Page 74 of Traitor Son

This was the result.

“It’s Tressin,” Juste whispered, and Remin nodded. He couldn’t speak.

That was his home.

Not a perfect reproduction, of course. Remin was eight years old when the Emperor burned down the ancient seat of his House, and there was so much he couldn’t remember. But he recognized the angled towers and deep windows, the rounded rooftop over the main house, the majestic entryway with its wide steps and four tall pillars.

“You…like it?” Sousten asked warily.

“Yes.” Remin’s throat was tight. He probably ought to have warned Juste; Juste had been born there too, and had seen that ancient andbeautiful house burn. His family had been executed alongside Remin’s. Tounot had come to foster every summer, and he and Remin had climbed every stair and garret of that old place.

Remin could see in his friend’s eyes that it was right.

“Tressin?” The princess echoed, glancing between them, and then her face paled. “That…that was your home, wasn’t it? The seat of House…your family’s House.”

“It was,” Remin said, filled with a grief that was so great, he could say nothing more.

Wisely, Sousten suggested that they postpone further discussion for another day, to give everyone time to absorb the current plans. But Remin found himself returning often to look at the hilltops again, following the game trail that would one day be a riding path, or walking up the wider lane that would become a road. He had fought a war for this place, he could remember every terrifying, horrifying, exhausting moment he had endured to get here, and now he could hardly believe that it would really be his.

And as he rode, he found himself remembering what the princess had said.

Trees take a long time to grow.They did. Remin slid off his warhorse to look at the monster oak near the top of the hill, the widest tree he had ever seen. It had to be centuries old, maybe even millennia. Oaks could live that long, couldn’t they? This oak might have been alive when his House was established, eleven hundred years ago. Wouldn’t that be something?

A tree like this couldn’t be imported, like one of Sousten’s ornamental plums. It couldn’t be bought for any price. Was that what the princess had meant? All of these trees were old growth forest. Who knew how old? Might there not be other trees as ancient here? Or others equally beautiful in their gnarled and grand old age?

The next morning, he slipped quietly into the cottage in the gray light of dawn to look at the princess, sleeping in her usual place in the center of the bed, curled up small around a pillow. All by themselves, his fingers reached to stroke her soft hair. He liked the thought that trees took a long time to grow. He liked that she would think of such a thing.

That same day, he went to talk to Sousten.

“Leave the trees,” he said, ducking through the low door of the architect’s cottage. “You can clear out the ones that are in the way of the house, or some other necessary structure, but try to include the rest in the gardens.”

“But these are formal gardens, Your Grace,” Sousten protested. “A lot of old, wild forest will quite spoil the sightlines. The fashion in the capital—”

“This is Tresingale,” Remin said firmly. “It is old, and wild. And you can’t buy a thousand year-old oak.”

Sousten’s mouth shut and his eyes turned thoughtful as the idea struck true, and lingered.

Chapter 9 – Dangerous Creatures

The devils had come to Nandre first.

For generations, the tiny mountain village had scraped a meager living from the hillsides of the Berlawe Mountains, sowing the few crops that would consent to grow in the stony soil. Poverty made an unlikely shield, but an effective one; whenever Valleth came, the villagers had only to retreat to the nearby mines until they went away. Nothing in Nandre was worth a siege.

We are made of sterner stuff than stone,they said to each other, a mantra that held true from one generation to the next. Over a century of occupation, as so many other villages and towns were sacrificed to the Lord of Tales, many converted to his worship, hoping to be spared. But Nandre never lost their faith in the stars.

For a hundred years, they watched smoke rise from the valley and listened for the thunder of hooves, the terrifying buzz of the Eagle Knights, swarming like wasps up the hills. They came to rape and plunder and left behind babies with ice-blond hair and blue eyes. But by spring of 822, Nandre knew that another war had begun, and this time, Valleth was losing. Smoke rose from Vallethi fortresses and magicians were often on the road, passing deeper into the mountains. By June of that year, the horses riding up the pass to the village were carrying the black and silver banners of Sir Remin, Knight-General of the Imperial Army.

Valleth must have suffered many defeats, for him to have come so far.

It would be some time before anyone connected those defeats with the arrival of the goat-stealers.

That was one of the problems, in the beginning. Everyone had a different name for the things that had appeared in the night, and often it seemed they were not even describing the same thing. In Meinhem, the great wolves came first, the swiftest of the devils, howling outside their stout log houses, smashing against the walls as if they were mad with foaming sickness. On the high, precarious cliffs of Raida, they called them the slinkers and thought they were some new Vallethi scout, killing the night watchmen in advance of a raid. And in Nandre, where the mountain scrub would not support any animal larger than goats, it was the disappearance of the livestock that first indicatedsomethingwas out there, in the dark.

Was it dogs stealing them? Wolves? They began to hear the noises of both in the night, snarling, rasping growls, and distant howls that froze the blood.

“I’ll see to the beasties myself,” said Fridolin Creit, who had been one of the richest men in the village until four of his goats went missing. And that was how he became the first human casualty of the devils. For at sunrise, the pen with the goat he had staked out as bait was empty, and so was his perch in a nearby tree.

The people of Nandre began to catch glimpses of…something, at dawn and twilight. Furtive shapes in the trees, scrabbling away from the sunlight. Nandre was high enough in the mountains that the trees were fairly sparse, especially near the village itself, where the land had long been denuded to feed the hearth fires. It likely saved some of the village children. In Raida, Selgin, and three times in the old forest of Meinhem, it was children that went missing, rather than livestock.

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