by Greg Keyes
Stephen started to retort, but Fend’s words struck home. He wasn’t afraid of the man anymore. He hadn’t actually been afraid even when he had thought Fend was about to kill him.
“This is about the faneway, then,” Stephen said.
“Exactly, pathikh.”
“I’ve walked one faneway and been nearly killed by another,” Stephen said. “I’m reluctant to travel this one until I know more about it.” But even as he said it, he suddenly felt like the old, timid Stephen again.
“What do you need to know?” Fend challenged. You are Kauron’s heir. The power of this mountain is yours. It is well past time for you to take it.”
“I haven’t found the Alq yet,” Stephen temporized. “I’ve found some interesting texts in the old section.”
“Pathikh,” Fend replied. “The Alq will show itself to you after you’ve walked the faneway and not before. Didn’t you know that?”
Stephen stared at the Sefry while he tried to absorb that.
“Why hasn’t anyone mentioned this?” he asked, glancing back at Adhrekh, his valet.
The other Sefry looked surprised, too. “We thought you knew that, pathikh,” he replied. “You’re Kauron’s heir.”
Stephen closed his eyes. “I’ve been looking for the Alq for three months.”
“That wasn’t clear to us,” Fend replied.
“What do you think I’ve spent all of my time doing?” Stephen asked.
“Reading books,” Fend said. “Reading books when you’re right here in the mountain.”
“It’s a big mountain…” Stephen started, then waved it away. “From now on, don’t take for granted that I know anything, please.”
“Then you’ll walk the faneway?”
Stephen sighed. “Fine,” he said. “Have someone show me the route.”
Fend blinked. His mouth opened, and his eyes darted past Stephen to Adhrekh.
“What?” Stephen asked.
“Pathikh,” the Aitivar said, “we don’t know where the faneway is. Only Kauron’s heir knows that.”
Stephen turned and stared at the man for a moment and saw he was serious. He looked back at Fend, and then the absurdity was suddenly too much to contain, and he started to laugh. Fend and Adhrekh didn’t seem to think it was funny, which made the whole thing even funnier, and soon he had tears in his eyes and the back of his head had begun to ache.
“Well,” he said when he could finally speak again, “there we go. Quite a situation. So my answer to you, Fend, is that I will walk the faneway when I find it. Do you have any further dismissive comments regarding the need to do research in the library?”
Fend glowered for a moment, then shook his head.
“No, pathikh.”
“Wonderful. Now leave me, please, unless you’ve got another bit of absolutely crucial information you’ve failed to mention to me.”
“Nothing I can think of,” Fend replied. He knelt, stood, saluted, and returned his weapon to its sheath. Then he held up a finger. “Except this. I’ve word of where Praefec Hespero is hiding,” he said. “I’d like to personally take charge of his capture.”
“Favor for an old friend?”
Fend stiffened. “Hespero was never my friend. Only a necessary ally for a time.”
“Find him, then,” Stephen said. “Bring him here.”
He watched the Sefry leave. Was he really going after Hespero?
It didn’t matter. Fend was leaving, and that was good.
He retired to the library, where he felt safest. His guard of four followed quietly behind him.
They made him almost as nervous as Fend did. Sefry were nothing new to Stephen. When he was growing up in Virgenya, they had been a fact of life.
But at a distance. The Sefry of his experience traveled in caravans. They danced, sang, told fortunes. They sold things from far away and counterfeit relics. He’d rarely seen one with a sword.
They did not come calling, they did not go to school, they did not pray in chapels or visit fanes. They moved in the world of men and women, but rarely did they socialize with them. Of all the former slaves of the Skasloi, they were the most apart.
The Aitivar did not sing or dance, so far as he knew, but they could fight like monsters. Twelve of them had routed three times their number in the battle below the mountain. They were decidedly unlike any of their race he had ever known, but then, he never had really known a Sefry, had he? Aspar had. He’d been raised by one, and he held that they were all liars, absolutely not to be trusted. Fend certainly bore out that assertion. But the Aitivar—he still didn’t know what motivated them. They claimed to have been waiting for him, Kauron’s heir, but they were a bit gray as to why.
He noticed they were still bunched around him.
