by Keyes, Greg
“Eh?” She said.
“Stay still,” Aspar said. “You fell, I don’t know how far. Do you have any pain?”
“Yes,” she said. “Every part of me hurts. I feel like I’ve been put in a bag and kicked by six mules.”
She suddenly gasped and jerked up to a sitting position.
“The Utin—”
“It’s dead. Still, now, until we’re sure nothing’s broken. How far did you fall?”
“I don’t know. After it hit me, everything is cloudy.”
He began inspecting her legs, feeling for breaks.
“Aspar White. Do you always get so romantic after killing an Utin?” she asked.
“Always,” he said. “Every single time.” He kissed her then, not from desire, but from sheer relief. As he did it, he realized that in the past few moments he had known the greatest terror he had ever in his life experienced. It was so elevated above any fear he had ever known before he hadn’t recognized it.
“Winna—” he began, but a faint noise made him look up, and in the thicket behind the dead Utin, he had a brief glimpse of a cowled figure in a hat, half hidden by a tree, face as white as bone, and one green eye—
“Fend!” He snarled, and reached for the bow.
When he turned, the figure was gone. He set the arrow and waited.
“Can you walk?” he asked softly.
“Yah.” She stood. “Was it really him?”
“It was a Sefry, certain. I didn’t get a better look.”
“There’s someone coming behind us,” she said.
“Yah. That’s Stephen and Ehawk. I recognize their gaits.”
The two younger men arrived a moment later.
“Saints!” Stephen gasped when he saw the dead creature.
Aspar didn’t take his gaze from the woods. “There’s a Se-fry out there,” he said.
“The tracks we saw earlier?” Ehawk asked.
“Certain,” Aspar replied.
“Yes, I’m fine, thanks,” Stephen said. “A little bruised, that’s all.”
“The boy?” Winna asked.
Stephen’s voice sobered. “He died.”
No one said anything at that. There wasn’t much to say.
The forest was still, its normal sounds returning.
“You two stay with her,”Aspar said. “I’m going to see what became of our friend’s companion.”
“Aspar, wait,” Winna said. “What if it is Fend? What if he’s leading you into another trap?”
He touched her hand. “I think the one trap was all he had planned. If we hadn’t had the praifec’s arrow, it would have worked well enough.”
“You used the arrow?” Stephen gasped.
“It had Winna,” Aspar said. “It was in the trees. There was nothing else I could do.”
Stephen frowned, but then nodded. He walked over to the Utin, knelt near the corpse, and gingerly removed the arrow.
“I see what you mean,” he said. “The other arrows didn’t even penetrate a fingerbreadth.” He shot them a wry grin. “At least we know it works.”
“Yah. On Utins,” Aspar allowed. “I’ll be back.” He squeezed Winna’s hand. “And I’ll be careful.”
He followed the tracks for a few hundred yards, which was as far as he dared alone. He’d told Winna the truth—he didn’t fear a trap—but he did fear that the Sefry was working his way back to Stephen and Winna, to catch them while he was away. Fend would like nothing more than to kill someone else Aspar loved, and he’d just come as close to losing Winna as he ever wanted to.
“It still looks like he’s alone,” Aspar said.
They had been following the Sefry trail for the better part of a day.
“Traveling fast,” Ehawk said. “But he wants to be followed.”
“Yah, I reckon that too,” Aspar said.
“What do you mean?” Stephen asked.
“The trail is obvious—sloppy even. He’s making no effort to lose us.”
“Ehawk just said he seems to be in a hurry.”
“That’s not enough to account for it. He hasn’t even tried the simplest tricks to throw us off. He crossed three broohs, and never even waded up or down the stream. Werlic, Ehawk is right—he wants us to follow him for some reason.”
“If it’s Fend, he’s likely leading us somewhere unpleasant,” Winna said.
Aspar scratched the stubble on his chin. “I’m not sure it is Fend. I didn’t get a very clear look, but I didn’t see an eye patch. And the prints look too small.”
“But whoever it was was traveling with the Utin, just as Fend and brother Desmond traveled with the Greffyn. So it’s probably one of Fend’s bunch, right?”
