The county of Marbury sat nestled in forestland, and while Outer Arbedes actually marked the eastern edge of Cressida’s kingdom it was considered less as real land and more like a thick, untouchable boundary line, as if the fae-controlled ruins were some cartographer-drawn curve that could not be crossed. Due to this and the density of the woodland, Braemar was the main entry for travellers coming from other counties and kingdoms. The route that Idris had marked on the map, however, took the carriage through the low hills and fresh-smelling trees of Marbury’s Underwood, instead of back towards the arable land of the trade city.

Technically, The Underwood was where Idris last had two feet.

Part of Willard’s studies was understanding the noble families of New Borria. Idris took the time in the carriage to give him the official family tree of the Eremonts, who had controlled Marbury for centuries.

“Why’d they all leave, then?” said Willard.

“Opportunities. Eremont healers are considered some of the best in the world. My mother went to the Imperial Kingdom and my father followed. Uncle Haylan – the last true heir of Temple Hill – worked in many noble houses for many years as a travelling herbalist, although he knew aria healing, too, and was rather proficient at it. My great-grandfather Yanis Eremont actually worked in the palace, serving the Queen’s great-grandmother.”

Willard gave a low whistle, settled back in his chair. “You got fancy blood, then,” he said.

“Coming from the son of a fae prince, Willard, I think that is a touch hypocritical.”

“What happens to Marbury with no Eremonts in it?”

“The lesser houses step up and caretake the villages and lands. House Meer and the Goldrivers, some others. My father, Obrin, was a Meer before he married my mother.”

“Lady Astridia Eremont,” Willard recalled.

“Correct.”

“Morning thistle and green boughs for Eremonts.”

“Something is sticking, at least,” said Idris mildly, his eyes wandering to the trees passing the carriage window.

“You should just choose a family name that you like,” said Willard, crossing his legs beneath him and moving the curtain so he could see the forest, too, “and put those little water dragons on your crest.”

“There are no family names I like.”

“Make one up.”

“I am content with the name I have.”

“Feels fae-like for certain out there,” said Willard. “Tingly in the wind.” He paused. “Your folks must’ve had dealings with the fae to live in a place like this.”

“The fae and the Eremonts keep to their sides of the line. The hunters had to be respectful, but the fae never bothered Temple Hill.”

“I’ve been having more and more bright dreams the closer we’ve got.” The hedge witch tousled his loose hair. “Hope I can use the songs here to get better at my casting.”

“I hope so,” said Idris.

“How’re you going to start a-looking?” said Willard, turning back to him.

“Follow the death aria, probably. I know what the dagger felt like, and if I can find where it lay… it should have some residual energy if it lay there for several hundred years. Then, I suppose we search for The Remaker. An invisible tower that cannot be breached.” Idris sighed. “I do not know where to begin. We should start laying crystals as soon as we arrive.”

“Lady Riette is going to ask questions.”

“She is not an aria adept. We can make up anything and she will have to believe us.”

“You’re fine with straight lying to her?” said Willard, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” said Idris, “but I do what I must.”

He knew the time they had in Marbury was dangerously limited. He was not going to get another opportunity like this, not sanctioned by the Queen at least. If Dravid was telling the truth, the secret to the Spirit Glass could be within the trees of his childhood.

“This is something else you have to learn about the nobility, Willard,” he said with a quiet sigh. “Sometimes diplomacy is the same as dishonesty.”

“’S’not something I want to learn,” Willard said, frowning to himself.

The ruins of Outer Arbedes were ten miles long and a mile deep. The first sign of the old temple complex was a series of crumbled pillars, moss-covered and forlorn, along the side of the road. Here, Riette stopped the carriage and looked in through the window.

“Are you sure about this, Sir Idris?” she said, her face troubled. Idris nodded.

“I am.”

“It’s my fault, Lady Riette,” said Willard, smiling sheepishly. “Ain’t Idris’s problem that I’m a problem. I’ll get out here, with you, and we can find a nice camping spot, aye?”

“Of course, Master Willard. I take it this means you are heading onward to Temple Hill?” she added to Idris, who nodded. “Well… I hope you find everything you are looking for there, Sir Idris.”

“I am sure I will.” He motioned to the bag beside Willard. “Master Willard will be deploying some crystals, for protection. Will you mark their positions on a map? When I return, I want to collect and study the energy they have captured.”

“Certainly,” said Riette.

“Don’t be long, ey?” said Willard, giving Idris a firm look. Idris smiled with more ease than he expected.

“I will hurry back. Documents are not as important as your progress.”

