Chapter 39

CHAPTER 39

FINN

Pelias had fallen. That was the first problem and not what Finn had expected. It had taken them two days’ hard riding from the scene of the ambush to reach the outskirts of the city to find everywhere was quiet, terrified. The whole land seemed to have fallen under a spell of fear. The closer they got the more devastation they met. The land was ravaged, just as Leander had promised.

They had lost Wren, and Laurence too. And the crown. Now it appeared they had lost everything.

Roland rode like a man in a stupor, consumed by fever and the darkest of magic. Finn had done everything he could to bind him to life with the magic of the Aurum. He was not going to lose the Grandmaster. The wounds had been bad but somehow he had managed to stop the bleeding, and while Olivier had dressed them, Finn had poured as much light into Roland’s body that it ought to have lit him up like the sun. But the injuries weren’t healing and it felt like part of Roland was gone forever, had slipped over the edge into death and not come back.

And wherever that part of him had gone ahead, it was pulling the rest of him after it.

‘We need to rest,’ Anselm told him. ‘He needs to rest. And we need some reconnaissance before we go any further. I don’t like this, Finn. It’s too quiet.’

At least that was something they could agree on.

‘Make camp then, and see to Roland. I’ll ride ahead and?—’

‘No,’ Anselm said. ‘You’re not yourself and you might be all that’s keeping Roland with us right now.’ Anselm was never one to sugar-coat things. ‘I’ll go. I know secret ways through the city and who to talk to. I’ll be quick. You stay here. Olivier can help tend Roland and you…’ That look again, suspicion and concern twisted together. It wasn’t that Anselm didn’t trust him, Finn knew that instinctively, but he was wary.

The reports that had greeted them on the road, when they met fleeing refugees, were not good. Leander had arrived by sea with half his army and the others had poured south along the coast and through the forests. The city guards had died in their droves trying to hold back the onslaught. Rather than submit to siege, a completely unprepared Pelias had opened the gates on the orders of the regents’ council.

That didn’t seem possible. Finn tried to imagine Lady Ylena giving up like that. And what had happened to the Knights of the Aurum?

If anyone could find out it would be Anselm. Finn had to trust in that.

Olivier helped set up a camp in a small copse of trees and they waited. The night stretched out in silence. Roland slept soundly and Finn kept watch until Olivier relieved him.

‘Will he return to us?’ he asked. Of Roland, not Anselm. Finn knew to his core that Olivier had no doubts whatsoever about Anselm. Before long, their friend would be back with the information they needed.

Roland, however, was another matter entirely.

‘He needs a proper healer,’ said Finn. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. Elodie would. And Wren. But I…’

The Aurum might be blazing inside him constantly, just like the holy flame in the Sacrum, but it shouldn’t be. In battle it had felt like music, sweeping over him and through him in a wave he couldn’t control. He was lost in it and his body fought with a will of its own, with a fury he had never possessed. He had never felt so much like a Paladin, consumed in the power of the light, so powerful and yet so helpless at the same time.

The Aurum would destroy him. And he would let it. Gladly.

A sound in the trees brought the two of them to alertness in an instant. Finn nodded to Olivier, who rose slowly and backed towards Roland, intent on defending him.

‘What happened to him?’ a young voice said from the depths of the foliage.

‘Robin?’ Olivier gasped and Finn recalled the two witchkind children who Roland had said brought them to the College of Winter.

‘And me,’ Lark chimed in, pushing her way out into the open without a trace of fear. ‘You have need of us. This is a right mess.’

‘Shh, Lark.’ Robin came forward to join her. ‘Don’t make them feel bad. They can’t help it. They don’t know anything.’ Lark shrugged, and scurried over to Roland to get a better look at him. She sucked on her lower lip and Finn was reminded of a weaponsmaster looking at damaged equipment.

‘Can you help him?’ he asked. They were witchkind, and perhaps something more than human, and Anselm had thought they were powerful indeed.

They both looked at him in unison as if he had grown an extra head. ‘We aren’t healers. Why didn’t you get him to do it?’ They both nodded at Olivier with a frightening synchronicity.

‘Me?’ Olivier said, his face pale. He took a step back. He had always been jumpy about magic – all the Arrendens were – but the past weeks had made him even worse.

‘Well that’s what you do, isn’t it?’ Robin said.

Olivier’s face took on a mulish expression. ‘I’m a knight.’

Lark wrinkled her nose. ‘Well you shouldn’t be. You had a gift – a gift of old magic no less – from the moment you were born. Why would you want to go giving that up for? To be a knight?’

She said ‘knight’ the way someone else might say ‘pig herder’.

Finn frowned, finally understanding. ‘You were a healer?’

‘No,’ Olivier insisted. ‘I was a boy . I wanted to be a knight anyway, and you can’t use magic and do that, can you? My family said it was for the best. We serve the Aurum.’

