The Briar King

by Greg Keyes

  His words made no sense. The black web spinning across Neil's vision was tightening its weave, wrapping around him, sinking toward his bones like a net cast into the sea. He briefly wondered what that net might bring up, and he remembered sunlight on whitecaps. He felt his father's hand in his own.

  Then nothing.

  He woke where he had fallen, face pressed into the stone. His mouth was dry, and his head ached as if from too much wine. Fighting the urge to retch again, he found Crow and clambered to his feet. He swayed there a moment, still dizzy, gaze exploring the shadows of the keep. It was still night, so he had not been unconscious too long, but the false Vargus and whoever he had been talking to were nowhere to be seen.

  What happened to me? The two men had talked as if he was someone else.

  But he still felt like Neil MeqVren.

  Glancing down, he saw that Sir James Cathmayl was dead, his glassy eyes staring beyond the lands of fate. All about, Cal Azroth was absolutely still and quiet, and yet somehow Neil sensed a stir of motion, of sharp darkness waiting to close on him and prick his veins.

  The queen.

  He started up the stairs at a dead run. Vargus had let someone into Cal Azroth, someone with murder in them. He prayed to the saints there was still time to stop them.

  The guardhouse on the wall contained only dead soldiers, slain where they had been sitting or lying. As he entered the tower, Neil found more dead there. The blood pooled on the floor was still warm.

  He passed Elseny's room and saw the door standing open.

  “Elseny?” he hissed. He could see her lying in her bed. He hesitated—his duty was to the queen first—but decided to wake her and keep her close.

  But there was no waking Elseny. The sheets beneath her chin were dark, and a second mouth gaped in her thin white neck. Her eyes were stones, and her expression was one of puzzlement.

  Fastia. Panic surged through Neil. Fastia's room was on the other side of the tower, in the opposite direction as the queen's.

  He hesitated only an instant, then grimly continued toward the queen's apartments.

  In the anteroom, he found carnage. Two men and a Sefry lay still on the floor. The inner door was sealed. He started toward it, but something sharp pricked into the base of his neck, and he froze where he was.

  “Move not,” Erren's voice rasped. “I can kill you before you draw another breath, long before you can turn.”

  “Lady Erren, it is I, Neil.”

  “I have seen Vargus Farre, too,” Erren said. “But he was not Vargus Farre. Prove yourself, Sir Neil. Tell me something only Sir Neil might know.”

  “The queen is well?”

  “Do as I say.”

  Neil bit his lip. “You knew I was with Fastia,” he said, “that night in Glenchest. You told me not to fall in love with her.”

  The assassin was silent for a heartbeat. “Very well,” she said. “Turn.”

  He did, and she moved so quickly he almost didn't see. Her hand cracked across his face. “Where were you? Damn you, where were you?” she demanded.

  “I saw men coming across the plain. I tried to raise the alarm, but the gate was already open. Sir Vargus opened it. And then he did something to me, witched me. I was sick and fainted; I don't know for how long. Is the queen …”

  “She is within, and well.”

  “Thank the saints.” He lowered his voice. “Lady Erren, Elseny is dead. Fastia may be in danger, as well.”

  “Elseny?” Erren's face twisted in grief, but then her eyes narrowed and her features were again carved of marble. “You will stay here, Sir Neil,” Erren hissed. “Your duty is to Muriele, and Muriele alone.”

  “Then you go, Lady Erren,” Neil urged. “Bring Fastia back here, where we can protect her. And Charles. All of the children must be in danger.”

  Erren shook her head. “I cannot. I do not have the strength.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am injured, Sir Neil. I will not last the night. I may not last the hour.”

  He stepped back, then, and saw how strangely she leaned against the wall. It was too dark to see exactly how she was hurt, but he smelled the blood.

  “It cannot be so bad,” he said.

  “I know death, Sir Neil. She is like a mother to me. Trust what I say, and waste no time on grief—for me, for Elseny— and no time on fear for Fastia. Stay clear headed, and answer my questions. I have killed three. How many are there in sum?”

