The Core

by Peter V. Brett

  There were close to a hundred people in the camp. A few were children and elders, but most were of an age with Briar—not yet twenty. Briar saw Milnese faces and Angierian, Rizonan, Laktonian, even Krasian. Some wore robes or bits of armor; others bared warded flesh to the limits of decency.

  Now every eye was on Briar, pinning him with the weight of their collective stare. He wanted to flee, but Stela took his hand and gave a reassuring squeeze. Callen got back to his feet, face a thundercloud, but Stela snarled and he held back.

  Stela cast her eyes over the crowd. “This is Briar Damaj! The one Gared said saved His Highness on the road.”

  “Then led him to his death.” A bearded man stepped forward, his thick brown hair pulled back to show a mind ward tattooed on his forehead. He wore a Tender’s brown robes covered in needlepoint wards, and carried a carved crooked staff. “I remember him. Mudboy. The Krasian traitor.”

  Briar bared his teeth. “Ent a traitor. Laktonian. Ent my fault I look like them.”

  Stela gave his hand another squeeze. “Mudboy,” she confirmed loudly. “But anyone other than me calls him that, they’ll be doing it with missing teeth. We shed ichor together. He is Pack.”

  Pack. The word sang to him, but looking at the staring faces, he knew it would take more than words to make it so.

  “That how it works now?” The speaker wasn’t as tall as Callen, lanky instead of broad. His armor was lighter as well, wards burned into boiled leather. He and Stela shared a resemblance. He pointed at Briar with his short spear, wards on its blade glowing with inner power. “You decide who’s Pack and who’s not?”

  Stela put her hands on her hips. “Keep pointing that spear at me, Uncle Keet.” She used the honorific mockingly. “Everyone’s here to see me shove it up your arse.”

  Keet hesitated. His eyes flicked about for support, but there was little to be had. Few in the camp wanted anything to do with this confrontation. They kept their eyes down, though all were watching with interest. Callen still glared at Briar, but even he seemed unwilling to challenge Stela directly.

  Stela leaned in, and Keet reflexively leaned back. “Briar is Pack.”

  After a moment, Keet dropped his eyes. “You want to make him a Wardskin, ent my business.”

  “We’ll initiate him,” Stela agreed. “But he can find his own path after that. Once folk see what Briar can do, might be some folk start calling themselves Mudboys.”

  Briar scowled, and Stela winked. “Better than Hogbreaths.”

  Briar laughed in spite of himself.

  “We all must find our own path.” The man in Tender’s robe stepped up to Briar. Stela’s grip on his hand tightened painfully, but the man only bowed.

  “Welcome, Briar. I am Brother Franq.”

  Stela’s grip on his hand eased, and the rest of the Warded Children followed suit. Callen and Keet might not have been able to challenge Stela, but this man could. “You’re the one writing New Canon.”

  Franq dismissed the thought with a wave. “The words belong to Arlen and Renna Bales. I merely record them.”

  “And help us find their meaning,” Stela said.

  Franq bowed to Briar a second time. “I apologize for calling you traitor. The Tenders of the Creator taught me to judge, but Arlen Bales has shown us a better way. All who stand together in the night are brothers and sisters. We are all Deliverers.”

  All around the camp, people drew wards in the air, echoing his word. “All Deliverers.”

  —

  “Mistress Leesha had us split into three groups at first,” Stela said as she walked Briar through the camp. “Strongest were training to join the Cutters one day. Mistress gave them all specially warded spears, short to make the Draw more efficient. We call ’em gut pumps, because you stick one in a demon’s gut and it pumps magic into you. Callen leads the Pumps.”

  Briar turned his head slightly, examining Callen’s faction as Stela gestured to another cluster. “Keet’s group was runtier—most of them tried out for the Cutters and got passed over. Call them Bones, because the mistress put slivers of demon bone in their spears. Makes up the difference in muscle, and to spare.

  “My group were folk who had no illusions about being fit to fight demons.” Stela nodded to another cluster, mostly young women dressed as sparsely as Stela. “Not strong enough to swing an axe or wind a crank bow like Wonda’s set.” She held up her warded hand. “Mistress honored us most of all. Warded our very skin.”

