Authors: Peter V. Brett
A wood demon wandered into Rojer's path, sniffing the air. Rojer froze, not daring to move as it searched. There was a sharp movement under the cloak, and she knew one of the warded throwing knives he kept strapped to his wrists had fallen into the palm of his good hand.
'Just walk around it, Rojer,' Leesha said, continuing down the path. 'It can't see or hear you.' Rojer tiptoed around the demon, twirling the knife nervously in his fingers. He had grown up juggling blades and could put one into a coreling's eye at twenty paces.
'It's just unnatural,' Rojer said, 'walking plain as day through hordes of corelings.'
'How many times must we do it before you tire of saying that'' Leesha sighed. 'The cloaks are safe as houses.' The Cloaks of Unsight were her own invention, based on wards of confusion the Painted Man had taught her. Leesha had modified the wards and embroidered them with gold thread into a fine cloak. Demons ignored her when she wore it, even if she walked right up to them, so long as she moved at a slow, steady pace and kept it wrapped around her.
She'd made Rojer's cloak next, embroidering the wards in bright colors to match his Jongleur's motley, and she was pleased to see that he seldom removed it, even in daylight. The Painted Man never seemed to wear the one she had made for him.
'Nothing against your wards, but I don't think I ever will,' Rojer said.
'I trust your fiddle magic to keep me safe,' Leesha said. 'Why don't you trust mine''
'I'm out here in the dark, aren't I'' Rojer asked, fingering his cloak. 'It's just eerie. I hate to say it, but your mother wasn't far off the mark when she called you a witch.'
Leesha glared at him.
'A Ward Witch, at least,' Rojer clarified.
'They used to call Herb Gathering witching, too,' Leesha said. 'I'm just warding, same as anyone.'
'You're not the same as anyone, Leesha,' Rojer said. 'A year ago, you couldn't ward a windowsill, and now the Painted Man himself takes lessons from you.'
Leesha snorted. 'Hardly.'
'See the light,' Rojer said. 'You argue his own wards with him all the time.'
'Arlen is still thrice the Warder I am,' Leesha said. 'It's just'it's hard to explain, but after looking at enough wards, the patterns started'speaking to me. I can look at a new ward and just by studying the lines of power, guess its purpose more often than not. Sometimes I can even change the lines to alter the effects. I've been trying to teach the knack to others, but none seems to get past rote.'
'That's what fiddling's like for me,' Rojer said. 'The music speaks to me. I can teach my apprentices to play songs well enough, but you don't play 'The Battle of Cutter's Hollow' for the corelings to pacify them. You have to'massage their mood.'
'I wish someone could massage my mother's mood,' Leesha muttered.
'About time,' Rojer said.
'Ay'' Leesha asked.
'We'll be in town soon,' Rojer said. 'The sooner we talk about your mum, the sooner we'll be done talking about it, and can get on with our business there.'
Leesha stopped short and looked at him. 'What would I do without you, Rojer' You're my best friend in the world.' She put just the right emphasis on the word
friend.
Rojer shifted awkwardly, walking on. 'I just know how she gets to you.'
Leesha hurried after. 'I hate to think my mum could be right about anything''
'But she often is,' Rojer said. 'She sees the world with cold clarity.'
'Heartless clarity is more like it,' Leesha said.
Rojer shrugged. 'Rabbit in one hat, bunny in the other.'
Leesha casually reached out to take snow from a low branch in her gloved hand, but Rojer noted the move and easily dodged the snowball she threw at him. It struck a wood demon, which looked about frantically for its assailant.
'You want children,' Rojer said bluntly.
'Of course I do,' Leesha said. 'I always have. Just never seemed to find the right time.'
'The right time, or the right father'' Rojer asked.
Leesha blew out a breath. 'Both. I'm only twenty-eight. With the help of herbs, I can likely carry a child to term for another two decades, but never as easily as I might have ten, or even five years ago. If I'd married Gared, our first child might be fourteen now, and there would likely have been several more after that.'
