The Briar King

by Greg Keyes

  Robert was right—it was a boast, salt rubbed in the wound by the duke of a small province who had made the emperor bend to his will.

  The humiliation of it tasted like rotten meat and sat sour in William's belly.

  The duke of Austrobaurg was a thick, short man with a brushy mustache and eyes as green as a sea swell. His long black hair was streaked gray, and his expression was imperious as he drew rein a few yards away.

  One of his knights raised a hand and spoke.

  “The Duke Alfreix of Austrobaurg greets the empire of Crotheny and wishes well-meeting.”

  Robert cleared his throat. “The emperor—”

  William cut him off, speaking in Hanzish. “What is this, Austrobaurg? Where is my sister? Where is Lesbeth?”

  To his astonishment, the duke appeared puzzled.

  “Lord Emperor?” he said. “I have no knowledge of Her Highness. Why should you ask me of her?”

  William tried to count to seven. He made it only to five.

  “I have no patience for this nonsense,” he exploded. “You have what you wanted: twenty Sorrovian ships lie at the bottom of the sea. Now you will return my sister, or by Saint Fendve I will burn every one of your cities to the ground.”

  The duke shifted his gaze to Robert. “What is His Majesty talking about?” he demanded. “We had an agreement.”

  “You know very well what my royal brother speaks of,” Robert snarled.

  “Your Highness,” Austrobaurg said, looking back to William, “I make nothing of this. I am here at your behest, to settle the matter between Saltmark and the Sorrows. This war benefits no one, as we agreed in our letters.”

  “Robert?” William asked, turning to his brother.

  Robert cackled and kicked his horse to full gallop. William watched him go, his mouth gaping.

  And as he stood confused, and his knights began to shout and reach for arms, the earth vomited up death.

  At first William thought it a strange flock of darkling birds, winging up from some subterranean nest, for the air was full of black flight and fearsome humming. Then the part of him that had once—so long ago—been a warrior sorted it out, as an arrow pierced Sir Ananias through the eye and pushed its blood-head through the back of his skull.

  Twenty yards away, a trench had appeared as the archers hidden there pushed up its coverings of cut sod. They were clad in raven black, like the arrows they shot.

  “Treachery!” Austrobaurg cried, desperately trying to wheel his mount and find cover behind his men. “Crothanic treachery!”

  “No!” William cried, but the Austrobaurg knights were already engaged with his own, and swords were spilling blood. Only he seemed to notice that both sides were falling from the deadly aim of the archers.

  “There's our enemy!” he shouted, drawing his sword and waving it toward the trench. “The enemy of us both!” Robert has betrayed me. He tried to fight clear to charge the archers, gasping as a shaft glanced off his breastplate. He watched as Sir Tam Dare, his cousin, made for the murderers, and saw him fall, quilled like a hedgehog.

  An Austrobaurg knight went down in the same fashion. The head flew from the shoulders of Sir Avieyen MaqFergoist, cut by the sword and arm of a knight wearing the crest of house Sigrohsn.

  A horse screamed, his own, and William saw an arrow in its neck. It reared so as to take another in the belly, then crashed to earth, twisting as it went. William twisted himself, felt a brief, grinding snap of bone as the beast covered him. The horse writhed off, kicking. A hoof—maybe that of his own horse, maybe another—struck William in the head, and for a time he knew nothing.

  He came back to the sea wind, and a view over the cliffs. He was propped sitting against a stone, feet facing the water, and his head hurt terribly. He tried to rise and found his legs wouldn't work.

  “Welcome back to us, brother.”

  William turned his head, sending splinters of pain down his neck. Robert stood there beside him, looking—not at him—but out toward the horizon. The sun had clotted the mist into clouds, and the waves danced now in fitful sunlight.

  “What has happened?” William asked. He wasn't dead yet. Perhaps if he pretended continued ignorance, Robert would choose another course. “The ambush—”

  “They are all quite dead, save me.”

  “And me,” William corrected.

  Robert clucked his tongue. “No, Wilm, you're merely a ghost, a messenger to our ancestors.”

