Er’ril swallowed, suddenly embarrassed by the lack of information he could extend to this man. “I don’t . . . don’t really know. The dark magick’s touch came to our land when the Gul’gotha invaded our shores. Scholars of my time believed its pestilence drove Chi away. When Chyric magick faded in the land to isolated whispers, the dark magick grew stronger. I have seen horrors during my travels that would shrivel the bravest man.”
Kral’s brow crinkled with his words. “You speak of times before my flame ventured from the Northern Waste. How could that be?”
Er’ril balked. He had spoken without thinking. One night of talking freely with Nee’lahn and the years of practiced constraint on his tongue had fallen away.
Nee’lahn spoke behind him. “Before you stands Er’ril of Standi, called the Wandering Knight by storytellers.”
Kral’s eyes narrowed in distaste, but an edge of fear crinkled at the corners. “You tell tales when I ask for truth.”
“He is not myth,” she said. “He is the truth.” Suddenly Kral thrust his hands forward and placed both palms on Er’ril’s temples. Er’ril knew what this meant and did not fight the large man. Nee’lahn, though, unacquainted with the custom, gasped.
The innkeeper, who had been sweeping broken glass across the common room, called to them. “No roughhousing in here! Take your argument to the street!”
Kral kept his hands steady.
Er’ril remained still as he spoke. “I am the one she named. I am Er’ril of the clan Standi.”
Kral closed his eyes for a heartbeat. Then his lids whipped open wide. He stumbled a step away, crashing into a table and overturning it. “You tell the truth!”
The innkeeper, red faced, his jowls shaking, raised his broom. “What did I say? Out before I call the town guard!”
Kral dropped to a knee. A floorboard cracked to splinters under his impact. “No! It cannot be.” His voice boomed across the room. Tears flowed to his beard.
Er’ril was shocked by the man’s reaction. He knew the mountain people had the ability to read the truth in another’s tongue due to some form of elemental rock magick that throbbed from the roots of their mountain home. But this reaction? Mountain men never shed tears, not even when horribly injured.
“You have come!” Kral’s voice was a rumbling moan. He sank to the floor. “Then the Rock speaks the truth. My people must die.”
12
THE DAMP PANTS were too long, and Elena was forced to roll them up at the ankle. The tail of her green woolen shirt hung to her knees. Joach had stolen the clothes from a shepherd’s drying line. As she shoved the locks of her red hair under a hunter’s cap, she complained to Joach. “I look ridiculous. Must we really do this?”
They stood hidden under a willow tree, its branches a screen around them. A small brook gurgled past the tree, stirring the branches on one side.
“This’ll make it harder to recognize us.” She watched Joach scrub his face with his nightshirt. Once clean, he pulled into a ragged jacket with yellow patches on the elbows. “They’ll be watching for two on horseback. We should leave Mist tied to the willow tree here.”
“I don’t like leaving her alone,” Elena said. “What if some thief comes upon her and steals her?” Elena purposely straightened her purloined shirt and gave Joach an accusing look.
He ignored her glare. “From here, it’s only a short walk to Aunt Fila’s. We can send Bertol back for her.”
Elena pictured Aunt Fila’s hulking son. “Bertol could get lost in his own backyard. What if he can’t find her?”
“El, the mare will be fine. There’s plenty of grass, and she can reach the water.”
“But it’s like we’re abandoning her.”
“We’re not. She’s safer here than with us.”
Her brother was right. Still, she hated breaking up her family. After last night, she found some small security in their closeness. Wearily she patted Mist’s flank. “Don’t fret; we’ll be back soon.”
Mist glanced up from where she chewed at the shoots of the scraggly grass that grew under the willow. She flicked her tail at Elena for disturbing her.
“See, El; she’s fine.”
Slightly hurt, Elena tucked her shirt under her belt. “Let’s go,” she said with a sigh.
Joach pushed through the sweep of willow branches. He held them wide to allow Elena to duck through, then let them brush back into place. Elena glanced over her shoulder. The mare was just a pale shadow in the tree’s shade.
