Straddled
In Aeryl’s herbarium three days before Winter Solstice, Irenya listened to Leachim as they stripped and straightened posy wires for re-use. Contrary to the herbalist’s appearance, her workroom was a model of catalogued order. On the shelves marched an army of glass jars containing bark, seeds, pods, roots, and other things that left Irenya frowning and suspicious; she had been swallowing Aeryl’s potions for months.
‘By all rights,’ Leachim was saying, ‘on his accession, Elaaron would have set up his household at Holdfast and his father retired here. That should have been the way of it, but Elaaron has inherited a world very different from his father’s. Holdfast is now a charred hulk on a blackened peninsula. Nothing grows there. Birds and animals shun the ruins even in daylight
