The Briar King

by Greg Keyes

  “It's mine,” Anne said, through gritted teeth.

  “Let me help her,” Austra asked, for the sixth time.

  “They aren't your things, my dear,” the sister replied. “You may carry only your own things.”

  Anne looked up wearily. After an hour of dragging, she had nearly made it to the gate. She had attracted an audience, some twenty girls of various ages but tending toward her own. They wore simple brown habits with wimples of the same color. Most of them were laughing and jeering at her, but she ignored them.

  She strained again, feeling the rope she had strapped across her chest cut into her bodice. Her foot sought purchase on the first of the flagstones and failed.

  The Sefry seemed to be enjoying the spectacle as much as everyone else. One had produced a tambour and another a small five-stringed croth, which he played with a little bow.

  “Give it up, Princess Mule!” one of the girls shouted. “You'll never bring them in, no matter how stubborn a jackass you be! And why would you?”

  The japing girl got a good chorus of laughter for that. Anne marked her, with her long, slender neck and dark eyes. Her hair was hidden by her wimple.

  Anne did not, however, reply but set herself grimly and pulled some more. She had to go back and work each trunk onto the flagstones individually, but after that they went a bit smoother. Unfortunately she was wearing out.

  At first she didn't notice the sudden silence that fell across the other girls, and when she did she thought it was because she had stumbled. Then she looked up and saw what had really silenced them.

  First she noticed the eyes, fierce and piercing and bright, like the eyes of Saint Fendve, the patroness of war madness, in the painting in her father's battle chapel. So striking were they that it took moments for her to understand their color— or rather that they had almost none, so black were they.

  Her face was harsh and old and very, very dark, the color of cherry wood. Her habit was black, wimpled in storm gray, and the moment Anne laid her gaze on her she was afraid of her, of what damage crouched behind those eyes and the rough seams of that face.

  “Who are you,” the old woman said, “and what do you think you're doing?”

  Anne set her jaw. Whoever this was, she was just a woman. She couldn't be any worse than Mother or Erren.

  “I am Anne of the house of Dare, princess of Crotheny. I am told I may have only those things that I can carry to my room, so I am carrying them there. And may I ask your name, Sister?”

  A collective gasp went up from the assembled women, and even Casita raised an eyebrow.

  The old woman blinked, but her expression did not change. “My name is not spoken, nor is the name of any sister here. But you may call me Sister Secula. I am the mestra of this coven.”

  “Very well,” Anne said, trying to remain brave, “where shall I put my things?”

  Sister Secula looked at her for another dispassionate moment, then lifted her finger. Anne thought at first she was pointing to the sky.

  “The top room on the left,” she said softly. It was then Anne realized she was pointing at the tallest of the towers on the wall.

  Midnight found Anne collapsed at the base of the narrow spiral stairs that led to the tower heights. Sister Casita had been replaced by another observer, an older member of the order who identified herself as Salaus. Austra was still there, of course, but otherwise the courtyard was empty.

  “Why persist in this, Anne?” Austra whispered. “You would have left all this behind had you succeeded in fleeing. Why do you care so much for it now?”

  Anne regarded her friend wearily. “Because that would have been my choice, Austra. All of my other choices have been made for me. To keep my things is the only choice it is still in my power to make.”

  “I have been up the stairs. You cannot do it, and they will not let you separate yourself from them. Leave one of the trunks behind.”

  “No.”

  “Anne …”

  “What if I give one to you?” Anne asked Austra.

  “I'm not allowed to help you.”

  “No. I mean I will give one of the trunks to you, and all of its contents.”

  “I see,” Austra said. “And then I would give it back, later.”

  “No. It would be yours, Austra. Forever.”

  Austra's hand flew to her mouth. “I've never owned anything, Anne. I don't think I'm allowed to.”

  “Absurd,” Anne said. She raised her voice.

  “Sister Salaus. I'm giving one of my chests to my friend Austra. Is that permitted?”

