We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Witch Roads, the first book in a brand new fantasy duology by Kate Elliott—publishing with Tor Books on June 10th.
When an arrogant prince (and his equally arrogant entourage) gets stuck in Orledder Halt as part of brutal political intrigue, competent and sunny deputy courier Elen—once a child slave meant to shield noblemen from the poisonous Pall—is assigned to guide him through the hills to reach his destination.
When she warns him not to enter the haunted Spires, the prince doesn’t heed her advice, and the man who emerges from the towers isn’t the same man who entered.
The journey that follows is fraught with danger. Can a group taught to ignore and despise the lower classes survive with a mere deputy courier as their guide?
1
On Ordinary Lanes and Behind Unprotected Walls
One hundred and thirty years after the Pall tore deadly rifts through the Tranquil Empire, it is still prudent to avoid walking abroad at night. Even people holding official tokens that permit them to travel on the safety of the imperial roads will halt before the sun sets. These tokens allow them to lodge at an imperial hostel protected by a split in the road. But many people—most people—have no choice but to walk about their lives on ordinary lanes and sleep behind unprotected walls.
The Shield of Peace and Prosperity so forcefully promised by the empire’s founders has, it turns out, only ever sheltered some, not all. This is exactly what the holy venerables of the Heart Temple predicted at the dawn of the empire, to no avail.
Three hundred years ago, these temple theurgists and custodians wrote uncompromising tracts condemning imperial ambition. They spoke out in village plazas and city markets. They warned against the consolidation of power into the hands of a single military clan.
In answer, the newly appointed imperial censors burned their pamphlets as treasonous. The imperial sentinels accused the venerables of sorcery and burned them as witches. The imperial engineers sealed their bones into the great roads that link together the growing empire and facilitate the swift movement of its armies.
After the rising of the Spore-laden Pall in the reign of the ill-fated Azalea Emperor, it was soon discovered that the imperial roads repelled the Pall and its deadly Spore. The imperial archivists sent out official dispatches proclaiming that it was the harmonious and honorable magic wielded by the reconstituted imperial theurgists, in cooperation with the imperial wardens, that protected the roads against the Pall’s malign influence.
Yet a tradition persists among the common people that the interred bones of the old venerables were infused with a holy power and it is the relics of those condemned as “witches” that have kept the roads safe. Even after all this time, the murdered venerables are said to still watch over the humble and the weak, the menial and the forgotten. Or so it is whispered, where the authorities cannot hear.
A passage censored from The Official’s Handbook of the Empire
as compiled by Luviara, theurgist, working at the behest of
the Inner Chamber of the Heart Temple
2
The Deputy Courier
It was early autumn, warm enough in the late afternoon that Elen and her nephew had taken off their long jackets, rolled them up, and tied them atop their packs. They tramped through the rugged Moonrise Hills on a path she knew well because every month for the last ten years she had walked the same route. She was a circuit courier for the local intendant, delivering messages, decrees, news, personal letters, contracts, warrants, and a copy of the imperial gazette to highland villages and hamlets that could only be reached on foot or by griffin scout. Griffins were out of reach for a humble deputy courier, but Elen had two good feet and was grateful for them.
“What are you smiling about?” grumbled Kem with the graceless bad temper of a cranky adolescent. “I have a blister. You said these boots would be broken in by the end of the circuit. And I’m hungry. How soon will we get home?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” He shaded his eyes and peered toward the setting sun as it spread a golden glow along the ridgeline that marked the edge of the hills. A knob of rock rising from the ridge was the best-known landmark, easy to spot. “There’s the lookout! We can’t be more than three hours from home.”
She didn’t need to check her official’s pocket watch to judge the sky. Birds were gathering, flocking toward roosting spots. “It’ll be dark in an hour.”
“Twilight lasts a while beyond that. It wouldn’t be so far to home, just another hour or two past the lookout. The trail is wide and chalky, so it’s easy to see. It’s almost full moon, so there’ll be enough light.”
“No.”
“But—”
“No.”
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His voice got tighter and grouchier. “For one thing, Palls don’t rise during the week of the full moon.”
“A Pall is not what I’m worried about.”
