The Blood Knight

1 The Charlatan

Aspar heard the death knells before he ever saw the town of Haemeth.

The sound carried in long, beautiful peals along the waters of the White Warlock River, startling a flock of hezlings into furtive flight. The southern sky was dark with smoke, but the wind was going that way, so Aspar couldn’t smell what was burning.

She’s a stranger. Would they ring the bell for a stranger?

He didn’t know. He didn’t know much at all about village customs on the north side of the Midenlands.

He urged Ogre to a trot. The great horse had strengthened steadily during the ride down the Warlock, grazing on rye and early fengrass, and after only a couple of days he was nearly his old self. This was cause for hope, but Aspar tried to keep away from that dangerous emotion. Winna had been far sicker than Ogre, and no medicine could bring back the dead.

The road wound along the low lip of the river valley, and after a few moments, Haemeth finally came into sight. Situated on the next large hill, it was a town of surprising size, with outlying farms and steadings spread out into the lowlands and along the road. He could see the source of the woeful music now, too, a spindly bell tower of white stone capped in black slate, so peaked that the whole thing looked rather like a spear.

A second tower, this one thicker and crenellated on top, stood on the highest point at the other end of town, and it seemed as if the two towers were joined by a long stone wall. Most likely the wall went all the way around the town, but since Aspar was looking up from below, all he could see was a handful of rooftops peeking over the top.

The smoke was coming from several huge pyres that had been built down by the river, and now that the wind had shifted a bit, he knew what they were burning.

He kicked Ogre into a gallop.

More than a few heads turned toward Aspar as Ogre brought him up to the crowd, but he ignored the shouts demanding that he identify himself, swinging himself down instead and striding toward the fire.

It was difficult to count the corpses, heaped as they were, but he reckoned there were more than fifty. Two of the blazes were already so hot that white bone was beginning to pop and fall into the coals, but in the third he could see faces beginning to blister. His heart labored as he searched for Winna’s sweet features, smoke stinging his eyes. The heat forced him to step back.

“Here,” a burly fellow shouted. “Watch yourself. What are you doing?”

Aspar turned on him.

“How did these people die?” he demanded.

“They died because the saints hate us,” the man replied angrily. “And I’ll know who you are.”

About six men had gathered behind the fellow. A couple of them had held pitchforks or long poles for working the fire, but other than that they didn’t seem to be armed. They looked like tradesmen and farmers.

“I’m Aspar White,” he grunted. “The king’s holter.”

“Holter? The only forest within six days of here is the Sarnwood, and it don’t have a holter.”

“I’m the holter of the King’s Forest,” Aspar informed him. “I’m looking for two strangers: a young woman with blond hair and a dark young man. They would’ve come in with two cowherds.”

“Don’t have much time to look for strangers,” the man said. “Seems like all we have time for these days is grief. And for all I know, you might be bringing us more of that grief.”

“I mean you no harm,” Aspar responded. “I only want to find my friends.”

“You work for the king, then?” a third man put in. Aspar glanced at him from the corner of his eye, unwilling to take his gaze completely off the more threatening fellow. The new speaker was sunburned, with close-cropped hair, half gray and half black, and was missing an upper right tooth.

“The way I hear it, their aens’t no king.”

“True, but there’s a queen,” Aspar said. “And I’m her deputy, with full power to enforce her laws.”

“A queen, eh?” the thin fellow said. “Well, we could use a good word with her. You see what’s happening to us here.”

“They don’t care in Eslen what’s become of us,” the first man exploded. “You’re being fools. They didn’t send this man here to help us. He’s just come for his friends, like he said. As far as he’s concerned, the rest of us can rot.”

“What’s your name?” Aspar said, lowering his voice.

“Raud Achenson, if it’s anything to you.”

“I reckon you’ve got somebody on the pyre there.”

“Mighing right I do. My wife. My father. My youngest boy.”

“So you’re angry. You’d like someone to blame. But I didn’t put ’em there, you understand? And Grim hear me, I’ll put you there if you say one more word.”

Raud purpled, and his shoulders bunched.

“We’re with you, Raud,” said a fellow behind him.

That released the big man like a catapult, and he sprang at Aspar.

Aspar punched him in the throat, hard, and he went down.

Without stopping, Aspar leapt forward and caught the man who had cheered him on, grabbing him by the hair. He yanked out his dirk and put the tip under the man’s chin.

“Now, why would you try to kill your friend?” he asked.

“Didn’t—sorry,” the man gasped. “Please—”

Aspar released him with a hard push that sent him tumbling. Raud was on the ground, gasping for air and getting little, but Aspar hadn’t crushed his windpipe. He gave the rest of the crowd a hard look but didn’t see anyone who looked like a taker.

“Now,” he demanded, “what happened here?”

The gray-and-black-haired man studied his feet.

“You won’t believe it,” he said. “I saw it myself, and I don’t.”

“I maunt I’ll try it, anyway.”

“It was a thing like a snake, but so big. It crossed upstream. We reckon it poisoned the water. The greft sent his knights after it, but it killed most of em.”

“I’ve seen it, too,” Aspar said, “so I’ve no trouble believing you. Now, I’m going to ask you again, and this time someone answer me. Two strangers, a man and a woman, the woman with wheat-colored hair. They would have come with two children, cowherds named Aethlaud and Aohsli. Where would I find them?”

A woman of middle years cleared her throat at that. “They might be at the Billhook and Bail,” she offered uncertainly.

“You there!”

The shout came from uphill, and Aspar turned to find a man riding down from the city gate. He was dressed in lord’s plate and mounted on a black stallion with a white blaze.

“Yah?” he answered.

“You’re Aspar White?”

“Yah.”

“You’ll want to talk to me, then.”

The man reached down and clasped Aspar’s hand, then introduced himself as Sir Peren, servant of the Greft of Faurstrem, whose seat was Haemeth. The holter mounted Ogre, and together they started up the hill.

“Your friends spoke of you,” Peren said once the crowd was behind them. “Winna and Ehawk.”

“You know them? Where are they?”

“I will not lie to you,” Peren said. “I saw them last this morning. They were dying. They might be dead by now.”

“Take me to them, then,” Aspar said, knowing his voice was harsh, unable to do anything about it.

Peren glanced at him. “You’ve found it, then?” he asked. “The cure?”

Aspar looked downhill to the pyres. A whole town infected by the woorm’s poison, and him with a bagful of the fruit.

“Is the greft infected?” he asked rather than answering directly.

“No, but his son led us against the waurm,” Sir Peren replied. “He, too, lies on his deathbed.” The man seemed nervous, Aspar thought.

Aspar relaxed his shoulders with a deep breath. They had been waiting for him. Either Ehawk or Winna had told someone he’d gone to find a cure, and word had gotten around.

Was he a prisoner? It was starting to feel that way. He probably could kill Peren and escape, but that meant Winna and Ehawk would surely die if they weren’t already dead.

“I’ll see my friends,” he said. “Then we’ll see about the greftson.”

By the time they reached the tower, two more armed and armored men had joined Peren in escorting him. Once they passed the outer keep, a servant took Ogre, his only ally, and by the time they entered the bailey and came into the audience of the greft, he had seven guards following him.

The Greffy of Faurstrem wasn’t a large or prosperous one, and the audience chamber reflected that fact in its modesty. An ancient throne of oak sat on a small stone dais, with a banner draped behind it depicting a hawk gripping a scepter and an arrow in its claws. The man on the throne was ancient, too, with a silver beard that nearly piled in his lap and rheumy gray eyes.

Peren dropped to his knee.

“Greft Ensil,” he said. “This is Aspar White, the king’s holter.”

The old man shook, every part of him, as he raised his head to regard his visitor. He stared at Aspar for a long, wasted moment before speaking.

“I thought I would never have a son,” he said at last. “The saints seemed to be denying me. I was almost resigned to it, and then, when I was sixty, the saints made a miracle and gave me Emfrith. Emfrith, my lovely boy.” He leaned forward, eyes blazing.

“Can you understand that, holter? Have you any children?”

“No,” Aspar replied.

“No,” Ensil repeated. “Then you cannot understand.” He sat back and closed his eyes. “Three days ago he rode out against a thing I believed only existed in legend. He went out like a hero, and fell like one. He is dying. Can you save him?”

“I’m not a leic, my lord,” Aspar said.

“Do not make mock of me,” the old man shrilled. “The girl told us. You went to the Sarnwood to locate the cure for this poison. Did you find that cure?”

“Is she alive?” Aspar asked.

The men around Ensil looked suddenly uncomfortable.

“Is she alive?” Aspar reiterated in a louder voice.

Ensil shook his head.

“She died,” he said. “As did the boy. There was nothing we could do.”

And suddenly Aspar smelled autumn leaves, and he knew murder was about—but whether already happened or on the way, he could not know. His throat thickened and his eyes burned, but he stood straighter and made his face stone.

“I’ll see her body, then,” Aspar said. “I’ll see it now.”

Ensil sighed and signed with his hand. “Search him.”

Aspar dropped his hand to his dirk. “Mark me, Greft Ensil. Maunt my words. I have the cure for your son, but it isn’t a simple tonic or the like. It needs doing in a particular way, or the result is poison that will only kill him all the quicker.

“And here’s the other thing. If Winna Rufoote is already dead, from whatever cause, then you won’t have my help. If you try to force me, I reckon I’ll fight and probably die, and I swear to you, so will your son. You cann? Now, I’m reckoning you say my friends are dead because you’re afraid I only brought antidote enough for one or two. Trouble with that is, if they aren’t really dead, you’ll kill ’em soon so I don’t know I’ve been tricked.

“But I know already, and I have enough cure for all three of them. The only thing will save your son is that girl drawing breath. So I’ll see her body, dead or alive, sprootlic. Now.”

Ensil stared at him for another long moment as Aspar battled doubt. Had he guessed right? Or was she really dead? He couldn’t believe the last, so he had to believe the first, even if it got him killed.

“Take him,” Ensil muttered.

Aspar tensed for the battle, but then he saw the chamberlain bow and point left.

“This way,” the man said.

Aspar didn’t weep often, but when Winna’s faint breath fogged the polished steel of his knife, a single salty droplet worked its way out of the corner of his eye.

They were in a sickroom improvised from a chapel. Ehawk was there, too, unconscious but breathing a little better, along with twenty or so others, many of whom were still awake enough to groan and wail.

Aspar retrieved the berries from his pouch and was about to start force-feeding them to Winna when he took pause.

He’d been right about the greft’s intentions. He might get a few berries down Winna, but as soon as they understood that he’d lied about the complexity of the cure, they would probably confiscate the entire pouch.

“Where is the greftson?” Aspar demanded. “This would be better done all at once.”

“He’s in his own chambers.”

“Bring him then, and quickly.”

Then he knelt back down and stroked Winna’s face, his heart making weird motions in its bone cage.

“Hold on, girl,” he muttered. “Just a few more minutes.”

He touched her neck but could find only the weakest pulsing there. If she died in the time it took them to bring the other fellow down…

“I’ll need to work without eyes on me,” he told the remaining men. “We’ll need to improvise some sort of tent around their beds.”

“Why?” the chamberlain asked.

Aspar tightened his gaze on the man. “You know of the Sarnwood witch, yah? You know how few come before her and live? And yet I did, and she made me a gift of one of her secrets. But I was forced to swear a geos that no eyes but mine would witness this cure. Now, do as I say, and do it sprootlic! Bring some wine and a small white cloth, too.”

The chamberlain looked dubious, but he sent men off to bring the things Aspar had demanded. A few moments later several men bore a litter into the room on which lay a young man of perhaps nineteen winters. His lips were blue, and he looked quite dead.

“Sceat,” Aspar said under his breath. If the greftson was dead, he wasn’t walking out of there, and neither were Winna and Ehawk.

But then the boy coughed, and Aspar realized that much of the blue color came from some kind of paste that had been swabbed over him. Some local attempt at medicine, more than likely.

With poles and sheets, the greft’s men quickly built a tent around the three bodies, placing a small brazier inside, along with the wine.

The instant the sheet was closed, Aspar began mumbling in the Sefry cant of his childhood, as Jesp had done when she pretended to do magic. He was amazed at how readily it came to him, considering how much distance he’d tried to put between himself and all that. Normally his survival depended on his senses, wits, and weapons. Today it depended on how well he remembered how to play the charlatan.

Breaking between singing and chanting, he crushed some berries and, as gently as he could, pushed five of them down Winna’s throat, following that with a little wine, then holding her mouth shut until she swallowed weakly. Then he moved to Ehawk and did the same thing. The greftson’s eyes fluttered open as he began the process on him.

“Swallow,” Aspar said.

Looking confused, the boy did so.

Raising his voice, Aspar ended the chant with a flourish.

He went back to Winna, who, he saw with leaden heart, seemed exactly the same. He fed her two more berries, then drew back the flap of the makeshift tent.

The greft had been carried in on a sort of armchair and sat regarding him with skeptical eyes.

“Well?” he growled.

“Now we wait,” Aspar said truthfully.

“If he dies, so do you.”

Aspar shrugged and settled onto the stool next to Winna. He glanced at Greft Ensil. “I know how it is to lose someone dear,” he said. “I know how it is to be threatened with that loss. And I suppose I would let a stranger die if it meant saving someone I loved. I don’t fault you for the sentiment or the lie. But you might have given me the benefit of the doubt.”

The old man’s face softened somewhat.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “You’re too weak in years to understand. Honor and bravery are for the young. They have the constitution for it and no sense, no sense at all.”

Aspar maunted that for a moment.

“I don’t claim to know much about honor,” he said finally. “Especially after the show I just put on.”

“What do you mean?” Ensil asked.

Aspar produced the remaining Sarnwood fruits. “I’m tired of all this,” he said. “I gave your boy and my friends more than the amount the witch said would make the cure. I’ve tried em myself, so I know they aren’t poison. They got my horse better, too. Three berries each, that’s what you’re supposed to give em.” He reached into the bag and pulled out a few. “I’m keeping these because after this I’ll find that woorm and kill it, and I might need them. But in the meantime, there’s plenty more here. Distribute em as you see fit.”

“But the chanting? The song? The wine?”

Aspar ticked them off on his fingers.

“Fraud, deceit, and I was thirsty. But the berries are real.” He tossed the bag to the chamberlain, who caught them as if they were eggs. “Now,” he went on, “I’ve been riding for a few days without sleep. I’m going to try and get some. If you honorable fellows are goin’ to slit my throat while I’m with Saint Soan, try and do it quietly.”

Fingers on his face stroked him awake far more pleasantly than the kiss of a razor might have. At first he was afraid that it was only a dream, that he wasn’t seeing Winna’s half-lidded eyes looking back at him from the cot. But after glancing around at the situation, he managed to convince himself.

Winna’s hand dropped loosely by her side.

“Weak,” she murmured. Then her eyes focused on him again. “Glad you changed your mind,” she whispered. “Glad to see you one more time.” Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes.

“I didn’t change my mind,” he said. “I found the witch. She gave me what I asked for.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes and wheezed a few breaths.

“I don’t feel well, Aspar,” she said.

“You’re better than you were,” he assured her. “You were close on Saint Dun’s gate when I got here. Now you’re awake.” He took her hand in his. “How in Grim’s name did you end up in the castle?”

“Oh. The girl, Haudy, told someone; I’m a little hazy. They came and took us, asked a lot of questions about you.” She closed her eyes. “I told them that if you came here, you wouldn’t have it. I didn’t think you would. I didn’t think I would see you again.”

“Well, here I am, and with the cure.”

“Ehawk?”

He glanced at the boy, who was asleep but seemed to have better color. The greft was asleep, too, guarded by four knights, but to his surprise Aspar found the greftson looking at them.

“What is this?” the boy managed. “What’s going on?”

“The story is you tried to fight a waurm,” Aspar said.

“Auy,” the young man replied. “That’s right, and then…” His face screwed up in concentration. “I don’t remember much after that.”

“Emfrith! My sweet boy!”

The guards had shaken their lord awake and were helping the frail old man move toward his son.

“Atta!” Emfrith replied.

Aspar watched the two embrace.

“How do you feel?” the greft asked.

“Weak. Sick.”

“You’ve been out of your head, unable even to recognize your own father.”

After a moment, the greft drew himself up and faced Aspar, his eyes wet with tears.

“I regret…” He paused, as if struggling up a mountain under a heavy load. “I regret my treatment of you, master holter. I will not forget that you have done this. When you leave here, you shall have whatever I can give to help you on your way.”

“Thank you,” Aspar said. “Food and maybe some arrows will do. But I’ll need them soon.”

“How soon?”

“Midday, if it please you, Greft. I have a woorm to slay, and I’m in a hurry to get at it.”

Winna’s hand came back to his and gripped it. “Do you understand?” he asked her. “I’d stay with you or wait until you can ride—”

“No,” she said. “No, that would be too long.”

“That’s my lady.”

He bent to kiss her and found her weeping again.

“We won’t grow old together, will we, Aspar?” she whispered. “We’ll never have children, or a garden, or any of that.”

“No,” he murmured. “I don’t think we will.”

“But you love me?”

He pulled away a bit and wanted to lie, but he couldn’t.

“Yah,” he said. “More than I have words for.”

“Then try and get killed later rather than sooner,” she replied.

She was sleeping again a bell later, but her color had improved. The greft-son was actually able to sit up, and Ensil was true to his word, providing him two pack mules replete with provisions and mountain clothing.

By the time the sun stood a bell after noon, the pyres of Haemeth were darkening the sky at his back.

2 Goatback

“Stephen,” Pale said. “Are you there?”

“Yes,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Your eyes had gone glassy, and the way down is steep. Shall I take your hand again?”

“Ah, no, thank you. I think I can manage.”

He concentrated now on the narrow trail. Earlier a cloud had come along and engulfed them, an odd experience for a boy from the low country. Now they were descending out of it into a small upland valley.

Roughly rectangular sheep pens came into view, built of piled stone.

They attested to the local livelihood, as did the sheep themselves. A crooked line of smoke drifted up from the only obvious human habitation, a sod-roofed dwelling with a couple of small outbuildings.

“What’s that smell?” Stephen asked, wrinkling his nose.

“Oh, you’d better get used to that,” she said.

The shepherd was a young man with black hair, dark eyes, and long, lean limbs. He regarded Stephen with undisguised suspicion and Sister Pale with delight, clapping her in a tight hug and kissing her cheek. Stephen found he didn’t care for that at all.

He liked it even less when they started speaking in a language quite unfamiliar to him. It wasn’t the fractured dialect of Almannish he’d heard back in Demsted or likely any related language. He thought it was probably a Vhilatautan dialect, but he’d experienced those only as written languages, never spoken, and this was much changed from the millennia-old tongues he’d studied.

For the first time he found himself more annoyed than intrigued by an encounter with a speech unknown to him. What were they talking about, those two? Why was she laughing? And what was that peculiar, perhaps disdainful look the fellow was giving him?

After what seemed like far too much of that, the man finally offered Stephen his hand.

“I am Pernho,” he said. “I help you and Zemlé. Can count on me. Ah, you going where?”

Stephen stole a glance at Pale—Zemlé? In their haste to escape it was a question they had never touched upon. He tried to keep his face neutral, but clearly he wasn’t good at that sort of thing because she caught his suspicion immediately.

“I already know it’s north,” she said. “Everyone knows that. But now you have to choose: northeast, northwest, or whatever.” She nodded toward Pernho. “If you trust me, you have to trust him.”

“Yes, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Stephen said.

Sister Pale shrugged and lifted her hands as a sign of surrender.

Stephen rolled his eyes.

“Clearly I have no choice,” he continued. With Ehan and Henne, he might have found his way across this tumult of mountains, but without them it seemed impossible.

“I love a confident man,” Sister Pale said wryly. “So where are we off to?”

“A mountain,” Stephen said. “I don’t know what it’s called now. ‘Vel-noiragana’ was its name two thousand years ago. I think now it might be known as ‘eslief vendve,’ or ‘Slivendy.’”

“Xal Slevendij,” Pernho mused. “But we also call it Ranhan, ‘The Horn.’ That’s not so far, as the eagle goes. But way is—” He frowned and made a twisting motion with his hands. “Nhredhe. No horses. You’ll need kalboks.”

“Kalboks?” Stephen asked.

“You asked about the smell,” Sister Pale said. “You’re about to find out what makes it.”

“I’ve never heard of people riding goats,” Stephen muttered.

“I imagine there are many things you’ve never heard of,” Pale suggested.

“I’m going to vomit again,” Stephen said.

“They don’t smell that bad,” Sister Pale replied.

“I’ve no idea what you would consider foul-smelling, but I never want to meet it,” Stephen said, fighting down his urge. “Doesn’t your friend ever wash these things? Or at least comb the maggots out of their fur?”

“Wash a kalbok? What a strange idea,” Sister Pale mused. “I can hardly wait for the next thing you’ll think of to improve life for us simple mountain folk.”

“Now that you mention it, I have some ideas for improving your roads,” Stephen said.

In fact, his nausea was only by about half due to the scent of kalbok; the rest came from its gait across what even Aspar White couldn’t possibly refer to as a road. Even calling it a trail was akin to confusing a mud hut with a palace. Their route dipped and turned along the lips of gorges and up promontories that seemed to be held in place only by the roots of straggling, half-dead junipers. Even the dogs took extra care in placing each step.

“Well,” Sister Pale said, “be sure and submit your suggestions to Praifec Hespero when we see him again. As a sacritor, he has some sway in these matters.”

“I will,” Stephen said. “I’ll distract him with a detailed proposition while his men are spiking us to trees.” A sudden worry occurred. “Your friend. If Hespero is following us—”

“Pernho won’t be there when they arrive. Don’t worry about him.”

“Good.” He closed his eyes and instantly regretted it because it only made him dizzier. With a sigh, he opened them again.

“He called you something,” he said then. “Zemlé.”

“Zemlé, yes. It’s my birth name.”

“What does it mean?”

“It’s our name for Saint Cer,” she explained.

“And the tongue you were speaking?”

“Xalma, we call it.”

“I should like to learn it.”

“Why? It isn’t widely spoken. If you want to get along in the mountains, better that you learn Meel.”

“I can learn both,” Stephen said, “if you’ll teach me. It should help us pass the time.”

“Very well. Which first?”

“Your language. Xalma.”

“So. Then I know just how to start the lesson.” She touched her hand to her breastbone. “Nhen,” she said. Then she pointed to him. “Win Ash esme nhen, Ju esh voir. Pernho est voir. Ju be Pernho este abe wire…”

The lesson continued for the rest of the day as the kalboks climbed steadily higher, first through rocky pasture and then, as they crossed the snow line, into a dark evergreen forest.

Before evening the forest had given way to a desolate, ice-crusted heath where nothing grew at all, and Sister Pale’s words came muffled through her scarf.

