“Have you seen my home?” she asked softly.
The Warded Man looked at her curiously, but made no reply.
“If you’ve come from the south, you must’ve come through the Hollow,” Leesha said.
The Warded Man shook his head. “I give the hamlets a wide berth,” he said. “The first person to see me runs off, and before long I’m met by a cluster of angry men with pitchforks.”
Leesha wanted to protest, but she knew the people of Cutter’s Hollow would act much as he described. “They’re only afraid,” she said lamely.
“I know,” the Warded Man said. “And so I leave them in peace. There’s more to the world than hamlets and cities, and if the price of one is losing the other …” He shrugged. “Let people hide in their homes, caged like chickens. Cowards deserve no better.”
“Then why did you save us from the demons?” Rojer asked.
The Warded Man shrugged. “Because you’re human and they’re abominations,” he said. “And because you struggled to survive, right up to the last minute.”
“What else could we have done?” Rojer asked.
“You’d be amazed how many just lie down and wait for the end,” the Warded Man said.
They made good time the fourth day out from Angiers. Neither the Warded Man nor his stallion seemed to know fatigue, Twilight Dancer easily paced his master’s loping run.
When they finally made camp for the night, Leesha made a thin soup from the Warded Man’s remaining stores, but it barely filled their bellies. “What are we going to do for food?” she asked him, as the last of it vanished down Rojer’s throat.
The Warded Man shrugged. “I hadn’t planned for company,” he said as he sat back, carefully painting wards onto his fingernails.
“Two more days of riding is a long way to go without food,” Rojer lamented.
“You want to cut the trip in half,” the Warded Man said, blowing on a nail to dry it, “we could travel by night, as well. Twilight Dancer can outrun most corelings, and I can kill the rest.”
“Too dangerous,” Leesha said. “We’ll do Cutter’s Hollow no good if we all get killed. We’ll just have to travel hungry.”
“I’m not leaving the wards at night,” Rojer agreed, rubbing his stomach regretfully.
The Warded Man pointed to a coreling stalking the camp. “We could eat that,” he said.
“You can’t be serious!” Rojer cried in disgust.
“Just the thought is sickening,” Leesha agreed.
“It’s not so bad, really,” the man said.
“You’ve actually eaten demon?” Rojer asked.
“I do what I have to, to survive,” the man replied.
“Well, I’m certainly not going to eat demon meat,” Leesha said.
“Me neither,” Rojer agreed.
“Very well,” the Warded Man sighed, getting up and taking his bow, a quiver of arrows, and a long spear. He stripped off his robe, revealing his warded flesh, and moved to the edge of the circle. “I’ll see what I can hunt up.”
“You don’t need to …!” Leesha called, but the man ignored her. A moment later, he had vanished into the night.
It was more than an hour before he returned, carrying a plump pair of rabbits by the ears. He handed the catch to Leesha, and returned to his seat, picking up the tiny warding brush.
“You make music?” he asked Rojer, who had just finished re-stringing his fiddle and was plucking at the strings, adjusting the tensions.
Rojer jumped at the comment. “Y-yes,” he managed.
“Will you play something?” the Warded Man asked. “I can’t remember the last time I heard music.”
“I would,” Rojer said sadly, “but the bandits kicked my bow into the woods.”
The man nodded and sat in thought a moment. Then he stood suddenly, producing a large knife. Rojer shrank back, but the man just stepped back out of the circle. A wood demon hissed at him, but the Warded Man hissed right back, and the demon shied away.
He returned soon after with a supple length of wood, shearing the bark with his wicked blade. “How long was it?” he asked.
“E-eighteen inches,” Rojer stuttered.
The Warded Man nodded, cutting the branch to the appropriate length and walking over to Twilight Dancer. The stallion did not react as he cut a length of hair from its tail. He notched the wood and tied the horsehair flat and thick on one side. He knelt next to Rojer, bending the branch. “Tell me when the tension is right,” he said, and Rojer laid the fingers of his crippled hand on the hair. When he was satisfied, the Warded Man tied the other end and handed it to him.
Rojer beamed at the gift, treating it with resin before taking up his fiddle. He put the instrument to his chin and gave it a few strokes with the new bow. It wasn’t ideal, but he grew more confident, pausing to tune once more before beginning to play.
His skillful fingers filled the air with a haunting melody that took Leesha’s thoughts to Cutter’s Hollow, wondering at its fate. Vika’s letter was almost a week gone. What would she find when she arrived? Perhaps the flux had passed with no more loss, and this desperate ordeal had been for nothing.
Or perhaps they needed her more than ever.
The music affected the Warded Man as well, she noticed, for his hands stopped their careful work, and he stared off into the night. Shadows draped his face, obscuring the tattoos, and she saw in his sad countenance that he had been comely once. What pain had driven him to this existence, scarring himself and shunning his own kind for the company of corelings? She found herself aching to heal him, though he showed no hurt.
Suddenly, the man shook his head as if to clear it, startling Leesha from her reverie. He pointed off into the darkness. “Look,” he whispered. “They’re dancing.”
Leesha looked out in amazement, for indeed, the corelings had ceased to test the wards, had ceased even to hiss and shriek. They circled the camp, swaying in time to the music. Flame demons leapt and twirled, sending ribbons of fire spiraling away from their knotted limbs, and wind demons looped and dove through the air. Wood demons had crept from the cover of the forest, but they ignored the flame demons, drawn to the melody.
The Warded Man looked at Rojer. “How are you doing that?” he asked, his voice awed.
Rojer smiled. “The corelings, they have an ear for music,” he said. He rose to his feet, walking to the edge of the circle. The demons clustered there, watching him intently. He began to walk the circle’s perimeter, and they followed, mesmerized. He stopped and swayed from side to side as he continued to play, and the corelings mirrored his movements almost exactly.
“I didn’t believe you,” Leesha apologized quietly. “You really can charm them.”
“And that’s not all,” Rojer boasted. With a twist and a series of sharp strokes of the bow, he turned the melody sour; once pure notes ringing out discordant and tainted. Suddenly, the corelings were shrieking again, covering their ears with their talons and scrambling away from Rojer. They drew back further and further as the musical assault continued, vanishing into the shadows beyond the firelight. “They haven’t gone far,” Rojer said. “As soon as I stop, they’ll be back.”