“Joef told me there’s been no sighting of Spore in ten years, not anywhere near Orledder Halt or in this region of the hills.”
“All the more reason to assume it could happen at any time.”
“But—”
“How many nos do you need? I haven’t forgotten when you were two years old. I can say no all day and night long and not break a sweat.” She grinned.
“Ugh. Why are you always so cheerful?”
“It’s a passage spell.”
“A passage spell? I’ve never heard of that.” His tone blended skepticism and curiosity.
“The grumpier you are, the more cheerful I become. It passes your grumpy energy across to me and I transform it into bright flowers and sunny days.” She laughed at his eye-rolling.
“You’re awful,” he said as he fought not to smile. But then his shoulders sagged.
“What is it?” she asked, gently now.
“I know you got permission to bring me on the full circuit to give me a taste of courier duty. I know I have to make a decision. I know I have to Declare for something. But… half the month you walk your assigned circuit, and half the month you work in Map Hall at the Residence. Doesn’t it get to be a grind, every month leaving at the new moon and returning at the full moon, walking at the same pace on the same path, seeing the same people over and over every year?”
“Having shelter, food, and a worthy purpose is never a grind. It might seem tedious to you, but I’d rather have had fewer shocks in my early life and more uneventful days like we’ve been fortunate to have, living in the Halt.”
His right hand strayed to touch the faded green ribbon that tied back his long, glossy hair. The ribbon had been his mother’s. She, too, had had unusually beautiful hair of a dark reddish-gold quite unlike the black hair most common in the empire. Although, she’d been more vain of it than Kem ever was.
The sting of losing Aoving would never fade and never heal. Never ever, thought Elen fiercely. But they had escaped, and had many good years before the accident. That they’d had so many good years considering where they’d started was a miracle worth cherishing every single day she woke up missing her sister. And she had the keeping of this wonderful if sometimes grumpy child, a responsibility that mattered more than anything in the world.
“I tell you what, Captain No. You have to make up your own mind whether you want to Declare as a courier. Or whatever profession you are eligible for. But today, I can give you a little taste of the unexpected and the slightly risky. We’ll camp at Three Spires.”
He cast her a shocked look, then a second and a third, like his head was stuck on a chain of disbelief he kept pulling. She wanted to laugh but knew when to stop. The ribbon touch had been a sure sign he was getting heart-tired, so she’d follow his lead. But he was still a youth, eager to hear about the most frightfully appalling things.
“Joef says Three Spires is haunted by the shade of a wicked sorcerer-king who wielded a hideous power that leached the life right out of anything the sorcerer touched,” he said, sounding gleeful.
She chuckled. “Joef has a most amazing storehouse of tales and rumors.”
“His aunt is the intendant’s archivist.”
“And the local gossip, with a finger in every bowl of porridge. Nourishing, but to be taken with a grain of salt. It’s safe to shelter in the Spires overnight as long as we follow the rules. What are the rules?”
He reeled it off by rote, barely listening to himself. “‘Don’t get dis-tracted or sloppy. No shortcuts. Stick to the routine. Stay calm.’ Isn’t that all just the same thing?”
“Is it?”
He sighed dramatically. He was brimful of sighs these days, the closer he got to the decision he’d have to make. “Declaration Week starts tomorrow! How do I decide? I can’t be a midwife like Mama, even though I know she wanted that for me. And I’m glad you had me come along on a full circuit. But I don’t want to be a courier. I’m sorry.”
“My blessed child, my hope for you is that you can be safe, not that you do what you think I want you to do. You like to work with your hands. You could apprentice to an artisan, like… I don’t know… old Seladwin would be a good person to learn from and work with. You’d never lack for customers. She needs someone to take over her shop since she has no heirs.”
“I’m not going to apprentice to the cobbler! I don’t want to make shoes all my life.”
“Well-made boots are a gift of human ingenuity and skill. Never forget it.”
He glanced at his boots, the first footgear he had ever possessed that hadn’t been handed down to him. A pair of new boots was a traditional gift for a youth as they Declared for a profession and thus the path and status they would follow throughout their life. “You told me so, didn’t you? That I should wear my old boots and break these in afterward. I really do have a blister.”