  William looked at his brother's face. It was quieter than he had ever seen it, almost serene.

  “You're going to kill me, brother?” he asked.

  Robert scratched his neck absently. “You're already dead, I told you. Your back broke when you fell from your horse. Have some dignity, Wilm.”

  Hot tears started in William's eyes, but he held them back. The very air seemed unreal, too yellow, like the colors in a dream.

  He pushed down his fear and dread along with his tears. “Why, Robert? Why this slaughter? Why murder me?”

  “Don't worry,” Robert said. “You'll have plenty of company on your journey west. Muriele dies today. And your daughters. Lesbeth is already there, awaiting you.”

  “All of them? All of them?” William could move his hands, he found, though they shook as if palsied. “You filthy beast. You're no Dare. You're no brother of mine.”

  A touch of anger at last entered Robert's voice. “But you'd already decided that, hadn't you, Wilm? If you thought me a brother, you would never have betrothed Lesbeth without asking me. I could never forgive you that.”

  “You killed her. You killed her and cut off her finger so I would think— Why? And my children? My wife? All for a single slight?” He had his hand on the hilt of his echein doif, now, the little knife every warrior kept concealed in a special place.

  The knife of last resort.

  “And for the combined thrones of Hansa and Crotheny, and one day Lier, as well,” Robert said absently. “But the slight might have been enough. I have been too often neglected by this family. Too often betrayed.”

  “You are mad. Crotheny will not have you, not for long. And Hansa—”

  “Is almost mine already.” He smiled. “There is a secret I have. It will stay so, for now. There are ways of talking to the dead, and even though your spirit will wander far from the houses of our ancestors, I am not so foolish as to take that risk. But I will thank you for your help, brother.”

  “Help?”

  “I could not have sent our ships against the Sorrows. You did that. Did you know that the lords of Liery have discovered the identity of those ships? Had you lived another few days, you would have had an earful, I'll tell you. You should thank me for sparing you the righteous pomposity of that old de Liery fool, Fail.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “Can't you just think for once, Wilm? The sea lords discovered that we've been aiding Saltmark against their allies. I let slip the hints that led them to know.”

  “But I agreed to that only because I thought Lesbeth—”

  “Hush and listen. They'll never know that, of course. Everyone who believed the story of Lesbeth's kidnap is dead. The hue and cry over your policy is already begun, and now you and Austrobaurg, dead, in the midst of trying to conclude a lasting peace. Very suspicious. Especially since you were slain with Lierish arrows.” His smile was ghastly.

  “It'll be war,” William groaned. “By the saints, it will be war with Liery.”

  “Yes, especially when Muriele's death is discovered. Her family will not take that lightly.”

  “Why Muriele? Why my girls?”

  “You killed the girls when you legitimized them to replace you. Muriele had to die, of course. She is beautiful, and I would not mind making her my queen, but she is too strong in temper.”

  William understood suddenly. “Charles?”

  “Exactly so. Your poor idiot son will be emperor, and I will be his prime minister. The girls—even Elseny—might have developed minds of their ow
n. Too much of their mother in them. But Charles—never.”

  “I see,” William murmured dully, willing Robert to draw nearer. “But if you plan to rule our country, why do you court war with Liery? It makes no sense. It will only weaken you.”

  Robert laughed. “Exactly so. Hansa could never have triumphed over a strong Crotheny that maintained Liery as an ally, not even with a bumbler like you on the throne. Your generals, after all, have great sense, some of them. But now—at the very least, this will drive the sea lords from our side, if not provoke them to war. Either way this gives Hansa the advantage in the coming war.”

  “The coming … You want Hansa to conquer Crotheny? Are you completely mad?”

  “You see?” Robert whispered. “Even you can learn to reason, if only a little. Too late, I think. And now, dear brother, it's time to bid you farewell.”

  He walked to William's feet and bent to grasp them.

  “Wait. How did you kill Muriele?”

