Gregory Keyes - The Briar King

She did know something then, but wasn’t willing to tell it. He looked at her again. Who was this girl, really? The daughter of some northern warlord? What had he gotten himself into?

“Very well, then,” he said. Whatever it was, he was deep in it now. He ought to see it through. Perhaps there would even be some reward in it for him.

Lady Ausa’s robe lay coral on the eastern horizon and the stars were vanishing above. They were out in open countryside, easy prey for horsemen. He tried to quicken his pace. If Anne was right, and they were followed, returning to Orchae-via’s triva would repay the countess in poor coin for the hospitality she had shown him. The place was defensible, but not by two swordsmen and a few serving women.

“There is an old estate nearby,” he considered aloud. Z’Acatto had dragged him to it one day in hopes of finding an unplundered wine cellar. They had found the cellar, but all of the wine had gone to vinegar. “It will make a good hiding place,” he decided. After all, if he couldn’t defeat one of the knights in single combat, what chance did he have against ten, or twenty? His father had made the mistake of choosing to face the wrong enemy for the wrong reasons. He would not make the same blunder.

Anne didn’t answer, but she was beginning to stumble. The sandals she and Austra wore were hardly fit for this sort of travel.

Lord Abullo’s horses were well in the sky, pulling a burnt orange sun free of the horizon, before Cazio made out the crumbling walls of the ancient triva. He wondered if the well was still good, for he was terribly thirsty. The vinegar was all gone, smashed by z’Acatto in a fit of disappointment.

They had almost reached the walls when he thought he heard hooves, and a glance back showed two horsemen approaching. There was little need to wonder who they were, for the gleam of the now-golden sun on their armor was evident.

“They may not have seen us yet,” Cazio hoped aloud, leading them behind a picket of cedars bordering the abandoned mansion. “Quickly.” The gate had long since crumbled, leaving only the columns of the pastato, and walls that were sometimes knee high and sometimes higher than his head. Weeds and small olive trees had cracked the stone of the courtyard and pushed it up as Lord Selvans sought to reclaim the place for his own. In the distance, he heard the approaching percussion.

“Just where I left it,” Cazio murmured, when they reached the vine-draped entrance to the cellar. The stairs still remained, albeit broken and covered in earth and moss. A cool breath seemed to sigh up from its depths.

“We’ll be trapped down there,” Anne protested.

“Better there than in the open,” Cazio pointed out. “See how narrow the way down is? They won’t get their horses in, and won’t be able to swing those pig-slaughtering blades. It will give me an advantage.”

“You can barely stand,” Anne said.

“Yes, but a da Chiovattio who can barely stand is worth six men hale and healthy. And here there are only two.”

“Don’t lie to me, Cazio. If we go down in there, can you win?”

Cazio shrugged. “I cannot say. But out in the open, I cannot.” The words sounded strange to him, though he had already thought them. He took Anne’s hand, and she didn’t protest. “On foot, outside, you will be run down before you can travel a cenpereci. We should not wish for choices we do not have.”

Reluctantly, the two girls followed him down.

“It smells like vinegar in here,” Austra observed.

“Indeed,” Cazio remarked. “Now remain below.”

For a moment the world seemed to turn strangely, and the next he was lying on the cold stone.

“Cazio!” Austra cried, coming to his side.

“It’s nothing,” Cazio murmured. “A dizziness. Perhaps an other kiss might cure it.”

“He can’t fight them,” Austra said. “He’ll be killed.”

“They still may not know we’re here,” Cazio pointed out.

But they heard hooves on stone, and nearby.

“I’ll need that kiss,” Cazio whispered.

He couldn’t see her blush, but Austra leaned close and touched her lips to his. They tasted sweet, like wine and plums, and he lingered on it. It was likely the last kiss he would ever have. He thought of asking Anne for one, too, but she wouldn’t give it and time was dear, now.

“That will be my token,” Cazio said, clambering to his feet. “And now it will be my pleasure to defend you ladies.”

His legs shaking, Cazio climbed back up toward the sun, where shadows were moving.

For some reason, he remembered where he had heard of a purple moon. It was in a song his father used to sing when he was a boy.

He remembered the line because, unlike the other verses, it never made any sense to him.

It still didn’t.

In the distance, he thought he heard a cornet sounding.

To Muriele the world felt suddenly silent, as if all of the sounds of battle had retreated to an infinite distance. She looked at the dead face of her daughter, saw her as an infant, as a child of six spilling milk on the Galléan carpet in her sunroom, as a woman in a wedding gown. The silence gripped beneath her breast, waiting to become a scream.

Elseny must be dead, too. And Erren, and Charles …

But the silence was in her, not without. Steel still rang, and Neil’s fierce battle cries proved him still alive. And over all that the sound of a horn, growing steadily louder.

It had sounded far off, at first, as if shrilled from the ends of the earth. Now it called from much nearer, but with a prickling she realized that it wasn’t approaching, only growing louder. And the source of the sounding was quite close indeed.

But where? Muriele puzzled at it, used the mystery to cloak Fastia’s dead face and her own imaginings. It didn’t take her long to discover the sound came from the wickerwork feinglest Elseny had filled with flowers only the day before. And in her dazed sight, the feinglest was changing, as slowly and surely as the sunrise drowning the morning star in gray light.

Her gaze fastened and would not waver, and as the horn droned louder she saw the change quicken, the wickerwork drawing tighter and taller. The vague resemblance to human shape was more pronounced with each heartbeat. Muriele watched, unable to move or speak, her mind refusing the sight as anything more than a waking dream.

It grew on, and the wailing of the trumpet rose so loud that Muriele at last managed to pull her hands to her ears to try to stop the sound, but her palms held no power to diminish it.

Nor could her brain arrest her eyes from seeing the feinglest shiver like a wasp-wing in flight, throw out arms and sprout proud antlers from its head, and open two almost-human eyes, leaf-green orbs in black almond slivers. A powerful animal musk penetrated her nostrils, overwhelming the sickly sweet scent of the flowers.

The Briar King towered the height of two men over her; his gaze connected with hers. He was naked, and his flesh was mottled bark. A beard of moss curled from his face, and long unshorn locks of the same dangled from his head. His eyes seemed to see nothing and everything, like those of a newborn. His nostrils quivered, and a sound came from his throat that carried no meaning for her, like the snuffling of a strange beast.

He leaned near her and sniffed again, and though his nose was of human shape, Muriele was reminded more of a horse or a stag than of a man. His breath was damp and cold, and smelled like a forest stream. Muriele’s flesh crawled as if covered with ants.