The Charnel Prince

by Greg Keyes

  I can hear Aspar, Winna, and Ehawk, but my body is lost to me. I cannot speak to them or move a finger or an eyelid.

  I remember I used to care for them.

  I do still, in many ways. When Winna is near I can smell her, feel her, almost taste her. When she touches me, it sends shivers through me that somehow are not revealed on my dead flesh.

  I heard her and Aspar last night. She smells different when they do that, sharper. So does Aspar.

  Observations of the quaint and curious holter-beast—in the act of procreation, this ordinarily closemouthed creature vocalizes extraordinarily, though only in low tones. He makes rhymes of his lover’s name—mina-Winna, fenna-Winna, and the inevitable winna-Winna. He calls her by other silly appellations of his own invention, notwithstanding that Winna is already a rather silly name.

  There’s someone new, a Sefry. Winna doesn’t like her because Aspar does, though he denies it every way he can. I wonder if she looks like his wife, the dead one?

  They’re taking me to the next faneway, which for them is clever. I wonder what will happen there? The first was very strange, and I am hard put to explain why it affected me the way it did. It was consecrated to one of the damned saints, she who was known as the queen of demons. Perhaps Decmanis is punishing me for stepping on her faneway, and yet somehow that doesn’t feel right. The only other possibility that occurs is that she is somehow also an aspect of Saint Decmanis, which would be very interesting indeed, not to mention heretical.

  Can saints be heretics?

  We’re approaching the fane. I can feel it like a fire.

  ASPAR SURVEYED THE CLEARING and the mound. The bodies were still there, and none of them were moving. Of the Briar King and his hunt there was no sign, save the dead bodies of slinders and the monks they had killed.

  “Oh, saints,” Winna said when she saw the carnage.

  “Weak stomach?” Leshya asked.

  “I’ve seen bodies like this before,” Winna said. “But I don’t have to pretend I like it.”

  “No, you don’t,” the Sefry agreed.

  “So what do we do now?” Winna asked.

  Aspar shrugged and dismounted. “Take Stephen up on the mound, I reckon. See what happens.”

  “Are you quite certain this is the wise thing to do?” Leshya asked.

  “No,” Aspar answered shortly.

  Stepping carefully, they picked their way around where the bodies were thickest and up to the top of the sedos. Aspar laid Stephen out in the very middle.

  As he’d more or less expected, nothing happened.

  “Well, it was worth a try,” he muttered. “You three watch him. I’m going to have a better look around.”

  Aspar walked back down through the carnage, feeling tired, angry at himself for having nursed such a forlorn hope. People died. He knew that by now, didn’t he? He used to be easy about it.

  The slinders looked like people now, their faces relaxed in death. They could have come from any village around the King’s Forest. He was thankful that he didn’t see anyone he knew.

  After a time he wandered to the edge of the forest, and before he realized it found himself standing beneath the gnarled branches of the naubagm and the strands of rotted rope that hung from them. The earth had drunk a lot of blood in this place. It had drunk his mother’s blood.

  He’d never been told what brought her here. His father and foster mother rarely spoke of her, and when they did it was in hushed tones, and they made the sign against evil. Then they had died, and he’d ended up with Jesp.

  A raven landed on the uppermost branch of the tree. Farther above, he saw the black silhouette of an eagle against the clouds. He took a deep breath and felt the land roll away from him, getting bigger, stretching out its bones of stone and sinews of root. He smelled the age and the life of it, and for the first time in a long while felt a kind of peaceful determination.

  I’ll fix this, he silently promised the trees.

  “I’ll fix this.” It was the first thing Jesp had said when she found him. He’d been running and bleeding for a day, the forest turned to shadow around him. When he finally fell, he’d dreamed he was still running, but now and then he woke and knew he was lying in the reeds of some marsh, half covered in water. He’d been awake when he heard her coming, and tried to reach for his knife, but he didn’t have the strength to move. Seven winters old, he’d been. He still remembered the way his breath whistled, because he’d kept forgetting that’s what it was, kept thinking it was some sort of bird he’d never heard of.