  “If it is a true gift.”

  “It is,” Anne replied. She tapped the smaller of the chests. “Take this one. It has two fine gowns, stockings, a mirror and combs—”

  “The mirror set with opal?” Austra gasped.

  “Yes, that one.”

  “You can't give me that.”

  “I already have. Now. You can choose to carry your things to our rooms, or you can leave them for the Sefry. I've made my choice. Now you make yours.”

  They crossed the threshold into their room an hour or so before dawn, dragging the trunks behind them. Sister Salaus presented them with a lit taper and a pair of dun habits.

  “The morning meal is at seven bells,” she said. “You should not miss it.” She paused, and her frown deepened. “I've never quite seen the like of that,” she said. “I do not know if it bodes ill or well for you as a beginning here, but it certainly sets you apart.”

  And with that, she left. Anne and Austra looked at each other for a few moments, then both burst out in a fit of laughter.

  “It certainly sets you apart,” Austra said, imitating the sis-ter's thick Vitellian accent.

  “There's something to be said for that, I suppose,” Anne replied. She cast her gaze around the room. “Saint Loy, is this really where we're to stay?”

  The room was a quarter of the tower, about five paces on a side. The roof was mere beams, and above that was the deep darkness of the conical roof. The girls could hear doves cooing, and feathers and bird droppings decorated the floor and the two wooden beds that were the only furnishings. There was a small window.

  “It's hardly better than a dungeon cell,” Austra said.

  “Well,” Anne sighed. “It's a good thing I'm a princess and not a greffess, I suppose.”

  “It's not so bad,” Austra supposed dubiously. “Anyhow, now you're a princess in a tower, just as in the story of Rafquin.”

  “Yes, I'll begin knitting a ladder from spider silk right away, so when Roderick comes—”

  Austra's face went serious. “Anne!”

  “I'm joking, dove,” Anne said. Nevertheless, she went to the window and peered out. “Look,” she said. “The sun is rising.”

  The pale horizon became a golden seam and eventually the sun himself peeked up to reveal the leagues of gently rolling pasture, sprinkled with gnarled olive trees and slender cedars. In the middle distance, a gently meandering river clothed itself more verdantly in cypress and willow, and beyond that, the scenery faded into pale green, yellow, and finally sky.

  “This place will do,” Anne said softly. “If I can see the horizon, I can bear anything.”

  “We'll test that now,” Austra said, holding one of the habits toward Anne.

  “Well, there's Princess Mule,” the girl with the long neck said as Anne and Austra entered the refectory.

  Anne's ears burned as the girls within earshot laughed, and a chatter went up in Vitellian.

  “I seem to have earned a nickname,” she noticed.

  The refectory was an airy place, its flat roof supported by slim, open arches on all sides. The tables were long, common, and rustic, and few empty seats greeted them. Anne chose the least populated bench and sat at an end across from a thickset young woman with a large jaw and close-set eyes. As Austra settled beside her, Anne noticed that the other girls had already been served bowls of porridge dressed with some sort of curd or fresh cheese.


  The girls at the table glanced at her from the corners of their eyes, but no one spoke until several uncomfortable moments had passed, when the thickset girl, without looking up from her meal, said, speaking Virgenyan, “You have to serve yourself, you know. From the cauldron on the hearth.” She gestured, and Anne saw a cauldron tended by a pair of the dun-dressed girls.

  “I'll fetch ours, Anne,” Austra said quickly.

  “They won't allow that,” the girl said.

  “Doesn't she know anything?” another of the girls wondered aloud.

  “You didn't know when you arrived, Tursas,” the thick girl pointed out. Then, to Anne, she said, “You'd best hurry. Soon they'll take the food to the goats.”

  “What kind of place is this?” Anne whispered. “My father—”

  “You'd best forget your station here,” the girl said. “Forget it, and quickly, or Mestra Secula will teach you to regret your stubbornness. You've already been foolish enough. Take my advice.”