  “Mistress Leesha tattooed you?” Briar asked.

  Stela shook her head. “Drew them on with blackstem, but then she went away. When the stain started to fade, I asked Ella Cutter to take a needle and ink them on permanent before they were lost.”

  Briar watched how the others in the camp gave the Wardskins a respectable berth. Though generally smaller in stature, they moved like predators, even here.

  “Children have grown since then,” Stela said. “Widows and heirs of the Sharum lost at new moon.” She gestured to the tents and water well used by the Krasian faction. They were not in battle, but every one of them had their night veils up, even the men. Briar noted on closer inspection that several of them had the light skin of Northerners, but had adopted Krasian dress and manner.

  “Then Brother Franq joined us and started training Siblings.” She gestured to a smaller group, all in plain brown robes.

  A tall woman stepped to the front of the cluster of Krasians, waving to them. The hair that fell from her headwrap was streaked with gray, her eyes full of wisdom, but she did not move like an elder. She was strong.

  Stela led Briar to her, bowing. “Briar, this is Jarit, First Wife of Drillmaster Kaval. She leads the Pack’s Sharum.”

  The woman studied Briar, trying to peel away the dirt and hogroot resin to see the features beneath. “What is your name?” she asked in Krasian.

  “Briar asu Relan am’Damaj am’Bogger,” Briar replied.

  “Damaj is a Kaji name,” Jarit noted. “Yet you claim not to be one of us?”

  “Born and raised in Bogton,” Briar said.

  Jarit nodded. “I remember when your father went missing. The men of Kaji searched for him in the city and Maze, not knowing if he had died on alagai talons or fallen to a Majah blade. Who could have guessed he fled to the North?”

  “You knew my father?” Briar asked.

  Jarit shook her head. “No, but my husband was the Kaji’s greatest drillmaster. I learned much in his house.”

  “Jarit and her granddaughter Shalivah started teaching us sharusahk,” Stela said, “after Wonda Cutter left with Mistress Leesha.” At the comment a girl of ten appeared. She seemed more like Jarit’s daughter than her granddaughter, but Briar knew how magic could shave years from a person. He looked around the well, realizing how many of the Krasians were children. Two young Krasian men wore the brown robes of Siblings with added night veils.

  “Tender converted you, like my father,” Briar guessed.

  “We still pray to Everam,” Jarit said.

  Briar nodded. “My father said Everam was the Creator, and the Creator was Everam.”

  Jarit smiled. “Your father was a wise man. We have not been converted by Tenders, or they by us. All of us saw Arlen Bales cast lightning from the sky when Alagai Ka came on Waning. If there remained any doubt, it vanished when Arlen Bales cast Ahmann Jardir down in Domin Sharum. The son of Hoshkamin was a false Deliverer. The son of Jeph is Shar’Dama Ka, and we must be ready for his call.”

  Briar grunted, having no real response. He nodded to the rising sun. “Why do your men keep their veils up?”

  “Everam commands modesty in His light,” Jarit said. “Arlen Bales showed us that it is when we face Nie that we must bare ourselves and stand proudly against Her.”

  “Don’t let the modesty fool you,” Stela said as they walked back to the Wardskins’ camp. “Pity the corelings when Jarit and her Sharum drop their veils.”

  Briar spat. “Ent got pity to spare, comes to cories.�
�

  “Honest word.” Stela gave his hand another squeeze, sending a thrill through him. “Come on. We’ve got work to do, if we’re going to initiate you tonight.”

  “What work?” Briar asked.

  They came up to a blond girl weaving her long hair. She could not have been much older than Stela. Like the other Wardskins, she was clad in little more than a few scraps of leather, tattoos twining about her limbs and body.

  “This here is Ella Cutter,” Stela said. The young woman gave Briar an appraising glance but kept her nimble fingers about the braiding. “Ella’s our best tattooist.”

  Ella smiled. “Bath and a shave first. Need a clean canvas.”

  Stela waved a hand before her nose. “First on my list. Got a cake of soap?”

  —

  “Not sure about this,” Briar said.

  He felt strange after the bath. Stela had found a stiff brush and scrubbed every inch of him while some of the other Wardskins laughed and jeered. His skin tingled, dry and raw in the cold morning air.

