The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [39]
THE DEAD whispered her awake.
Her first breath was agony, as if her lungs had been blown of glass and then shattered by the intake. Her muscles tried to crawl off her bones. She would have screamed, but her mouth and throat were cloyed with congealed bile and mucus.
Her head was hammering against stone, and there was nothing she could do about it but watch the sparks that formed in her eyes. Then her entire body bent backward as if she were a bow being pulled by a saint, and the arrows exploded wetly from her mouth, again, again, until finally everything unclenched and she lay quietly, unhurried breaths rasping in and out of her as the pain gradually washed away from her, leaving exhaustion behind.
She felt as if she were sinking into something soft.
Saints, forgive me, she silently prayed. I did not want to. I had to.
That was only half-true, but she was too tired to explain it to them.
The saints didn’t seem to be listening, anyhow, though the dead were still whispering. She thought she had understood them not that long ago, comprehended the strange tenses of their verbs. Now they flitted at the edge of her understanding, all but one, and that one was trying to lick into her ear like a lover’s tongue.
She didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to listen, for the very simple fear that if she did, her soul would return to oblivion.
But the voice wasn’t going to be denied by anything as simple as fear.
No, by the damned ones, it burred. You can hear me. You will hear me.
“Who are you?” She relented. “Please…”
“My name?” The voice gathered strength immediately, and she felt a hand press against the side of her face. It was very cold.
“It was Erren, I think. Erren. And who are you? You are familiar.”
She realized then that she had forgotten her own name.
“I don’t remember,” she said. “But I remember you. The queen’s assassin.”
“Yes,” the voice said triumphantly. “Yes, that’s me. And I know you now. Alis. Alis Berrye.” Something like a chuckle followed that. “By the saints. I missed you, didn’t know what you were. How did I miss you?”
Alis! I am Alis! she thought in desperate relief.
“I did not want to be found,” Alis said. “But I always feared that you would catch me. Indeed, I was terrified of you.”
The hand stroked against her neck.
“Coven-trained, yes.” The dead woman sighed. “But not by any proper coven of the Church, were you? Halaruni?”
“We call ourselves the Veren,” Alis answered.
“Ah, yes, of course,” Erren said. “Veren. The mark of the crescent moon. I know something of you. And now you are my queen’s protector.”
“I am, lady.”
“How did you accomplish this escape from death? Your heart was slowed to beating only once a day, your breath stilled. Your blood stank of gallowswort, but now it is clean.”
“If he had not used gallowswort—if he had used lauvleth or merwaurt or hemlock—I would be dead,” Alis replied.
“You might die, anyway,” Erren replied. “Even now you are very near. A thing as insubstantial as I cannot do much, but you are so very close to us, I think I might manage it…”
“Then she would have no one to aid her,” Alis said.
“Tell me quickly why you did not die. I know of no faneway, no shinecraft that will stop the work of gallowswort.”
“Our ways are different,” Alis said. “And the law of death has been broken. The markland between the quick and the dead is much wider than it was; the passage both ways less certain. Gallowswort is more sure than most poisons, because it acts not only on the body but also on the soul. There is a very old story in our order about a woman who let herself be taken by death and yet returned. It was the last time the law of death was broken, during the time of the Black Jester.
“I felt I might be able to accomplish the same thing, and knew the sacaums necessary to try. And I had no choice, really. The poison was already in me.” She paused. “You should not kill me, Sor Erren.”
“Does my queen understand the aim of your order?”
“My order is