The Blood Knight

Epilogue Best Work

Neil awoke to clatter and fuss. He was in an airy chamber, lying on good linen, and he felt terrible.

A glance around showed him that he was surrounded by the wounded. He tried to sit up and then thought better of it. Instead he lay there, trying to piece together his memories.

The battle for the waerd; he remembered that pretty well, but everything after was spotty. He thought he’d been on a boat at one point and had heard a familiar voice. Then he remembered leafless trees covered in black ravens, but that might have been a dream.

And then—certainly this was a dream—a very long run down a dark tunnel, crowded with people; some he knew, some he didn’t. Of those he knew, some were dead, some still living.

He found he’d closed his eyes again and opened them to see a young lady in a wimple offering him water. He took it, amazed at how good it tasted. The sunlight coming through the window reminded him of pollen, of being very young, lying in the clover watching the bees work, before he had ever lifted a war board or seen a man die.

“What’s happened?” he asked the woman.

“What do you mean?” she replied.

“Is this Eslen?”

“Yes,” she said. “You’re in the Liexguildhouse. You’re very lucky. Saint Dun had you, but he let you return to us.”

She beamed at him, then lifted a finger.

“A moment. I’ve been asked to report when you’re awake.”

She scurried off before he could ask another question.

But only moments later, a shadow fell across him and drew his eyes up.

“Your Majesty,” he murmured, trying again to rise.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t stir. I’ve been waiting for you to wake, and I’d hate to kill you with my presence. Oh, and you might as well get used to calling me Queen Mother.”

“As you wish, Queen Mother,” he replied. “You look well.”

“You’ve looked better,” Muriele allowed. “But I’m told you really ought to be dead. If the Church still held any sway in this city, you might be tried for shinecraft.”

Neil blinked. She had meant it as a joke, of course, but he suddenly recalled his vision of Brinna’s face. Brinna, who had saved his life once, somehow had used a part of her own life to do it. Could she have done it again, from afar? Did he owe her his life again?

“Sir Neil?” Muriele asked.

He shook his head.

“Nothing,” he replied. “A wild fancy.” His eyes felt tired, but he forced them open.

“You’ve no idea how happy I am you’re alive,” Neil told her.

“I’m very pleased myself,” the queen mother replied. “And extremely pleased with you, my friend. You brought my daughter back to me. And you brought her back as a queen. I cannot think how to thank you.”

“No thanks—”

“Of course,” Muriele replied. “But you must let me do something for you.”

“You can tell me what happened,” he said. “I don’t remember much after the waerd.”

She smiled. “I missed most of it myself, but I’ve been awake to ask questions. After you fell, Artwair took the waerd with few additional losses and, having done that, managed to break the Thornrath gate in a matter of bells. Sir Fail brought his fleet in, and the wind was with them.

“While all of that was going on, however, my reckless daughter invaded the inner keep through the dungeons, with a relative handful of Sefry. Robert’s forces were thin in the castle, however, either marshaling to fight Artwair and Fail on the King’s Poel or dealing with the insurrection in Gobelin Court. So Anne and her Sefry took the inner keep without much trouble.

“The fight in the outer keep was bloodier, but Anne had reinforcements from Artwair by then.”

“Wait,” Neil said. “I’m sorry, Highness, but I think I missed part of your story. Anne went into the castle with Robert’s permission, but it was a trap. How did she get Sefry troops? Or reinforcements?”

“That’s a much longer story, and it needs to be told in private,” Muriele said. “Suffice it to say that when the men on the outer Fastness understood they were being attacked from both «sides—and that the monarch they were fighting for had apparently vanished—things ended without the horror of bloodshed we might have had.”

“That’s a mercy,” Neil said, remembering the piles of bodies around him at Thornrath. He knew what she meant, of course.

“Anne is queen, then?” he added.

“Regent. She must be confirmed by the Comven, but that seems fairly certain, since Robert’s cronies have been set to their heels or are imprisoned, awaiting trial.”

“So all is well,” Neil said.

“Well enough,” she replied. “At least until Robert returns with the armies of Hansa and the Church.”

“You think that likely?” Neil asked.

“Very likely, indeed. But that is, as they say, a worry for another day. Mend up, Sir Neil. We’ve use for you yet.”

