The Born Queen tkotab-4

by Greg Keyes

  Aspar didn't reply. He just stepped into the leafy hall, feeling a sort of calm settle over him.

  "Aspar!" Winna shouted. She was holding her belly, and her face was ashen. He thought there was blood on her lips, although in the dim light it was difficult to be sure.

  "It's already too late," Fend said. "It's already begun."

  "Not too late to kill you, though," Aspar said.

  "Is that all you ever think about? I helped you."

  "Only to get Winna here. You planned to kill me after that."

  "Well, true. I really should have done it sooner, but I had a sense I would need you, and I was right. I only planned to do you because I knew you would slaughter me."

  "And I will."

  "You remember the last time we fought? You're even older and slower now, and I'm more powerful than ever. I'm the Blood Knight, you know."

  "No playing this time," Aspar said.

  "We can still do this together," Fend said. "It needs doing."

  "Even if it does, you said it's already begun. So what do I need you for?"

  "I guess you don't."

  "Aspar!" Winna screamed.

  Fend leapt at him, faster than a Mamres monk, his right-hand dagger slashing toward Aspar's face. The holter ducked, stepped in, and took Fend's other knife in the gut, then drilled his dirk under Fend's jaw so hard that he lifted the Sefry clean off his feet. He felt the man's spine snap.

  "I said no playing," Aspar told him. Then he dropped the gurgling man and slumped down to one knee, lowering his gaze to the knife still stuck in his belly.

  He took another look at Fend, but the Sefry was gazing back from beyond the world.

  "About time," he muttered, lowering himself down and scooting toward Ehawk to cut his bonds.

  "You let him stab you," the boy said.

  "If I'd fought him, he would have won," Aspar said. "I'd be dead, and he'd still be alive." He handed Ehawk the knife. "Cut Winna's bonds."

  He got up and walked over to Winna. She was panting hard, and he could see her belly moving. She clutched his arm, but her eyes were closed.

  "Sceat," he said. "I'm sorry, love."

  "It's killing her," Ehawk said.

  "Yah," he replied.

  "What should I do?"

  "I don't know," Aspar said. "Go bring Leshya here; maybe she knows. She's right near the entrance."

  Ehawk nodded and left.

  Aspar was finding it hard to take a deep breath. It was as if something were pushing down on him.

  "Winna," he said. "I don't know if you can hear me. I'm sorry for how I've been-always, but especially lately. There was a lot I needed to tell you, but I couldn't. I had a geos laid on me."

  Winna started to speak, but then she cried out again. Her eyes opened, and he saw they were glazed with pain.

  "Still love you," she said.

  "Yah. I still love you. Nothing will change that."

  "Our baby…" She closed her eyes again. "I can see her, Aspar. I see her in the forest with you, with her father. She's got my hair, but there's something wild in her, something from you, and she's got your eyes."

  Aspar reached to stroke her hair, saw he had blood all over his hand, and wiped it on the ground first.

  When his hand touched the earth, everything went still, and he felt his fingers reach into the soil, dividing, splitting, faster and faster, and his skin was expanding, moving out through the valley, across the hills, to the dying earth around it, and then he was back up north, staring into the eyes of the Briar King as he died.

  Holter.

  He lifted his hand and was back where he'd started, next to Winna.

  Fend was looking down at him.

  "Ah, sceat," Aspar said.

  "It's time," Fend said. Except that it wasn't Fend at all, not anymore. It was the witch.

  Cazio stood for a moment in a daze, wondering what had just happened, but then he realized that Austra was awake, looking at him.

  "Love," he said. "Are you well?"

  As she pulled up, the other people who had been in the crypt rushed out, probably to see what Anne could do now that she could fly.

  "I'm fine," she said. "I was asleep."

  "For days, yes," Cazio said. "Do you know what happened?"

  "I was with Anne, or she was with me," the girl replied. "It's a little confusing, but I think her soul came into me while her body healed."

  "Do you know the way out of here?"

  Austra looked around. "We're in Eslen-of-Shadows?"

  "Yes."

