A woman looked up at them as they entered. She was prematurely gray and looked haggard and drawn, but Leesha knew her blocky frame instantly.
“Thank the Creator,” Darsy said, catching sight of her. Leesha let go of Jona, and moved quickly to speak with her. After several minutes, she returned to Jona.
“Does Bruna’s hut still stand?” she asked.
Jona shrugged. “So far as I know,” he said. “No one has been there since she passed. Almost two weeks now.”
Leesha nodded. Bruna’s hut was far from the village proper, shielded by rows of trees. It was doubtful the soot had broken its wards. “I’ll need to go there and get supplies,” she said, stepping back outside. It was beginning to rain again, the sky bleak and bereft of hope.
Rojer and the Warded Man were there, along with a cluster of villagers.
“It is you,” Brianne said, rushing up to embrace Leesha. Evin stood not far back, holding a young girl in his arms with Callen, grown tall though he was not yet ten, next to him.
Leesha returned the embrace warmly. “Has anyone seen my father?” she asked.
“He’s home, where you should be,” came a voice, and Leesha turned to see her mother approach, Gared at her heel. Leesha did not know whether to feel relief or dread at the sight.
“You come to check on everyone but your own family?” Elona demanded.
“Mum, I only just …” Leesha began, but her mother cut her off.
“Only this and only that!” Elona barked. “Always a reason to turn your back on your blood when it suits you! Your poor father is finding death’s succor, and I find you here …!”
“Who’s with him?” Leesha interrupted.
“His apprentices,” Elona said.
Leesha nodded. “Have them bring him here with the others,” she said.
“I’ll do no such thing!” Elona cried. “Take him from the comfort of a feathered bed for an infested straw pallet in a room rife with plague?” She grabbed Leesha’s arm. “You’ll come see him now! You’re his daughter!”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Leesha demanded, snatching her arm away. Tears ran down her cheeks, and she made no effort to brush them aside. “Do you think I thought of anything else as I dropped everything and left Angiers? But he’s not the only person in town, Mother! I can’t abandon everyone to tend one man, even if he is my father!”
“You’re a fool if you think these people ent dead already,” Elona said, drawing gasps from the crowd. She pointed to the stone walls of the Holy House. “Will those wards hold back the corelings tonight?” she asked, drawing everyone’s attention to the stone, blackened by smoke and ash. Indeed, there was barely a ward visible.
She drew close to Leesha, her voice lowering. “Our house is far from the others,” she whispered. “It may be the last warded home in all of Cutter’s Hollow. It can’t hold everyone, but it can save us, if you come home!”
Leesha slapped her. Full in the face. Elona was knocked into the mud, and sat there dumbfounded, pressing her hand to her reddening cheek. Gared looked ready to rush Leesha and carry her off, but she checked him with a cold glare.
“I’m not going to hide away and leave my friends to the corelings!” she shouted. “We’ll find a way to ward the Holy House, and make our stand here. Together! And if demons should dare come and try to take my children, I have secrets of fire that will burn them from this world!”
My children, Leesha thought, in the sudden silence that followed. Am I Bruna now, to think of them so? She looked around, taking in the scared and sooty faces, not a one taking charge, and realized for the first time that as far as everyone was concerned, she was Bruna. She was Herb Gatherer for Cutter’s Hollow now. Sometimes that meant bringing healing, and sometimes …
Sometimes it meant a dash of pepper in the eyes, or burning a wood demon in your yard. The Warded Man came forward. People whispered at the sight of him, a robed and hooded specter hardly noticed a moment before.
“Wood demons won’t be all you face,” he said. “Flame demons will delight in your fire, and wind demons soar above it. The razing of your town might even have called rock demons down from the hills. They will be waiting when the sun sets.”
“We’re all going to die!” Ande cried, and Leesha felt panic building in the crowd.
“What do you care?” she demanded of the Warded Man. “You’ve kept your promise and seen us here! Get on your core-spawned scary horse and be on your way! Leave us to our fate!”
But the Warded Man shook his head. “I swore an oath to give the corelings nothing, and I won’t break it again. I’ll be damned to the Core myself before I give them Cutter’s Hollow.”
He turned to the crowd, and pulled back his hood. There were gasps of shock and fear, and, for a moment, the rising panic was arrested. The Warded Man seized on that moment. “When the corelings come to the Holy House tonight, I will stand and fight!” he declared. There was a collective gasp, and a flare of recognition in many of the villagers’ eyes. Even here, they had heard the tales of the tattooed man who killed demons.
“Will any of you stand with me?” he asked.
The men looked at each other doubtfully. Women took their arms, imploring them with their eyes not to say anything foolish.
“What can we do, ’cept get cored?” Ande called. “Ent nothing that can kill a demon!”
“You’re wrong,” the Warded Man said, and strode over to Twilight Dancer, pulling free a wrapped bundle. “Even a rock demon can be killed,” he said, unwrapping a long, curved object and throwing it into the mud in front of the villagers.
It was three feet long from its wide broken base to its sharp point, smooth and colored an ugly yellow-brown, like a rotten tooth. As the villagers stared openmouthed, a weak ray of sun broke from the overcast sky, striking it. Even in the mud, the length began to smoke, sizzling away the fresh droplets of drizzle that struck it.
In a moment, the rock demon’s horn burst into flame.
“Every demon can be killed!” the Warded Man cried, pulling a warded spear from Twilight Dancer and throwing it to stick in the burning horn. There was a flash, and the horn exploded in a burst of sparks like a festival flamework.
“Merciful Creator,” Jona said, drawing a ward in the air. Many of the villagers followed suit.
The Warded Man crossed his arms. “I can make weapons that bite the corelings,” he said, “but they are worthless without arms to wield them, so I ask again, who will stand with me?”
There was a long moment of silence. Then, “I will.” The Warded Man turned, looking surprised to see Rojer come and stand by his side.
“And I,” Yon Gray said, stepping forward. He leaned heavily on his cane, but there was hard determination in his eyes. “More’n seventy years I’ve watched ’em come and take us, one by one. If tonight’s t’be my last, then I’ll spit in a coreling’s eye afore the end.”
The other Hollowers stood dumbfounded, but then Gared stepped forward.
“Gared, you idiot, what are you doing?” Elona demanded, grabbing his arm, but the giant cutter shrugged off her grip. He reached out tentatively and pulled the warded spear free from the dirt. He looked, looking hard at the wards running along its surface.