She sniffed and followed after Joach, who had stopped by a thin path. The dirt rut ran from the edge of Winterfell to a swimming hole popular among the town children. The pool, its waters now icy cold, lay abandoned for the season, so the path was empty of prying eyes.
With the sun close to its highest point, the path was bright after the shadows of the forest. As they approached closer to town, the path widened enough for Elena to walk abreast of her brother. She noted how Joach’s eyes darted back and forth and how stiffly his legs moved as he hiked. Her brother’s nervousness leaped to her. She found her hands tugging at her shirt and adjusting her cap.
“Look,” she said, pointing down the path. “There’s the butcher’s shack.” Ahead, buried under the eaves of the forest’s branches, stood the icehouse of the butcher. The limbs of the trees helped keep the sun’s warmth from its roof.
Joach only nodded and hurried ahead.
By the time they passed the icehouse and reached the end of the path, both were white-faced and sweating thickly. The town of thatched roofs and brick buildings loomed ahead. Chimney smoke drew black lines into the sky, joining with the haze from the orchard fire. The town seemed uncommonly quiet. Usually bustling with the strident voices of stall merchants and shoppers, the streets ahead were silent except for an occasional shout.
Joach turned to her and offered a sick smile. “Ready? Walk fast, but not too fast.”
She nodded. “Hold my hand.”
His hand reached for her palm, then froze. “No. We might draw attention. Maybe we should even walk a distance apart.”
She found tears coming to her eyes. “Please, Joach. I need you close.”
“Okay, El,” he said with a relieved rush. It seemed similar emotions warred within him, too. “But we’d still better not hold hands.”
She squeezed back her tears and forced her head to nod. Aunt Fila’s bakery stood only a handful of blocks from the edge of town. If Elena concentrated, she’d swear she could even smell the baking bread from where she stood. Actually, the whole town of Winterfell greeted her with its familiar smells: the roasting breakfast meats; the hickory wood smoke; the yeasty pungency from the cider mill nearby; even the sweet, loamy smell of horse dung from the unwashed streets and stables. Elena straightened her shoulders. “Okay, I’m ready,” she said in a calmer voice.
Joach bit at his lower lip and stepped toward a back street that led into the merchants’ quarter. Elena swallowed the hard knot of tears in her throat and followed her brother closely.
The first shop they came to was the butcher’s shop. His wares of carved pig, yellow mutton, and headless chickens buzzed with flies. The butcher himself could be seen through the doorway, a bloody cleaver in his hand. His coarse black hair always reminded Elena of a pig’s spiky stubble, especially set against the man’s pale skin, shining with sweat and oil.
Elena found herself cringing. The butcher, loud of voice and smelling of offal, always made her nervous. He had a way of staring at Elena as if judging the quality of meat on her bones. This being the first shop greeting them upon entering Winterfell, Elena found herself clutching her baggy clothes tighter around her. A sense of unease crept toward her heart.
She and Joach walked on the far side of the street.
As soon as they passed the butcher’s shop, a voice spat toward them from a shadowed doorway just ahead, startling them. “You there, boys! Hold it right there!”
Both of them froze.
Joach stepped between her
and the speaker. A soldier dressed in a red and black uniform, his sword still sheathed, sauntered from the doorway. His dark hair and brown eyes warned that he was not a local conscript but one of the foreigners manning the garrison. His knotted nose spoke of past fights that Elena suspected were not in the line of duty.
“Where you coming from, boys?”
Joach made a subtle motion for Elena to back farther behind him. “We was out checking our traps, sir!”
The soldier’s eyes drifted behind them toward the forest. “Didn’t happen to see a boy and a girl with a horse, did you?”
“No, sir.”
The man’s dark eyes settled on Elena. She kept her head pointed to her feet and her stained hand buried deep in her pocket. “How about you, young ’un?”
Elena, afraid her voice would betray her, just shook her head.
“Then be off with you two.” He waved them past with a swing of his chin.
Joach slipped past the soldier with Elena on his heels. She risked a glance behind her and saw the soldier, a hand raised to shade his eyes, surveying the forest’s edge. He then drifted back to his shaded doorway.
