Page 70 of A Crown of Darkness

‘And me,’ Lark chimed in, pushing her way out into the open without a trace of fear. ‘You have need of us. This is a right mess.’

‘Shh, Lark.’ Robin came forward to join her. ‘Don’t make them feel bad. They can’t help it. They don’t know anything.’ Lark shrugged, and scurried over to Roland to get a better look at him. She sucked on her lower lip and Finn was reminded of a weaponsmaster looking at damaged equipment.

‘Can you help him?’ he asked. They were witchkind, and perhaps something more than human, and Anselm had thought they were powerful indeed.

They both looked at him in unison as if he had grown an extra head. ‘We aren’t healers. Why didn’t you get him to do it?’ They both nodded at Olivier with a frightening synchronicity.

‘Me?’ Olivier said, his face pale. He took a step back. He had always been jumpy about magic – all the Arrendens were – but the past weeks had made him even worse.

‘Well that’s what you do, isn’t it?’ Robin said.

Olivier’s face took on a mulish expression. ‘I’m a knight.’

Lark wrinkled her nose. ‘Well you shouldn’t be. You had a gift – a gift of old magic no less – from the moment you were born. Why would you want to go giving that up for? To be a knight?’

She said ‘knight’ the way someone else might say ‘pig herder’.

Finn frowned, finally understanding. ‘You were a healer?’

‘No,’ Olivier insisted. ‘I was aboy. I wanted to be a knight anyway, and you can’t use magic and do that, can you? My family said it was for the best. We serve the Aurum.’

‘Well that’s just stupid,’ Robin sneered. The two of them were really not helping matters. Finn had barely believed Roland’s tales about them, but now he was rapidly reassessing. ‘I wouldn’t want to be anything that badly. Especially not aknight.’

Finn needed to get a hold on this situation quickly. The scorn in the boy’s voice stung more than he would like to say. Olivier had been born a healer, into a devout family, and he had given up the magic that made him so because that was what was expected of him. ‘There’s a law. It wasn’t his choice.’

‘There’s always a choice. He could’ve run away. Joined us. Rebel witchkind live free or die.’

Olivier let out a low growl of a breath. ‘And awful lot of them justdie, you know?’

The two children – and for all their worldliness and precocious ways, they were just children – returned blank stares of hostility. Something else seemed to pass between them and suddenly Finn wondered just how young they were. And justwhatthey were.

Finn took Olivier’s arm, pulling him to one side and lowering his voice. ‘Can you heal? Do you know what to do?’

‘It was fifteen years ago, Finn. I barely remember what I could do. I tried very hard to forget, in fact. And until recently I didn’t have the power in me anymore. Whatever happened at the College of Winter…whatever they said about it…I gave magic up to the Aurum when I vowed to serve. I?—’

There wasn’t time for this. ‘And if the Aurum could give that back?’ Finn asked. Olivier’s mouth opened but for a moment he seemed to have lost the ability to form words. ‘We need Roland, Olivier. He’s the Grandmaster. If there’s even a chance…’

Olivier glanced at the two witchkind children again, then at Roland, and finally dragged his gaze back to Finn. ‘Maybe? But—’ He swallowed hard, his expression troubled. ‘If it’s even possible, if it even works… What will that make me, Finn?’

Finn pulled him into a hug because he knew that feeling of being lost and so far out of his depth. But what else could they do?

‘You’ll still be Olivier, and you’ll still serve the Aurum. You’re still a knight. You always will be. The laws?—’

‘Thestupidlaws,’ Lark corrected him, like some kind of exasperated teacher.

Finn almost laughed. If the situation wasn’t so dire he might have. If he wasn’t asking Olivier to give up everything he ever believed to be right… ‘The laws are old, and to be honest, I think they’ve gone beyond their time. If any of us survive this, I’m not sure people are going to care. Right now, Ilanthus has Pelias and Leander has Wren. It may not matter anymore. But we swore to obey Roland, didn’t we? To serve him? And to risk our lives for him?’

‘Is that what I’m doing? Risking my life?’

Finn shrugged. ‘Maybe?’

Olivier sighed and shook his head wearily. ‘You and Anselm were always his brightest students. I just struggled after you. Ialways knew that. And I always knew you’d lead me astray too. Now look where we are.’

‘The last free knights,’ said Robin, his voice strangely resonant. There was a glow in his eyes that was all too familiar. Finn felt an answering pulse in his chest and he stared. That felt like a title being bestowed on them by something ancient and wise. ‘The old magic reaches out. Even the Aurum realises the danger we all face. The Nox has all but lost itself and it will take its creature with it.’

‘Wren? You’re talking about Wren? She isn’t a creature.’

‘The lost queen of Ilanthus… If she is crowned in Pelias…’ His eyes seemed to roll up in his head and that weird resonance grew stronger. ‘When she is lost enough in her power, and her will is almost gone, she will wear the crown and the Nox and Aurum will battle to destruction. The magic in the land will tear itself asunder. The lines which feed our lives, light our way and cool us in the shadows will be broken. Chaos will devour us. Magic will be no more.’

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