The Briar King (63 page)

Aspar arched one eyebrow. “We, Cape Chavel Darige? I could put what you know about fighting on the head of a beer and it would float.”

“Yes, well, you could have taught me a little, Holter. I might have been some help.”

“I could have taught you just enough to help you make a corpse of yourself,” Aspar rebutted.

“So you'll kill them all yourself ? How?”

Aspar grunted a laugh. “I never said I couldn't find a use for you. You could wave your arms and draw their arrows while I creep around behind.”

“I'm willing to do that,” Stephen said earnestly. “If it will work.”

“That was a joke, boy.”

“Oh,” Stephen said, and his sarcasm got the better of his sense. “My mistake, but a natural one. A joke from you? Apologies, but the first time you see a fish fly, you're likely to think it's a bird.” Then he sobered again. “Well, what, then?”

“I have no idea,” the holter said. “I'll think of something before we catch up to them.”

“Marvelous plan.”

Aspar shrugged. “Do you have a better one? Something you read in a book, maybe?”

“Well,” Stephen considered, “in the
Travels of Hinn
, when beset by brigands, Hinn and his companions made themselves seem more numerous by building figures of mud and straw.”

“Yah. Were they able to make these figures walk?”

“Ah … no. But if we could lure Desmond and his men to come after us—”

“To fight our stick men?”

“Fine, maybe that wouldn't work. What if we set a trap? Dig a pit and put sharpened stakes in it, cover it over with leaves or something?”

Aspar nodded. “Fine idea. We'll dig this pit with our hands, shall we, before sunup? Maybe you can lead them in circles while the horses and I dig.”

“I'm just trying to help,” Stephen muttered. “And you asked.”

“I did, didn't I?” Aspar sighed. “Next I'll ask for a clout on the head. It would be more useful.” He remounted Ogre, then shot Stephen a more companionable glance. “Keep thinking,” he said. “Who knows, maybe you'll actually come up with something helpful.”

Stephen did prove himself useful a few bells later, when he waved for Aspar's attention. The holter caught the motion instantly and reined Ogre to a halt. Stephen tapped his ear, then pointed. He could hear men talking up ahead, and he was certain it was the rogue monks.

He had formed the opinion that none of the men they pursued had senses as well honed as his own, but there was still no point in taking chances. Thus far, remaining at the edge of his own hearing had kept them undetected. Stephen intended to treat it as a rule.

Aspar understood his signals and carefully dismounted. Stephen followed suit. The holter quietly commanded the horses to stay where they were, and the two men began creeping through the forest edge toward the source of the sound.

They stopped and crouched in a tangled mass of grapevines on the worn shoulders of a hill. Below, the forest broke into sparsely wooded fields, and beyond that a broad plain, green-gold in the afternoon sunlight.

Sixteen men were setting up camp around a small conical mound in the lightly wooded fringe. A couple of tents were already up. Ten of the figures wore broad-brimmed hats and
their faces were wrapped in gauze; that would be the Sefry, Stephen mused. The rest were human, and their number included Desmond and his remaining monks. Stephen glanced over at Aspar, who wore a look he had come to recognize as quiet fury. Stephen raised an eyebrow, and the holter glanced back, mouthing a word.

Fend.

Doubtless the holter was already working out how to kill fifteen men so he could get to the one.

Aspar motioned for Stephen to remain where he was and prowled off so silently he might have been a forest cat. Stephen desperately wanted to ask him where he was going, but he didn't dare.

Once the holter had vanished from sight, Stephen lay there, watching, wondering what he was supposed to do.

Below, the monks and Sefry were soon done preparing their camp, but their activities didn't cease. In fact, the small mound became the focus of new activity. It was with foreboding that Stephen realized the hill must be a sedos.

It was cool, but sweat beaded on his brow as he crawled nearer, hiding at last behind the mounded roots of a huge oak on a lower part of the hill. His senses expanded, and the life of the forest pulsed through him in sound. The chattering of squirrels above him worried into his head, accompanied by the stridulations of crickets and cicadas anticipating the coming of dark, just a bell or so away. The clicking chorus of leaf-cutting ants going about their tasks tickled the drums of his ears. Finches twittered happily and jays protested the presence of Spendlove's party below.

He strengthened his concentration, and through the stir of forest heard his enemies talking.

Spendlove chanted in a language Stephen did not recognize, though every now and then he caught a word that sounded like Old Vadhiian. Two of the other monks—Seigereik and one Stephen didn't know—had been stripped to the waist, and one of the Sefry was painting strange glyphs or symbols on their chests. Yet another man—Stephen did not recognize him either, but did not think him a monk—had been stripped
naked. He was taken to the top of the sedos and staked out spread-eagle. He had something stuffed in his mouth.

Where is Aspar?
Stephen wondered desperately. Something very bad was about to happen, something that needed stopping. He searched the surroundings, but the holter could move so invisibly when he wanted to that even Stephen's saint-given senses couldn't always locate him.

Desmond switched languages, to Old Vadhiian, and Stephen was suddenly riveted. His mind translated so swiftly it was like hearing his native tongue.

One to open the way, dread power, and one to walk the way. A path of blood for the changeling, a soul to work the change.

Spendlove drew something from his robes, something that glittered so sharply it brought an ache to Stephen's eyes. Brother Desmond moved to the prone man, who tried to shriek but could not. Desmond knelt over the bound man, and Stephen realized with a dull shock that the terrible thing in his hand was some sort of knife, as the monk split the man open from sternum to groin and begin pulling out his innards. The struggling quickly diminished to twitching.

Stephen's morning meal rose to his throat, but he kept it there, tightening his will, concentrating on the details of what was happening, trying to abstract them, to pretend it wasn't the end of a human life he was watching, that those weren't intestines Spendlove and his men were spreading in strange patterns around the still-writhing figure.

