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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MOUNTAIN SPRITES

I rested my head against the wood lip of a cart, dappled sunlight dancing over my face. We were out of the Seacht, past its cobbled streets and reaching bridges, back on the holloway road. I’d refused to look back. Refused a horse as well. The gargoyle, heartened by the spirit of refusal, had declined to fly, and so accommodations were provided, the two of us riding like cargo, jostled about in a horse-drawn cart.

I was wearing all the clothes Maude had left me, tunic and cloak and leggings. But the boots—the boots sat in a corner of the cart, untouched.

Maude sat next to them, catechizing me on what lay ahead. “The Fervent Peaks are rough—wet and windblown and cold. There’s one road, and it’s steep. The village is scattered upon it, but most of the dwellings sit on a wide plateau where the Tenor River pools. Folk fish there, but rarely go higher into the mountains, which are almost impossible to climb.”

“What a horrible picture you paint,” the gargoyle said, smiling and nodding, like he’d paid her a compliment.

“When I dream of the Ardent Oarsman,” I murmured to the sky, “I fall onto rocks. There’s a basin of water nearby, surrounded by seven jagged mountains. That’s where I see the stone oar.”

Maude ran the edge of her axe over a whetstone. No matter the jostling of the cart, her movements remained controlled. “This basin of water. Are there dwellings around it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What is around it?

“Rocks.”

Her eyes lifted. “Helpful.”

I threw my gaze out over the landscape—rolling moors covered in bromegrass and craggy rocks—and tried not to sulk. “I’m afraid I’m of little use. I have no idea where the Ardent Oarsman is. No idea where anyone is.”

“None of that.” Maude’s tone was firm. “You being here is enough.”

“I’m surprised King Castor’s grandfather didn’t document the precise locations of the Omens in his precious notebook.”

“Trust me, he tried. But the Omens have been doing this for hundreds of years. They obscure themselves beneath hoods or use their stone objects to vanish at whim. They know how to hide in plain sight.”

“I say, Bartholomew.” The gargoyle was leaning over the lip of the cart. “Is a road still a road if no one rode upon it?”

“ Road and rode are two different words, gargoyle.”

“Really?” A wayward branch swatted him over the face. “Perplexing.”

Maude stared.

“You’ll get used to him,” I mumbled.

She cleared her throat. “Right.”

“Why not find the Ardent Oarsman the same way you found the Harried Scribe? Leave a bit of pilfered spring water lying about. See who comes for it.”

Maude nodded at her axe. “That’s exactly what we’ll do. But first—the ceremony.”

“What ceremony?”

“The noble families host a ceremony when a new king comes. And since this is Benji’s first time in the hamlets as king, they’ll be wanting to put on a bit of a show. Faith requires a display. The greater the spectacle, the greater the illusion.”

“So I’ve heard.” I paused. “Maybe we can use that to our advantage.”

A brown horse came up next to the cart. Fig.

Rory wasn’t wearing his helmet—his black hair a mess. He pushed it out of his eyes. “Anything of note?”

I plastered a smile over my mouth. “Benji and Maude will be at the ceremony, which leaves you and I to sneak off with the spring water and watch for the Ardent Oarsman like good little soldiers.”

Maude’s gaze lifted. “It’s not a bad plan.”

Rory’s eyes flickered to my face. We hadn’t spoken since he’d measured me for armor.

You want to throw me down. And I, prideful, disdainful, godless, want to drag you into the dirt with me.

“If you wanted to get me alone, Diviner, all you had to do is ask.”

Maude gave him an exasperated look. But Rory just smiled, his stupid words winning two battles. Maude, irritated—me, flustered. And then he was spurring Fig, riding hastily up the line of the caravan to join Benji at the lead.

I shot air out of my nose. “Idiot.”

“He riles you.” Maude grinned at her axe. “And you him.”

“We’ve made an art of it.” I sat up straighter. Appraised her. “How old are you, Maude?”

“Forty-one.”

“How did you grow so close with the brute and the boy-king?” She wasn’t just older than Rory and Benji. She was more rooted. No derision, no drinking—less at war with herself. “Maybe I’ve only been around women, but you seem better natured than the two of them combined.”

