Unlike Emily, who came from our world, Frieda was born on the Nameless World and was raised in the Cairngorms, one of the poorest and most desolate parts of the Allied Lands. She developed magic when she entered her teenage years and was sold to Mountaintop Academy, where she was lucky enough to meet Emily (The School of Hard Knocks). They became friends and Frieda was allowed to follow Emily when she returned to Whitehall

She never returned home, until now.

Chronologically, the story starts roughly midway through Oathkeeper.

There was something in the air.

Radovan could feel it as he pushed his way through the twilight, stepping between trees and down paths that had barely been explored since the nearest village had been destroyed and the land cursed. It was rare for anyone to come so close, and even Radovan himself had been careful to skirt the edge of the ruined village, rather than go into the pooling shadows. The risk was just too great. Those who walked into the ruins never came out again.

He kept moving, frowning slightly as he pressed through the undergrowth. It had been a mistake to travel so far from his village, but times were hard — they were always hard — and his family were desperately short of food. Nothing had been decided, yet, but the murmuring had already started. It was just a matter of time before the old and useless, or the small and weak, were shoved into the cold, giving their lives — willingly or not — so the rest of their families could survive. Radovan hated the thought of his aged grandfather, a man who’d reached sixty, being sent to his death, but what choice did they have? If he found food, the old man might live to see sixty-one. And here…

His fingers searched the bushes, feeling for hidden mushrooms and other fungi. They would feed the family for a few short days more, if he found enough. If not… his stomach hurt, the hunger gnawing at his soul. He knew he should bring his find home, to feed his parents and older brothers, but he wanted to eat it himself. He knew, although he’d never admit it, that if he didn’t find enough he’d put himself first.

Why not? Everyone else did.

The ground shook, violently. Radovan tripped and fell, rolling down an incline he was sure hadn’t been there a few moments ago. He heard things crashing behind him, saw giant shapes — tree trunks — flying over his head, smashing to the ground further down the incline with sounds that almost deafened him. There was a brilliant flash of light, like lightning in a cloudless sky, there and gone so quickly he barely registered it. And then the world seemed to stop dead. He hit the bottom of the incline and lay still.

Silence. There was nothing but silence. And the whispering.

Radovan stumbled to his feet, quickly checking himself for wounds. There wasn’t anything beyond a handful of bruises. He breathed a sigh of relief as he straightened, taking deep shuddering breaths. The world was a harsh place, for a man with broken bones. His family couldn’t afford to let him heal on his own, let alone take him to a healer. The very thought was utterly absurd… he shuddered, feeling his body ache as he moved. The bruises would heal quickly, if he got home. If…

He looked around. There was… something, a strange shimmery radiance, flicking in the air, calling to him. The whispering was growing stronger, a sound right on the edge of his awareness… a sound tempting him with understanding, if only he listened long enough to make out the words. He staggered towards the radiance, despite all the old wives’ tales of things lurking within the darkness. He wasn’t sure what was calling to him, but… he couldn’t resist. His legs seemed to move of their own accord.

The world shifted. Something was right in front of him, something dark and yet illuminated by a strange light that made his eyes hurt. He gritted his teeth as the whispering grew louder, unable to comprehend what he saw. Or heard. He reached out, a lone voice screaming at the back of his head to stop, to run, before it was too late, and pressed his head against the thing. The whispering grew louder, the voices suddenly clear. They promised him everything he’d ever wanted — a full belly, a life of idleness, a wife and children who didn’t have to slave all day if they wanted to see the night — as long as he let them in…

… And he did.

Frieda woke, alone.

The tent felt hot and uncomfortable, a faint light shimmering through the canvas reminding her it was shortly after dawn. She sat up, taking a deep shuddering breath as she gathered herself. She’d slept in worse places — the floor of her family’s hovel, the dorms of Mountaintop — but there was something about the small tent that unsettled her. It felt both solid and flimsy, mocking her as she tried to catch a good night’s sleep. The wards crackled around her as she reached out with her fingertips, carefully dismantling the spells that had protected her during the night. She’d never felt comfortable sleeping without them, or the pistol Emily had gifted to her last year. The tent was big enough for two, if they were close, but she’d flatly refused to share. She couldn’t sleep properly if she wasn’t alone.

At least Hoban understood, she thought, brushing dark hair out of her eyes. And Emily …

The thought gnawed at her mind. She liked Hoban, not least because he let her sleep in a single tent. It was odd, she was sure, to his mind. She’d have sex, but not sleep — literally sleep—with him. Emily was about the only person Frieda had ever managed to sleep close to, and even she had been difficult, in those early days. And the less said about the dorms of Mountaintop and the rooms of Whitehall the better. She just preferred to have space to herself when she was asleep and vulnerable. The wards just didn’t feel like enough.

She crawled out of the bedroll and reached for her clothes, pulling trousers and shirt over her sleepwear. It felt grimy but compared to her childhood it was heaven. She scowled to herself — if she’d realised where they were going, she might have had second thoughts about spending much of the summer with her boyfriend — and tied her hair back in a long ponytail before clambering out of the tent. The campsite was remarkably active… she told herself she was being silly. Whitehall had spoilt her. Her old family had risen when the sun rose and gone to bed when it fell behind the distant peaks.

The air tasted fresh and pure, the faint scent of wild magic brushing against her nostrils. The campsite, nearly ten miles from the nearest major town, was surrounded by trees and — in the distance — mountains rising so high their peaks vanished in the clouds. She shivered, despite herself, as she looked at the trees. The clearing felt a little too clear for her peace of mind. It was hard not to fear unseen eyes. She’d grown up in the Cairngorms, before she’d been sold to Mountaintop, and she’d never quite managed to rid herself of the habits she’d learnt as a child. Her tutors had called them superstitions. She wanted to believe they’d been right. And yet…

She took a long breath, her eyes peering into the pools of shadow, then forced herself to walk on stiff legs towards the fire. Hoban was standing by the flames, brewing a pot of something the archaeologists — the diggers, they were nicknamed — considered stronger than kava. He smiled as she appeared, then picked up a mug and poured for her. Frieda took a moment to study him — he was tall and muscular, with hair cut close to his scalp and a nasty-looking set of scars that ran under his shirt — and then took the mug, sipping it gratefully. It tasted foul, and set her teeth on edge, but it woke her up. Hoban nodded politely — he was a man of few words — as the rest of the team appeared. He handed round the drinks without a hint of hesitation, or suggestion someone else should do the work. It was one of the things she liked about him. The men in her childhood had always passed such jobs to the women.

Her heart twisted as she looked at the distant mountains. She’d grown up only a few short miles from their destination, a nameless village — they were all nameless — hidden within the forests, their mere existences rarely acknowledged on any map. She felt her hands begin to shake as she remembered her childhood, remembered how close she’d come to dying time and time again before a passing magician had purchased her as one might purchase a sow or a lamb. No, he’d shown even less consideration for her as a young girl. And yet, he’d probably saved her life. The villages were permanently on the brink of starvation. She’d known it was only a matter of time before she was cast out to die.

Or someone killed me in a drunken fury, she thought, numbly. She’d thought she’d buried that part of her, but the memories had returned when she’d returned to the Cairngorms. The scent in the air was a mocking reminder of a time when life was nasty, brutish and short. It still was, for the hundreds of thousands of people within the region. Or I had an accident and they left me to die.

She carried her mug to the nearest stream and washed it quickly — no staff to do the washing, not here — and then made her way back to the tent. The interior looked surprisingly inviting, despite the brew, but she forced herself to start dismantling the tent instead of trying to go back to sleep. She couldn’t, even if she wanted to. Hoban had told her she had to pull her weight as part of the team, to use her strong back and her magic to help them complete their mission. Frieda didn’t mind. Hoban, bless him, had been embarrassed when he’d told her. He didn’t realise how hard she’d had to work as a young girl. She’d been put to work from the moment she’d been able to walk.

A hand touched her shoulder. She jumped and spun around, a hex forming on her fingertips before she realised it was Hoban. He raised his hands in surrender… Frieda flushed, embarrassed, as she banished the spell. She was doing her best to overcome the scars of her childhood — Emily had called it a fight-or-flight reflex — but it wasn’t easy. She’d spent too much of her life in a place where an unexpected touch meant a beating, or worse. Hoban didn’t understand. How could he? The Great Families — and her boyfriend’s family was amongst the greatest, as they made sure to tell everyone who crossed their path — had their problems, but they didn’t treat their children as servants and slaves. They had no comprehension of just how lucky they were.

“Sorry,” Hoban said. He kept his distance, a sign of understanding. Frieda loved him for that, too. He was a powerful sorcerer, used to taking what he wanted. And yet, he gave her space whenever needed. “Are you ready to go?”

“Just about,” Frieda said. She leaned forward and gave him a quick hug, as far as she could go in public. “You?”

“Ready.” Hoban watched as she finished stowing the tent in her rucksack, then slung it over her shoulders. “We’ll be on the way in a moment.”

Frieda nodded and followed him back to the campsite. It was practically melting away in front of her as tents were dismantled, the fire stamped out, and everything either buried or packed away. The diggers showed a surprising amount of respect for the land, unlike most outsiders who visited the region, something that had puzzled Frieda until she’d realised they didn’t want to anger the Other Folk. Or the Awful Folk. Or… she frowned inwardly as the team formed up, ready to resume the climb. There were all sorts of legends about things lurking in the shadows, ready to snare unwary passers-by. The team couldn’t afford not to take them seriously.

And they’ll be here for quite some time, she thought. She was going back to Whitehall at the end of the summer, to take her final year of schooling before she went on to an apprenticeship or… or what? They don’t want to anger the local spirits.

“All ready?” Hoban’s eyes swept the team. “Let’s go.”

The team shambled forward in a rough parody of a route march. Frieda had been shocked when she’d first seen it — Sergeant Miles would have castigated the lot of them — but the team wasn’t a military unit. It didn’t need to maintain strict discipline, not when everyone knew and trusted everyone else. Frieda flushed at the thought. She was the only stranger on the team, a newcomer who’d only been allowed to join because she was dating the team leader. It was galling… sure, Hoban had told her another magician was always welcome, but she had her doubts. It had taken a while for the rest of the team to even speak to her.

Sweat beaded on her back as they left the clearing behind, making their way along a rocky — and muddy — path that was barely visible, even to her. The wind blew hot and cold, the scent of wild magic pulsing around them… she gritted her teeth, understanding why so many outsiders were so ill at ease here. The Cairngorms were beautiful, but so was a Death Viper. A man who climbed the mountains might never come down again. She glanced at Hoban, who winked. She was mildly surprised the team wasn’t grumbling like martial magic students on a forced march. But then, they’d all volunteered for the team.

The hours wore on. Her arms and legs began to ache. It felt as though they’d walked and walked and yet made no progress, as if they were walking in circles. She told herself it wasn’t possible — Hoban and his team were skilled navigators, and someone would have spoken up if they’d thought they were going in the wrong direction — but it was hard to escape the sense they were lost. The landscape didn’t seem to change at all. It was nothing but endless trees and dark shadows.

Frieda ground her teeth. She’d gotten soft. She hadn’t felt so… unfit… when she’d been a child, when she’d gathered mushrooms and herbs for her family and… her heart twisted as she remembered finding a dead rabbit, only to have the carcass stolen from her by an older boy before she could get it home. The bastard had smacked her down… hatred pulsed through her, numbed by the grim awareness life was a constant struggle for survival. There were stories of villages that had resorted to cannibalism, when the snow came. She wanted to tell herself they weren’t true, that no one would break the taboo on eating human flesh, but she’d never cared to lie to herself. The villagers would do everything in their power to survive.

“Nearly there,” Hoban said, quietly. “Are you looking forward to seeing your family again?”

