Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

WREN

The tower loomed over them, black and empty, the morning light playing through the smoke that still hung in the air around it. The windows were gone, as was the door. Everything inside on the lower floor had been destroyed.

Wren tried to force herself to keep breathing as they stepped inside. The heat must have been intense, which told her at once nothing natural had done this. No normal fire.

Elodie had spoken about conjuring witchfire on occasion. It was a weapon of last resort, she said. That amount of magic was only to be used in desperate need.

Wren had never seen it though, and certainly never managed to produce so much as a spark herself. Light was not her forte. She was better at driving the darkness away than drawing the light to her. Now she wished she had listened properly. At least she might understand better what had happened here.

Wren ran her hand down the soot-blackened wall. Her fingers came away coated in a thick sticky darkness, which she hurriedly wiped off on her jerkin. It felt like tar.

Glancing back, she saw Finn examining everything with a critical eye. He was as aware of what all this might mean as she was.

‘Tell me about her,' he said at last.

Wren shook her head. ‘What is there to tell? She raised me.' And now she was gone. No one could have survived this.

The kitchen and workrooms were destroyed, the distillery must have gone up in a fireball, and their living room and bedrooms were ash, but as they moved further up the winding staircase, it wasn't as bad.

The round room at the top of the tower looked like a whirlwind had gone through it, and everything stank of smoke, but the flames had not reached it. Elodie's treasures were strewn everywhere. Even the precious telescope lay broken on the floor.

So the Ilanthians had come here, before she made it back. They must have.

Had Elodie still been here? Had they taken her? Was she already on her way back to Sidonia in black metal chains enchanted to suppress her magic, destined for a lifetime of slavery?

They had certainly taken anything of actual value, not that there had been much. Even the chest that Elodie kept locked at all times had been smashed open, the contents rifled through and most of it gone.

Elodie thought Wren didn't know about her secret treasures, but Wren had always been a curious child and suspiciously good at sneaking around, poking her nose in where it didn't belong. That said, she had never examined the contents of the chest too closely. They had always been Elodie's secrets and they felt private, sacrosanct.

Wren knelt before it and a sob lodged in her throat. She couldn't breathe. Her heart felt like it would tear itself out of her, and her eyes burned as she tried to sort through the scattered remains of a life.

At the bottom of the chest she found a locket. How had they missed that? On the floor beside it she found a leather-bound notebook, the cover etched with the symbol of the Aurum, the wheel of flames. It was battered and well used, old. She opened the book to find Elodie's neat writing covering the pages. So much of it. Her eyesight blurred with tears as she tried to read it. A diary? She didn't remember Elodie ever keeping one but she could have, Wren supposed. It felt like an invasion, but what else did she have now? She flicked through the pages, brushing her filthy fingertips against the ink and wishing she could ask Elodie what to do.

The page shifted beneath her touch and she shied back with a cry.

‘What is it?' Finn asked, instantly at her side. Had he been watching her? Waiting for her to pick something up? Or was he just as concerned about what they might find here as Wren was? ‘What's wrong?'

The words on the page changed, the ink drawing together, moving like water until it formed other words. A warning.

Run, little bird, and don't look back. Make for the Seven Sisters and I'll find you there. Don't trust anyone, neither hunter or knight.

Elodie's writing, unmistakable and still moving, adding more as she read it.

They are looking for both of us and I will not let them take you.

‘What's the Seven Sisters?' she asked.

‘Standing stones, in a clearing in the southern end of the forest, not far from Knightsford,' he said, that touch of wariness back in his voice. ‘They're old magic, the oldest. They stand at the conjunction of several lines of power, I believe. A dangerous place.'

She examined the locket again. It was beautiful, a delicate fancy, inscribed with the symbol of the Aurum as well. But why was Elodie warning her away from the knights while carrying treasures marked with their symbol?

‘Elodie says to meet her there. In the book.'

She tried to show him but the words on the page faded again, leaving just a smear of water-stained ink.

Whatever enchantment Elodie had woven around it had done its job, it seemed.

‘She's powerful, your Elodie,' Finn said, the wary tone never leaving his voice. ‘And she escaped Leander. Probably used the fire as a distraction. Clever.' Was that a begrudging tone of respect?

