by Greg Keyes
Including, unfortunately, the bit about love not caring what was right, or good, or what anyone wants.
Whitraff was there, but even at a distance it looked dead. The air was chill, yet not a single line of smoke traced the sky. No one was in the streets, and there was no sound that might come from man or woman.
Most of the villages and towns around the King’s Forest weren’t all that old—most, like Colbaely, had sprouted up in the last hundred years. The houses tended to be built of wood and the streets of dirt. Aspar remembered Whitraff as an old town—its narrow avenues were cobbles worn shiny by a hundred generations of boots and buskins. The heart of the town wasn’t large—about thirty houses huddled around the bell-tower square—but there had once been outlying farms to the east and stilt houses along the riverfront that went on for some way. It had always been a pretty lively place, for all of its small size, because it was the only river port south of Ever, which was a good twenty winding leagues downriver.
Now the outliers were ash, but the stone town still stood. Looking down on it from the hill above, Aspar noticed that the bell tower was missing. It was simply gone. In its place—on the mound where the tower had once stood—was the now all-too-familiar sight. A ring of death.
“Sceat,” he muttered.
“We’re too late,” Winna said.
“Far too late,” Leshya said. “This was done months ago, to judge by the burned homesteads.”
Aspar nodded. The dead scattered around the sedos looked to be mostly bone.
“Bad luck, that,” he said, “to build your town on the footprint of a Damned Saint.”
“I don’t see how you can joke about it,” Winna said. “All those people . . . I don’t see how you can joke about it.”
Aspar glanced at her. “I wasn’t joking,” he said softly. Lately it seemed impossible to say the right thing around Winna. “Anyway, maybe it’s not so bad as it looks. Maybe the rest of the townsfolk got away.” He turned to the Sefry. “This is a good position. You and Ehawk keep a watch from up here while we go down to have a look.”
“Suits me,” Leshya said.
They took the road in, and despite his words, it was as he’d feared. No one came out to greet them. The town was as quiet as its twin, Whitraff-of-Shadows, just upstream.
Of the people there was no sign.
Aspar dismounted in front of the River Cock, once the busiest tavern in the village.
“You two watch my back,” he told Stephen and Winna. “I’m taking a look in here.”
There wasn’t anyone inside, and there were no bodies, which wasn’t terribly surprising. But he did find that a roast on a spit had been allowed to burn to char, and one of the ale taps had been left open, so all the beer had drained out to form a still-sticky mass on the floor.
He went back out into the square.
“They left in a hurry,” he said. “There’s no blood, or signs of fighting.”
“The monks might have thrown the bodies into the river,” Winna suggested.
“They might have, or they might have gotten away. But here’s what I’m wondering—this river isn’t the busiest around, but someone would have noticed this, and as Leshya said, this must have happened a couple of months ago, maybe even before we fought Desmond Spendlove and his bunch. Why hasn’t anyone cleaned up the bodies? Why hasn’t anyone moved in, or at least sent word downriver?”
“Maybe they did,” Stephen said, “and the praifec kept it to himself.”
“Yah, but rivermen who saw this would talk it all up and down the river. Someone would have come to have a look.”
“You’re thinking the Church left it garrisoned?” Stephen asked.
“I don’t see sign of that, either. Plenty of ale and stores left in the tavern—you’d think a garrison would have tucked into that. Besides, I didn’t see any smoke coming in, and I don’t smell it now. But if it isn’t garrisoned, why hasn’t some passing boatman robbed the tavern?”
“Because no one who’s come here has left,” Winna said.
“Werlic,” Aspar agreed, scanning the buildings.
“Maybe there’s a greffyn here,” Stephen said.
“Maybe,” he conceded. “There was one with the monks back at Grim’s Gallows.” He didn’t mention that it had avoided him.
“I’m going down the waterfront,” he decided. “You two follow and keep me in sight, but not too close. If a greffyn’s been killing boatmen, we ought to find their boats and bodies.”
