Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

ROLAND

Roland dreamed of Elodie that night. Like every other night. She was reaching out to him from a tangle of twisted briars formed of shadows, her pale arms torn to shreds by their thorns. And though he hacked at the seething mass with his blazing sword, he couldn’t free her. Even Nightbreaker had no effect on them. They kept growing, coiling around her and crushing her in their sharp embrace.

The earth of Asteroth drank down her blood and the land sang with its touch. Old magic hummed in the air, something far beyond either light or dark. And certainly beyond the two of them. It demanded more and more, sacrifice, blood, self-destruction.

He woke up swallowing down a scream of rage and loss before it could escape. They had camped last night in a patch of ragged woodland on the edge of the Great North Road. They had left Pelias and even Knightsford far behind them now. The land here was wild and uncaring, the mountains stooping over them. The road to the College of Winter should have been direct and easy but something kept turning them around, something not quite natural. They were not lost. He knew that. Olivier’s maps showed them the way. But they couldn’t find the path, or when they thought they had, it twisted in another way.

Olivier looked up from keeping watch, his back to the embers of their fire, but said nothing. Anselm slept on, a deep and dreamless sleep of a man with no regrets.

Boys, thought Roland wearily. They were just boys and he should never have allowed them to come with him.

But he had, and it was too late to send them back. Not to mention far too dangerous. Who knew what Lady Ylena and her pet councillors would do to them for freeing him.

If he tried, they would argue of course. They were good at that. Well, Anselm was. Quick and clever and oh so determined. And Olivier’s loyalty was beyond question. Where Anselm would argue, Olivier would just carry on, stubbornly, doing what he thought was right. That had not changed. They were in their twenties now, far from actual boyhood. But to him, they were still boys. Still the squires he had taken under his wing along with Finn, grateful that his ward had friends. Each in their own way in need of his protection, he had given it with his full heart, sure then that he would never have children of his own so lavishing that care on them instead. In his own way. He was still the Grandmaster of the Knights of the Aurum then and they were sworn to serve.

He lay back again, trying to calm his breath and his erratic heart, staring at the stars peering through the high canopy of leaves overhead.

He’d left her behind. Left her lying there helpless. He hadn’t even been able to say goodbye, not really. His Elodie, his love, his queen…

And if she did awaken would she call him a traitor as well? He’d stood against her when she had been consumed with the power of the Aurum, but he had done so in order to save Wren from her wrath. Surely she would understand that. The Aurum itself might not, but Elodie would. She had to.

If she understood anything at all anymore. If she ever awoke.

No, he couldn’t think like that. He had given up on her once and she had come back to him. He had to keep believing. He would find a way to save her. Sister Maryn of the Maidens of the Aurum believed an answer could be found in the College of Winter, and that was where he would go. He’d find a solution. Elodie would awaken and they would be together again.

But something dark and foreboding in the back of his mind taunted him with the thought that his life had never been simple and he didn’t deserve such blessings. He’d left her behind. Just as she had once left him.

He had to pray that the Aurum would protect her. He had to believe that. She had been locked deep in its power, and it was trapped inside her. It needed her to survive. At least that was what Maryn had implied. He only hoped the maiden was right. She knew secrets of magic and the mysteries of the flames. She had to be right.

Trying to sleep was pointless now. It would be dawn soon. He roused himself again and got up.

‘Grandmaster?’ Olivier asked. No more than that but it was his way. The query was unspoken. What did he need? Was something wrong? What could Olivier do to help?

There was no way to answer. Roland wasn’t sure he even knew the answer anyway.

Nightbreaker, the great sword of the Grandmaster of the Knights of the Aurum, lay by his side, instead of the woman he loved, the queen to whom he had devoted his life even in her absence. He strapped it back against his body and felt the weight as something that belonged there. Part of him.

It was all he had of her. Once again. The sword had been his companion for more years than Elodie had.

Well, except in his dreams.

