The Core (The Demon Cycle, Book 5)

by Peter V. Brett

  And so Briar moved to gather as much information as possible before returning. He kept to the underbrush alongside the Messenger road south, slipping in and out of the hamlets along the way. He questioned contacts where he had them, and listened to the talk in the squares and inns.

  Most of the villages on the road to Docktown were under Hollow control, with considerable traffic in goods, travellers, and Cutter patrols. Countess Paper was aggressively expanding her borders in response to raids by the Wolves of Everam.

  The Wolves were a Sharum cavalry unit under a Krasian warlord named Jurim. They were always on the move, never staying longer than it took to sack a town. If they had a base, none could find it, and their numbers were likewise opaque. There might be as few as two hundred of them, or more than a thousand.

  Even in Hollow territory, Briar saw Wolf scouts spying on the road. They were skilled woodsmen by now, but clumsy and loud by Briar’s standards. He could easily have snuck up and killed them, but couldn’t bring himself to spill blood when there was no immediate threat.

  It was fear of the Wolves that kept the hamlets on the Krasian side of the border under Evejan law. The Laktonians now outnumbered their Krasian overseers, stripped bare after the Battle of Angiers. But those who tried to throw off the local dama without aid from the Hollow had been visited by the Wolves, reduced to ash and blood.

  Traffic thinned in Krasian territory. Trade wagons were fewer, and the dama did not allow chin to travel between villages. By the time Briar reached the split at Northfork, the Messenger road was empty.

  Briar headed east for a few days to learn what he could before reporting to Lakton. Krasian Messengers and patrols passed from time to time, but otherwise all was quiet. Hamlets east of Northfork were more firmly under Krasian control now that Prince Egar’s rebels had been crushed at the Battle of Docktown.

  But firmly under the thumb of the Krasians as they were, there were few Sharum in the hamlets. If the Laktonians struck now, there would be no reinforcements.

  He turned back, heading for Docktown. There were Sharum blacks in his pack he could use to slip into the town and explore. Then he would head north along the shoreline until he reached a certain hidden cove Captain Dehlia favoured. If he moved a certain rock, she would be sure to notice and send a boat to pick him up.

  But as he was about to cut cross-country, a lone traveller caught his attention.

  ‘The sun will set soon,’ Ashia told Kaji.

  It was not the Sharum’ting way to speak aloud. For the last decade she had largely spoken in the intricate hand code of the mute eunuchs who served the dama’ting. She and her spear sisters were not meant to be seen or heard. Only felt.

  But she was no longer simply a Sharum’ting. She was a mother, and a mother’s duty was to teach her child to speak.

  ‘We’ll need to make camp,’ she advised, wondering if there were hidden ears about. If they had just revealed too much of their plans. She saw a slight movement in the undergrowth. It could have been a deer, or a shadow, or nothing at all. Her veil flared and pulled tight as she sniffed the air.

  ‘Cap!’ Kaji echoed.

  ‘That’s right, my heart!’ The chatter, however unnatural it felt, only helped her disguise.

  Sharum patrols are apt to force themselves on any woman caught travelling alone, the Damajah had said. Or a shapely young mother, even with her babe. But a shapeless old woman travelling with her grandson will be invisible.

  And so Ashia had strewn rough dal’ting blacks over her armour to give her a shapeless figure. She hunched, adding the weight of years to her carriage. A thick black veil hid her face and hair. Makeup around the eyes added wrinkles to her smooth skin.

  Her twin stabbing spears were unscrewed and sheathed in cloth, supports for the pack Kaji rode on her back. She could have them in her hands in seconds if needed, extending the warded spearheads contained in the hollow shafts with a flick of her wrist.

  The mirror finish of her warded glass shield was hidden under a coating of paint shaded to look like battered bronze. The sort of shield almost every Krasian family had at least one of, left over from some Sharum relative who walked the lonely path. It hung from her saddle, not worth the effort of stealing.

  Likewise, her mare had been carefully chosen to appear nondescript. Rags tied about her fetlocks hid the silvered wards cut into her hooves. Even the horse’s name, Rasa, meant ‘hidden strength’.

