Leesha turned her voice to a lash. “You forget yourself, daughter of Ahmann. That, or you think me a fool. Begone from my sight. Now, before I lose patience with you completely.”
Amanvah blinked, but Leesha’s stare was hard, her words sincere. Leesha was in her place of power. Everyone in the Hollow would turn on Amanvah if she so much as raised a finger. Most of them were waiting eagerly for the day.
The young priestess kept her dignity as she rose. Her quick strides to the door were not quite a scurry.
As the latch clicked shut, Leesha put her head back in her hands.
Amanvah had a queer look about her as she climbed into the motley coach. Rojer had become accustomed to her moods, reading them in her eyes and bearing as easily as he did with the corelings.
But no empathy could tell him what Amanvah was thinking now. Her manner was unprecedented, showing nothing of her usual haughtiness. She seemed almost shaken.
Rojer reached for her hand. “Are you all right, my love?”
Amanvah returned the squeeze. “All is well, husband. I am simply frustrated.”
Rojer nodded, though he knew how frustration looked on Amanvah, and this wasn’t it.
“Mum still won’t see reason?” Kendall asked.
“Surely Mistress Leesha has convinced her,” Sikvah said.
“Wouldn’t count on that,” Rojer said. “She may not openly oppose it, but Leesha ent thrilled about the idea, either.”
“It remains to be seen,” Amanvah said. “Mistress Leesha appears willing to mediate the contract, but I am not convinced she is impartial. She may drive the dower beyond our ability to pay.”
“Don’t care about any dower,” Kendall said. “Let me talk to her …”
Amanvah shook her head. “Absolutely not. It is not proper for you to involve yourself in these proceedings, little sister.”
“Ay, so everyone gets a say in my marriage but me?” Kendall said.
Rojer had to laugh at that. “Had more say than me. Wasn’t even asked if I wanted it.” When Kendall stared at him, he quickly added, “Though of course I do. Sooner, the better.”
“This is exactly why both of you must be kept above the debate,” Amanvah said. “You will both see the contract before you are asked to sign, but hearing your flaws laid bare as the haggling continues can only do harm. As it is written in the Evejah, The cold of negotiating a marriage can douse the fires in which it must burn.”
Kendall sighed. “Just tired of having to sleep at my mum’s. Don’t care about some piece of paper.”
Rojer walked in the naked night, his warded cloak thrown back despite the chill air. He breathed deep, filling his lungs with winter’s bite. He had suffocated in that cloak for too long.
Rojer and Kendall played an easy melody on their fiddles, subtly nudging corelings in the area away, while Amanvah and Sikvah sang a harmony to make them invisible to demon senses.
There were five of them in all. Kendall and Sikvah at the rear, joined in their music like lovers. He and Amanvah were similarly linked. He could feel her voice resonating inside him, more intimate than the touch of their sexes. All four played the same piece, but Amanvah’s voice was led by Rojer’s fiddle, while Sikvah followed Kendall’s. This allowed them to break in two as needed, the blend of strings and voice enhancing each other’s power. Ahead strode Coliv, vigilant, shield and spear at the ready.
They carried no light—the world lit by magic. Rojer and Kendall wore motley warded masks Amanvah and Sikvah had made, allowing them to see its glow. The princesses wore delicate gold nets in their hair, dangling warded coins that offered the same power. Amanvah had sewn the sight wards into Coliv’s turban and veil that he might accompany them.
They walked until they found their favorite practice spot, a wide knoll that let them see far in every direction. Coliv was atop it in an instant, surveying the land. He gave sign all was clear, and the others followed.
When they were in position, Rojer lifted bow from string, his fiddle and Amanvah’s voice falling silent as one.
Kendall nodded, changing the easy melody that kept the demons at bay to a call that reached far into the night, drawing corelings to them with promise of easy prey. Sikvah kept singing, her voice still masking their presence.
Wind demons were the first to reach them, two of the creatures circling down from above. Kendall drew them close, and then her music suddenly shifted. Sikvah smoothly dropped her masking spell, joining her voice to Kendall’s music, and the demons shifted in midflight, colliding with one another and falling from the sky in a jumble of snapping beaks and slashing talons. They struck the ground so heavily Rojer almost could hear their hollow bones shattering.
He and Amanvah applauded, and Kendall and Sikvah bowed as he had taught them.
“Field demons to the west,” Coliv called. The reap was small, only five of the beasts, but five field demons could rend them to pieces in seconds.
Both women were calm as they turned to regard the approaching threat. Already Sikvah had resumed her song of unsight, masking the five humans atop the hill from the demons’ senses as surely as a warded cloak.
As the reap came in, pulled by Kendall’s insistent call, she knit her brow and layered another melody over the first, wracking them with pain. Sikvah layered a harmony to match, keeping them hidden even as she added power to Kendall’s attack.
Rojer’s hand clenched on the neck of his fiddle as the demons closed, remembering the night she had been cored because of his failing.
But Kendall had been out in the naked night without him many times since, and it was time to stop coddling her.
“Too easy,” he called, as Kendall set the corelings fighting. “Any two-klat Jongleur with one of my music sheets can make demons fight each other.” It wasn’t entirely true, but Kendall was still being timid in her harmony with Sikvah. She needed to push herself.
Kendall smiled at him. “Ay? How about if they fight themselves?”
She twisted the music like a knife in a wound, and the field demons turned their teeth and talons upon themselves. First Kendall made them claw their own eyes, leaving them stumbling blind in agony and rage. Soon after she had them lying on their backs, biting and clawing at themselves in a frenzy until the sheer number of wounds overwhelmed them. Hot, stinking ichor, glowing bright with magic, pooled like syrup around them.
