Arc 1: Chapter 24: Irn Bale

Arc 1: Chapter 24: Irn Bale

An hour later, I was clean and in a fresh set of clothes. They were plainer than what I’d borrowed from Castle Cael, but sturdier and more comfortable, the sort I was more used to.

Catrin and I were brought to a smaller hall. A round table of deep blue marble waited for us, set with dishes of food and drink. Pretty elf maids with silver leaves in their hair guided us, sitting us on stools carved of elder wood and whispering conspiratorially to one another. Their laughter was like the Wil-O’ Wisps — fey, carefree, and a touch unsettling.

We were left alone for a long time. Music drifted from somewhere, bitterly sweet. There was wine on the table, and I drank some. It helped ease the ache in my freshly stitched wounds.

They’d stitched my wounds with strings of moonlight.

Catrin eyed the wine dubiously. “Aren’t we not supposed to touch this stuff?” She asked, poking at the food.

“It’s not going to ensorcel us, if that’s what you mean.” I took another sip, wincing as the movement disturbed an injury. “Not unless we have too much, leastways. A lot of the stories are true, but we’ve been given hospitality. They won’t try to trick us unless we prove ourselves ungracious guests.”

Catrin lifted her drink, hesitated, then shrugged. She downed it fast enough I lifted an eyebrow.

“They’re not at all how I imagined,” Catrin said after lowering the cup and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “And… everything like I imagined.”

I nodded once.

“When I was a girl…” Catrin fell quiet, though the hall had been emptied. Only a few wisps bobbed in and out of the open windows. “When I was young, I daydreamed about who my real parents might be. I liked to imagine my real father might be a great elf lord, like in the stories. Wise, just, good. I liked to think he’d come and find me someday, take me away to be some sort of great lady. Or maybe my mother was the eld, and she’d teach me all her magics and songs…”

Catrin laughed, and there was a subtle note of grief in the sound. “Or maybe both my parents were false, and — when I found my true family — it would be a full set. Happily ever after.”

She fell silent. I studied the food in front of me. Kingly fair. I had no appetite, but I methodically dismantled the food, old habit compelling me to eat when I had the chance.

“You ever find out who they were?” I asked, after I’d eaten a while. “Your eld parent?”

This time, Catrin made no effort to hide her bitterness. “Yes. I’m no faerie princess, that’s for certain.”

When I didn’t respond, she threw a withering look my way that I caught in the corner of my vision. “Disappointed?”

I shrugged. “I wasn’t born noble. My relatives were mostly all woodcutters.”

Catrin’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You’re serious?”

I nodded. When I refused to elaborate, she leaned back and folded her arms, studying me. I carefully refused to meet her gaze, instead focusing on getting enough wine and elf-food in me to take my mind off my wounds.

But she wasn’t going to let me off the hook.

“I thought I’d imagined some of what the elves were saying earlier,” Catrin began. “That the Banemetal made me delirious. But it’s true. You’re not just a knight. You’re a bloody Knight. A paladin of the Alder Table. You’re…” She seemed to struggle for words. “I mean, they’re—”

“Gone,” I said. “Most of us, anyway. Lot of the knights died when Elfhome burned, and the rest…” I shook my head, a grimace forming. “Order was founded to safeguard the city and serve the Archon, the elf king, act as a bridge between the eld and human realms. Their broken oaths turned on them, turned them mad. Most of the rest died that way, after the fighting. There’s no Table anymore, no order. It all just…” I stared into my cup. “Faded away.”

“Not you, though.”

Catrin and I looked up as Irn Bale entered the hall. He’d also changed into garments free of blood and sweat, and entered the dining chamber trailed by a gaggle of whispering wraiths, all lurking in his shadow like ghostly courtiers.

I followed his entry with my eyes. “I swore a new oath after the war. Helped keep me sane.”

The Oradyn nodded thoughtfully as he sat along one edge of the round table. “Your penance. Yes, I heard aught of it.”

Catrin glanced between me and the elf, curious, but I refused to meet her eye. This was something I wouldn’t speak of. Not to her.

Irn Bale didn’t miss the dhampir’s confusion. “Your paramour knows nothing of this?”

Catrin and I both spoke at once.

“She’s not my—”

“He damn well wishes!”

We both fell silent and glared at one another. The elf smiled at our irritation.

Goring fae.

