The Briar King (26 page)

“Yes. Except to say that I am pleased with your performance as my sinescalh. Lord Hynde has gone too long without a successor. I should like to appoint you prime minister.”

“Do as you please,” Robert said. “But mark—I know the difference between words and thoughts.”

With that he left the room, glancing neither to the left nor to the right.

Anne looked up from where she knelt in the penitent box in time to see Praifec Hespero notice her and raise his eyebrows. Anne attempted a small smile.

“Who is this stranger?” the clergyman asked gently.

Anne dropped her head. “I suppose it's been some time since I came here,” she murmured.

“Without an escort, yes. I can only assume something is troubling you deeply. Or did you merely come for lustration?”

Anne shook her head. “I didn't know who else to talk to, who could tell me if I—if I'm losing my sanity or not.”

Hespero nodded. “I'm always here, child.” He settled onto a stool, dipped his fingers in the dish of fragrant oil and touched a bit to her forehead.
“Piesum deicus, tacez,”
he murmured. Then he leaned forward, hands on his knees. “Now, what is it that troubles you?”

“I've been having dreams. Very strange dreams.”

“Tell me.”

“I dreamed I stood outside of a dark forest, a forest of thorns. Around me were black roses, like those that grow in Liery. There was something terrible in the forest, watching me, and it started to come out, and then I woke.”

She felt suddenly foolish, so attentively was Hespero listening to her nightmare. She almost told him about her disappearing rose, but held back. There was no need for Hespero to know about Roderick.

The praifec rubbed his jaw. “I take it you've had more than one troubling dream.”

“The other wasn't a dream exactly. It happened at Elseny's
party, at the same time as the attempt on my mother's life.” She related the incident as best she could remember. Again, Hespero listened in silence. That silence stretched when she was done.

“You're certain you had not fainted?” Hespero finally asked. “Your maid found you, did she not, in an oblivious state?”

“Yes, Praifec.”

“And when you thought you were lost in the maze, you were in a panic.”

“But it
wasn't
the maze, Praifec. It was someplace else, and I had no shadow, and—”

“It may seem that way to you,” Hespero said, in a calming voice. “This is not uncommon for girls your age. There are diverse vapors in the world, and in these first years of womanhood, you will be particularly susceptible to them. That is most likely what you suffered.

“It is remotely possible that you were the victim of shine-craft, and that would be much more serious. If it was witching, the things you were told were lies. Prophecy flows only from the saints, and only through the true church. To believe anything else is heresy.”

“Then you don't think Crotheny is really in danger? Or my mother?”

“They are both in danger, my dear. An attempt was made on your mother's life. Rumors of war are on wing. But your father will deal with those dangers, with the help of the church. You aren't to worry your pretty head about this, Princess. It would be a needless brutality to yourself, and exactly what the enemies of this country would want.” He held up a finger. “Wait a moment.”

He vanished into a room behind the altar and returned a few moments later, carrying something small in his hand.

“This is a token of your namesake, Saint Anne. If you suffer from shinecrafting, it should protect you.” He handed the object to her. It was a small wooden tablet, carved with the saint's name.

“It was made from a tree that grows on the sedos of Saint
Anne, in Andemeur,” he said. “You may wear it on a necklace, or keep it in a pocket in your dress.”

Anne bowed. “Thank you, Praifec. I—” She broke off, unsure. She wanted to tell him about the tomb of Genya Dare, of the curse she had made there. But if he knew about that, he might see things differently. As she struggled to find the words, she changed her mind. Virgenya was her secret, hers and Austra's. She couldn't betray it, even to the most holy man in the kingdom.

Besides, he was doubtless right. Her dreams were nothing more than vapor phantasms, or witchwork.

“There was something else?” he asked mildly.

“No, Praifec. I'm sure you're right. About everything.”

“Trust me. But if you have more bouts like this, let me know. As I said, I'm always here. This kingdom and the family that rules it are my holy trust, even if your father doesn't always see it that way.”

Anne smiled, thanked him again, and left with a lighter heart.

CHAPTER FOUR
REWN ALUTH

THE PASSA GEWAY BECAME STAIRS, carved in the living rock. Aspar counted steps as they went.

After counting thirty, he heard voices rising from below. Winna heard them, too, and her grip tightened on his hand. He glanced at her, reflexively, and realized he could just make out her face.

Winna noticed the faint illumination, too. “It must be a way out!” she whispered hopefully as the silvery light grew brighter.

“Shh.” Aspar looked up and saw the source of the light, moving languidly down the stairs. His hand went to his dirk, but then stopped.

“Witchlight,” he said.

It was a pale sphere of luminescent vapor the size of a man's fist moving toward them.

“Is it dangerous?”

“No.”

Winna reached to touch it, and her fingers passed into the glow.

“Saints!”

“Later,” Aspar said. “Come on.”

Thirty more steps brought them to the top of the curving stairs. For an instant the only sound was Winna's breathless gasp of wonderment and the distant plinking of water.

A thousand witchlights drifted among spires and columns of glassy stone, touching flashes of color here and there but only hinting at the vastness of the cavern that stretched out
before them. Just beyond their feet, the ledge on which they stood dropped down to a vast obsidian mirror.

“It's beautiful,” Winna breathed. “Is that … water? An underground lake?”

“Yah.” Aspar had little time for wonder. He was peering into the gloom. If this ledge didn't go anywhere, he would make a stand and try to kill their pursuers one at a time as they came up the stairs. He might be able to do it, even if they had swords.

Odds were he couldn't.

But the ledge continued on and even widened to their left.

“This way,” he said, tugging her hand.

