The Born Queen tkotab-4

by Greg Keyes

  Neil lay in the dark, wondering if he was going mad, wondering how long he had been there. He thought he probably slept a lot, but the distinction between sleep and waking was starting to blur. His only indication of the time was when they brought his food, but he was always a little hungry, so he wasn't sure if he was being fed twice a day, once a day, or once every two days.

  He tried to think about mountain pasture and wide blue sky, but instead his mind kept replaying just a few things.

  Had the entire embassy really been a sham, a disguise for assassination? Would Anne really have ordered that? Would Muriele have been part of it?

  Maybe, maybe. Queens were forced to do that sometimes, weren't they? It was childish to think otherwise.

  But Anne had insisted he go along. Did she know? Know that he knew Brinna? Did she think that he would kill her if Alis failed?

  Should he, if he got the chance? Could he, if it was his queen's wish? After all, it was his fault that Hansa even had a Hellrune.

  And the thing that kept burning up through everything else was the memory of his kiss with her out in the marshes around Paldh, the touch of her lips and the sweet gift of her against him.

  Someone was humming a weird little song. Fingers traced along Neil's bare spine, up to his shoulder, along his ruined sword arm, back up around the edge of his ear. He smiled and rolled that way.

  Hazel eyes gazed down from a delicate face framed in dark tresses. She had a sad little smile on her lips.

  "Fastia," he gasped, his heart thundering.

  "I know you," the ghost sighed. "I remember you."

  Neil tried to sit up but found that he couldn't. His body seemed impossibly tired and heavy.

  "I kissed you once, too."

  "I'm sorry, Fastia," he whispered.

  "Why? For kissing?"

  "No."

  "I'm almost gone," she said. "The river is taking me. Whoever you are, I've almost forgotten you. If you ever wronged me, it's in the water now."

  "I love you."

  "You love her."

  "Yes," he said, miserably.

  She stroked his cheek. "No need for that," she said.

  "Did she bring you here?" he asked.

  "No. She's like a doorway, and through her I saw you. You drew me here."

  "I do love you."

  "I'm glad I was loved," she said. She closed her eyes. "Something is coming," she said. "You need to go back. I wanted to tell you that."

  She bent and brought her lips to his, and he felt a tickle. Then she began singing in a language he didn't know. He found himself wanting to sing it as well, to leave his flesh and join Fastia. But the song faded, and her with it, until she was gone.

  He started and was awake.

  Footsteps. Someone was coming. It didn't sound like the jailer.

  It wasn't; it was four guards. They didn't say anything, and he didn't ask them anything; he just let them lead him out of the hole and back up into the halls. They took him back to the chamber where he'd seen Brinna and left him there alone.

  He was wondering what to do, when the small door opened and the girl came in with a pitcher and filled an alabaster washbasin.

  "My lady asks that you bathe yourself," she said in Hanzish. Her eyes were darting, fearful, not like the last time.

  "I'm to leave you alone while you do so. Fresh clothes are there." She pointed to some garments folded on the chair he'd sat in before, then exited the way she had come.

  He stripped off his filthy weeds and scrubbed himself from head to toe. A bath would have been better, but when he was done, he felt so much more human that it was shocking. When he was dry, he slipped on the hose, breeches, and shirt that had been provided and stood waiting, enjoying the ability to straighten his limbs, back, and neck all at the same time.

  The girl stuck her head in a bit later, and a few moments after that Brinna entered, wearing the same, or an identical, black gown. She did not, however, have the mask with her.

  Her expression didn't tell him much, and for a little while that was all he got. Then she walked over and took her place in her armchair.

  "Please sit," she said.

  He complied.

  "Things are complicated," she said. "I wouldn't have had you stay in that place if they weren't."

  "I appreciate the sentiment," he muttered.

  "I doubt that, but that's not this discussion."

  She looked down and cleared her throat softly.