“Blisters hurt a lot, as I know all too well. We’re almost there. There’s a spring in the courtyard between the three towers. You can wash your feet and put on dry socks. That’ll help.”
“You know what I like about you?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“You never say ‘I told you so.’ Not like Mama always did.”
“Your mama had her own monsters to fight. And she did gloat a bit, didn’t she, when she was right? It’s funny how I miss that about her.”
He fiddled with the ribbon.
They walked in silence, feet crunching on the rocky path. Elen kept the pace brisk as the sun sank toward Lancer’s Ridge. Shadows crept down the slope like reaching hands. The wind began to flag. The overwhelming scent of autumn grass was softened by a faint fragrance of rose oil, so brief that, as soon as she registered the smell, it was gone, a phantom. It was only a memory of a similar hike into twilight, long ago, and the shock that had followed. She rubbed her right forearm, caught herself doing it, and stopped before Kem had a chance to notice and wonder.
A white post carved of holystone marked the turnoff to Three Spires. A seam of chalk guided them along a track that curved around and along the rocky slope. At a cairn, the track forked. One branch ascended steeply to the southern edge of the hill where three stone towers clustered together. From this distance, the slender spires looked more like huge stone spears than towers.
The Spires stood on the edge of a striking promontory. Their summits overlooked a long valley that extended southeast. The imperial histories claimed the towers had been built by the first Tranquil emperor as a fort, the location chosen for its view, and were later abandoned. Every local knew the story was ridiculous because the towers were far older than the empire. They weren’t even built with the same materials and techniques as imperial buildings.
The other branch of the track descended into the valley, to a cluster of ramshackle cottages and rough sheds ringed by a water-filled ditch. The village’s buildings were barely visible in the deep shadows pooled at the base of the promontory’s cliff. Any other traveler caught out at dusk would have overnighted in the hamlet. Elen ought to have done so, but she really didn’t want to have to deal with the awkward encounter she wouldn’t be able to avoid if they went there. She excused her reluctance by reveling in Kem’s awed stare as they climbed the final stretch toward the towers. The last light of the sun shimmered along the smooth walls, rippling like water because of an unknown magic woven into the towers that no one living today could name, much less shape to their will. Reflexively, she touched her forearm.
“Did you hurt yourself?” Kem asked, sharp as ever.
“My old injury that aches sometimes,” she said, which was enough of the truth.
His expression scrunched up as he eyed her. He was about to ask another question when they heard the thump of hurried footsteps from below.
A breathless shout caught at their backs. “Courier! Good Deputy, if you will! Pray attend us!”
So much for her attempt to escape a meeting she should have known was inevitable. She sighed, halted, and turned.
3
A Third Presence
Three individuals came up the path behind them. The first was a huffing-and-puffing elder aiding himself with a pair of walking sticks. The second was a farmer, a man about Elen’s own age, early thirties. The scrawny youth at the rear carried a bow and a quiver of arrows whose points were carved from scavenged holystone. Not that arrows would help if there was a Spore irruption, but it was better than no protection at all.
“Is that you, fair Elen, Honored Courier?” the farmer called in a wheedling tone that made her cringe. She did her best not to judge him harshly for the awkward way he fawned and flattered. He didn’t know any other way to speak to imperial officials, even one so inconsequential as a local intendant’s deputy courier. “We thought we’d missed you on your return from this month’s circuit. What a shame that would have been! I’ve a plea to make to you!”
Seeing that she’d stopped, the trio hastened their climb.
Kem snickered. “You think he’s going to ask again if you’ll marry him? Be a mother to his motherless brood? How many children did he sire on that poor woman before she died of exhaustion?”
“Let’s not be unkind to a person who knew no other road for her life. It isn’t me he’s enamored of. It’s what I represent. Something he’s never had.”
“What’s that?”
“Enough to eat more days than not. I know what it’s like to wake up hungry and go to bed even hungrier.”
“Mama used to say exactly that when I wouldn’t eat my beets. But she never would say more when I asked why you two got so hungry.”
