Leesha kicked her horse ahead, picking her way through the trees until she came alongside the Painted Man. With no natural path to follow, much less one wide enough for two, they had to continually shift and duck to avoid low-hanging limbs. Gared was forced to get down from his horse entirely and walk.
“Where are we going?” Leesha asked.
“To get your grimoires,” the Painted Man replied.
“I thought you said they were in Angiers,” she said.
“The duchy, not the city,” the Painted Man said with a grin.
The path soon widened, but still in a way that seemed natural to the untrained eye. Leesha was an Herb Gatherer, though, and knew plants better than anything.
“You cultivated this,” she said. “You felled trees and widened the path, then hid your work so it doesn’t seem a path at all.”
“I value my privacy,” the Painted Man said.
“It must have taken years!” Leesha said.
The Painted Man shook his head. “My strength has some uses. I can fell a tree almost as fast as Gared, and drag it off easier than a team of horses.”
They followed the secret path deep into the woods until it veered off to the left. Ignoring the clear path, the Painted Man turned right, and again plunged into the trees. The others followed, and when they pushed through the branches they gasped as one.
There, hidden in a hollow, was a stone wall, so covered in ivy and moss that it had been invisible until they were upon it.
“I can’t believe this is just sitting here, so close to the road,” Rojer said.
“There are hundreds of ruins like this in the forest,” the Painted Man said. “The trees reclaimed land quickly after the Return. A few are common Messenger stops, but others, like this one, have gone unnoticed for centuries.”
They followed the wall to a gate, ancient and rusted shut. The Painted Man took a key from his robes and inserted it in the lock, which turned with a smooth oiled click. The gates opened silently.
Inside was a stable that seemed collapsed from the front, but the rear half of the structure was intact and clear, with a large covered cart and more than enough space for the four horses.
“Miraculous that half the stable should survive the years so well, and the other half not,” Leesha noted with a grin, lifting some ivy out of the way to reveal fresh wards on the stable’s walls. The Painted Man said nothing as they brushed down the horses.
Like the rest of the compound, the main house was in ruins, the roof caved and looking decidedly unsafe. The Painted Man led them around the back to a servant’s house, still quite large by the standards of anyone raised in the hamlets. The place was half collapsed, like the stable, but the door the Painted Man led them through was heavy, thick, and locked.
The door opened into one great room, restored to function as a workshop. Warding equipment lay on every surface, along with sealed jars of ink and paint, various half-finished projects, and piles of materials.
There was a small cupboard by the fireplace. Leesha opened it to find one cup and one plate, one bowl and one spoon. A knife was stuck in a small cutting board by the cold pot hanging in the hearth.
“So cold,” Leesha whispered. “So lonely.”
“He doesn’t even have a bed,” Rojer murmured. “He must sleep on the floor.”
“I used to think I was alone, living in Bruna’s hut,” Leesha said, “but this…”
“Over here,” the Painted Man said, moving to a corner of the room with a large bookshelf. That got Leesha’s attention immediately, and she headed over.
“Are those the grimoires?” she asked, unable to keep the eagerness from her voice.
The Painted Man glanced at the shelf and shook his head. “Those are nothing,” he said. “Common wards and books, histories and basic maps. Nothing you can’t find in the library of any Warder or Messenger worth the name.”
“Then where…?” Leesha began, but the Painted Man moved over to a nondescript section of the floor and stamped his heel down hard in a precise spot. The board was on a fulcrum, and as one end dipped into a hollow in the floor, the other rose, revealing a small metal ring. The Painted Man grasped the ring and pulled, opening a trapdoor in the flooring, its edges uneven and filled with sawdust, making them indistinguishable from the surrounding floorboards.
He lit a lantern and led the way down the steps into a large basement. The walls were stone, and the room was cool and dry. There was a hall leading in the direction of the collapsed main house, but a giant stone block had fallen to bar the path.
Painted weapons lay stacked and hung everywhere. Axes, spears of varying length, polearms, and knives, all delicately etched with battle wards. Dozens of crank bow bolts. Literally thousands of arrows, stacked in gross bundles.
