Fletcher heard the click of flints being pulled back as the guards raised their weapons. Othello swore as Jakov gripped him by the hair and dragged him away, the chains scraping along the floor. But Fletcher saw nothing but those strange, hypnotic eyes, as the Manticore took a step forward.
‘I suggest everyone watch closely,’ Charles said jovially. ‘It is not often you see Manticore venom in action, especially not a full dose. Although those of you with weaker stomachs might wish to leave the room.’
The sting swayed back, bending like a bow at full stretch. It froze, perfectly still, as Xerxes waited for instruction from his master. Charles held up his hand, ready to give the order.
The Manticore purred with excitement, then there was a grip on Fletcher’s arm and he heard Didric’s voice croak in his ear.
‘Hold still. We wouldn’t want him to miss now, would we?’
Another, larger hand reached over his shoulder and tore open his jerkin, ripping the threadbare fabric to leave his chest exposed.
‘Your sacrifice is in vain, Fletcher,’ Zacharias hissed, and Fletcher felt his hot breath on the back of his neck. ‘You have done nothing but delay the inevitable. The dwarves will be put in their proper place, one way or another. It is a shame that you will not be there to see it.’
The two nobles pulled Fletcher’s arms apart, until he thought his shoulders would pop out of their sockets. He kneeled there as the Manticore took a final, deliberate step forward.
‘The prisoner is ready, my liege!’ Charles cried, his voice high with excitement. ‘Shall we begin the test?’
‘Do it,’ Alfric said simply.
Charles’s arm swung down and the sting came with it, hissing through the air. There was a grisly pop as the point broke through the skin below Fletcher’s sternum, and he cried out, for it felt like he had been run through with a sword. Then the bulbous sting pulsated as it injected the venom.
He sagged to the floor, feeling the liquid seethe within him, like acid in the blood. The pain gripped Fletcher then, as if the flesh within him was being cooked from the inside. His nerves screamed with agony, and his muscles seized and spasmed, leaving him kicking and twitching on the cold floor of the courtroom.
He could feel a blackness approaching and welcomed it with open arms. Anything would be better than this suffering. Even death.
As the blessed relief of unconsciousness took hold, he heard Didric cackling, as if from a great distance away.
‘Goodbye, Fletcher Wulf!’
13
The pain was almost gone, just a dull throb in the darkness. It would be so easy to let go. To be infinite and nothing, all at the same time. To be free.
But something called to him, in the endless black. Another soul, lost, as he was. Ignatius.
There was love there. It kept Fletcher from falling, though he leaned out over the abyss. Ignatius was calling to him. He felt their bond, unravelling, weakening. But Ignatius would not let go. The final thread held strong, and it pulled him back from the brink. Fletcher opened his eyes.
The walls and ceiling of the room were made of smooth, raw wood, patterned with the whorls of the grain beneath. There was no door to speak of, simply an opening that led into a dark corridor. Strangest of all, the room was lit by jars of tiny, glowing balls of yellow light that flew randomly within, like wyrdlights.
He was lying in a bed of sorts. Thick, deer furs swaddled him like a baby, cocooning him in a chrysalis of warmth.
‘You’re awake.’ A soft, lilting voice spoke.
A face sporting a pair of bright blue eyes appeared above him, and he discovered his head was resting in someone’s lap. Hair the colour of white gold tickled his chin, and he realised he was looking at Sylva, upside down.
‘Sylva!’ Fletcher blurted, then winced with pain as he sat up. His body ached, as if he had just woken from a fistfight he had lost. Badly lost.
‘Relax,’ Sylva said, pushing him back down with a gentle touch. ‘You took a full dose of Manticore venom. Let me do the talking.’
Fletcher lay back down, relaxing in the softness of her lap. He felt her fingers tease the unkempt locks away from his face, then a soft sponge wiping at his brow.
‘You’re lucky you were so close to our border. We used elven medicine to purge the venom from your body. Something that even the healing spell Hominum relies on so heavily could not fix.’
