Even after the coming of the Angelus, the process of turning away from the old ways was slow. There are substantial indications, from sources as diverse as the journals of Barons and sermons of priests, that offerings continued to be made to the faeries of the Ardenwood for generations after the Cataclysm. Queen Elantia herself was rumored to have presided over sacrifices to mark the harvest, though that is likely to be the work of her political enemies.

* François du Lutetia, A History of Narvonne

☀

8th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

Trist cursed, slid down out of Cazador’s saddle, and handed the reins to Yaél once he had caught up with the two squires. Both were wearing breeches, boots, and a chain shirt over a padded gambeson, along with their leather belts and arming swords. The small part of his mind that wasn’t panicking approved that they were ready to fight.

“Did I say something wrong?” Yaél asked, taking hold of Caz and stroking his nose. The destrier snuffed at her hair, and she laughed.

“No,” Trist assured her. “The error was mine, and it was in not saying anything before now.” You saved her life on her wedding night, his father had told him. Then hunted down the monster that killed her betrothed and destroyed it. Don’t ever let her believe otherwise. He’d done as his father had said he should, and now he regretted it. Trist sped his steps to catch up to the carriage, and knocked on the door.

“Clarisant,” he called. “May I speak to you?”

After a moment, the door cracked open, but Trist was met by the face of Anais, his wife’s maid. “M’lady is not feeling well,” the girl said, and for the second time in the same morning Trist found himself the target of a woman’s cold glare. “She needs time to rest.”

“I need to explain,” Trist protested.

“Explain when she’s well, then,” the maid snapped, and pulled the door shut again. Trist stood there like a fool, and the wagon kept rolling past him. Overhead, rain clouds were gathering, and he had the feeling that he was going to be soaked to the bone shortly. Already, he could feel aches where Adrammelech had clawed him, where his own shadow had cut him in Acrasia’s maze.

Trist’s gauntleted fingers creaked on the hilt of his sword, and he took a deep breath, then let go. He waited until Yaél and Isdern, walking with Caz, had caught up, then matched his steps with the two squires.

“I promise I didn’t do anything to make her angry,” Yaél said. “Even when we got to arithmetic.”

“I know you did not,” Trist said, with a sigh. “This is entirely of my own doing. But I am glad that the two of you are attending to your studies. And you got time in the practice yard, this morning, before we marched?”

“Aye,’ Isdern said. “Sir Bors came by to drill us a bit, and he said that General Ismet was going to come tonight after we make camp.”

Trist nodded. “Good. I asked her to teach you a few things, Yaél, since Dame Chantal was going to stay at the Tower of Tears.”

“She stabbed the Great Cataclysm in the eye!” Isdern proclaimed, excited.

“Aye, and she’s coming to teach me, not you,” Yaél teased him.

“While that is true,” Trist said, frowning as a cold drop of rain hit his forehead, “I am certain she will have something to add to Isdern’s training, as well. If nothing else, she may have you use him for practice.”

Yaél looked up at the dark clouds that had rolled in overhead. “Storm coming,” she observed. “Are we going to stop?”

“If I know the king, not unless we have to,” Trist answered. “With luck, the stone roads should keep our wagon wheels from getting stuck in the mud.”

The day dimmed as the gray clouds rolled between the sun and the land, and the sky opened. Rain sluiced down, darkening the gray stone of the Etalan road on which the army marched. Soldiers jeered and complained.

“Go get in the carriage,” Trist suggested to Yaél and Isdern, who hesitated. “Go on. Lady Clarisant is angry with me, not with either of you.” Already, he could feel water seeping down the back of his neck and under his armor. Everything would have to be dried, scoured for rust, and then oiled tonight when they made camp.

“Trist,” Acrasia said, appearing just off to the south side of the road, “Look at the storm. This isn’t natural.”

He searched the clouds, trying to find that focus where something about his eyes changed; it took the space of only a few breaths, now, and came more and more easily the longer he was an Exarch. There, running through the crowds like stiches in cloth, were- “Orange threads.”

Acrasia nodded. “Can you trace them?” Her tone reminded him of John Granger, teaching a lesson in the yard. He wondered whether he would only ever be on speaking terms with either Acrasia, or Clarisant, at any given time. The orange threads overhead gathered into a fiery, burning cord, which stretched down toward the land in the south.

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“There,” he pointed. “Away from the Ardenwood.”

“Of course.” Acrasia nodded.

“I must tell the King.” Trist swung back up into Cazador’s saddle, pressed his heels into the destrier’s flanks, and trotted forward. He found the King with Sir Guiron, Baron Urien, Sir Kay, and Sir Auron in the van. “Your Majesty,” he called as he approached, and the group of men reined in to wait for him. “This is no ordinary storm,” he explained, once he was close enough to lower his voice. No need to frighten the men quite yet. “I suspect it is the work of our enemies,” Trist continued, pointing in the direction the cord led.

“What color?” Guiron asked.

“Orange.”

“This is why we made certain to keep you free for the march,” Lionel Aurelianus said, with a sharp nod that Trist recognized as the signal he’d come to a decision. “Go see to it, Sir Trist. We will be on alert here. Sir Kay, ride back to the Caliphate column and let General Ismet know what Sir Trist has found. If you can find Sir Bors, tell him as well.”

“I will take Henry and Yaél with me,” Trist said, and waited just long enough for the King’s nod before wheeling Caz around and trotting back down the column to the carriage. “Get mounted,” he told Henry as he slowed. “We are going hunting.”