Willard left the carriage and, with a sturdy tap from Riette’s hand, the box began to move again. Idris sighed and closed his eyes.

Spotty memories began drifting into his head. The Underwood’s scent filled every pore. Was it really that long ago that he had smelled it every day? Every night as he lay down to sleep? It was as familiar as touch, as heartbeat. It was the most comforting smell he knew, the smell of the lands of his mother and her father and his…

He remembered it tinged with the edge of warm iron, of burning air.

With a tearful breath, he opened his eyes, sniffed hard. Instinctively, he placed his hands on his right knee, reminded himself that nothing had changed. Everything had been different, back then, and it had no bearing on the life he had now.

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He could have chosen not to walk into The Underwood alone. He could have waited, like he was told to. Neither of those things would have made him a healer. In his blood, since he was born, he had been a necromancer. He just had not known it. Maybe it would have been another year, or two, but the fact remained: he was not a healer magician of House Eremont. Nothing could have given him that.

If he had not walked into the trees alone, he would have hidden himself, ashamed, of the thing he was, instead of being celebrated in House Naga’s court. He might have made a home in Marbury but it still would not have been Temple Hill and his parents still would not speak to him.

This is better, he promised himself. This is the best way life could have been.

He had mourned this place, this smell. He had pushed it far from his thoughts and built something new.

I suppose this is what necromancers do, he thought, without any humour. Drag up the long dead. Encourage ghosts. This is merely a ghost I did not expect.

The road turned away from Outer Arbedes and towards the complex at Temple Hill, at which point Idris closed the curtain and shut his eyes. The carriage trundled along for a while until, with no warning, Lila stopped the horse, came down, and sat opposite him in the carriage.

“Would you like to sit with me?” she said softly. “To see it?”

Idris shook his head. “I would not, Lila. But thank you.”

“Would you like me to describe what I saw?” He nodded. “I saw,” she said, with a thoughtful air, “a village, not ten minutes ago. Filled with people. They were gardening, in huge houses made of yellow glass. The air smelled like…”

“Like poppies?” Idris said.

“Yes. Like poppies.”

“We are here, then.”

“I think we are, sir.”

“We are at the foot of a curving road,” he said, knowing it in his heart, “lined with perfectly shaped cedars. From here, you can likely already see the raised platform where Temple Hill sits. The wall. The clematis.”

Lila nodded, watching him carefully. Idris let out a long, tired breath and closed his eyes.

“Nobody has challenged you?” he said.

“Nobody.” She paused. “There is a house, by the trees, and a woman is sitting outside of it. I think she wants to speak to whoever is inside the carriage.”

“She will be the groundskeeper.”

“I can tell her you’re sick?” Lila offered, but Idris shook his head.

“I will speak to her.”

Lila got out, opened the door wide and pulled the steps down. Idris took up his cane, swallowed the gummy taste in his mouth and descended, slowly.

It was how he had described it – the trees, the road, the peek through the branches at the low wall on the hill – and there, to the left just before the road began to curl up the hill, was the comfortable little cottage that the groundskeeper lived in. Its tiled roof lied about its age, shown in the lichen on the white walls of the house and the haphazard state of the garden wall.

The woman who sat outside the cottage hesitated, then she stood from her rocking chair and approached the wall. She wore the olive-green shawl of the Eremont herbalists wrapped around her shoulders and the comfortable work-robe that the rest of the garden cultivators wore, but she was speckled with dirt like she had recently completed the digging of a trench.

Idris did not hail her. Instead, he walked slowly towards the cottage wall, his heart hammering. The closer he got, the more the woman seemed like she was about to fall down, until eventually she stammered, “Master Idris, is that you?”

“Hello, Polly,” he said, attempting another smile and failing at this one.

Polly opened the gate, hurried out and wrapped her arms around him, and he held her tight and buried his face in her shoulder.

“My father said you were dead,” she whispered. Idris sniffed hard, rocked her.

“Alive,” he said. “Last time I checked, anyway.”

Polly pulled away, looked him up and down, then, satisfied, clasped him in her arms again.

“Well, I’ll be,” she said tremulously, finally letting him go and smiling. “Oh, I should bow, but –“

“No, none of that.” Idris used the crook of his elbow to wipe his eyes. “I… Polly, nobody can know I am here, but I am glad to see you.”

“You were this high last time I saw you,” she said, putting her hand at her waist.

“I did not get much taller,” he said with a weak laugh.

She looked across at the carriage, then at his coat.

“Are your parents coming home?” she guessed.

“I do not think so.”

“Are you?”

He pursed his lips. “Polly, everything is… is so very complicated, but… oh, how do I begin…”

“If you are not dead,” Polly said quietly, “then… the other rumour must be true.”