Frieda had no answer. She’d been fourteen when she’d been sold and yet… she barely remembered her parents. She wasn’t even sure the people she remembered were her true parents. Family relationships were a tangled tree in the Cairngorms, where it was rare for someone who’d lost their partner not to remarry as quickly as possible. A father needed a wife to care for his brood, a mother needed a husband to bring home the bacon… not, she reflected, that there’d been much bacon. For all she knew, her parents were dead. She’d had no contact with them since she’d been sold. She had to think to remember their names.

Hoban frowned. “Frieda?”

“No,” she said, finally. “I’m not looking forward to seeing them again.”

She put the thought aside as the road reached a peak, then fell down into a valley. It felt wrong, in more ways than one. The remnants of a village lay in front of them, blackened and burnt by… something. She shivered as she remembered the stories the old women had told, while they’d been bossing the younger girls around. The village had been caught in a firestorm and destroyed, the entire population burnt to ash and the earth beneath their feet cursed. She’d been cautioned never to enter the valley, not for anything. The one time she’d wandered too close, she’d found herself unable to cross the old boundaryline. The village wasn’t a human place any longer.

And something happened to reveal an ancient structure below the village, she thought. The stories hadn’t made much sense, but apparently that was fairly common. A team of preliminary explorers had been dispatched at once, when word reached the White Council, while Hoban had been ordered to prepare a follow-up expedition. They think it might predate recorded history.

The thought made her smile. She’d never been that interested in history — she’d grown up in a world where nothing ever changed, where her family lived as their ancestors had done for thousands of years — but Emily loved it. Frieda had heard her grumbling about how recorded history wasn’t as recorded as everyone claimed, about inconsistencies in the records and confused dating systems making it impossible to be sure what had happened a few hundred years ago. Hoban agreed, from what he’d said. He’d told her that digging up the past was the only way to find out what had happened for sure. It was a dangerous task — old tombs tended to be cursed, old magical settlements tended to be infused with tainted magic — but he loved it. And Frieda wanted to make Emily proud.

Hoban tensed, one hand dropping to his sword. “Hold,” he said, his voice quiet yet urgent. “Where are they?”

Frieda nodded, reaching for her magic as the rest of the team spread out. The ruined village was completely deserted. There were no visible humans… her eyes narrowed as she realised she couldn’t hear birds, or small animals rustling through the undergrowth. She took a breath and grimaced as she tasted the lingering scent of wet smoke and burnt human flesh. The stench should have vanished long ago, along with the remains of the village. The nearby villages should have salvaged what they could, before nature reoccupied the valley and erased all traces of human settlement. Instead, it felt as if the village was suspended in a single moment of time.

“They should be here,” Garth said. He was a dark-skinned man, with a bearing that suggested he’d been a solider or a mercenary before joining the diggers. “They wouldn’t all have gone to the nearest village.”

“No,” Hoban agreed. “They’d know better.”

Frieda nodded in agreement. The nameless villages weren’t friendly to outsiders. There’d been no inn in her village, when she’d been a child, and she doubted there was one there now. There wasn’t even a proper pub. She doubted the diggers had been able to buy alcohol or find any of the pleasures of Dragon’s Den, not here. The villages were just too small and too tight-knit. Outside money was no good in the mountains.

She kept the thought to herself as they searched the village with practiced ease. The advance party had had tents — they wouldn’t have risked sleeping in the ruined buildings — but there was no sign of them. There was no hint anyone had entered the village, save for a number of trees that had been knocked down by a landslide or chopped down by human hands. Frieda sensed the wild magic growing stronger as she peered through the ruined trees. There was something there, half-hidden below the earth. It was so… alien … she had trouble looking at it.

“Interesting,” Hoban said. “What is it?”

“Dangerous,” Esther said. She was the only other woman on the team, with short red hair, green eyes, and a prickly disposition that suggested she knew she’d paid her dues long ago. “It isn’t a tomb, that’s for sure.”

Frieda swallowed as she tried to place the thing in proper context. It had been buried until the landslide had revealed it… she thought, suddenly, of an iceberg, only the tip visible above the waves. The thought chilled and excited her in equal measure. What was it? She felt her head start to pound as she looked closer, trying to make out details. The… the thing was just too different. Her eyes seemed to skip over it, as if her mind refused to accept its existence. Every time she thought she knew what it looked like, she realised she was wrong. The only thing she could say for sure was that there was a lot more under the ground.

“We need to do more digging,” Hoban said. “Whatever it is, we need to know. Quickly.”

“We need more manpower,” Garth said. “You want to teleport home and ask for help?”

Hoban scowled. “There’s too much wild magic in the air to teleport safely,” he said, after a moment. “And it would take them some time to put together a second team.”

Frieda barely heard him. She was torn, unsure what to do. She wanted to make Emily and Hoban proud, by helping to dig up the… the whatever … and figuring out what it actually was, but — at the same time — her instincts were insisting they should bury the whatever and swear blind they’d never seen it. It felt dangerous. The currents of magic flowing around it were just too eerie. And they really didn’t have the slightest idea what it was.

“Frieda and I will go to the nearest village and recruit help,” Hoban said. “There should be enough young men to help us dig it up, if we pay through the nose. If they refuse… we have authority to conscript labour.”

“Really?” Esther scowled at him. “Aren’t you the slightest bit concerned about what happened to the first team? They should be here, waiting for us!”

“Yes,” Hoban said, sharply. “But we also need to make a start on figuring out what we’ve found before someone else gets wind of it.”

Frieda shuddered. He’d told her, bitterly, of tombs that had been looted decades — perhaps centuries — before the diggers had arrived, of priceless artefacts and records stolen or destroyed by people who didn’t have the slightest idea what they were doing. She understood his thinking. They needed to know what they were dealing with before other parties figured out what was going on and started to interfere…

… And yet, as they started to walk, she couldn’t help feeling they were making a terrible mistake.

There were students, Frieda had been told, who looked forward to the holidays because it meant a chance to go home. She’d thought they were insane even before she’d been transferred to Whitehall and discovered that, away from the darkened tunnels of Mountaintop, it was possible to actually enjoy one’s holiday. But then, those students — children, really — had good and decent parents, parents who treated them as real people. She remembered laughing at a girl who’d whined that her parents had grounded her for a week after she’d disobeyed them. The silly twit hadn’t known how lucky she was. Frieda’s parents would have beaten her bloody if they’d caught her defying them.

The sense of oppression grew stronger as they made their way down the muddy track, picking their way through woodland paths that were barely visible against the gloom. She felt out of place, as if she’d sneaked into an aristocratic ball and discovered, too late, that she was expected to lead the first dance. She’d once known the forests around her village like the back of her hand — all the best places to find mushrooms, all the best places to hide when her parents and relatives had been in that mood — but now, they felt strange and wrong. She looked down at herself, her head spinning. Her outfit was very simple — she had no intention of becoming a clothes horse — but it was still finer than anything she’d ever owned as a child. It struck her, suddenly, that they might not even recognise her. She looked nothing like the scrawny girl they’d sold into an uncertain fate.

She snickered, then sobered. It might be better if they didn’t know who she was…

The path opened suddenly, revealing the village. Frieda gasped. Had it always been that small? And grimy? The low-built shacks looked laughable, even though she knew it was a very practical design. The children bustling around, watched by a pair of ancient crones — she knew the women were probably in their forties, but they looked older — were only half-dressed, while their older counterparts watched the newcomers warily. Frieda felt old memories rising inside her, taunting her, as she spied a cluster of thuggish young men eying her. She thought she knew them. She certainly knew their attitude.

Hoban addressed the nearest man. “I seek the headman,” he said, “Point me to him.”

The man jabbed a finger at the largest hut in the village. Frieda was torn between the urge to laugh or cry. She remembered the hut. It had once seemed a palace. Five rooms, a luxury beyond compare! Now… she found herself giggling helplessly, drawing disapproving stares from the villages who thought she couldn’t see them. She’d seen palaces and castles and magical mansions that were bigger on the inside. The headman’s hut was so tiny! Frieda tried to calm herself as they were shown into the audience chamber, a fancy name for a muddy parody of a throne room. The headman sat on a raised chair, trying to look both firm and obsequious. Frieda frowned, inwardly, as she looked back at him. She’d been impressed by the headman once, the strongest man in the village. Now… now, he was a joke.

“My Lord,” the headman said. “I am Ivanov, Son of Ivanov.”

“I am Lord Sorcerer Hoban,” Hoban said. “And this is Frieda, Daughter of Huckeba. She hails from your village.”

Frieda looked up. The headman stared at her, a wash of confused emotions crossing his face before he schooled his features into an immobile mask. Frieda was torn between amusement and annoyance as he tried to work out how she should be treated. Was she a powerful sorceress, with enough magic to burn the entire village to the ground, or was she a worthless woman who could be put to work while the men talked? Frieda held his eyes, daring him to try to order her to submit. The headman broke contact first.

It might have been better if Hoban hadn’t told him who I was, Frieda thought, crossly. I bet he doesn’t even remember me.

She kept the thought to herself and allowed her eyes to roam the chamber while the two men talked. The curtains at the rear were drawn back, revealing a makeshift kitchen — it had once seemed the best kitchen in the world — and a hanging birdcage, positioned against the far wall. Her heart clenched. The cage wasn’t for birds, but for young women. She’d slept in one herself, when she’d been a child. It was supposed to keep them safe from the men.

But it didn’t work, she recalled, trying not to shudder. The old memories hovered at the back of her mind. All it did was keep us firmly under our father’s thumb.

“Your team visited twice, then never came again,” Ivanov said. He sounded as though he was telling the truth, although Frieda wasn’t so sure. The wretched headman would have lost his head — the thought nearly made her smile — by now if he hadn’t been a very good dissembler. “They’re not the only people to have wandered off, never to be seen again.”

“Oh?” Hoban leaned forward. “Who else?”

Ivanov didn’t shrug dismissively, but the effect was there. “A pair of taxmen set out from the keep last month, hoping to make their rounds. They left the village late in the day and were never seen again.”

Frieda kept her thoughts to herself. The villagers hated the taxmen. They tended to be runaway villagers, looking for a little revenge by groveling in front of the local nobility while putting their insider knowledge to work rooting out hidden crops and seizing everything they could. Frieda recalled one boy, the runt of the litter, who’d become the worst of the bunch. He’d taken too much, even by the standards of the region. And he’d eventually had a terrible accident that was nothing of the sort.

And these taxmen probably got killed too, Frieda thought. She found it hard to feel any pity for the wretched creatures. They were little better than traitors to their own families and kindred. As long as their masters don’t know what happened to them, or even precisely where they died, there will be no punishment.

“We do need to recruit more workers,” Hoban said. There was a hint of threat in his tone. “We will pay good wages.”

Frieda tuned out the rest of the conversation. She knew how it would go. Ivanov would protest — probably truthfully — that the village couldn’t spare anyone, then make a show of offering a handful of likely lads before Hoban started trying to conscript local men to work on the dig. They wouldn’t be that helpful, not unless Hoban offered them permanent employment a long way from the village or something — anything — more than coins they’d probably lose in a hurry. The headman would take his cut — naturally — and the local strongmen would take the rest.

“We must discuss the details,” Ivanov said, finally. “Perhaps Lady Frieda” —Frieda could hear the sarcasm— “would care to visit her family?”

Frieda felt her blood boil. The headman was provoking her. No, he was testing her. He wanted to see if he had any influence over her… she wanted to laugh at the sheer provincialism of the trick. Didn’t he have any idea how wide the world truly was? Frieda had been to Mountaintop and Whitehall and Zangaria, all so far away the headman couldn’t even begin to comprehend the distance. His world petered out a few short miles from the boundary line. She doubted he’d been more than ten miles from the village in his entire life.

The thought made her smile. He looked disconcerted.

“Perhaps I will,” she said. She made a show of moving her eyes to Hoban. “I’ll meet up with you in an hour.”