“In the rain?” Henry complained. “My bowstring is waxed, but this wind is going to be hard to shoot through.”

“If anyone can hit a target in a storm, you can,” Trist assured him, then leaned down to knock on the door of the carriage. Again, the maid opened it a crack, but this time he didn’t let her get started. “I need my squire,” he said simply.

“Coming!” Yaél’s voice sounded from inside the carriage, and then she pushed past the maid. “What are we doing?”

“Hunting a daemon, most like,” Trist said. “Come out and mount up. The King is entrusting the safety of the column to us.” Yaél jumped down from the carriage, and joined Henry behind it, where they untied the two geldings they’d brought from Falais. The carriage door began to swing close, then halted again, and his wife poked her face out into the storm.

“You’re hunting a daemon? Did I hear that right?” Clarisant asked him.

“Aye,” Trist said. “The storm is unnatural, and I can see where it is coming from. Clarisant, please allow me to apologize,” he began, but she cut him off.

“Not now,” Clarisant said, brushing a wet strand of black hair back from where it had plastered over her forehead and down to her eyes. “If it’s behind the rain, then it will be the Stormbringer with a lion’s head,” she said. “You told me not to say the names, you remember?”

“Aye,” Trist said, thinking back to the list of daemons they’d uncovered in the Marian Codex. Vinea. “I know the one.”

“Then you remember it's also said to be able to see the past, present, and the future,” Clarisant told him. “Does the King know that?”

“No.” Trist frowned. “Send Isdern up the line to tell him, would you?”

“I will,” Clarisant promised. “And you come back. I’m still angry with you, and we aren’t done talking about this. So come back, Trist.”

“I swear I will,” he said, with a grin. At least she was speaking to him. “Henry! Yaél! Come on!” He turned Cazador’s head south, and they left the road, the carriage, and the marching army behind. The pounding hooves of their steeds ate up the ground, Trist guiding his companions up the hills which were the outlying arm of the Hauteurs Massif. The dry earth drank up the rain, and soon the hooves of their horses were flinging mud up behind them as they rode.

Passing the low scrub that grew nearest the road, they wove between oak, wild olive, and bay trees. “Close, now!” Trist called to his companions, and drew his longsword, holding it out to his right with one hand while guiding Cazador with the reins in his left. A moment later, they broke through the foliage, and saw the storm-daemon.

As Clarisant had predicted, Trist recognized Vinea the Stormbringer from the careful drawing in the pages of the Marian Codex. It was massive, far more muscular than Adrammelech had been, and wider than the Addanc, but perhaps not as tall. Vinea was barefoot, and its toes gripped the earth with sharp claws that reminded Trist of a cat or a wolf. It’s fingers were clawed, too, as most daemons seemed to be, and its tail thin and curling like that of a rat. It’s skin was the blue of a waterlogged corpse, and it wore scavenged pieces of armor where it could make them fit: greaves over its shins, vambraces on its forearms, but Trist could not imagine any cuirass fitting the width and bulk of its torso.

The most striking part of the daemon, however, was its head. The Marian Codex had shown the Stormbringer as having the head of a lion, a creature Trist had only heard legend of from beyond the Maghreb Waste. The head was like that of a massive cat, but surrounded with a crest of fur that covered the entire neck, and even hung down the torso a ways. Its ears were cat-like, as well, and its fanged muzzle, but its eyes shone the red of fresh blood lit by fire - the same luminescent red as the membranes of its outspread wings. To Trist’s eyes, curling strands of orange fire, and one brighter whirl of yellow, extended back from the daemon’s physical form into whatever realm might be the true source of such immortal creatures. One of the orange strands burned up into the sky, but the monster released it when it caught sight of Trist and his companions approaching, and turned to face them.

“Not quite as powerful as Adrammelech was,” Trist told Henry and Yaél. “But more powerful than the Addanc.” He reined Cazador in, having learned his lesson about charging on horseback from the battle south of the Tower of Tears.

“What would you have us do?” Yaél asked, as Trist swung down out of the saddle.

“Hold Caz,” he instructed. “Henry, if you see a shot, take it. Otherwise, make sure that nothing interferes.” Trist unclipped his helm from the saddle, settled it on his head, and strode the last distance up to the top of the hill. Overhead, a shock of lightning split the clouds.

“Trist du Camaret-à-Arden,” the demon growled, and its voice put Trist in mind of a wildcat from the Ardenwood. “You are known to us, and you have come, just as I foretold. The First Exarch overestimated you, it seems. We did not even have to burn your village or take your father to bring you forth.”

“More the fool you,” Trist said, settling into the modified high guard meant for fighting in full armor. Instead of holding the longsword above his head, he held it at his right shoulder, instead, tip still pointed to the sky.

The feline nose of the demon scented the wind. “It is true, then. I can smell Cecilia on you. In honor of your mother, I will make this offer a single time, though I can already see that you will refuse. Put aside your faerie. Serve me, as my Exarch, and I will give you strength beyond that of any mortal man. The Boon of the Stormbringer, as well, and the Boon of Clairvoyance. All these can be yours. Serve us, and Avitus may even spare your father. He will certainly let you keep your woman. Together we can kill your young king, and end this war before it begins.”

“Keep my mother’s name out of your mouth,” Trist snarled, and charged.