Chapter 32 #3
Ynyr rankled at every word. He wanted to spit in the bastard’s eye, to tell him there were no kings in the Greenwood and never would be.
Yet he could see in his expression that Abal wanted Ynyr to refuse.
Wanted to bring Glascoed to heel at the edge of a blade, as he had conquered Forgard.
This parley was some kind of performance.
A gesture of peace to dilute his brutality.
To make it seem that his hand had been forced to reach for violence.
‘Well?’ Abal demanded. ‘What say you, Ynyr?’
‘What would be the terms?’ Ynyr asked. The village councils had begrudgingly agreed to pay certain quantities of tribute, if they might buy peace.
Abal barked laughter. ‘Does the son negotiate terms with his father? But you are unused to civilised ways, and I must educate you. I will be your king, and you will be my subject, sworn to serve me as I will. You will owe me hospitality as I request it, warriors as I require them, and the fifth share of all the produce of your lands. Most vitally, you will dispense justice in my name according to the law of my will.’
The fifth share … twice as much as the councils had decided to offer in tribute. Far more than some of the villages could afford to pay. But what was there to do? Abal did not seem willing to yield any of his demands.
As Ynyr considered his answer—and whether it might not be best to lie, however it might disgust him, to buy time to find a path out from under Abal’s power—a figure on a black courser emerged from the trees at the base of hill and joined with the bulk of Abal’s forces.
Barwon. There was some discussion, then the lad rode hard for the top of the hill.
‘I agree,’ Ynyr snarled. He swung his leg over his saddle and dropped to the ground and waved at the dozen warriors with him to do the same. ‘Gods bleed us all, we will kneel.’
Ynyr went to his knees and dipped his head, peering up at the king through the tufts of his brows.
Abal, too, dismounted. He regarded Ynyr and those kneeling behind him with a twisted smile, as though he had bitten into a sweet fruit with a bitter aftertaste. ‘You swear, then, to serve me loyally as the Count of Glascoed, obeying my will and command?’
‘I swear it.’ Ynyr spat the words. He hated them, but he spoke them true. For now, at least, until he found a way to shrug off the yoke he knelt to receive.
Abal brought down his hammer, letting its twisted head settle on Ynyr’s left shoulder, then his right. ‘Then I accept your submission and service. Rise, Ynyr, Count of Glascoed, the Greenwood, and its attendant territories.’
‘Wait!’ Barwon reined in his courser, whose flanks heaved from the uphill sprint. ‘They have laid a trap!’
Ynyr wanted to bolt to his feet, but the head of Abal’s hammer still rested on his shoulder. The king snarled down at him.
‘Is this true, Ynyr?’ he said. ‘At this early hour of your service, have you already betrayed me?’
‘A legion of fighting men hold just behind that tree line,’ Barwon said, pointing to the wooded valley. ‘They await the signal to charge. They’ve little hope to defeat your army, but mean to slay you and seize the hammer of thunder for—’
‘You know these are lies, fool,’ Ynyr snarled. ‘We brought what fighters we could muster to defend against treachery, that is all.’
‘He admits it!’ Barwon cried, putting on a performance of shock and horror to make any mummer proud. ‘Then you suspect the king of treachery? There must be trust between the king and his servants. Majesty, how can you appoint this man to rule in your name while such a fog holds between you?’
‘Bastard.’ Ynyr’s hands flexed for want of his sword. ‘What is the point of this? I have already knelt.’
‘Majesty, you know the wiles and unruliness of these forest folk, half-fae as they are,’ Barwon said.
‘This one might kneel, but the others will claim he speaks only for himself. They have no respect for kings. Three hundred men-at-arms have already risen against you. You must make a statement, here. A declaration to all that rebellion will be met with swift and certain justice.’
‘I must do nothing,’ Abal said firmly. The hammer rose from Ynyr’s shoulder. An unconscious tension in his body unwound. For a moment, he felt the possibility that he and his people might ride away from this place—subjugated, but not destroyed.
