The Charnel Prince (33 page)

Then something came from the trees, creatures loping sometimes on four legs, sometimes on two. There were ten of them, and their baying became more frantic as their feet hit the clearing and they saw the monks.

At first Aspar thought they might be smaller versions of the utin or some other ugly thing from boygshin stories, but when he understood what they actually were, the shock went cold through him.

They were men and women. Naked, scuffed, dirty, bleeding, utterly mad—but Mannish, just as Ehawk had described.

As the leaves began to rustle in a strong autumn wind, the main pack of them came behind the leaders—twenty, fifty—more than he could count. He guessed at least a hundred. They moved strangely, and it wasn’t just that they sometimes dropped to their hands. They ran jerkily, frantically—like insects, in a way. A few carried rocks or branches, but most were empty-handed.

The majority looked to be relatively young, but some were stoop-shouldered and gray-haired. Some were little more than children, but he didn’t see any that looked as if they had seen fewer than fifteen winters.

They spread to encircle the monks, and their cacophonic yowling settled into a hair-prickling sort of song. The words were slurred and broken, just sounds really, but he knew the tune. It was a children’s song, about the Briar King, sung in Almannish.

Dillying Dallying

Farthing go

The Briar King walks to and fro

“Those are the slinders?” he asked.

“It’s what the Oostish have taken to calling them,” the Sefry said. “At least those who haven’t joined them.”

As she spoke, the slinders began to fall, quilled black by arrows. The monks were firing with inhuman speed and precision. But it hardly slowed the wave of bodies. They poured around the fallen like a river around rocks. The monks drew swords and formed themselves into a ring fortress—only two kept their bows out, and they were in the center.

Almost without thinking, Aspar reached for his own bow.

“You’re not that foolish,” she said. “Why would you fight for them? You’ve seen what they do.”

Aspar nodded. “Werlic.” The monks deserved what they got. But what they were facing was so weird and dread, he’d almost forgotten that.

What was more, he
had
forgotten the greffyn. He remembered it now as it let out a low unearthly growl. It stood pawing the ground, the spines on its back stiff. Then, as if reaching a sudden decision, it turned and bounded into the forest.

Straight toward him.

“Sceat,” Aspar mouthed, raising his bow. He already felt the sickness burning in the thing’s eyes. He let fly.

The arrow skipped off the bony scales above its nostrils. The greffyn glanced his way, and with blinding speed changed direction, bounded off into the forest and was gone.

Aspar had tracked one greffyn over half of Crotheny. He’d never seen it run from anything.

If the greffyn had fought alongside them, the monks might have stood a chance. He had seen how their kind could fight, and even a poor fighter with a sword was more than a match for any number of naked, unarmed attackers.

But these attackers didn’t care if they died, and that in itself was a potent weapon.

So he watched as the slinders hurled into the monks’ glittering blades like meat into a grinder, with much the same results. In instants the clearing was bathed in gore, viscera, severed heads and limbs. But the attackers kept coming without hesitation, without fear, like Grim’s birsirks—though birsirks usually carried at least a spear. He saw one who had lost a leg dragging himself toward the monks. Another impaled himself on a sword, locking his hands around his foe’s throat.

There was fighting against that, but there was no winning. One by one the monks were dragged down by sheer force of numbers and had their throats bitten out or their bellies clawed open. Then, with his stomach lurching, Aspar watched the slinders feed, tearing into the bodies like wolves.

He glanced aside at the Sefry, but she wasn’t watching the slinders. Her eye was on the forest edge from which they had emerged. He followed her gaze and saw that the trees were still trembling, swaying even, and he felt as if the sun were rising, but there was no light. Just the feel of radiance on his face and the sense of change.

Something new stepped from the forest, then, not as tall as the trees but twice the height of a big man. Black antlers branched from its head, but its face was that of a man with birch-bark-pale skin and a beard like thick brown moss. He was as naked as the slinders, though thick hair or moss covered much of him. Where his feet struck the ground, black briars spurted up like slow fountains.

“He didn’t look like that before,” Aspar muttered.

“He’s the Briar King,” the Sefry replied. “He’s always different, always the same.”

A crowd of slinders followed him, and when the briars sprouted, they hurled themselves upon them, trying to tear them from the ground. Their bodies were flushed with blood, for the thorns cut deep, but like the monks, the thorns were no match for determination and numbers. The slinders bled and died, but the thorns were ripped apart as surely as their human foes.

The Briar King, seemingly unconcerned with any of that, strode up to the fallen monks, and the forest at his back seemed to strain to follow him.

Grimly, Aspar reached for the black arrow. He knew his best chance when he saw it.

“And here is where your choice lies, holter,” the Sefry whispered.

“No choice,” Aspar said. “He’s killing the forest.”

“Is he? Are your eyes truly open, holter?”

For answer, Aspar fitted the arrow to the sinew of his bow.

The wind dropped, and then the Briar King turned. Even at that distance, Aspar could see the green glint of his eyes.

The slinders looked up, too, and started toward Aspar, but the horned monarch lifted one hand, and they stopped in their tracks.

“Think, holter,” the Sefry said. “I only ask you to think.”

“What do you know, Sefry?”

“Little more than you do. I only know what my heart tells me. Now ask yours what it tells you. I brought you here because no one knows this forest better than you—no Sefry, no Mannwight. Who is the enemy here? Who gave you that arrow?”

The wind was nothing now. He could make the shot almost without thinking.

He could end it.

“Those things that follow him,” Aspar said, “they used to be people. Villagers.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I’ve seen the empty villages.”

“Then . . .”

