In the film, the young Kintyre races back along the road to fetch help from Turn Hall, but stops when he finds an abandoned farm. Stealing rope from the ruins of the tilting barn, he returns to the chasm and rappels down to rescue his unconscious and bleeding brother in his first act of heroism. But before hauling them both back into the daylight, he spots something glittering on the bottom of a still, deep pool.
It’s Foesmiter. The crowd whoops and applauds hard when, after his third dive, Kintyre breaks the surface of the pool with the sword held aloft, glittering in the lone shaft of syrupy-golden sunlight. The music surges, the room cheers, and Elgar can see tears running down Forsyth’s cheeks in the reflected light of the film.
Homesickness? Elgar wonders.
The rest of the film is taken up with Kintyre getting Forsyth home and being scolded by his father for trying to run away on the eve of his own birthday party and the opportunity to choose a wife from all the pretty, stupid girls tittering at him from behind their fans. But Elgar isn’t watching anymore.
All he can see is the way Forsyth pants and shakes, the way he flinches at every movement on the screen, clenches his jaw at every word. The way Lucy presses her forehead against his shoulder, squeezes his thigh with her free hand, as if she has to hold him down, hold him still as Forsyth, who has always been intensely private and buttoned-down, is forced to experience one of the most profoundly emotional ten minutes of his life—in public.
Just for the sake of catching the Viceroy. Just for the sake of protecting Elgar.
He suddenly feels very small, and profoundly guilty. He wishes, suddenly, that he’d thought to offer Forsyth a private viewing first. But then the lights snap back on, and Elgar is caught staring. Heads swivel and murmurs rise as people try to figure out what he is looking at. Mortified, Forsyth mops at his face and ducks into Lucy’s embrace.
“So, what the heck was that?” the moderator asks, wrenching Elgar’s attention back to the stage, and the conversation he’s supposed to be having. The moderator says it with wide eyes and a grin he can’t quite conceal.
“What do you think?” Elgar replies, and then barrels on, too excited to actually let him answer. “It’s a teaser for the new . . . wait for it . . . Tales of Kintyre Turn television series!”
As he knew they would, the crowd surges to its feet again, screaming and hollering, stamping and applauding in joy. When the noise has died down again, the moderator says: “So, this series is about the Great Hero of Hain himself?”
“Yeah, it’ll follow the path of the books, tracing the story from when Kintyre leaves home at the end of this snippet and meets Bevel at the start of book one, right through to the defeat of the Viceroy.”
Elgar stops. Waits. Listens as the crowd cheers and thunders their feet against the carpet. He squints against the stage lights, searching. Now, the moment is now, it has to be. . . . He holds his breath, scanning the rafters, muscles clenched, ready.
Nothing happens. Nothing changes. Nothing jumps out of the shadows.
God dammit, Elgar thinks. I thought that would be his cue. Where the hell is he?
“Wow!” the moderator says, filling the awkward silence. “How awesome.”
Elgar jolts his attention back to the stage, where the moderator is making a “go on” face at him.
“Oh, uh, there’ll be more, too,” Elgar says slowly, drawing it out. Waiting, waiting. “Uh, it will follow some of the life of the people Kintyre left behind in Turnshire. Um. Like, uh . . . like his little brother, who, I am happy to report, has a whole storyline of his own now.”
Forsyth starts in his seat, eyes wrenched back to the stage by this pronouncement. His eyes are red-rimmed, his nose puffy, and he looks shocked. Shocked, and pleased.
The hall quiets. There is no crackle of fire, no evil laugh, no shouted oath. Nothing.
“That’s exciting!” the moderator says. “So we’ll be seeing everything, all eight books?”
“Absolutely, including how the Viceroy is finally defeated.” Elgar waits again, watches, braces himself.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Goddamn fucking nothing, Elgar snarls mentally. What’s taking so long?
He slips his downstage hand back to the hilt of the knife, unable to stop himself. His hand is shaking. His chest burns. The bottoms of his feet itch.
“That’s right, we don’t get that in the novels, do we?”
What? Elgar thinks stupidly, and yanks his gaze back to the man on stage with him, who’s starting to look annoyed.
“No. I’ve always had an idea of what happened to the villain, how he got his comeuppance,” Elgar says, feeling daring. Feeling invincible after the overwhelming positivity of the reception of this short, feeling reckless. Feeling like the kind of bait that’s getting sick of dangling. “He was always a bastard.”
In the front row, Lucy tenses, the corner of her mouth turning down.
“True enough!” the moderator laughs. Then he claps his hands, a sharp burst of sound that makes Elgar jump in his seat, wild-eyed and heart racing. “Right, we’ve got some folks lined up for the microphones, so let’s have at it, people! Who do we have first?”
“Hi!” a young woman says over the sound system, and the lights in the auditorium come up enough for Elgar to see her standing to the far left of the room, wearing a shirt with the map of Hain printed on it. “I’m Adrienne. I wanted to ask, can you
