The Briar King (4 page)

“I know the forest better than anyone. It's the same as it's always been.”

She nodded reluctantly.

“Well, as I said, good night.”

Her hand caught his. “Be careful, you,” she murmured, and gave it a little squeeze.

“Certain,” he said, hoping he turned quickly enough that she couldn't see him blush.

Aspar rose at first cockcrow, when the light out his window was still mostly starborn. By the time he'd splashed water from a crockery basin in his face and shaved the gray stubble sprouting there, cinched on his elkskin breeches and padded cotton gambeson, the east was primrose.

He considered his boiled-leather cuirass; that was going to be hot today.

He put it on anyway. Better hot than dead.

He strapped on his bone-handled dirk and settled his throwing ax into its loop on the same belt. He took his bow from its oilskin case, checked the wood and extra strings, counted his arrows. Then he recased the bow, slipped on his high boots, and went downstairs.

“First light, eh?” Winna said, as he passed through the common room.

“Getting old,” Aspar grumbled.

“Well, have some breakfast as you're not too early for it.”

“That reminds me. I need to buy—”

“I've packed you a week's worth of food. Paetur is loading it up for you.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Sit.”

She brought him a trencher of black bread with garlic sausage and fried apples. He ate every bit of it. When he was finished, Winna wasn't in sight, but he could hear her knocking about in the kitchen. For an instant, he remembered having a woman knocking about his own kitchen, in his own house.

A long time ago, and the pain was still there. Winna was young enough to be his daughter. He left quietly, so as not to attract her attention, feeling faintly cowardly. Once outside he made straight for the stables.

Paetur, Winna's younger brother, was busy with Angel and Ogre. Paet was tall, blond, and gangly. He was—what?— thirteen?

“Morning, sir,” Paet said, when he saw Aspar.

“I'm not a knight, boy.”

“Yah, but you're the closest we have hereabouts, except old Sir Symen.”

“A knight's a knight. Sir Symen is one; I'm not.” He nodded at his mounts. “They ready to go?”

“Ogre says yah, Angel says ney. I think you ought to leave Angel with me.” He patted the roan on the neck.

“She said that, did she?” Aspar grunted. “Could be she's tired from the running you gave her yesterday?”

“I never—”

“Lie to me and I'll whip you good, and your father will thank me for it.”

Paet reddened and studied his shoes. “Well … she needed a stretch.”

“Next time ask, you hear? And for pity's sake,
don't
try to ride Ogre.”

The barred bay chose that moment to snort, as if in agreement. Paet laughed.

“What's so funny?”

“Tom tried, yesterday. To ride Ogre.”

“When do they bury him?”

“He lost two front teeth, is all.”

“Lucky. The boy's lucky.”

“Yes, Master White.”

Aspar patted Ogre's muzzle. “Looks like you packed them well. You want to arrange my quiver and bow?”

“Could I?” The boy's eyes sparkled eagerly.

“I reckon.” He handed the weapon over.

“Is it true you've killed six uttins with this?”

“There's no such thing as uttins, boy. Nor greffyns, nor alvs, nor basil-nix, nor tax-counters with hearts.”

“That's what I told my friths. But Rink says his uncle saw an uttin himself—”

“Got drunk and saw his own reflection, more likely.”

“But you did kill the Black Wargh and his bandits, didn't you? All ten of them.”

“Yah,” Aspar said curtly.

“I'm going to do something like that someday.”

“It's not all it's made out to be,” Aspar replied. With that, he mounted up on Ogre and started off. Angel followed obediently. So did Paet.

“Where do you think you're going?” Aspar demanded.

“Down by the Warlock. A Sefry caravan came in last night. I want to get my fortune told.”

“You'd be better off staying away from them,” Aspar advised.

“Weren't you raised Sefry, Master White? Didn't Dirty Jesp raise you?”

“Yah. So I know what I'm talking about.”