‘Well that’s just stupid,’ Robin sneered. The two of them were really not helping matters. Finn had barely believed Roland’s tales about them, but now he was rapidly reassessing. ‘I wouldn’t want to be anything that badly. Especially not a knight .’

Finn needed to get a hold on this situation quickly. The scorn in the boy’s voice stung more than he would like to say. Olivier had been born a healer, into a devout family, and he had given up the magic that made him so because that was what was expected of him. ‘There’s a law. It wasn’t his choice.’

‘There’s always a choice. He could’ve run away. Joined us. Rebel witchkind live free or die.’

Olivier let out a low growl of a breath. ‘And awful lot of them just die , you know?’

The two children – and for all their worldliness and precocious ways, they were just children – returned blank stares of hostility. Something else seemed to pass between them and suddenly Finn wondered just how young they were. And just what they were.

Finn took Olivier’s arm, pulling him to one side and lowering his voice. ‘Can you heal? Do you know what to do?’

‘It was fifteen years ago, Finn. I barely remember what I could do. I tried very hard to forget, in fact. And until recently I didn’t have the power in me anymore. Whatever happened at the College of Winter…whatever they said about it…I gave magic up to the Aurum when I vowed to serve. I?—’

There wasn’t time for this. ‘And if the Aurum could give that back?’ Finn asked. Olivier’s mouth opened but for a moment he seemed to have lost the ability to form words. ‘We need Roland, Olivier. He’s the Grandmaster. If there’s even a chance…’

Olivier glanced at the two witchkind children again, then at Roland, and finally dragged his gaze back to Finn. ‘Maybe? But—’ He swallowed hard, his expression troubled. ‘If it’s even possible, if it even works… What will that make me, Finn?’

Finn pulled him into a hug because he knew that feeling of being lost and so far out of his depth. But what else could they do?

‘You’ll still be Olivier, and you’ll still serve the Aurum. You’re still a knight. You always will be. The laws?—’

‘The stupid laws,’ Lark corrected him, like some kind of exasperated teacher.

Finn almost laughed. If the situation wasn’t so dire he might have. If he wasn’t asking Olivier to give up everything he ever believed to be right… ‘The laws are old, and to be honest, I think they’ve gone beyond their time. If any of us survive this, I’m not sure people are going to care. Right now, Ilanthus has Pelias and Leander has Wren. It may not matter anymore. But we swore to obey Roland, didn’t we? To serve him? And to risk our lives for him?’

‘Is that what I’m doing? Risking my life?’

Finn shrugged. ‘Maybe?’

Olivier sighed and shook his head wearily. ‘You and Anselm were always his brightest students. I just struggled after you. I always knew that. And I always knew you’d lead me astray too. Now look where we are.’

‘The last free knights,’ said Robin, his voice strangely resonant. There was a glow in his eyes that was all too familiar. Finn felt an answering pulse in his chest and he stared. That felt like a title being bestowed on them by something ancient and wise. ‘The old magic reaches out. Even the Aurum realises the danger we all face. The Nox has all but lost itself and it will take its creature with it.’

‘Wren? You’re talking about Wren? She isn’t a creature.’

‘The lost queen of Ilanthus… If she is crowned in Pelias…’ His eyes seemed to roll up in his head and that weird resonance grew stronger. ‘When she is lost enough in her power, and her will is almost gone, she will wear the crown and the Nox and Aurum will battle to destruction. The magic in the land will tear itself asunder. The lines which feed our lives, light our way and cool us in the shadows will be broken. Chaos will devour us. Magic will be no more.’

He swayed back and Lark caught him before he could fall. Witchkind indeed, both of them.

‘He sees things that will happen,’ she informed the knights solemnly. ‘It may not be clear but it’s always right.’

A seer, Finn thought. Dear light, what would the maidens make of a seer like that?

Nothing, because Robin was a boy. They’d make him give up his magic and send him on his way. It could have been worse. In Ilanthus they would have killed him in honour of the Nox. How had it all become so wildly twisted and wrong? How did anyone even start to go about setting it right?

He tried to focus again. ‘They’re going to crown Wren in the Sacrum with that Ilanthian crown and break magic apart, that’s what you mean? Perhaps they think it will release the old magic, perhaps they just want it all gone. But who is doing this? Oriole in Sidonia said she had sisters.’

‘Alouette in the College of Winter said the same thing,’ said Olivier.

‘So they have someone in Pelias as well. Another sister. Someone who persuaded the council to give the city up to Ilanthus. But who would do that? Not Lady Ylena, surely? Who else would have the power?’

‘If Leander already had Wren, that might have been all the leverage he needed,’ Olivier reminded him. ‘But the knights, Finn, our brothers-in-arms…what happened to them? You’re right. We need Roland. Our people will follow him in Elodie’s name and he may be the last chance we have.’ He drew in a deep breath and then his eyes widened as Lark took his hand and squeezed it in her own. Olivier seemed to shiver for a moment and then cast her a reluctant smile. ‘All right. I’ll do it.’