Shadow’s Lure by Jon Sprunk Page B

stick in the fire. “Mind if I ask what takes you up to Haldeshale?”
    Caim put the knife away. Haldeshale was a region that had bordered his father’s estate. “I have family in Morrowglen.”
    “Maybe I know them. I’ve been all around these—”
    “I doubt it.” Caim bit his tongue. He was exhausted and not thinking straight.
    Hagan pulled a pipe from his coat. It was a nice piece of craftsmanship, carved from a light yellow wood and polished to a shine. He filled the bowl with a pinch of dry leaves—wild talbac by the rich green color—and lit the bowl with a stick from the fire. He didn’t give any sign that he suspected anything.
    There’s nothing to suspect . That was true enough. It had been more than seventeen years since he left Eregoth, an orphan and a fugitive.
    “Maybe you do,” Caim said. “My father soldiered a bit, under the baron.”
    “The old lord of Morrowglen?”
    “I suppose. I heard his name was Du’Vartha.”
    Hagan took a long pull from his pipe and blew the smoke up into the tree branches. “That’s a name from the old days. It reminds me of a story. About a nobleman who went north to fight in a great battle, and returned with a Fae wife.”
    Caim nodded and tried not to appear too interested. “I never heard that one.”
    “It happened not so long ago, during the empire’s crusade into the Wastes. The lord was injured on the battlefield and struck senseless. When he awoke his army had moved on, but such were his wounds that he could not follow.”
    Anxiety stirred in Caim’s belly as the old man talked. He felt like he knew how this tale was going to end.
    “He managed to crawl away,” Hagan continued. “Into an old, old forest where he thought to spend his last hours in this world. But just as he was beginning to lose hope, someone found him. A maid, alone in the woods. Day after day, she tended to him and cared for his wounds. In time, when he was able to ride again, he brought her back to his homeland, and she became his wife.”
    Caim listened to the crackle of the fire as he digested the tale. Is that what they said about his parents? His mother was a Fae wife? His memories of his childhood were mixed up and fragmented. He knew his mother had come from a foreign land, but not which one.
    Caim caught the old man watching him. “Nice story, but I don’t see how it could be true. A great lord like that, it doesn’t make sense his army would leave without making sure he was well and truly dead.”
    Hagan shrugged. “Like most tales, it’s hard to know where the truth leaves off and storytelling takes over. But that’s how it was told to me. Lots of folks around here respected the baron. Du’Vartha, I mean. Even though he was a foreigner.”
    Caim looked up. “He wasn’t from Eregoth?”
    “No, from down your way. Nimea, or so I heard. It’s not uncommon. Eregoth is a tapestry of clans and families from all over. The Du’Ormiks came from the south, too, long time ago.”
    Caim ground his teeth together. His father was Nimean? Why hadn’t he ever heard about that? “Any stories about why he came north? The baron, that is.”
    “He was an exile. Some kind of trouble back home, before the war. Came up with some armsmen and made a deal in Liovard for a plot of land and assurances of peace.”
    “But that didn’t last long.”
    Caim meant it for himself, but Hagan nodded.
    “True enough, but in the end it wasn’t the clans that came for Du’Vartha.”
    “How’s that?”
    Hagan glanced out at the darkness beyond the circle of their campfire. “What do you know about recent troubles in Warmond and Uthenor?”
    “Not much. Talk of fighting reached us in Nimea, but not the details.”
    “Perhaps I shouldn’t say any more.”
    “I’d appreciate it if you would speak your mind. I’m a stranger here, but even I can see that things are amiss. The people at the roadhouse were afraid.”
    “There’s good reason.” Hagan looked into the fire for several