There were trophies of a sort, as well, demon skulls, horns, and talons, dented shields and broken spears. Gared and Wonda drew wards in the air.
“Here,” the Painted Man said to Wonda, handing her a bundle of arrows, delicate wards entwined along their wooden shafts and metal heads. “These will bite coreling flesh deeper than the ones in your quiver.”
Wonda’s hands shook as she accepted the gift. Speechless, she bowed her head, and the Painted Man bowed in return.
“Gared…” the Painted Man said, looking around as Gared stepped forward. He selected a heavy machete, its blade etched with hundreds of tiny wards. “You can hack through wood demon limbs like errant vines with this,” he said, handing the weapon to Gared hilt-first. Gared dropped to his knees.
“Get up,” the Painted Man snapped. “I ent the ripping Deliverer!”
“Ent callin’ you any names,” Gared said, keeping his eyes down. “All I know is I spent my whole life acting the selfish fool, but since you come to the Hollow, I seen the sun. I seen how I let my pride and my…lusts,” his eyes flicked to Leesha, just for an instant, “blind me. The Creator blessed me with strong arms to kill demons, not to take whatever I wanted.”
The Painted Man held out his hand, and when Gared took it, he pulled the man roughly to his feet. Gared weighed more than three hundred pounds, but he might as well have been a child.
“Maybe you seen the sun, Gared,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I showed it to you. You’d lost your da just a day before. That’ll grow any man. Show him what’s important in life.”
He held out the machete again, and Gared took it. It was a huge blade, but it seemed little more than a dagger in Gared’s giant hand. He looked at the delicate warding in wonder.
The Painted Man looked at Leesha. “Those,” he pointed to a series of shelves at the far end of the room, “are the grimoires.” Leesha immediately moved toward the shelves, but he caught her arm. “I let you go there and we’ll lose you for the next ten hours.”
Leesha frowned, wanting nothing more than to pull her arm away and bury herself in the heavy, leather-bound tomes, but she suppressed the urge. This was not her home. She nodded.
“we’ll bring the books with us when we leave,” the Painted Man said. “I have other copies. Those will be yours to keep.”
Rojer looked to the Painted Man. “Everyone gets a gift but me?”
The Painted Man smiled. “We’ll find you something.” He moved over to the blocked corridor. The keystone that had collapsed from the archway looked to weigh hundreds of pounds, but he lifted it away easily, leading them to a heavy, locked door that had been hidden in the darkness.
He produced another key from his robes and turned it in the lock, opening the door and stepping inside. He touched a taper to a huge stand lamp by the door, and it flared to life, reflecting off large mirrors carefully placed around the room. Instantly the huge chamber was filled with bright light, and the visitors gasped collectively.
Carpets, rich and thick, woven in faded design from ages past, covered the stone floor. The walls were hung with dozens of paintings of forgotten people and events, masterworks in gilded frames, along with metal-framed mirrors and polished furnitur
e. Treasures lay piled in rain barrels around the room, filled to bursting with ancient gold coins, gems, and jewelry. Machines of unknown purpose lay partially disassembled alongside great marble statues and busts, musical instruments, and countless other riches. There were bookshelves everywhere.
“How is this possible?” Leesha asked.
“Corelings care little for riches,” the Painted Man said. “Messengers picked the easily accessible ruins clean, but there are countless places they’ve never been, whole cities lost to demons and swallowed up by the land. I’ve tried to preserve whatever survived the elements.”
“You’re richer than all the dukes combined,” Rojer said in awe.
The Painted Man shrugged. “I have little use for it. Take whatever you like.”
Rojer gave a whoop and ran through the room, running his fingers through piles of coins and jewelry, picking up statuettes and ancient weapons. He played a tune on a brass horn, then gave a cry and ducked behind a broken statue, reappearing with a fiddle in his hands. The strings had rotted away, but the wood was still strong and polished. He laughed aloud, holding the prize up in delight.