Fletcher smiled up at her and this time she allowed him to sit up gently and swing his legs from the side of the bed. He was on a strange shelf, which appeared to have grown out of the wall itself. A thick patch of soft, green moss served as a mattress on the top of it.
For a moment he reddened as he realised that he was wearing a simple blue doublet and trousers, with soft felt slippers on his feet. He wondered absently who had dressed him, hoping that it had not been Sylva.
‘It is good to see you,’ he said at last, throwing his arms around her. She hugged him back and they sat there for a while, revelling in their reunion.
Fletcher took in his old friend. Sylva wore a green velvet tunic, edged with fur and embroidered with leaping stags, the detailing as intricate as the finest of paintings.
Fletcher wasn’t sure if it was because he hadn’t seen a girl his age for more than a year, but Sylva seemed to him more beautiful than she had ever been, especially in her traditional elven garb. Avoiding his frank gaze, she jumped from the bed and gave a sharp whistle with her fingers.
Sariel bounded through the door. The golden-haired Canid was larger than when he had last seen her, and she sniffed at his feet excitedly. Fletcher avoided the temptation to stroke her, knowing the implications of caressing another person’s demon. Instead, he held out his hand for her to sniff, and she brushed his fingers affectionately with a wet nose.
The brief demonic contact reminded him to summon Ignatius, and the Salamander materialised with a joyful chirp. Fletcher gathered him into his arms and pressed the demon’s warm body against his chest.
‘So … your medicine saved me. I’m not a noble after all,’ Fletcher said, breaking the awkward silence.
He felt a twinge of disappointment. For a moment, he had thought he knew who his real parents were.
‘Not exactly. I know it’s a lot to process. King Harold is waiting for you, he’ll explain everything. Do you think you can walk?’ Sylva asked.
‘I can try.’
He swayed uneasily on his feet when he stood, so Sariel slipped her snout beneath his arm and nudged it on to her back, while Ignatius took his customary position around Fletcher’s neck. He leaned against Sylva and they hobbled out of the room.
Sylva led the way, taking one of the jars from the walls and shaking it. Within, tiny fireflies floated around, though a few of them sat at the bottom, feeding on a glutinous liquid.
‘Nectar,’ Sylva explained as she saw Fletcher peering at the jar. ‘We use it to trap them before dusk, then release them in the morning. No smoky torches for us.’
But Fletcher was barely listening, for they had stepped out into the light. He staggered again, but this time it was nothing to do with his fragile state. They were thousands of feet above the ground, on a thick branch as wide as the largest of tree trunks.
All around him, there was a network of similar structures, with broad, oaky leaves big enough to roof a house. He turned to see they had walked out of the inside of an enormous tree, the trunk thicker than the tallest building in Corcillum. All around, other trees, just as large as the one he stood upon, stretched into the sky. The entire scene was bathed in dusky orange light, for the sun was setting.
‘The Great Forest. Our home,’ Sylva said proudly, leading him out over the broad pathway.
On mossy branches above and below, Fletcher could see other elves, walking sedately back and forth. Several paused and stared at him across the way, some waving, others shaking their heads. He wondered when they had last seen a human. As for him, he had never seen an elf other than Sylva, and he found it fascinating t
hat they all shared her fine bone structure and pale hair.
‘Watch your step,’ Sylva said, pointing to a bridge that connected one branch to the other. It was constructed from strange, vine-like roots, twisting together to make a footway, complete with railings on either side. It felt solid under his feet, as if it had been carved from stone.
They walked in silence for a time, as the golden light of the setting sun filtered through the canopy. Their journey took them closer to the ground, though Fletcher wished they would go all the way to the top, so he could look out over the Great Forest and catch a glimpse of the Beartooth Mountains.
Finally, they stopped, and Sylva called over a nearby elf when they reached the next branch, speaking in a lilting language. The elf bowed respectfully, then leaped on to the branch below, as nimble as a squirrel.
