Willard was entirely baffling to Idris, but in a humorous way. In preparation for their walk, he tied fresh suede strips around the arches and ankles of his feet, singing his fae songs as he did so, and he introduced all of the pigs to Idris.

“This here’s Will Junior. You can tell because he follows me around all the ruddy time. And this is Petal. And Thorn. And Joe.”

“Joe?” said Idris, confused.

“My dad was called Joe,” said Willard, grinning. “But Joe the pig is much nicer, eh, Joe?”

He packed a small satchel with herbs and told Idris to look out for yellow flowers to make a powder with, seeing as they would be going slow. Then, he fetched a branch from the side of the house and presented it to Idris like a prize.

“To lean on,” he said, “for your ankle.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“Boots sturdy?”

“Yes.”

“Then off we trot. Will Junior, you’re going to trip us, you dumb-dumb. Stay here, that’s a good pig. Raised him from a wee ‘un, y’know. Fed him from a spoon. He was a tiny porker, now look at him.”

Willard was generous with everything he had – information, rations and time – but especially generous with his physicality. As they started on the difficult journey back to the border wall, the hedge witch noticed Idris struggling with the tree-branch-cane, and rather than offer advice, he simply put a hand on the small of Idris’s back and warned him to watch his step while he got used to the difference. This sudden touch made Idris blush – people did not generally touch him, save Lila – but after a few minutes, he forgot about it. He did not tell Willard that he was struggling with the stick because he usually carried his on his right side. If Willard noticed Idris limping on both legs, he did not mention it at all.

While the forest was not filled with the comforting sound of aria bells, it did gift Idris with songs he thought he had lost to his youth. The rustling leaves overhead were the perfect accompaniment to the soft whistling of the breeze and the croaking of hungry birds as they squabbled for insects. Willard hummed and sang his songs while they walked.

“Did your mother teach you the fae songs?” Idris asked.

“Aye.” Willard picked a few berries, tasted one. “She learned them from grandma, who says she learned them from actual fae, although I figure that’s tosh. I sing ‘em to let the fae know I’m around. Don’t want to sneak up on them by accident. Berry?”

“Why do you live out here? Surely there is nobody to talk to in the woods?”

“Oh, there ain’t. That’s fine. People from the villages come find me if they need me. But I’m not leaving my little home. All my ingredients are right where I need ‘em.”

“You can plant another garden.”

“Yanis, you can’t get magic out of any old plant or herb,” said Willard, very patiently. “This is a good, old forest. A magic place. The fae, they weave into everything out here. The soil, the streams. What do you think gives my tinctures their healing powers, hmm? It’s not so simple as just growing a new garden. Besides, it’s peaceful out here. Or, when there’s no wars on, it is.”

Idris frowned. It must have been stressful, living so close to the border while the war raged around it.

“Lucky the soldiers didn’t want the fae involved,” said Willard. “Elsewise I think this old place might’ve been done in.”

“Have you ever seen the fae?” asked Idris. Willard shrugged.

“Might’ve. Can’t never be sure, with fae.”

“You said you had an agreement with them.”

“I do. Or, my blood does. They know things like that.” He hopped over a rock, turned to grab Idris by the elbows to lead him over. “I don’t think I’d want to see the fae. Fae kingdom is no place for the living, or the mortal, y’know? I’ve heard things, at night. I know they’re here.”

Idris had never seen the fae, either, and like Willard, he was not so certain that he cared either way. The stories were not kind to the fae; abduction was their way, and mean-spirited tricks on those who crossed them. The first wars, hundreds of years ago, were laced with fae cruelty. It was better that they left each other alone.

“Do they have blue flowers?” Idris asked, and Willard gave his musical laugh.

“I don’t think anyone has blue flowers, Yanis.”

“As I thought,” whispered Idris, half-amused by Cressida’s joke.

Willard picked leaves and roots, mushrooms and berries, collected feathers and bones and owl pellets, and put them all into his satchel. Idris struggled along beside him, feeling more and more exhausted with each shaky step. Eventually, Willard hushed Idris and pointed to their slight left.

