Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

ROLAND

The College of Winter lay deep in the harsh mountains of the north, and could only be approached by certain roads, many of them secret. With Robin and Lark accompanying them, the three knights made their way through the forest leading their horses. Light slanted through the tall pines which towered over them. Snow began to fall and by the time they left the cover of the trees, it was coming thick and fast, and Roland feared it would slow them down further. Robin was right. It was like the College didn’t want to be found.

Neither of their witchkind guides talked much, but then nor did Roland. Anselm tried to engage the children in conversation while they ate and sometimes while they travelled.

‘We should reach the College tomorrow,’ Olivier said as they camped for the night. Mercifully the snow had stopped but the wind was still bitterly cold as they set up shelters and huddled together by the fire. He was studying the maps he had brought with him, his expression still grave, as if they defied him somehow. He was trying not to make eye contact with Robin or Lark, Roland noticed, and never addressed them directly.

Lark seemed to find this intriguing. In fact Olivier was the one person she seemed drawn to, the one she wanted to talk to. It was clearly starting to get on Anselm’s nerves but then the young Lord Tarryn had always been protective of Arrenden.

Robin clapped his hands together and blew on them. Neither of the siblings were equipped with the heavy cloaks the knights had brought in their packs but the cold didn’t seem to affect them quite as much. Robin was quicksilver, always moving, always watchful. His long brown hair tumbled over his green eyes and he had wound a scarf around his neck as he hunkered close to the fire.

‘Is there a history of craft in your family?’ Lark asked Olivier.

Olivier just glared at her. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘A hedge witch, perhaps?’ Robin asked. They were like a pair of magpies harrying their prey. ‘Healers? Or even Maidens of the Aurum? You have the instincts for it, and you’re clearly sensitive to the tides of power in this world. Your sense of direction alone?—’

‘I know how to read maps, nothing more.’ Olivier got to his feet and stalked away to the edge of the clearing, the conversation finished. Roland frowned at Robin who just shrugged, entirely unrepentant.

‘Must you?’ Roland asked.

‘A man should be true to himself. Your knight is not.’

‘There is no knight more true,’ Anselm snapped, his voice unusually sharp. ‘You just delight in causing trouble. All witchkind do.’

He got to his feet and followed Olivier, muttering darkly under his breath.

‘Perhaps not all witchkind,’ Roland said. ‘But he isn’t wrong about you, is he? What do you want? Really?’

Lark rolled her shoulders back. ‘At the moment, something warm to eat and perhaps a steaming bath. As if…’ Robin laughed at her but gave no reply of his own.

Roland sighed, took off his own cloak and held it out. ‘I’ll thank you to stop needling my knights. They are tired and they have given up everything to this cause.’

Robin wrapped the two of them in the cloak and nodded his thanks, managing to look a little chastened at least. Meanwhile, Lark’s eyes alighted on the sword, strapped to Roland’s back.

‘Is that it? Nightbreaker?’ she asked. When Roland nodded she smiled, an expression both knowing and mischievous. ‘I always thought that was an interesting name for the sword of a Grandmaster of your order. How many knights has it broken, do you think?’

Roland shrugged. ‘Every Grandmaster who has carried it, I imagine. The name is no joke and the double meaning is intentional. Our role is not something to be taken on lightly. They say it carries part of the Aurum in it, like a Paladin. Chosen and blessed.’

‘And those two are both Paladins like you?’

‘Yes, I believe so.’

There was still a seed of light in each of them, but something else as well. Something Roland didn’t want to consider. Wren had put it there. It wasn’t darkness. Not quite. But he didn’t have a word for what it was.

Robin hummed to himself, warming his hands again. ‘What would they give to serve the light, do you think? What would you give?’

‘I’ve given everything,’ Roland told him bluntly.

But Robin shook his head, his eyes gleaming in the firelight like emeralds, giving him a trickster cast, something just a little too other about him, as if something far older was looking out at Roland through those eyes. Lark snuggled in against her brother, watching in silence, just as keenly. ‘I don’t think so. Not yet anyway.’

They were witchkind, this strange pair. They lived free or died. Roland rather suspected more died than anyone knew. Some went to the College of Winter and that was that. And others…

He was suddenly ashamed to realise he had never questioned what happened to the others.

It felt like the edges of his world were slowly being chipped away and he did not like it one bit, the way the twins watched him, the things they said, and he felt a savage surge of shame and remorse.

‘Your queen was like us, for a while, when she was Elodie of Cellandre, a hedge witch. We knew of her. It gave us hope.’ Robin poked the fire with a stick, staring into it. After a moment it grew brighter, flames burning more merrily than before, and Roland narrowed his eyes, glaring at it.

