The Briar King

by Greg Keyes

  The rain stopped, but the sky grew darker. All Carsek could hear was his own wheezing breath; all he could see was blood and the rise and fall of iron, like the lips of sea waves breaking above him. His arm could hardly hold itself up for more killing, and of his fifty men he now stood in a circle with the eight who remained, Thaniel among them. And still the giants came on, wave on wave of them.

  But then there was a sound like all the gods screaming. A new tide swept up from behind him, a wall of shouting men, hundreds pouring out of the trenches, crushing into the ranks of their enemies, and for the first time Carsek looked up from death and witnessed the impossible.

  The massive steel portals of the citadel hung from their hinges, twisted almost beyond recognizing, and below them, white light blazed.

  The battle swept past them, and as Carsek's legs gave way, Thaniel caught him.

  “She's done it,” Carsek said. “Your Born Witch has done it!”

  “I told you she would,” Thaniel said. “I told you.”

  Carsek wasn't there when the inner keep fell. His wounds had reopened and had to be bound again. But as the clouds broke, and the dying sun hemorrhaged across the horizon, Thaniel came for him.

  “She wants you there,” Thaniel said. “You deserve it.”

  “We all do,” Carsek managed.

  With Thaniel under one shoulder, he climbed the bloody steps of the massive central tower, remembering when he trod it last, in chains, on his way to fight in the arena, how the gilded balustrades and strange statues had glimmered in Skasloi witch-light. It had been beautiful and terrible.

  Even now, shattered, blackened, it still brought fear. Fear from childhood and beyond, of the master's power, of the lash that could not be seen but that burned to the soul.

  Even now it seemed it must all be a trick, another elaborate game, another way for the masters to extract pleasure from the pain and hopelessness of their slaves.

  But when they came to the great hall, and Carsek saw Genia Dare standing with her boot on the master's throat, he knew in his heart they had won.

  The Skasloi lord still wore shadow. Carsek had never seen his face, and did not now. But he knew the sound of the mas-ter's laughter as it rose up from beneath the queen's heel. For as long as he lived, Carsek would not forget that mocking, spectral, dying laugh.

  Genia Dare's voice rang above that laughter. “We have torn open your keep, scattered your powers and armies, and now you will die,” she said. “If this amuses you, you could have obtained your amusement much more easily. We would have been happy to kill you long ago.”

  The master broke off his cackling. He spoke words like spiders crawling from the mouth of a corpse, delicate, deadly. The sound that catches you unaware and wrenches your heart into your throat.

  “I am amused,” he said, “because you think you have won something. You have won nothing but decay. You have used the sedos power, foolish children.

  “Did you think we knew nothing of the sedos? Fools. We had good reasons for avoiding the paths of its fell might. You have cursed yourselves. You have cursed your generations to come. In the final days, the end of my world will have been cleaner than the end of yours. You have no idea what you have done.”

  The Born Queen spat down upon him. “That for your curse,” she snapped.

  “It is not my curse, slave,” the master said. “It is your own.”

  “We are not your slaves.”

  “You were born slaves. You will die slaves. You have merely summoned a new master. The daughters of your seed will face what you have wrought, and it will obliterate them.”

  Between one blink and the other, a flash like heat lightning erupted behind Carsek's eyes, then vision. He saw green forests rot into putrid heaths, a poison sun sinking into a bleak, sterile sea. He walked through castles and cities carpeted in human bones, felt them crack beneath his heels. And he saw, standing over it all, the Born Queen, Genia Dare, laughing as if it brought her joy.

  Then it was over, and he was on the floor, as was almost everyone else in the room, clutching their heads, moaning, weeping. Only the queen still stood, white fire dripping from her hands. The master was silent.

  “We do not fear your curse!” Genia said. “We are no longer your slaves. There is no fear in us. Your world, your curses, your power are all now gone. It is our world now, a human one.”

  The master only twitched in response. He did not speak again.

  “A slow death for him,” Carsek heard the queen say, in a lower voice. “A very, very slow death.”