Neither spoke until they had turned a corner. “So they are hunting for us,” Joach whispered.
“But why? What did we do?”
“Let’s just get to Aunt Fila’s.”
Though they tried to keep their steps steady, their pace became hurried as they neared the corner beyond which Aunt Fila’s bakery stood. Elena nearly had to run to keep up with her brother’s frantic steps. Joach swung around the corner first and stopped so short she barreled into his back, pushing him a step forward. Elena could now see around the corner.
Where Aunt Fila’s bakery had once stood, smelling of fruited pastries and sugared cakes, only a smoldering skeleton of scorched posts and blackened beams remained. Elena’s first thought was that somehow her magickal fire had leaped from the orchards to strike down her aunt’s shop. But the milling crowd that sported torches quickly dismissed this worry.
“She’s in league with the demon!” someone yelled from the crowd.
“Mark her forehead with an evil eye!” screamed another.
“Anyone related to those cursed whelps should be banished from town!”
“No! Hung!”
Elena saw her Aunt Fila kneeling before the burned bakery. Her face, covered in smoke, ran black with tears. One of her sons, facedown on the cobblestones, lay in a pool of blood.
Elena’s vision blurred with tears. Though her fire had not directly burned her aunt’s shop, it had still destroyed more of her family. She took a step toward the crowd.
Joach stopped her. “No.”
They could have slipped back around the corner and maybe escaped, but Elena’s motion and Joach’s word drew the eyes of the crowd. Most simply ignored the two children dressed in crude clothes. But Aunt Fila’s son Bertol stared with eyes wide in recognition. He raised a finger to them. “There! There’s my cousins. See! See, we weren’t hiding them in our shop.”
One of Aunt Fila’s hands flew up toward her son, as if trying to force back his words and his betrayal. Her eyes touched Elena’s for a heartbeat, full of sorrow and pain.
The crowd lunged toward them. Joach tried to pull Elena with him, but strong hands suddenly grabbed them from behind.
Elena screamed but could not break free. She and Joach were shoved toward the crowd. Elena stared up into her captor’s eyes. It was the butcher. Thick of limb, he held both of them easily. His lips were white with hate, his eyes red with murder.
“Call the guard!” someone in the crowd called as they descended on her and Joach. “We’ve caught the demon spawn!”
ER’RIL FROWNED AT the mountain man, who still knelt in tears at his feet. Nee’lahn seemed abashed at his outburst, one small hand covering her mouth. “Kral,” Er’ril said, “I know nothing to doom your people. Stand up and put aside this foolishness.”
Kral only moaned, his face turned to the floor.
The innkeeper approached with his broom raised across his wide belly. “Out with the lot of you!” He made a sweeping motion with his broom, then pointed its handle at Kral. “Out before that lout passes out on my floor.”
Kral pushed to his feet, now towering like a bear over the rotund innkeeper. “Guard your tongue, keep, or I shall nail it to your door.”
The innkeeper blanched and took a step away. He raised his broom higher. “Don’t . . . don’t make me shout for the town guard.”
Kral started to reach for the innkeeper, but Er’ril laid a palm on his high shoulder. “He’s not worth the effort, Kral. Leave the man be.” Er’ril tugged the tall man toward the door. It was like moving a boulder settled deep in the dirt. But Er’ril felt the man’s shoulder relax, and Kral allowed himself to be pulled from the innkeeper’s throat.
Er’ril turned to the innkeeper. “In the future, mind your manners among the mountain folk.”
With Kral in tow, Er’ril led the way to the inn’s door. Nee’lahn followed them outside, where the cobbled streets were oddly empty except for a pair of soldiers slouched at a corner near two tethered horses. One, with his jacket unbuttoned and his gut hanging over his belt, raised a bored eye toward them, then returned his attention to his companion, who continued to brag of the previous night’s gambling.
Er’ril ignored them and turned to Kral. “Here we part ways, mountain man,” he said. “You seek the skal’tum, and as much as this may anguish you, I pray you never find it. But for me, I seek only the road to the plains.” He turned to Nee’lahn, who still stared toward the guards. She nervously scuffed at a cobble with the toe of her boot “And what path do you seek, bardswoman?”
