The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [103]
He lifted the stump, looked at it, and shrugged. “Don’t be. That’s the life of a warrior. I’m lucky that’s all I lost. How can I complain when I still have another, and eyes to see you with? So many of my men lost everything.”
“I-I don’t even know where to begin,” Anne said. “So much has happened…”
“I know a lot of it,” Artwair said. “I know about your father and your sisters. Elyoner has been catching me up on the rest.”
“But what about you? Where have you been?”
“On the eastern marches of the King’s Forest, fighting—” He paused. “Things. It seemed important at first, but then we realized they never really come out of the forest. Then I got word of what Robert’s been up to in Eslen, and I thought I ought to check into it.”
“My uncle Robert’s gone mad, I think,” Anne said. “He’s imprisoned my mother. Did you know that?”
“Auy.”
“I’ve determined to do what I can to free her and take back the throne.”
“Well,” Artwair said, “I might be of some help there.”
“Yes,” Anne said. “I hoped you would say that. I don’t know much about waging war, really, nor do any of my companions. I need a general, Cousin.”
“I would be honored to serve you in that regard,” Artwair replied. “Even one man can make a difference.”
Then he smiled a little more broadly and fondly mussed her hair.
“Of course, I’ve also brought my army.”
GRAY DAWN spilled into the valley as Stephen and Ehan raced toward the river. The horses proved unrideable, bucking and rearing uncontrollably, so they had to lead them.
The earth shivered beneath Stephen’s boots, and sick unreasoning fear threatened to overwhelm him. It felt as if everything was too loud and too bright, and he wanted to tell everyone he just needed a rest, a day or so to himself.
Ehan, too, was flushed and wide-eyed. Stephen wondered if this was how field mice felt when they heard the screech of a hawk, knowing the terror in their bones even when they hadn’t seen the predator itself.
He kept turning back, and just as they reached the base of the orchard, he saw it.
The monastery was raised up on a hill, its graceful, exuberant line etched against a lead sky faintly patinaed with amber. A peculiar violet light flickered in one of the highest windows of the bell tower; Stephen felt his face warming, as if he were looking at the sun.
An eldritch fog rose around the base of the structure, and at first Stephen thought what he saw was smoke rising up, until his saint-sharpened eyes picked out the details: the beetle-green lamps of its eyes, the teeth it showed as it opened its mouth, the long sinew of its body twining up the tower.
Everything else faded away: Ehan urging him on, the men at the bottom of the hill calling frantically, the distant tolling of the clock. Only the monster existed.
But “monster” wasn’t nearly the right word. The greffyn was a monster. The utin, the nicwer—those were monsters, creatures from an elder time somehow restored to a world that had believed itself sane. But everything in Stephen screamed that this—this was a difference not only of degree but of kind. Not a monster but a god, a Damned Saint.
His knees trembled, and he dropped onto them, and as he did so, its eyes turned toward him. Across the distance of a quarter of a league their gazes met, and Stephen felt something so far beyond human emotion that his body could not contain it much less understand it.
“Saints,” Ehan said. “Saints, it sees us. Stephen—”
Whatever Ehan meant to say was cut short as the violet light flared again. This time it didn’t confine itself to the single window. Instead, it spewed from every part of the great monastery. It brightened unbearably, and d’Ef suddenly was gone, replaced by a sphere of intolerable radiance.
“Fratrex Pell!” Stephen heard Ehan gasp.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE VITELLIAN VERB, SONITUM
Having a very specific definition, “to deafen by thunder.” It seems peculiar that the Hegemony would have had such a particular word; a verb “to make deaf” exists (ehesurdum), as does the word “thunder” (tonarus). It suggests that being deafened by thunder happened often enough