She could feel the headman’s eyes boring into her as she turned and left, stepping into the outside air. The poor man had to be completely unsure of her. Hoban was a sorcerer and Frieda was neither his clear superior nor groveling at his feet, let alone keeping herself out of sight and out of mind like a village girl. He didn’t have the slightest idea what to make of her. Good. She felt her smile grow wider as she took a long breath and let it out slowly. The village stank and yet, the air was cleaner than the hut. She wondered, not for the first time, how many unexplained deaths over the years had been caused by poisonous air.

The thought sobered her as she kept walking, heading towards a shack she hadn’t seen for over six years. It hadn’t changed, as far as she could tell; it was still a long low building that seemed permanently on the verge of falling and being squashed under its own weight. The roof was covered with soil and grass, a trick that was supposed to keep the heat from escaping during the long winter months. The hell of it, she reflected, was that it actually worked. It just didn’t feel that way. She shuddered, remembering long nights when they’d huddled together for warmth. It wasn’t something she could do now. Not after…

Frieda stopped outside the shack, suddenly unsure of herself. Hoban had let the cat out of the bag, damn it. She should have told him to keep his mouth shut. Frieda was hardly an uncommon name. The scrawny girl she’d been had vanished long ago. No one would know her, even the girls who’d taunted and the boys who’d… she felt her magic bubbling, her anger driving it on. It was hard to tap it down, to keep it under control. She knew she was brave and yet, it took everything she had to step up to the door and tap on the wood. There was no point in wasting time. Ivanov would tell her parents she’d returned shortly.

The door opened. Frieda found herself looking at a stranger’s face. The woman looked… strange. It took her a moment to realise just how much she had changed. The woman was both strong and weak, tough enough to bear and raise children while engaged in backbreaking labour and yet too weak to stand up to her husband or chart a new path for herself. A flash of horror ran through Frieda as she realised she was staring at her mother. The woman didn’t look like the giant she remembered…

“My Lady?” Daffodil, Wife of Huckeba, stared at her. “I…”

Frieda gritted her teeth. Her mother didn’t recognise her. Frieda had read a bunch of adventure stories about children who’d been stolen away and had to find their way back to their loving parents and, in all of them, the parents had recognised their children instantly. But this was reality… it had been six years since Daffodil had laid eyes on her child, six years of good food and healthy exercise and decent treatment. Frieda no longer looked like someone who belonged in the village. She looked like a visiting aristocrat. It was hard, so hard, not to turn and walk away.

“Mother,” she managed, suddenly very aware of how her accent had changed, too. “It’s me.”

Daffodil staggered. “Frieda?”

She stepped back hastily, muttering a welcoming invocation. Frieda sensed a faint tingle of magic around the doorway, too slight for her to be sure if it was anything more than a light sensation, as she stepped inside. The interior was dark and dingy, the air stinking of too many people in too close of a proximity. Her eyes narrowed as she spotted the older man leaning against the wall, the memories rising up and threatening to overwhelm her. Huckeba — her father — had once been her master, a tyrant who could never be appeased or challenged. He’d thrashed her regularly, beating her back and buttocks with his belt without even bothering with an excuse. He’d done the same to his other children, she recalled. It was no surprise to her that her oldest brother had walked off one day and never returned.

“This is Frieda,” Daffodil said. There was an airy tone in her voice that scared Frieda almost as much as it angered her. “She’s come back to us.”

Huckeba belched. He was drunk. Frieda shuddered. The villages brewed their own alcohol and drank themselves blind drunk regularly, when they weren’t fighting so savagely someone would be bound to wind up with a broken bone or cracked skull. A surge of hatred ran through her, followed by disgust and shame. She’d never really liked the tutors of Mountaintop — they’d looked down on her, for being a common-born magician — but they’d been far better than her biological father. She didn’t know, now, why she’d been so scared of him. It would be so easy to kill him with a snap of her finger.

You were a child, she told herself. Her body ached, quivering with remembered pain. Now, you’re a grown woman and a sorceress to boot.

“So,” Huckeba said. His voice was thick, his accent so strong it was hard to follow his words. “You’ve come back to us.”

“She’ll raise us up,” Daffodil said, her voice shaking. “She’ll…”

Frieda gritted her teeth. She’d wondered, from time to time, what it would be like to see her parents again. They’d beg her forgiveness, she’d told herself, and welcome her back into the family. Or she’d rage at them, demand to know why they’d sold her to a stranger who’d taken her to an uncertain fate. Or… instead, she felt an icy sensation spreading through her body. The man and woman in front of her were pathetic. It was impossible to believe they were her real parents. There were spells to check… she bit down, hard, on the temptation to check they were. It was possible, but… she studied her mother, picking out traces of her own features on the older woman’s embittered face. It was like staring into a vision of her future, or an alternate reality. The only thing she’d inherited from her father had been the eyes.

Huckeba staggered to his feet. “What do you want, girl?”

“Why?” Frieda readied a spell, just in case he tried to strike her. Again. “Why did you sell me to a stranger?”

Daffodil twisted her hands. “We had no choice. We would have died that winter, without money and food. We were promised you’d become a great lady and you have…”

Huckeba grunted. “You were sacrificed so that the rest of the family might live,” he said, stiffly. “Just like your uncle.”

Frieda frowned — her father’s brother had been a sore spot for as long as she could remember, although she’d never been sure of the details — and put the question aside for later consideration. Instead, she leaned forward. “That was it? You sent me away…”

“And now you’ve come back,” Daffodil said. “You’re our daughter…”

“There’s an aristocratic mother I met at Mountaintop,” Frieda said, stiffly. “She does everything for her daughter, from choosing her clothes to organising her courses and arranging her future marriage. The poor girl has no freedom. She doesn’t know how to cope without her mother. And yet, that mother is a far better parent than either of you!”

Huckeba stumbled forward, raising his fist. Frieda froze him effortlessly, disgust and contempt welling up within her. How could this… this brute rule his family? She looked at his uncovered arms and knew the answer. He’d brutalised everyone to the point they didn’t dare lift a hand to him, not when it would mean a week of pain. She knew she’d been lucky to survive. If she hadn’t had magic in her blood, she would have died too.

“I never want to see you again,” she said. “Either of you.”

She turned, ignoring the tears in her mother’s eyes. She felt no obligation to forgive her parents. They’d mistreated her and sold her and… she shook her head in disgust as she pushed the door open and stepped outside. She wanted to burn the shack to the ground, to erase all traces of her past, yet… what did that matter? She had made a life for herself that didn’t include any of her family. And besides, Emily would be disappointed. Frieda didn’t want to let her saviour down.

“Well,” a new voice said. “Look who’s come crawling back, dressed so fine.”

Frieda looked up, cursing herself for being lost in her own thoughts. The boys in front of her — she knew without looking there were others behind her — smiled nastily, their eyes wandering over her chest. Memories flashed through her mind, of little touches and gropes and…

She felt sick. She knew the leader. Ivanovo, Son of Ivanov.

“You think you’re better than us?” Ivanovo leered at her. “You think…?”

Frieda cast the spell without thinking. There was a brilliant flash of light. The boys were gone, small frogs hopping on the ground where they’d been. They panicked a second later, completely discomfited by the sudden change. Frieda understood. She’d had trouble coping the first time someone had turned her into a frog too. Bile rose in her throat. The aristocratic bitch who’d cast the spell had also talked about putting her in her place. And now…

She muttered a summoning spell, yanking the runaway frogs back to her. “Two things,” she said. “First, the spell will wear off shortly, but if you ever touch another woman without her permission, you’ll become frogs again. Permanently. And second…”

The frogs stared at her, quivering. “And second,” Frieda repeated, “you’re all going to work on the dig. Report to the cursed village tomorrow, or you’ll be cursed.”

She turned on her heel and walked away. Hoban would be pleased to have some labourers and he probably wouldn’t ask too many questions. Even if he did… Frieda smirked, feeling some of the ghosts of the past fade away. It wasn’t the first time the village louts had ganged up on a woman alone, she was sure. They’d been a little too practiced for it to be their first time. They deserved punishment. They deserved…

And none of them will ever know the spell won’t linger, she thought. Ivanovwould probably make a fuss, when his son whined to him, but who cared? It wasn’t as if he could do anything about it. They’ll treat their women a little better in future.

“They’re very good workers,” Hoban observed, three days later. “But they’re not very willing.”

Frieda shrugged. Hoban hadn’t asked too many — or indeed any—questions when the seven lads had turned up to work, the day after Frieda had turned them into frogs. Ivanovo had put together a face-saving story about the lads volunteering to work, and Hoban had apparently accepted it without bothering to wonder why the village had sent the strong backs it could ill afford to lose. Frieda hadn’t bothered to say anything about it. She didn’t know how she felt about the whole affair, let alone how her boyfriend would react if he knew the truth. It was odd to feel ashamed of something she couldn’t help, but… she was ashamed. Would he have even looked twice at her if he’d known where she’d come from?

“They’ll do,” she said, tartly.

It was hard to care about the village losing the lads for a few weeks. She suspected most of the female villagers would be quietly pleased, even if it was a possible death sentence. The harvest had to be gathered, the crops picked and hidden before the taxmen descended like a horde of locusts to take everything they could find.

“When they’re done, they can go back to their lives.”

Hoban gave her an odd look. Frieda scowled to herself. It had been a mistake to return home. She could have stayed away and kept thinking that, perhaps, her family missed her, that her parents regretted sending her away. Instead… she felt dead and cold, her soul twisting in dull pain… it was funny, she reflected, how she would almost have preferred to have their hatred than their attempt to use her, as tiny as it had been. Why should she help a family that had sold her to an uncertain fate? Why would she?

She put the thought aside as she surveyed the ruined village. It was odd to think her father had hailed from the burnt or rotten buildings in front of her, the remnants of an ancient community steadfastly refusing to rot into the ground and give birth to new life. The stories had never been clear on precisely what had happened to the village, although there’d been no shortage of rumours. Everyone agreed there’d been a firestorm, and the village had been scorched clean of life, but beyond that…? There were whispered stories of monsters striding out of the darkness, of shadowy creatures and evil sorcerers burning the land to ash… she shook her head. No witnesses had lived to tell the tale. It might remain a mystery, one of many casting a long shadow over the Cairngorms. She quietly accepted she might never know the truth.

Emily would never be satisfied with a mystery, Frieda thought. She’d be trying to unpick it until she found an answer.

A shiver ran down her spine as she raised her eyes and looked towards the dig. The workers were grumbling — she knew they were muttering to themselves, even though they kept their faces under tight control — and doing as little as they could get away with, but the mystery ruins were slowly being exposed. Frieda shivered, again, as she looked at the thing. It was still hard to even look at it, as if her eyes refused to accept it was there. The sight made her think of something Emily had once told her, a story about five blind men who’d touched an elephant. Every time she looked, she saw something different yet part of a greater whole. She couldn’t figure out how the pieces went together…

She shivered, a third time. The thing didn’t feel human. Hoban had told her of ancient tomes and ruined castles and weird things on the wrong side of the Craggy Mountains, but the artefact in front of her was different. She could feel it, no matter how she tried to turn away and hide. Her head ached just looking in its general direction. The artefact was playing games with her perception. It was both immensely huge and infinitively tiny, so big it dwarfed her and yet so small she thought she could pick it up and put it in her pocket. She wanted to tell the louts to bury the artefact, then declare the entire region permanently barred to human settlement. And yet, she knew she couldn’t. The diggers would never agree.

Hoban took her arm. “Are you alright?”

Frieda flinched, then cursed herself. “Yeah,” she managed. Couldn’t he sense it? The artefact was fundamentally wrong. “I just feel a little dizzy.”

“There’s water in the tents,” Hoban said. “We could go there…”

“Maybe later,” Frieda said. She knew he didn’t want water. He wanted to make love… she wondered, wryly, what his team would make of him slipping off to make love to her before dismissing the thought. She’d grown up in a world where she’d been uneasily aware of her parents having sex — there’d been no privacy for anyone, not in the wretched shacks — and she’d never liked it. “I think…”

She glanced up as she saw a man picking his way towards them. Her teeth clenched in a flash of sudden instinctive hatred. Sir Wheaton — the knighthood was probably assumed, along with the name — was King Harold’s enforcer. King Harold. Frieda tried not to snort in disgust, although it wasn’t easy. The king had an entire string of grandiose titles, but his realm was smaller than the average city state… her lips twitched, remembering the vast lands King Randor of Cursed Memory had bequeathed Emily. She could lose half her holdings, and half again, and she’d still have far more lands than the local monarch. She supposed that was why he’d given himself so many titles. It disguised the fact he was little more than a local bully-boy.

