The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [105]
What else could he recall?
They lived in caverns or deep water; they hoarded gold; their blood was venom but paradoxically could convey supernatural power under the right circumstances. They were much like dragons, but dragons were supposed to have wings.
And woorms weren’t dumb beasts. Woorms were supposed to have the power of speech and terrible, crafty minds always devising evil. They were said to be sorcerers, and the very oldest texts he could remember suggested that they had enjoyed some special relationship with the Skasloi.
He also remembered an engraving of the Briar King gripping a horned serpent. The caption had read—
Had read—
He closed his eyes and saw the page.
Vincatur Ambiom. “Subduer of woorms.”
So all he had to do was find the Briar King, and he would save them.
Stephen laughed at that, but no one heard him. Ehan might have thought he was in pain, though, for he looked more concerned than ever; at the moment that was quite a feat.
A bell later they descended into a lowland of white birches and crossed the worn track of the King’s Road. The day had dawned crisp and clear. Away from the woorm, the horses had calmed enough to be ridden.
Stephen reckoned they were riding north more or less, paralleling the Ef River, which ought to be off to their right. The land got lower and wetter until the horses were slogging through standing water. The trees thinned, but fern and cattail rose head-high, obscuring vision beyond the narrow path they followed, which to Stephen’s eye looked like no more than an animal path of some sort.
Finally Henne led them to slightly higher ground and a trail that had a well-traveled look. He took the horses to a trot, and they varied between that pace and a fast walk for perhaps two bells before they came quite suddenly upon a small cluster of houses.
Stephen didn’t imagine it was a village, more likely a sort of extended family steading. It also was clearly abandoned. The pigpen had fallen into a ruin of rough wooden fence poles; the largest house had holes in its cedar-shake roof. Dead weeds had poked up through hard dirt, and there were hints of snow around the yard.
Henne rode past all of that, down a slight rise to a flowing stream that seemed too small to be the Ef. He dismounted and went over to something suspended between two trees, covered with a tarp. For a moment Stephen feared that he would reveal a corpse when he drew away the cloth, that it was a burial such as he had heard some of the mountain tribes performed.
In fact he had gotten the scale wrong; it was a boat hung by rope above the highest watermark on the witaecs. It looked in fair shape and was large enough to accommodate them.
But not their horses.
Henne set them to the task of removing the harnesses and saddles, and those they placed in the boat. That made sense: the Ef flowed north, which was the direction they wanted to go, but at the city of Wherthen it would join the White Warlock and turn west toward Eslen. They might go upriver from Wherthen if they could find the right sort of vessel, but at some point they would have to find new horses and continue north and east to reach the Bairghs. Better that they didn’t have to buy new tack, as well.
Their task completed, they climbed into the craft. Henne went to the tiller, and Ehan and the other monk took the oars. Stephen watched the horses, which regarded them curiously as they started downstream. He hoped they had enough sense to scatter before the woorm reached them.
He tapped Ehan and made a rowing motion, but the little man shook his head, pointing instead to the packages of scrifti and books. Stephen nodded and set about securing them with twine in case the boat should capsize. When he was done with that, he dipped his hand in the icy-cold water, not long from the mountains.
He thought he felt the faint vibration of the woorm, but