The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [230]
“Fend shot him with the same arrow I used to kill the woorm.”
“Oh, no.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “But it isn’t good. It isn’t good at all.”
He looked around him at the trees, remembering the visions of desolation that had been the Briar King’s parting cry.
“Maybe you’d better tell me what you know about that, too,” he muttered.
She agreed with a curt nod of her head. Her shoulders were trembling, and Aspar wondered if she was crying.
Stephen looked up and smiled as Zemlé entered the scriftorium.
“Couldn’t wait, could you?” she asked. “We’ve only been here two days.”
“But look at this place,” Stephen said. “It’s magnificent!”
He nearly wept as he said it. The great room around them was fantastically huge, brimming with thousands of scrifti.
“You know what I found?” he asked her, knowing he was gushing, unable to feel silly about it. “The original Amena Tirson. Pheon’s Treatise on Signatures, of which no copy has been seen in four hundred years!”
“Virgenya Dare’s journal?”
“No, I haven’t found that yet,” he said. “But I will in time, have no fear. There is so much here.”
“There’s more,” Zemlé said. “While you’ve been with your books, I’ve been exploring. There’s a whole city out there, Stephen, and I don’t think all of it was built by the Aitivar. Some of it looks older, so old that they have those stone drips and drops you were talking about on them.”
“I’ll see all of that,” Stephen promised. “You’ll show me.”
“And there’s the faneway they keep talking about.”
“Yes, that,” Stephen mused. “They seem altogether too eager for me to walk that. I’ll want to research a bit before I do it. The faneway Virgenya Dare walked? We’ll see.”
“You don’t trust them?”
“I don’t know,” Stephen said. “I wish I really understood what happened on the mountain the other day.”
“I thought you said Hespero summoned the Briar King.”
“I suppose he did,” Stephen said. “I gave him the horn, months ago. And he did make short work of the khriim, which is, I suppose, why the praifec summoned him. Still, it seems a little odd. I thought Hespero wanted the Briar King destroyed. He sent us out to do just that.”
“Maybe he hoped they would kill each other,” she suggested. “And maybe they did. The Briar King shrank rather quickly after the khriim fell.”
“Maybe,” Stephen allowed.
“We’re just fortunate that Fend and the twelve were able to break Hespero’s forces.”
“I’d be happier if they’d captured him in the bargain,” Stephen said. “He can always come back.”
“If he dares, I’m sure you’ll be ready for him.”
Stephen nodded, scratching his head. “So they tell me.” Then he fell silent.
“Is something the matter?” she asked.
“You remember what you were saying about the traditions from the Book of Return? You called the woorm ‘khirme,’ almost the same as the Aitivar word for it, khriim.”
“Sure.”
“But you also mentioned another foe, Khraukare: the Blood Knight. You said he’s supposed to be my enemy.”
“That’s what the legend says,” Zemlé agreed.
“Well, the day we got here the Aitivar said they’d found the khriim and the khruvkhuryu. They meant Fend. ‘Khruvkhuryu’ and ‘khraukare’ are also cognate. Both mean ‘Blood Knight.’ But Fend claims to be my ally.”
She looked troubled but shrugged. “You’re the one who pointed out how untrustworthy the legends can be,” she said. “Maybe we just had it wrong.”
“Yet there’s more,” Stephen continued. “When I saw Fend’s armor, I was reminded of an engraving I once found in a book and of the caption beneath it. It said, ‘He drinks the blood of the serpent, and rises the tide of woe, the servant of Old Night, the Woorm-Blood Warrior.’”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think Fend wanted the khriim to die so he could taste its blood and become the Blood Knight.”
“But how could he have known the praifec would summon the Briar King?”
“He admitted that Hespero was once an ally. Maybe he still is. Maybe this whole business was some sort of performance for my benefit. All I know is, something still isn’t right.”
Zemlé caught his arm.
“I’ve spoiled your mood,”