“Don’t be mean.” Maude rubbed the flat of her thumb opposite the axe’s grain. “Benji’s plenty good-natured.”

I chuckled.

“Benji’s grandfather and my mother were knights together, our families close.” Her gaze went soft. “I was already in armor when the little shit was born. His parents passed, and his grandfather was too occupied hunting down information about the Omens to mind him, so we Bauers—that’s my name, by the way. Maude Bauer. We took Benji in.” Maude looked up the line of knights. “It was hard for him, being a Castor. Especially after his grandfather was killed. And Benji can be shy. It took him a while to get good with his sword. The other knights kicked him about. I put a stop to that.”

“So you’re like a mother to him?”

She snorted. “Don’t know a thing about being maternal. But I suppose there’s a pinch of tenderness under all this armor. I do love a stray.”

“Which brings us to Rory.”

“Rory.”

I thought Maude entirely beautiful in that moment, her green, charcoal-rimmed eyes catching sunlight, the lines around her mouth—the crow’s feet around her eyes—deepening as she spoke. “King Castor brought Rory, a scrawny boy of eleven, to Petula Hall when I was the exact age he is now. Twenty-six.” She looked into my shroud, into my eyes, swearing me to secrecy with a simple gaze. “He’d lost all faith in gods and men. Needed a purpose. So I made him my squire.”

I couldn’t imagine Rory as a boy, thin or small or vulnerable. He was none of those things, almost as if he’d taken pains to carve them from himself. “Why?” I asked. “Why help him, I mean?”

“Same reason you want to help your Diviners,” Maude said. “Because you care, and because you’re able to do something about it.”

I pondered that. “Was he a good squire?”

“The worst I’d ever seen.”

I smiled.

“He was raw and impatient and untrusting, and the other knights worked him hard because he wasn’t highborn and had no right being where he was.”

“Let me guess. You put a stop to that.”

“And enjoyed doing it. But Rory settled in time. Got stronger. Smarter. Meaner, too. Or maybe he just stopped thinking mistreatment was something he deserved.”

“Sounds like neither of them would be where they are without you.”

“They’d have found their way. They’re a good balance, those two. Benji wants to be resilient like Rory, and Rory wants to feel like the kingdom is worth changing the way Benji does.”

“Or maybe they both want to be just like you.”

Maude suddenly seemed battle worn. “The Bauer women have a stalwart reputation—a legacy of hunters. The Chiming Wood was once full of fearsome sprites, you know. My family slaughtered them. When I was knighted, I had massive boots to fill. Then Benedict Castor the First became my mentor. He directed my gaze to the kingdom’s greater issues—the corruption of the Omens and Aisling’s oppressive hand.” She tapped her axe. “I never understood what kind of knight I wanted to be until I struck down the Faithful Forester and discovered what a righteous kill was. Suddenly, I had a purpose, and it felt so good . But then Benedict took up the mantle, and the abbess called him a heretic, and the nobles in the hamlets echoed her.”

Maude shook her head. “We take vows as knights. To the kingdom, but also to our sovereign. I would have done anything for Benedict Castor, and he knew that. Which is why—”

She hauled in a breath. “Which is why he told me to deny him. That I could not go on, rooting out the Omens and their stone objects if anyone suspected I was complicit in his heresy. So when we knights brought him to stand before the abbess, and a Diviner proffered him five bad signs from the Omens, it was I who took him by the arm and dragged him into the courtyard. I, the first of his knights, to proclaim my withdrawal from his knighthood.”

Her green eyes found my face. “I, who threw the first stone.”

The gargoyle and I were entirely still. “That must have been horrible,” I murmured.

Maude nodded stiffly. “I made my own vow that day. That all Benedict Castor had learned, all he had taught me, would not go to waste. That I would bide my time, use my family name, my strength, to make another Castor the king. A king who would take up the mantle, and this time, succeed. That I would taste more righteous kills, and paint my blade with Omen blood. After all”—daylight danced over the edge of her axe—“that legacy of hunters shouldn’t go to waste, should it?”