Idris waited for that to sink in. The people of his mother’s county had no idea what had happened to him, only that Haylan had ridden like a man possessed out of Marbury with his nephew tied to his back, and neither had returned. There must have been rumours.

“You are… The Puppeteer?” she said, her eyes sad.

“That is what the soldiers call me,” he said quietly, “yes.”

Polly put a hand to her mouth, turned briefly. With a deep breath, she turned back, took his hands comfortingly.

“I am glad to see you well,” she said.

“Your father?” he said.

“He passed two summers back.”

“I am sorry, Polly.”

“So, I am the new groundskeeper of Temple Hill,” she said, with a small smile. “I just finished turning over the mulch on the gardens up on the ridge. The house is clean, and ready. If you’re staying –“

“I am not. This is a passing visit and I am afraid it will be my last, too.” He frowned, looked up the road. “I take it my parents are not home?”

“No.”

“Good. Polly, would you be so kind as to ensure that my attendant and I are not disturbed? We will likely only be in the house for the afternoon. I need some paperwork. It would not do for anyone to see me here. My parents would be upset about it, I think.”

He knew that everything he was saying was confusing to poor Polly, and he knew that if he even started to explain it would take too long and upset her too much, but to her credit, Polly composed herself and nodded amicably, and even leaned past him to wave at Lila.

“Hello, miss,” she called. Lila bowed.

“Good afternoon, lady.”

“Let me lead you up the hill,” said Polly, moving back towards the house. “I’ll bring old Coalfoot round.”

“That awful beast is still alive?” said Idris, frowning.

“Oh hush, Master Idris. Coalfoot is a gentleman.”

“A gentleman who almost killed me,” he said to Lila, who smiled.

“Come, Sir Idris,” she said.

This time, he did climb up onto the driver’s bench. Polly trotted beside them on Coalfoot, a curmudgeonly stallion who had never taken much stock in anyone but Polly, and the groundskeeper pointed out the improvements and maintenance she had been undertaking on the grounds of Temple Hill. The cedars were sentinels to stretches of wildflowers, but on the hill itself there were terraces of cultivated ground where the Eremonts tended to their morning thistle and dawn tubers. The stone lanterns had all been replaced but one set, the oldest set, up by the gate in the low wall which encircled the house itself. The left lantern still had the crude carvings that all of the children of House Eremont were encouraged to make – their first crest. Idris could still see his, etched inexpertly beside the opening.

Polly opened the gate so the carriage could come through. It rolled along the tiny pebbles of the courtyard and came to a stop beside the stables, and Idris finally tilted his head to look at his old home.

Temple Hill was built between the pillars of the ancient healer temple that once sat there. The pillars shone bright white, still clinging to sections of their roof in parts. The house was designed to mimic the temples as much as possible. Imitation pillars staunchly propped up the roof of the long building, half-set into the walls like the house had been dropped through existing structures and melted against them. The clematis Idris’s father had so hated had now taken over most of the bottom floor, clinging to the white-brick walls as if in everyone’s absence it had claimed the real estate it had always wanted. The wide windows on the bottom floor had the shutters closed; the round windows in the top floor were bare and cracked open. Just beyond the courtyard were the private herb gardens of the Eremonts, where every morning Idris had watched the old groundskeeper collecting medicines into his basket.

The aria bells on the posts of each corner of the wall sang the melodies of his dreams, sweet, clear healer arias, soothing to all. They made Idris’s heart squeeze.

Polly waited breathlessly beside Coalfoot, her hands behind her back, her face flushed.

“Is it… to your liking?” she said.

Idris nodded. “Just how I left it,” he whispered.

Nothing was different. The azalea bushes still bloomed. The steps to the front door still gleamed. All it was missing was his mother, tying Uncle Haylan’s shawl around his waist, and his father brushing the horses for their tack.

Lila held out a hand to help him down. Her touch was grounding; Idris gave her a grateful smile as he gathered up his cane again. Polly, pleased with his approval, unlocked the heavy iron doors on the front of the house and pushed them open.

“Take all the time you need, Master Idris,” she said. “I’ll keep any curious villagers away.”

“Thank you, Polly. I will not forget this kindness,” he said. She smiled.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “This is your home. You can come back any time you want.”

She held out the keyring for Lila. Idris did not correct her. He smiled and she moved to give their horse water, and he and Lila stood on the steps of Temple Hill and looked into the cool, dim hallway.

“I’m right here,” said Lila quietly, linking arms with him.

“Thank you, Lila.”

They stepped over the threshold together.