Er’ril never did get his answer from Nee’lahn, since a townsman suddenly rushed to the pair of soldiers from around a corner. “We’ve found them!” he yelled. “The demon children! We’ve got ’em caught like rabbits in a snare! Come quick!”
The heavier of the guards pushed off the wall he had been leaning against and nodded to the other soldier. “Go alert the garrison,” he said in a bored voice, obviously doubting the agitated man. “I’ll check what this fellow has found.”
The other soldier nodded and untethered his horse. He mounted briskly and hurried past Er’ril and his two companions, the clatter of hooves deafening until he tugged the horse around a corner.
“Show me what you caught,” the remaining guard said.
“It’s those Morin’stal whelps, all right,” the townsman said, pointing down the Street. “Their cousin even confirmed it.” He led the way for the guard and disappeared between the tailor’s shop and the shoemaker’s.
Nee’lahn was the first to speak. “What will they do with those children?”
Er’ril stared down the road to where the townsman and soldier had disappeared. “The town is incensed. Talk of demons in small towns is dealt with brutally. By the end of this day, they will probably beg for death.”
“But what if this is all gossip and rumor?” Nee’lahn said. “Then innocent blood will be shed.”
Er’ril shrugged. “This has nothing to do with me.”
Nee’lahn’s eyes grew wider. “If you ignore this, then their blood is as much on your hands as on the townsfolk’s.”
“I already have blood on my hands,” he said bitterly. Er’ril pictured the night of the Book’s binding and the young mage slain in a pool of red with Er’ril’s sword sprouting from his back like a weed among stones. “An innocent’s blood.”
“I know your story, Er’ril. That was the past. This is now!” Nee’lahn’s eyes narrowed with anger. “Do not let one wrong stain your hands forever.”
Er’ril’s cheeks heated up—whether from anger or shame, even he couldn’t tell.
Thankfully, Kral interrupted. “If these whelps be demon spawn true,” he said, “then the skal’tum may be close. I will go see.”
Nee’lahn nodded her head. “I wish to go, too.”
Both their eyes swung to him. One p
air of eyes determined and proud, one pair concerned and passionate. Once he would have felt similar emotions at the thought of children in danger. But what did he truly feel now? He looked inward and found nothing. This disturbed him more than their questioning eyes. What had the endless years done to him?
He faced Nee’lahn and Kral. “Let us find the truth.”
ELENA WATCHED JOACH struggle with the ropes that tied his wrists. Thick ropes secured her hands also, but she stood quietly. What was the use of struggle? She stared at the remains of her aunt’s bakery. The circle of townsfolk jeered and mocked. She knew most of them, had schooled with many of their children. Still their faces twisted with hate. Even if she and Joach could shed their bonds, where would they run? This was her home. This was her people.
A small stone flew from the crowd and struck her forehead, causing her to stumble. It stung and blood flowed from the welt. She saw her cousin Bertol reach for another stone, but Aunt Fila slapped his hand. At least one person still cared for her. Tears began to flow, not from the pain, but from all that she had lost.
Joach stopped his struggle, obviously succumbing to the futility, too, and edged closer to her. He had no words.
The butcher strode from the crowd toward them. He reached a hand toward Elena. Joach tried to step between but was cuffed away by a meaty palm. Elena saw blood spill from her brother’s lips as he fell to his knees. The butcher ripped the hunter’s cap from her head and released the cascade of her red hair. “See,” he said. “See the wit’ch! This is the demon that destroyed our lands and murdered good people. Do not be fooled by her pretty face.”
The butcher ran a finger across her cheek and down her throat. “Or her innocent body!” He suddenly grabbed her shirt and ripped it open. Buttons danced across the cobbles.
Elena cried out at the violation.
The crowd gasped at the butcher’s actions. Joach fought to reach the man, but hands held him down.
The butcher traced a finger along the bare budding of her breasts. “So innocent in appearance!” His voice had become thick and husky. “But so foul its lusts!”