14
‘So, Fletcher. You’re still with us,’ Harold said. They were sitting, watching the deer herds below. The sun was near set, casting dappled shadows over the busy ground, and Fletcher heard the mournful howl of a wolf in the distance.
‘It appears so,’ Fletcher replied, avoiding the king’s eyes.
‘It was touch and go for a while there. I didn’t think you’d make it. You were writhing in pain for most of the night.’
‘I owe the elves a great deal. And you, it seems. I can’t imagine how you convinced everyone to send me to the elves for healing, once you found out I wasn’t immune,’ Fletcher said dully.
‘Oh, no. You’re immune all right. But pump enough toxic, acidic liquid into someone’s body and he’ll not walk away easily, immune or otherwise. You should have died within minutes with that dose, but after the first hour of twitching on the floor, we knew. All the elves did was flush the venom from your system.’
Fletcher was stunned. He was immune. He was a Raleigh. It seemed unreal. Impossible.
‘I have pardoned you, but you should also know that your guilt is still being debated by the other nobles, and you may experience some animosity in the future,’ Harold continued. ‘Most agree that you were only defending your dwarven friend. You can be sure which side your cousins are on, of course.’
‘Cousins?’ Fletcher asked, still dazed.
‘The Forsyths. Your late mother and Tarquin and Isadora’s mother were identical twins, Alice and Josephine Queensouth – twins run in the family, it seems. Your father, Edmund, married Alice, while Zacharias married Josephine. We were all childhood friends, back in the day; everyone knew they would end up marrying … But that’s not what I have come here to talk about. I want to talk about your inheritance, or rather, the lack thereof.’
Fletcher remained silent, both elated and saddened by the news. His parents had wanted him. He had not been abandoned to die … but to live. Yet, he would never meet them, never hear their voices.
‘I don’t care about my inheritance,’ Fletcher mumbled. ‘I was just fine before.’
‘Be that as it may, you deserve to know what happened to your family’s estate. As their closest relatives, the Forsyths inherited all of your parents’ money, lands and properties.’ Harold paused awkwardly, clearing his throat. ‘Given your supposed crime, they have said you shouldn’t be alive and therefore don’t deserve any of it back. I disagreed. So we came to an agreement. They will keep all the money and the fertile lands in the centre of Hominum. In exchange, they have given you back your homeland. Raleighshire.’
Fletcher’s eyes widened.
‘What does that mean?’ He knew so little of Hominum’s lands, and barely anything about the Raleighs.
‘After your parents and their people died, the buildings fell into disrepair and the outlying villages were abandoned,’ Harold said, shaking his head with sorrow. ‘Other than the troops protecting the mountain pass and the not-so-secret entrance, there’s nary a soul for hundreds of miles all around. It’s a wasteland, really. But it’s yours, to do with as you wish. It is the least I could do, after the sacrifice you made for me. I will not soon forget it.’
Fletcher nodded. It didn’t seem real to him. It was land – which had been there before and would be there long after he was dead. What difference did it make who owned it? Nobody even lived there.
‘I have something else for you. How can I explain this?’ Harold said, rubbing his eyes. ‘Have you ever wondered how demons are passed down from generation to generation in noble families, even when the parent dies far from home? The demon should fade back into the ether upon their master’s death, correct?’
Fletcher nodded.
‘We summoners know the risk we run, always fighting one war or another. So, a summoner will always leave the summoning scrolls for their demons with a trusted friend, so that in the untimely event of their death, their child can be given the scroll and summon the demon back from the ether. In your father’s case, I was that trusted friend.’
Harold got to his feet and Fletcher joined him, unsure of himself. The king reached into his pocket and withdrew a roll of parchment, tightly bound with a red ribbon. From his other pocket, he withdrew a summoning leather, complete with a keyed pentacle embossed in the centre. He laid it down carefully a few feet away from them, in the middle of the branch.
‘Edmund’s Canid died in the attack, as did your mother’s Vulpid. But the Gryphowl that carried you to Pelt; that one may be alive, somewhere in the ether. Here is its scroll. The summoning leather has a keyed pentacle; as you know, you need one when summoning a demon from the ether.’
Fletcher’s hands trembled as he untied the ribbon, careful to not tear the dusty material as he unravelled it. The ink was faded, almost to a dark brown, but the words were clearly legible.
‘I would infuse your Salamander first,’ Harold suggested, before Fletcher could begin to read. ‘It’s not unknown for a newly summoned demon to attack an unfamiliar demon, before it is fully under its master’s control.’
Fletcher nodded, remembering how Ignatius had attacked Didric unbidden. Reluctantly, he infused Ignatius in a flash of violet light.
‘Begin,’ Harold said, nodding with approval.
‘Doh rah go si mai lo go.’ Fletcher’s voice grew more confident with each word spoken, growing louder and louder until the deer directly below scattered in confusion. ‘Fai lo go di ai lo go.’
The pentacle flared with purple light, and Fletcher’s vision became saturated with colour, just as it had years ago in Pelt’s graveyard. A violet orb appeared above the star, expanding until it was as wide as a carriage wheel, spinning slowly. There was a roaring sound, and Fletcher could hear the shouts of startled wood elves as the entire deer herd began to canter down the plains, fearful of the flashing lights and noise.
‘Lei go si mai doh roh!’
As the last words were spoken, the orb blinked out, leaving a fluttering creature in its place.