“I’m going to do a bit of research,” Stephen said. “I don’t need you right at my elbow.”
“You heard him,” Adhrekh said. “Take posts.”
Stephen turned to the vast collection of scrifti. A better collection he had never seen, not in any monastery or scriftorium. At this point, he had only the faintest idea of what was here or how it was organized. He’d found a very interesting section in an early form of Vadhiian he had never encountered before, and there were at least fifty scrifti in the section. Most seemed to be accounting records of some sort, and as much as he wanted to translate them, it seemed more pressing to divine the secrets of the mountain.
Still, daunting as the scriftorium was, the instincts and intuition of his training and saint-given gifts seemed to lead him roughly toward what he wanted. When he thought of a subject, there seemed a certain obvious logic that took him to it, although he found he couldn’t explain to Zemlé the workings of that logic.
And now, considering the mysteries of the Sefry, he found himself standing before a wall of scrifti, some bound, some rolled and sealed in bone tubes, some of the oldest placed flat in cedar boxes.
Sefry Charms and Fancies. Alis Harriot and the False Knight. Secrets of the Halafolk. The Secret Commonwealth…
He scanned along, looking for a history, but most of the books continued in the same vein until he came across a plain black volume with no title. He felt something like the sort of shock one often got on cold winter days when walking on a rug and touching something metal. Curious, he drew it forth.
The cover was only that, a brittle leather case enclosing a lacquered wooden box. The top lifted off easily, revealing sheets of lead tissue. He suddenly knew he had something very old. Excited, he peered more closely.
No one had ever heard the Sefry language; under the Skasloi, they seem to have abandoned their ancient tongue or tongues and adopted cants based on the Mannish languages around them. But Stephen had a sudden hope that that was what he might be holding, for the faint script impressed into the metal was not one he had ever seen before. It was flowing and beautiful but utterly unknown.
Or so he thought until he noticed the first line, and there something looked familiar. He had seen this script before, in simpler form, not flowing together but in distinct characters carved in stone.
Virgenyan tombstones, the oldest.
He blinked as the first line suddenly jumped out at him:
“My Journal and Testament. Virgenya Dare.”
He choked back a gasp. This was the book he’d been sent here to recover. It was the reason he’d been trying to find the Alq, the hidden heart of the mountain, because he’d assumed that was where such a treasure would be.
Maybe it wasn’t the real thing. Surely there had been many fakes.
Hands trembling, he took the box to one of the stone tables, lit a lamp, and found some vellum and a pen and ink to take notes. Once that was all assembled, he gingerly lifted the first sheet and held it to the light. The impression was faded, the script very difficult to make out, and the Virgenyan incredibly archaic. Without his saint-touched sense, he might not have been able to read it.
MY JOURNAL AND TESTAMENT. VIRGENYA DARE.
MY FATHER H
AS TAUGHT ME TO WRITE, BUT IT IS DIFFICULT TO FIND SOMETHING TO WRITE ON OR THE CHANCE TO DO IT. I WILL NOT WASTE WORDS. MY FATHER HAS DIED OF GALL ROT IN THE FESTER. HERE IS HIS ONLY MONUMENT, AND I GIVE IT WITH THE YEAR AS HE RECKONED IT.
ANANIAS DARE
HUSBAND AND FATHER.
B. 1560 D. 1599
I HAVE FOUND MORE LEAD TISSUE.
FATHER SAID I SHOULD WRITE, BUT I’M NOT SURE WHAT TO WRITE.
I AM VIRGENYA DARE, AND I AM A SLAVE. I WOULD NOT EVEN KNOW THAT WORD IF MY FATHER HAD NOT TAUGHT IT TO ME. HE SAID NO ONE USES IT BECAUSE HERE, THERE IS NO OTHER CONDITION TO COMPARE OURS TO. THERE ARE THE MASTERS, AND THERE IS US, AND THERE ISN’T ANYTHING ELSE. BUT FATHER SAID THAT WHERE WE COME FROM, SOME PEOPLE WERE SLAVES AND SOME WERE NOT. I THOUGHT AT FIRST HE MEANT THAT IN THE OTHER WORLD SOME MEN WERE ALSO MASTERS, BUT THAT ISN’T WHAT HE MEANT, ALTHOUGH HE SAID THAT WAS TRUE ALSO.