  Stela ignored the comment. “How in the Core do you still smell like hogroot?”

  “Sweat some, you eat enough,” Briar said. “Keeps the cories away, even when someone forces you into the bath.”

  Stela laughed at that, giving him a clean robe and bringing him to the tent where Ella knelt by a small fire with her implements. “Show Ella your hands.”

  “Not sure about this,” Briar said again. “Said I’d come to camp. Din’t say I’d get inked.”

  “Arlen Bales says yur body is the only weapon yur never without,” Ella said.

  “Just your hands for now,” Stela said. “Every Wardskin does it. Gives us weapons we can’t ever lose.”

  Briar couldn’t deny he liked the sound of that. He didn’t resist as Ella reached out to him. Her hands were soft as they took his, turning them over to inspect the palms.

  “Blackstem first,” Ella said, taking a brush and inkpot. “Hold still.” With a quick, bold hand, she drew an impact ward on his right palm, and a pressure ward on his left.

  “Offense and defense,” Stela said. “The first tools of gaisahk.” The word was Krasian, meaning “demon fighting,” but Briar had never heard it before.

  Ella finished her work, glancing at Stela. “What do you think?”

  “Perfect!” Stela said. “Do it.”

  Ella put a small table between them. “Arm here.” The table had straps on it, and when Ella reached for them, he snatched his hand away. The last time he saw a table like that, it was an instrument of torture.

  Stela steadied him. “Just to keep you from flinching. Even the best of us do sometimes. I’m right here, Briar. Ent gonna let anyone hurt you.”

  Briar met her eyes and took a deep breath, putting his arm on the table, palm up. Stela pulled the straps tight as Ella took up what looked at first like a small brush. It wasn’t until she began passing it through the fire that he saw the bristles were needles.

  —

  “What do you think?” Ella asked, wiping the blood from his left hand. His right was already poulticed and wrapped in a bandage.

  Briar flexed his hand, watching the ward conform. He straightened the palm and curled his fingers and thumb in tight around it in the proper form his father had taught for an open-hand sharusahk blow.

  “Beautiful,” he said. A weapon he could never lose, a part of him, even more than his hogroot sweat. The thought made him hopeful in a way he had never known. As Ella wrapped his hand he looked down at her long legs, covered in wards, and envied her their protection and power.

  Stela gave him a smack on the back of the head. “Ay, that’s enough of that. Go have a bite and a rest while I talk with Ella a spell.”

  Briar nodded, leaving the tent. The sun was high in the sky, and most of the people in camp were asleep in the shade. Still, enough moved about that he felt crowded. He needed time to himself.

  He circled behind the tent before anyone noticed him, meaning to make his way out of the Warded Children’s camp and back into Gatherers’ Wood.

  “Honest word?” Ella’s voice was clear even through the tent wall. “Ya stuck that filthy little bugger?”

  “Didn’t just stick him,” Stela said. “Took his first seed.”

  “No!” Ella squealed. “Ya sure?”

  Stela laughed. “Didn’t have a clue what he was doing.” Briar felt his face heat at the words. Her laugher, so beautiful a moment ago, cut at him.

  “Bad, then,” Ella guessed.

  “Didn’t say that,” Stela said, and Briar perked up. “Little stinker made it up in enthusiasm. Popped quick the first time, but I wasn’t far behind. Then it was popping all over.”

  Briar smiled from ear to ear.

  “Do all Krasian men have small cocks?” Stela asked, freezing the grin on his face.

  “Not ones I been with,” Ella said. “Not as big as Cutters, but bigger’n most.”

  “Briar’s half Laktonian,” Stela said. “Maybe that’s why.”

  “How small are we talking?” Ella asked. Stela must have shown with her hands, because her squeals of laughter followed Briar as he fled the camp.

  —

  Briar cleared the few possessions from his hideaway, returning to the hollow he dug beneath the goldwood tree, far from the Warded Children’s hunting grounds. He didn’t know how to feel about Stela anymore, but he knew he would never be able to sleep with the Pack nearby.

  His thoughts were still in chaos when he made his way to Mistress Leesha’s keep. There were guards on patrol, but they never saw Briar slip over the wall and through the courtyard, scaling a shadowed wall of the manse.

