Koll didn’t much care for holy places. They made him feel he was being watched. He liked to think he was an honest fellow, but everyone has their secrets. Everyone has their doubts.
‘What’s the book?’ he asked.
‘A treatise on elf-relics written two hundred years ago by Sister Slodd of Reerskoft.’
‘More forbidden knowledge, eh?’
‘From a time when the Ministry was fixed on gathering wisdom, rather than suppressing it.’
‘Only what is known can be controlled,’ muttered Koll.
‘And all knowledge, like all power, can be dangerous in the wrong hands. It is the use it is put to that counts.’ And Father Yarvi licked the tip of the one twisted finger on his withered left hand and used it to turn the page.
Koll frowned off into the still forest. ‘Did we have to come so early?’
‘The battle is usually won by the side that gets there first.’
‘I thought we came to talk peace?’
‘Talk of peace is the minister’s battlefield.’
Koll gave a sigh that made his lips flap. He perched himself on a stump at the edge of the clearing, a cautious distance from any of the offerings, slipped out his knife and the chunk of ash-wood he’d already roughly shaped. She Who Strikes the Anvil, hammer high. A gift for Rin, when he got back to Thorlby. If he got back, rather than ending up dangling from a tree in this glade himself. He flapped his lips again.
‘The gods have given you many gifts,’ murmured Father Yarvi, without looking up from his book. ‘Deft hands and sharp wits. A lovely shock of sandy hair. A slightly over-ready sense of humour. But do you wish to be a great minister, and stand at the shoulder of kings?’
Koll swallowed. ‘You know I do, Father Yarvi. More than anything.’
‘Then you have many things to learn, and the first is patience. Focus your moth of a mind and one day you could change the world, just as your mother wanted you to.’
Koll jerked at the thong around his neck, felt the weights strung on it click together under his shirt. The weights his mother Safrit used to wear as a storekeeper, trusted to measure fairly. Be brave, Koll. Be the best man you can be.
‘Gods, I still miss her,’ he muttered.
‘So do I. Now still yourself, and attend to what I do.’
Koll let the weights drop. ‘My eyes are rooted to you, Father Yarvi.’
‘Close them.’ The minister snapped his book shut and stood, brushing the dead leaves from the back of his coat. ‘And listen.’
Footsteps, coming towards them through the forest. Koll slipped the carving away but kept the knife out, point up his sleeve. Well-chosen words will solve most problems but, in Koll’s experience, well-sharpened steel was a fine thing for tackling the others.
A woman stepped from the trees, dressed in minister’s black. Her fire-red hair was shaved at the sides, runes tattooed into the skin around her ears, the rest combed with fat into a spiky fin. Her face was hard, made harder yet by the muscles bunching as she chewed on dreamer’s bark, lips blotchy at the edges with the purple stain of it.
‘You are early, Mother Adwyn.’
‘Not as early as you, Father Yarvi.’
‘Mother Gundring always told me it was poor manners to come second to a meeting.’
‘I hope you will forgive my rudeness, then.’
‘That depends on the words you bring from Grandmother Wexen.’
Mother Adwyn raised her chin. ‘Your master, King Uthil, and his ally, Grom-gil-Gorm, have broken their oaths to the High King. They have slapped aside his hand of friendship and drawn their swords against him.’
‘His hand of friendship weighed heavily upon us,’ said Yarvi. ‘Two years since we shook it off we find we all breathe easier. Two years, and the High King has taken no towns, has won no battles—’
‘And what battles have Uthil and Gorm fought? Unless you count the ones they fight daily against each other?’ Adwyn spat juice out of the corner of her mouth and Koll fiddled uneasily at a loose thread on his sleeve. She struck close to the mark with that. ‘You have enjoyed good luck, Father Yarvi, for the High King’s eye has been on this rebellion in the Lowlands. A rebellion I hear you had a hand in raising.’
Yarvi blinked, all innocence. ‘Can I make men rise up hundreds of miles away? Am I a magician?’
‘Some say you are, but magic, or luck, or deep-cunning will change nothing now. The rebellion is crushed. Bright Yilling duelled Hokon’s three sons and one by one he cut them down. His sword-work is without equal.’
Father Yarvi peered at the one fingernail on his withered hand, as if to check it looked well. ‘King Uthil might disagree. He would have beaten these brothers all at once.’
Mother Adwyn ignored his bluster. ‘Bright Yilling is a new kind of man, with new ways. He put the oath-breakers to the sword and his Companions burned their halls with their families inside.’
‘Burned families.’ Koll swallowed. ‘There’s progress.’
‘Perhaps you have not heard what Bright Yilling did next?’
‘I hear he’s quite a dancer,’ said Koll. ‘Did he dance?’
‘Oh, yes. Across the straits to Yaletoft where he paid the faithless King Fynn a visit.’
Silence then, and a breeze rustled the leaves, made the offerings creak and sent a twitchy shiver up Koll’s neck. Mother Adwyn’s chewing made a gentle squelch, squelch as she smiled.
‘Ah. So your jester can spin no laughs from that. Yaletoft lies in ruins, and King Fynn’s hall in ashes, and his warriors are scattered to the winds.’
Yarvi gave the slightest frown. ‘What of the king himself?’
‘On the other side of the Last Door, with his minister. Their deaths were written the moment you tricked them into your little alliance of the doomed.’
‘On the battlefield,’ murmured Father Yarvi, ‘there are no rules. New ways indeed.’
‘Bright Yilling is already spreading fire across Throvenland, preparing the way for the High King’s army. An army more numerous than the grains of sand on the beach. The greatest army that has marched since the elves made war on God. Before midsummer they will be at the gates of Thorlby.’
‘The future is a land wrapped in fog, Mother Adwyn. It may yet surprise us all.’
‘One does not have to be a prophet to see what comes.’ She drew out a scroll and dragged it open, the paper scrawled with densely-written runes. ‘Grandmother Wexen will name you and Queen Laithlin sorcerers and traitors. The Ministry will declare this paper money of hers elf-magic, and any who use it outcast and outlaw.’
Koll started as he heard a twig snap somewhere in the brush.
‘You shall be cut from the world, and so shall Uthil and Gorm and any who stand with them.’
And now the men appeared. Men of Yutmark from their square cloak buckles and their long shields. Koll counted six, and heard two more at least behind him, and forced himself not to turn.
‘Drawn swords?’ asked Father Yarvi. ‘On the sacred ground of Father Peace?’
‘We pray to the One God,’ growled their captain, a warrior with a gold-chased helmet. ‘To us, this is just dirt.’
Koll looked across the sharp faces and the sharp blades pointed at him, palm slippery around the grip of his hidden knife.