  She seemed just another of the countless Krasian women in the wetlands, widowed by Prince Jayan’s foolishness. With nothing worth stealing and a child on her back, she was largely ignored by bandits and Sharum patrols alike.

  The Damajah had used her earring to check their progress the first few nights, but Ashia had long since passed out of range. They would be in Everam’s Reservoir in just two more days.

  Ashia found a secluded patch of dry land not far from the road as the sun set.

  ‘Cap!’ Kaji cried, as she got down from her horse.

  ‘That’s right,’ Ashia agreed. ‘This is our camp. What do we do first?’

  ‘Hoss!’ Kaji answered immediately. They practised every evening.

  ‘Yes,’ Ashia said. ‘First I have to stake the horse.’ She did not use a hammer, driving the peg into the ground with a precise thrust of her palm, like striking a blow against Ala itself.

  ‘What do we do second?’ Ashia asked.

  ‘Suhkul!’ Kaji shouted.

  Ashia smiled as she spread her portable warded circle. Last night, he responded to the second question with ‘hoss’. The night before, nothing. Already, he understood her well enough, and every day brought a new word to his tiny lips.

  She set his pack down and began laying stones for a fire.

  ‘Cap!’ he pointed at the sticks she gathered.

  Ashia set them ablaze with her ruby ring, which contained a piece of flame demon horn. ‘Fire.’

  ‘Fir,’ Kaji agreed, and she felt a thrill run through her. Another new word. It was fitting, for today was a special day.

  She unstrapped Kaji and lifted him from the pack to change his bido. Her eyes never left his as her practised hands went about the task.

  ‘It is your born day.’ She lifted Kaji close. ‘Ala has made one journey around Everam’s sun since the night you were brought into this world.’ She opened the front of her robes to free a breast.

  There was a slight rustle in the trees. Ashia gave no outward sign, cooing as she brought her son in to suckle, but all her attention homed in on that spot. Eyes like a falcon’s could see no sign of anyone. Sharp ears strained, but there was no further sound.

  It could have been anything. The sun had not set, so she knew it was no demon, but it could have been a small animal. A falling nut. A slight breeze.

  But there was that scent again. The one she’d smelled on the road.

  She waited, falling into her breath as she strained her senses, but there was nothing to indicate a threat.

  ‘Your mother sees enemies everywhere,’ she told Kaji at last. The boy was not listening, eyes closed as he nursed. Ashia took her own repast, one of the small dense honey cakes the Sharum’ting used to keep up their strength with minimal ingestion.

  When he was done, she left him on a blanket in the hollow of her rounded shield. He stretched and fidgeted, free at last of the confining pack, but the wobbling shield kept him safely confined while she tended Rasa, removing the saddle and brushing her down.

  By the time the horse was settled, the sky was darkening. Perhaps a quarter hour before the rising. She lifted Kaji from the shield and set him on his feet. He held on to her sleeve, but it was for balance, not strength. For the next several minutes, he stumbled gleefully through the camp, dragging his mother along.

  ‘Hoss!’ he shouted at Rasa.

  ‘Yes, horse!’ Ashia laughingly agreed.

  ‘Fir!’ he barked at the fire.

  ‘Yes, fire!’ Ashia gave his hand a squeeze.

  ‘Cap!’ he cried to the wards.
/>
  ‘Wards,’ Ashia told him, tracing the symbols with a finger.

  ‘Wads!’ Kaji shouted.

  Another rustle. Ashia kept her breathing steady, but she picked Kaji up and swung him through the air. The boy squealed with joy as she brought him back to the fire in the centre of the circle.

  She reached into her saddlebag for a carefully wrapped box. ‘I have something special for you, my son. A present, for your first born day.’ Inside was a soft, yellow cake. ‘My Tikka made this when I was a girl, and I loved it more than anything. Now she has made one for you.’

  She began to sing, a traditional song for a child’s born day. She and her spear sisters were all trained singers. Ashia seldom had call to use the skill, but never did she feel closer to Everam than when she sang to her son.

