Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

ROLAND

Everything brought him back to Elodie. On the long ride north from Pelias, there wasn't much else to do but ponder the past.

How could it not, when everything he did was in her service? Even now.

The regents' council still existed in the vain hope that some day some trace of their lost queen might be found, that she might be found. That somehow the Aurum had saved her.

Sometimes Roland wondered if she had really destroyed the Nox, or if she had been devoured by it, and felt like the worst kind of traitor for thinking those thoughts. He had seen her there, framed by shadows, bathed in firelight. His last glimpse of her…

But there were still fragments of the Nox in the world, and its cursed shadow kin were still at large. Why would they survive when she did not? Elodie had been indomitable.

Rumours sometimes circulated that she had been found. A number of pretenders had come to the royal court over the years, but they had all failed the test.

Roland had known they would the moment he set eyes on them. He would always know Elodie. He's mine , she had said. And the words were prophetic. He still was. Even now.

The regents' council had not been forgiving of such pretenders.

So, Queen Aeryn of Asteroth lived on as a saint in the minds of her people. She had battled the Nox to keep it from the Aurum, turned back the darkness from the holy light, and paid with her existence. That was what he had to believe too. The alternative – that she had left him, run away to live out a life without him – was too terrible. She had never been a coward. She knew her duty better than anyone, and time and again she had met it head on, no matter what the consequences. She'd even agreed to marry Evander, even though she knew what he was and all he stood for. For the sake of the kingdom. For the vain hope of peace.

The night of the wedding still haunted him. Roland had stood guard outside the chamber, torturing himself with the knowledge that, inside the room, she gave herself to another man. Until she cried out and he couldn't stand it any longer. He'd burst through the doors like a charging bull.

The thoughts of that bastard Evander still made his stomach knot with rage. His hands around her throat, pushing her down onto her knees in front of him. The audacity of the man. She was the queen. She was… she was Roland's everything.

‘ We know how to deal with witches where I'm from ,' the Ilanthian prince said. ‘ I know where you belong. Now do what you're good for, woman. '

How she hadn't already killed him with all the powers at her fingertip, Roland would never know. He had wanted to snap the bastard's neck that instant. It was like he'd bound her with some kind of power, curtailed the magic flowing through her veins, leaving her helpless.

Perhaps she was just stunned, too shocked to believe what was happening until it was too late.

‘ Kill me and you invite war ,' Evander had the nerve to say. Rather than face Roland like a man. He'd fallen back on his position and the very real threat his people posed to Asteroth.

Elodie had stopped him killing the prince. Only Elodie would have that power.

‘ He's not worth the destruction war could bring. '

She'd hidden the bruises the next day, but she'd never spent another night with her husband.

Evander had never forgiven either of them. The rumours had spiralled. Roland didn't care. Couldn't care. He'd vowed to keep her safe from all harm.

Roland only hoped that when his precious Nox had devoured Evander it had hurt. He hoped it still hurt. He hoped it was eternal agony.

But it didn't change the fact that Elodie was gone and the fragile peace she had tried to build with that cursed marriage, and the thing the regents' council had scraped back together in the aftermath of the war, through hostages and reparations, was already falling apart. It had brought Finnian to them. That was the only good thing.

‘Grandmaster?' Anselm's voice brought Roland back to the present once more. This was no good. A terrible habit to indulge himself in at the best of times. He had crushed whatever report he was trying to read in his fist, something about troop movements in the east and a new training ground.

They had set up camp on the side of the road, his pavilion in the centre, where he was at the heart of everything.

‘I brought the file on the area,' Anselm said, with his usual efficiency, opening it on Roland's field desk beside the maps he'd requested. There were new and disturbing reports from the north, witchhunters on the move on the Ilanthian side and a stirring in the Forest of Cellandre, very close to the border. It did not bode well.

‘Cellandre's been still for years,' Roland said, before glancing at the papers. He unrolled the map. Much of the Forest of Cellandre was uncharted, especially in the far north where it crossed the border with Ilanthus. The roads that ran through it were known to be dangerous, but not particularly cursed. ‘There's a darkwood there, an ancient one, but it's small and settled ages ago. The people in that region reported nothing out of the ordinary in the last census, did they?'