  "There's a path up to the castle, yes. But we have to find Anne."

  "Well, she just flew off with the Kept," Cazio said. "Can you walk?"

  "I feel fine."

  "Let's go, then."

  He helped her to her feet and kissed her.

  "Come on," he said. "Let's go see what's happening."

  "A moment there," a familiar voice said.

  Marche Hespero stood in the doorway to the crypt. He looked disheveled, and his voice sounded strained.

  Cazio drew Acredo.

  "I just need her," Hespero said, pointing at Austra. "She's the link; she's the way to Anne. I can still save us all."

  "You?" Cazio nearly laughed the word. "You expect me to believe you're trying to save us?"

  "Listen," Hespero said. "The man who brought you here and Anne are fighting as we speak. Anne will probably win, and then she will come and finish me. If that happens, we will wish-beg-for the days when we were Skasloi slaves."

  Cazio stepped in front of Austra.

  "About all of that, I know nothing. You might be lying, you might be telling the truth. If I had to guess, I would say the first. It doesn't matter."

  "He isn't lying," Austra murmured.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Anne was trying to tell me something like that, even though I don't think she knew herself what she was getting at. And I am linked to her; we walked the same faneway."

  "Listen to her," Hespero said. "There's not much time."

  Cazio looked down at Austra. "Do you trust him?"

  "No," she replied. "But what choice do we have?"

  "Well, I'm not letting him have you," Cazio replied. "He might kill you both."

  She closed her eyes and took his hands. "Cazio, if that's what it takes…"

  "No."

  "I don't know why I spent any time talking to you at all," Hespero said. Cazio saw that he had drawn a rapier.

  "You remember that your weapon can't hurt me, I trust."

  "Oh, we'll find a way, Acredo and I," Cazio said, taking up his guard.

  Anne called lightning into him and for a moment thought it might actually be that easy. But the Jester grinned and regained his feet, and when she hurled another bolt at him, he twirled it around himself somehow and sent it back.

  He laughed, just as he had laughed in the otherwhere she first had met him in.

  What was so irritating was that she'd had him right under her nose-or at least the part of him that was Stephen. She could have killed him at any time, if only she'd understood, and this would never be happening. Worse, it had been her vision that sent him off to become-this.

  How many of her other visions were false?

  Well, there was still time to correct that mistake. She clapped her hands together and ripped him out of the world, into the sedos realm.

  "A change of scene?" he said. "Very well, my queen."

  The sky raged with her will; the land was all moors of black heather.

  "This is mine," she told him. "All of it."

  "Greedy," he said.

  Her fury kindled deeper.

  "I didn't want it. I didn't want any of this, but you all pushed me. The Faiths, you, my mother, Fastia, Artwair, Hespero-your threats and your promises. Always wanting something from me, always trying to take it by guile or trickery. No more. No more."

  She struck out then, filling the space between them with death of sixteen kinds, and with lovely glee she wa
tched him falter. Yet still he kept smiling, as if he knew something she didn't.

  No more. She saw a seam in him and pulled him open like a book, spreading his pages before her.

  "You dare call me greedy?" she said. "Look at what is in you. Look at what you've done."

  "Oh, I've been a bad boy, I'll admit," he said. "But the world was still here when I went to sleep. You're going to be the end of it."

  "I'll end you for certain," she said. "You and anyone else who won't-"

  "Do what you say? Leave you alone? Wear the proper hat?"

  "It's mine," Anne screamed at him. "I made this world. I've let you worms live on it for two thousand years. If I give you another bell, you should all beg me from your knees, kiss my feet, and sing me hymns. Who are you to tell me what to do with my world, little man?"

  "There you are," he said. "That's what we've all been waiting for."

  She felt him bend his will toward her, and it was strong, much stronger then she had thought. Her lungs suddenly seized as if filled with sand, and the more she fought, the more the weight of him crushed her.

  And still he smiled.

  "Ah, little queen," he murmured. "I think I shall eat you up."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  REQUIEM

  NEIL FELL and rolled, desperately clinging to consciousness. He fumbled for the little knife in his boot, but the man kicked him in the ribs hard, flipping him onto his back.