  "There are three reasons you're here and not dead or still imprisoned," she said. "The first is that I believe you are not an assassin. The second is that I think we can help each other without you breaching your real duty."

  She paused and settled her shoulders. "The third isn't important right now."

  "I'm glad you don't believe I'm an assassin," he said.

  She nodded and placed her hands on her knees. "I want you to help me escape again."

  "What?"

  "Anne has destroyed a third of our army," she said.

  "This is war," he said gently.

  "You needn't condescend to me, sir," she said. "I know what war is."

  "Sorry."

  "Understand, it was not the army of Crotheny that killed our men. It was Anne herself."

  "Oh," he said, frowning, trying to understand. He'd been with Anne a few times when she had used her gifts. But even on the march to Eslen, she had never been able to affect more than a dozen or so people and never actually had killed more than one or two. Even so, it had made him a little sick.

  "How many?" he asked.

  "Forty-eight thousand."

  "Forty…" It didn't make any sense.

  "It has begun, Sir Neil. She is coming into her strength. My father will keep sending his men against her, and they will continue to die."

  "What do you intend to do?" he asked.

  "Anne is beyond me. There is nothing I can do directly. But I think I might undo the damage I myself did. I might help mend the law of death, and if that is done, everything changes. All visions of the future, all prophecy becomes moot. On that, if nothing else, I ask you to trust me."

  "But why must I help you escape?"

  "I have to reach Newland," she said. "That's where I must be, and in a short time."

  "It's impossible for me to promise that," Neil said.

  "I realize that," she replied. "I just wanted you to know what I'm about. I need to talk to Queen Muriele, clearly. Only she can make the decision to take me to Newland. I just want your permission first, since she is in your charge."

  "That means having her brought up here?"

  "If I could do that, I would have already done so," she replied.

  "What do you mean?"

  "She went hunting with Berimund, yes?"

  "Yes, the day after we arrived. Just before I was seized."

  "My father isn't a stable man. He condemned your lady to death and ordered my brother to carry out that charge."

  Neil stood so violently that the chair went clattering to the floor. "You saw this?"

  She sucked in a breath and flinched back.

  "Did you?" he asked more softly.

  "No. I have spies, as well. But I have seen where my brother took her."

  "To murder her, you mean?"

  Her eyes focused outward and seemed to glaze. "Berimund won't do that," she said, her voice a bit singsong. "He's taken her someplace to hide. He doesn't know he's been followed."

  "Followed? By your father?"

  She shook her head. "No. Robert Dare."

  Without thinking, Neil put his hand up to his head, where the usurper had struck him with a bottle.

  "I have to get to her," he said. "Can you help me do that?"

  "I need her, too, and I need her alive," Brinna said. "Alis has agreed to aid me, but I need you, too."

  He took a deep breath. "I'll help you escape," he said. "But after we find the queen, I must obey her orders."

  "Even if they are to slay me?"

  "Any or
der but that," he said.

  Something bright flitted behind her face but quickly vanished.

  "Well," Brinna said. "Are we agreed?"

  "Yes."

  "That's good," she said. "Because we've already begun, I'm afraid. The interrogator insisted on being with me in this interview, and she got my father to put it in writing that she would be."

  "Where is she, then?"

  "In the next room, dead. I poisoned her. The men who brought you have also been dealt with. Or at least I hope so."

  "They've been dealt with," a quiet voice said.

  Neil started and found Alis standing behind him, clad in a dark blue gown. She held something bundled in a cloak.

  "I think this hauberk will fit you, Sir Neil," she said. "And you've your pick of these swords."

  "I'm sure you would prefer your own," Brinna said. "But those are beyond my reach. I hope one of these is suitable. You're going to need it very soon."

  CHAPTER TEN

  AN OLD FRIEND

  ASPAR HAD begun to draw the knife before he realized he was losing his mind, that the geos had taken his sense without him even knowing it.

  Leshya saw his expression and raised her eyebrows.

