The Riven Wyrde Saga boxed set

by Graham Austin-King

  Rhenkin flushed, and then coughed as Selena smiled at him.

  “The general staff would throw a merry fit,” he managed finally.

  “I’m sorry?” Selena said, in mock confusion. “Who’s queen?”

  Rhenkin laughed as he shook his head. “I would be willing to consider it, your majesty.”

  “Excellent. As for you, Hanris,” she said, turning to the small man, “I believe I will have need of a Lord Chancellor. If you’d be willing to consider the post.”

  “I would be honoured, your majesty.” Hanris said, looking shocked. “Though I feel I ought to give the matter some thought.”

  “Do,” Selena said, staring at the wall behind them as she thought. “I believe that will be all, gentlemen. You have things to consider and I believe I have a woman to meet.” She barely noticed them leave and was still staring into space when a guardsman tapped at the door and escorted the old woman in.

  Selena studied the woman as she approached. She was old, certainly. Her eyes and face carried more than their fair share of pain and struggle. At the same time though, she had a youthful look about her eyes, as if she hadn’t really lived her years.

  She grimaced as the old woman winced her way through a curtsy. “Please, don’t,” Selena told her. “I get more than enough bowing and scraping from the servants. I’ve no need to make a woman’s life harder than it needs to be.” She motioned her into the chair. “Sit, please. I have a number of things I’d like to talk to you about.”

  “Thank you, your majesty,” Miriam smiled as she eased herself into the chair with a soft grunt of pain.

  Selena gave her own wince. “Let’s dispense with that, as well, for now. I’ve only held the crown for a little more than a month and I still look behind me whenever someone uses that title.”

  “As you wish,” Miriam murmured.

  “Major Rhenkin informs me you can speak the language of the Bjornmen and that you learned this in the world of the fae?” the question sounded fantastical even to her and she shook her head at herself.

  Miriam frowned for a moment before she spoke. “That’s correct, your…” she stopped herself with a grimace. “That’s true, my lady.”

  Selena looked at her for a moment. The woman was nervous, that much was obvious. She looked as though she might bolt at any moment. “I think, perhaps, that we might have an awful lot to talk about,” Selena told her. “I’m suddenly very dry. How would you like a nice cup of tea?”

  Miriam smiled with a sigh that took much of her tension out with it. “I’d like that, my lady.”

  Selena reached for the bell-pull she’d had installed and looked up in expectation at the door. “Servants can be annoying,” she confided, “but they do have their uses.”

  “I think we’d both like some tea,” she told the servant when he arrived.

  The wait wasn’t long and Selena waved both the servant and Miriam away as she poured for both of them. “Now,” she said, settling back into her seat and sipping at her cup. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

  Miriam closed her eyes for a moment. “I suppose, in a way, it all started with Caerl,” she began.

  Selena sipped her tea as the old woman told her story. There was something about it that nagged at her but she ignored it as the tale passed from Miriam’s flight from her abusive husband, into the world of the fae, and then, finally, to her time at Tira Scyon. It would have been easy to pity the woman, her life had been torturous, but pity was a luxury she hadn’t the time for.

  “Tell me more about these Wildfae,” she asked as Miriam paused to sip her tea. “Do you think there is a division there?”

  “A division?” Miriam tapped at her cup as she thought. “Possibly, but it’s not as simple as that. If Aelthen had lorded the powers of the Highfae over them from the start, if he'd withheld the knowledge that they have of glyphs and the things they can do with them, then perhaps things would be different. As it is they are rediscovering things that have been lost to them for centuries. Their world has been turned upside down by the changes Aelthen has brought but this has been tempered by these discoveries. He’s destroying their society and everything they know with one hand yet offering them wonders with the other.”

  Selena nodded. “And what about the people there, the humans I mean?”

  “There aren’t many in Tira Scyon,” Miriam told her. “Just the few that the highfae brought with them from Tir Rhu’thin. Humans are probably as much creatures of myth to the wildfae as the glyphs themselves.”