“Circle,” he said. “Watch your step, now.”

Sure enough, there it was, almost invisible to the naked eye: a perfect, man-sized mushroom circle, oddly devoid of leaves and weeds in the centre. Even though there were no bells to mark the magic there, Idris felt it creep through his core like an icy finger playing with his spine. If there was one fairy circle, there were likely more.

“Almost there,” Willard whispered. “Don’t want to lose you to the fae, eh? Can’t say I’d be able to get you back out of that one.”

They did not talk while they crossed the fae borders. Willard hummed their songs, though, and kept his hands to himself. He did not take anything that might belong to the other realm. Idris followed the witch’s sure, bare feet, until he smelled something familiar.

Wood smoke. Warm earth. The battlefield.

The trees ahead looked normal. There was no sickly green glow. But there was also no sound. Idris held his breath, tried not to scream for Lila and Kurellan. From this position, the noise of the barracks should have carried on the wind.

Willard helped Idris out. They emerged some way from the mass grave where Idris raised the thralls, but from this point he could see the glittering light of the river far to his left and the wall ahead. The whole area was deserted, save a few crows picking at the ground. Somewhere, an aria bell groaned.

The wall looked so far away, though, and Idris was so tired and aching that he could hardly stand. Willard looked him up and down, patted him on the hand and said, “You need to rest? I can go ahead, find a pony from the soldiers?”

“Just… I only need a moment,” Idris lied.

“There’s no rush, friend. Sit, sit.”

Idris eased his way down, settled on the dirt. He knew he had to get to the barracks; if there were problems, he could help, or at least fly another letter out to Cressida. More pressingly, where was Lila? Had she stumbled into a fairy circle while searching for him? Had Kurellan made her leave?

Or – worse – did the green glow kill them?

Willard wandered away from Idris’s resting spot, occasionally kneeling to pick up a bone or a feather. Idris watched him travel all the way down to the wagon, to the rug where the thralls were raised. For some reason, he was terrified that Willard would put two and two together. He did not want his new friend to know about all of his inadequacies.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

When Willard returned, he had the wagon in his hands, just how Lila had brought it out to the gravesite.

“’Ey, look!” He beamed, showing his tooth gap. “Hop on. I’ll cart you up there. You sure your friends are here? Whole place looks dead.”

Idris shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

Carefully, Willard helped Idris up; Idris was dismayed to see that his coat and cane were gone as he slid into the wagon bed. Willard hefted the shaft up on his shoulders as gleefully as if he had volunteered to carry a monarch and began leading the cart forwards.

The closer they got to the gate in the wall, the more nauseated Idris felt. The death aria drifted through the aria bells hung on the struts, filled his lungs and gut, and combined with the sheer absence of any signs of life it was almost too much to bear. He scanned the structures for anything, but all he saw was old smoke and the blue sky, the ravens and crows.

Then, there was a shambling figure, coming from the gate, and Willard stopped in his tracks.

“King and Circle,” he whispered, dropping the cart.

Idris bumped down hard, cursed under his breath, and held out a hand to Willard. He knew what this was going to look like – that the barracks had been overrun by some errant necromancer’s casual cruelty – and he knew that if the thralls were attacked, they would fight back without remorse. The last thing he wanted was for Willard to get hurt.

“Stop,” he said, but the hedge witch grabbed the stick and brandished it like a weapon.

“Yanis, can you fight?”

“Bells, no,” Idris burst, “but please do not –“

And, as Willard steeled himself against the thrall that was assessing the threat, Idris took a deep breath of the aria and said, as clearly as he could, “Master.”

Willard visibly shivered when the sound hit the air, turned in surprise; the thrall dropped instantly to one knee and bowed its head. Idris blew out the charred taste of the poorly-crafted spell and coughed.