“My Lord,” Sir Wheaton said. He was making a very clear attempt to present himself as a sophisticate and failing miserably, like a young girl who’d learnt her social etiquette from books rather than her elders. “I trust everything is in order?”

Hoban nodded, curtly. He didn’t like Sir Wheaton either. The man had arrived to serve as the liaison between the diggers and the monarch, but he’d spent most of his time prowling the region rather than staying still. Frieda was sure he was preying on the villagers, which showed a certain lack of common sense. He’d hardly be the first person to vanish in the forests, his body lost forever. And yet… she grimaced. She didn’t want to think about it.

“I’ll see you later,” Frieda said, suddenly unable to bear the exchange any longer. “Have fun.”

She turned and walked away, making a wide circuit around the ruined buildings. Dark and twisted magic hung around them, shadowy impressions of the disaster that had overwhelmed the villagers before they could feel. The diggers were used to traces of old magics — Hoban had told her stories of excavating an entire city, one buried by a long-ago disaster that might have been caused by magic — and yet, none of them felt comfortable enough to actually live in the ruined buildings. She didn’t blame them. The dark magic had effectively preserved them as a monument, somehow leaving the ruins suspended in a single moment of time. It was just… unnatural. She knew what happened to other wooden buildings, if they weren’t constantly tended and repaired. They practically melted away, returning to the soil as nature reclaimed them. Here… there weren’t even any rodents, or insects, or birds flitting through the trees.

The air cleared suddenly as Frieda crossed the boundary line, the sunlight suddenly brighter and more welcoming. She took a long breath, looking down the road to the village before shaking her head and turning away. She hadn’t realised how oppressive the air had become, around the dig, until she’d stepped out of the site… she scowled, wondering if she should ask Hoban to teleport her back to Whitehall. Archaeology was like going to war, she decided as she started to walk through the trees. Long hours — or days or weeks or months — of boredom, followed by brief moments of screaming terror. Or so Sergeant Miles had told the class. Frieda had never been to war.

She felt better, somehow, as she made her way through the trees, keeping a wary eye out for trouble. In the old days, it had been dangerous for young girls to wander too far from their homes. It wasn’t uncommon for neighbouring villagers to kidnap young women for marriage, and everyone would pretend it was just normal… Frieda’s stomach churned, remembering all the horror stories she’d heard. She hadn’t needed outsiders to threaten her, not when she’d been a young girl. Her fellow villagers had been quite bad enough. She smiled coldly, banishing the fears as she heard something moving up ahead. If it was a local lout with dreams of capturing a bride, he was in for a very nasty shock.

The trees parted, revealing an old woman. Frieda blinked in surprise. The woman was genuinely old, not merely middle-aged and worn down by constant labour. Her skin was chestnut brown, darkened by a life in the woods, and her eyes were strangely avian, giving her a slightly disconcerting appearance. Frieda knew demihumans and yet… the old woman was just odd. She leaned on a staff Frieda was entirely sure she didn’t need. And she had magic, a faint aura of power that surrounded her like a shroud. A hedge witch…

“Well met,” Frieda managed. There’d been a hedge witch living nearby, from an old and probably unreliable memory, but no one talked about the old woman even though everyone had known about her. Frieda had been too young to slip up to her hovel — everyone knew where it was, even though they claimed otherwise — before she’d been sold to a passing magician. “I greet you.”

“Child of the Cairngorms,” the old woman said. “I greet you.”

Frieda nodded, eying her warily. Magicians tended to look down on hedge witches, regarding them as low-power magicians at best and outright frauds at worst. And yet, they could be very dangerous. Some bathed in the wild magic, others… Emily had told her of a hedge witch who’d embraced necromancy, the power driving her mad as she sought to change the world. Her eyes narrowed. That hadn’t been too far from here, had it? If she hadn’t known it was impossible, she would have wondered if it had been that battle that had left the village in ruins. But this had taken place well before Emily’s arrival and Frieda’s own birth.

“You are welcome in this place,” the old woman continued. “You may call me Granny.”

“Granny,” Frieda repeated. Hedge witches tended to be careful about names, either for fear of the Other Folk or — more likely — to conceal their family ties. Granny was old enough to have outlived her parents and siblings and it was quite possible the rest of her family had chosen to pretend she didn’t exist. “I’m sorry if I’ve walked into your land.”

She braced herself, expecting everything from a tongue lashing to a blow from the staff to a nasty — and warped— hex. Emily had met a hedge witch with a very nasty attitude to trespassers and, from what little she’d said afterwards, had come very close to losing her freedom if not her life. Hedge witches could be nasty, if they had wild magic. Their spells could be difficult to handle, even for a trained magician…

“You are not the first person to come looking for me,” Granny said. “And you are welcome in this place. I mean you no harm.”

“I didn’t come looking for you,” Frieda said, as Granny motioned her to follow. “I was exploring.”

Granny laughed. “That’s what they all say,” she said. “Every last one of them. They insist they didn’t mean to come here, even as” —the trees suddenly parted, revealing a cave hidden within a rocky mound— “they stumble into my lair. I give them bark tea and wait, listening to their excuses as they dance around their questions and their requests until they finally tell me what they want. They all seem surprised when I tell them I’ve heard it all before.”

Frieda frowned. “Everything?”

“Oh, yes.” Granny was suddenly serious, motioning for Frieda to sit on a log while she brought out two steaming mugs. “I was expecting to see you earlier, truth be told. It was clear you had the gift. The threadlines of fate insisted we’d cross paths.”

“You knew about me?” Frieda was startled. She hadn’t shown any magic, as far as she knew, until the passing sorcerer had noticed her. And purchased her. “You knew…”

“And I did nothing,” Granny said. There was no apology in her voice. “Destiny had you in his clutches.”

“I’m not staying,” Frieda said, firmly. “When this summer is over, I’ll be going home, and I won’t be coming back.”

Granny raised her eyebrows. “Going home?”

“This isn’t my home,” Frieda said. The raw anger surprised her. “My parents and siblings kicked and beat me. The villages…”

She shuddered, feeling sick. It would be easy, so easy, to raise a firestorm of her own and burn the village to the ground. It would be easy… she wondered, as she took a sip of the bark tea, if that was what had happened to the destroyed village. Her father had never talked about his brother, suggesting he’d been a magician… he’d certainly never been seen again. Frieda wondered at it for a moment, then dismissed the thought. It didn’t matter. The village wasn’t hers any longer.

“I understand,” Granny said. Her eyes were surprisingly gentle. Frieda believed her and yet… “Better than you might expect.”

Frieda scowled at her. Hedge witches enjoyed a certain amount of freedom, for all they were shunned publicly. Sir Wheaton would never dare visit the cave, for fear of spending the rest of his days croaking on a lily pad. Or worse. The villagers might mutter darkly whenever they saw the witch, but they wouldn’t get in her way or bar others from going to see her as long as they kept it quiet. The hypocrisy bugged her. Everyone knew everyone else did it.

“You may have a role to play here,” Granny mused. Her voice faded, as if her mind was a long way away. “The threadlines are still tangled around you.”

“No.” Frieda shook her head. It was impossible to predict the future, certainly in any great detail. And yet… if it was impossible, why was it illegal? She’d heard of noblewomen being executed for trying to predict when the king would die… why insist on the death penalty, if they were wasting their time? It was something to discuss with Emily, when they saw each other again. “I make my own future.”

Granny smiled. “They all say that, young lady.”

“Really.” Frieda finished her drink, grimacing slightly at the taste. It had been a long time since she’d drunk bark tea and she’d forgotten how sour it could be, if one wasn’t used to the flavour. She didn’t want to know what Granny had put in the water, before bringing it to the boil and leaving it to simmer. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll be on my way.”

“They disturbed something very dangerous,” Granny said, her tone so serious Frieda found herself unable to look away. “Something best left buried under the ground, away from human eyes. You’ve felt it, haven’t you? The sense that the thing you found should be left firmly alone.”

Frieda’s eyes hardened. “Do you know what it is?”

“No,” Granny said. “But I do know it’s dangerous. Your friends aren’t the only people to have gone missing over the last few months. They can feel it, down in the village. They’re closing their doors at night, praying to all the old gods that whatever’s been unleashed doesn’t come for them. You need to warn your friends. It has to be buried again, and quickly.”

“I can try,” Frieda said. “What do you know about it? Why was it even found?”

“The ground shifted, from what I was told,” Granny said. “It was spat out. Or, perhaps, it grew out of the earth and thrust itself into the light. And now it is poisoning the land. I can feel it, a poisonous needle thrust into the earth.”

Frieda shivered. “Did it destroy the village, so long ago?”

“It might.” Granny shrugged, her voice suddenly urgent. “Tell your friends. Tell them to bury it beneath the soil and forget they ever saw it. And quickly.”

“I can try,” Frieda repeated. She doubted the diggers would listen, even Hoban. It was hardly their first dangerous dig. She even understood their attitude. The artefact might be dangerous to the unwary, but they… they were trained and experienced archaeologists who knew to be careful. They might not realise they’d run into something they couldn’t handle until it was far too late. “But…”

She stood, brushing down her tunic. They might not have run into something they couldn’t handle. Hoban would certainly think so, she was sure, and she hoped to all the gods he was right. And yet, all her instincts were screaming Granny was right. The artefact really was dangerous. They’d be safer playing catch with a necromancer.

“You will be welcome, if you come back here,” Granny said. “Until then…”

Frieda nodded, recognising the dismissal. “I’ll do my best,” she promised. Hoban would give her a fair hearing, at least. He’d certainly never dismissed her because of an accident of birth. “And we’ll see.”

But she feared, even as she spoke, that the diggers wouldn’t listen.

“We need to know what it is,” Hoban said, when she returned to the site and told them about Granny’s warning. “And quickly, in case there are more of them.”

Frieda scowled. She understood his logic. The artefact, whatever it was, hadn’t come out of nowhere. Someone — or something—had made it. There were enough horror stories about things left behind after the Faerie Wars for her to be very aware of the dangers, of the need to know what was there even if the artefacts were buried and the site sealed off for the rest of eternity. Hell, she’d seen the Dark City and the wastelands near Mountaintop. And yet, the more she thought about it, the more she was sure they were making a terrible mistake.

Hoban leaned forward and kissed her, lightly. “We can handle it,” he said. “We know what we’re doing.”

“Perhaps we should call Emily,” Frieda said. “Or someone…”

Her boyfriend shook his head. “Lady Emily is not a trained archaeologist,” he said, curtly. It took Frieda a moment to realise she’d inadvertently insulted him. “And besides, isn’t she fighting a war?”

Frieda kicked herself, mentally. She’d seen Emily at her best. Hoban had only seen her at her worst, when she’d come very close to being broken by King Randor’s final curse. She had not taken it well. Frieda sighed as Hoban turned away, to return to the dig, She couldn’t blame Emily for reacting badly to the curse and yet… she ground her teeth in bitter frustration. They needed help.

The thought mocked her as the hours slowly turned into days. The digging team grumbled and grumbled and did as little as they could get away with, despite a mixture of promise and threats, but they slowly dug out more of the artefact. Frieda thought, as she studied the object, that her early thoughts about icebergs had been more accurate than she’d realised at the time. The artefact did look like the tip of an iceberg, although it was still hard to get a good look at it. Her eyes kept skipping over the artefact, leaving her with the impression it was both smooth and oily and yet angular and hard. She wondered, as she paced the edge of the dig and supervised the workers, if her own preconceptions were colouring her impressions. Frieda was no expert on subtle magic, and the team knew to watch for it; but she knew the basics. The runes tended to work better when they were encouraging someone to believe what they wanted to believe. It was easy to think one might be right, harder to admit one might be wrong.

