The Briar King

by Greg Keyes

  Robert gestured, and the torturer took the Safnian's ear in a grip of red-hot tongs. The prince's lean body arched, as if trying to break his own back and bend double, and this time a ragged sigh escaped him, but nothing more.

  “'Twill take but a little time,” the torturer told Robert. “He will confess to us.”

  William clasped his hands behind his back, trying not to fidget.

  “Robert,” he grunted. “A word.”

  “Of course, dear brother.” He nodded to the torturer. “Continue,” he said.

  “No,” William said. “Respite, until we've spoken.”

  “But brother dear—”

  “Respite,” William said firmly.

  Robert lifted his hands. “Oh, very well. But this is an art, Wilm. If you ask the painter to lift his brush in midstroke—” But he saw William meant it, and broke off. They moved away, into the dank and vaulted hall of the dungeons below Eslen, where they could speak unheard.

  “What troubles you, brother?”

  “I am altogether unconvinced that this man is dishonest.”

  Robert folded his arms. “The birds that twitter in my ear say otherwise,” he said.

  “Your birds have been magpies before,” William said, “leading us astray. Now is such a time.”

  “You cannot be certain. Let us continue until all doubt is cleared away.”

  “And if we find him innocent after all? They have ships in Safnia, you know. They might lend those ships to our enemies, and in a time when war approaches, that is no small thing.”

  Robert's eyebrows arched. “Are you joking with me, Wilm?”

  “What joke can you possibly hear in that?”

  “I have already given it out that the prince and all of his retainers were killed by Rovish pirates in the Sea of Ale. Word of what we do here will not travel.”

  “You don't expect me to have this man murdered,” William said incredulously.

  “What sort of king are you? What sort of brother?”

  “If he is innocent—”

  “He is not,” Robert exploded. “He is Safnian, born of a thousand years of oily southern lies. Of course he seems convincing. But he will confess, and he will die, and Lesbeth's betrayal will be avenged. My sources are not mistaken, Wilm.”

  “And how does this bring our sister back to us, Robert? Revenge is a sad feast next to a loved one restored.”

  “We will have both, I promise you, Wilm. You have met Austrobaurg's conditions; twenty ships have been sent to the basin of the Saurga Sea already.”

  “And you trust Austrobaurg to keep his word?”

  “He is an ambitious coward; there is no more trustworthy sort of man, so long as you understand them. He will do as he says.”

  “Austrobaurg maimed Lesbeth, Robert. How can he hope to stay our revenge if he returns her to us?”

  “Because if you try to take revenge, he will send word to the lords of Liery that you have been aiding his cause against their allies. Certainly he can produce proof.”

  “And you did not foresee this?”

  “Indeed I did,” Robert said. “And I saw it as the only guarantee of Lesbeth's safe homecoming.”

  “You should have been clear about that, then.”

  Robert lifted his nose a fraction. “You are emperor. If you cannot see the consequences … I am not your only councilor, brother.”

  “Liery must never know what we have done.”

  “Agreed. For that matter, it must never be known abroad that Lesbeth was ever taken captive. It would make us seem weak, which we can ill afford even in the best of times. No, this entire business must be erased. Austrobaurg will not talk. Lesbeth is our sister.”

  “And that leaves Cheiso,” William grunted. “Very well.”

  Robert bowed his head, then lifted his eyes. “You need not witness the rest. It may take some time.”

  William frowned, but nodded. “If he confesses, I'll want to hear it. Do not kill him too quickly.”

  Robert smiled grimly. “The man who betrayed Lesbeth shall not die easily.”

  William's steps through the dungeon were slow ones. The vague fear that had lived in him for months was deepening, and at last it was beginning to take sharper form.

  His reign had known border squabbles and provincial uprisings, but it had escaped real war. On the surface, this affair with Saltmark seemed another such petty dispute, yet William felt as if he and the empire were balanced on the tip of a needle. His enemies were striking somehow into his very house—first Muriele and then Lesbeth. They were laughing at him, the impotent king of the most powerful empire in the world.

  And while Robert spun dark webs to snare their troubles, William did nothing. Maybe Robert ought to be king.

  William paused, suddenly realizing that his steps had not taken him nearer the stairway that led to the palace, but rather, deeper into the dungeons. Torches still flickered here, clouding the dank air with scorched oil, but the passage faded into darkness. He stood there a moment, peering into it. How many years since he had been that way? Twenty?

  Yes, since the day his father first showed him what lay in the deepest dungeon of Eslen castle. He had never returned.

  He knew a moment of panic, and checked himself from fleeing back up into the light. Then, with something at least pretending to be resolve, he continued on a bit, until he came to a small chamber that was not a cell, but that did have a small wooden door. Through it, William heard a faint, sweet music, a not-quite-familiar tune played on the strings of a theorbo. The key was minor and sad, with small trills like birdsong and full chords that reminded of the sea.

  Hesitating, he waited for a break in the music, but the melody never quite seemed to find its end, teasing the ear with promise of closure but then wafting on like a capricious zephyr.

  Finally, remembering who was king, he rapped on the wooden surface.

