What shall I tell you, of the next three moons?

For the first moon, my brother and I became scholars, as we had not been since our first century of life. In less than three days, Scholar Timuth was able to advise us that the folio we had been given matched the writings of Argentius already held in our archive. It was a grimoire, in which he wrote of the means by which a student of magic might probe the barriers between our world and others. The principal thing it revealed was that his own native powers in this regard had never been sufficient.

On the fifth day, the rest of the grimoire was borne to our gates, and our studies began in earnest.

"When I went to Argentius as a youth, and asked what he might teach me of this matter," Cian said later, "he read me a most gracious lecture about so much depending on the innate abilities of the student, that there was little to be done if one did not come from a lineage tending to that power. He offered no more than tests by which we might gauge our ability—"

"Oh, I well remember those!" I said, and rose from my chair to pace our workroom. "Wandering the forest, seeking rifts in the earth—places where the hills were riven with no clear reason—"

"Going before known places where the Hunt had ridden out, and meditating, seeking to feel that shivering in the air which he described..."

"You, climbing to the furthest reach in the cavern at Oberon's Gate, and there reciting the invocations of opening, while Morgaine and I kept watch for any who might guess at what you attempted."

"You harping, playing love ballads to her, so that it might seem you sought only to achieve the magic of music ringing through the hall before it, to enchant her affections."

"Well, I would not say it didn't work," I said. "Fallon and Niallán were eventually the result."

"She being as ambitious in her way, as we in ours." Cian raised a hand, at my lifted brow. "But returning to Argentius—I could never have dreamed that he was such a fraud."

I spread my hands. "Well, indeed, brother! How should you? He was the High King, was he not, from before we were born! How many times must he have opened the Gates for the Hunt?"

"The better part of a thousand." Timuth looked up from the history he was studying, aside from our worktable. "Three, sometimes four times in any twelve moons, for three hundred and sixty years. Until he decided of his own will, to lay aside the crown and retire to his ancestral lands."

"And in all that time, he never had the power to do it unaided, and none ever questioned." said Cian. He leaned upon his hand, a finger brushing his lips, and for a moment was silent. "I would be shocked at the enormity of his deception, if it did not also give me hope."

"However," he said, "it raises another question. Where is the torc?" He reached into the book before him, opening it at one of the several ribbons now marking pages within it, to reveal an image of a torc, neatly inked in bold colour, in all its details. He glanced aside at Timuth. "Having read this, cousin, I have no doubt you are right. We must have this as well, and I wonder that Ravenna made no mention of it."

"She may not know of it, or understand its importance." Timuth drew himself up with a small sigh. "From your account of what she said, Lord Cian, she knew which were her lord's grimoires, and that this volume dealt with the opening of gates between worlds. Not knowing if she reads..." He let the words trail off, as Cian studied the drawing.

"It's clear he considered this more important than his crown, to enforce his power when opening the Gates." Cian looked up at me. "I shall send to her at once, to demand it."

"And if it happens that it may be unknown to her, or lost?" I asked.

"Then we may be, too, though I will hope not."

-o0o-

That day also began our search for metal-workers, as Cian's hope was that the torc might also be duplicated. To this end, his next direction was that Timuth should set aside his researches to make as exact a copy as he might, of the drawings of the torc, and with it list the materials and gather in summary Argentius' description of how it was made. He and I then went to consult with our smith.

He was willing to attempt the project, though doubtful that his skills would entirely serve our purposes. Thus it was decided that when Rogier and a party of our younger warriors were sent to gather materials for it, they should also seek along their way for any who might be capable of the delicate metalworking required.

Be it understood that these young men were half-bloods all, still protected in sufficient measure by their mortal mothers' ability to tolerate iron, that it was judged safe for them to seek even to the High King's poisoned citadel...and so it proved. It proved, in fact, that seeking there, they were able to return to our hall within that first moon, bearing both all we required, and leading a considerable number of those who had worked in finer crafts throughout that land.

[A/N (development) Before this goes into 'final' form as Lorcan's account of what happens next, I need ways of laying out more clearly, the nuances of what's happening here.

Conceiving House Wyvern as an 'underdog' House among Sidhe royals—as Lorcan notes earlier, people tend to whisper that however fearsome and impressive they may be as draconid weres, their familial powers aren't really much above those of ordinary 'rustic' were-beasts—I see them as disadvantaged in a couple of areas.

Past the basic skills Oracle Sirona describes in 'Chronicles of Mab', ie., minor workings of fire, water, earth and air (eg., fire-lighting), and self-glamouring to appear more impressive, they don't have the power to glamour everything around them, which I'm conceiving as the magical currency, the gold standard for everyday prestige among noble Sidhe. They can't work the necessary spells or routinely mind-warp everyone who walks into the great hall at Caisleán an Dragon to see everything as much more glorious and polished than it really is. These aren't the Fae who can invite you home for a fancy chicken dinner and an overnight stay in their 'high hall', which you wake up in the morning to find is a shepherd's hut with rain leaking in the roof, and the remains of dinner look more like boiled rat bones and bits of corn husk. They can't play magical games to a point where they don't need to care what the reality is. Which means, they have to invest real resources to get anything worthwhile that they have...and consequently, they aren't wildly rich. These dragons don't have hoards of gold lying around. Metals may not even be that common in my Otherworld, to begin with. So when Cian wants his smith to have a go at copying Argentius' torc, and possibly two or three goes at it, he has to get people out gathering the precious metals needed.

