She felt much the same. Only the utmost concentration let her keep focus on the wards she was painting onto Promise’s blotched coat. The mare swatted Renna with her tail, but didn’t nip or pull away.

‘Feeling stronger?’ she asked.

Arlen nodded. ‘Still feel off, though. Charged and exhausted at the same time. But it’ll do. We got a long way to ride, and I don’t mean to stop till we reach the Hollow.’

He pointed. ‘Path up ahead will take us east to the Old Hill Road. Fell out of use ’round ninety years ago when the corelings destroyed Fort Hill. Should give us a straight, clear run to the Hollow. We ride on through tomorrow night and we’ll be there noon the next day.’

Renna nodded. ‘Who’s Leesha Paper to you?’

Arlen breathed three times in rhythm, the surest tell he was embracing some feeling or memory, but there was no way to know what that might be. ‘Leesha Paper is Herb Gatherer of Deliverer’s Hollow, but she’s more like Selia Barren from back in the Brook. People hop when she claps. Innkeep in Riverbridge said Jardir snatched her from the Hollow and forced her to his bed. Need to see if that’s so. Pick up the trail, if I can. Find out Jardir laid a finger on her, gonna kill him.’

Renna smiled. ‘Wouldn’t be the man I love if you didn’t. What he did to you, I’m part fixin’ to kill him myself.’

‘Don’t you go tryin’ that, Ren,’ Arlen said. ‘You ent a match for him, no matter what you think you’ve learned. Jardir’s been fighting demons since before either of us was born.’

Renna shrugged. ‘Still haven’t answered my question. Din’t ask “Who’s Leesha Paper?” Asked “Who’s Leesha Paper, to you?” Hear tell the Krasians been forcing a lot of women to their beds. Why’s this the one that makes you come running?’

‘She’s my friend,’ Arlen said.

‘You don’t talk about her like a friend,’ Renna said. ‘You go all stiff. Cold. Can’t read you. Makes me think you’re hidin’ somethin’.’

Arlen looked at her and sighed. ‘What do you want me to say, Ren? You’ve got your Cobie Fishers, and I’ve got mine.’

‘Cobie Fisher is one,’ Renna said, feeling her blood pounding in her veins. ‘Da drove off any other boy who came to court more’n once. How many you got?’

Arlen shrugged. ‘Two or three.’

‘Well ent you popular.’ Renna spat. She could feel the monster raging within her, the demon essence, shrieking for violence. She gritted her teeth. It was too big to embrace. It was overwhelming. She tensed, fighting back the urge to leap at him. To kill him, even.

‘What?’ Arlen snapped, seeing the fierce look in her eyes and returning it tenfold. ‘Was I supposed to hold true because our das bartered us like cattle? I left Tibbet’s Brook and never meant to come back, Ren.’

Renna recoiled. Arlen Bales, just the idea of him and the memory of that kiss in the hayloft and her words of promise, had been Renna Tanner’s whole world when she was young. Dreams of Arlen had kept her going through hard times that would have broken other folk. That did break other folk. The thought that she had meant nothing to him back then, that she didn’t even enter into his thoughts, was too harsh to bear.

Arlen rushed at her, and instinctively she drew her knife. He was quicker, grabbing her wrists and holding them down with the strength of a rock demon. She strained against him uselessly.

‘Din’t know the girl you were then,’ Arlen said. ‘Or the woman you’d be. I had, I would have turned right around to take you away with me.’

Renna stopped struggling and looked at him. ‘You mean that?’

‘Honest word,’ Arlen said. ‘You askin’ if I got some past with women? Ay, I do. But past, as in done.’ He reached out, cupping her face and lifting it so their eyes met. ‘My future is Renna Tanner.’

Renna let her knife drop to the ground, but when he let her go, she still leapt on him.

4

Second Coming
333 AR Summer26 Dawns Before New Moon

They galloped until dawn, then eased the horses into a walk as the sun burned their night strength away. Arlen took them off road, leading Twilight Dancer with confidence down a Messenger way so overgrown and twisted it was almost invisible. The path beneath Renna’s feet never vanished, but it opened up suddenly before her and closed off quickly behind, like she was wandering through a thick fog.

Around midday, the path merged into a wide Messenger road, and they were able to mount again after a break for lunch and necessaries. Like the roads in Riverbridge, the Old Hill Road was made of stone, but most of it was now cracked and eroded into enormous potholes, filled with dirt and thick with stunted patches of scrub and weed. In more than one place, a full tree had broken through, leaving great blocks of broken stone, moss-covered and filthy. In other places, the road ran for long stretches as if untouched by time, miles of grey stone, flat and uniform with nary a crack or seam.

‘How’d they haul stones that big?’ Renna asked in wonder.

‘Din’t,’ Arlen said. ‘They made a muddy porridge called crete, which hardens into solid rock. All roads used to be like this, wide and stone, sometimes hundreds of miles long.’

‘What happened to them?’ Renna asked.

Arlen spat. ‘World got too small for big roads. Now Old Hill Road’s one of the last of her kind. Nature doesn’t take them back quickly, but eventually she does take ’em back.’

‘We’ll make good time here,’ Renna said.

‘Ay, but night will be a race,’ Arlen warned. ‘Field demons are drawn here like pigs to the trough. Come up through the potholes.’

Renna smirked. ‘Who am I to worry? Got the Deliverer with me.’ Arlen scowled, and she laughed.

Renna wasn’t laughing any more. Promise had relented to take a few strips of braided leather as a girth, but it was still all Renna could do to hang on as the giant Angierian mustang galloped flat-out over the ancient highway, leaping obstacles and barely keeping ahead of the reap of field demons at her heels.

Twilight Dancer fared no better, with as many of the corelings on his tail as Promise’s. The demons seemed bred for the road, their long tireless strides eating up the pavement.

Above, the raptor cries of wind demons filled the night sky. Renna glanced up and saw the demons clearly by the glow of their magic, massive wingspans blotting out the stars. Even wind demons weren’t quick enough to dive and take a galloping horse, but if they slowed …

‘Do we fight?’ Renna shouted to Arlen. Both their senses were far more acute in the night, but it was still hard to tell if he heard her over the thunder of hooves and the shriek of demons sensing a kill.

‘Too many!’ Arlen shouted back. ‘We stop to fight, more will catch up! Keep on!’

His face was clear as day to her night eyes, lined with worry. He was in no danger, of course. Nothing could harm Arlen in the night. But Renna had no such security. Her warded cloak would not shield her at a gallop, and while she had painted much of Promise’s splotchy coat, those wards wouldn’t last long in a pitched battle against an ever-increasing number of demons. Even Twilight Dancer’s warded barding had gaps necessary for mobility.