nobody will miss.”
He exhaled softly. “Yes, mistress.”
When he was gone and the door closed, shutting out the stupidity prevalent in the corridors and common areas of any village inn, Moragh cleared her mind and cast about herself, checking the positions of the candles and lines drawn around her with a variety of powders and unguents. Then, satisfied that she was protected, she opened the Book of Ilth, turning past all the realm-travel spells to the final section, to a title page that bore a single word.
Feiynd.
Dayn reached the village of Einharr late in an afternoon grown gray from an incoming storm. The warm air was charged with thunder, heavy with moisture and felt strange on his skin after so long in the relatively dry and cold wolfyn realm. Or maybe the strangeness came from the land’s sickness; he didn’t know.
All he knew was that as he walked through the open gates of the heavy wooden palisade surrounding the village, his skin felt slick and oily, and his gut churned with the deep sorrow that had only grown through the day.
He had walked past roadside ditches filled with bones, most from livestock, but some human, and of the human skulls, a too-high proportion had worn secondary canines. He had been assuming his inability to connect to anyone through mindspeak meant that the wolfyn magic he’d had thrust upon him had fouled some of his purely Elden powers. But the sight of the skull piles had made him consider that he might be the only mindspeaker in range. And that was a damned depressing thought.
He’d passed deserted farms, some burned, others just sitting there, rife with signs of a hasty exit; he wanted to believe that the farming families had fled to other kingdoms, but didn’t hold much hope of it. And as he’d gotten in closer to the village proper, he’d passed clusters of small houses and seen signs of habitation, but such poor signs—a few weedy chickens scratching list-lessly in the dirt, a thin dog slinking in the shadows, head down, ears flat to its skull—that his heart had hurt anew.
So now, as his boots scuffed the dirt track through the center of the village, raising no dust in the heavy air, he wasn’t entirely surprised to see that Einharr, once a thriving community well known for its singing halls and honey beer, was a squalid and run-down version of its former self. Hollow-eyed children peered at him from behind doorways and around corners, flinching away when he made eye contact, and older men and women skulked in windows or on overhung porches, watching him with dull, uninterested eyes.
Twenty years ago, when last he had ridden through here as part of his parents’ retinue, the villagers had packed the main street, cheering and jostling to touch the horses and carriages. Now, as he made for the third block in, where the tavern district began—or used to begin, at any rate—his presence seemed to have gone entirely unnoticed. “Seemed” was the operative word, though, because as he continued onward, his nape prickled and his instincts said someone was watching him, that he needed to be careful. Which was a nobrainer, but he needed information, and there was no place better to get it than at the local watering hole.
Picking the one with the most worn-looking steps, as had been his habit when investigating as a Forestal, he stepped up onto the slatted porch, his boots ringing hollowly as he crossed to the heavy, windowless door.
Movement blurred in his peripheral vision; he spun in a crouch, lifting his short sword, but it was just a kid, a skinny, gray-eyed boy wearing ragged homespun and grime behind his ears where he had missed washing. He didn’t duck away like the others, but rather stopped dead, eyes widening in shock and fright.
For a second, when the boy did the deer-in-headlights freeze, Dayn flashed on wide blue eyes and similar moments of fear. A searing bolt of grief rocketed through him, warning that he might have submerged his thoughts of Reda, but they weren’t gone. Not even close.
Then the kid broke from his paralysis, drew breath and screamed at the top of his lungs, “Wolfyn!” He spun and bolted, screeching, “Mama, Papa! The wolfyn’s here!”
Chapter 12
Doors slammed open on both sides of the road and club-wielding men hurtled out from the buildings and flew from around corners, boiling into the street, shouting things like “Get him!” “Cut him off!” “The money’s mine!” and “Don’t let