The Blood Knight

by Greg Keyes

  But for the first time in a very long time, he reckoned this was a duel he might lose. Dying was a thought he had become used to, fighting supernatural knights in heavy armor with magic swords. But in a duel of dessrata, only z’Acatto had been his match since he was fifteen.

  He felt a bit of fear but even more exhilaration. At last, a duel worth fighting.

  He feinted low and finished high, but Acredo retreated a step, put Caspator in a bind, and lunged. Cazio felt the tension run up his blade, and then, with a sudden dismaying ring of steel, Caspator finally snapped.

  Acredo paused, then came on. Cursing, Cazio retreated, holding the stub of his old friend.

  He was steeling himself for a last, desperate leap inside Acredo’s sword point in hopes of grappling him, when the Sefry suddenly gasped and fell to one knee. Cazio’s first thought was that it might be some odd gambit like the three-legged dog, but then he saw the arrow sprouting from the man’s thigh.

  “No!” Cazio shouted.

  But men-at-arms were swarming along the canal now. Acredo defiantly lifted his weapon again, but an archer shot him from five kingsyards, hitting him in the shoulder, and in the very next instant a third shaft struck through his throat.

  He clapped his hand to the wound and looked straight at Cazio. He tried to say something, but blood bubbled from his lips instead, and he fell face forward in the snow.

  Cazio looked up in anger and saw Sir Neil. The knight was without armor, though he was a bit better dressed than Cazio, still wearing a white shirt, breeches, and, most enviable of all, buskins.

  “Sir Neil!” Cazio cried. “We were dueling! He should not have died like that!”

  “This rubbish stabbed Her Majesty,” Neil replied, “in a cold-blooded assassination attempt. He does not deserve the honor of a duel or any sort of honorable death.”

  He glanced down at Acredo.

  “I did wish to take him alive, however, to discover who sent him.” He gave Cazio a hard glance. “This isn’t sport,” he said. “If you believe that it is—if your love of the duel is more important than Anne’s safety—then I wonder if you belong in her company.”

  “If I had not been here, she would be dead,” Cazio replied.

  “Fair enough,” Neil said. “But my point still stands, I think.”

  Cazio acknowledged that with a curt nod.

  Cazio picked up the Sefry’s fallen blade. It had a beautiful balance but was a bit lighter than Caspator.

  “I will take care of your weapon, dessrator,” he told the fallen man. “I only wish I had earned it fairly.”

  Someone placed a cloak over Cazio’s shoulders, and he realized he was shivering almost uncontrollably. It also occurred to him that he was being stupid, that Sir Neil was right.

  But he could not shake the feeling that no matter what a villain he had been, any dessrator deserved to die by the point of a rapier.

  “Sit me up,” Anne commanded.

  Just saying the words was almost enough to cause her to faint.

  “You should lie back,” Elyoner’s leic said. He was a young man, handsome in a feminine way. Anne wondered just how much medicine he knew that didn’t have anything to do with sex. He had stopped her bleeding and put something on her arm that caused it to throb a little less violently, but that was no guarantee she wasn’t going to die of sepsis in a few days.

  “I will sit up, against the pillows,” she said.

  “As Her Majesty wishes.”

  He helped her to that position.

  “I need something to drink,” Anne said.

  “You heard her,” Elyoner said. Her aunt was in a violet dressing gown of a complex weave whose name Anne didn’t know. She looked drunk and worried.

  More interesting was Austra, who was wearing nothing more than a bedcover pulled tightly around her shoulders. She had appeared only instants after Cazio had left; that was suggestive, since Cazio had been entirely naked.

  “Austra, put something on,” she said gently.

  Austra nodded gratefully and vanished into the adjoining wardrobe.

  A moment later, a young girl with hair in yellow ringlets wearing an umber skirt and a red apron appeared with a cup of what turned out to be watered wine. Anne quaffed it thirstily, her distaste for alcohol a thing of the past.

  The girl went to Elyoner and whispered something in her ear. Elyoner sighed in apparent relief.

  “The assassin is dead,” she said.

  “And Cazio?”

  Elyoner looked at the girl, who blushed and said something too low for Anne to hear. Elyoner tittered.

