Travelling through the fae realm, Willard explained, was like using the fastest carriage one could imagine, except there was no carriage and no horses and it made one’s skin tingle. The forests of the fae were connected, like rooms in a house.

  “You are mixing your metaphors in the most unhelpful way,” said Idris, his head hurting. Willard rolled his eyes.

  “Aye, so, imagine a house.”

  “Yes.”

  “All the fae forests are like rooms in the house. You walk through the room, through the doorway, and then you’re in the next one.”

  “Like the fairy circles?”

  “Aye, just like the circles. Magic doorways. You feel it, in your bones, when you go over the threshold, and then poof – you're in The Herald Wood. Poof – you're in The Underwood.”

  “Where are we now?”

  “Oh, much the same place as I pulled you out of. Nobody knows you’re here. Nobody who matters, anyway.”

  Idris did not like the idea that he was in the fae realm without the permission of the Fairy Queen; he was concerned about what might happen when that news eventually reached her. Willard assured him that by the time she knew he had been wandering her woods, they would be gone. Riette and Lila were sure to follow soon after. Idris sighed, pulled his prosthetic back on with a click.

  “My pa was right upset that you didn’t use your hare’s foot,” said Willard.

  “I cannot ride in it and I was not expecting to be assaulted by ravens. It is on the war-cart, though. I must confess I have not even put it on.”

  Once out of the nest, The Silent Lord rejoined them. As far as Idris understood, the stag’s purpose was as a fae guide. Whenever he was needed, he appeared and led the way wherever the travellers had to go.

  “He knows all the paths,” said Willard, smiling kindly at the huge beast. “That’s why there ain’t no maps. Don’t need ‘em.”

  The Silent Lord led the two men through the winding tree-ways of the fae, checking every so often to make sure they were keeping up. Occasionally, Idris saw more armoured fae, wearing skulls of smaller animals as helmets or carrying crossbows.

  “Scouts,” said Willard. “Off protecting the corners of the realm. Necromancy don’t just worry the folks outside. It ain’t a stain the fae can scrub off easily, neither.”

  While Idris resented it being called a ‘stain’, he understood. The Spirit Glass had been made in a crueller time. While it was technically fae, it could harm them just as much as any other weapon.

  Eventually, The Silent Lord stopped, flicked his ears and watched Willard. Willard grinned and bowed to him.

  “Many thanks, m’lord,” he said. The stag bowed back.

  “My lord,” said Idris humbly, dipping his head.

  “Come on,” said Willard, and he stepped onto a slightly darker patch of grass.

  And vanished.

  Quickly, Idris followed. He felt pins and needles all over his arms, on the back of his neck, and then, oddly, he was behind Willard, and they were stepping out of the edge of a forest, but the landscape was so wildly different from that of the gorge that he was sure he had missed something.

  “Wait,” blurted Idris, turning, staring at the trees.

  “Hmm?”

  “We... this is...”

  “The Herald Wood, aye.” Willard shifted his weight. “Not far from Obsidian Lake, now.”

  “How -” said Idris, and then felt bile in his cheeks, and he vomited violently into the undergrowth.

  “Oh, aye,” said Willard, sounding awkward. “It ain’t pleasant for... not-fae.”

  It felt like Idris’s brain had been spread too thin, or like his nerves had been pinched at every end. It was not until he had emptied his stomach that he felt better, and even then, the idea of travelling that way again made him feel dizzy.

  When Idris resurfaced from his third trip to the bushes, there were horses and carriages on the road. Willard waved jovially as they approached; on the first horse, proud and straight like a statue, was Judge Kurellan.

  “Master Willard,” he said, nodding.

  “Evening, Old Honour.”

  “Sir Idris.”

  Idris nodded, tried to inconspicuously wipe his mouth. “Your Honour.”

  “You been sleeping?” said Kurellan, frowning. Idris looked down at his fae clothes, a coarse-spun beige shirt and loose brown trousers, and shrugged.

  “I went for an impromptu fae outing, Your Honour. My travel clothes were covered in mud. I did not think it appropriate to greet you in a stained coat.”

  “Huh.” Kurellan tutted, rolled his eyes. “Master Willard, will you be joining us?”

  “Not yet,” said Willard. “I got other people to ferry first. We’ll meet you for supper.”

  “I brought you a carriage, Sir Idris,” said Kurellan, turning his war horse. “Her Majesty will be pleased to see you. I hope your investigation was fruitful.”

