A sand demon hissed at him. “What are you?” Arlen asked, but the creature only swiped at the wards, growling in frustration and stalking away when they flared.

Arlen watched it go, his thoughts dark. “To the Core with it,” he muttered, leaping out from the protection of his wards. The coreling turned just in time to take a blow from Arlen’s warded knuckles. His punches struck the unsuspecting creature like thunderbolts. Before it knew what had hit it, the demon was dead.

Other corelings approached at the sound, but they moved warily, and Arlen was able to dart back to the building and cover his wards long enough to drag his victim through.

“Let’s see if you can’t give something back, after all,” Arlen told the dead creature. Using cutting wards painted onto a sharp piece of obsidian, he opened up the sand demon, surprised to find that beneath the hard armor its flesh was as vulnerable as his. The muscle and sinew was tough, but not so much more than that of any beast.

The stench of the creature was terrible. The black ichor that served as its blood stank so badly that Arlen’s eyes teared and he gagged. Holding his breath, he cut meat from the creature, and shook it vigorously to remove the excess fluid before setting it over his small fire. The ichor smoked and eventually burned away, the smell of the cooking flesh becoming tolerable.

When it was cooked through, Arlen held up the dark, foul meat, and the years melted away, casting him back to Tibbet’s Brook, and the words of Coline Trigg. He had caught a fish that day, but its scales were brown and sickly, and the Herb Gatherer had made him throw it back. “Never eat something that looks sick,” Coline had said. “What you put in your mouth becomes a part of you.”

Will this become a part of me, too? he wondered. He looked at the meat, mustered his nerve, and put it in his mouth.

SECTION IV

CUTTER’S

HOLLOW

331–332 AR

CHAPTER 25

A NEW VENUE

331 AR

THE RAIN INCREASED to a steady pour, and Rojer picked up his pace, cursing his luck. He had been planning to leave Shepherd’s Dale for some time, but hadn’t expected it to be under such hurried and unpleasant circumstances.

He supposed he couldn’t blame the shepherd. True, the man spent more time tending to his flock than his wife, and it was she who made the advance, but coming home early to beat the rain and finding a boy in bed with your wife didn’t tend to put men in a reasoning mood.

In a way, he was thankful for the rain. Without it, the man might well have raised half the men in the Dale to give chase. Dalesmen were a possessive lot; probably because their women were often left alone while they took their precious herds to graze. The shepherds were serious folk, about their herds and about their wives. Interfere with either one …

After a frantic chase around the room, the shepherd’s wife had jumped upon her husband’s back, restraining him long enough for Rojer to snatch up his bags and dart out the door. Rojer’s bags were always packed. Arrick had taught him that.

“Night,” he muttered, as his boot sucked into a thick mud puddle. The cold and wet seeped right in through the soft leather, but he dared not stop and try to build a fire just yet.

He drew his motley cloak tighter, wondering why he always seemed to be running from something. Over the last two years, he had moved on almost every season, living in Cricket Run, Woodsend, and Shepherd’s Dale three times each, at least, but he still felt like an outsider. Most villagers went their whole lives without ever leaving their town, and were forever attempting to persuade Rojer to do the same.

Marry me. Marry my daughter. Stay at my inn and we’ll paint your name over the door to attract custom. Keep me warm while my husband’s afield. Help us harvest and stay the winter.

They said it a hundred ways, but they all meant, “Give up the road and plant roots here.”

Every time it was said, Rojer found himself on the road. It was nice to be wanted, but as what? A husband? A father? A farmhand? Rojer was a Jongleur, and he could not imagine being anything else. The first time he lifted a finger at harvest or helped chase down a lost sheep he knew he would be starting down a road that would quickly make him otherwise.

He touched the golden-haired talisman in its secret pocket, feeling Arrick’s spirit watching over him. He knew he would feel his master’s disappointment keenly if he ever put his motley aside. Arrick had died a Jongleur, and Rojer would, too.

True to Arrick’s words, the hamlets had sharpened Rojer’s skills. Two years of constant performing had made him into more than just a fiddler and tumbler. Without Arrick to lead, Rojer had been forced to broaden and grow, coming up with innovative ways to entertain alone. He was constantly perfecting some new magic trick or bit of music, but as much as his tricks and fiddling, he had become known for his storytelling.

Everyone in the hamlets loved a good story, especially one that told of faraway places. Rojer obliged, telling of places he’d seen and places he hadn’t, towns that sat over the next hill and ones that existed only in his imagination. The stories grew bigger with every telling, his characters coming alive in people’s minds as they went on their adventures. Jak Scaletongue, who could speak to corelings, and was forever tricking the stupid beasts with false promises. Marko Rover, who crossed the Milnese mountains and found a rich land on the other side where corelings were worshipped like gods. And of course, the Warded Man.

The duke’s Jongleurs passed through the hamlets to make decrees every spring, and the latest had told tales of a feral man who wandered the wilderness, killing demons and feasting on their flesh. He claimed it was honest word from a tattooist who had put wards on the man’s back, and that others had confirmed the tale. The audience’s attention had been rapt, and when folk had asked Rojer to retell the story another night, he had obliged, adding embellishments all his own.

Listeners loved to ask questions and attempt to catch him in contradiction, but Rojer delighted in the dance of words, keeping the bumpkins convinced of his outlandish tales.

Ironically, the most difficult boast to sell was that he could make the corelings dance with his fiddle. He could have proved it at any time, of course, but as Arrick used to say, “The moment you get up to prove one thing, you’ll be expected to prove them all.”

Rojer looked up at the sky. I’ll be playing for the corelings soon enough, he thought. It had been overcast all day, and was getting steadily darker. In the cities, where high walls made it so that most people never saw an actual coreling, it was believed to be a tampweed tale that they could rise under dark clouds, but living outside the walls in the hamlets for two years had taught Rojer better. Most would wait until full sunset to rise, but if the clouds grew thick enough, a few bold demons would test the false night.

Cold and wet and in no mood to take the risk, he cast about for a suitable campsite. He’d be lucky to make Woodsend the next day. More likely, he would be two nights on the road. The thought made his stomach churn.

And Woodsend would be no better than the Dale. Or Cricket Run, for that matter. Sooner or later, he would get some woman with child, or worse, fall in love, and before he knew it, he would only be taking his fiddle from its case on festival days. Until he needed to barter it to fix the plow or buy seed, that was. Then he would be just like everyone else.

Or you could go home.