The Sefry had chosen a nice spot, a violet-embroidered meadow overlooking the river and embraced on all sides by thick-limbed wateroaks. They were still setting their tents. A
big one of faded crimson and gold was fully erected, the clan crest—three eyes and a crescent moon—waving in a diffident zephyr. Hobbled horses grazed in the meadow, where ten men and twice that many children hammered stakes, uncoiled lines, and unrolled canvas. Most were stripped to the waist, for the sun wasn't yet high enough to sear their milk-white skin. Unlike most folk, the Sefry never darkened from the sun. In full light, they went swaddled head to toe.

“Hallo, there,” one of the men called, a narrow-shouldered fellow with features that suggested thirty years but that Aspar knew were lying by at least fifteen. He had known Afas when they were both children, and Afas was the older. “Do I see Dirt's Bastard, there?”The Sefry straightened, hammer swinging at his side.

Aspar dismounted.
Dirt's Bastard.
Not a nickname he'd ever cared for.

“Hallo, Afas,” he replied, refusing to let his annoyance show. “Nice to see you, too.”

“Come to run us off ?”

“What's the point? I'd just be wishing you on a different town, probably another in or around my jurisdiction. Besides, I'm on my way out.”

“Well, that's generous.” The Sefry tilted his head. “
She
said you'd be here. She was almost wrong, ney?”

“Who's ‘she’?”

“Mother Cilth.”

“Grim! She still alive?”

“They rarely die, these old women.”

Aspar stopped a few paces from Afas. The two men were of a height, but there the resemblance stopped. Aspar had weight to go with his altitude, an oak to Afas' willow. Close up, Afas' skin was a map, the blue rivers, streams, rills, and rinns of his veins plainly visible. He had six pale nipples, set like a cat's on his lithe, wiry torso. His hair was midnight dark, tied back with a gold ribbon.

“Where'd you just come from?” Aspar asked.

“South.”

“Come through the forest?”

Afas' indigo eyes went wide and guileless. “You know better than that, Holter. We wouldn't travel in King Randolf's forest without permission.”

“King Randolf died thirteen years ago. It's William, now.”

“Nevertheless.”

“Well. I'm going to Taff Creek. A boy came in last night saying his kin were murdered down there. I'd be grateful if you've heard anything worth repeating. I wouldn't ask too close where you heard it.”

“Decent of you. But I wat nothing about that. But I'll tell you this—if I
had
been in the forest, I'd be out of there now. I'd be going far away from it.”

“Where
are
you going?”

“We'll tinker here for a few days, to earn for supplies. After that? Far away. Tero Gallé, maybe, or Virgenya.”

“Why?”

Afas jerked his head toward the largest tent, the one already set up. “Because
she
says so. I don't know more than that, nor do I want to. But you can ask her. In fact, she said you'd want to ask her.”

“Hmm. Well. I suppose I ought to, then.”

“Might be healthiest.”

“Right. Stay out of trouble, hey? I've got enough to worry about without having to track you down later.”

“Sure. Anything for you, Dirt.”

Mother Cilth had been old when Aspar was a boy. Now she might have been a ghost looking across the chasm of death. She sat on a pile of cushions, robed in black, coifed in black. Only her face was visible, an ivory mask spidered with sapphire. Her eyes, palest gold, watched his every movement. Jesp's eyes had been that color. And Qerla's.

“There you are,” Mother Cilth rasped. “Jesperedh said you would be here.”

Aspar bit back telling her how long Jesp had been dead. It wouldn't matter. Whether it was all pretense or whether the Sefry had come to believe their own lies, he had never really known. It didn't matter, because either way their constant talk
of speaking with the dead was so much annoying sceat. The dead were dead; they did not speak.

“You wanted to see me?” He made a small attempt to keep the irritation from his voice, but it wasn't something he was good at.

“I see you already. I want to talk to you.”

“I'm here, Mother. I'm listening.”

“Still rude. Still impatient. I thought my sister taught you better.”

