The Briar King

1 The Halafolk

Lightning shattered a tree, so near that Aspar felt the tingle in the damp soil and smelled the metallic scent of scorched air. Ogre shivered and Angel shrieked, prancing madly. So did Pie Pony, Winna’s horse, so that she had to knot her free hand in her mane.

Wind rushed through the forest like an army of ghosts on the run, and the ancient trees rattled and groaned like doomed titans facing the Stormlord. Low thunder rumbled distant, bright coppery claps nearer. Chariot wheels and whip-cracks, his father had once called them, when Aspar was very young. He couldn’t remember his father’s face, his name, or almost anything else, except for that phrase and the smoky smell of tanned buckskin.

“Shouldn’t we get out from under this?” Winna asked, raising her voice above the approaching storm.

“Yah,” Aspar agreed. “The question is where? And the answer is, I don’t know. Unless there’s squatters hereabout I don’t know of, there’s no place to go.”

A chattering swarm of swallows blew overhead, almost indistinguishable from the leaves caught up in the furious air. A raindrop the size of a quail’s egg spattered against the ground.

Aspar searched the landscape. Two weeks on the greffyn’s trail had taken them deep into the low-lying fens surrounding the Slaghish River. The Slaghish had its headwaters to the south, in the Mountains of the Hare, which was where the storm was coming from. If they didn’t find high ground, they would soon have flood to add to the worry of lightning.

It had been a long time since he had been here, and even then he’d just been passing through. Which side of the valley rose most quickly? In his recollection, there was a ridge pretty near in one direction, but leagues away in the other. And he suddenly remembered something else, too. Something Jesp had told him, many, many years ago.

“Let’s try this way,” he shouted.

“The river?”

“It looks like we can ford it, here.”

“If you say so.”

The water was already muddy and rough. They dismounted and felt their way across, Aspar first. At midstream the water came to his chest and nearly to Winna’s neck. The current quickened noticeably in the crossing; they wouldn’t be going back over anytime soon.

Across the river they remounted and rode east across the low ground.

A short time later, the rain arrived in earnest. Dry ground became scarce as the streams feeding the Slaghish rose, and Aspar feared he had made a mistake. He worried that they would have to clamber up a tree and cut the horses loose to fend for themselves.

But then, at last, the land began to rise, and they started climbing out of the valley. The rain was pounding now, a relentless curtain of gray. Aspar was soaked to the bone, and Winna looked miserable. The storm grew more violent, and limbs and whole trees shattered by lightning or wind fell all around them.

If what Jesp told him was true—and if the years hadn’t dimmed his own memory too much—the ridge ought to be stony, full of caves and shelters. Even a small overhang would be welcome.

It was with some relief that he found the rocky back of the ridge. Jesp might have told him honest, then, which was always a pleasant surprise. He had loved the old witch, after all, and after her fashion she had loved him.

They followed along the ridge, as overhead the sky went one shade of storm gray to the next darker. Night was falling, and still the tempest gathered strength.

His reckoning was good, though. While there was still just enough light to see, he found a jutting ledge that overhung a shelter comfortably large for the two travelers and their mounts.

“Thank the saints,” Winna said. “I don’t think I could have taken another moment of that.”

She looked pale and chill. It wasn’t so cold outside, but it was cooler than a human body, and rain washed away all warmth. Aspar unwrapped a tarp proofed against water with resin, and drew out a dry blanket.

“Take off your wet things and wrap in this,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going?”

“For firewood.”

“You think you’ll find something in that that will burn?” Her teeth were chattering.

“Yah. Change.”

“Well, turn your back.”

“I’m going.”

It took a while to find what he was looking for—pine lighter knot, dry wood in the rainshadow of the rocks, other stuff that would fume but eventually light. When he had a good armload, and a haversack full of tinder, he returned to the cave.

By then it was near dark. The worst of the thunder had moved off, but the wind was still snapping trees. Winna watched him silently, tightly wrapped in her blanket, as he nursed flame from the damp wood. He noticed she had unsaddled the horses and brushed them down.

“Thanks for taking care of Ogre and Angel,” he said.

She nodded thoughtfully. “Will we lose the trail?” she asked.

He shook his head. “The thing about the greffyn’s trail is it gets easier to follow the farther we fall behind it. Gives things more time to die.”

“What about the men?”

He hesitated. “You noticed that, did you?”

“Asp, I’m no tracker, never even hunted, but I’m not a fool either. The horse tracks are plain enough, and I see there’s more than one. And boots, now and then.”

“Yah.”

“You think someone else is following the greffyn?”

“No. I think someone is traveling with it.” He reluctantly explained his theory about the bodies at the sedos, the ones clearly killed by men, adding Sir Symen’s stories of similar murders, as well.

“Fifteen days it takes you to tell me this?” she said.

“I wasn’t sure they were with it, at first. The paths cross, part, then come back together.”

“Anything else you aren’t telling me?”

“The Sefry think this is the work of the Briar King.”

She paled further. “Do you believe that?” she asked.

“I didn’t at first.”

“But now you do?”

He hesitated an instant too long. “No.”

“But that’s just you, isn’t it, Asp? That would make you gullible, wouldn’t it, to admit they might be right.”

“Maybe I should have told you this from the start,” he replied. “Maybe then I could have talked you out of coming.”

“No. There you’re wrong.” Her face was set bravely, but he noticed her chin was quivering. He suddenly had a nearly overpowering urge to go fold her into his arms, keep her warm, tell her he was sorry to be such a closemouthed bastard, tell her everything would be fine.

“How can you hate the Sefry so, Aspar? When they raised you? When you loved one.”

That broke something cold in him, spilled something harsh. “That’s none of your damned business, Winna,” he rasped out.

When he saw the hurt on her face, he couldn’t look at her anymore. He was almost relieved when she silently stood and moved to where the horses were. He thought at first she might be crying, but discounted that. She was tough, Winna, not weepy like some women. Nosy, yes, but not weepy.

He wished he hadn’t snapped, but it was too late now, and apologizing wouldn’t make it better, would it?

The sky was still leaden the next day, but the rain was gone, leaving only a fog in the valley below. As Aspar had expected, the lowlands were flooded and would take several days to drain. He decided to continue south along the ridge; the gref-fyn’s path had been going roughly in that direction anyway.

They came across the telltale trail of dead and dying vegetation before midday. Any trace of the monster’s human escorts was gone, but he had expected no less.

As usual, they followed alongside the poison trail, rather than on it.

“The Briar King,” Winna said, for the first time breaking the frosty silence. “When I lived in Glangaf, we used to have a Briar King every year—you know, for the spring festival. He broke open the beer casks and led the dance. He gave us kids sugar candy and presents. When Father moved us to Colbaely to take my uncle’s business, they didn’t do that. The old women build wickermen and burn chickens up inside of them. They make the sign of evil if anyone says his name.”

“Yah. Colbaely’s closer to the forest, and its folk are mostly from the old stock. Not Virgenyans from over the mountains or steaders from the west. For the old folk, the Briar King is no laughing matter.”

“What do the Sefry say about him?”

Aspar cleared his throat with some reluctance. “That he was once a prince among the old gods, the ones who made the world. That while they all died, he was cursed to live. That his only wish is to die, but the only way for him to die is to destroy the world itself. The Scaosen, who killed the old gods, managed to bind him to sleep, but every age or so he wakes …” He frowned. “There is a woman, I kann, and a thief who tried to steal from him who is now part of the curse. And a doomed knight of some sort. The usual silliness. I never paid much attention.”

“I remember hearing that he wakes only when the land is ill,” Winna said.

“In Dolham town they spell he wakes every year,” Aspar grunted. “That he begins to toss and turn in autumn, cracks his eye in the dead of winter, then rolls over and falls asleep again by spring. All of the stories tell a different tale. It’s why I don’t trust ’em. If they were true, they ought to say the same thing.”

“Not completely different,” Winna said. “They all seem to think it’s a very bad thing for him to be awake.”

“Except for your beer-pouring fellow in Glangaf.”

“Even he did some hard things. I remember one fellow who had been judged an adulterer by the town Comven. The Briar King dumped hog sceat on him, right in the middle of the town square, and then rooted up half his potato crop. Anything the Briar King did to you, you had to bear. After the spring festival, no one wanted to see him, because that usually meant he was coming to punish someone. And he had to do it, you see? It was part of the geas laid on him by being chosen.”

“Odd town, Glangaf. After his year was up, what happened to the fellow who was made king?”

“Everyone pretended to forgive him. Usually they didn’t.”

“How did they decide who the king was each year?”

“The men drew lots. The loser had to be king.”

“Where did the trail go?” Winna asked.

Aspar was asking himself the same question, and he didn’t like the answer that was suggesting itself. They stood facing a cliff of the same crumbling yellow rock that had sheltered them the night before. Behind it the foothills rose precipitously. A stream drizzled from the top of it, pattering into a pool some twenty paces in diameter. A stream from the pool continued downhill to the Slaghish lowlands. To the south, the vague blue outline of the Mountains of the Hare reared up into untroubled clouds.

The trail led into the water.

“Don’t touch it,” Aspar warned.

“I know better,” Winna replied, as Aspar dismounted and began an examination.

No tracks, no dead fish. Probably the storm had flushed the pool out pretty well. In fact, since by his calculations they were at least three days behind the beast, he doubted that any of this water had been here when the greffyn was; it was all down in the Slaghish now, on its way to the Warlock and eventually the Lier Sea.

Still, he wanted to be sure. He found a talus slope that let him ascend to the top of the cliff. There was no sign of the greffyn’s passage on top.

He went back down.

“It’s in the water?” Winna asked.

“It went into it. I don’t think it came out.” He started stringing his bow.

“You mean you think it drowned?”

“No.”

“Then—” She started backing up.

“Look,” he said, pointing.

On the surface of the pool, water-skaters wove ripple-webs, and small fish chased away from the edge.

“If it was still in there, these wouldn’t be alive, I don’t believe.”

“Unless it can choose when to kill and when not to. In that case it might be hiding, waiting for you.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think the pool is that deep.”

“What then?”

“Jesp—the Sefry woman who raised me. She used to talk about this place. She claimed there was a Halafolk rewn in these hills.”

“A what?”

“The Halafolk live in hidden caves. They call ’em rewns.”

“I thought that was just phay-story dust.”

Aspar shook his head. “If I remember right, this one is named Rewn Aluth. I’m guessing Jesp was telling the truth.”

“The Halafolk,” Winna repeated. “Down there.”

“Yah. I’ll bet there’s an entrance below the water, there. Typical.”

“You—you’ve been in one of these rewns before?”

He nodded. “Most people think the Sefry and the Halafolk are two different people. They aren’t. The caravaners are the wanderers, the restless ones. But they return home, now and then. When I was a boy, they took me with them.” He sat on a rock and started unlacing his cuirass.

“What are you doing?” Winna asked.

“Those tracks we’ve been following—the ones with the greffyn—they could just as easily be Sefry as human.”

“You mean you think the two are connected? That the Halafolk are responsible for the killings?”

“All of the dead I’ve seen have been human. We’ve been trying to clear the Sefry out of the royal forest for decades. Maybe they got tired of it.”

“If that’s so, you can’t just go in there yourself. Even if the greffyn doesn’t kill you, the Halafolk will. You need an army or something.”

“If the king is to send an army, he needs reason. I don’t have anything to give him but guesses, yet.” His shirt was off. “Wait here,” he said.

The pool was just deeper than he was tall, and clear enough that he had little problem finding what he was looking for—a rectangular opening in the rock face that led into the hill and slightly down.

He came back up.

“There’s a tunnel,” he said. “I’m going to see where it goes.”

“Be careful.”

“I will.”

He unstrung and recased his bow and placed it back on Ogre’s saddle along with his armor. He made sure he had his dirk and ax, took several deep, even breaths, then a deeper one, and dived.

The tunnel was roomy enough, and smoothed, but he had no trouble pushing himself along. What he did have trouble with was the darkness. Daylight faded quite quickly behind him, as his lungs started to ache. He remembered, too late, that the Halafolk were known for making false entrances into their havens. Traps designed to kill the unwary.

And it occurred to him that tunnel was too narrow to turn around in easily. Could he back out quickly enough to save

his life?

No, he couldn’t.

He swam harder. Colored spots danced before his eyes.

And then air. Damp and gritty-smelling, but air, and total darkness. He took a few moments to breathe before exploring further.

He was in another small pool, not much larger than the one he had entered. Aspar determined by feel that it was surrounded by a stone-walled chamber, rough and natural, which seemed to go on in one direction.

Good enough. He would return the way he had come, get all of his weapons and some torches, come back and find out where the passage went. And somehow convince Winna to stay behind. That was going to be the hard part.

He was just thinking that when he heard a splash and a gasp of breath behind him. He yanked out his dirk, holding it between himself and the unknown.

“Aspar? Aspar, are you there?”

“Winna—I told you not to follow me. And keep your voice down!”

“Aspar!” She did lower her voice, but he caught the frantic, panicky quality.

“Just after you went in—some men came up, on horses. Three, maybe four. They started shooting arrows at me. I didn’t know what to do, I—”

He had been feeling for her the whole time. Now he had her, and at his touch she stumbled through the water into his arms, gripping him with more strength than he knew she had. In the dark, it was easy to grip her back.

“Three or four, you say? Could it have been more?”

“Maybe. It happened fast, Aspar. Ogre and Angel are still loose—”

“That’s best. You did right, Winna. You think fast, girl!”

“What now, though? What if they follow me?”

“Were they human or Sefry?”

“I couldn’t see their faces very well. They wore cowls.”

“Probably Sefry, then.”

“Saints! That means they’ll come after us! We’re already in their haven!”

“Probably. Well. We’d better not be here when they come through. Take my hand. Feel with your other, and with your feet. Try to stay quiet. We’ll get through this, Winna. Trust me.”

“I trust you, Aspar.”

“Good.”

Now, he thought, if I only trusted myself. What a hell of a situation.

2 D’Ef

“Well, that’s it then,” Henne said, turning his sun-browned face toward Stephen and flashing him a chip-toothed grin.

“What is it?” Stephen asked. He didn’t see anything unusual—just the King’s Road, the straight, pale-barked columns of river birch all around, the green riot of cane that marked the edge of the river Ef, off to their right.

Henne pointed to a clump of ferns, and after a moment of incomprehension, Stephen realized they hid a stone boundary marker. From that point on the King’s Road, a track that might have been worn by deer wandered off through the forest.

“Past that is monastery grounds. The main road comes in from the south, but this’ll get you there quicker.”

“I don’t see the monastery.”

“Yah. It’s around the base of the hill, I reckon another league. I’ll ride on with you, if you wish.”

Stephen bit his lip. He had become more cautious about being alone in the forest, lately.

“They’ll probably feed you at the very least, for bringing me all this way,” he told the hunter.

“They would at that,” Henne said. “But then I’d have to stay and make pleasant with ’em for a while. Nothing wrong with that as it goes, but Whitraff village is three leagues downstream, and I fancy faren there in time for Evenbell. They have those pretty sort of people in Whitraff, the sort you won’t find in a monastery, no offense to you, lad.”

“Oh,” Stephen said. “Ah, none taken. And I’ll manage the last league by myself. Thank you much for your company on the journey.”

“Nothing to it,” Henne replied. “I’ll probably see you from time to time. Sir Symen sends someone down here every now and then to buy cheese and wine, and to make sure all is well. I may even stop on my way back. Maybe you can put in a word for a good price.”

“I’ll certainly tell the fratrex of the hospitality I received from the folk of Tor Scath,” Stephen promised.

“Good. Farst-thu goth, then,” Henne said, turning his mount back toward the King’s Road.

“Saints keep you,” Stephen replied.

A few moments later, for the first time since his kidnapping, Stephen found himself alone. To his surprise it felt good. He sat his horse for a moment, savoring the stillness of the forest. He wondered, suddenly, what it might be like to be As-par White, alone and at home in this great land. Free, not bound to anyone or anything, able to come and go like the wind.

Stephen had never known that. He likely never would. He’d never even thought about it, until this moment. His road was set; the youngest son, he had been his father’s tithe to the church since birth.

And Stephen wanted to serve, especially to study. He really did.

But sometimes …

Frowning at his foolishness, he kneed the horse into motion.

The forest began to open up. Stumps became as common as trees, and then even more so. The clearings were thick with blackberry and red-ticking, wild plum, horseteeth, and huckleberry. The drone of insects rose and fell around him, and for the first time in days the hot sun fell on him unhindered. It cheered him, and he began whistling a hornpipe.

A crash and a curse in the underbrush interrupted him and brought a rush of blood to his head. For a terrible moment, he was again being dragged from his mount, bound and gagged by men who might kill him at any moment. For a few drums of his heart the memory was more vivid than reality.

He calmed when he saw an old man in the habit of a fratir of the Decmanusian order.

“Can I help you, there?” Stephen called.

“Eh?” The old fellow’s bushy gray eyebrows rose skyward. “Who are you?”

“I’m Stephen Darige, of the Cape … Ah, Stephen Darige, at your service.”

“Well. Good, good. Going to buy cheese, then?”

“No, actually, I—”

“Yes, yes. Our cheese is noted far and wide. They come all the way from Fenburh for it. Well, since you’re going to d’Ef, the saints would smile kindly if you would help an old man.”

“As I said, I am in your service. What seems to be the trouble?”

“There is no trouble where saints prevail, young man, only challenge.” He grinned sheepishly. “But to be wise, it’s best to know when a challenge ought to be shared. I’ve a bundle of firewood here that I’ve, er … bundled a bit too large. I would be much grateful for some aid with it. It’s here, caught up in these blackberry vines.” To emphasize that, he kicked at something Stephen couldn’t quite see.

“No trouble,” Stephen replied, dismounting. “No trouble for a fratir. Are you a novice or a first initiate? I can’t tell the habits apart.”

“I am what you see,” the fellow said, looking a bit crestfallen. He brightened suddenly. “I am Brother Pell.”

“From Hornladh?”

“Yes, yes. Of course.” He suddenly looked suspicious. “How would you know?”

“You’re named for Saint Queislas,” Stephen said, a little smugly. “His name has many forms—Ceasel, here in Crotheny—but it’s only in the rural parts of Hornladh where they call him Saint Pell.”

“Not so. He is called the same in Tero Gallé.”

“With respect, good brother, there he is known as Pelle.”

“It’s nearly the same.”

“Quite so. But distinct, nonetheless.”

Brother Pell blinked at him a few times, then shrugged. “Here is the firewood, then.” He smiled vaguely.

Stephen looked down. The bundle was huge. It probably weighed more than the old man did.

“It’s a good thing I came along, then,” Stephen said. “How far is the monastery?”

“Half a league. The saints dispose. You’ll give me a hand?”

“Rest a moment, Brother. I’ll get this.”

“Many thanks, young sir, so knowledgeable about the names of saints.”

“It’s no trouble,” Stephen said, heaving at the heavy cords that bound the sticks. With a great deal of tugging, pulling, and lifting, he managed to get it onto his back. It was amazingly heavy and unwieldy. His knees were almost shaking. Half a league! He’d be lucky to make it as far as his horse. Let the beast drag it.

But when he started laying the bundle down behind the horse, the old man said, “What are you doing, young sir?”

“I’m going to harness my mount to your firewood.”

“No, no, Master Darige. That won’t do. Saint Decmanus, the patron of our sanctuary, is quite clear on that point. Limbs must be gathered with limbs and carried with limbs. We may not bring the wood back with the aid of your horse.”

“Oh.” Stephen shifted the weight on his back a bit. He had never heard that. “Well then, could you take her reins?”

“Assuredly, Master Darige.”

They continued on down the path, Stephen grunting beneath the load, Brother Pell whistling a slip-reel.

The forest ended soon after that, and from his hunched position, Stephen had a good view of green grass and cowcakes. When he troubled his head to lift itself, he saw pleasant pastures cropped by slow-moving rust-and-white cattle.

“The source of our vaunted cheese, yes,” Brother Pell said. “Good stock these, but the secret is the grass. Dew-drenched— you’ve never smelled anything sweeter. Almost you’d rather eat the grass, eh!” The brother waved at a pair of cowherds, and they waved back from their shaded resting spot near a willow-bordered creek.

“Nice bream in that brooh,” Brother Pell remarked. “A good place to meditate.” He chuckled. “Bream in the brooh. Almost a verse, that.”

“I think I need to meditate now,” Stephen said through gritted teeth. The shaded stream looked a paradise.

“Oh, it’s not so much further,” Brother Pell assured him. “Look, we’re coming up on the orchard.”

Stephen was beginning another treatise.

My Travels with the Damned, Part the Second: The odd affair of the monk with the brain of a cow.

If at first this human-seeming creature appears intelligent, the illusion quickly vanishes when it attempts conversation …

As Stephen composed, he staggered through long, beautiful rows of sweet spring apple blossoms, a kingdom of butterflies and bees. His legs begged him for rest, for just a moment leaned back against one of those perfumed trunks. He thought of apples, of crunching into one, and the juice flowing down his chin. Of cold cider wetting his parchment-dry throat.

The language of his treatise became harsher.

“See here, how much further is it, Brother?”

“No distance to speak of. Tell me, Master Stephen. How is it you know such lore about the names of saints?”

“I went to the college at Ralegh. I’ve come here to fill the novice position in the scriftorium.”

“Saint Lujé! You’re the lad who was coming from Virgenya! We had lost hope! Three searches went out and found no sign of you.”

“I was kidnapped,” Stephen said, between deep gasps. “Holter saved me. Took me … Tor Scath.”

“Your patron must have been watching you. But—why did you tell me you were come here to buy cheese?”

Stephen managed to lift his eye enough to stare at the monk.

… any thought that enters its head flits about within the hollow like an aimless insect, causing endless perplexion …

“I didn’t,” Stephen said, exasperated. “I—”

“There, there. I’m sure your adventures have made you cautious. But you’re safe now—you’re with us. And see, that’s where we live.”

He pointed, but all Stephen could see was the ground. Until he raised his head, further, further. The path wound up the steep flanks of a conical hill, and there, perched on the very top of it, stood the walls and towers of the monastery d’Ef.

“Come on!” Brother Pell said. “Step lively, and we may be in time for the praicersnu. I think it’s ham and cherries, today.”

Stephen had reached the end of his strength, however.

“I’ll rest before climbing that,” he said, perhaps a little sharply.

“Oh, lad—no! You can’t do that. You’ve set your foot on holy soil. Remember your Saint Decmanus! The burden is a blessing, on the road of the righteous. Do not set it aside until journey’s end, where it will be lifted from you.”

“I’m not certain he meant a literal burden,” Stephen protested.

“By the saints, you aren’t one of those, are you? Endlessly making excuses that the saints never really said what they said, or if they said it, did not mean it? That won’t go well, here. Besides, you’re in full sight of our reverend fratrex, and you should make a good impression on him.”

“You really think the fratrex is watching?”

“No doubt. I wouldn’t chance it if I were you.”

“I would think a fratrex would have better things to do than gaze out a window all day,” Stephen complained.

“Come on, boy-o.”

With yet another sigh of resignation, Stephen started up the path.

He folded at the very gates of d’Ef, to the grins and chuckles of several men in habit coming back from the fields.

“Brother Lewes,” Brother Pell said to a hulking sandy-haired fellow, “could you take our new brother’s burden?”

The monk nodded, came forward, and lifted the bundle as if it was a pile of twigs.

“Come around the side,” Brother Pell said. “I’ve a feeling you can use some water.”

“I’d be very thankful,” Stephen said.

Without the crushing weight of the firewood, Stephen had a better look at the monastery. It was built in the high style of the early de Loy period, when regents from Liery sat upon the throne in Eslen and brought architects from Safnia and Vitellio to marry their talents with the local craftsmen. Here the result was exuberant, strong, and practical, constructed of a pale rose granite. The chapel was marked by a double arched bell tower above a long, narrow, steepled nave. The doors were set in high arches. Two wings extended from the center of the chapel, traveled some thirty yards, then took rightangle turns back toward Stephen, terminating in smaller versions of the chapel doors. In the two three-sided yards thus enclosed were herb gardens, small vineyards, chickens, outdoor hearths, a few lazy dogs, and a number of monks working at various tasks.

