The Briar King (51 page)

Pursing his lips, Stephen returned to the scriftorium.

A closer inspection of the
Book of Murmurs
proved frustrating. In the back of his mind, he'd thought that perhaps
horned lord
might be better translated as
lord with horns
, but the word in question quite plainly referred to something like
antlers, not a sounding instrument made of horn. He sat for a while, staring glumly at the text, wishing he had the original sources the unknown author had drawn upon.

His mind whirred up various roads that went nowhere. He thumbed through the
Tome of Relics
, hoping to find some religious icon that matched the horn's description, though without much hope. If the language was really a Skasloi dialect, it probably predated the triumph of the saints over the old gods.

As he was putting the book away, memory intruded, of an evening not long past, when Aspar White had frightened him with the threat of Haergrim the Raver. He remembered his own fanciful connection to his grandfather's mention of Saint Horn the Damned, and on impulse he tracked down a volume of obscure and false saints peculiar to eastern Crotheny. It didn't take him long to find it. Since walking the fanes, Stephen found that the scriftorium had become almost like an extension of his own mind and fingers; simply thinking of a subject led him quickly to the appropriate shelves.

The book was a recent one, written by a scholar from the Midenlands, and though its organization was somewhat archaic, he soon found the reference he was seeking. He thumbed to the page and began to read.

Stephen paused at that, but read on. What followed, however, was mostly a recitation of other names for the Raver, one of which was indeed Saint Horn the Damned, for it was
said he had drawn the curse of the old gods upon himself by betraying them.

But Stephen kept returning to the reference to the Wicker Lord, and when he was done, searched for an entry concerning him. To his disappointment, the entry was slim.

Excited, Stephen pored through similar sources, and found some of the children's songs mentioned, but nothing that cast more light on the current situation.

The hour was late, and he alone remained in the scriftorium. Sleep tugged at the corners of his eyes, and he was near concluding that he had found all he was going to. One scrift remained, and it wasn't promising, being little more than a book of children's tales, but as he wearily unscrolled it, a small illustration caught his eye. It was of a manlike creature made up of leaves and vines, with limbs spreading from his head like antlers. In one hand, he gripped a small horn. It captioned a song he had already seen twice, a circle dance for children.

As he was about to put it away, his fingers brushed the margins, and he felt something—an imprint in the vellum. Intrigued, he examined it more closely.

It looked as if someone had written a note on another vellum or piece of paper, likely with a lead stylus, and the impression had gone through. Eagerly, he found a piece of charcoal and lightly rubbed the paper, as he had the stone markers on the
Vio Caldatum, and faint characters emerged. When he was done, he sat staring at the results.

The characters were the same as those inscribed on Aspar's horn, to the letter. Following it was a single word in the king's tongue.

Find.

“I'd stay away from her, if I were you,” Brother Ehan remarked the next day as Stephen sidled nearer Angel.

“I've ridden Angel before,” Stephen said. “Haven't I, girl?”

The mare looked dubious.

“Well, she may not be as crazy as the other, but she's learned some wildness.”

“Shh. Angel.” He proffered the mare an apple. She sniffed suspiciously and her eyes rolled, but she took a step or two closer.

“That's it, good girl. Come here.”

“I don't see what the point is, anyway,” Ehan said.

“The point is,” Stephen said softly, “I want to ride her.”

“Why?”

“Because it would take too long to walk where I want to go.”

“What in Saint Rooster's name are you talking about?”

The mare was almost close enough to touch now. Her flanks were trembling as she took another step, ducked her head, pulled it back up, and gently took the apple.

“That's fine, girl,” Stephen said. “Remember this?” He drew a bridle from behind his back.

Angel eyed the thing, but seemed almost calmed by its presence. Stephen lay it against the side of her head, letting her get a good whiff of him and it, then gently started putting it on her. She didn't object.

“That's my sweetheart,” Stephen cooed.

“Tell me where you're going,” Ehan demanded. “We're supposed to be tending the orchard after this.”

“I know. If I'm missed, I don't expect you to lie for me. I'm not going to tell you where I'm going for the same reason.”

Ehan chewed his lip and spat. “You'll be back by vespers?”

“Or not at all,” Stephen assured him. “All right, girl, are you ready?”

Angel answered by not throwing him once he'd gingerly climbed on her back. She stamped a little skittishly, but then took the bridle. Stephen switched her into a brisk trot, which wasn't all that pleasant bareback, for either party.

“Sorry, girl,” he said, “I couldn't have brought a saddle out here without being noticed.”

It had taken him almost two days to drag Aspar White from where he had found him to the monastery, but in fact the distance was only about a league. Unencumbered and mounted, he covered the distance in under two bells. His memory was as perfect at mental mapmaking as in every other thing since his fanewalk, so he found the spot without much trouble.

He surveyed the scene, frowning, and dismounted. Dead leaves littered the ground, fallen from a tree that might have been lightning struck but there was no mark of lightning on it. Nevertheless it was dead, and so was a trail of ferns and undergrowth that wound into the clearing, stopped short of the remains of his fire, then continued off in a different direction. The point where the trail turned was exactly where he remembered the beaked creature standing.