Stephen’s paida and weather cloak were back in Demsted, and he was thankful for the ankle-length quilted robe and heavy felt jerkin Pemho had provided him. The cone-shaped hat he was less certain about—he felt he looked silly in it—but at least it kept his ears warm.

Clouds sat on them for most of the journey, but as the sun was setting, the air cleared, and Stephen peered awestruck at the giants of ice and snow marching off toward every horizon. He felt tiny and titan all at once and intensely grateful to be alive.

“What’s wrong?” Pale asked, studying his face.

Stephen didn’t understand the question until he realized that he was weeping.

“I suppose you’re used to this,” he said.

“Ah,” she replied. “Used to it, yes. But it never loses its beauty.”

“I don’t see how it could.”

“Look there,” she said, pointing back. After a moment he thought he saw movement, like a line of black ants against the white.

“Horses?” he asked.

“Hespero. With some sixty riders, I should say.”

“Will he catch us?”

“Not soon. He’ll have to stop for nightfall, just like us. And he’ll be much slower using horses.” She clapped him on the back. “Speaking of which, we’d better make camp. It’s going to get very, very cold tonight. Fortunately, I know a place.”

The place she meant turned out to be a cave, snug, dry, and very small once the two of them, her dogs, and the kalboks were inside. Pale conjured up a small fire and used it to warm some salted meat Pernho had given them, and they had that with a beverage she called barleywine that tasted something like beer. It was pretty strong stuff, and it didn’t take much before Stephen felt light-headed.

He found himself studying the woman’s features, and to his embarrassment, she caught him at it.

“I, ah, should have told you before,” Stephen said, “but I think you’re beautiful.”

Her expression didn’t change. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m the only woman for fifty leagues, and we’re sleeping unchaperoned in a cave. Imagine how flattered I am when you shower me with compliments.”

“I… no. You don’t—” He stopped and rubbed his forehead. “Look, you must think I know something about women. I don’t.”

“You don’t say.”

Stephen frowned, opened his mouth, closed it. This was going nowhere. He wasn’t even sure why he’d started it.

“How much farther do we have to go?” he asked instead.

“Two days, maybe three, depending on how much snow we find in the next pass. That’s just to the mountain. Do you know where to go once we get there?”

He shook his head. “I’m not certain. Kauron went to a place called Hadivaisel. It might be a town.”

“There’s no town at Xal Slevendy,” she said. “At least—” She broke off. “ ‘Adiwara’ is a word for Sefry. The old people say there’s a Sefry rewn there.”

“That must be it, then,” Stephen said.

“You have some idea how to find it?”

“None at all. Kauron said something about talking to an old Hadivar, but that supposes he’d already found the rewn, I guess. And that was a long time ago.”

“You’ll find it,” she said firmly. “You’re meant to.”

“But if Hespero finds us first…”

“That will be a problem,” she acknowledged. “So you’ll have to find it quickly.”

“Right,” he said without a lot of hope.

He was starting to appreciate just how big mountains could be. And he remembered the exit from the rewn in the King’s Forest. Four yards away, it had been invisible. It was going to be like searching for a raindrop in a river.

He pulled out the pages he’d copied, hoping to find a better translation. Pale watched him without comment.

Among the pages was the loose sheet he’d found; he’d nearly forgotten it. It was very old, the characters on it faded, but he recognized the same odd mixture of letters on the epistle he’d carried and understood with growing excitement that what he held was actually a key for translating it.

Of course, Hespero now had the epistle, but he ought to be able to recall—

Something suddenly shivered through him.

“What?” Pale said.

“There was something in the chapel,” he said. “I haven’t really had time to think about it. But I swear I heard a voice. And my lamp; there was a face in it.”

“In the lamp?”

“In the flame,” he said.

She looked unsurprised. “Ghosts get lost in the mountains,” she said. “The winds fetch them up into the high valleys, and they can’t get out.”

“If this was a ghost, it was an old one. It spoke a language a thousand years dead.”

She hesitated then. “No one knows what happened to Kauron,” she said. “Some say he never returned, that he vanished into the mountains. But some say he appeared in the chapel late one night, babbling like a man with fever, though his skin was cool. The priest who found him put him to bed, and the next morning there was no sign of him. The bed showed no trace of being slept in, and the priest was left wondering if he’d really seen him or merely had a vision or a dream.”

“Have you ever felt anything there?”

“No,” she admitted. “I’ve never heard anyone else report anything unusual, either. But you’re different: a Bevesturi and Kauron’s heir. Maybe that’s why he spoke to you.”

“I don’t know. Whoever—whatever—it was, it didn’t seem nice or even helpful. I felt as if it was mocking me.”

“Well, I’ve no idea, then,” she said. “Maybe Kauron had enemies and you’ve attracted them, too. In the mountains, the past and the present aren’t distant cousins. They’re brother and sister.”

Stephen nodded and refolded his notes.

“Well,” he said, “I think I’ll try and get some sleep.”

“About that.” She sighed. “I may have to give you one more chance, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because, as I said, it’s going to get awfully cold tonight.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but she closed it with a kiss that smelled pleasantly of barleywine. He kept his eyes open, wondering at how different a face looked from that close.

She nibbled around to his ear and down the side of his throat.

“I really don’t know much about women,” he apologized.

“So you said. Then it’s time you had a lesson, I think. I can’t give you the ultimate lesson; this time of month you might get me with child, and we don’t want that. But there’s no point in skipping to the back of the book, is there? I think some of the early chapters can be pretty entertaining.”

Stephen didn’t reply; anything he said was potentially the wrong thing.

Besides, he’d pretty much lost interest in talking.

3 A New View of History

Ignoring Sir Leafton’s protests, Anne hurried to the far end of the square, where the Craftsmen had been quickly building a redoubt, piling crates, planks, bricks, and stone between two buildings that together commanded most of the breadth between the two walls.

In the few bells they’d had, they’d done a creditable job, but it wasn’t good enough. As Anne watched, a wave of armored men eight deep crashed into it, about half of them wielding pikes to keep the Craftsmen back as men with sword and shield pushed forward. Already they were spilling over the top. That quickly, Anne saw her plans crumbling.

It would be only seconds before their line was breached.

“Saints,” Austra shrieked, echoing Anne’s sentiments as one of her men fell, a spear driven through his mouth lapping out the back of his head like a monster’s tongue.

“Archers!” Leafton bellowed, and suddenly a black hail fell from the roofs and upper windows of the buildings. The charge faltered as shields raised to ward off fletched death, and the Craftsmen’s line closed solid and surged back to the wall.

Anne experienced a brief flash of hope, but they were still terribly outnumbered. Should she go now, while she had the chance? Take Austra and Cazio into the tunnels? At least she would avoid capture, and Artwair’s hands wouldn’t be tied by threats to her life.

But the thought of leaving her men to die was intolerable.

The attackers re-formed their ranks and battered at the wall again. Many fell, but they kept pushing.

“Majesty,” Leafton said, “I beg you. Move away from here. They will break through at any moment.”

Anne shook his arm off and closed her eyes, feeling the ringing of steel and hoarse cries of pain vibrate through her, reaching through it and beneath her for the power she needed to boil blood and marrow. If she could summon the same sort of power she had had at Khrwbh Khrwkh, she might be able to turn the tide or at least give her men respite.

But at Khrwbh Khrwkh there had been something potent in the earth, a pocket of sickness she had been able to draw to the surface, like pus in a boil. Here she sensed something similar, but it was more distant and more subtle, and lurking behind it she could feel the demon, waiting for her to open the way. Thus, a part of her faltered.

But a sudden new tenor entered the sounds of fray, and she opened her eyes to see what had happened.

Her heart fell when she saw that the attackers had been reinforced and were now nearly double their number, or so she thought at first.

Then she realized that wasn’t the case at all; the newcomers weren’t armored, at least not most of them. They wore guild clothing and Jessy, woolen plaid and workman’s flenne. They carried clubs and pitchforks, fishing spears, hunting bows, knives, and even a few swords, and they were cutting into her attackers from the rear.

The Craftsmen all sang out at once and went slashing over the wall. Blood ran like rainwater down the streets of Gobelin Court.

“The people of Eslen,” Austra breathed.

Anne nodded. “I sent four men to spread the word. I thought I would test the theory that I have their support.” She turned to her friend and smiled. “It appears that I do, at least some of them.”

“And why shouldn’t you?” Austra excitedly replied. “You’re their queen!”

At sundown Anne stood at the window of Saint Ceasel’s Tower on the Fastness. It was a beautiful afternoon; the sun’s great belly was impaled on the distant towers of Thornrath, making a red mirror of the Ensae, which she could just make out between the great paps of Tom Woth and Tom Cast. She could see the Sleeve, already velvety with shadow, and far below that the vine-covered dwellings of the dead in Eslen-of-Shadows and farther out on the misty rinns. The wind was from the sea, and it smelled strong and good.

This was her home; these were the sights and smells of her childhood. And yet it was strange now. Until a year ago this frame she looked upon—Thornrath, the rinns—contained most of the world she knew. Oh, she’d been east as far as Loiyes, but she knew now that that was a small distance. Today, in her mind’s far gaze she could see beyond the rinns to the hills and forest, across the strands and plains of Hornladh and Tero Galle, to the South Lierish Sea, to the white hills and red roofs of Vitellio.

Every sight, every sound, every league traveled had made her something different, and home no longer fit the way it once had.

She turned her attention to the north, to the city. There was the palace, of course, the only thing that really stood above her now, and below was her little kingdom of Gobelin Court. Volunteers continued to arrive, and Leafton and the other Craftsmen were working quickly to make them useful. The redoubt was infinitely more secure than it had been during the first attack, and all the natural walls were now well manned.

Robert’s men hadn’t been idle, of course. She could see them all around, a few streets away from her perimeter, building their own camps, trying to cut off aid from the outside. She’d even seen a few small siege engines rumbling down the hill, but most of the streets approaching the quarter weren’t wide enough for them.

“Do you think they’ll attack again tonight?” she asked Leafton.

“I doubt it. Nor, I think, will they fight in the morning. A siege is what I imagine. He’ll try and keep us contained here until we’re out of supplies.”

“Good,” Anne said.

“Your pardon, Majesty.”

“I have something to do tonight,” she told him. “In the Sefry house. I will be unavailable all night, possibly into tomorrow. I am not to be disturbed, and I leave the defense of this place entirely to you.”

“Of course, you must have your rest,” Leafton said. “But in case of an emergency—”

“I won’t be available,” she asserted. “I’ll take four men of your choosing to guard me, but other than that, do not send anyone into the house after me. Do you understand?”

“I don’t understand, Majesty, no.”

“What I meant was, ‘Will you obey?’” Anne clarified.

“Of course, Majesty.”

“Very good. Austra, Cazio—it’s time we were going.” She laid her hand on Leafton’s arm. “You’re a capable man,” she said. “I trust you. Keep my men safe. Please.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

Anne wasn’t sure what she’d thought the entrance to the Crepling passage would look like, but she’d imagined it would be hidden, an invisible wall panel of some sort, a rotating bookcase, a hatch beneath a rug.

It was, at least, located in the cold cellar of the building, behind racks of wine and hanging meats. But the entrance itself was just a little door set into the living rock into which the Sefry house was built. It was made of some sort of dark metal, with hinges and hasps of polished brass. Mother Uun produced a rather large key. She turned it in the lock, and the door opened almost noiselessly, revealing a descending stairway.

Anne allowed herself a wisp of a smile. Artwair and others in her command had assured her that the city and castle of Eslen were nearly impregnable, that its poellands and massive walls could frustrate nearly any army. Yet the city had fallen more than once. She tried to remember the stratagems by which her forefathers had won Eslen and dimly recalled the lesson as one to which she had paid a bit of attention.

Looking back on it, it seemed rather vague, the tale of that siege. There was lots of talk about bravery and bloody determination but not much detail about how William I had actually ended up in the Hall of Doves, with his sword driven into Thiuzwald Fram Reiksbaurg’s liver.

How many times had it happened like this? A small group of women or Sefry invading the fortress through this passageway to work some sort of mischief, to open the lower gates that a larger force might enter? Mother Uun, it seemed to her, was the keeper of far too much power. The fate of a dynasty could hinge on her Sefry whims.

But any man who sought her aid wouldn’t recall exactly what had happened, wouldn’t know how he’d gotten into the castle, wouldn’t remember how much power this lone Sefry wielded.

But Anne would remember. She would remember, and she would do something about it. When she was queen, there would be no walking into the castle unopposed.

With a sudden shock, Anne realized how intently Mother Uun was watching her. Could the Sefry read her thoughts?

“Well?” she asked.

“At the base of the stairs you will find the passage,” the Sefry explained. “Take the right-hand way, and it will take you outside the city, to the rinns. Take the left-hand way, and you will find your way into the dungeons, and from there into the castle, if you so wish. If the lower way is filled with water, you will find the valves that drain them in a small chamber to the left, just before the point where the water reaches the ceiling. They will take time to open up, of course, on the order of half a day.”

Anne nodded. If her vision was accurate, Sir Fail’s fleet would arrive in two days. If Thornrath was in Artwair’s hand’s by then, her uncle could confront the fleet and keep the outside gates open long enough for her to exit, then lead in a larger force.

She’d considered trying to take the palace with the men she had with her but didn’t think there would be enough of them. There were hundreds of guards in the castle. The thirty men she had left wouldn’t be enough to do more than tip her hand.

Either way, it was probably going to be difficult getting men to follow her through a gate they couldn’t remember even while they were looking at it. But it could be done. Cazio had managed to follow her would-be-assassin, after all. And her brother, Uncle Fail, and the Craftsmen had managed somehow to leave Eslen, led by Alis Berrye, if the rumors were true.

Yes, it could be done, and she had to take the first step: making certain the way was open.

“Take Cazio’s hand, Austra,” Anne said. “The rest of you, link hands as well. Keep them held until I tell you to let go. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Majesty.”

“Very well. And now we go.”

“Go where?” Cazio asked.

Cazio wondered if he’d gotten drunk without knowing it. He was aware of Austra’s hand, of the stone beneath his feet, of Anne’s face in lamplight, but he kept getting lost in the details.

He couldn’t actually remember what he was doing or where they were. It was like walking through a terrible sort of dream. He kept thinking he was waking, only to discover that he’d only dreamed he was doing so.

He remembered going into the Sefry house and Anne talking about something or other with the old woman. He recalled that they’d gone down to the cold cellar, which seemed peculiar.

But that felt like a long time ago.

Maybe it was a dream, he decided. Or maybe he was drunk.

Maybe—He blinked. Anne was talking to someone again. Now she was shouting.

And now he was running. But why? He slowed to look around, but Austra tugged hard on his hand and screamed for him to keep going.

He heard unfamiliar laughter somewhere.

He tasted blood on his lips, which seemed especially odd.

4 Death Songs

Neil felt the death calm settle about him. His breathing evened, and he savored the salt air as he watched a sea eagle banking in a sky equally blue and gray. The wind gentled from the southwest, ruffling the soft new grass of the hillside like a million fingers combing verdant hair. All seemed still.

Closing his eyes, he murmured a snatch of song.

Mi, Etier tneuf, eyoiz’etiern rem,

Crach-toi, frennz, mi viveut-toi dein…

“What’s that, Sir Neil?”

He opened his eyes. The question had come from a man just about his age, a knight named Edhmon Archard, from the Greffy of Seaxeld. He had quick blue eyes, pink cheeks, and hair as white as thistledown. His armor was good plain stuff, and Neil couldn’t see a dent on it.

Of course, his own armor was just as new. He’d found it in his tent the morning after Robert escaped, sent as a present by Elyoner Dare, who’d had his measurements taken “for clothes,” or so she had claimed. Still, Neil had the impression that in Sir Edhmon’s case, the man in the armor was as untested as the steel itself.

“It’s a bit of a song,” Neil explained. “A song my father taught me.”

“What’s it mean?”

Neil smiled.

“ ‘Me, my father, my fathers before. Croak, you ravens, I’ll feed you soon.’”

“Not very cheery,” Edhmon said.

“It’s a death song,” Neil said.

“You believe you’re going to die?”

“Oh, I’m going to die; that one thing is certain,” Neil said. “It’s the when, where, and how I’m not so clear on. But my fah always said it was best to go into battle thinking of yourself as already dead.”

“You can do that?”

Neil shrugged. “Not always. Sometimes I’m afraid, and sometimes the rage comes on me. But now and then the saints allow me the death calm, and I like that best.”

Edhmon flushed a little. “This is my first battle,” he admitted. “I hope I’m ready for it.”

“You’re ready for it,” Neil said.

“I’m just so tired of waiting.”

Even as he said that, he flinched as one of the ballistae behind them released with a booming twang, and a fifty-pound stone flung in a flat arc over their heads, smiting the outer bailey of Thornrath and sending a shatter of granite in every direction.

“You won’t be waiting much longer,” Neil assured him. “That wall’s coming down within a bell. They’re mustering their horse behind the waerd already.”

“Why? Why not take them up into the wall? Why risk them against us?”

Neil considered his reply for a few minutes, hoping to find an answer that wouldn’t frighten Edhmon too much.

“Thornrath has never been taken,” he said at last. “From the sea, it’s probably impossible. It’s too thick, too tall, and ships are completely vulnerable to bombardment from above. Likewise, the cliffs of the cape aren’t easily scaled from the seaside. A few defenders can keep any number of men from climbing up there, especially if the attackers are trying to bring up horses and siege engines. And without engines, they face the waerd, which can’t be taken without them.”

He pointed south down the spit of land that separated them from the wall, a ridge just ten kingsyards wide that plunged in cliffs to Foam-breaker Bay on the right and the Ensae on the left. It went that way for forty kingsyards and then widened enough for the waerd, a wedgeshaped fortress with its sharp end pointed at them and gates hidden around behind it. It had three towers and stood separated from the great wall behind it by about ten yards.

“We can’t just ride around the waerd, or they’d pelt us right off the cliffs with whatever they’ve got: stones, boiling oil, molten lead, all of that sort of thing. We’d never make it around to even give the gate a go. So we have to break the waerd from this side, and preferably from a distance. Out here we have a never-ending supply of missiles, though we don’t have a flat wall to hit. More often than not, our stones just skip right off.”

“I can see all of that,” Sir Edhmon said. “But I still don’t see what that’s got to do with the cavalry.”

“Well, when the wall comes down, we still have to cross this causeway and get through the breach before we can capture the castle. And we can only go a few at a time, about six or seven abreast. Then the horse will come to meet us before the ridge widens there.

“Meanwhile, they’ve been saving their missiles for when we come into their shorter range, about ten paces down the causeway. While their cavalry hold us, they’ll keep launching rocks or whatnot into those of us who are queued up behind. And if they do it right, four or five of us will die for every one of them. Maybe more. If the knights stayed in the waerd, they wouldn’t be much more use than any footman. Riding against us, they can do real damage.

“We’ll lose some men to the engines while we’re rushing the breach, but we’ll get in, move our own artillery up, and start battering the gates of Thornrath itself. Before that happens, though, they might kill enough of us to make us think twice about the whole endeavor. At worst they will have cut our numbers greatly.” He slapped the young knight on the shoulder. “Besides, they’re knights. Knights ride into battle. How do you think they’d feel on the wall, throwing rocks at us?”

“But there must be an easier way in,” Edhmon said.

“This is the easy way in,” Neil said. “To get to this approach, an army invading Crotheny would have to either land fifty leagues north of here and fight their way past the sea fortresses or cross the border with Hansa and make their way through Newland, which as you’ve seen can be flooded. According to Duke Artwair, this is the first time Thornrath has had to be defended from land. The southern approach, I’m told, makes this look easy.”

“But you make it sound so hopeless,” Edhmon said. “We might as well be riding off a cliff, and those of us in front will surely die.”

“Only if things go the way they want,” Neil said, nodding at the waerd.

“How else can things go?”

“Our way. Our first charge hits them so hard, we cut right through their horse and plunge into the breach. If they don’t hold us, they can’t bombard us, at least not for long.”

“But that would take a miracle, wouldn’t it?”

Neil shook his head. “When I first saw Thornrath, I thought it must be the work of giants or demons. But it was built by men, men like us. It didn’t take a miracle to build it; it won’t take one to capture it. But it will take men. Do you understand?”

“That’s it, Sir Neil. You tell ’im how it is!” Neil was startled by the shout and found that it was Sir Fell Hemmington who had spoken. “You hear that, lads? One charge or nothing!”

Suddenly, to Neil’s utter surprise, the whole column took up that refrain.

“One charge or nothing!”

He’d been talking to Edhmon without realizing that anyone else had been listening. But he was the leader, wasn’t he? He probably was supposed to have given some sort of speech, anyway.

The shouting doubled in fury as another stone struck the waerd and with a low rumble the wall finally collapsed, leaving a gap some five kingsyards in width. At the same moment, the enemy cavalry began to appear around either side of the fortification.

“Lances!” Neil shouted, couching his own long spear. All along the front rank, the others dropped level on both sides of him.

“One charge!” he shouted, spurring his mount, still feeling calm as the horse broke into a dead run.

The sea, as always, was beautiful.

5 Witchhorn

“What’s that look?” Zemlé asked from the back of her kalbok, a few kingsyards away. “It’s not guilt starting to gnaw you, is it?”

Stephen glanced at her. In the buttery light of the morning sun her face was fresh and very young, and for an instant Stephen imagined her as a little girl wandering the highland meadows, fussing at goats and combing through clover in search of a lucky one.

“Should I be?” Stephen asked. “Even if you consider what we did to be, ah—”

Her arched brows stopped him in the middle of his sophistry.

He scratched his chin and began again. “I never took a vow of chastity,” he said, “and I’m not a follower of Saint Elspeth.”

“But you were planning on being a Decmanian,” she reminded him. “You would have taken the vow.”

“Can I tell you a secret?” Stephen asked.

She smiled. “It wouldn’t be the first one.”

He felt his face go warm.

“Come on,” she prompted.

“It was never my idea to enter the priesthood. It was my father who wanted that. Now, don’t get me wrong; you know my interests. I could never have followed them without some attachment to z’Irbina, so I was willing. But I wasn’t much looking forward to that vow of chastity. I suppose I comforted myself with the thought that I was likely to remain mostly chaste whether I took the vow or not.”

“That’s silly,” she said. “You’re not what I would call ugly. A little inept, perhaps…”

“Oh,” Stephen said. “Sorry about that.”

“But perfectly trainable,” she finished. “A tafleis anscrifteis.”

Now his ears were burning.

“Anyway,” he went on, “I suppose I had vaguely hoped I might somehow move on to one of the less… stringent orders. And as things are, there’s not much chance of me taking the Decmanian vows now. Or even of living much longer, really. We should have gotten up earlier.”

