The Charnel Prince (34 page)

“The Church?” Winna looked at Aspar.

“Yah,” he said. “There were priests at the sedos. They cut people up and hung them about, like we’ve seen before.”

“But that was Spendlove and his renegades,” Winna said. “Stephen said the Church didn’t know anything about them.”

Leshya snorted. “Then your friend was wrong,” she said. “This is no small band of renegades. You think Spendlove and Fend were working alone? They are but a finger of stone on a mountain.”

“Yah,” Aspar said. “And what do you know of that? Where would I find Fend?” He cocked his head. “For that matter, you knew about the arrow. How
could
you know that?”

She rolled her eyes. “I saw you shoot the utin. I examined its body. The rest I either heard from you when I was following you or guessed. Someone from the Church gave it to you, didn’t they? And asked you to kill the Briar King.”

“Fend,” Aspar insisted, not to be sidetracked. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know where to find him,” she said. “I heard he was in the Bairghs when I came through there on my way south. One rumor was that he was going to the Sarnwood Witch, but who knows if that’s true?”

“Then how did you find us? How did you know who we were?” Winna demanded.

“You? Luvilih, I’ve no idea who you are, or who that boy in the tree is. But Aspar White is well known throughout the King’s Forest.”

“Not thirty years ago, I wasn’t,” Aspar said. “If you haven’t been here in that long, then it’s a fair question.”

“No, it’s still a stupid question. I was searching for the king’s holter, so I started asking who he was and how I might find him. Among other things, I heard about your fight with the greffyn, and that you were the one who first saw the Briar King. They said you’d gone to Eslen, so I was on my way there to find you. I was in Fellenbeth a few ninedays ago and heard you’d come through heading this way. So I followed.”

“But didn’t bother to introduce yourself.”

“No. I’ve heard of you, but I don’t know you. I wanted you to see the things I had seen, and I wanted to see what you would do.”

“And now you’re our best friend,” Winna said acidly. “And after all your help with the utin and leading poor Stephen straight to his doom, you reckon we’re yours.”

Leshya smiled. “You like them young, don’t you, holter?”

“That’s enough,” Aspar said. “More than enough. What’s the Church got to do with this?”

“Everything,” Leshya replied. “You saw the monks.”

“Not the praifec,” Winna blurted angrily. “If he knew about this, why would he—?”

“—send you to kill the only enemy strong enough to interfere with his designs?” Leshya finished rather smugly. “Saints know.”

“What makes you think the Briar King is against the Church and not with it?”

“Ask your lover.”

Aspar nearly jumped at the word, and when he looked back at Winna found an odd expression on her face.

“What, Aspar?” she asked.

“We saw him,” he told her. “The slinders—the things Ehawk saw, the things you heard—they were at his command. They killed the priests, and could have killed us, but he held them back.”

“Then the Briar King is good?”

“Good? No. But he’s fighting for the forest. The thorns that follow him—they’re trying to destroy him, pull him down like they’re doing the trees. The greffyn wasn’t his servant—it was his foe.”

“Then he
is
good,” Winna insisted.

“He fights for the forest, Winna. But he’s no friend of us, no friend of people.”

“Still, you didn’t kill him,” she said. “You said you didn’t even try.”

“No. I don’t know what’s going on exactly. I can use this arrow only once more—as long as the praifec wasn’t lying about that—and I don’t want to use it on the wrong thing, if you catch my meaning.”

Winna shot a sharp glance at Leshya. “We’ve no idea whom we can trust, then.”

“Werlic.”

“So what do we do? The praifec sent us out here to kill the Briar King. You didn’t do it. So what do we do now?”

“We take Stephen to the sedos and see what happens. That’s where we start. After that, we figure out who’s lying to us, the praifec—” He looked straight at Leshya. “—or you.”

The Sefry just smiled and pulled her boot back on.

ANNE MANAGED TO CRAWL out onto the deck before being sick again. She even made it to the steerboard rail, and there her whole body spasmed and she vomited until she thought her breast would tear apart. Then she slid trembling to the deck and huddled there, weeping.

It was night, and if the ship wasn’t still, the wind was. She heard a sailor laugh briefly and another hush him. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything.

She wished she could just die and have it over with. She deserved it.

She had killed Sir Neil, as certainly as if she had pushed him into the ocean herself. He had traveled across half the world and saved her—saved all of them—and all she had been able to do was watch the sea close over his head.

If she lived forever, she would never forget the look of betrayal in his eyes.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. It was better out here in the air. When she went below to the tiny cabin she shared with Austra, everything spun around. Two days now like that. She couldn’t keep any food down at all, and wine just made it worse, even when it was mixed with water.

She rolled over onto her back and looked up at the stars.

The stars stared back at her. So did an orange half-moon that seemed somehow far too bright.

She was starting to feel sick again.

She fixed her eye on the moon, trying to make the motion go away, to focus beyond it. She picked out features from the dark splotches, remembered maps, and noticed strange patterns that signified nothing she had ever seen, but nevertheless seemed to have meaning.

The motion of the ship gradually faded, and the light of the Moon went from orange to yellow to—as she hung directly overhead—shining silver.

With a soft movement, the ship was gone altogether. Anne looked around, only half surprised this time to find herself in a forest still bathed in moonlight.

She gathered her feet under her and stood up shakily. “Hello?” she said.

There was no answer.

