The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [143]
“They’re terrified,” Winna contradicted. “Who knows what they’ll come across out here in two days. If not a woorm or greffyn, then maybe just cattle thieves.”
“They aren’t my concern, Winna—you are.”
“Yah. I know. But do this for me.”
She was crying freely but silently. Her face was red, her lips tinted blue.
“I’ll go,” he said. “I’ll go by myself. It’ll be easier that way; you’re right about that. Ehawk won’t be in any condition to fight by then; you’re right. I wasn’t thinking.”
“No, love,” Winna said. “No. Then I’ll die without you, you see? I want to breathe my last in your arms. I want you to be there.”
“You aren’t going to die,” he said evenly. “I’ll be back, with your cure. I’ll meet you in Haemeth.”
“Don’t. Can’t you hear me? I don’t want to die alone! And she’ll kill you!”
“What about Ehawk? You’ve given up on yourself, but there still might be time to save him, even by your reckoning.”
“I…Aspar, please. I’m not strong enough for this.”
His throat was clotted, and his pulse pounded in his ears.
“Enough,” he said. He lifted her, strode back to her mount, and pushed her up on it, then brushed away her clinging hands.
“Ehawk,” he shouted. “Come here.”
The boy obeyed.
“You and Winna’ll go with these two to the town. Then you find a leic, you hear? The folk around here may know more about monsters and their venom then we think. You wait there, and I’ll be back.”
“Aspar, no!” Winna wailed weakly.
“You were right!” he shouted back. “Go with them.”
“You come, too!”
Instead of answering, he clapped his mouth and mounted Ogre.
“I’ll tell him to find you when I am dead,” he told Aohsli. “But you take care of him.”
“Auy, sir!”
He turned to regard Winna and found her and her horse only a few paces away.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered. Her lips moved, but he scarcely heard the sound.
“Not for long,” he promised.
She closed her eyes. “Kiss me, then,” she said. “Kiss me one more time.”
Grief welled up like a monster, climbing out of the caves of his guts, trying to claw its way out of his eyes.
“Keep that kiss,” he said. “I’ll get it when I return.”
Then he turned and rode and did not—could not—look back.
ROBERT DARE stroked his mustache, sipped his wine, and sighed. From their vantage on the dike he glanced out over the flooded lands toward Eslen.
“I’ve always favored the Galléan wines,” he commented. “You can all but taste the sunlight in them, you know? The white stone, the black soil, the dark-eyed girls.” He paused. “You’ve been there, Sir Neil? Vitellia, Tero Gallé, Hornladh—you’ve had quite the tour of this continent. I really hope you can arrange to see the rest of it. Tell me—they say that traveling opens the mind, broadens the palate. Did you learn any new tastes in your travels? Or anything at all?”
Watching the prince, Neil had the strange impression he was seeing some sort of an insect. It wasn’t anything obvious but something subtle about the way he moved.
A dog, a stag, even a bird or lizard—all those things moved smoothly, in time with the larger world around them. Beetles, in contrast, moved weirdly. It wasn’t just that they were quick or had six legs; it was more that they seemed to move to the rhythms of a different world, a smaller one, or perhaps to the smaller rhythms of this world that giants such as Neil could not feel.
That was how it was with Robert. His gestures studied normality but could not reproduce it. Seen from the corner of the eye, even the parting of his lips seemed oddly monstrous.
“Sir Neil?” Robert prompted politely.
“I was just thinking,” Neil said, “how best to sum it up. I was overwhelmed at first by the size of the world, how many parts it has. I was amazed by how different people are, and at the same time how they are all the same.”
“Interesting,” Robert said in a tone that suggested it was anything but.
“Yes,” Neil said. “Until I came to Eslen, I thought my world was large. The sea, after all, seems endless when one is upon it, and the islands seem uncountable. But