The Charnel Prince (57 page)

“I’m not chastising,” Aspar said. “The three of us would be in its belly now if you hadn’t come along.”

“Why didn’t its song affect you?” Winna asked, a bit sharply.

“I’m Sefry,” Leshya rejoined. “Our ears are made differently.” She quirked an amused smile at Stephen. “I don’t care for Mannish music that much, either.”

Winna raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t pursue the matter.

Stephen did, however. “Still,” he remarked, “how could you have known it wouldn’t lure you as it did us?”

“I didn’t,” she said, “but it’s a good thing to know, isn’t it?”

Winna regarded the Sefry. “Thank you,” she said. “Thanks for saving our lives.”

Leshya shrugged. “I told you we were in this together.”

“So how do we kill it?” Aspar asked impatiently.

“I don’t think we do,” Stephen replied.

“How’s that?”

“We might be able to prick it to death, given time, but time is what we don’t have. This faneway must be nearly complete. Aspar, we have to stop them from finishing it.”

“But
we
have the instructions for the last fane,” Winna said.

“Yes,” Stephen said, “which only means they need to send a rider to Eslen to see the praifec. That gives us a little more time, but not until next month. The nicwer has lost its voice, and that’s its most dangerous weapon. We’ll have to leave it to the riverboaters to kill it.” He turned to Leshya. “You called it a sedhmhari. What did you mean by that? It’s a Sefry word?”

“Mother Gastya called the greffyn that,” Winna supplied.

Leshya’s eyes went round. “You spoke to Mother Gastya?” she said, clearly surprised. “I thought she was dead.”

Aspar remembered his last sight of the old woman, how she seemed to be nothing but bone. “Maybe she was,” Aspar said. “But that’s not far nor near.”

Leshya acquiesced to that with a twist of her mouth. “There is no true Sefry language,” she clarified. “We abandoned it long ago. Now we speak whatever the Mannish around us do, but we keep old words, too.
Sedhmhari
is an old word. It means ‘demon of the sedos.’ The greffyn, utin, and nicwer are all sedhmhari.”

“They’re connected to the sedoi?” Stephen asked.

“Surely you knew that,” Leshya said. “The greffyn was walking the sedoi when you first saw it.”

“Yah,” Aspar said. “It’s how the churchmen were finding them.”

“But you’re implying a deeper connection,” Stephen persisted.

“Yes,” Leshya said. “They are spawned by the power of the sedoi, nourished by them. In a sense, they are distillations of the sedos power.”

Stephen shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. That would make them distillations of the saints themselves.”

“No,” Leshya said carefully, “that would make the
saints
distillations of the sedos power, just as the sedhmhari are.”

Aspar almost laughed at the way Stephen’s jaw dropped. For an instant he seemed the same naive boy he had met on the King’s Road, months ago.

“That’s heresy,” he finally said.

“Yes,” Leshya said dryly. “And wouldn’t it be terrible to contradict a church that’s sacrificing children to feed the dark saints? I’m very ashamed.”

“Yet—” Stephen didn’t finish his thought, but his expression grew ever more furiously thoughtful.

“It seems to me most of this is moot, at the moment,” Winna interrupted. “What matters is finding that last sedos, that Bent Hill.”

“She’s right,” Aspar concurred. “If we don’t have time to kill the nicwer, we don’t have time for you two to stand here and go all bookish for a nineday.”

Stephen reluctantly conceded that with a nod. “I’ve looked on my maps,” he said, “but I don’t see anything marked that looks at all like Khrwbh Khrwkh. Logic dictates that it has to be to the east.” He knelt and flattened the map on the ground so they could all view it.

“Why?” Aspar asked.

“We know the order of the faneways from the invocation, and we know where the first one was. These others have been leading steadily east. Most faneways fall in lines or arcs that tend to be regular.”

“Wait,” Winna said. “What about the faneway they meant to sacrifice
me
at? That was near Cal Azroth, and so would be north.”