“This pass is too dangerous without daylight,” she replied. “We started as soon as made sense. As for the other, I’m sure you feel you could die happy right now. But I promise you, there’s still plenty to live for.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Stephen replied. “But Hespero is still back there, and then there’s the woorm. Of course, we haven’t seen it lately. Maybe it’s given up the chase.”

“I doubt that,” Zemlé said.

“Why?”

“I told you—because the prophecy says it’s the waurm will drive you to the Alq,” she replied.

“But what if I’m not the one spoken of in the prophecy? Aren’t we making a rather large assumption?”

“It followed you to d’Ef, and from d’Ef at least as far as the Then River. Why would you begin to doubt now that it’s following you?”

“But why would it follow me?”

“Because you’re the one who will find the Alq,” she said, her voice hinting at exasperation.

“That’s a ‘catel turistat suus caudam’ argument,” he objected.

“Yes,” she agreed. “It goes round and round. Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“Well, is it supposed to kill m—Kauron’s heir?”

“I’ve already told you what I know,” she said.

Stephen remembered the monster’s glance as it found him from half a league away and shivered.

“Is it that bad?” she asked.

“I hope you don’t ever have to find out, no matter what the prophecy says,” Stephen replied.

“I’m kind of curious, actually. But set all that aside; you did have a look on your face. If it wasn’t guilt, then what was it?”

“Oh. That.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘that’? Don’t you dare tell me you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I—” He sighed. “I was wondering what would happen if we simply forgot this whole prophecy business and just went off into the mountains someplace. Maybe Hespero and the woorm would kill each other and everyone would forget the Alq.”

Her brows leapt up. “Go off together? You and me? You mean, like husband and wife?”

“Ah, well, I suppose I did mean that, yes.”

“That’s all well and good, but I hardly know you, Stephen.”

“But we—”

“Yes, didn’t we? And I enjoyed it. I like you, but what have either of us to offer the other? I’ve no dowry. Do you think your family would take to me under those conditions?”

Stephen didn’t have to think about that for long.

“No,” he admitted.

“And without your family, what do you have to offer me? Love?”

“Maybe,” he said cautiously.

“Maybe. That’s exactly right. Maybe.

“You wouldn’t be the first to confuse sex with love, Stephen. It’s a silly confusion, too. Anyway, a day ago you were desperately in love with someone else. Can a few well-placed kisses change that so easily? If so, how can I trust in any constancy from you?”

“Now you’re making fun of me,” Stephen said.

“Yes, I am, and no, I’m not. Because if I didn’t laugh at you, I might get angry, and neither of us needs that right now. If you want to run off into the mountains, you’ll have to do it alone. I’ll go on to the Witehhorn and try to find the Alq myself. Because even if the praifec and the waurm do destroy each other, there are others looking, and someone will find it eventually.”

“How do you know all this?” Stephen asked.

“The Book of Return—”

“But you’ve never seen the book,” Stephen snapped, cutting her off. “Everything you know is based on a thousand-year-old rumor about a book no one has seen except Hespero, if even that is true. So how do you know any of this is true?”

She started to answer, but he cut her off again.

“Have you ever read the Lay of Walker?”

“I’ve heard of it,” she said. “It’s about the Virgenyan warrior who fought off the demon fleet of Thiuzan Hraiw, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But here’s the thing: Historically, Walker lived a century or so before the start of the Warlock Wars, a hundred and fifty years before Thiuzan Hraiw even began to build his fleet.

“Chetter Walker fought off a fleet, all right, if you call ten ships a fleet. And they were from Ihnsgan, an ancient Iron Sea kingdom. But the epic, you see, was written down five hundred years later, after the chaos of the Warlock Wars, when Virgenya’s new enemy was Hansa.

“Thiuzan Hraiw was from Hansa, and his name has a very typically Hanzish sound to it. So the bards—sworn as they are to keep the songs exactly the way they heard them on pain of being cursed by Saint Rosemary—nevertheless have Walker living in the wrong century, fighting the wrong enemy, with weapons that hadn’t been invented yet. Oral tradition always promises it’s kept history straight, and it never does. So what makes you think your ancestors kept their little saga faithfully?”

“Because,” she replied stubbornly, “I have seen the actual book, or at least part of it, the part about you.”

That brought him up short. “Have you? And how did you manage that?”

She closed her eyes, and he saw her jaw tighten.

“I was Hespero’s lover,” she said.

That afternoon Zemlé pointed out the top of the Witchhorn. Stephen supposed he’d been envisioning something shaped like an ox horn, curving up into the sky, surrounded by storm clouds, lightning, and the distant black shapes of evil spirits whirling about its peak.

Instead, aside from being perhaps a bit taller than its neighbors, it was—to him, at least—indistinguishable from any other mountain in the Bairghs.

“We’ll reach the base of it by tomorrow noon,” she said.

He nodded but didn’t answer.

“You haven’t spoken since this morning,” she said. “I’m beginning to feel annoyed. Surely you understood that you weren’t my first lover.”

“But Hespero?” he burst out. “Oh, I think you might have mentioned that before I followed you up here, before I put all my trust in you.”

“Well, the point was rather to have you trust me,” she pointed out.

“Right. And I did. Until now, anyway, when I have no choice.”

“I’m not proud of it, Stephen, but the saints hate a liar. You asked, and I told you. Its more important that you believe the prophecy than think well of me.”

“How old were you when this happened? Ten?”

“No,” she said patiently. “I was twenty-five.”

“You said he left your village years ago,” Stephen snapped. “You can’t be much older than twenty-five now.”

“Flatterer. I’m exactly twenty-five, as of last week.”

“You mean—”

“Since he returned, yes,” she said.

“Saints, that’s even worse!”

She glared at him from her kalbok across about three kingsyards of broken ground.

“If I were close enough,” she said, “I would slap you. I did what I had to. I’m not a fool, you know. I had the same doubts about the prophecy as you. Now I don’t.”

“Did you enjoy it?” he asked.

“He was a good deal more experienced than you,” she shot back.

“Ah. No tafleis anscrifteis there, eh?” he responded sarcastically.

Her face contorted, and she began a retort but then closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. When she opened her eyes, she was more composed.

“This is my fault,” she said at last, evenly. “I knew you were young and lacking experience. I should have known it would do this to you.”

“Do what?”

“Make you stupid with jealousy. You’re jealous of a man I slept with before I ever met you. Does that make any sense to you at all?”

“Well, it’s just that—”

“Yes?” she asked patiently enough to make him feel once more that he was a little boy.

“—he’s evil,” he finished weakly.

“Is he?” she asked. “I don’t know. Certainly he’s our enemy in that he wants the same thing we do. But I haven’t betrayed you to him; indeed, I betrayed him to you. So stop being such a boy and try to be a man for once. You don’t need experience for that, just courage.”

That night saw no reprise of the night before. Stephen lay awake for long bells, excruciatingly aware of Zemlé’s every breath and movement. His mind moved downward toward sleep in fits, but a strong breath or turn of her body would snap him back.

She’s awake. She’s forgiven me…

But he wasn’t sure he needed forgiveness. She’d slept with apraifec. Surely that was a sin even if Hespero was a Skaslos reincarnated. And just before—

He sighed. That wasn’t the real problem, was it?

Hespero’s touch was the shadow under his own. The touch of a man who knew how to please a woman.

He cycled through ever smaller orbits of remorse and anger until the stone floor parted like tissue and something pulled him through.

Suddenly he was sticky and wet, and his flesh and bone ached as from a high fever. Panic sent him grasping for something, anything, but he was in a void—not falling but floating, surrounded on all sides by terrors he could not see.

He tried to scream, but something clotted in his mouth.

He was on the verge of madness when a soothing voice murmured to him in words he didn’t understand but which reassured him nevertheless. Then, gently, a band of color drew across his eyes, and his heart calmed.

His vision cleared, and he saw the Witchhorn, much as it had looked in the light of sunset, albeit with more snow. He floated down toward it like a bird, over a valley, over a village, and then, with a touch of vertigo, up its slopes, along a winding trail, to a house in a tree. A face appeared, pale, copper-eyed, a Hadivar face, and he knew now that Zemlé was right, it just meant Sefry.

More words came, and still he couldn’t understand them, but then he landed. He walked to the north side of the mountain, where moss ruled, to a stone face and through a clever door, and then he was in the rewn.

Beginning to understand. Joy filling his heart.

He woke to a gentle pat on his face and found Zemlé there, her eyebrows drawn in concern, her face—her lips—only a motion away.

But when she saw that he was awake, she straightened, and the look of apprehension vanished.

“Bad dreams?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” he replied, and related his vision.

Zemlé didn’t seem surprised.

“We’ll eat,” she said. “Then we’ll go and hope we find this mythical town of yours.”

He smiled and rubbed the sleep grit from his eyes, feeling much more rested than he ought to.

Choron, he wondered to the heavens, have you become a saint? Is it you guiding me?

The descent was considerably more trouble than it had been in his dream, and his confidence in the vision faded as they made their way down the broken slopes into a deep, resin-scented evergreen forest.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Zemlé asked doubtfully.

For an instant he didn’t understand her question, but then he understood that their roles had changed. Since entering the valley, she had been looking to him as the guide.

“I think so,” he replied.

“Because there is a quicker way to the mountain.”

He nodded. “Perhaps, but I want to see something.”

A bell later, the signs began to appear. They were subtle at first: odd mounds in the forest floor, depressions that resembled dry streambeds but were too regular. Eventually he made out bits of wall, though rarely higher than the knee. He continued on foot, leading his mount, and between footfalls he had flashes of narrow, fanciful buildings and figures in bright clothing.

“Hadivaisel,” he said, motioning all around him. “Or what’s left of it.”

“That’s good, then?” she asked.

“Well, at least it means I do know where I’m going.”

And so they pressed on, east toward the mountain, to the traces of the trail there. The tree house of his vision was gone, but he recognized the tree, though it was older and thicker. From there he began to lead them north and steadily higher, to Bezlaw, where the mountain’s shadow never lifted and the moss grew thick and deep white forest pipes stood from rotting logs.

It was already nearing dusk when they reached the ancient shade line, and Zemlé suggested a halt. Stephen agreed, and they set about situating the animals.

The hounds wouldn’t be situated, though; the hair bristled on the backs of their necks, and they growled constantly at the congealing darkness. Stephen’s own hackles were up. His hearing had improved over the last few days, and he heard at least some of what the beasts heard.

And he didn’t like it.

There were things coming on two feet, certain in the darkness.

And some were singing.

6 The Spoor of Death

Death told Aspar where to go. Dead trees in the forest, dead grass and gorse and heather on the heath, dead fish in the rivers and streams it preferred.

Following death, he followed the woorm, and with each day its trail grew plainer, as if its poisonous nature was waxing as it went.

The Welph River was clogged with carcasses, its backwaters become abattoirs. Spring buds drooled noisome pus, and the only things growing with a semblance of health were the fresh heads of all-too-familiar black thorns.

Strangely, Aspar felt stronger every day. If the poison of the woorm was multiplying in power, so was the efficacy of the witch’s cure. Ogre, too, seemed more filled with energy than he had been in years, as if he were a colt again. And each setting sun brought them closer to the beast—and Fend.

Beyond the Welph, Aspar no longer knew the names of places, and the mountains rose about him. The woorm preferred valleys, but on occasion it crossed low passes. Once it followed a stream beneath a mountain, and Aspar spent a day in the dark tracking it by torchlight. The second time it did that, he didn’t follow it far, because the tunnel filled with water. Instead, cursing, he reentered the light and worked his way up the mountainside until he found a ridge that gave him a good view of the next valley. He promised the Raver a sacrifice if the thing didn’t escape.

Straining his eyes in the dusk, he finally saw its head cutting waves in a river two leagues away and began finding his way down.

After that it was simple, and he was riding so close on its trail that he found animals and birds that were still dying.

Of course, another big mountain loomed at the end of the dale, and that could present problems if the monster found a way under it, too. He planned to catch it before the mountain, though.

He hadn’t by the next morning, but he knew he was close. He knew it by the smell. He checked the arrow then as he did every morning, doused the remaining embers of his fire, and returned to the chase.

The valley gained altitude, filling with spruce, hemlock, and burr-wood. He rode on the southern side of it, at the base of a cliff of tired yellow rock that rose some twenty yards, above which he could make out what looked to be a trail winding through rocky, shrubby ground. He was watching the long line of the rock face, considering that if he could find a way up there, he might gain a higher vantage. He didn’t see much hope of that, though. He had a feel for the way land lay, and it didn’t look as if the cliff was going to offer a slope any time soon.

Above the cliff more mountains rose, sometimes visible, sometimes hidden by the angle.

He thought he heard something and stopped to listen. It came again, clearer: a human voice shouting.

A moment later he located its source. There was a line of perhaps sixty horsemen on the upper path; maybe they had just joined it from a trail he couldn’t see. The cliff was about thirty kingsyards high here, and they were a bit upslope from the precipice. The shouting man was pointing down toward him.

“Good eyes,” Aspar murmured sourly.

The sun was behind them, so he couldn’t make out their faces, but the leader looked to be in some sort of Churchish garb, which put Aspar on guard immediately. He noted that three of them had bows drawn and ready.

“Hail, down there,” the leader shouted. Aspar was startled at how familiar his voice was, though he couldn’t place it right away.

“Hail, up on the ridge,” he responded loudly.

“I’d heard you were dead, Aspar White,” the man returned. “I really believe it’s no longer possible to trust anyone.”

“Hespero?”

“You will call him ‘your grace,’” the knight at Hespero’s side demanded.

“Now, Sir Elden,” Hespero replied, “this is my holter. Didn’t you know that?” Judging from the volume, he had said it entirely for Aspar’s benefit.

Aspar thought about playing along but quickly discarded the idea. He’d been alone in the forest for enough days to have lost any taste for dissembling.

“Not anymore, your grace!” he shouted. “I’ve seen enough of your work.”

“That’s fair,” Hespero replied. “I’ve heard.enough of yours. Fare you well, then, holter.”

Aspar turned his head and made as if to ride away but kept his eyes up. He saw Sir Elden draw his bow.

“Yah, that’s all the excuse I need,” he muttered under his breath.

He’d been wondering if he even required that, but Hespero had solved that problem for him with a word too low to hear. He leapt off Ogre as the first shaft missed him by more than a yard. As he found the ground, he calmly took aim and put one in the archer, right up through the bottom of his chin. He slipped another arrow to string and sent it after Hespero, but another mounted man surged into the path of the shot, catching it in his armored side.

The remaining ready archers scrambled off their mounts, and he noticed at least six more stringing their bows. He fired again, then whirled at a crash into the underbrush. He found himself looking down his shaft at the first man he’d shot, who had fallen from the cliff and lay broken on a boulder at its base.

Aspar stepped that way and ducked under an overhang just as arrows appeared to sprout from the earth like red-topped wheat. He caught the dead man and dragged him in, giving his body a quick search, taking his arrows and provisions, then finding a bit more than he had bargained for. Because in the man’s haversack was a horn—and not only that, a horn Aspar recognized, made of white bone and incised with strange figures.

It was the horn he’d found in the Mountains of the Hare, the horn Stephen had blown to summon the Briar King.

The horn they had given to Hespero for study.

Aspar put the horn back in its bag, looped it around his neck, took a deep breath, and bolted.

Most of the barrage missed him; one missile struck his cuirass and glanced away, and then he was well in cover of the trees, back on Ogre, and off at a gallop.

As it became clear he had outdistanced anyone who might be following, he slowed his pace and had time to wonder what it meant that Hespero was here. Coincidences happened, but he was sure this wasn’t one.

He thought about it as he rode, still at a reasonably brisk pace, checking behind him every thirty beats or so at first, less often later. Coming down a cliff was easier than going up one, especially if one had rope, and he was betting Hespero’s party had rope. Lowering horses down the cliff would take time, if they were able to manage it at all, so he should be able to keep his distance from any pursuers if he stayed away from the crags.

Of course, there was always the chance they knew the lay of the land better than he did. The cliff might become a gentle slope or sprout a ravine leading down. But there was nothing he could do about that.

Aspar wondered if Hespero was following the woorm, too, though given the direction he’d come from, that didn’t make a lot of sense. Perhaps, instead, he was following what the woorm was after, which, if he could believe Fend, was Stephen.

So what was Stephen doing up here in the mountains? And why was everyone so interested?

That he couldn’t know, but he guessed he would soon, because all the trails seemed to be converging. It ought to be interesting when they did, he reckoned.

The forest here wasn’t dead yet, although the track he was following was probably a mortal wound. It was too bad, because he found himself liking the conifer-rich landscape. Aspar had been in evergreen forests before, but only in the heights of the Hare. He liked the novelty of finding one on relatively flat ground.

What were the forests of Vestrana and Nahzgave like? They were even farther north. He’d heard tales of vast cold swamps and great boreal trees that dug their roots into ground frozen for more than half the year. He would like to see such places. Why had he waited so long?

Maybe they weren’t even there anymore. For all he knew, up north they’d been having greffyns and woorms and whatnot venoming the earth for years. He knew where they were coming from now, but he didn’t know why or how. Maybe Stephen could reckon that out, if Stephen was still alive. Was it a sickness, a rot, something that happened in the world now and then? Were their seasons longer than centuries, spells of quickening and dying? Or was someone—or something—doing this?

Was Hespero behind it all? Was Fend? Surely there was someone he could kill to make it stop. Or maybe the Briar King was right. Maybe the sickness was humanity itself, and it was everyone that needed killing.

Well, that was all tinder and no spark, and he wasn’t going to get the fire going just by thinking about it. He knew killing the woorm would put a stop to some of it, and maybe killing Hespero and Fend would help, too. He was certainly ready to give that a go.

Ogre picked his way over a collection of stones that looked suspiciously like a fallen wall, and Aspar noticed other such jumbles that weren’t natural to the terrain. Men and women had lived here once, built houses. Now the forest fed on their bones.

It was the way of things: Nothing was constant. Trees burned and produced meadow, meadows grew into thickets, and eventually the great trees came back and shaded out the grass and brush and smaller trees. Men made pastures and fields, used them for a few lifetimes, then the wood took them back. So it had always been until now. Now things had gone wrong.

He’d fix that or die. He saw no other choices.

Not much later he came to a broad clearing where he could make out the full loom of the mountain ahead. He realized he was already on its slopes, and from this angle he could see the woorm’s trail as a narrow but obvious line wiggling up the peak.

He could even see the front end of the trail, though the distance was too great to discern the beast itself. It was headed to the north face.

He could also hear Hespero’s men again, off to his right. Probably they were all on the same slope now, ridge and valley having evened out. He reckoned by the racket that they were probably almost a league away, though, and unless they had some shinecrafting, they’d have difficulty picking up his trail without backtracking along the cliff.

He patted Ogre’s neck. “You ready to run, old boy?” he asked. “We need to beat ’em to it.”

Ogre lifted his head eagerly, and together they hurled themselves at the mountain.

As Anne fled, Robert’s taunting laugh echoed in her ears.

How had he escaped Sir Neil? How had he known where to ambush her or about the secret passages at all?

But Robert wasn’t really a man anymore. She knew that. Probably he was like the Hansan knights and couldn’t die.

Had he and Sir Neil fought? Had he killed her knight? Or had the armies of Hansa already arrived, crushing Artwair and her army?

She wouldn’t think like that. She couldn’t. All that mattered now was to escape him long enough to think, to find safety for her and her companions. One of her men had died already, too confused by the glamour of the passage to run when she had commanded it, speared in the back by one of Robert’s soldiers. That left Anne five companions: three Craftsmen, Cazio, and Austra.

He’d been waiting for them with twenty men and a handful of his black-clad women to guide them.

Cazio, thank the saints, was still with her.

She tried to sweep away her fears and frustrations and concentrate. The passage should begin dividing up ahead, shouldn’t it? She’d never been here before, but she knew the place, could feel where it was going. If she could get them into the castle, into the passages there, they might be able to hide.

In the meantime, her men in Gobelin Court would all die, because even if Artwair succeeded in taking Thornrath in time to let Grand-uncle Fail’s fleet in, it would still take too long to win a siege now that her stupid little plan had begun to fall apart.

She felt helpless, but being dead or a captive would make her even more so.

“Hands!” she shouted. “Everyone keep holding hands!”

Anne searched back over her shoulder but saw no telltale lantern light behind them. Of course, the passage twisted and twined often enough that their pursuit needn’t be far to remain unseen.

Austra, with her in the front, held their only working lamp, and it now showed them two possibilities.

“The right branch,” she decided. They turned right, but after only sixteen paces they reached a dead end so freshly made that she could smell the mortar.

She hadn’t foreseen this. In her mind’s eye, the right passage wound its way through the outer wall of the castle and eventually, after a few more turnings, directly into her mother’s old solar.

“He’s blocked it up,” she murmured bitterly. “Of course he would.”

It was exactly what she had planned to do.

“The other one?” Austra asked hopefully.

“It goes under the castle, into the dungeons.”

“That’s better than being caught, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Anne agreed. “And there are ways into the castle from the dungeon. Just pray he hasn’t blocked this one off, as well.”

Sounds of pursuit seemed near as they moved back into the left passage.

“Where are we going?” Cazio asked.

“Don’t ask questions,” Anne said. “It’ll only make things worse.”

“Worse,” Cazio muttered. “It’s already worse. At least let me fight.”

“No. Not yet. I’ll tell you when to fight.”

Cazio didn’t answer. He might have forgotten already that they’d been talking.

The tunnel branched again, but as she suspected, the one she wanted was blocked off, this time a lot less neatly; its ceiling had been collapsed. It looked as if it had been done in haste, but it was every bit as efficient.

“He can’t know all of them,” she told Austra. “He can’t.”

“What if he has a map of some sort? Maybe your mother or Erren had one.”

“Maybe,” Anne said. “If so, we’re done for.” She stopped, a little chill working up her spine.

“Did you hear that?” she asked Austra.

“I didn’t hear anything,” her friend replied.

But Anne heard it again, a distant whispering of her name. And she remembered.

“There is one passage,” she murmured. “I saw the opening, but even I couldn’t see where it went. There’s a sort of fog there, and something else…”

“Something worse than Robert?”

An image flashed then, painfully bright, of the red-tressed demon. But that wasn’t right. That wasn’t who was whispering to her.

“You know what it is,” she replied. They reached a small chamber with two passages leading out of it. Both were blocked.

“You mean him?” Austra hissed. “The last of the… ?” She didn’t finish the thought. Her breath was coming hard.

“Yes.”

Anne made her decision and reached for the place she knew instinctively was there, a small depression in the stone.