Several of the witchlights began following them. He remembered how that had delighted him as a child, how he had named them as if they were pets. Now, however, he wished they would go away; clustered around, they would reveal Winna and him to their enemies.

Of course, that worked both ways. Their pursuers would soon acquire an entourage of helpful lights, too.

The path took them down, switchbacking along the cliffside. Aspar reckoned they descended ten yards before they came to a quay a few feet above the dark waters. There they had some good fortune, for two narrow boats were tied there. They got into one, and Aspar hulled the other with his ax.

As they rowed across the still water, Aspar noticed a clump of witchlights above, where the stairs debauched into the cavern. But the fickle illumination offered him only the occasional flitting silhouette. He couldn't tell how many they were.

Soon they were lost to sight, and there was only the water and a clean, wet, mineral smell.

“I never even dreamed of a place like this,” Winna whispered. “How wonderful it is.”

“I thought so, too, when I was little. But it closes in on you, after a while. The dark. Even among the Sefry not all can live with it. It's why they go out and brave the sun.”

“Where are they? The Halafolk?”

“I don't know. I thought to see them by now.”

Winna smiled. “You look funny, with those little lights following you around. Younger, like a boy.”

He didn't have anything to say to that, so he just grunted. Then her face changed. “What's that?” she asked, pointing behind him.

He turned to see what she meant. A large, shadowy something loomed up out of the lake. An island, he figured, for the lake had seemed much larger from above.

“I'm guessing this is where we'll find the Halafolk,” he murmured.

What they found was a city of the dead.

The houses were narrow and tall, almost whimsically so, making tight corridors of the streets that were beveled into the floor of the cave. The buildings themselves were built of carefully fitted stone, with high-pitched slate roofs designed to shed the constant dripping from above. On some, little fingers of stone had sprouted, growing toward the unseen ceiling of the cavern. Aspar had been told once that it was by this that the oldest dwellings could be known; stone did not grow quickly.

The houses were all quite empty. Aspar's and Winna's footsteps clattered like the echoes of a small army.

“Sir Symen said that all of the Sefry were leaving the forest, even the Halafolk,” Aspar mused. “I didn't believe him. Why should they?”

“To leave all of this, they must have good reason.”

“It's unimaginable,” he murmured. He pointed to a shingle that hung above the door of one house. Silver inlaid in slate depicted a six-fingered hand, three of the fingers with little candle flames. “That's the standard of the house Sern. No one from that clan has gone aboveground for five generations, or so they say. Some of these houses I don't even know.”

“Should we search the buildings?”

“Why? What we need is to find a way out.”

“Do you think the greffyn is still here?”

“I don't know what to think. Let's keep going this way; I want to find the town center.”

The island wasn't wide, but it was long. They crossed parks planted with pale fernlike trees and black rushes. Spidery bridges took them over canals where slender black gondolas still were moored, waiting for passengers that would never come.

In time they reached a broad plaza, and the largest building they had yet seen. It resembled a castle—or a parody of a castle, built for elegance rather than utility, with its spires of glassy stone and translucent domes glowing with natural luminescence.

“The palace?”

“It's where their prince would live and where their councils meet. If anyone is still here, that's where they'll be.”

“If anyone is still here, do we really want to find them?”

Aspar nodded grimly. “Yah. We have to find out what has happened here.”

“What about the men following us? Won't they come here, just as we did?”

“Yah.” He considered for a moment. “Werlic, that's a good point. We'll stay in one of these other buildings by the square, and watch. With luck, there will be too few of them to search every building in town.”

“Good. I'm tired. I'd like to rest.”

Aspar chose an unremarkable four-story house with a good view of the plaza. The door was unlocked. Nine witch-lights followed them in and up the spiral stair. They didn't stop until they reached the top floor.

It was a narrow bedroom the width of the house faced in moon-colored chalcedony, with a low sleeping couch and a larger, canopied bed. Crystal knobs on the bedposts glowed a faint white, so that even without the witchlights, there would be some illumination. Besides the staircase, a single arched doorway led to a small balcony facing away from the plaza. The view there was mostly darkness, of course, but in witch-light Aspar could just make out another four-story structure just across the way, and another balcony, a bit lower than the one on which he stood.

Back in the room, he dragged the couch over to a broad
window that overlooked the plaza. He drew the heavy shades until only a crack remained to peer through. It wouldn't do for someone to notice that this upper story was illuminated.

“Keep watch here,” he said. “I'll see if I can find something to eat.”

“Don't be gone long.”

“I won't.”

The pantry was below street level, carved into the stone foundation of the island.

Most of the bread had gone to mold, which was just as well, but he found some salted fish, venison, wild boar, a wheel of yellow cheese, and several racks of wine.

He cut a hunk of cheese and a slab of the ham and tucked two bottles of wine under his arm. Then he returned to the top floor.

“Is it safe to eat?” Winna asked. “They warn against breaking bread with the Halafolk.”

Aspar chuckled. “The cheese is from someplace in Holtmarh. The wine is from the Midenlands, and the meat was poached from the King's Forest. The only food they actually grow down here is hrew, a sort of nut that lives in the water. They make bread out of it. It tastes bad, but it's safe enough. If the lake has fish, they eat that, too.” He nodded at the window. “Anything?”

“No. But I may have missed them.” She looked up at As-par, a very young expression on her face. “I'm not afraid,” she said.

“You're a brave girl.”

“No, I mean it. I ought to be afraid. I was, earlier, at the pool. I was even when I told you I was coming with you. Now—it's all gone out of me.”

“It'll come back,” Aspar said. “Take my word for it.”