Stephen shook his head. “They did a different ritual there, not the same thing at all. That wasn’t part of this faneway, but a sedos used for the single purpose of possessing the queen’s guards. No, this faneway goes east.”

Aspar watched as Stephen’s index finger traced a shallow curve, across what must be the Daw River and into the plains near where Dunmrogh was located now.

“That’s the Daw there, and the Saint Sefodh River there?” Aspar asked.

“Yes,” Stephen replied.

“The forest extended that far—all the way into Hornladh? It’s no wonder the Briar King is angry. The forest is half the size it was.”

“A lot of it was destroyed in the Warlock Wars,” Stephen said. “The Briar King can hardly hold that against us.”

Leshya snorted. “Of course he can. He doesn’t care which particular Mannishen destroyed his forest, only that it was destroyed.”

“There’s still a stand of ironoaks in Hornladh,” Aspar said. “I passed through there on my way to Paldh once. Had a funny name—Prethsorucaldh.”

“Prethsorucaldh,” Stephen repeated. “That
is
a strange name.”

“I don’t speak much Hornish,” Aspar admitted.

“The ending,
caldh
, just means ‘forest,’” Stephen said. “
Preth
means a ‘copse,’ like a copse of trees.
Soru
, I think, means a ‘louse’ or ‘worm’ or something like that.”

“Copse-Worm-Wood?” Leshya said. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why would they call it a copse and a forest in the same name?”

Stephen nodded. “Doesn’t make a lot of sense, which means it probably wasn’t originally a Hornish name. It was something that sounded like
Prethsoru
, so over time they substituted words that made sense to them.”

“What do you mean?” Leshya asked, sounding as lost as Aspar felt.

“Like this place, Whitraff,” Stephen explained. “In Oostish, it means ‘White Town,’ but we know from this map that the original name was Vhydhrabh, which meant ‘Huskwood,’ corrupted through Vitellian to ‘Vitraf.’ When Oostish speakers settled here, they heard the name and thought it meant White Town, and so it stuck. You see?”

“This is hurting my head,” Aspar said. “Is there any point to this?”

“Preth-whatever doesn’t sound anything like Khrwbh Khrwkh,” Winna tentatively pointed out. “At least not to me it doesn’t.”

“No, nothing like it at all,” Stephen mused. “But it reminds me . . .” He paused. “The map is Vitellian, made just as the Hegemony was taking control of this territory. Most of the names on it were originally Allotersian or Vadhüan. But later on, there must have been Vitellian names for towns and landmarks.”

“Do you have another map from later on?” Leshya asked.

“No, not of that region,” Stephen told her. “And I still don’t see how Khrwbh . . .” He stopped again and seemed to stare off into the weird. It worried Aspar, sometimes, how quickly and oddly Stephen’s mind worked, ever since he walked the faneway of Decmanis. Not that it hadn’t worked strangely to start with.

“That’s it,” Stephen murmured. “It has to be.”

“What’s what?” Aspar asked.

“They
translated
it.”

“Translated what?”

“Names of places are funny,” Stephen said, his voice growing more excited—as it always did when he’d figured something out. “Sometimes, when a new people with a new language come along, they just keep the old name, not knowing what it means. Sometimes they bend it so it does mean something, as with Whitraff. And sometimes, when they
do
know what the old name means, they translate it into their own tongue. Ehawk, what do your people call the King’s Forest?”

“
Yonilhoamalho
,” the boy replied.

“Which means?” Stephen pressed.

“The King’s Forest,” Ehawk responded.

“Exactly. In the language of the Warlock kings, it was named Khadath Rekhuz. The Hegemony called it Lovs Regatureis, and during the Lierish Regency it was Cheldet de Rey. In Oostish it’s Holt af sa Kongh, and when Virgenyan became the king’s tongue we started calling it the King’s Forest. But the meaning remains unbroken after a thousand years, you see?”

