The Desert Spear

by Peter V. Brett

  “Kendall!” he called, and the girl stepped forward and began to play. Rojer softened his music and backed away from the corelings as she strengthened hers and approached them, until he was able to stop playing entirely, leaving the mesmerized demons to her sole control.

  Rojer went to where Leesha waited by the ward’s edge. “She really is quite good,” he said proudly. “The demons will follow her around like puppies, charging everything they touch.”

  Indeed, the corelings drifted after Kendall as she stepped carefully about the field. There were flares of light as demons touched the glass in their path, the etched wards siphoning off a tiny fraction of the demons’ magic and guiding it to new purpose.

  The corelings hissed, clawing at the areas where they had felt the drain. Kendall tried to change her music to calm them again, but her fear was apparent in her playing as she began to miss notes. She tried to increase her tempo to compensate, and that only made things worse. The demons started to shake the confusion from their heads.

  Rojer moved toward her slowly in his warded cloak, with plenty of time to reach her before the corelings turned ugly, but then Kendall misstepped. A bottle shattered under her foot, sending glass through the soft leather of her shoe. She cried out, and her bow slipped from the strings with a jarring sound.

  Immediately the corelings perked up, and her spell shattered. Their nostrils flared as they caught the scent of her blood, and they shrieked, launching themselves at her.

  Rojer broke into a run, but he had drifted far away to speak to Leesha, and one of the corelings buried its talons deep in Kendall’s body, pulling her close and sinking rows of teeth into her shoulder before he could get in range. Blood soaked her dress, and other demons leapt in, prepared to fight one another for a share of the kill.

  “Archers!” Rojer cried desperately.

  “We’ll hit Kendall!” Wonda cried back, and Rojer saw that all the women had bows drawn, but none dared risk the shot.

  He put his fiddle to work, notes meant to frighten and drive off the demons. They shrieked and broke off their attack, Kendall collapsing to the ground, but there was blood in the air now, and they were not easily driven back. They hissed and swiped, blocking Rojer’s path.

  “Kendall!” Rojer screamed. “Kendall!” Weakly, she lifted her head, gasping air as she reached a bloodied hand his way.

  Suddenly a huge shape swept by Rojer, nearly bowling him over. He looked up to see Gared tackle one of the wood demons into another. Both corelings were brought down under the burly Cutter’s weight, and the wards on his gauntlets flared brightly as he laid heavy blows on the one he had landed upon. By the time the other recovered, he was up again, but the coreling was quick and bit hard into his arm.

  Gared screamed and grabbed the demon’s crotch with his free hand. He flexed his mighty arms, lifting the huge wood demon and using it as a ram to drive into its fellows. He and the demons all went down in a tumble just as other Cutters rushed in, hacking at the prone creatures with warded axes.

  His fiddle useless amid the commotion, Rojer hurried to Kendall’s side, staining his cloak with blood as he threw it over her. Kendall croaked weakly at him as Rojer struggled to lift her. The commotion had drawn more demons from the woods, though, faster than the archers could pick them off.

  Gared, an axe in each hand and blood streaming down his arm, hacked his way to them. He dropped the weapons and lifted Kendall like a feather. With the archers and Cutters providing cover, he ran her to the hospit.

  “I need a blood donor!” Leesha cried as Gared kicked in the hospit door. They laid Kendall on a bed, and apprentices ran for Leesha’s instruments.

  “I’ll do it,” Rojer said, rolling up his sleeve.

  “Check if he’s a match,” Leesha told Vika as she moved to scrub her hands and arms. Vika quickly lanced a sample from Rojer as Darsy tried to have a look at Gared’s arm.

  “Worry about those that are hurt worse,” Gared said, pulling away. He pointed to the door, where other injured Cutters were being carried in.

  There was a whirlwind of bloodied activity as the Herb Gatherers worked. Leesha cut and clamped and sewed Kendall for two hours as Rojer looked on, dizzy from the blood transfusion.

  At last, Leesha paused to drag the back of a bloodied hand over her sweating brow. “Will she be all right?” Rojer asked.

  Leesha sighed. “She’ll live. Gared, I’ll have a look at that arm now.”

  “It’s just a scratch,” Gared said.