“I expect she didn’t care to relate the details.” She fixed a smile to her face, the politely noncommittal one she brandished to good effect together with her facility for names, titles, and proper address. “Elder Marsilion. Tiller Urnesso. Deputy Sentinel Willomo. I greet you under the Shield of the Empire’s Benevolent Cloak. It is late. I fear you will be caught out after dark beyond your moat. No need to follow me. Best to return to your homes.”
Marsilion replied first, as was his right as an elder. “When Urnesso spotted you on the hill, we thought you would shelter with us for the night. Yet you turned in this direction at the cairn. Surely you cannot intend to—” He indicated the three towers with a trembling hand. “Moon-bright is a dangerous time at the Spires. Haunts emerge from the moon’s malign shadow.”
“Have you seen a haunt yourself, Elder? Have any of you encountered one?”
“Oh, no, no, no, not me, Deputy Courier. We never come up here, nor walk beyond our moat at night. But my granfa’ told me, he did. Said when he were young, he lost a friend to a haunt. The lad went to the Spires on a dare one moon-bright night. Came walking down at dawn with a different set to his face and a stranger’s eyes. Walked right past his family as if he didn’t know them and never returned home again.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about your granfa’s story.”
“You have?” he asked, startled.
“Indeed I have.” She hadn’t, but Elen was a cheerful liar. It wasn’t that she thought lying was good but that she’d learned when a certain kind of lie oiled a string that would otherwise ravel into a knot. Sometimes people simply would not listen. It wasn’t that she faulted them for closing their ears to answers they didn’t want to hear or couldn’t understand or were afraid of. But there were times it was pointless to argue or try to persuade, so she’d stopped trying. “After that incident, wardens set a warding circle inside the central courtyard to keep out the haunts, protected by a holystone pavement.”
The elder nodded wisely, although his eyes creased with uncertainty. “Yes, it’s true there is holystone inside. I’ve seen it.”
Urnesso smiled, an expression more desperate than cheerful. “But you would honor us with your presence, if we might host you overnight, Deputy Courier. It would be our honor and duty.”
“It’s just not possible, Tiller,” she replied in a pleasant tone, making sure to use his title instead of his name. “Inspecting the Spires is part of my rounds for the intendant. Each season I make sure the warding is still intact. It’s just turned autumn, so I must shelter there overnight and refuse your kind invitation.”
Studying Urnesso’s hopeful expression, she accepted that she was using lies to fend off a proposal he would keep pressing because he didn’t know what else to do, who else to ask, how else to manage when he had to toil in marginally yielding fields all day among a scatter of five households, none of whom could quite feed themselves on the valley’s agriculturally impoverished land. One of his children had died last winter of an illness the little one had been too malnourished to survive. Kem had forgotten, but Elen didn’t forget what she saw in this hamlet and in the hill villages. She did what she could, and she lied when she had to. Lies were how she and Aoving had survived. Truth was better. Truth was what you aimed for when you drew your bow in life. But truth could so swiftly kill people who had no one to protect them, and she was glad to be alive.
“Here.” She swung down her pack and pulled from it the goat-meat sausage, the round of salted cheese, and the small sack of oats they’d been given that morning at a hamlet whose livestock had prospered on the slopes over the summer. “You’d be doing us a favor to take this off our hands and share it among your families. It will lighten our load.”
Kem’s eyes got round as he opened his mouth to protest. She gave him a hard stare until he snapped his lips closed and took a step back with a huff of displeasure. Willomo shyly looked Kem up and down in surprise, puzzled gaze lingering too long on Kem’s chest. Realizing he was staring rudely, the lad blushed and looked away. Kem bit his lip, annoyed and flushed. He was a surging wind funnel of emotion these days, not that she blamed him, given everything he was going through. At his age she’d never had the luxury, and she was glad he did, even when it made him tiresome to deal with.
“Best we all get on our way, Elder,” she went on, knowing they would have to let her go. “Sun’s setting. You’ve got a longer walk than I have. Peace of the night to you, Elder. Tiller. Deputy Sentinel.”
She beckoned to Kem and, without waiting for an answer, headed on up the track. It was rude, according to the custom of the villages, but fully in keeping with the perquisites of an imperial official, even one so humble as a deputy courier.
