The Briar King

by Greg Keyes

  “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.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  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 sig
ht, 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 tim
e 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.