He ought to ask about that, he thought, but the subject of Elodie was still heavy on his mind and he didn’t want to discuss it. Or that same shame and remorse. Perhaps they had turned from needling his knights to needling him. Testing him. Seeing what threads they could pull until he unravelled.

He laid his hand on the sheath holding Nightbreaker and forced his mind to calm. When he opened his eyes again, they were both watching him with that strange predatory intensity.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘The sword…tell us its story?’

Like children again. And yet, not quite. ‘It’s the sword of the Grandmaster of the Knights of the Aurum, forged in its flames by Aelyn the First. No blade had ever been Aurum-forged before. They say it has never failed a knight of true heart, and never will, that the Aurum goes with it and that the men who carry it will always be true.’

Robin nodded slowly to himself but Lark didn’t look so convinced. ‘There’s light in it, that’s true. But it can’t decide if someone is true, or dictate who they are. That’s up to the men themselves, isn’t it? Are you true, Roland?’

Was he? He’d failed Elodie, left her behind, lost in that endless sleep. He was trying to find a way to help her, and Ylena wouldn’t have let him near her if he had stayed but…

Enough, Roland thought. This strange pair knew nothing about any of them. They were just prodding at weak points to get a reaction. He didn’t know why. For their own amusement, it seemed. He rose to his feet, intent on finding Olivier and Anselm. They should have been back already and the mountains were not safe to wander in. He’d tell them to ignore the witchkind and keep their own counsel from now on. Perhaps agreeing to have the twins as guides was a mistake but he couldn’t deny that they had taken a much quicker path to the College of Winter with them leading the way. A witchkind path, they had called it, but to Roland it looked like any other road through the forest. That said, he wasn’t so sure it was entirely natural. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

The trees pressed close around him as he passed, but up ahead he saw another clearing, one bathed in moonlight, where Anselm bent over Olivier, his face all concern.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Olivier was saying. He sat on the ground, his legs drawn up against his chest. ‘It was years ago.’

‘Of course it matters. He has no right to make such insinuations. If we didn’t need him I’d?—’

But Olivier looked up at Anselm, and his face held anguish. ‘He isn’t wrong though. And he’s just a boy and he’s had a hard life. He can’t help but be blunt. My family might have treated me like those children. And if I had not pledged myself to the Aurum, what would have become of me? They wouldn’t have kept me, not knowing that about me. It was the only way. Otherwise?—’

‘There is no otherwise. You gave up a birthright to the Aurum. You are where you’re meant to be, Olivier.’ Anselm dropped to his knees in front of his friend and pressed his gloved hand against Olivier’s face. ‘The two of us are.’

Olivier tried to smile, but the expression didn’t really take hold. ‘My parents would have something to say about that as well. Shameful, Anselm. That’s what we are.’

Anselm just shrugged. ‘So be it then. They can think what they want. But you and I? We’re not shameful. There is nothing wrong with this.’ He leaned in closer, his lips brushing Olivier’s, his fingers burying themselves in the other man’s hair.

It was a private moment, far too private. Roland withdrew, careful not to make a noise.

Olivier had a secret and Lark had come very close to the mark. Many of the knights said they gave something when they took their vows to the Aurum. Roland had never felt it himself but then Elodie had long ago told him he had the magical sensitivity of a large rock. But Dain had, so had Yvain. His fellow Paladins had felt the power of the Aurum in all things. Perhaps it was something they should have discussed more, but it always seemed to him a personal choice, like who to love, and none of his business. It didn’t make them less of a knight. But clearly Olivier was concerned.

Family expectations, and judgemental beliefs, could be damaging.

Men called to knighthood had to give up anything magical to the Aurum. Was that what Olivier meant? It had clearly not been an easy choice, and he felt he had been given no choice at all. Which was wrong.

Tomorrow, Roland thought, he would find some way to reassure the young knight, hopefully without revealing what he had seen and heard here. But Lark had been right in one thing.

It was up to a man, or a woman, to decide who they were, and whether they were true.

Snow began to fall again and the wind was rising. Roland returned to their camp to find the witchkind twins on their feet, on the far side of the fire, facing the darkness beyond. They were watching something, something Roland could not yet see.

‘Roland?’ Lark whispered, and all the bravado was gone from her. She was focused, but not afraid, intense. ‘Draw your sword. Quietly, carefully.’

There was an edge to her voice that made Roland obey, slowly and smoothly slipping Nightbreaker free. A soft glow illuminated the blade, neither firelight nor moonlight, but something else entirely. The horses stirred nervously, whinnying in growing alarm, and Roland felt the skin tighten across the back of his shoulders, the hairs rising. He knew this feeling. Knew it far too well.

Shadow kin threaded through the trees towards him, like sharks scenting blood.