The Blood Knight

by Greg Keyes

  Neither of them had spoken since leaving the town through a secreted gate Stephen was certain he could never find again. He’d been concentrating too closely on not stumbling, on straining for sounds of pursuit, and on the hand holding his. But finally the muffled sounds of Demsted faded into the wind’s south quarter, and he couldn’t make out any hoofbeats or footsteps pursuing them.

  “Where are we going?” he whispered.

  “A place I know,” she answered unhelpfully. “We’ll find mounts there.”

  “Why are you helping me?” he asked bluntly.

  “Sacritor Hespero—the man you know as the praifec—he’s your enemy. Did you know that?”

  “I know it well,” Stephen said. “I just wasn’t certain he knew it.”

  “He knows,” Pale replied. “Did you think it a coincidence that he arrived shortly before you did? He’s been waiting for you.”

  “But how could he know I was coming here? That doesn’t make sense unless…” He allowed the words to trail off.

  Unless the praifec and Fratrex Pell were in league.

  Pale seemed to pluck the thought from his mind.

  “You weren’t betrayed by whoever sent you,” she told him. “At least, that isn’t required to explain why he’s here. He may not have even known you were the one who was coming.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I suppose you wouldn’t,” she said. “You see, before he was praifec in Crotheny, Hespero was sacritor in Demsted for many years. We liked him at first; he was wise, caring, and very smart. He used Church funds to make improvements in the village. Among other things, he expanded the temple a bit to include a ward for the care of aged persons with no kin to tend them. The elders tried to stop him from doing that.”

  “Why? It seems a worthy endeavor.”

  “Nor would the elders disagree. It was the location they objected to. To build the addition, he broke down an old part of the temple, a part that had once been the sanctuary of the older pagan temple that was here before. And he found something there, something our forefathers hid instead of destroying. The Ghrand Ateiiz.”

  “Book…ah, returning?”

  She squeezed his hand in what felt like affection, and he nearly swallowed his tongue.

  “The Book of Return,” she corrected. “After he found it, Hespero changed. He became much more distant. He still managed the attish—managed it better than ever, in fact—but his love for us seemed forgotten. He took to long trips into the mountains, and his guides came back changed with fear. They would not speak of what had happened or even where they went. Eventually he tired of that and focused all his energies on advancing his rank in the Church.

  “When he was promoted and finally left, we were relieved, but we shouldn’t have been. Now the resacaratum is upon us, and I fear he will hang everyone in Demsted.”

  “Are you all heretics?” Stephen asked.

  “In a way, yes,” she replied with surprising frankness. “We understand the teachings of the Church a little differently than most others.”

  “Because your church was founded by a Revesturi?”

  She laughed quietly.

  “Brother Kauron did not found our Church. Because he was Revesturi, he saw that we already followed the saints in our own way. He merely helped us shape our outward image so that when the Church finally came, they would not burn us as heretics. He helped us preserve our old ways. He cherished them, and he cherished us.”

  “So the Book of Return…”

  “Is about Kauron’s return. Or, more properly, the coming of his heir.”

  “Heir? Heir to what?”

  “I don’t know. None of us have ever seen the book. We thought Kauron took it with him. Our traditions were passed down mouth to ear, and we know its writings foretold these times. That much has been made clear by the things that have come to pass. And we know that Kauron’s one heir is destined to come, driven by a serpent into the mountains. The one who comes will speak with many tongues, and it is he who will find the Alq.”

  “The Alq?”

  “It means a sort of holy place,” she explained. “A throne or a seat of power. We’ve debated endlessly whether it is a physical place or a position, like that of sacritor. Whichever is true, it was fated to remain hidden until the day the one returned.

  “And that one seems to be you. We knew you were coming, and we have only the scraps of knowledge remembered from the Book of Return.Hespero has the book itself, so his knowledge of the signs is more precise. He was waiting for you because he knew you could lead him to the Alq.”