Gared looked around the room. “Liked the other room better,” he told Wonda, and she nodded her agreement.
The gates of Fort Angiers were closed.
“During the day?” Rojer asked in surprise. “They’re usually open wide for the loggers and their carts.” He sat now in the driver’s seat of the cart from the Painted Man’s keep, pulled by Leesha’s horse. She sat beside him, in front of several bags of books and other items used to disguise the cart’s false bottom. The hidden hold was filled with warded weapons and more than a little gold.
“Maybe Rhinebeck’s taking the Krasian threat more seriously than we thought,” Leesha said. Indeed, as they drew closer to the city, they saw guards armed with loaded crank bows patrolling the walltop, and woodworkers carving arrow slits at the lower levels of the wall. Where the gate had once had a single pair of guards, now there were several, standing alert with their spears at the ready.
“Marick’s tale likely set things in a frenzy,” the Painted Man agreed, “but I’ll wager those guards are there more to prevent thousands of refugees from pouring into the city than they are to ward off any Krasian attack.”
“The duke couldn’t possibly refuse all those people succor,” Leesha said.
“Why not?” the Painted Man said. “Duke Euchor lets the Beggars of Miln sleep on the unwarded streets every night.”
“Ay, state your business!” a guard called as they approached. The Painted Man pulled his hood lower and drifted toward the back of the group.
“We come by way of Deliverer’s Hollow,” Rojer said. “I’m Rojer Halfgrip, licensed to the Jongleurs’ Guild, and these are my companions.”
“Halfgrip?” one guard asked. “The fiddler?”
“The same,” Rojer said, lifting the newly strung fiddle the Painted Man had given him.
“Saw you play once,” the guard grunted. “Who are the others?”
“This is Leesha, Herb Gatherer of Deliverer’s Hollow, formerly of the hospit of Mistress Jizell in Angiers,” Rojer said, gesturing to Leesha. “The others are Cutters come to guard us on the road; Gared, Wonda, and, er…Flinn.”
Wonda gasped. Flinn Cutter was her father’s name, a man killed in the Battle of Cutter’s Hollow less than a year earlier. Rojer immediately regretted the improvisation.
“Why’s he all covered?” the guard asked, pointing his chin at the Painted Man.
Rojer leaned in close, dropping his voice to a whisper. “He’s badly demon-scarred, I’m afraid. Doesn’t like people looking on his deformity.”
“It true what they say?” the guard asked. “Do they kill corelings in the Hollow? They say the Deliverer has come there, bringing with him the battle wards of old.”
Rojer nodded. “Gared here has killed dozens himself.”
“What I wouldn’t give to have my spear warded to kill demons,” one guard said.
“We ’ve come to trade,” Rojer said. “You’ll have your wish soon enough.”
“That what you got in the cart?” the guard asked. “Weapons?” As he spoke, a few other guards walked back to inspect the contents.
“No weapons,” Rojer said, his throat tightening at the thought of them discovering the hidden compartment.
“Just looks like warding books,” one of the guards said, opening one of the sacks.
“They’re mine,” Leesha said. “I’m a Warder.”
“Thought he said you was an Herb Gatherer,” the guard said.
“I’m both,” Leesha said.
The guard looked at her, then at Wonda, then shook his head. “Women warriors, women Warders,” he snorted. “They’ll let ’em do anything out in the hamlets.” Leesha bristled at that, but Rojer laid a hand on her arm and she calmed.
One of the guards had moved back to where the Painted Man sat atop Twilight Dancer. Much of the stallion’s magnificent warded barding was hidden away, but the giant animal himself stood out, as did his cloaked rider. The guard moved in, trying to peek under the Painted Man’s hood. The Painted Man obliged him, lifting his head slightly so a sliver of light could reach under the shadows of his cowl.
The guard gasped and backed away, hurrying over to his superior, who was still speaking to Rojer. He whispered in the lieutenant’s ear, and his eyes widened.
“Clear the way!” the lieutenant shouted to the other guards. “Let them pass!” He waved them through, and the gate opened, allowing them passage into the city.
