The Briar King

1 The Holter

Aspar White smelled murder. Its scent was like a handful of autumn leaves, crisped by the first frost and crushed in the palm.

Dirty Jesp, the Sefry woman who had raised him, told him once that his peculiar sense came from having been born of a dying mother below the gallows where the Raver took his sacrifices. But Jesp made her living as a liar, and the why didn’t matter anyway. All Aspar cared about was that his nose was usually right. Someone was about to kill someone else, or try.

Aspar had just walked into the Sow’s Teat after a week of hard going in the Walham Foothills. His muscles burned with fatigue, his mouth was grittier than sand, and for days he had been dreaming of the cool, dark, honeyed sweetness of stout. He’d had just one sip, one moment of it dancing on his tongue, one kiss of foam on his lips, when the scent came and ruined the taste.

With a sigh, he set the grainy earthenware mug on the pitted oak of his table and looked around the dark, crowded interior of the tavern, one hand straying to the planished bone grip of his dirk, wondering where death was coming from and where it was going.

He saw only the usual crowd—charcoal burners mostly, their faces smudged black by their trade, joking and laughing as they drank away the taste of soot on their tongues. Nearer the door, which had been propped open to let in the evening air, Loh—the miller’s boy, in his clean, lace-trimmed shirt— gestured grandly with his mug, and his friends hooted as he drained the whole thing in one long draught. Four Hornladh merchants in checkered doublets and red hose stood near the hearth, where a spitted boar dripped sizzling into the coals, and around them gathered a clump of youths, faces eager and ruddy in the firelight, begging stories about the wide world beyond their tiny village of Colbaely.

Nothing that even looked like a brawl about to start. Aspar picked up his mug again. Maybe the beer was a little off, today.

But then he saw where murder was coming from. It came in through the open door, along with the first tentative trilling of whippoorwills and a faint, damp promise of rain.

He was just a boy, maybe fifteen. Not from Colbaely, Aspar knew for sure, and probably not even from the Greffy of Holtmarh. The newcomer swept a desperate, hurried gaze around the room, squinting, trying to adjust his eyes to the light, clearly searching for someone.

Then he saw Aspar, alone at his table, and lurched toward him. The young fellow was clad in brain-tanned elkskin breeches and a shirt of homespun that had seen better days. His brown hair was matted, caked with mud, and full of leaves. Aspar saw the apple in his throat bobble convulsively as he pulled a rather large sword from a sheath on his back and quickened his pace.

Aspar took another pull on his beer and sighed. It tasted worse than the last. In the sudden silence, the boy’s buskins swish-swished on the slate-tiled floor.

“You’re the holter,” the boy said in a thick Almannish accent. “The kongsman.”

“I’m the king’s forester,” Aspar agreed. “It’s easily known, for I wear his colors. I’ll be Aspar White. And you’d be?…”

“H’am the man is going to slooter you,” the boy said.

Aspar lifted his head just slightly, so he was looking at the lad with one eye. He held the sword clumsily. “Why?” he asked.

“You know why.”

“No. If I knew why, I never would have asked.”

“You know saint-buggering well—tho ya theen manns slootered meen kon—”

“Speak the king’s tongue, boy.”

“Grim take the king!” the boy shouted. “It’s not his forest!”

“Well, you’ll have to take that up with him. He thinks it is, you know, and he’s the king.”

“I mean to. Right after I take it up with you. This goes all the way back to Eslen before h’am done. But it starts here with you, murtherer.”

Aspar sighed. He could hear it in the young man’s voice, see it in the set of his shoulders. No use talking anymore. He stood quickly, stepped inside the sword point, and slammed his beer mug against the side of the boy’s head. The kiln-fired clay cracked and the fellow screamed, dropping his weapon and clutching his split ear. Aspar calmly yanked out his long dirk, grabbed the boy by the collar, hauled him up easily with one large, callused hand, and pushed him down roughly onto the bench across the table from where he had been sitting.

The boy stared defiantly at him through a mask of pain and blood. The hand holding the side of his head was shiny and dark in the dim light.

“You all see!” the boy croaked. “Witness, all! He’ll murther me like he slootered mine fam’ly.”

“Boy, just calm down,” Aspar snapped. He picked up the sword and set it next to him on his bench, with the table between it and the boy. He kept his own dirk out.

“Armann, bring me another beer.”

“Y’just busted one of my mugs!” the hostler shouted, his nearly round face beet-red.

“Bring it or I’ll bust something else.”

Some of the charmen laughed at that, and then most of the rest of them joined in. The chatter started up again.

Aspar watched the boy while he waited for the beer. The lad’s fingers were trembling, and he couldn’t look up. His courage seemed to be leaking out of him with his blood.

That was often the case, Aspar found. Bleed a man a little, and he grew less heroic.

“What happened to your family, boy?”

“As eft you don’t know.”

“You want another cuff ? Grim eat you, but I’ll beat you till you come out with it. I don’t take to threats, and I don’t take to being called a killer unless I did the killing. And in the end I don’t care what did ’r didn’t happen to a bunch of squatters— except that if something ill happened in the forest, that’s my job, to know about it, y’see? Because if I don’t care about you, I care about the forest, and about the king’s justice. So spell me it!”

“I just—I—they’re dead!” And suddenly he burst out crying. As tears ran through the blood on his face and trailed down his chin, Aspar realized that even fifteen had been an overestimate. The lad was probably no more than thirteen, just big for his age.

“Sceat on this,” Aspar grumbled.

“Aspar White!” He looked up to see Winna Rufoote, the hostler’s daughter. She was less than half his age, just nineteen, pretty with her oval face, green eyes, and flaxen hair. Strong willed. Trouble looking for lodging. Aspar avoided her when he could.

“Winna—”

“Don’t ‘Winna’ me. You burst this poor boy’s brains all over—and one of our mugs—and now you’re just going to sit here and drink beer while he bleeds on everything?”

“Look—”

“I won’t hear a word of it. Not from you, s’posed to be the king’s man. First you’ll help me get this boy to a room so I can clean him up. Then you’ll put your mark on one o’ them royal notes or else pay good copper for our mug. After that, y’can have another beer, and not before.”

“If this weren’t the only hostel in town—”

“But it is, isn’t it? And if you want to stay welcome here—”

“You know you can’t turn me out.”

“No. Turn out the king’s man? Sure I can’t. But you might start finding your beer tasting like piss, if you understand me.”

“It already tastes like piss,” Aspar grumbled.

She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. He suddenly felt a little weak in the knees. In twenty-five years as a holter, he had faced bears, lions, more outlaws than he could even count. But he had never learned how to handle a pretty woman.

“He did come in here to kill me, the little sceat,” Aspar reminded her sheepishly.

“An’ how is that such a strange thing? I’ve been tempted myself.” She pulled out a rag and handed it to the boy. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Uscaor,” he mumbled. “Uscaor Fraletson.”

“Your ear’s just a bit cut, Uscaor. It’ll be okay.”

Aspar blew out a long breath and stood back up. “Come on, boy. Let’s get you cleaned up, hey? So you’ll look nice when you come to murther me in my bed.”

But as the boy swayed to his feet, Aspar caught the scent of death again and noticed, for the first time, the boy’s right hand. It was bruised purple and black, and the sight of it sent a tingle up his spine.

“What happened there, boy?” Aspar asked.

“I don’t know,” Uscaor said softly. “I don’t remember.”

“Come on, Uscaor,” Winna said. “Let’s find you a bed.”

Aspar watched him go, frowning. The boy had meant to kill him, all right, though he hadn’t come very close. But that hand—maybe that was the thing his nose was trying to tell him about all along.

Uneasily, he waited for another beer.

“He’s asleep,” Winna told Aspar some time later, after she’d been alone with the boy for a while. “I don’t think he’s eaten or slept for two or three days. And that hand—it’s so swollen and hot. Not like any sort of wound I’ve seen before.”

“Yah,” Aspar said. “Me either. Maybe I ought to cut it off of ’im and take it for the apothecary in Eslen to have a look at.”

“You can’t fool me, Asp,” Winna said. “You’re rougher than an elm at the skin, but in your heart there’s softer stuff.”

“Don’t convince yourself of that, Winn. Did he spell why he wants me dead?”

“Same as he told you. He thinks you killed his family.”

“Why would he think that?”

“Hey, Winna!” someone yelled, from across the room. “Leave off the king’s bear and come wet me!” He banged an empty mug on the table.

“Do as you usually do, Banf—wet yourself. You know where the tap is. I’ll know what to charge you by how much you throw up later.”

That got a burst of jeers at the fellow’s expense as Winna sat down across from Aspar.

“He and his family put up a camp down near Taff Creek,” she continued, “a few leagues from where it meets the Warlock—”

“Right. Squatters, as I reckoned.”

“So they squatted in the royal forest. Lots do that. Does that mean they deserve to die?”

“I didn’t kill them for that. Raver’s teeth! I didn’t kill them at all.”

“Uscaor says he saw the king’s colors on the men who did it.”

“No. I don’t know what he saw, but he never saw that. None of my woodsmen are within thirty leagues of here.”

“You sure?”

“Damned sure.”

“Then who killed them?”

“I wat not. There’s plenty of room in the King’s Forest for all manner of outlaws. But I suppose I’ll be finding out.” He took another drink of his beer. “By the Taff, you say? That’s about two days. I’ll be leaving at first light, so tell Paet to have my horses ready.” He finished the beer in a single long swallow and rose from the table. “See you.”

“Wait. Don’t you want to talk to the boy some more?”

“What for? He doesn’t know what happened. He probably didn’t even see anybody. I’ll bet the part about the king’s colors is a lie.”

“How do you reckon that?”

“Maunt my words, Winn. Squatters live in terror of the king’s justice. They all reckon they’re going to be hanged or beheaded or hunted down, and they think I’m a two-headed uttin. I don’t discourage stories like that. I spread ’em, in fact. Somebody killed this boy’s kin, and he didn’t see who. He reckoned it was me. The rest he made up when he started feeling foolish.”

“But someone killed them,” she said.

“Yah. That much of his story I believe.” He sighed and stood. “Night, Winn.”

“You aren’t going by yourself ?”

“All of my men are too far away. I have to go while the trail is still warm.”

“Wait for some of your men. Send word to Dongal.”

“No time. Why so nervous, Winn? I know what I’m doing.”

She nodded. “Just a feeling. That something’s different this time. People coming up out of the forest have been … different.”

“I know the forest better than anyone. It’s the same as it’s always been.”

She nodded reluctantly.

“Well, as I said, good night.”

Her hand caught his. “Be careful, you,” she murmured, and gave it a little squeeze.

“Certain,” he said, hoping he turned quickly enough that she couldn’t see him blush.

Aspar rose at first cockcrow, when the light out his window was still mostly starborn. By the time he’d splashed water from a crockery basin in his face and shaved the gray stubble sprouting there, cinched on his elkskin breeches and padded cotton gambeson, the east was primrose.

He considered his boiled-leather cuirass; that was going to be hot today.

He put it on anyway. Better hot than dead.

He strapped on his bone-handled dirk and settled his throwing ax into its loop on the same belt. He took his bow from its oilskin case, checked the wood and extra strings, counted his arrows. Then he recased the bow, slipped on his high boots, and went downstairs.

“First light, eh?” Winna said, as he passed through the common room.

“Getting old,” Aspar grumbled.

“Well, have some breakfast as you’re not too early for it.”

“That reminds me. I need to buy—”

“I’ve packed you a week’s worth of food. Paetur is loading it up for you.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Sit.”

She brought him a trencher of black bread with garlic sausage and fried apples. He ate every bit of it. When he was finished, Winna wasn’t in sight, but he could hear her knocking about in the kitchen. For an instant, he remembered having a woman knocking about his own kitchen, in his own house.

A long time ago, and the pain was still there. Winna was young enough to be his daughter. He left quietly, so as not to attract her attention, feeling faintly cowardly. Once outside he made straight for the stables.

Paetur, Winna’s younger brother, was busy with Angel and Ogre. Paet was tall, blond, and gangly. He was—what?— thirteen?

“Morning, sir,” Paet said, when he saw Aspar.

“I’m not a knight, boy.”

“Yah, but you’re the closest we have hereabouts, except old Sir Symen.”

“A knight’s a knight. Sir Symen is one; I’m not.” He nodded at his mounts. “They ready to go?”

“Ogre says yah, Angel says ney. I think you ought to leave Angel with me.” He patted the roan on the neck.

“She said that, did she?” Aspar grunted. “Could be she’s tired from the running you gave her yesterday?”

“I never—”

“Lie to me and I’ll whip you good, and your father will thank me for it.”

Paet reddened and studied his shoes. “Well … she needed a stretch.”

“Next time ask, you hear? And for pity’s sake, don’t try to ride Ogre.”

The barred bay chose that moment to snort, as if in agreement. Paet laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Tom tried, yesterday. To ride Ogre.”

“When do they bury him?”

“He lost two front teeth, is all.”

“Lucky. The boy’s lucky.”

“Yes, Master White.”

Aspar patted Ogre’s muzzle. “Looks like you packed them well. You want to arrange my quiver and bow?”

“Could I?” The boy’s eyes sparkled eagerly.

“I reckon.” He handed the weapon over.

“Is it true you’ve killed six uttins with this?”

“There’s no such thing as uttins, boy. Nor greffyns, nor alvs, nor basil-nix, nor tax-counters with hearts.”

“That’s what I told my friths. But Rink says his uncle saw an uttin himself—”

“Got drunk and saw his own reflection, more likely.”

“But you did kill the Black Wargh and his bandits, didn’t you? All ten of them.”

“Yah,” Aspar said curtly.

“I’m going to do something like that someday.”

“It’s not all it’s made out to be,” Aspar replied. With that, he mounted up on Ogre and started off. Angel followed obediently. So did Paet.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Aspar demanded.

“Down by the Warlock. A Sefry caravan came in last night. I want to get my fortune told.”

“You’d be better off staying away from them,” Aspar advised.

“Weren’t you raised Sefry, Master White? Didn’t Dirty Jesp raise you?”

“Yah. So I know what I’m talking about.”

The Sefry had chosen a nice spot, a violet-embroidered meadow overlooking the river and embraced on all sides by thick-limbed wateroaks. They were still setting their tents. A big one of faded crimson and gold was fully erected, the clan crest—three eyes and a crescent moon—waving in a diffident zephyr. Hobbled horses grazed in the meadow, where ten men and twice that many children hammered stakes, uncoiled lines, and unrolled canvas. Most were stripped to the waist, for the sun wasn’t yet high enough to sear their milk-white skin. Unlike most folk, the Sefry never darkened from the sun. In full light, they went swaddled head to toe.

“Hallo, there,” one of the men called, a narrow-shouldered fellow with features that suggested thirty years but that Aspar knew were lying by at least fifteen. He had known Afas when they were both children, and Afas was the older. “Do I see Dirt’s Bastard, there?”The Sefry straightened, hammer swinging at his side.

Aspar dismounted. Dirt’s Bastard. Not a nickname he’d ever cared for.

“Hallo, Afas,” he replied, refusing to let his annoyance show. “Nice to see you, too.”

“Come to run us off ?”

“What’s the point? I’d just be wishing you on a different town, probably another in or around my jurisdiction. Besides, I’m on my way out.”

“Well, that’s generous.” The Sefry tilted his head. “She said you’d be here. She was almost wrong, ney?”

“Who’s ‘she’?”

“Mother Cilth.”

“Grim! She still alive?”

“They rarely die, these old women.”

Aspar stopped a few paces from Afas. The two men were of a height, but there the resemblance stopped. Aspar had weight to go with his altitude, an oak to Afas’ willow. Close up, Afas’ skin was a map, the blue rivers, streams, rills, and rinns of his veins plainly visible. He had six pale nipples, set like a cat’s on his lithe, wiry torso. His hair was midnight dark, tied back with a gold ribbon.

“Where’d you just come from?” Aspar asked.

“South.”

“Come through the forest?”

Afas’ indigo eyes went wide and guileless. “You know better than that, Holter. We wouldn’t travel in King Randolf’s forest without permission.”

“King Randolf died thirteen years ago. It’s William, now.”

“Nevertheless.”

“Well. I’m going to Taff Creek. A boy came in last night saying his kin were murdered down there. I’d be grateful if you’ve heard anything worth repeating. I wouldn’t ask too close where you heard it.”

“Decent of you. But I wat nothing about that. But I’ll tell you this—if I had been in the forest, I’d be out of there now. I’d be going far away from it.”

“Where are you going?”

“We’ll tinker here for a few days, to earn for supplies. After that? Far away. Tero Gallé, maybe, or Virgenya.”

“Why?”

Afas jerked his head toward the largest tent, the one already set up. “Because she says so. I don’t know more than that, nor do I want to. But you can ask her. In fact, she said you’d want to ask her.”

“Hmm. Well. I suppose I ought to, then.”

“Might be healthiest.”

“Right. Stay out of trouble, hey? I’ve got enough to worry about without having to track you down later.”

“Sure. Anything for you, Dirt.”

Mother Cilth had been old when Aspar was a boy. Now she might have been a ghost looking across the chasm of death. She sat on a pile of cushions, robed in black, coifed in black. Only her face was visible, an ivory mask spidered with sapphire. Her eyes, palest gold, watched his every movement. Jesp’s eyes had been that color. And Qerla’s.

“There you are,” Mother Cilth rasped. “Jesperedh said you would be here.”

Aspar bit back telling her how long Jesp had been dead. It wouldn’t matter. Whether it was all pretense or whether the Sefry had come to believe their own lies, he had never really known. It didn’t matter, because either way their constant talk of speaking with the dead was so much annoying sceat. The dead were dead; they did not speak.

“You wanted to see me?” He made a small attempt to keep the irritation from his voice, but it wasn’t something he was good at.

“I see you already. I want to talk to you.”

“I’m here, Mother. I’m listening.”

“Still rude. Still impatient. I thought my sister taught you better.”

“Maybe her lessons would have taken better if she had had a little help from the rest of you,” Aspar replied, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. “Take me as you find me or not at all. It wasn’t me wanted to talk to you.”

“Yes, it was.”

That was true, sort of, but he didn’t have to like it. He turned on his heel to leave.

“The Briar King is waking,” Cilth whispered.

Aspar paused, a bright tickle like a centipede crawling on his backbone. He turned very slowly to face the old woman again.

“What?”

“The Briar King. He wakes.”

“That’s sceat,” Aspar said harshly, though a part of him felt as if the earth had opened beneath his feet. “I’ve traveled the King’s Forest all my life. I’ve been in the deepest, black heart of it, and I’ve been places in the Mountains of the Hare that even the deer never saw. There is no Briar King. That’s just more of your Sefry nonsense.”

“You know better. He slept, and was unseen. Now he wakes. It is the first sign. Surely Jesp taught you.”

“She taught me. She also taught me to cheat at dice, and to play the voice of a ghost for her seances.”

The old woman’s face went even harder than it had been. “Then you should know the difference,” she hissed. “You should know the difference between the cold and the hot, between the breeze and the storm.” She leaned even closer. “Look in my eyes. Look there.”

Aspar didn’t want to, but her eyes had already caught him, like a snake about to eat a mouse. The gold and copper of her orbs seemed to expand until they were all he could see, and then …

A forest turned into gallows, rotting corpses hung from every branch. The trees themselves gnarled and diseased, covered in black thorns, and instead of foliage they bore carrion birds, ravens and vultures, gorged and fat.

In the depths of the forest the shadows between the trees shifted, as if something large were moving there. Aspar searched, but the movement stayed at the corner of his eyes, always still when he stared full at it.

Then he noticed the nearest corpse. The rope that hung her was nearly rotted through, and mostly it was just bones and blackened flesh hanging there, but the eyes were still alive, alive and pale gold …

The same eyes he was looking into now. Mother Cilth’s eyes.

With a harsh gasp, Aspar turned his gaze away. Mother Cilth grated out a laugh.

“You see,” she murmured.

“Sceat,” he managed, though his legs were trembling. “A trick.”

Cilth drew back. “Enough. I thought you were the one foretold. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps you learned nothing after all.”

“I can only hope.”

“A shame. Truly. For if you are not the one foretold, he is not yet born. And if he is not yet born, your race—and mine—will be wiped from the earth, as if we had never been. That part of the telling cannot be doubted except by fools. But maybe you are a fool. My sister perished for nothing.” She reached up and drew a veil over her face. “I dream,” she said. “Leave me.”

Aspar obeyed her, fighting an unaccustomed urge to run. Only when the Sefry camp was a league behind him did his breathing calm.

The Briar King.

What sceat, he thought.

But in the corner of his vision, something was still moving.

2 In Another Tavern

“The queen, of course, must die first. She is the greatest danger to our plans.”

The man’s voice was cultured and sibilant, speaking the king’s tongue with a hint of some southern accent. His words sent a snake slithering up Lucoth’s back, and he suddenly feared the sound of his heart was a drum for all to hear.

I am a mouse, he told himself. A mouse.

Which was what everyone called him. His real name was Dunhalth MaypHinthgal, but only his mother had ever called him Dunhalth. To everyone else in the small town of Odhfath, he was Lucoth, “the mouse.”

A dry silence followed the man’s pronouncement. From his vantage in the rafters, Lucoth could not see any of their faces, only that there were three of them, and from their voices, all men. He knew they’d paid hostler MaypCorgh for the use of the back room of the Black Rooster Inn, which in Lucoth’s experience meant that they probably had some secret business to discuss.

Lucoth had eavesdropped on such meetings before. He had an arrangement with hostler MaypCorgh, who let him know when the room was in use. In the past, he’d mostly overheard smugglers and brigands, and often learned things that Mayp-Corgh could use to turn a profit, part of which he would pass on to Lucoth.

But these weren’t smugglers or highwaymen. Lucoth had heard murders plotted before, but never that of a queen. Excitement replacing fear, he listened as another of the men spoke.

“The queen,” he sighed. This one had a deeper voice, with some gravel in it. “Is the prophecy so clear?”

“In all ways,” the first man replied. “When he comes, there can be no queen of the blood in Eslen.”

“What of the daughters?” the final man asked. His accent was strange even to Lucoth, who had heard many odd ones. The town of Odhfath was at a crossroads: Take the eastern way, and you came in time to Virgenya. West lay the port at Paldh. North brought you to Eslen and finally Hansa. The south road met the Great Vitellian Way, with its colorful merchant caravans.

“The daughters may not succeed to the throne,” the second man said.

“There is movement afoot to legitimize their succession,” the first man replied. “So they must all die, of course. The king, the queen, their female issue. Only then will our plans be assured.”

“It is an important step,” the third man said reluctantly. “A step that cannot be taken back.”

The first man’s voice dropped low and soft. “The Briar King wakes. The age of man is ended. If we do not step now, we will perish with the rest. That will not happen.”

“Agreed,” the second man said.

“I’m with you,” the third said. “But care must be taken. Great care. The time is coming, but it is not yet here.”

“Of course,” the first man said.

Lucoth licked his lips, wondering what reward might come from saving a queen. Or a whole royal family.

He had always dreamed of seeing the wide world and seeking his fortune in it. But he was wise enough to know that a fourteen-year-old boy who went on the road with no coin in his pocket would meet a bad end, and likely sooner than later. He had saved over the years—almost enough, he reckoned, to make a start of it.

But this—he almost saw the gold before his eyes, heaps of it. Or a barony, or the hand of a princess. All of that.

Hostler MaypCorgh wouldn’t know about this, oh no. Odds were too great he’d try to blackmail the men below. That wasn’t the way to do it. The way to do it was to lightfoot out of the loft, wait till tomorrow, and get a good look at the men so he could describe them. Then he’d take his earnings, buy a donkey, and set out for Eslen. There he would find an audience with Emperor William and tell him of what he had heard.

He suddenly realized the men below had gone silent, and left his imaginings to focus on them.

The first man’s head moved, and though Lucoth saw no eyes through the shadows, he felt a gaze burning on him.

Which was impossible. He held his breath, waiting for the illusion to fade.

“You have a loud heart, boy,” the man said. His voice was like velvet.

Lucoth jerked into motion, but it was the motion of nightmare. He knew the rafters of the inn like he knew the inside of his palm, but somehow it seemed all alien to him now, the few yards he had to cross to find safety a distance of leagues. Still, the thinking part of his mind told him, cross the wall, drop down. They’ll have to go around, by the door; that will put them long moments behind, plenty of time for a mouse to find a hiding place in the town of his birth.

Something smacked him on the side of the face, not too hard. He wondered what they had thrown at him, but was relieved it wasn’t something more deadly.

Then he understood that whatever it was, was still there, resting against his cheek. He didn’t have time for that, though. He went over the wall—it did not extend into the rafters—and dropped down into the next room. The open window was there, waiting for him. He felt dizzy and tasted something strange. For some reason he wanted to gag.

Only when he had reached the street did he feel to see what was stuck to him, and then he didn’t quite understand it, because it was the hilt of a dagger, which made no sense at all …

Then he realized that it did make sense if the blade was in his throat. Which it was. He could feel the tip of it inside his windpipe.

Don’t take it out, he thought. Take it out, it’ll bleed …

He started running down the street, but he couldn’t take his hand away from the thing in his neck, any more than he could wrap his mind around what had really happened to him.

I’ll be fine, he thought. It must have missed my veins. I’ll be fine. I’ll just get old Horsecutter to take it out. He’ll sew the wound. I’ll be fine.

Something thumped onto the street behind him. He turned to see a man-shaped shadow.

It started toward him.

He ran.

He could feel the pulse in his neck now and something clotting in his throat. He vomited, and that brought agony that sheeted down the whole left side of his body. He stumbled a few more steps.

Saints, please, leave me be, I’ll never talk, he tried to say, but his voice was pinned inside of him by the dagger.

Then something cold punched into his back. He thought it was three times, but maybe it was four. The final touch was faint, like a kiss, and right at the base of his skull.

“Sleep tight, boy,” he heard someone say. It sounded like a saint, which made him feel a little better.

3 The Squire

Night-winged clouds rubbed away the moon, and a freezing sea wind bittered the darkness. Neil had almost no feeling in his toes or fingers. He could smell nothing but brine and hear nothing but the wind and waves savaging the shore. But he could imagine much more: the breath of the foe, somewhere out there in the night. The clash of steel that would greet the dawn. The droning dirge of the cold, restless draugs beneath the waves, dead yet alive, shark-toothed mouths gaping in anticipation of the meat of the living. Of Neil MeqVren’s meat.

“Dawn’s almost here,” his father murmured, lowering himself to lie next to Neil on the sand. “Be ready.”

“They might be anywhere,” someone else said. Neil thought it was probably Uncle Odcher.

“No. There are only two places they could have put their ships in. Here, or on the Milkstrand. We’re here. They must be there.”

“They say the Weihands can march at night. That they can see in the dark, like the trolls they worship.”

“They can’t march at night any better than we can,” Neil’s father said. “If they aren’t on their ships, they’re doing exactly what we’re doing—waiting for the sun.”