She found the catch and pressed it. Something inside clicked, and a portion of the wall eased open. Anne saw that the stone had been cut very thin and somehow fixed to a thick wooden panel.

“Quickly,” she said to the others.

She ushered them through, stepped in, and pulled the door shut, listening for it to click into place. Then she turned to see what their situation was.

The six of them just managed to crouch on a small landing in a rough tunnel carved of living stone. After the landing the passage descended rather dramatically. If it hadn’t been so narrow, going down it at anything but a fall probably would have been impossible; as it was, they were able to control their descent by bracing their hands against the walls. Austra handed the lantern back to Cazio, and Anne led, with the light coming from behind her, throwing her shadow down the strange warren. The air was thick with a burned sort of smell, but it wasn’t hot; if anything, she had a chill.

“He’s down there,” she murmured.

“What does he want with you?” Austra wondered aloud.

“I’ve no idea,” she said, “but it looks like we’re going to find out.”

“What if this is all part of Robert’s trap?” Austra asked. “What if he sent that vision? He might be able to do that.”

“He might,” Anne conceded. “But I don’t think he could fool me about who he is. And Robert is behind us. I can hear the Kept up ahead.”

“But a Scaos…”

“Virgenya Dare made him our slave,” Anne said firmly. “I’m the rightful queen, so he’s my servant now. Do not fear him. Trust me.”

“Yes,” Austra said weakly.

Then she continued. “Remember how we used to play in the horz?”

“I remember,” Anne said. She reached behind her for Austra’s hand. “This is all happening because of that, somehow. Because we found the grave.”

“Virgenya Dare’s grave?”

“I was wrong about that,” Anne said.

“You? Wrong?”

“It happens,” Anne replied wryly. “Well, now, are we ready to meet a real live Scaos?”

“Yes.” She didn’t sound confident, though.

“Then off we go. Cazio, are you still all right there? And the rest of you?”

“Yes,” Cazio replied, and their companions echoed the reply. “But who, by Ontro, are you talking about? And how did we get into this wretched tunnel?”

“What was that?” Anne asked.

“I said, ‘How did we get into this tunnel?’”

“I think he knows where he is, and he’s remembering it,” Austra said.

“What do you mean, remembering it?” Cazio asked irritably. “I’ve never been here before. I don’t even remember how I got here.”

“This place must be older than the glamour,” Anne said. “That’s probably good.”

“Glamour?” Cazio muttered. “What glamour? The last thing I remember is the Sefry house. Was a spell cast upon me?”

“It’s the same with me!” one of Leaftons men, Cuelm MeqVorst, exclaimed.

“Yes,” Anne replied. “A shinecrafting was done to you, but we’re beyond it, and there isn’t time to go into detail. We are being pursued by the usurper and his men.”

“Let’s fight them, then,” Cazio said.

“No, there are too many,” Anne said. “But those of you in the rear, keep watch. Be ready. If somehow they find the way into here, we will have to fight.”

“They can only get to us one at a time,” Cazio pointed out.

“True,” Anne said. “You might be able to hold them off long enough for us to die of thirst.”

“What do we do, then?” MeqVorst wanted to know. His voice was edged with panic.

“You follow me,” she said firmly. “You may hear or see strange things, but unless there’s an attack from behind, keep your hands still unless I say so. Do all of you understand?”

“Not entirely,” Cazio said, and the other three men murmured agreement.

“Where are we going?”

“The only way left to us. Down.”

The scorched odor became stronger, at times stifling, and Anne fancied she smelled mingled with it the acrid scent of fear coming from those behind her.

“I hear it now,” Austra gasped. “Saints, he’s in my head.”

“We can’t go farther,” MeqVorst protested fearfully. “Men I can fight, but I’m not going to be food for some great bloody spider.”

“It’s not a spider,” Anne said, wondering as she said it if that was true. After all, no one knew what the Skasloi looked like, at least not that she’d ever read or heard. They were known as demons of shadow whose true forms were hidden by darkness.

“Stay calm, all of you,” she said. “He can’t hurt you as long as you’re with me.”

“I… it feels… the voice…” The warrior’s voice trailed off, and Anne thought she heard him weeping.

The murmurs grew louder but remained unintelligible until they finally reached level earth once again. Then they seemed to subside as they encountered yet another dead end.

Again Anne knew where the hidden entrance was. She found the latch, feeling as she did so a peculiar tingle.

The wall in front of them silently swung open, and lamplight poured from the tunnel into a low, round chamber.

Something shifted in the new light, something wrong, and she stifled a shriek. Austra didn’t manage to, and her scream reverberated in the hollow depths.

Anne stood stiffly, heart pounding, vision swimming.

It was only after several slow, thundering pulses of her blood that she understood that she was looking not on some sort of monster but at a woman and a man. The man was horribly disfigured; his face had been cut, burned, and who knew what else. His filthy rags covered very little of his body. The woman’s face was smudged and bloody. She wore men’s clothing of a dark hue.

To her amazement, Anne recognized her.

“Lady Berrye?”

“Who’s there?” Lady Berrye asked sluggishly. She sounded drunk. “Are you real?”

“I am.”

Lady Berrye laughed and squeezed the man’s shoulder. “It says it’s real,” she told him.

“Everything says it’s real,” the man gruffed with a strange accent. “But that’s what we tell ourselves, walking in the graveyard, yes?”

“You were my father’s mistress,” Anne said. “You’re hardly older than me.”

“You see?” Lady Berrye said. “It’s Anne Dare, William’s youngest daughter.”

“Yes,” Anne said a bit angrily. “It is.”

Lady Berrye frowned at that and swayed to her feet. Her expression grew trepidatious.

“Please,” she whispered. “I can’t, not again.”

She came closer, and Anne saw how gaunt she was. She had always seemed cheerful, a woman just leaving girlhood, with cheeks ruddy and smooth. Now her skin lay close to her skull, and her bright blue eyes seemed black and feverish. She reached a trembling hand toward Anne. Her fingers were torn and dirty.

The man was also pushing himself up, muttering in a language Anne did not know.

The instant Berrye’s fingers brushed Anne’s face, she jerked them back to her mouth, as if she had burned them.

“Saints,” she said. “She is real. Or more real than the others…”

Anne reached for the hand.

“I am real,” she confirmed. “You see my maid, Austra. These others serve me, as well. Lady Berrye, how did you come here?”

“It has been so long.” She closed her eyes. “My friend needs water,” she said. “Do you have any?”

“You both need water,” Anne said apologetically. “How long have you been down here?”

“I don’t know,” Lady Berrye replied. “I might be able to work it out. I think it was the third day of Prismen.”

“Twice a nineday, then.”

Cazio passed her his waterskin, and she handed it to Berrye. Alis quickly took it to the scarred man.

“Drink slowly,” she said. “Carefully, or you will not hold it down.”

He had a few sips, and then a fit of coughing wracked his body, causing him to fall. Berrye had a little, then knelt to give him a bit more. As she did, she began to speak, though her gaze stayed on the man.

“I am your mother’s servant,” she began.

“I doubt that very much,” Anne replied.

“I am coven-trained, Your Majesty. Not from the Coven Saint Cer, but I am a sister nevertheless. My task was to be your father’s mistress. But after his death, I sought out your mother.”

“Why?”

“We needed each other. I know it is difficult for you to believe, but I have served her as well as I could. I came down into the dungeons to free a man named Leovigild Ackenzal.”

“The composer. I’ve heard of him.” She glanced at the mutilated man. “Is this… ?”

“No,” Lady Berrye said. “Ackenzal would not come with me. Bobert has hostage people he cares for, and he refused to risk their injury for his freedom. No, this is, so far as I can tell, Prince Cheiso of Safnia.”

Anne gasped, feeling as if she had been slapped. “Lesbeth’s fiancé?”

At the mention of her aunt’s name, the man began to groan, then cry out incoherently.

“Hush,” Lady Berrye said, stroking his head. “This is her niece. This is Anne.”

The ravaged face turned up toward her, and for an instant Anne could see the handsome man he once had been. His eyes were dark, and worlds of pain poured from them.

“My love,” he said. “Always my love.”

“Robert accused him of kidnapping Lesbeth and giving her to the enemy. I thought he had been executed. I found him searching for a way out after I discovered that Robert had sealed off most of the passages.” She looked suddenly a bit frantic. “Your uncle, you know—”

“Isn’t human? I’m aware of that.”

“Have you taken the throne from him? Is his reign ended?”

“No. He’s searching for us even now. This was the only tunnel he hadn’t blocked.”

“I know. I hoped I could find a way out in the warrens around the Kept. Instead he has caught us here.”

“You’ve met the Kept?”

“No. Your mother came to see him once, and I was with her. But Robert has the only key I know of. We could not gain entrance.”

“Then we still cannot.”

Lady Berrye shook her head. “You don’t understand. The key is to the main entrance and takes you to the antechamber outside his cell. Outside, you understand? So that he sits within the walls of ancient magicks. So that he can be controlled. Anne, we are in his cell.”

As she said it, the walls seemed to shift like vast coils, and Austra pinched the lamp out, plunging them into utter darkness.

“What?” Anne cried. “Austra?”

“He told me to—I wasn’t—I couldn’t—”

But then the voice was back, no longer whispering but shivering through the stone and into her bones.

“Your Majesty,” it said in a mocking tone. Anne felt acrid breath on her face, and the darkness began a slow, terrible spin.

7 Triey

Leoff smiled at the little flourish of notes Mery added to the normally staid and melancholy Triey for Saint Reusmier.

She had permission to do so—the triey form encouraged extemporaneous elaboration—but where most musicians would have added a doleful grace note or two, Mery instead offered a wistful yet essentially joyful reiteration of an earlier theme. Since the piece was a meditation on memory and forgetfulness, it was perfect despite its novelty.

When she was done, she glanced up at him, as always, for approval.

“Well done, Mery,” he said. “I’m amazed someone your age understands that composition so well.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, scratching the side of her nose.

“It’s about an old man thinking back to his youth,” Leoff expanded. “Remembering happier times, but often imperfectly.”

“Is that why the themes fragment?” she asked.

“Yes, and they’re never quite put together completely, are they? The ear is never quite satisfied.”

“That’s why I like it,” Mery said. “It’s not too simple.”

She shuffled the music on her stand.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“That may be the second act of Maersca,” he said. “Let me see.”

Suddenly his heart felt cast in lead.

“Here,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Give me that.”

“What is it?” Mery asked, glancing at the page. “I don’t understand. It’s mostly shifting chords. Where’s the melody line?”

“That’s not for you,” Leoff said with a good deal more force than he meant to.

“I’m sorry,” Mery said, drawing her shoulders in.

He found that he was breathing hard. Didn’t I put that away?

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault, Mery,” he said. “I shouldn’t have left it out. It’s something I started, but I’m not going to finish it. Don’t give it another thought.”

She looked pale.

“Mery,” he asked, “is anything wrong?”

She peered up at him with wide eyes.

“It’s sick,” she said. “The music—”

He knelt and clumsily took her hand with his maimed one. “Don’t think about it, then,” he said. “Don’t try to hear it in your head, or it will make you sick. Do you understand?”

She nodded, but there were tears in her eyes.

“Why would you write something like that?” she asked plaintively.

“Because I thought I had to,” he said. “But now I think maybe I don’t. I really can’t explain more than that. Do you understand?”

She nodded again.

“Now, why don’t we play something happier.”

“I wish you could play with me.”

“Well,” he said, “I can still sing. My voice was never extraordinary, but I can carry a tune.”

She clapped her hands. “What shall it be, then?”

He fumbled through the music on his desk.

“Here we go,” he said. “It’s from the second act of Maersca. It’s sort of an interlude, a comical side story to the main plot. The singer here is Droep, a young boy scheming to, ah, visit a girl at night.”

“Like my mother used to visit the king?”

“Umm, well, I wouldn’t know about that, Mery,” Leoff temporized. “Anyway, it’s nighttime, and he’s under her window, pretending to be a sea prince from a very distant land. He tells her he speaks with the fish of the sea, and he explains how word of her beauty has come to him under the waves and across the world.”

“I see it,” Mery said. “The bream tells the crab, and the crab tells the bluefin.”

“Exactly. And each has a little theme.”

“Until we get to the porpoise, who tells the prince.”

“Exactly. Then she asks what he looks like, and he tells her he is the fairest of all who live in his country, which is true, in a way, since he’s made the country up.”

“No,” Mery said. “That’s still a lie.”

“But amusing, I think,” Leoff said.

“The melody is, anyway.”

“Ah, a critic already,” Leoff said. “But to continue, she asks to see him, yet he swears that only by magic was he able to come to her, and if she gazes on his face, he must return home, never to come again. But if she should lay three nights with him without seeing his face, the spell will be broken.”

“But then she’ll know he lied,” Mery said, puzzled.

“Yes, but he reckons that by then he will have managed to, well, ah, give her a kiss.”

“That’s a lot of trouble to go through for a kiss,” Mery said dubiously.

“Yes,” Leoff said, “it is. But that’s how it is with boys his age. You wait until you’re a little older, and you’ll see exactly how much trouble the young men will go through to win your attentions. Although I suggest that if one should ever claim to be from some far-off land, one you’ve never heard of—”

“I should insist on seeing his face.” Mery giggled.

“Exactly. So, are you ready to play?”

“Who shall sing the woman’s part?”

“Can you?”

“It’s too low for me.”

“Well, then,” Leoff said, “I shall sing falsetto.”

“And the duet?”

“I’ll improvise,” Leoff replied. “Here, we’ll skip the part where’s he’s introducing himself and get straight to the song.”

“Very well,” Mery said. She put her fingers to the keys and began. Under her influence, the accompaniment bounced even more boisterously than he’d imagined it might.

He cleared his throat as his cue arrived.

I have heard from the sea,

From the denizens of the sea,

Across a thousand leagues

The report has come to me

Of a lady so lovely

In such afar country

That I, the prince of Ferrowigh

Must hurry here to thee

You were bathing near the birm,

Admired by a bream

Who told his friend the crab

Who came scuttling by just then

And the crab told old bluefin

Who told a skate or ten

That I, the prince of Ferrowigh

Must come your heart to win…

For the first time in a long time it occurred to Leoff that he was happy. And more than that, optimistic. The terrors of the past months receded, and he felt as if good things actually might happen again.

He realized that he believed Ambria’s promise of escape, had believed it from the moment she’d told him. But in a way, it didn’t matter now.

“Well, aren’t we all jolly?” a feminine voice interrupted. He jumped.

Areana was standing inside the doorway, watching them. She hadn’t spoken to him since the morning she had found him with Ambria.

“Areana!” Mery cried. “Won’t you join us? We really need someone to sing the part of Taleath!”

“Do you?” she said skeptically, her gaze fixed on Leoff.

“Please,” he said.

She just stood there.

“Come on,” Leoff said. “You must have heard us. I know you want to sing it.”

“Do you?” she asked coldly.

“I want you to sing it,” he answered.

“I can start again,” Mery said.

Areana sighed. “Very well. Start it again.”

Mery grew tired a bell or so later and went to take a nap. Leoff feared that Areana would leave, as well, but instead she walked over to the window. After a moment’s hesitation, Leoff joined her.

“There’s something going on at the great wall, I think,” Leoff said. “At Thornrath. There’s been smoke for days.”

She nodded but didn’t seem to be looking at the wall or at anything else, for that matter.

“I thought you were very good singing Taleath’s part,” he attempted again, “although it’s not the part I wrote for you.”

“There will be no part for me in this travesty,” she snapped. “I won’t do it.”

He lowered his voice. “I’m only working on it to keep Robert from hurting you or Mery,” he said. “I’ve no intention of performing it.”

“Really?” Her gaze met his and softened a little.

He nodded. “Really. I’m working on something quite different.”

“Good,” she said, looking back outside. He struggled to find some way to keep the conversation going, but no acceptable words offered themselves to his tongue.

“You’ve made me quite foolish, you know,” she said, her voice sounding thick. “Quite foolish.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“That makes it worse. Why didn’t you tell me about you and Lady Gramme? I should have guessed, I suppose. She was your patron, and she is beautiful, and skilled, and you get along famously with Mery.”

“No,” Leoff said. “I… there was nothing to tell until the other night. She came—I was unprepared…”

She laughed resentfully. “Oh, yes, and so was I. And there’s no hiding I had the same idea. I thought I might ease your pain and I—” She began crying and gulped.

“Areana?”

“I was a virgin, you know. Not so fashionable in Eslen, but out in the poellands it’s still something to be…” She waved her hands helplessly. “Anyway, that’s gone. But I thought if I was with someone kind and gentle, someone who wouldn’t try to hurt me, I might wash it away, what…”

She leaned her arm on the windowsill and buried her face in it. He watched her helplessly, then reached out and stroked her hair.

“I wish it hadn’t happened,” he said. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“I know,” she sobbed. “And I expect too much. Who would touch me now?”

“I’m touching you,” he said. “Here, look at me.”

She raised her tear-streaked face.

“I think you were right,” he admitted, “about how I feel about you. But there’s something you need to understand. What they did to me in the dungeons—it changed me. I don’t just mean my body or my hands; it altered me inside. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. For so long, for so very long, I’ve been able to see no better end for all of this than revenge. It’s all I’ve really thought about. It’s all I’ve been planning. In the dungeon, I met a man; well, I heard his voice, anyway. We spoke. He told me that in Safnia, where he’s from, vengeance is considered an art, something to be done well and savored. It made sense to me, I have to say, to make Robert pay for the things he’s done. The other music I’ve been working on—that’s my revenge.”

“What do you mean?”

He closed his eyes, knowing he ought not to tell her but plunging on anyway.

“There are more than eight modes,” he said softly. “There are a few others so forbidden that they are spoken of only in whispers, even in the academies. You saw—you felt—the effect of music when it’s properly composed. We not only were able to create and control emotion, we made it literally impossible for anyone to stop us until we were done.

“That was using mostly the modes we know, but what made that piece so very powerful was my rediscovery—Mery’s rediscovery, really, come to that—of a very ancient forbidden mode. And now I’ve found another, one not used since the days of the Black Jester.”

“What does it do?”

“It can do many things. But a properly structured piece, when performed, might kill anyone who heard it.”

She frowned and searched his face with such a gaze that he knew she was looking for signs of madness.

“This is true?” she said finally.

“I haven’t tested it, of course, but yes, I believe it is.”

“If I hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t been part of the music in the Candlegrove, I don’t imagine I would believe you,” she said. “But as it is, I think you could do almost anything if you put your mind to it. So that’s what you’ve been working on?”

“Yes. To kill Prince Robert.”

“But that’s—” Her eyes narrowed. “But you can’t play.”

“I know. That’s been a problem all along. Robert can play, however. I had thought if I kept the mechanics of it simple enough, he might actually do it himself.”

“But more likely Mery would play it.”

“In which case I had thought to stuff her ears with wax,” Leoff said. “You understand, I agree with you—I always did. I think he plans to kill all three of us. I hoped to give the two of you a chance, but if I couldn’t…”

“You thought you’d take him with us.”

“Yes.”

“But what’s changed?”

“I’ve stopped working on it,” he said. “I shan’t finish it.”

“Why?”

“Because I have hope now,” he said. “And even if that fails…”

“Hope?”

“For something better than revenge.”

“What? Escape?”

“There is a possibility,” he said. “A chance we might survive this and live out our lives in better circumstances. But if we can’t—” He placed his ruined hand on her shoulder. “To make this music, this music of death, I have to surrender to the darkest parts of me. I can’t afford to feel joy, hope, or love, or I can’t write it.

“Yet today I realized I would prefer to die still capable of love than have my revenge. I would rather be able to tell Mery that I love her than slay all the evil princes in the world. And I would rather touch you as tenderly as I’m able, with these things that used to be hands, than bring such dread music into the world. Does that mean anything to you? Does it make sense?”

They were both crying now, quietly.

“It makes sense,” she said. “It makes more sense than anything I’ve heard or thought lately. It makes you the man I fell in love with.”

She took his hand and kissed it gently, once, twice, thrice.

“We’re both injured,” she said. “And I’m afraid. Very afraid. You say we might escape…”

“Yes,” he began, but she put a finger to his lips.

“No,” she said. “If it happens, it happens. I don’t want to know any more. If I’m tortured, I will confess. I know that about myself now. I’m no brave lady from a romance.”

“And I’m no knight,” Leoff said. “But there are many ways to be brave.”

She nodded, coming closer. “However much time we have,” she said, “I would like to help you heal. And I’d like you to help me.”

Leoff leaned down and touched his lips to hers, and they stood for a long moment, locked in that very simple kiss.

She reached for the stays on her bodice. He stopped her.

“Healing is done slowly,” he said gently. “A bit at a time.”

“We may not have very much time,” she pointed out.

“What’s been done to you shouldn’t happen to anyone,” he said. “And it may be harder to get over it than you believe. I would like to make love to you, Areana, but only if it were the first of many times, and of many more things that a man and a woman might do together, be together. If we try this now and fail, I fear the consequences. So for the moment, believe we will live and give this time.”

She pressed her head into his shoulder and put her arms around him, and together they watched the sunset.

“You have to go back to your room,” Leoff told her a few bells later. They were quietly lying on his bed, her head nestled on his chest.

“I’d like to stay here,” she said. “Couldn’t we just sleep, actually sleep? I want to wake up with you.”

He shook his head reluctantly. “Tonight is the night,” he said. “Someone will come to your room. I’m not sure what will happen if you aren’t there. Best we stick to the plan.”

“Are you serious? You really think we might escape tonight?”

“I didn’t want to believe it at first, either, but yes, I think the possibility is real.”

“Very well,” she said, untangling from him, standing, and smoothing her gown. Then she bent and gave him a long, lingering kiss. “Until I see you again,” she said.

“Yes,” he managed.

After she was gone, he didn’t sleep but lay awake until he reckoned the midnight bell was about to toll. Then he dressed in a dark doublet and hose and a warm robe. He bundled up his music and, just as the bell began to peal, padded out of his room and down the stairs.

Despite his caution, there were no guards to slip past. The halls were empty, silent, and dark save for the candle he carried.

When he entered the long corridor that led to the entrance hall, he saw a light ahead, as diminutive as his own. As he drew nearer, he made out a dark red gown and quickened his steps, his heart racing double time, like an ensemble that had quite escaped the measure of its leader.

At the doorway he paused, puzzled. Ambria sat in a chair, waiting for him. She wasn’t holding the candle; it flickered in a small sconce on a table near the chair. Her chin was on her chest, and he thought it odd that she had fallen asleep at such an anxious time.

But she wasn’t asleep, of course. Every angle of her body was somehow wrong, and when he came close enough to see her face, it looked bruised and swollen, and her eyes seemed far too large.

“Ambria!” he gasped, and went down on his knee. He took her hand and found it cold.