“Maybe her lessons would have taken better if she had had a little help from the rest of you,” Aspar replied, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. “Take me as you find me or not at all. It wasn't me wanted to talk to you.”

“Yes, it was.”

That was true, sort of, but he didn't have to like it. He turned on his heel to leave.

“The Briar King is waking,” Cilth whispered.

Aspar paused, a bright tickle like a centipede crawling on his backbone. He turned very slowly to face the old woman again.

“What?”

“The Briar King. He wakes.”

“That's sceat,” Aspar said harshly, though a part of him felt as if the earth had opened beneath his feet. “I've traveled the King's Forest all my life. I've been in the deepest, black heart of it, and I've been places in the Mountains of the Hare that even the deer never saw. There is no Briar King. That's just more of your Sefry nonsense.”

“You know better. He slept, and was unseen. Now he wakes. It is the first sign. Surely Jesp taught you.”

“She taught me. She also taught me to cheat at dice, and to play the voice of a ghost for her seances.”

The old woman's face went even harder than it had been. “Then you should know the difference,” she hissed. “You should know the difference between the cold and the hot, between the breeze and the storm.” She leaned even closer. “Look in my eyes. Look there.”

Aspar didn't want to, but her eyes had already caught him,
like a snake about to eat a mouse. The gold and copper of her orbs seemed to expand until they were all he could see, and then …

A forest turned into gallows, rotting corpses hung from every branch. The trees themselves gnarled and diseased, covered in black thorns, and instead of foliage they bore carrion birds, ravens and vultures, gorged and fat.

In the depths of the forest the shadows between the trees shifted, as if something large were moving there. Aspar searched, but the movement stayed at the corner of his eyes, always still when he stared full at it.

Then he noticed the nearest corpse. The rope that hung her was nearly rotted through, and mostly it was just bones and blackened flesh hanging there, but the eyes were still alive, alive and pale gold …

The same eyes he was looking into now. Mother Cilth's eyes.

With a harsh gasp, Aspar turned his gaze away. Mother Cilth grated out a laugh.

“You see,” she murmured.

“Sceat,” he managed, though his legs were trembling. “A trick.”

Cilth drew back. “Enough. I thought you were the one foretold. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps you learned nothing after all.”

“I can only hope.”

“A shame. Truly. For if you are not the one foretold, he is not yet born. And if he is not yet born, your race—and mine—will be wiped from the earth, as if we had never been.
That
part of the telling cannot be doubted except by fools. But maybe you
are
a fool. My sister perished for nothing.” She reached up and drew a veil over her face. “I dream,” she said. “Leave me.”

Aspar obeyed her, fighting an unaccustomed urge to run. Only when the Sefry camp was a league behind him did his breathing calm.

The Briar King.

What sceat,
he thought.

But in the corner of his vision, something was still moving.

CHAPTER TWO
IN ANOTHER TAVERN

“THE QUEEN, OF COURSE, must die first. She is the greatest danger to our plans.”

The man's voice was cultured and sibilant, speaking the king's tongue with a hint of some southern accent. His words sent a snake slithering up Lucoth's back, and he suddenly feared the sound of his heart was a drum for all to hear.

I am a mouse,
he told himself.
A mouse.

Which was what everyone called him. His real name was Dunhalth MaypHinthgal, but only his mother had ever called him Dunhalth. To everyone else in the small town of Odhfath, he was Lucoth, “the mouse.”

A dry silence followed the man's pronouncement. From his vantage in the rafters, Lucoth could not see any of their faces, only that there were three of them, and from their voices, all men. He knew they'd paid hostler MaypCorgh for the use of the back room of the Black Rooster Inn, which in Lucoth's experience meant that they probably had some secret business to discuss.

Lucoth had eavesdropped on such meetings before. He had an arrangement with hostler MaypCorgh, who let him know when the room was in use. In the past, he'd mostly overheard smugglers and brigands, and often learned things that Mayp-Corgh could use to turn a profit, part of which he would pass on to Lucoth.