  "Stand him up," he heard Robert say.

  Rough hands lifted him and slapped him up against the wall of the house.

  "That wasn't a bad performance," Robert said. "I had heard you were in worse shape." He laughed. "Well, now I guess you are."

  Neil tried to focus on Robert's face. The other fellow had his head turned; he seemed to be looking for something.

  Neil spit on the second man. He turned back and slapped Neil.

  He hardly felt it.

  Robert pinched Neil's cheeks. "Last time we talked," he said, "you likened me to a mad wolf who needed to be put down. And here twice you've failed to do that. There's no third chance for you, my friend."

  "I didn't fail," Neil said. "I did all I needed to."

  "Did you? And what was that?"

  "Distracted you," Neil said.

  Robert's eyes widened. There was a flash of actinic blue light, and then Neil was facing two headless men. Behind the stumps of their necks a grim-faced Alis appeared, as if stepping from a dark mist, the feysword held in both hands.

  Neil fell with the dead man who had been holding him. Robert's body continued to stand.

  Neil wiped blood from his eyes and watched through a haze as Alis picked up Robert's head. The prince's lips were working and his eyes rolling, but Neil didn't hear him say anything.

  Alis kissed Robert's forehead.

  "That's for Muriele," she said.

  Then she tossed the head away, into the yard.

  Fend's dead eyes glimmed like oil on water as the witch of the Sarnwood stooped toward Winna.

  "No," Aspar said. "Fend tricked you."

  She paused, cocking her head.

  "It won't work the way you want it to," he said. "It can't."

  "It will," she said. "I know it."

  "You can't have my child," he said. "Her child."

  "My child," the witch replied.

  "Not for long," Aspar said. He pulled the knife out of his stomach. Blood gouted.

  "That can't hurt me," the witch said.

  "I've been wondering," Aspar grunted. "Why my child?"

  He dropped the knife and put one hand on Winna's belly and the other in a pool of Fend's blood. He felt the shock of the woorm's poison and what it had become in Fend's Skaslos veins before his fingers dug down again. This time they kept digging.

  He closed his eyes and saw again the Briar King's eyes, stared into one of them as it opened wider and wider and finally swallowed him.

  He had been sleeping, but something had awakened him; he felt wind on his face and branches swaying around him. He opened his eyes.

  He was in a tree at the edge of a meadow, his forest all around.

  A Mannish woman in a brown wool dress lay on her back at the foot of the tree, her knees up and legs spread. She was gasping, occasionally screaming. He felt her blood soaking into the earth. Everything else was still.

  There was pain showing through the woman's eyes, but he mostly saw resolve. As he watched, she pushed and screamed again, and after a time she pulled something pale blue and bloody from herself. It cried, and she kissed it, rocked it in her arms for a few moments.

  "Aspar," she whispered. "My lovely son. My good son. Look around you. This is all yours."

  Then she died. That baby might have died, too, but he reached down from the tree and took him in, kept him safe and quick until, almost a day later, a man came and found the dead woman and the boy. Then he drifted back into the long slow dream of the earth, for just a little while, until he heard a horn calling, and knew it was time to wake fully and fight.

  "I'm sorry," Aspar told the witch. "I'm sorry your forest was destroyed, your world. But there's no bringing it back. Trying to will destroy what's left of my forest. That's what Fend wanted, although I don't know why."

  "Stop," the witch hissed. "Stop what you're doing."

  "I couldn't if I wanted to," Aspar said. It was the last thing he was able to say; agony stretched him as everything inside of him pressed out against his skin. Then he split open, and with the last light of his mortal eyes he saw green tendrils erupt from his body. They uncoiled fast, like snakes, and reached for the sun.

  The pain faded, and his senses rushed out from tree to grass blade and vine. He was a deer, a panther, an oak, a wasp, rainwater, wind, dark rotting soil.

  He was everything that mattered.

  He pulled life up from the earth and grew, pushing up through the roof and absorbing the thorns into him as he went.