  Again, the sound from the trees. The warded coins strung about her forehead let her see in Everam’s light now that the sun was setting, but even with them, there was no sign of any creature in the woods.

  But it was there, and it was clever, timing its movements with the rise and fall of her song to mask the sound.

  Whoever it was did not appear to wish them immediate harm. After a few moments, they began drifting away. A spy on the way to report to a superior?

  The spy moved in time with not just her voice, but the crickets and birds, the cries of bats and the howl of wind. Sensitive to the night’s harmony, it was no mere animal. No simple demon. One of Asome’s elite Krevakh Watchers? A dama sorcerer?

  Or was it one of the shapeless alagai? The kai. Ashia fought one of them, Asome at her side, what seemed a lifetime ago. The demon recovered quickly from even her strongest blows, doubling and redoubling its assaults, growing more and more limbs until she could not dodge or parry them all.

  It had been her husband who killed it, in the end. Ashia could not say in truth that she would have been victorious alone. Such a demon had killed her master, Enkido.

  As she sang, she slipped her warded glass spear shafts from the baby pack, screwing them together into a walking stick. When the song was done, she set the cake in front of Kaji. He stared at it.

  ‘Cake,’ Ashia said.

  ‘Cay,’ Kaji said.

  ‘You eat it.’ Ashia reached out and broke a piece off the cake. How long since she last tasted Tikka’s cake? Nearly a decade. ‘Like this.’

  She popped the piece into her mouth. Soft, sticky, and sweet, it tasted like childhood. Like happiness and safety. She remembered her own private pillow chamber filled with silks and velvet and rich carpet, golden chalices and stained glass. Vapid conversations with the crowd of young women who seemed to exist only to flatter her. The life she lived before being wrenched into cramped subsistence beneath the Dama’ting Palace.

  Kaji laughed, mimicking her as best he could. He used two hands, grabbing the spongy cake in gleeful fists, scattering far more than made it into his mouth. Ashia laughed again. She hated Kajivah for witlessly sending her and her cousins to Inevera, and hated her again when she was pulled away from them to marry Asome. But if all those moments were leading to this, the sound of Kaji’s laughter, then every moment of suffering was worth it.

  But even as she watched her son experience Tikka’s yellow cake for the first time, a part of Ashia was tracking the spy. They had drawn off, but not too far. She could smell them.

  Ashia cleaned Kaji’s sticky hands and nestled him in a blanket inside her shield. Even if the outer wards should fail, the circle around the rim of the shield would keep him safe until she could get to him.

  She lifted Kaji’s soiled bido. ‘You may be allowed to empty yourself in the circle, my son, but I am afraid I cannot.’ She kissed him. ‘I will be back in a moment.’

  She moved slowly, in case the predator still watched, pretending to need the walking stick to get to her feet. She shuffled slowly out of the firelight, slipping behind a tree.

  The moment she was out of sight, Ashia dropped her heavy outer robe, clad now in feather-light black Sharum’ting silks, reinforced with plates of warded glass. She activated her hora of silence, making no sound as she scampered up the tree and into the boughs.

  Kaji was speaking to himself as he often did, much of it indecipherable sounds. Ashia focused on them, moving as one with their rise and fall, as the predator had. She flitted from tree to tree like a hummingbird between flowers, and soon circled around the camp and into the trees, at last getting a look at the spy.

  Briar lost a day, but while his information was useful, there was no one expecting him in Lakton. The road was not safe for an old Krasian woman and her child. The Sharum were his enemy – he had to believe that – but his home had not been invaded by women and children.

  He was impressed by the woman, and a little suspicious. Her back was stooped, as if she did not have the strength to carry herself upright, but she rode the day through with a babe on her back, stopping only to feed and change him. When the day grew late, she showed no fear, calmly finding a spot out of sight of the road and making camp.

  Krasian women were hard. They did the majority of work in their communities, ran businesses, constructed buildings, slaughtered livestock, and raised children.

