“But Yarlaith—”

“I said enough! Can’t you see he’s in shock? Leave him alone!”

Morrígan stood dumbfounded. He never so much as raised his voice before. She watched in silence as her uncle placed a hand on Fionn’s oversized shoulder. The young mage looked up at the healer.

“Yarlaith?” he said with a quivering tone. “The voices… will they ever stop?”

“Quiet,” whispered Yarlaith. “You’re going to be okay.”

***

That night, the Harvest Moon loomed over Roseán, full and red; it illuminated the night’s sky and would have allowed the farmers to spend a little longer tending to the final crops of the season if weren’t for the festival. Though the sun had set less than an hour ago, the revellers were already in a drunken stupor, dancing in circles around a bonfire in the centre of the Square.

Morrígan sat alone next to a long wooden table lined with bottles of cheap ale and wine. Peadair had taken it on himself to provide alcohol for the evening, free to all who yearned to forget that their beloved Bear would be in hibernation for the unforeseeable future.

Many in the village had blamed Peadair for being so submissive to the king’s orders but seemed happy to forget all about it with a free pint of ale in their hands. Morrígan had even overheard the Reardon brothers complain about the battlemage’s presence a few nights previously.

They curse the soldiers and their magic, yet they’re happy to use Yarlaith’s fire-crystals to kindle their forge.

Morrígan turned her attention back towards the villagers. There was a band of musicians by the bonfire, playing merry songs of folk heroes triumphing over greedy noblemen.

I wonder if the nobility sing similar songs about the small-folk?

She watched the villagers dance and sing. Around the perimeter of the Square, a group of battlemages stood guard, with green hoods pulled low over their shadowed faces.

“Geomancers,” muttered Yarlaith, approaching from behind. “Do you know much about them, Morrígan?”

Morrígan didn’t answer right away. She hadn’t forgotten how he had yelled at her earlier, even if he wanted to pretend he had.

“They manipulate the earth,” she answered, refusing to look at her uncle. “They can move soil and sand.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound very useful.” He chuckled softly to himself. “What use is a full battalion of soldiers playing with dirt? Is there anything else in the earth they could manipulate?”

She would have preferred to walk off, to leave him standing alone, but the answer suddenly came to her.

“Metal,” she said. “Geomancers can manipulate ore, can’t they?”

“The Firstborn’s weapons couldn’t penetrate Simian plate-mail during Móráin’s Conquest,” said Yarlaith, the bonfire dancing in his eyes, “but their magic was capable of bending and twisting it. I can’t imagine it was a pleasant experience for the Simian soldiers inside.”

He gave Morrígan an inquisitive look. “So what else do you think they could manipulate?”

She watched the Geomancers closely, imagining how they must look toiling the earth, great boulders rising beneath their feet… entire mountains at their fingertips….

“The troll,” she whispered suddenly, her heart leaping from her chest. “The petrified troll!”

The stone beast was still there, just outside the village, standing over her family’s farm like a statue commemorating the slaughter. None of the villagers had been able to pick it apart with their hammers and axes. It seemed as if troll-stone was quite stronger than the earthly kind.

“Yarlaith, do you think they could move it?”

The old healer smiled. “Well, there’s no harm in finding out. Why don’t you ask one of the Geomancers yourself?”

“Me? Why… why me?”

Yarlaith sighed and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Morrígan, you see the way the villagers react to the military presence. We are on the brink of war, but many are reluctant to see their protectors as anything more than strangers who invade their streets and claim their taverns. The soldiers are alienated from the community they are sworn to safeguard, and that must take its toll on morale. If anything, they’d be happy to help, if it aids in having the villagers see them as sharing the same interests as their own.”

Morrígan agreed. Besides, watching the horrible stone troll being disposed of would surely be a spectacle.

She left her uncle at the edge of the gathering, fixed her hair, and brushed dust from her new cloak. Yarlaith had said that the beadhbh feathers didn’t match the theme of the festival, but she had ignored him: it was different, and that was festive enough for her.

As Morrígan crossed the Square, she spotted Sorcha, dancing in circles with the other villagers. She was wearing another one of her mother’s dresses, designed in the style of high nobility. White and spotless, it appeared to radiate with its own light as she leapt gracefully around on the tips of her toes. Her soft, blond hair kept its perfect shimmer and shape while she whirled faster and faster, quickening to the tempo of the music. All eyes were on her, hands clapping to the beat, but Morrígan shrugged and carried on towards the battlemages.

They wouldn’t think she’s so pretty if it wasn’t for her mother’s dresses.

“Um, excuse me?” asked Morrígan as she approached the nearest Geomancer. He stood tall like a statue, moving only his eyes to look down at her. When he spoke, his voice grated with the rough accent of Cruachan.

“Yes, ma’am, is there anything I can help you with?”

“Have you heard about the troll, just outside the village?”

Morrígan surprised herself with how difficult it was to say those words. She began to rehearse the story in her head, but she couldn’t bring herself to even picture the scenes from that horrible morning, let alone describe them out loud.

Fortunately, the mage nodded.

“Yes, it was a terrible tragedy, and we hope our presence here can help prevent anything of the sort from happening again.”

“Would it be possible for the troll to be moved, somehow?” she asked. “With magic?”

The mage frowned pensively and called for another Geomancer stationed nearby.

“Berrían,” he said as the other solider arrived. “The petrified troll out near the Teeth. Do you reckon it could be moved?”

Berrían paused. A thick beard clung to his face like mottled dirt, a stark contrast to his light, sandy hair. “Perhaps, but it’ll depend on a few things….”

Morrígan was more than eager to learn. Her father used to be a jack-of-all-trades, and he had told her before that craftsmen are always pleased to talk at length about their work if you showed any interest. It was one of the few useful things he had said to her, although he’d been trying to justify the amount of time he spent drinking in The Bear.

“What exactly does it depend on?” she asked.

“See, our magic is capable of manipulating the earth,” Berrían began, enthusiasm showing in the speed of his speech. “This lets us bend and shape the earth and Her fruits with ease.

“Now, we can manipulate natural metals, too, but if you take one metal and make an alloy out of it, like steel, then it gets a bit harder to work with. The armour of the Simians is far removed from iron and quite difficult to take control over, though still within the power of any Geomancer worth his weight in dirt.”

“And stone?”

“Oh, stone is easy—far easier than the Simian stuff. But a petrified troll… that may be a matter of flesh.”

“So?”