Briar King

by Keyes, Greg

  “I am not the least,” Anne replied. “I will never be the least of anything.”

  “Absurd. You are the least learned in every subject. You are the least disciplined. You are the least worthy of even that novice robe you wear. Listen to you! What have you ever done? You have nothing that was not given to you by your birth.”

  “It is enough.”

  “It is if your only ambition is to be the brood mare for some highborn fool, for brood mares neither need nor have brains enough to want more than they were born with. Yet my understanding is that the very reason you were sent to me is that even that lowest of ambitions escapes your thick head.”

  “I have talents. I have a destiny.”

  “You have inclinations. You have desires. A plow-ass has those.”

  “No. I have more.” My dreams. My visions. But she didn’t mention those aloud.

  “Well, we shall see, shan’t we?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think yourself a creature apart, better than every other girl here. Very well—we shall give you the chance to prove that is so. Yes, we will. Come with me.”

  Anne gazed down into the utter blackness and tried not to tremble. Behind her, three sisters tightened a series of ropes supporting the leather harness they had strapped on her.

  “Don’t do this,” Anne said, trying to keep her voice low.

  None of the sisters answered, and Sister Secula was already gone.

  The air wafting out of the hole was cold and metallic.

  “What is it?” Anne asked. “Where are you putting me?”

  “It is called the womb of Lady Mefitis,” one of the initiates answered. “Mefita is, as you know, an aspect of Cer.”

  “The aspect that tortures damned souls.”

  “Not at all. That’s a common misconception. She is the aspect of motion in rest, of pregnancy without birth, of time without day or night.”

  “How long am I to be down there?”

  “A nineday. It is the usual penance associated with humility. But I urge you to use your time in meditation, and in perceiving the glory of our lady. After all, her fane is there.”

  “A nineday? I’ll starve!”

  “We’re going to lower food and drink sufficient for that time.”

  “And a lamp?”

  “Light is not permitted in the womb.”

  “I’ll go mad!”

  “You won’t. But you’ll learn humility.” Her smile hid an uncertain emotion. Triumph? Grief ? Anne thought it could be either. “You must learn it some time, you know. Now, in you go.”

  “No!”

  Anne kicked and screamed, but for naught. They had her strapped well, and in no time the initiates had her out over the black well and descending into it.

  The opening was as wide as she was tall. By the time her descent ended and her feet touched stone, it seemed no larger than a bright star.

  “Keep near, where the stone is flat and level,” a voice floated down. “Do not go beyond the wall we have built, or you will find danger. The caves are empty of beasts, but full of cracks and chasms. Stay in the wall, and you will be safe.”

  Then the circle vanished, and the only light remaining was the illusion of it painted on her eyelids, a single spot fading quickly from green, to pink, to deep red—gone.

  And Anne screamed until her throat felt torn.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE KEPT

  PRINCE CHEISO OF SAFNIA spasmed and coughed flecks of blood onto the stone floor as his torturer drew a score across his back with a red-hot iron, but he did not scream. William could see the scream anyway, buried in the Safnian’s face, digging to get out like the larvae of an earth wasp struggling to emerge from a paralyzed spider. But it stayed prisoned in that proud, dark face.

  William could not help but admire Cheiso’s bravery. The man had been whipped and burned, the flesh of his back sanded raw and rubbed with salt. Four of his fingers were broken, and he had been dunked repeatedly in a vat of urine and offal. Still he did not beg, or cry out, or confess. They were made of sterner stuff than William had known, these Safnians. He doubted that he would have held up so well.

  “Will you speak now?” Robert asked gently. He stood behind the prince and stroked his brow with a damp rag. “You have sisters yourself, Prince Cheiso. Try to imagine how we feel. We degrade ourselves when we treat you thus, but we will know why you betrayed her.”

  Lying there on a table turned upright, Cheiso lifted his eyes then, but he did not look at Robert. Instead, his black eyes focused steadfastly on William. He licked his lips and spoke.

  “Your Majesty,” he said, in that faraway accent of his kind, “I am Prince Cheiso of Safnia, son of Amfile, grandson of Verfunio, who turned away the Harshem fleet at Bidhala with two ships and a word. I do not lie. I do not betray my honor. Lesbeth your sister is my dearest love, and if any evil has come to her, I will live to find who did it and make him pay. But you, Emperor of Crotheny, are a fool. You have supped on lies, and they have fattened your wits. You may dig with your prick of iron down to my very bones and carpet your floor with my blood, but there is nothing I can tell you save that I am innocent.”

  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 h
ope 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, then, 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 f
ather 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.”