When an awkward silence had fallen, Irn Bale laced his fingers together and studied us a long while. “I should apologize for that theater before. You understand, it was necessary to keep you safe from the others.”

Catrin half stood from her seat, her palms striking the bluestone table. “Necessary!? You dragged us here against our will and tried to kill him. Your cronies shot me!”

I winced at the changeling’s outburst. The mutterings of the wraiths grew more agitated.

“I understand, lord.” I inclined my head to the oradyn. “I hold no grievance toward you or yours.”

Catrin’s outrage gave way to disbelief as she turned her glare on me.

I explained before Irn Bale could. “You wanted them all to see I still had the Archon’s magic in me.”

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Irn Bale smiled and nodded, the expression pulling at his scars. “In part. You understand, the Eldarine are angry, Alken Hewer. Many hold your order responsible for these dark times, and they will take that anger out on you. And those near you.” His ageless eyes flickered toward Catrin, who hadn’t sat back down. “I am not just the ruler of those who’ve taken refuge here, but their voice. If needed, I am their rage. Their hate. Their grief.”

He placed a hand to his chest. “I cannot be seen to disregard their feelings. For that reason, today at least, I was the wrathful chieftain. Now they have seen your oaths have not abandoned you, that you still wield the aures — the Golden Flame — they will be less likely to challenge my decision to host you.”

I waved a hand, as though brushing away so much mist. “I get it. I don’t take any offense for myself…” I let my voice harden. “Your people did hurt my companion.”

Catrin’s anger turned to surprise. Irn Bale unclasped his fingers, letting them spread like slow-unfolding wings. “My warriors were overzealous in this. What weregild would you and the malcathe ask for this injury?”

“What did you just call me?” Catrin almost spat the question. I placed a hand on her elbow and she fell silent, sitting down with a sullen huff.

“You’ve already healed our injuries,” I asked. “All I want now is for both of us to be allowed to leave in peace. That, and information about the lord of Castle Cael.” I smiled, not bothering to try to make it look friendly. “I know what’s half the reason you had me brought here in the first place.”

Irn Bale didn’t reply at once. Instead he stood and moved to one of the balconies separating the dining terrace from the otherworldly woods beyond. I stood and moved to stand beside him. Catrin followed too, though hesitantly, and she kept some distance back, looking uncomfortable and out of place.

The Oradyn placed his hands against the railing and contemplated the eternal trees. The wisps were trying to braid his hair, or tangle it, their laughter like tiny bells.

“I am among the last,” he said. “This refuge here… there are very few of us. Save for the little ones and the Faded, there are perhaps half a hundred Sidhe in these woods. All of them follow me. A few hundred might still reside in living body across all the land men call Urn. Perhaps some more if you include the Briar, but even then our numbers are small. A thousand at most?” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “And yet, our bodiless spirits riddle the land. Who knows how long it will be before our stray shades reincarnate, or the lesser spirits choose to manifest in the flesh?”

He held out a hand and one of the wisps alighted in it. Its light grew dim, as though saddened by the elf lord’s mood.

He turned to me then, still holding the tiny mote of flame in his palm. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me. “We have no where else to depart. No ancient land to sail to. The West is lost to the Adversary’s offspring, the East wrapped in wrathful seas. The Wend has been closed to us, along with the lands beyond it. This is all we have.”

He indicated the twilit forest. “This, and a few other enclaves. We have little left to us, Sir Alken, and must defend it.”

“Don’t call me that,” I said, too hasty. When Irn Bale raised a blue-black eyebrow, I winced. “Don’t call me Sir. I’m not a knight anymore.”

“Ah.” A sad smile played across the elf’s lips. “The Church?”

I turned away from his shining-star eyes. “I’m an excommunicate. I can’t claim knighthood anymore.”

“Among mortals, maybe. Your priests do not decide such things among my kind. You are a paladin of the aur enhar — the Golden Bough.”

“Maybe once,” I sighed. “Nowadays I feel more like a shadow. I’ve… done things. Things I’m not proud of.”

Irn Bale nodded. “It is a fell role, that of Headsman. It was not meant to be bestowed on the True Knights. But this was not my choice, and I cannot gainsay it. Nor can I stop what must come to pass.”

More elven prophecy, I thought, annoyed. Irn Bale smiled.

“I don’t like having my thoughts read,” I snapped.