  For long moments, nothing happened, but then the music stopped in midphrase, and the door swung inward, silently, on well-oiled hinges, and in the orange light a narrow wedge of ghost-pale face appeared. Eyes of milky white looked upon no world William knew, but the ancient Sefry smiled as if at a secret joke.

  “Your Majesty,” he murmured, in a slight voice. “It has been many years.”

  “How—?” William faltered again. How could those unsighted eyes know him?

  “I know it is you,” the Sefry said, “because the Kept has been whispering for you. You were bound to come.”

  Corpse fingers tickled William's spine. The dead are speaking my name. He remembered that day in his chambers, the day Lesbeth returned. The day he'd first learned about Saltmark from Robert.

  “You will want to speak to him,” the old one said.

  “I don't remember your name, sir,” William said.

  The Sefry smiled, to reveal teeth still white but worn nearly to the gums. “I was never named, my liege. Those marked to keep the key are never named. You may call me Keeper.” He turned, and his silk robe shifted and pulled over what might have been a frame of bone. “I will fetch my key.”

  He vanished into the darkness of his abode, and reappeared a moment later with an iron key gripped in his white fingers. In the other hand he carried a lantern.

  “If you would but light this, Your Majesty,” he said. “Fire and I are not friendly.”

  William took a torch from the wall and got the wick going.

  “How long have you been down here?” William asked. “My father said you were the Keeper in his father's time.” How long do Sefry live?

  “I came with the first of the Dares,” the withered creature said, starting down the hall. “Your ancestors did not trust my predecessor, since he was a servant of the Reiksbaurgs.” He hissed a small laugh. “A wasted fear.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That Keeper no more served the Reiksbaurgs than I serve you, my liege. My task is older by far than any line that ever sat this throne.”

  “You serve the throne itself, th
en, without regard for who sits it?”

  The Sefry's soft footsteps scraped ten times on stone before he softly answered. “I serve this place and this land, without regard for thrones at all.”

  They continued in silence, down a narrow stair that cut through stone in which the black bones of unknown beasts could be seen now and then—here a rib cage, there the empty eyes of a flat and alien skull. It was as if the stone had melted and flowed around them.

  “These bones in the rock,” William asked. “Are they monsters imprisoned by my ancestress, or some older Skasloi sorcery?”

  “There are sorceries more ancient than the Skasloi,” the Keeper murmured. “The world is very old.”

  William imagined his own skull, gazing emptily from the stone across unimaginable gulfs of time. He felt suddenly dizzy, as if suspended over a great pit.

  “We are below Eslen, now,” the Sefry informed him. “We are in all that remains of Ulheqelesh.”

  “Do not speak that name,” William said, trying to control his breathing. Despite the narrowness of the stair, his strange vertigo persisted.

  The Sefry shook his head. “Of all names that might be spoken here, that is the least powerful. Your ancestress destroyed not only the form of the citadel, but the very soul of it. The name is only a sound.”

  “A dread sound.”

  “I will not speak it again, if it bothers you,” the Sefry promised diffidently.

  They continued without speaking, but the way was no longer silent. Along with the scraping of their shoes on the stone there was a hissing, a whispering. William could not make out the words, if indeed there were words, if it were not some movement of air or water in the deeps of the place. And as he drew nearer their destination, it began to sound familiar.

  Was the old man right? Was the Kept calling his name? The words lisped, as if from some creature with no lips, Hriiyah. Hriiyah Darrrr …

  “Why are his guardians never named?” William asked, to shut the voice from his head.

  “You feel why, I think. Names give him a little power. Never fear. He is feeble, and what strength he has I will check.”

  “You're certain?”

  “It is my only duty, Sire. Your grandfather did come here often, your father, as well. They trusted me.”

  “Very well.” He stopped, staring at the door that appeared before them. It was iron, but despite the damp no rust marred its surface. In the lamplight it was black, and the curling characters that grooved its surface were blacker still. A faint smell hung in the air, a bit like burning resin.

  The Keeper approached the door and placed his key in one of two locks. But he paused.

  “You need not do this, Sire,” the Sefry said. “You may always turn back.”

  He thinks me weaker than my father and grandfather, William thought, ashamed. He senses a lack of will.

  “I think I must continue,” he said.

  “Then it needs the other key.”

  William nodded and reached beneath his doublet to the chain that hung there, and extracted the key he had worn since taking the throne, the key that every king of Crotheny had worn since the days of the elder Cavarum. William himself normally didn't wear it; its weight felt cold against his breast, and most days it remained in a coffer near his bed. He had put it on that morning before descending to the dungeons.

  Like the door it fitted, the key was black metal, and like the door, it seemed impervious to rust and all other marks of time's scythe.

  He placed the key in the lock and turned it. There was hardly any sound, just the faintest of snicks from somewhere within the great portal.

  I am king, William thought. This is my prerogative. I am not afraid.

  He grasped the handle of the door and tugged, and felt the amazing mass of it. Yet despite its inertia, it moved, almost as if it was the touch of his hand rather than the strength of his arm that moved it.

  The voice grew louder and broke into a weird, low sound that was perhaps a laugh.

