Framed by the dark, brooding cliffs of Outer Arbedes, Willard the hedge witch became Willard the fae princeling. With his curls atop his head and his sleeves rolled up past his elbows, he created light.
Idris watched him for an hour while the sun set. He did not speak. Willard likely did not know he was there, but he shifted his stances fluidly, eyes closed, his arms golden. It was as if Willard had discovered magic, somehow. It was nothing like what Idris did, or the Queen. It felt to Idris as if he had been playing at arias the whole time, and he was now witnessing a master conducting the orchestras he thought he knew.
I cannot teach him a thing, Idris thought.
Eventually, his brow damp with sweat and his arms shaking, Willard opened his eyes, blew out the last notes of the aria and watched the light fade from his outstretched fingers. He looked just as surprised as Idris was.
“How does it feel?” Idris asked softly. The tall, decaying walls of the ruins dampened his voice.
“Like… I dunno, Idris,” Willard said. “How long you been here, anyways?”
“A while. You looked happy. I did not want to disturb you.”
“How’d my stances look?”
“Fine.”
Willard’s shoulders dropped and he looked carefully at Idris. “You well?”
“Yes.” Idris cleared his throat, tried to clear his thoughts. “I think you should move to the intermediate hand positions. The arias here are good for you.”
“Your face is all puffy,” said Willard.
“I expect it is, yes. Temple Hill was dusty.”
Willard came over to sit beside him on the fallen doorframe. “I put the crystals down, like you asked. Lady Riette has the map. What’re you hoping to find out here?”
“I… I am almost certain that The Remaker’s invisible tower is out here.”
“But what’re you gonna do when you find him?” said Willard. “Ask him for directions to the armour? I dunno if he’d give ‘em.”
“I honestly have not thought that far.”
Ask him why he did it, Idris thought furiously, holding the tears back. Ask him why he chose my mother.
“Willard,” he said, “have you forgiven your father?”
Willard blinked; his round face worked through a few conflicting emotions.
“I ain’t had a proper chance to talk to him,” he said. “I… I think I weren’t ever properly cross with him. Maybe only a little. I don’t know what goes on in fae princes’ heads, y’know? I do think he loved me mam. I think in a roundabout way, he loves me, too. Why’d you ask?”
Idris shook his head. Voicing anything he thought he understood right now would cause fresh tears, and he did not want to cry anymore. Now, he was angry. He was angry that he had been created by a creature who did not care about him, who did not care about his mother, who did not worry what he wrought on others. If Layton was The Remaker, like Idris thought, then there was only one thing ‘remaker’ could mean, and that was that Layton was a necromancer. But the leaps of logic still made Idris’s head hurt, so he tried to bury them beneath his task, beneath his duty, beneath everything else.
“Maybe I can ask him, here,” said Willard, looking around them at the navy night, the towering ancient buildings. “Things are right fuzzy ‘round the edges, here.”
“The death aria here is strong, too,” Idris said.
“I bet. Idris… you sure everything is fine?” said Willard. “You don’t sound like yourself.”
“I…” Idris did not know how to explain everything. “It was a difficult day,” he said. “Lady Riette is clearing up the camp. I told her we should move to where the strongest accumulation of aria energy is, so we should start looking for the crystals soon.”
“Aye.” Willard stood, pulled his sleeves down. “S’nearly night, though.”
“I do not think I will sleep well here, Willard. I can work through the night.”
Riette and Lila emerged from the shadows with the tent and supplies they had taken from the carriage. Willard instantly offered to carry the bindle, and Riette sat beside Idris and showed him the map they had drawn.
“Willard placed crystals within the mile,” she said. “I think he used them all.”
“Good. Thank you. We should get moving.”
Outer Arbedes was forbidding even in the daylight, on account of most of the ruins still being covered by stubborn ceilings and second floors that refused to rot away. At night, the moonlight was split by giant geometric statues, old awning struts that once shielded the buildings from the rain. The shadows clawed. The buildings were huge, as if giants had lived there, with doors that ran taller than the royal ballroom and hunks of foundations larger than Willard’s hut. Fae glitter burst in odd corners, warning them away from protected spaces. Willard walked ahead, singing fae songs to warn his kin of invaders. Occasionally, the broken flagstones tried to trip Idris; he had been walking all day and his prosthetic was starting to feel cumbersome.