Brother Pell led him into the yard on the right, through an open arch in that wing, and Stephen saw that the back of the structure mirrored the front. This yard, however, was more serene, planted with rose gardens and adorned by statues and shrines to various saints. Against the chapel wall was built an arbor, covered in grapevines, and beneath were wooden benches and boards for dining. Brother Pell motioned Stephen to a bench. The board was set with a pitcher, two mazers, and several plates of food.

“Sit, sit,” Brother Pell said. He took up the stoneware pitcher and poured them each a mazer of water. It was cold and clean-tasting, and it felt like the laugh of an angel going down his throat. Stephen finished it greedily, then poured himself another.

Brother Pell had turned his attention to the cloth-covered plates. “What have we?” he wondered, lifting the linen.

The answer set Stephen’s mouth watering. Crusty bread, a round of soft, pungent cheese, slices of brick-red ham so salty he could already taste it on his tongue, and yellow and red speckled cherries.

“May I?” Stephen asked.

“The bread only,” Brother Pell replied. “Novices are not allowed meat, cheese, or fruit their first month here.”

“Not—” He closed his mouth. He had heard about this sort of thing. He should have been prepared for it.

Brother Pell laughed gently and clapped his hands thrice. “My apologies, yes? That was me having fun with you. Please, eat of anything before you. There is no hardship concerning food here, save on fast days or when contemplation is assigned. Eat frugally, but well. That’s our motto, here.”

“Then—”

“Tuck in,” Pell said.

Stephen did. He forced himself to eat slowly, but it was difficult. His stomach wanted it all, immediately.

“What brought you here, Brother Darige?” Brother Pell asked.

“To the church or to d’Ef ?”

“D’Ef. I heard you requested this monastery, specifically.”

“I did indeed. For its scriftorium. There is only one more comprehensive—the one in the sacarasio of the Caillo Vallaimo in z’Irbina.”

“Oh, yes. Your interest in names and such. But why not there, then? Why d’Ef ?”

“The Caillo Vallaimo has more scrifti. D’Ef has better ones, at least by my interests.”

“How so?”

“D’Ef has the best collection of texts from the early days of the Hegemony in this region.”

“And why does that excite you?”

“It’s the chronicle of the spread of the faith, its battles with heresy and black warlockery. I am also much interested in the early languages of these regions, spoken before Vitellian was imposed.”

“I see. Then you are conversant with Allotersian dialects and script?”

Stephen nodded excitedly. “It was my major course of study.”

“And Vadhiian?”

“That’s more difficult. There are only three lines written in that tongue, though it’s much like Old Plath, from what I can see. I—”

“We have ten scrifti in Vadhiian here. None are completely deciphered.”

“What!” In his excitement, Stephen upset his mazer. It flew from the table and broke into pieces at the brother’s feet.

“Oh!” Stephen said, as Brother Pell bent to gather the shards. “Oh, I’m sorry, Brother Pell. I was just so—”

“It’s no matter, Brother Darige. You see?”

Stephen did see, and his mouth dropped wide. Brother Pell had gathered pieces, but what he set on the table was a whole mazer. A faint steam rose from it.

“You—” Stephen looked back and forth between the old man and the mended cup and felt his face pricked from within by a thousand needles.

“Y-you did a sacaum of mending. Only a—” The implications crystallized. “You must be the r-reverend fratrex,” he stammered.

“Indeed, yes. You see? I do have better things to do than to stare out of a window all day.” His thick brows lowered dangerously. “And now, we must consider what to do with such a prideful young man. Indeed, we must.”

3 Rumors of War

“We are not at war with you,” the archgreft Valamhar af Aradal explained to William II and his court, stroking his yellow mustache. “Indeed, Hansa is not at war with anyone.”

William counted slowly to seven, a trick his father had taught him.

A king should not answer too quickly. A king should appear calm.

The old man had been full of advice, most of which, William had discovered later, came from a book written centuries ago by the prime minister of Ter Eslief—a country that no longer even existed.

He shifted on the simple throne of white Hadam ash and gazed around the lesser throne chamber. It was “lesser” only in that it wasn’t as ornate as the room where coronations and high court were held. In size, it was just as grand, its ceiling rising high in a series of vaults, its ruddy marble floor expansive enough to make even a fat, haughty fool like Aradal look small. Which was quite the point.

Aradal’s guards stood well behind him, armored but un-weaponed, wearing garish black-and-sanguine surcoats. Ten Craftsmen more than doubled their four. On William’s right hand stood Praifec Marché Hespero, in somber black robes and square hat. On his left, where a prime minister ought to stand, stood Robert, clad in bright yellow and green velvets. The only other persons in the room were Baron Sir Fail de Liery, in his dun-colored surcoat, and his young charge Neil MeqVren.

Seven.

And now he could speak mildly, rather than in a burst of fury. “Those weren’t Hanzish troops on those Hanzish ships that sacked four towns in the Sorrow Isles? That seems dangerously close to war, so far as I am concerned.”

“The war,” Aradal said, “if you can call this sort of minor skirmishing that, is between the Sorrows and Saltmark. Salt-mark, I’m sure you know, is a longtime ally of Hansa. They asked for our help, and we gave them what we could spare; our ships and troops are under their command. The Sorrows, after all, were the aggressors. And may I further point out, Your Majesty, that the Sorrow Isles are not part of the Crothanic empire.”

William leaned his elbow on the armrest of his throne and propped his chin on his fist, regarding the Hanzish ambassador. Aradal had a fat, pink face above a corpulent body overdressed in a black sealskin doublet trimmed in martin and red kidskin buskins glittering with diamonds—hardly a sterling example of Hanzish manhood. Yet that was deceptive, as William knew from bitter experience. The man was as clever as a raven.

“The Sorrows are under our protection,” William said, “as Saltmark is under yours, as well you know. What evidence have you that King Donech was the aggressor in this matter?”

Aradal smiled. “It began as a conflict over fishing grounds, Majesty. The west shoals are rich and, by treaty, neutral territory. In the last year, ten defenseless fishing ships from Salt-mark have gone down to the draugs, sent there by Sorrovian privateers. Three more were sunk in Saltmark’s own waters. Who could tolerate such a breach of treaty? And what sort of protector would Hansa be, to rest and watch while our ally faced the Sorrovian navy? A navy, I might add, equipped and supplemented by both Liery and Crothany.”

“I asked for evidence, not sailor’s stories,” William exploded, forgetting to count this time. “What evidence have I that any of Saltmark’s ships were ever sunk? And if they were, that they were sunk by any ship from the Sorrows?”

Aradal fiddled with his mustache. Were his lips moving? Was he counting? Damned book.

“The evidence can be presented,” the ambassador finally said. “We have witnesses in plenty. But the real proof is that Your Majesty has doubled the number of his ships in the Sorrows.”

“As you’ve more than doubled your own in Saltmark.”

“Ah, yes, but it appears you sent your ships before we sent ours,” Aradal replied. “Doesn’t that suggest Your Majesty was well aware of a conflict developing between the Sorrows and our protectorate? And before you would take such action, would you not be aware of the cause of the conflict?”

William kept his face impassive. He’d moved the ships in secret, at night, to hidden harbors. How had Hansa learned of it?

“What are you saying?” he asked. “That we sank your fishing ships?”

“No, Sire. Only that you knew the Sorrows were due a just revenge. That the Sorrows are like your children, and even when they go astray you would protect them.” His eyes hardened. “That such would be a mistake, just as it would be a mistake to commit a single knight, soldier, or sea captain from the army of Crotheny to join in this conflict.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It is a simple statement. If you go to war with Saltmark, you must go to war with Hansa. And that, Majesty, would benefit no one.”

Sir Fail de Liery, up until now sitting quietly, suddenly pounced up from his bench.

“You fop! Do you think Liery will stand by while you conquer our cousins on this ridiculous pretext?”

“If Liery joins with the Sorrows, we will have no choice but to assume that we are at war with you,” the ambassador replied.

“And, no doubt,” William said softly, waving de Liery back to his seat, “you will counsel me to not join with Liery? And when both the Sorrows and Liery are in your hands, and some excuse allows you to turn your attention to Andemeur, you will still insist that it isn’t my affair? What, then, when you’ve camped on the Sleeve? Or in my own sitting room?”

“That is not the situation we are discussing, Majesty,” Aradal said smoothly. “When Saltmark has a new treaty with the Sorrows, this sad little affair will be at an end. We have had thirty years of peace, Majesty. Do not risk that, I beg you.”

“I’ll show you risk, you damned popinjay—” Fail began, but William cut him off.

“This is our court, Sir Fail. We will consider what Liery has to say, but later. Lord Aradal is here to treat with Crotheny.”

The old knight glared but took his seat. William sat back, then glanced to Marché Hespero.

“Praifec, do you have anything to add to this … discussion?”

Hespero pursed his lips, pausing a few breaths before speaking.

“I am grieved,” he said, “that the church was not entrusted with our traditional role as peacekeepers. I fail to understand why I’ve had no word from my counterpart in Hansa, though I’m certain any delay was unintentional. Nevertheless, it seems that the church is consulted on fewer decisions of note with each passing day, and that is, as I said, a grievous thing.”

His black-eyed gaze wandered over each man in the room. He clasped his hands behind his back.

“The church Senaz and His Holiness the Fratrex Prismo have been quite outspoken about their desire for peace, particularly between Hansa and Crotheny. War between them could lay waste the world. I urge both of you to set aside any further hostilities until I’ve had a chance to speak with Praifec Topan and to consult with the Senaz.”

Neil watched the Hanzish ambassador as he left the chamber. He didn’t like the man’s smile.

“You see what I mean?” Fail grunted. “We’ve been fighting a slow war with Hansa for years. Your father was a casualty of it. But when it comes here, it’s suddenly all talk of fishing rights and who should have been consulted.”

“You disapprove of our governance, Sir Fail?” William asked mildly.

“I disapprove of catfooting around what all of us know,” Sir Fail replied. “But I think Your Majesty was forceful, today. Still, what does it mean? That’s what I want to know. Will you help us drive them from the Sorrows?”

“I would rather they retired,” William replied. “And I will certainly wait until the praifec has made his inquiries.”

“You’d rather they retired? As well await a she-wolf to suckle a fawn!”

“Enough, Sir Fail. We will discuss this matter at length, I assure you. I did not send for you so that we might argue today.”

“Why then?”

“Two reasons. The one, so you would hear Ambassador Aradal and know, from his own lips, what he told me and what I said to him, so you can take it back to Liery when you go. The second—I wanted to see your young apprentice. It’s been ten days since he saved my queen’s life, and I have not properly thanked him.”

Neil dropped to his knee. “Your Majesty, I require no thanks.”

“I think you do, especially after the beating you took at the hands of my Craftsmen. You understand, of course, that they did not at first understand why you attacked Sir Argom.”

Neil glanced briefly at Vargus Farre, one of the knights who stood in the room. He owed Vargus a cracked rib.

“I understand, Your Majesty. Had I been in their place, and known only what they knew, I would have done the same.”

William leaned forward intently. “How did you know? That Argom was attacking the queen?”

“I didn’t, at first. I thought he had seen some danger to her and was rushing to intercept it. But there was no one threatening the queen, and Sir Argom was preparing the reaper— that’s what we call a low, flat stroke of the blade. It’s for dealing with unarmed rabble, and well-bred knights do not care for it. If the queen were threatened by someone nearby her, he wouldn’t have dared used that stroke. The chance of hurting her in the bargain would be too great. So I reckoned that he wasn’t truly a Craftsman, rather some pretender who had donned the livery.”

“All that, and in only a few heartbeats.”

“He’s very quick about such things,” Sir Fail put in.

William leaned back on his throne. “Here is my problem, Neil, son of Fren. There was a day when your reward for saving the queen of Crotheny might well have been a small barony. Unfortunately, with things as they are, I shall require the good will of all my nobles, and to be frank, I cannot afford to anger any of them by giving lands to a man of mean birth.”

“I understand, Majesty,” Neil said. He had been preparing for this, but it still hurt an amazing amount. Much more so than the beating.

“Understand? I don’t understand!” Fail bellowed.

“Come, Sir Fail,” Robert, the king’s brother, said. “I know you are fond of theatrics, but allow the king to finish, will you?”

William himself remained unperturbed. His lips seemed to be moving slightly. Was he praying?

“On the other hand, we were all greatly impressed by you. My wife in particular, as might be expected. You are from her homeland, you have Sir Fail’s trust and good word, which means oceans in itself, and you proved better at keeping her from harm than her own bodyguard. Indeed, since we do not yet know why such a seemingly loyal knight as the late Sir Argom would so violently go renegade, all of our Craftsmen are suspect.

“And so here is what we will do. We will give you the rose, and you will become the captain of the queen’s personal guard, which will henceforth be named the Lier Guard. Like the Craftsmen, you must renounce your lands and possessions. Since you have none to renounce, the matter is already settled. This will make the queen happy, it will make me happy, and will only slightly annoy my more extreme nobles.

“The question is, will it make you happy?”

“Your Majesty?” Neil’s head seemed full of a white-hot light.

“Come here, and kneel.”

Dumbly, Neil did so.

“Praifec, do you bless this young man to be a knight in my service?”

“I do,” the cleric said, “and bless him to the service of the saints. By Saint Michael, Saint Mamres, Saint Anne, and Saint Nod.”

“Very well.” William drew his broadsword, and two of the Craftsmen brought a large wooden block.

“Place your right hand on the block.”

Neil put his palm on the wood, noticing as he did so the deep cuts there.

William lowered his sword until the edge was resting on the bare flesh of Neil’s wrist.

“Do you swear yourself to the kingdom of Crotheny?”

“I do, Your Majesty.”

“And to the protection of its king and castle?”

“I do.”

“Most especially, and above all, to the protection of the queen, Muriele Dare née de Liery?”

“I do, Majesty.”

“Do you swear yourself to obedience and to poverty?”

“I do, Sire.”

“Saint Nod gave his hand in sacrifice, so his people might live. Will you do the same?”

“My hand, my head, my life,” Neil answered. “It is all the same to me.”

William nodded and pulled the sword quickly along Neil’s flesh. Blood started; Neil did not wince.

“Keep your hand for now, Sir Neil,” the king told him. “You will have need of it.”

A servant approached with a pillow. On it lay a red rose.

“You may add the rose to your standard, as ornament to your armor, sword, and shield. Rise up.”

Neil did so. His knees were trembling, but his heart was a war drum, loud, fierce, and proud.

He almost didn’t notice when Sir Fail came up and clapped him on the arm.

“That was well done, son. Shall we find a bandage for your wrist?”

“To keep the blood from the floor,” Neil murmured. “But I shall not wrap it. Let it bleed as it wants. Am I really a knight?”

Sir Fail laughed. “You are indeed,” he said, “and in deed.”

A cough from behind summoned their attention. Neil turned to see Vargus Farre towering over him.

“Sir Neil,” Vargus said, bending slightly at the waist. “Let me be the first of the Craftsmen to congratulate you. You are deserving. When we were asleep, you were awake.”

Neil returned the bow. “Thank you, Sir Vargus. I much appreciate it.” From the corner of his eye, Neil saw Sir James Cathmayl approaching.

“So it really is Sir Bumpkin now,” he said. His voice sounded a bit forced.

“By Lier, man!” Fail snapped. “What cause have you to insult my charge? I’ll have you on the field, for this.”

Sir James shrugged. “That’s fine, sir. But I’ve a date with your charge first. He swore that when he took the rose, he would put on spurs and kill me.”

“And I am your charge no longer, Sir Fail,” Neil reminded him. “I can fight my own battles.”

“James, stop this nonsense,” Vargus snapped. “The lad— er, Sir Neil doesn’t know you’re joking. He’s sworn now to protect the queen; would you put your pride against that? You’re a Craftsman! The household guards do not fight in their own ranks.”

“It was his challenge,” Sir James said. “If he wishes to withdraw it, I would not be opposed.”

“I do withdraw it, if you will withdraw your insults, sir,” Neil replied.

For a long, icy moment, Sir James regarded him. “Some insults come from haste and poor judgment,” he said at last. “Some come from knowledge and consideration. Mine were spurious, and I apologize. Still, let me state my position. I remain disapproving of your promotion. Knighthood should be reserved for the gentle of birth. But my king has spoken, and my queen has a protector, and I find that I am unable to lay the blame at your feet—Sir Neil.”

He made a face. “Sir Neil. It gripes my tongue to say that. But I shall.” He looked levelly at Neil. “Do we still have cause to fight, sir?”

“No, Sir James, we do not. And I’m glad. My duty is to the queen now, and it would be frivolous to engage in combat that would lessen the royal guard by one—however the contest went—especially when nothing more important than my own honor is at stake. You’ve been truthful in stating your objections, and I find no fault in you.”

Sir James gave a small, stiff bow. “Very well,” he said. “Another time, then.”

As he left, Vargus winked at Neil. “You’ll be fast friends in no time,” he said. “And now, if you would care, I’ll show you where our armory and provisions are. Whilst you’re a guard of one, you shall need to share ours, I think.”

“That is very kind of you, Sir Vargus. Very kind indeed.”

“Well, that was awfully touching, brother,” Robert said, once they had removed themselves to William’s outer chambers.

“I think it will work well.”

Robert shrugged. “Some will be incensed, I’m sure. But you keep Fail’s good will—the old fart—and anyway, the boy is very popular with the common folk. Never hurts to let ’em know one of their own can occasionally make good, does it? Any more than it hurts to remind the nobles who their king is.”

“Not at all,” William agreed. He waved the whole matter away with the back of his hand. “This situation with Hansa, though,” he said. “Do you think the praifec will take our side?”

“Why should he?” Robert said, holding his nails up for his own inspection. “You’ve spent the last five years making it infinitely clear that you want no interference by him and his church in domestic affairs. Now you want him to commit himself to your cause? No, he will wait, and make you sweat. Withhold his endorsement until you really need it. Then he’ll ask you for something. Perhaps he’ll ask you to name a male heir.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Because I would have to name you.”

“Nonsense. That would suit the praifec no better than having you remain on the throne. But your son could rule, with the proper guidance—if you know what I mean.”

“Ah. Holy guidance, you’re suggesting.”

“Indeed.”

“How do you know Hespero will ask for this?”

“I don’t. It’s just a guess. But I believe Hespero always imagined that one day he would rule this empire in all but name. You’ve spoiled his plans by naming your daughters as heirs. Fastia is too strong willed, and would besides have her husband to come between. Elseny, while a little less forceful, will soon be enspoused, as well. Anne—well, who can tell Anne what to do?”

William furrowed his brow. “Enough of Hespero and what he wants. Have you learned anything of the attempt on my wife? My spies tell me nothing.”

“There is talk of shinecraft and encrotacnia,” Robert replied. “Sir Argom served us loyally for ten years. I can trace no allegiance to our enemies, nor can I imagine anything for which he might have been blackmailed or bribed.” He shrugged. “Then again, blackmail works only because a certain thing is secret. No, I cannot tell you any more than you already know, brother.”

“Well.” William ticked his fingers against the wall. “It tasks me. Why Muriele? If a Craftsman can be turned, then he could as easily have killed me. Or you. Or one of the children.”

“A grieving king can be of more use than a dead one. Or perhaps it was Liery they were striking at, not you.”

“Who was striking at?”

Robert laughed. “Brother! We cannot be that different. We don’t know how Sir Argom was turned from protector to assassin, nor precisely why, but we assuredly know who accomplished it.”

“Hansa?”

“They mean to take your throne, that much must be clear, even to you. They’ll nibble at first, but soon their appetite will lead to larger bites. Small wars on our frontiers, assassinations and sabotage here in the capital. It’s the way Marcomir thinks.”

“How are you so certain?”

“Because I understand him. Marcomir is a practical man, undeterred by notions of honor or scruple. He is an able ruler, and a most dangerous enemy.”

“He is, in other words, like you.”

“Precisely, brother.”

“Then what would you have me do?”

“Have Marcomir killed,” Robert said promptly. “As soon as possible. His heir, Berimund, may not prove as able.”

“Have Marcomir killed,” William repeated incredulously.

Robert rolled his eyes. “For the teats of Saint Anne, brother! He tried to have your wife murdered. At your daughter’s birth day party.”

“I do not know that,” William said.

“Of course you do. And even if I’m wrong, how can a dead Marcomir be bad for Crotheny?”

“If an assassin should be traced to me, that will bring war for certain.”

“Yes. It will bring war with Berimund, a war we can win. Brother, in this room, let’s you and I be honest. Hansa is too strong. If they are willing to pay a high enough cost, they will take Tier Eslen, your crown, and our heads. Marcormir is willing to pay that cost, and has the strength of will to force it upon his nobles. Berimund does not have that potence.”

“If we have the support of the church—”

“If. Maybe. How long has it been since holy troops have been used in war between two kingdoms of the church? They are not heretics in Hansa, at least not to appearances. Brother, nip this candle at the quick. Have Marcomir killed.”

“No.”

“William—”

“No. That is an end of it. Not because I am prudish, as I’m sure you suspect, but because I am prudent. Marcomir is well protected, and not just by swords. Who could we send who would certainly succeed?”

“Lady Erren.”

“She serves my wife, and would never be parted from her.”

“Another coven-trained, then.”

“Again, the risk. The coven-trained report to the church.”

“I could find you one who would not.”

“Stop this, Robert. If you wish to help, think of ways to win Hespero, instead of ways to anger the church toward us.”

Robert sighed. “As you say. But at least do this—send Muriele and your children to Cal Azroth.”

“Cal Azroth? Why?”

“They’ll be easier to protect there. It’s our most perfect fastness, without a city full of murderers and witches on its doorstep. No one can come or go there without being seen. Our sister Elyoner controls the countryside, and of all of us she is the one who has no political aspirations whatsoever.

“There is much moving here, William, much that even I cannot discern. Someone has chosen to strike at you through your family. You will make better decisions if they are safe.”

William nodded reluctantly. “I will consider it.”

“Good.”

“Robert?”

“Yes, brother dear?”

“Don’t be upset with Lesbeth because she did not come to you first for permission.”

“She did not ask me at all,” Robert said, in a strange, small voice.

“She feared you would not approve it.”

“Of course. Why should I give my twin sister in marriage to that Safnian oaf ? After the slight he paid me?”

“You see?”

Robert exhaled. “No. If she had asked, I would have protested, cajoled, extorted, but had she held firm, I would have assented.” He looked up at William, and like his voice, his eyes had gone strange. “None of you think the least good resides in me,” he murmured. “None of you can think even one generous thought on my behalf. I thought she of all people—” He broke off, his face pale. “Are we done, brother?”

“Yes. Except to say that I am pleased with your performance as my sinescalh. Lord Hynde has gone too long without a successor. I should like to appoint you prime minister.”

“Do as you please,” Robert said. “But mark—I know the difference between words and thoughts.”

With that he left the room, glancing neither to the left nor to the right.

Anne looked up from where she knelt in the penitent box in time to see Praifec Hespero notice her and raise his eyebrows. Anne attempted a small smile.

“Who is this stranger?” the clergyman asked gently.

Anne dropped her head. “I suppose it’s been some time since I came here,” she murmured.

“Without an escort, yes. I can only assume something is troubling you deeply. Or did you merely come for lustration?”

Anne shook her head. “I didn’t know who else to talk to, who could tell me if I—if I’m losing my sanity or not.”

Hespero nodded. “I’m always here, child.” He settled onto a stool, dipped his fingers in the dish of fragrant oil and touched a bit to her forehead. “Piesum deicus, tacez,” he murmured. Then he leaned forward, hands on his knees. “Now, what is it that troubles you?”

“I’ve been having dreams. Very strange dreams.”