And now she lay locked in an enchanted sleep, miles away in Pelias, the power of the Aurum itself burning inside her.

At least, he thought bitterly, he knew where she was this time.

He made his way to the edge of their camp and into the bushes to relieve himself.

That was when he heard it: movement, all around them. He let out a low whistle to alert Olivier and backed up, bracing himself for attack.

The undergrowth came alive all around him, a wild rustling and groaning as the ground itself ripped open. Roots and vines rose like living things, tearing themselves up from the earth and down from the canopy, and Roland staggered back, drawing Nightbreaker. He wasn’t fast enough, not against something like this. No one could be.

This was more than an enchantment. This was wild magic, old magic.

Behind him he heard Olivier cry out in alarm, shouting Anselm’s name, but the other young knight wasn’t even fully awake yet. The same roots surged up from the earth around his sleeping form and engulfed him in moments. Olivier was backing towards him, trying the impossible task of covering all angles alone.

Roland retreated, aware that Nightbreaker had not flamed to life in his hands. Perhaps the Aurum was not able to help him here. Perhaps it couldn’t help at all anymore. Or perhaps this was not an attack of darkwoods or shadow kin, and therefore nothing to do with the Nox.

Then, abruptly, all went still. The leaves made soft murmurings in the breeze and the trees creaked softly. There was no birdsong, no sign of animal life around them. Just that eerie silence.

Some primal instinct in Roland would give almost anything to flee if he could. But that was not an option.

‘Hold,’ said a voice, young, soft and quiet, with a slight waver indicating it was not actually as confident as it was endeavouring to sound. ‘Hold or the forest will tear him apart.’

The roots and vines tightened on Anselm, one coiling around his throat. His face was visible, eyes wide with fear, his jaw clenched tightly. He struggled all the same, even though there was no getting out of that trap.

‘If that was your intention you would have done it already,’ Roland replied to the leaves and the undergrowth. Still no sign of who he was talking to. The woodlands were still and so unnaturally quiet. ‘Let him go. We mean you no harm. We’re just passing through.’

‘Knights of the Aurum just passing through?’ said another voice, definitely a girl this time, high and sweet as birdsong. ‘Now I’ve heard everything. Where’s the trail of death and destruction?’

The first voice – a boy perhaps – hissed something at her. Their voices came from all around the clearing though, as if echoing back on themselves. A deliberate trick, Roland thought, but a clever one. A warrior with less discipline would be thrown off balance, trying to look for the source and not focusing on anything else. Such as his priorities.

‘Let Anselm go, and we’ll talk,’ he told them.

‘Why do you think we want to talk to you?’ the girl snapped.

‘Shut up, Lark.’

Roland glanced at Olivier, who cast him a confused glance. They sounded like children, young adolescents at most. Siblings too close in years to talk without argument. Twins perhaps.

‘I mean it, Robin. We should just kill them and?—’

Roland raised his hands and slowly lowered his sword until he could set it down at his feet. They weren’t to know he could retrieve it in a heartbeat. He was trying to make a point. Olivier followed suit, though he didn’t look happy about it.

‘Talk to me,’ Roland said. ‘My name is Roland de Silvius. I’m listening. What do you want? Who are you?’

A vine slid forward cautiously to prod at the sword and then recoiled sharply, as if stung. It withdrew, back into the undergrowth. If they had thought to snatch the sword away they’d have to do better than that. Nightbreaker could look after itself. It had been forged in the Aurum and magic was an innate part of it.

A boy stepped out of the trees, his hair tangled with sticks and leaves, his face smeared with dirt and coloured oils, not yet even in his teen years. Behind him, there was a girl, roughly the same age, wearing the same sort of clothing decorated with leaves, bark and flowers.

Not children. Not quite. But not definitely adults either.

Roland drew in a breath. They looked feral and he was not sure what was going on here, who they were or what they wanted.

‘We are witchkind,’ said the boy in a steady voice, glaring at the knights. ‘We live free or we die. And you’re all our prisoners.’