  “That’s not the case at Tir…” Selena gave up. “At this other place?”

  “No.” Miriam shook her head, apparently unaware of the expression she pulled as she spoke. “No, the humans at Tir Rhu’thin are either kept as slaves or used for breeding. The fae don’t reproduce quickly and there’s more chance of them breeding satyr or fae’reeth than a true fae. By interbreeding with humans they can change all of that. Their numbers have grown steadily since I was taken, and even more so since the Wyrde fell. This religion they created, this Church of the New Days, has resulted in hundreds, if not thousands of children passing into the world of the fae. Time passes more there than in this world and they will all have grown to be used as breeding stock.”

  “The fae are behind the church?” Selena gasped.

  Miriam nodded, guilt plain on her face. “The fae that took me used me as a way to pass through into our world, piercing the Wyrde. It was depressingly easy for them to dupe men with glamours and the religion grew from there. I am sure there are honest people in the church, that most have no idea, but there must be some who know what it is they are doing with the orphans and street children.”

  Selena shook her head. “Lords and Ladies this is too much.” She took a deep breath. “Okay we can talk about that later. Tell me about this Aervern. What does she want?”

  “If there is a division, Aervern lies at the centre of it,” Miriam told her. “She spent the last month I was with her in Tira Scyon showing me how Aelthen was bringing these changes with him. From his allowing the satyr to rejoin the fae, to his claiming of the Ivy Throne, his actions have all been calculated and she knows that. She has her own agenda though. There has been nothing selfless about her efforts. The fae don’t place as much emphasis on family that we do but it was her mother that Aelthen killed to gain the Ivy Throne. It’s her world he’s disrupting.”

  “So why show you?”

  “Because she didn’t just show me the impact he’s had there in Tira Scyon,” Miriam explained. “Aelthen has brought the fae together with a common purpose that they probably haven’t had for thousands of years. He’s offering our entire world to them, their promised land. I watched as the armies of the fae swept through the city the Bjornmen have built in the Eastern Reaches. I saw the Great Revel, the horde of satyr that he’s unleashed, and the swarm of fae’reeth that tore through the streets of that place. Not a thing was left living in that city. He plans to march this scourge across all of Haven until this world is all like Tir Rhu’thin.”

  “And so she showed you in order to enlist your help in contacting us,” Selena nodded. “I suppose that makes sense. And what do you suppose she wants with us?”

  “I don’t know, my lady,” Miriam admitted. “But she will wish to meet you and your Wyrdeweavers, and soon. I've had no contact with her at all since I arrived here and the new moon fell soon after. The moon will be full again in another few days. My hope is that she will reach out to me then.”

  Selena reached for the bell-pull again. “I don’t like repeating things,” she told Miriam. “It’s probably best if I bring the others in at this point.”

  “Of course, my lady,” Miriam said as Selena rose to her feet and went to meet the servant at the door, giving instructions in a low voice.

  “I’ve asked Rhenkin and Obair to join us,” she said as she settled back into her seat, wincing slightly at the pain.

  Miriam nodded. “If I can ask, my lady, how old is your baby
now?”

  Selena’s shock must have shown on her face as the old woman smiled at her expression. “How did you know?”

  “It’s been the talk of every servant here, your majesty,” Miriam told her. “And even if it wasn’t I’m an old woman. I can see the signs.”

  Selena managed a small smile. “He’ll be five weeks this Setday.”

  “You’re still in pain,” Miriam told her. It wasn’t really a question. “He wasn’t a small baby was he?” Her smile was a shade away from a laugh as Selena shook her head with a grimace of remembered pain.

  “Salt baths will help,” Miriam told her. “Witch hazel won’t hurt either. You just need to give it time, I’m afraid.”

  Selena nodded, frowning at this other side of the woman.

  “I was the first taken,” Miriam told her in response to the unspoken question. “The first human the fae stole from this world. I’ve helped so many women after they’ve had their fae-born children I couldn’t even count them.”