  “I don't know,” Neil admitted. “When the illness overcame me, I was not sensible. But they told me I was to kill the queen.”

  Erren's brow furrowed. “They thought you changeling, like Vargus. Yet you were not. Somehow the sorcery was interrupted.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “Darkest encrotacnia,” Erren whispered. “A man is killed, and his enscorcled soul sent to take the body of another. The soul already in the body is ripped from it. You should not be alive, Sir Neil, and yet you are. But that may work to your advantage. If you pretend to be what they think you are, it might give you more space to strike.”

  “Yes, lady.”

  “The guards and servants are dead, you think?” Erren asked.

  “Yes, lady.”

  “Then you must get the queen to the garrison,” Erren told him. “They could not have killed all of the soldiers there. There are far too many.”

  A faint noise came from down the hall.

  “Hsst.” Erren stepped to the side of the door. Neil made out two pale figures moving toward them, and tightened his grip on Crow.

  “That is you, Ashern?”

  Neil seemed to remember that name from the courtyard.

  “Aye.”

  “Have you done it? The queen is dead?”

  They were closer, now, and Neil could see they were both Sefry. The speaker had an eye patch.

  “Aye, it's done.”

  “Well, let's see. We should not tarry.”

  “You will not trust my word?” They were almost close enough, but the Sefry with the eye patch hesitated, just as Neil struck. Both men leapt back, but the one who had spoken was faster, so Crow took the other in the shoulder and opened him to the lungs. Something hard hit Neil's armor, just over his heart. The one-eyed Sefry was running backwards, his hand cocking back …

  Neil understood and threw himself aside as a second thrown knife whirred by his head and snapped against the stone. By the time he recovered, the Sefry was gone.

  “That's the end of your advantage,” Erren said. “Now you must go, and swift, before he returns with more.”

  “It may be that he has no more.”

  “The changeling Vargus still lives. That makes at least two, but we must assume more.”

  She rapped on the queen's door, three soft taps, a pause, then two harder ones. Neil heard a bolt draw, and then the door cracked inward. He saw the queen's eyes beyond.

  “Sir Neil is here,” Erren said. “He will stay with you.”

  “Erren, you're hurt,” the queen noticed. “Come inside.”

  Erren smiled briefly. “We have more visitors for me to receive. Sir Neil will take you to the garrison. You'll be safe there.”

  “My daughters—”

  “Your daughters are already safe,” Erren replied, and Neil felt her hand touch his back in warning. “Now you must go with Sir Neil.”

  “I won't leave you.”

  “You will,” Erren replied simply. “I will join you at the garrison.”

  A noise sounded near the end of the hall, and Erren spun in time to receive one of the three arrows that sped through the door. It hit her in the kidney. The other two thudded against the wall next to Neil.

  “Erren!” the queen screamed.

  “Sir Neil!” Erren reminded, in a tone of cold and absolute command.

  Neil was through the door in an instant, shouldering the queen aside. He slammed the portal behind him, just as several more shafts thocked into the other side. He bolted it.

 
“Do not open it,” Neil told the queen.

  “Erren—”

  “Erren is dead,” Neil told her. “She died so you might live. Do not betray her.”

  The queen's face changed, then. The confusion and grief fled from it, replaced by regal determination.

  “Very well,” she said. “But whoever did this will have cause to regret it. Promise me that.”

  Neil thought of Elseny, dead in her bed, all her laughter and whimsy bled into her sheets. He thought of Fastia, and nursed a terrible hope that she still lived.

  “They will,” he said. “But we must survive the night.”

  He went to the window, sheathing Crow as he did so. He'd examined the room earlier, of course, and even without the moon he knew the tower wall dropped some five yards to the wall of the inner keep, where he had stood earlier that night watching for ghosts. A glance showed no one without. He returned to her bed and began knotting the sheets together, tying one end to the bedpost.

  The door shuddered beneath repeated blows.

  “Finish here,” he told the queen. “Tie them well. When you've fixed two more together, start down. Do not wait for me.”

