I turned from the window.
Mordred was watching me with that particular expression of his, something that wasn’t quite neutral, not quite waiting, but evaluating. He always looked like a man running calculations behind his expression.
“You said it intensifies when the wind comes from the east.”
“Yes.”
“Active or passive.”
“Passive.” He was certain of that one, as there was no hesitation when he responded. “There is no direction to it. No intention that I can detect. It radiates outward the way heat radiates. For that reason, I don’t believe it’s trying to reach the wards. The wards are simply close enough to be affected by it.”
Something in the Whispering Wilds was generating a field it didn’t know it was generating. Or didn’t care.
Neither option was comforting.
“What’s your hypothesis then?” I asked flatly.
He inhaled. “I believe, my king, that something old has become active in the Wilds. Not recently active... I believe it has been there for some time, dormant or diminished. What has changed is the degree of activity. It is intensifying. The rate of intensification over the three weeks I have been tracking suggests...” He stopped. Started again. “It’s not accelerating linearly.”
Exponential, then. Or close enough.
“Blodeuwyn?”
He shook his head. “I do not believe she is capable of such a thing.”
“Hmm,” I answered. “Then that leaves us nowhere and with nothing we can use.”
“Yes.”
I looked at him. “And you waited three weeks to bring this to me.”
“I needed sufficient data to distinguish this from routine ward degradation.” There was no apology in his voice because clearly he didn’t think he owed one. “I also needed to eliminate every alternative explanation before I brought you a conclusion that would require significant decisions.”
He meant he hadn’t wanted to walk into my solar and tell me there was something ancient and nameless waking up in the magical forest until he was sure enough that I couldn’t dismiss it. He knew me well enough for that.
I pulled my gaze back to the window. The treeline hadn’t moved. Obviously, it hadn’t moved. But it looked different now than it had ten minutes ago. The dark had a different quality to it. Or I was assigning quality to darkness because Mordred had just handed me a problem with no clean edges.
“Can you contain it?”
This time it was a longer pause than any that had come before it.
“I don’t know what it is,” he said. “And thus, I cannot answer that question yet.”
Which was the most honest thing Mordred had said all evening, and therefore the most alarming.
I said nothing. He said nothing. The coals in the grate ticked and settled.
Outside, somewhere beyond the wall, the Whispering Wilds stood in the dark and did whatever they were doing. They had always been a place unto themselves, answering different laws and rules of nature and magic. They were patient, and they were indifferent. Older than my kingdom and everything it was built on.
“Find out what it is,” I said.
Mordred inclined his head. “Yes, sire.”
“Quickly.”
“Yes, sire.”
I stayed at the window a long time after his footsteps faded down the corridor.