The Blood Knight

by Greg Keyes

  Adhrekh waved that away. “The khriim is here. You speak the tongue of the ancients. Tell me, what was his name?”

  “His name? You mean Brother Kauron? Or Choron in your speech.”

  Adhrekh lifted his head, and his eyes flashed with triumph. The other Sefry plucked the arrows from their bows and returned them to their quivers.

  “Well,” Adhrekh mused. “So you have come, after all.”

  Stephen didn’t quite know what to say to that, so he let it go by.

  “Why did you abandon the village?” Stephen asked.

  Adhrekh shrugged. “We vowed to live in the mountain, to keep guard there, and we have. It is our way.”

  “You live in the Alq?” Zemlé asked.

  “That is our privilege, yes.”

  “And it was Brother Choron who asked you to guard it?”

  “Until his return, yes,” Adhrekh said. “Until now.”

  “You mean until the return of his heir,” Zemlé corrected.

  “As you wish,” Adhrekh said. He moved his regard back to Stephen. “Would you like to see the Alq, pathikh?”

  Stephen felt a chill, half excitement and half fear. ‘Pathikh’ meant something like lord, master, prince. Was Zemlé actually right? Was he really the heir to this ancient prophecy?

  “Yes,” he said. “But wait. You said the khriim was here. Do you mean the woorm?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the valley? Where?”

  “No. Once you led it near enough, he was able to find his way. He’s waiting for you in the Alq.”

  “Waiting for me?” Stephen said. “Maybe you don’t understand. It’s dangerous. It kills anything it touches, anything it comes near.”

  “He said he wouldn’t understand,” said another of the Sefry, this one a woman with startlingly blue eyes.

  “I understand that if the woorm is in the mountain,” Stephen said, “I’m not going there.”

  “No,” Adhrekh said, his face melancholy. “I’m afraid you will, pathikh.”

  “Qexqaneh,” Anne gasped, hoping she remembered the pronunciation correctly.

  The thing in the darkness seemed to pause, then press against her face like a dog nuzzling its master. Shocked, she swatted at it, but there was nothing there, although the sensation persisted.

  “Sweet Anne,” the Kept snuffled. “Smell of woman, sweet sick smell of woman.”

  Anne tried to collect herself. “I am heir to the throne of Crotheny. I command you by your name, Qexqaneh.”

  “Yessss,” the Kept purred. “Knowing what you want is not the same as having. I know your intention. Alis-smells-of-death knows better. She just told you.”

  “Is that so?” Anne asked. “Is it? I’m descended in a direct line from Virginia Dare. Can you really defy me?”

  Another pause followed, during which Anne gained confidence, trying not to reflect too closely on what she was doing.

  “I called you here,” the Kept murmured. She could feel the vastness of him contracting, drawing into himself.

  “Yes, you did. Called me here, put a map in my head so I could find you, promised me you could help me against her, the demon in the tomb. So what do you want?”

  He seemed to withdraw further, but she had the sudden feeling of a million tiny spiders nesting in her skull. She gagged, but when Austra reached for her, Anne pushed her away.

  “What are you doing, Qexqaneh?” she demanded.

  We can talk like this, and they cannot hear us. Agree. You don’t want them to know. You don’t.

  Very well, Anne mouthed silently.

  She felt as if she were whirling again, but this time it wasn’t frightening; it was more like a dance. Then, as if she were opening her eyes, she was standing on a hillside bare of any human habitation. Her body felt as light as thistledown, so flimsy that she feared any breeze might carry her off.

  All around her she saw the dark waters, the waters behind the world. But this time her perspective seemed reversed. Instead of perceiving the waters as flowing together—trickles building rinns, rinns pouring into broohs, broohs into streams, streams into the river—Anne descried the river as a great dark beast with a hundred fingers, and each of those fingers with a thousand fingers more, and each of those with a thousand, reaching and prying and poking into every man and woman, into every horse and ox, into each blade of grass, tickling, gesturing—waiting.