Her sense of unease grew stronger as incidents started to mount up. One worker went mad, running around screaming his head off until she stunned him… and then, when he recovered, had no memory of the incident at all. Another fell asleep when he was supposed to be working, nearly falling into the pit as he hit the ground. Frieda thought someone had hit him with a sleep spell, perhaps someone lurking in the undergrowth, but there was no trace of any magic on his person. Two more simply downed tools and walked away from the artefact, as if they thought it was the end of the working day. They didn’t stop, or respond to orders or shouts, until they crossed the boundary line on the edge of the ruined village.

She watched, more concerned than she cared to admit. She’d been told, as a child, that the ruined village was haunted, that no man entered the blackened wasteland and returned with his life. It belonged to the Awful Folk now and… she didn’t believe it. No, she didn’t want to believe it. And yet, there were things flickering at the corner of her eye, shapes moving within the forest as night crept over the land, whispers echoing at the edge of her awareness… she knew she was brave. She knew she could handle anything, and if she couldn’t, she knew she could make it feel it had been in a fight; yet she wanted to turn and run. She hadn’t felt so scared since the first time the lads had cornered her, when she’d started to grow into a young woman…

Her eyes narrowed. No, it wasn’t like that. It was… something else, a deep gnawing fear that didn’t seem to have a cause. There were no visible threats, save for the artefact and it didn’t seem to be doing anything, yet she was scared. Very scared. The sense of being watched waxed with nightfall and waned with sunrise, yet never faded completely. She could feel unseen eyes on her, but… she could never see them.

“We could sneak off, into the bushes,” Hoban suggested, one afternoon. “That’s what they do here, isn’t it?”

Frieda shook her head. She’d never let herself be caught, not like some of the other girls… they claimed, at least, that they’d been careful to run without running very fast. The thought of making love in the forest repelled her, for reasons she couldn’t put into words. It wasn’t just that it represented one of her nightmares, of being forced to go further than she wished… it was the omnipresent sense they were being watched. She was too lost in her own fears to feel guilt at the way his expression fell, just for a second. He was too good a man to push the issue… in a way, she almost wished he had. A fight would have broken the shadows falling over her thoughts, whatever the cause. She was almost tempted to pick one.

I picked a fight with Cat, she recalled suddenly. And that didn’t end well.

She frowned, inwardly. She’d never liked Cat. He was too flashy, too heavily masculine, too… too full of himself for her peace of mind. She’d feared disaster, the moment she’d heard Cat and Emily had started to date. And she’d been right… she shook her head, sternly. She wished both of them were here, beside her. If there was a threat, Cat would be quite happy to charge into the teeth of certain death while Emily and Frieda came up with a plan. He’d consider it sheer tactical brilliance. Of course, he would.

Esther came up to them, her face grim. “Have either of you seen Sir Wheaton?”

“He isn’t a real knight,” Frieda said automatically, although she’d never been clear on what a real knight was. The tales of chivalry and brave men battling evil sorcerers and rampaging dragons to save innocent women and children had long since given way to an ugly reality, where the best of the knights were little more than bully-boys enforcing their master’s will. “He’s probably trying to lure some maiden into the forest with him.”

She knew, even as she spoke, it probably wasn’t true. Sir Wheaton didn’t need to lure anyone anywhere. He could have any woman in the village for the asking and to hell with however she felt about it. Her husband couldn’t say no… although he’d probably take it out on the poor bitch afterwards, instead of the untouchable knight. Frieda had seen the way the so-called knight had looked at her, even though he knew she was a sorceress. She had no doubt he wouldn’t hesitate to take a village girl, if he wanted one.

“He should have been up here at noon,” Esther said, flatly. She hadn’t grown up anywhere near the Cairngorms. She didn’t understand the realities of life in the mountains. “He’s not normally late.”

“Odd,” Hoban agreed. “His master wants to keep an eye on us.”

Frieda nodded. Lord Harold — the nobleman’s titles grew more grandiose with every passing day, from what she could see — wanted to be sure he got his fair share of the loot, if the dig uncovered an old tomb crammed with gold and jewels. It had happened, to be fair, although most of the buried treasure had come with very nasty curses attached. Frieda suspected Sir Wheaton had failed, unsurprisingly, to convey the sheer alienness of the artefact to his master. She’d bet her entire fortune that, if there was a tomb underneath, it wasn’t intended for a human.

She brushed her hair out of her eyes. “I’ll go looking for him,” she said, shortly. It was something to do, something that would alleviate the boredom for a few short hours. “If he turns up, tell him not to waste so much time messing around in the village.”

Hoban gave her an odd look. “The village?”

Frieda shrugged. “Where else would he go?”

She turned and walked to the knight’s tent, brushing the pair of tiny locking charms apart with practised ease. The tent might have been splendid once, but it had passed through so many owners — some of whom had patched the fabric up repeatedly — that it looked strikingly tawdry. She was mildly surprised the knight had been sleeping at the campsite. He could have stayed in his master’s castle, and commute every morning. Her lips twitched as she peered inside, rolling her eyes at the mess. Perhaps his master couldn’t stand the sight of him. Frieda could hardly blame the overlord for that.

Disgusting, she thought. Sergeant Miles would have flogged his students for leaving their tents in such a state. Everything had to be in its place, he’d insisted, or you wouldn’t know where it was when you needed it. There has to be something of his here.

She gritted her teeth, picked up a small dagger and cast a tracking spell. The dagger pulled her around, pointing towards the village. Of course… Frieda cursed under her breath as she allowed it to lead her out of the tent, pushing the flap closed behind her. The knight was in the village… who knew? A thought crossed her mind, and she smiled. She was a sorceress, a de facto noblewoman. She could give him hell, and he’d just have to take it…

The dagger led her onwards, down the road. Frieda held the hilt lightly, keeping her eyes open. The sense of unseen eyes was growing stronger, again… she thought she saw something within the tree-line, gone almost as soon as she noticed it. Her eyes narrowed. It might not be dangerous — she knew children snuck through the forests hunting for mushrooms, careful to remain unseen — and yet, she felt uneasy. The knife twisted in her hand, nearly breaking out of her grip. Frieda blinked in surprise. Sir Wheaton couldn’t have changed his position so quickly, yet the knife was charmed to point directly at its owner.

Her mind raced. Sir Wheaton could have teleported… except he couldn’t, because he wasn’t a sorcerer. Or was he? Frieda herself was living proof magic ran strong in the Cairngorms, and she was hardly the strongest magician to come out of the region. She’d once heard a rumour that Void himself had been born in the mountains… she shook her head as the knife twisted again. Sir Wheaton was no sorcerer. If he had magic to match hers, he would either have left long ago or simply taken over for himself. He wouldn’t be running errands for a nobleman with grand titles and pitiful holdings.

She kept her eyes open as she allowed the knife to lead her onwards, into the forest. The trees closed in around her, casting long shadows over her path. She frowned as she flitted from tree to tree, wishing she’d taken the time to brush up the skills she’d learnt as a child. She’d once practically flowed through the trees, so silently she hadn’t disturbed the wildlife. Now, she was uneasily aware of her own footsteps. Her mere presence was causing the birds and beasts to flee.

The knife twisted again. This time, it pointed back towards the campsite. Frieda stopped dead, shaking her head. She wished she could fly, although… the canopy overhead was so thick she doubted she could see anything if she flew over the treetops. It wouldn’t even be easy to spot the village itself, not from the air. Too many villages believed witches flew overhead at midnight, hunting for victims to drag back to their lairs before the sun rose… she put the thought aside as she cancelled the tracking spell and carefully put it back together. This time, the knife twisted so rapidly she had to let go of the hilt and jump backwards. It fell and hit the ground, spinning in the soil before the last of the magic wore off. Frieda swore under her breath. Sir Wheaton was alive — she thought — but he was clearly hidden from her spells. Or…

She hesitated, briefly considering leaving the knife on the ground, then picked it up and headed back to the camp. It wasn’t easy going. The trees seemed to be closing in around her, as if they were moving when she wasn’t looking. She thought she was being silly, and yet the sensation of something right behind her, breathing down her neck, refused to go away. It was all she could do to walk calmly, despite an urge to either flee or hurl a fireball into the empty air behind her. If it hit something… she breathed a sigh of relief when she found the road, then started to make her way back to the camp. Hoban had to be informed. He could decide what to do.

Granny said we should bury the artefact and forget we ever saw it, she recalled, numbly. She hadn’t seen anything of the hedge witch, since she’d delivered her warning, And Hoban refused to listen.

The thought haunted her as she reached the boundary line and crossed into the village. Hoban was standing there, talking to Ivanovo. Frieda nearly flinched. It was hard not to fear what Ivanovo might be saying to Hoban, even though it was unlikely Ivanovo would be able to poison his mind. And yet… she gritted her teeth, reminding herself that the macho code of the mountains didn’t apply to magicians. If Ivanovo told Hoban everything, or even hinted at everything, it would probably be the last thing he ever did.

Ivanovo really did flinch when he saw her. Frieda was almost pleased.

“The tracking spell kept twisting,” Frieda said, talking an unholy delight in talking over the headman’s son. It was rare for any woman to have a chance to speak in the village, certainly not before the men. The sheer disrespect she’d shown would grate on him, all the more because he couldn’t strike back at her. “It felt as if he was teleporting.”

“Or someone was concealing his location,” Hoban finished. “There’s a lot of wild magic in the air. It could have disrupted the spell.”

“Or the Awful Folk got him,” Ivanovo said. “He was their lawful pray…”

“It wasn’t as if the magic was disrupting the spell,” Frieda said, interrupting Ivanovo. She knew she was being petty, but — for once — it felt awfully good. “It was more as if he was being whisked around, impossibly fast.”

“Curious,” Hoban said. “We’ll send a messenger to his master if he doesn’t show up by nightfall.”

Frieda bit her tongue to keep from telling Hoban they had to act now. He might not notice, or care, if she undercut him in public, but Ivanovo would. And then… she wanted to think it wouldn’t matter, when both Frieda and Hoban were powerful sorcerers, but she knew better. Ivanovo would think Hoban was weak — his woman was daring to contradict him in front of watching eyes, the horror—and it would rebound on them somehow. She promised herself she’d discuss it later, when they were in the tents. She could chat with him, as well as make love, before she went to her own tent.

The villagers might have done something to him, she thought coldly, but how could they have hidden him from my charm?

Her thoughts raced as she left the two men and headed to the tents. The charm had been cast perfectly. She’d checked. If Sir Wheaton had been killed, the charm wouldn’t have worked at all. If he’d been wounded and left to die, or simply held prisoner somewhere, the charm should have led her straight to him. Unless a sorcerer had hidden him, in which case the charm shouldn’t have locked on to anything… she frowned, wishing she knew more about how the spells actually worked. Was she facing a curiously improved obscurification charm, tied into a concealment ward? She thought it was possible…

No, she thought. That wouldn’t give us a variable location. The charm would just refuse to locate him.

She puzzled over it for the rest of the day, wishing — again — Emily or Alassa or even Jade or Aloha were with her. She’d even take Cat. And yet… she spoke briefly to Hoban, who was dismissive. She didn’t really blame him — Sir Wheaton might interfere at a crucial moment, making it impossible for the diggers to complete their mission — but it still worried her. She wouldn’t have reported the villagers for killing the bastard. She just wanted to know what had happened to him for her peace of mind.

“You could stay, you know,” Hoban said, afterwards. “I’ll be on the far side of the tent.”

Frieda shook her head, feeling a twinge of affection. He was trying to be kind… she smiled, despite herself, as she slipped out of the tent. It was too small for his offer, as well meant as it was, to mean much. And yet…

She paused as she sensed the darkness pooling over the land. The artefact was a pit of darkness… no, it was impossibly tall and yet tiny beyond words. She could see it, even though it was hidden in the shadows. She had the sense of mighty workings spinning around her, gone almost as soon as she sensed them. People moving in the shadows.