Even though no aria bells hung to sing the songs of the magic that dwelt there still, Idris felt them thicken the air like soup. In his bones, there was the death aria. It sung to him from the marrow, flushing through his blood; it was difficult to hear anything over the low, mournful notes that only played for him. It was the first time he had felt the aria since Braemar, at least this strongly, and immediately he felt nauseated by its resurgence, as if with every crest and swell it was tossing him across an unkind sea.
The first crystal glowed golden, filled with fae energy. Idris instructed Willard in the correct way to store it, now it was full, in the lead-lined trunk, and Willard shut it away.
“We are deeper in this place than I want to be,” said Riette, after Willard had grabbed the second golden crystal.
“Are we safe, sir?” said Lila quietly.
“The arias themselves cannot hurt you,” said Idris, trying to speak quietly, aware that the noise in his head did not translate to noise outside of it.
“The fae?” said Riette. Willard shook his head.
“Nah. Fae don’t want to fight us. They just want to be left alone. We respect ‘em, they’ll respect us.”
They had not reached the third crystal when Idris felt it. It was a tingle that the death aria did not normally produce but that he was intimately familiar with, but oddly, he felt it only in the scar on his shoulder.
“Here,” he said. “We can camp here.”
Everyone stopped, looked at him.
“It is rather exposed here,” said Riette, glancing upwards. They were in some sort of courtyard, with a deep pit in the centre where there may have been a pool or fountain, once-upon-a-time, and now only contained rotting leaves and curling roots from ambitious trees. “We have not collected the crystals, yet.”
“We should not go too far from the carriage,” said Idris. “This is a good, central point.”
“Well…” Riette sighed, lowered her pack. “There, perhaps? In that building?”
At the edge of the courtyard was something that looked like it was a warehouse, once. Idris nodded. As Willard and Riette set off to put up the tent, Lila gripped Idris’s arm.
“Are you well?” she said, her eyes troubled.
“It will pass. Nausea.” Idris spat. “Many people died here. I am out of practice.”
“It has been a trying day, regardless,” said Lila, assisting him across the broken stones. “You should rest, sir.”
He shook his head. “There is work to do.”
Their small camp was a puddle of homeliness in an unforgiving place. Riette lit a fire and they shared the food they had brought from The Silk House. Willard left out a plate for the fae, near the old pool, and reminded everyone how to appease the invisible spirits. Idris sat mute, filled with everything. Every strange shadow and cool chill of night air made the death arias bulge in his chest. He felt cruelly gripped, like he was on the edge of a deep pit and below, all that waited was a fall into forever.
“Sir Idris should retire,” said Riette eventually, her eyes stern.
It was the first thing he had truly heard for an hour. He blinked, glanced up at his companions.
“I will not sleep,” he said. “Not even if I am dog tired. The arias are… invasive, tonight. I –“
He dry heaved, gripped his stone seat hard. Lila immediately stood and grabbed the water skin.
“No,” Idris said, holding up a hand, his head suddenly spinning, his scar throbbing. “No, I… let me… just excuse me, for a moment, please.”
He got up shakily, hobbled out of the camp and back into the courtyard, and when his legs failed him he simply fell to his knees and let the aria work through him. It tore through his windpipe, pounded in his skull, and then, suddenly, he vomited onto the broken stonework.
Once his stomach was empty, he wiped his mouth and eyes, felt the clamminess of his own forehead.
Whatever had left him was black and tarry. He spat, but there was no more. Now it was gone, though, his head felt clearer. He wondered if it was something the Spirit Dagger had left behind in him, some fae poison he did not know of. His mouth tasted bitter, but not in the usual way – like he had drunk fermented, salty wine. The scar still fizzed on his shoulder.
Have I been holding onto that poison since Braemar?
“Sir Idris?” said Lila quietly.
“I will take that water now,” he said, his voice weak.
“Was it… the regular kind?”
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“No. The irregular kind.”
“I thought all of that was gone.”
“I think it is all gone now.” He took the skin, sipped the water. “I should have purged back in Veridia. The healers should have… anyway, that does not matter. I am not qualified to tell real healers what to do.”
“There is wine, if you need to cut off from the aria, sir.”
“No.” He sniffed, tried to get back to his feet. Lila slid her arm under his armpit and shouldered his weight. “Thank you, Lila. No, I… I need to feel it, else I will not find him.”
