Page 91 of Silverbow
“Why are you searching for one?”
He should tell her it was none of her concern, but she’d hardly spoken to him since Windcross Wells, not that it mattered. “Because Eastwood cannot rise without one.”
“Is that part of your prophecy?”
Oryn sighed. He could throttle Cedric Norvallen. “It is.”
“And you want to raise Eastwood?”
“I want to go home.” She stared at him, and Oryn wondered what exactly it was she was thinking, but instead he asked, “What is it you miss most about Ryerson House?”
She fiddled with the candle holder, avoiding his gaze. “The pillows. Or Mistress Alys’s cooking.”
Well, he doubted that was the truth, and there was nothing he could do about the cooking. Colm was the best cook among them, but a pillow was easy enough to see to.
“Where were you going after Trowbridge? After you saw the bounties? Were you still meaning to turn yourself in?”
She shrugged. “Misthol, or perhaps Pavia.”
“Why?”
She studied the board a long time before moving her stone. “I want to burn it all to the ground.”
Enya
As they prepared to leave Ested, Enya had come to the conclusion that she preferred the nights on the road to the nights in the inns. The beds were better, and sometimes the food, but on the road, she had things to occupy her hands. In the inns, she had nothing to do but stew in her own thoughts and fret over being seen. The wine helped after a fashion, as did the dancing, even if the feel of hand on her waist brought an empty sort of distraction.
Oryn had peeled off to rouse Bade and Aiden, dragging after another long night, and she left Colm to settle with the innkeeper. Hauling her saddle bagsover her shoulder, she stepped outside to rouse the stable boy. She found the yard already occupied by a tall, skinny man in a dark cloak that seemed too heavy for the season, but on second look, she froze mid-step.
It was not a man, she realized, as pale hands tipped with long black talons rose to throw back the hood of the night black cloak. Where there should have been only folds of fabric, tattered leathery wings unfurled. The face that stared back at her made her heart skip two beats and chilled her to her marrow.
A lantern with two casks of oil, flint and steel, her belt knife, a…a…Her list slid away from her under the creature’s stare.
It was a face like a bat’s that stared at her intently, but hairless, and too pale, like a slug that spent its whole existence under a rock. It opened its mouth, showing hideous black teeth, and started to croon. The sound was like a snake slithering through dead leaves, but it was a song thatpulledat her, tugged her forward on some unseen cord. Enya took a step toward it. She only distantly heard thethudof the saddlebags hitting the dirt as she let them fall.
A lantern with two casks of oil, flint and…and…Thought melted away like late season snow. That song held all the sadness in the world, all the grief, all the despair. It was terrible, and beautiful, and it drew her.Closer.She wanted to be closer. Needed to be closer. She put one leaden foot in front of the other, gazing into the horrible face. It reached out for her, talons reflexing.
A flash of silver whirred over her shoulder and the song cut off abruptly. Enya gaped at the hilt of a knife buried in the creature’s throat. Those terrible hands clawed at the blade, black blood seeping around it. She stared, unable to move, and the next instant, she was ripped backwards so hard she nearly came out of her boots, pulled tight against a hard, stony chest. The flash of a sword sent the creature’s head rolling in a spray of black as Colm darted around her.
Oryn spun her around to face him. His fingers curled around her chin, lifting it so he examined her face, searching frantically. “Did it touch you?”
“N-No,” she stuttered. The icy rush that was his healing passed through her, but the cold that settled into her bones was something deeper. Colm wiped a black spattered blade on the creature’s cloak. “What is that?”
“Demondread,” Oryn said. “A soul eater.”
She was only aware that Oryn still held her fast in his grip when her knees buckled and she did not fall. Bade and Aiden burst from the rear of the inn, steel rasping as they drew blades, scanning the stable yard. Soul eaters were just stories told to frighten children, or at least they had been.
“I…I thought all the dark creatures were hunted to extinction,” she said breathlessly.
“But the witches weren’t.”
twenty-three
Oryn
They fled Ested, leaving the villagers to puzzle over the beheaded demondread. Oryn still puzzled over it as the sun climbed to its peak. They rarely drifted far from Covwood and when they did, they preferred to hunt for unsuspecting souls in quiet, secluded places. What one was doing in a village on the Misthol Road, he couldn’t fathom.
Perhaps the High Lord of Valbelle was onto something. Perhaps Cedric would send word if he survived Covwood, but even if something was stirring, it seemed too unlikely to be mere coincidence they would find a demondread in a stable yard in Ested, reaching for the Silverbow.