“Leovigild Ackenzal, I presume,” someone very near said.

Leoff was proud of himself; he didn’t scream. He straightened, lifting his chin, determined to be brave.

“Yes,” he whispered.

A man stepped from the shadows. He was massive, with a grizzled half-shaved face and hands the size of hams.

“Who are you?” Leoff asked.

The fellow grinned a horrible little grin that sent a profound shiver through the composer.

“You might call me Saint Dun,” he said. “You might call me Death. Right now, you just consider yourself warned.”

“You didn’t have to kill her.”

“Don’t have to do nothin’ in this life but die,” he replied. “But I work for His Majesty, and this is what he asked me to do.”

“He knew all along.”

“His Majesty, he’s busy. I haven’t spoken to him lately. But I know him, and this is what he would have wanted. Lady Gramme didn’t know about me, you see. I didn’t figure in her plans.” He stepped closer.

“But you know about me,” he added softly. “And I reckon you need to know I can’t be bribed or otherwise bought, like some here. Now His Majesty knows who his friends are, or he will when he returns to find em still alive. And as for you, I’ll ask you to make a choice.”

“No,” Leoff said.

“Oh, yeah,” the man replied. He gestured at Ambria’s corpse. “That’s the price she pays for this little attempt. Your price is to choose who dies next: Gramme’s little brat or the landwaerden girl.” He smiled and tousled Leoff’s hair. “Don’t worry. I’m not asking you to make a snap decision. I give you until noon tomorrow. I’ll come up to your room.”

“Don’t do this,” Leoff said softly. “This isn’t decent.”

“The world aens’t decent,” the killer replied. “Sure you ought to know that by now.” He pointed with his chin. “Go on.”

“Please.”

“Go on.”

Leoff returned to his room. He glanced at the bed where Ambria had lain, remembering her touch. He went to the window and gazed out at the moonless night, taking long, deep breaths.

Then he lit his candles, took out the unfinished music, pen, and ink, and began to write.

8 The Battle of the Waerd

This was no joust, and there was no clever turning at the last moment to glance the blow. Not with horses galloping flank to flank, not when any deflection of spear by shield risked having it plunge into a battle-brother to the left or right. One might try to skip the blow upward with a last-instant tilt of the shield, but then one would lose sight of the target.

No, this was more like war galleys meeting at full oar, prow to prow. What was left was flinching and not flinching.

Neil didn’t flinch; he met the shock of the killing point in the center of his shield, blowing out his breath as it happened to prevent it being knocked out of him.

His opponent, in contrast, panicked and shifted his shield so Neil’s spear struck the curving edge. As the stun of contact went through him, Neil watched his weapon deflect and drive to the right, striking his foe’s shield mate in the throat, shattering his neck into a bloody ruin and sending him hurtling back into the next rank.

The broken shaft of the first man’s lance struck Neil’s helm, turning his head half-around, and then the real jolt came as the full weight of horses, barding, armor, shields, and men slammed together. Horses went down, screaming and kicking. His own mount, a gelding named Winlauf, staggered but didn’t fall, largely due to the press that surrounded them.

Neil clutched for the blade Artwair had given him, a good solid weapon he’d named Quichet, or Battlehound, for his father’s sword. But before he could do that the head from a lance in the second rank of Thornrath’s defenders slipped its slaughter-eager point through his shield and into the shoulder joint of his armor before the shaft shivered.

He felt as if he’d fallen naked through the icy surface of a midwinter mere; Battlehound came up in his hand, seeming to lift of its own accord. The horse of the man who had hit him was just tripping over the mount of the first man he’d met, which had gone down in the shock. The knight, still holding the broken spear shaft, was coming out of his stirrups, hurtling like a javelin toward Neil. Battlehound straightened Neil’s arm and locked it, so that the flying man found the weapon’s mortal-making point in his gorget.

The impact knocked Neil backward out of his stirrups, so he flipped over his mount’s haunches and down into the hooves of his next line.

Then there was blood and noise, and his body was seizing from the pain. Getting up was dark agony, and he wasn’t sure how long it took him to do it.

When he did, he found the causeway mounded with men and horses, but his men still were surging forward. Overhead, flame and stone and feathered death were wracking the battle ground, but their charge was pushing through it.

Winlauf was dying, and only a few men on either side retained their steeds. This was the moment; if they were pushed back now, most of them would perish in the killing zones of the siege engines. Here they were inside all but arrow range, and the presence of the defenders’ own men deterred that.

“One charge!” he howled, unable, really, to hear himself. Half his body felt like it was gone, but it wasn’t the half that was carrying Battlehound.

As the very sky seemed to catch fire, Neil put everything that was in him to killing.

“What is that?” Stephen asked Zemlé.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Ghosts? Witches?”

“Do you know the language of the song?”

“No. It sounds a little like the Old Tongue. A few words sound familiar.”

Stephen caught a shimmer, then, eyes reflecting fireglow. The dogs were barking and howling as if they had gone insane.

Whatever they were, they weren’t slinders, as he first had feared.

They were coming far too cautiously. He couldn’t be certain, but judging by the behavior of the dogs, the intruders were actually circling the camp.

“Whoever you are,” he cried, “we mean you no harm.”

“I’m sure that’s of great comfort to them,” Zemlé said, “considering there are at least ten of them and we’re basically unarmed.”

“I can be pretty intimidating,” Stephen said.

“Yes, well, at least you’re not a blithering coward,” she observed.

“I am, actually,” he confided, though her assessment made him feel suddenly very warm. “But after a point you just get stunned and stay stunned. I don’t have the sense to be scared anymore.” He frowned. The song had ceased, but words were being exchanged, and then the sounds clicked into place.

“Qey thu menndhzif,” he shouted.

The wood fell suddenly silent.

“What was that?” Zemlé asked.

“What they’re speaking, I think. A Vadhiian dialect. Kauron’s language.”

“Stephen!” Zemlé gasped. The dogs dropped to the ground, still snarling, but oddly cowed.

Someone had stepped into the clearing.

In the firelight, Stephen couldn’t tell what color his eyes were, but they were large. His hair was as milk-white as his skin, and he was dressed in soft brown leathers.

“Sefry,” he whispered.

“Your Hadivar,” Zemlé said.

“You speak with old words,” the Sefry said. “We are thinking you are the one.”

“Who are you?”

The stranger studied the two of them for another moment or two, then tilted his head.

“My name is Adhrekh,” he said.

“You speak the king’s tongue,” Stephen said.

“Some,” Adhrekh said. “It has been a long time since I have used it.”

More Sefry appeared at the edge of the firelight. All were armed with swords nearly as slim as the one Cazio carried. Most had bows, as well, and most of the arrows in those bows seemed to be pointed at him.

“My, ah, my name is Stephen Darige,” he returned. “This is Sister Pale.” He wasn’t sure why he shied from the more familiar name he’d been using.

Adhrekh waved that away. “The khriim is here. You speak the tongue of the ancients. Tell me, what was his name?”

“His name? You mean Brother Kauron? Or Choron in your speech.”

Adhrekh lifted his head, and his eyes flashed with triumph. The other Sefry plucked the arrows from their bows and returned them to their quivers.

“Well,” Adhrekh mused. “So you have come, after all.”

Stephen didn’t quite know what to say to that, so he let it go by.

“Why did you abandon the village?” Stephen asked.

Adhrekh shrugged. “We vowed to live in the mountain, to keep guard there, and we have. It is our way.”

“You live in the Alq?” Zemlé asked.

“That is our privilege, yes.”

“And it was Brother Choron who asked you to guard it?”

“Until his return, yes,” Adhrekh said. “Until now.”

“You mean until the return of his heir,” Zemlé corrected.

“As you wish,” Adhrekh said. He moved his regard back to Stephen. “Would you like to see the Alq, pathikh?”

Stephen felt a chill, half excitement and half fear. ‘Pathikh’ meant something like lord, master, prince. Was Zemlé actually right? Was he really the heir to this ancient prophecy?

“Yes,” he said. “But wait. You said the khriim was here. Do you mean the woorm?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“Yes.”

“In the valley? Where?”

“No. Once you led it near enough, he was able to find his way. He’s waiting for you in the Alq.”

“Waiting for me?” Stephen said. “Maybe you don’t understand. It’s dangerous. It kills anything it touches, anything it comes near.”

“He said he wouldn’t understand,” said another of the Sefry, this one a woman with startlingly blue eyes.

“I understand that if the woorm is in the mountain,” Stephen said, “I’m not going there.”

“No,” Adhrekh said, his face melancholy. “I’m afraid you will, pathikh.”

“Qexqaneh,” Anne gasped, hoping she remembered the pronunciation correctly.

The thing in the darkness seemed to pause, then press against her face like a dog nuzzling its master. Shocked, she swatted at it, but there was nothing there, although the sensation persisted.

“Sweet Anne,” the Kept snuffled. “Smell of woman, sweet sick smell of woman.”

Anne tried to collect herself. “I am heir to the throne of Crotheny. I command you by your name, Qexqaneh.”

“Yessss,” the Kept purred. “Knowing what you.want is not the same as having. I know your intention. Alis-smells-of-death knows better. She just told you.”

“Is that so?” Anne asked. “Is it? I’m descended in a direct line from Virginia Dare. Can you really defy me?”

Another pause followed, during which Anne gained confidence, trying not to reflect too closely on what she was doing.

“I called you here,” the Kept murmured. She could feel the vastness of him contracting, drawing into himself.

“Yes, you did. Called me here, put a map in my head so I could find you, promised me you could help me against her, the demon in the tomb. So what do you want?”

He seemed to withdraw further, but she had the sudden feeling of a million tiny spiders nesting in her skull. She gagged, but when Austra reached for her, Anne pushed her away.

“What are you doing, Qexqaneh?” she demanded.

We can talk like this, and they cannot hear us. Agree. You don’t want them to know. You don’t.

Very well, Anne mouthed silently.

She felt as if she were whirling again, but this time it wasn’t frightening; it was more like a dance. Then, as if she were opening her eyes, she was standing on a hillside bare of any human habitation. Her body felt as light as thistledown, so flimsy that she feared any breeze might carry her off.

All around her she saw the dark waters, the waters behind the world. But this time her perspective seemed reversed. Instead of perceiving the waters as flowing together—trickles building rinns, rinns pouring into broohs, broohs into streams, streams into the river—Anne descried the river as a great dark beast with a hundred fingers, and each of those fingers with a thousand fingers more, and each of those with a thousand, reaching and prying and poking into every man and woman, into every horse and ox, into each blade of grass, tickling, gesturing—waiting.

Into everything, that is, except the formless shade that stood before her.

“What is this place?” she demanded.

“Ynis, my flesh,” he replied.

Before she could retort, she realized it was true. It was Ynis, in fact the very hill upon which Eslen stood. But there was no castle, no city, no work of Man or Sefry. Nothing to be seen.

“And these waters? I’ve seen them before. What are they?”

“Life and death. Memory and forgetfulness. The one drinks, the other gives back. Piss on the left, sweet water on the right.”

“I’d like you to be more clear.”

“I’d like to smell rain again.”

“Are you he?” she asked. “The man who attacked me in the place of the Faiths? Was that you?”

“Interesting,” Qexqaneh mused. “No. I cannot wander so far. Not like this, pretty one, disgusting thing.”

“Who was it, then?”

“Not who,” Qexqaneh replied. “Who might be. Who will be, probably.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Aren’t mad yet, are you?” he replied. “In time.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Good enough for the geos, milk cow,” he replied.

“Her, then,” Anne snapped. “The demon. What is she?”

“What was, what hopes to be again. Some called her the queen of demons.”

“What does she want with me?”

“Like the other,” Qexqaneh said. “She is not she. She is a place to sit, a hat to wear.”

“A throne.”

“Any word in your horrible language will do as well as the next.”

“She wants me to become her, doesn’t she? She wants to wear my skin. Is that what you’re saying?”

The shadow laughed. “No. Just offers you a place to sit, the right to rule. She can hurt your enemies, but she cannot harm you.”

“There are stories of women who take the form of others and steal their lives—”

“Stories,” he interrupted. “Imagine instead those women finally came to understand what they really were all along. The people around them didn’t understand the truth. There are things in you, Anne Dare, aren’t there? Things no one understands? No one can understand.”

“Just tell me how to fight her.”

“Her true name is Iluumhuur. Use it and tell her to leave.”

“It’s that simple?”

“Is it simple? I don’t know. Don’t care. Neither should you, since you’ll never live for it to matter. Your uncle’s warriors block your every exit. You will die here, and I can only savor your soul as it leaves.”

“Unless…” Anne said.

“Unless?” the Kept repeated mockingly.

“Don’t take that tone,” Anne said. “I have power, you know. I have killed. I might yet win my way through this. Perhaps she will help me.”

“She might,” he said. “I have no way of knowing. Call her true name and see.”

Anne coughed out a sarcastic laugh. “I somehow find that an outstandingly bad idea despite your reassuring words. No, you were going to offer me a way past my uncle’s troops. Well, then, what is it?”

“I was just going to offer my assistance in defeating them,” he purred.

“Ah. And that would involve…”

“Freeing me.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Anne mused. “Free the last of the demon race who enslaved humanity for a thousand generations. What a wonderful idea.”

“You have kept me for far too long,” he snarled. “My time is past. Let me go so that I may join my race in death.”

“If death is what you want, then tell me how to kill you.”

“I cannot be killed. The curse holds me here. Until the law of death is mended, I cannot die any more than your uncle can. Release me, and I shall mend the law of death.”

“And die yourself?”

“I swear that if you release me, I will deliver you from this place. I will leave, and I will do all in my power to die.”

Anne considered that for a long moment.

“You cannot lie to me.”

“You know I cannot.”

“Suppose I consider this,” Anne said slowly. “How would I free you?”

The shadow seemed to waver for a moment.

“Place your foot on my neck,” he snarled bitterly, “and say, ‘Qexqaneh, I free you.’”

Anne’s heart raced faster, and her belly seemed to fill with heat.

“I want to go back to my friends now,” she told him.

“As you wish.”

And with that she stood once more in darkness, with the earth tugging harder at her feet.

Aspar followed the woorm trail up a talus slope wiry with young trees to a great crack in the mountain, a natural cul-de-sac fifty kingsyards wide at the mouth and narrow toward the rear, where a great cascade of water plunged from far above. Predictably, the waterfall had dug a deep pool for itself, and just as predictably, the creature’s trail vanished into it.

The holter dismounted and walked the border of earth and water, searching for any other sign of the beast but only confirming what he already knew: The beast was in the mountain now. Whether it had reached its destination or was just passing through again, he could not know.

“Sceat,” he muttered, taking a seat on a rock to think.

Was Fend still riding the woorm? The last time he’d spoken to anyone who saw it, they’d reported two people on its back. If that was the case, then either the water passage was short enough for the men to survive or the two had dismounted as they had in the Ef valley. If that was true, they were waiting somewhere for the woorm to perform whatever task it had here.

The third possibility was that Fend and his comrade had drowned, but he didn’t think that was particularly likely.

On the chance they had dismounted, he checked carefully for traces but didn’t see any sign of men on foot. Given the fact that the earth here was covered in high moss, fern, and horsetail, it would be nearly impossible to avoid leaving some trace, even for Sefry.

That suggested that the woormriders had gone swimming with the woorm, which in turn implied that he might be able to follow. That belief was strengthened by the likelihood that this was the entrance to yet another Halafolk rewn. Sefry couldn’t hold their breath any longer than humans, so he ought to be able to make the swim, as he had done to enter Rewn Aluth.

Of course, a short swim for the beast might be a long one for him. Still, going after it was likely to be his only hope now.

That meant that once again he and Ogre had to part.

Wasting no time, he unbuckled the stallion’s saddle and slid it off, along with the blanket. Then he removed the bridle and hid it all beneath a small rock overhang. Ogre watched him the entire time, seeming strangely attentive.

Aspar walked him back to the entrance of the rift, then around the side of the mountain opposite the approach he expected Hespero and his men to take.

There he put his forehead against Ogre’s skull and patted his mount’s downy cheek.

“You’ve been a good friend,” he said. “Saved my life more times than I can count. Either way this goes, you’ve earned your way through. If I don’t come out, well, I maun y can take care of yourself. If I make it, I’ll find someplace quiet for you where y can stud and eat. No more arrows or greffyn poison or what have you, yah?”

The bared bay tossed his head, as if shaking off Aspar’s embrace, but the holter calmed him with another few strokes on his cheek.

“Just stay over here,” he said. “I wouldn’t have one of Hespero’s men riding you. Don’t suspect you would, either, and they’d probably kill you then, so just rest. I might well need one more fast ride out of you aer this is over.”

Ogre stamped as he walked away, and Aspar cast one glance back and raised an admonishing finger.

“Lifst,” he commanded.

Ogre whickered softly, but he obeyed and didn’t follow.

Back at the pool, Aspar unstrung his bow and wrapped it in an oiled beaver skin, tying it taut. He put the sinew in a waxed bag and tightened that, as well. He wrapped up his arrows, especially the arrow, in otter skin and bundled it all to his bow. He checked to make certain he had his dirk and hand-ax, then sat by the pool, breathing deeply, getting himself ready for a long underwater swim.

At his eighth breath, bubbles appeared in the pool, and then the water suddenly began to rise. Aspar watched for a few heartbeats, rooted, but as he understood what was happening, he grabbed his things and darted through the trees to the cliff, where he started climbing as swiftly as he could.

The rock face wasn’t all that difficult, and when the sudden flood slapped against the stone, he was already some four kingsyards up, well above it. But it wasn’t the water he was worried about, so he continued, straining his limbs, practically vaulting from hold to hold.

He heard a low, dull whump, and a moment later a brief shower of water pelted him, though he was already as high as the tops of the lower trees.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw the woorm tower up, wreathed in poisonous vapors, eyes glowing like green moons beneath the shadow of the sky.

9 An Unexpected Ally

Despite the stew of anger, fear, and frustration that seethed in Stephen, he had to admit that the Sefry were better hosts than the slinders.

Yes, he and Zemlé were captives in the sense that they weren’t given any choice about where they were going. However, the Sefry handled them gently—royally, even—bearing them on small chairs set atop wooden poles and constraining them with numbers rather than violence. Their path wound deeper into the shadow forest, through fernlike trees and dense vines that drew closer, narrower, darker, until with a start Stephen realized that they had passed into the living stone of the mountain itself without his noticing the transition.

There the journey became more harrowing, and he wished they’d been allowed to walk as the cortege proceeded down a steep, narrow stair. On the left was stone, and to the right there was nothing but a distance their lanterns did not penetrate. Even the rewn had not seemed so vast. Stephen wondered if the mountain was entirely hollow, a brittle shell filled with darkness.

But no, not just darkness; something tugged lightly at the hairs of his arm and neck, and the faintest musical hum vibrated from the stone itself. There was power here, sedos power such as was only hinted at by the faneway he had walked and the others he had known. Even in Dunmrogh, at Khrwbh Khrwkh, where Anne Dare had unleashed the dormant might of an ancient fane, he hadn’t sensed this sort of subtle puissance.

Thankfully, the seemingly bottomless pit finally showed its foundation, and the Sefry took them through a more manageable cavern. It was still grand but low enough that he could make out the glittering stone teeth depending from its ceiling.

“It’s beautiful,” Zemlé murmured, pointing at a column that glowed as if polished in the lamplight. “I’ve never seen stone take such forms. Or is it stone at all?”

“I’ve read of such things,” Stephen said, “and seen them elsewhere. Presson Manteo called the ones that hang ‘drippers’ and the ones that point up ‘drops.’ He thinks they are formed pretty much as icicles are.”

“I see the resemblance,” Zemlé allowed, “but how can stone drip?”

“Stone has both a liquid and a solid essence,” Stephen explained. “The solid essence is predominant, but under special conditions, beneath the earth, it can become liquid. It is possibly how these caverns were formed. The stone liquefied and flowed away, leaving only space behind it.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I don’t know,” Stephen said. “At the moment, I’m a lot more interested in why we’re being held captive.”

“You’re not captives,” Adhrekh said again. “You are our honored guests.”

“Wonderful,” Stephen said. “Then thank you for the hospitality, and would you please take us back now?”

“You have traveled a great distance, through many hardships, pathikh,” Adhrekh said. “How can we allow you to leave without achieving what you came for?”

“I did not come to find the bloody woorrn,” Stephen snapped, loudly enough that his voice echoed through the cavern. “I could have met him back at d’Ef if I’d wanted.”

“Yes,” another voice said drily. “You could have. Might have saved us all a lot of trouble, at that.” The voice was somehow familiar.

As Stephen followed the sound, they came to a stop, and his bearers carefully settled the palanquins onto the floor. The stone here looked handworked, and he smelled water.

His gaze fastened on a familiar face, and his heart went jagged in his chest.

“Fend,” he said.

The Sefry smiled. “I’m flattered you remember me,” he said. “Our last meeting was a hectic one, wasn’t it? What with all the arrows and swords, greffyns and Briar Kings. There wasn’t really much time for a proper introduction.”

“You know him?” Zemlé asked.

“In a way,” Stephen said flatly. “I know that he’s a murdering villain, without honor, compassion, or any other admirable quality.”

Fends single eye widened. “How could you know that? Can you pretend to hear my thoughts? You wouldn’t be relying entirely on Aspar’s opinion of me, would you?”

“No,” Stephen said. “I’ve Winna’s opinion, as well. She was your prisoner, you may remember. And I saw with my own eyes what happened in the grove near Cal Azroth. And I saw the bodies of the princesses you murdered there.”

Fend shrugged lightly. “I’ve done things that would seem regrettable, I agree. But I do not regret them because I understand why I did them. When you also understand, I believe you will think better of me.

“I hope so, because I am in your service.” He nodded to Adhrekh. “Thank, you, sir, for your hospitality and your help in finding this place.”

The other Sefry shrugged. “We are only its keepers,” he replied.

Stephen had been so focused on Fends evil face that he hadn’t noticed at first what he was wearing. It was armor of an exceedingly baroque and antique sort, plate and chain chased in a metal that resembled brass. It was the breastplate that really drew Stephen’s attention, depicting as it did a bearded human head adorned with horns. He’d seen a nearly identical engraving when he’d been at d’Ef, searching for clues to the nature of the Briar King. He’d thought at first that it was supposed to represent the king, who was usually depicted with horns. But the caption of the engraving had called it something quite different.

He realized with a chill that without really knowing it, he had taken several steps toward Fend. He stepped back quickly.

“Could you repeat that last bit?” Stephen asked. “About how you serve me now?”

“That’s how it is,” Fend said. “I’ve been trying to find you for months, to offer you my services.”