  “Fruitful, perhaps. Too exciting, absolutely. Thank you, Willard,” Idris added as he walked to the carriage. Willard beamed.

  “Ain’t no bother. I’ll see you in two shakes.”

  After the horse rides, war-cart and fae transportation, Idris was grateful for a carriage at last. He sank into the cushioned bench and closed his eyes, and he finally managed to sleep; it was black dark outside, compared to the artificial, continuous light in the fae realm. When he woke, it was to a squire tapping on the carriage door and cautiously asking if he was well in there. Apparently, he had slept all through the night.

  Obsidian Lake was much the same as it was the last time Idris had been there in the spring. It was a small, quiet town, beside a substantial lake which gave the place its name, the volcanic rock bedding the body of water making it seem like a pool of ink. The resin lamps were lit in comforting blue as Idris left the carriage in the overcast dawn, and the soldiers greeted him with salutes and nods of their heads. There was no protective wall, only a few guard towers, so the guards watched the road in groups of three. A lot of them recognised him and smiled when they saw him.

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  Idris followed Kurellan to the same small inn they had utilised previously. Once they were settled with a meal, Kurellan asked Idris to report. He did so with as much detail as he figured the old man would understand, and Kurellan nodded thoughtfully, making notes.

  “You’re not hurt?” he checked at the end.

  “A few superficial beak wounds.” Idris tilted his face to the light. “But I will live.”

  “He could’ve hurt you if he wanted.” Kurellan sat back in his chair, frowning to himself. “Seems there’s a lot he could do, if he wants. All of this is petty irritation.”

  “He is playing with his food,” said Idris, finally picking up his spoon to eat. “He likes us distracted, irritated. That is when we make mistakes.”

  Kurellan sucked his left cheek, nodded. In the candlelight, he looked older than usual, the deep shadows between his wrinkles obscuring his face.

  “I... if I could be bold,” said Idris.

  “You can, but only once.”

  “I think I need to hear what happened at Old Risston.”

  The change in Kurellan’s demeanour was immediate. His sharp eyes fixed on Idris and became dark. The frown was all at once a scowl.

  “For what?” he said gruffly.

  “You are, as far as I am aware, the only person I know who has fought a necromancer. If we are to battle Lord Vonner, I need to be sure of what we are facing, of preparations I should make.”

  “You’re a necromancer. It should be easy.”

  “Kurellan...” Idris sighed, put down his spoon again. “You and I both know that ‘necromancer’ is a rather broad term for the skills I have. It was only a few months ago that I had even met another necromancer and his abilities far exceed my own, even before he uses that damned armour. I am fighting a war with a butter knife. If I know what to expect, I can pinpoint where I should focus my studies. Otherwise, I am swinging in the dark.”

  The old man drummed his heavy fingers on the table top, tutted, and leaned forwards again.

  “Old Risston was the final push against the last great rogue necromancer in the kingdom,” he said. “It was... difficult.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Not much older than you, I would wager.” Kurellan sighed; he seemed tired, or sad. Either way, it was an emotion that Idris had not seen the judge display before. “The necromancer called himself The Scourge. We had been chasing him up and down the kingdom for two or three years, putting down undead rebellions and uprisings while he made ever-more outrageous demands of the kingdom and its resources. Those old, lone necromancers, they thought themselves conquering kings. They wanted gold and men and weaponry and land, and they wanted it at the expense of the lives of others. Every few years a new one would pop up, all of them deranged. Since the last of the necromancers died out – excepting present company,” Kurellan added, jerking his thumb Idris’s way, “life’s been pretty easy.

  “So I spent most of my first few years as a knight dealing with that kind of dung. The Scourge was giving us more trouble than most. Maybe he had some access to your family library or something, but he displayed skills we hadn’t dealt with before. A lot of necromancers, once the Fae Wars were over, were... let’s call them poor cousins, after the Vonners went into hiding.”

  Idris frowned. “I suppose if necromancy was outside of the Vonner line, then...”

  “Then access to a teacher or any texts was likely minimal,” finished Kurellan.

  “A little like my education.”

  “Quite.” The old judge shrugged. “Reason being, previous kings and queens of New Borria made getting necromantic texts a living nightmare, to try and prevent this sort of thing from happening. I assume the Vonners curated their collection with the assistance of the royal line, when they were still in favour, and when they went dark they took a generation’s worth of education with them. Likely, the library at Raven’s Roost is the most complete necromantic library on the continent. Anyway.

