Chapter 26 #2
‘This sounds like madness, to me,’ Queen Medrith fumed, lurking behind Prince Owyn’s seat in his solar.
The fire crackled behind her and filled the room with steady warmth.
Light flickered in the First Folk sculpture of fluted crystal on the mantel.
The counts of Afondir, Forgard and Cilbran stood around the table.
Only Afondir had shown any reaction to Torin’s conclusion—a mild surprise, followed by a flat mask of stoicism that badly disguised his satisfaction.
‘You spoke to the sorceress yourself, Your Highness,’ Torin said. ‘She sought out the Count of Glascoed, who had fled the castle in the early hours that very morning.’
‘He did not flee,’ Owyn said. ‘He asked my permission to leave.’
Torin inclined his head, accepting the correction, though it was spurious.
‘The point remains, Glascoed departed against the grain of your traditions. He ought to have remained as his fellow counts have done, a symbol of the kingdom’s strength, stability and fidelity to the royal successor.
An unusual act, worthy of some scrutiny. ’
The queen harrumphed. ‘But to suggest he might be in league with fae folk is absurd.’
‘Perhaps not in league,’ Torin said. ‘At least, not knowingly.
The fae have all manner of inscrutable powers that defy mortal art and knowledge.
They are older than us. As old as the First Folk, some suggest, and wild.
Their magic is as the wind and the waves.
Their domains trace borders that twist and braid through our world.
Their agendas and capabilities defy comprehension, let alone explanation, Your Majesty.
It is not beyond belief that some faction had reason to place a geas on the Count of Glascoed to some unknown end.
Nor is it unreasonable to suspect that their doing so has some relation to the haunting that grips your kingdom.
‘But consider this—the very night the haunting assaulted your kingdom in force, the sorceress Fola went to meet a troupe of fae folk on the festival grounds, the epicentre of that horror. A meeting that occurred moments before wraiths filled the sky. A meeting which Sir Orn witnessed, and for that, Fola’s mercenary nearly killed him.
By dawn, while Parwys still reeled from the horrors of the night, the Count of Glascoed had left the castle, against all tradition and propriety.
The next day, Parwys was attacked by this fae woman and her rimewolf, bringing chaos that covered the escape of the sorceress Fola. ’
‘If Fola and Ifan are in league, why did she not know he had returned to Glascoed?’ Medrith argued.
Torin shook his head sadly. ‘The bonds between wicked hearts are weak, Your Majesty.’ He resisted an urge to look at Afondir as he said this.
‘Perhaps the Count of Glascoed was startled by the horrors of the night and fled without a word to her. Perhaps Sir Orn’s presence at the festival grounds disrupted their plans, and Fola sought an audience with the count to reformulate their strategy, while unbeknown to her, he decided to take initiative on his own.
I cannot say with any certainty, but it is clear enough that the two are—or at least, were—in league.
After all, in the aftermath of her meeting with the fae folk and the horrors at the festival grounds, Fola did not seek an audience with either you, Your Majesty, or you, Your Highness, but with the Count of Glascoed.
More, the proximity of Fola’s meeting with the fae folk to the haunting’s assault suggests that the two are connected in some way.
By her own admission, she is a sorceress who meddles in the powers of undeath.
Perhaps she sought to wrest control of the haunting for her own dark purposes and failed.
Such meddling often has terrible, unintended consequences. ’
‘And what fae agenda do you suppose they serve?’ the Count of Cilbran asked.
His gauntlets creaked as he pressed his knuckles to the tabletop, still faintly scarred by burns left when Torin had exorcised the sorceress’s accursed staff.
‘Fae beasts are well known in Cilbran. The rimewolves are of that kind, but not so intelligent.’
‘I cannot say,’ Torin answered. And, in truth, he little cared.
One did not need to understand evil to destroy it.
He had been a step behind Fola since arriving in Parwys, but now had the opportunity to corner her in Glascoed with an army at his back.
‘The prisoner has not been forthcoming,’ he went on.
‘Perhaps all this is merely a war between factions of the fae, bleeding over into your realm. One faction of the frozen mountains, in league with the rimewolves. Another of the forest, twisting the Count of Glascoed and undead spirits to dark purposes. But we need not understand the why of it to know what we must do.’
