“FOR WHAT PURPOSE do you disturb the Elder?”
Nyrgoth Elder was seven feet tall, gaunt, clad in slate robes that glittered with golden sigils, intricate beyond the dreams of tailors. Lyn imagined a legion of tiny imps sewing that rich quilted fabric with precious metal, every tiny convolution fierce with occult meaning. His hands were long-fingered, long-nailed; his face was long, too: high-cheekboned, narrow-eyed, the chin and cheeks rough with dark stubble. His skin was the sallow of old paper. He had horns. In the old pictures, she’d thought they were a crown he wore, but there they were, twin twisted spires that arched from his brows, curving backwards along his high forehead and into his long, swept-back hair. She would have said he was more than half monster if she hadn’t known he was something half god. He was the last scion of the ancient creators who had, the stories said, placed people on the world and taught them how to live.
And now she had been silent too long. Esha jogged her elbow and she burst out, “I call upon the ancient compact between the royal line of Lannesite and the Elder, where you bound yourself to aid the kingdom should foul magic rise against it. A new threat has arisen who wields terrible powers, as did Ulmoth in the time of Astresse Once Regent. Ulmoth whom you met sorcery with sorcery and cast down.”
The Elder’s look at her was haughty and dismissive. There had been a moment, when she told him of Astresse, that she had thought to read human responses in those arch features, but now she looked on him and could only see the distance between them.
“I am not troubled by such small matters,” he pronounced. “These disputes you must resolve yourself. It is not fit for me to intervene,” and he turned to go.
Lyn had a whole speech prepared—literally memorised by heart—in which she recited the Lineage of Queens, elucidated the deeds of her great-grandmother and the legends of Nyrgoth Elder and made a formal plea, diplomat to great power, for the honouring of bargains. There was an expected language to these things, just as though one were telling a tale, conventions to abide by. One did not just charge into the tower of a sorcerer and take liberties.
And yet he was already going away, without any of her elaborate charade enacted, and she just lunged forwards and tugged his sleeve, as though she were a peddler and he was departing without paying.
The robe punished her. There was a crackle and a feeling as though it had bitten her fingers. Then she was sitting on the floor, hand ringing with pain and tears in her eyes. Esha had grabbed her shoulders and was trying to haul her back, gabbling apologies to the Elder, begging him to forgive the princess’s temerity. Nyrgoth just stood there, looking down at her, seemingly as surprised as she was by the development.
At last, he said, “Forgive me. The things of this tower are jealous of me, and careful in my defence.” And then, after unnamed things came and went in his eyes, “Astresse did the same, when she came to me and I told her I would not intervene.”
“And you did intervene,” Lyn reminded him. “Elder, there is a new power arisen in the Ordwood that men say is a demon who steals minds, whom the strongest cannot face with a blade. The forest kingdoms are falling already. Lannesite’s roads are heavy with those fleeing their homes.” And my mother will do nothing, she thought but did not say. No gain in telling the Elder that she was not exactly here with royal sanction.
“Please,” she said, all those fancy words she’d learnt condensed down to that one. “I invoke the compact between us,” she went on, but quietly, an entreaty and not a demand. “You promised my family, long ago. Are the vows of a sorcerer nothing?”