“You’ve been following me to find this mountain,” Stephen said. “Don’t let him fool you, Adhrekh. He hasn’t come here for any good purpose.”

“Only you could find the mountain,” Fend replied. “And it’s probably true that if I had managed to catch up with you earlier, I would have had a difficult time at best convincing you to come here. But this is where you were supposed to be, just as I was fated to accompany you and now to serve you. It really won’t be so confusing once you understand things.”

He stepped forward, drawing a nasty-looking dagger from his belt. Stephen flinched, but Fend offered it to him hilt first, then knelt at his feet.

“It was better this way” he said. “I am here; I’ve found the secret mountain and the armor of my station. Now I offer you my life.”

Stephen took the blade, wrapped in a miasma of absolute disbelief. Fend was evil; there was no doubt about that. What was he playing at here?

Aspar wouldn’t hesitate, would he? He’d plunge the knife straight in and try to figure out what the Sefry was up to later. And he owed Aspar so much, owed him at least the death of this man…

But he wasn’t Aspar, and even Aspar might not be able to strike down someone kneeling in front of him. Stephen liked to think even Aspar couldn’t do that.

So he dropped the knife on the ground.

“Explain this to me,” he said, gesturing first at Fend, then at the rest of the party. “Any of you. Tell me what is happening.”

“You are Kauron’s heir,” Zemlé said.

Startled, he whirled on her. “Did you know, then? Were you part of this trap?”

Her eyes widened in hurt. “No. I mean, I didn’t know the particulars. I knew that you were Kauron’s heir. I don’t know this man, Stephen. I’ve never met any of these people.”

Studying the group more closely, Stephen noticed another figure, standing beyond Fend. To his surprise, he realized it was a human in the robes of a monk.

“You!” he shouted. “Who are you?”

The man stepped forward.

“My name is Brother Ashern,” he said, bowing. “I am also at your service.”

“Are you Hierovasi or Revesturi?”

“I am neither,” he said. “I am pledged to the saint of the mountain. That appears to be you, Stephen Darige.”

“You’re all mad, aren’t you?”

“No,” Fend replied, “not mad. Determined, yes. And unfortunately, there isn’t time enough for the sort of discussion that will clear things up entirely. Praifec Hespero and his men are nearly here. It would be a mistake to let them enter the mountain. Even on the slopes, Hespero might be able to draw on the power of the seven fanes. If he enters the mountain, even the woorm might not be able to stop him.”

“Yet if Brother Stephen had time to walk the faneway—” Brother Ashern began, but Fend shook his head.

“That would take days. Hespero is approaching. I’ve seen him. Isn’t that right, Stephen?”

“He’s been following us,” Stephen admitted. He looked sharply at Fend. “But you and he were allies.”

“I once worked with him,” Fend admitted. “It was necessary to reach this present point. But our interests no longer coincide. He wants what is yours by right. You wended the horn that woke the Briar King. You found this place.”

“But I don’t even know what this place is!”

“Don’t you?” Fend asked. “Don’t you know who your first predecessor was? The first of your kind to come here?”

“Choron?”

“Choron? No, he was merely returning something to its proper place. It was Virgenya Dare found this place, Stephen. This is where she walked the faneway. This is where she discovered the magicks that destroyed the Skasloi. Would you give that kind of power to Hespero?”

“No,” Stephen said, his head whirling, “but I wouldn’t give it to you, either.”

“I’m not asking for it, you half-wit,” Fend snarled. “I’m only asking you take it for yourself.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the only way,” Fend replied. “The only way to save our world.”

“I still don’t understand what you expect me to do.”

“I am at your command,” Fend replied. “The woorm is at your command. These warriors are at your command. Simply tell us what to do.”

“You expect me to believe all this?” Stephen snapped, his frustration reaching a boil. “I was brought here against my will. Now you claim you’ll follow my orders? It doesn’t make sense!”

“We had to bring you here,” Adhrekh said. “I’m sorry we had to use coercion to get this far, but we cannot force you any farther. You are Choron’s heir. If you want to leave, leave. But if you do, this other one will take your place.”

“Are you saying you would obey Hespero?”

“It’s the geos of this place,” Fend said. “If you do not take up the scepter, someone else will. And when they do, we must follow them. You must decide.”

“If I agree, and if I tell you to destroy Hespero and his forces?”

“We will try,” Fend replied. “I think we will win. But as I said, his power waxes. Unlike you, he has dreamed of this place for decades.”

Stephen glanced at Zemlé, then turned his gaze to Adhrekh.

“I want to be alone with Sister Pale for a moment,” he said.

“Don’t take too long,” Fend warned. “A decision delayed may be a decision denied.”

“There’s something really wrong here,” he told Zemlé once they were alone.

“It’s certainly confusing,” she admitted.

“Confusing? No, it’s more than that. It’s madness. Do you know who Fend is? The things he’s done? Whatever else I know or don’t know about this situation, I know Fend can’t be trusted.”

“That may be so, but if they’re right about Hespero, maybe we should worry about the Sefry later.”

“You mean I should do what they’re asking? Order them to attack Hespero? I—No, this makes no sense. If Fend is eager for me to do something, that’s an excellent sign that I shouldn’t do it. Besides, Fend and Adhrekh seemed agreed on the matter of the praifec. Fends been riding the woorm, so I assume he has some control over it. Adhrekh and his people have been acting pretty freely. So why do they need me to tell them to do what they already want to do?”

“They said something about a geos—”

“Yes,” Stephen said, “I know. Yet it sounds wrong.”

“Maybe…” Zemlé began, then shook her head.

“What?” he said.

“You’re already—”

“What?”

She let out a long breath.

“It’s what you were saying, days ago. About how you keep getting off your path. You’ve been living for other people, Stephen. Even the way you talk about Aspar—you were his companion, never his equal. Could you—just consider this—could you possibly be afraid of the power you’re being offered? Could it be you don’t trust it because you can’t, because if you’re in command, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself if things go wrong?”

“That’s not fair,” Stephen said.

“Maybe it isn’t,” Zemlé said. “I haven’t known you that long. But I think, ah, I think I know some things about you. I think maybe I see some things about you far more clearly than you see them yourself.”

She reached out and gripped his hands in hers.

“Think, Stephen. Even if Fend is lying, even if Virgenya Dare was never here, still, what secrets might this place hold? What might you learn? I can feel the power here, so I know you must, as well. This is what you came for, and all you have to do is submit to leading.”

He closed his eyes.

Zemlé was certainly right about the terror he felt at the idea of taking command. How could he send anyone to fight and die? And yet what if his other uncertainties were, as she said, merely his way of trying to justify inaction?

After all, Fend and Adhrekh weren’t saying anything terribly different from what Fratrex Pell had said. Maybe it was true. Maybe he was the one who was supposed to do this.

He just hadn’t ever believed it. He had supposed all along that he would find Virgenya Dare’s journal and translate it, and if he found something of use, he would do what he had always done: take it to someone else, someone who would know how to use the information.

And yet, how had that worked out? Desmond Spendlove had used his translations to commit abominable acts. He had given Praifec Hespero the benefits of his research, yet more people had died horribly as a result. Now Hespero was coming to get him.

Maybe it really was time he stopped being the source of someone else’s power. Maybe it was time he took charge.

Zemlé was right. When the threat posed by Hespero had passed, then he would have the leisure to come to a full understanding of his situation. Then he could consider how to deal with Fend.

He took Zemlé by the shoulders and kissed her. She stiffened, and at first he thought she would push him away, but then she loosened up, returning his gesture with enthusiasm.

“Thank you,” he said.

He found the others waiting for him, more or less as he’d left them.

“If you’re serious about this,” Stephen said, “then let it be done. Stop Praifec Hespero—no matter what, don’t let him enter the mountain. Take him captive if you can, but do what you must.”

“Now, that’s the way it’s done,” Fend said. He bowed. “As you command, pathikh, so it shall be accomplished.”

Stephen felt his teeth clench, and he waited, fearing that he had unlocked some secret curse, walked straight into a trap. But nothing happened except that all the other Sefry bowed, too, which was certainly strange enough in its own way.

“Where is the woorm?” Stephen asked.

Fend smiled and made a long, low whistle, and behind him the waters parted. Two great green lamps rose above them all. A faint, appreciative murmur went up among the Sefry, who were clearly collectively insane.

Stephen stumbled back, trying to shield Zemlé with his body.

“Th-the poison!” he stammered.

“Has no effect, here,” Adhrekh assured him. “The sedos power in the mountain creates it harmless. And we have proof against it once we are outside.”

Stephen couldn’t tear his gaze off the thing, but after a long moment he realized they were still waiting for him to say something.

“Fine,” he said. “There’s the woorm. Where are your warriors? How many do you have?”

“There are twelve,” Adhrekh said.

That, finally, was enough to make Stephen look away from the monster to see if the fellow was joking.

“Twelve? But there are more than twelve of you here now.”

“Yes. But most of the Aitivar are forbidden to fight. Twelve will have to be enough. And we have the khriim with us, as well as the khruvk-huryu.”

“The what?” Stephen began, but he was too late. They were already in motion. Fend sang out again, and the great head dipped down so he and Ashem could mount. Adhrekh and eleven other warriors set off at a jog toward the far end of the cavern.

Suddenly Stephen was full of doubt again. Someone was plucking at his sleeve, and he turned to see who it was. It was a Sefry he hadn’t noticed before, one so ancient that even in torchlight Stephen fancied he could see the bones through his skin.

“Pardon, pathikh,” the man wisped, “but do you wish to watch? There is a higher vantage.”

“Yes,” Stephen said. “I think I’d like that a great deal.”

He followed the Sefry, growing uneasier by the moment. He felt like the man in the old story about the Damned Saint who was trapped in a bottle. The man got one wish, and then the saint would kill him. There were only two things he could not wish for: to be spared—or for the saint to die.

10 The Ships

“Anne?”

She found Austra shaking her gently.

“I’m fine,” Anne told her friend.

“What happened? You were talking to—it—and then you went still as a statue.”

“Nothing,” she lied. “I’ll tell you later. For the moment, I need you all to stay here and stay still. I have to do something else and must not be disturbed.”

“Very well, Anne.”

“Anne?” Alis whispered weakly.

“Yes, Lady Berrye?”

“Do not trust him.”

“Oh, I don’t,” Anne replied.

Then she settled on the floor, cross-legged. She closed her eyes and imagined she was at the Coven Saint Cer, in the womb of Mefitis. She focused on an invented middle distance and tried to picture a light there, slowing her breathing until it was deep and steady, until she could feel the slow pulse of the tide beneath Ynis and the deeper, secret motions of the earth.

Until she was calm and quiet.

As the light flickered into being, she had a moment when she felt as if she were spreading out, as if the stone and water of Ynis and Newland were becoming her flesh and blood. The Kept ached like a pustule, as did the thing in Eslen-of-Shadows, but that rushed suddenly away as the darkness shattered and she found herself in a forest clearing. Although the sun stood at noon in a brilliant clear sky, she cast no shadow, and she knew that this time she had finally come to the right place.

“Faiths!” she called.

For a moment she thought they might not appear, but then they stepped into the clearing: four women, masked and gowned as if for a costume ball, as similar and as dissimilar as sisters.

The first, on Anne’s right, wore a dress of deepest green and a sneering golden mask. Her hair fell in amber braids almost to her feet. Next to her stood a brunette in a mask of bone and a rust-red dress. The third Faith was as pale as the moon, with silver locks. Her gown and disguise were black. The final woman wore a white mask and a white dress, and her hair was darker than coal.

“You’ve all changed,” Anne noticed.

“As have the seasons, the winds, and you, my dear,” the first Faith said.

“Where have you been?” Anne asked. “I’ve tried to find you before.”

“This sort of visiting has become more difficult,” the bone-masked Faith said. “The thrones are appearing.”

“Yes, the thrones,” Anne said. “One of you once told me that you couldn’t see the future. You said that you were like chirgeons, that you could feel the sickness of the world and sense what was needed to make it well.”

“That’s true,” the black-gowned Faith replied.

“Very well,” Anne said. “What do you feel now? I’m asking for your advice.”

“This is a dangerous time for us to give you advice,” the green-gowned woman replied, spreading her hands. Her sleeves fell back, and Anne noticed something she hadn’t seen in any of her earlier encounters with the Faiths.

“What is that?” she asked.

The woman dropped her hands, but Anne stepped forward.

“It’s all right,” the white-clad sister said. “She had to know sometime.”

Anne caught at the Faith’s hand and felt an odd tingle of contact, as if she held something very slippery. But the arm came up obediently so she could see the mark tattooed there: a black crescent moon.

“I was attacked by a man wearing this mark,” she said. “A follower of yours, perhaps?”

The Faith turned to her sister. “You explain,” she said, “if you’re so certain she should know.”

A wry smile appeared below the black mask.

“Anne, I don’t think you appreciate how important it is for you to take the throne: the literal throne of Esien and the eldritch one that is beginning to appear. We have tried to explain to you, but at every turn you have jeopardized yourself by giving in to selfish desires.”

“I wanted to save my friends from certain death. How is that selfish?”

“You know how, yet you refuse to admit it. Your friends do not matter, Anne. The fate of the world does not rest with them. After everything you’ve experienced, Anne, you are still spoiled, still the girl who fought to keep her saddle in a place where she had no use for it simply because it was hers. A little girl who will not share her toys, much less give them up.

“You almost ruined everything at Dunmrogh. For right or wrong, we decided you should be parsed from your friends so you could see things more clearly. Yes, we have followers—”

“And bloody wonderful ones, too,” Anne snapped. “One of them tried to rape me.”

“Not one of ours,” the honey-haired faith said. Her voice, too, was honeyed. “Someone our servants hired without knowing enough about him. In any event—”

“In any event, you proved to me that I can’t trust you. I never really believed I could, but now I know for certain. You have my thanks for that.”

“Anne—”

“Yet I’ll give you one more chance. Do you understand my predicament? Can you see that much?”

“Yes,” the palest Faith answered.

“Well, then, if you’re so interested in my being queen, can you show me a way out of this that doesn’t involve freeing the Kept?”

“You can’t free him, Anne.”

“Really? And why is that, pray the saints?”

“It would be very bad.”

“That’s not an explanation.”

“He is a Skaslos, Anne.”

“Yes, and he’s promised to mend the law of death and die. Is there something wrong with that?”

“Yes.”

“Then what is it?”

But they didn’t answer.

“Very well,” Anne said. “If you won’t help me, I’ll do what I must.”

The golden-haired Faith stepped forward.

“Wait. The woman Alis. The two of you can escape.”

“Indeed? How?”

“She has walked the faneway of Spetura. If you augment her power with your own, you can pass through your enemies unseen.”

“That’s the best you can do? What about my friends?”

The women glanced at one another.

“Right,” Anne said. “They don’t matter.” She turned away.

“Farewell,” she said.

“Anne—”

“Farewell!”

With that, the glade shattered like colored glass, and the darkness returned.

“Well,” the Kept said. “You’ve compared the wares. Are you ready to deal?”

“Can you lift the glamour on the passage? The one that makes them unknowable to men?”

“Once I’m free, yes. But only once I’m free.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear it.”

“Swear that once free, you will do as you’ve promised: mend the law of death and then die.”

“I swear it by all that I am, by all that I ever was.”

“Then place your neck at my feet.”

There was a long pause, and then something heavy struck the floor near her. She raised her right foot and brought it down on something large, cold, and rough.

“Anne, what are you doing?” Alis asked in the blackness. She sounded frantic.

“Qexqaneh,” Anne said, lifting her voice. “I free you!”

“No!” Alis shrieked.

But of course, by then it was too late.

Their mounted foes were all dead, and now the remaining defenders of the outer waerd were swarming to protect the gap opened by Artwair s ballistae. The hole was almost near enough for Neil to touch when something struck his shoulder from above so hard that it drove him to his knees.

Neil looked up dully at a man standing over him, lifting his sword to deliver the death blow. Neil cut clumsily at the fellows knees. His weapon was too blunted from slaughter to slice through the metal joint, but the bones within snapped from the impact just as the strike from above glanced hard from Neil’s helm.

Head ringing, he rose grimly to his feet, put the tip of Battlehound on the man’s throat, and leaned.

He had no idea how long they had been fighting, but the early culling had been done. He and the eight men he had left standing were pitted against perhaps twenty warriors with sword and shield and perhaps another five defenders on the wall who had the proper angle to shoot at them. Reinforcements trying to reach them across the causeway were still being ground up by concentrated missile fire from the waerd’s engines.

He dropped down among the bodies and held his shield over his head, trying to catch his breath. The defenders were being smart and conservative, staying in the gap rather than rushing out of it.

Neil glanced around at his men. Most were doing as he was, trying for a rest despite the rain of death from above.

He reached to feel his shoulder, found an arrow jutting there, and broke it off. That sent a sharp, almost sweet jag of pain through his battle-numbed body.

He glanced at the young knight Sir Edhmon, who crouched only a kingsyard away. The lad was bloody head to toe, but he still had two arms and two legs. He didn’t look frightened anymore. In fact, he didn’t look much of anything except tired.

But when he glanced at Neil, he tried to grin. Then his expression changed, and his eyes focused elsewhere.

For a moment Neil feared a wound had caught up with him, for those who died often saw the Tier de Sem as they left the world.

But Edhmon wasn’t looking beyond the mortal sky; he was staring over Neil’s shoulder, off to sea.

Neil followed his gaze as a fresh rain of arrows fell. He was greeted by a wondrous sight.

Sails, hundreds of them. And though the distance was great, it was not too great to see the swan banner of Liery flying on the leading wave steeds.

Neil closed his eyes and lowered his head, praying to Saint Lier to give him the strength he needed. Then he lifted his eyes and felt a sort of thunder enter his voice.

“All right, lads,” he cried, swearing he heard not his own voice but his father’s exhorting the clan to battle at Hrungrete. “There’s Sir Fail and the fleet that’ll put the usurper to his heels if we do our jobs. If we don’t, those proud ships will be shattered, and their crews will go down to the draugs, because I know Fail well enough to tell you he’ll try to get through, no matter the odds, whether Thornrath is in Bloody Robert’s hands or no.

“It’s not far we’ve got to go. We’re eight against twenty. That’s hardly more than two apiece. Saint Neuden loves odds like that. We’re all going to die lads, today or some other. The only question is, will you die with your sword rusting in a sheath or swinging in your hand?”

With that he rose, bellowing the raven war cry of the MeqVrens, and the other seven leapt up with him, some shouting, some praying aloud to the battle saints. Sir Edhmon was silent, but his face held a grim joy that Neil recognized as his own.

They marshaled shoulder to shoulder and charged up the slope.

There was no great shock of contact this time; the shields bumped together, and the defenders pushed back, cutting over their rims. Neil waited for the blow, and when it hit the edge of his battle board, he hooked his sword arm up and over the weapon. Edhmon saw that and cut the arm Neil held thus trapped, half severing it.

“Hold the line steady!” Neil shouted. The warrior in him wanted to surge over the fallen man, deeper into the defenders, but with numbers against them, that would be foolish. Their line was their only defense.

One of the largest men Neil had ever seen pushed into the enemy force from behind. He was a head and a half taller than the rest of them, with a wild yellow mane and tattoos that marked him as a Weihand. He carried a sword longer than some men were tall, wielding it with both hands.

As Neil watched helplessly, the giant reached over his own men, grabbed Sir Call by the plume of his helmet, and yanked him through the shield wall, where the Weihand’s comrades hacked him to pieces.

With a roar of impotent rage, Neil slammed his shield into the man in front of him and beat at his head once, twice, thrice. The third time the shield dropped, and Battlehound slammed into his helm so hard that blood sprayed from his nose.

He pointed his sword at the giant and raised his voice above the din.

“Weihander! Thein athei was goth at mein piken!” he roared.

The result was remarkable: The giant’s face, already red, went perfectly livid. He charged toward Neil, disrupting the shield line he was supposed to be defending.

“What did you say?” Sir Edhmon shouted, panting heavily.

“I’ll tell you when you’re old enough,” Neil shot back. “But saints forgive me for insulting a woman I’ve never met.”

Before the Weihander could reach him, a new man filled the line in front of him and let his shield drop a little, perhaps as a ruse. Neil jerked his own shield up and then quickly chopped back down so that the pointed bottom of the board caught on the top of his foe’s guard and brought him down on one knee. Neil then clubbed the back of his head with Battlehound’s hilt.

Howling, the warrior charged into him, and they both went sliding down the rocky slope made by the fall of the waerd wall. Neil hit him again but couldn’t get the leverage he needed for a lethal blow; his arms and legs felt as if they’d been poured of lead.

He dropped his sword and felt for the dagger at his waist. He found it but discovered his foe had had the same idea a moment earlier as he felt the point of a dirk scrabble against his breastplate. Cursing, he fought his weapon free, but the moment had been enough; his breath went cold as steel slid through the joint on his side and between his ribs.

Choking back his scream, Neil plunged his knife under the back lip of the man’s helmet and into the base of his skull. His foe made a sound like a short laugh, jerked, then stopped moving.

Grunting, Neil pushed the limp corpse off him and tried to stand, but he hadn’t managed that when the giant reached him. He got his shield up in time to catch a blow from the fellow’s huge sword. It struck like thunder, and something in the shield cracked.

The giant cocked his weapon for another try, and Neil straightened and struck him under the chin with what remained of his shield. The Weihand stumbled back and fell.

Unfortunately, so did Neil.

Gasping, he threw off the board and retrieved Battlehound. A few kingsyards away, the Weihand rose to meet him.

Neil glanced back at the gap and saw Edhmon and four others still standing; the waerd defenders seemed to have all fallen. Sir Edhmon was starting down the slope toward the giant.

“No!” Neil shouted. “Stay together; find the siege engines. They’ll be lightly guarded. Stay together; make sure you get at least one of them! Then move on.”

The Weihand glanced at Edhmon and the others, then grinned fiercely at Neil.

“What’s your name?” he asked the giant.

His enemy paused. “Slautwulf Thvairheison.”

“Slautwulf, I apologize twice. Once for what I said about your mother, the second for killing you.”

“Just the first will do,” Slautwulf said, hefting his sword. “Silly bugger. You can hardly lift your weapon.”

Neil pressed his left hand over the hole in his side, but he knew there wasn’t any point; he couldn’t stop the blood.

Slautwulf charged then, his greatsword arcing out to cut Neil in half. Neil intended to outdistance the blow by a hairsbreadth, then rush in during the backswing, but he stumbled in the retreat, almost losing his footing entirely. The stroke missed by a decent margin, though, and the Weihand came again.

This time Neil narrowly avoided the stroke, then charged in as he’d planned. Slautwulf, however, anticipated that. Rather than trying to swing the blade again when he didn’t have time, he brought the hilt down on Neil’s helm. Neil let his legs go and collapsed, bending with the blow as much as he could, tumbling forward and thrusting Battlehound upward with all his might. He lay on his back with Slautwulf’s surprised face peering down at him.