  The queen nodded and went to the task. Neil, meanwhile, pushed a heavy chest to add weight to the door.

  He wasn't in time. The bolt suddenly snapped open, as if pulled by invisible fingers. Neil leapt to it, drew Crow, yanked it open, and slashed.

  The pale face of a Sefry looked at him in surprise as Crow split collarbone, heart, and breastbone. Neil didn't let the malefactor drop, but with his other hand lifted him by the hair, using him as a shield against the inevitable darts that flew from the darkness. Then he shoved the body away and slammed the door again, drawing the bolt firmly into place.

  A glance behind him showed that the queen had already begun her descent. He went to the window and watched until she reached the stone cobbles, and was turning to follow her when the door exploded inward.

  Neil slashed the sheet at the bedpost and leapt to the windowsill, dropping to hang by his fingers as two arrows hummed by and a third glanced from his byrnie. Then he dropped.

  A fall of three yards even in half armor was easily enough to snap bones. He hit the cobbles and collapsed his knees. The air blew out of him and glimmer-lights danced across his vision.

  “Sir Neil.” The queen was there. On the horizon a purple sickle was rising. For a moment, Neil did not recognize it as the moon.

  “Away from the window,” he gasped, reaching up to her.

  She took his hand, and they ducked around the curve of the tower, away from any sharp-nosed arrows that might scent them from above.

  “This way,” Neil said. They started along the battlements toward the stair to the courtyard, glancing behind them often. Neil made out at least one slight figure dropping from the tower in the moonlight. He hoped it wasn't one of the archers.

  They reached the steps without incident, however. Once down them, they needed only to cross the courtyard and open the gate that led through the old wall and across the canal to the garrison. Last Neil had seen, that yard was empty of the living, and he hoped it still was.

  They had taken only a step down, however, when the queen suddenly jerked away from him and started back up.

  “Your Majesty—” he began.

  “Fastia!” the queen shouted.

  Neil saw Fastia, turning the corner of the battlements perhaps twenty yards away, still wearing the same blue dress he had seen her in earlier. She looked up at the sound of her name.

  “Mother? Sir Neil?”

  “Fastia. Come to us. Quickly. There is danger.” She started toward her daughter.

  Neil swore and started after her, noting the three figures closing rapidly from the way they had come.

  A fourth appeared silently from the shadows behind Fastia.

  “Fastia!” he shouted. “Behind you! Run toward us!”

  He passed the queen an instant later, his heart roaring, watching Fastia's face grow nearer, confusion mixing with fear as she turned to see what he was yelling about.

  “Keep back from her!” Neil thundered. “By the saints, keep back from her!”

  But the black-clad figure was there, moving terrifically fast, a sliver of moonlight in his hand, lifted and then buried in Fastia's breast, two heartbeats before Neil reached her. The man danced back and drew a sword as Neil howled and drove in, hammering Crow down with both hands. The man parried, and cut back, but Neil took the slash on his hauberk and crashed into him, bringing an elbow up into his chin with a hoarse shout. The man went down but was already bouncing back up when Crow split his skull.

  The queen was kneeling with her daughter, and the men approaching from the tower were nearly upon them. They could never make it to the stairs and down before the men arrived.

  Fastia looked up at him, blinking, hiccuping.

  There was only one way, and Neil took it.

  “Over the wall, into the canal, and swim to the causeway,” he told the queen. “I have Fastia.”

  “Yes,” the queen said. She never hesitated, but jumped.

  Neil lifted Fastia in his arms.

  “I love you,” she gasped.

  “And I you,” he said, and leapt.

  The wall here was seven yards high, and the water felt like stone when he hit it. His hauberk dragged him straight to the bottom, and he had to let loose of Fastia to shuck it off. For a panicked instant he couldn't find her again, but then felt her arm, got his grip, and brought her up. He found his bearings and struck toward the causeway that led to the garrison. It seemed impossibly far away. Ahead of him, the queen was already swimming. Fastia's eyes had closed, but her breath still whistled in his ear.

