The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [45]
Stephen started to protest, but Dreodh waved him off. “There were those of us who always kept to the old ways—his ways. We made the ancient sacrifices. But what we remembered, we did not remember truly. Our understanding wasn’t complete. We believed that because we honored him, we would be spared when he returned. But the Briar King knows nothing of honor, or truth, or deceit, or any human virtue. His understanding is the understanding of the hunter and the hunted, the earth and the rotting, the seed and springtime. Only one agreement was ever made with him by our race, and we broke it. And so now we must serve him.”
“Must you?” Stephen said. “But you just said you had a choice.”
“And this is what we have chosen. You would have done the same, had you been one of us.”
“No.” Stephen sneered. “I rather think not.”
Dreodh stood abruptly. “Follow me. I will show you a thing.”
Stephen followed, stepping gingerly around the slinders. In sleep, they seemed normal men and women save for their general state of undress. He reflected that until now he rarely had glimpsed the nakedness of a woman. Once, when he was twelve, he and some friends had watched through a crack in a wall while a girl changed her frock. More recently, he’d accidentally caught a glimpse of Winna as she was bathing. Both times the sight seemed to have seared through his eyes, straight through his belly to where his lust dwelled. Other times the act of merely imagining what a woman might look like beneath her clothes was a powerful distraction.
Now he saw scores of women, some quite beautiful, all as naked as the saints had made them, and he felt nothing but a general sort of revulsion.
They waded through a shallow stream and were soon out of the light.
“Keep your hand on my shoulder,” Dreodh instructed.
Stephen did so, following him through the darkness. Though the saints had blessed his senses, he could not see without any light. He could almost hear the shape of the cavern by the echo from their footfalls, however, and he made a conscious effort to remember the turnings and how many steps came before each.
Presently, a pale new light shone ahead, and they reached the stony shores of an underground lake where a small boat waited for them, tied at a polished limestone quay. Dreodh gestured him in, and in moments they had started across the obsidian waters.
The illumination came from dancing motes like fireflies, and in their tiny lamps the shadow of a city took shape, dreamlike and delicate. Here a spire suddenly glinted like a trace of rainbow; there the hollow eyes of windows gazed out like watchful giants.
“You’re going to destroy that?” Stephen breathed. “But it’s so beautiful.”
Dreodh didn’t reply. Stephen noticed that a few of the floating lights had begun drifting toward them.
“Witchlights,” Dreodh explained. “They are not dangerous.”
“Aspar told me about these,” Stephen said, reaching toward one of them. They were like little glowing wisps of smoke, flames with no substance or heat.
More arrived, escorting them to the farther shore.
Stephen already heard a hushed chatter beyond. Human voices or Sefry, he could not say, but they were high in pitch.
When he saw their low forms on the bank, illumined faintly by the ephemeral lights, Stephen suddenly understood. “Children,” he breathed.
“Our children,” Dreodh clarified.
They came ashore, and a few of the youngsters wandered up to them. Stephen recognized one as the other singer back at the tree, the girl. She leveled her gaze at Dreodh.
“Why have you brought him here?” she asked.
“He has been called. I am to take him to the Revesturi.”
“Still,” she said, sounding extraordinarily adult, “why bring him here?”
“I wanted him to see the jungen.”
“Well, here we are,” the girl said.
“Ehawk said he never saw any signs of children in the abandoned villages,” Stephen said. “Now I think I understand. He’s holding your children hostage, isn’t he? If you don’t serve the Briar King as slinders, your children are forfeit.