  Leesha bit back a scowl, reminding herself how brave Gared had just been, but try as she might, she could not forget how his lies had almost ruined her life, and how he had brutally beaten any man caught speaking to her after she broke off their betrothal.

  “You were bit by a demon, Gar,” she said. “You let the wound fester, and I’ll be cutting that arm off before you know it. Get over here.”

  Gared grunted and complied. “It’s not so bad,” Leesha said, after she had washed the wound out with hogroot tincture. Charged by the magic he had absorbed, the clean cuts from the demon’s sharp teeth were already closing. She wrapped the arm in a clean bandage, and then took Rojer aside.

  “I told you Kendall wasn’t ready for a solo,” she whispered angrily.

  “I thought…” Rojer began.

  “You didn’t think,” Leesha said. “You were showing off, and it almost cost that girl her life! This isn’t a game, Rojer!”

  “I know it isn’t a game!” Rojer snapped.

  “Then act like it,” Leesha said.

  Rojer scowled. “We’re not all as perfect as you, Leesha.” His eyes were seething, but Leesha saw right through to the pain they hid.

  “Come to my office,” she said, taking him by the arm. Rojer yanked his arm away, but followed Leesha to her office, where she poured him a glass of hard alcohol more suited to antiseptics than consumption.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was out of the light.”

  Rojer seemed to deflate, falling into a chair and downing the glass in one gulp. “No, you weren’t,” he said. “I’m a fraud.”

  “Nonsense,” Leesha replied. “We all make mistakes.”

  “I didn’t make a mistake,” Rojer said. “I lied. I lied and said I could teach people how to charm corelings when in truth, I don’t even understand how I do it myself. Just like I lied last year and told you I could see you safely here from Angiers. It’s how I made my way in the hamlets after Arrick died, and how I got into the Jongleurs’ Guild. Seems lying is all I ever do.”

  “But why?” Leesha asked.

  Rojer shrugged. “Keep telling myself pretending to be something’s the same as being it. Like if I just pretend to be great like you and the Painted Man, it will be so.”

  Leesha looked at him in surprise. “There’s nothing so great about me, Rojer. You know that better than anyone.”

  But Rojer laughed out loud. “You don’t even see it!” he cried. “An endless line of weapons and wards comes from your hut, the sick and injured cured with a wave of your hand. All I can do is play my fiddle, and I can’t even save a life when I do. You and the Painted Man have become giants while I spend months teaching my apprentices, and all they’re good for is getting folk to dance.”

  “Don’t belittle the joy you and your apprentices have brought to a town fraught with hardship,” Leesha said.

  Rojer shrugged. “I do nothing a keg of ale can’t do on its own.”

  Leesha took his hands in hers. “That’s ridiculous. Your magic is as strong as Arlen’s or mine. The fact that you have such trouble teaching it is just proof of how special you are.”

  She laughed mirthlessly. “Besides, however big I grow, I’ll always have my mum to cut me back down.”

  It was a moonless night, and where Leesha and Rojer walked, far from the glow of the greatward, the darkness was near complete. Leesha walked with a tall staff, the end of which held a flask of chemics that glowed fiercely, casting light for them to make their way by. The f
lask and staff were etched with wards of unsight; corelings could see the light, but they could no more find the source than they could find the two of them in their warded cloaks.

  “Don’t see why he couldn’t meet us in town,” Rojer muttered. “Hemight not feel the cold, but I do.”

  “Some things are best said in private,” Leesha said, “and he tends to draw a crowd.”

  The Painted Man was waiting for them on the warded path leading to Leesha’s cottage. Twilight Dancer, his enormous black stallion, was in full barding and horns, nearly invisible in the darkness. The Painted Man himself wore only a loincloth, his tattooed skin bare to the cold.

  “You’re late,” the Painted Man said.

  “Had some problems at the hospit,” Leesha said. “An accident while we were charging glass. Why aren’t you wearing your cloak?” She tried to make the question seem casual, but it hurt her that for all the hours she spent on it, Leesha had never seen him wear the garment apart from the one time she threw it across his shoulders to check the fit.

  “It’s in my saddlebag,” the Painted Man said. “Not looking to hide from corelings. They want to come at me, let them. World could do with a few less.”