“Tell me.”

“I dreamed I stood outside of a dark forest, a forest of thorns. Around me were black roses, like those that grow in Liery. There was something terrible in the forest, watching me, and it started to come out, and then I woke.”

She felt suddenly foolish, so attentively was Hespero listening to her nightmare. She almost told him about her disappearing rose, but held back. There was no need for Hespero to know about Roderick.

The praifec rubbed his jaw. “I take it you’ve had more than one troubling dream.”

“The other wasn’t a dream exactly. It happened at Elseny’s party, at the same time as the attempt on my mother’s life.” She related the incident as best she could remember. Again, Hespero listened in silence. That silence stretched when she was done.

“You’re certain you had not fainted?” Hespero finally asked. “Your maid found you, did she not, in an oblivious state?”

“Yes, Praifec.”

“And when you thought you were lost in the maze, you were in a panic.”

“But it wasn’t the maze, Praifec. It was someplace else, and I had no shadow, and—”

“It may seem that way to you,” Hespero said, in a calming voice. “This is not uncommon for girls your age. There are diverse vapors in the world, and in these first years of womanhood, you will be particularly susceptible to them. That is most likely what you suffered.

“It is remotely possible that you were the victim of shine-craft, and that would be much more serious. If it was witching, the things you were told were lies. Prophecy flows only from the saints, and only through the true church. To believe anything else is heresy.”

“Then you don’t think Crotheny is really in danger? Or my mother?”

“They are both in danger, my dear. An attempt was made on your mother’s life. Rumors of war are on wing. But your father will deal with those dangers, with the help of the church. You aren’t to worry your pretty head about this, Princess. It would be a needless brutality to yourself, and exactly what the enemies of this country would want.” He held up a finger. “Wait a moment.”

He vanished into a room behind the altar and returned a few moments later, carrying something small in his hand.

“This is a token of your namesake, Saint Anne. If you suffer from shinecrafting, it should protect you.” He handed the object to her. It was a small wooden tablet, carved with the saint’s name.

“It was made from a tree that grows on the sedos of Saint Anne, in Andemeur,” he said. “You may wear it on a necklace, or keep it in a pocket in your dress.”

Anne bowed. “Thank you, Praifec. I—” She broke off, unsure. She wanted to tell him about the tomb of Genya Dare, of the curse she had made there. But if he knew about that, he might see things differently. As she struggled to find the words, she changed her mind. Virgenya was her secret, hers and Austra’s. She couldn’t betray it, even to the most holy man in the kingdom.

Besides, he was doubtless right. Her dreams were nothing more than vapor phantasms, or witchwork.

“There was something else?” he asked mildly.

“No, Praifec. I’m sure you’re right. About everything.”

“Trust me. But if you have more bouts like this, let me know. As I said, I’m always here. This kingdom and the family that rules it are my holy trust, even if your father doesn’t always see it that way.”

Anne smiled, thanked him again, and left with a lighter heart.

4 Rewn Aluth

The passageway became stairs, carved in the living rock. Aspar counted steps as they went.

After counting thirty, he heard voices rising from below. Winna heard them, too, and her grip tightened on his hand. He glanced at her, reflexively, and realized he could just make out her face.

Winna noticed the faint illumination, too. “It must be a way out!” she whispered hopefully as the silvery light grew brighter.

“Shh.” Aspar looked up and saw the source of the light, moving languidly down the stairs. His hand went to his dirk, but then stopped.

“Witchlight,” he said.

It was a pale sphere of luminescent vapor the size of a man’s fist moving toward them.

“Is it dangerous?”

“No.”

Winna reached to touch it, and her fingers passed into the glow.

“Saints!”

“Later,” Aspar said. “Come on.”

Thirty more steps brought them to the top of the curving stairs. For an instant the only sound was Winna’s breathless gasp of wonderment and the distant plinking of water.

A thousand witchlights drifted among spires and columns of glassy stone, touching flashes of color here and there but only hinting at the vastness of the cavern that stretched out before them. Just beyond their feet, the ledge on which they stood dropped down to a vast obsidian mirror.

“It’s beautiful,” Winna breathed. “Is that … water? An underground lake?”

“Yah.” Aspar had little time for wonder. He was peering into the gloom. If this ledge didn’t go anywhere, he would make a stand and try to kill their pursuers one at a time as they came up the stairs. He might be able to do it, even if they had swords.

Odds were he couldn’t.

But the ledge continued on and even widened to their left.

“This way,” he said, tugging her hand.

Several of the witchlights began following them. He remembered how that had delighted him as a child, how he had named them as if they were pets. Now, however, he wished they would go away; clustered around, they would reveal Winna and him to their enemies.

Of course, that worked both ways. Their pursuers would soon acquire an entourage of helpful lights, too.

The path took them down, switchbacking along the cliffside. Aspar reckoned they descended ten yards before they came to a quay a few feet above the dark waters. There they had some good fortune, for two narrow boats were tied there. They got into one, and Aspar hulled the other with his ax.

As they rowed across the still water, Aspar noticed a clump of witchlights above, where the stairs debauched into the cavern. But the fickle illumination offered him only the occasional flitting silhouette. He couldn’t tell how many they were.

Soon they were lost to sight, and there was only the water and a clean, wet, mineral smell.

“I never even dreamed of a place like this,” Winna whispered. “How wonderful it is.”

“I thought so, too, when I was little. But it closes in on you, after a while. The dark. Even among the Sefry not all can live with it. It’s why they go out and brave the sun.”

“Where are they? The Halafolk?”

“I don’t know. I thought to see them by now.”

Winna smiled. “You look funny, with those little lights following you around. Younger, like a boy.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that, so he just grunted. Then her face changed. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing behind him.

He turned to see what she meant. A large, shadowy something loomed up out of the lake. An island, he figured, for the lake had seemed much larger from above.

“I’m guessing this is where we’ll find the Halafolk,” he murmured.

What they found was a city of the dead.

The houses were narrow and tall, almost whimsically so, making tight corridors of the streets that were beveled into the floor of the cave. The buildings themselves were built of carefully fitted stone, with high-pitched slate roofs designed to shed the constant dripping from above. On some, little fingers of stone had sprouted, growing toward the unseen ceiling of the cavern. Aspar had been told once that it was by this that the oldest dwellings could be known; stone did not grow quickly.

The houses were all quite empty. Aspar’s and Winna’s footsteps clattered like the echoes of a small army.

“Sir Symen said that all of the Sefry were leaving the forest, even the Halafolk,” Aspar mused. “I didn’t believe him. Why should they?”

“To leave all of this, they must have good reason.”

“It’s unimaginable,” he murmured. He pointed to a shingle that hung above the door of one house. Silver inlaid in slate depicted a six-fingered hand, three of the fingers with little candle flames. “That’s the standard of the house Sern. No one from that clan has gone aboveground for five generations, or so they say. Some of these houses I don’t even know.”

“Should we search the buildings?”

“Why? What we need is to find a way out.”

“Do you think the greffyn is still here?”

“I don’t know what to think. Let’s keep going this way; I want to find the town center.”

The island wasn’t wide, but it was long. They crossed parks planted with pale fernlike trees and black rushes. Spidery bridges took them over canals where slender black gondolas still were moored, waiting for passengers that would never come.

In time they reached a broad plaza, and the largest building they had yet seen. It resembled a castle—or a parody of a castle, built for elegance rather than utility, with its spires of glassy stone and translucent domes glowing with natural luminescence.

“The palace?”

“It’s where their prince would live and where their councils meet. If anyone is still here, that’s where they’ll be.”

“If anyone is still here, do we really want to find them?”

Aspar nodded grimly. “Yah. We have to find out what has happened here.”

“What about the men following us? Won’t they come here, just as we did?”

“Yah.” He considered for a moment. “Werlic, that’s a good point. We’ll stay in one of these other buildings by the square, and watch. With luck, there will be too few of them to search every building in town.”

“Good. I’m tired. I’d like to rest.”

Aspar chose an unremarkable four-story house with a good view of the plaza. The door was unlocked. Nine witch-lights followed them in and up the spiral stair. They didn’t stop until they reached the top floor.

It was a narrow bedroom the width of the house faced in moon-colored chalcedony, with a low sleeping couch and a larger, canopied bed. Crystal knobs on the bedposts glowed a faint white, so that even without the witchlights, there would be some illumination. Besides the staircase, a single arched doorway led to a small balcony facing away from the plaza. The view there was mostly darkness, of course, but in witch-light Aspar could just make out another four-story structure just across the way, and another balcony, a bit lower than the one on which he stood.

Back in the room, he dragged the couch over to a broad window that overlooked the plaza. He drew the heavy shades until only a crack remained to peer through. It wouldn’t do for someone to notice that this upper story was illuminated.

“Keep watch here,” he said. “I’ll see if I can find something to eat.”

“Don’t be gone long.”

“I won’t.”

The pantry was below street level, carved into the stone foundation of the island.

Most of the bread had gone to mold, which was just as well, but he found some salted fish, venison, wild boar, a wheel of yellow cheese, and several racks of wine.

He cut a hunk of cheese and a slab of the ham and tucked two bottles of wine under his arm. Then he returned to the top floor.

“Is it safe to eat?” Winna asked. “They warn against breaking bread with the Halafolk.”

Aspar chuckled. “The cheese is from someplace in Holtmarh. The wine is from the Midenlands, and the meat was poached from the King’s Forest. The only food they actually grow down here is hrew, a sort of nut that lives in the water. They make bread out of it. It tastes bad, but it’s safe enough. If the lake has fish, they eat that, too.” He nodded at the window. “Anything?”

“No. But I may have missed them.” She looked up at As-par, a very young expression on her face. “I’m not afraid,” she said.

“You’re a brave girl.”

“No, I mean it. I ought to be afraid. I was, earlier, at the pool. I was even when I told you I was coming with you. Now—it’s all gone out of me.”

“It’ll come back,” Aspar said. “Take my word for it.”

“I never thought of you as someone who could be afraid. As long as I can remember, you’ve always been there, As-par. When I was a little girl, you would just appear, from out of the forest, like some ancient hero from the legends.” She looked away.

“What you must think of me,” she said.

Aspar poured her a mazer of wine, then one for himself. It was thick, a little bitter. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was.

“I’ve been afraid,” he said.

“I know that, now,” she replied.

He moved to the window, so he could see out. The square below was still and quiet. Winna stayed where she was, almost within touching distance.

“Where do you think they went? The Halafolk?”

Aspar shrugged. “The mountains, maybe. Across the eastern sea, for all I know.” He took another drink. The wine was starting a small fire in his belly. “I was too rough last night,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to grumble.”

Her gaze fastened on his. “Well. You do know how to apologize,” she said. “I would never have guessed that either, and no one will believe me if I speak of it.”

“I’m not good at this,” Aspar grunted.

“No, you’re not. But I forgive you.”

He took another drink of wine, and was searching for something to say, when Winna suddenly gasped.

“What’s that?” Suddenly she was against him, gripping him, eyes wide.

“What? Do you hear something?”

Her face was inches from his, and smiling. “You really aren’t good at this.”

“That’s not what I meant, Winna, I—” She felt good, in his arms, and he suddenly realized how long it had been since he touched anyone. Except for the kiss from a few weeks ago. The kiss.

He never decided to do it. He knew he didn’t. But suddenly his face was against hers, his lips greedy on hers, and he felt stupid and awkward, like a boy with his first woman.

Their clothes came off, piece by piece, and fingers and lips traced the freshly exposed skin. Part of him sounded a little alarm; they had enemies outside.

Too much of him didn’t care.

When they came together, and her ankles locked behind his knees, for a long, unblinking moment he looked into her eyes. What he saw there amazed him. She looked back, and laid her hand on his cheek.

Much later, as they lay tangled and sated, he stroked the skin over her ribs and wondered if he could believe what he was feeling.

He sat up to look out the window.

“Is the Sefry army out there yet?” Winna asked languidly.

“They might have marched around the square ten times, and I wouldn’t know,” he replied.

“I suppose that wasn’t so smart just now.”

He lifted his shoulders helplessly. “May have been the smartest thing I’ve done in years.”

She chuckled and kissed him. “That was good. Now, don’t say another word about it. You’re sure to find some way to spoil it if you keep talking, and I want to be happy for a while.”

“Very well.” He looked back out the window.

“But talk about something, or I’ll fall asleep.”

“That’s not a bad idea. I can keep watch.”

“No, not yet. Who do you think they are? The men following us.”

“From what you said, they were dressed like Sefry.”

“Yah. I remembered something else. One of them had an eye patch.”

“What?” He took her by the shoulders.

“Aspar! That hurts!”

“An eye patch! Which eye?”

“I don’t know. Aspar, what’s wrong with you? You know him?”

He dropped his hands away. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Saints! Aspar, your face—” She stopped. “This has to do with her, doesn’t it?”

“Winna, I need to think.”

“Think, then.” He could hear the hurt in her voice, even through his anger.

“See?” he told her. “No matter what, I’ll find a way to spoil it.”

She got up and went over to the bed, wrapped herself in one of the sheets.

“I understand if you don’t want to talk about her,” she said. “But this man. He tried to kill me, Aspar.”

“Come here,” he said.

She hesitated a moment, then came into his arms.

“Her name was Qerla, my wife,” he said softly. “She was of the Nere clan. We met—well, never mind. We were young, and we thought it didn’t matter.”

“What didn’t matter?”

“That Human and Sefry can’t make children together. That her clan would disown her, withdraw their protection. That we would be alone, just the two of us.”

“It sounds romantic.”

“It was, for a while. After that it was just hard. Harder on her than on me. I never really had a clan, just old mother Jesp. Qerla was the first person I ever really—who was ever mine, in any sense.”

“You loved her.”

“I loved her.”

“And the man with the eye patch. He’s the one who—” She stopped.

“He killed her,” Aspar confirmed. “If it’s the same man. He was an outlaw Sefry, a man named Fend. He was setting a trap for me, but he caught them instead.”

“Them? I thought—”

“An old Sefry lover of hers, a Jasper clan man. A poet. Fend found them in bed and killed them there. And then I found him.” He pursed his lips. “He put a sword through my belly, and I put a dirk in his eye. We both fell, and when I came around he was gone.”

“She betrayed you.”

“I think I must have betrayed her first, somehow,” Aspar said.

“I doubt that,” she whispered. “I doubt it much. Everyone gets weak. She got weak. It doesn’t mean she didn’t love you.” When he didn’t say anything, she took his hand. “You really think the man I saw was Fend?”

“I thought he was dead. But who knows? Maybe.”

In his heart, there was no doubt. If his father’s gods existed, this was just the sort of thing that would amuse them.

They didn’t talk, for a while, and Winna drowsed against him. Looking at her face, he felt briefly guilty. She was so young! When Qerla had been alive, Winna hadn’t even been born.

The guilt passed. In all of the important ways, Winna was older than he was.

One day she might realize that she had no interest in a scarred old holter. Until then he would just count himself lucky, and let it go at that.

And get her through this alive.

And kill Fend, if it was Fend. He couldn’t imagine what the outlaw might have to do with Briar Kings and greffyns. But he would find out, and he would kill him, this time.

He was near drowsing himself when he heard the clatter of hooves on stone. He peered out the window and saw clumps of witchlights moving across the square. He jerked his head back in—for he had witchlights around his own head, of course. He thought he’d done it in time.

“Horses,” he whispered. “They’ve found another way in.”

“Maybe it’s not the same bunch that tried to kill me.”

“Maybe,” he said dubiously.

From below he heard the high, shrill call of a horn, and the witchlights suddenly drifted out of the window, as if answering the call.

“Get dressed,” he told Winna. “Fast.”

5 Brotherhood

The fratrex marched Stephen across the yard and through a small arched doorway. Stephen held his tongue, afraid that anything he might say at this point would simply dig a deeper grave for his self-respect. Instead, he tried to remember what he had heard about Decmanusian penance. What did it involve? Whippings? Confinement?

“Come, come, hurry up!” Fratrex Pell said. “Through here.” He pointed to a very low doorway; the lintel was only as high as Stephen’s waist. “Yes, yes—on your knees.”

Stephen sank down contritely, crawling through the opening, steeling himself for whatever was to come. He said a small prayer and raised his head.

Then he uttered a loud gasp.

“We come to the saints on our knees,” Fratrex Pell said, behind him. “And so we come to knowledge—humbly.”

“It’s wonderful,” Stephen said. Tears stung his eyes. “It’s like a hundred thousand presents, all waiting to be opened.”

“Move through, son, that I may follow.”

Stephen did so, mute with awe.

The scriftorium rose around him, a tower with walls of tomes, scrolls, tablets, parchment cases, maps. Nowhere could he see bare stone; the whole structure might have been held together by the insectile scaffolding of ladders that spindled up from the floor to the next level. There he saw no more than a narrow walkspace that ran around the base of yet another level of shelves and provided a footing for the ladders that climbed up to the third level. Four levels in all, then a dome set with crystal panes, so the sun’s light fell in to illuminate it all.

Tables at ground level overflowed with scrifti, and studious monks remained absorbed in their studies and copywork as Stephen and the fratrex entered. Others worked at tables set precariously on balconies jutting at strange intervals up and down the wall. Ropes and pulleys were working everywhere, as monks lowered and raised baskets of manuscrifts from level to level or sent them hurtling horizontally across the room.

And the smell! Ink and vellum, paper and chalk and melted wax. Stephen realized he was beaming like a fool.

“Here is your punishment,” Fratrex Pell said quietly.

“How do you mean?” Stephen asked. “The sight of this room brings me nothing but joy.”

“Your sin was pride; you think you are knowledgeable, and indeed you are. But when you stand here, you must be reminded of how very much you do not know. Can never know. Be humble, Stephen. You will be a better man, and a better member of this order.”

“Thank you, Reverend Fratrex. I’m so …” He shook his head. “So grateful. And eager! When may I begin? What should I do?”

“Today? Anything you want. Familiarize yourself with the scriftorium. Browse. Tomorrow we’ll see how you are with Vadhiian. We have a pressing obligation to translate those texts; it’s one of the reasons I pushed to have you appointed here.”

“You mean you—”

“Go to it, son. I’ll see you at vespers.”

“Well. You must be the new fellow.”

Stephen glanced up from the text he was hunched over and found a pleasant-faced man with cropped brown hair regarding him.

“Ah—yes, Brother.” He carefully put the scrift aside and stood, finding himself a head shorter than the stranger. “My name is Stephen Darige.”

“Desmond Spendlove.”

“You’re a Virgenyan!”

“Indeed I am,” Spendlove replied.

“What part?”

“Just south of Quick, on the Nerih River.”

“I know the place!” Stephen said. “We used to take the boat down to Cheter-by-Sea. We’d stop there in the little town—the one with the statue of the pig—”

“Wildeaston. Yes, that’s just a furlong from where I grew up.”

“Well. I’m pleased to meet you,” Stephen told him.

“Finding your way around the scriftorium, are you?”

Stephen chuckled. “I haven’t got very far. I ran across this right away. It’s an original text of the Amena Tirson, a sort of geography of this region from—”

“—pre-Hegemonic times,” Spendlove finished. “Yes, I’m quite familiar with the Amena Tirson. It was my project in the college at Pennwys.”

“Really? Sorry, I’ve just got a lesson in humility, and here I am condescending to you.”

“It’s no matter. The old man got you with the wood-carrying trick, yes?”

“Trick?”

“No one can approach d’Ef without his knowledge. He greets most of the novices, in some similar fashion.”

“Oh.”

Spendlove gestured at the scrift. “But you were going to say something about the Amena Tirson,” he reminded.

“Yes. This version is different from the ones I’ve seen.”

“It’s a little different. The chapter on trees goes on longer.”

“That’s not what I meant. There’s a list of fane names and other locations I’ve never heard of, and talk of walking them.”

“Well, there is the faneway here, the way of Saint Decmanus.”

“Yes, of course. But these others—”

Desmond shrugged. “Are surely dead now, or so faint with the sainted presence as to be unwalkable.”

“I know,” Stephen replied. “It’s just odd. There were murders—” He broke off. “Saints! How could I have forgotten that? I was just so overwhelmed, I mean, first carrying the wood, and then discovering he was the fratrex, and then all of this!”

“What are you going on about?” Desmond inquired mildly.

“There have been murders in the King’s Forest.”

“That’s hardly new. The place is swarming with bandits.”

“Yes, I know. But this is different, I think. Blood rituals on the old sedoi, and some sort of monster involved.”

“Monster? Does this have to do with old Symen up at Tor Scath?”

“Yes, yes. That’s where I heard about it.”

“Then I have to warn you, the old knight is well known for his exaggerations. He sent a man down here a fortnight ago, to warn us of some evil in the forest. We set extra watches, just in case, and the fratrex made a report to the praifec in Eslen. Yet the search parties we sent out for you didn’t find anything strange.”

“Oh, I’d had my doubts about his story, too, but—” But Sir Symen had seen something. Of that Stephen was certain.

But the holter had gone to find the truth, and he hadn’t wanted Stephen along. Whatever it was, Aspar White would surely kill it. Stephen would write a report for the fratrex, but there his obligations ceased. Then he could throw himself head-to-toe into his studies.

“Come on,” Desmond said, clapping him on the shoulder. “It’s just a bit before vespers and evening meal. Let’s go for a walk. There are things about life at d’Ef that the fratrex wouldn’t have told you.”

Stephen glanced reluctantly at the Amena Tirson, then nodded. He recased the thin sheets of vellum in their cedar box and replaced it on the shelf.

“Ready!” he said.

Evening calm had settled outside. In the distance, cows lowed, the crickets had begun their nightly stridulations, and the frogs in the Ef lowlands warbled throaty tunes. The evening star was a jewel on velvet in the eastern sky, while the west was still a bed of fading embers. The forest was distant and green across acres of rolling pasture and vineyard. Stephen and Desmond stood upslope of the monastery, where soft candlelight was beginning to glow in windows.

“The faneway starts in the chapel,” Desmond said, “and finishes out there. It takes about two days to walk.”

“You’ve walked it, then?”

“Yes. You will, too, soon enough. You aren’t a normal novice, from what I hear. The mysteries will be unfolded to you more quickly, I think.”

“I hardly deserve it.”

“No. You don’t.”

Something in Desmond’s voice didn’t sound right. Stephen looked at his companion and saw a hardness set on his face.

“There is an order to things,” Desmond explained. “Or ought to be. I’m here to see that order is kept, do you understand?”

Stephen took a few steps back from the monk. “What do you mean?”

Desmond smiled. It wasn’t a very comforting smile. Stephen backed up further, wondering if he should run. He backed right into another monk. It was Brother Lewes, the giant who had lifted the firewood like a willow wand. Stephen tried to jump away from him, but the monk grabbed him by the arm.

Stephen started to shout, but a meaty hand clamped over his mouth. It smelled like hay and cow manure.

“You’re new,” Desmond explained. “As I said, there are some things you ought to know. It starts with this: I don’t care who you are, or who your family was. Here, you start over. Here, your life begins again. And here, I am your father, your brother, your best friend. I will help you through everything, but you have to trust me. You have to believe me.

“The fratrex thinks you’re special. That means nothing to the rest of us. To us, you have to prove yourself. It won’t matter what the fratrex thinks of you if you slip and hit your head on a rock, or fall on a pitchfork, or eat the wrong mushroom. It’s only the rest of us that can keep you safe from things like that. Do you see what I’m saying?”

There were other monks gathered around now, at least ten of them. They had their cowls up, and Stephen couldn’t see their faces. He was beyond panic; he knew he shouldn’t struggle, but he couldn’t stop. Since being kidnapped, the very thought of being restrained was intolerable. Now, caught in this steel grip, it was reality, and still intolerable. He could barely think, he was so frightened and angry. Tears started in his eyes.

“Brother, release Brother Stephen’s tongue, so he can tell me he understands.”

The hand came away.

“I understand! Of course I understand! Whatever you say.”