  “I didn't, obviously, since I'm here and she's at Cal Azroth. Indeed, it isn't even through my agency that she shall die. Others have seen to that.”

  “Who?”

  Robert looked coy. “No, no. I can't tell. Just some people with whom I share common goals, for the time being. Only for the time being.” He licked his lips. “They desired Muriele dead for … superstitious reasons. I made use of their credulity. Now, if you'll just bear up with a little of that famous Dare stoicism …”

  William saw Robert grasp his ankles, but felt nothing. Robert tugged him a few inches toward the cliff's edge.

  “Tell me where the key is, by the by,” Robert said. “You aren't wearing it.”

  “What key?”

  “William, please. Don't be petty, now of all times. The emperor must possess the key to the cell of the Kept.”

  A brief hope intruded on William. “I can show you where it is,” he said. “But I will not tell you.”

  Robert stroked his beard thoughtfully, then shook his head. “I will find it. Likely it's in the coffer in your room.”

  He returned to his task.

  Saint Fendve give me the strength, William prayed.

  “Tell me one last thing, Robert,” he asked. “What did you do with Lesbeth's corpse?”

  “I buried it in the garden on the point.”

  William's feet were almost dangling over the cliff, now. Robert frowned, seeing that he couldn't drag his brother straight off. “I see how to do it,” he muttered, more to himself than to William. “Less dignified, but that's how it is.”

  He pulled William's dead legs, changing his position so that he was parallel to the edge. William heard the gulls below. If Robert threw his legs over now, the weight would take the rest of him.

  “I didn't mean where did you bury her, Robert,” William said. “I meant what did you do with the body before you buried it, besides cut off the finger? A clever man like you, surely there must be some fun to be had with a sister's corpse, especially a sister you so unnaturally desired—”

  He was cut off by a kick in the head, and the bloodred flash that blinded him.

  “I never!” Robert shrieked, his calm shattered like brittle glass. “We never! My love for her was pure—”

  “Pure rut-lust, you loathsome shit.”

  The foot came again, but this time William caught it and drove the sharp of his echein doif into his brother's calf. Robert shrieked at the unexpected pain and fell with his knee on William's chest. With an inarticulate cry, William rose up and drove the knife at Robert's heart.

  It sunk in to the hilt.

  Then Robert gave him a great shove, and he was in the air, without weight. He clawed for a handhold, almost found one … and then there were no more to be had.

  The rocks caught him, but there was no pain. The spray of the sea, the salty blood of the world, spattered on his face.

  Muriele, he thought. Muriele.

  In the deeps he heard the draugs singing, mournful and greedy, coming for him.

  At least he'd killed Robert.

  His eyes closed, and the wind died, and then, like a figure in a shadow play, a shape appeared against a gray background. Tall, man-shaped and yet not, antlers like a stag's spreading from its head. The figure gestured, and William saw Eslen a smoking ruin, held in its palm. He saw the heartlands of Crotheny blasted and withered in the other outstretched hand. In its eyes, as in a fire-lit mirror, he saw war. Far, far away, William heard the keen bray of a horn.

  The stag-crowned figure began to grow, not at all like a man now, but like a forest, his horns multiplying to make the branches, his body stretching and tearing into dark boughs and thorny, creeping vines. And as he grew, the dark thing spoke a single name.

  Anne.

  The name broke his soul from his body, and that was the end of William II, emperor of Crotheny.

  Robert's mouth worked, trying to draw air. He stared at the hilt in his breast, feeling foolish.

  “Good for you, Wilm,” he muttered. “Good for you, saints damn you.” It was a strange moment to feel pride for his brother, but there it was.

  “My prince!”

  Robert recognized the voice of the captain of his Night-striders, but it sounded far away.

  Robert didn't look back; he couldn't tear his gaze from the hilt of the knife. From his perspective, it stood like a tower against the sea.

  Far away, he thought he heard the wild sounding of a trumpet, and then the sky fell on him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE EVE OF FIUSSANAL

  ANNE, AUSTRA, AND SEREVKIS STROLLED in the gardens of the countess Orchaevia. Laughter and music suffused the twilight, blossoms of fantastic color and shape perfumed the air, and the mood was, overall, undeniably gay.

