The Briar King

by Greg Keyes

  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.

  CHAPTER SIX

  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 b
een 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.”