'Arrick used to say,
There's nothing gained in lamenting what never was,
' Rojer said. 'Of course, he was living proof of how hard those words are to live by.'
Leesha sighed, touching her belly and imagining the womb within. It wasn't Gared she lamented, really. Her mother had been right about the bandits on the road, as Rojer well knew. But what she had never told him, or anyone, was that it had been her fertile time when it happened, and she had feared a child might come of it.
Leesha had hoped Arlen would add his seed when she seduced him a few days later. If he had, she would have raised the child, if one came, in the hope it sprang from tenderness and not violence. But the Painted Man had refused, vowing to have no children lest the demon magic that gave him his strength infect them somehow.
So Leesha had brewed the tea she had sworn never to brew, and ensured that the bandits' seed could find no purchase. When it was done, she had wept bitterly over the empty cup.
The memory brought fresh tears, cold lines streaking her cheeks in the winter night. Rojer reached out, and she thought he meant to wipe them away, but instead he put his hand into her hood and withdrew it suddenly, producing a multicolored handkerchief as if from her ear.
Leesha laughed despite herself, and took it to dry her tears.
By the time they reached town, half a dozen corelings were trailing them, sniffing at the footprints in the snow beyond the radius of the cloaks' magic. A woman at the edge of the forbidding raised her bow, and warded arrows struck the demons like thunderbolts, killing those that failed to flee.
All the young women in Deliverer's Hollow studied the bow now, starting as soon as they could hold one. Many of the older women, not strong enough to pull a great bow, had begun learning to aim a loaded crank bow so they could throw in. The women worked in shifts to patrol the edge of town, killing any demons that ventured too close.
As they came into the light, Leesha saw Wonda waiting for them. Tall, strong, and homely, it was easy to forget the girl was only coming to her fifteenth summer. Her father, Flinn, had died in the Battle of Cutter's Hollow, and Wonda was sorely wounded. She'd recovered fully, though she was badly scarred, and had become attached to Leesha during her time in the hospit. Wonda followed Leesha like a hound, ready to kill any coreling that came near. She carried the yew great bow the Painted Man had given her, and could put it to deadly use.
'I wish you'd let me escort you, Mistress Leesha,' Wonda said. 'You're too important to walk alone outside the forbidding.'
'That's what my father says,' Leesha said.
'Your father is right, mistress,' Wonda said.
Leesha smiled. 'Perhaps when your Cloak of Unsight is finished.'
'Really'' Wonda asked, her eyes widening. Each cloak took many, many hours to make, and was a royal gift.
'If you're determined to shadow my steps,' Leesha said, 'I don't see there's much alternative. I gave the pattern to my apprentices to embroider last week.'
'Oh, thank you, mistress!' Wonda said, throwing her long arms around Leesha and hugging her in a girlish fashion that seemed unfit for one taller and stronger than most men.
'Air,' Leesha gasped at last, and Wonda let go and drew back quickly, looking sheepish.
'Isn't she a little young to be venturing outside the forbidding'' Rojer asked quietly as they headed into town. The cobbled streets of Deliverer's Hollow looped and twisted awkwardly and often inconveniently, but in so doing they formed a huge, complex ward of protection designed by the Painted Man himself. No coreling, big or small, could rise through the soil of the town proper, nor set foot upon it, nor fly above. The streets glowed softly, warm with magic.
'She does it already,' Leesha said. 'Arlen caught her out hunting demons alone twice last week. The girl's determined to get herself cored. I want to keep her where I can see her.'
Once, the village would have been dark and silent after sunset, but now the glowing cobbles cast light for dozens of people moving to and fro. The Hollow had lost many in the battle almost a year ago, but its numbers had swelled as folk filtered in from nearby hamlets, drawn to the growing legend of the Painted Man. These newcomers stared and whispered to one another as Rojer and Leesha, the Painted Man's only known confidants, passed.
