Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Outside, the rain falls from the churning, restless sky, and the night feels like it’s not just come early this evening, but is a season in and of itself. When I hear talk and a clanging, I whisper down the back of the Gauntlet and peer around the corner.
Mr. Cavenish is being walked along the main street, and the men with him are not being rough. The innards are no longer in his hand, but the bell remains. The soulful sound it makes is like a countdown, and I think of the deteriorating wall that surrounds my village. Even in its decline, the mortared stone bulwark is tall as the Gauntlet’s thatched roof and thick as a mead barrel. Still, I find myself wondering if those creatures whose faces and teeth have yet to be seen can climb. Or fly like dragons.
Maybe the balas in the moat will give us some protection.
For my two decades of life, I have stayed cloistered inside Greensward’s wall, only venturing out to gather the plants and roots I need. Otherwise, I don’t even leave the pub unless I have to. I’ve never felt safe, even within our village, and as I think about what’s stalking us? The news from the other territories on Anathos seem like forest fires of danger ready to consume me: There’s been talk of animals, and even people, being attacked in the settlements that ring the various royal courts. I’ve heard so many fearful whispers at the end of the night, travelers sharing that which they refuse to acknowledge in the light of day.
The milkman is right. We are being hunted here, the wall that protects us both a defense and a target. But he’s wrong that the Fulcrum has been weakened because of magic. I’ve been wielding a sliver of that sacred energy my whole life, and I refuse to believe there’s been any bad repercussions—and everybody in this pub who ignores me feels the same way, too. Even Mr. Cavenish.
They hate that they’ve had to rely on me, but though I am a shunned orphan, I have learned one solid truth: There’s nothing people will not do for their family.
No, the cause is something else.
And that’s what we need to fear, even more than the demons, which are but the preamble to a much more deadly enemy.
Two
A Mouse Among Rats.
I wait for the trio of men to get farther ahead of me, and then I ghost along in their wake, following the eerie clanging of the cowbell. My cloak soaks up the icy rain as if parched for cold water, and beneath my ratty leather soles, the cobblestone lane is slick as a mossy riverbed. The row houses that crowd up on both sides of our main thoroughfare have their shutters tightly shut and their doors bolted for reasons other than the bad weather, but their chimney flues are open, tendrils of smoke eaten by the wind.
When a distant creaking travels to my ears, I glance over my shoulder. The bridge that crosses our moat is being hauled up, and when the planks lock into place at the squat towers, the pair of sentries descend from their duty. That the men head to the Gauntlet is no surprise, and I wish they would stay where they were.
For all the good they could do with their pitchforks.
They are just civilians, like the rest of us. Our village is on the very fringes of the Prosperitus territory, and there are no royal guards here, for we are but a worthless trading post. That’s why our wall is unrepaired and we have no protectors.
We must take care of ourselves.
Refocusing on my own journey, the lane before me is cast in a palette of grays, and wisps of fog curl and flatten in the downpour like restless phantom limbs. All I hear is water, dripping off roofs, splashing underfoot, tapping on my hood. Except I’m listening for other things. I’m looking for … other things. It’s unlikely the sentries missed an entrance through the front. What if a demon came over the top? What if they possess dark magic, so that which is solid is nothing but air to them? And how did they get out …
Just as we have our wall, the continent of Anathos has the Fulcrum. The difference is that the latter was conceived to keep things inside and it was supposed to last for eternity. The Book of Time provides us with the story of the Great Containment, how after the Dark King gathered up and perverted the natural magic of the continent, and used it to subjugate the populations of all the compass points, the Savior came and rescued our ancestors from torture and tyranny. Working in secret, she extracted the tiny quantums of energy still left in the landscape, and then she seduced the evil overlord into a fissure in the ground and created the swirling force field that imprisoned him and his army of demons—