  “Rehta should know,” the other girl said. “Sister Mestra put her—”

  “Hush, Tursas,” Rehta said sharply.

  Anne considered ignoring the advice, but her belly added the final weight to the argument. Cheeks burning, feeling all of their eyes upon her, she went and fetched the porridge, ladling it into a stoneware bowl and procuring a spoon to eat it with. Austra joined her. Despite its consistency, the mush was surprisingly good. Anne washed it down with cold water and wished for bread. Halfway through her meal, she glanced back up at the girl identified as Rehta.

  “Thanks for the advice,” she said.

  “And so what happens now, I wonder?” Austra asked. “What do you do all day?”

  “You'll interview with the mestra,” Tursas said. “You'll get your names, then you'll be assigned studies and tasks.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” Anne said sarcastically.

  The other girls didn't answer.

  They met the mestra in a small, dark room with no windows and lit by a single oil lamp. The ancient sister regarded the girls from behind a small writing desk for a very long space before speaking. Then she looked down at the ledger before her.

  “Austra Laesdauter. Henceforth, in this place, you shall be known as Sister Persondra. You, Anne Dare, shall be Sister Ivexa.”

  “But that means—”

  “In the language of the church it signifies a female calf, and denotes the behavior I desire from you—obedient and passive.”

  “Stupid, you mean.”

  The mestra focused her frightening gaze on Anne again. “Don't think to make trouble here, Sister Ivexa,” she said quietly. “An education in the Abode of Graces is a rare privilege and a priceless opportunity. The lady Erren recommended you, and she is well thought of by me. When you disappoint me, I am disappointed in her, and to feel disappointment toward her is upsetting.”

  “I endeavor to do my best,” Anne replied rigidly.

  “You do nothing of the kind. You began your tenure here with an unseemly tantrum. I wish it to be your last. It may be that you will return to the world one day. If you do, your behavior must reflect well your time here or I and every other sister of this order and the very Lady of Darkness herself will bear your shame. If, after a time, I'm not assured that you will represent us well, I promise you—you shall not leave at all.”

  Anne's scalp prickled at that, and a sudden panic caught at the base of her throat. She suddenly felt very uncertain and very far from home, as she considered just how many ways Mestra Secula could make good on that promise. Already she could think of two, and neither seemed very promising.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  GIFTS

  STEPHEN AWOKE TO HIS BREATH, and agony that shot like flames from his lungs out to his fingers and toes, burning holes where his eyes ought to be and scorching hair from his head. His eyes flickered open to a terrifying light that poured nightmare colors into his skull and left them there to clot into shapes so terrible and fantastic that he shrieked at their very existence. He lay on the ground wailing, covering his eyes, until gradually the pain subsided, until he realized that it wasn't pain at all, but a return from nothingness to normal sensation.

  Nothingness. He had been nothing at all. He hadn't even been dead. He'd been less and less and then—nothing.

  Now he was back, and as he gradually grew more accustomed to feeling again, he saw that the terrible shapes were only the trees of the forest and the blue sky above it. The rasping across his skin was a gentle breeze swaying the fern fronds.

  “My name,” he said shakily, “is Stephen Darige.” He sat up and brought his hands to his face, felt the shape of his bone beneath the skin, the stubble of beard on his chin, and began to weep. He drew breath and worshipped it.

  A long time later he pulled himself to his feet with the aid of a nearby sapling. The bark was a luxury against his raw fingers, and he coughed out a laugh that sounded strange to his ears.

  He was filthy, covered in mud and blood from shallow scratches. He smelled like he hadn't bathed in weeks, and it smelled wonderful.

  As reason reasserted itself, he began to try to work out where he was. He had collapsed—who knew how long ago— on the gently sloping hill of a sedos, bare of trees but covered in bracken fern. At its summit was a small fane, and by the characters graved on its face he recognized it as dedicated to Saint Dryth, the final incarnation of Decmanus on the faneway.