After one hundred steps she risked a glance back to make sure the others had taken the food. Of course they had. Urnesso lagged behind as if wondering if she would change her mind, not that she had ever given him an opportunity to ask again, not after the first time.
Abruptly Kem said, “It’s selfish of him to think you would marry a poor tiller from a ragged hamlet that can’t even feed itself. And give up being a courier, if the intendant would even allow it.”
“Hard to say what any of us would do in his situation. I’ve been asking around.”
“Asking around?”
“In the hill villages. Sometimes a person loses their kin or their home, or a stray relative from a distant village turns up and no one knows what to do with them. Can’t turn them out, but can’t feed them. There might be someone for whom Urnesso’s situation would be a hopeful change.”
“You’re the one who just said none of them ever have enough to eat.”
“He’d do better with a second pair of adult hands in his household to share the work. Who’s to say it couldn’t get better, in that case?”
“But not you, Aunt?” He slid a look her way, testing.
“Not me. I’m sorry for him, but I’m not sorry for refusing to be the one he’s looking for.”
“You’re the sunniest person I know,” he said with a considering tilt of his head, “but then I think you are also the most merciless.”
She laughed. “You ever tried sitting on bare rock, under a hot sun, for an entire cloudless day, without water?”
“No.” Another sharp look. “Have you?”
“Think it over. Now hush. Once we reach the promontory, no talk.”
“No talk? What does that mean?”
“Haunts are attracted to the sound of voices.”
“Haunts?” He cast a newly apprehensive glance toward the towers as the path began to level off. They’d reached the top of the slope. “There’s really a haunt there?”
“Do you doubt Joef?” she said, stifling a laugh.
“I don’t know. Joef tells all kinds of stories and says they’re true. Is it safe for us?”
“As safe as anything in this world, which means it isn’t safe.”
“What about the wardens and the circle of warding?”
“There is a circle of holystone pavement. I don’t know if it was put there by imperial wardens, or if it’s always been there since the towers were first built. Stay inside its boundaries, and no restless soul can touch you.”
“So there is a haunt in the Spires?” he demanded.
“There’s a presence, although I couldn’t say what. A haunt is as good a name as any.”
“How do you know?” His mouth twisted. “Never mind. Of course you know every single little thing along this circuit.”
“I doubt I do, but not for want of trying. There’s something I want you to see, something beautiful in the towers you can’t see anywhere else, except maybe in another set of Spires like these.”
“There are other Spires? In other places?”
“Why would this be the only one?”
“I don’t know. I could ask Joef, but he doesn’t have access to the surveyor maps.” He paused before asking, “Why are surveyor maps locked away from the archivists?”
“Up-to-date maps are for the use of the empire’s armies, not for its historians.”
“Oh. Huh. The same way you can’t share the information you hear in Map Hall.”
“That’s right. While it’s true an intendant is the chief magistrate and justiciar for an intendancy, it’s really a military position. Keeping the peace locally and supervising scouts, surveyors, couriers, and I suppose spies, although I don’t know about spies. Maybe only the palace has charge of spies. And never say I said that to you. It could get us both in trouble.”
He nodded. “Do you think Elder Marsilion’s story is true? About the haunt who possessed the youth?”
She smiled. “We’ll be fine as long as you do what I tell you for once. To start with, no talking.”
He opened his mouth, paused, and shut it. They shared an easy grin.
He was such a good boy. She loved him so ferociously, for himself, first of all, and also for everything her beloved Aoving had gone through without losing the brilliance of a loving if fragile heart.
The moon hung fat and bright, a sliver away from being full, and appearing as a gauzy pearl suspended low in the east in the darkening heavens. No clouds marred the sky’s depths. The first stars hadn’t yet appeared. Rock pigeons crooned, although she couldn’t see them.
They picked their way up the slope toward the point of the promontory. The rocky ground was spotted with fragrant clumps of creeping juniper and straggling clusters of woolly speedwell. Partway across, the vegetation ended as if a line had been drawn. The promontory narrowed until it was barely more than an arm’s span wide, a dangerous ridge path. Kem didn’t falter as he followed her.