“All that to spell what?” Aspar asked, a little put off that he still didn’t see where this was going, and knowing he was going to feel stupid when Stephen reached his conclusion.

“I think
Prethsoru
came from Vitellian
Persos Urus
,” Stephen replied triumphantly.

“Hurrah,” Aspar said. “What the sceat does that mean?”

“Bent Hill,” Stephen rejoined, too smugly. “Do you follow me now?”

“Sceat, no, I didn’t follow any of that,” Aspar shot back. “It’s a bridge made of mist.”

“Probably,” Stephen admitted.

“And if I take your meaning, you’re saying we should ride hell-bent for a forest in Hornladh based on nothing more than this silly wordplay?”

“Exactly,” Stephen promptly replied.

“And—let’s get this clear—even
you
don’t think you’re right about this?”

“A blind shot in the dark,” Stephen allowed.

Aspar scratched his chin. “Let’s get going, then,” he said. “That’s twenty leagues if it’s a yard.”

“Wait!” Leshya protested. “If he’s wrong—”

“He’s not wrong,” Aspar said.

“What about the nicwer?” Ehawk asked. “We still have to cross the river.”

“There’s a ford a league downstream,” Aspar told him. “If it follows us there, at least we’ll be able to see it. After that we can double back to the Old King’s Road. It goes straight to Dunmrogh.” He nodded at Stephen and Winna. “You two help Ehawk get mounted. Leshya, you come with me and we’ll get some supplies from the tavern.”

He saw Winna’s frown, and felt a flash of exasperation. Leshya was the only one of them immune to the song of the nicwer. Didn’t Winna
know
it made more sense for the Sefry to go back to town with him? After all, there might be more than one of the beasts in the river.

He didn’t say anything, though. He wasn’t going to embarrass himself by explaining something that ought to be understood. Winna still had a lot of learning to do.

“Keep a close watch on the river,” he said instead. “Yell if you see anything. And put something in your ears.”

“You should do the same,” Winna shot back.

“Then I couldn’t hear you yell, could I?” he countered, starting off toward town, Leshya a pace behind him.

FOR A MOMENT ANNE’S TONGUE was frozen by surprise. “I’m sorry?” she asked, finally. “Who do you mean? I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

“I haven’t,” Osne said. “Word came to me that you might pass this way. Do you think it coincidence that my husband found you?” She placed her hands on the table, palms up. “Sister Ivexa,” she said softly. “One sister of the coven Saint Cer did not die in the attack, and the coven has many graduates and allies across the land. Word has spread quickly both of your plight and of your pursuers.”

Anne felt as if all she had to walk upon was a sword’s edge beneath her feet. The simple thought that someone actually knew who she was and wanted to help her instead of kill her was nearly too much to accept. It ran hard up against the fact that this could just be another betrayal in fair disguise.

She was far too tired to parse out which was more likely. “If you wanted me dead, you could have had that,” Anne said.

“I do not wish any harm to you, Anne,” Osne assured her.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to easily trust words like that.” She placed one hand flat on the table, feeling the solidity of the wood. “Who survived the massacre?” she asked.

“You did not know her as a sister,” Osne said, “and in some ways she is not, but more.”

Anne knew then, without thinking, as if she had always known. “The countess Orchaevia.”

Osne nodded. “Unfortunately, you fled her estates before she was aware of what was happening. But now you are among friends again.”

“What do you want from me?” Anne asked warily.

Osne reached across the table and took her hand. “Only to help you return to Eslen and your destiny.”

Anne felt the callused hand in hers, as substantial and real as the table.

“You—you are a sister of the coven, Osne?”

“I attended,” the older woman said. “I did not take my vows, but still when they call, I will answer. I would not risk all for the coven Saint Cer—not my life, or the life of my husband and sons—but I will risk them for you, Anne Dare. I have
seen
. The Faiths have sent me dreams.”