That night, she dreamed. And woke up screaming.

Frieda knew, without false modesty, that patience wasn’t one of her virtues.

She’d spent most of her life chasing instant gratification, first in the Cairngorms and then at Mountaintop and Whitehall, because she believed, deep inside, that there would soon be no tomorrow. There was no point in waiting for something when she knew she might not last long enough for it to arrive. Even at Whitehall, when she’d known she finally had a future, it had been hard for her to learn to wait. The habit was simply too deeply ingrained in her very bones.

And yet, she had to wait now.

She sat in the hide, the hidden half-tent concealed near the dig, and waited. It felt wrong to be in the open air after nightfall, something that no one risked without a very good reason for fear of the Other Folk and other things that went bump in the night. She supposed their unknown enemies wouldn’t expect her to be doing anything of the sort, if indeed they bothered to think about it at all. It was very rare for the villagers to risk leaving their homes after dark.

And they shouldn’t realise I’m here, she told herself. It shouldn’t even cross their minds.

The air felt odd, the wind blowing hot and cold seemingly at random. She wasn’t looking at the artefact — she’d been careful to pick a position where the artefact was out of her sight — but she could feel it behind her, like a boy creeping up to breathe down her neck. She would almost have preferred the boy. The artefact was a brooding presence that dominated the landscape, seemingly looming larger with every passing day. Hoban had told her they were still digging, that they hadn’t reached the bottom yet, and still… she swallowed hard. It was impossible to make sense of what she was seeing. Or sensing. Her mind simply refused to accept it.

She waited, checking her pistol and counting the seconds as they ticked onwards. It was quite possible she was wasting her time. The missing worker was probably hidden a long way from her. The other workers knew his absence, and the missing tools, had been noticed. It would be foolish for him to return to steal more or even to return what he’d stolen. Her lips quirked in disgust as the clouds shifted, shafts of moonlight stabbing down to the ground. There were very few crimes held in universal abhorrence in the region, but stealing tools was very definitely one of them. The thief would be lucky if he wasn’t beaten to death when he was caught.

And something odd clearly happened to him, she reflected. Or else the tracking spell would have either led us to him or failed completely.

The darkness seemed, somehow, to grow darker as the moon faded behind the clouds again. Frieda leaned forward, biting her lip to keep from falling asleep. It was galling. She knew how to stay awake and yet, her eyelids were suddenly very heavy. A flicker of alarm ran through her, banishing the tiredness in the wink of an eye. Was someone trying to put her to sleep? Sergeant Miles had taught her spells to put sentries to sleep, then shown her how to resist them. She couldn’t sense any magic, but that was meaningless. The subtle spells were designed to be difficult to detect. They’d be rendered useless the moment their target realised they were there.

She felt her heart start to race as her eyes peered into the darkness. She’d cast a pair of night vision spells as a matter of course and yet, it was hard to spot any movement within the pools of shadow. The ruined village was completely lifeless and yet… she tensed as she spotted a moving shadow, inching towards the dig. She froze, trying not to breathe. The intruder’s senses might be as good as her own, if not better. If he’d grown up in the Cairngorms, he was probably as attuned to the local environment as everyone else… she wished, suddenly, she’d spent more time outside since she’d left Mountaintop. The intruder might not need magic to sense her. The moment he sensed something out of place, he’d turn and run.

And I need to follow him back to his lair, she thought, grimly. She briefly considered trying to enchant the intruder, then dismissed the thought before she could even begin to put the idea into practice. The locals might be backed by a sorcerer or a rogue team of diggers or… who knew? We need to know who’s behind him.

She gritted her teeth and waited as the shadowy form flitted around the dig. He — she thought the intruder was male, he certainly carried himself like a local man — didn’t seem scared of the artefact. Frieda had no idea what that meant. Was he too stupid to be scared? Was he unable to sense the aura surrounding the artefact? Or… or what? If it made her skin crawl every time she looked at it, if it made hardened diggers take the long way around just to avoid getting to close to it, if… she shook her head. She’d get answers out of the intruder shortly, after he’d returned to his lair. She reached out with her senses but found nothing. The artefact’s baleful presence overshadowed everything else.

The intruder was good, she noted sourly, as he slipped back into the shadows. Her ears were sharp, and yet she’d heard nothing. He hadn’t even stepped on a twig! Frieda would have been impressed — she’d seen experienced scouts and soldiers betray their presence through slight mishaps — if it hadn’t made life harder for her. She inched forward, drawing on nearly fifteen years of life in the region — and five more years at Mountaintop and Whitehall — and slipped after the intruder. If he was aware of her presence, he did nothing. Instead, he moved with the confidence and grace of someone who knew the region like the back of his hand.

Which is interesting, she thought, because the headman told us no one has crossed the boundary line since the village was destroyed.

She put the thought aside for later consideration as she kept moving, slipping from tree to tree as she struggled to keep the intruder in sight. The undergrowth seemed to snatch at her, roots and branches threatening to snap across her face and make noises that would be all too revealing. Frieda knew she was fit and healthy, after five years of proper food and medical care, but she feared the intruder could simply outrun her. She readied a spell to take him down, all too aware he might be quick enough to put a tree trunk between them while she was casting the spell. If he acted quickly, and refused to panic, he might well get away.

The shadows seemed to ebb and flow like living things as the intruder continued ghosting through the trees. Frieda sensed flickers of wild magic—tainted magic — riding the winds, brushing almost painfully against her wards. She was suddenly very sure she was being watched by unseen eyes, eyes that were very far from human. A shiver ran down her spine, her legs jerking as they felt a sudden urge to stop. Frieda bit her lip and forced herself to keep going. The intruder seemed to be moving without fear, even though he was travelling well off the beaten path. She’d thought he’d head down to the village and plead innocence the following morning, but instead he was slipping further up the mountains. She cursed under her breath. If she lost sight of him now, she’d lose him for good.

Next time, we’ll have to set up a proper booby trap for him, she thought. And hope we can make him talk before his backers get spooked and vanish.

Frieda kept moving, eyes peering into the darkness as the wild magic grew stronger. The ground shifted below her feet, the earth giving way to stones that looked to have been thrown against the mountainside by an angry god. She crossed a stream that would become a raging torrent later in the year, when the autumn rains began in earnest. It was hard to tell if the intruder had a real destination in mind, or if he knew she was there and was trying to get her thoroughly lost before vanishing into the shadows and leaving her stranded in the middle of nowhere. She smiled, rather grimly, at the thought. She could still sense the artefact, a poisoned needle stabbing into the land. It would be child’s play to let the artefact guide her back to the camp.

The world seemed to shift around her, so sharply she thought — for a second — she’d been attacked. Her senses were dulled, as if someone had thrown a blanket over her… panic yammered through her, forced down by schooling and experience. She hadn’t walked into a bunch of boys with bad intentions… she hadn’t! The panic nearly made her lash out, or cower under an imaginary blow, before she calmed herself. The air felt dead, weirdly hot and cold. She’d stepped under a magical shroud.

Well, she told herself. I guess we know why the tracking spells didn’t work.

She kept moving as moonlight glinted through the trees and reflected off the giant rocks. The intruder was barely visible in the distance, a tiny figure set against immense boulders that seemed larger than houses. Frieda forced herself to slow down as the intruder paused, before resuming his walk. She felt very small as magic pulsed around her, a weird dullness that made her feel she’d drunk a very weak sleeping potion. The rocks were just too big… she knew, intellectually, that she wasn’t entering a land of giants, but it was hard to be sure. The old tales suddenly seemed very real to her. Emily had even seen the remains of a giant, bones left to rot hundreds of years ago…

The thought mocked her as she slipped through the cracks, wondering if she should try to change herself into an owl or raven or something — anything — else that might pass unnoticed in the night. She put the thought out of her head a moment later. Self-transformation was just too dangerous, particularly when she might need to use her magic in a hurry. And yet… she sensed life all around her, hidden rodents and insects scurrying away from the two humans. She hoped the intruder didn’t realise he’d been followed as he reached an overhang and stepped into the shadows. If she was lucky, he’d assume he’d been the sole cause of the disturbance.

Frieda shivered as the moonlight grew stronger, throwing the overhang into sharp relief. It didn’t look completely natural… she frowned as she realised someone had literally carved a doorway into the rock, converting an inner cave into a… into a what? The tainted magic grew stronger as she approached, making it harder for her to pick up on anything from within. The intruder had completely vanished. Frieda hesitated, unsure if she should keep inching into the darkness or go back to the camp. She could round up reinforcements, then return to catch the intruder in the act…

And then she heard a child cry.

She hesitated, just for a second. There were things in the darker parts of the forests that sounded just like lost children. No one knew what they really looked like, because no one had come back to tell the tale. Prudence suggested beating a hasty retreat and yet… there was a missing child, a little girl taken from the village below the mountains. Frieda asked herself, quickly, what Emily would do, yet she already knew the answer. Emily would throw herself into the cave to find the child, risk be damned. It was crazy, by local standards, and yet… Frieda had good reason to be grateful. If Emily had turned her back on her…

The shadows loomed around her as she slipped into the cave. The interior was weird, as if parts of the tunnel had been carved and other parts had been left completely alone. She couldn’t tell if it was intentional or if the structure had been abandoned long enough for wind, rain and earthquakes to start wearing it down. The wind blew into her face as the tunnel started to climb upwards, suggesting the upper levels were open to the elements. She stumbled over a broken step, nearly fell to the ground. If she’d made a sound… she gritted her lips and forced herself to keep going, despite the growing magic. The tunnel grew wider as it leveled out. A faint glimmer of light shone at the far end.

Frieda kept moving, clinging to the shadows as best as she could. The walls were lined with strange carvings, eerie diagrams and drawings that seemed to change every time she looked away. Her eyes narrowed as she studied an image that looked weirdly familiar, even though she’d never seen anything like it in her entire life. And yet… she remembered, suddenly, exploring the caves and tunnels under Mountaintop and Heart’s Eye. There’d been similar carvings under there too.

Hoban would love this place, she thought. And so would Emily.

The tunnel widened again, revealing a giant chamber. Frieda looked up, spotting a faint pulsing light darting overhead. The magic felt wrong. She had the uneasy sense she’d walked into a trap and braced herself, but nothing happened. And yet… she froze as she spotted the bodies, piling against the far wall. They were unmoving… she forced herself to inch towards them, even though it was clear they were already dead. She shuddered, feeling a sudden urge to throw up, as she saw the expressions on the dead faces. They’d died in screaming terror.

She frowned as she eyed the topmost body. Sir Wheaton?

Her mind started to race. It was Sir Wheaton. He was dressed — the other bodies were naked — but she thought she would have recognised him regardless. There was no sign of what had killed him, nothing beyond the terrified expression on his face. Frieda inspected the bodies quickly — they weren’t the first corpses she’d seen, growing up in the mountains — but found no hint of how they’d died. Her eyes narrowed as she realised the corpses should have decayed by now. Sir Wheaton had only vanished a few days ago, but everyone else… she shook her head. There were at least ten bodies in the pile, and if they’d all vanished at the same time… no, they’d been taken and killed over the last few months. The headman had said as much.

She stood upright, frowning. Who were they?

Taxmen, perhaps, she thought. Her lips quirked. Taxmen were about as welcome as mercenaries, as far as the villagers were concerned. It isn’t as if anyone would bother to waste time looking for missing taxmen. They might find them.

