Chapter 35

CHAPTER 35

ROLAND

Roland had dreamed about Elodie the previous night, in the brief hours he tossed and turned in a guest bedroom of the College of Winter. She was lost in the darkness, heartbroken, and try as he might, he couldn’t reach her. He threw himself against invisible walls, like impregnable glass, but to no avail. The flames that danced around her guttered as if in a wind, and she looked so wan and helpless.

Elodie had never looked helpless. She was fierce and wonderful, his beloved queen.

But not in his nightmare. Here she was helpless and he was powerless, and they were eternally apart.

It was a relief to be on the road, after another brief conference with Vambray that morning.

The enchantments on the College seemed to have vanished with Alouette’s influence, and the relief among the inhabitants was palpable. Roland heard them talking, the people of the College, these witchkind who had never faced such danger, ascribing it by turns to the arrival of the knights and their Grandmaster, and some who even whispered that it was the princess. What Wren would make of that he didn’t know. She didn’t seem anything like the girl he had known in Pelias and Roland didn’t know how to even broach the subject of what she had endured in Sidonia. Or what changes had transformed her.

Because she was transformed. The dark power came off her in waves, so strong even Roland could feel it, and the effect she had on Finn was unsettling. More than unsettling. Her hair was long and rippling with shadows, her skin like moonlight and her eyes wide and dark, but ringed as if bruised. Previously, he had not seen the Nox in her, no matter how many times everyone had told him she was the dark goddess incarnate. She was a child, a girl, his daughter…

But he saw it now.

She looked exhausted this morning, her nerves on edge, and she kept glancing at Finn as if she expected him to go berserk. The Ilanthian gown was gone, which was just as well. She wore a simple travelling outfit, a leather jerkin over breeches, with a long green cloak, and looked far more comfortable in it than she had since he had first brought her to Pelias. But her eyes were darker than ever, deep and endless, and full of doubts.

Finn was transformed as well. He was the young man Roland knew and loved again, his eyes aglow, that darkness they had seen in him when he arrived banished. That was Wren’s doing, because Roland understood now that, while she could call the shadow kin and bend them to her will, she could banish them as well.

Finn bowed to Roland, still decked in that dark mail of the armour he had arrived wearing. And though it was shadow-wrought steel and clearly of great age, made with the skill of a master, it didn’t smother him as it had on his arrival here. Rather it shone with a blue-black light, and the sword strapped to his back remained sheathed. An ominous threat, no doubt, but not an overt one. Not yet. Just like Finn. Prince Finnian… He was controlled, careful in every movement, but when he smiled it was as if the sun came out from behind clouds.

‘Grandmaster,’ Finn said and Roland just pulled him into a hug before he could say one more formal word.

‘Not anymore,’ Roland told him. Finn pulled back with a look of shock and Roland gave him a rueful smile. ‘The Lady Regent Ylena relieved me of that duty.’ Finn frowned and looked ready to argue – of course he did – but Roland shook his head. ‘It is done, Finn. Yvain is Grandmaster.’

‘In name anyway,’ Anselm muttered under his breath but when Roland glanced his way he had the nerve to look completely innocent.

‘Enough,’ he said. ‘We must go back to Pelias and inform them of this plot. We must protect the queen, above all else. Vambray believes that we can wake her. He has told me how. Nightbreaker is the key. That was why Alouette was so keen to take it. If I had not brought it with me…’

‘They would never have known to use it,’ Olivier interrupted. ‘It has never been known for magic. Yvain would have carried it as you did, as a sword.’

‘Perhaps. He might have worked it out, or Maryn would have perhaps. Whatever the odds, we must return it. It represents the Aurum now.’

‘And the crown we brought from Ilanthus represents the Nox,’ Wren added. ‘We must keep it from Leander at all costs. He can use it to gain control of the Nox. And of me.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I think the safest place is in Pelias, don’t you? Perhaps the only safe place.’

A fortress city which Roland knew how to defend…he only hoped that was true.

And now, the main thing was to get there as quickly as they could. The southern road was clear and straight, but too exposed. If there were Ilanthian troops on the move, Roland’s party could be in grave danger and he would not allow any harm to come to Wren. He would not allow Leander to take her. Not now when she had escaped him again.

But they needed to move fast. Covertly. And now.

He glanced back at Wren as they finally set off from the College of Winter and a chill crept down his spine.

They made much better time than Roland expected, stopping only briefly to rest the horses more than themselves. It was a hurried race for home and they didn’t have time to talk. That was what he told himself anyway.

So when he kept watch in the darkest hours of the night, he was surprised when Wren came to join him.

‘You should sleep,’ he told her.

‘I can’t.’

Everyone else was asleep. Roland pursed his lips and pondered on how to deal with wayward daughters. He’d heard of such things, of course. Too many of the Paladins with daughters complained about it.

Roland didn’t know what on earth they were going on about. Having a daughter…

He put out an arm and she nestled in against him. ‘I’m scared,’ she said after an age.

‘Understandable,’ he replied, unsure what else to say. She was right to be scared. There was a lot to be scared of. ‘We will be back in Pelias soon, just another couple of days.’

‘That’s part of what I’m afraid of, Roland.’

He smiled at the sound of his name on her lips, the tone so like her mother’s. But this was no time for humour. He knew that.

‘We will make it. We will face it together. I won’t let anything happen to you, Wren. I promised, didn’t I? And Finn?—’

‘I tried to help him, tried to rid him of the shadow-touch but…’ Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. ‘I don’t know. I may have made it worse, the other way. The light of the Aurum took him, filled him and it…it…’

‘It’s in Finn now? Not Elodie?’

She shook her head, helplessly. ‘I don’t know. Not really. Part of it maybe? But I fear it. If he’s the Aurum, and I’m the Nox?—’

‘But you aren’t,’ he told her. ‘He’s Finn and you’re Wren and that’s the end of it.’

‘No it isn’t. I wish it was all. They want him to be king in Ilanthus. Well, before Leander killed Alessander and claimed the throne. And he wants to marry me – Leander, I mean – and…and…’

What a tangle, he thought. It was worthy of a mummers’ play.

‘Enough,’ Roland sighed. ‘We’ll see it through. We will work it out. But first we need to reach Elodie and wake her. She’ll know what to do, Wren. She always does. You know that.’

And in this he only hoped he was right.