  Into everything, that is, except the formless shade that stood before her.

  “What is this place?” she demanded.

  “Ynis, my flesh,” he replied.

  Before she could retort, she realized it was true. It was Ynis, in fact the very hill upon which Eslen stood. But there was no castle, no city, no work of Man or Sefry. Nothing to be seen.

  “And these waters? I’ve seen them before. What are they?”

  “Life and death. Memory and forgetfulness. The one drinks, the other gives back. Piss on the left, sweet water on the right.”

  “I’d like you to be more clear.”

  “I’d like to smell rain again.”

  “Are you he?” she asked. “The man who attacked me in the place of the Faiths? Was that you?”

  “Interesting,” Qexqaneh mused. “No. I cannot wander so far. Not like this, pretty one, disgusting thing.”

  “Who was it, then?”

  “Not who,” Qexqaneh replied. “Who might be. Who will be, probably.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Aren’t mad yet, are you?” he replied. “In time.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Good enough for the geos, milk cow,” he replied.

  “Her, then,” Anne snapped. “The demon. What is she?”

  “What was, what hopes to be again. Some called her the queen of demons.”

  “What does she want with me?”

  “Like the other,” Qexqaneh said. “She is not she. She is a place to sit, a hat to wear.”

  “A throne.”

  “Any word in your horrible language will do as well as the next.”

  “She wants me to become her, doesn’t she? She wants to wear my skin. Is that what you’re saying?”

  The shadow laughed. “No. Just offers you a place to sit, the right to rule. She can hurt your enemies, but she cannot harm you.”

  “There are stories of women who take the form of others and steal their lives—”

  “Stories,” he interrupted. “Imagine instead those women finally came to understand what they really were all along. The people around them didn’t understand the truth. There are things in you, Anne Dare, aren’t there? Things no one understands? No one can understand.”

  “Just tell me how to fight her.”

  “Her true name is Iluumhuur. Use it and tell her to leave.”

  “It’s that simple?”

  “Is it simple? I don’t know. Don’t care. Neither should you, since you’ll never live for it to matter. Your uncle’s warriors block your every exit. You will die here, and I can only savor your soul as it leaves.”

  “Unless…” Anne said.

  “Unless?” the Kept repeated mockingly.

  “Don’t take that tone,” Anne said. “I have power, you know. I have killed. I might yet win my way through this. Perhaps she will help me.”

  “She might,” he said. “I have no way of knowing. Call her true name and see.”

  Anne coughed out a sarcastic laugh. “I somehow find that an outstandingly bad idea despite your reassuring words. No, you were going to offer me a way past my uncle’s troops. Well, then, what is it?”

  “I was just going to offer my assistance in defeating them,” he purred.

  “Ah. And that would involve…”

  “Freeing me.”

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” Anne mused. “Free the last of the demon race who enslaved humanity for a thousand generations. What a wonderful idea.”

  “You have kept me
for far too long,” he snarled. “My time is past. Let me go so that I may join my race in death.”

  “If death is what you want, then tell me how to kill you.”

  “I cannot be killed. The curse holds me here. Until the law of death is mended, I cannot die any more than your uncle can. Release me, and I shall mend the law of death.”

  “And die yourself?”

  “I swear that if you release me, I will deliver you from this place. I will leave, and I will do all in my power to die.”

  Anne considered that for a long moment.

  “You cannot lie to me.”

  “You know I cannot.”

  “Suppose I consider this,” Anne said slowly. “How would I free you?”

  The shadow seemed to waver for a moment.

  “Place your foot on my neck,” he snarled bitterly, “and say, ‘Qexqaneh, I free you.’”

  Anne’s heart raced faster, and her belly seemed to fill with heat.

  “I want to go back to my friends now,” she told him.

  “As you wish.”

  And with that she stood once more in darkness, with the earth tugging harder at her feet.

  Aspar followed the woorm trail up a talus slope wiry with young trees to a great crack in the mountain, a natural cul-de-sac fifty kingsyards wide at the mouth and narrow toward the rear, where a great cascade of water plunged from far above. Predictably, the waterfall had dug a deep pool for itself, and just as predictably, the creature’s trail vanished into it.