  What they did not do was fight. Not against other humans, and certainly not against demons. This one didn’t even have any weapons, only a battered shield, yet she faced the coming night with no sign of worry. Even Briar was filled with fear when the sun set. It was the reason he was still alive.

  Who was this woman? Was the boy her son? Grandson? Or just another orphan, like Briar? Everam knew there were endless stories of broken families throughout the land. The Krasians sank or captured more than half the Laktonian fleet and kept their grip on the hamlets, but not without terrible losses. Were they headed to Docktown seeking his father?

  Or perhaps the woman worked for an orphanage? A Messenger of sorts, ferrying children to whatever families would take them. Krasians always succoured the children of Sharum who walked the lonely path, and they would need to replenish their warriors after the battles. What family would turn down a healthy Krasian son?

  But from the moment she unstrapped the baby, he knew that was not it. Whoever she was, whatever she was, there was no mistaking a mother’s love for her child.

  He watched, basking in the sound of the boy shouting words in Krasian, and the mother’s replies.

  Relan insisted his children understand who they were and where they came from. He taught them to speak his language, sing his songs, dance his dances. He taught his sons sharusahk and sought to find good husbands for his daughters.

  Briar heard his father’s language often of late, but always in anger. This woman spoke with laughter and joy, the way Briar Damaj remembered it best.

  He understood then that anyone who could love so fully and speak with such joy could never be his enemy. They appeared to be headed for Docktown, and he resolved to see them safely there, even if it cost him time. He would keep watch as they slept, luring the cories away from them.

  She sat with the child, and by the time Briar realized what was happening, she had bared her breast to feed him.

  Briar felt his face heat, turning quickly to avert his gaze. Too late. The image burned in his mind’s eye. Even after several moments of steady breathing, it lingered. A young woman’s breast. The bulk that gave her an appearance of age was due to a second robe beneath her first, the armoured blacks of a Sharum. A rarer sight than a woman carrying the family shield, but not unheard of. It explained some of her calm before the setting sun.

  Briar heard her shuffling cloth when the baby was finished, and dared to look again in time to see the boy clutch at his mother’s robes and pull himself onto his feet. He hung tightly for balance, stumbling around the camp, pointing and shouting his words. Briar moved closer, not wanting to miss a moment of it.

  But then the woman took her son back to the fire, and began to sing a song Briar had not heard in years. The born day song, praising Everam for giving life.

  How
many times had Briar’s family sung that song? There were seven in the Damaj house.

  The woman’s voice was the most beautiful, transcendent thing Briar had heard short of the duet Halfgrip’s wives performed at his funeral. He lost himself in the sound, letting it wrap him like a warm blanket.

  And for an instant he remembered the sounds of their voices. The choir of his brothers and sisters. The deep tone of his father. And his mother, as always, leading the song.

  He choked, swallowing the sound and squeezing sudden drops from his eyes. He tried to grasp the memory again, to hear them one more time, but it was gone like a wisp of smoke. He felt sobs building in his chest, and knew he could not suppress them for long.

  Holding his breath, Briar backed away as quickly as he could without being noticed. When he was far enough away, he put his back to a tree, slid down to the wet soil, and wept.

  Ashia watched the spy, unsure.

  He was certainly no dama, years too young, and clad in filthy rags. He carried a warrior’s spear and shield, but he looked like no Sharum Ashia had ever seen. His clothes were of Northern design, filthy with sap and soil to make him all but invisible in the underbrush, even to wardsight.

  But now that she was close, Ashia could see his magic was strong, particularly focused in his hands. His face was so covered in dirt that his features were hard to make out. He could have been Krasian, or a dark-haired greenlander who spent too much time in the sun.

  Who was he? What did he want? And why in Everam’s name was he weeping?

  Capture him and find out.

  Ashia tightened her grip on her staff, keeping the blades retracted. With her other hand, she drew a few inches of silk cord from the spindle on her belt. There was a point where the lines of power converged in the back of the neck. Leaning forward, head between his knees, the spy had bared it for her. A precise strike would stun him long enough for her to loop the cord around his wrists and ankles. She would be back in the camp with her prisoner before Kaji began to miss her.