Briar King

by Keyes, Greg

  Late in the day, the land fell more steeply, and they found themselves following the stony course of a stream bordered with head-high horsetails and ferns. The valley walls rose steeply on each side, closing them in, unscalable without rope and spike.

  Night came swiftly in the narrow valley, and Aspar and Winna bathed in a shockingly cold pool, embracing first for warmth and then for more. Winna tasted like the water, almost metallic with youth and life. After, they curled in their blankets beneath the ferns. When Winna was asleep, Aspar lay listening to the warbling of frogs and nightbirds, and the trickle of water over stone. Somewhere near, that trickling became a rushing hiss as the stream dropped for some unknown depth. It was that sound that had stopped Aspar a little shy of true dark. If they were to negotiate a cliff, let them do it in morning’s light.

  As he lay there, he was amazed at how good he felt. There was something in the forest here, some almost sensual vitality, that he hadn’t noticed since he was a boy. It was the force that had first made him fall in love with the woods, a force that was wonder and beauty and awe forged together.

  He hadn’t realized how much the hard years had stripped from him until now, when he suddenly had it back. Was it really this place that was different, somehow more alive than the rest of the world, or was it a change in Aspar White, brought on by—well, Grim, he could admit it to himself, however foolish it might sound aloud—love?

  He didn’t know and hardly cared. For the first time since he was a boy, he felt perfectly at one with the world.

  There was indeed a cliff, as sheer as ever one could be, and it seemed to drop forever. That was difficult to tell, of course, for the canyon—it was certainly that now, with walls scarcely a stone’s throw apart—was filled with trees. Not tall, slender boles, but a writhing, twisting, twining maze of thick branches, black-skinned and armed with thorns bigger than his hand. They rose from the unseen bottom in a heady tangle that reminded him of nothing so much as the tyrants. You couldn’t fall far, in there. Of course, if you fell at all, you were likely to be impaled by the dagger-size thorns.

  “What sort of tree is that?” Winna asked.

  “I’ve never seen its like.”

  Winna waved at the glossy green leaves, shaped like long, narrow hearts. “Briar trees, maybe? For a Briar King?”

  “Why not?” Aspar wondered.

  “We have to climb down through that, though, don’t we?”

  “It’s that or go back,” Aspar replied.

  “What about the horses?”

  Aspar nodded reluctantly. “We’ll have to leave ‘em. I suspect we’ll be back this way anyhow. I’ve a feeling this valley boxes, somewhere up ahead.”

  He turned and patted Ogre’s cheek. “Take care of these two, as you did before, yah? I’ll be back for you.”

  Ogre looked at him darkly, then tossed his head and stamped.

  They kept close to the solid comfort of the granite wall, descending down the snaky branches from one to another. So tightly did they coil and twine, rarely was there room for Aspar to straighten. The thorns, at least, were spaced wide enough to avoid with relative ease, and in fact made good handholds.

  The sky above became a mosaic, stained glass, a memory. At noon they were in twilight, and the leaves were going thin and yellow, starved for sunlight. A little lower, there were no leaves at all. Instead, the limbs were home to pale shelf fungi and yellow slime mold, white mushroomlike spheroids, and vaguely obscene crimson pipes.

  Dragonflies the size of small birds wove in and out of the briars, and pale, squirrellike beasts scampered away from As-par and Winna as they climbed farther and farther from the sun.

  Winna, ever delighted, and getting comfortable with their descent, moved ahead of Aspar by a stone’s throw. He didn’t like that, and said so, but she replied with lighthearted taunts about his age and encouraged him to greater speed.

  When first she shrieked, he thought it was another joke, so unreal did her scream sound. But when she repeated herself, he understood the terror in it.

  “Winna!” He dropped his own height, hit a branch slick with fungus and nearly fell. He caught himself, though, and went down the next branch as dexterously as a squirrel. He could see her, but he couldn’t see what threatened her.