Medrith scoffed. ‘Plunge a kingdom less than a decade removed from the ravages of plague, already reeling from the death of its monarch and a haunting, into civil war?’ She shook her head firmly and thumped her staff on the stone floor.
‘This sounds a scheme to pit us against one another and drain our strength. Alberon is in thrall to these churchmen, is it not, My Lord?’
The count of Afondir tilted his head and toyed with the golden chain he wore about his neck. ‘The King of Alberon has converted, yes, and pays a tithe to the Mortal Church, though I would not say “in thrall to” it.’
‘Perhaps that tithe pays for the services of this inquisitor.’ Medrith’s eyes bored into Torin’s.
Her gaze still burned as she turned to her son.
‘Owyn, you must see this. You will bring an army against Glascoed before you are even crowned, and while our attention and our strength is turned inwards, Alberon will march across the Afondra and anchor warships in the Roaring Bay. Whether they do so in service to the Mortal Church, or in league with them, it matters not. By following the advice of this interloper, we plunge our foot into the hunter’s snare—’
‘Say what you will of Alberon, but the anakriarch is my guest,’ the Count of Afondir cut in.
Torin had to mask his surprise—he had not expected the man to come to his defence.
Owyn had yet to act on Torin’s accusations against Afondir, but spies circled royal courts like carrion over a fresh kill.
Torin had presumed that Afondir knew that his treasonous intent had been revealed, and was simply waiting for an opportunity to turn that knowledge to his advantage.
This had seemed an appropriate moment—Afondir might have sided with Medrith and pushed for Torin’s ejection from the kingdom, or worse—yet the count reinforced their connection instead.
‘And,’ Afondir went on, ‘he has done more to address the horror gripping our kingdom than you or your druids, Your Majesty. Perhaps the Old Stones cannot protect us from this—’
‘That is blasphemy!’ Medrith snapped.
‘… but the Mortal Church might.’ Afondir smiled slightly.
‘Where their influence reaches, the world becomes safe from these sorts of terrors. Alberon is untroubled by ghosts and fae, or by monstrous beasts like rimewolves. Troubles that sap our strength and attention. If you are so concerned about falling to a rival kingdom, perhaps consider whether we can afford to ignore the advantages they have already seized upon.’
The queen trembled, her knuckles white around her staff. Shadows gathered around her, and the iron grey of her hair caught the firelight and burned like forge-hot steel. A loss of control in the grip of high fury. Torin tried not to feel smug at her collapse into intemperance.
‘An advantage—if it is such—granted by the sacrifice of our ways,’ she said, biting on each word. ‘You would destroy who and what we are, and the powers we know—that belong to us—to buy the favour of foreigners, whose magic we neither understand nor can hope to control.’
‘Our intent is not to weaken Parwys, Your Majesty,’ Torin answered her accusation. ‘Our goal is the ennoblement and strengthening of all mortalkind.’
Honest words—for he tried very hard to say nothing that was dishonest, and the people of Parwys would be far stronger, far more noble, far better off under the guidance of the Church, rather than left to the squalid ignorance of these heathen druids and petty monarchs.
‘Do you doubt the ability of our people to learn?’ Afondir scoffed, unfazed by the queen’s display.
‘And speak for yourself, Your Majesty. We are not all cloistered in our druids’ groves and mountain temples, blind to the ways of the world beyond the Afondra.
The Mortal Church has a growing following in my county.
One that gives strength and hope to my subjects in these troubled times. One I cannot ignore.’
‘Not everything that gives hope is good,’ Cilbran muttered, his mailed fists still planted on the table. ‘Some men light fires thinking only to warm themselves, until the castle burns down.’
‘We seem to have strayed far from our purpose here,’ the Count of Forgard said flatly.
He crossed his arms and glared from Afondir to the queen, his curled moustaches twitching in annoyance.
A picture of military seriousness in the face of pointless political squabbling.
Torin had to admire that demeanour, even if—as it seemed likely to do in this case—it became an obstacle for him.