  Which meant he had finished the walk. The saints had not destroyed him.

  He found a pool fed by the clear waters of a spring, stripped off his rank clothing, and bathed beneath the overhanging branches of an ancient weeping willow. His stomach was as flat and hollow as a tambour, but he felt incredibly good despite his hunger. He scrubbed his clothes, hung them out to dry, and lazed on the mossy bank, drinking in the sounds around him, so happy to be alive and sensible that he didn't want to miss anything.

  Some sort of bird trilled a complex bramble of notes and was answered by another with a slightly different song. Bronze and metal-green dragonflies danced over the water, and water-skitters dimpled along the transparent surface of another world where silver minnows darted and crayfish lurked in search of prey. All was fascinating, all was wonder, and for the first time in a long time it seemed, he remembered why he had wanted to be a priest: to know the world, in all its glory. To make its secrets a part of him, not for gain, but for the simple pleasure of knowing them.

  The sun climbed to noon, and when his clothes were reasonably dry he donned them and set his feet back on the path toward the monastery, whistling, wondering how long he had been gone. Trying to understand what had happened to him. He spoke aloud, to hear his own voice.

  “Each saint took a sense from me,” he told the forest. “In the end they gave them back. But did they fashion them? Did they change them, as a blacksmith takes rough metal and makes something better? Nothing feels the same!”

  Moreover, he felt that nothing ever would be the same again.

  He started whistling again.

  He stopped still when his whistling was answered in kind, and with a start he realized that it was the birdsong he had heard earlier. Every note, every variation of it was still in his head, clear and delicate. He laughed again. Could he have done that before, or was it a gift from walking the fanes? The gifts were different for each faneway and for each person who walked them, so there was no way of knowing what he had gained. At the moment, he felt that if this one thing—the power to imitate the birds—was all he had received, it would be enough.

  At night the songs changed, and as he sat beside his fire, Stephen delighted in learning them as he had those of the day. It seemed he could forget nothing, now. With no effort at all he could recall to the least detail the appearance of the pool he had bathed in. He could feel the patterns in the night as if he had always understood them.

  The sahto of Decmanus was that of knowledge, understanding in all of its forms. It seemed he had indeed been … improved.

  The
next day he further tested his abilities by reciting ballads as he traveled. The Gorgoriad, the Fetteringsaga, the Tale of Findomere. He never stumbled on a word or phrase, though he had heard the last only once, ten years earlier, and its recitation took almost two bells.

  He sacrificed near each shrine and thanked the saints but did not mount their sedoi. Who knew what walking the fanes backwards would do?

  His second night, something in the nightsong changed. There was a tremor in it, an echo of a thing he knew, as if the forest were gossiping about something dark and terrible that Stephen had once met. The more Stephen listened, the more convinced he became that it had to do with him. The conviction grew as sleep eluded him, but he tried to ignore it. He was expected back at the monastery. He had work to do, and the fratrex probably would be unhappy if he dallied. He had walked the fanes early so as to better perform his tasks, after all.

  But morning found the waking forest with the same terrible undertone, and whenever Stephen turned his face east he felt a chill and a vague sickness. He remembered the dark tales at Tor Scath, the old knight's conviction that something evil was abroad. When he thought of the Briar King, he felt a terror that nearly scalded him.

  At the fane of Saint Ciesel, the feeling began to fade, and with each step nearer the monastery it faded more. Soon he began whistling again, singing other songs and ballads he knew, but even so his joy was diminishing, replaced by a nagging in his bones. Something out there was wrong, something needed him, and his back was to it.

  He came to a stream, one he remembered crossing early in his journey. He was nearly there, would probably be at the monastery by sundown. By morning he would be testing his new gifts on the things he loved best, the ancient scrifts and tomes of the church. Surely that was what Saint Decmanus wanted of him, not to go chasing a bad dream through the wilderness.