  He swung under the next branch, and something hit him in the face, something that gripped him like a giant, hairy hand. He gave a hoarse cry and clawed at it, pulling off a spider bigger than his head. He was mired in a web, too. It ripped easily enough, but it was sticky and disgusting. He hurled the spider away, hoping it hadn’t bitten, not feeling a bite.

  A moment later he was just above Winna. She, too, was veiled in the sticky white spider-weave, crying and shaking. One of the eight-legged creatures was advancing toward her along the limb.

  He pinned it there with his throwing ax. Its legs flailed wildly, but it was stuck fast.

  “Were you bit?” he asked, as he reached her at last. “Did one of those things bite you?”

  She shook her head, but waved a trembling hand around them.

  They were everywhere, the spiders, spread between nearly every limb. Some were the size of fists, some as large as a cat. They were thick-legged, hairy, with yellow striping. An arm’s length from Winna, one of the squirrels struggled in a web, as its weaver moved toward it, mandibles working eagerly.

  “Are they poisonous?” Winna rasped faintly.

  “We aren’t going to find out,” Aspar said. “We’re moving back up. We’ll travel in the higher branches.”

  “But don’t we have to go down?”

  “Not yet. Not now. Maybe this is just a local nest of ‘em.”

  Aspar retrieved his ax, and they climbed back up, weaving carefully between the webs. A spider dropped from a branch, straight toward Aspar’s head, but he batted it away with a disgusted growl.

  Finally, when they were well above the level where the spiders dwelt, they stopped and cleaned off as many of the webs as they could. Then they examined one another for wounds and spent a few moments nestled together.

  “We’ll want to be out of these trees by nightfall,” Aspar said.

  “Why? You think the spiders will come up?”

  “No. But what else lives in here? What lives even farther down, where it must always be dark? I don’t know what might come up at sunfall, and that’s the problem. As well, we won’t sleep well in these branches, and we can’t start a fire.”

  “We should go, then.” She sounded shaky.

  “Can you?”

  “Yah. I can.”

  He had the sudden urge to kiss her, and he did.

  “What was that for?” she asked.

  “You’re a brave lass, Winna. The bravest.”

  She uttered a staccato laugh. “I don’t feel brave. Screaming at spiders.”

  Aspar rolled his eyes. “Come on, you.”

  They went on, keeping to the middle heights. The rift walls came nearly together and then began to widen again, and as they got wider, the thorn forest dropped lower and lower; without the narrow walls to crowd them up toward the sun, the branches wandered in a more leisurely fashion.

  Now and then, Aspar could actually see the ground, covered with what resembled white ferns.

  But the great, dark, unknown cavern behind them troubled him more and more as the day waned. He could almost smell the presence of something large and mirksome, caged by the sun but free to walk when the Shining King slept.

  And he would sleep soon.

  “Let’s go down,” Aspar said, “and hope for no more surprises.”

  The spiders were there, but in much fewer numbers and spread much more thinly. They were also generally smaller, and so Aspar and Winna made their way down through them with relatively few anxious moments. Finally, reluctantly, As-par dropped around twice his height from the last branch onto the leaf mold that covered the ground, avoiding the patches of white, whisklike growth that might hide more many-legged predators.

  A moment later, h
e caught Winna as she followed him down.

  More than ever it seemed like a cave. The trunks of the thorn trees were massive in girth, but spaced wide apart. The result was like a gigantic, low-roofed hall with many pillars. A very dark hall, and from the way they had come, from the heart of that darkness, Aspar smelled something fetid.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s hurry.”

  They more or less ran. Aspar strung his bow, brandishing it in front in case of spiderwebs they might not see. The ground was level and flat and deep with mold. It smelled like centipede, like the underside of a piece of rotting bark.

  As the light faded, the tree trunks grew taller, but Aspar still saw no end to them. Finally, desperate, his back itching and the smell of autumn leaves filling his nostrils, he noticed one tree with a large hollow in it.

  “If this forest has an end, we won’t find it before nightfall,” he told Winna. “This is the best we can do.”