There was no way to explain this simply. By the look of Willard’s face, he had never heard anyone use aria magic before, and certainly never expected his guest to be a necromancer. Maybe he did not even know what a necromancer was.

“It is a long story,” he whispered to Willard.

“I… oh,” said Willard quietly. “Well, I’m sure it is. Come on. Let’s see if we can find your friends, eh?”

Ashamed, Idris allowed the hedge witch to pull him back into the barracks.

The next time Willard let the cart down, he did it softly, and he knelt, gazing at the carnage. Idris, just above him in the wagon, put a hand to his mouth.

Everywhere, dead soldiers.

The weapons racks were burned to ashes, and mounds of melted metal clumped beside them; the stables were empty and horses with their throats slit littered the trail that led to the main road. Ash painted the outer walls. Doors were burst off their hinges. The soldiers who had tried to protect the wall lay face down, some half-armoured and caught unaware. Carrion birds picked at the fresh food available.

Willard glanced, ashen-faced, at Idris. Idris waved a hand to him and tried to push himself up.

“Help me,” he said, his voice still burnt from the half-made aria, and Willard nodded quickly and hoisted him to his feet. “This way,” said Idris, pointing to the dead horses.

Goosebumps prickled his arms, even in the warm afternoon. The fresh aria felt different to the older one – louder, more urgent. More importantly, he was terrified that Lila and Kurellan had fallen. Idris limped along, held up by Willard, checking the ground.

“Tracks,” he whispered, pointing. “Look. A horse got out. More than one.”

“Your friends?” said Willard.

Idris scanned for Lila’s blue shirt, Kurellan’s magpie armour, and did not see either of them. The Queen’s soldiers lay everywhere, and a handful of his newly-raised thralls. It looked like nobody escaped.

“I do not see them dead. Not here.” And then, “Captain Farley,” he murmured, seeing a man slumped beside the smashed gate, head down.

“You knew him?”

“Only for a moment.” He paused. “Willard… please help me?”

“Whatever you need.”

“Place me down in front of the captain. And… if you can find water or wine in one of these buildings, bring that, too.”

Willard did not ask, but his eyes became troubled. “Are you…? Y’know, it’s not my place. Here.”

Willard set Idris down and wandered off to find supplies; Idris knelt, feeling the raw scraping of his prosthetic on his stump and the throbbing in his ankle, and he closed his eyes and wished he did not have to do what he was about to do. But he needed information, and there was nobody living to ask.

He waited until Willard returned, with a skin of water and a jug of wine and a less cheerful air.

“Whole place is empty, but the mess, it ain’t looting. It’s just mess,” he said, handing Idris the drinks. Idris nodded, chugged half of the water and put the wine between him and Farley’s corpse. “Do you need anything else?”

“I… you do not have to stay for this, Willard,” said Idris quietly.

“What’re you going to do?” said the hedge witch, kneeling next to him.

“Hopefully, talk to him.”

“You…” Willard struggled with the next question, his eyebrows bunched up. “You can talk to the dead?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“This, I have to see.”

“It is unpleasant.”

“That’s all right.” Willard settled on his haunches, in a respectful mimicry of Idris’s stance. “Ain’t never seen a body talk to a dead man before.”

“Then if you want to stay, will you be my voice?”

“I can be. What do you want me to ask?”

“Ask where Lila and Kurellan went. Ask if anyone got out, and which direction they went. And… and ask him what he saw. About the green glow and the powerful man.”

Willard nodded firmly, eyes only on Captain Farley’s body.

Idris breathed deep, focused on the sound in the wind, and pretended he was in the dungeon, with Kurellan sitting behind him and attendants at every corner, with sand timers and towels, but his knees dug painfully into the hard dirt and the smell of fresh blood and hot steel still lingered in the air. The feeling of sunlight on his skin was foreign as he raised his cut, swollen hand in the usual motion and his body was already spent as it started to tremble and sweat. The tension almost forced him to faint, even before he spoke.

