But the coreling struck back, spraying silk in Lesa’s face. She gave a muffled cry and stumbled away as Selia stabbed the demon between the pincers, her spear going into its mouth and bursting up through its skull between its rows of great black eyes.
Lesa had dropped her spear and shield, falling to her knees as she struggled to claw the silk from her nose and mouth. Selia saw she could not breathe.
Keeping her shield up, Selia dropped her spear and snatched the warded knife from Lesa’s belt.
“Stop thrashing.” Selia gripped Lesa by the chin and pierced the silk covering the young woman’s mouth. The blade came away gummy and wet with blood, but Lesa drew a gasping breath.
“Cad see!” Nose still bound, Lesa’s words were barely understandable. “Geddid off!”
The silk was stuck fast to hair and flesh. Removing it would be painful, likely to leave scars to last a lifetime, but there was nothing for it. Brine and his Cutters were holding the line with help from the militias from the Square and Boggin’s Hill, but there were corelings everywhere, and they would sense her weakness.
“Deep breath and keep your eyes shut tight.” Selia took the back of Lesa’s hair, bunched at the base of her helm, in one fist, and a handful of sticky silk in the other. Killing demons had left her energized, bursting with strength, and she tore the hardening web from Lesa’s face.
Lesa’s shriek was a knife in Selia’s heart. Her face was dark with blood in the flickering firelight. Selia glanced down, seeing hair and bits of skin in the handful of silk.
Along with the mind-warded steel plate that had been riveted to Lesa’s leather helm.
She looked up just as Lesa punched her in the face.
* * *
“What did you think?” Lesa demanded as Selia stumbled back from the blow. “That you could seduce me like that Southwatch skink, and this time it would turn out well?”
Selia tried to find her balance, but Lesa kicked one foot out from under her, and she barely caught herself on her arms before smashing her face on the cobbles.
Lesa gave her no time to recover, kicking her hard in the stomach and then dropping down onto Selia’s back. She put a forearm under Selia’s chin and pushed her head forward with the other hand. Selia struggled, but Lesa, too, was charged with magic, and had the advantage of leverage.
“Your love is a curse, Selia Barren,” Lesa whispered. “Everyone you give it to is destroyed by it. Now I’ll be food for the demons just like your precious Anjy.”
The words filled Selia with rage, and she heaved, getting a foot under her and kicking hard against the cobbles, flipping them both onto their backs. Lesa lost a breath as she was bashed against the stone but she kept the hold, continuing to choke as she worked her ankles around Selia’s thighs, immobilizing her.
Selia struck Lesa’s unprotected sides with her elbows, feeling a rib break, but under the demon’s control, Lesa seemed immune to the pain. Selia thrashed, opening a tiny gap in the hold. She slid her fingertips in, prising her way between arm and throat. Lesa tightened her grip, but she could do little else to stop it. Lesa was strong, but her strength was cold—calculated. Selia’s, powered with rage, came with a burst of adrenaline.
Selia tasted blood in her mouth, teeth clenched as she strained, pushing the arm from her throat. She forced them apart, gasping a breath and redoubling her efforts. She would not abandon another to the demons. She would not abandon Tibbet’s Brook to a coreling hive. She would not—she would not.
Selia worked her other hand into the hold, and suddenly Lesa released her with a kick that gave her time to roll to her feet. Selia rose shakily to meet her. “This ent you, Lesa. Felt the coreling in my mind, too. Real you is in there. Fight. Resist with all you’ve got.”
“There is no resisting the prince.” Jeorje came up on the other side of Selia.
“We’ve all lost.” Lesa held up Selia’s brookstone necklace, clutched in her thick leather glove. The heavy cord was broken, but the stones were knotted in place to maintain precise spacing. If she could get it back, she could fix—
The thought broke off as the demon struck her mind, shoving past her defenses. As before, the mind demon delved into her darkest memories—moments of shame, failure, humiliation, and weakness.
She’d failed Anjy and Renna, but she stood strong for those women. There was meat for the demon in those memories, shame, but some pride, too. But then it found something even more delicious.
Marry me, Bil Square said all those years ago. Ent no more place in the Brook for square boys than girls. Don’t mean we have to be alone.