“I’m not sure if that went well or not,” Rojer said.
“What’s done is done,” the Painted Man said. “Let’s move quickly before word spreads.”
They headed into the bustling city streets, boardwalked to prevent corelings from finding a path to rise within the city’s wardnet. They had to dismount and lead the horses, which slowed things considerably, but it also allowed the Painted Man to virtually disappear between the horses and behind the cart.
Still, their passage did not go unobserved. “We ’re being followed,” the Painted Man said at one point when the boardwalk street was wide enough for him to come up alongside the cart. “One of the guards has been drifting along in our wake since we left the gate.”
Rojer looked back and caught a glimpse of a city guard’s uniform just before the man ducked behind a vendor’s stall.
“What should we do?” he asked.
“Not much we can do,” the Painted Man said. “Just thought you should know.”
Rojer knew the mazelike streets of Angiers well, and took them on a circuitous route through the most crowded areas to their destination, hoping to shake the pursuit. He kept glancing over his shoulder, pretending to look appreciatively at passing women or vendors’ wares, but always the guard was there, just on the edge of sight.
“We can’t keep circling forever, Rojer,” Leesha said at last. “Let’s just get to Jizell’s before it starts to get dark.”
Rojer nodded and turned the cart directly for Mistress Jizell’s hospit, which quickly came in sight. It was a wide, two-story building, made almost entirely of wood, as were all the buildings in Angiers. There was a small visitors’ stable around the side.
“Mistress Leesha?” the girl minding the stable asked in surprise, seeing them pull up.
“Yes, it’s me, Roni.” Leesha smiled. “Look how you’ve grown! Have you been keeping to your studies while I was gone?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am!” Roni said, but her eyes had already flicked to Rojer, and then drifted on to Gared, where they lingered. Roni was a promising apprentice, but she was easily distracted, especially by men. Fifteen and full-flowered, she would already be married and raising children of her own if she had grown up in the hamlets, but women married later in the Free Cities, and Leesha was thankful for that.
“Run and tell Mistress Jizell we ’ve arrived,” Leesha said. “I didn’t have time to write, and she may not have room for all
of us.”
Roni nodded and ran off, and before they were done brushing down the horses, a woman shouted “Leesha!” Leesha turned, only to find herself smothered against Mistress Jizell’s prodigious bosom as the older woman swept her into a tight hug.
Just shy of sixty, Mistress Jizell was still strong and robust despite the heavy frame under her pocketed apron. A former apprentice of Bruna much as Leesha was, Jizell had been running her hospit in Angiers for more than twenty years.
“It’s good to have you back,” Jizell said, pulling back only after all the air had been squeezed from Leesha’s slender frame.
“It’s good to be back,” Leesha said, returning Jizell’s smile.
“And young Master Rojer!” Jizell boomed, sweeping poor Rojer into a similarly crushing embrace. “It seems I owe you thrice! Once for escorting Leesha home, and twice more for bringing her back!”
“It was nothing,” Rojer said. “I owe you both more than I can repay.”
“You can help work that off by playing your fiddle for the patients tonight,” Jizell said.
“We don’t want to put you out if there’s no room,” Leesha said. “We can stay at an inn.”
“The Core you can,” Jizell said. “You’ll all stay with us, and that’s final. We have a great deal of catching up to do, and all the girls will want to see you.”
“Thank you,” Leesha said.
“Now, who are your companions?” Jizell asked, turning to the others. “No, let me guess,” she said when Leesha opened her mouth. “Let’s see if the descriptions in your letters do them justice.” She looked Gared up and down, craning her head back to meet his eyes. “You must be Gared Cutter,” she guessed.
Gared bowed. “Yes’m,” he said.
“Built like a bear, but with good manners,” Jizell said, slapping one of Gared’s burly biceps. “we’ll get along fine.”
She turned to Wonda, not flinching in the least at the angry red scars on the young woman’s face. “Wonda, I take it?” she asked.
“Yes, mistress,” Wonda said, bowing.
The Desert Spear (demon) Page 35