  “He’s well, more or less, albeit perhaps in danger of losing bits to the frost.”

  “When he’s clothed, I want to see him. And Sir Neil.” Anne turned to watch Elyoner’s men carrying off the corpses of the guards.

  Austra emerged a few moments later, having hastily thrown on an underskirt and an ample dressing gown of Nahzgavian felt. Anne recognized it as one Fastia once had favored.

  That had been Fastia, hadn’t it? Her spirit or ghost, come in a dream. If she hadn’t waked her, the Sefry would have completed his job without hindrance; she would have died in her sleep with no protest.

  “Aunt Elyoner,” Anne said. “You knew that passage existed?”

  “Of course, dear,” she said. “But few others do. I thought it secure.”

  “I wish you had told me of it.”

  “I wish I had, too, dove,” she replied.

  “Uncle Robert would have known about it, yes?”

  Elyoner shook her head with great certainty. “No, my dear. That is an impossibility. I would not have thought…but then, I do not know as much about the Sefry as perhaps I believed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Cazio chose that moment to arrive. He hobbled into the room making a desperate show of not hobbling, but the bandage on his foot was plain proof that he had received some sort of injury.

  “Anne!” he said, coming quickly to kneel by the bed. “How bad is it?” He took her good hand, and she was surprised to feel how cold it was.

  “His blade went through the meat of my arm,” Anne replied in Vitellian for his benefit. “The bleeding is stanched. There was no poison, fortunately. And you?”

  “Nothing of consequence.” His gaze flicked up and away, to where Austra stood behind her. “Austra?”

  “I was never in danger, of course,” Austra said, sounding a bit breathless.

  Cazio released Anne’s hand—a little too quickly, she thought.

  “He stabbed you?” Anne asked.

  “A small wound, in the foot.”

  “Cazio,” Elyoner said. “They found the two of you down by the canal. How did you get there?”

  “I followed him there from the hedge maze, Duchess,” the swordsman replied.

  “That’s where the passage comes out?” Anne asked. “That wall in the grotto?”

  “Passage?” Cazio asked. His brow furrowed.

  “Yes,” Anne said. “The passage there, in the wall. Behind the tapestry.”

  Cazio glanced at the tapestry. “There’s a passage hidden behind there? Is that how he got in?”

  “Yes,” Anne said, beginning to be irritated. “And it’s how he got out. You followed him, Cazio.”

  “I’m sorry, I did no such thing.”

  “I watched you.”

  Cazio blinked, and for perhaps the second or third time in the months she had known him, he actually seemed to have lost his tongue.

  “Cazio,” Elyoner said gently, “how did you get outside, do you suppose? To the grotto in the hedge maze?”

  Cazio placed his hands on his hips. “Well, I—” he began confidently, then stopped, frowning again. “I…”

  “Have you gone mad?” Anne said. “How drunk are you?”

  “He can’t remember, dove,” Elyoner said. “No man can. It’s a sort of glamour. Women can recall the passages in these walls. Women can use them. A man can be led through one, but it never imp
resses his memory. A few moments from now poor Cazio won’t even remember what we were talking about, nor will any man here.”

  “That’s absurd,” Cazio said.

  “What’s absurd, dear?” Elyoner asked.

  Cazio blinked, then looked a bit frightened.

  “You see?”

  “But the Sefry was male. I’m pretty sure of that.”

  “We will determine that for certain,” Elyoner said. “There are ways of telling, you know. But I suppose the glamour was meant for humans. Perhaps it doesn’t work on Sefry.”

  “This is all very strange.”

  “Then your mother never showed you the passages in Eslen castle?”

  “Secret ones, you mean?”

  “Yes. Austra?”

  Anne turned to where Austra stood, looking mostly at the floor. “I’ve heard tell,” she said softly. “I’ve only ever been in one of them.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?” Anne said.

  “I was asked not to,” she said.

  “So Eslen castle has passages like these?”

  “Indeed,” Elyoner said. “It’s riddled with them.”

  “And Uncle Robert doesn’t know about them,” Anne mused. “An army could take the castle from inside.”