She was about to say she had never met anyone more powerful, but Elodie was the only witch she knew and most of her practice lay in the mundane, in herbs and knowledge and healing. And in her link to the forest itself. All the other things Wren herself could never actually master. But that's when she heard it.

We are witchkind. We will live free or die.

It was like a whisper in the back of Wren's mind.

Now that sounded more like Elodie than the words in the book.

She swallowed hard. ‘We have to go south,' she said at last. ‘To Knightsford. You to warn them of the Ilanthians and me to the stones, to find her.'

‘Can I see the locket?' he asked abruptly and she frowned. But there didn't seem to be a reason not to let him. As he took it his fingers brushed against her skin and he froze for a moment. Wren felt something like a shiver pass right through her before he pulled back.

Finn opened the locket carefully, as if afraid he'd damage it, and stared at the images inside.

On one side was a small child with dark hair and huge eyes. Wren as she had been. She remembered Elodie painting it, remembered having to sit still, remembered fidgeting and squirming until Elodie gave up and released her back into the wild. Elodie had laughed at her, rather than been annoyed. Said she was a feral little thing and nothing would ever change that. But she'd said it with fondness.

On the other side the face of a man looked back at them. Handsome, strong, his hair and eyes as dark as Wren's, the lines of his face making him stern.

Finn snapped the locket shut. He shoved it back into Wren's hand and got to his feet, retreating to the far side of the room.

‘What is it? What's wrong?' She rose unsteadily, as if the floor beneath her feet had suddenly become uneven.

‘That's Roland de Silvius,' he said, his voice shaken. ‘Made years ago, but there's no mistaking him. He's barely changed. Who is Elodie? Where did she come from?'

Wren shook her head, bewildered. How could he know the man in Elodie's locket? ‘I don't know. We've always been here.'

‘But she didn't come from here, did she?'

‘No. We moved here when I was little…'

‘And you never asked where from?'

Wren looked around the tower room that had been a sanctuary and a stronghold, right to the last. This had been Elodie's space. Wren herself had always preferred to be outside in the forest, in the greenwood, in the open air. Perhaps she should have paid more attention, but it was far too late now.

‘She didn't like to talk about the past,' was all she could tell him, and he gave her a look like he'd worked out something devastating.

‘I bet she didn't,' Finn muttered.

‘Why don't you tell me what's wrong? And who this Roland is?'

But she remembered too many times Elodie crying out in her dreams and nightmares, calling for Roland, weeping, his name on her lips like that of a lover or a lost soul. She screamed his name in the darkest moments of the darkest nights when the worst dreams tormented her. Whenever Wren had gone to her then, tried to help her or comfort her, Elodie had buried her face in her hands, refused to look at her.

Faced with the image before her, Wren began to suspect why. But she didn't want to think about it. She didn't dare.

Finn seemed to have gathered his wits now. He straightened, staring at her as if seeing her for the first time. ‘You've never heard that name? Roland de Silvius, first Paladin of the Royal Court, Queen's champion, the Grandmaster of the Knights of the Aurum?'

All that? It sounded terribly grand, a list of a name. Too big for one man.

Roland… She might have heard that name. And Elodie had told her of the Knights of the Aurum of course. But none of the rest of it. Not Grandmaster, or champion or anything like that. Just Roland.

This didn't make any sense. Elodie was a hedge witch. A talented one no doubt, but nothing more, living in a benighted forest, miles from anywhere, on the edge of the civilised world. She had nothing to do with Grandmasters, or knights or Paladins. She scoffed if they were mentioned and warned Wren away from them. Even standing there now with Finn felt like some kind of betrayal.

‘But why would Elodie have his picture in a locket?'

Finn took another step towards her and stopped, looming over her, suddenly a threat. She hadn't thought of him as one before. But the chance had always been there, hadn't it? He was tall, warrior-trained, and knew all about the Knights of the Aurum. Who had she brought into their home?

‘A very good question, Wren of Darkwood. It's the type of gift one would give only to someone you loved, isn't it? And Roland only ever loved one person. The one person he couldn't have of course, even if things had been different. We thought her killed in the battle for the Aurum twenty years ago. The love of Roland's life, so all the stories say—I never asked him, but I didn't have to. They are legendary. Roland de Silvius loved Queen Aeryn of Asteroth. The lost queen.'