“I don’t care what they can do,” another voice muttered. “They never reckoned on meeting the men of clan MeqVren.”

What’s left of us, Neil thought. He had counted twelve, last time the sun went down. Twelve. The morning before, they had been thirty.

He was rubbing his hands to try to warm them when a fist closed over his fingers. “You ready, son?” his father whispered.

“Yeah, Fah.” He couldn’t see his face, but what he heard in the voice made his scalp prickle.

“I shouldn’t have brought you on this one.”

“I been to war before, Fah.”

“Yes. And proud I’ve been of you. No MeqVren—nor no man of no clan I’ve ever heard tell of—ever killed his first foe when he had only eleven winters, and that’s been a year gone for you, now. But this—”

“We going to lose, Fah? We going to die?”

“If that’s the way the saints want it, damn them.” He cleared his throat and sang, very softly,

Neil shivered, for that was part of the MeqVren death-chant.

But his father clapped him on the arm. “I don’t intend for us to die, lad. We’ll catch ’em off guard.”

“Then the lord baron will pay us a pretty penny, eh, Fah?”

“It’s his war. He’s a man of his word. Now let’s be still, for here comes the dawn.”

The sky lightened. The twelve men of the MeqVren clan crouched behind the dune, motionless. Neil wondered what the baron or the Weihands might want with this wretched island anyway, with it so rocky and hard it wouldn’t support even sheep. He turned to look back at the sea. The sky had lightened enough so he could make out the prow of their longship, a horse-head silhouette.

And down the beach, another. And another.

But the MeqVrens had only one ship.

He tugged at his father’s sleeve.

“Fah—”

That’s when something hissed along and thumped into his father’s back, and his father sighed strangely. That’s when the shouting started, and the MeqVrens rose to their feet in a shower of arrows, to face three times their number coming up the strand. Neil closed his eyes, then jumped up with the rest of them, his hands too cold to feel his spear, but he could see it, clutched in his hands.

Then an arrow hit him. It made the same sound as the one that had hit his father, just a little higher in pitch.

Neil jerked awake and found himself clutching his chest, two fingers below his heart, breathing as if he had just run a league. He felt like he was falling.

Where am I?

The confusion lasted only a few heartbeats, as he recognized the rocking of a ship, the furnishings of his cabin. His breathing slowed, and he felt the small puckered scar.

Eight years, but in his dreams it hadn’t faded at all.

Eight years.

He sat there a few more minutes, listening to the sailors on the deck above. Rather than trust himself to sleep again, he rose to shave. He wanted to look his best today.

He stropped his razor and brought its keen edge to his cheek, then down the square lines of his chin, whisking off the stubble with sure, steady motions. He finished without a single scratch, and with the same blade he trimmed his wheat-colored hair well away from his eyes.

The Black Mary of that day on the beach faded, and his excitement grew. Today! Today he would see Thornrath!

He splashed water on his face, blinked it from his blue eyes, and went above decks.

They reached the Cape of Rovy by midafternoon and sailed with the alabaster cliffs on their left hand for another bell. There, clearing the headland, they turned into Foambreaker Bay, a wide haven in the shape of a moon two-thirds full, circumscribed on the north by the Cape of Rovy and on the south by the Craigs-Above-Ale. West was the open sea, and east, where Saltspear’s prow now pointed, stood a marvel so awesome Neil thought his heart would crack. He almost welcomed it, if he could die with this much wonder on him.

“Saints of Sea and Thunder,” he managed weakly.

His earnest thanksgiving was all but swept off by the wind buffeting the deck of the Saltspear, but the old man who stood beside him, Fail de Liery, heard and bit a fierce grin into the westerly. Hair streaming behind him like a banner of smoke, Fail glanced over at Neil, and though his face was pitted, scarred, and wrinkled by threescore years of life, he still seemed somehow youthful when he chuckled.

“There she is, lad,” the elder said. “That’s Thornrath. Does she measure up?”

Neil nodded his head dumbly as the cape dropped farther behind them. The eastern sky behind Thornrath was as black as coal smut, and above that darkest lens piled curtains of spume-gray clouds that broke at the meridian. But from the clear western sky, the sinking sun slanted golden light to blaze the bay and the mightiest fortress in the world against that storm-painted canvas.

“Thornrath,” he repeated. “I mean I’d heard—you’d told me—” He paused to try to understand what he was actually seeing, to understand the size.

If Foambreaker Bay was a moon two-thirds full, the entire eastern third of it—perhaps four leagues—was a wall the hue of ivory. Seven great towers of the same stone jabbed at the sky, the centermost rising to such a high sharp point it was dizzying.

As Neil watched, a man-o’-war sailed through one of six arched openings in the wall. He reckoned its masts at more than twenty yards high, and they were in no danger of touching the top of the arch. And the arch was only half as high as the wall.

“Saints!” Neil breathed. “Men built that? Not the Echesl?” He crooked his finger and touched his forehead, a sign against the evil of that name.

“Men built it, yes. They quarried the stone in the Eng Fear mountains, two hundred leagues upriver. It was sixty years in building they say, but now no one can come against Crotheny by sea.”

“It is a wonder,” Neil said. “Proud am I to serve that.”

“No, lad,” Fail said gently. “You don’t serve a thing of stone, no matter how grand. Never that. You’ll serve Crotheny, and her king, and the royal line of Dare.”

“That’s what I meant, Chever Fail.”

“They call a knight sir, in the king’s tongue, lad.”

“Sir Fail.” The word sounded awkward, as did every word in the king’s tongue. It lacked music, somehow. But it was the language of his lord, and he had learned it. Practiced at it as hard as he had the sword, the lance, and the mace.

Well, almost as hard.

“Sir Fail,” he said again.

“And soon Sir Neil.”

“I can’t believe that. How can the king knight me? It’s no matter, I’ll be proud to serve him, even as a footman. Just so long as I can serve him.”

“Lad, I tilted at Sir Seimon af Harudrohsn when I was only in my eighteenth winter. I fought beside all five Cresson brothers at the battle of Ravenmarh Wold, and I sent Sir Duvgal MaypAvagh—who himself slew more than twenty knights— to the shadowcity, along with his second, before the gates of Cath Valk. I have known knights, lad, and I tell you that in my fifty-six years, I’ve never seen a lad more deserving of the rose than you.”

Neil’s throat tightened further with love and gratefulness to the tough old man. “Thank you, Sir Fail. Thank you for— for everything.”

“That better be the wind in your eyes, son. I don’t go for all this courtly weeping, as well you know.”

“It’s the wind, chev—sir.”

“Good. And keep it that way. And don’t let any of these fops at the court steer you a different course. You’re a warrior of the marches, raised by a good father and then by my hand. Just remember that, and you’ll keep who you are. It’s the steel in the marches that keeps safe the soft gold here in the center. Gold’s pretty, but it’ll scarce cut butter. Don’t worry about pretty, lad. Worry about your edge. The court’s more dangerous to a real warrior than a thousand Weihand raiders are.”

“I’ll remember that, sir.” He tried to stand taller. “I will make you proud of me.”

“Come below. I have something to give you.”

“I was going to save this until after the king knighted you, but your armor took a hard beating at Darkling Mere. And it is, after all, a lord’s duty to keep his warriors looking warlike, eh?”

Neil couldn’t answer. As when he had first seen Thornrath, he was struck speechless as his master unrolled the sealskin bundle to reveal the gleam of oiled steel.

Neil had worn armor since he was ten. First toughened leather, as he had been wearing that ill-fated dawn his father died, then a steel cap and byrnie with greaves, and finally the hauberk of chain he wore now, with its battered but serviceable breastplate.

But he had only dreamed of what Fail de Liery presented him—a suit of lord’s plate, articulated by lobstered joints. It was good, plain work, with no frills or elaborations.

It must have cost a small fortune.

“Sir Fail, this is more than I could ever dream of. How can I ever—I could never take that. Not on top of everything else.”

“It’s fitted for you,” the old man said. “I had the measurements taken when your last suit of clothes was made. No one else could wear it. And as you know, I am much insulted when my gifts are refused.”

“I—” Neil grinned. “I’d never insult you, Sir Fail.”

“Do you want to try it on?”

“Saints, yes!”

Thus it was, when they passed beneath the great arch of Thornrath, Neil MeqVren stood proudly on the deck of the Saltspear, his house de Liery tabard cinched around the most perfect suit of armor ever made. He felt bright and deadly, a sword made human.

The wonders piled up. Passing through the great arch, the waters before them were parted by a high, hilly land.

“Two rivers meet here,” Fail told him. “The bloody-minded Warlock from the southeast and the Dew tumbling out of the Barghs in the north.”

“And so this island is royal Ynis itself ?”

“It is. The rivers meet five leagues ahead of us, on the other side of the island, split again, and come back together here.”

“Ynis! Then where is Eslen? Where are the rivers that flow above the land?”

“Patience, lad. It’s farther east. We’ll be there near sundown. But as to the rivers—you’ll see.”

Ynis rose from a flat plain, a series of hills spotted with delicate, spired castles, red-shingled hamlets, fields and forest. The plain around the island was mostly fields of grain, very green. Cottages were there, and men working the fields, and strange towers with great wheels turning on them. Canals ran off from the river, some so long they vanished in the hazy distance.

And indeed, Neil realized with a growing sense of excitement that he was looking down upon the landscape. Embankments had been raised along the riverside, forcing it to flow higher than the country around.

“When our ancestors fought here against the last stronghold of the Echesl, this was a plain, or so the legends say,” Sir Fail said. “Ynis was the mount they raised for their castle. But after their defeat, and the castle Eslen was founded in its place, it all sank into quagmire, marsh, all the way to the horizon. The Echesl had used some sort of sorcery to keep the water back, and with their passing, it passed, too. The people living here could have abandoned it then, found better land in the east, but they wouldn’t do it. They swore to take the land back from the waters instead.”

“They found the secret of the Echesl sorcery?”

“No. They worked hard. They built dikes. They made these pumps you see, pushed by the winds, to drain away the water. Two thousand years of slow, hard battle with the waves, but you see the result.” He laid a hand on Neil’s shoulder.

“So, you see, men did this, too.”

And finally, sailing above the land like characters in a phay story, they hove in sight of Eslen of the three walls.

On the highest hill stood the castle, with its eight towers of chalk-white stone bloodied by twilight, long pennants fluttering black against the rosy clouds. From there, the city spilled down like water poured from the top of a hill, dammed briefly by each of the concentric walls surrounding the castle but never quite contained, slate-topped waves of buildings flowing over the smaller hills until they reached the waterfront and piled against stone-faced quays and stout wooden piers. Shrouds of mist and woodsmoke lay in the low places between the hills, and candlelight already made windows into eyes here and there.

“It’s all so grand,” Neil murmured. “Like an enchanted city of the Queryen, from the old tales. I’m afraid to look away, for fear it will vanish.”

“Eslen is no city of moonbeams and spider silk,” the old knight assured him. “It’s real enough, you’ll see. And if you think this so grand, wait until you see the court.”

“I can hardly wait.”

“Oh—you’ll learn about waiting, son, never doubt that.”

The Saltspear came to a quay, a sort of watery plaza surrounded with docks replete with colorful boats of every size. One stood out above the rest, a five-masted battle-queen that dwarfed the Saltspear and every other ship anchored there. Neil was admiring her when he suddenly recognized the flag she flew and instinctively reached for his sword.

Fail touched his arm. “Ney, lad. There’s no call for that.”

“That’s a Hanzish warship.”

“So it is. That’s nothing unusual. Remember, we’re at peace with Hansa and the Reiksbaurgs.”

Neil’s mouth dropped open, closed, then opened again. “Peace? When they pay Weihand raiders hard silver for Liery scalps and ears, and their privateers sink our merchantmen?”

“There’s the real world,” Fail said, “and there’s the court. The court says we’re at peace with them. So don’t you go pulling steel if you see a Reiksbaurg, and keep your tongue still, you hear?”

Neil felt as if he’d swallowed something unpleasant. “I hear, sir.”

Even as they docked, darkness dropped like an ax. Neil set his foot upon the cobbles of Eslen in a most unfamiliar night.

The docks bustled with men and women half seen by lamplight. Faces came and went—beautiful, sinister, innocent, brutal—all mere impressions, appearing and vanishing like ghosts, going to and from ships, greeting and parting, slinking and carrying burdens. Gutted fish, hot tar, burning kerosene, and ripe sewage perfumed the air.

“The upper gates of the city are closed by now, so we’ll be rooming at an inn,” Fail told him, as they pressed through the dockside crowd and crossed a long plaza where young girls and hard-looking women cast provocative glances at them, where blind or legless beggars crouched in shadows and wailed for assistance and children skirmished in mock combat between the legs of pedestrians and the wheels of carts.

Buildings three and four stories tall crowded at the edges of the plaza like giants crouched shoulder to shoulder, playing at knucklebones, spilling cheery light, woodsmoke, and the scent of roasting meat into the cool night air.

It was to one of these giants they made their way, proclaimed the Moonfish Inn by a gilded sign that hung over the doorway.

“Be a good lad,” Fail said, “and see our horses are stabled here. Give the hand a copper miser, no more or less, for each horse. Then change from your armor and meet me in the common room.”

“On my word, Sir Fail,” Neil told him.

The ale-and-cod pie was good—much better than the shipboard fare—but Neil hardly noticed it. He was too busy watching. Never had he seen so many strange faces and clothes or heard such a confusion of tongues. Two tables away, a group of dark-skinned men in colorful robes spoke guttural nonsense. When the serving girl brought their food, their mustached lips curled in what seemed like disgust, and they made strange signs at her back with their fingers before taking their food. Beyond them, two tables of men similar in complexion seemed to be taking turns making flamboyant speeches to one another and drinking wine in unwise haste. They wore somber doublets and bloodred hose and long, silly-looking swords.

There were peoples he recognized, too—blond-shocked Schildings, with their rough fisherman’s hands and quick laughter; sea rovers from the isles of Ter-na-Fath; a knight from Hornladh and his retainers, wearing the yellow stag and five chevrons of the house MaypHal. Neil asked about that one.

“Sir Ferghus Lonceth,” Sir Fail told him.

“And him?” Neil pointed at a large man with dark red hair cut short, a neatly trimmed beard, and a sable tabard. His device was quartered—a golden lion rampant, three roses, a sword, and helm. Six men sat at his table, all with the northern look about them. Some might have passed for Weihands, and Neil took an almost instant dislike to them.

“I don’t know him,” Fail admitted. “He’s too young. But his device is that of the Wishilms of Gothfera.”

“Hanzish, then. From the ship.”

“Yes. Remember what I said,” the older man cautioned.

“Yes, sir.”

About that moment, one of the men from the Hornladh knight’s table arrived.

“Chever Fail de Liery, my master, Sir Ferghus Lonceth, begs the quality of your company.”

“I would cherish his company,” Fail said. “We shall join you, yes?”

“Is it not more meet that my master joins you? After all, in seniority and fame, you are most certainly first, and entitled to the board of your choosing.”

“That may be so, lad,” Fail replied. “But there’s only two of us and eight of you, and you have the more room at your table. Seniority is all well and good, but in the inn, let us be practical, yes?” He rose, then turned to Neil. “Neil, be a good lad and invite the Wishilm knight to join us.”

“Sir,” the Hornladh squire said, “I invited him on behalf of my own master, and he did disdain the invitation.”

“And he may disdain mine. But it shall not be said that I lacked the hospitality to invite him,” Fail replied.

Neil nodded, and walked to the Hanzish knights’ table.

When he arrived, he stood there politely for a moment or two, but they all ignored him, laughing and joking in their own language. Finally, Neil cleared his throat.

“Pardon me,” he said, in Hanzish.

“By Tyw! It can speak!” one of the squires said, a giant of a fellow with a broken nose. He turned devil-filled blue eyes toward Neil. “I’ll have another pint of ale, wench, and be quick!”

They all laughed at that.

Neil breathed slowly and smiled. “My master, Sir Fail de Liery, requests the quality of your presence.”

“Fail de Liery,” the Hanzish knight suddenly mused. “I don’t know any such knight. There is a doddering old man by that name, but I’m quite sure he was never a knight. You, boy. What do you do for him?”

“I’m his squire,” Neil said evenly. “And if you have not heard the fame of Sir Fail de Liery, you have no ears for the hearing, or wits to hold what you hear.”

“Master! That sounded like an insult,” one of the Hanzish squires exclaimed.

“Did it?” Wishilm said. “It sounded to me like the fart of a cock-a-roach.”

Blue-eyes wagged a finger at him. “My master will not dirty his hands with you, I assure you. He fights only worthy knights, which it is plain you are not. Your insults are meaningless to him.”

“But not to us,” another of the Hansans put in.

“I have promised my master I shall not draw steel, nor disrupt the hospitality of this house,” Neil told him.

“This man is a coward!” the fellow bellowed, loudly enough to stop conversation all around the common room of the inn.

Neil felt a sort of trembling in his hands. “I have made you an invitation, and you have not accepted it. Our conversation is done.” He turned and walked toward where his master and the Hornladh knight sat.

“Don’t walk away from me, you!”

Neil ignored him.

“Well done, lad,” Sir Fail told him, offering him a place on the bench next to him. “It would be shame on the both of us were you to brawl in a public house.”

“I would never shame you, Sir Fail.”

“Let me introduce you. Sir Ferghus Lonceth, this is my protégé, Neil MeqVren.”

Lonceth clasped his hand. “I took him for your son, sir! Is he not?”

“He is like a son to me, but no, I cannot claim that honor. His father was a warrior in my service.”

“It’s good t’meet you,” Sir Ferghus said, still gripping Neil’s hand. “MeqVren. I’m afraid I don’t know that house. Are they allied with the clan Fienjeln?”

“No, sir. My clan has no house.”

An instant of silence followed that, as they politely struggled with the concept of a squire with no birth claim to knighthood.

“Well,” Sir Ferghus said, breaking the silence. “You are most welcome in our company. The recommendation of Sir Fail de Liery is better than the blood of ten noble houses.”

As they drank, Neil thought that perhaps some of Lonceth’s squires did not agree but were too polite to say anything.

“Tell me, Sir Ferghus,” Sir Fail said, once the toast had gone around. “I’ve heard little of your illustrious uncle. How does he find Paldh?”

The two knights talked for some time after that, and the squires, as was meet, stayed quiet. Most of Lonceth’s men drank heavily. Neil, as was his custom, did not.

When a lull came in the conversation, Neil tapped his master on the shoulder.

“I would check on the horses, Sir Fail,” he said. “Hurricane and Sunstamper both were having trouble with their land legs.”

Fail looked at him with a slightly suspicious smile. “See to it, then. But hurry back.”

The two horses were fine, as Neil knew they would be. And the massive, blue-eyed Hansan and two of the other Hanzish squires were waiting for him in the street—also as he knew they would be.

4 The Novice

Aspar awoke in the sure grasp of a tyrant, and to music. The music was a wild one—drumming of a woodpecker, the lark’s trilling melody rising above, the drifting, whirring chords of cicadas beneath. He rubbed dream grit from his eyes, braced his hands on the narrow wooden platform, and sat up carefully to greet the quick of dawn.

A wind soughed through the tyrants as they stretched their ancient, creaking limbs to the morning, clucked their smaller branches, bruised a few leaves into giving up their green, peppery scent.

Below, Ogre whickered. Aspar leaned from his perch to gaze at the faraway ground, to see that both his mounts were where he’d left them the evening before. From his prospect they seemed no larger than dogs.

The woodpecker drummed again as Aspar loosened his joints for the climb down. He had overslept on purpose this time. He liked to be in the branches when the first bronze of the sun came slanting through and the forest hummed and grumbled to life. This ancient stand he called the tyrants was one of the few places he could do that. In other places, centuries of fire, logging, and disease left at best one or two of the ancient ironoaks towering over lesser trees. Here they stood proud and unchallenged for leagues, ancient, titanic wrestlers, their muscular arms intertwined, gripping and pulling at each other, holding up a world in itself. A man could be born, live, and die up here, drinking the dew that gathered in mossy recesses, eating shelf fungus and squirrel or the flightless branch quail that ran peeping along the great boughs.

The world below—the world of Man and Sefry—did not matter up here.

Or so he had believed when he was a boy, when he discovered this place and built his first platforms. He’d imagined then that he would live here.

But even the tyrants could be chopped down or burned. Even the eternal could be killed by a hungry charcoal burner or for a nobleman’s whim. He had seen it, the boy Aspar had been. It was one of the few times in his life he had cried. That was when he knew he wanted to be a holter.

The King’s Forest, bah. The boy back at the inn was right about that at least. The king came here once or twice a year to hunt. This was Aspar’s forest. His to protect.

And something was happening out here. The Sefry were liars, yes, and not to be trusted. But if they really were fleeing the forest, with its deep sunless shadows and myriad caves, there had to be a reason for it. The Sefry did not step into the sun lightly.

So, reluctantly he made sure he had everything and started back down, limb to limb, to where the lowest branches, too heavy to keep themselves up, slopped in mazy, ropy paths to earth, there to put down new roots.

That was why Aspar called them tyrants; beneath their shading, creeping branches, no other green thing could live, save moss and a few ferns.

But deer and elk could survive, on the ankle-deep acorns, and the dappled cats that hunted them, like the lithe specimen he saw giving him a wary look from a few branches over. This one was small, just triple the size of a village tabby. In the Mountains of the Hare there were still lions, and here a few panthers worthy of note. But they wouldn’t bother him.

Ogre gave him a cross look as he stepped onto the black leaf mold. Angel tossed her head in greeting.

“Don’t look at me like that, you nag,” Aspar grunted at Ogre. “You’ve had the night to roam. You want me to start tethering you or keeping you hobbled?”

Ogre continued to glare, but he let Aspar mount, and picking their way through roots that sometimes mounded as high as the horses’ shoulders, they walked leisurely back to the Old King’s Road, a wide track that ran along a series of low ridges. In places it had been built up with stone and embanked, so it stood above the roots. Low branches had been cut away, allowing wagons to pass. To Aspar, the Old King’s Road was an affront, a leagues-long gash in the living forest. Still, it seemed unlikely that the tyrants would notice such a minor injury.

Midday he grew thirsty. He dismounted and made his way down a slope to where he knew a spring was—no point in wasting what he had bottled. Besides, springborn water was clean and cold, better than the flat rain-gathered stuff from the village. He found the stream bubbling from a sandy dish below a low cleft of crumbling rock, from whence it ran for a few large man’s jumps into Edwin’s Brooh. He knelt at the spring pan, cupping his hands, and then stopped still as a statue, trying to understand what he saw.

The natural basin was about as wide as his forearm, and water trickled cheerfully into it, as usual. But the pan seethed with black-peeping frogs scrambling away from his approach. A half dozen of them lay belly-up in the pool.

Nor were they alone. A yard-long creek-eel lay putrefying, its eyes filmed blue. Several large croaker-frogs sat there, too. All of them were alive, but they didn’t look healthy, nor did they even try to flee.

Aspar backed away from the spring, his stomach feeling funny. In all his years, he had never seen such a sight.

After a moment, he walked the rivulet’s length, down to where it met the brooh. All the way down it was clogged with dead frogs and, in its lower reaches, fish.

There were dead fish in the brooh, too, big ones, fetched up against the ferny banks or caught in natural weirs of sticks and roots.

The chill in his bones deepening, he unlimbered his bow and strung it, then started upstream. Something had poisoned the brooh, somehow, and its creatures had sought up to the springhead for cleaner water. There were folk who used the root of the sawbriar to stun fish to make them easy for the catching, but that worked only in a small, still pool. To kill a whole brooh would take more sawbriar than there was in the world.

The dead fish continued for a hundred paces, then a hundred more, and he was just about to return for his horses when he noticed that the stream had become clear again. He went a bit farther, to make sure, then backtracked, and on this pass noticed something else. A clump of ferns on the side of the stream had a distinct yellow cast to them. As if they, like the fish and frogs, were dying.

It was next to the ferns that he found the print.

Prints didn’t take well in the dense leaf mold of the forest floor, but on the muddy verge of the stream he found the impression of a paw. Though water had filled it and softened its outlines, it looked essentially like a cat track. But no dappled cat paw made this, nor even a panther. Aspar’s hand would just barely cover it. Even the lions of the Mountains of the Hare didn’t get that big. If this track belonged to a cat, it was bigger than a horse.

He traced the outline with his finger, and the instant he touched it he tasted metal on his tongue, and his belly spasmed, trying to give up his lunch. Almost without thought he scrambled back from the brooh and stood fifteen paces away, shivering as if he had a fever.

He might have stood there longer, save that he heard voices in the distance. On the road.

Where his horses were.

He ran back that way, as quickly and quietly as he could, the sick feeling melting as swiftly as it had come.

There were four of them, and they had already found Ogre and Angel when he got there.

“Got the king’s mark on ’em, they have,” one of them was saying, a tall, gangly young man with a missing front tooth.

“Ought to leave ’em, then. No good will come of taking ’em.” That was an older fellow, short, tending toward fat, with a big nose. The third man, a thickly built redhead, seemed to have no opinion. The fourth clearly had one, but he couldn’t express it, bound and gagged as he was.

This last fellow appeared to be no more than sixteen and had the look of a townsman about him in his impractical doublet and hose. His wrists were tied in front of him and then tethered to an old yellow mare. They had two other horses, a bay gelding and a sorrel mare.

The redhead was watching the woods. He had looked twice at Aspar where he crouched in a brake of ferns, but gave no indication of having seen him.

“A kingsman wouldn’t just abandon his horses,” Gangly argued. “He’s either dead or these have run away. See? They izn’ tethered.”

“You don’t have to tether horses like that,” Big Nose replied. “He’s probably just off taking a piss.”

“He went a long way, then,” the redhead grunted. “He did’n want his horses to see ’im piss?”

Aspar had never seen these fellows, but he was pretty certain he knew who they were; the three fit the description of some bandits lately come down from Wisgarth to worry at the occasional traders on the King’s Road. He’d planned to hunt them down in the summer, when he had enough men.

He waited to see what they would do. If they didn’t take his horses, he’d just follow them for a while. In fact, maybe he had already found his killers; Gangly wore a bloodred cloak trimmed in umber. Those were close to the king’s crimson and gold.

“We take ’em,” Gangly said. “I say we take ’em. Even if he’s here someplace, we can put a day between us easy with all of this horseflesh and him afoot.” He started forward, toward Ogre. “Easy, you nag.”

Aspar sighed, and fitted an arrow to his string. He couldn’t afford to be generous with these three.

Ogre did the first part of his work for him, of course. As soon as Gangly was close, the great beast reared and dealt him a thunderous blow in the chest with his hooves. By the time Gangly hit the ground, Big Nose was staring at the arrow sprouting from his thigh.