“I only have to lift it once,” Neil pointed out.

“Jah,” Slautwulf managed, spitting blood as the greatsword dropped from his hands. The warrior hadn’t any armor beneath his battle skirt or undergarments, for that matter. Battlehound had pierced straight up through his groin, pelvis, intestines, and lungs.

Neil managed to roll away before the giant toppled. They lay there for a moment, staring at each other.

“Never worry,” Neil rasped in the Weihand’s tongue. “Saint Vothen loves you. I see his valkirja coming for you already.”

Slautwulf tried to nod. “I’ll see you in Valrohsn, then.”

“Not just yet,” Neil said. He put his fist into the ground and began to push himself up.

But an arrow knocked him back down, and all the wind out of him.

I’ll just lie here a moment, he thought, gather up my strength. He closed his eyes, listening to his ragged breath.

The ships, he remembered, and he wanted to see them again.

His eyes felt as if they had been sewn shut, but after what seemed like an unimaginable effort, he managed to open them, only to find himself still facing Slautwulf. Sucking a deep, painful breath, he managed to turn his head to face the sea.

Another arrow thumped into his breastplate.

Right, he thought. Stupid, Now they know you’re still alive.

But he didn’t have to move anymore. He could see the ships, the Lierish ships. Had he saved them? If Edhmon and the others managed to take down even one of the siege engines, Artwair could risk another charge, and enough would get through to take the waerd. With the elevation of the waerd to provide cover, they could take down the Thornrath gate in a day. They didn’t even have to occupy the whole wall, just enough of it to allow ships to enter through one of the great arches.

If…

His vision blurred until the sails and sea began to melt together. He tried to blink it away, but that only smudged things more. Gradually his vision focused once more, but instead of the sea he now saw a face, high-cheekboned, strong, pale as milk, with eyes so blue that they seemed blind. At first he thought it was the valkirja he’d lied to Slautwulf about seeing.

But then he knew who it was.

“Swanmway,” he murmured.

Brinna, she seemed to say. Remember? My real name is Brinna.

He remembered kissing her.

He knew he ought to be thinking about Fastia, but as the light faded, it was only Brinna’s face he could hold in his mind.

11 Free

Stephen shivered as he stepped onto the ledge. His vision plummeted through empty space for what seemed the better part of a league before it reached trees and stone. It couldn’t really be that far, because he could make out the figures of the praifec and his men approaching a sort of cul-de-sac in the mountain.

Still, he gripped Zemlé’s hand more tightly.

“I think I’ll be sick if I stay out here,” he said.

“You’ve stone beneath your feet,” she answered. “Just remember that. You won’t fall.”

“If a strong wind comes—”

“Not very likely,” she assured him.

“Look there,” said lone, the ancient Sefry who had led them to this high aerie. He pointed, flinching as his hand came in contact with the light. Fend and his warriors wouldn’t have any such worry; the westering sun had already filled the valley below with shadow.

Stephen leaned a little farther and saw what the old man was pointing at: a pool of deep blue water. And as if on cue, the woorm—khriim?—suddenly erupted from it.

“Saints,” Stephen prayed, “let me have done the right thing.”

Aspar froze for an instant, then grabbed for the pack on his back, cursing his luck. Naturally he would have his best shot at the thing when his bow was unstrung.

He fumbled out the watertight bag and pried at its fastening, but the wax made it tough to get the knot open, especially when he found himself glancing up at the woorm every few heartbeats. It grasped at the trees with its short forelimbs, dragging its tail from the pool, rearing almost as high as Aspar sat. A perfect target…

He heard the whir of an arrow and knew suddenly that the woorm wasn’t the only easy target. He heard it skip off the stone behind him. That meant the only place it could have come from was…

There.

Fend and his companion were in the monsters saddle, and the companion was taking aim at Aspar again. Cursing, he levered himself up just as a red-fletched missile struck his boot. He didn’t feel any pain, but the impact and his reaction sent him tumbling toward the edge. He threw his arms out to catch himself…

… and watched his bow, the string, and the black arrow fall toward the forest floor.

“Ah, sceat,” he snarled.

He spent exactly one heartbeat deciding what to do next. Then he leapt for the nearest treetop, some five kingsyards below him.

The presence of the Kept seemed to uncoil all about her, stretching vaster with each instant, and her bones hummed as if a saw were cutting through them.

Free.

The word struck her as if the Kept had somehow cast it into a lead ingot and hurled it at her. Her breath voided her lungs in a single painful gasp, and her heart felt as if it were liquid with terror. Confidence, command, certainty—all were swept aside, and she was a mouse in an open field, watching the hawk descend.

Free.

There was no joy in the word. No elation, no relief. It was the most vicious sound Anne had ever heard. Tears exploded from her eyes, and she trembled uncontrollably. She had doomed them all, ruined everything . .

Freeeee.

Something cracked like thunder, so loud that her shriek was lost in it.

And then… nothing.

He was gone.

It took what seemed a very long time to regain control of herself and her emotions. She heard the others weeping and knew she wasn’t alone, but that did nothing to ease the humiliation.

Finally, after an age, Austra had the presence of mind to relight the lamp.

Their eyes confirmed that the chamber was empty. It was much larger than she had imagined.

“What have you done?” Alis asked weakly. “Dear saints, what have you done?”

“W-what I thought was best,” Anne managed. “I had to do something.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” Cazio said. •

Anne started to try to explain, but her breath caught, and she suddenly felt like crying again.

“Wait,” she said. “Wait a moment, and I’ll try—”

Something suddenly hammered on the other side of the secret door.

“We’re found!” Austra gasped.

Cazio came to his feet and drew his weapon. He looked shaky, but it gave Anne heart. Screwing up her resolve, she determined to be strong.

“The Kept promised to kill Robert’s men,” she said.

“I’m thinking he lied to you about that,” Alis replied.

“We’ll see,” Anne replied.

“Someone give me a weapon,” Prince Cheiso said weakly but with determination. “I need a weapon.”

Cazio caught Anne’s eye, and she nodded. He proffered the Safnian a dagger. He glanced at the other three men, remembering vaguely there once had been four of them. What had happened to the fourth?

But after the soul bending he’d just experienced, nothing would surprise him.

“What are your names?” he asked the warriors.

“Sir Ansgar,” one of them said. Cazio could just make out a small beard. “These are my bondsmen, Preston Viccars and Cuelm MeqVorst.”

“The passage is narrow,” Cazio said. “We’ll take turns. I’m first; work out the rest of the order among you.”

“I pledged an oath to Sir Leafton that I would face her foes first,” Ansgar replied. “I hope you will allow me to honor that oath.”

Cazio started to object, but Ansgar, after all, was wearing armor. He was probably more suited, so to speak, to the situation.

“I yield the priority,” he said. “But please do not kill them all. Leave some for me.”

The man nodded, and Cazio stepped back, hoping his head would clear a bit more. At least their foe hadn’t made it through a few moments earlier, when they were all still weak. Maybe Robert’s men had been affected, as well.

He’d have to ask Anne exactly what had happened once this was over.

“Maybe they won’t make it through—” Austra began, but suddenly a wand of flickering light appeared in the stone, carving through it. An instant later, not only was the hidden doorway gone, so was a large lump of the passage.

“Saints,” Anne breathed. “He’s got a feysword.”

And indeed, Robert Dare stepped through the gap. Sir Ansgar started forward but paused when the usurper held up his hand.

“Wait a moment,” he said.

“Majesty?” Ansgar asked, glancing at Anne.

“Do as he says,” Anne said. “What do you want, Robert?”

Robert was shaking his head.

“Amazing. He’s gone, isn’t he? You let him go.”

“I did.”

“Why? What could he possibly have promised you? Rut I can guess, can’t I? He told you he would help you defeat me. And yet here I stand, unvanquished.”

“We haven’t begun fighting yet,” Cazio said.

“Did someone ask you to speak?” Robert snapped. “I’ve no idea who you are, but I’m certain neither Her Majesty nor I gave you leave to speak. Stab me if you wish, but please don’t sully my language with that ridiculous accent.”

“Cazio has my leave to speak,” Anne snapped, “and you do not, unless it is to beg forgiveness for your treachery.”

“My treachery? Dear Anne, you’ve just loosed the last Skasloi upon the world. Do you know how long he’s been planning this? He was the one who taught your mother to curse me, who made me what I have become and broke the law of death. You have fallen into his design and betrayed our entire race. Your treachery outshines mine as the sun does, ah, some small star.”

“You left me no choice,” Anne replied.

“Oh, well, if that’s the case—No, wait, you had at least two other choices. You might have told him no and surrendered to me. Or you might have fought me and died.”

“Or we could fight you and live,” Cazio said.

“You are becoming annoying,” Robert said, poking the shining blade toward him. “Surrender, Anne, and all of you will live, I promise you.”

Cazio would never know what Anne might have said to that, because Cheiso suddenly rushed forward, howling in anguish, and launched himself at Robert.

The usurper raised his eldritch weapon, but not quickly enough. Cheiso plunged his borrowed dagger into the prince’s chest. Robert promptly thumped him on the head with the hilt of his weapon, but the momentary truce had ended, and the flood had come.

Roberts men surged into the chamber. Cazio leapt toward the prince, but Ansgar was already there, swinging a blow that might have decapitated Robert had he not ducked it, then thrust his feysword into Ansgar’s belly. The weapon went through him as if he were butter, and Robert carved up and out his shoulder, splitting the knight’s upper body into two pieces.

“Now you,” Robert said, turning toward Cazio.

Rut it wasn’t the first time Cazio had faced a man who couldn’t die or, for that matter, a sword he couldn’t parry. As Robert cocked for the cut, he lunged long and stop-hit the prince in the wrist. Robert snarled and slashed at Acredo’s blade, but Cazio disengaged and stabbed him in the wrist a second time. Then, avoiding the next, even wilder blow, Cazio made a draw-cut to the top of Robert’s hand.

“Not much of a swordsman, are you?” he said, grinning, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Even with a sword like that.”

Robert rushed him then, but again Cazio avoided the beat at his blade and sidestepped the charge as one might a bull, leaving his blade in a high line for Robert to run into. The usurper did, the blade taking him in the forehead so that his skull stopped and his feet went flying out from under him. Cazio had the great pleasure of seeing the bastard land flat on his back.

“Zo dessrator, nip zo chiado,” he pointed out.

He had to say it quickly, however, for Robert’s men—and women—were swarming all around. He placed himself as best he could in front of Anne, engaging two, then three, and finally and impossibly four. He saw Preston and Cuelm fall, and then it was just he, standing between the three woman and the mob.

Worse, he saw Robert in the background, dabbing a cloth at his pierced head.

“Kill them all,” he heard Robert shout. “I’ve lost all patience with this business.”

Aspar threw his arms around the trunk of the fir and gritted his teeth as his body stripped the topmost branches. The scent of resin exploded in his nostrils as the treetop bent earthward under his weight, and for a moment he felt like the jungen who once had ridden saplings to the ground for fun.

This one wasn’t going all the way to the ground, though, so he let go before it could snap him back up. That left him falling another five kingsyards into shallow water that was still draining off from the woorm’s eruption.

He was lucky. The water didn’t hide a boulder or a stump, but it still felt as if a palm the size of a boy had slapped him with all its might.

The pain galvanized him rather than slowing him down, and he managed to slosh to his feet and take stock of the situation.

Aspar couldn’t see the woorm just now, but he could hear it crashing through the forest. He spun and ran toward the base of the cliff, hoping against hope that he would find his bow and the precious arrow. But though the water was receding, it left in its wake ajumbled mess of sticks, leaves, and needles. It could take him a bell—or ten—to find his gear.

He still didn’t see the woorm, but he drew his dirk and, reaching for his ax, encountered the horn where he’d tucked it in his belt. He plucked it out, staring at it for a moment.

Why not? He didn’t have much to lose at this point.

He raised the horn to his lips, took the deepest breath he could manage, and blew a shrill high note that he remembered very well from a day not long gone. Even after he ran out of breath, the peal hung in the air, reluctant to fade.

But fade it did, and the woorm was still coming.

He’d reached the cliff now, and fortune favored him a bit; his bow-stave was caught in the lowest branches of an everic. But he didn’t see the arrow anyplace, and the woorm—

—was suddenly turning away from him, moving out of the canyon.

But something was still coming, something man-sized and moving far too quickly for a man.

“Sceat,” he groaned. “Not a another one of these bloody—”

But the» the monk was on him, his sword a barely visible gleam in the dusk.

Stephen stiffened as the high clear note of a horn sounded in the evening air.

Zemlé noticed. “What is it?”

“I recognize that horn,” he said. “That’s the Briar King’s horn. The one I blew, the one that summoned him.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” Stephen replied absently.

Below, the khriim had been doing unusual things. Instead of moving straight toward the praifec and his men, it had gone off through the trees, in the direction of the cliffside. Just after the horn blew, however, it resumed its course, moving toward the approaching war band.

Stephen felt a tingle as a line of eight horsemen formed and charged the creature. He wondered if they stood a chance. A knight, a horse, armor, and barding at a dead gallop all concentrated on the steel tip of a lance was a formidable force.

He saw the Sefry warriors now, as well: twelve small figures approaching the praifec’s men at a trot. He caught an actinic glitter and realized that they had feyswords, like the knight he and his companions had fought in Dunmrogh.

The riders broke against the khriim like waves against a rock, except that a broken wave flowed back out to sea. The horsemen and their horses lay where they fell.

So much for that.

Stephen felt something move across his skin, and all the hairs on his arm stood up. He wasn’t cold, but he shivered.

“The horn…” he murmured.

“What’s that?” Zemlé gasped. She pointed, and Stephen saw a dark cloud approaching, or so it appeared to be at first glance.

But it wasn’t a cloud; rather, it was a collection of thousands of smaller things, flying close together.

“Birds,” he said.

They were of all sorts—corbies, martins, swans, hawks, curlews—and all were crying or singing, making whatever noise they made and raising the strangest cacophony Stephen had ever heard. When they reached the valley, they began spiraling down into the forest, forming an avian tornado.

The forest itself was behaving in an equally peculiar manner. An acre of it was moving; the trees were bending toward one another, knitting their limbs together. Stephen was reminded of the effect of the dreodh song on the tree they’d fled the slinders into, but if it was the same magic, it was far stronger.

“Saints,” Zemlé breathed.

“I don’t think the saints have much to do with this,” Stephen murmured as he watched the birds descend into the quickening forest and vanish as if swallowed.

A shape was forming now, a shape Stephen recognized, albeit larger than he had ever seen it before, maybe thirty kingsyards high.

Moments later, antlers spreading from his head, the Briar King tore his roots from the earth and began to stride purposefully toward the khriim.

Aspar waited until the last second and hurled his ax. The monk tried to turn, but that was the thing about moving fast: it made it harder to change direction. His attempt only spoiled the cut meant to take Aspar’s head off. It soughed over the holter’s head instead as the attacker hurled past.

Aspar turned to find the fellow already coming back, but he was delighted to see that his ax had found its mark and savaged the man’s weapon arm, the right one. The sword lay discarded on the waterlogged moss, and blood was pumping from his biceps.

He was a little slower, but not much. His left fist arced out in a blur; Aspar felt as if he were moving underwater as the knuckles connected with his chin. He smelled blood, and his head rang like a bell as he stumbled back.

The next blow dug into his flank and broke ribs.

With an inarticulate cry, Aspar threw his left arm around the man, stabbing at the monk’s kidney with his dirk, but the blade never made contact. Instead the fellow twisted oddly, and Aspar found himself somehow hurled into a tree.

His vision flashed black and red, but he knew he couldn’t stop moving, so he rolled to the side and tried to get to his feet, spitting out fragments of his teeth. He grabbed a sapling and used it to pull himself up.

It was only when he tried to put weight on his leg that he realized it was broken.

“Well, sceat,” he said.

The man retrieved his sword and was returning with it gripped in his left hand.

“My name is Ashern,” he said. “Brother Ashern. I’d like you to know there’s nothing personal in this. You fought well.”

Aspar lifted his dirk and shouted, hoping it would drown out the approaching hoofbeats, but Ashern heard them in the last instant and turned. Aspar launched himself, and everything went red.

Ogre reared from a full gallop, his hooves striking down at the monk. Brother Ashern’s swing cut right through the lower part of the great beast’s neck, and the churchman continued turning, deftly blocking Aspar’s desperate knife thrust.

Then Ogre’s hoof, still descending, hit him in the back of the head and crushed his skull.

Aspar fell, and Ogre collapsed just next to him, blood pumping from his neck in great gouts. Gasping, Aspar crawled over, thinking he might somehow close the bay’s wound, but when he saw it, he knew it was no use. Instead he cradled the stallion’s head in one arm and stroked his muzzle. Ogre seemed more puzzled than anything.

“Old boy.” Aspar sighed. “You never could stay out of a fight, could you?”

Red foam blew from Ogre’s nose as if he were trying to whinny an answer.

“Thank you, old friend,” Aspar said. “You rest now, yah? Just rest.”

He continued stroking Ogre until his breath stopped and his terrible eyes went dull.

And for a while after.

When Aspar finally lifted his head again, he saw, four kingsyards away, the case of the black arrow.

Nodding grimly to himself, he strung his bow and crawled until he found a branch the right size and shape to use as a crutch. His leg was pulsing with awful pain now, but he ignored it as best he could. He retrieved the arrow and began hobbling toward the sounds of combat.

12 Entirely Sword

Cazio lunged deep, driving Acredo through a swordsman’s eye. A blade cut at him from the right, but with his rapier busy killing, the only thing he had to deflect it with was his left arm. He got lucky and caught the flat, but the pain was terrific.

Withdrawing Acredo’s bloody tip, he parried another blow, retreating all the while, wondering how much farther back the chamber went. Robert’s men were taking advantage of the space to spread out, forcing Cazio to retreat more quickly or be surrounded. He reckoned he would kill one, maybe two more of them before one of their cleavers cut off enough of him to end the fight. After that, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do.

No. He couldn’t let them have Austra or Anne. He couldn’t think that way.

He deepened and slowed his breathing, willed the muscles he wasn’t using to relax.

Z’Acatto had spoken once or twice of something called chiado sivo, or “entirely sword,” a state of oneness that a true dessrator could enter in which he might accomplish fantastic things. There had been times when Cazio had felt he was almost in that state. He had to let go of winning and losing, of life and death, of fear, and become nothing but motion.

Parry, attack, parry, disengage, breathe, feel the sword as part of his arm, his spine, his heart, his mind…

They can’t hurt me, he thought. There’s nothing here to hurt, just a sword.

And for long, beautiful moment he had it. Perfection. Every move correct, every motion the best. Two more men went down, then another two, and he wasn’t retreating anymore. He controlled the rhythm, the footwork, the floor itself.

For a moment. But recognizing that moment, he lost the detachment he needed to prolong it, and his assault faltered as two men arrived to replace every one he put down. He retreated again, ever more desperate as Robert’s forces began to encircle him.

He realized he’d lost track of the women and hoped against hope that his instant of chiado sivo had given them a chance to escape.

Even you might have been proud of me, z’Acatto, he thought as the corner of his eye warned him of a new fighter, flanking him.

No, not flanking him, flanking Robert’s men.

And not just one man but a horde.

The newcomers were unarmored but fighting with long, wicked knives and firing short, powerful-looking bows. Cazio’s antagonists were all down within a few heartbeats, leaving him gasping, still on guard, wondering if he would be next. Just because they were Robert’s enemies, that didn’t make them Anne’s friends.

But those who were closest merely smiled at him, nodded, and finished their butchery. He reckoned there were at least fifty of them.

He also realized belatedly that they weren’t human but Sefry.

The folk of Gobelin Court had finally weighed in on a side, it seemed.

Aspar paused, gaping, wondering how long it had been since anyone had witnessed anything remotely like what he was seeing. He’d thought he was numb, but now he understood he wasn’t so much numb as insane.

He could see them because they had flattened the forest for half a league in every direction. The Briar King was a hulking mass roughly sembling human shape, albeit with the antlers of a buck, but all and all he was less human in appearance than he had been before.

The apparition was locked in combat with the woorm, which coiled about him like a blacksnake around a mouse. The king, in turn, had both titanic hands gripped about the monster’s neck.

As Aspar watched, a stream of green venom spewed from the great serpent’s mouth, not just vapor but a viscous liquor that spattered upon the forest lord and began to smoke, burning great holes in him. The stuff of the king shifted to fill those gaps.

He didn’t see Fend. The saddle was empty, and a quick scan of the forest showed nothing, though a little farther off a battle was raging between the praifecs men and some other force. He couldn’t make out much of that.

A rush of pain and fever from his leg reminded Aspar that he might lose consciousness at any time. If he had anything to do here, he’d better do it now.

And he certainly had something to do. He wasn’t going to think about it anymore; there was no riddle here.

He knew which side he was on.

He carefully opened the case and brought forth the black arrow. Its head glittered like the heart of a lightning stroke.

The praifec had said the arrow could be used seven times. It had been used five times already when Aspar had received it. He’d shot it once to kill an utin and save Winna’s life.

That left one.

He set the shaft to his string and sighted, feeling the wind, watching the curl of vapors around the combatants, willing his shaking muscles to quell so his mind could tell them what to do.

One deep breath, two, three, and then he felt the shot and released the string. He watched the flash of light grow tiny and vanish at the base of the woorm’s skull.

Aspar caught himself holding his breath.

He didn’t have long to wait. The woorm shrilled an awful stone-shattering scream, and its body twisted as it arched back, vomiting venom. The Briar King grabbed it by the tail and unwound it and hurled it into the forest. Part of the king’s arm tore loose and went with the monster, and he staggered as great chunks of his body sloughed away. He gripped a tree to steady himself but continued to melt.

“Grim,” Aspar muttered, and closed his eyes. He sank down next to the spruce he’d used for support, watching the great coils of the woorm heave up into sight and subside behind the trees. With each heartbeat the sounds of its thrashing diminished.

He couldn’t see the Briar King anymore at all.

Exhaustion flooded through him, and relief. That, at least, was done.

He knew he ought to try to set the bone in his leg, but he’d have to rest first. He drew out his water flask and had a drink. His food was back with Ogre’s tack, but he didn’t have much of an appetite, anyway. Still, he probably needed to eat…

His head snapped up, and he realized he’d dozed off.

The Briar King was watching him.

He was only about twice the size of a man now, and his face was almost human, albeit covered in light brown fur. His leaf-green eyes were alert, and Aspar thought he saw the faintest of smiles on the forest lord’s lips.

