A Curse of Blood & Stone (Fate & Flame 2)

“And now they’re burning the evidence in the center of their village.” Abarrane snorts. “Imbeciles.”

The men near her adjust their grips on their swords as if anticipating she’ll pounce on them any second.

“Now we know what they were hiding,” Zander mutters.

There’s no way these villagers would have heard that Isembert is dead and therefore not likely to come here and punish them.

Fearghal looks to a brawny man gripping a mace with two hands. “What did ya do, Elsten?”

The man—Elsten—sets his jaw. “What we needed to do. What the Ybarisans told us to do.”

Zander moves in, making them adjust their stances. “And what did they tell you to do?”

Elsten stiffens his posture. “When the elven bastards start screamin’, cut their throats to dull the sound until they bleed out or the poison finishes ’em off.”

“You did all this in one night?” I cringe at the gruesome piles. Fearghal had said there were fifteen elven here, out of sixty villagers. Many of these men wear soiled bandages on their arms and legs, across their foreheads. They must have battled. Not all the elven died so easily.

His face is stony as he considers me, like he’s deciding if he wants to answer. “They fed on us every night. We’d had enough.”

“This type of killing would have taken planning, coordination.” Jarek’s footfalls are slow, measured, and ominous as he paces.

“They been trading our kids to the saplin’s!” a woman cries out from the shadows.

“Is that true?” Zander asks, his eyes on Elsten.

The mortal swallows hard. “The saplings never bothered us before, but lately, they been showing up, demanding a vein. Corbett didn’t like bein’ someone’s regular meal, so he pulled a few of our children out of bed one night, turned ’em into your kind, and handed ’em over to the saplings to buy them a few months. Gave ’em something to live off in whatever hole they crawl into durin’ the day. Doubt they’re still alive.”

Zander curses. “And what did the other keepers do about this?”

“A few o’ them were angry with Corbett, but in the end, they didn’t do nothing, didn’t punish him at all. Said that’s the way things are, livin’ up here. That’s our risk. Not theirs. Ours. So when the Ybarisans showed up with those little glass bottles and told us the keepers would never be able to do that again if we listened to ’em … we listened.”

Of course they did.

I would have too.

Zander absorbs this as he studies the burning corpses. “Have many Ybarisans have come through here?”

“The whole lot of them at first, when they were headin’ north with their supplies. But then a few would come south, and the keepers started shutting the gates on ’em. Didn’t like ’em coming through.”

“And what was your arrangement with them?” Zander uses a conversational tone rather than accusatory, the usual cold edge when he’s questioning those who have wronged him absent. It’s smart; we need information.

Still, the man balks.

“We’ll get the answers from you one way or another, so you may as well tell him what he wants to know.” Jarek weaves through the men, towering over them.

Another speaks up, a wiry man with a scruffy face. “We helped ’em get those vials out.”

“How?”

“We’d meet ’em in the eastern woods, past the summer crops. They would give us the vials, and we would take ’em with us on our trade routes. Find others who were sick of Islor’s ways to pass ’em along to.”

“And where have those trade routes led since the Ybarisans arrived?”

“Everywhere. Bellcross, Lyndel, Cirilea …”

I think of that massive ten-day fair, all those people from all over Islor, coming in to sell their keepers’ wares.

The poison was already all around us.