  “Then all he need do is follow us,” Stephen said, instinctively glancing over his shoulder into the darkness.

  “True. But this way we have a chance of arriving ahead of him and preventing him from becoming the heir.”

  “But how could he ever do that? You just admitted you don’t even know what that means,” Stephen said.

  “No, we don’t, not exactly,” Sister Pale allowed. “But we do know that if Hespero becomes the heir, no good can come of it.”

  “And how do you know I would be any better?”

  “That’s obvious. You aren’t Hespero.”

  There was a logic there that Stephen had no way to contradict. Besides, it served his purposes.

  “Does your tradition tell you who sent the woorm or why it’s following me?”

  “About the khirme—what you call the waurm—little is said, and what we’ve gleaned can be contradictory. One legend says that it is your ally.”

  Stephen vented a humorless laugh. “I don’t expect I’ll count on that,” he said.

  “It is a debated tradition,” she admitted. “Besides the khirme, there is also mention of a foe called the Khraukare. He is a servant of the Vhelny, who does not wish you to have the prize.”

  Stephen’s head was beginning to swim.

  “Khraukare. That translates as ‘Blood Knight,’ doesn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the Vhelny?”

  “Vhelny. It means, ah, a king, of sorts, a lord of demons.”

  “And where are these people? Who are they?”

  “We don’t know. We didn’t know who Kauron’s heir was, either, until you showed up.”

  “Could Hespero be the Blood Knight, the servant of the Vhelny?”

  “It’s possible. The Vhelny has other names: Wind-of-Lightning, Sky-Breaker, Destroyer. His only desire is to see the end of the world and everything in it.”

  “Perhaps you mean the Briar King?”

  “No. The Briar King is lord of root and leaf. Why would he destroy the earth?”

  “There are prophecies that say he might.”

  “There are prophecies that say he might destroy the race of Man,” she corrected. “That isn’t the same thing.”

  “Oh. True. But why would Hespero want to destroy the world?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sister Pale replied. “Perhaps he is insane. Or very, very disappointed in things.”

  “And you, Sister Pale? What’s your interest in this? How do I know you aren’t an agent of Hespero, tricking me into leading you to the Alq? Or a disciple of the Destroyer, or whoever else wants this thing?”

  “You don’t, I suppose. And there’s nothing I can say to convince you. I could tell you that I am descended of the line of priestesses Kauron met when he came here. I could tell you that I was trained in a coven but that it was not the Coven Saint Cer. And I could tell you I am here to help you because I have waited all my life for you to come. But you have no reason to believe these things.”

  “Especially when you’ve already lied to me once. Or perhaps twice,” he replied.

  “The once I understand: what I told you about Saint Cer. But that wasn’t for your benefit; it was for the benefit of others. But when did I lie to you a second time?”

  “When you told me you attended a different coven. There are many covens, but all are of the Order of Saint Cer.”

 
“If that’s true, then it would mean I told the truth the first time and am only lying now. So it’s still only one lie, not so much, really, between friends.”

  “Now you’re making fun of me.”

  “Yes. What did I tell you earlier about assuming that you know everything?”

  “Then there really is a coven dedicated to a saint other than Cer? And it isn’t a heretical sect?”

  “I never claimed that it wasn’t heretical,” Pale replied. “Unsanctioned by z’Irbina, certainly. But neither are the Revesturi sanctioned by the Church, yet you are one.”

  “I’m not!” Stephen snapped. “I’d never even heard of the Revesturi until a few ninedays ago, until I started on this bloody quest. And now I don’t understand anything at all!”

  He jerked his hand away from her and groped away into the dark.

  “Brother Darige—”

  “Stay away,” he said. “I don’t trust you. Every time I think I have some inkling of what’s going on, this happens.”

  “What happens?”