Redhead was faster than Aspar anticipated, and keener of eye. Aspar got a shot off first, but he was still shaky from whatever had sickened him near the creek. He missed, and Redhead’s bow sang out. The holter saw the arrow spinning toward him dead-on, deceptively slow, a trick of the mind. He could never move in time.

But the missile struck the tendril of a grapevine, glanced wide, and chuckled past his cheek.

“Raver!” Aspar swore. That had been close.

He bolted into motion, and so did Redhead, both fitting arrows to their bows, weaving through the trees. Redhead had the high ground. He was light of foot and a damned good shot. The two men ran parallel to each other, though their paths were gradually converging.

At fifteen yards Redhead took his second shot. It hit Aspar high in the chest and glanced from the leather cuirass beneath. Aspar missed his next shot, and then they were separated by a copse of new growth too dense to see through.

They came out six yards from each other, in a clearing. As-par stopped, stood profile, and let his shaft fly.

Redhead’s dart whirred by, missing by nearly a foot. As-par’s yard nailed through Redhead’s right shoulder.

The man shrieked as if he had been disemboweled, and dropped his bow. Aspar reached him with five quick strides. The fellow was going for his dirk, but Aspar kicked his arm, hard, just at the elbow.

“Lie still and live,” he grunted.

Redhead shrieked again when Aspar yanked both his injured and his good arm behind his back, cut the sinew cord from the discarded bow, and tied him up. With a long cord in his side bag he fashioned a noose to slip over Redhead’s throat.

“Walk ahead,” he commanded, still warily searching the surroundings for more enemies.

Gangly was still down when they reached the horses, and Ogre wasn’t finished with him yet; the bay’s foreparts rose and fell, and he was bloody to the withers. Big Nose was lying on the ground, staring at the scarlet pooling there.

About the time they reached them, Redhead’s legs gave out and he collapsed, eyes closed and breath coming in harsh wheezes.

Aspar cut up the reins from the yellow mare and trussed Big Nose. Gangly he didn’t bother with; his ribs had been splintered into his lungs and he’d choked on his own blood.

During all of this, the boy on the horse had been making all manner of gruntings and muffled squeals. It wasn’t until he was sure the bandits were secure that Aspar turned his attention to him, pulling the gag down.

“Ih thanka thuh, mean froa,” the boy began, in breathless and somewhat clumsy Almannish. “Mikel thanks. Ya Ih bida thuh, unbindan mih.”

“I speak the king’s tongue,” Aspar grunted, though he understood the boy plainly enough.

“Oh,” the fellow replied. “So do I. I just thought you must be from hereabouts.”

“I am. And not being stupid, I learned the king’s tongue, just like everyone in his service,” Aspar replied, unaccountably annoyed. “Besides, Virgenya is just through the mountains, so Virgenyan is as common in these parts as anything else.”

“My apologies. No offense intended. What I meant to say was thank you, thank you very much, and could you untie my hands, as well?”

Aspar glanced at the knot. It wasn’t complicated. “Probably,” he said.

“Well? Aren’t you going to?”

“Why did they have you tied up?”

“So I wouldn’t run away. They robbed me and took me prisoner. You probably saved my life.”

“Probably.”

“For which, as I said, I’m grateful.”

“Why?”

The fellow blinked. “Well—ah—because I feel I have much left to do in my life, much of value—”

“No,” Aspar said, talking slowly as if to a child. “Why did they take you prisoner after they robbed you?”

“I suppose they thought to ransom me.”

“Why would they suppose that was worthwhile?”

“Because, I—” The boy stopped, suspicious. “You’re like them, aren’t you? You’re just another bandit. That’s why you won’t cut me loose. You think you can get something from me, too.”

“Boy,” Aspar said, “don’t you recognize by my colors and badges that I’m the king’s holter? Yah, well, that’s one sort of stupid. But insulting an armed man when you’re tied up, that’s another.”

“You’re the holter?”

“I’m not given to lying.”

“But I don’t know you. How do I know that? You could have killed the real holter and taken his things.”

Aspar felt a smile try to quirk his lips. He resisted it. “Well, that’s a point,” he allowed. “But I’m the kingsman, and I’m not planning to sell you for your pelt or anything else. Who are you?”

The boy pulled himself straighter. “I’m Stephen Darige. Of the Cape Chavel Dariges.”

“Indeed? I hayt Aspar White of the Aspar White Whites. What business have you in the King’s Forest, Cape Chavel Darige? Lost your carriage?”

“Oh, very good,” the lad said sarcastically. “A very clever rhyme. I’m traveling the King’s Road, of course, which is free to all.”

“Not if you’re a merchant, it isn’t. There’s a toll.”

“My father is a merchant, but I’m not. I’m on the way to the monastery d’Ef, or was when these ruffians took me. I’m to be a novice there.”

Aspar regarded him for a moment, then pulled his dirk and cut the young man’s bonds.

“Thank you,” Stephen said, rubbing his wrists. “What changed your mind? Are you a devout man?”

“No.” He gestured at the fallen men. “Priest, eh? You know any leeching?”

“I’ve been at the college in Ralegh. I can bind wounds and set bones.”

“Show me, then. Get the arrows out of those two and make it so at least one of ’em doesn’t bleed to death. I need to talk to ’em.” He swept his hand around. “Are there any more of these fellows, or is this the whole gang-along?”

“That’s all I ever saw.”

“Good. I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going?” Darige asked.

“King’s business. I’ll be back.”

Aspar scouted back down the road half a league, just to make certain there were no trailing bandits. Returning, he rode back up Edwin’s Brooh, looking for more signs of whatever had made the print, but couldn’t find anything. He suspected the creature must have walked in the stream itself. Given time, he could probably pick up the trail, but right now he didn’t have the time. The boy seemed truthful enough, but you could never be certain. And he was starting to feel that it was very urgent indeed that he see exactly what sort of massacre had happened at Taff Creek.

When he rode back up, he found Stephen rising unsteadily; he’d been kneeling over what looked very much like a pool of vomit.

“Well, Cape Chavel Darige, how has it been?”

Stephen gestured at Gangly. “He’s dead,” he said weakly.

Aspar couldn’t help it; a laugh burst entirely unbidden from his lips.

“What—what’s so funny?”

“You. Of course he’s dead. Grim’s eye, look at him!”

“See here—” Stephen’s eyes bulged and watered, and he spasmed, as if about to vomit again, but then he straightened. “I’ve never seen a dead man before. Not like that.”

“Well, there’s plenty more men dead than alive, you know,” Aspar said. Then, remembering his first dead man, he softened his tone. “Never mind him. The other two? Did you leech them?”

“I—I started one …” Stephen looked sheepish.

“I shouldn’t have left them to you. My mistake.”

“I’m trying! It’s just, well, the blood—”

“Like I said,” Aspar said gruffly. “My fault. I should have reckoned you’d never actually done it before. I’m not blaming you.”

“Oh,” Stephen said. “Do you think they’re dead, too?”

“I doubt it much. I shot ’em in muscle, see? Not in the organs.”

“Why? You don’t seem to care much about killing.”

“I told you. I need to question ’em.”

“Oh.”

“Let’s start again. Can you cut bandages? Can you do that?”

“I already did.”

“Good. Let me see if I can’t save these fellows from Mother Death, then, so as you can keep your next meal down, yah?”

“Yes,” Stephen replied weakly.

Aspar knelt beside Redhead, who was dead to the world but still breathing. The arrow was lodged in his shoulder bone, so it would take a little cutting to get it out. Aspar started to it, and Redhead moaned.

“What did you want to question them about?” Stephen managed.

“I want to know where they were a few days ago,” Aspar grunted, grasping the arrow shaft and working it back and forth.

“Kidnapping me.”

“Where?”

“Two days back.”

“Not when—where.” The shaft came out, clean with the head. Aspar pressed the rag Stephen had cut into the wound. “Hold this here,” he commanded.

Stephen made a gagging noise but did as he was told. As-par found another bandage and began wrapping it.

“Where?” he repeated. “Press hard.”

“Two days back along the King’s Road,” Stephen replied.

“That being where? Nearer Wexdal or Forst?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Well, had you crossed the Owl Tomb before they took you up?”

“That’s a river? I’m not sure.”

“Yes, the Owl Tomb is a river. You couldn’t have missed it. It had an old stone causey over it. You can let go now.”

Stephen lifted his hands, staring at the blood on them, his eyes a little unfocused. “Oh. You mean the Pontro Oltiumo.”

“I mean what I say. What’s that gibberish?”

“Old Vitellian,” Stephen said. “The language of the Hegemony, who built that causeway a thousand years ago. They made this road, too. Owl must be a corruption of Oltiumo.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I looked at maps before I came. Hegemony maps.”

“How is it you thought that maps made a thousand years ago would do you any good at all?”

“The Hegemony made better maps than we do. More accurate. I have copies of them, if you want to see.”

Aspar just stared at him for a second, then shook his head. “Priests,” he muttered, making certain it sounded like a swear word. “Let’s do this other.”

Big Nose was easier. The shaft had gone straight through the muscle of the thigh without even grazing the bone.

If Gangly and his bunch had taken Darige east of the Owl, it was impossible for them to have been anywhere near Taff Creek. There went that possibility. So it was on to the Taff, after he figured out what to do with this bunch.

Whatever he decided, it would take him at least a day out of his way.

That couldn’t be helped, he supposed, not unless he wanted to kill them all and set the priest a-wandering. It was a tempting thought.

“Help me get these men up on their horses,” he grunted, when they were finished.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

“I mean, I’ll be late getting to the monastery.”

“Will you? I’ll try to hold my tears.”

“Why—what are you so angry with me for, holter? I didn’t do anything to you. It’s not my fault!”

“Fault? What does that mean, or matter? You set out from Virgenya alone, didn’t you? Just you and your maps, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“Why? What book put that in your head?”

“Presson Manteo did it, almost a hundred years ago, when he wrote the Amvionnom. He said—”

“Doesn’t matter what he said, does it? It didn’t do you a damned bit of good.”

“Well, I know it was stupid now,” Stephen said. “It still doesn’t explain why you’re mad at me.”

It didn’t, did it? Aspar took a deep breath. The boy didn’t seem a bad sort, actually; he was just a burden Aspar didn’t need at the moment. And that superior tone and low-country accent didn’t help make him more endearing.

“I see a few of your sort every year,” he explained. “Little noblings off for a romp in the wild. Usually what I see are their corpses.”

“You’re saying I’m a burden to you?”

Aspar shrugged. “Come on. I’ll take you someplace safe.”

“Tell me the way. I’ll go alone. You’ve saved my life. I don’t want to trouble you anymore.”

“I have to take the prisoners anyway,” Aspar said. “Ride along with me.”

He started to mount.

“Aren’t we going to bury him?” Stephen asked, pointing at Gangly.

Aspar considered that, then walked over to the deceased bandit. He dragged the corpse about ten feet off the side of the trail, folded its arms across his breast.

“There we go,” he said, with mock cheer. “A holter’s funeral. Care to say any words?”

“Yes. There is a proper liturgy—”

“Say it as we travel, then. We have someplace to be before dark.”

Like most priests—and boys—Darige couldn’t seem to stop talking. Within a bell, he had quit moping from being chastised and begun chattering constantly about the most inane subjects—the relation of Almannish to Hanzish, the dialects of Virgenya, the virtues of certain stars. He gave trees and birds and hills names that were long, unpronounceable, and entirely wrong and thought himself clever. And he kept wanting to stop to look at things.

“There’s another,” he said, for the fifth time in two bells. “Can you wait just a moment?”

“No,” Aspar told him.

“Really! Just a moment.” Stephen dismounted, and from his refurbished pack drew a roll of paper and separated a leaf from it. From a pouch at his belt, he produced a chunk of charcoal. Then he hurried to a waist-high stone standing by the side of the road. There were many such, along Old King’s way, all like this, squared columns two hands on a side. Most had been pushed out of the ground by roots growing up beneath them, expelled like infected teeth.

“This one still has writing on it!”

“So?”

Stephen pressed his sheet of paper against the stone and began blackening it with his charcoal.

“What in Grim’s eye are you doing?”

“Taking a rubbing—I can study it later. See? The writing comes through.” He held the sheet up, and Aspar saw, indeed, that in addition to the grain of the stone itself and the impressions of lichens, he could make out a number of angular marks.

“Ancient Vitellian,” Stephen said triumphantly. “This marks the boundary of two meddixships, and tells the distance to the next and last guardtower.” He squinted. “But here they call this road the Bloody Trace. I wonder what that means? The maps all mark it as the Vio Caldatum.”

“Why is your head full of this?” Aspar asked.

“It’s my calling—ancient languages, history.”

“Sounds useful.”

“If we have no past, we have no future,” Stephen replied cheerfully.

“The past is dead, and the Bloody Trace is an old superstition.”

“Aha! So you’ve heard the name. Local folklore? How does it go?”

“You wouldn’t be interested.”

“I just said I was.”

“Then you shouldn’t be. It’s old pig-wife talk.”

“Maybe. But sometimes the folk preserve a primitive sort of wisdom that scholarship has forgotten. Real bits of history, packaged up in simple conventions, made entertaining so common people can understand it, distorted here and there by misunderstandings, but still keeping some truth for those with the wits and education to riddle it out.”

Aspar laughed. “Makes me proud to be ‘folk,’ ” he said.

“I didn’t mean to imply you were simple. Please, can’t you tell me? About the Bloody Trace?”

“If you get back on your damned horse and start riding again.”

“Oh—certainly, of course.” He carefully rolled up his paper, placed it in a canvas sack, and remounted.

“Not much to tell, really,” the holter said, as they started along once more. “It’s spelt that long ago, when the demon Scaosen ruled the world, they used to keep humans like hounds, and race ’em up and down this road till their feet wore to the bone. They’d gamble on the outcome, keep ’em going until they all dropped dead. They say the road was ruddy from one end to the other, from the blood of their torn feet.”

“Scaosen? You mean the Skasloi?”

“I’m just telling a story.”

“Yes, but you see, with a bit of truth! You call them the Scaosen, while in the Lierish tongue they are known as Echesl. In Hornladh, Shasl. The ancient term was Skasloi, and they were quite real. History doesn’t doubt them in the slightest. It was the first Virgenyans who led the slaughter of them, with the aid of the saints.”

“Yah, I know the story. Me, I’ve never seen a Scaos.”

“Well, they’re all dead.”

“Then it doesn’t much matter whether I believe in them or not, does it?”

“Well, that’s not a very enlightened attitude.”

Aspar shrugged.

“I wonder,” Stephen said, stroking his stubbly face. “Could this have really been a Skasloi road before it was Vitellian?”

“Why not? If you believe that sort of thing, the whole stretch of it’s said to be haunted by alvs. The old people say the alvs come as white mists, or as apparitions, so terrible in beauty to see them is to die. The Sefry say they’re the hungry ghosts of the Scaosen. People leave them things. Some ask them for favors. Most try to avoid them.”

“What else do these alvs do?”

“Steal children. Bring sickness. Ruin crops. Make men do evil by whispering evil words in their ears. They can still your heart just by reaching their misty fingers into it. Of course, I’ve never seen one, so—”

“—you don’t believe in them. Yes, holter, I think I’m starting to understand you and your philosophy.”

“Werlic? Good. Now, if it please you, could you stop your nattering for a space? So if there be alvs or uttins or booghinns sneaking about us, I’ve me a chance to hear ’em?”

Miraculously, Stephen did quiet after that, studying his rubbing as they rode. After a moment, Aspar almost wished he would start up again, for the silence left him with the uneasy memory of the spring, the dead frogs, the print that had so bruised the earth. It reminded him that there were, indeed, things in the forest that he hadn’t seen, even in all of his days roaming it.

And if some strange beast, why not the Briar King?

He remembered a song they had sung as children, when he lived with the Sefry. It went with a circle game and ended with all playing dead, but he couldn’t remember the details. He remembered the song, though.

“What was that?” Stephen said.

“What?” Aspar grunted, starting from the membrance.

“You were singing.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“I thought you were.”

“It was nothing. Forget it.”

Stephen shrugged. “As you wish.”

Aspar grunted and switched his reins to the other hand, wishing he could forget as easily. Instead, he remembered a verse from another song, one Jesp used to sing.

5 The Princess

“They’ve seen us!” Austra gasped.

Anne leaned around the side of the oak, fingers gripping its rough skin. Behind her, her cream-colored mare stamped and whickered.

“Hush, Faster,” she whispered.

The two girls stood in the shadows of the forest at the edge of the rolling meadow known as the Sleeve. As they watched, three horsemen made their way across the violet-spangled grass, heads turning this way and that. They wore the dark orange tabards of the Royal Light Horse, and the sun glinted from their mail. They were perhaps half a bowshot away.

“No,” Anne said, turning to Austra. “They haven’t. But they are looking for us. I think that’s Captain Cathond in the lead.”

“You really think they’ve been sent out to look for us?” Austra crouched even lower, pushing a lock of golden hair from her face.

“Absolutely.”

“Let’s go deeper in the woods, then. If they see us—”

“Yes, suppose they do?” Anne considered.

“That’s what I just said. I—” Austra’s blue eyes went as round as gold reytoirs. “No. Anne!”

Grinning, Anne drew her hood over her red-gold hair, then took Faster’s reins, gripped the saddle, and flung herself up. “Wait until we’re out of sight. Then meet me in Eslen-of-Shadows.”

“I won’t!” Austra declared, trying to keep her voice low. “You stay right here!”

Anne clapped her thighs against her horse’s flanks. “Faster!” she commanded.

The mare broke from the woods in full gallop, a few leaves swirling in her wake. For perhaps ten heartbeats the only sound was the muffled thumping of hooves pounding damp soil. Then one of the mounted men started shouting. Anne glanced back over her shoulder and saw she had been right: Captain Cathond’s red face was behind the shouting. They wheeled their white geldings to pursue her.

Anne shouted in joy at the rush of wind on her face. The Sleeve was perfect for racing, long and green and beautiful. To her right, the forest was dressed in spring leaves, dogwood and cherry blossoms. Left, the Sleeve dropped a steep shoulder down to the marshy rinns that surrounded the island of Ynis and bordered the broad river Warlock, which lapped honey-gold against his banks.

Faster was living thunder, and Anne was the bright eye of lightning. Let them try to catch her! Let them!

The Sleeve curved around the southern edge of the island, then turned right, climbing up to the twin hills of Tom Woth and Tom Cast. Anne didn’t wait for the Sleeve to bend, however, but twitched the reins, commanding Faster into a sharp turn, sending clots of grass and black earth flying, veering them back into the woods. She ducked branches and held tight as the horse leapt a small stream. A quick look back showed the horsemen cutting into the woods earlier in hopes of heading her off. But the wood was thick with new growth through there and would slow them.

She had ridden, though, the tract that had been burned off a few years before. It was relatively clear, a favorite cutoff of hers, and Faster could whip around the great-girthed ash and oak. Anne crowed as they sped beneath one tree that had fallen aslant upon another, then up a hill, right, and back out onto the Sleeve, where it curved up to Tom Woth and Tom Cast. As she gained altitude, the topmost towers and turrets of Eslen castle appeared above the trees to her right, pennants streaming in the breeze.

When the men emerged from the wood again, they were twice as far behind her as they had been when they began the pursuit, and there were only two of them. Smugly, she started around the base of Tom Woth, headed back toward the south edge of the island. There was no challenge to it now; when she came to the Snake they wouldn’t even see her performance. A shame, really.

“Good girl, Faster,” she said, easing up the pace a little. “Just don’t go skittish on me, you hear? You’ll have to be brave, but then you can rest, and I’ll find you something good to eat. I promise.”

Then she caught motion from the corner of her eye and gasped. The third horseman, through some miracle, had just entered the Sleeve almost at her elbow. And worse, a new fellow on a dun wearing a red cape appeared just behind him. A hot flash of surprise burned across Anne’s face.

“Hey, there! Stop!”

She recognized the voice of Captain Cathond. Her heart drummed, but she clapped Faster fiercely, circling the hill. Tom Woth and Tom Cast together looked like an ample woman’s breasts. Anne rode right down the cleavage.

“You’d better slow up, you damned fool!” Cathond shouted. “There’s nothing on the other side!”

He was wrong. There was plenty on the other side—a spectacular view of the verdant rinns, and far below, the river, the southern fens. Coming from between the hills, there was a terrible and wonderful moment when it seemed the whole world was spread before her.

“Here we go, Faster!” Anne cried, as they crossed the lip over nothing and all of Faster’s feet were in the air. Now that it was too late, she felt a thrill of fear so sharp she could nearly taste it.

An instant stretched to eternity as Anne lay flat and knotted her hands in Faster’s mane. The warm musk of horse, the oil and leather of the saddle, the rushing air were her whole universe. Her belly was stuffed with tickly feathers. She shrieked in delirious fear, and then her mount’s hooves struck the Snake, a narrow gorge slithering down the steep side of the island.

Faster almost went end over end, and her hindquarters came around awkwardly. Then she caught a pace, bounding along the edge of the Snake, back and forth, now slipping out of control, then recovering and gathering her legs to spring. The world jumbled by, and Anne’s fear was so mixed with giddy elation she couldn’t tell the difference. Faster stumbled so hard she nearly plowed her head into the ground, and if that happened, there would be an end to both of them.

So be it then, she thought. If I die, I die, and glorious! Not like her grandmother, wasting like a sick dog in the bed, turning yellow and smelling bad. Not like her Aunt Fiene, bled dry in childbirth.

But then Anne knew she wouldn’t die. Faster had her hooves on a gentler slope, and she became more surefooted. The giant willows at the base of the Snake beckoned her in, but before she entered their concealing shadows she cast a final glance up the way she had come and saw the silhouettes of her pursuers, still on the edge. They didn’t dare follow her, of course.

She had escaped, for the moment. For the rest of the day, if she was lucky.

Faster’s withers were trembling, so Anne got off to let her walk a bit. It would take the guards forever to get down here by any of the conventional routes, and then they had twenty paths to choose from. She smiled up at the gnarled roof of willow, got her bearings, and started back east, toward Eslen-of-Shadows.

“That was wonderful, Faster,” she said. “They didn’t even think about following us!” She brushed her hair from her face. “Now we’ll just find Austra and hide out in the tombs the rest of the day. They won’t look for us there.”

Her blood and Faster’s wheezing were so loud in her ears that Anne didn’t hear the other rider until he had already turned the bend behind her. She spun and stopped still, staring at him.

It was the man on the dun, in the red cape—the latecomer. He was tall and fair, but dark-eyed, a young man, perhaps nineteen. His horse was blowing almost as hard as Faster.

“Saint Tarn, what a ride!” he exclaimed. “Quite mad! You, my lad, are—” He broke off, squinting at Anne.

“You’re no lad,” he said.

“Never have been,” Anne replied coldly.

His gaze was fixed on her now, and his eyebrows went up. “You’re Princess Anne!”

“Am I? And what is that to you?”

“Well, I’m not sure. I thought the Royal Horse was after a thief or a poacher. I thought I’d help ’em, for a lark. Now I’m confused.”

“My mother sent them, I’m sure. I’ve probably forgotten some dull errand I was supposed to do.” She put her foot in the stirrup and swung back into the saddle.

“What? So quickly?” the man said. “But I’ve just caught you. Don’t I get something for that?”

“I can lose you again,” Anne promised.

“You never lost me,” he pointed out. “I came down on your heels.”

“Not right on them. You were up there thinking about it for a while.”

He shrugged. “You’ve ridden that before, I warrant. I’ve never ridden in Eslen before today.”

“Well done, then.” At that, she turned to leave.

“Wait. Don’t you even want to know who I am?”

“Why should that matter to me?” she retorted.

“I don’t know, but it certainly matters to me who you are.”

“Oh, very well,” she said. “What’s your name?”

He dismounted and bowed. “Roderick of Dunmrogh,” he said.

“Fine, Roderick of Dunmrogh. I am Anne Dare, and you have not seen me today.”

“What a shame that would have been,” he said.

“You’re awfully bold, aren’t you?”

“And you’re awfully pretty, Princess Anne. Tarn’s own horsewoman, I’m bound. But if you say I haven’t seen you, I haven’t seen you.”

“Good.”

“But … er … why haven’t I seen you, if I may ask?”

“I told you. My mother—”

“The queen.”

She glared at him. “Yes, the queen, saints save her. And me from her.” She narrowed her eyes. “How do you know who I am?”

“I saw you. In court. I took the rose of knighthood only nineday ago.”

“Oh! So it’s Sir Roderick, then.”

“Yes. But you were there, along with your sisters.”

“Oh. Yes, I do suppose I stand out, the duck amongst the swans.”

“It was your red hair that bought my attention,” Roderick said, “not pinfeathers.”

“Yes. And the freckles, and this boat keel of a nose.”

“There’s no need to bait a hook to catch my praise,” he said. “I like your nose. I liked it right away, and I’m happy to say so.”

Anne rolled her eyes. “You thought I was a boy.”

“You’re dressed like one! And you ride like one. It took only one glance up close to dispel that illusion.” He wrinkled his brow. “Why are you wearing breeches?”

“Have you ever tried to ride in a dress?”

“Ladies ride in dresses all the time.”

“Yes, of course—sidesaddle. How long do you think I would have stayed in my seat coming down the Snake sidesaddle?”

He chuckled. “I see your point.”

“No one else does. They didn’t care when I was little; the whole court thought it cute. ‘Little Prince Anne’ some called me. When I became marriageable everything changed, and now I must sneak about to ride like this. Mother says fifteen is far too old for childish habits. I—” She broke off, and a suddenly suspicious expression crossed her face. “You weren’t sent to court me, were you?”

“What?” He seemed genuinely astonished.

“Mother would like nothing so well as to have me married off, preferably to someone dull, old, and fat.” She looked at him. “But you are none of those.”

For the first time, Roderick looked annoyed. “All I did, Princess, was to try to pay you a compliment. And I doubt very much that your mother would seek a husband for you from my house. We aren’t grotesquely rich nor are we fawning sycophants, and so find no favor at your father’s court.”

“Well. You are plainspoken, aren’t you? I apologize, Sir Roderick. When you’ve been at court a while, you’ll find just how little honor and truth there is in it, and perhaps excuse me.”

“Smile, and I’ll forgive quite quickly.”

To her dismay, she felt her lips bow of their own accord. For an instant her belly went light and weird, as if she were still plunging down the Snake.

“There. Better than a royal pardon,” he said, and he started to remount. “Well. It was nice meeting you, Princess. I hope we can speak again.”

“You’re going?”

“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Besides, I just realized what sort of trouble could come, if we were found together, in the woods, unchaperoned.”

“We’ve done nothing shameful,” Anne said. “Nor will we. But if you’re afraid—”

“I’m not afraid,” Roderick said. “It was your reputation I was considering.”

“That’s very kind of you, but I can consider my own reputation, thank you.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t trust you. You might tell someone you saw me. I think I must bind you into my service for the rest of the day, as my bodyguard.”