A convenient place to lay hands on these, right now, would be the former High King's citadel...currently polluted beyond Sidhe toleration, with the cold-iron fallout from Ravenna's spell. That brings me to their second area of disadvantage.

Given their dubious status and prosperity, it's hard for the sons of House Wyvern to find mates among their fellow 'noble' Sidhe. Princesses young enough to be fertile do not line up to marry them... Long-term it limits their ability to (perhaps) strengthen their lineage's magical abilities through their descendents, and for Cian and Lorcan, it means neither have been able to make noble alliances. They've had to settle for, in Cian's case, a series of mortal concubines (short-lived and basically disposable, though the woman who gave him son Rogier, 35-40 years ago, is still alive, and he has decently sent her to safety with the other women in Mab's mountain-of-glass sanctuary) and in Lorcan's case, a long-standing liaison with Morgaine (likely now over) an accomplished warrior-woman of 'rustic' Sidhe descent, which has given him Fallon and Niallán. Hence the comment about Morgaine being ambitious, too...for her it's been a helpful step up, to have sons by even as lowly-ranked a 'noble' as Lorcan.

This means the clan has quite a few children around, out of Cian's and Lorcan's generation of the family, who are born half-blood Sidhe, some number of them not yet old enough (say, loosely, upwards of 100-150 years, out of an estimated 800-1,000 years Sidhe lifespan) to have been what my Sidhe call "taken up into the body of the Sidhe". Which is something that turns up occasionally out in RL fairy lore...the idea that babies stolen away by the fairies, wet-nursed by fairy women and later fed with fairy food, will become fairies, on the same basis as those born to fairy women. At this stage Rogier is the highest-ranked of these. These young men, and possibly a few women as well, are safe to go into the blight zone Ravenna has created.

Sooo...what Cian arranges now, is that Rogier and a troop of these iron-insensitive youth conduct a raid into the blight zone which used to be the High King's domain. Being rude about it, it's a looting mission: sweep up every precious artifact they can lay hands on. Raw stocks of gold, silver and electrum may be a priority, but they will be up for taking everything that isn't nailed down. This is where I also see there being opportunity for them to sweep up and escort back any skilled help they may be able to use back home, eg., any mortal male slaves they encounter, or other half-bloods working as artisans. Doesn't have to be bad news for the people involved, they will be 'rescued' back to a safer future with House Wyvern, though it probably will mean some period of indentured service afterwards.

These aren't points I see Lorcan wanting to make explicit, as part of this story which I'm imagining him either telling or writing down, years later. Between his offering it as a 'testimony' to how events have unfolded, and the lore convention that the Fae don't outright lie about anything, he needs not to be hiding anything that's obvious, but...I'd like to show him pussyfooting more around them. TL;DR I need to find ways of making it more obvious that being somewhat marginal as Sidhe nobility, these characters don't have the precious materials they need to experiment with just lying around, and they're going to exploit an aspect of their marginal status to get those resources through what amounts to plain banditry.

Absolutely not writing any kind of 'side quest' focused on Rogier's adventures playing scavenger in the wasteland.]

At the same time, riders were sent bearing a message to Ravenna, describing the torc and advising that for matters to proceed, this must be added as part of our bargain. More followed, when tracing further through the grimoire we realized a second must be found, treating of potions Argentius had used to heighten his sensitivity to the energies in the walls between worlds.

In the days we waited for both parties to return, we began by learning the Invocation of Opening which had ended the first part of the book we had seen, and also to consider where it might best be performed.

The invocation itself was not difficult: we had heard its like before. Never from Argentius himself, but from Deaglan, and from his father Teris before him, once we were both old enough to ride with the Wild Hunt ourselves. We had not attended with the Court often enough to have done so more than once or twice a year, but it was enough to make the cadences of the long verse familiar. It was in fact very similar to the charm Cian had tested in his youth, which I had covered by my very public wooing of Morgaine.

What we had not understood in those days, was that unless we were also in the presence of a rift in the walls between the worlds, or at the very least some point of weakness where one might be broken, no amount of chanting would do anything to aid our cause.

"It also makes sense," Timuth observed, "of the traditional times for our forays into the mortal world falling at the particular times they do."

Cian nodded. "Beltaine, Samhain, or Midsummer Day, or under either a full moon, or in the dark of one."

"Yule is possible as well, though less often performed," Timuth said, with an expression of distaste. "At that I don't wonder! So much colder, and so often wet and unpleasant in the mortal lands in that season."

At that Cian smiled. "Nothing to trouble any creature less delicate than yourself, Timuth. But true. I have ridden at Yule on occasion."

"My point being, my lord, that while Argentius makes no mention of it, others do speak of these as times when the walls between worlds stretch thin, and rifts can be more easily be found."

"Except there's no time for us to find anything," I said. "However we attempt this, Cian, it must be at a known Gate."

"That decision's made," he said. "It's the Oberon's Gate we'll use." He pulled the map towards him, and rested a finger over the valley leading to the field of caverns. "It isn't the nearest to us, or necessarily the largest, but everything points to its being the one Argentius writes about discovering, near the middle of the grimoire."

"The one he describes so exhaustively...and exhaustingly." I shook my head, and rubbed my eyes. "I grant some of it did sound like the big gallery leading to the Gate."

"It is that cavern," said Timuth. "I have found references to it in the House Annals. It was during his reign that it acquired its name, once it became his most common choice from which to command the Hunt. It was then that avenue leading into it was widened, and pillars carved." He hesitated. "My lords, I have a question."

"What?"

"How great a host has the Iron Queen in mind to take with her?"