The Desert Spear

this…”
    “Over here,” the Painted Man said, moving to a corner of the room with a large bookshelf. That got Leesha’s attention immediately, and she headed over.
    “Are those the grimoires?” she asked, unable to keep the eagerness from her voice.
    The Painted Man glanced at the shelf and shook his head. “Those are nothing,” he said. “Common wards and books, histories and basic maps. Nothing you can’t find in the library of any Warder or Messenger worth the name.”
    “Then where…?” Leesha began, but the Painted Man moved over to a nondescript section of the floor and stamped his heel down hard in a precise spot. The board was on a fulcrum, and as one end dipped into a hollow in the floor, the other rose, revealing a small metal ring. The Painted Man grasped the ring and pulled, opening a trapdoor in the flooring, its edges uneven and filled with sawdust, making them indistinguishable from the surrounding floorboards.
    He lit a lantern and led the way down the steps into a large basement. The walls were stone, and the room was cool and dry. There was a hall leading in the direction of the collapsed main house, but a giant stone block had fallen to bar the path.
    Painted weapons lay stacked and hung everywhere. Axes, spears of varying length, polearms, and knives, all delicately etched with battle wards. Dozens of crank bow bolts. Literally thousands of arrows, stacked in gross bundles.
    There were trophies of a sort, as well, demon skulls, horns, and talons, dented shields and broken spears. Gared and Wonda drew wards in the air.
    “Here,” the Painted Man said to Wonda, handing her a bundle of arrows, delicate wards entwined along their wooden shafts and metal heads. “These will bite coreling flesh deeper than the ones in your quiver.”
    Wonda’s hands shook as she accepted the gift. Speechless, she bowed her head, and the Painted Man bowed in return.
    “Gared…” the Painted Man said, looking around as Gared stepped forward. He selected a heavy machete, its blade etched with hundreds of tiny wards. “You can hack through wood demon limbs like errant vines with this,” he said, handing the weapon to Gared hilt-first. Gared dropped to his knees.
    “Get up,” the Painted Man snapped. “I ent the ripping Deliverer!”
    “Ent callin’ you any names,” Gared said, keeping his eyes down. “All I know is I spent my whole life acting the selfish fool, but since you come to the Hollow, I seen the sun. I seen how I let my pride and my…lusts,” his eyes flicked to Leesha, just for an instant, “blind me. The Creator blessed me with strong arms to kill demons, not to take whatever I wanted.”
    The Painted Man held out his hand, and when Gared took it, he pulled the man roughly to his feet. Gared weighed more than three hundred pounds, but he might as well have been a child.
    “Maybe you seen the sun, Gared,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I showed it to you. You’d lost your da just a day before. That’ll grow any man. Show him what’s important in life.”
    He held out the machete again, and Gared took it. It was a huge blade, but it seemed little more than a dagger in Gared’s giant hand. He looked at the delicate warding in wonder.
    The Painted Man looked at Leesha. “Those,” he pointed to a series of shelves at the far end of the room, “are the grimoires.” Leesha immediately moved toward the shelves, but he caught her arm. “I let you go there and we’ll lose you for the next ten hours.”
    Leesha frowned, wanting nothing more than to pull her arm away and bury herself in the heavy, leather-bound tomes, but she suppressed the urge. This was not her home. She nodded.
    “We ’ll bring the books with us when we leave,” the Painted Man said. “I have other copies. Those will be yours to keep.”
    Rojer looked to the Painted Man. “Everyone gets a gift but me?”
    The Painted Man smiled. “We’ll find you something.” He moved over to the blocked corridor. The keystone that had collapsed from the archway looked to weigh hundreds of pounds, but he lifted it away easily, leading them to a heavy, locked door that had been hidden in the darkness.
    He produced another key from his robes and turned it in the lock, opening the door and stepping inside. He touched a taper to a huge stand lamp by the door, and it flared to life, reflecting off large mirrors carefully placed around the room. Instantly the huge chamber was filled with bright light, and the visitors