Chapter 16: Invisible

They decided to start in Llanfyllin. The capital was where Siannon first encountered the Ellesmeres and where Asha had saved the kingdom from the Norse. Siannon was joyful to fly with Asha again, the heat within her skin counteracting the frigid air.

Ellesmere Keep was as majestic as ever, no signs of abandonment or ruin like Macnylleth. She landed Asha on the edge of the woods south of the castle and walked the rest of the way. She encountered people, but no one took note of her presence. When she reached the keep, she called to the guard of the watch, but he didn’t answer.

A rider came to the gate, and she spoke to him, but he ignored her. When she tried to touch his leg to demand his attention, her hand passed through him like nothing was there. “Wonderful,” she thought. “Now I’m invisible.”

She tested her new condition by walking through the closed gate. If this wasn’t a dream, had she passed away and experienced the past few days as a ghost? It would explain the skeletal crew and encountering her father. She decided to set aside those questions and proceed into the castle.

Siannon expected to find King Quinn, Dylan’s brother and Llanfyllin’s king since the end of the Norse War, whom she had seen at the previous Festival of Weylin. Instead, she found King Malcom, a young man whose hair had only begun to turn white, and his three young sons in the Great Hall.