  “All this to say, The Scourge was better than that. Better than you. Raised a hundred thralls to stop us on a road once and commanded them all to follow us through the river – and most of them made it, too. Skeletons and all. I don’t think getting dead bodies to swim is an easy feat.”

  “It is not,” said Idris, frowning. He had never even considered it.

  “Instead of getting swept away, they just kept coming.” Kurellan’s gaze darkened again. “Used to have nightmares about boats, after that. Undead creatures trying to pull me out.”

  Idris allowed Kurellan his disgust for a few moments. He was under no illusions that something he understood as rather normal was abhorrent to most – just because he had come to terms with what he could do with arias did not mean other people had to accept it. Thralls were frightening when you did not expect to see them, and even Idris suspected that if a hundred chased him through a river, he would be sleepless over it, too.

  “He was strong and he knew it,” said Kurellan eventually. “Smart, too. We finally cornered him at Old Risston, out near the coast. He had nowhere to run, then. Sources told us he was waiting for passage to the Imperial Kingdom but the weather had been rough and the boat hadn’t come in. Instead of hopping onto a docked boat, he had to wait. And he knew we were after him.” Kurellan pursed his lips. “He killed everyone in the town.”

  “Everyone?” said Idris quietly. Kurellan nodded.

  “Passed some kind of necromantic wave through the place while everyone was sleeping. Did the same thing the green faces did at the border – rotted everything and killed everyone. Then he set fire to the whole place. When we got there, it was a ghost town, homes and fields burnt, nothing left. Then the villagers started crawling out of the windows to attack us.”

  “That...” It seemed like a scene from a bedtime story. “That’s awful.”

  “I think he figured it’d slow us,” said Kurellan.

  “That is an assumption I would make, too.”

  “We fought the whole town,” the old man said. “Killed women and children that The Scourge had risen to pull us apart. Dogs. Cats. Horses. Skeletons from the graves. It took hours. Every time we thought we were done, there were more. If we didn’t take their heads, they got up again.” He swallowed, his eyes glazed. “Thought I was never going to see anything like that again.

  “Eventually, we found him. He had taken up in a basement, set it up with all of his crystals and aria bells. Filled the place with pentagons that did all kinds of things to keep us out. One man put his foot into one pentagon and it rotted the whole thing to the hip within seconds. We could hardly get close, and nobody wanted to, after what we had gone through. He killed one of my boys instantly. Some strike to the chest. Burned him up from the inside. I had a salt bomb but when I threw it, it struck his bells. Next thing he did was raise the man he murdered and ordered him to kill me.

  “There’s nothing so awful as striking down a man you knew,” said Kurellan quietly. “Even if he is controlled and undead. I won’t ever forget it.”

  It was quiet. Idris watched the sorrow play out on Kurellan’s face, in the softness of his breaths.

  “How did you kill him, in the end?” Idris whispered.

  “I did too much. Smashed an oil jar on his pentagon, set it alight. Threw myself through the fire and took his head clean off his neck. Salted the whole corpse. Burned it. Watched and waited to make sure the bones were gone. Then we turned Old Risston into a funeral pyre and called it a day.” Kurellan sighed. “Never went back. By all accounts, the place is cursed.” He paused. “You know your grandfather went to try and cleanse the place, after, don’t you?”

  Idris blinked. “No. My... Eremont grandfather?”

  Kurellan nodded. “He said he had never felt energy like it. His bells shattered before he got within a half-mile of the border. There was nothing that could be done. No amount of caustic salt could rid the place of what The Scourge had done to it.”

  “Do you think The Scourge was...”

  “Vonner?” he finished. “No. But I do think he had dealings with Raven’s Roost, now I look back on it. No way he could have done what he did without a Vonner assisting him.” Kurellan fixed Idris with a strange look. “You think you can kill Layton?”

  “I think it is possible -”

  “That isn’t what I asked, whelp,” said Kurellan.

  Idris stared right back at him. He knew what Kurellan had really meant; he simply did not know if he could answer truthfully.

  “I think I have to,” he said.

  “But can you? You had a chance, once. You didn’t take it.”

  “I did not know then what I know now.”

  “If you can’t,” said Kurellan, “then I will, if you want me to. I think your uncle deserves that debt to be paid. If you don’t want me to,” he added, with an air of casual threat, “I might just do it anyway. The old raven irks me. I can’t suffer men like him to live.”

  Idris did not know if he could send Kurellan to that fight, knowing Layton’s power and hatred, knowing the effect of Old Risston and The Scourge.

  So he did the only thing he could do.

  “I can do it,” he said. “Just clear the way.”