  Fighting down the paranoia, Aspar pushed the eldritch blade back in, unhooked the scabbard, and held it out toward her.

  "This is yours," he said. "I should have given it back to you days ago."

  "You make better use of it than I would," she said.

  "I don't like it," he said.

  "Neither do I," the Sefry replied. "It's a sedos thing."

  Aspar proffered it for another few breaths, but she didn't reach for it, so he hooked the sheath back on his belt.

  "Let's keep Fend's offer to help us quiet for now," Aspar said. "Until we cann what he's up to."

  "It could confuse things more than they already are," she said.

  He couldn't tell if it was a question. "Yah."

  They found Emfrith's bunch setting up camp in a field not too far from the road. Winna came running up as they passed the watchmen. She was flushed, and though she seemed excited, it was hard to tell if it was from a good or a bad cause.

  "He found us," she said. That sounded happy.

  "Stephen?"

  Her expression fell, and then she shook her head.

  "Ehawk."

  Aspar felt a slight lift of his shoulders. "Really? Where is he?"

  "Sleeping. He was nearly falling out of his saddle. I don't think he's rested in days."

  "Well, I reckon I'll talk to him later, then."

  "That's all you have to say?"

  "I'm glad the lad's alive," he said. "But I reckoned wherever he was, he was all right. Ehawk can take care of himself. Not like-" He stopped.

  "Not like Stephen," she said softly.

  "Stephen's fine, too," he said gruffly. "Probably holed up in a scriftorium someplace."

  "Right," Winna agreed. "Probably."

  Early the next morning, Aspar found Ehawk crouched around the coals of the fire. The young Watau grinned when he saw Aspar.

  "You were hard to find," he said. "Like tracking a ghost. Lost you before the cold river up there."

  "The Welph."

  "I don't like those trees. It's like always being at the snow line in the mountains."

  "Yah," Aspar said. "Different. Anyway, you should have just waited like Winna. I would have just come to you."

  "I couldn't do that," the Watau boy replied. "Winna didn't wait, either. She made Emfrith look for you, but once her belly started swelling, he wouldn't go far." He stirred the embers with a stick. "He didn't want to find you, anyway."

  "Yah, I conth that," he said.

  Ehawk nodded and pushed back his pitch-dark hair. His face looked leaner, older. His body was catching up with the man inside.

  "So where are we going?" he asked.

  "Mountains of the Hare. The western ranges, near Sa Ceth ag Sa'Nem."

  "Ah." The boy shook his head. "You're seeking the Segachau, then."

  "What?"

  "The reed-water-place," the young man said. "The well of life. The hole everything came out of at the beginning of time."

  "Grim's eye," Aspar swore. "You know something about it?"

  "My people have lived in the mountains for a long time," the Watau replied. "That's a real old legend."

  "What do they say?" Aspar asked.

  "It gets pretty complicated," Ehawk said. "Lots of tribes and clan names. But really, when you simple it, the story spells that in the ancient times everything lived beneath the earth: people, animals, plants. There was also a race of demons under there that kept everything penned up. They ate us. So one day a certain man got out of his pen and found a reed that went up into the sky. He climbed it and came out here, in this world. He went back down and led everyone else up here, too. That man became the Etthoroam, the Mosslord-him you call the Briar King. He stopped the demons from following, and he made the sacred forest. When he was done, he went to sleep, and he told the people to worship the forest and keep it from harm or he would wake and take his revenge. And the place where he came up is called Segachau. They say you can't always find it."

  Aspar scratched his chin, wondering what Stephen would make of that story. The Watau didn't have writing or libraries. They didn't follow the ways of the Church any more than his father's Ingorn people did.

  And yet in two ways at least, Ehawk's story agreed with Leshya's tale of the Vhenkherdh. Both said the Briar King came from it, and both agreed it was the source of life.