  “This! Blood Knights, Destroyers, prizes, treasure troves, prophecies, and Alqs, and…”

  “Oh,” she said. He could almost see the shape of her face in the moonlight now and the liquid shimmer of her eyes. “You mean knowledge. You mean learning. You think you’d be more content if the world continued to bear out what you believed to be true when you were fifteen.”

  “Yes!” Stephen shouted. “Yes, I think I would!”

  “Then there’s something I don’t understand. If learning is so painful to you, why do you pursue it? Why were you there in the scriftorium tonight?”

  “Because…”

  He felt like strangling someone, possibly himself.

  “Don’t do that,” he said sullenly.

  “Do what?”

  “Make sense. Even better, don’t talk to me at all.”

  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he found her much nearer, near enough that he could feel her breath on his face. He could make out the curve of her cheek, rounded so she looked young. Ivory in the moonlight. One eye was still dark, but the other shone like silver. He could see half her lip, too, either pouting or naturally made that way.

  Her breath was sweet, faintly herbal.

  “You started this,” she breathed. “You started talking. I was perfectly happy holding your hand in silence, helping you, taking you where you need to go. But you had to start asking all the questions. Can’t you just let things happen?”

  “That’s all I have been doing,” Stephen said, his voice cracking. “It’s like one of those dreams where you’re trying to do something, but you keep getting distracted, pulled off the track, and your original purpose falls farther and farther away. And I’m losing people. I lost Winna and Aspar. I lost Ehawk.

  “Now I’ve lost Ehan, and Henne, and Themes, and I keep trying to pretend it doesn’t matter, but it does.”

  “Winna, Aspar, Ehawk. Are they all dead?”

  “I don’t know,” he said miserably.

  “Winna was your lover?”

  That went in like an arrow.

  “No.”

  “Ah, I see. But you wanted her to be.”

  “What’s this got to do with anything?”

  “Nothing, maybe.” He felt her hand wrap around his again. They were both cold.

  “Were they with you on this quest of yours?” she pressed. “Did the waurm kill them?”

  “No,” Stephen said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I came to Crotheny to join the monastery d’Ef. On the way I was kidnapped by bandits. Aspar—he’s the king’s holter—he saved me from them.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, then I went on to d’Ef, but only after learning about terrible things in the forest and about the Briar King. And then at d’Ef—” He stopped. How could he explain in a few words the betrayal he’d felt at finding the corruption at d’Ef? At the first beating Brother Desmond and his cohort had given him?

  Why should he?

  She squeezed his hand encouragingly.

  “Thing went wrong there,” he finally said. “I was asked to translate terrible things. Forbidden things. It was as if the world I thought I knew ceased to exist. Certainly the Church was different than I believed it to be. Then Aspar showed back up, nearly dead, and it was my turn to save him, and suddenly I was off on his quest, off to rescue Winna—and save the queen, of all things.”

  “And you did that?”

  “Yes. And then the praifec sent us out after the Briar King, but halfway through that business we figured out that the real evil was Hespero himself, and we ended up trying to foil their plans to awaken a faneway of the Damned Saints. After doing that we were thrown in with a princess off to reclaim her throne from an usurper—something I really had no idea how to do—and the next thing I know I’ve been snatched by slinders and I’m sitting with my old fratrex, whom I thought dead, and he tells me the world’s only hope is for me to come up here…I just wanted to study books!” He couldn’t continue then. Why was he going on like this, anyway?

  He sounded like a child.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally managed. “That must all sound ridiculous.”

  “No,” she said, “it sounds reasonable. I knew a girl who wanted to study letters at the Coven Saint Cer. She’d wanted to do so since she was five, when she was in the care of her aunt, who dusted the temple library in Demsted. Everything looked hopeful, but then a boy she’d known forever but never thought twice about seemed suddenly to shine like a watchstar, and she couldn’t bear the thought of not knowing his touch.

  “And then she found herself with child, and her dreams of a coven education dropped away. Suddenly marriage—something she had always wished to avoid—became her only path.