His boots echoed hollowly as he made his way down the little street that sloped toward the river. Soon enough he made out the wooden docks. Still there. He didn’t see any boats at all. Crouching in the shadow of the last house, he peered intently at the far bank of the river. The trees came right up to the water, and nothing obviously worrisome caught his eye. He glanced back and saw Winna and Stephen, watching him nervously.
He motioned that he was going closer.
A tattered yellow wind-banner fluttered in the breeze, producing nearly the only noise as he approached the planking of the docks. The only birds he heard were quite distant.
Which was odd. Even in an empty town, there ought to be pigeons and housecrows. On the river there should be kingfishers, whirr-plungers, and egrets, even this time of year.
Instead, nothing.
Something caught his eye, then, and he dropped back into a crouch, bow ready, but he couldn’t identify what he’d seen. Something subtle, a weird play of light.
And the scent of autumn in his nostrils that always meant death was near.
Slowly, he began to back up, because he could feel something now, something hiding just beneath the skin of the world.
He saw it again, and understood. Not the world, but the water. Something huge was moving just under the surface.
He kept backing up, but he remembered that being far from the water hadn’t helped the people of Whitraff.
The water mounded up suddenly, and something rose above it with the sluggishness of a monster in a dream that knows its victim can’t outrun it. He had only an impression of it at first, of sinewy form and sleek fur or possibly scales, and of immensity.
And then it called in a voice so beautiful that he knew he’d been wrong, that this creature was no destroyer of life, but was the very essence of it. He’d come to the place where life and death changed, where hunter and hunted were one, and all was peace.
Relieved beyond words, Aspar lay down his bow, stood straight, and walked to meet it.
CHAPTER FOUR
BORDERLANDS
SOMEONE BEGAN SHOUTING JUST as Anne and Austra reentered the ruined city of the dead. Anne whipped her head around and saw two fully armored men on horseback charging down the hill.
“They’ve seen us!” she shouted unnecessarily.
She ducked behind the first building, practically dragging Austra with her, looking wildly around for somewhere to hide.
Death or capture lay in every direction—the orderly rows of grapes on either side of the valley offered no real protection; they might elude their pursuers for a little longer, but in the end they would be run down.
Hiding posed the same problem, of course, and there really wasn’t anyplace to hide.
Except the horz. If it was as thickly grown as it looked, they might be able to squeeze into places where larger, armored men couldn’t follow.
“This way,” she told Austra. “Quickly, before they can see us.”
It felt like forever, reaching the walled garden, but as they passed through the ruined arch, the knights still weren’t in sight. Anne got down on her hands and knees and began pushing through the gnarled vegetation, which if anything grew more thickly than in the horz Austra and she used to haunt in Eslen-of-Shadows. The earth smelled rich, and slightly rotten.
“They’re going to find us,” Austra said. “They’ll just come in after us, and we’ll be trapped.”
Anne wriggled between the close-spaced roots of an ancient olive tree. “They can’
t cut their way in,” she said. “Saint Selfan will curse them.”
“They murdered sisters of a holy order, Anne,” Austra pointed out. “They don’t care about curses.”
“Still, it’s our only choice.”
“Can’t you—can’t you do something, like you did down by the river?”
“I don’t know,” Anne said. “It doesn’t really work like that. It just happens.”
But that wasn’t really true. It was just that when she had blinded the knight outside the coven and hurt Erieso in z’Espino, she hadn’t premeditated it, she’d just done it.
“I’m frightened of it,” she admitted. “I don’t understand it.”
“Yes, Anne, but we’re going to die, you see,” Austra said.
“You’ve a point there,” Anne admitted. They had gone as far into the horz as they could. They were already lying flat on their bellies, and from here on, the plants were woven too tightly.
“Just lie quiet,” Anne said. “Not a sound. Remember when we used to pretend the Scaos was after us? Just like that.”