  Striking tinder, he held it inside and made certain the space was empty, then the two of them crouched within.

  The forest faded and vanished, and Aspar placed himself between Winna and the outside, gripping his bow.

  Behind him, after a bell or so, Winna’s breath starting coming slow and regular.

  A little after that, the nightbirds stopped singing, and the dark grew very quiet indeed. And then—there was still no sound, but Aspar felt it, like a blind man feels the heat of the sun on his face. The earth trembled faintly, and then a stench thickened the air.

  Aspar squinted at the darkness, and waited.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DEPARTURES

  “I KNOW IT ISN’T FAIR, DOVE,” Lesbeth said, drawing Anne’s hair back for the pin. “But your mother feels it’s best for you.”

  “Roderick will forget about me.”

  “If that happens, then he never loved you,” Lesbeth said. “Besides—Anne, I tried to warn you of this.”

  “But you’re marrying for love!” Anne said. “You’re the youngest, and so am I.”

  “I was patient,” Lesbeth said. “And most of all, I was fortunate.”

  “I wish to be so fortunate,” Anne said.

  Lesbeth came around so she could look Anne in the eye. “Then do as your mother says. You may not understand, Anne, but she is giving you a chance for true love better than ever you had before.”

  “By sending me away? To a coven? That makes no sense.”

  “Oh, but it does,” Lesbeth assured her. “It will keep marriage off you for a time, for one thing, and even after you leave the coven you will have a grace period wherein you might claim to be considering vows. You will have a way of delaying suitors, and thus opportunity to be courted by more of them. The more you have, the better your chance of finding one who pleases you. And if worse comes to worst—why, you can take the vows.”

  “Never.” Anne tossed her head. “Besides, I’ve already found the suitor I want.”

  “Well, him you can’t have, and that’s that, Anne. Not now, anyway. Maybe in a few years—maybe Roderick will prove himself in service, or in some other way to redeem his family. More likely, you’ll realize that what you two share is a young passion, a teakettle love, done once the steam boils out. More men are like that than you might think.” Lesbeth took Anne’s fingers in her own. “A merchant knows, never buy the first ware you see. It may appear all very well, but until you have some basis for judgment, how can you know?”

  “Well, I’ll get no better basis for comparison in the coven, and that’s assured!” Anne replied bitterly.

  “Patience,” Lesbeth replied. “And you’ll have Austra with you, yes?”

  “Yes,” Anne agreed reluctantly, “but it shall still be awful. Learn to be like Erren? What exactly does Erren do, besides sneak about and pry into things?”

  Lesbeth made a funny little frown. “Surely you know what Erren does.”

  “She’s Mother’s spy.”

  “Yes, she’s that. But she also—Anne, Erren kills people.”

  Anne started to laugh at that, but then she saw Lesbeth wasn’t joking. “Kills who? How?” she asked.

  “People. People who are dangerous to the kingdom, and to your mother.”

  “But who? Who has she killed?”

  Lesbeth’s voice dropped very low. “It’s secret, mostly. That’s the thing about Erren, she’s very … quiet. But—do you remember that fat lord from Wys-on-Sea? Hemming?”

  “Yes. I thought he was a sort of clown, always joking.”

  “He was a spy for the Reiksbaurgs. He was part of a plot to kidnap Fastia.”

  “But I remember—he died in his chambers. They said it was his heart.”

  “Maybe. But it was Erren who stopped his heart, whether by poison or needle or sacaum of death it cannot be said. But it was Erren. I heard your mother speak of it, once.”

  “That’s …” Anne didn’t know what it was. Erren had always been spooky, but … “I’m to learn such things?” Anne asked. “Why?”

  “Great houses must have women like Erren. She is your mother’s first cousin, you know, of gentle birth. But your mother has this in mind: If you will not serve your house in marriage, you will serve it in some other way. She’s giving you a choice.”

  “I don’t believe it. Mother hates me.”

