The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [212]
“I was attacked by a man wearing this mark,” she said. “A follower of yours, perhaps?”
The Faith turned to her sister. “You explain,” she said, “if you’re so certain she should know.”
A wry smile appeared below the black mask.
“Anne, I don’t think you appreciate how important it is for you to take the throne: the literal throne of Eslen and the eldritch one that is beginning to appear. We have tried to explain to you, but at every turn you have jeopardized yourself by giving in to selfish desires.”
“I wanted to save my friends from certain death. How is that selfish?”
“You know how, yet you refuse to admit it. Your friends do not matter, Anne. The fate of the world does not rest with them. After everything you’ve experienced, Anne, you are still spoiled, still the girl who fought to keep her saddle in a place where she had no use for it simply because it was hers. A little girl who will not share her toys, much less give them up.
“You almost ruined everything at Dunmrogh. For right or wrong, we decided you should be parsed from your friends so you could see things more clearly. Yes, we have followers—”
“And bloody wonderful ones, too,” Anne snapped. “One of them tried to rape me.”
“Not one of ours,” the honey-haired faith said. Her voice, too, was honeyed. “Someone our servants hired without knowing enough about him. In any event—”
“In any event, you proved to me that I can’t trust you. I never really believed I could, but now I know for certain. You have my thanks for that.”
“Anne—”
“Yet I’ll give you one more chance. Do you understand my predicament? Can you see that much?”
“Yes,” the palest Faith answered.
“Well, then, if you’re so interested in my being queen, can you show me a way out of this that doesn’t involve freeing the Kept?”
“You can’t free him, Anne.”
“Really? And why is that, pray the saints?”
“It would be very bad.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
“He is a Skaslos, Anne.”
“Yes, and he’s promised to mend the law of death and die. Is there something wrong with that?”
“Yes.”
“Then what is it?”
But they didn’t answer.
“Very well,” Anne said. “If you won’t help me, I’ll do what I must.”
The golden-haired Faith stepped forward.
“Wait. The woman Alis. The two of you can escape.”
“Indeed? How?”
“She has walked the faneway of Spetura. If you augment her power with your own, you can pass through your enemies unseen.”
“That’s the best you can do? What about my friends?”
The women glanced at one another.
“Right,” Anne said. “They don’t matter.” She turned away.
“Farewell,” she said.
“Anne—”
“Farewell!”
With that, the glade shattered like colored glass, and the darkness returned.
“Well,” the Kept said. “You’ve compared the wares. Are you ready to deal?”
“Can you lift the glamour on the passage? The one that makes them unknowable to men?”
“Once I’m free, yes. But only once I’m free.”
“Swear it.”
“I swear it.”
“Swear that once free, you will do as you’ve promised: mend the law of death and then die.”
“I swear it by all that I am, by all that I ever was.”
“Then place your neck at my feet.”
There was a long pause, and then something heavy struck the floor near her. She raised her right foot and brought it down on something large, cold, and rough.
“Anne, what are you doing?” Alis asked in the blackness. She sounded frantic.
“Qexqaneh,” Anne said, lifting her voice. “I free you!”
“No!” Alis shrieked.
But of course, by then it was too late.
Their mounted foes were all dead, and now the remaining defenders of the outer waerd were swarming to protect the gap opened by Artwair’s ballistae. The hole was almost near enough for Neil to touch when something struck his shoulder from above so hard that it drove him to his knees.
Neil looked up dully at a man standing over him, lifting his sword to deliver the death blow. Neil cut clumsily at the fellow’s knees. His weapon was too blunted from