I slept in the cart and dreamed of Aisling. Of my hammer, my chisel, working limestone. Of bells that kept ringing until I could not tell who was crying out—the cathedral, or the stones I’d split.

The cart jostled and I woke. I looked around for One—for Two and Three and Four and Five—but they were not there. The light was dimmer than before, the holloway road less deep, the trees more sparse—the landscape rocky and sprawling. I sat up. Took in the view. The king’s caravan was following the Tenor River, going upstream. Headed toward… “Oh.”

Looming far in the distance beneath heather-gray clouds that grew darker by the moment was a jagged mountain range. Stern and steep, its mountaintops clustered together, like claws on a gargantuan seven-fingered hand.

The Fervent Peaks.

I reached out, and the gargoyle’s stone palm was there.

“Could your friends be in that high, jagged place, Bartholomew?” he asked.

A terrible noise made me jump. A call, long and loud, starting as a resonant rumble and ending on the pitched notes of a shriek. It came from the north, and I looked out over the sprawling landscape. A nearby hill, grass and heather and rock—

Was moving.

The noise sounded again, so loud I slapped my hands over my ears. The horses cried out, and the hill raised itself onto four hooved feet.

No. No, it wasn’t a hill. It was a creature with the appearance of a hill, its back decorated by stone and bromegrass. It was only when it stood upon its legs that I realized it was like an enormous boar. It had granite tusks and wide orange eyes. Its mouth was full of dark mud, and that mouth was larger than the cart I rode in.

Not a hill at all. It was—

“Mountain sprite!”

The knights began to shout. Maude was already out of the cart, volleying over its lip, barking “Stay here” to the gargoyle and me as she ran up the line. “Spread out,” she shouted. “Ready your whips.”

The line of knights scattered, and the ground began to shake.

“I say, Bartholomew.” The gargoyle blinked his stone eyes. “What on earth are they doing?”

What indeed. Whips seemed an absurd weapon against such a behemoth foe. But then the knighthood regathered, a resolute line, riding at full canter toward the mountain sprite, cracking their whips.

The sound was like a storm. Sharp, volatile.

“They’re herding it away,” I murmured.

The sprite did not like the sound of the whips. It grew louder in its shrieks, holding its ground. I saw its wide, desperate eyes flash, and then the creature was lowering itself onto its great haunches.

And lunging.

Four knights fell from their horses, knocked asunder as the sprite broke their line. Whips cracked, but the creature kept lunging, kept roaring, snapping its wide, muddy mouth.

“It’s trying to eat them,” I said, hand to my throat.

“And look,” the gargoyle said pleasantly. “It’s coming our way.”

It was. The sprite was not as quick as the knights, who rode in expert circles, avoiding its attempts to snap at them. But the gargoyle and I were still, and the sprite had caught us in its orange gaze. It came closer, making the entire world tremble.

I reached for my hammer. Felt a hollowness in my palms and the soles of my bare feet. “Perhaps we should—”

The sprite’s monstrous cry stole my words, so loud my ears screamed. The cart horse spooked, jolting forward, and the gargoyle and I were upended, tumbling from the cart onto the road.

We fell in a tangle, my foot in his ear, his left wing lodging under my ribs.

“How undignified.” The gargoyle let out a whimper. “Did anyone see me fall?”

“Bigger problems,” I managed. The mountain sprite was closer now, its great eyes trained on our cart, creaking behind our cantering horse. It began to run after it, dropping its great snout onto the road, as if rooting. With five great strides, it caught up to the horse and cart. Opened its gaping mouth.

And ate the horse, and the cart, in one snapping bite.

I heard the groan of wood, the crunch of bones—the horse’s final scream.

The gargoyle and I shared a horrified glance.

The earth shook again—this time from the knights. They’d re-formed the line, and were riding once more toward the sprite, whips cracking. I took the gargoyle by the arm, yanking him onto his feet. We darted off the road, diving behind the cover of a craggy granite boulder.

The knights cantered past us. I saw Maude in the center, leading the charge.

The sprite turned, its great eyes widening as it faced the charge. When it opened its mouth, shrieking loud enough to split the sky, I could feel its fury, its fear.