Anselm shook his head. Of course, he already knew. The boy held facts and figures in his mind like a keeper of annals. Perhaps that would be what they would make of him one day, in service of the Aurum. Their history, their memory.

‘Not a thing. They're a superstitious bunch, relying on hedge witches to care for them and guide them. Paladin Dane wrote a report on the area some years ago, which I've included in the file for you.' Anselm pulled the yellowing piece of paper out, finding it unerringly in the papers. ‘But, unless the Ilanthians are going after hedge witches on our side of the border now… I don't know. They never seemed that desperate. There are enough people born with access to the shadows in their own lands. Do you want to investigate it?'

The forest was the most likely route Finn would take on his way back. A less used path, away from the main trade routes. They could head up that way and wait for him. Knightsford wasn't far and Roland knew he could manage things as easily from there as anywhere else. The role of the Grandmaster of the Knights of the Aurum had never been fixed to a single location. The ability to be constantly on the move was one thing that his masters had drummed into him. They brought him with them, training him to succeed them. Now it seemed like he would be the last Grandmaster of the order.

‘Why not?' he sighed. ‘We were heading for Knightsford anyway. We can strike out north from there. Give the order.' Anselm bowed and left.

Roland sorted through the papers Anselm had left, reading through the regional reports, but everything seemed to be drawing his attention back to the northern border. Ilanthus. It was always Ilanthus. Even in times of peace their most belligerent neighbour – which invariably positioned itself against everything Asteroth stood for – was a thorn in his side.

It had stolen Elodie from him, long before the Nox had finished the job.

And when his father died, Leander would take the throne of Ilanthus. He would not want peace. Not for a second. He'd loved his uncle, or as near to love as any of that line could manage. He served the Nox still, even though it was lost to them. As lost as the Aurum was to Asteroth if Roland was honest about it. Oh fragments of the Nox's power still lingered in the world, in places of shadow and darkness, like the deepest caves, the wildest forests and moonless nights. The witchkind could detect it. The crown prince had long gathered witchkind under his banner and enslaved those who would not serve willingly. Rumour had it he was already performing the sacrifices necessary to raise the Nox, seeking out anyone who could aid him.

That was what Finn had gone north to determine. He'd been adamant he could find out, and well aware of the dangers it presented to him personally. But his blood should protect him, or at least that was what he had believed.

Roland could only pray he was right.

Even so, Asteroth needed to be ready for a new war.

Roland was building up the army but, while he could train soldiers up to the standard, and create knights, they weren't yet Paladins, nor would they ever be. Paladins needed that divine spark that only the Aurum could bestow. They needed its light flowing in their veins. And the Aurum slept on. The women who tended the flame in the Sacrum in Pelias still spoke of the moments where it seemed ready to come alive again. More out of a desperate hope, he suspected, than any real evidence. Even Finnian's vow had barely stirred it.

He was beginning to fear it would never awaken.

The road ahead looked bleak and terrible.

The last page of Dane's report caught his eye and he stared at it for a long time.

The village of Thirbridge is a tiny outpost, home mainly to loggers, hunters and a few souls scraping out a living from the soil in the shadow of the forest. The darkwood presses close and its people have been known to wander there for favours. Sightings of shadow kin in the night and suspicion of witchkind blood in the locale. Rumours of a hedge witch of great power nearby, although the precise location of her home is unclear. The inhabitants are fiercely protective of her, and will not discuss her with outsiders. She tends them, healer and midwife both, keeping the villagers safe and stopping them from straying. The woman has a child. Further investigation advised.

It was an old report. Dane had written it but Roland hadn't seen it before. Dane had died two years ago in a random skirmish near Rookwood, when his knights had stumbled on a knot of shadow kin far larger than expected.

North then. He'd intercept Finn and get his report on Ilanthus. And maybe he would carry out the investigation of the darkwood and its hedge witch that Dane had suggested after all. If his old friend had thought it worth reporting, there was always a chance.

It would lead to nothing though. It always did.