Chapter 29
The Aleph
It is commonly theorised that thaumaturgy functions by making meaning, naming the nameless, and binding it to a purpose and function.
Curious, then, that the frenzy of activity before the First Folk’s fading can be, in many ways, understood as a war against meaninglessness.
Thrice before, Llewyn had been to the city of Glascoed.
The second and third times had been as a member of the Silver Lake Troupe, in the first years after Nyth Fran.
At midsummer, folk from as far as Caer Palu came to dance beneath pines strung with tinsel, to drink summer mead from Miggenbrot and to hear the old songs and watch troupers play the old stories.
Tales of Abal the Protector and the Beast-King of Galca, of course—though earlier versions, not Damon’s reinterpretation.
But also of folk heroes like Jak the Leaper, who on legs jointed like a hare’s could cross the river Afoneang at a bound.
Or of Teri Mountainsdaughter, who it was said emerged from her crystal palace beneath the earth once a season to visit her charms and pleasures upon a lucky fool—a woodsman in spring, a shepherd in summer, a farmhand in autumn and a miner in winter.
Some folk tales struck too close to home, for Llewyn, particularly those told around low campfires when the midsummer sun had fallen. Tales of changeling children returned from the forest, something of their souls twisted by the fae.
The death of Harlow had changed things. Ifan, racked by grief, had neglected his father’s usual donations, and the foreboding atmosphere bred by the nascent haunting had dulled the common folk’s appetite for entertainments.
More, after Siwan’s grip on the raven fiend had first faltered in Caer Bren, Llewyn and Afanan had agreed to leave the Greenwood as far behind as possible, for fear of the Grey Lady picking up their trail.
And now they had returned, having proven that flight from the forest had offered no protection from the powers that dogged Siwan’s heels.
Eyes peered from windows and alleys that morning as they travelled towards the castle. They put an itch under Llewyn’s skin and a chill beyond the misty air of early autumn in his bones. Old anxieties coupled with new fears that cast his mind back to older, darker memories.
Siwan nudged him with her elbow. ‘You asked, and now you’re not even listening.’
They occupied the rear of their party’s little procession up the hill, towards the inner palisade wall and the shut, iron-bound gate to Castle Glascoed.
Damon, Harwick and Spil walked just ahead of them, arguing back and forth about what their next steps ought to be.
From the sound of things, Spil wanted to return to Parwys as soon as possible in the hope of tracking down Ayden, Tula and the others, including Afanan.
Llewyn had resigned himself to the idea of Afanan’s death, but Spil refused to accept it.
He had known her the longest of all of them.
Harwick said little, while Damon seemed determined to stay with Siwan.
Llewyn regretted dividing their loyalties in this way.
With Afanan’s death and the troupe’s shattering, they had lost the only home they had known.
Just beyond them was the four-armed mercenary—three-and-a-half-armed, now—who served as Fola’s bodyguard and, apparently, lover.
The stump of his amputated arm hung in a sling, though he seemed little troubled by the loss.
As dangerous a mortal as Llewyn had ever known.
Fola led the column, plodding ahead with a new staff of smoothed oak she’d bought from the innkeeper.
Her strange little bird perched atop it, bobbing up and down with its rise and fall.
She looked no more than an ordinary traveller in the simple blouse, skirt and riding cloak Spil had picked out for her.
Notable only for her odd company and a complexion a few shades darker than was usual in the kingdom.
Folk who would stop and stare at Llewyn for the sharpness of his cheekbones would let Fola pass with only a brief acknowledgment.
She seemed, to even a discerning eye, alert and clever but not unkindly.
Certainly no danger. And Siwan, despite his best efforts to train her in caution, had fallen for the glamour.
‘I don’t doubt her city holds the wonders that she claims,’ he said. ‘But she is waving them in your face as a distraction, to keep you from questioning her intentions.’
‘I’ll admit I don’t understand that part of it.
’ Siwan crossed her arms and kicked at a loose cobble.
‘Neither do you, though. If Fola’s magic is like a bonfire, Afanan’s was a candle, and yours back when …
well, before Nyth Fran, was less than that, from what you’ve told me.