  Elyoner smiled wanly. “You would have difficulty if the army were made up of men, I should think,” she said.

  “I could lead them!” Anne said.

  “Perhaps,” Elyoner said. “I’ll tell you what I know of them, of course.”

  “Do any of them open outside the city?”

  “Yes,” Elyoner replied. “There is one that I know of. And several emerge within the city, at various locations. I can tell you where they are, perhaps make a little map if my memory serves me.”

  “Good,” Anne replied. “That’s good.”

  Anne understood then that she was ready. Not because she knew what she was doing but because she had no choice.

  Ten years of studying warcraft and building an army might make her better suited to the task, but in a few ninedays her mother would be married and she would have to fight not only what troops Robert could muster but Hansa and the Church, as well.

  No, she was ready—because there was no other choice but to be.

  THOUGH IT was made of lead, Stephen handled the manuscrift gently, as if it were the tiniest of babies, the sort born too early.

  “It’s been cleaned,” he noted.

  “Yes. Do you recognize the letters?”

  Stephen nodded. “I’ve only seen them on a few tombstones, in Virgenya. Very, very old tombstones.”

  “Exactly,” the fratrex said. “This is the ancient Virgenyan script.”

  “Some of it,” Stephen cautioned, “but not entirely. This letter and this one here—both are from the Thiuda script, as adapted by the Cavari.” He tapped a square with a dot pressed into the center. “And this is a very primitive variant form from Vitellian, where it was sounded as ‘th’ or ‘dh,’ as in thaurn, or, ah, dreodh.”

  “It’s a mixture of scripts, then.”

  “Yes,” Stephen nodded. “It’s…” He trailed off, feeling the blood rush to his scalp and his heart clout like a marching drum.

  “Brother Stephen, are you well?” Ehan asked, staring at him with concern.

  “Where did you get this?” Stephen asked weakly.

  “It was stolen, actually,” the fratrex said. “It was found in a crypt in Kaithbaurg-of-Shadows. A coven-trained recovered it for us.”

  “Well, don’t keep the bag on my head,” Ehan said in an attempt to lighten the mood. “What do we have here, Brother Stephen?”

  “It’s an epistle,” he answered, still not believing it himself.

  The fratrex’s mouth formed a small “o.” Ehan merely lifted his shoulders in puzzlement.

  “It’s a very old word in Virgenyan, no longer used in the king’s tongue,” Stephen explained. “It means a sort of letter. When they were planning their revolt, the Skasloi slaves passed these to one another. They were written in cipher so that if the epistles were intercepted by their enemies, the information, at least, remained safe.”

  “If it’s in cipher, though, how can you read it?” Ehan wondered aloud.

  “A cipher can be broken,” Stephen said, excitedly now. “But if I’m to do so, I’ll need some books from the scriftorium.”

  “Whatever we have is at your disposal,” the fratrex said. “Which ones do you have in mind?”

  “Yes, well,” Stephen mused, “the Tafliucum Eingadeicum, of course—the Caidex Comparakinum Prismum, the Deifteris Vetis, and the Runaboka Siniste, for a start.”

  “I had guessed those already,” the fratrex responded. “They are packed and ready to go.”

  “Packed?”

  “Yes. Time is short, and you cannot remain here,” the fratrex said. “We’ve repelled one attack by the Hierovasi, but there will be more—either from them or from our other enemies. We remained here only to await you.”

  “To await me?”

  “Indeed. We knew you would need the resources of the library, but we can carry no more than a fraction. So we had to keep it safe until you returned, because I didn’t know everything you would need.”

  “Yet surely I’m not the only scholar of languages—”

  “You are our foremost surviving expert,” the fratrex said, “and the only one to have walked the faneway of Saint Decmanus.

  “But there’s more to it than that, I’m afraid. I don’t want to burden you, but all auspex point to your personal importance in the coming crisis. I believe it has to do with you being the one to wend the horn and wake the king, though it’s unclear whether you are important because you blew the horn or you sounded the horn because you were important. You see? The spetural world will always grip some secrets.”

  “But what am I to do, exactly?”