Aspar bit hard into the aspen branch Leshya had placed in his mouth as she popped the bone in his leg into its proper place. The agony actually left spots in his eyes, as if he’d tried to look into the sun.

“That’s the worst of it,” she promised as she began to tie the splint. Beneath her broad-brimmed hat she looked drawn and pale, even for a Sefry.

“You shouldn’t have left Dunmrogh for another month,” he said. “Your wounds—”

“I’m fine,” she said. “And if I’d stayed any longer, you’d be dead now.”

“Yah,” Aspar said. “About that—”

“No thanks are necessary.”

“Not what I meant.”

“I know,” she said, inspecting her splinting. Then she looked at him. “I left Dunmrogh as soon as I could stand,” she explained.

“Why?”

She seemed to consider for a moment.

“I thought you would need my help.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all? That’s it? You were full of holes, Leshya, deep ones, and that needs time. What if you had died?”

“Then I’d be dead,” she said cheerfully. “But I get feelings. I hear things on the wind, and sometimes I see things that haven’t happened yet. And I saw you, facing off against the khriim, and reckoned you might need my help.”

“The what?”

“The sedhmhar. The big thing you killed.”

He frowned. “You saw me?”

“Through a teardrop. Up on the cliff, trying to get your bow strung.”

He shook his head skeptically. “You could never have tracked me here that fast, not unless you left a day after I did, and I know you couldn’t have gotten up that soon. You were almost dead.”

“I didn’t track you,” she said. “I recognized the place and came straight here.”

“You recognized the place,” he said in utter disbelief.

“The mountain, Aspar. It has a Halafolk rewn in it: the first, the eldest of the rewns. I was born here. So yes, I recognized it. Once I was here, it wasn’t that hard to find you, not with you calling attention to yourself the way you were.”

He digested that for a moment. “And you came just to help me?”

“Yes. Witness—now we’re leaving, and quickly.”

“Why? They’re your folk.”

She chuckled. “Oh, no. Not anymore. Not for a long time. They’ll kill us if they catch us, both of us, I promise you.”

“Fend—”

“Not one of mine, I swear.”

“I know that. I know where Fend is from. But he told me something just as he was about to kill me.”

“That being?”

“That the Sefry are Skasloi.”

She was reaching for her knife and froze in midmotion. Then she laughed again, picked up the knife, and slid it into a scabbard.

“I always wondered if you knew that,” she said. “I thought you might, having been raised by us.”

“No,” Aspar said. “That I would have remembered.”

“I should think so.”

“But how?”

“Well, I’m not that old, my friend. I wasn’t there. They say we changed our form somehow, to be more like you. To fit in.”

“But the Skasloi were all killed.”

“The great ones. The princes. And most of the rest of us. But a few changed, posed as slaves, and so survived.”

She caught his gaze and held it “We aren’t them, Aspar. The Skasloi who enslaved your ancestors are dead.”

“Really? And it never occurred to any of you that you might like to have things the way they were before?”

“I suppose some feel that way,” she said.

“Fend, for instance? Your folk back in the mountain?”

“It’s complicated,” she temporized. “Sefry are no more simple than humans and not much more united.”

“Don’t put me off,” he said.

“I’m not,” she replied. “But we should start moving again. We’ll have to be a lot farther from here before I start to feel safe.”

“But you’ll tell me as we ride?”

She nodded. “Plenty of time. It’s going to be a long ride.”

“Good, then.” He reached for his crutch, and she stooped to help him, but he warned her back with his palm.

“I can do it,” he said.

And after a bit of grimacing, he did, though he needed her help to mount.

He felt stupid sitting behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. Like a kindling.

“We need more horses,” he said.

“I’ve some ideas about that,” she told him.

She nudged the horse into motion.

“He came to you,” she said softly. “The Briar King.”

“Yah.”

“And what? What did he do?”

Aspar paused a moment. “You didn’t see?”

“No. I saw him go to you through a gap in the trees, but I was riding fast. By the time I found you again, he was gone, and Fend was there.”

“He’s dead, Leshya.”

Her spine stiffened.

“I thought I felt something,” she murmured. “I’d hoped…”

“Fend shot him with the same arrow I used to kill the woorm.”

“Oh, no.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But it isn’t good. It isn’t good at all.”

