The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [41]
“I may have once known such things,” Erren said. “No longer. What, then?”
“There is a man the usurper has imprisoned. If I can free him in Anne’s name, I believe even the most reluctant landwaerden will rally to her cause. It should tip the balance.”
“The passages, then.”
“It will be a risk,” Alis said. “Prince Robert is alone among men in that he knows of the passages and can remember them. But—”
“But he thinks you are dead,” Erren said. “I understand. It is a weapon you can use only once, really.”
“Exactly,” Alis replied.
“Have a care,” Erren said. “There are things in the dungeons of Eslen that should have died a very long time ago. Do not think them impotent.”
“I will help her, Erren,” Alis said.
“You will,” Erren agreed.
“I cannot replace you, I know. But I will do my best.”
“My best wasn’t good enough. Be better.”
A chill passed through Alis, and the voice was gone.
Her head was suddenly filled with the stench of putrefying flesh, and as her senses returned, she could feel ribs digging into her back. The hand on her cheek was still there. She touched it; it was wet and slimy and mostly bone.
Robert had lied to Muriele. He’d put her in the Dare crypt, all right, but not in William’s tomb; she was in the same sarcophagus as Erren.
On top of her. His little joke or a coincidence?
Maybe his mistake.
She lay there a long moment, shivering, garnering her strength, and then pushed at the stone above her. It was heavy, too heavy, but she searched deep, found more resolve, and shoved enough to make it budge a bit. She rested, then pushed it again. This time a sliver appeared in the darkness.
She relaxed, letting fresh air flow in to strengthen her. Bracing hands and feet, she shoved with all the might her slight frame would allow.
The lid scraped another fingersbreadth open.
She heard a distant bell and realized it was ringing the noon hour. The world of the quick, of sunlight and sweet air, was suddenly real to her again. She redoubled her efforts, but she was very, very weak.
It was six bells later—Vespers—before she managed to unseat the lid and crawl off the rotting body of her predecessor.
A little light was coming through from the atrium, but Alis did not look back at her host, nor did she at present have the energy to replace the lid. She could only hope that no one had reason to come here before she had managed to regain it or find help.
Feeling as frail and light as a broomstraw, Alis Berrye made her way out of the crypt into Eslen-of-Shadows, the dark sister to the living city on the hill high above it. Looking up at Eslen’s spire and walls, for a moment she felt more daunted and alone than she ever had before. The task she had chosen—that she had promised a ghost she would carry out—seemed altogether beyond her.
Then, with a wry laugh, she remembered that not only had she survived one of the deadliest toxins in the world, but she had vanished from beneath the very eye of the usurper Robert Dare. Thinking himself careful, he had made himself careless.
She would make that mistake into a dagger with which she would strike at his heart and loose whatever strange blood rotted in it.
PART II
THE VENOM
IN THE ROOTS
Fram tid du tid ya yer du yer
Taelned sind thae manns daghs
Mith barns, razens, ja rengs gaeve
Bagmlic is gemaunth sik
Sa bagm wolthegh mith luths niwat
Sa aeter in sin rots
From tide to tide and year to year
A man’s days are counted
Wealthy in children, homes, and rings
He feels strong, like a tree
A tree proud in limbs may not feel
The venom in its roots
—OLD ALMANNISH SAYING
STEPHEN WASN’T SURE how long he fought against the slinders, but he knew he had no strength left in him. His muscles were limp bands wracked by occasional painful spasms. Even his bones seemed to ache.
Oddly, after he stopped struggling, the hands gripping him became strangely gentle, as if he were like the stray cat he once had removed