“I don’t want to die,” Austra murmured.
Anne took Austra’s hand and pulled her close, until she could feel the other girl’s heartbeat. Somewhere near she could hear them talking.
“Wlait in thizhaih hourshai,” one of them said in a commanding voice.
“Raish,” the other replied.
Anne heard the squeak of saddle leather and then the sound of boots striking the ground. She wondered, bizarrely, if anything had happened to Faster, her horse, and had a painfully clear flash of riding him across the Sleeve in sunlight, with the perfumes of spring in the air. It seemed like centuries ago.
Austra’s heart beat more frantically next to hers as the boot sounds came nearer and the vegetation began to rustle. Anne closed her eyes and tried to work past her fear to the dark place inside her.
Instead she touched sickness. Without warning it swept through her in a wave, a kind of fever that felt as if her blood had turned to hot sewage and her bones to rotting meat. She wanted to gag, but somehow couldn’t find her throat, and her body felt as if it had somehow faded away.
“Ik ni shaiwha iyo athan sa snori wanzyis thiku,” someone said very near them.
“Ita mait, thannuh,” the other growled from farther away.
“Maita?” the near man said, his tone hesitant.
“Yah.”
There was a pause, and then the sound of something slashing into the vegetation. Anne gasped as the sick feeling intensified.
Austra had been right. These men showed no fear of the sacred.
She pressed herself harder against the earth, and her head started to spin. The earth seemed to give way, and she began sinking down through the roots, feeling the little fibers on them tickle her face. At the same time, something seemed to be welling up from beneath her, like blood to the surface of a wound. Fury pulsed in her like a shivering lute string, and for a moment she wanted to catch hold of it, let it have her.
But then that, too, faded, as did the nausea and the sensation of sinking. Her cheek felt warm.
She opened her eyes.
She lay in a gently rolling spring-green meadow cupped in a forest palm of oak, beech, poplar, liquidambar, everic, and ten other sorts of trees she did not know. Over her left shoulder, a small rinn chuckled into a mere that was carpeted with water lilies and fringed by rushes, where a solitary crane moved carefully on stilt legs, searching for fish. Over her right shoulder, the white and tiny blue flowers of clover and wimpleweed that were her bed gave way to fern fronds and fiddleheads.
Austra lay next to her. The other girl sat up quickly, her eyes full of panic.
Anne still had her hand. She gripped it harder. “It’s all right,” she said. “I think we’re safe, for a moment.”
“I don’t understand,” Austra said. “What happened? Where are we? Are we dead?”
“No,” Anne said. “We aren’t dead.”
“Where are we, then?”
“I’m not sure,” Anne told her.
“Then how can you be certain—?” Austra’s eyes showed sudden understanding. “You’ve been here before.”
“Yes,” Anne admitted.
Austra got up and began looking around. After a moment she gave a start. “We’ve got no shadows,” she said.
“I know,” Anne replied. “This is the place where you go if you walk widdershins.”
“You mean like in the phay stories?”
“Yes. The first time I came here was during Elseny’s party. Do you remember that?”
“You fainted. When you woke, you were asking about some woman in a mask. Then you decided you had been dreaming, and wouldn’t talk about it anymore.”
“I wasn’t dreaming—or not exactly. I’ve been back here twice since then. Once when I was in the Womb of Mefitis, another time when I was sleeping on the deck of the ship.” She gazed around the clearing. “It’s always different,” she went on, “but I know somehow it’s always the same place.”
“What do you mean?”
“The first time it was a hedge maze. The second time it was a forest clearing, and on the ship it was in the midst of the forest, and dark.”
“But how? How did we come here, I mean?”
“The first time I was brought here by someone,” Anne explained. “A woman in a mask. The other times I came myself.”
Austra folded down into a cross-legged position, her brows knitted. “But—Anne,” she said, “you didn’t go anywhere, those other times. I wasn’t there in the womb of Mefitis, but you were still on Tom Woth, that day. And you were still on the ship.”