“Now that’s luck. I’ve been under the rose for only a week, and already I’m escorting a princess of the realm. I would be delighted, lady, though I cannot stay for the rest of the day. I have duties, you know.”

“Do you always do what you ought?”

“Not always. But in this case, yes. I don’t have the luxury of being a princess.”

“It isn’t a luxury,” Anne said, spurring her horse forward. “Are you coming, or not?”

“Where are we going?”

“To Eslen-of-Shadows, where my grandfathers sleep.”

They rode a few moments in silence, during which time Anne stole several glances at her new companion. He sat straight, easy, and proud in the saddle. His arms, bared almost to the shoulder by his riding vest, were lean and corded. His profile had a little hawk in it.

For the first time, she wondered if he was who he said he was. What if he was an assassin, a thief, a rogue—even a Hanzish spy? His accent was peculiar, and he did have the northern look to him.

“Dunmrogh,” she said. “Where is that, exactly?”

“South. It’s a greffy in the kingdom of Hornladh.”

“Hornladh,” she repeated, trying to remember the map in the Gallery of Empire. That was south, or so she seemed to remember.

They clopped across the stone bridge that crossed the Cer Canal, enduring the weathered gazes of the stone faces carved on the endposts. Silence settled around them again, and though Anne felt she ought to say something more, her head was quite empty of ideas for conversation.

“Eslen is larger than I thought,” Roderick offered, at last.

“This isn’t Eslen. Eslen is the castle and the city. The island is Ynis. Right now, we’re in the rinns, the low ground between Ynis and the Warlock.”

“And Eslen-of-Shadows?”

“Wait a moment—there.” She pointed through a vaulted opening in the trees.

“Fist of Saint Tarn,” Roderick gasped, gazing down at the city of the dead.

Its outskirts were modest, row on row of small wooden houses with thatched or shingle roofs facing out onto dirt streets. Some were in good repair, with neatly tended yards kept up by the families. More resembled the skeletons that lay within them, rickety frames pulled down beneath creepers, thorns, and years of falling leaves. Trees sprouted up through a few.

There were five circular canals within the borders of the necropolis, one within another. After they crossed the first the houses appeared more solid, built of dressed stone, with roofs of slate and fences of iron around them. The streets and avenues were cobbled there. From their vantage it was difficult for Anne and Roderick to make out more, save that the city rose in height and grandeur as it neared the center, where domes and towers stood.

“We have royal tombs in Dunmrogh,” Roderick said, “but nothing like this! Who are buried in these smallest, poorest houses?”

Anne shrugged. “The poorest people. Every family in Eslen-on-the-Hill has a quarter here, in keeping with their means. What they build and how they keep it is up to them. If their fortunes change, they might move the remains of their ancestors inward. If someone beyond the third canal falls on hard times, they might have to move farther out.”

“You mean to say that a man could be buried in a palace, and a century later find himself in a pauper’s hovel?”

“Of course.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“Neither is having worms eat your eyes, but that comes with being dead, too,” Anne replied wryly.

Roderick laughed. “You have me there.” He shifted in his saddle. “Well, I’ve seen it. And now I have to go.”

“Already?”

“Will it take more than a bell to return to the keep?”

“Assuredly.”

“Then I should have been on my way already. What’s the quickest way?”

“I think you should find it on your own.”

“Not if you want to see me again. My father will have me sent back to one of our lesser holdings a hundred leagues from here if I miss at my duties.”

“What in the name of Saint Loy makes you think I’d want to see you again?”

For an answer he pranced his horse near, caught her eyes with his own steel blue ones. She felt a sudden surge of panic, but also a kind of paralyzation. When he leaned in and kissed her, she couldn’t have stopped him if she wanted to.

And she didn’t want to.

It didn’t last long, just one brief, wonderful, confusing brush of lips. It wasn’t what she had expected kissing would be like, not at all.

Her toes were tingling.

She blinked, and said softly, “Go along this canal until you reach a street paved in lead bricks. Turn left. It will take you up the hill.”

He tossed his head at Eslen-of-Shadows. “I’d like to see the rest of this sometime.”

“Come back in two days, around the noon bell. You might find me here.”

He smiled, nodded, and without another word, rode off.

She sat, dazed, staring at the black water of the canal, recalling the feeling of his lips touching hers, trying not to let it escape, examining it, each nuance of his word and motion, striving to understand.

She didn’t know him.

She heard hoofbeats approaching, and her heart quickened, both hoping and fearing that he had come back. But when she looked up, it was Austra she saw, her golden locks bouncing on her shoulders, her expression quite cross.

“Who was that?” Austra asked.

“A knight,” Anne replied.

Austra seemed to consider that for a moment, then turned angry eyes back on Anne. “Why do you do these things? You came down the Snake, didn’t you?”

“Did anyone see you?” Anne asked.

“No. But I’m your lady-in-waiting, Anne. And I’m lucky to be, since I’ve no noble blood in me. If something happens to you—”

“My father loved yours, Austra, noble blood or no. Do you think he would ever turn you out?”

Suddenly she realized that tears had started in Austra’s eyes.

“Austra! What’s wrong?” Anne asked.

“Your sister Fastia,” Austra replied steadily, blinking through the tears. “You just don’t understand, Anne.”

“What don’t I understand? We grew up together. We’ve shared the same bed since we were five, when your parents died and Father took you in as my maid. And we’ve been playing games like this with the guard since I can remember. Why are you crying now?”

“Because Fastia told me I wouldn’t be permitted to be your maid any longer, if you couldn’t be curbed! ‘I’ll set someone with more sense to her,’ she said.”

“My sister is just trying to scare you. Besides, we share the risk, Austra.”

“You really don’t understand. You’re a princess. I’m a servant. Your family dresses me up and pretends to treat me as if I’m gentle, but the fact is, to everyone else I’m nothing.”

“No,” Anne replied. “That’s not true. Because I would never let anything happen to you, Austra. We’ll always be together, we two. I love you as much as any sister.”

“Hush,” Austra replied, snuffling. “Just hush.”

“Come on. We’ll go back, right now. Sneak in while they’re still looking. We won’t get caught this time, I promise.”

“The knights—”

“They couldn’t catch me. They won’t say anything, from shame, unless Mother or Fastia asks ’em outright. And still, they never saw you.”

“It doesn’t matter to Fastia whether I’m an accomplice or if you duped me.”

“Figs for Fastia. She hasn’t as much power as you think. Now come along.”

Austra nodded, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “But what about the knight who did catch you?” Austra asked.

“He won’t tell anyone, either,” Anne said. “Not if he wants to keep his head.”

Then she frowned. “How dare Fastia speak to you so? I should do something about this. Yes, and I think I know

what.”

“What?”

“I’ll visit Virgenya. I’ll tell her. She’ll do something, I’m certain.”

Austra’s eyes widened again. “I … I thought you said we were going back up the hill.”

“This won’t take any time at all.”

“But—”

“I’m doing this for you,” Anne told her friend. “Come on. Be brave.”

“Can we start back in a bell or so?”

“Of course.”

Austra held her chin up. “Let’s go ahead, then.”

They continued across the inner canals, until they came to the royal quarter, where the streets were all paved with lead bricks, smoothed and slicked by shoes and the brooms of the caretakers, where the stone figures of saints supported roofs flat or slanted and everything was twined thick with pink-eyed primrose and ajister thorn and the doors of the buildings were sealed with sigils and good steel locks.

This last circle was walled in midnight and stars, a bastion of black granite, mica flecked, with spears of wrought iron. The gates were guarded by Saint Under, with his hammer and long, grim face, and Saint Dun with her tear-brimmed eyes and crown of roses.

It was also guarded by a tall fellow of middle years who wore the somber gray livery of the scathomen, the knight-priests who guard the dead.

“Good evening, Princess Anne,” the man said.

“The best evening to you, Sir Len,” Anne replied.

“Here without permission again, I take it.” Sir Len removed his helm to reveal brown braids framing a face that might have been chiseled onto a brick, so stern and angular and flat it was.

“Why do you say that? Has Mother or Fastia been down here asking after me?”

The knight smiled briefly. “I can no more tell you of their comings or goings than I can tell them of yours. It is against my vow. Who comes here, what they do, of those things I cannot speak. As well you know, which is why you come here to do your mischief.”

“Are you turning me away?”

“You know I cannot do that, either. Pass, Princess.”

“Thank you, Sir Len.”

As they proceeded through the gates, Sir Len rang the brass bell, to let the royal dead know visitors were coming. Anne felt a gentle fluttering in her belly, a sure sign the spirits had turned their eyes upon her.

We’ll see, Fastia, she thought smugly. We’ll just see.

Anne and Austra dismounted and tied their horses outside the small courtyard where the dead of house Dare made their homes. There stood a small altar, where lay fresh and withered flowers, candles—some half-burnt, some puddles—mazers that smelled of mead, wine, and oak beer. Anne lit one of the candles, and they both knelt for a moment, as Anne led them in the prayer. The lead was hard and cold beneath Anne’s knees. Somewhere near, a jay scolded a raven, a sudden shrill cacophony. Anne chanted,

She took Austra’s hand. “Come on,” she whispered.

They skirted the great house where the bones of her grandparents and great-grandparents lay, where her uncles and aunts held midnight courts and her youngest brother Avieyen played with the toys in his marble crib, around the red marble colonnaded pastato and wide-arched valve of bronze, past the lesser mansion, where her more distant cousins no doubt plotted, as they had in life, for a position amongst their more august relatives. On to the crumbling stone walls and wild, straggling trees of the horz.

Over the years, Anne and Austra had worn a regular path back to the tomb, enlarging the hidden way as their bodies grew—not by cutting, of course, just by pushing and prying their way along. The Wild Saints had made no complaint, stricken them with no fever or blemishes, and so they thought themselves safe in that small modification. Also in the steps they had taken to hide their secret—strategically placed mats of rudely woven grapevine, a rock moved here or there.

What really kept it hidden, Anne was sure, was Virgenya’s will. She had hidden for over two thousand years from everyone but Anne and Austra. She seemed to want to keep it that way.

And so, after a few moments on hands and knees, Anne found herself once more before the sarcophagus.

They had never been able to move the lid any further, not even with a wooden lever, and after a time Anne had come to believe she was not supposed to look inside, and so she stopped trying.

But the little crack was still there.

“Now,” she said. “Have you got the stylus and the foil?”

“Please, don’t curse Fastia on my account,” Austra pleaded.

“I’m not going to curse her,” Anne said. “Not really. But she’s become insufferable! Threatening you! She deserves punishment.”

“She used to play with us,” Austra reminded her. “She used to be our friend. She made us overdresses of braided nodding-heads and dandelions.”

“That was a long time ago. She’s different, now, since she married. Since she became our mistress.”

“Then wish for her to be the way she was. Don’t put any ill on her. Please.”

“I just want to give her boils,” Anne said. “Or a few pocks on her beautiful face. Oh, all right. Give those here.”

Austra handed her a small, paper-thin sheet of lead and an iron scriber. Anne pressed the lead against the coffin lid and wrote.

Anne considered the sheet. There was still room at the bottom.

“What? Who is Roderick of Dunmrogh?” Austra exclaimed.

“You were looking over my shoulder!”

“Of course. I was afraid you would ask for boils for Fastia!”

“Well, I didn’t, you busybody,” Anne said, waving her friend away.

“No, but you did ask for some boy to fall in love with you,” Austra said.

“He’s a knight.”

“The one who chased you down the Snake? The one you just met? What, are you in love with him?”

“Of course not. How could I be? But what could it hurt for him to love me?”

“This sort of thing never turns out well in phay stories, Anne.”

“Well, Cer likely won’t pay attention to either of these. She likes curses.”

“Falling in love with you could easily be a curse,” Austra replied.

“Very funny. You should replace Hound Hat as court jester.” She slipped the lead foil through the crack in the lid of the sarcophagus. “There. Done. And now we can go.”

As she stood, a sudden dizziness struck her between the eyes, and for an instant, she couldn’t remember where she was. Something rang brightly in her chest, like a golden bell, and the touch of her fingers against the stone seemed very far away.

“Anne?” Austra said, voice concerned.

“Nothing. I was dizzy for an instant. It’s passed. Come on, we should get back to the castle.”

6 The King

“Now, let me introduce myself,” the big Hansan said to Neil. “I’m Everwulf af Gastenmarka, squire to Sir Alareik Wishilm, whom you’ve insulted.”

“I’m Neil MeqVren, squire to Sir Fail de Liery, and I’ve promised him I will not draw steel against you.”

“Convenient, but that’s no matter. I’ll tear your head off with my bare hands, no steel needed nor asked for.”

Neil took a deep, slow breath and let his muscles relax.

Everwulf came like a bull, fast for all of his bulk. Neil was faster, spinning aside at the last instant and breaking the big man’s nose again with the back of his fist. The Hansan pawed air and swayed back. Neil stepped in close, snapped his elbow into the squire’s ribs and felt them crack, then finished with a vicious jab into the fellow’s armpit. The breath blew out of Everwulf and he collapsed.

The rest of the squires weren’t playing fair. From the corner of his eye, Neil saw something arcing down toward him. He ducked and kicked, struck feet. A man went down, dropping the wooden practice weapon he held in his hand. Neil scooped it up, rolled, and caught his next attacker across the shins. This one screamed like a horse being stabbed.

Neil bounced to his feet. The fellow he had tripped was scuttling away. Everwulf was panting in a heap on the ground, and Shin-struck was gurgling. Neil leaned on the wooden sword casually. “Are we done with this?” he asked.

“It’s done,” the one fellow still capable of talking said.

“A good night to you then,” Neil said. “I look forward to meeting you fellows on the field of honor, once we’ve all taken the rose.”

He dropped the wooden sword, brushed his hair back into place. High above, he could just make out the moonlit spires of the castle.

The court! Tomorrow he would see the court!

William II of Crotheny gripped the stone casement of the tall window, and for a moment felt so light that a rush of wind might pull him out of it. Alv-needles pricked at his scalp, and a terror seemed to burst behind his eyes so bright it nearly outshone the sun. It staggered him.

The dead are speaking my name, he thought, and then, Am I dying?

An uncle of his had died like this, one heartbeat standing and talking as if everything was fine, the next, cooling on the floor.

“What’s the matter, dear brother?” Robert asked, from across the room. That was Robert, attracted to weakness like sharks to blood.

William set his jaw and took a deep, slow breath. No, his heart was still beating—furiously, in fact. Outside, the sky was clear. Beyond the spires and peaked roofs he could see the green ribbon of the Sleeve and the distant Breu-en-Trey. The wind was blowing from there, the west, and had the delicious taste of salt on it.

He wasn’t dying, not on such a day. He couldn’t be.

“William?”

He turned from the window. “A moment, brother, a moment. Wait for me outside, in the Hall of Doves.”

“I’m to be ejected from my own brother’s chambers?”

“Heed me, Robert.”

A frown gashed Robert’s forehead. “As you wish. But don’t make me wait long, William.”

When the door closed, William permitted himself to collapse into his armchair. He’d been afraid his knees would give out with Robert in the room, and that wouldn’t do.

What was wrong with him?

He sat there for a moment, breathing deeply, fingering the ivory inlay on the oaken armrest, then stood on wobbly legs and went to the wash basin to splash water on his face. In the mirror, dripping features looked back at him. His neatly trimmed beard and curly auburn hair had only a little gray, but his eyes looked bruised, his skin sallow, the lines on his forehead deep as crevasses. When did I get so old? he wondered. He was only forty-five, but he had seen younger faces on men with another score of winters.

He brushed away the water with a linen rag and rang a small bell. A moment later his valet—a plump, balding man of sixty—appeared, clad in black stockings and scarlet-and-gold doublet. “Sire?”

“John, make sure my brother has some wine. You know what he likes. And send Pafel in to dress me.”

“Yes, Sire. Sire—”

“Yes?”

“Are you feeling well?”

John’s voice held genuine concern. He had been William’s valet for almost thirty years. In all of the kingdom, he was one of the few men William trusted.

“Honestly, John? No. I just had some sort of … I don’t know what. A terror, a waking Black Mary. I’ve never felt anything like it, not even in battle. And worse, Robert was here to see it. And now I have to go talk to him about some-thing-or-other, who knows what. And then court. I wish sometimes—” He broke off and shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Sire. Is there anything I can do?”

“I doubt it, John, but thank you.”

John nodded and started to leave but instead turned back. “There is a certain fear, Sire, that cannot be explained. It’s like the panic one has when falling; it simply comes.”

“Yes, it was much like that. But I wasn’t falling.”

“There are many ways to fall, Sire.”

William stared at him for a moment, then chuckled. “Go on, John. Take my brother his wine.”

“Saints keep you, Sire.”

“And you, old friend.”

Pafel, a ruddy-faced young man with a country accent, arrived a few moments later with his new assistant Kenth.

“Not the full court garb,” William told them. “Not yet. Something comfortable.” He opened his arms, so they could take his dressing gown.

“As you wish, Sire. If I may? Today is Tiffsday, so of course the colors of Saint Tiff are appropriate, but we are also in the season of equinox, which is ruled by Saint Fessa …”

They put him in raven hose with gold embroidered vines, a bloodred silk doublet with a standing collar and gold florets, and a robe of black ermine. The familiar routine of dressing— complete with Pafel’s nonstop explanations—made William feel better. This was, after all, an ordinary day. He wasn’t dying, and there was nothing to be afraid of. By the time he was dressed, his hands and legs had stopped shaking, and he felt only that distant foreboding he had carried for the past several months.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” he told his dressers. When they were gone, he composed himself with a few deep breaths and went to the Hall of Doves.

The hall was as light and airy as a room all of stone could be, built of dressed alabaster and appointed with drapes and tapestries in pale greens and golds. The windows were broad and open; after all, if an army won past the floodlands, three city walls, and the outer fortress, all was lost anyway.

A faint rusty stain in the otherwise unblemished floor reminded William that it had happened once before. Thiuzwald Fram Reiksbaurg, the Wolf-Coat, had fallen here, struck through the liver by the first William Dare to reign in Eslen, just over a hundred years ago.

William stepped past the stain. Robert looked up from an armchair—William’s armchair—where he pretended to study a prayerbook. “Well,” he said. “There was no need to pretty yourself up on my account.”

“What can I do for you, Robert?”

“Do for me?” Robert stood, stretching his long, lean body to its full height. He was only twenty, decades younger than William, and to emphasize the fact he wore the small mustache, goatee, and close-cropped hair that was currently in fashion among the more effete courtiers. His regular features were somewhat marred by a smirk. “It’s what I can do for you, Wilm.”

“And what might that be?”

“I went for a walk last night with Lord Reccard, our esteemed ambassador from Saltmark.”

“A walk?”

“Yes. We walked first to the Boar’s Beard, then to the Talking Bear, over the canal to the Miser’s Daughter—”

“I see. The man isn’t dead, is he? You haven’t stirred us up a war with Saltmark, have you?”

“Dead? No. He’s alive, if somewhat remorseful. War … well, just wait until I’ve finished.”

“Go on,” William said, trying to keep his face straight. He wished he trusted his brother more.

“You may remember Reccard’s wife, a lovely creature by the name of Seglasha?”

“Of course. Originally from Herilanz, yes?”

“Yes, and a true daughter of that barbaric country. She cut her last husband into a gelding, you know, and the one before that was hacked to pieces by her brothers for slighting her in public. Reccard is quite terrified of her.”

“Not without cause, it seems,” William said.

Robert arched his brows. “You should talk, married to that de Liery woman! She’s at least—”

“Speak no ill of my wife,” William warned. “I won’t hear it.”

“No? Not even from your mistresses? I’ve heard a few choice complaints from Lady Berrye concerning your wife, in words I do not think she invented.”

“Robert, I hope you didn’t come to lecture me about proper behavior. That would be the goat calling the ram hairy.”

Robert leaned against an alabaster pillar, folding his arms across his chest. “No, brother dear, I came to ask if you knew that Hansa had moved thirty war galleys and one thousand troops into Saltmark.”

“What?”

“As I said, poor Reccard is quite terrified of his wife. I guessed correctly that he wouldn’t want her to know about the games we played at the end of the night, with the ladies in the Lark’s Palace. So I convinced him that he ought to be … friendly to me.”

“Robert, what a schemer you are. It’s not fitting for a Dare to act so.”

Robert made a disgusted sound. “Now who is lecturing on morality? You depend on my ‘unworthy’ behavior, William. It allows you to keep the armor of your righteousness clean and polished, while at the same time retaining your kingdom. Will you ignore this information because I obtained it so?”

“You know I cannot. You knew I could not.”

“Precisely. So do not lecture me, Wilm.”

William sighed heavily and looked back out the window. “Who knows about this? About these Hanzish ships?”

“At this court? You and me, and the ambassador, of course.”

“Why would Hansa invest Saltmark? Why would Saltmark allow it?”

“Don’t be silly. What other reason could there be? They’re preparing something, and Saltmark is with them.”

“Preparing what?”

“Reccard doesn’t know. If I had to guess, though, I’d say they have designs on the Sorrow Isles.”

“The Sorrows? Why?”

“To provoke us, I wouldn’t doubt. Hansa grows fat with men and ships, brother. The emperor of Hansa is an old man; he’ll want to use them soon, while he still can. And there’s nothing under the sun that he wants more than that crown you wear on your head.”

Marcomir Fram Reiksbaurg isn’t the only one who wants my crown, William thought sourly. Or do you think me too thick to know that, dear brother?

“I suppose you could simply ask the Hanzish emissary,” Robert went on. “His ship anchored yesterday.”

“Yes, that complicates things, doesn’t it? Or simplifies them. Perhaps they’ve come to declare war in person.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “In any event, I’m not scheduled to speak to that embassy until the day after tomorrow, after my daughter’s birthday. I will not change that; it would seem suspicious.” He paused, considering. “Where is Reccard now?”

“Sleeping it off.”

“Put spies on him, and on the Hansans. If any correspondence passes, I want to know of it. If they meet, let them, but make certain they are overheard. Under no circumstances must either get a message out of the city.” He knitted his fingers and looked at them. “And we’ll send a few ships to the Sorrows. Quietly, a few at a time over the next week.”

“Wise moves all,” Robert said. “You want me to act as your sinescalh in this matter, then?”

“Yes. Until I tell you otherwise. I’ll draft the formal writ of investment this afternoon.”

“Thank you, William. I’ll try to be worthy of you and our family name.”

If there was sarcasm in that, it was too subtle to detect. Which meant nothing, actually. William had known his brother only since his birth. It wasn’t long enough.

A bell jangled faintly, from the hallway.

“Enter!” William said.

The door creaked open, and John stepped in. “It’s the praifec, Sire, just returned from Virgenya. And he has a surprise with him.”

The praifec. Grand.

“Of course. Show him in.”

A moment later, the black-robed praifec Marché Hespero stepped into the chamber.

“Your Majesty,” he said, bowing to William. He then bowed to Robert. “Archgreft.”

“How good to see you, Praifec,” Robert said. “You’ve made it back from Virgenya in one piece.”

“Indeed,” the churchman replied.

“I trust you found our kinsmen as thickheaded as us?” Robert went on.

William wished, not for the first time, Robert would keep his mouth shut.

But Hespero smiled. “Let us say, they are as seemingly intractable in many ways, even in the matter of heretics, which is troubling. But the saints dispose, yes?”

“I trust they do,” William said lightly.

Hespero’s smile didn’t falter. “The saints work in many ways, but their most cherished instrument is the church. And it is written that the kingdom should be the knight of the church, the champion of it. You would be distressed, King William, if your knights failed you?”

“They never have,” William replied. “Praifec, what may I have brought for you? Wine and cheese? The jade pears came ripe while you were away, and they are excellent with the blue Tero Gallé cheese.”

“A cup of wine would suit me well,” Hespero replied.

John poured a goblet for Hespero, who frowned as he sipped at it.

“If it’s not to your taste, Praifec, I can send for a different vintage,” William said.

“The wine is excellent, Sire. That is not what troubles me.”

“Please. Speak your mind, then, Your Grace.”

Hespero paused, then rested his goblet on a pedestal. “I have not seen my peers on the Comven. Are the rumors true? Have you legitimized your daughters as heirs to the throne?”

“I did not,” William said. “The Comven did.”

“But it was your proposition, the one we discussed while you were drafting it?”

“I believe we did discuss it, Praifec.”

“And you remember my opinion that making the throne heritable by women is forbidden by church doctrine?”

William smiled. “So thought one of the churchmen in the Comven. The other voted for the reform. It would seem the issue is not as clearly drawn as some believe, Eminence.”

In fact, it had taken some doing to get even one of the priests to vote William’s way—more of Robert’s dirty but effective dealings.

At times like this, he had to admit that Robert indeed had his moments.

Anger gathered for an instant on the cleric’s brow, then smoothed away. “I understand your concern over the need for an heir. Charles, while a wonderful son, has indeed been touched by the saints, and—”

“My son will not enter into this conversation, Praifec,” William said mildly. “You stand in my house, and I forbid it.”

Hespero’s face grew more stern. “Very well. I will simply inform you then, reluctantly, that I must enjoin the high Senaz of the church to consider this matter.”

“Yes, let them do that,” William said. And let them try to reverse a decision of the Comven, he thought, behind his smile. Let even the church convince that squabbling pack of lordlings they made a wrong decision. No. One of my daughters will rule, and my son, bless his soul, will continue playing with his toys and his Sefry jester until he is an old man.

He won’t be your lack-wit king, Hespero. If it came to that, I’d rather leave the throne to Robert, had he any legitimate heirs.

“Saints!” a female voice interrupted. “You three aren’t going to argue politics all day, are you?”

Robert was the first to react to the newcomer.

“Lesbeth!” He bounded across the floor and swept her up in a hug. She giggled as he spun her around, her red hair losing a comb and fanning out behind her. When Robert put her down, she kissed his cheek, then disentangled herself and leapt ferociously into William’s arms.

“Praifec!” Robert said. “He is a blessed man who returns my beloved twin from her rustic exile!”

William held his youngest sister back to look at her. “Saint Loy, but you’ve grown, girl!”

“The image of Mother,” Robert added.

“You two!” Lesbeth said, taking their hands. “How I missed you both!”

“You should have sent word,” William told her. “We would have had a grand celebration!”

“I wanted to surprise you. Besides, isn’t Elseny’s birthday tomorrow? I wouldn’t want to cast a shadow on that.”

“You could never cast a shadow, sweet sister,” Robert told her. “Come here, sit down, tell us everything.”

“We’re being rude to the praifec,” Lesbeth said. “And after he was gracious enough to escort me the whole, long way. And such delightful company! Praifec, I cannot express my thanks.”

“Nor I,” William added quickly. “Praifec, forgive me if my words were sharp. Though it is early, it’s been a taxing day already. But now you’ve brought me joy, and I’m in your debt for seeing my sister home safe and sound. I am ever the friend of the church, and will certainly demonstrate it to you.”