The child cried, again. Frieda spun around and headed into the next chamber, throwing caution to the winds as she followed the sound through a network of caves and caravans. The stone walls pulsed with strange shimmering light, magic — wild magic — spinning through the air. Her senses started to hurt, her head pounding as if she was on the verge of a headache. A low thumping sound echoed through the air, like the beating of a giant heart… she wondered, fancifully, if she was running through the remains of a giant’s body. There were stories of people who lived in dragons…

She slowed as the sound grew louder, taking a breath… the air was dusty, too dusty. She sneezed. She heard something clatter ahead of her and cursed savagely, forcing herself to run faster. The intruder knew she was there now… she kicked herself, mentally, for not using more powerful concealment spells. They might have been enough to snuff out the sound before it reached his ears. Magic — weird magic — blossomed as she crashed into the final cave and stopped, dead. The child — a young girl, barely old enough to help her mother — was sitting on a rock. It looked a little too carved… Frieda’s blood ran cold as she realised it was an altar. Ivanovo was standing behind the rock, holding a knife in one hand and something weird, something alien, in the other. It felt deeply — deeply—wrong, as if her mind refused to look at it properly. It was… it was wrong.

Like the artefact, she thought. Did he find it in the dig?

“You?” Ivanovo stared at her. “You….”

He jabbed the thing at her, as if it were a wand. Frieda felt something crash into her, a power so strange and alien she couldn’t even begin to define it. She sensed tendrils of power spinning around her, vanishing into the distance… straight back towards the dig. It was a flash of lightning, parting the shadows long enough for her to get a glimpse of what was waiting for her before the shadows fell again. The power was overwhelming and yet, seemingly unfocused. It should have killed her and yet… she had the weirdest sense she’d only caught a tiny flicker of the power Ivanovo had unleashed, that most of it had gone elsewhere. There was something underground, something sleeping… her blood ran cold. It was waking.

The ground shook. Ivanovo screamed, grabbed the child and ran. Frieda tried to hit him with a spell, but the hex missed him and splattered uselessly against a wall. She cursed as the entire cave network started to collapse, dust and rocks falling from high overhead and slamming to the ground. It was suddenly very hard to breathe. She forced herself forward, to run as fast as she could. Ivanovo had to be stopped.

And she knew, somehow, that she was running out of time.

He’s going back to the artefact, Frieda thought, as she ran out of the collapsing tunnels into the open air. He has to go back there.

Her mind raced, putting the pieces together. She’d sensed something under the artefact, something sleeping… something on the verge of waking up. She had no idea what it was, not really, but she was certain that it had to be stopped. Granny’s warnings rang in her ears. The village had been built on top of the artefact, and its destruction had kept everyone away, until the ground shifted and revealed something fascinating below the ground. And it had drawn the diggers like moths to the flame. And Ivanovo…

He’s been killing people for months, she thought. Behind her, she felt the ground shake as the last of the caves collapsed into rubble. And he’s been doing something with their life and magic.

She frowned. What had Ivanovo been doing? He was no magician. It was rare for a male magician to remain in the Cairngorms, even if they didn’t have the potential to become full-fledged sorcerers. Granny and her ilk were about the only magicians who stayed in the mountains for their entire lives, and they were permanently on the fringes of society, respected and feared in equal measure. Frieda couldn’t believe Ivanovo had magic. He’d never have shut up about it, if he’d had enough power to light a spark. She’d heard horror stories of magicians who’d turned entire towns and villages into their private kingdoms, with their populations enslaved or enchanted. Ivanovo would have done just that, she was sure, if he’d had the power. And yet, without magic, what could he do with a stone knife? Even necromancers needed a spark of power before they could fan it into a blaze.

He was feeding something, she told herself. The thing she’d sense threatened to fade from her mind, her memories already blurry… she bit her lip as she worked out what was happening. Ivanovo was gathering magic and life energy and channelling it to the artefact… she had no idea why, but it didn’t matter. He has to be stopped.

She forced herself to keep running. The artefact’s brooding presence was growing stronger, poison spilling over the land. She had no idea how Hoban and the others had missed it. She knew they’d decided to make a show of going to bed, in hopes of obscuring the fact Frieda hadn’t gone to her private tent, but surely they could sense something. She couldn’t imagine Ivanovo somehow killing or capturing the diggers. They were experienced sorcerers, and sorcerers weren’t easy to kill, not for a mundane.

Her hand dropped to the pistol at her belt. If Ivanovo had a firearm…

You saw no trace of firearms in the village, she reminded herself. They were rare so far from civilised lands, with the local lords and their followers doing everything in their power to prevent firearms from entering their world. And even if he did have a pistol, it wouldn’t be easy to kill the entire team without being caught and stopped.

She kept running, relying on skills she hadn’t used for years to pick her way down the rocky slope and into the forest. The trees loomed around her, the branches seeming to snap at her face as if they were animated by a remorseless will. She told herself she was imagining it — the artefact seemed to be driving away the wild magic pervading the forest — and kept moving, jumping over streams and hopping over fallen trunks as she picked her way onwards. The artefact was almost drawing her towards it… she hoped, as she darted through the remains of a long-gone village, that it wasn’t literally pulling her to the site. She might run up to the artefact and…

… And what?

Frieda tried to force herself to think. Emily would have come up with a plan by now, a plan certain to work because it was her. She was brilliant as well as knowledgeable, skilled at spotting weak points, insightful enough to see how an enemy might become a friend… Frieda knew, all too well, she couldn’t hope to live up to her saviour’s example. Her mind raced, trying to work out how Ivanovo could be stopped. But she didn’t even know what he was doing. She wasn’t even sure why her instincts insisted he was going back to the artefact.

Don’t be silly, she told herself. Where else can he go?

She clambered up and over a mound, then paused as she sensed a column of darkness — she couldn’t help thinking of it as dark light—streaming from the artefact and reaching up to infinity. It had to be visible for miles around, a darkness so dark it made the night seem like day. She shuddered helplessly, her stomach churning at the sheer wrongness of the sight, then stumbled back into motion. The dig was closer, much closer. She briefly considered trying to find the others — she needed help — but the camp was right on the far side of the burned-out town. If they couldn’t sense the gathering darkness, they had to be enchanted — or dead. She told herself they couldn’t be dead.

The darkness touched her the moment she crossed the boundary line, an oppressive sensation that left her feeling as though she was being violated at a very primal level. Her legs shook as she felt breath on her neck, even though she knew she was imagining it. There was no one behind her and yet… all of a sudden, the old tales of succubi and incubi sneaking into huts, when the doors were left unbarred, and assaulting the helpless inhabitants suddenly seemed very real. She shuddered again, then forced herself to keep going. The artefact looked unchanged and yet… it was huge, as if it was growing into a tower far larger than Whitehall or Alassa’s castle. Her eyes hurt. Her brain found it impossible to process what she was seeing. Again.

She reached out gingerly with her senses as she rounded the artefact, trying to find Ivanovo despite the pain. It was impossible. The artefact was both silent and incredibly loud, its mere presence shaking the world. She thought she sensed mighty engines thrumming, preparing themselves for… for something… but it was hard to be sure. The world was shaking as she stumbled around the artefact. Ivanovo was kneeling beside it, his back pressed against the alien object. He no longer looked human. It was so hard to see it took her a moment to see that he’d removed his shirt, revealing dark things driven into his skin. She remembered all the stories about people who’d been stolen away by the Awful Folk and how they’d been different when they’d finally returned to their village. Ivanovo looked… she couldn’t see him clearly. It was as if he was standing in front of a light so bright he was lost in the shadows.

“Too late,” Ivanovo managed. His voice no longer sounded human either. It sounded as if a hundred voices were blurring together into a single harmonic that tore at her ears. Blood trickled down his jaw and onto the ground as he spoke. “He will rise.”

Frieda reached for her magic, but her power splinted and drained even as she tried to cast a spell. She felt a flash of pure terror — she was helpless in front of a monster, a young man she knew to have far more than just wandering hands — before she remembered herself. She was no longer the scrawny runt of the litter, but a young woman with strength and skills that didn’t depend on magic. Ivanovo was strong, yet far from unbeatable. His confidence in his muscles would blind him. If he came at her, confident she’d yield before him, she’d kick him in the groin and stomp on his throat before he knew what had hit him.

She gritted her teeth. She could sense power — her power, but not just her power — flowing into the artefact. Ivanovo had given it everything it needed to start draining power and life from the surrounding world and channel it… where? She tried to follow the power as it twisted into realms beyond her ken, but it was impossible. There was just an overwhelming sense of wrongness… she cleared her throat, bracing herself. What would Emily do? She’d keep him talking until she could come up with a plan.

“This is madness,” she managed. If nothing else, openly challenging Ivanovo might provoke him into stepping away from the artefact and coming at her. The village menfolk had never stood for women questioning them, certainly not in public. She hoped irritation would override the fear of being transfigured again. “What are you doing?”

“He will rise,” Ivanovo said. “It is his time.”

“Whose time?” Frieda leaned forward, trying to sense the threads of raw magic pervading the air. It almost felt like spellwork, except it was so complex she couldn’t even begin to figure out how to pick it apart. She’d seen the wards of Whitehall and the evolving spellwork beneath Heart’s Eye, and yet they were child’s play, compared to the unfolding nightmare in front of her. “What is happening?”

“They come to our lands and take what little we have,” Ivanovo said. He sounded drunk, his words slurring together as he clutched the child in his arms. “We hate it. We hate it! And we can do nothing. I found…”

His mouth twisted into an expression that chilled her to the bone. “Radovan found it. I took it. It promised us everything, if only we brought it what it wanted. We did. We killed and killed and killed again, keeping our side of the bargain. He will rise, and he will make us kings of the land…”

The ground shook. Frieda was nearly knocked off her feet. She steadied herself as she tried to think. Who would rise? There were old tales of gods and kings slumbering below the land, ready to wake when the kingdom was in mortal danger, but she’d never believed in any of them. She doubted Ivanovo wanted to wake a king or even a god. The mountain folk lived far too close to a wild inhuman world to have faith in its benevolence. What was he trying to wake? And who was Radovan? The name was unfamiliar.

She frowned as the pieces fell into place. “This… thing you’re trying to wake, do you trust it?”

She’d hoped to appeal to his paranoia, and to the justified suspicion every commoner felt for their local aristocracy, but it went nowhere. Ivanovo was too far gone. His body was twisting and bulging in odd places, as if things were crawling under his skin. He had to be in terrible pain and yet, he didn’t cry out. Frieda would have been more impressed if he hadn’t been up to something disastrous. She wracked her brains, trying to think of a solution. Emily would have worked one out by now. Frieda was completely lost. Her legs felt as if they’d been turned to stone.

Her mind churned. He killed at least a dozen men for power, but he didn’t kill the child even though her cries might have drawn attention to his lair, she thought, numbly. It made no sense. Why not?

She forced herself to inch forward. Stepping closer to the artefact felt like forcing her way into a furnace, an act so close to suicide as to be completely indistinguishable, and yet… if she killed him, or dragged him away from the artefact, or even took the child… she couldn’t think of anything better. Nothing about the artefact made sense… surely, if Ivanovo was up to something, he could have waited until the diggers completed their work and left again… unless he’d thought they’d take the artefact with them. Or if he feared they’d try to destroy it before he could complete his work. It was clearly dangerous, and while Hoban might be reluctant to smash it, his superiors might have different ideas. Frieda wished, suddenly, she’d thought to write to Emily. Hoban would never have forgiven her if she’d called in reinforcements from the one person everyone took seriously, but it might have saved a few lives. It was too late now.

The artefact pulsed with darkness, a deadly heartbeat hammering on the air. Her legs seemed unsure if they wanted to stop or hurl her into the artefact. She thought she could hear distant screams as she inched closer, her hands twisting as if the world itself was slowing down. Perhaps it was…

“Bitch.” Ivanovo raised his eyes to meet hers. His eyes were nothing more than pools of dark shadow, his face unrecognisable in the twisted light. He held a knife in one hand and the girl in the other. “It’s too late.”

She wanted to reach for him, but her body refused to cooperate. Ivanovo stabbed… Frieda blinked in shock as the stone knife was plunged into his heart. For a moment, her mind refused to comprehend what had happened. He’d stabbed himself? He’d killed himself? It was absurd and yet… her head spin as the artefact twisted, an invisible force picking her up and throwing her away from the alien object. The girl screamed once, then fell silent. Frieda landed badly but forced herself to roll over and stagger to her feet. She’d had worse, thanks to her father and the village louts. She really had.