“No lion did this, Angel,” he murmured. Not that he had ever accepted the fratrex's rationalization.

He was still studying the unnatural trail when he heard voices in the distance.

Stephen had had plenty enough experience with strangers in the forest for one lifetime, so he began quietly leading Angel away. Remembering Aspar's story, he went up a ridge where a line of thicker growth hid him from the valley. He tethered the mare on the other side of the ridge, then crept down where he could have a view of the place he'd found As-par White.

After perhaps half a bell, eight mounted men came into view. Stephen felt a cold shock when he saw who they were.

It was Desmond Spendlove and his men. They had their cowls down, and Stephen recognized several of them: the
hulking Brother Lewes, Brothers Aligern, Topan, and Seigereik—the four nastiest of the bunch, according to Ehan. The others he had seen but couldn't name. They were eight in all.

They stopped and examined the campfire and dead vegetation.

“What is it up to?” Lewes grunted.

Spendlove shook his head. “I don't know. It was chasing someone. Maybe that holter Fend told us about.”

“Right. Then where is he?”

“Someone dragged his body out,” Seigereik said, examining the ground. “That way.”

“D'Ef is a league that way,” Spendlove mused. “How interesting.”

“But the greffyn didn't follow,” Seigereik said.

“It probably left after killing its prey.”

“Are we to take up its trail again, then?”

Spendlove shook his head. “No. We've work to do in the west.”

“Ah. The queen?”

“The changeling in her guard bungled her killing. Now it's our turn. We're to meet with Fend in Loiyes.” He looked again at the greffyn's trail. “But first I think we'd better stop in at d'Ef, to learn more about what happened here.”

“With the allies Fend has, he should be able to handle this on his own,” Topan said, his ice-blue gaze needling casually through the surrounding forest.

“Fend can fail, just like the changeling. They should have sent us to begin with, but ours isn't to question.”

“Still, it could take us a month to get there,” Topan argued. “What if we go all that way for nothing?”

“There are other matters to tidy,” Spendlove assured him. “Besides, the country air will do you good.”

“I've had too much of that lately.”

“We do what we do,” Spendlove replied. “If you don't want to do it anymore, you know the way out.” He started for his horse.

As they rode off, Stephen didn't dare breathe. He lay there, teeth clenched, realizing that he had taken Aspar White to perhaps the most dangerous place imaginable.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE WOMB OF MEFITIS

ANNE DREAMED OF THE LIGHT of the sun on the grassy Sleeve, of the furnace of sunset on the rinns, of the simple dance of a candle flame. She wrapped herself in the memory of color and shadow and hoped she wouldn't forget the way the wind in the leaves of the tall elms along the canals shivered the light into pieces of phay gold. Not the way she had forgotten Roderick's face.

They won't let me go mad,
she thought.
They won't leave me down here for a nineday.

But maybe they already had. Maybe she had been here for a month. A year. Maybe her hair had turned gray and Roderick was married. A father dead of old age. Maybe her madness was in clinging to hope, in pretending she hadn't been here for very long at all.

She tried to re-create time by counting heartbeats or tapping her fingers. She tried to measure it by her periods of hunger, and how much food and water remained. She preferred to keep her eyes shut rather than open. With them shut, she could pretend things were as they ought to be, that she was in her bed, trying to sleep.

Of course, she had mostly lost the difference between waking and sleeping.

Her only consolation was that she had begun to hate the darkness. Not to fear it, as she first had, or capitulate to it as Sister Secula surely meant her to.

No, she loathed it. She plotted against it, imagining how she might strike a light in its ugly belly and kill it. She
searched through the meager supplies, hoping to find some small piece of steel, something that would make a spark against stone, but there was nothing. Of course there wasn't. How many girls had they put down here, over the centuries? How many must have thought of the same thing?

“But I'm not another girl,” Anne muttered, listening as the sound of her voice filled the place. “I'm a daughter of the house Dare.”

And so, with great determination, she stared at nothingness and imagined a single point of light, banishing every other thought. If she couldn't break the darkness in reality, she could at least do so in her heart. She tried, and maybe she slept, and she tried again. She took the idea of light, her memories of it, and squeezed them together between her eyes, willing it to be real with every fiber of her being.

And suddenly it was there—a spark, the tiniest of points, no larger than a pinprick.

“Saints!” she gasped, and it vanished.

She wept for a little while, dried her eyes, and with greater determination than before, began again.

The next time the spark appeared, she held it, nurtured it, fed it all of the membrance of light she could find, and slowly, hesitantly, beautifully it grew. It grew to the size of an acorn, then as large as a hand, and it had color in it, and spread like a morning glory opening its petals. She could see things now, but not what she had expected. No walls and floor of stone, but instead the rough bark of an oak, twining vines, a spray of yellow flowers—as if the light was really a hole through the wall of a dark room, opening into a garden.

But it wasn't a hole; it was a sphere, and it pushed away the darkness until there was none left and she stood not in a cave, but in a brightly lit forest glade.

She looked down and could not see her shadow, and with a skip of her heart knew where she was. She also knew her madness must be complete.