  The holter dismounted and walked the border of earth and water, searching for any other sign of the beast but only confirming what he already knew: The beast was in the mountain now. Whether it had reached its destination or was just passing through again, he could not know.

  “Sceat,” he muttered, taking a seat on a rock to think.

  Was Fend still riding the woorm? The last time he’d spoken to anyone who saw it, they’d reported two people on its back. If that was the case, then either the water passage was short enough for the men to survive or the two had dismounted as they had in the Ef valley. If that was true, they were waiting somewhere for the woorm to perform whatever task it had here.

  The third possibility was that Fend and his comrade had drowned, but he didn’t think that was particularly likely.

  On the chance they had dismounted, he checked carefully for traces but didn’t see any sign of men on foot. Given the fact that the earth here was covered in high moss, fern, and horsetail, it would be nearly impossible to avoid leaving some trace, even for Sefry.

  That suggested that the woormriders had gone swimming with the woorm, which in turn implied that he might be able to follow. That belief was strengthened by the likelihood that this was the entrance to yet another Halafolk rewn. Sefry couldn’t hold their breath any longer than humans, so he ought to be able to make the swim, as he had done to enter Rewn Aluth.

  Of course, a short swim for the beast might be a long one for him. Still, going after it was likely to be his only hope now.

  That meant that once again he and Ogre had to part.

  Wasting no time, he unbuckled the stallion’s saddle and slid it off, along with the blanket. Then he removed the bridle and hid it all beneath a small rock overhang. Ogre watched him the entire time, seeming strangely attentive.

  Aspar walked him back to the entrance of the rift, then around the side of the mountain opposite the approach he expected Hespero and his men to take.

  There he put his forehead against Ogre’s skull and patted his mount’s downy cheek.

  “You’ve been a good friend,” he said. “Saved my life more times than I can count. Either way this goes, you’ve earned your way through. If I don’t come out, well, I maun y’ can take care of yourself. If I make it, I’ll find someplace quiet for you where y’ can stud and eat. No more arrows or greffyn poison or what have you, yah?”

  The bared bay tossed his head, as if shaking off Aspar’s embrace, but the holter calmed him with another few strokes on his cheek.

  “Just stay over here,” he said. “I wouldn’t have one of Hespero’s men riding you. Don’t suspect you would, either, and they’d probably kill you then, so just rest. I might well need one more fast ride out of you aer this is over.”

  Ogre stamped as he walked away, and Aspar cast one glance back and raised an admonishing finger.

  “Lifst,” he commanded.

  Ogre whickered softly, but he obeyed and didn’t follow.

  Back at the pool, Aspar unstrung his bow and wrapped it in an oiled beaver skin, tying it taut. He put the sinew in a waxed bag and tightened that, as well. He wrapped up his arrows, especially the arrow, in otter skin and bundled it all to his bow. He checked to make certain he had his dirk and hand-ax, then sat by the pool, breathing deeply, getting himself ready for a long underwater swim.

  At his eighth breath, bubbles appeared in the pool, and then the water suddenly began to rise. Aspar watched for a few heartbeats, rooted, but as he understood what was happening, he grabbed his things and darted through the trees to the cliff, where he started climbing as swiftly as he could.

  The rock face wasn’t all that difficult, and when the sudden flood slapped against the stone, he was already some four kingsyards up, well above it. But it wasn’t the water he was worried about, so he continued, straining his limbs, practically vaulting from hold to hold.

  He heard a low, dull whump, and a moment later a brief shower of water pelted him, though he was already as high as the tops of the lower trees.

  Looking over his shoulder, he saw the woorm tower up, wreathed in poisonous vapors, eyes glowing like green moons beneath the shadow of the sky.