  “Gather the books and scrolls you know you will need, though no more than can be packed on one mule and one horse. Be prepared to leave by morning.”

  “Tomorrow? But that’s not enough time. I have to think! Don’t you understand? If this is an epistle, it’s likely the only one that has survived.”

  Ehan coughed. “Begging both of your pardons, but that’s not right. My studies weren’t thorough, I know—the virtues of minerals has always been my subject—but in the ahvashez in Skefhavnz, I studied John Wotten’s letter to Sigthors. I didn’t know the word ‘epistle,’ but that’s what it would be, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Stephen said, “if what you studied was really a letter from Wotten to Sigthors—but it wasn’t. What you learned was a reconstruction of that text by Wislan Fethmann four centuries ago. He based it on a short summary of its content written by one of Sigthor’s grandnephews sixty years after the victory over the Skasloi.

  “Sigthors was killed in the battle. The grandnephew got his information interviewing the surviving son, Wigngaft, who was seven when his father read the letter aloud to his followers and sixty-seven when asked to recall what it said. There was also a single line recorded supposedly by Thaniel Farre, the courier who delivered the letter. But we don’t have the original by Farre, only a thirdhand copy of a quotation of Farre in the Tafles Vincum Maimum, written a full thousand years after his death. ‘Come what may, no grandchild of mine shall see a single sunrise under slavery. If we do not succeed, with my own hands I will end my line.’”

  Ehan blinked. “So that’s not really what was written?”

  “In truth, we have no way of knowing,” Stephen said.

  “But surely Fethmann must have been inspired by the saints to create an accurate reconstruction.”

  “Well, that’s one school of thought,” Stephen said drily. “In any event, he wrote in Middle Hanzish, not in the original encrypted form, so whether it was divinely inspired or not, that ‘epistle’ is of no help in translating this one. There are, by the by, a few other epistles with the same dubious provenance as the one you bring up. In fact, it’s not uncommon to find the
m for sale in Sefry caravans, both as ‘originals,’ written in gibberish, and as translations.”

  “Fine, then,” Ehan said brusquely. “So our epistle was a fraud, a local tradition not approved by the Church. So what? Are there no authenticated epistles?”

  “There are two fragments, neither with more than three complete lines. Those seem to be originals, though neither is here. But they are supposedly faithfully reproduced in the Casti Noibhi.”

  “We have the Dhuvien copy of that volume,” Pell said.

  “I could hope for a better edition,” Stephen said. “But if it’s the best you’ve got, it will have to do.”

  A thought occurred, and he met the gaze of the fratrex.

  “Wait a moment,” he said. “You said this epistle—if that is what it is—is a clue to the location of Virgenya Dare’s journal. How can that be, when her journal was hidden centuries after the revolt was over?”

  “Ah,” the fratrex said. “Yes, that.” He signed to Ehan, who lifted a leather-bound tome from behind his bench.

  “This is the life of Saint Anemlen,” the fratrex said. “While at the court of the Black Jester, Anemlen heard a rumor of Brother Choron, in whose hands the journal had been entrusted. Choron was supposed to have stopped in the kingdom ten years before the Jester won his bloody throne, serving as an adviser to the monarch who was reigning at the time.

  “The book rested there for a while. In one passage, Anemlen records that Choron discovered—in a reliquary—the scroll you now hold. Without saying what it was, he stated that it spoke of a ‘fastness’ in a mountain some eighteen days’ ride to the north and that this mountain was known as Vhelnoryganuz.

  “He set out to find it, ostensibly because he felt that most sacred of documents would be safer there. He left for Vhelnoryganuz but never returned. As you know, the Black Jester had his court where the city of Wherthen now stands, though little remains of the original fortress. But when the Church liberated and consecrated the area, they gathered all the scrifti they found. The evil ones were destroyed, for the most part. Those which were not evil were collected and copied.

  “And then there were a few that were kept in the scriftorium because no one was certain what they were. This was one such scroll. Brother Desmond acquired it for me; thank the saints he did not discern its nature. We received it just before your flight from this place. If things had proceeded as we hoped, you would have studied it months ago, and at a more leisurely pace. Unfortunately, things have not proceeded as we hoped.”