“Well, so far as I know Fend’s outlaws are the only Sefry left in the forest,” Aspar agreed. “The rest left months ago.”
The trail had pulled them deep into the forest. Here, there was no sign of the black thorns. Huge chestnut trees rose around them, and the ground was littered with their sticky issue. Somewhere near, a woodpecker drummed away, and now and then they heard the honking of geese, far overhead.
“What could they be up to?” Winna wondered aloud.
“I reckon we’ll find out,” Aspar said.
Evening came, and they made camp. Winna and Stephen rubbed down the horses while Ehawk started a fire. As-par scouted, memorizing the land so he might know it in the dark.
They decamped at the first light of dawn and continued on. The tracks were fresher, now—their quarry wasn’t mounted, while they were.
Midday, Aspar noticed something through the trees ahead and waved the others to a halt. He looked at Stephen.
“I don’t hear anything unusual,” Stephen said. “But the smell—it reeks of death.”
“Keep ready,” Aspar said.
“Holy saints,” Stephen breathed, as they got near enough to see.
A small stone building sat on a rounded tumulus of earth. Around the base of the mound lay a perimeter of human corpses, reduced mostly to bone. Stephen was right, though— the stink was still there. To his saint-blessed senses it must be overwhelming.
Stephen confirmed that by doubling over and retching. Aspar waited until he was done, then moved closer.
“It’s like before,” he said. “Like the sacrifices your renegade monks were making. This is a sedos, yah?”
“It’s a sedos,” Stephen confirmed. “But this isn’t like before. They’re doing it correctly, this time.”
“What do you mean?” Winna asked.
Stephen sagged against a tree, looking pale and weak.
“Do you understand about the sedoi?” he asked her.
“You mentioned something about them to the queen’s interrogators, but at the time I wasn’t paying much attention. Aspar was hurt, and since then—”
“Yes, we haven’t discussed it much since then.” He sighed. “You know how priests receive the blessing of the saints?”
“A little. They visit fanes and pray.”
“Yes. But not just any fanes.” He waved at the mound. “That’s a sedos. It’s a place where a saint once stood, and left some bit of his presence. Visiting one sedos doesn’t confer a blessing, though, or at least not usually. You have to find a trail of them, a series of places visited by the same saint, or by aspects of that saint. The fanes—like that building there— have no power themselves. The power comes from the sedos— the fane is just a reminder, a place to help us focus our attention in the saint’s presence. I walked the faneway of Saint Decmanis, and he gifted me with the heightened senses I have now. I can remember things a month after as clearly as if they just happened. Decmanis is a saint of knowledge; monks who walk other faneways receive other blessings. The faneway of Mamres, for instance, conveys martial gifts on those who walk it. Great strength, alacrity, an instinct for killing, those sorts of things.”
“Like Desmond Spendlove.”
“Yes. He walked the faneway of Mamres.”
“So this is part of a faneway?” Win
na asked. “But the bodies…”
“It’s new,” Stephen said. “Look at the stone. There’s no moss or lichen, no weather stains. This might have been built yesterday. The renegade monks and Sefry who were following the Greffyn were using it to find old sedoi in the forest. I think it had the power to scent them out, and made a circuit of those which still had some latent power. Then Desmond and his bunch performed sacrifices, I think to try to find out what saint the sedoi belonged to. I also don’t think they were doing it right—they lacked certain information. Whoever did this did it correctly.” He passed his palm over his eyes. “And it’s my fault. When I was at d’Ef I translated ancient, forbidden scrifts concerning these things. I gave them the information they needed to do what you see here.” He shook, looking paler than ever. “They’re building a faneway, you see?”
“Who?” Aspar said. “Spendlove and his renegades are dead.”
“Not all of them,” Stephen said. “This was built after we killed Spendlove.”
“But what saint left his mark here?” Winna whispered.
Stephen retched again, rubbed his forehead, and stood straight again.
“It’s my place to find that out,” he said.
“All of you, wait here—please.”
Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold or destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming edition of The Charnel Prince by Greg Keyes. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
The Briar King is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2003 by J. Gregory Keyes
Excerpt from The Charnel Prince by Greg Keyes copyright © 2004
by J. Gregory Keyes
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