The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [173]
“I meant the race to which women belong, I suppose,” the Sefry said.
“But you are a woman, are you not, though not of Man-kin?”
“Indeed,” she said, the corners of her mouth lifting faintly.
Anne frowned but wasn’t sure she wanted to crawl farther into this odd warren of semantics, not when the Sefry seemed perfectly content to be drawn farther and farther from the original question.
“Never mind,” she said. “This person you say whispers to me. I want to know about him.”
“Ah,” Mother Uun said. “Yes. Virgenya Dare did not kill the last of the Skasloi. She kept him alive in the dungeons of Eslen.
“He is there yet, and it is my charge to make certain that he stays there.”
An unexpected vertigo seized Anne; she felt as if her chair were nailed to the ceiling and she must grip its arms tightly to keep from falling out as the room slowly revolved.
Again she heard unintelligible words breathed into her ear, but this time she thought…almost…that she understood them. The voices of strange birds warbled beyond the window.
No, not birds at all, but Austra and Mother Uun.
She focused on them.
“That’s impossible,” Austra was saying. “The histories clearly say that she killed him. Besides, that would make him more than two thousand years old.”
“He was older than that when his kingdom fell,” Mother Uun replied. “The Skasloi did not age as your kind does. Some of them did not age at all. Qexqaneh is one of those.”
“Qexqaneh?”
As she said the name, Anne suddenly felt something rough sliding against her skin, and her nostrils filled with a scent like burning pine. It happened so quickly that she burst into a fit of coughing.
“I should have warned you to be careful with that name,” Mother Uun said. “It draws his attention, but it also gives you power to command him, if your will is strong enough.”
“Why?” Anne asked hoarsely. “Why keep such a thing alive?”
“Who knows the mind of the Born Queen?” Mother Uun said. “Perhaps, at first, to gloat. Or perhaps from fear. He made a prophecy, you know.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Anne said.
Mother Uun closed her eyes, and her voice changed. It dropped lower and canted somewhere between song and chant.
“You were born slaves,” she said. “You will die slaves. You have merely summoned a new master. The daughters of your seed will face what you have wrought, and it will obliterate them.”
Anne felt as though a hand were cupped across her mouth and nose. She could hardly draw breath.
“What did he mean by that?” she managed.
“No one knows,” the Sefry replied. “But the time he spoke of has come; that much is certain.” Her voice was of normal pitch now, but she was almost whispering.
“Even bound, he is terribly dangerous. To enter the castle, you must pass him. Be strong. Do nothing he asks and do not forget that it is in your blood to command him. If you ask him a question, he cannot lie, but he will nevertheless do his best to mislead you.”
“My father? My mother? Did they know of him?”
“All the kings of Eslen have known the Kept,” Mother Uun replied. “As will you. As you must.”
Well, at least that wasn’t something I missed when I wasn’t paying attention, Anne mused to herself.
“Tell me,” she said, “do you know anything about a certain tomb beneath a horz in Eslen-of-Shadows?”
“Anne!” Austra gasped, but Anne shushed her with a motion of her hand.
Mother Uun paused, the cup just inches from her lips, and her smooth brow wrinkled.
“I can’t say that I do,” she replied at last.
“What of the Faiths? Can you tell me anything about them?”
“I suspect you know them better than I,” the old woman said.
“But I would be more than moderately pleased to learn what you know of them,” Anne countered in what she hoped was an insistent tone.
“Sorceresses of the most ancient sort,” the old woman offered. “Some say they are immortal; others say that they are the heads of a secret order and are replaced with each generation.”
“Really? Which explanation do you fancy?”
“I do not know if they are immortal, but I suspect they are long-lived.”
Anne sighed. “This is no more than I have already