The Charnel Prince (38 page)

Aspar threw the ax and sidestepped. The churchman’s shaft sang through empty air, but the ax also missed.

The monk suddenly jogged to the right, and Aspar grimly understood he had no intention of closing for close combat. He’d just keep running and shooting until they were all dead or he was out of arrows.

He reached into his haversack, found his extra sinew, pulled it out to restring the bow. An arrow struck his boiled-leather cuirass with a thump, and he cursed and dropped to the ground. He finished stringing his bow. Another arrow plowed the soil right in front of his nose, and now the monk was hurtling toward him again, ignoring Leshya.

Aspar nocked the arrow to his string, the bow turned flat to the ground. It was an awkward pull, and he knew the other man would have one more shot before he got his.

But the monk stumbled, an arrow suddenly standing in his thigh. He shouted, turned, and loosed his dart toward the mound, but another arrow hit him in the center of the chest, and he sat down, hard. Aspar fired, hitting him in the right collarbone, and the fellow pitched over, howling.

Leshya was on him almost immediately, kicking the bow from his hands.

“Don’t kill him,” a familiar voice shouted.

Aspar looked toward the mound. Stephen stood there, holding Ehawk’s bow. Winna was running toward him, and nearly barreled him over with a hug.

Aspar couldn’t stop the smile from raising his lips. It felt too good, seeing Stephen standing there.

“Sceat,” he murmured. “It worked.”

“Keep him alive,” he told Leshya, waving at the monk.

She was already binding the man’s hand with cords. “If it can be done,” she said. “I’ve a few questions to ask him myself.”

Aspar hesitated. She had helped in the fight. She had probably saved his life when the Briar King came. But trusting her—trusting any Sefry—was a foolish proposition.

She looked back up, as if he had shouted his thoughts. Her violet gaze held his for an instant, and then she shook her head in disgust and returned to her task.

Aspar took another good look around the clearing, then started toward Stephen and Winna, his step feeling lighter.

It grew heavier again when he saw Ehawk. The boy was sprawled on the grass, pawing weakly at an arrow in his thigh. The ground around him was slick with blood. Winna and Stephen were already ministering to him.

“Hello, Aspar,” Stephen said without looking.

“It’s good to see you up and—ah—alive,” Aspar said.

“Yes, it’s good to be that way,” Stephen replied, not looking up from his task. “Winna, put something in his mouth so he doesn’t bite his tongue off.”

“I can deal with that, if you’re not up to it,” Aspar offered.

“No,” Stephen said. “I trained for this. I’ll do it. But I could use some foolhag for this wound, to stop the bleeding.”

Aspar blinked. The last time Stephen had confronted a bleeding wound, he’d collapsed in a fit of vomiting and been useless. Now he bent over Ehawk, his hands slick with blood, working quick, sure, and steady. The boy had certainly changed in the few months he had known him.

“I’ll find some,” he said. “Ehawk, how are you, boy?”

“I’ve f-felt better,” he gasped.

“I’ll bring
saelic
for the pain,” Aspar promised. “You just breathe deep and slow. Stephen knows what he’s doin’.” He went after the herbs, hoping that was true.

As soon as Ehawk’s bleeding was staunched and his leg bandaged, they put him on his horse, loaded the still-unconscious monk on Angel, and set off to get as far from the sedos as possible before nightfall.

“We’re going the wrong way,” Leshya said.

“I picked it, I’m in charge, it can’t be the wrong way,” Aspar pointed out.

“We should be following the monk’s trail.”

“What trail? The Briar King’s hunt missed him, that’s all.”

“I doubt that,” she said. “I think he came to bring them a message.” She held up a document with some sort of seal on it.

“That’s a Church seal,” Stephen said from where he was riding by Ehawk, some ten yards away.

“Well, your eyes are still good,” Aspar said.

“Yes.” Stephen smiled.

“How are you?”

“A little confused. I don’t know what’s happened since—well, whatever it was happened.”

“You don’t remember?” Winna asked.

Stephen trotted nearer. “Not really. I remember going into the sedos and feeling strange. Or, rather, not feeling much of anything. The bodies made me sick—I was going to
be
sick—and then suddenly I didn’t care. They might as well have been stones.”

“The letter?” Leshya interrupted.

“Stephen is our friend,” Winna snapped. “We thought he was dead. You’re going to have to tend your own beehive for a breath or two.”

Leshya shrugged and pretended interest in the forest.

“Was when you came down you fell,” Aspar said.

Stephen shook his head. “I don’t remember that, or anything else until I woke up on the sedos and saw you fighting the monk.”

“That was a nice shot you made. Didn’t know you could handle a bow so well.”

“I can’t,” Stephen said.

“Then—?”

“You remember how I hit Desmond Spendlove with his knife? Sometimes I can see something done and—well,
do
it. It doesn’t always work, and never with anything complicated. I can’t watch someone fight with a sword and learn how to do it, though I might be able to make some of the strokes. But to know when to do them—that’s different.”

Shooting a bow isn’t that simple either
, Aspar thought.
You have to know the weapon, allow for the wind . . .

Something was different about Stephen, but he couldn’t say what.

“That was one of the, ah, saint gifts you got?” he asked.

“From walking the faneway of Saint Decmanis, yes.”

“And do you have anything new like that? From this sedos?”

Stephen laughed. “Not that I know of. I don’t feel any different. Anyway, I didn’t walk the whole faneway, just two sedoi, if I understand what happened.”

“But something happened,” Aspar persisted. “The first killed you; the second brought you back to life.”

“What would the next one do, I wonder?” Leshya asked.

“I’ve no intention of finding out,” Stephen replied. “I’m alive, walking, breathing, I feel good—and I don’t want to have anything more to do with the saint that faneway belongs to.”

