Chapter 4: Let Them Burn

Gwenith's cave smelled of smoke, dried thyme and old goat.

She sat them down by a banked fire and pushed a pot of barley stew at each of them.

She said nothing until Ellory had eaten two bowls.

Saren did not touch his.

He sat with his back against the wall and his eyes on the old woman.

She looked back at him over her pipe.

"You are the last of the keepers," he said.

"I am the last who remembers there were any."

"Then you are the last who sang me into the ground."

"I never sang you anywhere, serpent." Gwenith blew out smoke.

"I was born three hundred years too late for that."

"What I know, I know from my gran's gran," Gwenith said. "She knew it from a book nobody has seen since."

"A convenient book," Saren said.

"A burned one. Eat your stew."

Saren looked at the spoon in his hand with distrust.

Ellory leaned over and showed him how to hold it.

"Like that."

"I know how to eat," Saren said.

"You know how to eat pears."

Saren put his shoulders back, took one mouthful of stew, and swallowed it with deep suspicion.

Then he ate the whole bowl.

"Where is the village?" Ellory said to Gwenith.

The old woman put down her pipe.

"I went to the high rock at dusk and looked," Gwenith said.

"They've marched everybody to Cold Ford, in chains. Two hundred of them, with the babies on the carts."

Her voice did not shake, but her hand did.

"They're camped on the near bank, on our side of the Rill, where the mist has gone thin. The Marshal's banner is up."

"I counted four hundred riders," Gwenith said.

"Lowen?" Ellory said.

"Alive when I saw him. Shouting."

Ellory's shoulders dropped. "Then we go and get them."

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