  Then he’d seen Jesp’s face, that ancient, pale Sefry face. She stood there for what seemed a long time, while he tried to talk, and then she knelt down and touched his face with her bony fingers.

  “I’ll fix this,” she said. “I’ll fix you up, child-of-the-Naubagm.”

  How she knew that about him, she never said. But she raised him, and filled him with Sefry nonsense, and she died.

  He missed her. And now that he knew that Sefry stories weren’t all nonsense, he desperately wished he could talk to her again. He wished he’d paid more attention when she was alive. And maybe he wished that he’d thanked her, at least once.

  But that was done.

  He sighed and cracked his neck.

  A few kingsyards north, something ran out of the forest, moving faster than a deer.

  It was a man, dressed in the habit of one of the monks. He had a bow, and he was making straight for the sedos, where Aspar could still see the others.

  With a silent curse, Aspar pulled a shaft from his quiver, set it to the string, and let it go.

  The monk must have seen the motion from the corner of his eye—even as the arrow arced toward him, he dropped into a sudden crouch and whirled, firing at Aspar.

  Aspar’s shot missed by a thumb’s breath; the monk’s missed Aspar by just twice that.

  Aspar stepped behind the Naubagm as the monk fitted and fired another arrow. It struck quivering into the ancient tree.

  The monk turned again and sprinted toward the mound and out of range. Cursing—and at a much slower pace than his adversary—Aspar ran after him.

  The monk did a strange, twisting dance, and Aspar realized that Ehawk and Leshya were firing at him now. Both missed, and before either could draw new arrows, the churchman shot back. Aspar watched in throat-choking helplessness as Ehawk jerked weirdly and fell. Winna was crouching, but still far too large a target.

  Leshya fired again and again without success.

  The monk’s dodging gave Aspar a chance to get back in range, and he drew back to shoot, still running.

  His bowstring snapped with a hollow thud.

  He drew his ax, snarling.

  Leshya drew and shot. This time the monk had to dodge so violently that he stumbled, but he rolled and came back up, facing Aspar.

  Aspar threw the ax and sidestepped. The churchman’s shaft sang through empty air, but the ax also missed.

  The monk suddenly jogged to the right, and Aspar grimly understood he had no intention of closing for close combat. He’d just keep running and shooting until they were all dead or he was out of arrows.

  He reached into his haversack, found his extra sinew, pulled it out to restring the bow. An arrow struck his boiled leather cuirass with a thump, and he cursed and dropped to the ground. He finished stringing his bow. Another arrow plowed the soil right in front of his nose, and now the monk was hurtling toward him again, ignoring Leshya.

  Aspar nocked the arrow to his string, the bow turned flat to the ground. It was an awkward pull, and he knew the other man would have one more shot before he got his.

  But the monk stumbled, an arrow suddenly standing in his thigh. He shouted, turned, and loosed his dart toward the mound, but another arrow hit him in the center of the chest, and he sat down, hard. Aspar fired, hitting him in the right collarbone, and the fellow pitched over, howling.

  Leshya was on him almost immediately, kicking the bow from his hands.

  �
�Don’t kill him,” a familiar voice shouted.

  Aspar looked toward the mound. Stephen stood there, holding Ehawk’s bow. Winna was running toward him, and nearly barreled him over with a hug.

  Aspar couldn’t stop the smile from raising his lips. It felt too good, seeing Stephen standing there.

  “Sceat,” he murmured. “It worked.”

  “Keep him alive,” he told Leshya, waving at the monk.

  She was already binding the man’s hand with cords. “If it can be done,” she said. “I’ve a few questions to ask him myself.”

  Aspar hesitated. She had helped in the fight. She had probably saved his life when the Briar King came. But trusting her—trusting any Sefry—was a foolish proposition.

  She looked back up, as if he had shouted his thoughts. Her violet gaze held his for an instant, and then she shook her head in disgust and returned to her task.

  Aspar took another good look around the clearing, then started toward Stephen and Winna, his step feeling lighter.