The horses whickered, reared, but the knights kept their seats. Save one, who slipped from his saddle, unnoticed by the rest, who cantered ahead. He landed among rocks, his gold armor, gold hair, shining among gray granite.

Benji.

The gargoyle and I ran forward. When we reached the king where he’d fallen, the knights were a ways away. They’d come upon the mountain sprite, whips and swords drawn, and more horrible shrieks sounded.

“Are you all right, Benji?” I looked him over, pulse in my ears. “Your leg—are you—”

“Fallen and caught between rocks like a pathetic turtle?” The king gave me a queasy grin. “Sadly, yes.”

The gargoyle tutted. “How embarrassing. I would never fall in such an ungainly way.”

“Help me get him out,” I snapped, taking the king beneath his arm. The gargoyle took his other arm, and we tugged until Benji let out a cry.

He shook his head. “It’s my greaves. The left one is stuck.”

It was. The armor around Benji’s leg was bent from his fall, catching in deep crags in the rocks he’d fallen upon, lodging him there. “We’ll have to take it off,” I said.

Benji nodded at the horizon. “They should be done soon.”

When I looked up, the mountain sprite was fleeing, the great beast limping and bleeding—crying out as it stumbled over hills and bluffs to get away from the knights.

“Mountain sprites are cumbersome and ravenous but easy to drive off,” Benji said. He looked to his whip, which had fallen twenty paces away. “Sadly I am as talented with one of those as I am on a warhorse—”

The earth rolled with such fervor I felt it in my bones. The landscape was shifting again, another hill, another sprite , rising from the earth twenty paces in front of us. It came onto its four legs, stomping upon the earth, its great orange eyes wheeling over Benji.

The mountain sprite let out a dissonant rumble, crushed Benji’s whip beneath its hooves, and began to stalk forward.

“Fuck.” I dove for the king once more. Pulled his arm with all my might.

But his armor remained trapped.

“Do something, Bartholomew!” The gargoyle was wringing his hands, dancing nervously on his toes. “Bite off his leg if you must!”

“Oh, gods.” My sweaty fingers slipped over steel. “How do I get your armor off, Benji?”

The king’s face had lost all its color. He was staring up at the mountain sprite with unblinking eyes. “There’s a clasp—I can’t reach it.”

I ripped a fingernail, blood joining sweat as I wrenched at the clasps around Benji’s leg. But they, too, had been damaged from his fall. I could not get him free. Meanwhile the sprite, with its long snout and terrifying eyes and wide, muddy mouth, was getting closer.

The knights had rallied once more—their attention and urgency directed our way. They rode full force toward their king. Oh, how they rode.

But they would not get to the sprite before it got to Benji .

The king shook, and so did the rocks around us, the mountain sprite drawing closer. Vast as its body was—its snout wide and its brome-covered skin thick—I could see the sprite was smaller than it could be. I could count its ribs. See the jagged points of its shoulder and hip bones. It was hungry. Starving.

Benji looked back at me, tugging his leg to no avail. “Run, Six,” he said, pale as death. “Run.”

I dropped to a crouch, fixed directly between the king and the sprite. Whips cracked in the distance, but the creature kept coming toward us, its hot breath blowing the hair from my face.

My hand fell to my belt. I withdrew my hammer and chisel.

The sprite’s nostrils flared. It must have known, being a creature of Traum, that tools could be weapons, and that weapons were instruments of pain. Still, it kept coming.

“ Go ,” Benji cried, yanking heedlessly against rocks.

I didn’t.

The sprite drew closer. Closer. It shrieked, and the wind carried the horrible knell, and I held my ground. Raised my hammer. Harnessed all the strength I possessed.

And swung.

A great fissure, like a burst vein, exploded beneath the tip of my chisel, and a thunderous crack split the air—louder than a hundred whips. The granite rock holding Benji hostage split in half, freeing the king’s leg. I took him beneath both arms. Wrenched him free.

Benji let out a gasp, and the sprite kept coming—

Stone arms wrapped around me. “Hold tight to the boy, Bartholomew,” came the gargoyle’s craggy voice. He spread his great stone wings. Sprang from his feet.

And then we were in the air.