The perilous path led between an aisle of stone guardians who faced each other, in pairs. In most old tales, the statues were said to be all that remained of the dread armies of the wicked sorcerer-kings, petrified at the instant of a vast blasting spell that had wiped the sorcerer-kings from the world forever. Joef ’s aunt favored the old poems, mostly fragments, that called these statues “the Shorn,” selfless volunteers who had offered to stand guard for eternity to make sure the sorcerer-kings never returned. Or maybe they were just decorative statues of incomparable appearance. Certainly the sculptors had lavishly depicted people of striking power, heroic warriors. Some were carved with armor or tabards and some with bared torsos, the better to display their musculature. But it was their heads that grabbed attention, because most bore the heads of beasts.
The beast heads were not fully animal but something blended, as if magic had fused the intelligence and beauty and power inherent in each animal to make each soldier stronger with the attributes of their guardian beast. A ram-headed man in lamellar armor. A tigerish woman wearing a headdress woven of stylized wheat and barley. A fierce rat soldier, eager to attack. A proud eagle-faced person whose seeming cape was really its folded wings.
Kem’s breathing tightened. It wasn’t only the lifelike nature of the guardians that troubled him, as if they might open their eyes at any moment and move to block the path.
Yet worse than that, to either side and mere steps beyond the statues, the ground dropped away into sheer cliffs. It was dangerously windy up here on the promontory. The sense of being one slip away from plummeting to death was palpable. That alone was enough to make it seem an invisible haunt prowled alongside, breathing down their necks, a third presence who might act on a whim to animate one of the stone guardians to push a trespasser over the edge. Such a malicious haunt might follow intruders inside the towers, might slide their shadow into an unsuspecting lad’s body to steal it for their own ends, as an escape from the ruins into the world beyond.
That was an unpleasant thought. The elder’s story was one she’d not heard before today, as if it were a shameful secret he’d not wanted anyone outside the family to know. She shivered, although maybe the sudden chill that engulfed her came from a cold gust of wind.
Kem touched her arm to reassure her, although she’d not said a word.
The last pair of stone guardians had startlingly beautiful humanlike faces, as if humans were just another type of beast—and weren’t they, after all? Still, seeing human faces on the statues was a bit comforting, right up until the eye dropped to the severed head each held in its hands. One cradled the exquisitely carved head of a sharp-snouted dragon with a knifelike crest and gemstone eyes. The other held the head of a young man, mouth wide as if he had stiffened into stone as he screamed for help that would never come.
4
The Holystone Pavement
Past the narrowed ridge path and its stone guardians, the promontory widened into a flat area about two hundred paces across, a blunt, prow-like point high above the valley. Cliffs plunged away on all sides except the narrow ridge path that connected the promontory to the main rise of the hillside.
It was on this windswept little plateau that the unknown and long-forgotten builders had constructed three towers in a triangular formation, linked by three connecting walls to create a walled compound. The towers rose about sixty ells, measuring arm to shoulder, and were impossibly slender and yet nevertheless enduringly stable. The connecting walls were about twice Elen’s height, with no crack of age or erosion on the smooth surface. Along two sides the walls rose directly from the promontory’s cliff face. The third wall faced the statues. The path Elen and Kem were walking ended at a stone staircase.
These steps ascended to an arched opening set midway up the wall. None of the spires had an external door, so this opening was the only way inside the triangular compound. No physical gate was set into the door-like opening. Maybe that was because life had been peaceful in ancient days and no one had feared attackers or thieves, or maybe it was because the always-open gate was a lure to entice the unwary into a trap.
There was no way to know. Whoever had built this place was long gone before the empire; of that, she was sure. Elen respected the potency of haunts, but she did not fear them the way she prudently feared the threat of a steel blade held in the hand of a brutal soldier or a barbed whip by a cruel overseer.
She went up the stairs first and made space on the landing, beneath the arch, for Kem to stand beside her. The interior was an enclosed, triangular courtyard with a holystone-lined pool at the center, within a circle of holystone pavement. Beyond the pavement, the courtyard’s ground was bare rock except for three holystone paths that led from the circle to the closed doors of each spire.