“I’m not sure of that,” Anne said. “I might have gone and returned.”
“I’m not certain about Tom Woth,” Austra granted her, “but I am sure about the ship. I didn’t take my eyes off you. That means, wherever we think we are—or wherever our shadows have gone—our bodies are still there for the knights to find and do with as they please.”
Anne raised her hands helplessly. “That may be, but I don’t know how to get back. It always just happens.”
“Well, have you ever tried? You brought us here, after all.”
“That’s true,” Anne conceded.
“Well, try.”
Anne closed her eyes, trying to find that place again. It was there but quiet, and seemed in no mood to stir.
Austra gasped.
Anne opened her eyes, but didn’t see anything immediately. “What is it?”
“Something’s here,” Austra said. “I can’t see it, but it’s here.”
Anne shivered, remembering the shadow man, but there were no shadows now. A warm wind was picking up, almost summery, bending the tops of the trees and ruffling the grass. It had a scent of festering vegetation about it, not exactly unpleasant.
And it blew from every direction, toward them, forcing the trees, ferns, and grass to bow as if she and Austra were lords of Elphin. And at the edge of her hearing, Anne heard the faint, wild music of birds.
“What’s happening?” she murmured.
Suddenly they came, over the treetops—swans and geese, fielies and swallows, brieches and red-Roberts, thousands of them, all swirling down into the clearing, clattering, cawing, and screeching toward Anne and Austra. Anne threw up her hands to cover her face, but a yard away the birds spiraled around them, a cyclone of feathers whirling up to cloud the sky.
After a moment, the fear faded, and Anne began to laugh. Austra looked at her as if she had lost her mind.
“What is it?” Austra asked. “Do you know what’s happening?”
“I’ve no idea,” Anne said. “But the wonder of it . . .” She needed a word she didn’t have, so she stopped trying to find it.
It seemed to go on for a long time, but the winds finally subsided and went to their quarters, taking the birds with them, leaving only the crane, still fishing for his catch. The sound of the birds faded last.
“Anne, I’m sleepy.” Austra
sighed. Her panic seemed to have left her.
Anne found her own lids suddenly very heavy. The sun was warmer now, and after the rush of events, natural and otherwise, she felt as if she had been awake for days.
“Faiths, are you here?” she asked.
There was no answer, but the crane looked up and regarded her before going back to his task.
“Thank you,” Anne said.
She wasn’t sure whom she was speaking to, or what she was thanking them for.
She woke in the horz with Austra beside her, still clutching her hand. They were both covered in severed limbs and foliage. The knights had done it—they had defiled the sacred garden. She and Austra lay at the terminus of their destructive, sacrilegious path.
Well, she thought. We’re not dead. That’s a start. But if Austra was right, and the land of the Faiths was just a sort of dream, how could their assailants have missed them?
She listened quietly for a long time, but heard nothing except the drone of an occasional insect. After a time, she woke Austra.
Austra sat up, took in their return, then mumbled a faint prayer to Saint Selfan and Saint Rieyene. “They didn’t see us,” she said. “Though I can’t imagine why not.”
“Maybe you were wrong,” Anne said. “Maybe we didn’t leave our bodies behind after all.”
“Maybe,” Austra said dubiously.
“You stay here,” Anne said. “I’ll go out and have a look.”
“No, let me go.”
“If they catch you, they’ll still come after me,” Anne said. “If they catch me, they’ll have no reason to come in after you.”
Austra reluctantly consented to that logic, and Anne went back out of the horz, walking this time through the torn and trampled vegetation.
Near the entrance she found a pool of dark, sticky liquid which she recognized as blood. There was more outside, a trail of it that abruptly stopped.
She poked around a few of the ruins, but the horsemen seemed to be gone. They weren’t on the road, either, when she climbed the hill and looked down.
Cazio, z’Acatto and the horsemen were gone.