“You can find him in the morning –“
“I will not. I will do it tonight.”
“I will not presume to tell you what to do, sir,” she started.
“Then don’t,” said Idris firmly.
Lila pursed her lips and said nothing.
He did not speak to his companions when he returned. Instead, he went to his tent, closed the flap and made plenty of noise as he took off his fake foot, so they knew he intended to sleep. When he was done and the stump was medicated and soothed, he lay in his cot bed, flat on his back, and he stared at the canvas until it blurred.
Nothing mattered. Not the pain in his right leg, in his hip and knee and stump, not the lump of tears in his throat that would not go, not the headache, not the queasiness. He could scream and sob and tear the tent down and it would mean nothing.
He had asked his uncle, years ago, why the arias had punished him. The look on Haylan’s face, then, was a look that haunted Idris for years. The idea that his aptitude was a punishment was abhorrent to Uncle Haylan.
“There is a lot of good a necromancer can do, Idris,” he had said.
What good?
Idris raised dead soldiers to fight wars and was shunned for it. He replaced workers that had fallen in the Queen’s battles and acted like that was enough. He interrogated criminals. He frightened people. Most days, he frightened himself.
And it was good?
“Blood cannot be evil,” said Uncle Haylan, once. “It merely gives us the tools to choose.”
The Remaker, then, he chose. He chose to give Dravid Orrost the Spirit Dagger, or at least the location of it. He chose to make another awful thing like himself, leave it somewhere in the kingdom to fend for itself, to wonder and self-loathe and be alone.
I will burn his tower to cinders, Idris thought, clenching his jaw so hard that he could hardly breathe. With him inside.
The rage was worse than the aria, but they fed each other until Idris’s gut churned and the tent span. At last, he got up, collected his crutches and coat, filled his pockets and ventured back out of the tent. He needed air, or he needed his answers. Either would be fine.
It was black dark; Willard sat, hunched, by the fire.
“Idris,” he said, turning. “No sleep?”
“Not yet.” Idris limped past. “I still feel dreadful. I will wander awhile so I do not disturb you with my retching.”
“Well, lemme come with,” said Willard.
“No. I cannot go far,” said Idris, lifting a crutch. “I will return.”
“Aye.” The hedge witch settled back down. “Shout if you need me, ‘ey?”
“I will.”
Idris propelled himself across the courtyard and, once he was certain that Willard could not see him anymore, he slid into the shadows and further into the ruins.
He did not much care if he wandered into a fairy circle or bumped into something dire out there. Mostly, he wanted to be alone. Willard would advise him against facing The Remaker on his own, or else he would alert Riette; it was better to do it quickly and be done with the whole sorry mess. The throbbing in his shoulder that tingled and tugged at him reminded him about the Spirit Glass; the callouses on his hands burned against the crutches. The shadows and the structures enveloped him. The mead halls and entryways of the past dragged him through.
After a while, he saw the next crystal. He forced his body over to it, knelt. The crystal was warm to the touch, less golden than the others. There was a formless, grey smoke curling inside, too. Were there places in Outer Arbedes that even the fae would not go?
If that was true, he might be closer than he thought.
Idris rested for a moment, leaning against the foot of some long-gone statue. If he closed his eyes, the death arias swept past him like a warm breath. He tried to hum one, but as always, the melody did not work in a human mouth.
The further he went, the worse his shoulder hurt. He did not bring the map, so he assumed he was way off the trail of the remaining crystals, but it no longer mattered. If he was lost in the ruins, then he was lost. Perhaps The Remaker would take pity on him and save him. He kept placing his crutches down, swinging forwards, placing his foot, placing his crutches. The sounds of owls and rats stopped worrying him.
A place like this was a necromancer’s domain.
Eventually, exhausted and sweaty, he turned his head and saw a doorway, smaller than the rest. The roots that had grown over it had been cleaved with something – probably a sword – and inside there was a lantern, unlit.
Dravid, Idris thought.
He used his left crutch to brace and ducked his head, and blinked for a moment to get used to the darkness in the new room. The lantern was not as old as the rest of Outer Arbedes and there were clear tracks through the hall. Idris’s shoulder felt like it was bleeding acid and the searing pain in the middle of his head would not go.
He moved slowly, gently. It did not take long before he saw what he thought was the Spirit Dagger’s eventual resting place.