After a few moments, only one of the demons was still kicking. It was a thickly armored creature, the leader of the reap. Kendall eased her melody away, and it leapt to its feet, wounds already beginning to close. In minutes it would be fully healed, and those milky blind eyes would see once more.
Kendall gave it no time. She reached out tendrils of music, catching the demon fast and leading it in a blind charge right into an exposed rock face on the hilltop. It stumbled back, shrieking, but Kendall might as well have had it on a string, using the demon’s own legs to smash its head back into the stone. Again and again, until there was only a wet slapping sound and the creature collapsed, its skull smashed.
Rojer gave a shrill whistle to accompany their applause. Even Coliv banged his spear on his shield. But then he pointed. “Flame demons coming from the south. Wood from the east.”
Rojer looked and saw the approaching corelings, still a few moments away. “Fiddle down, Kendall. Amanvah and Sikvah’s turn.”
Amanvah glided over to join Sikvah, her voice lifting and falling naturally into Sikvah’s song of unsight, weaving in a song of summoning.
Kendall was smiling proudly as she came to Rojer, pressing right up against him. He felt his heart quicken and his face flush. It took little, these days, for his apprentice to excite him. She was a whole new person to him now.
“You’ll soon be as good as me,” Rojer said, meaning it.
Kendall kissed his cheek. “Better.”
“From your lips to the Creator’s ears,” Rojer said. “I’d have it no other way.”
The flame demons came racing up the hill, but before they could reach the top, his wives seduced them. Rojer tried other words to describe it, but none was so apt. The corelings circled Amanvah and Sikvah, giving off a soft, rhythmic noise that sounded disturbingly like purring.
The copse of wood demons drew near, spreading out to surround the hilltop. Coliv dropped into a crouch, and Rojer and Kendall gripped their instruments, ready to raise them at a moment’s notice.
Amanvah led the way as the singers dropped a pitch. The flame demons arched their backs, hissing, and darted to take up guard around the hilltop. They kept hissing as the woodies approached, and when they were in range, spat fire at them.
The resulting battle was fierce, but ultimately one-sided. Wood demons were wary of flame demons, but nevertheless killed them on sight. Flame demons could hurt them, even kill occasionally, but seldom before a wood demon crushed several of them.
Then Sikvah began a counterpoint to Amanvah’s seduction, extending the song of unsight to cover their new allies. Woodies swung wildly, but the nimble flame demons danced around the lumbering blows, hawking great gobs of firespit. The spit stuck where it landed, burning with an intense flame that left Rojer seeing spots. He flexed his right hand, crippled where a flame demon had bitten off his index and middle fingers.
Soon the last of the wood demons had collapsed, bright pyres that burned out into a charred and blackened remain.
“Might as well have stepped into a sunbeam,” Kendall said, applauding.
“Ay,” Rojer said loudly, “but like I told you, making demons fight each other is easy.” Of course, what his wives had done was far beyond that, but like Kendall, they were here to test their boundaries.
Amanvah smiled at him, and Rojer knew his confidence was well placed. She touched her choker as she climbed octaves, the song that moments before had the flame demons dancing their victory becoming a lash that drove them north at a frantic run. There was a cold fishing pond barely a mile in that direction. His senses enhanced by the wardsight, Rojer heard the splashes as the flame demons leapt in, and saw the rising clouds of steam that marked their passing.
There was a flash of magic above their heads, and Rojer looked up to see a wind demon plummet to the ground a few feet away, Coliv’s spear embedded in its chest. The spear survived the fall. The coreling did not.
The Watcher bowed deeply. “You are all touched by Everam, it is true. But this will not save you, if you drop your guard. Everam has no time for fools who do not respect Nie’s might.”
Rojer expected Amanvah to snap at his haughty tone. Instead, she gave a fraction of a bow. More than he had ever seen her give a mere warrior. “You speak wisdom, Watcher, and we hear.”
Coliv bowed again. “I live to serve, Holy Daughter.”
Leesha kept her door shut as she tackled the mounds of paper covering her desk. Outside, Wonda kept visitors away, even Jizell and Darsy. She was in no mood to see anyone.
Wonda’s distinctive knock came at the door, and Leesha sighed, wondering who it was she thought urgent enough to disturb over. “Come in, dear.”
Wonda poked her head in. “Sorry, mistress …”
Leesha did not look up from her papers, pen scratching as she marked, signed, and annotated. “Unless someone’s dying, Wonda, I haven’t the time. Tell them to make an appointment.”
“Ay, that’s just it,” Wonda said. “You asked me to get you at dusk. Supposed to test the Warded Children this evening.”
“It can’t possibly be dusk already …” Leesha began, but looking through her window at the darkening sky, she realized it was true. Already her office so dim she was straining her eyes without realizing.
Leesha looked at the barely dented pile of papers beside her and fought down the urge to weep. Dusk came earlier each day as they approached Solstice, making the tasks she need to accomplish seem that much more insurmountable. Night was a vise, crushing her. New moon in summer had nearly destroyed them. Hollowers died every minute, the entire county holding on for dawn’s succor and time to refortify. What would happen if the coreling princes returned when dark was half again as long, and daylight a scant few hours?
“And Stela wrestled a rippin’ wood demon!” Wonda was saying as Leesha’s carriage made its way home. She and Wonda used to walk the mile from her cottage to the hospit, but now there was no peace for Leesha when she did. Too many well-wishers, petitioners, and would-be advisors.
“Creator, you should have seen it.” Wonda went on. “Corespawn’s thrashing and kicking fit to tear itself in two, and there’s Stela on its back, calm as a tree, waiting patiently for her next hold. Broke its spine in two when she found it.”