I couldn’t imagine Rory as a boy, thin or small or vulnerable. He was none of those things, almost as if he’d taken pains to carve them from himself. “Why?” I asked. “Why help him, I mean?”

“Same reason you want to help your Diviners,” Maude said. “Because you care, and because you’re able to do something about it.”

I pondered that. “Was he a good squire?”

“The worst I’d ever seen.”

I smiled.

“He was raw and impatient and untrusting, and the other knights worked him hard because he wasn’t highborn and had no right being where he was.”

“Let me guess. You put a stop to that.”

“And enjoyed doing it. But Rory settled in time. Got stronger. Smarter. Meaner, too. Or maybe he just stopped thinking mistreatment was something he deserved.”

“Sounds like neither of them would be where they are without you.”

“They’d have found their way. They’re a good balance, those two. Benji wants to be resilient like Rory, and Rory wants to feel like the kingdom is worth changing the way Benji does.”

“Or maybe they both want to be just like you.”

Maude suddenly seemed battle worn. “The Bauer women have a stalwart reputation—a legacy of hunters. The Chiming Wood was once full of fearsome sprites, you know. My family slaughtered them. When I was knighted, I had massive boots to fill. Then Benedict Castor the First became my mentor. He directed my gaze to the kingdom’s greater issues—the corruption of the Omens and Aisling’s oppressive hand.” She tapped her axe. “I never understood what kind of knight I wanted to be until I struck down the Faithful Forester and discovered what a righteous kill was. Suddenly, I had a purpose, and it felt so good. But then Benedict took up the mantle, and the abbess called him a heretic, and the nobles in the hamlets echoed her.”

Maude shook her head. “We take vows as knights. To the kingdom, but also to our sovereign. I would have done anything for Benedict Castor, and he knew that. Which is why—”

She hauled in a breath. “Which is why he told me to deny him. That I could not go on, rooting out the Omens and their stone objects if anyone suspected I was complicit in his heresy. So when we knights brought him to stand before the abbess, and a Diviner proffered him five bad signs from the Omens, it was I who took him by the arm and dragged him into the courtyard. I, the first of his knights, to proclaim my withdrawal from his knighthood.”

Her green eyes found my face. “I, who threw the first stone.”

The gargoyle and I were entirely still. “That must have been horrible,” I murmured.

Maude nodded stiffly. “I made my own vow that day. That all Benedict Castor had learned, all he had taught me, would not go to waste. That I would bide my time, use my family name, my strength, to make another Castor the king. A king who would take up the mantle, and this time, succeed. That I would taste more righteous kills, and paint my blade with Omen blood. After all”—daylight danced over the edge of her axe—“that legacy of hunters shouldn’t go to waste, should it?”

I slept in the cart and dreamed of Aisling. Of my hammer, my chisel, working limestone. Of bells that kept ringing until I could not tell who was crying out—the cathedral, or the stones I’d split.

The cart jostled and I woke. I looked around for One—for Two and Three and Four and Five—but they were not there. The light was dimmer than before, the holloway road less deep, the trees more sparse—the landscape rocky and sprawling. I sat up. Took in the view. The king’s caravan was following the Tenor River, going upstream. Headed toward… “Oh.”

Looming far in the distance beneath heather-gray clouds that grew darker by the moment was a jagged mountain range. Stern and steep, its mountaintops clustered together, like claws on a gargantuan seven-fingered hand.

The Fervent Peaks.

I reached out, and the gargoyle’s stone palm was there.

“Could your friends be in that high, jagged place, Bartholomew?” he asked.

A terrible noise made me jump. A call, long and loud, starting as a resonant rumble and ending on the pitched notes of a shriek. It came from the north, and I looked out over the sprawling landscape. A nearby hill, grass and heather and rock—

Was moving.

The noise sounded again, so loud I slapped my hands over my ears. The horses cried out, and the hill raised itself onto four hooved feet.

No. No, it wasn’t a hill. It was a creature with the appearance of a hill, its back decorated by stone and bromegrass. It was only when it stood upon its legs that I realized it was like an enormous boar. It had granite tusks and wide orange eyes. Its mouth was full of dark mud, and that mouth was larger than the cart I rode in.

Not a hill at all. It was—

“Mountain sprite!”

The knights began to shout. Maude was already out of the cart, volleying over its lip, barking “Stay here” to the gargoyle and me as she ran up the line. “Spread out,” she shouted. “Ready your whips.”

The line of knights scattered, and the ground began to shake.

“I say, Bartholomew.” The gargoyle blinked his stone eyes. “What on earth are they doing?”

What indeed. Whips seemed an absurd weapon against such a behemoth foe. But then the knighthood regathered, a resolute line, riding at full canter toward the mountain sprite, cracking their whips.

The sound was like a storm. Sharp, volatile.

“They’re herding it away,” I murmured.

The sprite did not like the sound of the whips. It grew louder in its shrieks, holding its ground. I saw its wide, desperate eyes flash, and then the creature was lowering itself onto its great haunches.

And lunging.

Four knights fell from their horses, knocked asunder as the sprite broke their line. Whips cracked, but the creature kept lunging, kept roaring, snapping its wide, muddy mouth.

“It’s trying to eat them,” I said, hand to my throat.

“And look,” the gargoyle said pleasantly. “It’s coming our way.”

It was. The sprite was not as quick as the knights, who rode in expert circles, avoiding its attempts to snap at them. But the gargoyle and I were still, and the sprite had caught us in its orange gaze. It came closer, making the entire world tremble.

I reached for my hammer. Felt a hollowness in my palms and the soles of my bare feet. “Perhaps we should—”

The sprite’s monstrous cry stole my words, so loud my ears screamed. The cart horse spooked, jolting forward, and the gargoyle and I were upended, tumbling from the cart onto the road.

We fell in a tangle, my foot in his ear, his left wing lodging under my ribs.

“How undignified.” The gargoyle let out a whimper. “Did anyone see me fall?”

“Bigger problems,” I managed. The mountain sprite was closer now, its great eyes trained on our cart, creaking behind our cantering horse. It began to run after it, dropping its great snout onto the road, as if rooting. With five great strides, it caught up to the horse and cart. Opened its gaping mouth.

And ate the horse, and the cart, in one snapping bite.

I heard the groan of wood, the crunch of bones—the horse’s final scream.

The gargoyle and I shared a horrified glance.

The earth shook again—this time from the knights. They’d re-formed the line, and were riding once more toward the sprite, whips cracking. I took the gargoyle by the arm, yanking him onto his feet. We darted off the road, diving behind the cover of a craggy granite boulder.

The knights cantered past us. I saw Maude in the center, leading the charge.

The sprite turned, its great eyes widening as it faced the charge. When it opened its mouth, shrieking loud enough to split the sky, I could feel its fury, its fear.

The horses whickered, reared, but the knights kept their seats. Save one, who slipped from his saddle, unnoticed by the rest, who cantered ahead. He landed among rocks, his gold armor, gold hair, shining among gray granite.