  It grew heavier again when he saw Ehawk. The boy was sprawled on the grass, pawing weakly at an arrow in his thigh. The ground around him was slick with blood. Winna and Stephen were already ministering to him.

  “Hello, Aspar,” Stephen said without looking.

  “It’s good to see you up and—ah—alive,” Aspar said.

  “Yes, it’s good to be that way,” Stephen replied, not looking up from his task. “Winna, put something in his mouth so he doesn’t bite his tongue off.”

  “I can deal with that, if you’re not up to it,” Aspar offered.

  “No,” Stephen said. “I trained for this. I’ll do it. But I could use some foolhag for this wound, to stop the bleeding.”

  Aspar blinked. The last time Stephen had confronted a bleeding wound, he’d collapsed in a fit of vomiting and been useless. Now he bent over Ehawk, his hands slick with blood, working quick, sure, and steady. The boy had certainly changed in the few months he had known him.

  “I’ll find some,” he said. “Ehawk, how are you, boy?”

  “I’ve f-felt better,” he gasped.

  “I’ll bring saelic for the pain,” Aspar promised. “You just breathe deep and slow. Stephen knows what he’s doin’.”

  He went after the herbs, hoping that was true.

  As soon as Ehawk’s bleeding was staunched and his leg bandaged, they put him on his horse, loaded the still-unconscious monk on Angel, and set off to get as far from the sedos as possible before nightfall.

  “We’re going the wrong way,” Leshya said.

  “I picked it, I’m in charge, it can’t be the wrong way,” Aspar pointed out.

  “We should be following the monk’s trail.”

  “What trail? The Briar King’s hunt missed him, that’s all.”

  “I doubt that,” she said. “I think he came to bring them a message.” She held up a document with some sort of seal on it.

  “That’s a Church seal,” Stephen said from where he was riding by Ehawk, some ten yards away.

  “Well, your eyes are still good,” Aspar said.

  “Yes.” Stephen smiled.

  “How are you?”

  “A little confused. I don’t know what’s happened since—well, whatever it was happened.”

  “You don’t remember?” Winna asked.

  Stephen trotted nearer. “Not really. I remember going into the sedos and feeling strange. Or, rather, not feeling much of anything. The bodies made me sick—I was going to be sick—and then suddenly I didn’t care. They might as well have been stones.”

  “The letter?” Leshya interrupted.

  “Stephen is our friend,” Winna snapped. “We thought he was dead. You’re going to have to tend your own beehive for a breath or two.”

  Leshya shrugged and pretended interest in the forest.

  “Was when you came down you fell,” Aspar said.

  Stephen shook his head. “I don’t remember that, or anything else until I woke up on the sedos and saw you fighting the monk.”

  “That was a nice shot you made. Didn’t know you could handle a bow so well.”

  “I can’t,” Stephen said.

  “Then—?”

  “You remember how I hit Desmond Spendlove with his knife? Sometimes I can see something done and—well, do it. It doesn’t always work, and never with anything complicated. I can’t watch someone fight with a sword and learn how to do it, though I might be able to make some of the strokes. But to know when to do them—that’s different.”

  Shooting a bow isn’t that simple either, Aspar thought. You have to know the weapon, allow for the wind . . .

  Something was different about Stephen, but he couldn’t say what.

  “That was one of the, ah, saint gifts you got?” he asked.

  “From walking the faneway of Saint Decmanis, yes.”

  “And do you have anything new like that? From this sedos?”

  Stephen laughed. “Not that I know of. I don’t feel any different. Anyway, I didn’t walk the whole faneway, just two sedoi, if I understand what happened.”

  “But something happened,” Aspar persisted. “The first killed you; the second brought you back to life.”

  “What would the next one do, I wonder?” Leshya asked.

  “I’ve no intention of finding out,” Stephen replied. “I’m alive, walking, breathing, I feel good—and I don’t want to have anything more to do with the saint that faneway belongs to.”

  “You know the saint?” Leshya asked.

  “There was a statue in the first one,” Stephen said, “with a name: Marhirehben.”

  “I’ve never heard of him,” Winna said.