‘Thank you for your mercy, Your Majesty,’ Ynyr muttered.
Abal turned away from him. He raised his hammer and pointed its head at the clouds above the wooded valley.
His grip on the haft shifted. With a sound like stone grinding on stone, the crystal strands began to unbraid.
They seemed like living things, waking from slumber, peeling themselves apart.
The head of the hammer opened like a blossom in spring, its three crystal petals quivering.
The grinding sound became a hum, then a slow, steady rumble.
Pressure filled the air. Ynyr tried to stand, but the force that bound bodies to the earth had redoubled in strength.
His muscles screamed and bones ached as Abal swung the hammer down.
The clouds recoiled. The tops of trees burst apart. The earth split. A quake shook the ground in the same moment an ear-splitting burst of thunder rolled and a wave of dust rolled over them. Horses screamed in the sudden ochre dark. Ynyr found his feet and staggered to the ridge of the hill.
The stand of forest was gone. As the dust drifted, he glimpsed a hole in the world where it had stood. Clean lines of stone, like wood split with a wedge. Water fell from some heretofore underground stream. There was no sign at all of the three hundred warriors who had followed and trusted him.
(The vision shifted, other voices joining in Ynyr’s account.
Fola felt the nervous energy in that wooded valley, heard the whispered questions, peered through other eyes at the top of the hill while Abal and Ynyr talked, and from that vantage watched the hammer rise and unfurl.
Knew, in her body, the weight of the blow.
Pain enough to set her mind to voiceless screaming.)
Ynyr’s mind reeled. He had been a fool to imagine standing against such power. Just as Abal was a monster for wielding it, for ending three hundred lives with the sweep of his arm. A quiver worked through him—of fear, of rage, of grief.
He began to turn, a howl building in his throat, his hand reaching for his sword.
He would surely die, but if he struck fast and true he might take Abal with him.
A kind of justice, that. Someone else would take up the hammer.
Someone else would plunge these lands into tyranny.
But not Abal. Not this beast who had dug up old powers better left buried.
His hand found the hilt of his blade. A red blur filled the corner of his vision. A heavy blow fell upon his head.
Thoughts came sluggishly from behind a gauzy curtain of pain. He tried to move. Only one eye responded—the other showed nothing but a shattered field of red. Above him, Barwon knelt before Abal. The bloody hammer rose, touched one shoulder, and then the other.
Rage flared. A boiling hatred, filling Ynyr, demanding outlet and finding none in his wreck of a body. A boot obscured his vision. There were murmured words. Incomprehensible as the buzzing of flies.
Then darkness.
* * *
‘You have seen,’ Ynyr’s voice seethed from the edge of the void.
Fola opened her eyes. There was the ghost, beside the aleph, against a field of silver mist. The hazy shade of Ifan hugged himself.
The lingering pain and hatred of the vision clung to her like cobwebs, threatening to overwhelm her good sense.
Her left hand twitched, the index finger reaching for the thumb.
If her spells could reverberate backwards through time, she would crush Abal’s head without hesitation.
She took a slow, deliberate breath. For all its wonders, for all its beauty, the wider world held its share of horrors. She would face them, and reckon with them. Do what she could to ease the pain they caused. But she would not let them change who she was.
‘You are owed justice,’ Fola said. ‘For Abal’s cruel brutality, and for Barwon’s treachery.’
‘For more than that,’ Ynyr snapped, his words a thunderclap.
‘Three hundred souls snuffed out in an instant. And then horror visited upon the Greenwood as those who refused to bend to tyranny were hunted down and slaughtered. But even that is not all. Abal’s line continues.
Barwon’s line continues. Mine was ended, as were those of countless others.
Those who rode against us sired generations that have shaped this kingdom, even as we were denied that future.
They killed us. They destroyed a way of life.
And they scoured our legacy from the land. ’
‘You see?’ Ifan wept openly, the ghostly whisper of his voice trembling. ‘An end to the line of Abal. An end to kings in Parwys. My father understood, before he died, what had to be done.’