  They tied Twilight Dancer to a hitching post in the yard and went inside. Leesha took a match from her apron and lit the fire, filling a kettle and hanging it over the blaze.

  “How are the fiddle wizards coming along?” the Painted Man asked Rojer.

  “More fiddle than wizard, I’m afraid,” Rojer said. “They’re not ready.”

  The Painted Man frowned. “Cutter patrols would be stronger with a fiddler who can manipulate the demons’ emotions.”

  “I can patrol with them,” Rojer said. “I have my cloak to keep me safe.”

  The Painted Man shook his head. “Need you teaching.”

  Rojer, blew out a breath, glancing at Leesha. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “And the Hollow?” the Painted Man asked when Leesha joined them at the table.

  “Expanding quickly,” Leesha said. “Already we have twice as many people as we had before the flux last year, and more come in daily. We planned the new town to accommodate growth, but not at this rate.”

  The Painted Man nodded. “We can have the Cutters clear more land and plot another greatward.”

  “We need the lumber, anyway,” Leesha agreed. “We haven’t sent a shipment to Duke Rhinebeck in over a year.”

  “Had to rebuild the entire village,” the Painted Man said.

  Leesha shrugged. “Perhaps you’d like to explain that to the duke. He sent another Messenger, requesting an audience. They fear you, and your plans for the Hollow.”

  The Painted Man shook his head. “Ent got any plans, beyond making the Hollow secure from corelings. When that’s done, I’ll be on my way.”

  “But what about the Great War on demonkind?” Rojer asked. “You have to lead the people to it.”

  “Corespawn it, boy, I’m not the ripping Deliverer!” the Painted Man growled. “This isn’t some fantasy from a Tender’s Canon, and I wasn’t sent from Heaven to unite mankind. I’m just Arlen Bales of Tibbet’s Brook, a stupid boy with more luck than he deserved, most of it bad.”

  “But there’s no one else!” Rojer said. “If you don’t lead the war, who will?”

  The Painted Man shrugged. “Not my problem. I won’t force war on anyone. All I aim to do is make sure that anyone who wants to fight, can. Once that boulder shifts, I mean to get out of the way.”

  “But why?” Rojer asked.

  “Because he doesn’t think he’s human,” Leesha said, reproach clear in her tone. “He thinks he’s so tainted by coreling magic that he’s as much a danger to us as they are, even though there ’s not a shred of proof.”

  The Painted Man glared, but Leesha glared right back. “There ’s proof,” he said finally.

  “What?” Leesha asked, her voice softening but still skeptical.

  The Painted Man looked at Rojer, who shrank back under the glare. “What I say stays in this cottage,” he warned. “If I hear even a hint of it in a song or tale…”

  Rojer held his hands up. “Swear by the sun as it shines. Not a whisper.”

  The Painted Man eyed him, finally nodding. His eyes dropped as he spoke. “It’s…uncomfortable for me, in the forbidding.”

  Rojer’s eyes went wide, and Leesha inhaled a sharp breath, holding it as her mind raced. Finally, she forced herself to exhale. She had sworn to find a cure for the Painted Man, or at least the details of his condition, and she meant to keep that vow. He’d saved her life, and that of everyone in the Hollow. She owed him that much and more.

  “What are the symptoms?” she asked. “What happens when you step onto the ward?”

  “There’s…resistance,” the Painted Man said. “Like I’m walking against a strong gust of wind. I feel the ward warming beneath my feet, and myself getting cold. When I walk through the town, it’s like wading through hip-deep water. I pretend otherwise, and no one seems to notice, but I know.”

  He turned to Leesha, his eyes sad. “The forbiddance wants to expel me, Leesha, as it would any demon. It knows I don’t belong among men any longer.”

  Leesha shook her head. “Nonsense. The ward’s siphon is just drawing away some of the magic you’ve absorbed.”

  “It’s not just that,” the Painted Man said. “The Cloaks of Unsight make me dizzy, and I can feel warded blades warm and sharpen at my touch. I fear I become more demon every day.”

  Leesha took one of the warded glass vials from her apron pocket and handed it to him. “Crush it.”

  The Painted Man shrugged, squeezing as hard as he could. Stronger than ten men, he could easily shatter glass, but the vial resisted even his grip.