But the Briar King had saved his life. He’d been poisoned by the greffyn, and the king had stooped upon him. He remembered only a dream of the roots, sinking deep, of treetops drinking in the sun, of the great wheel of seasons, of birth and death and decay.

He’d told himself it was a lie.

The Briar King turned very slowly and walked back toward the forest. Aspar pulled the bow to its full draw, and suddenly noticed that his fingers trembled.

The Briar King’s gaze lingered. In the eyes of the greffyn, he’d seen only sickness. In the eyes of the Briar King, he saw life.

Cursing softly, he lowered the bow as the creature and its entourage faded into the trees.

The howling stopped, and the forest was quiet.

“I cannot say for certain that was the right choice, holter,” the Sefry said, breaking the silence. “But it is the one I would have made.”

Aspar returned the arrow to its case. “And now suppose you just tell me who you are?” he muttered.

“My clan is Sern,” she replied. “My talking name is Liel, but I prefer the name I was given in Nazhgave—Leshya.”

“You’re lying. No one from clan Sern has left the Halafolk rewns in a thousand generations.”

“Did you find any of my clan at Rewn Aluth? You’ve seen for yourself that we have. And I broke that prohibition long ago, before any of my folk.”

“Sceat,” he snarled. “How do you know so much about me, when I’ve never heard of you?”

She smiled grimly. “You think you know everything about the Sefry, Aspar White? You do not, and far less about me. As I said, I’ve been away. Thirty winters I spent in the north. I only came back when I felt him wakening.”

“You didn’t answer my question. How do you know so much about me?”

“I’ve taken an interest in you, Aspar White,” she said.

“That’s still no answer,” he said. “I don’t have much patience with Sefry two-talk.” He narrowed his eyes. “Every Sefry in the forest left months ago. Why are you still here?”

“The others flee from their duty,” she said sternly. “I do not.”

“What duty is that? I’ve never heard of any Sefry having a duty to any beyond themselves.”

“And I’m afraid that for the time being you’ll remain unenlightened,” she said. “Will you attack me for my silence?”

“I might. You got a friend of mine killed.”

“The mannwight? I had no way of knowing that would happen—I only wanted you to see what the Church was doing. He must be somehow sensitive to the fanes. Was he a priest?”

“So you don’t know everything either.”

“No, of course not. But if he was a priest, and has walked another faneway, perhaps one related to this one, it might explain—”

“Wait,” Aspar said, as memory suddenly struck him. “This sedos—is it part of the same faneway as the first one you led us to?”

She raised an eyebrow. “It seems most likely. Those monks built that fane first, then came here.”

“And were they finished here? Did they complete their rites?”

She glanced at the messy corpses around the mound. “I think so,” she said, “but I am certainly no expert on these matters.”

“Then I’ll bring the one who is,” Aspar replied. He turned to leave.

“Stay a moment, holter. We still need to talk. We are, it seems, working toward the same purpose.”

“I have only one purpose right now,” Aspar replied, “and I doubt very much that it’s the same as yours.”

“I’m going with you, then.”

Aspar didn’t answer. He found Ogre, mounted, and rode toward where he had left the others.

But still the Sefry followed.

He found Ehawk, Winna, and Stephen not far from where he’d left them, except they had somehow gotten Stephen’s body up into an ironoak, safely wedged in the crotch of two branches. Ehawk had his bow out.

“That’s them,” he said, when he saw Aspar. “That’s what attacked us in the Duth ag Pae. Hear them?”

The song of the slinders had begun again, albeit very distantly. “Yah,” Aspar said. “But I don’t think they’re coming this way.”

“You saw them?” Winna asked, starting to clamber down.

“Yah. I saw ‘em.”

Winna’s feet hit the ground, and she ran to throw herself into his arms. “We thought they had you,” she whispered, pressing her face into his neck. He felt dampness.

“It’s fine, Winna,” he said. “I’m fine.” But it felt good, after the days of tension and argument.

But then she stiffened in his arms. “He’s here,” she said. “Behind you.”

“Yah. It’s not Fend.” Nonetheless, he shot Ehawk a cautioning glance. The boy nodded and stayed in the tree with his weapon ready.

“No?” she pulled away from him, and they watched the Sefry walk into the camp.

Leshya glanced at Winna, then bemusedly at Ehawk. “The squirrels run large here,” she said.

“And dangerous,” Aspar replied.

“Who is she?” Winna asked.

“Just a Sefry,” Aspar grunted. “As full of lies and trouble as any of them.”

“And she can speak for herself,” Leshya said. She sat on a log and pulled off one of her buskins, spilling a rock from it and massaging her foot.

Winna stood watching her for a few moments, trying to absorb the new situation.

“Our friend was hurt because of you,” Winna finally said, angrily. “You led us—”

“I heard he was dead,” Leshya interrupted. “Was that opinion somewhat exaggerated?”

“Maybe,” Aspar allowed.

“What?” Winna said. “You’ve changed your mind?”

Aspar held his hands out, cautioning. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he said. “But something like this happened to him before, to hear him tell it. When he walked the faneway of Saint whoever.”

“Decmanis.”

“Yah. He said he lost all feeling in his body, forgot who he was, that even his heart stopped beating. Maybe something like that’s happened now. Maybe he just needs to finish the faneway.”

Winna’s eyes lit with hope, then dulled again. “We don’t know about these things, Aspar. Last time he managed it alone, because the saints intended it. This time—” She nodded up at the still body.

“You said yourself he hasn’t started to rot.”

“But— No, you’re right. We can’t just do nothing. We have to try. But we don’t even know where the rest of the faneway is.”

“We know where part of it is,” Aspar said. “That’s a start.”

“Consider carefully,” Leshya interposed, “whether anyone—even your friend—should walk a faneway such as the Church is creating.”