Desmond nodded approvingly. “That sounded sincere. But I don’t know you, Brother Stephen. I can’t be sure. And you can’t be sure of me. So let’s have a lesson, shall we?” He jerked his head, and the other monks converged. Stephen tried to scream, but a cloth was forced into his mouth. His arms were pulled up straight and then his shift was yanked off. He was shoved to earth, facedown, and held spread-eagle.

“Here is your lesson,” Desmond’s voice said, from somewhere far away and much too close. “The seven virtues. The first is solidarity.”

A streak of the most intense pain Stephen had ever felt cut his back in two. He screamed into his gag, a shrill hysterical shriek of pure animal terror.

“The second virtue is chastity.”

Another stroke of fire fell, and droplets spattered across Stephen’s cheek.

He lost track of the virtues after number three. He might have fainted. The next thing he was aware of was Desmond’s voice very near his ear.

“I’m leaving you new robes and a rag. There’s a well just down the hill. Clean yourself up and come to dinner. Sit at my table. Speak to no one of this—no one. There are, as you know, more than seven virtues. There are seven times seven.”

The gag came out, and he was released. He lay there, unable to move, to even think of moving, as full night fell.

6 Mother Gastya

“They’ve seen us?” Winna whispered.

“I think so,” Aspar said, pulling on his breeks. “You saw what the witchlights did? Someone called them. They’ll know where we are, since witchlights gather around people.”

“Maybe the lights just flew down because there are more people there.”

“Maybe. I doubt it, the way they went of a sudden. And then that burst on the horn. If the man with one eye was Fend—he has some shinecrafting. I don’t doubt that he could call witchlights. So hurry, dress. We might not have long.”

He cursed silently as he finished yanking on his breeches. Moments ago, their dalliance had seemed worth the risk. Now—how old did he think he was, anyway? He knew better. If he’d known one of their pursuers was Fend …

“Ready,” Winna breathed. She didn’t sound frightened.

“Here,” Aspar said. He wrenched two of the glowing crystal globes from the bedposts and handed one to Winna. “It’s not much,” he said, “but with the witchlights gone, it’s the best we have. Now, this way.”

He went through the arched door onto the balcony. Without the witchlights, there was only a void, and the pale light of the crystals wasn’t enough to fill it. Aspar weighed the crystal in his hand, trying to remember where the other balcony was. Then he tossed the sphere.

It struck with a silvery tinkling, and a sudden vague light bloomed, a glowing cloud. The balcony appeared, a low construct railed in iron wrought to resemble snakes with crowns and feathered tails.

“Can you jump to that?” Aspar asked Winna.

She cut her eyes. “Yes.”

“Do it, then. Hurry, for in a few moments the light will dissipate. When you get there, go in, hunt up all of the ways off of that floor—up, down, out windows. I’ll be right there.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Wedge the door to the stairwells. Maybe they’ll think we’re trying to barricade ourselves in.”

She nodded, braced herself, and jumped. The instant she did, Aspar knew he’d made a mistake. Winna didn’t have any idea whether she could jump that far; she’d just said she could do it to sound confident for him. She almost made it clear anyway, but clipped the low railing going in, lost her balance, her arms windmilling, her back to a long drop and stone streets, and the balcony only to the back of her knees. Aspar held his breath, trying not to call out, all his blood racing into his head, his fingers itching to grab her. He bent to jump, in the dim hope he might somehow reach her before she fell, but by then she had recovered—by sitting down, hard.

Winna turned, flashed him an uncertain grin, then tried the casement. It swung open. She turned again, mouthed hurry, then slipped through.

Aspar let out the breath he had been holding, drew his ax and his dirk, and slipped back into the room. He crept down the stairwell they had ascended, hours earlier, willing his muscles to relax and his breath to stay even.

Without witchlights or globes it was pitch dark. He smelled dead leaves.

He came to the first landing and listened. Hearing nothing, he wondered if he had been wrong. Maybe no one knew they were here. He kept moving down, silent as a fog in the night.

He stopped on the next landing and crouched to listen.

He heard his own breathing—and something else.

Aspar closed his eyes—unnecessary, since he couldn’t see anything, anyway, but it helped him concentrate. He drew a long, slow breath, tasting the air, smelling nothing but dust. He held the air in his lungs.

There was no sound at all, then, but still he didn’t move. He kept crouched, waiting.

And then there was a breath, not his own. He didn’t hear it; he felt it on his face.

Aspar struck upward with his dirk, hard, and felt it catch against chain mail. That brought a grunt and a rush of something going by Aspar’s face. Aspar reached around, grappling for upper arms; something smacked against his back. His invisible foe shouted then, which helped Aspar find his oppo-nent’s face. A helmet belled under the edge of his ax, and he slipped his dirk into something soft where the throat ought to be. He’d guessed right; the scream gurgled off.

Then something kicked him in the chest with the force of a mule, a finger or two to the right of his sternum. Flashes of gold exploded inside of his eyes as he chopped down, found a solid wooden shaft there, and realized a spear was standing out of him, and someone was still pushing on it. He couldn’t tell how deep it had gone.

He turned away from the force of the push and lashed out with his ax. It hit something meaty, and someone howled. The spear in Aspar’s chest hung free, and then its own weight wrenched it out. That hurt, too, so much that Aspar’s knees buckled. That may have saved him from whatever hissed over his head and struck yellow sparks from the wall.

In the brief light a shadow congealed, and Aspar uncoiled from his involuntary crouch, driving his dirk through a bottom jaw and up into brain. He pushed the jerking body back, roughly, and heard someone below grunt as if struck.

“Fools!” another voice shouted, from further down the stairwell. “I told you to wait until—there!” Suddenly the staircase was alive with color, as a swarm of witchlights flew around the curve of the next landing to surround Aspar like hungry blood flies. In the light, he saw three Sefry in a pile, two probably dead, a third farther down, trying to put his half-severed hand back on.

Turning the corner behind the lights were at least four more. One had an eye patch, but Aspar already knew it was Fend; he’d recognized the voice.

Aspar almost leapt down the shaft at them anyway. He might be able to kill Fend before he died.

But if he didn’t, Fend would catch Winna. If Aspar did manage to kill the Sefry bastard, Fend’s men would probably kill him anyway, and then they would catch Winna.

So Aspar grabbed the spear up from the floor and ran back up the stairs, cloaked in witchlights. At the top, he slammed the door, dropped the bar on it, and wedged the blade of the polearm beneath it.

He touched his chest, and his fingers came away sticky. There wasn’t enough light to see how far the blade had gone in. He could stick a finger in, to see how deep it was, but he was already queasy, and that might make him sick. Right now, he couldn’t afford it.

So he ignored the wound and followed after Winna, dropping to the balcony and into the next building where Winna stood waiting.

“Where were you?” she asked.

“I killed a few. They’ll be coming. We have to hurry. You found our next path?”

“Wait,” Winna said. She lifted and upended a large basket onto the balcony. Broken glass poured out with a musical tinkling.

“I found some vases and broke them. Let them land on that, when they jump after us.”

“Good thinking,” Aspar said, feeling a burst of pride. “Now let’s go.”

“Out here, then,” she said. “We don’t want to go down yet. I think I found a better way. I couldn’t see far, but now that we have the witchlights back, we can be sure.”

He followed her to the next window, one at right angles to the one they had just come through. Beyond were roofs, peaked and scaled and close.

They jumped out, Winna leading, and scrambled on polished slate, around the bottom of a steep-pitched spire, trying to hide their glowing escort from any line of sight their pursuers might be able to establish. Aspar cast his gaze back often. On the other side of the spire was another jump, though it was barely more than a long step. The steep angle of the other roof made the landing less than certain, however.

They went on like that, roof to roof.

Unfortunately, Aspar felt his strength ebbing, and he was getting a bit dizzy. As they came to the edge of the fourth roof, his footing betrayed him and he slipped. Clawing at the slate proved no good, and he went over, but the railing of the balcony below caught his body, hard, held him there long enough for him to get a grip on the iron rails.

By the time he pulled himself onto the balcony and got his breath, Winna had dropped down to join him.

“Are you all right? Did they—” Her eyes widened. “You’re bleeding.”

“I think we’re done with rooftops,” he muttered. “Let’s get down to the street.”

“But you’re bleeding,” she repeated.

“I’m fine. We can’t stop to talk about this, Winna. We have to keep moving, and hiding. Eventually we’ll find a way out, or they’ll give up.” Unless Fend knows who he’s chasing. He won’t give up if he knows it’s me. “This time we’ll find a place with no windows.”

In the distance, he heard the horn again, and cursed as the witchlights that hovered around them suddenly flew up, like a colored fountain. They shot up toward the cave roof, then dropped like angry bees back toward Aspar and Winna.

Aspar didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to; Winna understood what had just happened.

“Down,” she said.

Hoof-clacks on cobbles greeted them as they came onto the street, though Aspar couldn’t ascertain exactly where they were coming from. The vast hollow of the cavern and the close walls of the city played sling-stones with noise. He and Winna ducked in and out of alleys more or less at random. Aspar’s feet seemed very distant from him, and he began to wonder if the spear might have been poisoned. Surely he hadn’t lost that much blood.

“Which way?” Winna whispered, as they came to a cross intersection. A post in the center of it bore a carved head with four faces, all with bulging, fishlike eyes.

“Grim!” he muttered. “You choose.”

“Aspar, how badly are you hurt?”

“I don’t know. Choose a direction.” The witchlights had left them again, and they had only the sphere to show the way.

She chose, and chose again. Aspar seemed to lose track of things for a moment, and the next he knew he was lying flat on the cobbles. If he raised his head a little, he could see the ragged edges of Winna’s skirt, and he heard the lapping of water. He was lying at the edge of the canal.

Their witchlights were back.

“… up, you damned fool,” Winna was saying. Her voice sounded more than a little panicked.

He helped her wrestle him to a sitting position.

“You’re going to have to go without me, Winn,” he managed.

“Egg in a snake’s den chance of that,” Winna said.

“Do it for me. They’ll find us, and soon. I can’t have Fend—I can’t have him kill another—” He stopped, and gripped her arm, as something big stepped from the alley. “Turn your head,” Aspar gasped. “Don’t look at it.” He drew out his ax, holding up the flat for a dull mirror. It was spattered in gore, however, and all he could see was the faint yellow glow.

But the greffyn was there, at the end of the alley, bigger than a horse. He could feel the sick light of it against his face.

“The greffyn?” she asked, voice quaking. She’d done as he told her, thank Grim, and was averting her eyes.

“Yah. Into the canal with you. Don’t look back.”

“Into the canal with both of you. Or my boat, if you prefer.” The voice was throaty, hoarse even, as from speaking too much or not enough. Aspar peered into the darkness and barely discerned a cowled figure in a slender gondola, just against the edge of the canal.

Then he found he didn’t have much to say about it. Winna, grunting, rolled him from the canal edge over into the boat, then followed him in.

As the gondola began to move, a sort of burring sound, beginning below the edge of hearing and rising to sudden, intolerable shrillness exploded behind them, and Aspar felt his stomach heave.

Winna began to sob, then choke, then she vomited into the water.

They passed beneath an arch Aspar thought was a bridge, but it just went on, and on, a hole within a hole, the entrance to hell, probably, to the realm of dust and lead. But Winna’s hand found his, and he didn’t care, and yet another sort of nightfall took him away.

He awoke to the familiar scent of spider lily tea and oven-stone, to fingers on his face, and a dull fever in his chest. He tried to push his eyelids open, but they wouldn’t move. They felt as if they had been sewn shut.

“He will be well,” a voice said. It was the same throaty old voice from the boat.

“He’s strong,” Winna’s voice replied.

“So are you.”

“Who are you?” Aspar rasped.

“Ah. Hello, foundling. My name—I don’t remember my real name. Just call me—call me Mother Gastya.”

“Mother Gastya. Why did you save us?”

A long silence. Then a cough. “I don’t know. I think I have something to tell you. I’m forgetting, you see.”

“Forgetting what?”

“Everything.”

“Do you remember where everyone went? The Sefry from the city?”

“They went away,” Mother Gastya grated. “Of course they went away. Only I remained.”

“But the men chasing us were Sefry,” Winna said.

“Not of these houses. I do not know them. And they came with the sedhmhar. They came to kill me.”

“Sedhmhar. The greffyn?”

“As you call it.”

“What is it, Gastya?” Aspar asked. “The greffyn?”

“It is the forest dreaming of death. The shocked gaze be fore the eyes roll up. The maggot wriggling from the wound.”

“What does that mean?” Winna asked.

Irritation finally gave Aspar the strength to open his eyes, though they were ponderous as iron valves.

He was in a small cavern or room, roughly furnished. By witchlight he made out Winna’s face, lovely and young. Facing her was the most ancient Sefry Aspar had ever seen. She made Mother Cilth seem a child.

“Sefry can’t talk straight, Winna,” Aspar grunted. “Even when they want to. They lie so much and so often, it just isn’t possible for them.”

“You find the strength to insult me,” the old woman said. Her silvery-blue gaze fastened on him, and he felt a vague shock at the contact. Her face was beyond reading; it looked as if it had been flayed, cured, and placed back on her skull. A mask. “That’s good.”

“Where are we?”

“In the ancient Hisli shrine. The outcasts will not find us here, at least not for a while.”

“How confident you make me feel,” Aspar said.

“She saved our lives, Aspar,” Winna reminded him.

“That remains to be seen,” Aspar grunted. “How bad’m I hurt?”

“The chest wound is not deep,” Gastya replied. “But it was poisoned with the smell of the sedhmhari.”

“Then I shall die.”

“No. Not today. The poison has been drawn out. You will live, and your hatred with you.” She cocked her head. “Your hatred. Such a waste. Jesperedh did her best.”

“How do you … Have we met?”

“I was born here in Rewn Aluth. I’ve never left it.”

“And I’ve never been here before. So how did you know?”

“I know Jesperedh. Jesperedh knows you.”

“Jesp is dead.”

The ancient woman blinked and smiled, then lifted her shoulders in a polite shrug. “As you wish. But as for your hatred— caring for humans is no easy task, you know. In most clans it is forbidden. Jesperedh might have left you to die.”

“She might have,” Aspar said. “I’m grateful to her. Just not to the rest of you.”

“Fair enough,” Gastya allowed.

“Why did the other Sefry leave Rewn Aluth?”

Mother Gastya clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “You know,” she said. “The Briar King awakes, and the sedhmhar roams. Our ancient places are no longer safe. We knew they would not be, when the time came. We made our plans. All of the great rewns of the forest stand empty, now.”

“But why? Surely all of you together could defeat the greffyn.”

“Hmm? Perhaps. But the greffyn is only a harbinger. Sword and spear and shinecraft will never defeat what follows. When the water rises, we do not wait for the flood, we Sefry. Our boats have long been built.”

“But the greffyn can be killed,” Aspar persisted.

“Possibly. What of it?”

“Give me a straight answer, damn you. Mother Cilth wanted me to do something. What is it?”

“I …” She paused. “I’m remembering, yes. She wanted you to find me. To find me, and the Briar King. Beyond that, I do not know.”

“And the greffyn will lead me to the Briar King?”

“It would be better if you reached him before the greffyn does,” Mother Gastya murmured.

“Why? And how will I do that?”

“As to the first, it’s just a tingle in my mind. As to the second—follow the Slaghish into the Mountains of the Hare, always taking the southern and westernmost forks. Between that headwater and the Cockspurs is a high valley.”

“No, there isn’t,” Aspar said. “I’ve been there.”

“There is.”

“Sceat.”

The crone shook her head. “There always has been, but behind a wall, of sorts. A breach has formed in it. Follow the valley down, through the thorn hollows. You’ll find him there.”

“There is no such valley,” Aspar said stubbornly. “You can’t hide such a thing. But suppose there was. Suppose pigs are rutting geese, and everything you say is true. Supposing all of that—why should I do what Mother Cilth wants me to accomplish? What good will it do?”

Mother Gastya’s eyes seemed to shiver like distant lightning. “Because then you will believe, Aspar White. Only seeing him will do that. And to do what you must, you must first believe, in the deepest cistern of your blood.”

Aspar rubbed his forehead with his hand. “I hate Sefry,” he murmured. “I hate you all. Why me? Why do I have to do this?”

She shrugged. “You see with eyes both Sefry and Human.”

“Why should that make a difference?”

“It will make a difference. Human breath he shall draw, and Human soul charge him; but his gaze shall have Sefry quick and see the colors of night. So the prophecy goes.”

“Prophecy? Grim damn you, I—” He stopped short at the echo of a voice. “What’s that?”

“The outcasts. They’re coming for you.”

“I thought you said they couldn’t find us.”

“No. I said they would, at the proper time. That time is near. But they will not find you. Only me. Take my boat, and let the current carry you downstream. In time, you will see light, and steer toward it.”

“Why can’t you go?”

“The light will end me, and there are things I must do first.”

“Fend will kill you.”

Gastya croaked softly at that and placed her hand briefly on Aspar’s. With a terrible chill, he neither saw nor felt flesh on her fingers, only cold, gray bone. “Go on,” Mother Gastya said. “But take this.” The bones of her hand opened and dropped a small, waxy sphere into his palm. “This draws the poison out. You may not be well yet. If you sicken again, clutch it to the wound.”

Aspar took the sphere, staring at the hand. “Come on, Winna,” he murmured.

“Y-yes.”

“The boat is there,” Gastya said, lifting her chin to point. “Do not dally. Find him.”

Aspar didn’t answer. A shiver kept scurrying up and down his back like a mouse in a pipe. He was afraid his voice would quiver if he spoke. He took Winna’s hand, and they went to find the boat.

But once the water had taken the gondola past the carved stone posts that marked the Hisli shrine, and into a low-roofed tunnel, away from Mother Gastya and her hollow, pitted voice, Winna squeezed his fingers.

“Was she, Aspar? Was she dead?”

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “The Sefry claim—they say their shinecrafting can do such things. I’ve never believed it. Never.”

“But you do now.”

“It could have been a glamour. Probably it was a glamour.”

A long time later, it seemed, strange sounds came down the tunnel. It might have been screams, but whose Aspar could not say.

7 Plans for an Outing

“Majesty!” the guard protested. “You cannot— I mean, it’s—”

Muriele glared up at the tall, weak-chinned fellow. He had a carefully trimmed mustache and was immaculate in the pale-and-blue livery of the house Gramme. Muriele couldn’t remember his name, nor did she really try.

“Cannot what?” she snapped. “Am I your queen or not?”

The man flinched, bowed, and bowed again, as he had been doing from their first encounter. “Yes, Majesty, of course, but—”

“And is not the lady Gramme my subject, and a guest in my husband’s house?”

“Yes, Majesty, quite, but—”

“But what? These are my rooms, sir, despite that your mistress lives in them. Out of my way, that I may enter. Unless you know some reason I should not.”

“Please, Majesty. The widow Gramme is … entertaining.”

“Entertaining? Surely she would have to be entertaining the king himself, if you are to put aside my wishes. Are you, sir, prepared to tell me that the lady Gramme is entertaining my husband?”

For a long moment, the young knight stood there, trying out various movements of his lips but never quite making a sound. He looked from Muriele, to Erren, to the young knight Neil MeqVren, who stood with hand on the hilt of his weapon. Then he sighed. “No, Majesty. I am not prepared to tell you that.”

“Very well, then. Open that door.”

A moment later she was striding into the suite. Adlainn Selgrene—Gramme’s lady-in-waiting—dropped her needlework and gave a little shriek as Muriele marched toward the bedchamber, but at a hard glance from Erren, the small blonde fell quite silent.

Muriele paused at the double doors and spoke to Neil and Erren without looking at them.

“Stay outside for a moment,” she said. “Give them time to get proper.” Then she took the handle and shoved the doors open.

The lady Gramme and William II were a pink tangle of limbs on her enormous bed. People look rather stupid in the act of sex, Muriele thought, oddly detached. Helpless and stupid, like babies without the charm.

“By the saints!” Muriele said, deadpan. “Whatever are you doing with my husband, Lady Gramme?”

Gramme shrieked in an outrage altogether free of fear, and the king gave a kind of bullish bellow, but they both scrambled under cover in short order.

“Muriele, what in the name of the saints—” William shouted, his face ruddy.

“How dare you break into my rooms—” Gramme howled, pushing at her tangled ash-blonde curls with one hand and drawing the coverlet up with the other.

“Shut up, the both of you,” Muriele shouted. “You especially, Lady Gramme. That everyone knows about … this … does not make it legal to the church. My husband may be above holy sanction, but I assure you, you are not, nor will he—in these times—stand in my way if I wish to press for it.”

“Muriele—”

“No, hush, William. War is afoot, yes? With whose family would you rather risk a rift? Mine, with its matchless fleet and its legions of knights? Or this whore’s, whose father commands forty skinny nags mounted by oafs wearing pots for helms?”

Gramme understood the threat more quickly than William.

Her mouth clamped shut very quickly indeed, though she was near tears with anger.

William, biting his lip, also relented. “What do you want, Muriele?” he asked tiredly.

“Your attention, husband. I’m told I’m to be escorted by barge to Cal Azroth. I don’t remember deciding that I wanted to go there. And I don’t remember being asked.”

“I am still your husband. I am still king. Need I ask permission to make my wife safe? You were nearly killed!”

“Your concern is noted. Is that what you came to Lady Gramme to discuss? Your deep worry and concern for my welfare?”

William ignored the dig. “It’s not safe for you in Eslen, Muriele. That much is plain. It will be much easier to guard you at Cal Azroth. It’s what the place was built for.”

“Move the whole court, there, then, not just me.”

“Impractical. I must be here, near the fleet. But Fastia, Anne, Elseny, and Charles will accompany you. I will not risk my children, either, with assassins abroad.”

“I refuse this protection. Send the children if you will.”

William’s face tightened. “Erren, speak to your mistress.”

From the corner of her eye Muriele noticed that Erren and Sir Neil had taken the moment she asked of them and finally entered the chamber.

“She already knows my mind, Majesty,” Erren replied.

“Lady Erren, you, at least, must have the sense to know this is for the best.”

Erren bowed politely. “Yes, Majesty. If you say so, Majesty.”

“Well, I do say so!” William suddenly leapt out of the bed and dragged a robe up from the floor. He threw it over his shoulders.

“Muriele,” he grated, “join me in Lady Gramme’s sunroom. Immediately. The rest of you remain here. I am your king, damn you all, and never forget it!”

William leaned on the casement of the window and regarded the sunset. He did not look at Muriele when he spoke.

“That was childish, Muriele, childish and destructive. What sort of word might spread in the court now? Did you really want Lady Gramme to think I tell you nothing? Do you want her to spread that around?”

Muriele choked back tears. “You do tell me nothing, damn you. If I don’t have your ear, why should anyone think I do? I’d rather be thought of as spurned than stupid, husband.”

William turned a shockingly weary gaze on her. “This is not the usual course of our lives,” he protested. “When all is normal, I do confide in you and seek your opinion. I kept this quiet because I knew you would not want to go, and I need you to go. You are correct, war looms everywhere, and they have already tried to kill you once. I don’t even know how they did it. I’ll wager hard that your deadly old Erren doesn’t know, either.”

“Then what makes you think Cal Azroth will be safer for me?”

“Because of all our manses, it is best built for defending against assassins, against craft and art and the winged, evil dead or whatever else might come along. It has a full garrison, so even if they send an army after you, you may be safe. You know the place, Muriele. Won’t you see reason?”

“It’s easier to see something in the plain light, than when it creeps behind you in the dark. I don’t like hearing my fate through rumor. Even four years ago, you would not have treated me so. Now it is commonplace. Are Gramme’s whispers growing strong in your skull? Do you really conceive of replacing me as queen?”

Something came over William’s face, then, something she had not seen for some time. He turned away again, unable to meet her gaze.

“All kings have mistresses, Muriele. Your own father did.”

“That never answers my question.”

He turned back to her. “You are my queen, my wife, and I think my friend.”