  “How absurd. She loves you. She may love you best, of all her children.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “You cannot see yourself, can you, Anne? Except in a mirror, and there everything is backwards. Believe me. Your mother loves you. I, too, wish she would not send you off, but I understand why she does. You will, too, one day, even if you never agree. That’s what growing up ought to be, you know, or bring with it anyhow—the vision to understand something even when you’re dead set against it.”

  Anne felt tears start. “I’ll miss you, Lesbeth. Just as I get you back, now I have to go.”

  “I’ll miss you, Anne,” Lesbeth said, giving her a long hug. “And now I must go. I cannot bear to see you off.”

  “Neither can Mother, it seems. Or Fastia.”

  “They are already gone, Anne. Didn’t you know? They left on the barge, before dawn. And everyone thinks you are with them.”

  Including Roderick, Anne thought, as she watched her aunt vanish through the arch in the stable yard. He still thinks I’m going to Cal Azroth. She and Austra had been watched like prisoners, and she had found neither the time nor the opportunity to send him a message.

  Besides, she didn’t know where she was going.

  I’ll take my first chance, she thought. They can’t do this to me. Even Lesbeth, though I love her dearly, doesn’t understand me. I can’t be trapped in a coven. I can’t. If I have to live like a bandit, or dress as a man and fight as a soldier of fortune, I will do it.

  She was still thinking in that vein when the coach came, and Austra and some bearers with their luggage.

  “Where do you think we’re going?” Austra whispered, as the shades were drawn on the coach, and it began rumbling forward.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Anne said, with false brightness. “It doesn’t matter one bit.”

  Muriele watched the elms go by. They lined the canal like a colonnade; elms had deep, straight roots that would never undermine the dikes they were planted on, only strengthen them.

  Beyond the elms, the fields of Newland went flat and green to the horizons. Only the now distant bump that was the island of Ynis marred that flatness, for even the south hills were obscured by a noon haze.

  “Did I do the right thing?” she murmured. Anne’s face was vivid in her mind. I hate you. What mother could bear to hear that from her child?

  Some things had to be borne.

  “My queen?”

  Muriele turned to find the young knight, Neil MeqVren, almost at her elbow. “Yes?” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he said, bowing hastily. “I thought you spoke to me.”

  “No,” she said. “Only to myself, or to
the saints.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, then.”

  “It’s no bother. You said your farewells to Sir Fail, I hope.”

  “I had little time, and we spoke only a few words,” Neil replied.

  “He’s bursting with pride of you. If you were his own son, I think he could never be prouder.”

  “If he were my own father, I could never be gladder of it.”

  “I’m sure that’s so,” Muriele replied.

  She let silence rest between them for a moment. “What do you think of all this, Neil?”

  “Newland, you mean?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant, but since you bring it up, you must have some opinion.”

  Neil grinned a little sheepishly and looked very, very young. “I guess, Majesty, that it makes me nervous. You’re from Liery, so you understand; we would never put chains on our lord the sea. We would never dream to tell him where he can and cannot go. Yet here—well, it is grand, I have to say, and astonishing—that land can be taken from the waves. And I suppose Saint Lier has raised no objection, but it seems … impertinent.”

  “Even for the emperor of Crotheny?”

  “Begging your pardon, Your Majesty, but even an emperor is simply a man. I serve that man, and all he represents, and if you should ask me to throw my body into a hole in one of these dikes to plug it and keep the sea out, I’d do it, then let the saints judge me as they might. But still, in all—I love the sealord, but I do not trust him over my head, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” Muriele said quietly. “The Reiksbaurgs began this, and my husband’s people finished it. Beneath these waters, they found the most fertile soil in all the world. But don’t allow yourself to be fooled; we pay a tithe to the saints of the waves, of marsh, and river. And sometimes they take their own tithe. It is, as you say, an uneasy arrangement.”

  Neil nodded. “And so what did you mean, Majesty, when you asked me what I thought?”

  “Do you agree with my husband? Is going to Cal Azroth what we ought to do?”