CHAPTER ONE A Place for Demons

At the Waystone Inn on Felling night, Old Cob recounts tales of Taborlin while the regulars drink. The new innkeeper, Kote, briefly corrects a proverb, revealing unexpected knowledge. Their routine shatters when Carter stumbles in, bloodied, carrying a huge black, eyeless, mouthless spiderlike corpse.

The group recoils as Kote identifies it as a scrael and tests it with iron, producing a crackle and foul stench, confirming it as demonlike. Carter describes it attacking and killing his horse Nelly. Kote methodically examines the body, then ensures the proper burning and burial via the priest, preventing souvenir-keeping.

Alone upstairs, Kote and his student Bast discuss the attack. Bast insists there is never just one scraeling, fearing more. Kote explains Carter’s narrow survival and covers his own surgical skills with a plausible story. Their banter and Kote’s multilingual “banishment” joke can’t mask anxiety. Kote’s gaze lingers on a triple-locked roah-wood chest, revealing buried grief and a concealed identity.

The next evening, the regulars avoid mentioning the scrael publicly, instead fretting over war news, predatory prices, and unsafe roads. Privately, they buy cold-wrought iron from the smith and bar their doors. Despite gossip, they cling to the belief that stories happen elsewhere, even as unease deepens in a place no longer safe from demons.