“I do not need to be in your mind to see them,” the elf said. “You wear them on your face.” The smile died and he placed both hands on the railing. “Orson Falconer must die. I do not wish it — his family has suffered enough harm they did not earn. But we cannot have his poison spreading, and he threatens my people. You know what he intends for these dyghul soldiers from the continent?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “He implied it was for prestige.”

“In part, I imagine.” Irn Bale nodded to the forest. “They are for me, or so I believe. He wants the magic in this place — it is an old fountain of Light, preserved since the Dawn Days. He is a petty threat now, but with this power he could become as dangerous as the traitor magi in the west.”

“Why?” I asked. “What drove him Recusant?”

Irn Bale turned his eyes upward and closed them, as though drinking in old memories from the primeval light. “He is the scion of a once great house. Caelfall was not always the sick land it is now. Once it was bountiful, the Falconers mighty among Men. But the city now called Vinhithe, and other enclaves of your kindred at the time, were suffering great famine. The priests cried out for aid, and the Onsolain answered. They diverted rivers, changed the wind, raised hills… all to save larger lands from ruin.”

He opened his eyes and turned them to me, speaking with a weary, immortal sadness. “It was ill considered. The Onsolain are not infallible. My people know this truth better than yours, I think, for we have seen such things through the ages of this world. It is why we venerate them, but do not worship them as your people do. Tens of thousands were saved, but Caelfall… it suffered. The changing of climate, the restructuring of the land, it turned it into the marsh it is today.”

I considered this, a bit disturbed at the idea that the Onsolain might be responsible for such woes. “When did all this happen?”

“Long ago,” Irn Bale said. “Many lifetimes of your kind. But House Falconer never recovered, and darker forces began to take advantage of their fall. Orson’s mother was a Briar witch who seduced his father, and taught her son the truth of his blood’s history. She poisoned his mind against the world that took his birthright, made him believe his destiny had been snatched. He might have been a king… instead he is a backwater noble of little worth in the eyes of the wider world.”

“So this is revenge for his ancestors,” I said, “and his ploy to regain what he thinks he deserves.”

“He has the potential to become a new dark lord,” Irn Bale agreed. “We’ve had enough of those, I think. He must be stopped.”

“I’ve already sworn to do it,” I said. “Or been sworn. Whatever.” I leaned my hands against the railing to mimic the elf, sighing. “I’m not sure how I’ll do it. That castle is full of monsters. I’ve gone up against long odds before, but…” I shook my head, grimacing. “He’s protected. Some kind of dark spirit. I don’t think I’ll catch him by surprise.”

“Then don’t try,” Irn Bale suggested. When I turned to him, surprised, the elf shrugged with one lean shoulder. “You are no assassin, Alken Hewer. You are an Alder Knight and the Headsman of Seydis — the chosen executioner of the Powers. You are no thief in the night, and it diminishes you to act like one. Face the evil.”

He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Punish it.”

He stepped back and turned his gaze once more to the forest. “I sense a darkness in the forest. The Baron is searching for you, I think. You and her.” He nodded to Catrin.

“He sent me out to see if I’d murder a man for him and I ended up vanishing among the wyldefae,” I said, folding my arms. “I don’t think I’m going to have a warm welcome back.”

“Do you intend to continue your ploy of alliance?” Irn Bale asked, curious.

“I don’t know.” I glanced at Catrin. “You never told me what your plan was.”

The dhampir shuffled, glancing nervously at the elf lord. “Might still work, but we need to get back to the castle.”

“I have slowed time in the forest,” Irn Bale said. He said it casually, as though he were saying he’d put out more guards or felt confident about the weather. “I cannot do so for long, but it should give you the time to recover and return to the castle well before dawn. From there, you will be on your own. I have something for you as well, Sir Knight.”

I turned to the old elf, surprised.

“Your enemies are many, and strong.” The oradyn moved to stand in a column of moonlight. “I am forbidden from leading my people to war against a human lord, though I would gladly take vengeance for the death of my friend. All I can do is prepare to defend myself.”

His expression became stern, and for a moment I saw a glimpse of what old humanity must have seen when they first encountered the elves — a grim, deathless hunter, terrible and ageless. No less than a god to those ancient men.

“It is your task to deliver Orson Falconer his doom,” Irn Bale told me. “I will arm you for the task.”