I HAVE LIVED WITH THE MASTER SINCE I WAS FIVE. I DO WHAT PLEASES HIM, AND IF I DO NOT, I AM HURT, AND THAT SOMETIMES PLEASES HIM, TOO. HE CALLS ME EXHREY (I INVENT A SPELLING HERE), WHICH MEANS “DAUGHTER.” THE MASTERS DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN OF THEIR OWN, BUT MY MASTER HAS HAD MANY MANNISH CHILDREN, ALTHOUGH ONLY ONE AT A TIME. I HAVE FOUND THE BONES OF MANY OF THEM.
I SLEEP ON A STONE IN HIS CHAMBER. SOMETIMES HE FORGETS TO FEED ME FOR A FEW DAYS. WHEN HE WILL BE GONE FOR A LONG TIME, HE LEAVES THE DOOR OPEN SO THE OTHER HOUSE STAFF CAN TAKE CARE OF ME. IT WAS TIMES LIKE THAT I USED TO SEE MY FATHER, FOR THEY WOULD SMUGGLE HIM TO THE OUTER COURTS. I HAVE TEACHERS, ALSO, WHO SCHOOL ME IN THE ANTICS THAT PLEASE THE MASTER. IN THE WAYS OF THE SKASLOI CHILDREN WHO ARE NO MORE. SOMETIMES I AM LEARNT OTHER THINGS.
That brought Stephen to the end of the first sheet. He lifted it and went to the next and saw that it was different. The hand was the same, but the characters weren’t all Virgenyan and neither was the language.
“Like the epistle,” he murmured. “A cipher.”
He lifted his pen to begin the work of translating it and realized with a start that his hand had been in motion while he’d been reading. He looked to see what he had written, and when he did, crawlers went up his neck. It was in Vahiian, and the hand was an oddly angular scrawl not at all his own:
SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS IN THE MOUNTAIN. IT DOES NOT MEAN YOU WELL.
TELL NO ONE YOU’VE FOUND THE BOOK.
CHAPTER SIX
A MESSAGE FROM MOTHER
ASPAR DROPPED belly-down when he saw the greffyn. That put it out of sight, but he still could feel the burn of its yellow eyes through the trees. He glanced up at Leshya in the branches above him. She touched her eye with two fingers, then shook her head no. It hadn’t seen him.
Gradually he raised his head until he was peering down the streambed.
He counted forty-three riders. Three of them were Sefry, the rest human. But that didn’t end the count of the procession. He’d spied at least three greffyns: horse-size beasts with beaked heads and catlike bodies, if one discounted the scales and coarse hair that covered them. Four vaguely manlike utins loped alongside the horses, mostly on all fours, occasionally raising their spidery limbs to grasp and swing from low branches. A manticore like the one he and Leshya had killed that morning finished up the unlikely company.
Grim, Aspar wondered, is all of that really for me?
He all but held his breath until they had passed. Then he and Leshya compared their count.
“I think there may be one more greffyn or something about that size and shape,” she said. “Following a few dozen kingsyards behind and deeper in the woods. Other than that, that’s about the size of it.”
“I wonder what they left up in the pass.”
She thought about that for a moment. “The lead riders. Did you get a good look at them?”
“They were Sefry. Your lot?”
“Yes. Aitivar. But the three leading, those were all three Vaix.”
“Vaix?”
“Aitivar warriors.”
“Only three?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. The Mannish are probably fighting men. But there are only twelve Vaix at any given time. They aren’t ordinary warriors. They’re fast, strong, very skilled, very hard to kill.”
“Like that Hansan knight?”
“Hard to kill, not impossible. But they have feyswords and other arms inherited from the old times.” Her mouth quirked. “My point is, Fend has a quarter of his warriors out looking for you. You should be flattered.”
“Not flattered enough. He’s not with them.” He frowned. “How do you know Fend is their master?”
“Because I believe he drank the blood of the waurm you killed. I think he’s the Blood Knight, which means the Aitivar have won.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Well, this isn’t the time to talk about it,” she said.
“No, that would’ve been sometime in the last four months.”
