though the accelerated healing granted by his Warborn blood had staunched their bleeding.
Other than the severed hand, only a deep gash on his right upper shoulder still seeped blood and a trickle of pus.
She daubed ointment liberally, suppressing her own wince as Colm hissed.
‘Fuck, that salve still reeks,’ he muttered, then glanced down at Frog. ‘Little guy lost a limb, too, looks like. Only his is already regrowing. Any chance you can manage that trick for me?’
Fola felt a hitch in her chest and shook her head. How dare he put on a brave face, torn to shreds as he is, and on my behalf? ‘There are ways, in the City. But not here. Not with my skill.’