“It was my pleasure,” the cleric said, bowing. “And now I hope I may excuse myself. My staff is somewhat helpless without me, and I fear it will take weeks to straighten out my office. Nevertheless, I would be honored to advise you when you hold court.”

“I shall be honored to have you there. I’ve been too long without your wisdom, Praifec.”

The churchman nodded and withdrew.

“We must have more wine!” Robert said. “And entertainment. I want to hear about everything.” He spun on his heel. “I’ll arrange it. Lesbeth, will you join me in my gallery, at half-bell?”

“Without doubt, dear brother,” she replied.

“And you, brother?”

“I will stop by. Then I must hold court, you know.”

“A pity.” Robert wagged a finger at Lesbeth. “Half-bell. Don’t be late.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Robert hurried off.

When they were alone, Lesbeth took William’s hand and squeezed it. “Are you well, Wilm? You look tired.”

“I am, a bit. Nothing for you to worry about. And I’m much better, now.” He squeezed her hand back. “It’s good to see you. I missed you.”

“And I missed you. How is Muriele? And the girls?”

“All well. You won’t believe how Anne has grown. And Elseny, betrothed! But you’ll see her at her birthday tomorrow.”

“Yes.” Her eyes flickered down, almost shyly. “Wilm, I have a secret to tell. And I must ask permission for something. But you must promise me that it won’t interfere with Elseny’s birthday. Will you promise?”

“Of course. Not something serious, I hope.”

Her eyes sparkled strangely. “It is, I think. At least I hope so.”

Muriele Dare, the queen of Crotheny, stepped back from the peephole. Whatever Lesbeth had to say to William, Muriele would let the siblings speak in private.

Quietly, she padded down the narrow passage, gliding on the smooth stone beneath her stockinged feet, through a secret red-oak panel and the small room beyond, down the stair behind the statue of Saint Brena, and finally to the locked and concealed door to her own chambers.

There, in near darkness, she took a moment for a few deep breaths.

“You’ve been in the walls again.”

Muriele started at the female voice. Across the room, she made out a gowned shadow.

“Erren.”

“Why have you started doing my job? I’m the spy. You’re the queen.”

“I was bored, you were elsewhere, and I knew the praifec had returned. I wanted to know what he would say.”

“Well?”

“Nothing particularly interesting. He reacted as we expected to my daughters being named as heirs. On the other hand, have you heard anything about Hanzish troops in Saltmark?”

“Nothing so definite,” Erren said. “But there is much happening in Hansa. They will take action soon.”

“Action of what sort?”

“Crotheny will be at war within the year, I’m certain of it,” Erren replied. “But there are nearer things I fear more. Rumors abound among the coven-trained.”

Muriele paused at that. Erren was a very special sort of assassin, trained by the church to serve noble families.

“You fear for our lives?” she said. “Would Hansa be so bold as to use coven-trained to murder us?”

“No—and yes. No, they will not employ my sisters, for that would incur the wrath of the church. But there are others who will kill for kings, and the mood in Hansa is that there is in Crotheny a king needing killing. That I know.” She paused. “But something else is in the wind. Talk of new kinds of murder, of encrotacnia and shinecraft unknown to the coven-trained. Some say perhaps assassins from Hadam or some other foreign place are responsible. Across the sea they may have unfamiliar skills.”

“And you have cause to fear that these new killers will be turned against my family?”

“I fear it,” Erren said. Her tone held no uncertainty.

Muriele crossed the room. “Then take whatever precautions you deem necessary, especially with the children,” she said. “Is that all you can tell me now?”

“Yes.”

“Then light some of the candles and send for mulled wine. The passages are chilly today.”

“We could ascend to your sunroom. The sun is warm outside.”

“I prefer to remain here, for the moment.”

“As it pleases you.”

Erren went into the antechamber, whispered to the serving girl there, and returned with a burning taper. Its light was kind to her face, painting away the years better than blush. She looked almost like a girl, her features delicate beneath the dark, straight hair. Only a few streaks of silver gave it the lie.

She lit the taper near the writing desk, and as the light in the room doubled, crow’s feet appeared, spindling out from her eyes, and other lines of age reluctantly revealed themselves, beneath her chin, in the skin of her neck and forehead.

A corner of Muriele’s room appeared, as well. The portrait of her father, on the wall, his eyes stern yet kind, flecked with gilt by the painter, not nearly as warm as they were in person.

Erren lit a third candle, and a red couch appeared from shadow, a table, a sewing kit, the corner of Muriele’s bed— not the one she shared with the king, that was in their marriage room—but her bed, cut from the white cedar of the Lierish uplands and canopied with black cloth and silver stars, the bed of her childhood, where she had slipped each night into dream.

The fourth candle chased all of the shadows under things, where they belonged.

“How old are you, Erren?” Muriele asked. “Exactly?”

Erren cocked her head. “How nice of you to ask. Will you ask how many children I have, as well?”

“I’ve known you since you left the coven. I was eight. How old were you?”

“Twenty. Now do your sums.”

“I’m thirty-eight,” Muriele replied. “That makes you fifty.”

“Fifty it is,” Erren replied.

“You don’t look it.”

Erren shrugged. “Age has less to hold over one if one is never a great beauty to begin with.”

Muriele frowned. “I never considered you plain.”

“You are a poor authority in such matters. You often claim not to know you are beautiful, and yet your beauty has been famous since you were thirteen. How can one be surrounded by such admiration and not succumb?”

Muriele smiled wryly. “One cannot, as I’m sure you know, cousin. One can, however, cultivate the appearance of modesty. If the appearance is kept up long enough, who knows but that it might one day become true? And here age helps, for as you say, passing time steals beauty, and when one is sufficiently old, false modesty must become real modesty.”

“Excuse me, Majesty, Lady Erren,” a small voice said from the curtained doorway. It was Unna, her maid, a petite girl with honey-mud hair. “Your wine?”

“Bring it in, Unna.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

The girl placed the pitcher in the center of a small table, and a cup on either side. The scents of orange blossom and clove rose in steam.

“How old are you, Unna?” Muriele asked.

“Eleven, Your Majesty.”

“A sweet age. Even my Anne was sweet at that age, in her way.”

The maid bowed.

“You may go, Unna.”

“Thank you, Majesty.”

Erren poured some wine and tasted it. After a moment she nodded and poured some for Muriele.

“What is all of this about age?” Erren asked. “Have you been watching your husband and his mistresses again? I should never have shown you the passages to his room.”

“I have never done such!”

“I have. Poor puffing, panting, pungent man. He cannot keep pace with the young Alis Berrye at all.”

Muriele covered her ears. “I do not hear this!”

“And to make matters worse, Lady Gramme has begun to complain about his attentions to Alis.”

Muriele dropped her hands. “What! The old whore complaining about the new one?”

“What do you expect?” Erren asked.

Muriele exhaled a shallow laugh. “My poor, philandering William. It’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for him. Do you suppose I should start my own fuss again? About Gramme’s bastards?”

“It might make things more interesting. Alis wears his body thin, Lady Gramme chews his ears off, and you do away with what remains. It shouldn’t be difficult.”

Muriele shrugged. “I could task him. But he seems … For a moment, watching him in the Hall of Doves today, I thought he might collapse. He looked more than weary, he looked as if he had seen death’s shadow. And if a war really is coming with Hansa … No. Better I be the one that he can count on.”

“You’ve always been that,” Erren pointed out. “Ambria Gramme wants to be queen, and is spectacularly unsuited for it. Alis and the lesser young ones are hoping for a … shall we say, pensioned? … position such as Gramme enjoys. But you—you are queen. You aren’t maneuvering for anything.”

Muriele felt the humor rush from her face. She looked down at her wine, at the light of the nearest candle wriggling in it like a fish.

“Would it were true,” she murmured. “But I do want something of him, the bastard.”

“Love?” Erren scoffed. “At your age?”

“We had it once. Not when we married, no, but later. There was a time when we were madly in love, don’t you think?”

Erren nodded reluctantly. “He still loves you,” she admitted.

“More than he loves Gramme, you think?”

“More deeply.”

“But less carnally.”

“I think he feels guilty when he comes to you, and so does so less often.”

Muriele plucked a small smile from somewhere. “I mean for him to feel guilty.”

Erren arched her eyebrows. “Have you ever thought of taking a lover?”

“How do you know I haven’t?”

Erren rolled her eyes. “Please. Don’t insult me again. You have already made note of my advanced age. That’s quite enough for one night.”

“Oh, very well. Yes, I have considered it. I consider it still.”

“But will not do it.”

“Considering, I think, is more fun than doing, in such cases.”

Erren took a sip of wine and leaned forward. “Who have you considered? Tell me. The young baron from Breu-n’Avele?”

“No. Enough of that,” Muriele said, her cheeks warming. “You tell me. What mischief did my daughters find today?”

Erren sighed and squared her shoulders. “Fastia was a perfect princess. Elseny giggled a lot with her maids, and they made some rather improbable speculation as to what her wedding night will be like.”

“Oh, dear. It’s time to talk to her, I suppose.”

“Fastia can do that.”

“Fastia does too much of what I ought to do already. What

else? Anne?” “We … lost Anne again.”

“Of course. What do you think she’s up to? Is it a man?”

“A month ago, no. She was just sneaking off, as usual. Riding, getting drunk. Now, I’m not so sure. I think she may have met someone.”

“I must speak to her, too, then.” She sighed. “I should not have let things go this far. She will have a difficult time, when she is married.”

“She need not marry,” Erren said softly. “She is the youngest. You might send her to Sister Secula, at least for a few years. Soon, your house will need a new …” She trailed off.

“A new you? Do you plan to die?”

“No. But in a few years, my more … difficult tasks will be beyond me.”

“But Anne, an assassin?”

“She already has many of the talents. After all, she can elude me. Even if she never takes the vow, the skills are always useful. The discipline will do her good, and Sister Secula will keep her well away from young men, of that I can assure you.”

Muriele nodded. “I must think on it. I’m not convinced something so drastic is needed.”

Erren nodded. “She has always been your favorite, Anne.”

“Does it show?”

“To some. I know it. Fastia does. Anne certainly does not.”

“Good. She should not.” She paused. “She will hate me if I send her away.”

“For a time. But not forever.”

Muriele closed her eyes and rested her head on the back of the chair. “Ah. I hate these things,” she whispered. “I will think on it, Erren. I will think on it close.”

“And so now what? More wine?”

“No. You were right. Let’s go to the sunroom and play nines.” She smiled again. “Invite Alis Berrye. I want to watch her squirm a bit.”

7 Tor Scath

Stephen Darige composed a treatise in his head as he rode along, entitled Observations on the Quaint and Vulgar Behaviors of the Common Holter-Beast.

This pricker-backed woodland creature is foul in temper, mood, and odor, and on no account should it be approached by men of good or refined sensibility. Politeness angers it, civility enrages it, and reasonableness evokes furious behavior, like that of a bear that, while stealing honey, finds a bee lodged up his—

“Stop your horse a moment,” the holter said gruffly.

It communicates mostly in grunts, growls, and trumpeting farts. Of these, the last are the most intelligible, though none could be confused with speech—

“I said, stop him.” Aspar had halted his own mounts and those with the captives, as well.

“Why?”

Then Stephen could see why. The holter was clearly listening to something, or for something.

“What is it?”

“If you’ll keep quiet, maybe I’ll find out.”

Stephen strained his own ears, but heard nothing but wind hissing through leaves and branches chattering together. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Me neither,” Pol, one of the men who had kidnapped Stephen, grunted.

“Shut up, you,” Aspar White said to Pol, kicking his own horse to a trot. “Come on. I want to make Tor Scath before sundown.”

“Tor Scath? What’s that?” Stephen asked.

“The place I want to reach before sundown,” the holter replied.

“Someplace y’can bugger a bear?” Pol asked.

For that Pol got a cuff and after a brief stop a gag in his mouth.

Stephen liked horses, he really did. Some of his fondest memories were of the horse he’d had as a child, Finder, and of rides across his father’s estates with his friends, pretending they were the knights of Virgenya, storming the fortresses of the Skasloi.

He liked horses when they ran, the rushing of it. He liked it when they walked sedately.

Trotting, he hated. It hurt.

They alternated between walk and trot for the next two bells. By that time, further inspired by the jolting ride, Stephen had added several pages to his treatise.

He’d also begun to hear something, as the holter predicted, and to wish he hadn’t. The forest was growing dark, and he was already imagining movement in every shadow. Now the shadows had voices, hollow with distance, throaty ululations that worried at the edge of hearing and then vanished. He tried to ignore them, concentrating on the fourth chapter of his treatise, “The Very Annoying Personal Habits of the Holter-Beast,” but the sounds crept deeper and deeper into his head, becoming a howling or baying that sounded unearthly.

“Holter—what is that?” he asked.

“Hounds,” Aspar White told him, in his irritatingly brief manner. “Told you y’d hear them.”

Stephen had heard hounds before. He didn’t remember them sounding like that. “Whose hounds? This is the King’s Forest! No one lives here! Or are they wild?”

“They aren’t wild, not the way you mean.”

“They sound vicious. And eerie.” Stephen turned in his saddle, frowning. “What do you mean, ‘not the way I mean’? Are they wild, or aren’t they?”

The holter shrugged. At that moment, a particularly bloodcurdling note entered the baying, much nearer than before. Stephen’s belly tightened. “Will they stop at dark? Should we climb a tree, or—”

“Pissing saints!” Aiken, the redheaded bandit, gasped. “It’s Grim, id’n it? It’s Grim and his hunt!”

“Quiet,” Aspar said. “You’ll scare the boy.”

“What do you mean, Aiken?” Stephen asked.

The bandit’s face had bleached itself so white even his freckles had disappeared. “One-eyed Grim! He hunts for the lost souls wandering the forest. Oh, saints, keep him off me! I never meant no harm to no one!”

Stephen wasn’t sure who Grim was, but his grandfather had told stories of a host of nocturnal ghosts and demons led by a beast-man named Saint Horn the Damned. Stephen had never got around to checking whether or not Saint Horn was recognized by the church or was just a folk legend. He now sincerely wished he had.

“What’s he talking about? Is he right?” Stephen asked the holter.

Aspar shrugged, looking almost nervous. “Could be,” he replied.

“Pissing saints!” Aiken howled. “Cut me loose!”

“Do you want a gag, too?” the holter snapped.

“You don’t believe in any such creature,” Stephen accused, wagging his finger at Aspar. “I know you well enough by now.”

“Werlic. Right. I don’t. Ride faster.”

For an instant, the holter almost looked frightened, and that put a chill deep in Stephen’s bones. He had never met anyone so prosaic as Aspar White. If he thought there was something to fear …

Aspar was quiet for a moment, then said, in a low voice, “I’ve heard those dogs raging, but never seen ’em. Once, they came straight at me, and I thought to spy them at last. I nocked an arrow and waited. That’s when I heard ’em—high above me, in the night air. I swear, it’s the only place they could have been.

“Here, listen—they’re coming at us. We’ll see, yah? Be still.”

“This is perfect nonsense,” Stephen hissed. “I don’t—”

“For pity, let me down!” Aiken moaned. “If it’s the Raver, we have to lie flat in the road or be taken!”

“If it is him, I’ve a mind to make his work lighter,” Aspar grunted, fingering the bone handle of his dirk. “It’s the damned souls he likes best, after all, and those not all weighted down with skin and bone. Cover that cesshole with your teeth, or I’ll cut you loose of your corpse!”

Aiken quieted to whimpering then, and they waited, and the hounds came closer and closer.

Stephen’s fingers began to tremble on the reins. He willed them to stop, for his fear to blow away with the cool wind. Through the trees, the sky was dark lead, and the woods were so murky he could scarcely see ten yards.

Something huge and black exploded onto the road, and Stephen shrieked. His horse danced sideways and Stephen had a nightmare impression of gleaming eyes and twisted antlers. He screamed again, yanked at his reins, and his horse went widdershins like a puppy chasing its tail.

Then the hounds burst onto the road, huge mastiffs with glistening teeth, their howling so loud it actually hurt his ears. Most tore on, following their terrible quarry, but three or more began racing around the horses and men, yelping and slavering.

“Saints, keep us!” Stephen hollered, before losing his grip and thumping painfully onto the leaf-littered forest floor.

As he looked up, another horse and rider loped out from the trees. The rider was human in form, but with a face that was all beast, bright beady eyes and matted hair.

“Saints!” Stephen repeated, remembering Saint Horn the Damned.

“Grim!” Aiken screamed.

“Hello, Aspar,” the beast-man said, in perfectly good king’s tongue. “I hope you’re happy. You probably cost me that stag.”

“Well, you nearly cost the world a priest. Look at this boy; you nearly frightened him to death.”

“Looks like. Who did you think I was, boy, Haergrim the Raver?”

“Gah?” Stephen choked. Now he knew what it meant to have his heart pounding in his throat, something he had always considered a fanciful literary expression. The rider was closer now, and Stephen realized that he had a human face after all, covered by a bushy, unkempt beard and long, ragged hair.

“Well, he’s an educated fellow,” Aspar went on. “His thousand-year-old maps say no one lives in the King’s Forest, so who else could you be but the Raver, yah?”

The bearded figure bowed slightly, in the saddle.

“Symen Rookswald, at your service,” he said.

“Sir Symen,” Aspar amended.

“Once upon a time,” Sir Symen said dolefully. “Once upon a time.”

Tor Scath wasn’t on Stephen’s maps either, but it was as real as any black shadow in the night could be.

“It was built by King Gaut, more than five hundred years ago,” Sir Symen explained in melancholy tones, as they wound up the path to the hilltop fortress. “They say Gaut was mad, fortifying his stronghold not against mortal enemies, but against the alvs and other dead things. Now it’s a royal hunting lodge.”

Stephen could make out only the outlines in the moonlight, but from what he could see, it certainly looked as if it had been built by a madman. It wasn’t large, but weird spires and turrets jutted up with little rhyme or reason.

“I’m beginning to wonder if Gaut was sane after all,” Rookswald added, his voice smaller.

“What do you mean?” Aspar White demanded.

“What needs to be done with these two?” Sir Symen asked, ignoring the question.

“A cell for them,” the holter grunted, “to wait for the king’s justice when he comes—what, next month?”

“We’re innocent men!” Aiken asserted weakly.

Sir Symen snorted. “I have to feed them until then?”

“I don’t much care. I might have left them to the wolves, but I suspect they might be persuaded to answer questions about a few other matters.”

“Other matters?” Symen said. “Yes. I’m glad you came, Aspar. I’m glad my summons reached you.”

“Your what?”

“Brian. I sent Brian to fetch you.”

“Brian? I haven’t seen him. How long ago did you send him?”

“Ten days ago. I sent him to Colbaely.”

“Huh. He should have found me, then, or at least left word behind him.”

They entered through a narrow tower, crossed a small, smelly courtyard, where Symen remanded the two prisoners and the horses to a hulking brute named Isarn. They proceeded into a dark hall, furnished in rustic fashion. Stephen noticed that only every fourth or fifth torch socket was plenished. A graying man in white and green livery greeted them.

“How was the hunting, sir?” he asked.

“Interrupted,” Sir Symen said. “But by an old friend. Can Anfalthy find something to decorate this old board with?”

“I’m sure she can. Master White, it’s good to see you again. And you, young sir, welcome to Tor Scath.”

“The same, Wilhilm,” Aspar replied.

“Thank you,” Stephen managed.

“I’ll fetch you some cheese, meantime.”

“Thank you, Wil,” Sir Symen said, and the old fellow left. He turned back to Stephen. “Welcome to King William’s hunting lodge, and the most impoverished, thankless barony in the entire kingdom.”

“Our host is somewhat out of favor at court,” Aspar explained.

“And the sky is somewhat blue,” the disheveled knight replied. In the light, he wasn’t frightening at all; he looked gaunt, and sad, and old. “Aspar, I have things to tell you. The Sefry have left the forest.”

“I saw Mother Cilth’s bunch in Colbaely. They told me as much.”

“No. Not just the caravaners. All of them. All of them.”

“Even the Halafolk?”

“All.”

“Well. I’ve been trying to get the Halafolk out of the forest for twenty years, and now they just up and leave? I don’t believe it. How can you be sure?”

“They told me. They warned me to leave, too.”

“Warned you about what?”

Suspicion flitted across Sir Symen’s face. “If Brian didn’t reach you, why did you come?”

“A boy came to Colbaely claiming his folk were killed by men in the king’s colors, down by Taff Creek. I ran into the priestling and his captors on my way to investigate. I couldn’t very well keep hauling them about, so I brought them here.”

“Taff Creek. I didn’t know about that one.”

“What do you mean, ‘that one’?”

“There was a woodcutting camp, two leagues south, killed to a man. We found them twenty days ago. Some tinkers on their way to Virgenya, likewise slaughtered. A half score of hunters.”

“Did any of these hold patents from the king?” Aspar asked.

“Not a one. All were in the wood illegally.”

“Then someone’s doing my work for me.”

Stephen couldn’t stand it anymore. “So that’s your work? Murdering woodcutters?”

“It’s not my law, boy, but the king’s. If the forest was open to anyone, how long do you think it would stand? Between trappers, charburners, woodcutters, and homesteaders, before long the royals wouldn’t have any place to hunt.”

“But murder?”

“I don’t kill woodcutters, boy, not unless they try to kill me, and sometimes not even then. I arrest them. I lock them up someplace to await the king’s justice. I scare them off, most of the time. What I meant just now was that whoever is behind this is killing those who ought not to be here in the first place. It doesn’t gladden me; it makes me angry. This forest is my charge, my territory.”

“But Brian is missing,” Rookswald said. “And he was my man. Though I may be the least favorite of the king’s knights, I still hold a patent to be here, and my household with me.”

At that moment, Wilhilm reappeared, with a stoneware platter of cheese, a pitcher of mead, and mazers for each of them. It suddenly occurred to Stephen that he was hungry, and when he bit into the pungent, almost buttery cheese, he amended that to ravenous. The mead was sweet and tasted of cloves.

Aspar White ate, too. Only the bearded knight seemed not to notice the food.

“I don’t think they were killed by men,” Rookswald said softly.

“What then?” the holter asked, around a mouthful. “Bears? Wolves?”

“I think the Briar King killed them.”

The holter stared at him for a moment, then snorted. “You’ve been listening to the Sefry, sure enough.”

“Who is the Briar King?” Stephen asked.

“Another one of your folk stories,” the holter scoffed.

“So I thought, once upon a time,” Sir Symen said. “Now, I don’t know. The dead we found—” He paused for an instant, then looked up. “They were of two sorts, the dead, the woodcutters. In the flat, where they were camped, they simply fell, no marks on them. No sword cut, no claw gashes, no arrow holes. Nor had they been gnawed or pecked at since death. There wasn’t anything alive at the camp. Chickens, dogs, squirrels, the fish in the stream, all dead.

“But did you know that there’s a seoth near there, a hill with an old fane? That’s where we found the rest of them, or what was left of them. They had been most foully killed, by torture, and slowly.”

Stephen noticed something cross the holter’s face, something quickly hidden. “Tracks?” the woodsman asked. “Were there tracks?”

“There were tracks. Like those of a cat, but larger. And tracks of men, as well.”

“Did you touch any of them? The tracks?”

A peculiar question, Stephen thought, but the old knight nodded. “I touched one of the bodies.” He held out his hand. It was missing two fingers, and freshly bandaged. “I had to cut them off, before the rot spread to my arm.” He scowled. “Aspar White, I know your look. You know something of this. What?”

“I came upon such a track,” Aspar said. “That’s all I know.”

“The Sefry are old, Aspar, especially the Halafolk. They know a great deal. They say the greffyns have returned. And the lord of the greffyns, of all unholy things that slink in this wood, is the Briar King. If they are awake, he is awake, or soon to be. They do his bidding, the greffyns.”

“Greffyns,” Aspar White repeated. His tone somehow made the word mean ludicrous.

“Can’t you tell me more of this?” Stephen asked. “I might be able to help.”

“I don’t need your help,” the holter said bluntly. “Tomorrow, you continue to d’Ef. Play your games of maps and stories there, if you wish.”

Stephen flushed, his tongue temporarily stilled by helpless anger. How could anyone be so arrogant?

“The Briar King has always been here,” Sir Symen whispered. “Before the Hegemony, before the Warlock Wars, even before the mighty Scaosen themselves, he was here. Ages turn, and he sleeps. When his sleep is troubled enough, he wakes.”

He turned rheumy eyes upon Stephen. “That’s the real reason the King’s Wood exists, though most have forgotten. Not to furnish a vast hunting park for whatever family rules in Eslen. No. It is so that when the Briar King rouses, he is not displeased.” He grasped Aspar by the arm. “Don’t you remember? The old tale? It was a bargain struck between the Briar King and Vlatimon the Handless, when the Scaosen were slaughtered and the kingdom of Crotheny established. The forest would be kept for him, from the Ef River to the sea, from the Mountains of the Hare to the Gray Warlock. The bargain was that if that were left untouched, Vlatimon and his descendants could have the rest.

“But if the bargain is broken, then every living thing shall perish, as it did before, and the Briar King will raise a new forest from our bones and ashes. When we say it’s the King’s Forest, you see, we don’t mean the king of Crotheny. We mean the true lord of it, the undying one, the master of the greffyns.”

“Symen—” Aspar began.

“We’ve broken Vlatimon’s ancient vow. Everywhere, the borders are compromised. Everywhere, trees are cut. He wakes, and he is not pleased.”

“Symen, the Sefry have muddled your brains. Those are old tales, no better than the stories about talking bears and magic ships that sail on land. Something strange is about, yes. Something dangerous. But I will find it, and I’ll kill it, and that will be an end to it.”

Symen didn’t answer but just shook his head.

Anything further was interrupted by the arrival of the food, escorted out by a plain, cheerful woman of middle years and two young girls. They settled two steaming pies, a platter of roast pigeons, and black-bread trenchers on the table. The girls hurried off without speaking, but the woman put her hands to her hips and regarded the three of them.

“Well, hello there, Aspar, and hello, young sir, whoever you might be. My name’s Anfalthy. We were ill prepared for guests, but I hope this will please you. If there’s anything missing y’would like—anything at all—I’ll see what I can do. I make no promise but that I’ll try.”

“Lady, anything you bring will please us, I’m sure,” Stephen said, remembering his manners.

“Game has been scarce,” Symen muttered.

“He hasn’t been droning on about the end of days again, has he?” Anfalthy asked. “Look, Sir Symen, you’ve not even touched your wine. Drink it! I’ve mixed in herbs to cheer your mood.”

“No doubt.”

“Don’t mind his dark mutterings, you two. He’s been at that for months, now. A trip abroad is what he needs, but I can’t convince him.”

“I’m needed here,” Symen insisted.

“Only to gloom up the place. Eat, you fellows, and call for more if you need it.”

The pie, compounded of venison and boar and elderberries, was a little gamey to Stephen’s taste, but the pigeon, stuffed with rosemary and marjoram and pork liver, was delicious.