  His bandaged hands were a hindrance in the climb, both for the loss of grip and for the reminder of all that had transpired in the past day. For better or worse, a simple scouting mission had changed his life forever.

  He ran across the roof, crouched too low for any to see, until he came to the spot above the mistress’ office window and clambered down to the sill.

  Careful not to be seen, Briar checked the hall window first. Two of Wonda’s guardswomen stood at the chamber doors, attention outward. He moved to Leesha’s office window.

  The mistress was on the office divan, Olive in her arms. Her back was to the window, and Briar could not see or hear anyone else in the room. He reached out to knock.

  “Come in, Briar.” Leesha spoke before he could make a sound. “Close the window quick. Cold as a demon’s heart out there.”

  Briar slid a wire between the panes, tripping the lock. Warmth from the roaring fire engulfed him as he slipped inside and shut the pane. Cold seldom bothered him, but few things did. He adjusted easily to the heat, stepping carefully to avoid leaving dirt on the warded floor.

  The mistress’ dress was unlaced, the babe latched at one breast. A day ago, Briar would have thought little of it, but now he felt himself flush, casting his eyes down.

  “No need to look away,” Leesha said. “Nothing to be ashamed of, using them for the purpose the Creator meant for them. Folk are going to have to get used to the sight.”

  She gestured to the laden tea table. “Help yourself to tea and a bite.”

  Briar’s mouth watered when he saw the sandwiches on the table. Not the delicate crustless fingers Duchess Araine served, these were thick brown bread with generous cuts of meat. He stuck one in his mouth, holding it while he took a handful of dried hogroot leaves from his pocket, crumbling them into a cup and pouring hot tea over it.

  Briar glanced warily at the empty couch across from the mistress. He was freshly bathed but still felt too dirty to sit on such fine material.

  “Sit, Briar,” Leesha said. “Elissa told me they didn’t want you muddying the furniture in the Monastery of Dawn, but here you are my guest.”

  Briar sat stiffly, legs tight together to put the least surface of his backside possible on the couch. He hunched, gnawing on his sandwich while the tea steeped.

  Leesha cleared her throat. “That do
esn’t mean you don’t need a napkin.”

  The scolding was one his mother had given a thousand times, and Briar quickly snatched a napkin off the table, laying it across his knees.

  “What happened to your hands? Let me look at them.” Olive began to thrash and cry as Leesha broke the latch.

  Briar raised his hands to forestall her. “S’fine. Just scraped. Washed and wrapped.”

  He meant to tell her about the tattoos, but when the moment was upon him the lie came easily. He didn’t know himself what the ink meant, and had no desire to share the question before he thought it through.

  Leesha looked ready to insist, even as she allowed Olive the nipple once more. “You’re not the clumsy type, Briar. What happened?”

  “Found Stela Cutter fighting cories and threw in,” Briar said, skipping the details. “She brought me back to the Children’s camp.”

  “Stela Cutter was out hunting alone?” Leesha demanded. “Does she have a night wish?”

  “Safer’n you think,” Briar said. “She’s strong. Leads the Children.”

  “Stela?” Leesha gaped. “She’s the sunny side of a hundred pounds and eighteen summers old.”

  “Everyone’s afraid of her and the other Wardskins,” Briar said. “Act like they’re not, but I can tell.”

  “Afraid why?” Leesha asked.

  Briar shrugged. Stela changed dramatically when they were no longer alone. There was still so much he didn’t understand about her and the other Children.

  “How many are there?” Leesha asked.

  “Hundred, at least,” Briar said. “Wardskins, Bones, Pumps, Sharum, and Brothers. Call themselves the Pack.”

  Olive fell asleep at the breast. Leesha pried her gently away and rose, throwing the babe over a shoulder. Olive gave a contented burp, still sleeping as Leesha glided to the crèche and laid her down.

  She returned a moment later, dress laced tight, and sat across from Briar. Her eyes, the color of sky, pierced him.

  “Tell me everything.”

  —

  The sky was darkening when Briar returned to the Warded Children’s camp. He’d told Leesha everything about the Children, but kept private the details of his own interactions with them. Wasn’t her business.