  “She’d just begun to settle in to that, to lose the edge of her resentment, when her husband died and then her child. Just to live, she had to become the maid of a foreign noble, tending children who were not hers. Then one day a woman appeared and offered her another chance at her dream, to study in a coven…”

  Her voice had become hypnotic, and he could see both of her eyes now, small half-moons.

  “That’s how life is, my friend. Yours seems strange because it is full of wonders fantastic, but the fact is that few people remain on the path they begin on. The truth is, we have dreams like you describe because our dreams are dark mirrors of waking.

  “But here is where you are lucky,” she continued. “I have come to put you back on your path. You joined the Church because you loved knowledge, yes? Loved mystery, old books, the secrets of the past. If we find the place you’re looking for—if we find the Alq—you’ll have all of that, and more.”

  Stephen felt as if he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “The girl, the one who wanted to study—”

  She leaned forward, and her lips met his, caressed them slightly. A shock ran down his spine, a very pleasant one.

  But he pulled away.

  “Don’t do that,” he said.

  “Why? Because you like it?”

  “No. I just told you. I don’t trust you.”

  “Hmm,” she said, leaning back in. He meant to stop her, he really did, but somehow her lips were on his again, and he did like it, of course, and as if he had gone mad, he suddenly let go of her hand and reached around her, drew her body against his, realizing with a shock how small she was, how good she felt.

  Winna, he thought, and touched her face, ran his fingers under her hood into her blond hair, seeing her in his mind’s eye with the perfect clarity only an initiate of Decmanus could conjure.

  She placed both hands on his chest then and pressed him away gently. “We can’t stay here,” she said. “It’s not much farther, and we’ll be safe.”

  “I—”

  “Hush. Try not to think too much about it.”

  He couldn’t help it. He laughed quietly. “That will be very difficult,” he said.

&n
bsp; “Think about this instead,” she told him, taking his hand again and beginning to lead him back to the trail. “Soon the sun will rise, and you will see that I am not her. You should be prepared for that.”

  Sunrise found them on a rocky white path winding through a high, treeless moor. The clouds were low, wet and cold, but the ground cover was brilliant green, and Stephen wondered what it was. Could Aspar name it, or were they too far from the plants the holter knew?

  Snow capped the surrounding peaks, but it had to be melting, for the path was often crossed by rivulets, and virtual waterfalls cascaded down the sides of many of the hills. They stopped at one of them to drink, and Sister Pale pushed back her weather cloak.

  In that gray light he finally saw her.

  Her eyes really were silver or, rather, a blue-gray so pale that they caught the light that way at times. Her hair, however, wasn’t blond but a thick auburn, cut simply and short. Her cheeks were rounded, as had been hinted in the darkness, but whereas Winna’s face was an oval, Pale’s tapered sharply to the chin. Her lips were smaller than they had seemed when he was kissing them, but they had the natural pout he’d imagined. She had two large pox marks on her forehead and a long, raised scar on her left cheek.

  She kept her eyes averted as she drank, then studied their surroundings, knowing he was studying her, giving him his chance.

  It was disappointing. Not only was she not Winna, she wasn’t as beautiful as Winna. He knew it was a terrible thought, but he couldn’t deny his reaction. In the phay stories, the hero always won the beautiful virgin and everyone else had to settle for what was left.

  Aspar was the hero of this tale, not Stephen; he’d known that for some time. Winna wasn’t a virgin, but she had that air about her, the aura of the hero’s prize.

  Pale tilted her head to look at him then, and he almost gasped. He recalled the time Sacritor Burden had been trying to explain the saints to him; he’d produced a piece of crystal, triangular in cross section but long, like the roof of a lodge house. It seemed interesting, even unusual, and when he put it into the sunlight, it sparkled fetchingly. But it was only when he turned it just so that it threw out the colors of the rainbow and revealed the beauty that had been hidden in white light.