“I’ll go tomorrow to Taff Creek,” Aspar promised. “Now do as Anfalthy said. Drink your wine.”

“You’ll see, when you go,” the old knight said, but he did sip his wine, indifferently at first, but in ever larger gulps. As the evening wore on, the rest of the household joined them; it seemed there were about twenty people resident in the tower. Within a bell, the board was crowded, and pies, roast boar, partridge, and duck covered it from end to end, so that Stephen wondered how they ate when game wasn’t scarce. The conversation grew boisterous, with children and dogs playing about their feet, and the force of the old knight’s doomsaying faded.

Still, it nagged at Stephen, and more so, the holter’s gruff dismissal of anything Stephen might have to add. So when the mead courage finally came on him, he leaned near Aspar White.

“You want to know what I think?” he asked.

The holter frowned, and for a moment Stephen thought that the older man would tell him, once again, to be silent. He decided not to give him the chance. “Listen,” he rushed on. “I know you don’t think much of me. I know you think I’m useless. But I’m not. I can help.”

“Oh? Your thousand-year-old maps can help me with this?”

Stephen’s lips tightened. “I understand. You’re afraid I know more than you. That I might know some damned thing that might be of use.”

Even as the words tumbled out of his mouth, Stephen knew the mead had brought him to a bad end. But the holter was just so damned smug, and Stephen was too drunk to feel fear as more than the distant whisper of a saint.

Then to his vast surprise, the older man laughed bitterly. “Plenty I don’t know,” he admitted. “Go ahead. Tell me what you make of all this.”

Stephen blinked. “What?”

“I said, go on. What do you think of Sir Symen’s story?”

“Oh.” For a brief instant there were two Aspars, then one again. “I don’t believe it,” Stephen said, pronouncing each word very deliberately.

The holter raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

“Really. First of all, too many of the details aren’t right. Vlatimon, for instance. He didn’t found Crotheny; he wasn’t even of the Croatani, the tribe the country was named for. Vlatimon was Bolgoi, and he conquered a small kingdom in the Midenlands, and that lasted only a half century before it was gobbled up by the Black Jester in the first Warlock War.

“Shec … secondly, the whole notion of some old forest demon who has that sort of power—the power to punish the entire world—flies straight in the face of church doctrine. There are powers, yes, and the church tolerates that they be called saints, or angels, or gods as it might please local custom—but they’re all shub … shubordin … they all serve the All-in-One. Not to get too technical, but—”

“And yet you were the one who said these tales carry some truth in them. Is that the case only when the truth doesn’t clash with the teaching of your church?”

“It’s your church, too.” But of a sudden Stephen doubted that. Might the holter be heretic?

“The church, then?”

“The answer is yes and no. I recall now that in Virgenya we have phay stories about a character named Baron Greenleaf, who is also said to sleep in a hidden place and wake to avenge wrongs done the forest, very mush … mush … like this Briar King. Baron Greenleaf and the Briar King are probably both based on a real person—one of the early warlock kings, perhaps, or even a Skaslos who survived beyond the rest.

“Or perhaps he is a misunderstanding made manifest. After all, the church teaches that the Alwalder demands a balance between cultivated and wild ground. As each village must have a sacred horz, where things grow wild, so too must the world itself have wild places. In the imagination of the folk, perhaps this forest is the horz of the world, and the Briar King a personification of the punishment that comes from violating it.”

“And these dead people? This talk of greffyns?”

Stephen shrugged. “Murderers who kill by poison? I don’t know, but there could be many explanations.”

“This from the fellow who only a few days ago argued for all manner of ghosts and ghoulies? Who flinched today when he thought Grim the Raver was come for him?”

“I argue from the knowledge of the church, from what the Alwalder allows as possible. The dead do have souls, and there are spirits in the world, creatures of light and darkness. All are accepted by the church, catalogued, named. Your Briar King is not.

“Greffyns—I can’t say. Possibly. The Skasloi and the warlock lords after them created all sorts of fell, unnatural creatures to serve them. Some of those might still exist, in the corners of the world. It’s not impossible.”

“And this business Sir Symen spoke of, the sacrifices at the seoth? I know the church builds fanes on them.”

“In the church we use the ancient term, sedos. They are the seats of the saints’ power on earth. By visiting the sedoi, priests commune with the saints and gather holiness to themselves, and so, yes, we build fanes on them to mark them, and to insure that those who visit them are in the proper frame of mind. But the church maintains fanes only on living sedoi, not on the dead ones.”

“What do you mean, dead?”

“A sedos is a spot where a saint left some of his power, some virtue of his essence. Over time, that fades. Once the sacredness has faded, the church ceases maintaining the fanes. Most of those in the King’s Forest are dead. But dead or alive, I’ve never heard of human sacrifice at a sedos—even among heretics. Not for centuries, anyway.”

“Wait. Then you have heard of it.”

“The blackest of the sorcerers in the Warlock Wars sacrificed victims to the nine Damned Saints. But this couldn’t have anything to do with that.”

Aspar stroked his chin. He glanced up. “Why not?”

“Because the end of the wars was the end of that. The church has kept careful watch for that sort of evil.”

“Ah.” Aspar took another swallow of mead and nodded. “Thank you, Cape Chavel Darige,” he said. “For once you’ve given me something to think about.”

“Really?”

“I’ve had a lot of mead.”

“Still, thank you for listening.”

The holter shrugged. “I’ve arranged for you to leave for d’Ef tomorrow.”

“I could stay a bit longer, go with you to this creek—”

The holter shook his head. “So I can see this meal come back up out of you when we find the corpses? No thank you. I’ll do well enough on my own.”

“I suppose you can,” Stephen flared, reaching for the mead jug. Somehow he miscalculated, however, and the next thing he knew it was spilling across the table, a honey flood.

“Anfalthy!” Aspar shouted. “Could you show this young fellow his bedchamber?”

“I’m not a child,” Stephen muttered. But the room had begun to spin, and he suddenly didn’t want to be anywhere near the arrogant holter, the morose knight, or any of the rest of these rustics.

“Come on, lad,” Anfalthy said, taking his hand.

Mutely he nodded and followed, the light and noise fading behind him.

“He’s right,” Stephen heard himself say. His faraway voice sounded angry.

“Who’s right?” Anfalthy asked.

“The holter. I’m no use wi’ arms an’ such. Blood makes me sick.”

“Aspar is a fine man, good at what he does,” Anfalthy said. “He is not a patient man.”

“Just wanted to help.”

Anfalthy led him into a room, where she used her candle to light another, already in a sconce on the wall. He sat heavily on the bed. Anfalthy stood over him for a moment, her broad, comforting face looking down at him.

“Aspar has too many ghosts following him already, lad. He wouldn’t want to add you to them. I think he likes you.”

“He hates me.”

“I doubt that,” she said softly. “There’s only one person in the world Aspar White hates, and it’s not you. Now go to sleep; tomorrow you’re off, yah?”

“Yes,” Stephen said.

“Then I’ll see you for breakfast.”

When Stephen rose the next morning, nursing a pounding head, Aspar White was already gone. Sir Symen supplied Stephen with two fresh horses and a young huntsman to be his guide, and wished him well. Anfalthy gave him a bundle of bread, cheese, and meat and kissed him on the cheek.

As his headache improved, so did Stephen’s mood. After all, in two days, he realized, he would finally be at d’Ef, where his work would start. Where his knowledge would be appreciated, valued, rewarded. The scriftorium at d’Ef was one of the most complete in the world, and he would have access to it!

The eagerness he had felt when he started from Cape Chavel more than a month ago began to return. Bandits, kidnapping, and a crude holter had overshadowed it, but he figured he had had his run of trouble. What more could happen?

8 Black Roses

Anne felt a feathery trembling in her belly and goosebumps on her flesh, even though the night wind came from the sea—warm, heavy, wet, and salty. The air seemed to sag with the need to rain, and the moon came and went fitfully in the cloud-bruised sky. Around her, neat rows of apple trees swayed and rustled in the wind.

On the wall of the keep above, she could hear two guards talking, but couldn’t make out what they were saying.

She felt faintly dizzy, a slight vertigo that had come and gone in the month since she had visited Eslen-of-Shadows. She stepped under one of the trees and leaned against the trunk, her head swimming with the scent of the blossoms. She lifted the scrap of paper that the stablehand had passed to her when she had put up Faster.

“You work fast, Virgenya,” she whispered.

Though Fastia seemed unaffected by her request to Saint Cer.

It was surely tenth bell by now. Had they forgotten to ring it?

She shouldn’t be doing this. What if he didn’t come, anyway?

What if he came, and it was just a cruel joke, something to laugh about with the other knights and the stablehands? Silly. What did she know about this fellow?

Nothing.

She brushed nervously at her dress of Vitellian brocade, feeling sillier by the instant.

The hairs on her neck suddenly pricked up. A shaft of the inconstant moonlight cast the silhouette of something big and dark moving through the branches of the apple tree nearest her.

“She is like a dream, like a mist, like the phay dancers seen only from the corner of the eye in the woodland glade,” a voice whispered.

“Roderick?”

She jumped as the tenth bell began to chime, high up in the August Tower, and jumped again when the long shadow dropped from the tree and landed with a soft thump.

“At your service.” The shadow bowed.

“You startled me,” Anne said. “Were you a thief before you became a knight?” she asked. “Certainly you aren’t a poet.”

“That wounds, Princess.”

“Go to a physician or a rinn witch, then. What do you want, Roderick?”

He moved into the moonlight. His eyes were shades in an ivory carving. “I wanted to see you in something other than riding dress.”

“You said you had seen me in court.”

“True. But you look lovelier now.”

“Because it’s darker?”

“No. Because I’ve met you now. It makes all the difference.”

“I suppose you want to kiss me again.”

“No, not at all. I want you to kiss me.”

“But we just met!”

“Yes, and got off to a good start.” He suddenly reached and took her hand. “You’re the lady who rode down the Snake like a madman. There’s nothing cautious about you, Princess. I kissed you, and I’ve kissed enough to know you liked it. If I’m wrong, tell me so, and off I’ll go. If I’m right … why don’t we try it again?”

She folded her arms and cocked her head, trying to think of a good response. He didn’t give her time.

“I brought you this.” He held something out to her. She reached for it and found herself clutching the stem of a flower.

“I cut off the thorns for you,” he said. “It’s a black rose.”

She gasped, genuinely surprised. “Where did you find it?”

“I bought it from a sea captain, who got it in Liery.”

Anne breathed in its strange scent of plum and anise. “They grow only in Liery,” she told him. “My mother talks about them all the time. I’ve never seen one.”

“Well,” Roderick replied, moving a little closer. “I got it to please you, not to remind you of your mother.”

“Shh. Not so loud.”

“I’m not afraid,” Roderick said.

“You should be. Do you know what will happen to you if we’re caught here?”

“We won’t be.”

His hand found hers, and she suddenly felt her head go funny. She couldn’t think anything. She felt frozen, almost uncomprehending, as he pulled her against him. His face was so near she could feel his breath on her lips.

“Kiss me,” he whispered.

And she did. A sound like the sea rushed into her ears. She could feel the hard muscles of Roderick’s back through his linen shirt, and a prickly, itchy sort of heat. He took her face in his hands and stroked lightly behind her ears as his lips pressed hers, now nibbling, now opening greedily.

He whispered things, but she hardly heard them. All sense of words dissolved when his lips crept down her neck, and she thought she was going to cry out, and then the guards would hear her, and then—well, who knew what would happen then. Something bad. She could almost hear her mother now …

“Anne. Anne!” Someone was calling her.

“Who’s that? Who’s there?” Roderick panted.

“It’s my maid, Austra. I—”

He kissed her again. “Send her away.” He said the words right into her earlobe. It tickled, and suddenly she giggled.

“Um. No, I can’t. My sister Fastia will check my bed soon, and if I am not in it, she will raise the alarm. Austra is keeping watch of the time. If she’s calling, I have to go.”

“It cannot be, not yet!”

“It is. It is. But we can meet again.”

“Not soon enough for me.”

“My sister’s birthday is tomorrow. I’ll arrange something. Austra will carry the word.”

“Anne!”

“I’m coming, Austra.”

She turned to go, but he took her by the waist and spun her into the crook of his arm, like a dancer, and kissed her again. She laughed and gave it back. When she finally turned and left, she felt an ache beneath her breast.

“Hurry!” Austra took her hand and pulled her insistently. “Fastia may be there already!”

“Figs for Fastia. Fastia never comes until eleventh bell.”

“It’s nearly eleventh bell now, you ninny!” Austra practically dragged Anne up the staircase that wound to the top of the orchard wall. On the last step, Anne cast one more look down at the garden but saw only the inky shadow of the looming keep on the other side.

“Come on!” Austra commanded. “Through here.”

Anne clutched the back of Austra’s dress as they rushed through the dark. A few moments later they tripped up another staircase and emerged into a wider hall lit with long tapers. At a high, narrow door, Austra fumbled the key from her girdle and pushed it into the brass lock. Just as the door swung open, the sound of footsteps echoed up from the stairwell at the far end of the hall.

“Fastia!” Anne hissed.

They ducked through the door and into the anteroom of her chambers. Austra closed and locked the door, while Anne kicked off her damp slippers and dropped them into the empty vase on the table next to the divan. She fell back onto the little couch and yanked off both stockings at once, then ran barefoot through the curtained doorway to her bedchamber. She flung the stockings on the other side of the canopied bed and began trying to reach the fastenings of her gown. “Help me with this!”

“We haven’t time,” Austra said. “Just throw your nightdress over it.”

“The train will show!”

“Not if you’re in bed, under the covers!”

Austra, meanwhile, shucked her own dress right over her head. Anne stifled an amused shriek, for Austra wore no underskirt, no corset; she was naked as a clam in soup.

“Hush!” Austra said, wriggling into a nightgown and kicking her discarded dress under the bed. “Don’t laugh at me!”

“You’d think you were the one out to meet someone.”

“Hush! Don’t be sick! It’s just faster this way, and it’s not like anyone was going to notice I was uncorseted. Get under the covers!”

A key scraped in the lock. Austra squeaked, pointing to Anne, and pantomimed letting down her hair.

Anne yanked the netting from her locks, threw it vaguely toward the wardrobe, and dived under the covers. Austra hit the mattress at almost the same instant, hairbrush in hand.

“Ouch!” Anne yelped, as the curtain parted and the brush caught in a tangle.

“Hello, you two.”

Anne blinked. It wasn’t Fastia.

“Lesbeth!” she exclaimed, leaping out of bed and rushing to embrace her aunt.

Lesbeth gathered her in, laughing. “Saint Loy, but we’re almost the same height, now, aren’t we? How could you grow this much in two years? How old are you now, fourteen?”

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen. And look at you—a Dare, through and through.”

In fact, Anne realized she did look like Lesbeth. Which wasn’t good, because while Lesbeth was very pretty, Elseny and Fastia and her mother were beautiful. She would take after the wrong side of the family.

“You’re warm,” Lesbeth said. “Your face is burning up! Do you have a fever?”

That drew a stifled giggle from Austra.

“What?” Lesbeth asked, her voice suddenly suspicious. She stepped back. “Is that a dress you have on under your nightgown? At this hour? You’ve been out!”

“Please don’t tell Fastia. Or Mother. It was really all very innocent—”

“I won’t have to tell them. Fastia is on the way up.”

“Still?”

“Of course. You don’t think she’d trust me with her duty?”

“How long do I have?”

“She’s finishing her wine. She had half a glass when I left, and I asked for a moment alone with you.”

“Thank the saints. Help me out of this dress!”

Lesbeth looked stern for a second, then laughed. “Very well. Austra, could you bring a damp cloth? We’ll want to wipe her face.”

“Yes, Duchess.”

A few moments later they had the dress off, and Lesbeth was unlacing the corset. Anne groaned in relief as her ribs sighed out to where nature perversely reckoned they ought to be.

“Had that pretty tight, didn’t you?” Lesbeth commented. “Who is he?”

Anne feared her cheeks would scorch. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Ah. Someone disreputable. A stablehand, perhaps?”

“No! No. He’s gentle—just someone Mother wouldn’t like.”

“Disreputable, then, indeed. Come on—tell. You know I won’t let on. Besides, I have a big secret to tell you. It’s only fair.”

“Well …” She chewed her lip. “His name is Roderick of Dunmrogh.”

“Dunmrogh? Well, there’s your problem.”

“How so?” The corset fell away, and Anne realized her undershirt was plastered to her with sweat.

“It’s political. The grefts of Dunmrogh have Reiksbaurg blood.”

“So? Our war with the Reiksbaurgs was over a hundred years ago.”

“Ah, to be young and naïve again. Turn, so I can get your face, dear. Enny, the war with the Reiksbaurgs will never be over. They covet the throne a thousand covetings for every year that has passed since they lost it.”

“But Roderick isn’t a Reiksbaurg.”

“No, Enny,” she went on, wiping the cool rag on Anne’s face and neck, “but fifty years ago the Dunmroghs sided with a Reiksbaurg claimant to the throne. Not with arms, so they kept their lands when it was all over—but support him they did, in the Comven. They still have a bad name for that.”

“It isn’t fair.”

“I know it’s not, sweet, but we’d better talk about it later. Change that shirt and put on your gown.”

Anne ran to her wardrobe and changed the sodden linen for a dry one. “When did you learn so much about politics?” she asked, shrugging back into her embroidered nightgown.

“I just spent two years in Virgenya. It’s all they talk about, down there.”

“It must have been terribly boring.”

“Oh—you might be surprised.”

Anne sat on the edge of her bed. “You won’t tell anyone about Roderick? Even if it is political?”

Lesbeth laughed and kissed her on the forehead, then knelt and took her hand. “I doubt very much it’s political for him. He’s probably just young and foolish, like you.”

“He’s your age, nineteen.”

“I’m twenty, meadowlark.” She brushed a curly strand from out of Anne’s face. “And when your sister comes in, try to keep the left side of your head away from her.”

“Why?”

“You have a love bite, there, just below your ear. I think even Fastia will know what it is.”

“Oh, mercifu—”

“I’ll comb your hair, like I was doing when the duchess came in,” Austra volunteered. “I can keep it pulled long over that spot.”

“That’s a good plan,” Lesbeth approved. She chuckled again. “When did this happen to our little lark, Austra? When last I saw her she was still dressing up in the stablejack’s clothes so she wouldn’t have to ride sidesaddle. When did she become such a lady?”

“I still ride,” Anne said defensively.

“That’s true enough,” Austra said. “That’s how she met this fellow. He followed her down the Snake.”

“Not fainthearted, then.”

“Roderick is anything but fainthearted,” Anne said. “So what’s your big secret, Lez?”

Lesbeth smiled. “I’ve already asked your father’s permission, so I suppose I’ll tell you. I’m getting married.”

“Married?” Anne and Austra said, in unison.

“Yes.” Lesbeth frowned. “I didn’t like the sound of that! You seem incredulous.”

“It’s just—at your age—”

“Oh, I see. You had me reckoned a spinster. Well, I had plenty of sisters, and they all married well. I was the youngest so I got to do something they didn’t. I got to be choosy.”

“So who is he?”

“A wonderful man, daring and kind. Like your Roderick, far from fainthearted. He has the most elegant castle, and an estate that stretches—”

“Who?”

“Prince Cheiso of Safnia.”

“Safnia?” Anne repeated.

“Where is Safnia?” Austra asked.

“On the shore of the southern sea,” Lesbeth said dreamily. “Where oranges and lemons grow outdoors, and bright birds sing.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“Not surprising, if you pay no more attention to your tutors now than you did when I still lived here.”

“You love him, don’t you?” Anne asked.

“Indeed I do. With all of my heart.”

“So it’s not political?”

Lesbeth laughed again. “Everything is political, meadowlark. It’s not like I could have married a cowherd, you know. Safnia, though you ladies have never heard of it, is a rather important place.”

“But you’re marrying for love!”

“Yes.” She wiggled a finger at Anne. “But don’t let that put foolish ideas in your head. Live in the kingdom that is, not the one that ought to be.”

“Well,” a somewhat frosty voice said, as the curtain to the antechamber parted again. “That’s better advice than I expected you to be giving her, Lesbeth.”

“Hello, Fastia.”

Fastia was older than all of them, almost twenty-three. Her hair was umber silk, now bound up in a net, and her small features were perfect and demure. She was no taller than Anne or Austra, and a handswidth shorter than Lesbeth. But she commanded presence.

“Dear Fastia,” Lesbeth said. “I was just telling darling Anne my news.”

“About your betrothal, I suppose?”

“You already know? But I only just asked my brother Wil-liam’s permission a few bells ago.”

“You forget how fast news travels in Eslen, I’m afraid. Congratulations. You’ll find marriage a joy, I think.”

Her tone said otherwise, somehow. Anne felt a faint pang of pity for her older sister.

“I think I shall,” Lesbeth replied.

“Well,” Fastia asked, “is all in order here? Have you girls said your prayers and washed your faces?”

“They were praying, I believe, even as I entered the room,” Lesbeth said innocently.

Anne nodded. “We’re all but asleep,” she added.

“You don’t look sleepy.”

“It’s the excitement of seeing Lesbeth. She was telling us all about Shanifar, where her betrothed rules. A delightful-sounding place—”

“Safnia,” Fastia corrected. “One of the original five provinces of the Hegemony. That was over a thousand years ago, of course. A great place once, and still quaint from what I hear.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Lesbeth said, as if she hadn’t heard the condescension in Fastia’s tone. “It’s very quaint.”

“I think it sounds wonderful and exotic,” Anne put in.

“Most places do, until you’ve been to them,” Fastia replied. “Now. I don’t want to be the troll, but somehow the duty has fallen to me to make sure these girls get to bed. Lesbeth, may I entice you into taking a cordial?”

Hah, Anne thought. You can’t fool me. You love playing the troll. What happened to you? “Surely we can stay up a bit. We haven’t seen Lesbeth in two years.”

“Plenty of time for that tomorrow, at Elseny’s party. It’s time for the women to chat.”

“We are women,” Anne retorted.

“When you are betrothed, then you’ll be a woman,” Fastia replied. “Now, good night. Or, as Lesbeth’s Safnian prince might say, dena nocha. Austra, see that you are both asleep within the hour.”

“Yes, Archgreffess.”

“Night, loves,” Lesbeth said, blowing them a kiss as the two passed through the curtain into the antechamber. After another moment, they heard the outer door close.

“Why does she have to be like that?” Anne muttered.

“If she weren’t, your mother would find someone who was,” Austra replied.

“I suppose. It just galls me.”

“In fact,” Austra said, “I’m something glad they’re gone.”

“Why is that?”

A pillow hit Anne in the face.

“Because you haven’t told me what happened yet, you jade!”

“Oh! Austra, it was quite extraordinary. He was so—I mean, I thought I would catch afire! And he gave me a rose, a black rose—” She broke off abruptly. “Where’s my rose?”

“You had it when we came in the room.”

“Well, I don’t have it now! I must press it, or whatever one does with roses …”

“I think one finds them first,” Austra said.

But it wasn’t in the receiving room, nor on the floor, nor under the bed. They couldn’t find it anywhere.

“We’ll see it in the morning, when the light is better,” Austra said.

“Of course we will,” Anne replied dubiously.

In her dream, Anne stood in a field of ebony roses, wearing a black satin dress set with pearls that gleamed dully in the bone light of the moon. The air was so thick with the scent of the blooms she thought she would choke.

There was no end to them; they stretched on to the horizon in a series of low rises, stems bent by a murmuring wind. She turned slowly to see if it was thus in all directions.

Behind her the field ended abruptly in a wall of trees, black-boled monsters covered with puckered thorns bigger than her hand, rising so high she couldn’t see their tops in the dim light. Thorn vines as thick as her arm tangled between the trees and crept out along the ground. Through the trees and beyond the vines was only darkness. A greedy darkness, she felt, a darkness that watched her, hated her, wanted her. The more she stared at it, the more terrified she became of shapes that might or might not be moving, of slight sounds that might be footsteps or wings.

And then, when she thought her terror could be no greater, something pushed through the thorns coming toward her. Moonlight gleamed on a black-mailed arm and the fingers of a hand, uncurling.

And then the helmet came through, a tall, tapering helm, with black horns curving up, set on the shoulders of a giant. The visor was open, and there she saw something that wrenched from her own throat a keening sound somehow more alien than anything she had yet known. She turned and ran through the roses, and the small barbs caught at her dress, and now the moon looked like the rotted eye of a fish …

She awoke, thrashing with the motions of flight, not knowing where she was. Then she remembered, and sat up in her bed, arms wrapped about her middle.

“A dream,” she told the dark room, rocking back and forth. “Just a dream.”

But the air was still thick with anise and plum. In the pale moonlight streaming through her window she saw black petals scattered upon her coverlet. She felt them in her hair. Wet trickled down her face, and the bright taste of salt came to her lips.

Anne slept no more that night, but waited for the cockcrow and the sun.

9 On the Sleeve

Neil woke early, inspected his new armor for any blemishing its single wearing might have left on it. He checked his spurs and tabard, and finally drew Crow, his broadsword, then made certain the hard, sharp length of her gleamed like water.

Moving quietly, he slipped on his buskins and padded from the room, down the stairs, and out of the inn. Outside, a morning fog was just starting to lift, and the docks were already alive with movement, fishing crews putting out for the middle shoals, seacharmers and salters and whores looking to be taken on, seagulls and fishravens fighting over scraps.

Neil had noticed the chapel of Saint Lier the day before, distinguished by its mast-shaped spire. It was a modest wooden building right at water’s edge, built on a raised stone foundation. As he approached, several rough-looking sailors were on their way out. He greeted them by passing his hand over his face, the sign of Saint Lier. “His hand keep you,” he told them.

“Thanks, lad,” one of them said gruffly. “And you.”

Within, the chapel was dark and plain, all wood, in the island style. The only ornament was a simple statuette of the saint himself above the altar; carved of walrus tusk, it depicted him standing in a coracle.

Neil carefully placed two silver coins in the box and knelt. He began to sing.

He prayed for the souls of his father and mother, for Sir Fail and his lady Fiene, for the hungry ghosts of the sea. He prayed for King William and Queen Muriele, and for Crotheny. Most of all he prayed that he himself might be worthy. Then, after a time of silence, he rose to leave.

A lady in a deep green cloak stood behind him. He started, for in the intensity of his prayers, he hadn’t heard her enter.

“I’m sorry, lady,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean to keep you from the altar.”

“There’s plenty of room,” she answered. “You did not keep me from it. It just that it’s been a long time since I heard anyone pray so beautifully. I wanted to listen, I’m afraid, and so it’s to you I must apologize.”

“Why?” Neil asked. “I’ve no shame for my prayers. It’s an honor to me if you found something in them. I …”

Her eyes gripped him. Sea-green, they were. Curls of black hair cascaded from beneath her hood, and her lips were a ruby bow. He couldn’t guess her age, though if pressed, he would put her in her thirties. She was too beautiful to be human, and with a sudden dizziness, it occurred to Neil that this was no earthly woman, but a vision, a saint or an angel, perhaps.