  And for Carsek, that was the end of it. They took the master away, and he never saw him again.

  The Born Queen, chin held high, turned to regard them all, and Carsek felt her gaze touch his for just an instant. Again he felt a flash, like fire, and for a moment he almost fell to his knees before her.

  But he was never going down on his knees again, not for anyone.

  “Today, we start counting the days and seasons again,” she said. “Today is the Day of the Valiant; it is the Vhasris Slanon! From this instant, day, month, season, and year, we reckon our own time!”

  Despite their wounds and fatigue, the shouts that filled the hall were almost deafening.

  Carsek and Thaniel went back down, to where the celebrations were beginning. Carsek, for his part, wanted only to sleep, to forget, and to never dream again. But Thaniel reminded him of their oath.

  And so it was, as his wounds stiffened, they drank Thaniel's brandy, and Carsek sat on a throne of chalcedony and looked down upon the arena where he had fought and killed so many fellow slaves.

  “I killed a hundred, before the gate,” Thaniel asserted.

  “I killed a hundred and five,” Carsek replied.

  “You can't count to a hundred and five,” Thaniel retorted.

  “Aye, I can. It's how many times I've had your sister.”

  “Well,” Thaniel mused, “then my sister had to have been counting for you. I know that after two hands and two feet, I had to start counting for your mother.”

  At that, both men paused.

  “We are very funny men, aren't we?” Carsek grunted.

  “We are men,” Thaniel said, more soberly. “And alive, and free. And that is enough.” He scratched his head. “I didn't understand that last thing she said. The name we're to reckon our years by?”

  “She does us a great honor,” Carsek said. “It is the old tongue of the Vhiri Croatani, the language of my fathers. Vhasris means dawn. Slanon means … Hmm, I don't think I know your word for that.”

  “Use several, then.”

  “It means beautiful, and whole, and healthy. Like a newborn baby, perfect, with no blemishes.”

  “You sound like a poet, Carsek.”

  Carsek felt his face redden. To change the subject, he pointed at the arena. “I've never seen it from up here,” he murmured.

  “Does it look different?”

  “Very. Smaller. I think I like it.”

  “We made it, Carsek.” Thaniel sighed. “As the queen said, the world is ours now. What shall we do with it?”

  “The gods know. I've never even thought about it.” He winced at a sudden pain in his belly.

  “Carsek?” Thaniel asked, concerned.

  “I'll heal.” Carsek downed another swallow of the liquid fire. “Tell me,” he said. “As long as we're giving lessons in language. What were you saying back there, in the trench? About you people not being the Bornmen?”

  Thaniel chuckled again. “I always thought you called us that because we are so recent to this land, because we were the last that the Skasloi captured to be their slaves. But it's just that you misheard us.”

  “You aren't being clear,” Carsek told him. “I might be dying. Shouldn't you be clear?”

  “You aren't dying, you rancid beast, but I'll try to be clear anyway. When my people first came here, we thought we were in a place called Virginia. It was named for a queen, I think, in the old country; I don't know, I was born h
ere. But our queen is named after her, too—Virginia Elizabeth Dare— that's her real name. When we said Virginia you dumb Croatani thought we were speaking your language, calling ourselves Vhiri Genian—Born Men. It was a confusion of tongues, you see.”

  “Oh,” Carsek said, and then he collapsed.

  When he woke, four days later, he was pleased that at least he hadn't dreamed.

  That was the fourth day of the epoch known as Eberon Vhasris Slanon.

  PROLOGUE

  The day the last Skasloi stronghold fell began the age known as Eberon Vhasris Slanon in the language of the elder Cavarum. When the language itself was forgotten by all but a few cloistered scholars in the church the name for the age persisted in the tongues of men as Everon, just as Slanon remained attached to the place of the victory itself in the Lierish form Eslen.

  Everon was an age of human beings in all their glories and failings. The children of the rebellion multiplied and covered the land with their kingdoms.

  In the year 2,223 E. the age of Everon came to an abrupt and terrible end.

