Page 34 of A Touch of Shadows
‘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.
FLAVIAN’S DREAMS OF THE AURUM