Gregory Keyes - The Blood Knight

“The fight in the outer keep was bloodier, but Anne had reinforcements from Artwair by then.”

“Wait,” Neil said. “I’m sorry, Highness, but I think I missed part of your story. Anne went into the castle with Robert’s permission, but it was a trap. How did she get Sefry troops? Or reinforcements?”

“That’s a much longer story, and it needs to be told in private,” Muriele said. “Suffice it to say that when the men on the outer Fastness understood they were being attacked from both «sides—and that the monarch they were fighting for had apparently vanished—things ended without the horror of bloodshed we might have had.”

“That’s a mercy,” Neil said, remembering the piles of bodies around him at Thornrath. He knew what she meant, of course.

“Anne is queen, then?” he added.

“Regent. She must be confirmed by the Comven, but that seems fairly certain, since Robert’s cronies have been set to their heels or are imprisoned, awaiting trial.”

“So all is well,” Neil said.

“Well enough,” she replied. “At least until Robert returns with the armies of Hansa and the Church.”

“You think that likely?” Neil asked.

“Very likely, indeed. But that is, as they say, a worry for another day. Mend up, Sir Neil. We’ve use for you yet.”

Aspar bit hard into the aspen branch Leshya had placed in his mouth as she popped the bone in his leg into its proper place. The agony actually left spots in his eyes, as if he’d tried to look into the sun.

“That’s the worst of it,” she promised as she began to tie the splint. Beneath her broad-brimmed hat she looked drawn and pale, even for a Sefry.

“You shouldn’t have left Dunmrogh for another month,” he said. “Your wounds—”

“I’m fine,” she said. “And if I’d stayed any longer, you’d be dead now.”

“Yah,” Aspar said. “About that—”

“No thanks are necessary.”

“Not what I meant.”

“I know,” she said, inspecting her splinting. Then she looked at him. “I left Dunmrogh as soon as I could stand,” she explained.

“Why?”

She seemed to consider for a moment.

“I thought you would need my help.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all? That’s it? You were full of holes, Leshya, deep ones, and that needs time. What if you had died?”

“Then I’d be dead,” she said cheerfully. “But I get feelings. I hear things on the wind, and sometimes I see things that haven’t happened yet. And I saw you, facing off against the khriim, and reckoned you might need my help.”

“The what?”

“The sedhmhar. The big thing you killed.”

He frowned. “You saw me?”

“Through a teardrop. Up on the cliff, trying to get your bow strung.”

He shook his head skeptically. “You could never have tracked me here that fast, not unless you left a day after I did, and I know you couldn’t have gotten up that soon. You were almost dead.”

“I didn’t track you,” she said. “I recognized the place and came straight here.”

“You recognized the place,” he said in utter disbelief.

“The mountain, Aspar. It has a Halafolk rewn in it: the first, the eldest of the rewns. I was born here. So yes, I recognized it. Once I was here, it wasn’t that hard to find you, not with you calling attention to yourself the way you were.”

He digested that for a moment. “And you came just to help me?”

“Yes. Witness—now we’re leaving, and quickly.”

“Why? They’re your folk.”

She chuckled. “Oh, no. Not anymore. Not for a long time. They’ll kill us if they catch us, both of us, I promise you.”

“Fend—”

“Not one of mine, I swear.”

“I know that. I know where Fend is from. But he told me something just as he was about to kill me.”

“That being?”

“That the Sefry are Skasloi.”

She was reaching for her knife and froze in midmotion. Then she laughed again, picked up the knife, and slid it into a scabbard.

“I always wondered if you knew that,” she said. “I thought you might, having been raised by us.”

“No,” Aspar said. “ That I would have remembered.”

“I should think so.”

“But how?”

“Well, I’m not that old, my friend. I wasn’t there . They say we changed our form somehow, to be more like you. To fit in.”

“But the Skasloi were all killed.”

“The great ones. The princes. And most of the rest of us. But a few changed, posed as slaves, and so survived.”

She caught his gaze and held it “We aren’t them , Aspar. The Skasloi who enslaved your ancestors are dead.”

“Really? And it never occurred to any of you that you might like to have things the way they were before?”

“I suppose some feel that way,” she said.

“Fend, for instance? Your folk back in the mountain?”

“It’s complicated,” she temporized. “Sefry are no more simple than humans and not much more united.”

“Don’t put me off,” he said.

“I’m not,” she replied. “But we should start moving again. We’ll have to be a lot farther from here before I start to feel safe.”

“But you’ll tell me as we ride?”

She nodded. “Plenty of time. It’s going to be a long ride.”

“Good, then.” He reached for his crutch, and she stooped to help him, but he warned her back with his palm.

“I can do it,” he said.

And after a bit of grimacing, he did, though he needed her help to mount.

He felt stupid sitting behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. Like a kindling.

“We need more horses,” he said.

“I’ve some ideas about that,” she told him.

She nudged the horse into motion.

“He came to you,” she said softly. “The Briar King.”

“Yah.”

“And what? What did he do?”

Aspar paused a moment. “You didn’t see?”

“No. I saw him go to you through a gap in the trees, but I was riding fast. By the time I found you again, he was gone, and Fend was there.”

“He’s dead, Leshya.”

Her spine stiffened.

“I thought I felt something,” she murmured. “I’d hoped…”

“Fend shot him with the same arrow I used to kill the woorm.”

“Oh, no.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But it isn’t good. It isn’t good at all.”

He looked around him at the trees, remembering the visions of desolation that had been the Briar King’s parting cry.

“Maybe you’d better tell me what you know about that, too,” he muttered.

She agreed with a curt nod of her head. Her shoulders were trembling, and Aspar wondered if she was crying.

Stephen looked up and smiled as Zemlé entered the scriftorium.

“Couldn’t wait, could you?” she asked. “We’ve only been here two days.”

“But look at this place,” Stephen said. “It’s magnificent!”

He nearly wept as he said it. The great room around them was fantastically huge, brimming with thousands of scrifti.

“You know what I found?” he asked her, knowing he was gushing, unable to feel silly about it. “The original Amena Tirson . Pheon’s Treatise on Signatures , of which no copy has been seen in four hundred years!”

“Virgenya Dare’s journal?”

“No, I haven’t found that yet,” he said. “But I will in time, have no fear. There is so much here.”

“There’s more,” Zemlé said. “While you’ve been with your books, I’ve been exploring. There’s a whole city out there, Stephen, and I don’t think all of it was built by the Aitivar. Some of it looks older, so old that they have those stone drips and drops you were talking about on them.”