  It made Anne intensely uncomfortable, and she didn't know why.

  Part of it was surely the borrowed dress; it was a bit too tight and such a bright green it nearly hurt her eyes. But the most of her discomfort was lurking anonymously in the back of her mind until Austra put a light on it with a simple observation.

  “This reminds me of Elseny's birthday,” she said. “All these flowers.”

  “That's it,” Anne muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  But that was it. It was the festival of Saint Fessa—or as they called her here, Lady Fiussa. Fiussa was the patroness of flowers and vegetation, and in the early days of autumn, when Fiussa departed for her long sleep, it was customary to wish her well and pray for her to return the next spring. Thus, as at Elseny's birthday, there were flowers everywhere, many dried in the spring to retain their color.

  Austra noticed her discomfort, of course, and probed at it. “They make much of the Fiussanal here, don't they?” she said cautiously. “Much more so than in Eslen.”

  “Yes,” Anne answered distractedly, not caring to put her mouth on the bait. She hadn't told Austra about her visions. She wasn't sure she intended to. She'd never kept secrets from her best friend, but now that she'd started down that road it would be difficult to turn back.

  Serevkis rescued her without meaning to.

  “Indeed?” the Vitellian girl remarked. “How is Fiussanal celebrated in Crotheny?”

  “We exchange lockets with pressed flowers,” Austra told her. “We build a feinglest in the sacred horz and drink the last of the new wine.”

  “What's a feinglest?” Serevkis asked.

  “It's a sort of wickerwork, filled with flowers,” Anne told her. “I think the custom came from Liery.”

  “Ah.” Serevkis grinned. “We have that custom, I think, though we name it differently. Follow me. I think I saw the horz around here.” They walked past a rambling stand of olive trees cheery with box-shaped paper lanterns, along a wing of the triva to a small walled garden.

  There, beside a gnarled, ancient oak, stood a woman made of flowers. Her eyes were red poppies, her skirt of goldenrod and orange-damsel, her fingers purple asters.

  The sight of her sent an awful, si
ck jolt through Anne, recalling vividly the women in her visions, the black roses, the horned thing in the woods.

  “Like that?” Serevkis asked. “Is that a feinglest?”

  “No,” Anne said weakly. “I mean, yes, I guess it is, but in Crotheny we make cones, or tall baskets, or … never anything like that. Never anything that looks like a person.”

  But she remembered that feinglest was Leirish for green woman. A hollow of anxiety deepened in her.

  “Let's leave this place,” she said. In the lantern light, it looked as if the green woman was widening her smile, as if at any moment she would take a step toward them.

  “I think she's pretty,” Austra opined.

  “I'm leaving.” Anne turned and walked back toward the house and the sounds of celebration.

  “Well, what's wrong with her?” Serevkis muttered, more puzzled than angry.

  Anne quickened her pace. She wanted away from the garden, out from under the night sky, the fields and trees. She wanted lantern light and people and wine. Especially wine.

  As they stepped back into the huge courtyard of the mansion, the countess herself came toward them, smiling. She wore a gown embroidered to the point of tastelessness with gold and silver flowering vines.

  “My dear,” she said to Anne. “That face! I hope you are enjoying yourself.”

  “I am, casnara,” Anne lied. “Thank you so very much for your hospitality.”

  “It's nothing,” the woman said, beaming. “And for you, my dear, I think I may have a special surprise.”

  Anne blinked. She had met the countess, of course, upon arrival when everyone else had, but couldn't imagine how she had drawn the woman's special attention.

  “Here,” the countess said, taking her aside and whispering in her ear. “Enter my house through the largest door, and you will find a staircase on your left. Follow it up, then down the hall, where it will open into my lavender garden. There you will find a young man who very much desires your company.”

  “I … a young man?”

  The countess looked very pleased with herself. “By your face, you must be the one. I think you must know who I mean.”