And Selia, broken and tired, had agreed.
The town celebrated the match, and even the elders seemed satisfied. The whispers stopped. But Bil was no more interested in her body than she was in his. They fumbled awkwardly abed a few times, eyes closed, imagining Creator-knew-what as they tried to maintain the arousal necessary to complete the act and produce a child. It ended in failure as often as success, with nary a skipped flow to show for it. Soon they gave up entirely.
Bil began disappearing for hours, sometimes barely making it home by nightfall. Once he didn’t come home at all, and Selia went to bed sick with worry. He returned the next morning without explanation, for what could he say? Selia never asked whom he was with, but they both knew she was no fool.
She didn’t resent Bil seeking love, even if secret trysts were all he could find. But it stung when men sniggered at her back, forcing her to wonder if they’d lain with her husband.
Soon after, folk began to whisper again, this time the word that would haunt the rest of her life.
Barren.
Selia felt the demon savor the word, drinking it like chilled nectar. There was so much shame and self-loathing wrapped up in that word. So much despair. Power it could turn against her—and, through her, the town she Spoke for. How many folk had escaped the riot in the square, cowering behind succor and waiting for dawn? What would happen to them if their Speaker became the voice of evil?
Selia struggled against the mind demon’s power, but her anger and rage fed the demon as well, and it only increased the pressure against her. She had seen in their last encounter that negative emotion was its food and drink.
But had her life truly been one of despair? It was woven into the tapestry of her life, but it was only part of the picture. Selia focused back on her marriage, calling up memories the coreling prince disdained. The way Bil had made her laugh and brought her tea after a long day. The warm quilts that filled their home, and the impeccable way he kept their house while she was carrying the worries of the town.
Bil had been a good husband. They spent over thirty years together, loving if not in love. When the cancer took him, she wept bitter tears—not for a wasted marriage, but for all they shared.
Selia felt the demon recoil slightly, and seized on the slackening of control. If her love was truly a curse, why did she keep finding it, again and again?
She thought of Deardra—not the betrayal, but the intimacies and confidences they had shared, exploring something forbidden in the hope that someone else could understand.
Again the demon squirmed in her mind, pulling away from the thoughts and trying to force her back into memories of shame.
But Selia was done being ashamed of who she was. Done regretting decisions she would not have made another way if she’d had the chance to make them over again. She focused instead on the breathless passion she’d shared with Anjy, the raw intensity of Lesa’s loving. She thought of the countless times she’d been there for the folk of Tibbet’s Brook, solving problems from petty squabbles to coreling massacres. She’d lived a life to be proud of, no matter what Jeorje Watch or the demon prince might want her to think.
The demon was retreating from her mind now, unprepared for the force of her will, the intensity of positive memory and emotion she used like spear and shield in this psychic battle.
Its will fled her body, but Selia latched on to it, riding like a
tether into the coreling prince’s own mind. She sensed its panic as it tried to shake loose her mental hold, but the demon was controlling too many drones to fight her off. Through it, she could sense every mind—human and coreling—it was connected to, and in so doing she was able to sense its position.
The demon was right there in the square, just a few feet away. It was hidden behind a veil of magic, but she could see it now, with her mind if not her eyes. It was small, barely five feet tall, with an enormous head, slender limbs, and long, almost delicate talons.
One by one, the connections in the demon’s mind winked out, demons and folk under its control regaining their senses as the coreling prince sought to focus its will on her. Selia saw into its thoughts in that moment, saw the web of caves on Mack Pasture’s land where the captured folk were being held for the coming of the queen. It wasn’t too late for them.
But it might be too late for her. With every drone the demon released, its will grew in strength, becoming a hillside—a mountain. The demon wrested control of her, seizing her mind in its mental talons and slowly crushing it, savoring her dawning realization that she was going to lose this battle.
I will tear open your skull and feast on your mind, its thoughts promised.
But then the blade end of Jeorje’s cane burst from the demon’s chest. Lesa came in next, punching its bulbous head with warded gauntlets.
There was an instant of freedom as the coreling prince reeled from the blows, but Selia knew it would not last; knew even these grievous injuries would not be enough to end such a powerful demon. She scrambled, snatching up the brookstone necklace Lesa had dropped. The moment her hands clutched the stones, etched with lacquered mind wards, the demon was shut out of her head.