‘Aye,’ Ynyr said. ‘There can be no justice while the descendants of the wicked yet profit by the crimes of their forebears, can there? This young count seems a good lad, but I cannot stomach that he rules a land that should be free, nor that he does so as a product of Barwon’s betrayal.
More for Abal’s children. That tyrant’s line and the lines of his warriors must pay in blood for every murder—and for every child who ought to have been born if not for the slaughter of their ancestors. ’
‘Then you will drown this land in blood,’ Fola said.
Her heart ached for Ynyr. There had been an echo of the City in his people’s way of life.
Harder, more brutal, without the benefit of the First Folk’s gifts of plenty and security, but based on the same respect for life and autonomy.
She mourned the loss of that vision of the world, but could not stomach the brutality of Ynyr’s demand for vengeance.
‘Was violence your way, Ynyr? Brutal retribution? Have you changed so much in death?’
Ynyr’s eyes flashed, black on yellow. ‘We do not ask for your help, sorceress. Time and forgetting had made us weak, though our hate simmered long. Now we have the strength we need. The anger that we need. The demands of justice do not decay. Already, it has begun.’ He turned his attention to Ifan.
‘If you give up all you have gained by Barwon’s crime, you may be spared. ’
Ifan went to his knees and lowered his head.
‘You may be strong, Ynyr, but you are not all-powerful,’ Fola said.
‘The world is saturated with the unsettled dead, and the living have found ways to defend against them. If you make war, war will be made against you in turn. Abal’s line will kneel to the Mortal Church of Tarebach, whose priests will scour you from the earth.
Blood will flow, but you will not see justice, only your oppressors bent to the will of another, more dangerous power. ’
Ynyr regarded her with his raven’s eyes. ‘The young count is driven by guilt and fear,’ he said. ‘But what drives you, sorceress? What does it matter to you whether the dead of this land are avenged or forgotten?’
Ynyr had a point. She could take Siwan and flee Parwys, with all its horror and history.
But that was not her way—not her people’s way.
What claim could the City make to goodness if it stood back and allowed all the world around it to descend into chaos and cruelty?
‘I have the power to help, so I will. But if we pursue your vengeance to the hilt, Prince Owyn will commit an echo of Abal’s crime—though Tarebach will conquer, now, replacing Parwys.
To that end I propose a lesser vengeance, but a greater justice. ’
‘What does the suffering of the living matter to the dead?’ Ynyr snarled.
The mist of the vision gathered around him, giving the impression of vast, dark wings.
‘They have forgotten us. Written over our lives and deaths with a false history. A more comforting story. Easier to live with than the truth.’
‘Abal is already dead, as is Barwon,’ Fola pressed.
A ghost was only a spell, cast in the moment of death.
One of such profound need that it worked upon the world without structure beyond the desperation of the dying.
‘That those who betrayed you lived long, died well, and left a legacy makes your vengeance incomplete, but every year the march of time erodes what remains of your need.’ Until Siwan, by some resonance between her suffering and that of these unsettled dead, exposed them to the influence of the raven fiend.
Now these ghosts fed as much on its incomprehensible hatred as on their own desire for justice.
‘You cannot have your vengeance. Not truly,’ she said, daring to hope.
‘You can only torture and abuse those who benefit from the crime as an accident of their birth. But I agree that there can be no justice in the shadow of a lie. So I ask this—if the true history of Abal’s conquest were recognised, and promulgated, and the myth of the Beast-King scoured from the land, would that be enough? ’
‘Do not tell me what is and is not justice,’ Ynyr snapped. ‘I know what would satisfy me. I feel it in the marrow of my being. Nothing will be enough while a king of Abal’s line yet lives.’
A pulse rippled through the silver mist. Ynyr began to fade like fog burned away by the rising sun—all but the yellow of his eyes. ‘You know what we require.’ His voice echoed as the vision faded. ‘You know what justice demands. When it is done, we will go to our rest.’