“We once were friends,” she said, more softly, a little confused.

“I can’t let you be killed. It’s as simple as that. I can live without Ambria, or Alis, or any of those others. Without you …” His hands dropped helplessly at his sides. “Being king is hard enough, without you asking me to be better as a man. You’ve never asked that of me. You’ve never even mentioned my mistresses. Why now, of all times, when things are worst and weakest, do you choose to … to … erupt in this manner?”

She lifted her chin defiantly. “I don’t know. I suppose because this is the first time I’ve felt truly unwanted. After I was nearly murdered, you came to me. You were tender, as you were of old. And then, poof ! Nothing. As if in that one night you could take my terror away. And now to send me off, like a child, without even talking to me? Intolerable.”

He cast his head down. “Tonight. Can’t we talk tonight, when we have cooled a bit?”

“You want me to come to our bed when you still have her stink on you? When I know for certain? What do you think of me? That I have no pride at all? I’m a de Liery, damn you, Wilm!”

She knew she was going to cry, then, if she didn’t leave quickly. “I’ll go. Not for myself, but if my children will be safer at Cal Azroth, I’ll take them there. Never mind your ridic—” She couldn’t finish. She turned and walked swiftly down the stairs, through the bedchamber.

“Erren. Sir Neil. To me, now.”

Her shoulders were shaking by the time she reached the hall. By the time they came to the Depren Stairs, the tears had started.

Neil paced slowly in the anteroom, wondering what he ought to do. Only a few hours ago, he had begun his service as the sole member of the Lier Guard. The queen had hardly said two words to him, and before he knew it he was off to confront his sovereign lord—the same king who had just given him the rose!—in a state of undress with his mistress.

Now the queen had shut herself in her bedroom, and the lady Erren with her.

The other knights assigned to the queen were confined to the halls. Only Neil was allowed in the apartment. He supposed he might stick his head out and ask them what he ought to do, but Vargus wasn’t there, or even Sir James, and he did not know the rest.

A door creaked, and he turned, hand on the pommel of Crow.

It was the lady Erren.

“Take ease, young chever,” she said, in Lierish. “The queen sends her apologies. She’s been—as you’ve seen, I think—too distracted to properly welcome you to her staff.”

“That’s no matter,” Neil replied. “This is so great an honor for me, I cannot even begin to say. But …”

“But you have questions, yes? Ask them of me.”

“Thank you, Lady. Mostly, it’s this—what exactly are my duties?”

Erren smiled sternly. “That’s simple enough. You protect the queen. Not me, not her daughters, not her husband, not the crown prince—but the queen. Always and only, your eye is to her safety. If you can save the king’s life by allowing the queen to be stung by a bee, you are to let the king perish. Is that simple enough?”

“It is. Quite simple.”

“You have command of yourself, in that case. No order will you be given, no task or errand can keep you from her side. It matters not who gives it. Act always as you think best.”

“And the other knights? The Craftsmen?”

“They are not under your command, if that is what you mean. Nor are you under theirs. The queen commands this household, and I am the chief of her staff. You obey the queen’s command, then mine, then the king’s, in that order. If at any time you feel any command jeopardizes the queen, you shall ignore it.” She paused. “But be certain. I’ll have no cocksure young man second-guessing every order I give. You are not the strategist, here. You are the watchdog. You are the sword. Do you understand the difference?”

“I do, Lady.”

“Very well, then. In time, we will assemble a real Lier Guard, and you will be its captain. Until then, things stand as I’ve put them before you. Do you have other questions? About what just happened, for instance?”

“No question that is meet, I think.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it is a question I would put to the king, if it were not impertinent,” Neil said softly.

A mixed look of alarm and approval flashed across the lady Erren’s face. She placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Love her,” she said, “but do not fall in love with her. She counts on you for her life, and I would not want you to be dispassionate about that. But fall in love with her, and she is as good as dead. You might as well thrust the knife in yourself. You understand?”

Neil stiffened. “I know my place, Lady.”

“I’m sure you do. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“I know what you’re talking about, Lady Erren. I may be young, but I’m not a fool.”

“If I thought you were, you would not be here,” Erren said softly. “And if I ever think you are, you will vanish quite quickly, be assured.” She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “There. Welcome to the staff. I must go out for a time.”

“In that case, Lady, shouldn’t I be in her room? That is, if she is not in your sight, shouldn’t she be in mine?”

“An excellent point,” Erren replied. “Let me prepare her. I will return shortly enough. I have news to deliver to the archgreffess Fastia. Let her have the unpleasant task of carrying it further.”

“Cal Azroth?” Anne blurted. “I can’t go to Cal Azroth! Not now!”

Fastia gave Anne a peculiar look. “Whatever do you mean by that, Anne? What particular thing keeps you here at this particular moment?”

Anne felt something in her belly drop away. “That’s not what I meant,” she said quickly. “I just don’t want to go, that’s all. Cal Azroth is a boring place.”

Fastia’s suspicious gaze lingered for a moment. Then she shrugged. “Anne, let me explain the facts to you. Fact the first: our mother was nearly murdered. Fact the second: Father and Erren and everyone else who ought to know fear that you, or I, or any of us might be next. We’re all going where we can be protected. Fact the third: you are going to Cal Azroth. This is not an evening chapel or a sewing lesson you can skip by dressing as a boy and leading the Royal Horse on a merry chase. If need be, you will be tied hand and foot until the barge is well under way.”

Anne opened her mouth to begin an angry protest, but Fastia held her finger to her lips. “A moment,” the older woman said. “Let me say more. Mother needs us, Anne. Do you think she wants to go into exile any more than we do? When she heard, she stormed to Father and railed against it. But Father needs to know we are safe, and Mother needs her children. Needs you, Anne.”

Anne closed her mouth. Fastia had a way of making everything sound true. And if Erren was involved—well, Erren had a way of finding things out, if she put effort into it. And Erren most certainly should not find out about Roderick.

“Very well,” Anne replied. “I see this is important. When do we leave?”

“On the morrow. And tell no one, you understand? Too many people already know where we’re bound.”

Anne nodded. “Austra will go, of course?”

“Of course.”

Fastia took Anne’s chin in her hand. “You look tired, Anne. Have you been sleeping well?”

“I’ve had Black Marys,” Anne admitted. “I—” She had a sudden, powerful urge to tell Fastia about her experience in the maze. But if the praifec himself told her not to worry, there was no point in it. It would only be one more thing Fastia would think was wrong with her.

“Yes?” Fastia prompted. “What sort of Black Marys?”

“Silly things,” Anne lied.

“If they keep up, you must tell me about them. Dreams can be important, you know.”

“I know. But these are just … silly.”

“Not if they make you unwell.”

Anne forced a smile. “Well, there will be plenty of time to discuss this at Cal Azroth, I should think. There’s nothing else to do there.”

“Well, there’s always Elyoner. I’m sure she’ll pay us a visit. And I’ll see about having your horse Faster brought along. How would you like that?”

“Oh, Fastia, would you?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, pack. I’ll see you soon.”

“Very well.”

“And, Anne?”

“Yes, Fastia?”

“I do love you, you know. You are my little sister. I know sometimes you think—” She frowned, and reddened slightly. “Anyway.” Her hands fluttered briefly, then settled. “Pack,” she said.

When Fastia was gone, Austra came padding into the room.

“You heard?” Anne asked.

“Yes.”

“What a nuisance. I’m supposed to meet Roderick tomorrow.”

“Do you want me to get word to him?” Austra asked, a little trepidantly.

“Yes,” Anne murmured. “Yes. Tell him I’ll meet him tonight, instead. At the midnight bell, in the crypt of my ancestors.”

“Anne, that’s a very bad idea.”

“I may not see him for months. I will see him before I go.”

8 Scrifti

The sting of a slap brought Stephen out of his dream.

He was actually grateful to the pain, for it released him from terror, a phantasmic netherworld of horned beastmen, eviscerated women and children, feathered beasts, and leering faces that formed and dissipated like clouds, variously his kidnappers, Aspar White, and Brother Desmond.

He wasn’t grateful for long. In his sleep, blood had glued his shift to his back, and in places to the wooden bench he slept on. The movements of waking pulled ropes of pain tight about his back and limbs.

“There’s a good lad,” the brother bending over him said as Stephen sat up. “Up with you.” He slapped Stephen on the back, inciting a gasp of shock and tears of pain.

“Leave him be,” a softer voice said. “Desmond and his bunch aren’t around now.”

“I don’t know that,” the first fellow muttered. He was a short man, barrel-chested with skinny arms, red-haired and copiously freckled. “For all I know, you’re in with ’em. All I know is, it never hurts to treat the new ones rough. It can hurt to go soft on ’em.” He thumped Stephen’s back again, though not as hard this time.

But it was too much. Stephen bounced up from the sleeping board, towering a good head over his antagonist. “Stay back from me,” he warned. “Don’t touch me again.”

The redhead gave two steps, but he didn’t look terribly concerned.

“What’s your name, fellow?” That was the other man, a gangly young fellow with big ears and an easy smile.

“Stephen Darige.”

“I’m Brother Alprin, and the little one there is Brother Ehan.”

“Don’t call me the ‘little one,’ ” the redhead warned.

“Gozh margens ezwes, mehelz brodar Ehan,” Stephen said.

“Eh?” Brother Ehan exclaimed. “That’s Herilanzer! How is it you speak my language?”

“I don’t. Only a few words.”

“How did you guess he was Herilanzer?” Brother Alprin asked.

“His name. His accent. I’m good at that sort of thing.” And it’s been getting me in trouble, up until now. I should have kept my mouth shut.

But Ehan grinned. “Well, that beats anything I’ve heard lately. Generally speaking, no one understands Herilanzer but Herilanzers. No one even tries. What’s the point?”

Stephen shrugged. “Maybe someday I’ll go to Herilanz.”

“That’s even funnier,” Ehan said. “You’d last about half a bell in my homeland. If the frost didn’t kill you, the first child to come along would.”

Stephen mused that if Brother Ehan was a typical Herilanzer adult, the children must be knee-high at best, but decided against saying any such thing. He already hurt too much. He nodded instead. “Maybe,” he conceded.

He glanced around the dormitory—a large room illuminated by high window slits. It was very spare—fifty wooden benches each just wide enough to sleep on, and a small open box at the end of each bench for possessions. He noticed his was empty.

“My things! My books, my charcoal—my rubbings! Where are they?”

“One of Desmond’s boys took them. If you’re lucky, and behave well, you’ll get them back.”

“Does—I mean, the fratrex—”

“Don’t even start thinking that way,” Alprin cautioned. “The only way around Desmond and his lot is to cooperate, thank them, and hope they eventually move on to someone else. Whether the fratrex knows about all of this, I can’t say. That’s a moot point. If you go to him—or to anyone—that’s a very bad mistake.”

“But how can he—how can they just—just do these things?”

Brother Ehan slapped him on the back again, and Stephen nearly bit his own tongue in half.

“You idiot!” Ehan hissed. “Do you know me? Or Brother Alprin? You just met us! We could be the worst of the lot! And if we were, right now you would, by the saints of storm and blood, be regretting it, oh, terribly you would. You want to survive here? Listen, learn—don’t talk until you know the other fellow.”

“Aren’t you breaking your own rule? You don’t know me either.”

“I know you’re new. That’s enough.”

“He’s right,” Alprin said. “And don’t expect any kindness from us—or anyone—if there’s the least chance anyone is watching. There are rules concerning new people. Even I won’t break them, often.”

“So you’ve been warned,” Ehan grunted. “That’s more than I meant to do, and it’s the last you’ll get. Trust no one.” He scratched his chin. “Oh, and the fratrex wanted you in the scriftorium a quarter bell ago. Something about ‘important translations.’ ”

“Saints!” Stephen said. “But my things—”

“Forget them,” Alprin said. “Really. You’re sworn to poverty anyway.”

“But my things weren’t riches. They were things I need for my work.”

“You have the whole scriftorium,” Ehan said. “What else could you need?”

“My notes.”

“Too bad.” Brother Ehan turned to Brother Alprin. “It’s time we left. We’ve risked our necks enough for one day, and I’ve got work to do.”

“Thank you,” Stephen said. “Eh Danka ’zwes.”

Ehan laughed as he left. “Speaking Herilanzer,” he exclaimed. “What next?”

What indeed? Stephen thought. Back at Tor Scath, he thought things had gotten as bad as they could. Now he found he was already nostalgic for those days.

But the scriftorium awaited, and that thought still brought excitement, though a much warier excitement than he had known the day before.

“Stiff from carrying that wood, eh?” the fratrex asked, peering down his nose.

“Very stiff, Reverend,” Stephen replied. He wasn’t fooling himself. Despite choosing his words carefully, he’d just told his superior a lie. He didn’t like it, but until he understood more about the monastery and its inhabitants, he was determined to take the ominous advice of Brothers Alprin and Ehan.

The fratrex looked sympathetic. “Well, this evening you can take the meal out to the watchposts. The walk will loosen you up.”

“Thank you, Fratrex.”

“No need for that. Now, my boy, did you find anything of interest yesterday? I’m sure you did.”

I found rotten apples in the church bin, Stephen thought sourly.

“I found an early copy of the Amena Tirson,” he said.

The fratrex nodded approvingly. “Ah, yes, the old geography. We have the original.”

“I think that must have been what I found. Were—were the copies made here?”

The fratrex scratched his chin and cocked his head. “It’s been here for the last two centuries, so I would guess that any copy you’ve seen elsewhere came from here. Why? Did you find an error?”

“Not exactly. What I—”

“Well then! Of course not. We have the best copyists in the world.” He winked at Stephen. “And the most competent translators, eh? Now, do you want to see what I brought you here to show you?”

“Very much, Fratrex Pell,” Stephen said.

The old man thumped a cedar box. “It’s right here.”

The box was much like the one that had held the Amena Tirson, but larger. This box looked new—but when the old man slid off the lid, what was inside did not.

“Lead sheets,” Stephen murmured, almost to himself. “A holy text.”

“So one would think. But see the date? This predates the Hegemony—and the spread of the church in this area—by two hundred years.”

“True,” Stephen agreed. “But scriving on lead was known to have significance even before the church codified its use. Messages to the dead, for instance, were written that way, in archaic Vitellian, before the Sacaratum and the first church.”

“Messages to the dead, yes,” the fratrex acknowledged. “According to our earliest doctrines, the spirits of the departed are best able to read from lead. But before the church, those messages were small things—curses and other requests, just as some still write today. It was only after the second reform that texts dedicated to the saints were written in this fashion, since the saints are served by the departed.

“But here, long before the second reform—well, see for yourself.”

Stephen moved closer, for a better look, and his heart thumped faster. The pain in his back didn’t go away, but for an instant he nearly forgot about it. “It’s an entire text,” he said. “A book, just like the sacred writings of the church.”

“And do you know the language?”

“May I hold it?”

“Of course.”

Stephen lifted out the first heavy leaf. When his fingers touched it, it almost seemed as if he could taste the lead in his mouth, and his fingers trembled slightly.

Who had scrived this? What had the author been feeling, when he set down this first page? The immensity of time swept over Stephen like a wave tumbling him in the ocean— delightful and a little frightening. He squinted at the small figures.

“There is a great deal of patination,” he murmured, brushing at the white film that coated it. “Where was this found?”

“In the old chapel of Saint Donwys, in the Marches of Hume, or so I’m told.”

“They didn’t take very good care of it,” Stephen noticed. “It’s been kept damp.” He frowned. “And it almost looks— could it have ever been buried?”

“I doubt that,” the fratrex said. “In any case, we have it now, and will take proper care of it. Indeed, that’s another reason we requested a brother of your qualifications. To be honest, I would have preferred someone higher in the order than a novice, but I’m sure you’ll prove yourself worthy of the church’s trust.”

“I will strive to, Reverend.”

“Now. What can you tell me of it? It’s Vadhiian, that much even I can discern, but—”

“With greatest respect, Reverend,” Stephen said, very cautiously, remembering his earlier lesson in humility. “At first glance, I’m not altogether certain that’s the case.”

“Oh?”

“It’s similar, to be sure, but …” He stared at the first line, frowning.

“It’s the Vadhiian characters, yes?” the fratrex asked.

“Yes. But look at this line. It looks like Dhyvhubh khamy, ‘this addressed to the gods.’ In Vadhiian, that ought to be Kanmi udhe dhivhi. You see? Vadhiian had lost the case endings from ancient Croatani. I think this is an unknown dialect— perhaps a very old form of Vadhiian.”

“Indeed? How old? The date tells us it was written during the reign of the Black Jester. The language of his empire was Vadhiian.”

“The text may have been copied. See here, below the date?”

“I see the letter Q, at least if I understand the scrift.”

“It is Q,” Stephen affirmed. “The Black Jester reigned for the most part of a century. During the early years of his rule, it became customary for a scrive or translator to put his mark below the date.” He smiled grimly. “The Jester wanted to know who to punish if anything was copied incorrectly. After his defeat, of course, the Hegemony established itself, and the church along with it, and practices were brought into line with church procedure.”

“You think this is a copy of something earlier, then?”

“Possibly. Or perhaps this was some sort of literary dialect— much as we use Vitellian and Croatani for our sacred texts.”

The fratrex nodded. “Here I acknowledge my limits. It may be as you say.”

“Or it may not,” Stephen said hastily. “After all, I based that on just a few words. But with some study, I can develop a more confident opinion.”

“And how long until you’ve translated the whole thing?”

“I can’t say with certainty, Reverend. If it is an unknown dialect, it could be troublesome.”

“Yes. Could you do it in a nineday?”

“Reverend?” Dismayed, Stephen tried to keep the strain from his voice. “I can try. Is it that important?”

The reverend frowned. “To me? No. But consider it a test, a first devotion. Do this in the time I’ve allotted, and you may well walk the fanes earlier than any other novice.”

Mention of the fanes brought Stephen’s pain back to mind. What would Brother Desmond say to that?

“Reverend, I desire no special treatment. Of course I will translate with alacrity. It’s what you brought me here for, and I will not disappoint you.”

“I don’t expect you to.” Then Fratrex Pell’s voice sharpened. “Nor do I expect you to question my judgment. If I declare you are ready to walk the fanes, it will be because you are. Do you understand, yes? Special treatment does not enter into it.

“We’ve been banging our heads against this scrift for months, and in a count of one hundred you’ve already unraveled one of its mysteries. That is a clear sign from the saints. Your success or failure in the next nineday will also be a clear sign, one way or another. You see?”

“One way or another, Reverend?”

“Exactly.” The fratrex patted him firmly on the shoulder, sending darts of agony shooting through Stephen’s body. “My, you are tender,” he said. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. Saints be with you.”

“And with you, Reverend,” Stephen replied.

When the fratrex was gone, his words still hung in the air, as certain in form as if scrived in lead, and as uncertain as the content of the manuscrift.

One way or another. If Stephen succeeded, he would walk the fanes and become an initiate, something that might otherwise take a year or more. Of course, then Desmond Spendlove would probably beat him to death.

But what if he failed? What would the saints be telling the fratrex then?

But no, one thing was certain—no one had read these ancient words in more than a thousand years. Whatever might come, whatever he was risking, he would do it.

He found paper and charcoal for tracing, a brush for cleaning the characters, and mixed some ink.

A bell later he had forgotten the fratrex, Desmond Spendlove, and all threats of punishment and pain, as ancient thoughts slowly, tentatively revealed themselves.

The dialect was, indeed, unknown. The form of the words was much like Vadhiian, but the way those words were put together, and the grammar that gave them sense, were older, more akin to the tongues of the elder Cavarum.

The vespers bell found him still hunched over the manuscrift, with translated lines scribbled on the paper next to it. As he progressed, he had crossed out preliminary guesses and replaced them with more certain ones. Sitting straight up, he cracked his neck and rubbed his eyes, then went back through his notes.

He had begun to gather the pieces of the puzzle—the conjugation of this and that verb, the relation of subject to object—but hadn’t tried to put it all together. So, on a clean sheet, he began a running translation. It read:

A frost touched Stephen’s spine. What in the name of the saints did he have here? He had never seen an ancient text even remotely like this.

Of course, little had survived from the era of the Warlock Wars. Much of what had been written then was profane and evil, and had been destroyed by the church.

If this was such a text, how had it slipped by? Simply because no one could read it? That was stupid. When the Hegemony brought peace to the north, they had with them some of the greatest scholars in the ancient world. Besides, this language would have been close enough to dialects of the time that any scholar back then should have been able to accomplish with ease what Stephen was now doing with difficulty— translate it by reference to sister languages.

Maybe this one had been hidden or, as Stephen suspected, buried. Maybe some peasant had dug it up in his field and brought it to the brothers at Saint Donwys, who assumed it was a sacred church text, and put it in their scriftorium.

Wherever it had come from, Stephen was virtually certain that it ought not to exist. Just as certainly, when the church learned what it was, it would be destroyed.

He should tell Fratrex Pell all this now. He should go no further.

“Brother?”

Stephen nearly jumped out of his skin. A monk he did not know was standing only a few feet away.

“I’m sorry?” Stephen said.

“Fratrex Pell asked you to deliver the evening meal to the watchtowers.”

“Oh! Of course.”

“Shall I replace that?” The brother waved at the scrift.

“Oh—no. It’s something I’m translating for the fratrex. Could we leave it here, so I can take it up more easily tomorrow?”

“Of course,” the fellow said.

“I’m Stephen Darige,” he offered.

“Brother Sangen, at your service. I keep things on the shelves, here. That’s one of the new Vadhiian scrifts?”

“There are more?”

“Oh, yes. They’ve been trickling in for the past few years.”

“Really? All from Saint Donwys?”

“Heavens, no. From all over.” He frowned slightly, as if suddenly concerned. “You’d better get going. Fratrex Pell is mostly patient, but if he asks that something be done, he means it.”

“Of course.” Stephen picked up his free translation and notes. “I’m going to keep these with me, so I can mull them over before sleep. Is that permitted?”

“Of course. Good evening to you, Brother Stephen.” His voice dropped. “Keep you well on the path to the watchtowers. ’Tis said the south path, down by the woods, is longer but more … pleasant. I can explain the way to you, if you would like.”

“I would,” Stephen said. “Very much.”

In the gloaming, with fireflies rising like ghosts departing the world, Stephen felt the chill return. He fought the urge to go straight to the fratrex and reveal what he had discovered.

He didn’t fear the curse, of course. Whatever pagan god had been invoked was long dead, or a captive of the saints. The Black Jester had been defeated and lay dead for more than a millennium. The curse was no longer of any matter.

But any scrift that began with such a strong curse was likely to contain things no man ought to see, ought to have ever seen.

Yet he couldn’t be sure. It might prove to be nothing more than a catalogue of dead fiends. And it might contain information useful to the church.

Until he was certain it was irredeemable, he couldn’t give it up to be destroyed.

He would read further. If he came across something clearly unholy and dangerous, he would take it straight to the fratrex.

Right now he had other worries. Brother Sangen was either helping Stephen avoid Brother Desmond and his thugs or sending him into their arms. There was no way of knowing which, and nothing he could do about it but prepare himself.

He had the sudden, strange thought that it would be nice to have Aspar White with him right now. The holter was gruff, but he also seemed to know clearly what was right and wrong.

Not to mention the fact that Desmond Spendlove and his bullies wouldn’t last a twenty count against Aspar. That was a fight Stephen would love to see.

Then again, Aspar White would scoff at Stephen for being a weak, pampered child. He straightened his back. He couldn’t defeat his enemies, but he could make certain that they did not defeat him, even if they beat him to the ground. They would not beat his spirit.

It was the best he could do. It would have to be enough; he only hoped it didn’t kill him.

On the heels of that thought, a voice spoke from the forest, soft but carrying.

“Well. What are you about, little one?”

Stephen took a deep breath, for courage, as Desmond Spendlove stepped onto the grass, a wicked gleam just barely visible in his eyes.