She had twice been to this place. The first time she had been forced—drawn from her sister’s birthday party by a strange masked woman. The second, she had come herself, somehow, trying to escape the darkness of the cave where she had been confined by the sisters of the coven Saint Cer.

This time she wasn’t sure if she had been called or come or something in between. But it was nighttime, where before it had always been bright. And there was no one here—no strange masked women making obscure statements about how she had to be queen, or the whole world was going to end.

Maybe they didn’t
know
she was here.

A cloud passed across the moon, and the shadows in the trees deepened, seemed to slink toward her.

That was when she remembered that there were no shadows in this place, not under the sun, at least. Then why should they be here when it was night?

She was starting to think she wasn’t in the same place at all.

And it dawned upon her that she had been wrong about another thing. There
was
someone there, someone her eye kept avoiding, would not let her stare straight at. She tried harder, but each time she turned one way, she found herself looking another, so the tall shadow was always at the corner of her eye.

A soft laugh touched her ears. A man. “What is this,” a voice said. “Is this a queen, come to see me?”

Anne realized she was trembling. He moved, and she gritted her teeth as her head turned in response, so as not to see him. “I’m not a queen,” she said.

“Not a queen?” he asked. “Nonsense. I see the crown on your head and the scepter in your hand. Didn’t the Faiths tell you?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Anne said. “I don’t know any Faiths.” But she knew she was lying. The women she had met here before had never named themselves, but that name seemed very right, somehow.

He knew, too. “Perhaps you do not know them by name,” the voice purred, echoing her thoughts. The shadows drew closer. “They are known by many. Hagautsin, Vhateis, Suesori, Hedgewights—the Shadowless. It doesn’t matter what they’re called. They are meddlesome witches with not nearly the wisdom or power they pretend to.”

“And you? Who are you?” Anne tried to sound confident.

“Someone they fear. Someone they think you can protect them from. But you cannot.”

“I don’t understand,” Anne said. “I just want to go home.”

“So you can be crowned? So you can become what the Faiths predicted?”

“I don’t want to be queen,” Anne replied truthfully, continuing to edge away. Her fear was a bright cord around her heart, but she reached for the power she had unleashed in z’Espino. She felt it quivering there, ready, but when she reached toward the shadow, there was no flesh, no blood, no beating heart. Nothing to work upon.

And yet there was something, and that something came suddenly, racing across the green from not one direction, but from all of them, a noose of darkness yanking tight. She balled her fists, trembling, and turned her face to the moon, the only place her flesh would let her look.

Light flashed through her, then, and the thing in her turned altogether different and she felt like marble, like luminescent stone, and the darkness was a wave of chill water that passed around her and was gone.

“Ah,” the voice said, fading. “You continue to learn. But so do I. Do not hold your life too dear, Anne Dare. It will not belong to you for long.”

Then the shadows were gone, and the glade was filled with perfect moonlight.

“He’s right,” a woman’s voice said. “You do learn. There are more diverse powers in the moon than darkness.”

Anne turned, but it wasn’t one of the women she had seen before. This one had hair as silvery as the lunar light and skin as pale. She wore a black gown that flashed here and there with jewels and a mask of black ivory that left her mouth uncovered.

“How many of you are there?” Anne asked.

“There are four,” the woman replied. “You have met two of my sisters.”

“The Faiths.”

“He named to you but a few of our names.”

“I’ve never heard of you by any names until now.”

“It has been long since we moved in the world. Most have forgotten us.”

“Who was that? Who was he?”

“He is the enemy,” she said.

“The Briar King?”

She shook her head. “The Briar King is not the enemy, though many of you will die by his hand. The Briar King is a part of the way things were and the way things are. The one you just spoke to is not.”

“Then who was he?”

“A mortal, still. A thing of flesh and blood, but becoming more. Like the world, he is changing. If he finishes changing, then everything we know will be swept aside.”

“But who is he?” Anne persisted.

“We do not know his mortal name. But the possibility of him has been arriving for millennia.”

Anne closed her eyes, anger welling in her breast. “You’re as useless as your sisters.”

“We’re trying to help, but by our nature we are restricted.”

“Yes, your sister explained that, at least,” Anne replied. “But I found it just as unhelpful as anything else any of you have told me.”

“Everything has its seasons, Anne. The moon goes through its cycle each month, and each year brings spring, summer, autumn, winter. But the world has larger seasons, stronger tides. Flowers that bloom in Prismen are dormant in Novmen. It has been so since the world was young.”

“And yet the last time this season came around, the cycle itself was nearly broken, a balance was lost. The wheel creaks on a splintered axle, and possibilities exist that never did before. One of those possibilities is
him
. Not a person, at first, just a place, a throne if you will, never sat before but waiting to be filled. And now someone has come along to fill it. But we do not yet know him—we see only what you saw, his shadow.”

“Is he the one behind the murder of my sisters and father? Did he send the knights to the coven?”

“Ultimately, perhaps. He certainly wants you dead.”

“But why?”

“He does not want you to be queen.”

“Why?” Anne repeated. “What threat am I to him?”

“Because there are
two
new thrones,” the Faith said, softly. “Two.”

Anne woke on the deck of the ship. Someone had slipped a blanket over her. She lay there a moment, fearing that if she straightened, the wave-sickness would return, but after a moment she realized that she felt well.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. It was morning, the sun just peeking over the marine horizon. Austra was at the railing a few yards away, conversing in low tones with Cazio. She was smiling, and when Cazio reached to touch her hand, she went all rosy.