‘My apologies!’ the king laughed as the wood elves below hurled what could only be elvish curses at them.
But Fletcher was ignorant of it all, for the new consciousness in his mind was like nothing he had ever encountered. While Ignatius’s psyche was a gentle mix of emotions and intentions, this creature’s mind was as sharp as it was fast, flitting from thought to thought with absolute clarity.
The demon was much like a barn owl in appearance, with a heart-shaped face, white plumage on its underside and tawny brown feathers above. But unlike an owl, it had four feline legs, complete with a cat’s tail, ears and claws, as well as fur intermingled within the fluffy plumage. Most endearing of all, it had round, expressive eyes as blue as Sylva’s, which it focused on Fletcher with curiosity.
‘The Gryphowl is exceedingly rare, so you may not have heard of it before,’ Harold said, edging away from the demon as it emitted a disgruntled screech. ‘As you might have already guessed, it’s rather like a hybrid of owl and cat, at level four. Your father named her Athena.’
‘She’s beautiful,’ Fletcher breathed, exerting the control he had learned at Vocans. Grasping his connection with Athena, he pulsed his intentions to her, allowing her to read them as he could hers.
The Gryphowl cocked her head to one side then, with a flap of her wings, settled on Fletcher’s shoulder. She was careful not to grip too hard with her paws, for they were tipped with a razor-sharp mix of claw and talon. As Athena sensed a twinge of pain from Fletcher, they retracted back into her paws with a soft schick.
‘You should probably infuse her, before anyone sees,’ the king said, looking around warily. ‘The elves have requested that any foreign demons must be infused at all times. I would have waited, but I wanted to gift you the demon before Zacharias laid claim to the scroll. I wish you well of her.’
Fletcher was disappointed, for he wished to get to know the demon better, but nevertheless pointed his palm above his shoulder. The pentacle flared violet until he could feel its outline, hot against his skin. With a mental tug, Athena dissolved into threads of white light that shot into his palm. He staggered with the powerful euphoria of the first infusion, as his consciousness merged with hers like the meeting of two rivers.
Within him, he felt his pool of mana grow twofold, and the threads that connected master and demons seemed to braid themselves together. He felt more powerful, the electric energy pulsing along the connection like a beating heart.
As for the psyches of the two demons, they remained apart from each other, unable to sense each other’s thoughts. Still, he could sense their intentions, as they watched the world through his eyes.
His mind felt very fuzzy, pulled in all directions by the combined consciousness of two demons. He remembered Seraph had once described a summoner who had dozens of Mites. He couldn’t imagine how confusing that would be.
‘Good!’ Harold said, snatching up the summoning leather and propelling Fletcher along the branch before he could catch his breath. The sun was almost completely set now, and the king released a large ball of wyrdlight, which illuminated the branch ahead as they walked.
Still dazed from infusion, Fletcher saw other lights wink into existence on the branches around them, illuminating the elves that still wandered above. But these were not wyrdlights.
Luminous mushrooms, previously just common frills of brown that had grown along fissures in the mossy bark, glowed with a fierce, green light. Above, blue shone out from the undersides of the branches – glow-worms with incandescent strands of silk dangling like blue gossamer. Even as he marvelled, the fireflies ascended from the wood floor below, a drifting cloud of orange sparks that swirled around them. It was a kaleidoscope of colours, which cast the entire network of branches in an eerily shifting light.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ the king said. ‘Edmund wrote about it to me, years back. He was often in the Great Forest then, negotiating a trade agreement with the elven clans. Bows, leather, furs and medicines – all were much-needed commodities in Hominum. He dreamed of a society where elves and men could walk each other’s lands, with free trade and movement for all. Of course, it all fell apart when he died.’
Fletcher listened closely, eating up every morsel of information he could about his parents. He wished he knew what they looked like. With a twinge, he realised that, in a way, he already did. Had he seen Zacharias’s wife in the crowd during the Tournament and the trial? It was hazy in his memory, but he could just about picture a blond lady, sitting close beside Lord Faversham. He supposed he had inherited his dark hair from his father.
‘Can you tell me more … about my parents?’ Fletcher asked timidly.
Harold gave a deep sigh, leading Fletcher on to a bridge to another branch.
‘Edmund was my closest friend and Alice … well … if things had gone another way, she might have been my wife. But, I could never get in the way of their happiness. You’re all that’s left of the two people I loved the most.’
Fletcher looked into Harold’s face and saw sorrow there. Perhaps a sadness that he had kept hidden for a long time, even from the nobles he considered friends. It would not do for a king to show his emotions.
Fletcher had always imagined the king to be a calculating, indomitable figure. Instead, he found a kind-hearted man with a deep sense of morality, but who was utterly alone and powerless to make the changes he dreamed of.
‘I wish I could help you,’ Fletcher said. ‘I can fight them in the open, while you work against them in the shadows. But I am just one boy. There’s not much I can do.’
‘You’re a Raleigh now – there’s plenty you can do,’ Harold disagreed, as the branch they walked upon ended at a large hollow in the centre of a particularly thick tree trunk. ‘The first of which is casting your vote as a member of the council, a right you earned when you won the Tournament. The elven clan chiefs and the dwarven elders will be in attendance too. It’s the first time this has happened in the history of our peoples. It’s time to solidify the alliance of men, dwarves and elves, once and for all.’
Fletcher gulped as they walked into the shadowed entrance of the trunk.
‘When will that be?’ he asked.
‘Right now.’