It took Stephen a moment to understand that Brother Desmond wasn’t talking to him. In fact, he hadn’t even seen Stephen. Quickly, Stephen ducked behind a hummock of hay, peering around the edge of it.

The prey Spendlove and his wolves were gathering around was Brother Ehan.

“Don’t call me that,” Ehan cautioned.

“I’ll call you whatever I want. What did you tell the new fellow, Brother Ehan? Nothing disparaging, I hope.”

“Nothing he didn’t already know,” Ehan replied.

“How do you know what he does or doesn’t know? Are you that friendly with him already?”

Brother Ehan’s chin lifted defiantly. “Come on, Spendlove. Just you and me. Without your dogs.”

“Hear what he called you, fellows?” Brother Desmond said.

“Dogs,” Ehan repeated. “Little bitches following a big one.”

The circle closed in. Ehan suddenly leapt into motion, straight toward Brother Desmond.

He never got there. One of the other cowled figures swung a stiff arm so that Ehan caught it under his chin. His feet flew up in the air, and he landed with a pronounced whoosh of air, audible even from Stephen’s hiding place.

Stephen felt a knot in his throat. He shouldn’t interfere with this; every instinct warned him not to. And yet, from far away, he still somehow felt the holter’s eyes on him. Aspar White, however crude he might be, whatever his faults, would never stand by and merely watch this.

“Damned cowards!” Stephen shouted. Or his throat did, anyway. He couldn’t remember giving it the go-ahead.

But it got their attention. Brother Desmond and four others started toward him, at a run. Three made a beeline, and the other two circled around the other side of the haystack.

Stephen ducked behind the mound of fragrant straw. He could run, of course, but they were moving fast, much faster than he could. They would catch him.

So instead, he dug his fingers into the plaited grass and climbed as swiftly as he could. When he had nearly reached the top he stayed very still and watched his pursuers meet and mill below.

“He must have run on to the tree line, under cover of the haystack,” one of them said.

“Find him.” That was Brother Desmond, whose face Stephen could suddenly see quite clearly, for a torus of light had appeared around him, a sort of glowing mist.

Saint Tyw, don’t let them look up, Stephen prayed silently.

Whether by the grace of the saint, or because it simply did not occur to them, they didn’t but instead spread out and ran for the trees.

That wouldn’t distract them long. Beyond the stream and its willow border lay nothing but open pasture, and they would quickly discover that he wasn’t there.

Stephen scrambled on over the haystack and slid down the other side.

The two remaining men were still with Ehan; one was holding the little fellow down while the other produced what looked like a heavy bag.

They saw Stephen at the last second, as he kicked the fellow on top of Ehan under the chin. He felt teeth clack together, as the other man bellowed like a bull and swung the bag at him.

It hit hard, low in his back, and it hurt. It felt like a sack full of pears, and probably was. Stephen dropped to his knees, tasting blood in his mouth.

The next thing he knew, Ehan was tugging at him.

“Get up, you idiot! They’ll be here any second!”

Stephen came woozily to his feet. The fellow he had kicked was lying still, and the other was on the ground, too. Moaning.

“Come on!” Ehan repeated. Then he ran.

Stephen followed, inspired because he could suddenly hear Desmond and the others, calling for them to stop, threatening dire things if they didn’t.

He followed Ehan to the forest edge, and then it was all branches scratching at him, sudden outcroppings of unseen rock, and finally a trail that twisted its way uphill.

His lungs felt like a pair of hot lanterns, and the ache in his kidneys where the bag had hit him turned into a matching fire.

Finally, they dodged back into a clearing. It was now full pitch night, but Ehan seemed to know where he was going.

Just when Stephen thought he couldn’t go another step, his companion grasped his arm and pulled him down.

“I don’t think they’re following anymore,” he panted. “We’ll wait here, and see. But they can find us anytime; they probably won’t waste the effort.”

“Why—did—we—run—then?” Stephen managed, between savage, painful breaths.

“I wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t done what you did,” Ehan replied. “But they might have killed us, just then. Next time Desmond catches us alone, it’ll be bad, but he’ll have calmed them down.”

“They can’t just kill us!” Stephen protested.

“Oh, can’t they, fellow-boy?” Ehan said. “They killed a novice just two months ago. Broke his neck and dumped him down a well, so it would look accidental. These fellows aren’t playing. That was an ogre-stupid thing you did. We’re just lucky they left Inest and Dyonis with me; they don’t have any saint gifts yet. If it had been any of the others, we would be dead.”

Ehan paused. “But—Eh Danka ’zwes, yah? Thanks. You didn’t know any better. You’re a better fellow than I reckoned you for. Stupid, but a good fellow.”

“I couldn’t just watch,” Stephen explained.

“You’d better learn,” Ehan said seriously. “You’d really better.”

“Surely if we all got together—”

“Forget that. Listen, they really will leave you alone, eventually. That’s the first time they’ve come after me in a year.”

“Because you talked to me.”

“Yah, I guess.”

Stephen nodded at the darkness, and they both sat until the tempests in them had calmed to a normal-breathing zephyr.

“All right,” Ehan said. “This way back to the dormitory.”

Stephen felt the provision bag, still tied to his belt.

“I have to take this to the watchmen.”

“They’ll be waiting for you to do that, like as not.”

“The fratrex told me to do it.”

“The brothers on watch will understand.”

“The fratrex told me to do it,” Stephen said again, “and I

will.” Ehan mumbled something in his own language, too low and quickly for Stephen to understand.

“Very well,” he said finally. “If you insist on being a fool. But let me show you a back way.”

9 Exile

Breath caught in Anne’s throat as Roderick’s fingers brushed lightly over her breast. Had it been an accident? He had never done that before. But it had never been like this before, either, their kisses grown so urgent, demanding of something more.

No, here his hand came back to her breast, clever thing. The first brush had been a foray, to see what her reaction would be. But now he was there with confidence, tracing over the thin fabric of her gown, raising her nipple into a little fortress tower.

And his mouth nibbled and bit and licked its way around her throat, till he was standing behind her, panting into the nape of her neck, one hand still on her breast, one tickling over her belly, lower and lower, exploring her like an adventurer in an unknown land.

When she could stand it no longer, she turned in his grip and kissed him fiercely, beginning an exploration of her own around the base of his throat, to his chest where his shirt opened. When their lips met again it was with a furious, passionate tangle as something other than her brain took control, and Anne was pushing and pulling her body against his with all of her strength.

They came apart, both gasping like animals, and for an instant Anne felt ashamed and frightened. But then Roderick’s hand came to her cheek, very gently, and his dark eyes held her, promising nothing but happiness and devotion.

Around them, the tomb was utterly silent, little revealed by the single taper burning in a wall sconce. They were in the center room, where bodies lay in state and the family gathered for the rites of the dead. No one had died recently; her ancestors were elsewhere, in their own rooms, in the vaults that made up the rooms of the great house. Before Roderick arrived she had said a prayer to keep them quiet.

“You are more beautiful than anyone I have ever laid eyes on,” Roderick whispered. “When I first met you, it was not so. You were beautiful, yes, but now—” He struggled for words. “It’s as if each time I see you, you glow with a greater light.”

She couldn’t think of anything to say, and she could hardly stand the intensity of his eyes, so she leaned in and tucked her head under his chin and laid her cheek against his chest.

“It must be that love brings greater beauty,” he said, into her hair.

“What?” She drew back, to see if he was joking.

“I know, it’s doomed, but there it is. I love you, Anne.”

This time she didn’t turn from his gaze but watched as his face dropped nearer, his lips parted, and he gave her a long, sweet kiss.

But then she pushed away from him.

“I have to leave tomorrow,” she said roughly. She felt sudden tears clotting her head, trying to get out.

“What do you mean?”

“Father is sending us away, to Cal Azroth. My mother, my sisters, my brother—me. He thinks we’re in danger. It’s stupid. How could we be safer there?”

“Tomorrow?” Roderick sounded as if he was in pain. “For how long?”

“I don’t know. Months, probably, until this stupid thing with Saltmark is over.”

“That’s terrible,” he whispered.

“I don’t want to go.” Now it was her turn to stroke his cheek. “We still have time,” she said. “Kiss me again, Roderick. Let’s worry about tomorrow when it arrives.”

He did kiss her slowly at first, but within moments he had reclaimed all of the ground he had conquered earlier, and pushed forward. When he took her nipple between thumb and forefinger, she laughed in delight: who would think of something like that? It was all so surprising!

He unlaced her bodice and kissed the long border of fabric and flesh, so each touch of his lips was wet and vivid, yet somehow far away, and all the more exciting for it.

The bodice slipped farther.

When his hand worked past her stockings, to the bare flesh of her upper thigh, her whole body went stiff. She moaned, and for the first time felt real fear. It was a strange fear, however, a mixed one. And Roderick seemed so certain of what he was doing, so confident.

And he loved her, didn’t he?

He stopped, and caught her with those great eyes again. “Shall I stop? If you have any doubt, Anne, say it.”

“Would you stop if I asked?” she panted.

“Yes.”

“Because I’m not sure—but I don’t want you to stop yet.”

He grinned. “I love you, Anne Dare.”

“I love you, too,” she said, and just as she was realizing what she had said, he came back to her. And a sort of helplessness swallowed her, as if nothing could happen anyone would blame her for. Nothing.

And she was fifteen! Who remained virgin at that age?

Just then Roderick stiffened and leapt up, whirling, reaching for his sword.

“Young man,” a familiar voice said, “do not be more foolish than you already have been.”

Anne sat up, gathering her gown against her bosom. “Who is that? Erren?”

Erren stepped through the doorway, and behind, saints help her, came Fastia.

“We were—” Roderick began.

“About to hump like wild goats? Yes, I saw that,” Erren said dryly.

“Anne, fasten your clothes,” Fastia snapped. “Now. By all the saints, in the house of our ancestors?” Something strange quivered in her voice, something more than outrage, but Anne could not identify it.

“Anne is blameless,” Roderick began.

But Anne had found her own voice. “How dare you!” she snapped. “How dare you follow me down here? This is my affair, and mine alone! It’s no one’s business who I love!”

“Perhaps not,” Erren replied. “But it is very much the business of the kingdom with whom you rut, I’m afraid.”

“Indeed? Really? What of my father, who lies with every slut who—”

“Hush, Anne!” Fastia shouted.

“—walks into the palace, no, I will not hush, Fastia. I cannot help that my blood does not run like ice, as it does in both of you.”

“You will be silent,” Fastia said. “And you, Roderick of Dunmrogh, you’d best begone. Now, before this turns into an incident that must come before the court.”

Roderick lifted his chin. “I do not care about that. We have done nothing shameful, Anne and I, and we have only followed our hearts.”

“When hearts swing between thighs, that will undoubtedly be true,” Erren said.

“Don’t go, Roderick,” Anne said. It was more a command than a plea.

He took her hand. “I will go. But this is not done. You will hear from me.”

He gave Erren and Fastia one arch glance, then left without looking back.

Anne glared at the other women, as well, marshaling her arguments even as the sound of Roderick’s horse’s hooves on lead cobbles faded. Fastia’s face, meanwhile, was working through some frightful contortions.

And suddenly, Anne’s older sister burst out laughing. Erren joined in by grinning and shaking her head.

“Heavenly saints!” Fastia managed. “Where did you find that one?”

“It’s not funny! Why are you laughing?”

“Because it’s so laughable! Do you think you’re the first to come to the tombs for this sort of thing? Did you think you were being clever? And Roderick. ‘Shall I stop?’ Oh, dear. And you, thinking he would, that you would even want him to!”

“You were watching the whole time?”

Fastia calmed, but she was still chuckling. “No, not the whole time. Only as it was starting to get interesting.”

“You had no right, you cold-blooded bitch!”

That stopped Fastia’s laughter, and Anne was suddenly sorry. How long had it been since her sister had laughed? Even if it had to be at Anne’s expense. Her self-righteousness faltered.

Fastia nodded, as if to herself. “Walk with me a moment, Anne. Erren, if you could stay here?”

“Certainly.”

Outside, there was a faint chill in the air. The necropolis lay under silver light. Fastia took a few steps into the courtyard, then looked up at the half-empty moon. Her eyes were wide and glistening. Anne wasn’t certain if there were tears there or not.

“You think I begrudge you this, Anne?” she asked softly. “You think I don’t understand exactly how you feel?”

“No one knows how I feel.”

Fastia sighed. “That’s just part of it, Anne. The first time you hear a new song, you think you’re the first to ever hear it, no matter how many lips it’s been on. You think I never trysted, Anne? You think I never felt passion or thought I was in love?”

“You don’t act like it.”

“I suppose I don’t. Anne, I do remember what you feel now. It was the most exciting time of my life.”

“And then you married.”

To Anne’s surprise, Fastia chopped her head in agreement. “Yes. Ossel is a strong lord, a good ally. He is a good man, all in all.”

“He is not good to you,” Anne said.

“That’s neither here nor there. Here is the point, Anne: Every passion I knew when I was your age, every pleasure, every desire—they are like thorns in me now, twisting. I regret ever—” She fluttered her hands helplessly. “I don’t know how to say this.”

“I do,” Anne said. “If you had never known how good loving could be, you would not hate it so much with your husband.”

Fastia’s lips tightened. “That’s crude, but that’s it in a walnut.”

“But if you had married for love—”

Fastia’s voice grew harsher. “Anne, we do not marry for love. Nor may we, like our men, seek love after marriage. That sword does not swing both ways. We can find other pleasures— in our children, in our books and needlework and duties. But we may not—” Her hands darted about like confused birds, and she finally settled them by crossing her arms over her chest.

“Anne, I so envy you, and so pity you at the same time. You are just like me, and when reality falls upon your dreams, you will become just as bitter. I know what you think of me, you see. I have known it for years, since you cut me out of your heart.”

“Me? I was a girl! You cut me out of yours, when you married that oaf.”

Fastia clasped her hands together. “Perhaps. I did not want to. But those first few years were the hardest, and after—” She shrugged. “After, it seemed best. You will marry, one day, and go off, and I will not see you anyway.”

Anne stared at Fastia for a long moment. “If this is all true, I mean …”

“Why did I follow you down here?”

“Yes. Why didn’t you leave well enough alone?”

“Weren’t you listening? I told you my reasons. But there are other reasons. This Roderick—he is a schemer from a family of schemers, Anne. If he were to get you with child, there would be no end of it.”

“That’s not true! Roderick is—no, he’s not like that. You don’t know him, and I don’t care about his family.”

“You don’t. I wish I didn’t have to, but Mother and Father do. Absolutely. Anne, I have nothing if not my duty, do you understand? I could not willingly stand back and let this happen. As much as this may hurt now, it would have hurt much, much more later. And it would have hurt the kingdom, something I know you don’t consider yet, but it is true.”

“Oh, figs!” Anne exploded. “What nonsense. And besides, he and I—we never—I mean, he couldn’t have got me with child, because we never—”

“You were going to, Anne. You may think you weren’t, but you were.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Anne, please. You know it’s true. Without my interference, you would not have left the tomb a virgin.”

Anne straightened her shoulders. “Will you tell Mother?”

“Erren already has. She’s waiting for us now.”

Anne felt a sudden tremor of fear. “What?”

“Mother sent us for you.”

“What will she do? What can she do? I’m already exiled. I won’t see him in Cal Azroth.”

“I can’t say, Anne. Believe it or not, I did speak for you. So did Lesbeth, for that matter.”

“Lesbeth? She told? She betrayed me?”

Fastia’s eyebrows went up. “Oh. So Lesbeth already knew? How interesting.” Anne thought there was hurt in her voice. “And predictable, I suppose. No, Mother asked her opinion in the matter, as she did mine.”

“Oh.”

Fastia brushed Anne’s hair from her face. “Come. Make yourself presentable. The longer we make Mother wait, the angrier she will be.”

Numbly, Anne nodded.

Up the hill, through the gates into the castle—from Eslen-of-Shadows to her mother’s chambers—Anne prepared her arguments. She nursed her outrage, reassured herself of the unfairness of it all.

When she entered her mother’s chambers, however, and found the queen sitting in an armchair as if on a throne, her mouth went dry.

“Sit,” Muriele said.

Anne did so.

“This is most disappointing,” her mother began. “I thought, of all my daughters, in your own way, you had the most sense. I was fooling myself, I suppose.”

“Mother, I—”

“Just keep your tongue, Anne. What can you say that would sway me?”

“He loves me! I love him!”

Her mother snorted. “Of course. Of course he does.”

“He does!”

“Listen to me, Anne,” her mother said softly, leaning forward. “I. Don’t. Care.” She measured each word for fullest effect.

Then she leaned back in her chair and continued. “Most people in this kingdom would kill to live your life, to enjoy the privilege you hold. You will never know hunger, or thirst, or lack for clothing and shelter. You will never suffer the slightest tiny boil without that the finest physician in the land spends his hours easing the pain and healing you. You are indulged, spoiled, and pampered. And you do not appreciate it in the least. And here, Anne, here is the price you pay for your privilege: it is responsibility.”

“The cost is my happiness, you mean.”

Muriele blinked slowly. “You see? You haven’t the slightest idea what I mean. But you will, Anne. You will.”

The certainty of that clutched at Anne’s heart. “What do you mean, Mother?”

“The lady Erren has written a letter for me. I have arranged for a coach, a driver, and an escort. You will leave in the morning.”

“For Cal Azroth, you mean? I thought we were going by barge.”

“We are. You are not going to Cal Azroth.”

“Where am I going?”

“You are going to study, as Erren did. You will learn the most useful arts a lady may know.”

“Erren?” Anne blurted. “You—you’re sending me to a coven?”

“Of a very special sort.”

“Mother, no!” Tendrils of panic seized her.

“What else can I do with you? You leave me at a loss.”

“Please. Don’t send me away.”

“It won’t be forever. Just until you’ve learned a few lessons, until you appreciate what you have, understand that you serve more in this world than your own desires. You need not take vows, though you may choose to do so, of course, in your fourth year.”

“Fourth year! By all the merciful saints, Mother!”

“Anne, don’t carry on. You’ve already embarrassed yourself aplenty for one night.”

“But this isn’t fair!” Anne felt the blood rushing to her cheeks.

“Life seldom is.”

“I hate you!”

Muriele sighed. “I hope that is not true.”

“It is. I hate you.”

“Very well,” her mother said. “Then that is the price I must pay. Go now, and pack. But don’t bother with any of your better gowns.”

10 Into the Tangle

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” Winna said, her voice hushed with awe. She stood on a stony ridge, profiled against the monstrous peak of Slé Eru, where glaciers threw the sun back at itself and eagles glided in lazy spirals. On either side the ridge—really a saddle between Slé Eru and the lesser but still dazzling peak of Slé Cray—dropped into breathtaking glens, deep and forested. They had just come up from Glen Ferth, where the headwaters of the Slaghish had their start in the ice melt of the two mountains. That was a very deep drop, a great green bowl whose other rim was hazed blue with distance, and the Slaghish was a tiny silver rill in its bosom. The other side of the ridge did not drop so far, but it was no less breathtaking, a highland valley of meadows and birch, and behind it another line of modest mountains, the footstool of the immense range whose pinnacles faded from sight, even in a clear blue sky.

“It’s true,” Aspar replied. But he wasn’t looking at the landscape; he was looking at Winna standing against the backdrop of the high snowfields of Slé Eru. She wore a wide grin and her cheeks were pink with exertion and excitement, eyes all wonder-jeweled.

Winna caught that and gave him a sly, sidewise glance. “Why, Aspar White! Was that honey talk?”

“The best I can do,” he replied.

“You do well enough,” she assured him. She pointed at the highest peaks on the horizon. “What mountains are those?”

“Sa’Ceth ag sa’Nem—the Shoulders of Heaven,” he said.

“Have you been there?”

“Yah.”

“Did you climb them?”

“No man has ever climbed the Shoulders,” he replied. “Not even the tribesmen who live on them. Those mountains have barely gotten started when the snowline starts.”

“They’re wondrous.”

“That they are,” he agreed.

“And this valley below us? What’s it called?”

“Anything you like. I’ve never seen it before, nor heard it named. Those are the Cockspurs beyond.”

“Then Mother Gastya was right. There is a hidden valley here.”

“Looks like it,” Aspar agreed. He wanted to be annoyed about that, but found he couldn’t. Instead he wondered how powerful the magic must be to hide a whole valley—and what such power might mean if it was turned against two small people.

“Let’s go, then!” Winna exclaimed.

“Give the horses a few moments,” Aspar replied. “They aren’t used to the heights, and they had a hard climb up. After all they’ve been through, I don’t want to risk a bad step now.”

When they’d come out of the waterway that led from Rewn Aluth, Ogre, Angel, and Pie Pony had been waiting for them. How they knew where to be would always remain a mystery; Ogre was a smart horse, but not that smart. Mother Gastya had to have had a part in such things, and Aspar didn’t like that, much—the thought that his horses could be shinecrafted.

Though he was damned grateful to have them.

“How long should we let them rest?” Winna asked.

“A bell or so. Let them forage downslope a bit.”

“Yah. And what might we do meantime?”

“Rest ourselves, I suppose,” Aspar said.

“Indeed?” Winna replied. “With a bedroom view like this? I had other in mind.” And she smiled, in a way he had come to like quite well.

“What are you looking at now?” Winna asked, a bell later. They were still on the ridge, Winna doing up the fastenings of her dress, Aspar pulling on his buskins. Aspar was gazing back toward the Slaghish, and the way they had come.

“Well?” Winna persisted. “Do you see them?”

“Not a sign. That’s what worries me. Twenty-five days since we left Rewn Aluth, and no hint of either Fend or the greffyn.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“No. But where are they? If the greffyn is coming here, as Mother Gastya said, and if Fend and his bunch are with it, or following it—” He shook his head. “What are they doing?”

“Don’t you reckon they’re the ones making the sacrifices at the old—how did you say it?—sedos fanes? The ones cutting up those poor people?”

“There were men with the greffyn at Taff Creek,” Aspar said, lacing his buskin. “Some of them stayed with it all the way to Rewn Aluth, I think, but some went back west. I couldn’t follow ’em both, of course. So, yah, I think Fend is mixed up in that, though it wasn’t him alone. There’s another bunch out there somewhere.”

“So they killed squatters in the forest, and went after the Halafolk at Rewn Aluth,” she said. “They’re chasing folk out of the King’s Forest.”

“Yah.”

“So maybe they aren’t done yet. Maybe they went after more squatters, or another Halafolk rewn before coming back to the Briar King.”

“That sounds sensible,” Aspar agreed.

“But I don’t understand the sacrifices. The greffyn kills just by a touch. So the men are the ones doing the awful things, yah? Not that any death isn’t awful, but you know what I mean.”

“I do. And, yah, men did what I saw on the Taff.”

“Then why? What has it to do with the greffyn?”

Aspar examined the back of his hands, noticing as if for the first time how wrinkled they had become. “That priestish fellow I told you about, the Virgenyan—he said the warlocks used to do things like that, ages ago. Sacrifices to the Damned Saints, he said. My father’s folk—” He gestured vaguely northeast. “—they still hang criminals as sacrifice to the Raver.”

Winna’s eyes widened. “That’s the first you’ve ever said of your parents.”

“My father was an Ingorn, my mother a Watau. My mother died when I was born, but my father took a second wife, and we lived with my father’s people, in the mountains. The Ingorns keep to the old ways, but I don’t remember much about living there. There was a feud, of sorts, and my father was outlawed. He moved down a few leagues from Walker’s Bailey, and we lived in the woods there till I was seven or thereabouts, I guess. Then the feud caught up with us. They killed my father and stepmother. I ran like a rabbit, but an arrow caught me. They reckoned me for dead, and I would have been, but Jesp found me.”

“And raised you up.”

“Yah.”

“I’m sorry about your parents. I guess I reckoned they were dead, but nobody ever knew.”

“I haven’t told that story in a long time.”

“Aspar?”

“Hmm?”

She kissed his cheek. “Thank you for telling me.”