  The music lifted, the discord sharpened, and suddenly a murmur grew in the air, the whisper of a thousand crystal bells with pearl clappers chiming his music in all of its parts. It seemed to spin him around, and the air grew darker until even the flames of the candles appeared only as dim sparks.

  But the music. Oh, it went out of the house and into the vast hollow places of the world. It rang in the stone of the mountains and sang in the depths of the sea. The cold stars heard it, and the hot sun in its passage below the world, and the bones inside his flesh. And still it went on, filling everything.

  He almost lost his own voice. Mylton's voice did falter, but then it came back, stronger, leading the lowest chords up from the depths toward the still unseen summit.

  On the music climbed, falling now and then but always tending higher, never resolving and seemingly irresolvable.

  He couldn't stop singing now if he wanted to; Mylton's stumble had been the last time that was possible. He heard many thousands of voices now sighing in the starless gulf, then millions, and he began to panic, because he couldn't remember how it finished, what was supposed to happen at the end. The music on paper no longer mattered. The requiem had them all in its grip now, and it was going where it wanted to.

  He felt his body shiver like a dragonfly's wing and then cease to be. Nothing remained of him but his voice.

  The end came, and it was terrifying, wonderful, and then-in a single, impossible moment-perfect. Every note fit with every other. Every voice supported every other. Everything was in its place.

  The voices of the dead faded with his own.

  Mery sagged against the wall and collapsed.

  Out in the yard, the head of Robert Dare stopped trying to talk.

  Hespero came at him like lightning, lunging and thrusting at Cazio's groin. He parried quickly in uhtave, but the blade wasn't there, for the fratrex had disengaged. It was only by wild chance that he managed to catch the blade a second time and stop it from running through his throat.

  Cazio stepped back.

  "You know how to use a sword p
retty well."

  "I may have neglected to mention that I studied with Mestro Espedio."

  Cazio narrowed his eyes. "I met another student of his not long ago. Acredo. This is his sword."

  "An acquaintance," Hespero said. "You killed him, I gather."

  "No. An arrow did."

  Hespero shrugged and came at him again, using the attack of the Cuckold's Walk Home. Cazio countered it, move for move for move. Acredo nearly had killed him with that attack when they had fought because Cazio hadn't known the final reply, but he knew the point would be at his throat when it was all over, so he finished with a high controsesso.

  Again he didn't find the blade, but Hespero's found him, slipping through the ribs of his right side. Cazio fell back, looking at the blood in utter disbelief. Hespero came grimly on.

  You're going to be fine, Cazio thought. He got lucky.

  He parried the next attack barely and then desperately struck deep. His blade grazed Hespero's off-weapon hand and drew blood.

  That was a nice surprise.

  "You're a better swordsman than I thought," Cazio said. "But you aren't invulnerable anymore."

  "If you treat that wound now, you might live," Hespero said.

  "Oh, you're not getting away that easily," Cazio said.

  "I don't have time for this," the fratrex said.

  Cazio renewed his attack, a feint to the hand, a bind from perto to uhtave.

  Hespero punched him in the jaw with his off-weapon hand. Cazio reeled back, trying desperately to get his guard up.

  Austra launched herself at the fratrex, leaping on his back and wrapping her arms around his neck. Hespero reached back with his left hand and grabbed her by the hair, but she didn't let go until he slammed her into the wall.

  By that time Cazio was on his feet, albeit unsteadily. He lurched toward Hespero.

  "Saints, you really don't know when to quit," Hespero said.

  Cazio didn't waste his limited breath answering; he stamped and started an attack in perto. Hespero, a little impatiently, bound in sesso and riposted; Cazio ducked and lunged low but short.

  Hespero started the Cuckold's Walk Home, and Cazio kept up with him, barely. The last feint came to his throat, and he desperately parried again, and again the blade wasn't there.

  Neither was Cazio. As the final flank stroke came, he twisted his body out of the way and counterattacked rather than trying to parry. Acredo slid neatly through the churchman's solar plexus.