“Ay, on the road, maybe,” Gared agreed. “Cutters make ’em feel safe, but safe don’t give them a place to sleep and a full belly. Safe don’t heal the cored. Safe don’t put clothes on their backs and put ’em right back to work. Don’t give ’em a new life before losing the old one even has time to set in. You do that, Leesh. Time ya stopped bein’ so guilty about it.”
“Guilty?” Leesha asked.
“That yur alive and Rojer ent,” Gared said. “That ya had to kill those Krasians came to murder the duke. Poisoned them Sharum last summer so they couldn’t turn on us. Stuck the demon of the desert. Ya done what ya done to help people, every time. Wern’t selfish, or evil. Quit tellin’ yurself otherwise.”
Leesha looked at Gared, trying to peel back the years to their childhood romance, or the young man she had hated for so many years. The man who had ruined her reputation and arguably her life. The man in front of her was both those men, and neither. The mistakes of youth had cast both of them onto new paths.
Those paths had been difficult, but they’d led inexorably to them becoming the most powerful people in Hollow County.
And somewhere along the way, he had become like a brother to her. He was a woodbrained oaf even now, but he was a good man, and she loved him still. Leesha reached out, taking Gared’s and Rosal’s hands in hers. “I am truly happy for the two of you.”
CHAPTER 4
RAGEN AND ELISSA
334 AR
“Night.” Ragen pulled up short as the thick woods to either side of the warded Messenger road ended abruptly. It was nearing dusk, but there was light still. “We passed through less than a year ago, and this was miles of woodland.”
“Cutters’ axes swing day and night,” Briar said. The boy was on foot, somehow keeping pace with the horses.
Even atop his saddle, Ragen could smell Briar. Elissa had him bathing now, but all the hogroot the boy ate had gotten into his sweat. The scent protected him from demons at night, but it made him stand out to everyone else.
“They didn’t just clear the land,” Elissa said. “There are entire towns that weren’t there before.”
“Greatwards, too,” Briar said. “Cories can’t touch the Hollow.”
“Creator be praised.” Elissa blew out a breath. “I set out from Miln to have a taste for once of the naked night. Now I’ve had my fill. I’m ready for walls, a bath, and a feathered bed.”
“Walls make you soft,” Briar said. “Forget what’s out there.”
“I daresay I’ll have no trouble remembering,” Ragen said. They had been making their way out of Lakton for weeks via ill-used Messenger ways. Ragen had maps, but since the great Messenger road was built, many of the old trails had been reclaimed by the wetlands.
But the road was too dangerous. After the Battle of Docktown, the Krasians sent an army to take the Monastery of Dawn. The monastery was the most defensible spot Ragen had ever seen short of Lakton itself. He and Shepherd Alin had thought to hold out for weeks, but even those great walls were no match for Krasian laddermen. There was hand-fighting on the walls the first day, and they had been forced to flee to the docks.
Krasian privateers harried them for miles, but could not keep pace with Captain Dehlia and the Sharum’s Lament. They lost sight of the pursuers long enough to send boats out to a tiny fishing village to the north where they could begin the trek back to Miln.
The Krasians were conquering every village near the Messenger road, so Ragen had taken his charges overland, through out-of-the-way hamlets and along trails that were little more than dim memories of a path. They made valuable contacts along the way, and sent Euchor reports whenever possible, though Creator knew if any of them made it to him.
Ragen shook his head as they approached the first greatward. “I remember when Cutter’s Hollow was a hamlet with less than three hundred people. Now it’s home to a hundred thousand, by some estimates.”
“All because of Arlen,” Elissa said.
“You really knew him?” Briar asked. “Warded Man?”
“Knew him?” Ragen laughed. “We practically raised him. Like a son to us.” Briar looked up at him, and Ragen reached down, squeezing the boy’s shoulder. Briar tended to flinch at intimate contact, but this he allowed, even leaning into it a bit. “Like you’ve become, Briar.”
“In another life, you might have called him brother.” Elissa choked on the words. “But now Arlen is gone.”
“Ent,” Briar said.
“What’s that, boy?” Ragen asked.
“Folk saw him,” Briar said. “When Krasians first came. He was on the road, helping.”
“There were rumors,” Elissa said.
Ragen reached over to take her hand. “People tell ale stories, Briar.”
Briar shook his head. “Different folk, different places, same story. Drew wards in the air and cories burst into flame.”
“Do you think…” Elissa asked.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Ragen said, though he hadn’t dared believe it himself. “Boy’s too stubborn to die.”
Elissa laughed, sniffling.
She looked up suddenly. “Do you hear singing?”
—
“There.” Ragen had the distance lens to his eye, whatever he saw lost in the gloom to Elissa.
“What is it?” Elissa asked.
Ragen passed Elissa the lens. “Looks like a funeral procession.”
In the lens, Elissa could see a fiddle-playing Jongleur, flanked by two singing Krasian women in bright, colorful robes. Behind the Krasian women were a Tender and a finely dressed woman, followed by their attendants and six Cutters bearing a wooden litter on their wide shoulders.
Hundreds followed in their wake, voices joined in song. They were led by a bright patchwork troupe of Jongleurs.
“The Jongleur at the lead,” Elissa said, moving the lens back to the front. “Might that be Arlen’s friend? The fiddle wizard, Rojer Halfgrip?”
“Not unless Arlen didn’t notice that Halfgrip is a woman with two hands,” Ragen said. Elissa looked closer and saw he was right. The three in front were all women.
Elissa studied the women. Their music was eerily clear, carried on the night air as if by magic. “Why would a funeral procession be heading to the edge of the greatwards?”
“Kill seven cories,” Briar said.
Elissa looked at him. “Whatever for?”
“It’s a Krasian ritual,” Ragen said. “They believe killing seven demons—one for each pillar of Heaven—honors and guides a departing spirit down the lonely path.”
“The lonely path?” Elissa asked.
“Path that leads to the Creator.” Briar’s voice tightened. “And His judgment.”
They stepped off the road as the procession reached them, blending into the crowd as it passed. The Mistress of the Hollow held a rod in her hand that looked to be a slender bone covered in gold plate, etched with wards. As they went, she used it to draw light wards that hung in the air like silver script. Then she gave a flick of her wrist and they shot high into the sky and burst into brilliance, hanging in the air to illuminate the procession.
“Ragen,” Elissa said quietly.
“I see.” Ragen had heard of the demon bone magic of the Krasians, but didn’t truly understand it until now. If demon bones held magic after the coreling died, it meant any skilled Warder could do what the mistress just did.
And few in Miln were as skilled as the Warders’ Guildmaster and his wife.
The procession stopped at a great clearing, and the trio at the lead left the road, going to stand at its center. They changed their song, and demons appeared at the outskirts, drawn to the sound. Elissa gripped Ragen’s arm with sharp fingernails, but neither of them could utter a word.
A few in the crowd cried out when the corelings were almost upon them, but again the music shifted, and demon claws dug great furrows in the ground as they pulled up short.
The fiddler kept her tune, holding the center of the clearing free of demons as the Krasian women circled, driving some of the demons away with shrieks, even as they kept others bound in place until there was only one of each breed.