  “Painted glass,” the Painted Man said, examining the vial. “So what? I taught you that trick myself.”

  “That wasn’t charged till you touched it,” Leesha said. The Painted Man’s eyes widened.

  “Proof of what I’m saying,” he said.

  “The only thing it proves is that we need more tests,” Leesha said. “I’ve finished copying your tattoos and studying them. I think the next step is to start experimenting on volunteers.”

  “What?!” Rojer and the Painted Man asked in unison.

  “I can make a stain from blackstem leaves that will stay in the skin no more than two weeks,” Leesha said. “I can perform controlled tests and mark the results. I’m certain we can—”

  “Absolutely not,” Arlen said. “I forbid it.”

  “You forbid?” Leesha asked. “Are you the Deliverer, to order folk about? You can forbid me nothing, Arlen Bales of Tibbet’s Brook.”

  He glared at her, and Leesha wondered if perhaps she had pushed him too far. His back arched like a hissing cat, and for a moment she was afraid he would leap at her, but she stood fast. Finally, he deflated.

  “Please,” he said, his tone softening. “Don’t risk it.”

  “People are going to imitate you,” Leesha said. “Already Jona is drawing wards on people with charcoal sticks.”

  “He’ll stop if I tell him to,” the Painted Man said.

  “Only because he thinks you’re the Deliverer,” Rojer noted, and flinched at the look the Painted Man gave him in return.

  “It won’t make any difference,” Leesha said. “It’s only a matter of time before your legend draws a tattooist to the Hollow, and then there will be no stopping it. Better we experiment now, in control.”

  “Please,” the Painted Man said again. “Don’t curse anyone else with my condition.”

  Leesha looked at him wryly. “You’re not cursed.”

  “Oh?” he asked. He looked at Rojer. “Do you have one of your throwing knives?”

  Rojer flicked his wrist, and a knife appeared in his hand. He spun it deftly and moved to give it to the Painted Man, handle-first, but the Painted Man shook his head. He rose and took a few steps back from the table. “Throw it at me.”

  “What
?” Rojer asked.

  “The knife,” the Painted Man said. “Throw it. Right at my heart.”

  Rojer shook his head. “No.”

  “You throw knives at people all the time,” the Painted Man said.

  “As a trick,” Rojer said. “I’m not going to throw one at your heart, are you insane? Even if you can use your demon speed to dodge…”

  The Painted Man sighed and turned to Leesha. “You, then. Throw something—”

  He hadn’t even finished the sentence before Leesha snatched a frying pan off a hook by the fire and hurled it at him.

  But the pan never struck home. The Painted Man turned into mist as the iron passed through, dissipating his body as if waved through smoke. It clattered against the far wall and fell to the floor. Leesha gasped, and Rojer’s mouth fell open.

  It took several seconds for the mists to coalesce again, re-forming into the body of the Painted Man. He breathed deeply as he became solid.

  “Been practicing,” he said. “Dissipation is easy. Like relaxing your molecules and spreading them the way boiling spreads water into steam. Can’t do it in sunlight, but at night I can do it at will. Pulling back together is harder. Sometimes I worry I’ll spread too thin, and just…drift away on the wind.”

  “That sounds horrible,” Rojer said.

  The Painted Man nodded. “But that’s not the worst of it. When I dissipate, I can feel the Core pulling at me. When the dawn is near, the pull can become…insistent.”

  “Like that day on the road, in the predawn light,” Leesha said.

  “What day?” Rojer asked, but Leesha barely heard him, reliving that terrible morning.

  Three days after the attack on the road, Leesha’s body had healed, but the pain had not lessened. All she could think of was her womb and what might be growing there. There was a tea Bruna had taught her of, one that would flush a man’s seed from a woman before it could take root.

  “Why would I ever want to brew such a vile thing?” Leesha had asked. “There are few enough children in the world as it is.”

  Bruna had looked at her sadly. “I hope, child, that you never find out.”

  But Leesha understood when the bandits had left her. If she ’d had her herb pouch, she would have brewed the tea as soon as she ’d washed her body, but the men had taken that, too. The decision was out of her hands. By the time they reached the Hollow, it would be too late.