  OBSERVATIONS QUAINT & CURIOUS:

  THE VIRGENYAN LEAST LOON, PART THE SECOND, THE PERENNIAL CAPTIVE

  Some scholars in times past have wondered what need the loon has for feet, legs, or indeed limbs of any sort. They cite as the source of their confusion the fact that the creature spends the vast majority of its time in captivity, carried hither and yon by its keepers. What they fail to see is the humorous side of the VLL’s natural history, to wit, that though it is often a helpless captive, its nature is to be dissatisfied with such humiliation.

  Its legs, therefore, exist for the sole purpose of allowing it to walk from one detention to the next…

  DESPITE THE STEW of anger, fear, and frustration that seethed in Stephen, he had to admit that the Sefry were better hosts than the slinders.

  Yes, he and Zemlé were captives in the sense that they weren’t given any choice about where they were going. However, the Sefry handled them gently—royally, even—bearing them on small chairs set atop wooden poles and constraining them with numbers rather than violence.

  Their path wound deeper into the shadow forest, through fernlike trees and dense vines that drew closer, narrower, darker, until with a start Stephen realized that they had passed into the living stone of the mountain itself without his noticing the transition.

  There the journey became more harrowing, and he wished they’d been allowed to walk as the cortege proceeded down a steep, narrow stair. On the left was stone, and to the right there was nothing but a distance their lanterns did not penetrate. Even the rewn had not seemed so vast. Stephen wondered if the mountain was entirely hollow, a brittle shell filled with darkness.

  But no, not just darkness; something tugged lightly at the hairs of his arm and neck, and the faintest musical hum vibrated from the stone itself. There was power here, sedos power such as was only hinted at by the faneway he had walked and the others he had known. Even in Dunmrogh, at Khrwbh Khrwkh, where Anne Dare had unleashed the dormant might of an ancient fane, he hadn’t sensed this sort of subtle puissance.

  Thankfully, the seemingly bottomless pit finally showed its foundation, and the Sefry took them through a more manageable cavern. It was still grand but low enough that he could make out the glittering stone teeth depending from its ceiling.

  “It’s beautiful,” Zemlé murmured
, pointing at a column that glowed as if polished in the lamplight. “I’ve never seen stone take such forms. Or is it stone at all?”

  “I’ve read of such things,” Stephen said, “and seen them elsewhere. Presson Manteo called the ones that hang ‘drippers’ and the ones that point up ‘drops.’ He thinks they are formed pretty much as icicles are.”

  “I see the resemblance,” Zemlé allowed, “but how can stone drip?”

  “Stone has both a liquid and a solid essence,” Stephen explained. “The solid essence is predominant, but under special conditions, beneath the earth, it can become liquid. It is possibly how these caverns were formed. The stone liquefied and flowed away, leaving only space behind it.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I don’t know,” Stephen said. “At the moment, I’m a lot more interested in why we’re being held captive.”

  “You’re not captives,” Adhrekh said again. “You are our honored guests.”

  “Wonderful,” Stephen said. “Then thank you for the hospitality, and would you please take us back now?”

  “You have traveled a great distance, through many hardships, pathikh,” Adhrekh said. “How can we allow you to leave without achieving what you came for?”

  “I did not come to find the bloody woorm,” Stephen snapped, loudly enough that his voice echoed through the cavern. “I could have met him back at d’Ef if I’d wanted.”

  “Yes,” another voice said drily. “You could have. Might have saved us all a lot of trouble, at that.” The voice was somehow familiar.

  As Stephen followed the sound, they came to a stop, and his bearers carefully settled the palanquins onto the floor. The stone here looked handworked, and he smelled water.

  His gaze fastened on a familiar face, and his heart went jagged in his chest.

  “Fend,” he said.

  The Sefry smiled. “I’m flattered you remember me,” he said. “Our last meeting was a hectic one, wasn’t it? What with all the arrows and swords, greffyns and Briar Kings. There wasn’t really much time for a proper introduction.”

  “You know him?” Zemlé asked.

  “In a way,” Stephen said flatly. “I know that he’s a murdering villain, without honor, compassion, or any other admirable quality.”