She indicated the holystone, and Kem nodded, understanding this pavement was the warding she’d mentioned. But he didn’t look at the pavement for long. Instead, his gaze sped upward along the spires. The towers were linked at the top by an elaborate and magnificent scaffolding. It extended out from the crown of each spire to form a delicate three-way bridge. The bridges met on a central platform that seemed suspended in the air directly above the pool. By some magic, perhaps the last remnants of wicked sorcery, the scaffolding couldn’t be discerned from the outside, so it was spectacular both because of its ornate construction and its unexpected presence.
Kem choked back a garbled sound as he stared up at this architectural marvel. Elen delighted in watching his face shine with excitement. After a few moments, aware of incoming night, she tapped him on the arm.
They descended into the courtyard via a ramp that sloped from the opening down to the ground. Scraps of vegetation and dead bugs lay scattered on the rock where the wind had blown them. The holystone pavement remained pristine, as if it had been swept that morning. It was darker inside the courtyard than outside because of the shadows. As stars blinked into view overhead she guided him onto the pavement and set down her pack.
“You can speak here,” she said, “but do not leave the circle. There’s a basin where you can wash your feet. Not in the spring. It’s pure-water.”
“As if I would pollute a pure-water spring!” he said indignantly as he shrugged off his pack. Sitting on the pavement, he unlaced the boots and tugged them off, and finally peeled off his socks with grimaces and gasps. “Oh! Ow! Ah!”
His feet had indeed gotten a few blisters; not many, but two had rubbed raw and were now oozing. Poor lad.
Elen grabbed up a hallow-wood bucket stored next to the rim of the pool. After dipping it into the softly burbling spring, she carried it over to a wood trough, poured the water in, and let half of it flow into a wash basin. After they’d both washed their hands and faces, Kem bathed his feet with gasps of pain. He scrounged in his pack for a vial of gelatinous wax-leaf oil. As he smeared the oil on the blisters, his gasps were succeeded by sighs of relief as the ointment soothed some of the pain. She handed him a small brush. He began to clean their boots of the day’s dust and grime.
Couriers before her time had built fires in a crude stone hearth set against the outer curve of the pavement. She sat cross-legged as she arranged kindling she’d stored here months ago, and lit a fire with her tinder box. While she waited for the water to boil, she noted in her logbook the encounter with the elder and the gift of the food, as well as their stopover in the Spires for the night, listed as “seasonal inspection, autumn, Year Eighteen of the Magnolia Emperor.”
When the water boiled in her little copper kettle, she brewed a single cup of precious Eloquent Flower Tea in the small iron pot in which she’d intended to cook up a tasty sausage and cheese porridge for their supper. Her stomach growled.
“This will take the edge of hunger off,” she said, handing the cup to Kem.
“I don’t mind.” He sipped at the tea, then drained the whole cup in one thirsty gulp. “I haven’t had this tea before. It’s sweet.”
“I save it for special occasions.”
“I’m not sure I like it.” He yawned. “That was the longest day’s walk yet. What are you going to show me?” He gestured toward the scaffolding above. “What is that? How does it stay up? Do the tower doors ever open? Are there stairs?”
“We have to wait until the moon reaches zenith. Go ahead and take a nap now. I’ll wake you.”
“Aren’t you tired?”
“Not yet.”
“Guess you’re used to it. I’m glad you let me walk with you for the full route this time. It really does help me realize I don’t want to Declare for courier any more than I want to be a cobbler. Does anyone know? Is it just me who doesn’t know?”
“You’re finding your way.”
“But I’m not allowed to put it off any longer. Why does it have to be seventeen? It used to feel like the day would never come, that I still had time to think it over, and now it’s so rushed. If I don’t Declare this week, then I’ll get assigned. Maybe that would be better. Just go with what the justiciar’s office sticks me with.”
“How do you mean?”
He shook his shoulders the way he used to when he was small and frustrated over a trouble he couldn’t fix. “The things I want, I can’t have. To join an imperial order as anything but a menial you have to be Manor-born. Well, sure, it’s true the calligraphers are open to anyone, but we never had enough coin to buy me the training I’d need to qualify. That wouldn’t be so bad. Writing up contracts in beautiful letters.”
