The Born Queen (32 page)

“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 order 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

A
N
O
LD
F
RIEND

A
SPAR 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 learned 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?”

“Because eventually our names find us, just like our deaths.”

“This child isn’t going to die, Aspar. I know that in my heart. I don’t know why you would try to—” Her voice cracked.

They rode along for a moment.

“What names?” he asked.

“Never mind,” she answered.

He glanced over at her. “I always thought Armann was a good name,” he said.

She frowned, and at first he thought the conversation really was over. But then she nodded. “Yes,” she allowed. “My father would like that.”

“And if it’s a girl?”

“I like Emmer,” she said. “Or Sally.”

A bell later the wind shifted to blow from the woods, and the scent of corruption was so strong that Aspar gagged and lost his breakfast, then lay over his horse’s neck dry-heaving.

“For the saints, Asp, what’s wrong?” Winna asked.

“The smell.”

“Smell?” She sniffed at the air. “I smell something a little rotten,” she said. “Nothing to be sick over. Are you all right?”

“Yah,” he said.

But he wasn’t. When they got nearer, he saw some others wrinkling their noses, but to him the stench was so overpowering that he could hardly think. He wanted anger to hold him up, get him through it, but mostly he felt sick, tired, and sad. Something deep in his chest told him it was time to lie down and die, along with the forest he had known.

Because it was gone.

Every natural tree had rotted into viscous black slime, and growing from their putrefied corpses were the triumphant black thorns he first had seen growing from the footprints of the Briar King.

But it wasn’t just the vines now. They had been joined by trees with long saw-toothed leaves, barrel-shaped plants that resembled giant club moss, leafless, scaly bushes. He recognized some of them as being like those he had seen in the Sarnwood, but although unnatural, those had seemed healthy. These were not; like the ironoak, yew, poplar, and pine they had sprung from, these plants were dying, too.

So were the beasts. They came across the corpses of a greffyn and an utin. It looked like the first had killed the second, started to eat it, and then died of its own wounds.

Later they came across other sedhmhari that appeared simply to have dropped dead, perhaps of hunger.

There were no birds at all, no sounds except those they and their horses made. And for Aspar the smell only got worse and worse as they climbed up into the Lean Gable Hills and then back down along the edge of what once had been the Foxing Marshes but were now noisome meres infested with the giant scabby mosslike plants. There were things still moving in the water, big things, but none came close enough to see.

“This is insane,” Emfrith said as darkness started to settle in and Aspar hunted for a campsite. “What could have done this?”

Aspar didn’t feel like answering and didn’t, but the knight persisted.

“And what refuge do you hope to find in this desert? And where will we find supplies? We don’t have that much food or wine left, and I wouldn’t drink from any of the springs we’ve seen. There’s nothing to hunt.”

“I know a place where we might find supplies,” Aspar said. “We can be there by tomorrow.”

“And then what?”

“Then we head into the mountains.”

“You think they won’t be like this?”

No,
Aspar thought.
They’ll be worse
.

They reached the White Warlock the next morning, crossing the ancient Brew Bridge, a narrow span of pitted black stone. The river was no longer the clear stream that had inspired its name but ran black as tar.

When they were halfway across, something exploded out of it.

As his horse reared, Aspar had the impression of something that married snake and frog. Its immense greenish-black bulk rose up above them and showed a mouth topful of yellow needles that was reared to strike down toward them.

But it stopped suddenly, swaying there. Aspar saw that its eyes had pupils like a toad’s, and weird gills opened and closed on the sides of its massy neck. He saw no limbs; the sinuous neck—or body—continued deep into the water.

He started to put an arrow to his bow, but the beast suddenly turned its head, looked back the way Aspar and his companions had come, and vented a forlorn croak. Then it withdrew into the river as quickly as it had risen.

“Sceat,” Aspar breathed.

“It didn’t attack us,” Emfrith wondered.

“No,” Aspar agreed.
Fend told it not to
.