She could explain everything she plans to do and it would still sound like nonsense to us. ’
‘Then how can you trust her?’ Llewyn pressed. ‘You can’t begin to understand her.’
‘I hardly feel I understand you, sometimes,’ Siwan snapped. ‘Also, it’s very funny to hear you speak of “trust”. I know you suspect a dagger behind every back and a drop of poison in every cup, and I know you’ve your reasons, but not everyone is out to catch or kill me, Llewyn.’
She glared at the side of the road, hugging herself tight.
He fought down the urge to defend himself.
Things were still fragile between them after their last, disastrous argument.
More, a part of him knew that she was right.
His life had been a parade of betrayals—beginning when his own family gave him up to the Grey Lady.
Until, somehow, he had found a way to trust Afanan. She had been good, truly. Compassionate in a way he could hardly countenance, even towards those who by right ought to have been her enemies. Even towards a raven fiend. Kinder than any mortal had cause to be.
In all likelihood, that kindness had made her hesitate in a fateful moment during her duel with the Huntress. Llewyn cleared his throat to quash a sudden swell of grief and guilt.
‘Not everyone, no,’ Llewyn admitted. ‘But some people are.’
‘Not Fola,’ Siwan said pointedly.
Llewyn worked his jaw. Afanan had told him to trust Fola.
To take Siwan to the City. The part of him that had seen the good in her—that felt her absence as an ache behind his ribs—wanted to trust. Another part, older and stronger, reminded him of all the cruelty the Grey Lady had dealt—and forced him to deal—in the cause of her twisted, incomprehensible vision of justice.
The gates loomed ahead. A second curtain wall, higher and made of red brick, stood behind the wooden palisade, while the castle itself loomed higher still—a round turreted tower at the heart of two layers of fortification.
A watchman appeared on the palisade rampart and called down to Fola for her name and business in the castle.
They would be inside before Llewyn could navigate through this argument in the way it needed.
‘We’ll talk of this later,’ he said.
Siwan huffed, shook her head, and took a quick step ahead of him to walk beside Damon.
‘I’ll say this, though,’ Llewyn muttered under his breath, appending a final point to their argument.
One he might voice to her later, though now he worried about pushing her too much and upsetting her.
‘If Fola’s so worth trusting, why hasn’t she explained her business with the count? Nor her solution to the haunting?’
While Fola made her case to the watchman for an audience, Llewyn’s finger traced the pale, smooth band of skin on his thumb, and a small weight of silver pulled at his pocket.
He didn’t like secrets. Didn’t like lies and glamour. As far as he was concerned, they were the Grey Lady’s tools, and he’d have nothing more to do with them.
A wicket gate swung open. Fola led their company into the outer courtyard.
Llewyn had never set foot within a castle before.
The Grey Lady’s domain skirted the edges and shadowed alleys of cities, not the heart of mortal fortifications.
If she’d had any business with kings or counts, she’d have sent an older, more powerful agent than he.
The palisade wall encircled a flattened hilltop.
Structures of mortared stone roofed with slate stood against the walls, some with chimneys trickling smoke, others with wide doors that marked them out as stables.
Stone towers surveyed the approach to the castle as well as this outer courtyard, which would become a killing field should an enemy army breach the palisade.
‘Those towers are younger than the rest of it,’ Harwick observed, scratching at his jaw.
He always seemed slightly ashamed when he drew on his experiences as a mercenary before joining Afanan’s troupe.
‘And the palisade’s newer still. Some of those logs were felled within the year.
The inner curtain wall stood alone to defend the castle when old Harlow died. ’
‘Ifan has been building fortifications?’ Spil said, astonished. ‘Against what?’
‘There are rumours of rebels in the forest,’ Damon ventured.
Colm made a puzzled grunt. ‘The young count’s either an idiot or a coward if he’s spent this much effort shoring up his defences instead of hunting down a few bandits and rebels. Maybe he thinks the walls will be some help against the haunting?’
This last was a question for Fola. She shook her head. ‘They wouldn’t be. But kings and princes have spent more effort on more foolish things.’
One of the watchmen led them through the barbican and gatehouse, a dark and narrow passage lit by a single lantern and the light falling from murder holes overhead. Llewyn blinked against the sun as they emerged into the inner courtyard.