“I told you—”
“Yah. When there’s a chance, you’re telling me. But sceat, yah, now we’ve got to get out of here. So, back to the question: How many do you think they have in the pass?”
“Too many,” she said. “But I can’t think of another way to leave.”
“I can,” Aspar said.
She lifted an eyebrow.
Aspar grabbed at a scraggly yellow pine as the rotten shale under his foot shifted and then snapped. He watched it turn in the air, the flat fragments almost seeming to glide on their long way down.
He felt the pine start to pull up from the roots and, with a grunt, pushed with the foot that still had purchase—and fell forward.
His target was a sapling growing up from the narrow edge below. He caught it, but it bent like a green bow, and he lost his grip and went back out into the air, turning, flailing for any purchase at all. Everything seemed to be out of reach.
Then something caught him. At first he had the impression of a giant spiderweb because it sagged as his weight went into it. He lay there for a moment, blinking, feeling the air all around him. The almost vertical slope stretched twenty kingsyards above, shattered stone and crevices filled with soil supporting a tenacious forest. Higher, the sky was simple and blue.
About four kingsyards up, Leshya’s face peeked down from where she was braced in the roots of a hemlock.
“That was interesting,” she said. “How I wonder what you will do next.”
A quick survey showed Aspar that he’d fallen into a sort of hammock of wild grapevines. Just below, the stubborn forest gave way to a gray stone cliff. If the vines failed to support him, there was nothing between him and the jumble of fallen rock a hundred yards below. He couldn’t even see the river at the bottom of the gorge, so there wasn’t much hope of hitting that.
He looked back in the direction from which he’d fallen. He and Leshya had been working their way down a groove worn by water running off the plateau. Not quite as perpendicular as the rest of the precipice, it was cluttered with enough debris to offer purchase, or at least so it had seemed from above. It was starting to look more dubious now as the water track steepened. The gray stone was harder, it seemed, than the shale above.
“What can you see from there?” Leshya asked.
“The channel hits the gray rock and gets steeper,” he said.
“Steeper?” she said dubiously. “Or impossible?”
“Steeper. Work your way to the deepest cut and there should be handholds. Below that, there’s a talus slope, like I reckoned.”
“How far below that?”
“I maun thirty kingsyards.”
“Oh, is that all? Thirty kingsyards of wedging our fingers and boot tips in cracks?”
“If you’ve got a better idea…”
“I do. Let’s go back up and fight them all.”
Aspar grabbed the thickest vine and carefully pulled himself to a sitting position. The natural net creaked and sagged, and leaves and chunks of rotting wood fell silently past him. Then he started working his way toward the rock face, curs
ing Grim in advance should a vine come unanchored and send him to the bonehouse.
He reached the wall and managed to scrabble sideways to the ledge, where he spent a few moments appreciating having something solid between him and the earth’s beckoning.
He turned at a slight noise and found Leshya on the shelf just above him.
“How’s the leg?” she asked.
Aspar realized he was wheezing as if he had just run for half a day. His heart felt weak, and his arms already were trembling from fatigue.
“It’s fine,” he said.
“Here,” Leshya said, holding out her hand.
She helped him up, and together they sat, regarding the descent still before them.
“At least we don’t have to go up it,” Leshya said.
“Sceat,” Aspar replied, wiping the sweat from his brow.
It had looked somehow better from the other angle. Now he could see the river.
“You might make it to the talus slope,” she said. “But the river…”
“Yah,” Aspar snarled.
The river had dug itself down another hundred kingsyards. Although he couldn’t see the canyon wall on his side, the other side looked as smooth as a fawn’s coat.
“We need rope,” he said, “and lots of it.” He glanced back at the vines.
“No,” Leshya said.
He didn’t answer, because she was right. Instead he scrutinized the gorge, hoping to find something he had missed.
“Come on,” Leshya said. “Let’s make it to the slope. At least there we’ll be able to camp. Maybe we’ll see a way to the river, maybe we won’t. But if they don’t think to look down here, we could survive for a while.”
“Yah,” Aspar said. “You said this was a stupid idea.”
“It was the only idea, Aspar. And here we are.”
“From here I might be able to get back up. Certain you could.”
“Nothing up there we want,” the Sefry replied. “Are you ready?”
“Yah.”