“You know the saint?” Leshya asked.

“There was a statue in the first one,” Stephen said, “with a name: Marhirehben.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Winna said.

“Her,” Stephen corrected, “at least in that aspect, the saint is female. If the word
saint
really applies.”

“What do you mean?”

“Marhirehben was one of the damned saints, whose worship was forbidden by the Church. Her name means ‘Queen of Demons.’”

“How can a saint be completely forgotten?”

“She wasn’t. You’ve heard of her—Nautha, Corpse Mother, the Gallows Witch—those are some of her names that survive.”

“Nautha isn’t a saint,” Winna protested. “She’s a monster from children’s stories.”

“So was the Briar King,” Stephen said.

“Anyway,
somebody
remembers her old name.” He frowned. “Or was reminded. She was mentioned in several of the texts I deciphered. Another of her aspects was ‘mother devouring.’ She who eats life and gives birth to death.” He looked down. “They couldn’t have done this without me, without my research.”

“Stephen, this isn’t your fault,” Winna said.

“No,” Stephen said. “It isn’t. But I was an instrument of whoever’s fault it is, and that doesn’t please me.”

“Then we should follow the monk’s trail,” Leshya said.

“Let me see the letter,” Stephen said. “Then we can decide what to do. We were sent to find the Briar King, not to chase my corrupt brethren all over the King’s Forest. It may be that one of us ought to take word back to the praifec.”

“We already found the Briar King,” Aspar said.

“What?” Stephen turned in his saddle.

“It was the Briar King and his creatures killed the rest of those monks back there,” Aspar explained.

“You said something about the Briar King’s hunt,” Stephen said, “but I didn’t realize you had seen
him
again. Then the arrow must not have worked.”

“I didn’t use it,” Aspar said.

“Didn’t use it?”

“The Briar King isn’t the enemy,” Leshya replied. “He attacked the monks and let us be.”

“He is the enemy,” Ehawk’s voice came weakly. “He turns villagers into animals and makes them kill other villagers. He may hate the monks, but he hates all men.”

“He’s cleansing his forest,” Leshya said.

“My people have lived in the mountains since the day the Skasloi fell,” Ehawk said. “It is our right to live there.”

Leshya shrugged. “Consider,” she said. “He wakes, and discovers his forest is diseased, and from the rot monsters are springing which will only hasten its end. Utins, greffyns—the black thorns. It is the disease he is fighting, and so far as he is concerned, the people who live in this forest and cut its trees are part of that disease.”

“He didn’t kill us,” Aspar pointed out.

“Because,” she said, “like him, we are part of the cure.”

“You don’t know that,” Stephen said.

Again she shrugged. “Not for certain, I suppose, but it makes sense. Can you think of another explanation?”

“Yes,” Stephen said. “Something is wrong with the forest, yes, and terrible creatures are waking or being born. The Briar King is one of them, and like them he is mad, old, senile, and terribly powerful. He is no more our friend or our enemy than a storm or bolt of lightning.”

“That’s not so different from what I just said,” Leshya replied.

Stephen turned to Aspar. “What do you think, holter?”

Aspar blew out a breath. “You may both be right. But whatever is wrong with the forest, the Briar King isn’t the cause of it. And I think he is trying to fix it.”

“But that could mean killing every man, woman, and child within its boundaries,” Stephen pointed out.

“Yah.”

Stephen’s eyes widened. “You don’t
care!
You care more about the trees than you do about the people.”

“Don’t talk for me, Stephen,” Aspar cautioned.

“You talk, then. You tell me.”

“Read the letter,” Aspar said, to change a topic he wasn’t sure about himself. “Then we’ll reckon where to go from here. It may be that we should have another talk with the praifec.”

Stephen frowned at him, but took the letter from Leshya’s hand. When he examined the seal, he smiled grimly.

“Indeed,” he said. “We may well want to have another conversation with Praifec Hespero. This is his seal.”

“FRALET ACKENZAL?” Leoff looked up at the young man who stood at his door. He had blue eyes and wispy yellow hair. His nose bent to one side, and he seemed a bit distracted by it.

“Yes?”

“If it please you, I’ve been sent to conduct you to the lady Gramme’s affair.”

“I . . . I’m quite busy,” Leoff said, tapping the music notation on his desk. “I’ve a commission . . .”

The man frowned. “You
did
accept the lady’s invitation.”

“Well, yes, actually, but—”

The fellow wagged his finger as if Leoff were a naughty child. “Milady made it quite clear that she would be most insulted if you did not attend. She’s had a new hammarharp brought in just for you.”

“I see.” Leoff cast his gaze desperately around the room in the vague hope that he would see something that would get him out of this predicament.

“I’ve not much to wear,” he attempted.

The man smiled and beckoned to someone unseen. A round-faced girl dressed in servant’s garb appeared, bearing a bundle of neatly folded clothes.

“I think these will fit you,” the man said. “My name is Alvreic. I’m your footman for the night.”

Seeing no escape, Leoff took the clothes and went to his bedchamber.

———«»——————«»——————«»———

Leoff watched the slowly turning saglwics of a malend on the side of the canal and shivered, both from the cold and the memory of that night near Broogh. A full moon, pale in the daylight, rose just behind it, and in the clear air he heard the distant barking of dogs. The autumn smell of hay was gone, replaced by the scent of ash.

“I had rather thought the ball was to be held in the castle,” Leoff ventured.

“Is the coat not warm enough?”

“It’s a beautiful coat,” Leoff said. It was, for it was quilted and embroidered with leaves on the high collar and wide cuffs. He just wished it were as warm as it was pretty.