The room was shaped in a pentagon, with a low ceiling and a raised walkway to approach the centre, where a stone bier sat with a skeleton laid on top. Candelabra and funerial vases sat around it but those were long ago rendered useless. The skeleton had its hands crossed on its chest.
Idris resisted the temptation to investigate the death aria further – he did not know if he was well enough to be doing necromancy, yet – and instead looked up at the carved tableau in the rock behind the skeleton. The scenes were eroded and faint, covered in cobwebs; it was difficult to tell what was intentional and what was not. Still, there was an image that Idris knew he had read about, before.
A man, with a skull for a head, taking off a helm.
Idris took a deep breath, glanced at the bones on the bier. Was this the last man to use the Dead Walker armour? And why was he here?
He propped his left crutch against the bier, lifted his hand, and immediately felt a wave of pure, unadulterated death aria, blasting in his head like a full orchestra had crammed into the funeral room with him. He gasped, clenched his fist and stared at the bones, and he felt the energy wafting from them, an updraft of magical energy.
“A necromancer?” he whispered, unable to think without speaking. “Are you… one of…”
He took the crutch again, breathed hard. If he had the strength to dive, to conduct, he would find out what had killed this man, how long ago, and how painful it must have been, but he had no strength and no will to do so. The skeleton on the bier was him. It was some errant necromancer who had wandered too deep into powerful things he knew nothing about. If he had wielded the Spirit Glass, it had killed him. He did not need magic to tell him that.
Idris left the parlour, shivering and disoriented. For a few more minutes, he kept going only because it was something to do, because the aria demanded it. Then, not knowing why, he stopped, and he breathed slowly and clearly for what felt like the first time in hours.
“I need to get a grip on myself,” he whispered, pinching the bridge of his nose, feeling the bump. “Where am I, now?”
He gazed up, into the cracked rafters and crenelations of the old ruins. It looked like some sort of garrison. Skeletons of ballistae struts were abandoned on towers. The paving beneath his crutches was neat, even if it was decaying.
The aria here felt… different.
It was still a death aria. Most death arias were low, mournful, trudging along on their own without any sense of purpose or direction. This one felt… crafted. Idris was not sure if ‘personalised’ was the right word. If he listened hard, he thought he might be able to understand it.
“Protection?” he murmured. “Or… no, not protection…”
He limped a little further, towards what looked like a breach in the wall, except several feet taller than he was and only wide enough for two men. The aria continued, controlled and serene.
“Warding,” he said. “A curtain. This is… this is a death curtain.”
He had read about death curtains and never had the need to make one for himself. In theory, the curtain kept out other necromantic energy, meaning that other people’s thralls could not pass the line. He wondered how far it extended and how deep it was.
Carefully, he knelt, laid down his crutch.
“Maybe…” he whispered, and he loosened his shoulders and took a deep, cool breath, right into his stomach.
The sheer power that surged through him was alarming, at first. When the arias were as strong as this, it was usually best to work in pairs, but he had never had that luxury. Instead, he breathed again, deeper, longer, letting the beats and the melody untangle themselves in the hollow chamber of his body. The key was concentration.
He kept his eyes open – he wanted to see the hole in the wall – and picked up on a recurring motif in the aria. Arias did not usually repeat. They went on and on but they did not have themes or direction. A cluster of notes that returned, bar after bar, meant manipulation. The tune, though, was unfamiliar, something Idris had never conducted himself.
In the state he was in, emotionally and physically, a Nexus of Control would be impossible, and besides, the last time he had managed it, it had almost broken him. Instead, Idris wondered if he could simply unravel the tune. If he could latch onto the spell, follow it, let it move him, then surely he could dislodge it, just a little, just enough.
Gently, he opened his mouth and he sang the tune.
This time, the stilted humming did not appear. The true, sad sounds of the aria pushed, burning, through his lips.
Idris kept singing the same refrain, over and over. The sweat on his brow and in the small of his back was familiar. He raised his right hand, made a pentagon with his fingers, his palm up.
He knew the melody. Now, to sing it out of tune.
“Loose,” he whispered.
The sound that exited him was not his own voice, nor any word perceptible to human ears. He pinched his fingers together and pulled, like tugging on an invisible string.
In the wall, there was a chink of light.
Then, as he opened his mouth to widen the hole, there was a fierce, startling pinch on the top of his ear.