After a time, seemingly satisfied, Spendlove beckoned one of the bare-chested monks—Seigereik—to step forward. Seigereik did so, face grim, straddling over the still-twitching, disemboweled figure.

“Are you ready, Brother?” Spendlove asked softly.

“I am, Brother Spendlove,” Seigereik said, his voice tight with determination.

“Be strong,” Spendlove bade him. “There will be a moment of disorientation. There will be pain, but you must bear it. And you
must
succeed. There can be no more failure.”

“I will not fail, Brother Spendlove.”

“I know you won't, Brother Seigereik, my warrior.”

Seigereik lifted his arms and closed his eyes.

“A soul to work the change,” Spendlove intoned, and struck Seigereik in the heart with the glittering knife. Stephen choked back a gasp as the monk's legs folded and he dropped lifeless. The air around the sedos seemed to darken, and something like a high keening of wind whipping black smoke soughed off through the treetops.

What have I just seen?
Stephen wondered. Two sacrifices, one willing, one not. And Seigereik was supposed to complete a task after he was dead? It didn't make any sense. Unless …

Would the corpse rise again? Had Desmond done the unthinkable and broken the law of death?

But the monk's body remained where it had fallen. No, it was the soul that had been sent away, wrapped in dark magic.

He shook himself away from his suppositions. The Sefry and two of the remaining monks were mounting their horses.

“He'd better succeed,” one of the Sefry—by his eye patch, probably Fend—remarked.

“Your way is prepared,” Spendlove assured him. “It might even be over by the time you get there.”

“I doubt that.”

“One more will make it certain,” Spendlove replied. He knelt over the disemboweled man on the ground. “There's still life in him. I can probably use him again. Brother Ash-ern, prepare yourself.”

The other painted monk nodded.

“Why take chances?” Fend asked, waving at the disemboweled captive. “Use the girl.”

“I thought you wanted to kill her in front of the holter,” Spendlove said. “After all, you brought her all this way.”

“I had that whim,” Fend said. “It has passed. Just leave her where he'll find her.”

Desmond glanced at the dying man.

“You may be right,” he allowed. “If he pops off in the middle, Ashern's sending will go awry.”

Fend and his Sefry rode off. A few moments later Spend-love chopped his head at one of the men, and said, “Bring her out.” A struggling woman was led from one of the tents.

Holter, where are you?
Stephen wondered frantically. As-par White was nowhere to be seen.

If the holter noticed Fend riding off—and of course he would—he would probably follow in hopes of killing him. Stephen realized he could no longer count on Aspar White; the man's obsession with the one-eyed Sefry was obvious, though he had never deigned to explain why.

Stephen thought he knew what Spendlove was up to, now, though it seemed incredible. If he didn't act very soon, the young woman below was going to be murdered in a very unpleasant way.

He'd just seen one man die that way. He would die himself before he watched it happen again. Steeling himself, he began moving toward the camp as quickly as he could.

CHAPTER EIGHT
THE PLAIN OF TERROR

A SAINT'S BREATH OF WIND sighed along the battlements of Cal Azroth as Neil gazed past the queen to the sun melting on the distant green horizon. The plain of Mey Ghorn was open and still, the only motion in sight the occasional whirl of swallows overhead. The triple ring of canals around the fortress was already in shadow, and soon their waters would hold stars. Off to his right he heard soldiers talking in the garrison, connected to the inner keep by a causeway.

The queen often stood like this at evening, facing Eslen.

Laughter bubbled up from the gap between keep and garrison. Elseny, by the sound of it. Neil glanced behind and down and saw her there. From above, the circle of her yellow dress and her dark hair made her resemble a sunflower. She was in the citadel's narrow, high-walled horz, on the big flat rock that was at the center of it, putting flowers in the wickerwork feinglest two of the old serving women had built earlier that day. Neil had never seen one exactly like this, vaguely human in shape. In Liery it was considered ill luck to build one so, though he had never heard why.

A movement to the side caught his eye, and with a start he realized he could see the edge of a second dress, peeking from beneath the canopy of an ash tree, this one blue and less noticeable in the fading light. Then came the flash of a white face looking up, and Fastia's gaze touching his own. She quickly looked back down, while Neil bit his lip, a blush creeping up his face. Fastia often had avoided him in the two
ninedays that had passed since that evening in Glenchest. He didn't know if she hated him or …

Nor does it matter,
he told himself.
Remember what Erren said.
He couldn't control what he felt, but he could certainly control what he
did
. With one exception, that was what he had been doing all of his life.

Once was enough, though. The unfamiliar feel of failure rested heavy in his heart.

“Ten thousand men and women died on this plain,” the queen said softly.

Neil started and turned his gaze guiltily from the horz, but the queen wasn't looking at him. He wasn't even sure she was talking to him.

“Is it so, Your Majesty?” he asked, not certain how to respond. “Was it in battle against Hansa?”

“Hansa?” the queen said. “No. Hansa wasn't even a dream in those days. Nor was Crotheny. In those days, the houses of men weren't divided. The ancestors of Marcomir fought beside the Dares.”

“It was the war against the Skasloi, then?”

She nodded. “They had loosed their shackles and burned the citadels in the east, but that was nothing if they did not reach Ulheqelesh and win there.” She turned to him, and with a shock he saw tears in her eyes. “Ulheqelesh was where Eslen now stands.”

“I never knew its name in the demon's tongue,” Neil replied. He felt profoundly ignorant.

“We don't speak it often. Most do not know it. It is one of the burdens of royalty that we must read the oldest histories.”

“And the battle here, at Mey Ghorn?”

“The name has become corrupted over time. In the old tongue it was
Magos Gorgon
, the Plain of Terror.”

“And the battle—it was a great one?”