She raised her eyebrows. This was the first time he’d mentioned aspiring to the Imperial Order of Calligraphers. “Maybe, but if you think a deputy courier’s rounds are boring, then I have to wonder if you’d find such painstaking work tedious after a month. By then it would be too late, the die cast, and your life settled.”
“It’s not how it happened with you and Mama,” he murmured peevishly. “You didn’t even grow up here. You made a place for yourselves after the normal age for Declaration. Why can’t I explore and try out more things before I have to settle down?”
“Our circumstances were unusual. It’s only because we arrived in Orledder Halt in the midst of a virulent Spore irruption. We had useful skills when the locals desperately needed help. That’s why we were invited to stay. Otherwise, two women and a toddler-in-arms would have been granted the customary three nights of hospitality and then required to move on.”
He’d heard the story before, of course. But now he asked, “Do you ever wish you could have kept traveling? Seen more of the empire?”
She shut her eyes, swallowing a spike of pain and terror. Surely the past could not catch up to them. What did the past care about humble Orledder Halt and its unimportant inhabitants? “I’m content here, Kem. So was your mama. Her especially. I like being a courier. She was a good midwife. People respected her.”
He wiped his eyes. “I wish I could be what she was, like she wanted me to be. But I can’t.”
“I know.” She rested a hand on his hair. “You are who you are. And I love you for it. She did too.”
“Did she?” he said in a low voice.
“She didn’t always know how to show it. You know that.”
“I know.” He sighed with youthful despair. “Joef is going to Declare as an archivist and take his training from the order at Ilvewind Cross. He said I could come with him and try for a menial’s position there. He says the archivists aren’t as rank-rigid as the wardens and engineers. He says sometimes the Imperial Order of Archivists raises up promising menials to become novices. But Ilvewind Cross is so far away and so big, and has so many people. And what if they kept me as a menial all my life, sweeping the floors and cleaning the privies? I’d rather be a cobbler. But there’s nothing else. Nothing, nothing, nothing.”
“Be patient.” She paused, eyeing him.
He yawned hugely as the tincture’s relaxing properties took hold.
“It’ll sort out,” she said soothingly, needing him to succumb to his weariness instead of fighting to stay awake.
“I hope so.” His eyelids fluttered.
None too soon. He lay down, pillowing his head on an arm, just as the rim of the moon topped the eastern wall. Within a few breaths, he fell asleep.
Elen set the kettle on the hearthstone and rose, settling her stance firmly on the pavement. She stood patiently watching the light and shadow shift as the moon rose like a lamp being slowly lifted until it was high enough to illuminate the depths of the courtyard. Moonlight spread fractured tendrils down the inner walls, creeping toward the ground. Where the delicate light lanced through the darkness, the shadows around it rippled. They seemed to take on substance and, like water, flowed along the walls. There was danger, and yet beauty, too. Life was so fragile that she chose to embrace the beauty she found even when it skirted alongside menace. She braced herself.
A harsh, grinding scrape of stone against stone sounded from beyond the opening that led outside, coming slowly closer. A dark shape loomed into view within the archway, as if one of the statues had dragged its weight down the path and up the stairs. Yet the physical statue could not pass through the opening.
The swirling shadows met the presence, seeped into it, filled it as wine fills an empty cup, and at the same time lightened it as if turning stone into mist. A whispery body formed—darker than night and dusted with the magic of the silent moon. Almost a person, but no longer stone and yet not embodied in flesh.
The figure descended the ramp with a brisk but soundless stride, approached the circle, and halted a few paces back from the pavement’s gleaming edge. The haunt was beautiful, wearing a lithe shape and comely humanlike features very like those of the statue that had been holding the head of a dragon. Was the beast’s head meant to represent his prey or his hidden heart, who could know? Elen saw him as a man, but she had no idea what manner of being he really was or how dangerous he might be.
She held still. Some said if you didn’t move, haunts couldn’t see you. But he saw her. Slowly, as with the sweet taste of hazard, he smiled.
Excerpted from The Witch Roads, copyright © 2025 by Kate Elliott.