  Two loud splashes sounded behind him. He struck harder, cursing.

  He emerged onto the causeway at almost the same time as the queen. He lifted Fastia into a cradle-carry and they ran for the garrison gate, keenly aware that the gate to the other courtyard—and those who probably now occupied it—lay behind them.

  The garrison gate was open, too, the bodies of perhaps ten soldiers crumpled beneath its arch.

  In the darkness beyond, something growled, and Neil saw glowing eyes and a shadow the size of a horse, but shaped like no horse he had ever seen.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A LESSON IN THE SWORD

  CAZIO WOKE, wondering where he was, chagrined that he had dozed. Without moving more than his eyes, he quietly took in his surroundings.

  He lay in a small copse of olive trees, through which the stars twinkled pleasantly in a cloudless sky. Not far away reared the shadow of the Coven Saint Cer.

  He sat up, rubbing his eyes, reaching instinctively to see if Caspator was there, and felt reassured to find the familiar hilt next to him.

  What had wakened him? A familiar noise, it seemed. Or had it merely been a dream?

  Memory came lazily, but there wasn't much to remember. When the girls left Orchaevia's fete, he'd taken a walk into the countryside. He'd never been afraid of the dark, and felt learning to move in it, to sense the unseen, could only improve his fencing skills.

  Why and how exactly his footsteps had taken him to the coven, he couldn't say. He'd just looked up and there it was. Once there, he'd pondered what to do; it was too early and would have seemed far too eager on his part to try to get Anne and Austra's attention. So he just stared up at their tower for a while, finally rationalizing that the best hunter was the one who knew the habits of his prey. That being the case, he would observe and perhaps catch a glimpse of them. And after all, it was a pleasant night—not a bad one to spend beneath the stars. No doubt z'Acatto was wandering drunkenly around the triva, spoiling for an argument, and if Orchaevia found him, he would be forced to report on his success or failure with Anne. Avoiding that conversation was one of the reasons he'd gone on his nocturnal stroll in the first place.

  With those thoughts in mind, he'd found the olive grove and waited. A lantern eventually brightened the tower, and he wat
ched the shadow play of the two girls at the window— discussing him, no doubt.

  Then the light had gone out, disappointingly soon, and he'd closed his eyes for a moment—

  And slept, apparently.

  He congratulated himself on avoiding a close call. How foolish he'd have seemed if he'd slept until morning. Anne might have seen him and thought him become what Orchaevia claimed he was, a lovesick fool.

  Even thinking the word startled him. He, Cazio Pachiomadio da Chiovattio, lovesick.

  Ridiculous.

  He glanced back up at the tower. No light showed in the window, but then why should it? It must be well into the morning by now.

  The noise that had awakened him repeated itself, a bell ringing, and with sudden interest Cazio realized that something was going on at the coven. He saw torches all along the battlements, most of them moving at what must be a frantic pace. He thought he heard horses, too, which was odd. And faintly, ever so faintly, shouting, and what might be the occasional sound of steel.

  He sat up straighter. No, by Diuvo, he did hear steel. That wasn't a sound he was likely to misplace.

  That took him straight from muddled to wide awake, and he sprang to his feet with such haste that he bumped his head on a low branch. Cursing, he found his hat and donned it, took the cloak he'd been using as a bed and pinned it back on.

  Who was fighting in the coven? Had bandits attacked the place? Crazed rapist vagabonds from the Lemon Hills to the south?

  He had to know. He began striding toward the left, where he supposed the gate was. If it was naught—some strange exercise to celebrate the Fiussanal—the worst they could do was turn him away.

  He'd gone no more than fifty pereci when he heard the drumming of hooves in the night. He stopped, cupping his ear and turning this way and that until he determined that the noises came from the very direction he was going—and they were getting louder. He watched for torches—who would ride at night without torches—but he saw none. A slice of moon was half risen, the strangest color he had ever seen, almost purple. It seemed to him he'd heard that meant something, but he couldn't remember where. Was it a verse?