So strong and certain was the feeling that his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he couldn’t remember what else he had meant to say.

“The honor is mine, young man,” she said. She cocked her head. “You have an island accent. Are you from Liery?”

“I was born on Skern, my lady,” he managed. “But I am pledged to a lord of Liery, as was my father.”

“Would that lord be the Baron Sir Fail de Liery?”

“Yes, my lady,” he replied, feeling as if he were in a dream.

“A good and noble man. You do very well to serve him.”

“Lady, how could you know—”

“You forget, I heard your prayers. Sir Fail is with you? He is near?”

“Yes, lady. In the inn, just up the way. We arrived yesterday; he intends to present me at court today, unworthy as I may be.”

“If Sir Fail wishes to present you, the only thing unworthy about you is your doubt of him. He knows what he is about.”

“Yes, lady. Of course.”

She lowered her head. “You should know that the court will be on the hill of Tom Woth, today, to celebrate the birthday of the princess Elseny. Sir Fail may not know this, having just arrived. Take the northern gate and ride up the Sleeve. Sir Fail will know where. Tell him to go to the stone circle and wait.”

“You command me, lady.” His heart was thunder, and he could not say why. He wanted to ask her name, but he feared the answer.

“I wonder if you would excuse me now,” the lady said. “My prayers are less elegant than yours. The saint will forgive my clumsiness, I know, but I would rather no one else heard. It’s been long since I came here. Too long.”

She sounded infinitely sad.

“Lady, if there is anything I can do for you, please name it.”

Her eyes gleamed in the darkness. “Take care in the court,” she said softly. “Stay true to yourself. Stay who you are. It is a … difficult thing.”

“Yes, lady. If you ask it, it will be done.”

So saying, he left her there, his feet feeling oddly heavy on the cobbles of the street.

“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” Fail de Liery said.

Neil couldn’t keep his head still. “I’ve never see anything like it. I’ve never seen clothes like this, so much color and silk.”

Hundreds of courtiers were riding up the greensward, along with dwarves, giants, jesters, and footmen, all in fantastic costume.

“You’ll see more. Come, those are the stones ahead.”

They spurred their mounts to a gallop, toward the small circle of standing stones near the forest edge. A large group waited there, mounted and on foot. Neil noticed knights among them, all wearing livery of black and deep sea-green trimmed in bronze. He didn’t know whose colors they were, and they bore no devices.

“Sir Fail!” a man called out, as they approached. Raising his hand in greeting, he rode out of the circle. He was unarmored, a man of middle years, his auburn hair held with a plain gold circlet, clearly a fellow of some importance. Sir Fail dismounted, and so Neil did, too, as the newcomer also swung down from his horse, a handsome white Galléan stallion with a peppering of dark spots on his withers and muzzle.

“You old de Liery warscow! How are you?”

“Right well, Your Majesty.”

Neil’s knees went suddenly weak.

Majesty?

“Well, I’m well pleased to see you here,” the fellow went on easily. “Well pleased!”

“I’m glad I found you! I would’ve been going up to an empty palace, right now, if it weren’t for my young squire, here. May I present him to you?”

The king’s eyes turned on Neil, suddenly, lamps whose light seemed both intense and weary. “By all means.”

“Your Majesty, this is Neil MeqVren, a young man of many talents and great deeds. Neil, this is His Majesty William II of Crotheny.”

Neil remembered to drop to one knee and bowed so low his head nearly hit the ground. “Your Majesty,” he managed to croak.

“Rise up, young man,” the king said.

Neil came to his feet.

“He’s a likely looking lad,” the king said. “Squire, you say? This the fellow I’ve heard so much about, the lad from the battle of Darkling Mere?”

“It is, Sire.”

“Well, Neil MeqVren. We’ll have some talks about you, I expect.”

“But not now,” a prim-looking young woman said, sidling up on the back of a delicate-looking bay. She nodded to Neil, and he felt an odd sense that they had met before. Something about her hazel eyes was familiar, or almost so. She was a severe beauty, with high cheekbones and glossy hair several shades browner than chestnut.

“This day is for Elseny, and none other,” the woman went on. “But I’ll wish a good day to you—Neil MeqVren, is it?”

It took Neil an open-mouthed moment or two to realize she was presenting her hand. He took it, albeit belatedly, and kissed the royal signet ring.

“Your Majesty,” he said. For this was surely the queen.

A laugh trickled through the group, at that, and Neil realized he had made a mistake.

“This is my daughter Fastia, now of the house Tighern,” the king said.

“Hush your laughing, all of you,” Fastia said sternly. “This man is our guest. Besides, it’s clear he knows royal quality when he sees it, at least.” Her smile was brief, more of a twitch, really.

At about that moment, another young woman came flying into Sir Fail’s arms. He whirled her around and she shrieked delightedly.

“Elseny, what a sight you are!” the old man said, when he managed to step back from her.

Neil had to agree. She was younger than Fastia— seventeen, or thereabouts—and her hair was raven black, not brown. Where Fastia had a hardness to her beauty, this one had eyes as wide and guileless as a child.

“It’s so perfect to see you today, Granuncle Fail! You came for my birthday!”

“That part was the work of the saints,” Fail said. “Surely they smile on you.”

“And who is this young fellow you’ve brought us?” Elseny asked. “Everyone has met him but me!”

“This is my charge, Neil MeqVren.”

Neil’s face grew warmer and warmer at all of the attention.

Elseny was clad outlandishly in a colorful silk gown elaborately embroidered with flowers and twining vines, and she wore what looked for all the world like insect wings sprouting from the back. Her hair was taken up in complicated tiers, and each level had a different sort of flower arranged in it: hundreds of tiny violets on the first, red clover next, pale green saflilies, to a crown of white lotus.

Like Fastia, she offered her hand. “Granuncle,” she said, as Neil kissed her ring. “Really! Today I’m not Elseny, you should know! I am Meresven, the queen of the Phay.”

“Oh my! I should have known. Of course you are.”

“Have you come to be knighted?” Elseny asked Neil, quite suddenly.

“Ah—it is my greatest desire, Princess—I mean, Your Majesty.”

“Well. Come to my court, and I will certainly make you a knight of Elphin.” She fluttered her eyes and then, quite swiftly, seemed to forget him, turning back to Fail and taking his arm. “And now, Uncle,” she said. “You must tell me how my cousins in Liery fare! Do they ask after me? Have you heard I am engaged?”

“And here is my son, Charles,” the king said, once it was clear Neil’s introduction to Elseny was done.

Neil had noticed Charles peripherally when they first rode up. He had seen such men before, grown adult in length and breadth but with the manner of a child. The eyes were the sign—roving, curious, oddly vacant.

At the moment, Charles was talking to a man clothed from neck to foot in garish robes that looked as if fifteen different garments had been torn, mixed, and patched back together. On his head sat an improbably broad-brimmed, floppy hat hung with silver bells that jangled as he walked along. It was so large, in fact, the fellow resembled a walking hat.

“Charles?” the king repeated.

Charles was a large man with curly red hair. Neil felt a little chill when the saint-touched stare found him.

“Hello,” Charles said. “Who are you?” He sounded like a child.

“I’m Neil MeqVren, my lord,” Neil said, bowing.

“I’m the prince,” the young man said.

“That is clear, my lord.”

“It’s my sister’s birthday, today.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“This is Hound Hat, my jester. He’s Sefry.”

A face peered up at him from beneath the hat, a face whiter than ivory with eyes of pale copper. Neil stared, amazed. He had never seen a Sefry before. It was said they would not venture upon the sea.

“Good day to you,” Neil said, nodding to the Sefry, not knowing what else to say.

The Sefry put on a malicious little smile. He began to sing and caper a little, the huge hat wobbling.

The jester’s song brought howls of laughter from the crowd. The loudest was Charles, who slapped the Sefry on the back in his delight. That sent the jester flying. He tumbled crazily, grasping the corners of his huge hat and rolling into a ball. When he came near someone on foot, they kicked at him, and he tumbled off in another direction, hooting. Within instants, an impromptu game of football, led by the crown prince, had distracted everyone from Neil, but his ears still burned from their laughter. Even the king, Fastia, and Elseny had laughed at him, though thankfully Sir Fail had merely rolled his eyes.

Neil tightened his mouth, locking a reply to the jester inside of it. He didn’t want to shame Sir Fail with the tongue that had brought him trouble more than once.

“Don’t mind Hound Hat,” Fastia told him. “He mocks everyone he can. It’s his vocation, you understand. Here, walk alongside me. I will continue your education on the court. ’Tis plain you need one.”

“Thank you, lady.”

“We’re missing a sister—my youngest, Anne. She’s sulking down that way—see, that’s her with the strawberry hair? And, look, here comes my mother, the queen.”

Neil followed her gaze.

She no longer wore a cowl, but Neil knew her in an instant, by her eyes, and by her faint smile of recognition. And now he understood why Fastia and Elseny had seemed so familiar. They were their mother’s daughters.

“So, you roused old Fail,” the queen said.

“Majesty. Yes, Majesty.” This time, he did knock his head against the grass.

“You’ve met already?” Fastia asked.

“I went to the chapel of Saint Lier,” the queen said. “This young man was there, praying like a poet. They teach prayer like that only on the islands. I knew he must be with Fail.”

“Your Majesty, please forgive any impertinence I might have—”

The king interrupted Neil. “You went without an escort? To the docks?”

“My guard was near, and Erren just outside, and I was hooded. Disguised, as it were.”

“It was foolish, Muriele, especially in these times.”

“I’m sorry if I worried you.”

“Worried? I did not know. That’s what worries, after the fact. From now on you will not go about without escort. Please.” He seemed to realize that his voice had turned sharp, and calmed it. “We’ll discuss it later,” he said. “I don’t want to welcome Fail and his young guest with a family quarrel.”

“Speaking of quarrels,” Queen Muriele said, “I hope you will all excuse me a moment. I see someone with whom I need to speak. Young MeqVren, I apologize for my deception, but it was worth it to see your face, just now.” She looked over at her husband. “I’m going only so far as over there,” she said, “if you wanted to know.”

Neil was glad she had switched the object of her conversation so quickly, for he had nothing at all to reply. He felt guilty for something he could not name.

“It had to be Fastia,” Anne told Austra as the two girls walked their horses up the violet-spangled Sleeve. The air was thick with spring perfumes, but Anne was too agitated to enjoy them.

“Fastia is usually more direct,” Austra disagreed. “She would have questioned you about the rose, not taunted you with it.”

“Not if she already knew everything.”

“She doesn’t know everything,” Austra said. “She can’t.”

“Who did it, then? Lesbeth?”

“She has changed,”Austra pointed out. “Become more political. Maybe she’s changed as much as Fastia has, but we just don’t know it yet.”

Anne considered that for a moment, shifting her seat a bit. She despised riding sidesaddle—or slidesaddle, as it ought to be called. She always felt as if she was just about to slip off. If she and Austra were alone, she would switch in an instant to a more natural mode of riding, underskirts be damned.

But they weren’t alone. Half the nobles in the kingdom were riding up the gently rising field.

“I can’t believe that. Lesbeth wouldn’t betray me any more than you would.”

“You suspect me?” Austra asked indignantly.

“Hush, you stupid girl. Of course not. That’s what I just said.”

“Oh. Well, who, then? Who has a key to your rooms? Only Fastia.”

“Maybe she forgot to lock the door.”

“I doubt that,” Austra said. “I do, too. Still—”

“Your mother.”

“That’s true. Mother certainly has a key. But—”

“No. Here comes your mother.”

Anne looked up and, with a sudden dismayed prickling, realized it was true. Muriele Dare née de Liery, Queen of Crotheny, was trotting her black Vitellian mare away from her retinue and toward Anne and Austra.

“Good morning, Austra,” Muriele said.

“Morning, Your Majesty.”

“I wonder if I might ride with my daughter for a few mo ments. Alone.”

“Of course, Your Majesty!” Austra immediately switched her reins and trotted off, leaving only an apologetic and worried glance. If Anne was in trouble, odds were good that Austra was, too.

“You girls seem agitated about something this morning,” Muriele observed. “And you aren’t riding with the royal party.”

“I had a bad dream,” Anne told her. It was part of the truth, at least. “And no one told us we had to ride with the royal party.”

“That’s a shame about the dream. I’ll have Fastia bring you some fennage tea tonight. It’s said to keep Black Mary away.”

Anne shrugged.

“I think there’s more to it than bad dreams, however. Fastia believes there is a deeper cause in your agitation.”

“Fastia doesn’t like me,” Anne replied.

“On the contrary. Your sister loves you, as well you know. She just doesn’t approve of you all of the time, as well she shouldn’t.”

“All sorts of people disapprove of me,” Anne muttered.

Her mother searched her with her jade-green gaze. “You are a princess, Anne. You have yet to take that seriously. In childhood, it is forgiven—for a time. But you’ve entered into your marriageable years, and it is well past time for you to give up childish behavior. Your father and I were both terribly embarrassed by the incident with the greft of Austgarth—”

“He was a disgusting old man. You can’t expect me—”

“He is a gentleman, and more, his allegiance is of the utmost importance to us. You find the well-being of your fa-ther’s kingdom disgusting? Do you know how many of your ancestors have perished for this country?”

“That’s not fair.”

“Fair? We are not like normal people, Anne. Many of our choices are made for us by our birth.”

“Lesbeth is marrying for love!”

Muriele shook her head. “Ah, this is what I feared, and what Fastia feared, as well. Hers is a fortunate match, but Lesbeth knows no more of love than you do.”

“Oh, yes, Mother, as if you know the slightest thing about love!” Anne exploded. “All of Eslen knows Father spends more time with the lady Gramme than ever he did in your chambers.”

Her mother could move quickly, at times. Anne never saw the slap coming until her face was already stinging from it.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Muriele said, her voice low, flat, and as dangerous as Anne had ever heard it.

Tears welled in Anne’s eyes and her throat swelled. I will not cry, she told herself.

“Now. Listen to me. There are three young men here today, all comely after a fashion. Are you listening? They are Wingaln Kathson of Avlham, William Fullham of the Winston Baronet, and Duncath MeqAvhan. Any of them would be a good match. None of them are disgusting old men. I expect you to entertain each, do you understand? They have come solely to meet you.”

Anne rode in sullen silence.

“Do you understand?” Muriele repeated.

“Yes. How will I know them?”

“You will be introduced, never fear. It is arranged.”

“Very well. I understand.”

“Anne, this is all for your own good.”

“How fortunate that someone should know what is good for me.”

“Don’t be a brat. This is your sister’s birthday. Put on a happy face—if not for me, then for her. And for my sake, let us have an end to our arguments, please?” Muriele smiled the cold little smile that Anne never trusted.

“Yes, Mother.”

But inside, despite the slap that still burned her face, Anne’s heart felt lighter. Her mother didn’t know about Roderick.

But someone knew, didn’t they? Someone had found her rose.

For a moment, she wondered if it had to do with Roderick at all. He hadn’t been in the dream.

“What’s this?” a male voice piped in, from the side. “The two loveliest women in the kingdom, riding without escort?”

Anne and Muriele both turned to greet the newcomer.

“Hello, Robert,” Muriele said.

“Good morning, dear sister-in-law. How lovely you are! The dawn was slow today, fearing to compare with you.”

“How nice of you to say,” Muriele replied.

Ignoring her cool tone, Robert switched his attentions to Anne. “And you, my dear niece. What a stunning creature you’ve become. I fear this birthday party might become a slaughterground of young knights jousting over you, if we don’t provide restraint.”

Anne almost blushed. Uncle Robert was a handsome man, fit, wide shouldered, slim waisted. He was dark, for a Dare, with black eyes and a small mustache and beard that perfectly fit his sardonic manner.

“Best worry about Elseny,” Anne replied. “She’s far the more beautiful, and it is, after all, her birthday.”

Robert trotted his horse over and took Anne’s hand. “Lady,” he said, “my brother has three beautiful daughters, and you are in no way the least of them. If some man has said this, tell me his name and I shall see the ravens pecking at his eyes before nightfall.”

“Robert,” Muriele said, a hint of irritation in her voice, “do not flatter my daughter so unmercifully. It’s not good for her.”

“I speak only the truth, Muriele dear. If it sounds flattering, well, I hope I will be forgiven for it. But really, where is your bodyguard?”

“There,” Muriele said, waving her hand to where the king and his retinue made their way along. “I wanted to speak to my daughter alone, but they are there, and quite alert, I assure you.”

“I hope I haven’t interrupted anything. You seemed serious.”

“Actually,” Anne replied—brightly, she hoped—“we were talking about Lesbeth’s upcoming wedding. Isn’t it exciting?” Too late, she saw the warning in her mother’s eyes.

“What’s that?” Robert’s voice suddenly had a certain coldness to it.

“Lesbeth,” Anne said, a little less certainly. “She asked Father’s permission last night.”

Robert smiled briefly, but his forehead was creased. “How odd that she didn’t ask mine. Goodness! It seems the joke has been on me!”

“She was going to tell you today,” Muriele said.

“Well. Perhaps I’d best go find her and give her the opportunity. If you will excuse me, ladies.”

“Of course,” Muriele said.

“Remind Lesbeth that she promised to see me today!” Anne shouted, as her uncle rode off.

They continued silently for a moment or two.

“You should perhaps be more careful about what you let drop,” Muriele said. But somehow she didn’t sound angry any longer.

“I—the whole castle knows by now. I thought she would have told her own brother.”

“Robert has always been very protective of Lesbeth. They are, after all, twins.”

“Yes. That’s why I thought he would know.”

“It doesn’t always work like that.”

“I see it doesn’t. May I ride with Austra, now?”

“You should join the royal party. Your granuncle Fail is here—Oh, it looks like he’s ridden off with your father. Very well, you may be standoffish if you wish. Tonight you must be sociable, however. And you must be agreeable at your sister’s festival.” She pulled her reins and started off. She cast back over her shoulder. “And stay proper on your horse, you hear me? Today of all days.”

The Sleeve curved and rose gradually to the top of Tom Woth, a broad-topped hill that looked down on the reaches of the city east, and upon its twin, Tom Cast west. There was erected an open-sided pavilion of brilliant yellow silk, flying the banner of the bee and the thistle, the imaginary standard of Elphin.

An enormous floral maze surrounded the pavilion. Its walls consisted of close-planted sunflowers and pearly nodding-heads. Up and about those substantial stalks crept scarlet trumpet vines, morning glories, and blossoming sweet peas. Courtiers were already dismounting and making their way into the labyrinth, laughing and giggling. From someplace in the maze a delicate music played on hautboy, croth, great harp, and bells.

Austra clapped her hands. “It looks delightful, don’t you think?”

Anne forced a smile, determined to enjoy herself. Things, after all, could be much worse, and the festival atmosphere was infectious.

“Very,” she said. “Mother’s outdone herself, this time. Elseny must be positively bursting.”

“Are you well?” Austra asked, almost guiltily.

“Yes. I don’t think Mother knows about Roderick, either. Maybe I tore up the flower, in my sleep.”

Austra’s eyes grew round. “You have done such things! You used to walk about, perfectly unaware of anyone trying to speak to you. And you mumble and mutter most constantly.”

“That must be it, then. I think we are safe, my dear friend. And now I need only entertain three young fellows, and everyone will think well of me.”

“Except Roderick.”

“I shall make that up to him later in the day. You’ll make the arrangements?”

“Of course I will.”

“Well, then. Dare we enter Elphin?”

“I think we so dare!”

They dismounted and approached an archway that had been erected at the entrance of the maze. On either side stood two men wearing chain mail made of daisies. Anne recognized them as players from the household troop.

“Fair ladies,” one said, in high manner. “What seek you, here?”

“Why, an audience with the queen of Elphin, I suppose,” Anne said.

“Milady, betwixt you and that glorious queen lie the twisty courts of the phay, full of beauty and deadly danger. In all candor, I cannot admit you without you be accompanied by a true knight. I implore you, choose one.”

Anne followed his pointing finger, to where a number of boys stood dressed as knights. They wore outlandish armor of paper, fabric, and flowers. Their helms formed into masks, so it was difficult to tell who they were.

Anne strode over to them, and they formed a line. It took only a few moments for her to be sure that Roderick wasn’t among them.

“Which one?” she said aloud, tapping her chin. “What do you think, Austra?”

“They all look quite brave, to me.”

“Not brave enough. I have another in mind. You, sir knight of the green lilies, lend me your sword.”

Obediently, the young man handed her his weapon, which was, in fact, a willow wand painted in gilt and furnished with a guard of lacquered magnolia petals.

“Very good. And now your helm.”

He hesitated there, but she was, after all, a princess. He removed the masked helm to reveal a young, somewhat homely face she didn’t recognize. Anne leaned up and kissed his cheek. “I thank you, sir Elphin knight.”

“Milady—”

“May I have your name?”

“Uh—William Fullham, milady.”

“Sir Fullham, you will save a dance for me, when we reach the queen’s court?”

“Of course, milady!”

“Wonderful.” And with that, she donned his helm and marched back to the guards.

“I hayt Sir Anne,” she proclaimed, “of the Bitter Bee clan, and I will escort the lady Austra to the queen.”

“Very well, Sir Anne. But beware. The Briar King is said to be about.”

When he said it, something went wrong in Anne’s belly, as if she had stepped off of something higher than she thought it was, and the image of her dream flashed behind her eyes— the field of black roses, the thorny forest, the hand reaching for her.

She staggered for a moment.

“What’s wrong?” Austra asked.

“Nothing,” Anne replied. “It’s just the sun.”

With that, she entered the maze.

10 The Taff

Aspar left Tor Scath before dawn, departing the King’s Road and striking across the uplands of Brogh y Stradh, through meadows blazing with red clover, lavender weed, and pharigolds. He found the Taff near its headwaters, surprising a small herd of aurochs stamping the stream bank into a musky quagmire. They watched him with suspicious eyes as he, Ogre, and Angel picked their way through the twisty maze of ancient willows that surrounded and canopied their watering place. The wild cattle smell followed him downstream, long after the bellows of the bulls faded.

Everything seemed well, but it wasn’t. He was more certain now than ever. It wasn’t just the things Symen had told him.

Yes, he believed some of the old man’s babblings. Ultimately, the knight was trustworthy when it came to reporting what he had seen. The dead bodies, the mutilations, the strange absence of wounds all were undoubtedly true, though Aspar wanted to see for himself.

The rest—greffyns, the Briar King, and the like—that part he didn’t trust.

Though Symen’s speculations were less than reliable, it was something in Aspar himself that worried him. The night before, on the road when he’d been trying to scare the young priest-to-be, he’d almost frightened himself, almost imagined that the wild soul-hunt had really fallen upon them—despite that he had always known, in his head, that it was merely Symen and his dogs.

Something was out there, and he didn’t know what. For all his babbling about greffyns and Briar Kings, neither did Symen. And that was the worrisome thing, the not knowing.

Ogre was skittish, his ears pricking all of the time, and twice shying—Ogre, shying—at nothing at all.

And so, by degrees, Aspar prepared himself for what he would find on Taff Creek.

The bodies lay like a flight of birds broken by some strange wind, scattered around their unfinished nests. He tied his horses a safe distance away and went on foot among them.

They had been dead for days, of course. Their flesh had gone black and purple, and their staring eyes had sunk into their heads, as if they were really carved from pumpkins, then left too long in the sun. That shouldn’t have been. The ravens should have picked their eyes long ago. There should be worms, and the stink of putrefaction.

Instead he smelled only autumn leaves.

It was as Symen had described; they had simply dropped dead. Which might mean …

He looked around.

Seothen—sedoi, the priestling had called them—were usually on high ground, but not always. If the church built fanes on them, there were paths, but as the boy said, few of the sedoi in the King’s Forest were used by the church, though until last night Aspar had never thought to wonder why. He’d only known that the church didn’t bother with most of them.

Somebody was bothering with them, though.

He found it on a little hillock, not far from the stream, aided by its smell of rotting flesh and the croaking of ravens. The fane itself was almost gone, a few rocks still holding the shape of an ancient wall and an altar stone. But on the trees encircling it, the bodies of men, women, and children had been nailed up by the hands and feet. They had been split open from sternum to crotch and their intestines pulled like ropes about the fane, forming a sort of enclosure. The big muscles of their arms and legs had been flayed open, too.

This near, the smell was almost enough to make him retch. Unlike those in the field, these corpses were rotting, and the trees were full of man-fatted corbies. A few bodies had already parted from their limbs, upsetting the unholy architecture of the murderers.

Down the hill, Ogre whinnied, then snorted. Aspar recognized the tone and, turning his back on the ghastly tableau, hurried back.

He stopped still as he neared the horses and saw, in the tangle by the stream, an eye the size of a saucer.

The rest of it was all guessing, lost in the mosaic shadows of the forest. But it was watching him, of that he was certain. And it was big, big enough to have made the print he had seen by Edwin’s Brooh. Bigger than Ogre.

He exhaled softly, and as he inhaled again, he reached for the quiver on his back, pinched one of the black-fletched arrows in three callus-hardened fingers, and drew it out. He lay it on his bow.

The eye shifted, and a few leaves stirred. He saw a beak, black and curving and sharp, and wondered if he was dead already, just from having caught its gaze.

He couldn’t remember that much about greffyns. They didn’t exist, and Aspar White had never paid much attention to things that didn’t exist. But there it was. And it had killed the squatters without touching them. Somehow.

Why was it still here? Or had it gone and returned?

He brought the weapon up, as the greffyn nosed into the clearing.

Its head was vaguely eaglelike, as the old stories told, though it was flatter than that. It had no feathers, but was scaled in black and dark, iridescent green. A mane of what looked like coarse hair began at its neck. Its foreparts were thickly muscled, ox-size but sinuous. It moved like a bird, jerky, but fast and sure. He would get one shot. He doubted very much that it would be enough.

He aimed for the eye.

The greffyn cocked its head, and he saw something in it then he had never seen in an animal. Consideration, calculation.

Disdain.

He drew the bow. “Come on, then, you mikel rooster,” he growled. “Come or go, it makes no never mind to me, just do one or the other.”

It crouched, like a cat preparing to spring. Everything went still. The bowstring cut into his fingers, and the scent of the resin on it tickled his nose. He smelled leaf mold and chestnut blossoms and woodsmoke—and it. Animal, yes, but also something like rain hitting the hot rocks around a campfire.

It uncoiled like a snake striking, bounding up and out, a blur. Despite its size, it was the fastest living thing he had ever seen. It tore across the meadow at a right angle to him, south. In two eye blinks it was gone.

He stood for a long moment, marveling, wondering if he could have hit it, glad enough that it hadn’t come down to that.

Glad that its gaze wasn’t enough to kill.