Not so, Jeorje and Lesa. They stiffened as the demon returned its attention to them, but Selia gave it no chance, cracking the necklace across the coreling’s face like a lash. The wards flared to life as they struck, again breaking the demon’s concentration.
Jeorje shook off the demon’s control again, yanking his cane free to bash the demon’s knobbed cranium with the impact-warded head. Lesa continued to hammer it with punches as Selia whipped the necklace around the demon’s throat and pulled tight.
The coreling raised a talon, drawing a ward in the air that flung the others back, but Selia had the cord wrapped around her fists and kept the hold, dropping to try and pull the demon down.
Instead the prince of demons swelled, growing as big as a wood demon. Selia was dragged upward, feet dangling in midair, the cord digging painfully into her hands, even as its wards flared brighter and brighter. The coreling’s talons cut deep into her flesh as every demon in the square raced their way, desperate to protect their master.
But they were too late, as Jeorje and Lesa rushed back in. Lesa put her spear into the demon’s heart, and Jeorje drove the spearhead of his cane into the coreling prince’s skull.
The coreling gave a strangled cry, echoed in the shrieks of every demon in the vicinity. The prince collapsed, and a shock wave seemed to pass through the other corelings, wracking their bodies and leaving them curled up like dead flies on a windowsill.
Suddenly the square was quiet, save for the crackle of flames and the moans of the wounded.
Jeorje got to his feet, turning to Selia. He still clutched his cane, spear tip sizzling with power as it dripped black ichor.
Selia straightened. She had no armor or weapon, and the others were too far away to reach her in time if he struck.
And she was tired.
“Still think I’m a burden on this town?”
Jeorje locked stares with her, twisting the cane in his hands. “Always thought you were touched by the Core.”
“You’ve felt that touch personally, now,” Selia said. “Demon make you want to kiss another man?”
Jeorje scowled, but he lowered his cane. “Ent saying I forgive you for Anjy.”
Selia put her hands on her hips. “Ent saying I forgive you, either.”
“Ay, fair and true. But I never wanted . . .” Jeorje swept his hand over the square, littered with bodies of demon and folk alike.
“None of us did,” Selia agreed. “That was the demon talking. We stand together now, put out the fires and rescue the folk trapped in that hive, maybe we forget today ever happened.”
Jeorje glanced at the stage. “Did you cheat the vote?”
Selia met his eyes when he looked back to her. “No.”
“Ay.” Hog came over to them, his armor spattered with blood and ichor, but a sheepish look on his face. “That was me. Selia didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Corespawn you, Rusco!” Selia snapped.
Rusco shrugged. “You went down, Speaker, knew he’d come for me next.”
“Ent wrong about that,” Jeorje said. “But it doesn’t matter. Coreling played us like a fiddle. Sent me looking for trouble, and would have found a way to start it, vote or no.”
Jeorje’s eyes flicked to Lesa, face bloody but still beautiful to Selia’s eyes. “That going to continue?”
Selia crossed her arms. “Ay.”
“Sure as the sun rises,” Lesa agreed.
“Still don’t approve.”
“Don’t care,” Selia said.
Jeorje nodded. “Then let’s put things back the way they were.”
“No,” Selia said. “High time we started making things better.”
About the Author
PETER V. BRETT is the bestselling author of the Demon Cycle series—including The Warded Man, The Desert Spear, The Daylight War, The Skull Throne, and The Core—which has sold nearly three million copies in twenty-six languages worldwide. He spends too much time on the internet, but occasionally unplugs to practice kickboxing and dad fu. He lives in Manhattan.
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By Peter V. Brett
The Demon Cycle Series
The Warded Man
The Desert Spear
The Daylight War
The Skull Throne
The Core
The Great Bazaar (novella)
Brayan’s Gold (novella)
Messenger’s Legacy (novella)
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
barren. Copyright © 2018 by Peter V. Brett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Harper Voyager and design are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers LLC.
first edition
Cover design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2018
Cover texture © Michael Steden/Shutterstock
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition September 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-274062-5
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-274056-4
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