He let the aria through, breathed it gently into his body. Beside him, Willard shivered again, as if a cold wind had passed them. There were so many bodies around them that centring all of his attention on Farley made Idris’s head spin, as if there were sixteen different orchestras playing sixteen different tunes; singling out a corpse in a battlefield was almost beyond his capabilities even at full health. If he managed this, it was likely going to be for only a minute before he lost control.

The air felt hot, close and uncomfortable. The sound of his own breathing was maddening. Then, like a fish sliding through his grasping fingers, he felt it, and as soon as he picked up Farley’s tune, he clenched his fist.

The pressure of the aria burst the healing cuts on Idris’s hand. Blood dripped through his fingers, running over his hand, onto the mud. As it hit the earth, it hissed, smoked, evaporated into crystals.

Captain Farley’s head spasmed to the right. His red beard was drenched with blood.

“Speak,” Idris said, unsure if he had even formed the words correctly.

Farley mumbled, “S… sound the alarm…”

“King and Circle,” Willard whispered.

“Sou… sound the…”

“Did Lila and Kurellan get out?” said Willard, clearly.

“L… Lila…?” Farley’s head twitched again. “Kur… ellan… on a… a black mare…”

“Which direction?”

“Out the… gate…”

Farley’s loose hand flopped vaguely towards the gate he sat beside. Sweat fell into Idris’s eye. His chest hurt from the deep, desperate breathing that was holding the reanimation together.

“The green glow,” said Willard, leaning forward slightly. “Tell me about the green glow.”

“The necro… mancer…” Farley whispered. “The ne… necromancer… assassins… betrayers…”

There was a sudden shudder, all through Idris’s spine, that he could not contain, that jerked him bodily forwards. He felt the aria all at once over his whole torso, in his hair, burning the hairs on his arms, and he gasped and released his hand and all at once he was choking, like the air was toxic to him. Willard reached out immediately, said, “This’ll sting,” and pinched Idris hard on the top of the ear.

Whatever nerve Willard got, it did the trick. Instantly, the aria collapsed like a breaking wave over Idris’s back, and he dragged in air like a drowning man, falling forward in relief. The corpse of Captain Farley slumped forward again and remained still.

Nobody spoke. Willard nudged the wine jug towards Idris’s hand. Idris grasped it, slurped up as much as he could and vomited most of it out immediately. The way it touched the burning pain in his throat was too much. His lips were cracked and bloody and his skin was tender, and his head and ears rang like he had been punched in the back of the head five times. His hand was red and sticky again.

“I found a nice little room to hide you in,” said Willard at last. “You’re all done for today, I’d bet. Can you stand?”

Idris nodded, held out an arm for Willard to pull him up by. Together, they made it to the room that Captain Farley had previously requisitioned for Idris. He was not surprised to find it ransacked, his books flung about with pages missing and his trunk regurgitating all of his clothes, but he was too exhausted to care. Willard helped him into the bed and sat at his side on the lid of the trunk, his previously sunny face slack and his dark eyes troubled.

“Yanis?”

The charade was over, so Idris decided now was the time to be even partially honest.

“Idris.”

“Oh. Well, Idris… I do hope your friends are safe. I really do.” He patted Idris’s hand. “I want you to know that I’m not gonna leave you here all on your lonesome. I can stay right here. The… the dead bodies, walking around, they’re our friends, right?”

“Correct.”

“They ain’t going to try and fight me?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Thank you,” Idris whispered. He could not articulate all of the things he was thankful for. Willard smiled softly, gripped Idris’s shoulder in a warm gesture.

“’Ey, I said I’d get you back to your friends, didn’t I?”

“I was not honest when you promised that.”

“That’s all right. I get it. We’ll talk when you’re rested up.”

“I am sorry,” Idris managed as the darkness of unconsciousness circled his vision.

“Sorry for what?”

“For…”

For lying. For being a necromancer. For leading Willard into a chaotic barracks filled with dead men.

He drifted down, into the black deep, where the aria was gone and there was no more pain. He welcomed it.