‘Forgive my elvish,’ Sylva said, reddening. ‘I was tutored in many languages, even orcish runes, but the other high elves have not been so fortunate. I sent him to fetch your King.’
‘Not at all,’ Fletcher replied with a smile. ‘I liked it.’
They were on a smooth, flat branch, only a few hundred feet from the ground. Sylva led him to the edge, where they sat together, looking out at the forest floor.
‘I wanted you to see this,’ Sylva said, waving out at the plains below.
Herds of deer moved slowly beneath them, a countless procession of thudding hooves. Along the edges, great stags clattered their antlers as they ducked and dodged, vying for the attention of the does who grazed nearby.
They were a mix of greys, browns and white spots; small deer, large deer and great, heavy-horned moose that stomped past.
The ground was covered in a thick layer of bright green moss, the same that had made up the mattress of his sickbed. The deer seemed to enjoy it, trimming the top layer like grass and chewing it slowly into pulpy cud, staining the edges of their mouths with green.
‘These are the riches of our people. The Great Herds of the forest. We raise every species of deer under the sun,’ Sylva said, her hand outstretched at the deer below.
Fletcher turned to look behind him, and saw an endless host of deer, fading into the depths of the forest. There must have been thousands of them – of all different sizes and breeds, from barking, muntjac deer with their long, tusk-like upper teeth, to red deer jousting back and forth as they interlocked their heavy crowns of antlers.
‘Look at those fawns, there’s at least a hundred of them,’ Fletcher said, pointing to a group of deer on the edge of the herd. They were tiny, barely larger than a wild hare.
‘Where are their mothers?’ he asked.
‘Those aren’t fawns, they’re pudus,’ Sylva laughed. ‘See the two spikes on some of their heads? Those are the males’ antlers.’
‘Oh,’ Fletcher said, marvelling at the miniature creatures. ‘You really do have every species.’
‘The herds give us everything we need: furs and leathers for clothing and blankets, meat and milk for our tables, bones and antlers for carving, sinews and rawhide for our bowstrings and stitching. We even render their fats for tallow, making soaps, candles and glues.’
She pointed to the far edges of the herd, where Fletcher could see elves astride the same elks he had seen in Ignatius’s memory, as large as horses but with splayed antlers that they tossed and jostled each other with. Ignatius yelped in recognition, startling the riders below.
The elves carried bows on their backs and long, supple sticks tipped with lassos, which they gently waved to scare wandering deer back into the herd. Their hair was long, streaming over their shoulders in waves of sable, russet and hazel, unlike the elves Fletcher had seen in the trees. They wore wolfskin cloaks, with the wolves’ upper jaws resting on their brows like helmets.
‘Our wood elves keep them safe, healing their injuries and helping to deliver their young, guiding them down the safe paths and protecting them from the predators of the forest.’
As Fletcher watched, a large bird swooped in from above, alighting on an elf’s wrist. It dug its talons into a thick leather wrist guard, and the elf offered it a morsel of raw meat as a reward.
‘You keep eagles as pets?’ Fletcher asked. ‘Why?’
For a moment he wondered if he was being too inquisitive, but Sylva answered readily enough. She seemed pleased he was so interested in the culture of her people.
‘We keep foxes too, as you do with dogs. But an eagle is strong enough to carry off a wolf if need be, and they keep watch for the hundreds of packs that forever roam behind the herds. But we can never keep all the deer safe, there’s just too much food in one place.’
Fletcher watched a nearby wood elf whip his pole down, slipping a lasso over an errant fawn’s legs and pulling it back to the safety of the herds like a trussed chicken.
Fletcher was going to ask more, but someone cleared his throat behind him.
‘Thank you, Sylva, for bringing him,’ King Harold said, settling down beside them. ‘I’ll see you at the council meeting.’
‘Council meeting?’ Fletcher asked, but Sylva simply smiled at him and gave him a squeeze on the shoulder as she got up to leave.
Then she was gone, leaving Fletcher alone with the king.
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 p
arents 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.
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