  “And now, Sire, you must extinguish the lantern,” the Keeper said, “before we open the inner door. Light has no place there.”

  “I remember. You can guide me?”

  “That is my task, Sire. I am not yet too infirm for it.”

  William snuffed the lantern, and black welled up from the dark heart of the world. He felt the press of ancient bones all around him, as if in the darkness the stone were flowing, creeping closer to take him in.

  A moment later, he heard the sound of metal sliding, and the odor strengthened and bittered. He had smelled something like it once in his own sweat, just after an unexpected bee-sting.

  “Qexqaneh,” the Sefry said, in the loudest voice William had yet heard him use. “Qexqanehilhidhitholuh, uleqedhinikhu.”

  “Of course,” a voice burred, so close and familiar it made William jump. “Of course. There you are, Emperor of Crotheny. There you are, my sweet lord.”

  The tone was not mocking, nor were the words, quite. Nevertheless, William felt mocked.

  “I am emperor,” he said, with forced confidence. “Speak to me accordingly.”

  “A mayfly emperor, who will live hardly more than two beats of my heart,” the Kept replied.

  “Not if I have your heart stopped,” William said.

  Motion then, a sound like scales scraping against stone, and more airy laughter. “Can you, could you? I would weep black garnet tears for you, Prince of Least. I would bleed white gold and shit you diamonds.” A rasping cough followed. “No, little king,” the Kept continued. “No, no. Those are not the rules of our game. Your bitch ancestress saw to that. Go back to your sunlit halls and cuddle 'round your fear. Forget me and dream away your life.”

  “Qexqaneh,” the Keeper said firmly. “You are commanded.”

  The Kept snarled, and sultry rage infused his voice. “My name. Older than your race, my name, and you use it like a rag to wipe up the run from your bowels.”

  William tightened his lips. “Qexqaneh,” he said. “By your name, answer me.”

  The Kept's anger vanished as quickly as it came, and now he whispered. “Oh, little king, gladly. The answers shall give me joy,” he said.

  “And answer truthfully.”

  “I must, ever since that red-tressed whore that began your line shackled me. Surely you know that.”

  “It is so, Sire,” the Keeper agreed. “But he may answer elusively. You must sift his words.”

  William nodded. “Qexqaneh, can you see the future?”

  “Could I see the future, I would not be in this place, foolish manling. But I can see the inevitable, which is something else again.”

  “Is my kingdom bound for war?”

  “Hmm? A tide of blood is coming. A thousand seasons of woe. Swords will lap their fill and more.”

  Dread gripped William, but not surprise.

  “Can I prevent it?” he asked, not really hoping. “Can it be stopped?”

  “You can own death or it can own you,” the Kept said. “There are no other choices.”

  “Do you mean by that that I should prosecute this war? Attack Saltmark, or Hansa itself ?”

  “Little does that matter. Would you own death, little king? Would you keep it near your heart and be its friend? Will you feed it your family, your nation, your pitiful human soul? I can tell you how. You can be immortal, King. You can be like me, the last of your kind. Eternal. But unlike me, there will be none to prison you.”

  “The last of my kind?” This was confusing talk. “The last Dare?”

  “Oh, yes. And the last Reiksbaurg, and the last de Liery— the last of your pitiful race, manling. Your first queen killed you all. It has been a slow death, a sleepy death, but it is awake now. You cannot stop it. But you can be it.”

  “I don't understand. No war can kill everyone. That's what you are saying, is it, Qexqaneh? That only one man will survive the slaughter? What nonsense is this?” He looked at the Keeper. “You are certain he cannot lie?”

  “
He cannot knowingly lie, no. But he can twist the truth into rings,” the Keeper replied.

  “I can tell you,” Qexqaneh murmured silkily. “You can be the one. You can put out the lights of this world and start a new one.”

  “You're mad.”

  “Someone will do it, little king. The Nettle-man is already arising, you know. The rot has spread deep, and maggots crawl up. Even here I smell the putrescence. You can be the one. You can wear the night raiment and wave the scepter of corruption.”

  “Be clear. Do you really imply the end of the world is at hand?”

  “Of course not. But the end of your house, your kingdom, your foul little race and all its issue—that is indeed on time's nearest horizon.”

  “And one man shall cause this?”

  “No, no. What are those things on the side of your head? Does nothing you hear reach your brain? One shall benefit from it.”

  “At what cost?” William asked skeptically. “Other than the cost of being like you?”

  “The cost is light. Your wife. Your daughters.”

  “What?”

  “They will die anyway. You might as well profit from their slaughter.”

  “Enough!” William roared. He turned to leave, then suddenly spun on his heel.

  “Someone attempted to murder my wife. Was this why? This tainted prophecy of a future even you admit you cannot truly see?”

  “Did I admit that?”

  “You did. Answer me, Qexqaneh. This prophecy of yours. Do others know it?”

  The Kept panted for a few moments, and the air seemed to warm. “When you wretched slave beasts stood on the bones of my kin,” he grated at last, “when you burned every beautiful thing and believed that you—you lowly worms—finally owned the world, I told you then what would happen. My words began the new era, this age you name Everon. They are remembered in many places.”

  “So the attempt on my wife?”