Then his feet wobbled out from under him. The forest floor came up to smack his face, and he thought he heard Dirty Jesp somewhere, laughing her silky, condescending laugh.

He awoke to fingers brushing his face and a soft murmuring.

He reached for his dirk. Or tried to—his hand didn’t move.

I’m tied up, he thought. Or nailed to a tree.

But then he opened his eyes and saw Winna, the hostler’s daughter from back in Colbaely.

“What?” he mumbled. His lips felt thick.

“Did you touch one of them?” she asked. “I can’t find any sign, but—”

“Where am I?”

“Where I found you, near the Taff, right by where all that poor boy’s kin lie dead. Did you touch one of the bodies?”

“No.”

“What’s wrong with you, then?”

I saw a greffyn. “I don’t know,” he told her. He could move his hands now, a little. They were tingling.

“The boy died,” she said. “That purple hand of his—his whole arm turned black. It wasn’t a bruise. It started after he tried to shake his mother awake.”

“I didn’t touch any of them. Can you help me sit up?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

She held up her own hands, showing angry red marks on the fingers and palms. “I got this from washing his wounds. It hurt that night, but I gave it no mind. By midday after you left, I was blistered.”

Cold seeped up Aspar’s back as he remembered Symen’s missing fingers. “We’ll need to find you a leic,” he said.

Winna shook her head. “I saw Mother Cilth. She gave me an ointment and told me the poison was too weak to do me real harm.” She paused. “She also told me you needed me.”

He started to deny that last, but a wave of dizziness overcame him.

Winna got around behind him, reached her small arms up under his, and lifted. He felt weak, but between the two of them, they managed to get him scooted against a tree so he could stay up.

She felt soft, and she smelled good. Clean.

“I thought you were dead,” she said, voice low.

“You followed me here?”

“No, you great fool, I conjured you back to Colbaely with my alvish broom-handle. Yes, of course I followed you. I was afraid you would touch the bodies, and catch whatever shine-craft killed them.”

He looked up at her. “Sceat. You followed me here alone? Do you know how dangerous that was? Even on a good day, there’s cutthroats and beasts, but now—wasn’t it you warning me that the forest is different now?”

“And wasn’t it you who scoffed at me for sayin’ it? You’re ready to admit I was right?”

“That’s not the point,” Aspar snapped. “The point is you could have been killed.”

Winna’s eyebrows lowered dangerously. “Aspar White, you’re not the only one who knows a thing or two about the King’s Forest, at least hereabouts. And which of us was almost killed? It might as easily have been a wolf or a bandit that found you as it was me, and then you would’ve slept through your own death.”

“The same wolf could have found you.”

She uttered a terse laugh. “Yes, and been too fat on holterflesh to catch me. Aspar White, is this you wasting breath on something already done?”

He had a response to that, he was sure of it, but then another bout of sickness came over him, and it was all he could do not to vomit.

“You did touch one!” she said, her ire suddenly replaced by concern.

He shook his head. “I stopped by Tor Scath. Sir Symen found some dead like this, and lost two fingers for touching them. Why—why didn’t y’send someone? You shouldn’t have come yourself, Winn, whatever that old witch Cilth told you.”

She regarded him for a long moment.

“You’re a fool, Aspar White,” she said.

And then she kissed him.

“That’s enough firewood, I think,” Winna said, when Aspar returned with his fourth armload.

“I suppose it is,” he said. He stood there awkwardly for a moment, then nodded to the rabbits roasting on spits over a small fire. “Those smell good.”

“They do.”

“Well. I should—”

“You should sit there and tell me what happened. I’ve never seen you like this, Asp. You seem … well, not frightened, but as close to it as I’ve known you to come. First I find you laid out like a dead man, then you want to ride at neck-breaking speed until it’s almost dark. What killed those people, Aspar? Do you think it’s after us?”

You left something out, there, Aspar thought to himself, remembering the touch of her breath on his. Something that’s muddying my thoughts considerably. He stood for a heartbeat longer, then took a seat across the fire from her. “I saw something.”

“Something? Some kind of animal?”

“Something that ought not to be.”

She spread her hands and shrugged, a silent go on?

“The Sefry had children’s stories about them. Maybe you heard them, too. About greffyns.”

“Greffyns? You think you saw a greffyn? A lion, with an eagle’s head and wings, and all?”

“Not exactly like that. I didn’t see any wings, or feathers. But someone as saw this might describe it that way. It was like a big cat, and it had a beak. It acted something like a bird.”

“Well, they’re supposed to hate horses. And lay golden eggs, I think. And wasn’t there a story about a knight who tamed one to ride?”

“Do you remember anything about poison?”

“Poison? No, I don’t.” She brightened. “Could it have been a basil-nix? They were supposed to be poison, remember? So poison they could hide in a tree and the fruit of the tree would kill whoever ate it.”

“That’s it. That’s what I was trying to remember. Winna, whatever I saw—what it touches, dies.”

“And what touches whatever it touches, too, it would seem.” Suddenly her face scrunched in horror. “It didn’t touch you, did it?”

“No. It looked at me, that’s all. But even that took its toll. Or it might have been poison vapor, in the air. I wat not. That’s why I was in such a hurry to leave, to get you away from there.”

“Where do you think it came from?”

“I don’t know. From the mountains, maybe.” He shrugged. “How did they kill them, in the stories?”

“Aspar. No.”

“I have to find it, Winn. You know that. I’m the holter. Maunt it.”

“Maunt it yourself: How can you kill something you can’t even look at? How do you know it can be killed?”

“Anything can be killed.”

“That’s just like you. Three days ago you didn’t even believe such a creature existed. Now you know for certain you can kill it.”

“I have to try,” he said stubbornly.

“Of course you do,” she said disgustedly. She turned the rabbits a bit.

“Are you sorry I kissed you?” she asked suddenly. Her face flushed red when she said it, but her voice was strong.

“Ah … no. I just—” He remembered how her lips had felt, the warm taste of them, the brush of her cheek against his, her eyes so close.

“I won’t do it again,” she went on.

“No, I wouldn’t expect you to.”

“No, next time you have to kiss me, Aspar White, if there’s going to be any kissing. Is that clear to you?”

Clear? No, not one damned bit! he thought.

“Werlic, it’s clear,” he lied. Did that mean she wanted him to come kiss her now, or that she thought it was a mistake?

One thing certain—in the soft light of the fire she looked very kissable.

“The rabbits are ready,” she said.

“Good. I’m hungry.”

“Come on then.” She handed him one of the spits. The coney was still sizzling when he bit into it. For a while he had the perfect excuse not to talk, or kiss, or do anything with his mouth but chew. But when he was down to greasy bones, the silence started becoming uncomfortable again.

“Winna, do you know the way to Tor Scath? It’s less than a day east of here.”

“I know where it is.”

“Could you make it there on your own? I don’t like asking it, but if I take you all the way there and then come back, I’m afraid I might lose the greffyn’s trail.”

“I’m not going to Tor Scath.”

“It’s too far back to Colbaely with things like that roaming the woods. In fact—” He broke off. The greffyn hadn’t had hands, had it? How would it nail people to trees and make a corral from their intestines?

“In fact, I’m not thinking clear. I’ll take you to Tor Scath. The greffyn’s trail will keep.”

“Aspar, if you take me to Tor Scath, I’ll slip off first chance I get, and I’ll follow you again. If you take me all the way back to Colbaely, I’ll do the same. If you don’t want me wandering the woods alone, you’ll take me with you, and that’s that.”

“Take you with me?”

“If you’re fool enough to hunt this thing, I won’t let you hunt it alone.”

“Winna—”

“It’s not an argument,” she said. “It’s fact.”

“Sceat! Winna, this monster is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever heard of, much less seen. If I have to worry about you as well as me—”

“Then you’ll be that much more careful, won’t you? You’ll think more carefully before doing something foolish.”

“I said no.”

“And I said it’s not an argument,” Winna finished. “Now— we can talk about something else, something more pleasant, or we can get some sleep and an early start. Which will it be?”

Aspar stirred the fire with the tip of the greasy skewer. Nearby, Ogre grumbled something.

“Do you want the first watch, or the morning?” he asked finally.

“Morning,” she said immediately. “Throw me that blanket. And don’t fail to wake me.”

Minutes later she was asleep. Aspar shouldered his bow and walked out of the circle of light. He had taken them back into the Brogh y Stradh, and a short distance away one of the many upland meadows showed through the trees. He stepped to the edge of it and regarded the rising moon. It was huge and orange, three-quarters full. A nightbird called to it, and Aspar shivered.

He had loved the forest at night, found leaves the most restful bed in the world. Now the dark felt like a cave full of vipers. He remembered the greffyn’s eye, its awful disdain. How did you kill something like that? Would the young priest have known? Probably not, and even if he did, it was too late. He’d be a day’s travel toward d’Ef by now.

Would that Winna were that far away.

Would that she had never found him.

No matter how earnestly he told himself that, it still felt like a lie. Disgusted, he turned his back to the evil-looking moon and returned to the edge of the firelight and Winna’s slow, regular breathing.

11 Widdershins

By the time they had reached the festival grounds, Fastia had filled Neil’s head with the names of so many lords, ladies, retainers, grefts, archgrefts, margrefts, marascalhs, sinescalhs, earls, counts, landfroas, andvats, barons, and knights he feared it would burst. He spent most of his time nodding and making noises to let her know he was listening. Meanwhile, Sir Fail, still speaking with the king, drew farther and farther away. The rest of the royal party outpaced them until only he and Fastia and a few of the deviceless knights were left.

When they reached the hilltop, with its gaudy and bewildering collection of tents, plant growth, and costumed servants Fastia, too, excused herself. “I need to speak to my mother,” she explained. “Details about the celebration. Do try to enjoy yourself.”

“I will, Archgreffess. My deepest thanks for your conversation.”

“It is little enough,” Fastia said stiffly. “It’s rare we get a breath of fresh air in this court, and well worth breathing it when it comes along.” She began to ride away, then paused, turned her horse back, and brought her head quite near his, so that he could smell the cinnamon perfume she wore. “There are others in the court you haven’t met. I pointed out my uncle, Robert? My father’s brother? My father has two sisters, as well. Lesbeth, the duchess of Andemeur, and Elyoner, the duchess of Loiyes. You’ll find the first sweet-tempered and pleasant in conversation. Elyoner I advise you to avoid, at least until you are wiser. She can be dangerous for young men like you.”

Neil bowed in the saddle. “Thank you again, Princess Fastia, for your company and your advice.”

“Again you are welcome.” This time she rode off without looking back.

That left him alone, which gave him time to let it all sink in, to try to understand the seeming chaos around him.

And to struggle with the fact that he had actually met a king. No, not just a king, but the king, the Amrath, the Ardrey— the emperor of Crotheny and the kingdoms that served it, the greatest nation in the world.

He began a brief prayer of thanks to Saint Lier.

“Look how Sir Bumpkin sits his horse,” someone said, behind him. “Praying to stay in the saddle, Sir Bumpkin?” Another man guffawed in response. Neil finished his prayer, then looked about to see who “Sir Bumpkin” might be, and found two of the sable-and-green-clad knights regarding him. The one who had spoken had a hawkish nose and a small black beard. His companion was pox-scarred, with chipped teeth and eyes like blue ice. Nearby, another of the knights started drifting toward them.

“You are wrong on at least one count,” Neil replied. “I am not titled, and thus no ‘sir’ of any sort.”

“It’s just plain Bumpkin, then? A pity,” the knight said, pulling thoughtfully at his goatee. “Seeing how poorly you sit a horse, I had a mind to see how you fall off of one. But I suspect if I watch long enough, that will happen of its own accord.”

“Have I given you offense, sir?”

“Offense is too strong a word. You amuse.”

“Well, I’m happy, I suppose, if I can give such a great lord as yourself amusement,” Neil replied evenly.

“You suppose? You don’t even know who I am, do you?”

“No, sir. You wear no device.”

“This braying island ass doesn’t know who I am, fellows.”

The third knight arrived, a huge, bearlike man with a bristly blond beard. “Sometimes your own mother pretends she don’t know you either, Jemmy,” he ground out in bass tones. “Leave the lad be.”

The man Neil gathered to be Jemmy pursed his lips as if to make retort, then laughed. “I suppose I must,” he said. “And he is, after all, too far beneath me to muck about with. Go along, Bumpkin.” He kneed his mount, turning dismissively away.

“I pray, sir, that you do tell me your name,” Neil called after him.

The fellow turned slowly back. “And why is that, Bumpkin?”

“So when I take the rose and don my spurs I can call on you.”

The knight laughed, and his companions with him. “Very well,” he allowed. “I am Sir James Cathmayl. I will be happy to kill you, just as soon as you wear the rose. But rumor has it that you’re merely a lost puppy, nipping about the heels of Sir Fail, with no house, lands, title, or good name. Is it true?”

Neil drew himself straighter. “All but the last. My father gave me this name, and his father before him, and we have faithfully served the Toute de Liery for three generations. MeqVren is a good name, and he who disputes that is a liar.” He cocked his head. “And if I’m of so little count, why are there rumors about me already?”

Sir James tweaked his mustache. “Because Sir Fail, however eccentric, is one of the most important men in the kingdom. Because you spoke to both His and Her Majesty.”

“And because it’s said you made three squires of that oaf Alareik Fram Wishilm shit themselves,” the blond-bearded giant added.

“That, too,” Sir James admitted. “You’re a curiosity, is what you are.”

“And who are you fellows? What lord do you serve?”

Blond-beard chuckled good-naturedly; the other two sneered. “He is a babe, isn’t he?” Sir James grunted, rolling his eyes. “Who do you think we are, boy?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but turned and rode away. Poxy-face went with him.

Neil blushed, but stood his ground.

“We’re the Craftsmen, lad,” Blond-beard said. “The royal bodyguard.”

“Oh.” Of course, he had heard of the most famous guard in the land. How stupid that he hadn’t known their colors. “My apologies. I should have known, by your very presence around the king.”

The blond man shrugged. “Never mind Jemmy. He’s not a bad sort, when you get to know him.”

“And may I ask your name, sir?”

“Why? So you can call me out, too?”

“Not at all. I’d like to know the name of the man who showed me kindness.”

“Well. Vargus Farre, at your service. I’m pleased to meet you, and I wish you luck. It’s only honest to tell you this, though: I’ve never heard of an ungentle man being knighted, and if by some miracle you are, you’ll know little peace. You’ll be seen as an affront, and every knight in the country will bring challenge against you. Take my advice—stay with Sir Fail as his man-at-arms. It will be a good thing for you.”

“I’ll take what the king gives me, and desire no more,” Neil replied. “My only wish is to serve His Majesty as best I can.”

Sir Vargus smiled. “Those are words I’ve heard often enough to render ’em as meaningless as geese honking. And yet I think you mean them, don’t you?”

“I mean them.”

“Well, then. Saints smile on you. And now I must attend to my duties.”

Neil watched him go, still feeling stupid. He noticed them, now, watching from afar. Even though the king and Sir Fail looked as if they were alone, in fact there was a circle of Craftsmen around them—at a distance, yes, looking almost uninterested. But when someone moved toward the king, so did they.

He looked for the queen and found her near the edge of the hill, talking to two ladies. There, too, vigilant Craftsmen kept both their range and their guard.

It was said these men renounced all lands and property upon entering the royal bodyguard. It was also said that they felt neither pain nor desire, that none could stand against them, that their weapons had been forged by giants.

Perhaps that’s why he hadn’t recognized them right away. To Neil, they seemed like any other men.

Alone again, Neil had the leisure to reflect on just how out of place he felt. In Liery, he had known who he was. He was Neil, son of Fren, and since the destruction of his clan, the fosterling of Fail de Liery. More than that, he had been a warrior, and a good one. Even the knights of Liery had recognized that, and complimented him on it. He had been one of them in all but title. None had successfully stood against him in single combat since he was fourteen. No enemy of the de Lierys had ever stood against him at all, not since that day on the beach.

But what use was he here, in this place of frilly tents and costumes? Where even the most civil of the royal bodyguard spoke to him with such condescension? What could he do here?

Better that he serve the empire as he always had, as a warrior of the marches, where it mattered little whether or not one wore a rose, and mattered much how one wielded a sword.

He would find Fail de Liery and ask him not to recommend him. It was the only sensible course of action.

He looked about and saw Sir Fail break away from the king.

“Come, Hurricane,” he told his mount, “let’s tell him, and hope it’s not too late.”

But as he turned, he caught a glimpse of the queen. The sight of her held him momentarily.

She was still mounted, silhouetted against the blue sky. Beyond her, the land dropped away to a distant green, still misty with morning. A breeze ruffled her hair.

He realized he had stared too long, and began to turn, when a motion caught his eye. It was one of the Craftsmen, his mount at full gallop, careening across the green toward her, a long silver flash of steel in his hand.

Neil didn’t think but kicked Hurricane into motion. Clearly the knight was rushing to meet some threat. Frantically, Neil searched with his eyes as he galloped forward, but saw nothing the warrior might be responding to.

And then he understood. He drew Crow, flourishing her and uttering the piercing war cry of the MeqVrens.

Austra giggled as Anne shooed away some great lout dressed as an ogre, brandishing her willow-wand sword.

“This is fun,” the maid said.

“It’s good of you tell me,” Anne replied. “Else I might never have known.”

“Oh, foo. You’re having fun.”

“Maybe a little. But it’s time we part company, fair lady.”

“What do you mean?” Austra said. “You are my knight. Who else shall escort me to the center of the maze and the Elphin queen’s court?”

“That isn’t your charge, as well you know. You must find Roderick and direct him to meet me at the fane of Saint Under.”

“In Eslen-of-Shadows? That’s—”

“The last place anyone will look for us. And it’s not far from here. He is to meet me there at dusk. Go find him, tell him, then find me again in the maze. We shall then proceed to my sister’s birthday court, and none will be the wiser.”

“I don’t know. Fastia and your mother must be watching us.”

“Amidst all this? That would be difficult.”

“As difficult as me finding Roderick.”

“I have confidence in you, Austra. Now hurry.”

Austra rustled off, and Anne continued through the labyrinth on her own.

She knew how to work mazes, of course. Some of her earliest memories were of her aunt Elyoner’s estate of Glenchest, in Loiyes, and the vast hedge labyrinth there. She had feared it until her aunt explained the secret. You simply trailed a hand on one wall and walked, always keeping contact. In that way you would work through the entire thing. Slow it might be, but not as slow as bumbling confusedly around in the same corner for four bells.

She was in no hurry, but from habit, she trailed her left hand along the floral wall.

Meanwhile, children and court dwarves dressed as boghshins and kovalds ran by, squealing and making fierce faces. Many of the court giants were dressed as pig-headed uttins with tusks and green-skinned trolls with bulging eyes. Hound Hat, her father’s Sefry jester, tipped his huge brim to her as she went by, his shadowed face the only flesh visible, the rest of him clad in voluminous robes that swallowed even his hands.

She hoped Austra would find Roderick. The kiss in the orchard had been far different from that first peck in the city of the dead. Or rather, the kisses in the orchard, for she seemed to have lost more than half a bell, when she was with him. It wasn’t just the lips, with kissing, as she had always imagined. It was the face, so close, the eyes so near they could hide nothing if you caught them open.

And the warmth of bodies—that was a little frightening. Confusing. She wanted more.

Anne paused, her hand still on the wall.

Something was different. She seemed to have entered a corner of the maze no one else had found, not even the “monsters” who were supposed to inhabit it. She had been so deep in thought that she had failed to take notice. Now, straining her ears, she couldn’t even hear anyone else.

Just how big could this maze be?

The flowers had changed, too. The walls here were made of scarlet and white primrose—and they were denser. She couldn’t see through them at all. In fact, at their bases the stems were quite thick, as if they had been growing for a very long time. But she had been on Tom Woth in midwinter, and there had been no trace of a maze. Sunflowers could grow more than head high in a few months, but a thick stand of primrose? That seemed unlikely.

Her breathing quickened.

“Hello?” she called.

No one answered.

Frowning, Anne turned around, so that her right hand was touching the wall she had been following. Walking quickly, she retraced her steps.

After a hundred paces or so, she lifted her skirts and broke into a run. The maze was still primroses, now sunset red, then sky blue or snow white, pink and lavender. No sunflowers or twining peas, no jesters or goblin-dressed children, no giggling courtiers. Nothing but endless corridors of flowers, and her own sharp breathing.

Finally she stopped, trying to stay calm.

Obviously she wasn’t on Tom Woth anymore. Where was she, then?

The sky looked the same, but something was different. Something other than the maze.

She couldn’t place it at first, but when she understood, she gasped and, despite herself, began to tremble.

She couldn’t see the sun, which meant it must be low in the sky. Yet there were no shadows. Not from the maze, not from her. She lifted her skirt. Even directly underneath her, the grass was lit as uniformly as everything else.

She slapped herself. She pinched herself, but nothing changed.

Until behind her she heard a faint, throaty chuckle.

Time slowed, as it often did for Neil in such moments. The Craftsman’s horse seemed almost to drift toward the queen, its great shanks rippling and glistening like black waters beneath the moon.

The queen hadn’t yet noticed anything unusual, for the black-and-green-clad knight was approaching from behind her, but Fastia was facing the oncoming rider, and her face was slowly transforming from puzzlement to horror.

For the Craftsman’s target was the queen herself. His sword was drawn back, level with his waist and parallel to the ground, in preparation for the strike known as reaper, aimed at kissing Her Majesty’s neck and making a fountain of her lovely white throat.

In that long, slow moment of calculation, Neil was suspended between possibilities. If the Craftsman didn’t flinch, Neil would never stop him.

The Craftsman didn’t flinch, but his horse did, seeing Hurricane bearing down so fast. A single hesitation, less than a heartbeat, but it was enough.

Hurricane crashed into the other horse’s hindquarters, striking from the side with such force that it spun the Craftsman clean around. For this, Neil’s own decapitating blow went high, but Neil managed to get his left arm around, and the two steel-clad men hit with a noise like a ton of chain being dropped from a watchtower onto cobblestones.

Then there was a tangle of limbs and no weight, and Neil discovered that there was, indeed, an edge to the hill. A very steep slope, and he and the knight were flying out over it like the clumsiest, most improbable birds in the world.

Thunder smote repeatedly as they hit the grass-dressed hill and bounced, bounced again, and rolled. He lost his hold and they came apart. Crow wasn’t in his hands anymore. He finally fetched to a stop against a rock, flashes like anvil sparks filling his vision.

He didn’t know how long he lay there, but it couldn’t have been long, because he and the royal guardsman were still alone, though the distant hilltop bristled with figures.

Neil got to his feet a few breaths before the Craftsman, who lay some ten paces away. Crow, by good chance, rested halfway between them. Less fortunately, the knight still held his blade.

Neil didn’t get Crow up in time, and he had to take that first blow on his forearm. Sheathed in steel as it was, the heavy blade would still have shattered the bone, but Neil angled it so the blade skidded aside. The force struck like lightning all the way to his hip, and for an instant time paused again.

Then Neil lifted Crow, his bird of slaughter, and brought her straight up from the ground, one-handed, a weak blow, but it struck directly beneath the knight’s chin. The helm caught it, but his head snapped back, and now Neil had two hands on his weapon.

He hammered in right, hit the helm again, this time just about where the man’s ear should be.

The knight fell.

Neil waited for him to get up.

He did, but his helm was deeply dented, and he limped a little. He was a big man, and by the way he set his middle guard, Neil could tell he knew how to fight without a shield.

The Craftsman struck, coming straight on, feinting a head cut, dropping to strike under the arm instead. It was well done, but Neil saw it coming and took a fast, long step to his right, and the other blade bit only air. Crow, on the other hand, lifted as if to block the feint, then came back and once again struck the conical helm, in the same place it had before.

This time, blood spurted from the visor. His foe tottered and fell, trying to curl around his head.

Neil sighed, walked a few steps, and sat down, badly in need of a few deep breaths. It wasn’t easy. His beautiful new armor was stove deeply in from below his left arm all the way to his hip, and he was pretty sure the ribs underneath were cracked, too.

He heard shouts above him. Too steep for horses. Five Craftsmen were clanging down the slope as best they could in their armor. Neil lifted Crow again, ready to meet them.

Her gown was of a red so dark it seemed nearly black, and it was hemmed with strange scrolling needlework that glinted ruby. Over it she wore a black robe, embroidered in pale gold with stars, dragons, salamanders, and greffyns. Amber hair fell in a hundred braids to her waist. She wore a mask of red gold, delicately wrought; one eyebrow was lifted, as if in amusement, and the lips carried a quirk that was almost a sneer.

“Who are you?” Anne asked. Her voice sounded ridiculous to her ears, quivering like a baby bird.

“You walked widdershins,” the woman said softly. “You have to be careful when you do that. It puts your shadow behind you, where you can’t look after it. Someone can snatch it—like that.” She snapped her fingers.

“Where are my friends? The court?”

“Where they always were. It’s we who are elsewhere. We shadows.”

“Put me back. Put me back right now. Or …”

“Or what? Do you think you are a princess here?”

“Put me back. Please?”

“I will. But you must listen to me first. It is my one condition. We have only a short time.”

This is a dream, Anne thought. Just like the other night.

She drew a deep breath. “Very well.”

“Crotheny must not fall,” the woman said.

“Of course it shan’t. What do you mean?”

“Crotheny must not fall. And there must be a queen in Crotheny when he comes.”

“When who comes?”

“I cannot name him. Not here, not now. Nor would his name help you.”

“There is a queen in Crotheny. My mother is queen.”

“And so it must remain.”

“Is something going to happen to Mother?”

“I don’t see the future, Anne. I see need. And your kingdom will need you. That is blazed on earth and stone. I cannot say when, or why, but it has to do with the queen. Your mother, or one of your sisters—or you.”

“But that’s stupid. If something happens to my mother, there will be no queen, unless father remarries. And he cannot marry one of his daughters. And if something happens to Father, my brother Charles will be king, and whoever he chooses for wife will be queen.”

“Nevertheless. If there is no queen in Crotheny when he comes, all is lost. And I mean all. I charge you with this.”

“Why me? Why not Fastia? She’s the one—”

“You are the youngest. There is power in that. It is your trust. Your responsibility. If you fail, it means the ruin of your kingdom, and of all other kingdoms. Do you understand?”

“All other kingdoms?”

“Do you understand?”

“No.”

“Then remember. Remembering will do, for now.”

“But I—”

“If you want to know more, seek with your ancestors. They might help you when I cannot. Now go.”

“No, wait. You—” Something startled her, and she blinked. When her eyes fluttered open again, Austra was standing in front of her, shaking her.

“—nne! What’s wrong?” Austra sounded hysterical.

“Stop that!” Anne demanded. “Where did she go? Where is she?”

“Anne! You were just standing there. Staring no matter how hard I’ve been shaking you!”

“Where did she go? The woman in the gold mask?”

But the masked woman was gone. Looking down, Anne saw that she had a shadow again.