  Other than that, though, the Watau story was very different from the Sefry's, and that made him feel suddenly better about the whole thing. He'd learned from Stephen just how twisted time could make the truth; maybe no one, not even the Sarnwood witch, had all the facts. Maybe when he got there, Aspar could find some way to surprise everyone. Come to think of it, he probably knew at least one thing no one except maybe Winna did.

  "It's good to have you back, Ehawk," he said, patting him on the shoulder.

  "'Tis good to be back, master holter."

  Aspar's improved mood didn't last long.

  Another two days brought them to the Then River, and the land was starting to warn Aspar what to expect on the road ahead.

  Green fields gave way to sickly yellow weeds, and the only birds they saw were high overhead. At the banks of the Then, some tough marsh grass still clung to life, just barely.

  But across the stream what once had been rich prairie was brittle and brown, dead for a month or more. There was no birdsong, no buzz of crickets, nothing. It was wasteland.

  The villages were dead, too. They found no one alive, and the bones that remained were gnawed and crushed as no natural beast could manage.

  The next day, the edge of the King's Forest appeared, and Aspar prepared himself for the worst.

  Winna, who hadn't been talking much to him lately, rode up beside him.

  "It'll be bad, won't it?" she said.

  "Yah." He already could see how wrong the tree line was.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I know how it hurts you."

  "I'm the holter," he said. "I'm supposed to protect it."

  "You've done your best," she said.

  "No," he replied harshly. "No, I haven't."

  "Aspar," she said gently, "you have to talk to me. I need to know why we're coming here, where everything is dead except for monsters. I trust you, but you usually tell me what's going on. Fend's not even trying to catch us, and Emfrith is starting to question our direction, too. He's wondering what happens when we run out of supplies."

  "Emfrith can ask me himself," Aspar snapped.

  "I don't think this is about taking me someplace safe," Winna said.

  The geos stung him, but he held his ground against it, because now the only way to convince Winna that they should be doing this entailed telling her part of the truth.

  It was such a relief, he almost felt like crying.

  "Listen," he said softly. "I le
arned some things from the Sarnwood witch, from my trip into the Bairghs. What you see here-what we'll see ahead-it's not stopping with the King's Forest. It'll keep spreading until everything is dead, until there are no woods or fields anywhere. There's nowhere I can take you where you and the child will be safe, not for long."

  "What are you telling me?"

  "I'm spellin' that our only chance is to stop this somehow."

  "Stop it?"

  He explained in brief about the Vhenkherdh and the possibility of "summoning" a new Briar King. He didn't tell her how Leshya had come by her knowledge, and of course he made no mention of Fend's assertion that her unborn child was to be the sacrifice that would save the world. He still wasn't sure he believed that himself. When he was done, she looked at him strangely.

  "What?"

  "There's still something I don't understand," she said. "I accept it's true that there's no place where this rot won't eventually reach me. But there are places that will be safe from it for a while longer. The Aspar I know wouldn't have wanted me along for this…attempt, not in my condition. He would have had Emfrith take me as far from the King's Forest as possible while he went to fight and maybe die. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm glad you didn't do that."

  "I think Fend's after you, too," he said.

  "Then why doesn't he send an utin for me?"

  "The wyver attacked you, remember?"

  She nodded uneasily. "Is that the only reason?"

  "When I saw Fend last, he told me as much," Aspar said.

  "But why?"

  "You were his captive for nearly a month. What do you think? Fend hates me, he's barking mad, I love you. How much reason do you maunt he needs?"

  "Right," she said. "Right. It's just-something doesn't feel right."

  "Nothing is right," Aspar replied.

  "I know," she said calmly. "But we're going to fix it, werlic. So our child can grow up."

  "Yah," he said, his voice tight.

  "I've thought of names," she said.

  "The Ingorn don't name children until they're two years old," Aspar said roughly.

  "Why not?"

  "Because most don't live," he said. "If you don't name them, they can try to be born again. Them with names die true deaths."

  "That's stupid," Winna said. "Why name anyone, ever?"