  The door saved Selena from having to think of a response as a servant announced Obair.

  “Your majesty,” the old man said with the briefest nod. “I thought it might be best to bring Devin along. I hope you don’t mind?”

  His words were lost on her as she turned at Miriam’s gasp. The blood had drained from the old woman’s face and her eyes were full of tears. Selena followed her gaze as the question worked its way to her lips but the words were forgotten as she saw the young man.

  His hair was shocking enough, somehow turned white as if the colour had simply dripped out of the ends, but it was his face that had silenced her. The recognition was clear as he took half a step forward, frowning as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

  “Oh my stars, Devin!” Miriam gasped. Her hand reached out blindly, clutching at the back of a chair to keep herself from falling.

  “What’s going on here?” Obair demanded, confusion disguising itself as frustration in his voice.

  Devin’s face twisted and the years fell away from him as he spoke. His voice didn’t belong to a man almost full grown but somehow reached back through the years to the child that had been lost and scared in the woods. “Ma?”

  Miriam went to him slowly, one hand reaching out in wonder to touch his face, and then she pulled him gently into her arms.

  “She took you!” Devin began and then their tears stole what words remained as they clung to each other in an embrace that was almost visceral.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Now then, shall we get started?” Selena told them as she closed the door Devin and his mother had just left through. The morning was getting away from them and she could feel her frustration rising. “Obair, why don’t you bring me up to speed on your trip?”

  Obair nodded, though his gaze was still on the door as Selena settled down behind the desk again. “Yes, your grace. Or perhaps your majesty is more appropriate?”

  Selena gave a wry smile. “A man recently told me titles are like a warm cloak, a comfort in some places but awfully bothersome in others. Why don’t we dispense with the majesties for now?”

  “Very well…” he floundered.

  “Selena?” she offered.

  “…Selena,” Obair finished, looking profoundly uncomfortable.

  “Rhenkin tells me your journey met with some success?” she prompted him.

  He nodded, his fingers twisting the folds of his robe in his lap. “It did, though it may be that it provided more questions than answers. Lillith’s cottage was exactly where I remembered it, though she was long dead when we found her.” A flash of something that might have been pain passed over his face and she gave a brief smile of sympathy.

  “She did, however, leave a diary,” Obair explained. “Lillith made it clear that the Wyrde was much more complex than I ever imagined. She had been performing her own ritual, just as I was working my own. As it turns out it was Lillith maintaining the Wyrde, I merely helped to provide her with the power to do this.

  There was something he wasn’t telling her and she fought back a spike of irritation as she motioned for him to continue. His story twisted away from whatever it was he’d been concealing, becoming so fantastical that she might have scoffed if it hadn’t been for recent events. A faerie creature that could melt through iron bars to effect its own escape, did a lot to eradicate any scepticism she might have had.

  Obair continued his tale, taking her through his efforts to teach Devin the steps of the ritual, the arrival of the two Bjornmen that had somehow passed between the worlds, and Ylsriss's stunning discovery.

  “One moment,” she said, stopping him with an upraised hand as she pinched at her forehead with another. “Are you telling me that this ritual you’ve been performing is somehow related to these fae markings? To their magic?”

  “They call them glyphs, apparently,” Obair told her. “And yes, that would seem to be the case. As surprising as that is it’s the least of our discoveries.”

  “I hardly see what more there could be!” Selena muttered to Rhenkin but he returned her look with a blank expression that gave nothing away. That was another conversation to be had today, she thought.

  “It would seem that what I’d always been told about the knowledge and records of the druids was not entirely correct,” Obair explained. “My master had always told me that they’d been destroyed during the purges, lost as the druids fled from the men Caltus sent out to hunt us down. Devin, Ylsriss, and the other Bjornman, Joran, managed to locate a series of glyphs. They were etched into the stones themselves at the circle near Lillith’s cottage. Somehow Devin was able to activate their power and access the records and histories.”