Wind slapped my face, my arms locked and straining around Benji. He held me, too, and the gargoyle held both of us, chuckling to himself as he soared. “What fun! What a wonderful display of valor on my part.”

He flew us directly over the knights as they cantered toward the mountain sprite. The beast screamed—tried to run. Was no match against their swords. They cut it down, and when it fell, the earth shook a final time.

Everything went still.

The gargoyle coasted over grass, then dropped down upon it. Benji and I fell in a heap, groaning. I coughed. “You all right?”

“I think so.” The king’s golden hair was dark with sweat, his ruddy cheeks wan. But his blue eyes were resolute. He took my hand. “Thank you for staying. You’re very brave, Six.”

I realized then that Benedict Castor, for just a moment, had thought he was going to die. A boy of seventeen, with everything in the world still to prove. “Not half as brave as you, Benji.”

Wind sang through the grass, the hills and road quiet, like it had all been but a terrible dream. I looked back at the knights, who were now riding toward us. Behind them, like a hill once more, lay the body of the slain mountain sprite.

Something sharp prickled behind my eyes. “What do they eat? Mountain sprites?”

“Shale from the Peaks.”

I turned my gaze on the king. “Then surely the right thing to do would be to feed it shale, not kill it.”

Benji tinkered with his broken greaves. “Likely. But the land we’re about to venture into belongs to the noble families of the Fervent Peaks. And they are adamantly against sharing it with sprites.” His straps finally unclasped, and he let out a sigh of relief. “After all, sprites have plagued Traum for centuries. Everyone knows that.”

“Perhaps,” I murmured. “Then again, someone rather wise once said, ‘Traum’s histories are forged by those who benefit from them, and seldom those who live them.’”

Benji’s hands stilled. He looked up at me. But before he could tender a response, the knights closed in around us, dismounting as they came to check on their king. Highfalutin apologies were spouted, the knights sorry not to have noticed their king fall. There were a few chuckles as well, a few heavy exhales, and a healthy amount of profanity, the company glad on all accounts they’d killed the sprite—

“Move.”

Someone was shoving their way through the group, pushing forward with urgent steps.

Rory.

His face was drawn and without warmth. When he saw Benji and me and the gargoyle seated in the grass next to one another, whole and unharmed, he put a hand to his mouth, smothering a low sound—then walked away as brusquely as he’d come.

Maude picked Benji up out of the grass. Looked him over. “All in one piece?” she asked.

Benji gave a shaky laugh. “All in one piece.”

Maude clasped his shoulder, then turned her gaze to me and smiled. Like I’d done something more than save her king. Like she wasn’t just pleased, but proud. “You did good.” She nodded at the gargoyle. “You too.”

We walked back to the road, which was littered with pieces of our lost cart.

“Look, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle said, lifting my boots from a bush. “Your foot-gloves are perfectly unscathed.”

“Well, what do you know.” Maude hauled a large wicker box from a gorse bush. “This too.”

“What’s that?”

“Your pretty waxen hide,” she said, unlatching it and showing me my Diviner dress, covered in wax. The one she’d cut off me—my precise measurements for armor.

Maude gestured at the mold. “I’ll sleep better knowing the next time you face down a mountain sprite, you’ll be dressed for it. I’ll send this to Petula Hall at the outpost ahead. The more time my blacksmith has with it, the better. You have impressive measurements.”

My head snapped her way. “For a Diviner, you mean?”

She fixed me with a reproving glace. “There aren’t ghosts in my words, Six. No rot hiding behind the scent of flowers. When I insult you, you’ll know it.” She nodded at the box. “You have a strong body to match a valiant spirit. That was all I meant.”

Her honesty, bereft of cruelty, shamed me. “I can’t pay your armorer.”

“Don’t lose your tail feathers—we’ll work something out. Unless you find your Diviners before it’s finished.”

“I’m sure another knight could make use of it if I don’t.”

There was something in her eyes I couldn’t read. Not derision or hunger or pity… “It’s not like your gossamer, shapeless enough to fit anyone. No one’s going to wear this armor as well as you.”

I realized what it was after she’d walked away. Kindness.

There’d been kindness in her eyes.