They entered the Corelings' Graveyard, which was once the old town square where so many demons and Hollowers had perished. Despite its name, the graveyard was still the center of activity for the town: the place where the villagers trained and where the Cutters assembled each night to receive the blessings of Tender Jona before heading out to hunt demons. They stood there now, heads and broad shoulders bowed, drawing wards in the air as Jona prayed for their safety in the naked night.
Other villagers stood by, heads bowed to join in the blessing. There was no sign of the Painted Man. He spared no time for blessings, likely already out hunting. Sometimes days passed with no sign of him other than demon bodies left freezing in the snow until the morning sun rose to burn them from the world.
'There's your promised,' Rojer said, nodding toward Gared Cutter, who stood at the forefront of the Cutters, stooping low so that Tender Jona, whom Gared had bullied as a child, could take a charcoal stick and draw a ward on his forehead.
A giant, Leesha's former betrothed towered over even the other Cutters, few of whom stood under six feet. His hair was long and blond, and his bronzed arms were thick with muscle. A pair of warded axe handles jutted over his shoulders, and his gauntlets, tough leather bolted to hammered steel etched with wards, hung from his belt. They would soon be black with sizzling demon ichor.
Gared was not the oldest of the Cutters, nor the wisest by any means, but he had emerged from the Battle of Cutter's Hollow a leader whom even the eldest followed without question. It was he who shouted at the men to train harder in the day, led the charge at night, and left more dead corelings in his wake than any save the Painted Man himself.
'Whatever he's done to you,' Rojer said, 'you have to admit, he's the sort that gets songs sung and statues made for him.'
'Oh, there's no denying he's beautiful,' Leesha said looking at Gared. 'He always was, and drew others to worship him like iron to a magnet. I was one of them, once.'
She shook her head wistfully. 'His da was the same way. My mother broke her wedding vows repeatedly with him, and on an animal level, I even understand it. Both men were perfect specimens on the outside.'
She turned to Rojer. 'It's the inside that worries me. The Cutters follow Gared without question, but does he lead them in defense of the Hollow, or out of love of carnage''
'We thought the same about the Painted Man, once,' Rojer reminded her. 'He proved us wrong. Perhaps Gared will, too.'
'I wouldn't gamble on it,' Leesha said, turning away from the scene and continuing on.
At the far end of the graveyard stood the Holy House, and built onto the side of the stone building was the new hospit, completed before the first snows.
'Ay, Mistress Leesha! Rojer!' Benn called, spotting them. The glassblower was standing with his apprentices, who where carrying blown items and large sheets of glass. Nearby, a group of fiddlers stood, tuning their instruments in a clamor. Benn gave a few quick instructions to his apprentices and came over to meet them.
'Ready to charge when you are, Rojer,' he said.
'How were last night's results'' Leesha asked.
Benn reached into a pocket, producing a small glass vial. Leesha took the item, running her fingers over the wards thoughtfully. It seemed like ordinary glass, but the wards were smooth, as if the bottle had been heated again after they were etched.
'Try and break it,' Benn encouraged.
Leesha cast the vial down onto the cobbles as hard as she could, but the glass only bounced, ringing a clear note. She picked it up, studying it closely; there wasn't the slightest mark upon it.
'Impressive,' she said. 'Your warding is improving.'
Benn smiled and bowed. 'You can break one on an anvil, if you're determined, but it ent easy.'
Leesha frowned and shook her head. 'They should resist even that. Let me see one you haven't charged yet.'
Benn nodded, signaling an apprentice who brought another vial, almost identical to the first. 'Here's one of those we mean to charge tonight.'
Leesha studied the vial closely, tracing her fingernail down into the grooves of the etching. 'Might be that the depth of the groove affects the power of the charge,' she mused. 'I'll think on it.' She slipped the vials into a pocket in her apron for later study.
'We've got production running smoothly now,' Rojer said. 'Benn and his apprentices blow and ward by day, and my apprentices and I lure corelings in to charge them at night. Soon every home will have windows of warded glass, and we'll be able to store liquid demonfire in quantity without fear.'