He nodded. “It’s getting awful easy, telling you things.” Too easy, maybe.

They followed the glen down, as Mother Gastya had instructed, camping that evening at the edge of a meadow, and waking to the low calls of aurochs. The forest cattle were rooting in the edge of the woods, and a few of the males cast uneasy glances in Aspar and Winna’s direction. Ogre stamped and whinnied a challenge.

“Calves,” Aspar whispered, nodding toward the smallest of the beasts. “Best we back away from here, slow.”

So they broke camp and retreated into the woods, making a wide circle around the meadow and its touchy occupants.

For most of the day they continued down the gently sloping valley, through fields of brilliant green, or flaming with red clover. Deer, elk, and one pride of spotted lions that Aspar noticed watched them go, with mostly lazy eyes. It was as if the reputation of man had never reached this place.

Late in the day, the land fell more steeply, and they found themselves following the stony course of a stream bordered with head-high horsetails and ferns. The valley walls rose steeply on each side, closing them in, unscalable without rope and spike.

Night came swiftly in the narrow valley, and Aspar and Winna bathed in a shockingly cold pool, embracing first for warmth and then for more. Winna tasted like the water, almost metallic with youth and life. After, they curled in their blankets beneath the ferns. When Winna was asleep, Aspar lay listening to the warbling of frogs and nightbirds, and the trickle of water over stone. Somewhere near, that trickling became a rushing hiss as the stream dropped for some unknown depth. It was that sound that had stopped Aspar a little shy of true dark. If they were to negotiate a cliff, let them do it in morning’s light.

As he lay there, he was amazed at how good he felt. There was something in the forest here, some almost sensual vitality, that he hadn’t noticed since he was a boy. It was the force that had first made him fall in love with the woods, a force that was wonder and beauty and awe forged together.

He hadn’t realized how much the hard years had stripped from him until now, when he suddenly had it back. Was it really this place that was different, somehow more alive than the rest of the world, or was it a change in Aspar White, brought on by—well, Grim, he could admit it to himself, however foolish it might sound aloud—love?

He didn’t know and hardly cared. For the first time since he was a boy, he felt perfectly at one with the world.

There was indeed a cliff, as sheer as ever one could be, and it seemed to drop forever. That was difficult to tell, of course, for the canyon—it was certainly that now, with walls scarcely a stone’s throw apart—was filled with trees. Not tall, slender boles, but a writhing, twisting, twining maze of thick branches, black-skinned and armed with thorns bigger than his hand. They rose from the unseen bottom in a heady tangle that reminded him of nothing so much as the tyrants. You couldn’t fall far, in there. Of course, if you fell at all, you were likely to be impaled by the dagger-size thorns.

“What sort of tree is that?” Winna asked.

“I’ve never seen its like.”

Winna waved at the glossy green leaves, shaped like long, narrow hearts. “Briar trees, maybe? For a Briar King?”

“Why not?” Aspar wondered.

“We have to climb down through that, though, don’t we?”

“It’s that or go back,” Aspar replied.

“What about the horses?”

Aspar nodded reluctantly. “We’ll have to leave ’em. I suspect we’ll be back this way anyhow. I’ve a feeling this valley boxes, somewhere up ahead.”

He turned and patted Ogre’s cheek. “Take care of these two, as you did before, yah? I’ll be back for you.”

Ogre looked at him darkly, then tossed his head and stamped.

They kept close to the solid comfort of the granite wall, descending down the snaky branches from one to another. So tightly did they coil and twine, rarely was there room for Aspar to straighten. The thorns, at least, were spaced wide enough to avoid with relative ease, and in fact made good handholds.

The sky above became a mosaic, stained glass, a memory. At noon they were in twilight, and the leaves were going thin and yellow, starved for sunlight. A little lower, there were no leaves at all. Instead, the limbs were home to pale shelf fungi and yellow slime mold, white mushroomlike spheroids, and vaguely obscene crimson pipes.

Dragonflies the size of small birds wove in and out of the briars, and pale, squirrellike beasts scampered away from As-par and Winna as they climbed farther and farther from the sun.

Winna, ever delighted, and getting comfortable with their descent, moved ahead of Aspar by a stone’s throw. He didn’t like that, and said so, but she replied with lighthearted taunts about his age and encouraged him to greater speed.

When first she shrieked, he thought it was another joke, so unreal did her scream sound. But when she repeated herself, he understood the terror in it.

“Winna!” He dropped his own height, hit a branch slick with fungus and nearly fell. He caught himself, though, and went down the next branch as dexterously as a squirrel. He could see her, but he couldn’t see what threatened her.

He swung under the next branch, and something hit him in the face, something that gripped him like a giant, hairy hand. He gave a hoarse cry and clawed at it, pulling off a spider bigger than his head. He was mired in a web, too. It ripped easily enough, but it was sticky and disgusting. He hurled the spider away, hoping it hadn’t bitten, not feeling a bite.

A moment later he was just above Winna. She, too, was veiled in the sticky white spider-weave, crying and shaking. One of the eight-legged creatures was advancing toward her along the limb.

He pinned it there with his throwing ax. Its legs flailed wildly, but it was stuck fast.

“Were you bit?” he asked, as he reached her at last. “Did one of those things bite you?”

She shook her head, but waved a trembling hand around them.

They were everywhere, the spiders, spread between nearly every limb. Some were the size of fists, some as large as a cat. They were thick-legged, hairy, with yellow striping. An arm’s length from Winna, one of the squirrels struggled in a web, as its weaver moved toward it, mandibles working eagerly.

“Are they poisonous?” Winna rasped faintly.

“We aren’t going to find out,” Aspar said. “We’re moving back up. We’ll travel in the higher branches.”

“But don’t we have to go down?”

“Not yet. Not now. Maybe this is just a local nest of ’em.”

Aspar retrieved his ax, and they climbed back up, weaving carefully between the webs. A spider dropped from a branch, straight toward Aspar’s head, but he batted it away with a disgusted growl.

Finally, when they were well above the level where the spiders dwelt, they stopped and cleaned off as many of the webs as they could. Then they examined one another for wounds and spent a few moments nestled together.

“We’ll want to be out of these trees by nightfall,” Aspar said.

“Why? You think the spiders will come up?”

“No. But what else lives in here? What lives even farther down, where it must always be dark? I don’t know what might come up at sunfall, and that’s the problem. As well, we won’t sleep well in these branches, and we can’t start a fire.”

“We should go, then.” She sounded shaky.

“Can you?”

“Yah. I can.”

He had the sudden urge to kiss her, and he did.

“What was that for?” she asked.

“You’re a brave lass, Winna. The bravest.”

She uttered a staccato laugh. “I don’t feel brave. Screaming at spiders.”

Aspar rolled his eyes. “Come on, you.”

They went on, keeping to the middle heights. The rift walls came nearly together and then began to widen again, and as they got wider, the thorn forest dropped lower and lower; without the narrow walls to crowd them up toward the sun, the branches wandered in a more leisurely fashion.

Now and then, Aspar could actually see the ground, covered with what resembled white ferns.

But the great, dark, unknown cavern behind them troubled him more and more as the day waned. He could almost smell the presence of something large and mirksome, caged by the sun but free to walk when the Shining King slept.

And he would sleep soon.

“Let’s go down,” Aspar said, “and hope for no more surprises.”

The spiders were there, but in much fewer numbers and spread much more thinly. They were also generally smaller, and so Aspar and Winna made their way down through them with relatively few anxious moments. Finally, reluctantly, As-par dropped around twice his height from the last branch onto the leaf mold that covered the ground, avoiding the patches of white, whisklike growth that might hide more many-legged predators.

A moment later, he caught Winna as she followed him down.

More than ever it seemed like a cave. The trunks of the thorn trees were massive in girth, but spaced wide apart. The result was like a gigantic, low-roofed hall with many pillars. A very dark hall, and from the way they had come, from the heart of that darkness, Aspar smelled something fetid.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s hurry.”

They more or less ran. Aspar strung his bow, brandishing it in front in case of spiderwebs they might not see. The ground was level and flat and deep with mold. It smelled like centipede, like the underside of a piece of rotting bark.

As the light faded, the tree trunks grew taller, but Aspar still saw no end to them. Finally, desperate, his back itching and the smell of autumn leaves filling his nostrils, he noticed one tree with a large hollow in it.

“If this forest has an end, we won’t find it before nightfall,” he told Winna. “This is the best we can do.”

Striking tinder, he held it inside and made certain the space was empty, then the two of them crouched within.

The forest faded and vanished, and Aspar placed himself between Winna and the outside, gripping his bow.

Behind him, after a bell or so, Winna’s breath starting coming slow and regular.

A little after that, the nightbirds stopped singing, and the dark grew very quiet indeed. And then—there was still no sound, but Aspar felt it, like a blind man feels the heat of the sun on his face. The earth trembled faintly, and then a stench thickened the air.

Aspar squinted at the darkness, and waited.

11 Departures

“I know it isn’t fair, dove,” Lesbeth said, drawing Anne’s hair back for the pin. “But your mother feels it’s best for you.”

“Roderick will forget about me.”

“If that happens, then he never loved you,” Lesbeth said. “Besides—Anne, I tried to warn you of this.”

“But you’re marrying for love!” Anne said. “You’re the youngest, and so am I.”

“I was patient,” Lesbeth said. “And most of all, I was fortunate.”

“I wish to be so fortunate,” Anne said.

Lesbeth came around so she could look Anne in the eye. “Then do as your mother says. You may not understand, Anne, but she is giving you a chance for true love better than ever you had before.”

“By sending me away? To a coven? That makes no sense.”

“Oh, but it does,” Lesbeth assured her. “It will keep marriage off you for a time, for one thing, and even after you leave the coven you will have a grace period wherein you might claim to be considering vows. You will have a way of delaying suitors, and thus opportunity to be courted by more of them. The more you have, the better your chance of finding one who pleases you. And if worse comes to worst—why, you can take the vows.”

“Never.” Anne tossed her head. “Besides, I’ve already found the suitor I want.”

“Well, him you can’t have, and that’s that, Anne. Not now, anyway. Maybe in a few years—maybe Roderick will prove himself in service, or in some other way to redeem his family. More likely, you’ll realize that what you two share is a young passion, a teakettle love, done once the steam boils out. More men are like that than you might think.” Lesbeth took Anne’s fingers in her own. “A merchant knows, never buy the first ware you see. It may appear all very well, but until you have some basis for judgment, how can you know?”

“Well, I’ll get no better basis for comparison in the coven, and that’s assured!” Anne replied bitterly.

“Patience,” Lesbeth replied. “And you’ll have Austra with you, yes?”

“Yes,” Anne agreed reluctantly, “but it shall still be awful. Learn to be like Erren? What exactly does Erren do, besides sneak about and pry into things?”

Lesbeth made a funny little frown. “Surely you know what Erren does.”

“She’s Mother’s spy.”

“Yes, she’s that. But she also—Anne, Erren kills people.”

Anne started to laugh at that, but then she saw Lesbeth wasn’t joking. “Kills who? How?” she asked.

“People. People who are dangerous to the kingdom, and to your mother.”

“But who? Who has she killed?”

Lesbeth’s voice dropped very low. “It’s secret, mostly. That’s the thing about Erren, she’s very … quiet. But—do you remember that fat lord from Wys-on-Sea? Hemming?”

“Yes. I thought he was a sort of clown, always joking.”

“He was a spy for the Reiksbaurgs. He was part of a plot to kidnap Fastia.”

“But I remember—he died in his chambers. They said it was his heart.”

“Maybe. But it was Erren who stopped his heart, whether by poison or needle or sacaum of death it cannot be said. But it was Erren. I heard your mother speak of it, once.”

“That’s …” Anne didn’t know what it was. Erren had always been spooky, but … “I’m to learn such things?” Anne asked. “Why?”

“Great houses must have women like Erren. She is your mother’s first cousin, you know, of gentle birth. But your mother has this in mind: If you will not serve your house in marriage, you will serve it in some other way. She’s giving you a choice.”

“I don’t believe it. Mother hates me.”

“How absurd. She loves you. She may love you best, of all her children.”

“How can you say that?”

“You cannot see yourself, can you, Anne? Except in a mirror, and there everything is backwards. Believe me. Your mother loves you. I, too, wish she would not send you off, but I understand why she does. You will, too, one day, even if you never agree. That’s what growing up ought to be, you know, or bring with it anyhow—the vision to understand something even when you’re dead set against it.”

Anne felt tears start. “I’ll miss you, Lesbeth. Just as I get you back, now I have to go.”

“I’ll miss you, Anne,” Lesbeth said, giving her a long hug. “And now I must go. I cannot bear to see you off.”

“Neither can Mother, it seems. Or Fastia.”

“They are already gone, Anne. Didn’t you know? They left on the barge, before dawn. And everyone thinks you are with them.”

Including Roderick, Anne thought, as she watched her aunt vanish through the arch in the stable yard. He still thinks I’m going to Cal Azroth. She and Austra had been watched like prisoners, and she had found neither the time nor the opportunity to send him a message.

Besides, she didn’t know where she was going.

I’ll take my first chance, she thought. They can’t do this to me. Even Lesbeth, though I love her dearly, doesn’t understand me. I can’t be trapped in a coven. I can’t. If I have to live like a bandit, or dress as a man and fight as a soldier of fortune, I will do it.

She was still thinking in that vein when the coach came, and Austra and some bearers with their luggage.

“Where do you think we’re going?” Austra whispered, as the shades were drawn on the coach, and it began rumbling forward.

“It doesn’t matter,” Anne said, with false brightness. “It doesn’t matter one bit.”

Muriele watched the elms go by. They lined the canal like a colonnade; elms had deep, straight roots that would never undermine the dikes they were planted on, only strengthen them.

Beyond the elms, the fields of Newland went flat and green to the horizons. Only the now distant bump that was the island of Ynis marred that flatness, for even the south hills were obscured by a noon haze.

“Did I do the right thing?” she murmured. Anne’s face was vivid in her mind. I hate you. What mother could bear to hear that from her child?

Some things had to be borne.

“My queen?”

Muriele turned to find the young knight, Neil MeqVren, almost at her elbow. “Yes?” she said.

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he said, bowing hastily. “I thought you spoke to me.”

“No,” she said. “Only to myself, or to the saints.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, then.”

“It’s no bother. You said your farewells to Sir Fail, I hope.”

“I had little time, and we spoke only a few words,” Neil replied.

“He’s bursting with pride of you. If you were his own son, I think he could never be prouder.”

“If he were my own father, I could never be gladder of it.”

“I’m sure that’s so,” Muriele replied.

She let silence rest between them for a moment. “What do you think of all this, Neil?”

“Newland, you mean?”

“No, that’s not what I meant, but since you bring it up, you must have some opinion.”

Neil grinned a little sheepishly and looked very, very young. “I guess, Majesty, that it makes me nervous. You’re from Liery, so you understand; we would never put chains on our lord the sea. We would never dream to tell him where he can and cannot go. Yet here—well, it is grand, I have to say, and astonishing—that land can be taken from the waves. And I suppose Saint Lier has raised no objection, but it seems … impertinent.”

“Even for the emperor of Crotheny?”

“Begging your pardon, Your Majesty, but even an emperor is simply a man. I serve that man, and all he represents, and if you should ask me to throw my body into a hole in one of these dikes to plug it and keep the sea out, I’d do it, then let the saints judge me as they might. But still, in all—I love the sealord, but I do not trust him over my head, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Muriele said quietly. “The Reiksbaurgs began this, and my husband’s people finished it. Beneath these waters, they found the most fertile soil in all the world. But don’t allow yourself to be fooled; we pay a tithe to the saints of the waves, of marsh, and river. And sometimes they take their own tithe. It is, as you say, an uneasy arrangement.”

Neil nodded. “And so what did you mean, Majesty, when you asked me what I thought?”

“Do you agree with my husband? Is going to Cal Azroth what we ought to do?”

Neil considered his words carefully before answering. “The lords of Hansa are a treacherous lot,” he finally said. “They fight from the smoke, always behind masks. They pay Weihand raiders for Lierish scalps, and do not call that war. They are dabblers in shinecraft, despite all their pretense to be a holy, churchish nation. That man I fought was your man, through and through, I do believe it. And yet he would have killed you.”

“These are all statements of fact, more or less,” Muriele noted. “What do you think?”

“I think if Hansa believed that by striking at the king’s family they could weaken the kingdom, they would do it. But, to be honest, this retreat to the countryside makes me uneasy.”

“Why?”

“I am not altogether certain. It feels … wrong. Why try to slay you, rather than the king himself ? And how can you be safe in any place when we don’t even know how your man was turned against you? If ’twere shinecraft, I might be turned against you just as easily. I would throw myself on my sword before doing you harm, but I’ll wager that knight I slew would have sworn the same thing.”

“Perhaps. Sir Neil, in some things you are wise beyond your years, but in the ways of the court you are yet naïve. It takes no shinecraft to corrupt a man, not even a Craftsman. The magicks of greed, fear, and envy are quite enough to work most of the evil you will ever see at court.

“As to why me, rather than the king, I admit to puzzlement there, as well.”

“Maybe …” Neil frowned to himself a moment. “What if all your enemy desired was to separate you from the king? To divide your family?”

Something about what the knight was saying seemed very right. “Go on,” she said.

“If I were the king, suddenly deprived of children and— wife—I would feel the weaker. Like a wagon missing a wheel.”

“My husband still has his mistresses. And his brother.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. But—what if it were they who wanted you out of the way?”

Muriele stared at the young man, suddenly realizing she did not have a measure of him at all. “By the saints, Sir Neil,” she murmured. “It was purest libel for me to call you naïve. Accept my apologies, I beg you.”

“I know nothing, Your Majesty,” Neil said slowly, “but I follow the lady Erren’s advice to the end of the path. In my mind, I must think everyone in the world your enemy. The lady Erren included. Myself included. And if I think like that, everything seems suspicious. And if I think like that, saints willing, I will not long stand surprised when your true foes raise their hands again. Instead, I will slaughter them where they stand.”

The passion in his voice sent a shiver through her. Sometimes, at court, one forgot that there were real people in the world, genuine people. This young man was such a one, still. He was genuine, he was dangerous, and, saints willing, he was hers.

“Thank you, Sir Neil, for your opinion. I find it worth considering.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty, for listening to my concerns.”

Lesbeth tossed back her auburn hair and stared off across the western bay, and the great white teeth of Thornrath that marked it from the periwinkle sea beyond. She could just make out the white sails of a merchantman, near the horizon. A gull wheeled overhead, no doubt eyeing the remains of the baked hen, Donchest cheese, and honey cakes still spread on the picnic cloth.

“A beautiful day,” her brother Robert said, sipping from the last half of their second bottle of wine. They sat together on the westernmost prominence of Ynis, a grassy spur littered with the crumbled ruins of an old tower.

“It is,” Lesbeth replied, flashing him a smile she didn’t quite feel. Robert had been … brittle since he learned of her betrothal. She’d accepted his invitation to picnic, in hopes of healing that. But she hadn’t dreamed he would bring her here of all places. Robert was spiteful, yes, but usually not to her.

Just concentrate on the sea and sky, she told herself. Concentrate on the beauty.

But Robert seemed determined not to let her.

“Do you remember how we came up here as children?” he asked. “We used to pretend the tower there was our own castle.”

“Those were excellent days,” Lesbeth said, around the lump in her throat.

“I knew you, then,” Robert said. “Or thought I did. I always fancied I knew your least thought, and you mine.” He swallowed another mouthful of wine. “Then.”

Lesbeth reached for his hand and took his fingers in hers. “Robert, I am sorry. I should have asked your permission to marry. I know that. And I’m asking now.”

An odd look crossed Robert’s face, but he shook his head. “You asked Wilm’s. He’s the eldest.”

Lesbeth squeezed his hand. “I know I caused you pain, Robert. It’s only that I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“How can that be?” he asked.

She drew a deep breath. “It is as you say. Once we were so close, one of us could not blink without the other knowing. And now, somehow—”

“You don’t know me anymore,” he finished for her. “We have grown separate. Ever since that day when Rose—”

“Please, stop!” Lesbeth closed her eyes against the terrible memory, willing it away.

“As you wish,” he said. “But we never spoke of—”

“Nor shall we. I cannot.”

He nodded, and a look of resignation crossed his face.

“Besides,” she went on. “I know you believe my prince Cheiso insulted you—”

“I do not believe he did,” Robert said. “I am certain of it.”

“Please, Robert. He did not mean to give offense.”

Robert smiled and held his hands up. “Perhaps he didn’t,” he allowed. “And so where is he now? I should think he would have come to ask permission—if not from me, then at least from Wilm. Why did he leave you to do it?”

“He will arrive within a nineday or two,” Lesbeth replied. “He had matters pressing him. He asked me to wait, so we might travel together, but I was impatient. I wanted to share my news.” She turned her head to the side. “Please, Robert. Be happy for me. You are my brother, and I do love you, but after—”

“After we killed Rose?” he said bluntly.

Lesbeth nodded silently, unable to go on.

“It was an accident,” he reminded her.

Lesbeth didn’t remember it that way. She remembered a cruel game, played with a servant, a game that went further than it ever should have. And she remembered knowing that Robert meant for it to go that far, from the very start. After that, she hadn’t wanted to know what Robert was thinking anymore.

But she nodded again, as if agreeing with him. “I cannot speak of this,” she said again.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’ve spoiled our outing. That was not my intention. There are years between us we cannot repair, I know. Silence has worked on us like poison. But we are twins, Lesbeth.” He stood suddenly. “May I show you something?”

“What is it?”

He smiled and for a moment looked like the boy she remembered. “A wedding gift,” he replied.

“Up here?”

“Yes.” He looked a little embarrassed. “It’s something I worked on with my own hands. It isn’t far.”

Lesbeth smiled tentatively. There was so much hurt in Robert, so much broken. She did love him, though. She took his hand and let him pull her up, and followed as he led her into the mostly wild gardens around them. When they had been young, these had been well-tended, but over the years this spot had fallen out of fashion, and the roses and hedges allowed their own way. Now, in places, it was as dense as a true forest.

Robert did not lead her far. “Here it is.”

Lesbeth could only stare in dull shock. The sun was shining, flowers were blooming. She was going to be married. How could he do this?

He had dug up Rose. Her little bones—she had been ten— lay in the bottom of a yawning hole in the earth. Her clothes had gone to rotten rags, but Lesbeth recognized what remained of the blue dress she had last worn.

“By all the saints, Robert—” The horror choked off anything else she might have said. She wanted to run and scream, and bawl her eyes out. Instead she could only gaze into that hole, into that terrible crime of her past. She had never known what Robert did with the body. They had told everyone Rose had run away.

I’m sorry, Rose, she thought. Saints of grief, but I’m sorry.

“I love you, Lesbeth,” Robert said softly. “You should have asked my permission. Mine, not Wilm’s. Mine.”

And as she turned to face him, he struck her in the breast, so hard she staggered back and sat down, her skirts billowing around her. She stared up at him, more perplexed than hurt. Robert had never hit her before, ever.

“Robert, what—” As soon as she tried to speak, she knew something was very, very wrong. Something inside her was all twisted, and her breath hurt like fire. And Robert, standing over her—his hand was still a fist, but there was a knife in it, the narrow bodkin he always wore at his belt, the one Grandpa had given him when he was eleven. It was red to the hilt.

Then she looked down at the front of her dress and saw the wet redness over her heart. Her hand was sanguine, too, where she had pressed it without thinking against the wound. As she watched, blood actually spurted between her fingers, like a spring bubbling from the earth.

“Robert, no,” she sighed, her voice high and strange. “Robert, do not kill me.”

He bent over her, his dark eyes glistening with tears. “I already have, Lesbeth,” he said, very softly. “I already have.” And he kissed her on the forehead.