  It may be that I am the last to remember it.

  —THE CODEX TEREMINNAM, AUTHOR ANON.

  IN THE MONTH OF ETRAMEN, in the year twenty-two fifteen of Everon, two girls crouched in the darkest tangles of a sacred garden in the city of the dead, praying not to be seen.

  Anne, who at eight was the eldest, peered cautiously through the thickly woven branches and creepers enclosing them.

  “Is it really a Scaos?” Austra, a year younger, asked.

  “Hush!” Anne whispered. “Yes, it's a Scaos, and a monstrous one, so keep low or he'll see your hair. It's too yellow.”

  “Yours is too red,” Austra replied. “Fastia says it's rust because you don't use your head enough.”

  “Figs for Fastia. Keep quiet, and go that way.”

  “It's darker that way.”

  “I know. But we can't let him see us. He'll kill us, but not fast. He'll eat us a bit at a time. But he's too big to follow us back in there.”

  “He could use an ax, or a sword, and cut the branches.”

  “No,” Anne said. “Don't you know anything? This is a horz, not just any old garden. That's why everything is so wild here. No one is allowed to cut it, not even him. If he cuts it, Saint Fessa and Saint Selfan will curse him.”

  “Won't they curse us for hiding here?”

  “We aren't cutting anything,” Anne said reasonably. “We're just hiding. Anyhow, if the Scaos catches us, we'll be worse than cursed, won't we? We'll be dead.”

  “You're scaring me.”

  “I just saw him move!” Anne squeaked. “He's right over there! For the saints and love of your life, go!”

  Austra moaned and lurched forward, pushing through twining roots of ancient oaks, through vines of thorn, primrose, and wild grape so ancient they were thicker than Anne's legs. The smell was earth and leaves and a faint, sweet corruption. Grayish green light was all that the layers of leaves and boughs allowed them of the sun's bright lamp. Out there, in the broad, lead-paved streets of the city of ghosts, it was noon. Here, it was twilight.

  They came into a small space where nothing grew, though vegetation arched over it, like a little room built by the Phay, and there crouched together for a moment.

  “He's still after us,” Anne panted. “Do you hear?”

  “Yes. What shall we do?”

  “We'll—”

  She never got to finish. Something cracked with a sound like a dish breaking, and then they were sliding into the open mouth of the earth. They landed with a thump on a hard stone surface.

  For several moments, Anne lay on her back, blinking up at the dim light above, spitting dust from her mouth. Austra was just breathing fast, making funny little noises.

  “Are you well?” Anne asked the other girl.

  Austra nodded. “Uh-huh. But what happened? Where are we?” Then her eyes went huge. “We're buried! The dead have taken us!”

  “No!” Anne said, her own terror receding. “No, look, we've just fallen into an older tomb. Very old, because the horz has been here for four hundred years, and this is under it.” She pointed to the light falling down the same dirt slope they had come down. “The ground must have been thin there. But see, we can go back out.”

  “Let's go, then,” Austra said. “Quickly.”

  Anne tossed her red locks. “Let's look around first. I'll bet no one has been here for a thousand years.”

  “I don't think it's a tomb,” Austra said. “Tombs look just like houses. This doesn't.”

  Austra was right, it didn't. They had fallen at the edge of a big, round room. Seven huge stones set like pillars held up an even bigger flat rock like a roof, and smaller stones had been fitted around to keep the dirt out.

  “Maybe this is what houses looked like a thousand years ago,” Anne suggested.

  “Maybe it's a Scaosen tomb!” Austra exclaimed. “Maybe it's his tomb.”

  “They didn't have tombs,” Anne said. “They thought they were immortal. Come on, I want to see that.”

  “What is it?”

  Anne stood and made her way to a box of stone, longer than it was tall or wide.

  “I think it's a sarcophagus,” she said. “It's not all ornamented like the ones we use now, but it's the same shape.”

  “You mean there's a dead person in there.”

  “Uh-huh.” She brushed her hand across the lid and felt incisions in the stone. “There's something written here.”

