III.

The keep loomed at the far end of town. During morning walks to the garrison, Raylin often found her attention pulled there as she imagined ways to defend and attack the daunting stone structure. Constructed by hobs, the keep was built into and atop a craggy rock formation. Bridges spanned the various chasms, most with no clear beginning or end as they were hidden from view by sheer rock faces.

Even if Raylin hadn’t spent so much time with LittleThaw and been treated to countless lectures on the keep’s structural highlights, the building melded beauty and fierceness, aesthetic and function in ways only hob builders could manage. From certain angles the keep was nearly invisible, blending into the rock, and at others, the bridges looked ready to unfold like dozens of wings, ready to carry the building into the sky.

Instead of heading uphill toward the keep, Shield Yel turned to a side road which led out of the town and into the surrounding countryside. As the seat of military power, the keep had seemed a logical place for whatever test Yel had designed for her. Then again, besting hobs in a board game was hardly an ordinary means of earning the right to become a Shield.

“Have you been to the hob den before?” Raylin asked, matching her gait to Yel’s careful military stride and peeking at his face to see how he might react now that she had deduced their destination.

“I’d like to hear about the brigands around Digrif’s Bay,” he said, changing the subject.

Raylin had a lifetime of complaints she wanted to unload on Yel, but after a quick mental calculation of their speed and the distance to the den, she knew a summary would have to suffice.

“The Radiance has too many rules. Brigands don’t have any,” she said. “Trial and error have taught them how much crime relegates them as a threat versus a mere nuisance. Unless you can catch them in the act of committing a crime, they hide in plain sight. These aren’t the homeless desperate brigands and bandits that live rough on the road after a war. They’re tax paying citizens of Digrif’s Bay.”

“Why not send word to the outpost?” Yel asked. He was a man familiar with rules and protocols, the question delivered automatically as if he had asked it a hundred times. “It sounds like you know who among your people are brigands. If you knew at least part of their movements, it would give Shield Bree a chance to strike while they’re exposed.”

“And if Bree failed to capture them all, our master of letters would tell the surviving brigands who had sent letters and to where.” Raylin struggled to keep frustration from her voice. The snub-nosed master of letters wouldn’t have to be tortured or bribed for the information. He would hand it over willingly, never questioning his loyalty to criminals. “They would know it was me, and while they wouldn’t kill me, I’d lose a finger. Perhaps they would rape me or my mother. Like I said, they know how to walk a line. Teaching me a lesson without turning the town against them would be easy.”

“That contradicts the story about your father,” Yel said. Lips pursed and eyes squinted, he looked genuinely interested in the brigand problem, attacking the tangled knots with experience and careful thought. “The town caught your father, a brigand, and forced him to serve time. Your people sound fearless and resilient. How did they go from punishing brigands to supporting them.”

“We don’t have time for their entire history, but simply put, those who survived for any length of time learned to adapt, and those who didn’t died,” Raylin said. They were on the edge of town where commercial buildings gave way to homes with quaint gardens, hung laundry, and a few rocking chairs on porches. Children hollered through a swinging gate and out into the quiet road under the watchful gaze of their mothers, every one of them bent over some chore. Aromas of lunch still filled the air with remnants of grilled vegetables and stews.

Raylin envied the citizens of Tailso. With the garrison and keep, they were guaranteed protection from whatever the wilds could throw at them. Shopkeepers and artisans saw a steady income from the business of training and equipping soldiers, and the soldiers themselves earned enough to ensure their families would never go hungry.

It was a drastically different life from what she had known in the Bay. Her mother had sewn fishing nets and repaired sails. They always had a few chickens and a goat or two, plus the garden around their house produced vegetables for the two of them. Thanks to Gnolen’s kindness and skill, they could count on the occasional fish or crab. Neither poor nor rich, they merely survived, which had always been enough for people in the Bay.

“Nowadays, it’s about coin,” Raylin said, a hard edge to her words. “It filters through the town, starting at the top. The town elders use the stolen money to improve the Bay in minor ways, repainting the inn or repairing signposts. They pay various functionaries bonuses and invest large sums into the market under the guise of more improvements, which are never implemented. Instead, the money trickles down to people like my mother, who are offered more for their work than appropriate.”