  “Is that how?” she left the question hanging

  “How his hair turned white?” Obair finished for her. “That and more. It was almost as if the stones sucked the very life from him. He had ice on him when they carried him into the cottage. Ylsriss and I have spoken about it a few times but the best we have is guesses.”

  “Guesses are often a good place to start when you have nothing else to go on.” Rhenkin put in.

  “Guesses, Rhenkin?” Selena said with an arch look. “That doesn’t sound very professional at all!”

  “We dress them up and use terms like ‘force predictions’ and ‘logistical estimates.’” He shrugged. “They’re guesses all the same.”

  Obair looked back and forth between them, probably sensing the undercurrents, Selena thought.

  “Our best guess is that the glyphs were designed to work differently,” the old man continued. “Ylsriss tells me that the glyphs created by the fae function with the power they can draw from the moon. The glyphs Devin activated seem to draw on our life-force itself. I suppose, in a strange way, that makes sense. The Wyrde worked on much the same…” he stopped, clamping his lips shut and glancing at both of them in a panic.

  “On much the same what, Obair?” Selena asked. She’d barely beaten Rhenkin to it and he examined the druid intently as he started to speak.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you this,” the old man said, sighing the words out in a confessional whisper. “It was something I never knew. From what I gather none of us ever knew.” He shook his head, ignoring them for a moment before he began again. “Lillith’s diaries made it clear there were two sects of druids, the keepers and the guardians. The keepers, like her, were responsible for maintaining the barrier of the Wyrde. They also kept the knowledge of the truth of the Wyrde, the truth of what it was that provided the power for the barrier.

  “The guardians worked a ritual to provide that power. You see, the ritual I performed was keeping a soul captive, trapped between this world and whatever place it is that we go on to after death.” He sucked in a breath, shaking his head. “This doesn’t get any easier to tell the second time around,” he said. “I’d struggled to hold the Wyrde for decades, never realising that every time it tried to escape the hold I had it was a soul trying to escape its torment. I suppose, in a
way, it all makes sense. If the Wyrde is a magic based upon the glyphs of the fae then it wouldn’t have their ability to draw power from the moon to rely upon. Our souls are all we have to offer. It’s hardly surprising that Devin’s hair turned white. He’s lucky to be alive at all!”

  Selena glanced at Rhenkin but the major was staring at Obair. His mask had slipped for once and the stark horror was clear on his face for just the briefest moment before he caught himself. Someone else might have missed it but she knew that face too well.

  “What did Devin discover?” Rhenkin asked.

  “Everything and nothing,” Obair told him. “We talked about it on the journey back to Druel. The stones held the records of the druids but it was nothing like we could ever have imagined. The souls of dozens, if not hundreds, of druids had passed into those stones, given freely at the point of death, carrying their knowledge with them.”

  Obair shook his head with a bitter laugh. “My master would talk of the lost histories when I was a child. It was the closest I ever got to bedtime stories. This was far more than the collection of dusty books I’d always imagined though. For the moments that Devin managed to reach the histories he touched the lives of those who’d lived there. In that moment he shared years, decades maybe, of their lives. He touched their memories, their lives, everything they’d known. The knowledge came like a flood, overwhelming him, and threw him from the stones.”

  “He must have discovered something we can use?” Rhenkin pressed.

  Obair gave a helpless shrug. “He learned how to maintain the Wyrde, a glimpse at the history of mankind and the fae, but nothing of any true use.”

  “Then it was for nothing?” Selena murmured the question.

  “No,” Obair shook his head. “The stones only held so much but they did point us in the right direction.”

  Rhenkin frowned. “How’s that?”

  “Those were not the only stones,” Obair reminded him. “The histories pointed him very clearly to Widdengate.” He laughed then, a hard sound touched with bitterness. “I left the glade looking for help, hoping to warn mankind. As it turns out the answers lay in the very stones I’d spent my life with. The knowledge, and probably the help I’d sought, was right there with me if I’d only known how to access it.”