Page 53 of Magick and Lead
The idea of a warm meal and a bed filled Rohree with such joy that tears nearly rose to her eyes. “They might have food. They might have an inn. Do you have money?” she asked.
“Yes,” Clua said. “But let’s be careful. There may be Gray Brothers about.”
And yet, as they skirted a pasture and found the main dirt road that led through the village, Rohree’s relief only grew. The place looked as ordinary as a village could be. The stonecottages were tidy, with well-thatched roofs. The fields were tended. Goats and sheep bleated greetings from their pens. She saw no people—not yet—but firelight flickered ahead, bright and welcoming.
“Surely they must have—” she started to sayfood, but the smell hit her before the sentence was finished, the scent of roasting meat, crackling fat, dripping grease. Her mouth began to water, and she walked faster, stumbling ahead as if pulled by an invisible thread, heedless of Clua’s whispered warnings to be cautious.
Ahead, the dirt track opened up into a modest town square. At its center, a bonfire burned, flames twisting and twining up toward the nascent stars. This was where the scent seemed to be coming from, and Rohree hurried toward it even faster—moving with such abandon that she nearly tripped over the first body.
She stopped, staring down. A man lay across her path. And another. And another. And a woman beside them. And another woman beyond her. The whole square was filled with prostrate bodies, dozens upon dozens of them.
“Slaughtered,” Rohree whispered, her breath catching in her throat.
But Clua shook her head, pointing. “No. Look. They’re breathing.”
Sure enough, upon closer inspection, Rohree saw chests rising and falling. “What in the name of the Mother…?” she muttered.
Clua shook her head, slipping her mace free of its sling. “Stay close to me,” she said.
Together, they picked their way through the sleeping bodies, toward the bonfire. Here and there, they caught whiffs of vomit on the air, and twice Rohree had to step over multicolor splatters, redolent with wine.
“Did they all drink themselves stupid?” she wondered aloud, glancing around once more.
Clua had made it to the edge of the fire. Now that they were close to it, Rohree could see that the fuel for the flames wasn’t just ordinary wood. It was… something else. Clue reached out and lifted a half-burned slab of something. It was large and smooth and slightly curved, and had veins of silver-painted wood, like a painter’s canvas made of leather. Or like a…
“Dragon wing,” Clue muttered. Then she stooped, poked her mace-head into the ashes, and brought it up again. Caught on one of the spikes was a tangle of honey-blonde hair.
“I saw you coming,” the voice made Rohree and Clua both start, and they turned to find a man kneeling some twenty feet away. He was naked except for a sort of loincloth, and he seemed to be smeared in dark mud—which, Rohree supposed, was why they hadn’t seen him sooner. He knelt at the edge of a large, round trough.
“I scried you,” he said, pointing at the dark, still water.
“Good evening, Grandfather,” Clua said, using the most polite greeting she could for an older man. “What’s happened here?”
The man’s gaze swept the expanse of bodies. “Ah. Traveling into the void, they are. I would be too, but someone must scry-watch and man the fire, or so we’ve been taught. But you are strangers and you come into my town askingmequestions when by rights I should be asking questions ofyou. Tell me, who are ye?”
“We are the queen’s—” Rohree started to answer, but Clua stepped in front of her.
“We are but travelers, sir. And weary ones. Do you have a bit of food to spare? We have coin.”
The man’s eyes lingered on Rohree’s antlers, then on Clua’s fine coat of chain mail. He pursed his lips and pointed toa building behind them. “They’re cooking over there, at the boarding house. Food for our brothers and sisters, once they awaken. But come. A half-woman and a sprite hiking together through the woods. That’s a fancy sight. There must be more to your story. And tell me your names. And who you serve.” He arched an eyebrow, inquisitive.
“We—” Rohree started to say, but Clua cut her off again.
“We are refugees, grandfather. I am a blacksmith’s apprentice, and my friend here served a noble family. We left Issastar after the city was destroyed. We are traveling to stay with some cousins of mine in Iyafelt,” Clua said.
“Hmm,” the man rubbed the scraggly beard on his chin. “You came from the wrong direction, then.”
Clua swallowed, adjusting her grip on her mace. “I guess we got turned around in the woods. We’ll just buy some food and be on our way.”
The man’s expression became stern.
“No. You will leave. And you will leave hungry, for the food being prepared is for the voyagers into the void,” the man declared, then his eyes drifted down again to gaze into the water.
Clua was tugging on Rohree’s arm, but the hunger burning in the sprite’s belly shifted to become anger. She tore away from Clua’s grasp, stormed forward, and splashed the dark water into the man’s face.
“Many things have changed in Maethalia these past months,” she said. “Have the laws of hospitality disappeared, too? Even a child knows the Mother’s teachings. Welcome the wanderer. Feed the stranger.”
“Rohree,” Clua warned through gritted teeth.