Raylin didn’t think of her neighbors as bad people. There were plenty, like her mother, who refused to accept the brigands’ coin, regardless of how it came to their hands. However, life’s unpredictability made a few extra coins hard to resist even in the best of times. In the worst, it was nearly impossible.

Last winter when Raylin had fallen ill, her mother had tried the usual herbs to no avail. With no sign of the fever breaking, she had hired a Mender from the nearest grove. Her mother had denied doing so, blaming the fever for the misunderstanding. According to her, she had prayed over Raylin day and night, but Raylin’s mind had been clear. She remembered the Mender’s cool hands on her skin as magic flushed through her body.

Their relationship had been strained since then, her mother refusing to admit she had taken brigand money, and Raylin declaring she would rather have died than accept indirect help from those she despised the most.

“Gnomen tax collectors arrive on a reliable schedule, and the Bay is always in the middle of their route,” she said, burying her feelings and sticking to the facts. “They’re not stupid, so I’m guessing they know they’ll be robbed. I highly doubt they’re handing over all their coin without changing any of their routines or bringing reinforcements, so there are several factors at play. The gnomen are probably accepting bribes, and then they’re actually making a profit by insuring their losses.”

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“How would you deal with them?” Yel asked as they approached the open town gate. It was guarded by a half dozen soldiers in black cloaks and well-polished armor who saluted Yel and cast quizzical looks Raylin’s way.

“If I had the full resources of a Shield at my disposal?” Raylin asked, lowering her voice. She waited until they were well past the gates before speaking again, shy around the guards’ quiet stares and sharp ears. “Wodenlang and lycanthropes. A few days of reconnaissance, then a quick strike at the right moment would expose the menogs and eliminate the brigands.”

“And it all stems from your father’s death? Did you mean anything you said about justice, or are you motivated purely by revenge?” Away from Bree, the question didn’t feel like a test. Raylin had the sense Yel was genuinely curious about her motivations, whatever they were.

“I’m too late for revenge,” she said, “otherwise it would be a motivation. The men who killed my father have all met similar ends, and I grew up with many of the current brigands.”

Any further discussion ended when they arrived at the hob den.

What might once have been a ragged cave entrance had since been molded into a beautiful set of rock doors. Wide enough to fit three hobs abreast and tall enough that a visitor had to crane their neck to see the top, the doors were a testament to hob craftsmanship.

The first time Raylin had come with LittleThaw, the doors had been carved into a woodland scene. Trees had bordered the edges, melding into the rock where the doors ended, individual leaves sculpted with great care. At the bottom, fallen leaves had created a carpet where the keen eyed might spot a few insects or a small woodland creature. In the center, a fire had seemed to crackle in a clearing, and the entire piece had been carved to give it depth. The hobs had created the impression that a visitor was walking into a forest clearing which had already been prepared for them.

Now the doors had become a cross-section of a tavern. A wodenlang bard sat upon a small stage, its long fingers frozen between strums of the stringed instrument they called a lily’s stem. No tables or patrons were visible in the scene as if any who approached and studied the doors for any length of time were the bard’s audience. Lanterns hung from hooks on the ceiling, and a fire roared in the hearth. Raylin could even see bits of sawdust on the floor.

The only part of the door which never seemed to change were the words carved at humanoid height on the wide handles. “All are welcome,” they said. Raylin had stared at the doors for a long time on her first visit while LittleThaw had waited patiently at her side, beaming like a proud mother.

Several hobs stood near the entrance, either coming back from work or going out to enjoy the day as the sun finally began its slow passage across the western sky. RotStump greeted Raylin with a frown. He was the first hob she had beaten after arriving in Tailso. She didn’t know the others by name, but they knew her and suddenly found themselves urgently needing to be somewhere else.

“Imagine that,” Yel said between quick chuckles. As he had before, the Shield morphed into a completely different person, dropping all the military protocol as his face widened with joy. “Hobs running in fear from a human.”