He gasped. The aria, monstrous, shoved itself out of his skin, causing a ripple in the air that skittered stones away and left him choking.
Lila slapped him clean across the face.
Idris gripped his cheek, stared stunned at her.
“Black bells, Lila,” he said.
“Oh, black bells yourself, sir,” she said. “What are you doing? Why are you out here in the dead of night? Don’t you know we’ve been looking for you?”
He did not. He swallowed, trembling, cold suddenly.
“I know where the tower is,” he said.
She said nothing. She knelt in front of him, jaw hard, eyes shining. Idris weakly gestured to the wall.
“Beyond there. Invisible to the naked eye. A death curtain. I… Lila…” He felt terrible for what he was going to say and do next, but he did it anyway. He took her hands. “Lila, I must go alone.”
“Don’t do this,” she said, her voice tearful.
“My father – my blood father – he is inside. I know it. But Willard and Riette, they cannot know it. I have to know. I… I have to ask him.”
“The Spirit Glass –“
“When I return, which I undoubtedly will,” he added, seeing the fear in her eyes, “I will know where it is. This is not about the Spirit Glass. You understand that.” Slowly, she nodded. “I… here.” He rummaged in his pocket. There, still, was the scrying water. “Take this. If you go more than two full days without hearing from me, you call the Queen. It will respond when you tip it into a cup or a bowl.”
Lila gripped the vial, frowning. “Hear from you?”
“I will not be able to come out once I am in, not until I have done what I mean to,” he said. The next item he produced was a small bag of knuckle bones. He often used them for practice, to work on form and function of arias, and had kept them on his person for years. Realistically, he should have replaced them several times, but they were one of the final gifts that Uncle Haylan had ever given him. “If this rattles,” he said, pressing the bag into her hand, “that is me. I am… rather attuned to the contents, probably ridiculously so. Keep it against your heart. If you do not feel this rattle once a day, then I am in danger.”
She nodded. “What are you going to do when you find him?”
Idris sighed. “I… I do not know, Lila. But this could be my only chance. It will look like… treason, I assume. But know this: I hate that man, Lila. I have never hated anything or anyone. Not like this. I hate him. I hate what he did and what he took from me and my family. There is nothing he can offer me.”
“You are acting on impulse, it does not have to be like this –“ she said, but he shook his head. “You are hurting. I understand. But…”
“Even if you do not agree with what I am about to do,” he said, “you cannot follow me. The curtain will not let you.”
Lila said nothing.
Idris got up, taking only a single crutch. Already, he could hear Willard calling, “Idris?” There were lanterns, too.
To her credit, Lila did not stop him. He limped on, to the hole in the curtain, and he used his free hand to slide his fingers inside the gap.
The curtain was hot, like everything to do with necromantic energy, but not unpleasant. Idris pushed and it gave, tearing itself upwards as he pushed. He heard the notes drop, as if a cat was walking down a piano’s keys.
Without looking back, he stepped beyond the curtain and let it close behind him.
It was black dark in the gap. He turned and was surprised to learn that he could see through the curtain, back out into the world beyond, without it being disturbed. Lila picked herself up off the cobbles, took the crutch off the floor and gathered herself, tucking the bone bag into her shirt.
“Sir Idris?” cried Riette, from some way off. Beyond the curtain, her voice sounded like Idris was hearing it from underwater.
Willard appeared, with a torch in hand. When he saw the crutch, he seemed troubled.
“Miss Lila –“
“He cannot go far with only one,” she said, her voice shaking. “But I do not know where he was heading.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
“’Ey now, Miss Lila, we’re gonna find him,” Willard said reassuringly, putting a hand on her shoulder. Lila nodded, closed her eyes. “Like you said, he can’t go far. Why, he left all his books, he’ll be bored silly.”
She laughed once, then put a hand on her mouth. The sadness was not feigned. Idris watched with guilt icing the sweat on his back. Willard rubbed her back.
“I’ll go on to the other crystal, you keep going. Aye?”
“Yes.”
“Lady Riette!” he shouted, walking away.
Lila looked once at the gap in the wall where the curtain sat. Idris breathed the aria, wiggled his fingers. She blinked, touched the spot in her shirt where the bag of bones sat.
“I’ll keep them off the trail,” she whispered. “You do what you must, Sir Idris.”
He took that as consent, and he started to walk.