Shaking her head, she crawled away, trying to get to her feet, failing. “I’m going to be married,” she told him, trying to make him understand. “To a Safnian prince. He’s coming for me.” She could almost see Cheiso, standing before her. “I’ll give him children. I’ll name one for you. Robert, don’t—”

Sheer panic swept through her. She had to get away. Robert had gone mad. He meant to hurt her.

But there was no strength in her arms, and something closed around her ankle, and the grass was sliding beneath her, and she was leaving a broad trail across it, like a giant snail, except that the trail was red.

And then a moment like floating, and Robert’s face before her again.

“Sleep, sister,” he said. “Dream of when we were young, and all was well. Dream of when you loved me best.”

“Don’t kill me, Robert,” she begged, sobbing now. “Help me.”

“You’ll have Rose,” he said. “And soon enough—soon enough, you’ll have company aplenty. Aplenty.”

And he smiled, but his face seemed very far away, retreating. She hadn’t felt the fall, but the empty sockets of Rose’s little white skull were right next to her.

Lesbeth heard the music of birds, and a whispering she ought to recognize, words she half understood. They seemed very important.

And then, suddenly, that was all.

12 Spendlove

When Stephen Darige awoke from the grips of Black Mary for the fourth time in one night, he cursed sleep, rose, and crept from the dormitory. Outside, the night was clear and moonless, with a feel like early autumn in the air. He walked a small distance, to where the hillside started its roll down to the pastures, and there sat gazing up at the stars.

The stars eternal, his grandfather had called them.

But his grandfather was wrong; nothing was eternal. Not stars, not mountains. Not the saints, nor love, nor truth.

“Saint Michael,” he murmured. “Tell me what truth is. I don’t know anymore.”

He felt as if there was something spoiled in him, something he badly needed to vomit up. But he feared if it came out, it would take a life and form of its own, and devour him.

He should have told the fratrex what the scroll was as soon as he understood. He shouldn’t have translated it. By the saints, he shouldn’t have.

Now it was too late. Now he had those evil words in him. Now he couldn’t get them out.

A faint brush of shoes on grass told him someone was behind him. He was sure he knew who it was, and didn’t care.

“Hello, Brother Desmond.”

“Good morning, Brother Stephen. Taking some air?”

Stephen turned enough to see the shadow of the man standing against the stars. “Leave me alone or kill me. I don’t care which.”

“Don’t you?” It sounded strange, the way he said it, almost like a lullaby. Then a fist knotted in Stephen’s hair and yanked him down flat. Desmond dragged him a few feet and then crouched, brought the edge of a broad-bladed knife against Stephen’s throat.

“Don’t you?” he whispered again, almost in Stephen’s ear.

“Why?” Stephen managed. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Because. I don’t like you. You’re going to walk the fanes next month. Did you know that?”

“What?”

“Yes. You’re done with your translation, aren’t you?”

“What? How did you know that?”

“I know everything that goes on around here, you little pissant. Why wouldn’t I know that?”

“I haven’t told anyone.”

“Don’t worry. I took your notes to the fratrex for you, after I read them.”

The knife came away, and Brother Desmond stood. Stephen expected a vicious kick, but instead, to his surprise, Desmond sighed and sat next to him on the grass.

“Wicked stuff,” Spendlove said, almost whispering. “Spells to turn men to jelly, prayers to the Damned Saints. Blood rites, deformation of children. First-rate wicked. Is that why you can’t sleep?”

“You read it,” Stephen said dully. “Can you sleep?”

Desmond growled up something like a laugh. “I never could,” he replied.

“Why did you steal my work?”

“Why not?”

“But you gave it to the fratrex.”

“Yes. Believe what you might about me, Brother Stephen, but I do serve my order.” His voice dropped even lower. “Very well I serve it.”

Stephen nodded. “Well, you’ve done me a favor. I didn’t know if I would have the courage.”

“What do you mean?”

Stephen suddenly wished he could see Brother Desmond’s eyes. For the first time since they had met, the other man sounded puzzled.

“You know,” Stephen said. “You know very well I won’t be walking any fanes after the fratrex reads what I wrote and realizes what I’ve done.”

“You did what he told you to do,” Spendlove replied, and this time there could be no doubt about it, the monk was puzzled, or doing a blessed good imitation.

“Brother Desmond, the work of the church has always been to destroy such foul texts. The moment I knew what it was, I should have consulted with the fratrex. Instead, I barreled ahead and translated a forbidden scrift. I’ve probably damned myself, and I will certainly lose my position here.”

That got a wry chuckle from Spendlove.

“Brother Stephen, you may think I’m your worst enemy in this place. I’m not. You’re your own worst enemy. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” With that, Brother Desmond stood. “Good luck walking the fanes,” he said. He almost sounded as if he meant it.

A moment later Stephen was alone again, with the stars.

The fratrex looked up from a desk cluttered with books, paper, and several inkwells.

“Eh? Good morning, Brother Stephen.” He tapped some sheets of paper on his desk. “Excellent work, this. Are you quite sure of it all?”

“Reverend? As sure as I can be.”

“Well. I am not disappointed in you, I can tell you that.”

“But, Reverend—” He felt as he had in the woods, when the hounds were coming, and for an instant he really had believed Aspar White’s Grim Raver was stooping on him. He had felt the same way when he was halfway through the manuscrift and really understood what he had.

It was that spinning sensation that came of suddenly realizing he truly didn’t understand the world. Of having too many secure assumptions upset at once.

The fratrex sat waiting for him to continue, one eyebrow cocked.

“The nature of the scrift,” Stephen explained. “I should have told you as soon as I knew. I should have stopped before I finished it. I’m sorry. I’ll understand if you ask for my resignation.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” the fratrex said. “If I ask for your resignation, I shall get it, and whether you understand or not is entirely beside the point. But why should I ask for it? You did exactly what I requested, and splendidly.”

“I don’t understand, Reverend. Church policy—”

“Is much better understood by me than by you,” the fratrex finished dryly. “The church has concerns you cannot begin to understand, and which I cannot, at this time, explain to you. Suffice to say that there is evil in the world, yes? And that evil may remain silent for many years, but when it speaks, we should at least know the language. If we do not, it may well talk us all into its spell.”

The implications of that walked through Stephen like a ghost, leaving chill footprints on his heart.

“Reverend, may I confide in you?”

“As in no other.”

“I heard … things on the way here. On the road. At Tor Scath.”

“Go on. Please, sit. You look as if your legs are ready to give way.”

“Thank you, Reverend.” He settled onto a small, hard stool.

“So tell me these things.”

Stephen told him the rumors of the greffyn, and the terrible rites on the abandoned sedos fanes. When he was done, the fratrex leaned forward.

“Such rumors are not unknown to us,” he said, in a low voice. “Nor should they be spread any further. Keep them to yourself, and be assured that the church is not complacent in these matters.”

“Yes, Reverend. It’s just that—the sacrifices at the fanes. They resemble certain rites described in the scrift.”

“I have seen that. What reason do you think I had for wanting this translated?”

“But—I think whoever is doing these things only half understands what they are about.”

“What do you suppose they are about?”

“I’m not sure, but I think they are trying to revive an ancient faneway, one of the forbidden ones. Perhaps the very one that the Black Jester walked to gain his unholy powers. The rites are a sort of test, to help them learn which of the thousand fanes in the forest still have power, and to determine the order in which they ought to be walked.”

“But they aren’t doing the rites correctly, so we have nothing to fear—yet,” the fratrex reasoned.

“Yet my work would help them,” Stephen said softly. “Some of the missing pieces to their puzzle may lie in what you have before you.”

The fratrex nodded solemnly. “Of course, we are aware of that. But we cannot risk fighting this enemy in the dark. They have some of the secrets. They got them somewhere. We cannot oppose them when we know nothing.”

“But, Reverend—” The image of Desmond Spendlove flashed through his mind. “—what if our enemies are in our midst already? In the church itself ?”

The fratrex smiled grimly. “The surest way to catch a weasel is to set a trap,” he said. “And for a trap, bait is needed.”

He stood. “I thought I taught you a lesson in humility, Brother Stephen. I wonder now if I succeeded. I am no doddering fool, and the church is too canny to be cuckolded by evil. But your loose tongue and your questions could do a great deal of damage, do you understand? Perform the tasks I set before you. Do not speak of them to anyone but me. Do your best to keep anyone else from seeing your work.”

“But my work has already been seen.”

“By Brother Desmond, yes. That was not unforeseen. But do better in the future. Hide your progress. Write faulty translations as well as sound ones.”

“Reverend? The translation is done.”

For answer, the fratrex stooped, and from beneath his desk he brought up a large cedar box.

“There are more,” he said. “I expect the same alacrity that you have already shown.” He smiled thinly. “And now, I suggest you meditate and prepare. Soon you will walk the faneway of Saint Decmanus, and you must be in the proper state of mind.”

Stephen knelt and bowed. “Thank you, Reverend. And I apologize for any impertinence. I assure you it comes entirely from concern for the welfare of the church.”

“In this place, that is my concern,” the fratrex reminded him. He waved the back of his hand. “Go on,” he said. “Put away your worries, and prepare for revelations.”

But Stephen left feeling that he had already had one revelation too many. He feared another might break him.

13 The Briar King

Morning’s soft stirring found Aspar still awake, legs cramping beneath him, bow still strung.

Whatever had come in the night had gone with it, leaving only the memory of its stink. And when Winna began to wake, Aspar stepped cautiously into the light and gazed around him.

Sun maidens were kissing the leaves high above, and though shadows lay long on the earth, they all pointed back toward the way from which Aspar and Winna had come. Before them, the forest grew thinner, and not far away, Aspar could reckon the end of it, by the open look of the treetops.

He inspected the damp leaf litter for some sign of what had come stalking the night before, but found no track or spoor, no broken branches, fur or feathers. This left him wondering if his senses hadn’t betrayed him, somehow. He was, after all, on a Sefry errand, where truth and lies mixed in the same muddy water.

“Good morning to you, Aspar,” Winna said. “Didn’t you sleep at all?”

He grinned wryly. “Not likely.”

“We agreed that we would share the watches,” she reminded him, exasperation in her voice. “You should have waked me.”

“You can have tomorrow night, then, the whole thing,” he promised. “Anyhow, look, I think we’re nearly out of the forest.” He nodded in the direction where the trees thinned.

Winna stretched and yawned. “Looks the same to me, but I’ll take your word for it. Did we have any visitors in the night?”

“Something came out, but it made no sound and left no prints. It went away before the dawn.”

Winna frowned. “I dreamed of something that smelled foul.”

“The foul smell wasn’t a dream,” Aspar said. “That’s for certain.”

“Could it—could it have been the Briar King himself ?” she wondered.

“Grim, I hope not,” Aspar swore. “Whatever was out in the dark, I never want to see it.”

Winna looked unsettled at that, but she didn’t say anything.

“What now?” she asked instead.

“I suppose we go on, and see what there is to see. Do you need food?”

“Not yet. We can eat in a while. If there are more of those spiders overhead, I’d like to be out from under ’em. Saints, yes! They crawled all through my dreams, too.”

As the space widened between the trunks of the trees the white, strawlike ground cover gave way to ferns and horsetails, then to bushier growth—rambling mounds of blackberry bushes, knee-high catgrass and broomsedge, grapevines groping over all. For Aspar, it was a relief to see plants he knew, by Grim’s bloody eye!

At last, just short of midday, they left the forest behind them. The trees ended rather abruptly, giving way to a gently rolling valley floor. Mountains framed every direction, adding force to Aspar’s guess that the only way in and out of the valley—short of crawling across the icy glaciers—was probably the way they had come.

The fields were brushy with grass and thistle and wild primrose, but riddled with enough animal trails to make the going easy most of the time.

If they had anywhere to go, which they didn’t.

They struck on toward the far valley wall, but slowly. Aspar wondered just what in the name of the Sarnwood witch he was looking for.

It was a bell later when Winna pointed off to their right. “What’s that?” she asked.

Aspar had already noticed what she was gesturing at—a line of small trees, not much taller than the grass, marching toward the valley wall, not quite paralleling their own path.

“A stream, most likely,” he grunted.

“Most likely,” Winna conceded. “But it seems odd to me.”

“Nothing odd about it,” Aspar argued.

“What would it hurt to have a look?” Winna asked. “I don’t see anything else even a little strange.”

“You’ve a point,” he allowed. They turned their steps that direction.

After a few hundred paces, Winna asked, “Aspar, what do the Sefry expect us to do here?”

“Find the Briar King, I reckon.”

“Just find him?”

“That’s what Mother Gastya said,” Aspar replied.

Winna nodded. “Yah. But aren’t you the one who says the Sefry always lie?”

“I am,” Aspar admitted. “But that doesn’t matter. Whatever they want of me, I would have come here eventually. I’ve lived in this forest all of my life, Winn. Something’s wrong with it. Very wrong.” He chewed his lip, then cleared his throat. “I think it’s dying. I think the greffyn has something to do with it, and if there is a Briar King, and he’s at the bottom of this rot—I need to know.”

“But suppose Mother Gastya lied. Suppose this isn’t where the Briar King is. What if she sent you as far from him as she could?”

“I thought of that. I took the chance.” He glanced at her. “But that’s not what you’re worried about, is it? You’re worried that he is here.”

For a few moments the swishing of Winna’s tattered skirts against the grass was the only sound. “I know he’s here,” she said finally. “But what if the Sefry sent you to him so he could kill you?”

“If Mother Gastya wanted me dead, she needed only to have kept silent for another few heartbeats, back in Rewn Aluth,” Aspar pointed out. “Whatever the Sefry want, it’s not just my death.”

“I guess not,” Winna conceded. Then she stopped.

They had reached the line of small trees. “I don’t see a stream.”

“No,” Aspar said slowly.

The trees were very small versions of the briar trees. They stood just over waist high.

“Look how regular they’re spaced,” Winna said. “Like somebody planted them.”

“There’s something else,” Aspar said, crouching. “Something …” It reminded him of tracking, somehow. But it took him another twenty heartbeats to understand why.

“They’re planted like a man’s footsteps,” he said. “A big man. But see? It’s as if at every stride, a tree sprang up.” He glanced back over his shoulder. The trail of trees led back into the forest—and it led ahead, to the valley wall.

“What’s that up there?”

Aspar followed the imaginary line her finger traced in the air. Far off—half a league, maybe—the row of trees led to some sort of dome. It looked man-made.

“A building?” he speculated. “It looks a little like a Watau longhouse.”

It wasn’t a longhouse. His mother’s people built their lodgings of freshly cut young trees, bending them into arches and then covering all with shingles of bark. The structure he and Winna beheld was likewise made of trees—but they were still alive, thrusting strong roots into the soil and lacing their branches tightly together. It was shaped like a giant bird’s nest, turned upside down. It stood perhaps twenty yards high at its apex.

So tight and dense were the trees woven that nothing could be seen within, even when they drew near enough to touch it.

A circuit of the weird, living structure led them to an opening, of sorts—a twisting path between the trunks and branches just large enough for Aspar to squeeze through. No sound came from within.

“You’ll stay here,” Aspar told Winna.

Winna frowned at him. “Aspar White, I’ve climbed mountains, swum in freezing water, and endured thunderstorms with you. I’ve saved your life twice now, by my count—”

“Winna, do this for me.”

“Give me a reason to. One that makes sense.”

He stared at her, then took a step and put his palm to her cheek. “Because this is all different,” he said. “There’s nothing canny, here. Who knows which stories are true, and which are lies? Who knows but that if the gaze of the greffyn brings faintness, the eyes of the Briar King might not slay in a single blink?” He kissed her. “Because I love you, Winna, and would protect you, whether you want me to or not. And finally, if something happens to me, someone must get word to the king, and the other holters. Someone has to save my forest.”

She closed her eyes for a long time, and when she opened them, they were smiling and moist. “I love you, too, you great lout. Just come out alive, will you? And then take me out of this place. I couldn’t find my way back alone anyhow.”

“I’ll do that,” he said.

A moment later, he stepped into the trees.

Immediately, something went strange. He felt a sort of shock, like he might feel if he had nodded off, then jerked his head up suddenly. A bumblebee seemed to be buzzing someplace inside his chest, accompanied by a rhythmic humming from his lungs.

He continued on, following the winding path, and felt deepness, as if he were far beneath the earth.

There was a scent, too, powerful and changeable, never the same from one breath to the next, and yet somehow consistent. It was pine sap, bear fur, snake musk, burning hickory, sour sweat, week-old carcass, rotting fruit, horse piss, roses. It grew stronger as he approached, and seemed to settle, to become less varied, until the smell of death and flowers filled his head.

Thus Aspar turned the last corner of the maze and beheld the Briar King.

He was shadow-shape, caught in the thousand tiny needles of light piercing the gaps in the roof of the living hall. He was thorns and primrose, root and branch and knotted vines, tendril-fingered. His beard and hair were of trailing gray and green moss, and hornlike limbs twisted up from his head.

But his face—his face was mottled lichen papered on human skull, black flowers blooming from his eye sockets. And as Aspar watched, the king turned slowly to face him, and the roses opened wider, still blooming.

Aspar opened his mouth, but he didn’t say anything. He couldn’t look away from those widening eyes, the ebony stamens that seemed to grow larger until they were the only things in the world. The stench of death and perfume choked him, and his limbs began to twitch, his body felt violent, itchy, and suddenly, without warning, his vision cracked like a mirror and from behind it he saw … things.

He saw the ironoaks—his ironoaks, the tyrants—rotting, limbs snapping, plagues of worms and flies bursting from beneath their putrefying bark like maggots from a corpse. He saw the Warlock River running black, deer falling in their tracks, green things shriveling and melting into a viscous pus. He smelled the putrefaction. The sickness he had felt on touching the greffyn’s spoor hit him again, a hundred times stronger, and he doubled to vomit, and then—

—then he went mad.

The next time he knew anything clearly, it was agony. His shoulder was on fire.

“Aspar?”

He looked up through a film of pain to see Winna, staring frantically down at him. They were in a stand of trees, someplace. Poplars. He had something gripped in his hand.

“Aspar, is that you? Are you sensible?”

“I—wha’s happening?”

“You were gone—” Her head suddenly jerked up, and when she started again, her voice was much lower. “You were in there for three days! The tree house closed up, and I couldn’t go in after you. Then when you came out, you ran like a wild man. I chased you.”

He clawed at his shoulder and found a crude bandage, soaked in blood.

“The one-eyed man and his band are here. You attacked them, and they shot you. They’re hunting for us, now.”

“Fend? He’s here?”

“Shhh. I think they’re close.”

“Three days?” Aspar grunted. “How can that be?” He looked around. “My bow? Where is it?” He looked dully at what he held in his hand. It was a horn, a white bone horn, incised with weird figures. Where had he gotten that?

“Still with the Briar King, I guess. When you came out, you didn’t—” Her head jerked up again, and she raised a dirk. It was Aspar’s dirk.

“Give me that,” he grunted. “I can still fight.” He put the horn in his haversack and reached for the weapon.

“But I wouldn’t advise it,” a familiar voice said.

A circle of bows appeared around them, and there, in As-par’s pain-reddened vision, stood a Sefry in a broad-brimmed hat, bundled against the pale amber evening that suffused the scene. He wore a jerkin and cloak of umber felt, the same color as his hat. He had one eye of pale green, and where the other eye ought to be was a yellow patch.

“Fend,” Aspar snarled. “Come and die.”

Fend laughed. “No, thank you,” he said.

“Stay back,” Winna said. “I’ll cut the first to come near.”

“We won’t come near, then,” Fend said reasonably. “We’ll fill you both with shafts from a distance. Aspar, tell your little girl to put down her knife and come here.”

Aspar chewed that for less than a heartbeat. “Do it, Winna,” Aspar said.

“Asp—”

“He’ll kill you if you don’t.”

“What about you?”

“Girl,” Fend said, “I’ve nothing against you, really. I can’t allow Aspar to live, of course. He knows it, and so do I. But he also knows that if you behave, I might let you live.”

“And leave her alone,” Aspar said. “Promise to do her no harm.”

“Why should I?” Fend asked. “After all, there are so many kinds of harm. She might even come to like some of them.”

Winna reversed the knife and placed it against her breast. “You can forget that,” she said.

But in the next eye blink, the dirk was on the ground, and Winna was screaming and staring wide-eyed at an arrow shaft neatly piercing her palm.

“Winna!” Aspar shrieked. And then, “Fend!” An impossible energy lurched into Aspar’s limbs, and he picked up the knife, hurling himself forward.

A second shaft struck him in the thigh, a third in his arm. Even as he staggered, he knew they were missing his vitals on purpose, and he remembered the bodies around the old sedos shrine on the Taff, tortured and bled while they were still alive.

He got back up, grimacing, and heard Fend’s laughter.

“Oh, Aspar. I so admire your tenacity.”

“I’ll kill you, Fend,” Aspar said quietly. “Believe it, you bitchson.” He twisted the shaft in his thigh until it snapped. He went light-headed from the pain, but then took another step toward the one-eyed Sefry. The point hadn’t cut any tendons.

Suddenly, Fend’s men gave ground, and Fend himself stepped back, eyes widening. Aspar felt an instant’s savage satisfaction before he realized it wasn’t him they feared.

It was the greffyn. It had stepped from the wood very, very quietly. With silent purpose it padded toward Aspar.

“Well,” Fend said. “It’s chosen you. I would have preferred to kill you myself, but I imagine this will do. Good-bye, Aspar.”

Aspar blinked once at the greffyn, less than a kingsyard away. Then he turned and ran. Fend laughed again.

The greffyn seemed in no hurry to finish him. Aspar ran as if in a nightmare, his feet cloying to the ground. If he could only escape the greffyn and find his bow, he might have a chance to save Winna.

He clung to that thought, to keep him going, to keep his heart pumping blood and his legs moving. He didn’t look back, but he could hear the greffyn behind him now, hissing along through the grass. Enjoying the chase, perhaps, like the cat it resembled.

He knew where he was, now, anyway. In his madness, he had gone farther along the canyon wall. Ahead he could see the Briar King’s weird, living barrow. If he could reach it, the greffyn might not be able to squeeze through the narrow opening. And his bow was in there.

He ran on, but his legs called a halt, and his body left his feet behind. With dull surprise, he found his face pressed into the earth.

He managed to roll over, with the dirk held up.

The greffyn was there, looking down at him with saucer-size eyes.

Aspar’s other hand strayed to his belt, and found his ax.

The greffyn came a step closer and lowered its head. It sniffed at him. It clacked its jaws, then came even closer and sniffed again.

“Just a little closer,” Aspar said, gripping his ax. “Come on, what are you waiting for?”

But it sniffed once more, and then drew back.

Aspar didn’t know what that meant, but he took the opportunity to regain his feet. He turned and continued on, staggering often, but the greffyn didn’t follow.

Its gaze did, however, the sweet, hot sickness that he had known three times already. It wasn’t as bad, this time. Maybe the medicine Mother Gastya had done to cure him back in Rewn Aluth was still working. Maybe that was why the greffyn hadn’t wanted to touch him.

Whatever the case, two arrow wounds and the greffyn’s deadly gaze proved finally too much. He fell into the tall grass and slept, and dreamt foul Black Marys.

He awoke smeared with his own vomit. His wounds were no longer bleeding, but they were throbbing and red, and felt hellishly hot.

He got up anyway, thinking of Winna in Fend’s hands. He started a small fire and plucked out the remaining arrow, then seared out the wounds with a glowing coal. He pressed the paste Mother Gastya had given him into the cauterized holes and bound them with scraps of his shirt.

The night came and went before he could manage to stagger more than a few yards at a time, but the sun seemed to bring him new strength, and he grimly rose to search for Fend, and his men, and Winna. Most of all, Winna.

He found only their trail, leading back into the briar tree forest.

Implacably, wishing his head would clear, wishing the pain would ease off instead of getting worse with each step, he set off after them.

“I will kill you, Fend,” he murmured. “By Grim, I will. I will.”

He repeated it until it made no sense, until long after he was capable of rational thought.

But even then, he didn’t stop moving. Only death could stop him.