  “Her,” Stephen corrected, “at least in that aspect, the saint is female. If the word saint really applies.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Marhirehben was one of the damned saints, whose worship was forbidden by the Church. Her name means ‘Queen of Demons.’ ”

  “How can a saint be completely forgotten?”

  “She wasn’t. You’ve heard of her—Nautha, Corpse Mother, the Gallows Witch—those are some of her names that survive.”

  “Nautha isn’t a saint,” Winna protested. “She’s a monster from children’s stories.”

  “So was the Briar King,” Stephen said.

  “Anyway, somebody remembers her old name.” He frowned. “Or was reminded. She was mentioned in several of the texts I deciphered. Another of her aspects was ‘mother devouring.’ She who eats life and gives birth to death.” He looked down. “They couldn’t have done this without me, without my research.”

  “Stephen, this isn’t your fault,” Winna said.

  “No,” Stephen said. “It isn’t. But I was an instrument of whoever’s fault it is, and that doesn’t please me.”

  “Then we should follow the monk’s trail,” Leshya said.

  “Let me see the letter,” Stephen said. “Then we can decide what to do. We were sent to find the Briar King, not to chase my corrupt brethren all over the King’s Forest. It may be that one of us ought to take word back to the praifec.”

  “We already found the Briar King,” Aspar said.

  “What?” Stephen turned in his saddle.

  “It was the Briar King and his creatures killed the rest of those monks back there,” Aspar explained.

  “You said something about the Briar King’s hunt,” Stephen said, “but I didn’t realize you had seen him again. Then the arrow must not have worked.”

  “I didn’t use it,” Aspar said.

  “Didn’t use it?”

  “The Briar King isn’t the enemy,” Leshya replied. “He attacked the monks and let us be.”

  “He is the enemy,” Ehawk’s voice came weakly. “He turns villagers into animals and makes them kill other villagers. He may hate the monks, but he hates all men.”

  “He’s cleansing his forest,” Leshya said.

  “My people have lived in the mountains since the day the Skasloi fell,” Ehawk s
aid. “It is our right to live there.”

  Leshya shrugged. “Consider,” she said. “He wakes, and discovers his forest is diseased, and from the rot monsters are springing which will only hasten its end. Utins, greffyns—the black thorns. It is the disease he is fighting, and so far as he is concerned, the people who live in this forest and cut its trees are part of that disease.”

  “He didn’t kill us,” Aspar pointed out.

  “Because,” she said, “like him, we are part of the cure.”

  “You don’t know that,” Stephen said.

  Again she shrugged. “Not for certain, I suppose, but it makes sense. Can you think of another explanation?”

  “Yes,” Stephen said. “Something is wrong with the forest, yes, and terrible creatures are waking or being born. The Briar King is one of them, and like them he is mad, old, senile, and terribly powerful. He is no more our friend or our enemy than a storm or bolt of lightning.”

  “That’s not so different from what I just said,” Leshya replied.

  Stephen turned to Aspar. “What do you think, holter?”

  Aspar blew out a breath. “You may both be right. But whatever is wrong with the forest, the Briar King isn’t the cause of it. And I think he is trying to fix it.”

  “But that could mean killing every man, woman, and child within its boundaries,” Stephen pointed out.

  “Yah.”

  Stephen’s eyes widened. “You don’t care! You care more about the trees than you do about the people.”

  “Don’t talk for me, Stephen,” Aspar cautioned.

  “You talk, then. You tell me.”

  “Read the letter,” Aspar said, to change a topic he wasn’t sure about himself. “Then we’ll reckon where to go from here. It may be that we should have another talk with the praifec.”

  Stephen frowned at him, but took the letter from Leshya’s hand. When he examined the seal, he smiled grimly.

  “Indeed,” he said. “We may well want to have another conversation with Praifec Hespero. This is his seal.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AT THE BALL

  FRALET ACKENZAL?”

  Leoff looked up at the young man who stood at his door. He had blue eyes and wispy yellow hair. His nose bent to one side, and he seemed a bit distracted by it.