“I’ve been a bit overzealous challenging them to matches,” Raylin admitted with her own grin.

“Yes, you have. I knew about you as soon as you beat LittleThaw,” Yel said and turned to face her. “Listen, Raylin. Away from the garrison, we can be candid. I understand why you might disagree with the rigid rules of the military structure, but they serve a purpose. Right now, you’re free to operate outside those rules, but if you become a Shield, you’ll be bound to them.”

Raylin didn’t know how to respond to that, so she remained quiet as RotStump opened a single door with ease, ushering them inside with a slight tilt of his head and another frown directed at Raylin.

“Marvelous!” Yel said.

The rock inside the den had been smoothed, shaped, and shined in such a way that light flowed over every surface like lapping waves. LittleThaw had told her they infused the rock with salt, providing its glitter and filling the air with a crisp smell. Wisp lights of matching colors faced each other on opposite walls. They lightened and darkened in hue down the corridor, mimicking the gradations of a rainbow.

They stuck to one side of the wide hallway as the occasional hob passed. Raylin feared Yen might strain something, turning his head from side to side, gawking at each room and intersecting hallway. For all the wonders throughout the Radiance he must have seen, there was always something new. Raylin couldn’t blame his fascination with the hob den. It still amazed her.

Tailso’s inn had accommodations for all races, but there were rooms in the den for visitors as well. Burrowers and gnomen felt more comfortable surrounded by solid stone while other races considered it a novelty to stay with the hobs. If the den had any other visitors, they were nowhere to be seen. Hob-sized wooden doors at each room’s entrance had smaller doors cut into them for their guests.

“I was told you know your way around this place,” Yel said. “We are due in the central chambers, but first I must inquire after a guest who might have stayed here recently.”

“The den mother would know,” Raylin said and pointed to a room on the left. A sign hung above the door, “Guidance” written upon it in several languages. “But I doubt she’ll easily part with such sensitive information.”

“And yet, I must try,” Yel said. “Wait here a moment, please.”

After three sharp raps upon the door, he drew himself up to his full height. When the den mother opened the door, her smile was warm and nearly the size of a small child. Raylin had never had occasion to meet the den mother but knew she was a well-respected figure named LeafHop.

Though she wasn’t trying to overhear the conversation, the hallway’s acoustics combined with Yel’s strong voice made it impossible for Raylin not to hear every bit of the conversation.

“I’m terribly sorry to impose on your hospitality and that of your den,” Yel said after introducing himself as an official representative of Core. “But I need to know anything you can tell me about a hob named EchoingKnock.”

“Quite an unusual name for a hob.” LeafHop rubbed at her chin, her kind smile no longer touching her eyes which shone with razor sharp focus. She had a cracked but sonorous voice.

“He’s also known as the Hero of Shrivemount,” Yel said, obviously expecting a reaction by the way he said it.

“Truly an unusual name for a hob. Much too long.” LeafHop’s eyes narrowed a fraction, but otherwise she was a kindly grandmother happy for the conversation.

Raylin on the other hand gasped but stifled the noise by shoving a fist into her mouth. Ever since she had been small, Raylin had heard tales of the Hero of Shrivemount. The fallen bridge was a familiar site to those who lived in the Bay, and rumors of the golem still persisted. It was one thing to know she might visit places she had often read about in books, but it would be something else entirely to meet a veritable legend.

And to think he had stayed here. And Raylin had never heard mention of it. She wondered if LittleThaw knew and had withheld the information.

The more she thought about it, the more Raylin realized the last thing the Hero would want was attention. Most assumed he’d died when the bridge fell, but if he still lived, she couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have his greatest and worst moment overlap, celebrated in song throughout the land by bards. Once, Raylin had considered his destruction of the bridge a brilliant strategic decision. Her time with LittleThaw and the hobs throughout Tailso had altered that opinion as she’d learned more about the mountain hobs’ reverence for stone, not to mention the keepers’ connections to their bridges.