Peter Brett - The Desert Spear

Leesha kicked her horse ahead, picking her way through the trees until she came alongside the Painted Man. With no natural path to follow, much less one wide enough for two, they had to continually shift and duck to avoid low-hanging limbs. Gared was forced to get down from his horse entirely and walk.

"Where are we going?" Leesha asked.

"To get your grimoires," the Painted Man replied.

"I thought you said they were in Angiers," she said.

"The duchy, not the city," the Painted Man said with a grin.

The path soon widened, but still in a way that seemed natural to the untrained eye. Leesha was an Herb Gatherer, though, and knew plants better than anything.

"You cultivated this," she said. "You felled trees and widened the path, then hid your work so it doesn't seem a path at all."

"I value my privacy," the Painted Man said.

"It must have taken years!" Leesha said.

The Painted Man shook his head. "My strength has some uses. I can fell a tree almost as fast as Gared, and drag it off easier than a team of horses."

They followed the secret path deep into the woods until it veered off to the left. Ignoring the clear path, the Painted Man turned right, and again plunged into the trees. The others followed, and when they pushed through the branches they gasped as one.

There, hidden in a hollow, was a stone wall, so covered in ivy and moss that it had been invisible until they were upon it.

"I can't believe this is just sitting here, so close to the road," Rojer said.

"There are hundreds of ruins like this in the forest," the Painted Man said. "The trees reclaimed land quickly after the Return. A few are common Messenger stops, but others, like this one, have gone unnoticed for centuries."

They followed the wall to a gate, ancient and rusted shut. The Painted Man took a key from his robes and inserted it in the lock, which turned with a smooth oiled click. The gates opened silently.

Inside was a stable that seemed collapsed from the front, but the rear half of the structure was intact and clear, with a large covered cart and more than enough space for the four horses.

"Miraculous that half the stable should survive the years so well, and the other half not," Leesha noted with a grin, lifting some ivy out of the way to reveal fresh wards on the stable's walls. The Painted Man said nothing as they brushed down the horses.

Like the rest of the compound, the main house was in ruins, the roof caved and looking decidedly unsafe. The Painted Man led them around the back to a servant's house, still quite large by the standards of anyone raised in the hamlets. The place was half collapsed, like the stable, but the door the Painted Man led them through was heavy, thick, and locked.

The door opened into one great room, restored to function as a workshop. Warding equipment lay on every surface, along with sealed jars of ink and paint, various half-finished projects, and piles of materials.

There was a small cupboard by the fireplace. Leesha opened it to find one cup and one plate, one bowl and one spoon. A knife was stuck in a small cutting board by the cold pot hanging in the hearth.

"So cold," Leesha whispered. "So lonely."

"He doesn't even have a bed," Rojer murmured. "He must sleep on the floor."

"I used to think I was alone, living in Bruna's hut," Leesha said, "but this…"

"Over here," the Painted Man said, moving to a corner of the room with a large bookshelf. That got Leesha's attention immediately, and she headed over.

"Are those the grimoires?" she asked, unable to keep the eagerness from her voice.

The Painted Man glanced at the shelf and shook his head. "Those are nothing," he said. "Common wards and books, histories and basic maps. Nothing you can't find in the library of any Warder or Messenger worth the name."

"Then where…?" Leesha began, but the Painted Man moved over to a nondescript section of the floor and stamped his heel down hard in a precise spot. The board was on a fulcrum, and as one end dipped into a hollow in the floor, the other rose, revealing a small metal ring. The Painted Man grasped the ring and pulled, opening a trapdoor in the flooring, its edges uneven and filled with sawdust, making them indistinguishable from the surrounding floorboards.

He lit a lantern and led the way down the steps into a large basement. The walls were stone, and the room was cool and dry. There was a hall leading in the direction of the collapsed main house, but a giant stone block had fallen to bar the path.

Painted weapons lay stacked and hung everywhere. Axes, spears of varying length, polearms, and knives, all delicately etched with battle wards. Dozens of crank bow bolts. Literally thousands of arrows, stacked in gross bundles.

There were trophies of a sort, as well, demon skulls, horns, and talons, dented shields and broken spears. Gared and Wonda drew wards in the air.

"Here," the Painted Man said to Wonda, handing her a bundle of arrows, delicate wards entwined along their wooden shafts and metal heads. "These will bite coreling flesh deeper than the ones in your quiver."

Wonda's hands shook as she accepted the gift. Speechless, she bowed her head, and the Painted Man bowed in return.

"Gared…" the Painted Man said, looking around as Gared stepped forward. He selected a heavy machete, its blade etched with hundreds of tiny wards. "You can hack through wood demon limbs like errant vines with this," he said, handing the weapon to Gared hilt-first. Gared dropped to his knees.

"Get up," the Painted Man snapped. "I ent the ripping Deliverer!"

"Ent callin' you any names," Gared said, keeping his eyes down. "All I know is I spent my whole life acting the selfish fool, but since you come to the Hollow, I seen the sun. I seen how I let my pride and my…lusts," his eyes flicked to Leesha, just for an instant, "blind me. The Creator blessed me with strong arms to kill demons, not to take whatever I wanted."

The Painted Man held out his hand, and when Gared took it, he pulled the man roughly to his feet. Gared weighed more than three hundred pounds, but he might as well have been a child.

"Maybe you seen the sun, Gared," he said, "but that doesn't mean I showed it to you. You'd lost your da just a day before. That'll grow any man. Show him what's important in life."

He held out the machete again, and Gared took it. It was a huge blade, but it seemed little more than a dagger in Gared's giant hand. He looked at the delicate warding in wonder.

The Painted Man looked at Leesha. "Those," he pointed to a series of shelves at the far end of the room, "are the grimoires." Leesha immediately moved toward the shelves, but he caught her arm. "I let you go there and we'll lose you for the next ten hours."

Leesha frowned, wanting nothing more than to pull her arm away and bury herself in the heavy, leather-bound tomes, but she suppressed the urge. This was not her home. She nodded.

"We 'll bring the books with us when we leave," the Painted Man said. "I have other copies. Those will be yours to keep."

Rojer looked to the Painted Man. "Everyone gets a gift but me?"

The Painted Man smiled. "We'll find you something." He moved over to the blocked corridor. The keystone that had collapsed from the archway looked to weigh hundreds of pounds, but he lifted it away easily, leading them to a heavy, locked door that had been hidden in the darkness.

He produced another key from his robes and turned it in the lock, opening the door and stepping inside. He touched a taper to a huge stand lamp by the door, and it flared to life, reflecting off large mirrors carefully placed around the room. Instantly the huge chamber was filled with bright light, and the visitors gasped collectively.

Carpets, rich and thick, woven in faded design from ages past, covered the stone floor. The walls were hung with dozens of paintings of forgotten people and events, masterworks in gilded frames, along with metal-framed mirrors and polished furniture. Treasures lay piled in rain barrels around the room, filled to bursting with ancient gold coins, gems, and jewelry. Machines of unknown purpose lay partially disassembled alongside great marble statues and busts, musical instruments, and countless other riches. There were bookshelves everywhere.