Messenger’s Legacy
Read Messenger’s Legacy Online
Authors: Peter V. Brett
Harper
Voyager
An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers Ltd
77-85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
First published in Great Britain by Harper
Voyager
2014
Copyright © Peter V. Brett 2014
Cover texture ©
www.Shutterstock.com
Cover design © HarperCollins
Publishers
Ltd 2014
Map by Andrew Ashton.
Peter V. Brett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008114701
Ebook Edition © December 2014 ISBN: 9780008114718
Version: 2014-11-11
Contents
For Myke and Joshua, who read all the versions.
L
ike the other Demon Cycle novellas,
The Great Bazaar
and
Brayan’s Gold
, this story grew out of the main series, a stunted branch that put down roots and flourished when planted on its own.
The first chapter, ‘Burning True’, was originally written as the opening chapter of my third novel,
The Daylight War
. It quickly became clear that telling Briar’s story fully would require far more space than I had to spare in a series already known for its ever-increasing number of point-of-view characters. The chapter was excised, but I always knew I would come back to it when the time was right.
Some time later, the chapter was published in Shawn Speakman’s charity anthology
Unfettered
, under the title
Mudboy
. Still only a piece of Briar’s story, I’m grateful to Subterranean Press for giving me the chance now to finally tell the story in full.
Look for Briar to make appearances in
The Skull Throne
, the fourth book of the Demon Cycle next year.
Peter V. Brett
July, 2014
Burning True
324 AR Summer
B
riar started awake at the clanging.
His mother was banging the porridge pot with her metal ladle, the sound echoing through the house. ‘Out of bed, lazeabouts!’ she cried. ‘First Horn sounded a quarter past and breakfast is hot! Any who ent finished by sunup get an empty belly till luncheon!’
A pillow struck Briar’s head. ‘Open the slats, Briarpatch,’ Hardey mumbled.
‘Why do I always have to do it?’ Briar asked.
Another pillow hit Briar on the opposite side of his head. ‘Cause if there’s a demon there, Hardey and I can run while it eats you!’ Hale snapped. ‘Get goin’!’
The twins always bullied him together … not that it mattered. They had twelve summers, and each of them towered over him like a wood demon.
Briar stumbled out of the bed, rubbing his eyes as he felt his way to the window and turned up the slats. The sky was a reddish purple, giving just enough light for Briar to make out the lurking shapes of demons in the yard. His mother called them cories, but Father called them
alagai
.
While the twins were still stretching in bed waiting for their eyes to adjust to the light, Briar hurried out of the room to try and be first to the privy curtain. He almost made it, but as usual, his sisters shouldered him out of the way at the last second.
‘Girls first, Briarpatch!’ Sky said. With thirteen summers, she was more menacing than the twins, but even Sunny, ten, could muscle poor Briar about easily.
He decided he could hold his water until after breakfast, and made it first to the table. It was Sixthday. The day Relan had bacon, and each of the children was allowed a slice. Briar inhaled the smell as he listened to the bacon crackle on the skillet. His mother was folding eggs, singing to herself. Dawn was a round woman, with big meaty arms that could wrestle five children at once, or crush them all in an embrace. Her hair was bound in a green kerchief.
Dawn looked up at Briar and smiled. ‘Bit of a chill lingering in the common, Briar. Be a good boy and lay a fire to chase it off, please.’
Briar nodded, heading into the common room of their small cottage and kneeling at the hearth. He reached up the chimney, hand searching for the notched metal bar of the flue. He set it in the open position, and began laying the fire. From the kitchen, he heard his mother singing.
When laying the fire, what do you do?
Open the flue, open the flue!
Then leaves and grass blades and kindle sticks strew
Pile bricks of peat moss, two by two
Bellow the embers till the heat comes through
And watch the fire, burning true.
Briar soon had the fire going, but his brothers and sisters made it to the table by the time he returned, and they gave him no room to sit as they scooped eggs and fried tomatoes with onions onto their plates. A basket of biscuits sat steaming on the table as Dawn cut the rasher of bacon. The smells made Briar’s stomach howl. He tried to reach in to snatch a biscuit, only to have Sunny slap his hand away.
‘Wait your turn, Briarpatch!’
‘You have to be bold,’ said a voice behind him, and Briar turned to see his father. ‘When I was in Sharaj, the boy who was too timid went hungry.’
His father, Relan asu Relan am’Damaj am’Kaji, had been a
Sharum
warrior once, but had snuck from the Desert Spear in the back of a Messenger’s cart. Now he worked as a refuse collector, but his spear and shield still hung on the wall. His children all took after him, dark-skinned and whip thin.
‘They’re all bigger than me,’ Briar said.
Relan nodded. ‘Yes, but size and strength are not everything, my son.’ He glanced to the front door. ‘The sun will rise soon. Come watch with me.’
Briar hesitated. His father’s attention always seemed to be on his older brothers, and it was wonderful to be noticed, but he remembered the demons he had seen in the yard. A shout from his mother turned both their heads.
‘Don’t you dare take him out there, Relan! He’s only six! Briar, come back to the table.’
Briar moved to comply, but his father put a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place. ‘Six is old enough to be caught by
alagai
for running when it is best to keep still, beloved,’ Relan said, ‘or for keeping still when it is best to run. We do our children no favours by coddling them.’ He guided Briar onto the porch, closing the door before Dawn could retort.
The sky was a lighter shade of indigo now, dawn only minutes away. Relan lit his pipe, filling the porch with its sweet, familiar scent. Briar inhaled deeply, feeling safer with his father’s smoke around him than he did with the wards.
Briar looked about in wonder. The porch was a familiar place, filled like the rest of their home with mismatched furniture Relan had salvaged from the town dump and carefully mended.
But in the false light before dawn everything looked different – bleak and ominous. Most of the demons had fled the coming sun by now, but one had turned at the creak of the porch door and the light and sound that came from the house. It caught sight of Briar and his father, stalking towards them.
‘Keep behind the paint,’ Relan warned, pointing with his pipe stem to the line of wards on the planks. ‘Even the boldest warrior does not step across the wards lightly.’
The wood demon hissed at them. Briar knew it – the one that rose each night by the old goldwood tree he loved to climb. The demon’s eyes were fixed on Relan, who met its gaze coolly. The demon charged, striking the wardnet with its great branchlike arms. Silver magic spiderwebbed through the air. Briar shrieked and ran for the house.
His father caught his wrist, yanking him painfully to a stop. ‘Running attracts their attention.’ He pulled Briar around to see that, indeed, the demon’s gaze was turned his way. A thin trickle of drool, yellow like sap, ran from the corner of its mouth as it gave a low growl.