“I guess I did the right thing, yah?” Aspar said.

He had never heard the Briar King speak, and he didn’t now. But the creature stepped closer, and suddenly Aspar felt bathed in life. He smelled oak, apple blossoms, the salt of the sea, the musk of a rutting elk. He felt larger, as if the land were his skin and the trees were the hairs upon it, and it filled him with a joy he had never quite known, except perhaps when he was young, running through the forest naked, climbing oaks for the sheer love of them.

“I never knew—” he began.

And with the suddenness of a bone snapping, it all ended. The bliss went out of him like blood from a severed vein as the Briar King’s eyes grew wide and his mouth opened in a soundless scream.

There, on his breast, something glittered like the heart of a lightning bolt…

The king locked eyes with him, and Aspar felt something prickle through his body. Then the form that stood before him simply fell apart, collapsing into a pile of leaves and dead birds.

Aspar’s chest heaved as he tried to draw a breath, but the scent of autumn choked him, and he clapped his hands to his ears, trying to shut out the deep keening that shuddered through the earth and trees as with a single voice the wild things of the world understood that their sovereign was gone.

Like lightning flashing before him, he saw forests crumbling into dust, great grassy plains putrefying, leagues of bones bleaching beneath a demon sun.

“No,” he gasped, finally managing to breathe.

“Oh, I think yes,” a familiar voice countered.

A few kingsyards behind where the Briar King had stood was Fend, with a bow in one hand and an evil grin on his lips. He was dressed in weird armor, but the helm was off. His mouth was smeared with dark blood, and he had a light in his eyes that was crazy even for him.

Aspar fumbled for his dirk; he didn’t have his ax or any more arrows.

“Well,” Fend said, “that’s that. You killed my woorm, but that’s not all bad. You know what happens when you drink the fresh blood of a woorm?”

“Why don’t you tell me, you piece of sceat.”

“Come, Aspar,” Fend said. “Don’t be so angry. I’m grateful to you. I was supposed to drink the blood, you know. The problem was how to get to it once the beast had served its purpose. And you solved that problem rather neatly. Even better, you gave me the one thing I needed to slay His Majesty Stickerweed.”

“No,” Aspar said. “The arrow could only be used seven times.”

Fend waved a finger.

“Tsk. It’s not like you to believe in the phay stories, Aspar. Who told you it could only be used seven times? Our old friend the praifec? Tell me, if someone could make a weapon this strong, why would they limit its use?”

He walked over to the pile of rot that was all that remained of the Briar King and lifted the arrow out.

“No,” he said. “This will be useful for some time to come, I think. You still have the case, I imagine. Ah, there it is.”

“Yah. Come and get it.”

“Killed Ashern, did you? These Mamres monks are always a little too confident in their speed and strength. Makes them forget that skill—and in your case simple hardheadedness—can go quite a long way.”

He fitted the arrow to his string.

“I shouldn’t think this will hurt much, considering,” Fend said. “That’s fine with me. You took my eye, but I consider the debt paid now. I’m sorry you can’t die fighting, but it would take too long for you to heal, and you’d continue to be a nuisance. But I can let you stand, if you’d like, so you can die on your feet at least.”

Aspar stared at him for a moment, then propped his makeshift crutch under his arm and pushed himself painfully up.

“Just tell me one thing,” he said, “before you kill me. Why Qerla?”

Fend grinned. “Really? Not ‘Why kill the Briar King’ or even ‘What’s this all about’? You’re still on the Qerla thing? But that was so long ago.”

“That’s it. That’s all I want to know.”

“I didn’t want to kill her, you know,” Fend said. “She was a friend of mine once. But I thought—we thought—she was going to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“The big Sefry secret, you dolt.”

“What the sceat are you talking about?”

Fend laughed. “Living with us all those years, and you never guessed? I suppose that’s fair. Even some of the Sefry don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“What we are,” Fend said. “We’re Skasloi, Aspar. We’re what remains of the Skasloi.”

“But—”

“Ah, no, sorry. I’ve answered your question. That’s all you get.”

He raised the bow, and Aspar tensed himself for one last try. The dirk wasn’t balanced for throwing, but—

Did he hear hoofbeats? He had a sudden image of Ogre come back from the dead and nearly laughed.

Fend’s eyes narrowed, then widened in shock as an arrow struck his breastplate, followed quickly by another in the knee joint. Aspar turned to find there was indeed a horse thundering up behind him, but it wasn’t Ogre; it was a dappled gray he’d never seen before.

The rider he recognized by her pale skin, black bangs, and almond violet eyes. She had a bow and shot it again, this time at Fend’s head. But he twisted aside, and the arrow missed. The horse thuttered to a stop, and she leapt off, slinging her bow on her shoulder.

“Come on,” she commanded. “Mount.”

“Fend—”

“No, look,” she said. “There’s more. Get on!”

She had to swing the broken leg over for him; the pain was so acute, he nearly fainted. But he saw what she meant: Several armored figures were coming to Fend’s aid. Fend himself was rising, fitting the deadly arrow to his string.

Leshya whirled her mount, and they were running. Aspar meant to take her bow and have a parting shot at Fend, but a hard bounce struck pain through him like a sledgehammer, and he sank away from the world.

Anne blinked in astonishment as the Sefry went down on their knees before her.

“I thought Mother Uun said that Sefry wouldn’t fight,” Austra said.

Anne nodded and squeezed her friend’s hand.

“Which one of you leads?” she asked.

A black-eyed fellow with pale yellow hair and silvery mail dipped his head.

“I am captain of this troop, Your Majesty.”

“What is your name, sir?”

“Cauth Versial, Highness,” he replied.

“Rise, Cauth Versial,” Anne said.

He did so.

“Did Mother Uun send you?” she asked at last.

“She told us what the Kept promised you.”

“But that was only moments ago,” Anne protested. “How could she know? How could you arrive so quickly?”

“We were waiting, Majesty. Mother Uun foresaw this possibility.”

“I don’t understand,” Anne said. “Mother Uun said she was one of his guardians; she helped keep him imprisoned. Why should he go to her?”

“These are very ancient matters, Your Majesty,” Cauth said, “and I do not understand them completely. Only that it was part of our geos that if he were ever freed, he could command us in one thing.”

“And he commanded you to save my life.”

“To protect you and serve you, Majesty.”

“Then your service isn’t over?”

“No, Majesty. It is not. Not until you release us or we die.”

“How many of you are there?”

“One hundred fifty, Majesty.”

“A hundred and—Do you know a way into the castle from here?”

“Yes, Majesty,” he said, pointing. She turned and saw that she had practically backed against a massive metal portal.

“He’s right,” Alis said. “Prince Robert may have filled in every other passage, but he would not cut himself off from the Kept. Yet a key is needed.”

Even as she said it, the door opened soundlessly, revealing an ancient Sefry so frail and thin that Anne was almost afraid that he was another sort of walking dead. His eyes stared blankly into nothing.

“Majesty,” the old man said. “You have come at last. Welcome.”

Alis made a sputtering sound. “You had your tongue cut out,” she said. “And your eardrums burst.”

The aged Sefry smiled. “I healed.”

“You don’t seem very upset that your charge has escaped,” Anne said.

“It was fated,” the Keeper replied. “I felt him go and came here.”

“Command us, Majesty,” Cauth said.

Anne took a deep breath. “Do you think you have enough men to take the castle from within?”

“With the element of surprise, I should think so.”

“Very well. Cazio, you’re with me. Austra, take ten of these Sefry for a bodyguard. The Kept said he lifted the glamour on the passages. Lets find out. Find Sir Leafton. Have him drain the lower passages and send runners out to bring reinforcements from the army. The rest of you, come with me. No, wait. My uncle Robert was with these men. Find him first and bring him to me.”

But Robert, unremarkably, was nowhere to be found.

13 Muriele’s Watch

With Alis gone, Muriele felt blind to the outside world. She had her two windows, of course, and occasionally the guards would let something drop when they thought she was out of earshot, but she rarely trusted that, since anything she “overheard” from them might be part of one of Robert’s games.

But something was happening outside, of that she was certain. Through her southern-facing window, she could see a good bit of the city, and for days something had been happening near the Fastness, in or near the Sefry quarter. Fires were burning, and she had glimpses of armored men and siege engines moving along the streets leading there.

Was it a revolt of some sort? Or had Robert become even more distempered and decided for some reason to slaughter the Sefry?

There was a third possibility, but it was one she hardly dared think about. The Crepling passage was supposed to have an outlet in Gobelin Court. Had Sir Fail returned? But no, he wouldn’t be able to remember the passage. Unless Alis—

But Alis was dead. Wasn’t she?

On that question hung Muriele’s most slender hope. But locked in a tower as she was, she had plenty of time to entertain even the most forlorn possibilities.

The girl’s last words had been in Lierish, Muriele’s native tongue. I sleep. I sleep. I’ll find you.

Alis was coven-trained and well versed in the virtues of a thousand venoms. Might she somehow have only appeared to be dead?

No. That was an inane hope.

She conjured other scenarios. Perhaps Praifec Hespero had come to the conclusion that the Sefry were heretics in need of hanging and the Sefry weren’t surrendering quietly. That certainly made sense.

Perhaps something had gone wrong with Robert’s Hansan alliance and Hansa had somehow managed to gain a foothold in Eslen.

But no, that wasn’t likely at all. Her marriage gown had been fitted, and the other preparations for her wedding seemed to be moving along smoothly.

Her east-facing window, while providing a marvelous view of the confluence of the Dew and Warlock rivers, did not tell her much at all. She very much wished she could see west toward Thornrath or north to the King’s Poel. If there was a battle, that was where it would be.

She entertained herself as best she could and waited for something to happen, because everything was out of her hands now.

She found she liked that in a way. The only thing that really grieved her was that she didn’t know what had become of Anne. The shade of Erren had assured her that her youngest daughter was still alive, but that had been months ago now. Had Neil MeqVren found her?

Even if he had, he wouldn’t—couldn’t—bring her here. So it was best to pretend that Anne was safe, protected, anonymous in some far country.

On what she reckoned to be the fifteenth day of Etramen, Muriele awoke to the clash of arms. Sometimes the wind would carry the sounds of steel from the city and the voices of men shouting. But this seemed nearer, perhaps in the inner keep itself.

She went to her window and craned her neck to look down, but since the Wolfcoat Tower was set in the southern wall of the keep, she had very little view of the inner courtyard. She could hear better with her head in the air, however, and she was more certain than ever that there was fighting below.

A movement farther toward the horizon caught her attention. Beyond the walls of the city she could see a bit of Eslen-of-Shadows, the necropolis where her ancestors slept, and beyond that the muddy, shallow southern channel of the Warlock. At first she wondered if a flock of swans had settled on the rinns, but then the perspective of distance worked itself out, and she saw that they were boats: galleys and canal boats, mostly. But she couldn’t see any standards or sign that let her recognize their origin.

When the guard brought her meal, he looked frightened.

“What is it?” she asked him. “What’s happening?”

“It’s nothing, Queen Mother,” he said.

“It’s been quite a while since you called me that,” she observed.

“Auy,” he replied. He started to say something else but shook his head and closed the door.

A brief moment later it opened again. It was the same fellow.

“Don’t eat it,” he said, his voice pitched very low. “His Majesty said if ever… just don’t eat it, please, Your Highness.”

He closed and locked the door again. She set the food aside.

Time passed, and the tumult quieted, then renewed itself farther down, in the outer keep. She had a very thin view of the Honot Yard before the great gate of the outer keep, and she made out sun glinting off armor there, along with dark streams of arrows. Shouts of valor and shrieks of agony filled the air at times, and she prayed to the saints that no one she loved was dying.

It was nearly dark when she heard the ring of steel in the tower itself. She composed herself in her armchair and waited, with no idea what to expect, thinking that at least it was something, something Robert hadn’t planned. Even if that meant they were invaded by slaughtering hordes of Weihands, that was better than whatever her brother-in-law would think of next.

She winced as the fighting came to her door and a piteous howl cut through the heavy beams and stone walls. She heard the familiar scrape of a key in the lock.

The door swung wide, and the bloody body of the guard who’d warned her not to eat the food flopped onto the threshold. He blinked at her and tried to speak, but his mouth was pouring blood.

Just behind him came a man she did not recognize. He had a distinctly southern look to him, enhanced by the weapon he carried, the sort she had known Vitellians to wield. His dark regard picked quickly through the spare chamber and returned to focus on her.

“You are alone?” he asked.

“I am. Who are you?”

Before he could answer, another face appeared behind him.

In the first few heartbeats, all Muriele saw was the regal bearing and stern gaze. Saint Fendve the War Witch incarnate.

It was only as the woman lifted off her helm that Muriele recognized her daughter. Her skin was dark and weather-changed, and her hair fell only as far as her throat. She wore men’s clothes and even a small breastplate, and one cheek bore an angry-looking bruise. She looked wonderful and terrible, and Muriele could only wonder what had eaten her daughter and taken her shape.

“Leave us for a moment, Cazio,” Anne said quietly to the man.

The swordsman nodded and vanished back through the doorway.

When he was gone, Anne’s features softened, and she rushed forward, meeting Muriele halfway as she rose.

“Mother,” she managed to choke out, and then she dissolved into tears as they wrapped their arms around each other. Muriele felt strange, almost too stunned to react.

“I’m sorry,” Anne gasped. “Those things I said to you. I was afraid they would be the last.” She broke into deeper sobs, and months of isolation suddenly distilled in Muriele. Endless days of suppressed hope collapsed.

“Anne.” She sighed. “It’s you. It’s you.”

And then she was crying with her daughter, and there was too much to say, and not enough. But there would be time, wouldn’t there?

Against all odds, they had time.

Leoff wiped tears from his eyes and tried to compose himself; it was nearly noon.

So much depended on such little things. Did Robert’s executioner have any mercy in him at all? Probably not, and in that case, his night’s work was in vain. Even if Ambrias murderer took a small pity on him, so many other things had to go right. He had to slip the wax into Mery’s ears unseen and not have her protest or wonder aloud why he had done it. He had to be allowed to stand near Areana so he could cover her ears at the crucial moment.

Even if he managed all of that, he wasn’t sure it would work. Some sound would enter their heads regardless of how well he prepared. It might be too much.

It suddenly occurred to him that if he could find a needle, he might be able to pierce Areanas eardrums in time.

But it was beyond thinking about now, for he heard boots thumping in the hall.

A moment later his door opened, and even the poor plan he had arranged fell into disarray.

For there stood Robert Dare.

The prince smiled and drifted into the room, glancing around it with a sort of mock interest. For a single, beautiful moment, Leoff thought the usurper had countermanded the executioner, but then Mery and Areana were escorted in by the killer, four guards, and Lord Respell.

“Well,” Robert said, shuffling through the papers on Leoff’s desk, “you do seem to have been busy.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Robert looked surprised. “Oh, it’s Majesty now, is it? What brings that on?” He glanced over at Mery and Areana.

“Oh, right,” he said, tapping his head with his index finger.

“Please, Your Majesty.”

“Oh, please yourself, you simpering dog,” Robert snapped. “I am in no mood to grant clemency. Noose is my man. How would he feel if I gave him authority to make decisions and just snatched it away from him, eh? Well, that’s not how you breed loyalty, is it?”

“Let it be just me instead,” Leoff said.

“No,” Robert said. “You’ve work to do for me, remember? Unless you’ve finished.”

“I have done a great deal, but I am not finished yet,” Leoff said. “And I still need helpers.”

“You will have to make do with half the staff,” Robert said. “But here, before you make your little decision, why not perform some small piece of this for me. I’m told the three of you make very pretty music together. Wouldn’t you like to do that one more time?”

Leoff blinked. “Of course, Sire. And perhaps if it pleases you—”

“If it pleases me, then I shall take no further steps in disciplining you,” Robert snapped.

Leoff nodded, trying to make his face into a mask.

“Very well,” he said. “Mery, Areana, come here, please.”

They came. Mery seemed puzzled but not particularly concerned. Areana was white and trembling.

“Leoff,” she whispered.

Leoff pulled up the piece. “Let me add a few quick notes,” he said. “I think Your Majesty will enjoy this best if you’ll just give me a few seconds to confer—”

“Yes, yes, go ahead.” Robert sighed. He walked over to the window and peered out, his brow furrowed.

“They’ll be here soon,” Lord Respell said uneasily.

“Shut up,” Robert said. “Or I shall have Noose remove your tongue.”

Leoff wondered what the exchange was about, but he couldn’t spend any time on it. Instead his mind was racing furiously through the darkling chords.

“Mery,” he whispered. “You must play this with expression. You won’t like it, but you must. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Leoff,” she replied primly.

“Areana, you’ll sing this top line. Use the words from Sa Luth af Erpoel.” He dropped his voice even lower. “Here—this is very important.”

He penciled in new notes on the last three measures. “You must both hum these beneath your breath. Ontro Vobo, yes?”

Areana’s eyes widened, and he saw her swallow hard, but she nodded.

“All right, then,” he said. “Shall we? Mery, if you would begin.”

“Yes, go on,” Robert said. He didn’t turn from the window.

Mery placed her fingers on the keyboard, stretching to complete the awkward chord, and pressed. The notes throbbed in the air, a little menacing but mostly intriguing, illicit, the thrill of doing something a bit wicked made sound.

Mery’s hands grew more sure, and Areana joined, singing words that had absolutely nothing to do with the music but that rang out with a stark sensuality that stirred sudden shameful desire in Leoff, so that as he added his own voice, he found himself helplessly imagining the things he would do to her, the ways he could bring pleasure and pain to her lithe body.

The song was a death spell, but it had to be built. Playing the last chord wouldn’t do anything unless the listener had been drawn to the edge of the precipice.

Until now, the mode had been a modified form of the sixth mode, but now Mery took them with a frantic run of notes into the seventh, and lust subtly became madness. He heard Robert laugh out loud, and a look around the room at open mouths or tight grins told Leoff that they were all insane with him.

Even Areana’s eyes sparkled feverishly, and Mery was gasping for breath as it all quickened into a lumbering whervel and then softened, shifting into the mode for which Leoff had no name, spreading out into broad chords.

The world seemed to sag underfoot, but Areana’s voice was black joy. Fear was gone, and all that remained was the longing for night’s infinite embrace, for the touch of decay, that most patient, inevitable, and thorough lover. He felt his bones straining to slough free of his flesh and then rot like tissue.

The end was coming, but he no longer wanted to sing the extra notes. Why should he? What could be better than this? An end to pain and striving… rest forever…

Distantly, he felt a hand grip his, and Areana leaned close, no longer singing. But she hummed in his ear.

He drew a painful, horrible breath and realized he hadn’t been breathing. Shaking his head, he took up the hastily written counterpoint, though it seemed to cut through his brain like an ax. He doubled over, still humming, trying to cover his ears, but his hands were like stones, falling to the floor, and black spots filled his vision. His heart beat weirdly, stopped for a long moment, then thumped as if it would explode.

He found his face was pressed against the stone. Areana had collapsed beside him, and in a fevered panic he reached for her, fearing her dead. But no, she was breathing.

“Mery.”

The girl was slumped at the hammarharp, eyes open and blank, spittle on her chin. Her fingers were still on the keys, jerking madly but not pressing to produce sound.

Everyone else in the room lay on the floor, unmoving.

Except for Robert, who still stood gazing out the window, stroking his beard.

Forcing his legs to work, Leoff crawled to Mery and pulled her down into his arms. Areàna was trying to sit up, and Leoff drew the three of them together, where they huddled, trembling.

Mery had started a sort of hiccupping, and Leoff tried to stroke her hair with the club of his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m sorry, Mery.”

“Well,” Robert said, turning at last. “Very pretty, just as you promised.” He strode over to the man he’d called Noose, who lay facedown in a pool of his own vomit. He kicked him in the ribs, hard. Then he knelt, touched his hand to the assassin’s neck, and moved on to Lord Respell, who had fallen against the wall in a sitting position. Respell’s eyes were still open, frozen in a look of adoration. Robert drew a knife and cut the arteries in Respell’s neck. A bit of blood drooled out, but it was clear no heart was pumping.

“Very good,” Robert murmured, “All quite dead. Very good.” He strode over to the hammarharp, took the score, and began rolling it up.

“This was just what I wanted,” he said. “I commend you on a job well done.”

“You knew?”

“I thought that old book might be useful,” Robert confided with an awful false joviality. “Not to me, but I had it in mind that you might be able to unravel its secrets, if properly motivated.”

“You’re horrible,” Areana managed to croak.

“Horrible?” Robert sniffed. “Is that the best you can do?”

He slipped the manuscrift into an oiled leather scroll case.

Leoff thought he heard a faint commotion coming from the door. Groaning, he forced himself to his feet and scooped up Mery.

“Run,” he wheezed.

“Oh, come now,” Robert began, but Leoff was concentrating on fighting the vertigo, on staying balanced on his legs. Areana was right behind him.

They broke out into the hall and stumbled toward the stairs.

“This is really annoying,” Robert called from behind.

Leoff tripped on the stair, but Areana caught him. His lungs hurt, he needed to stop, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t…

Why hadn’t Robert died? Had he plugged his ears? Leoff hadn’t noticed anything.

He watched his feet as if they weren’t part of him because they didn’t feel like they were. He knew they were moving too slowly, as in a Black Mary. He remembered Robert’s dagger, wet with blood, couldn’t look back for fear of seeing it cut Areana’s beautiful, soft throat…

Then suddenly they were face to face with men in armor.

“No!” Areana cried, and lurched forward, but the men caught her—and then Leoff and Mery—in strong arms.

It was then that Leoff noticed the woman who was with them, the same woman who had come to free him from his cell.

“You are safe,” she said. “Robert is still up there?”

“Yes,” he gasped.

“With how many men?”

“It’s just him.”

She nodded, then spoke to one of the soldiers.

“Take them back to Eslen. Make them comfortable and see that a leic tends them immediately. Her Majesty will want the best for them.”

In a daze, no longer able to resist even if he wanted to, Leoff allowed himself to be carried outside to where many more men and several wains waited.

On the wagon, he let his muscles unfurl and lay back in the warm sun. Mery had begun to cry, which he hoped was a good sign.

“I never gave up hope,” Areana told him. “I remembered what you said.”

“You saved us,” Leoff replied. “You saved me.”

They rested against each other, with Mery between them. The sun on Leoff’s skin felt clean and real, a thing apart from horror.

Except…

“I’ve given Robert something terrible,” he murmured. “An awful weapon.”

“You’ll fix it,” Mery whispered, sounding tired but firm.

“Mery? Are you all right?”

“You’ll fix it,” she repeated. Then she fell asleep.

It was silly, the faith of a six-year-old, but it made Leoff feel better. And long before they reached Eslen, he’d joined Mery in slumber.