He looked around him at the trees, remembering the visions of desolation that had been the Briar King’s parting cry.

“Maybe you’d better tell me what you know about that, too,” he muttered.

She agreed with a curt nod of her head. Her shoulders were trembling, and Aspar wondered if she was crying.

Stephen looked up and smiled as Zemlé entered the scriftorium.

“Couldn’t wait, could you?” she asked. “We’ve only been here two days.”

“But look at this place,” Stephen said. “It’s magnificent!”

He nearly wept as he said it. The great room around them was fantastically huge, brimming with thousands of scrifti.

“You know what I found?” he asked her, knowing he was gushing, unable to feel silly about it. “The original Amena Tirson. Pheon’s Treatise on Signatures, of which no copy has been seen in four hundred years!”

“Virgenya Dare’s journal?”

“No, I haven’t found that yet,” he said. “But I will in time, have no fear. There is so much here.”

“There’s more,” Zemlé said. “While you’ve been with your books, I’ve been exploring. There’s a whole city out there, Stephen, and I don’t think all of it was built by the Aitivar. Some of it looks older, so old that they have those stone drips and drops you were talking about on them.”

“I’ll see all of that,” Stephen promised. “You’ll show me.”

“And there’s the faneway they keep talking about.”

“Yes, that,” Stephen mused. “They seem altogether too eager for me to walk that. I’ll want to research a bit before I do it. The faneway Virgenya Dare walked? We’ll see.”

“You don’t trust them?”

“I don’t know,” Stephen said. “I wish I really understood what happened on the mountain the other day.”

“I thought you said Hespero summoned the Briar King.”

“I suppose he did,” Stephen said. “I gave him the horn, months ago. And he did make short work of the khriim, which is, I suppose, why the praifec summoned him. Still, it seems a little odd. I thought Hespero wanted the Briar King destroyed. He sent us out to do just that.”

“Maybe he hoped they would kill each other,” she suggested. “And maybe they did. The Briar King shrank rather quickly after the khriim fell.”

“Maybe,” Stephen allowed.

“We’re just fortunate that Fend and the twelve were able to break Hespero’s forces.”

“I’d be happier if they’d captured him in the bargain,” Stephen said. “He can always come back.”

“If he dares, I’m sure you’ll be ready for him.”

Stephen nodded, scratching his head. “So they tell me.” Then he fell silent.

“Is something the matter?” she asked.

“You remember what you were saying about the traditions from the Book of Return? You called the woorm ‘khirme,’ almost the same as the Aitivar word for it, khriim.”

“Sure.”

“But you also mentioned another foe, Khraukare: the Blood Knight. You said he’s supposed to be my enemy.”

“That’s what the legend says,” Zemlé agreed.

“Well, the day we got here the Aitivar said they’d found the khriim and the khruvkhuryu. They meant Fend. ‘Khruvkhuryu’ and ‘khraukare’ are also cognate. Both mean ‘Blood Knight.’ But Fend claims to be my ally.”

She looked troubled but shrugged. “You’re the one who pointed out how untrustworthy the legends can be,” she said. “Maybe we just had it wrong.”

“Yet there’s more,” Stephen continued. “When I saw Fend’s armor, I was reminded of an engraving I once found in a book and of the caption beneath it. It said, ‘He drinks the blood of the serpent, and rises the tide of woe, the servant of Old Night, the Woorm-Blood Warrior’”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think Fend wanted the khriim to die so he could taste its blood and become the Blood Knight.”

“But how could he have known the praifec would summon the Briar King?”

“He admitted that Hespero was once an ally. Maybe he still is. Maybe this whole business was some sort of performance for my benefit. All I know is, something still isn’t right.”

Zemlé caught his arm.

“I’ve spoiled your mood,” she said. “You were so happy when I came in.”

He smiled and grabbed her around the waist. “I’m still happy,” he said. “Look, whatever Fend is up to, he’s pretending to be my ally, and for the moment, that’s more or less the same as being one. I have everything I need here to figure out what’s really going on, and I will. You were right, Zemlé. It’s time I took matters into my own hands.” He pulled her closer. “Specifically, it’s time I take you in my hands…”

“You’ve certainly grown bolder, sir,” she murmured.

“I’m in a library.” Stephen laughed. “It’s where I do all my best work.”