The artefact had changed. No… the girl had changed. Frieda’s eyes hurt — she thought she was crying tears of blood — as she looked at the child. She could see tendrils of power burning through the girl, threads leading back to something so different she couldn’t even begin to understand what she was seeing. It was vast and alien and hungry and… she swallowed hard as she worked out what Ivanovo had done. He’d given his own life to forge an unbreakable link between the alien entity and the child, turning the poor girl into a host… no, something worse than a host. A bridgehead. Frieda could feel the entity pressing forward, forcing its way into the human world. She could hear it promising everything she’d ever wanted, if only she opened her mind. The promises were everything…

It’s not real, she told herself. The entity was either reading her memories — possible, if terrifying — or her own mind was filling in the blanks. There were spells that made people see what they wanted to see or needed to see to ensure they didn’t get suspicious. She doubted the promises were real, or that the entity would bother to keep its side of the bargain. It was offering her what she wanted to hear, and she knew enough to be suspicious of anyone — or anything — who did that. It offered Ivanovo everything and then pushed him into self-sacrifice.

Her knees buckled. The entity was growing stronger. She could feel its power sweeping over the land. They’d be feeling it in the campsite now, she was sure; the villagers further down the valley would be feeling the first questing touches of a very alien mind. A yawning hunger swept through her, her mind trying to make sense of what the entity wanted. It wanted everyone. And Ivanovo had unleashed it. He hadn’t known what he was really doing, she was sure, although she didn’t want to give him any credit. His mind had been so twisted he’d never stood a chance.

Frieda forced her eyes to open. The girl was standing in front of the artefact, her form twisting as the entity forced its way into the human realm. Reality itself was threatening to break down. Frieda saw images of herself flickering around the child. She was a beaten wife and mother, she was a hedge witch, she was a powerful sorceress, she was a necromancer, she was a slave, she was a… corpse. She shook her head and focused, trying to understand what was happening. Her earlier thoughts came back to haunt her. The girl was a bridgehead. The entity was using her to reach the human world. And…

Shit, Frieda thought.

The conclusion seemed inescapable and so did the consequences. Her fingers dropped to the pistol at her belt. She drew it slowly, her arms feeling as if they were made of lead. It was hard, so hard, to lift the weapon and point it at the girl. The pistol felt heavier than an entire school… she gritted her teeth, telling herself she was imagining it. Her hand shook as she took aim, her heart twisting. If it had been Ivanovo, she would have fired without hesitation and passed water over his grave. An innocent girl…

Her heart twisted painfully. Emily would have found a way to save the girl. She would have banished the entity without leaving chaos and death in its wake. Emily would have… but Frieda was not Emily. She didn’t have Emily’s gift for finding perfect solutions. And she was running out of time.

She pulled the trigger. The gun jerked in her hand. For a horrible moment, she thought she’d missed. She’d spent days practicing, when Emily had gifted her the pistol, but she’d never felt so drained… the girl seemed unharmed, just for a second, before collapsing into a pile of rags and bones. The entity screamed — Frieda heard it, a howl that crossed worlds and realms — before snapping out of existence. She couldn’t tell if it was dead or merely banished. It didn’t matter. It was gone, and it had taken an innocent girl with it…

Her legs buckled and collapsed. Frieda was unconscious before she hit the ground.

“Frieda! Frieda!”

Frieda jerked awake, suddenly convinced she was about to be hurt. Or worse. Her eyes hurt so badly, when she opened them, that she jammed them closed again. She came up swinging, her fist narrowly missing someone’s jaw; she reached for her magic, ready to cast a spell, only to discover it was too drained. She needed time to recover…she felt a hand on her shoulder and flinched, panic shooting through her. She was young and female and defenseless and…

“Frieda, it’s me,” Hoban said. “I’ve got you.”

Frieda relaxed, slightly. Hoban was a good guy. He’d understood, at least, why she needed to sleep alone. And yet, in her experience, there were very few true good guys. They could turn on their girlfriends without a second thought… she remembered Cat, walking away from Emily, and felt a sudden surge of hatred. He deserved to die and worse for what he’d done to Emily in her worst moments…

She put the thought out of her head and concentrated on opening her eyes. The bright sunlight lanced down, hurting so badly she thought someone had literally stabbed her in the eye. Hoban muttered a pair of pain relief charms, the effects so profound Frieda was too grateful to yell at him for casting spells on her without her permission. She leaned against him for a long moment, then turned to look at the artefact. It was still there, but… it looked dead. She hoped it was a permanent thing.

Her mouth was dry, but she managed to talk. “What… what happened to you?”

Hoban looked disturbed. “It was… it was weird,” he said, finally. “We were caught in our nightmares, aware we were dreaming and yet unable to wake up.”

Frieda nodded, wondering why the effect — whatever it was — hadn’t touched her. She’d tasted enough of the entity’s power to know it could have crushed her effortlessly, if it had realised she was a threat. She’d been a tiny little insect, compared to a giant… perhaps the entity had only been able to affect sleeping minds. Perhaps… she shook her head as she stumbled to her feet. It didn’t matter. The entity was gone.

“What happened to you?” Hoban held her gently. “And to her?”

“I killed her,” Frieda said. The words tasted like ashes in her mouth. She’d grown up in a world where some people had to be sacrificed to save the rest, but she still felt as if she’d done something wrong. “I…”

She forced herself to talk, spilling out the whole story. Hoban listened, without interruption, as she outlined everything that had happened in one terrible night. He believed her… Frieda was almost relieved, even though she knew she should have expected it. But then, he’d had a taste of the entity’s power, too. He knew it had been dangerous. She stopped, breaking off as she heard birdsong overhead. The animals were returning to the ruined village. She was sure that was a good sign.

“The artefact is falling apart,” Hoban said, when she’d finished. A dull crack echoed behind her, followed by a crash. “Whatever happened, I think you killed it.”

Frieda couldn’t bring herself to care. Her head hurt. Visions of something vast and powerful and unknowable danced behind her eyes, fading like memories of a brief meeting that ended almost as soon as it began. The entity, whatever it had been, was gone. The artefact was dying. She turned to peer towards the dig and frowned, remembering her earlier thoughts about icebergs. The artefact was cracking and breaking, fragments of semi-translucent material falling to the ground. It was slowly becoming a pile of broken glass. The aura of darkness was gone.

She looked at her boyfriend, wondering how he’d react. The artefact had been dangerous, true, but it had also been unique. The find would have made his name, if he’d been able to dig the artefact out and present it to the world. And yet… he was smart and experienced enough to know that some things were probably best left buried beneath the land for the rest of time. Frieda took a breath and waited, knowing she’d done the right thing. If he was ungrateful…

They’re often ungrateful to Emily, too, Frieda recalled, suddenly. And how many times has she saved the world?

“Probably for the best,” Hoban said, finally. “We’ll write the entire encounter up, of course, and make sure everyone knows what happened in case we encounter a second artefact. It wouldn’t be the first time…”

He shook his head. “And we’ll have to pay our respects to the headman, before we leave for good,” he added. “Are you coming?”

“I killed his son,” Frieda said, tightly. Ivanovo had been a monumental asshole — a thug, a groper, a rapist — and she’d hated him with a passion, but his father probably didn’t see it that way. Probably. Ivanovo’s father had been an asshole when he’d been younger, too. Frieda supposed most of his people would say he hadn’t changed at all. “I suppose I should tell him how his son died.”

The thought haunted her as she helped the diggers pack up the camp, then followed Hoban down to the village. The locals looked disturbed, as though nightmares had swept over the land, although their memories would be gone soon enough. They didn’t have time to dwell on them. She looked at the distant mountains and shuddered. It might be summer now, but winter was coming. If the villagers weren’t ready for the cold, they wouldn’t live to see another summer.

She glanced at her father’s shack as they made their way to the headman’s hut. She wanted to go and speak to them one final time and, at the same time, she wanted to turn her back and never see them again. She understood why they’d sold her — and part of her would always be grateful, even though they couldn’t have been sure where she was going or what would happen to her — but she also hated them. They’d sacrificed her to ensure the remainder of the family would live to see another year…

And there’s no point dwelling on it now, she told herself. You won’t be coming back.

The headman eyed them both nervously. “My Lord,” he said. “What happened?”

“The artefact proved to be very dangerous,” Hoban said, shortly. He didn’t go into details. The last thing they needed was someone looking for another one. “And I’m afraid your son was consumed when it tried to come to life.”

Frieda watched Ivanov closely as Hoban’s words sank in. Did he know what Ivanovo had been doing? Had he been quietly encouraging his son to do… to do what? Frieda suspected the artefact had been playing everyone for fools, offering them whatever they wanted in exchange for sacrifices… and twisting their minds, so when the time came they offered themselves without hesitation. Had Ivanovo been alone? Or had there been more than a handful of locals involved? Or… she shook her head. It wasn’t her problem. The remnants of the gang would either run for their lives or be hunted down and killed by the local aristocracy.

“My son…” Ivanov let out a deep shuddering breath. “I… why?”

“You raised him to be a little monster,” Frieda said, curtly. Old hatreds bubbled through her, fueling her magic. It would be easy, so easy, to give the headman a taste of what she’d endured at the hands of his son. A single spell, little more than a joke at Whitehall, would break him so completely he would never recover. “You let him run wild and…”

She shuddered. “Do better with your younger son. And don’t even think about letting him run wild again.”

The headman’s face was blank, but Frieda knew what he was thinking. He couldn’t strike at her, but he could strike at her family. The moment the diggers turned their backs and left, her parent and siblings would be kicked out of the village or simply beaten to death. It wouldn’t be hard, either, for Ivanov to convince the rest of the villagers to get rid of her family. She’d cursed a bunch of young lads…

She felt conflicted. Her parents were her… parents. They’d birthed her, raised her… and then sold her, to save the rest of the family. She loved them and hated them and she wanted to go to them and she wanted never to see them again. And… she told herself she owed her parents one thing. Just one.

“My parents are under my protection,” she told Ivanov, meeting his eyes in a manner few village girls would dare. She smiled inwardly as she saw the headman recoil. Young women were meant to be neither seen nor heard, let alone challenge the headman openly. They were lucky there were no villagers to witness the scene. “If you hurt them, because of me, you’ll spend the rest of your life in a pigsty.”

The headman flinched. “Yes.”

Frieda pushed her advantage. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, My Lady,” Ivanov managed. “I won’t harm them.”

“Good.” Frieda knew she was bluffing. There was no way she could cast a lingering spell of protection over her parents, not without spending the rest of her life in the village. But it was unlikely the headman would try to call her bluff. He had too many enemies. If they knew he’d been turned into a pig, they’d chop him up and turn him into dinner. “And I hope we never see each other again.”

She stepped outside, leaving Hoban to say their goodbyes and ensure the ruined village and cave network would be left untouched for a few years, at least until a new team of diggers could come to study the carvings. The air was fresh and cold, clearer than she recalled from their first visit… the looming shadow of the artefact was gone. She frowned as she looked towards her father’s shack, wondering if she should go see her parents before dismissing the idea once and for all. They’d kicked her out, disowned her, sold her. She owed them nothing, nothing beyond ensuring the headman wouldn’t lash out at them for daring to be related to her. She couldn’t walk back into their lives and stay there, not any longer. They were just too far apart.

Hoban joined her, a moment later. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah.” Frieda mentally planned the week. They’d go down to the nearest city, report to Hoban’s superiors, and then… they could go somewhere else. She had time before she had to go back to school for her final year. Who knew? Maybe she’d have a chance to meet up with Emily, again, before she returned to her apprenticeship. “Let’s go.”

She took one final look at the village, knowing deep inside she’d never return, then turned and walked away. It was time to go back where she belonged.