  “What?”

  “It's just letters. V, I, D, A. It doesn't make a word.”

  “Maybe it's another language.”

  “Or an abbreviation. V—” She stopped, transfixed by a sudden thought.

  “Austra. Virgenya Dare! V-I for Virgenya and D-A for Dare.”

  “That can't be right,” Austra said.

  “No,” Anne whispered. “It must be. Look how old this tomb is. Virgenya Dare was the first of my family born in the world. This has to be her.”

  “I thought your family had ruled Crotheny for only a hundred years,” Austra said.

  “It's true,” Anne replied. “But she could have come here, during the time of the first kingdoms. No one knows where she went, after the wars, or where she was buried. This is her. I know it, somehow. It must be. Help me get the lid off, so I can see her.”

  “Anne! No!”

  “Come on, Austra. She's my ancestor. She won't mind.” Anne strained at the lid, but it wouldn't move. When she finally cajoled the reluctant Austra into helping her, it still didn't move at first; but as the two girls strained, the heavy stone lid shifted a fingersbreadth.

  “That's it! It's moving!”

  But try as they might, they couldn't budge it more.

  Anne tried to look into the crack. She saw nothing, but the smell was funny. Not bad, just strange, like the old place under a bed that hasn't been cleaned for a very long time.

  “Lady Virgenya?” she whispered into the box, hearing her voice hum around inside. “My name is Anne. My father is William, the king of Crotheny. I'm pleased to meet you.”

  No answer came, but Anne was sure the spirit had heard. After all, sleeping for this long, she was probably slow to wake. “I'll bring candles to burn for you,” Anne promised. “And gifts.”

  “Please, let's go,” Austra pleaded.

  “Yes, very well,” Anne agreed. “Mother or Fastia will miss us pretty soon, anyway.”

  “Are we still hiding from the Scaos?”

  “No, I'm tired of that game,” Anne replied. “This is better. This is real. And it's our secret. I don't want anyone else to find it. So we have to go, now, before they look this far. Fastia might be small enough to squeeze through.”

  “Why does it have to be secret?”

  “It just does. Come on.”

  They managed to scramble back up through the hole and the tangled vegetation, until at last they emerged near the crumbly stone wall of the horz. Fastia was standing there, her bac
k to them, long brown hair flowing down her green gown. She turned as she heard them approach.

  “Where have you—” She broke off and vented an outraged laugh. “Ah! Just look at you two. Filthy! What in the name of the saints have you been into?”

  “Sorry!” Anne said. “We were just pretending a Scaos was after us.”

  “You'll wish it was only a Scaos when Mother sees you. Anne, these are our revered ancestors all around us. We're supposed to honor Aunt Fiene, to put her body in the after-house. It's a very solemn business, and you're supposed to be there, not playing games in the horz.”

  “We were bored,” Anne said. “Aunt Fiene wouldn't care.”

  “It's not Aunt Fiene you have to worry about—it's Mother and Father.” She brushed at the grime staining Anne's white gown. “There's no way to get you clean, either,” Fastia replied, “not before Mother sees.”

  “You used to play here,” Anne said. “You told me so.”

  “Maybe I did,” her older sister replied, “but I'm fifteen now and about to be married. I'm not allowed to play anymore. And I'm not allowed to let you play, either, at least not right now. I was supposed to watch you. Now you've gotten me in trouble.”

  “We're sorry, Fastia.”

  Her older sister smiled and pushed back her dark hair, so like their mother's, so unlike Anne's strawberry mop. “It's all right, little sister. This time I'll take the blame. But when I'm married, I'll be governing you younger children, so you'd better get used to paying attention to me. Practice. Try minding me at least half the time, please? You, too, Austra.”

  “Yes, Archgreffess,” Austra mumbled, curtseying.

  “Thank you, Fastia,” Anne added. For an instant, Anne almost told her older sister what they had found. But she didn't. Fastia had become strange lately. Not as much fun, more serious. More grown-up. Anne loved her, but she wasn't sure she could trust her anymore.