The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [52]
The first few structures were occupied by more of the children. He could hear laughter, song, and the soft lisps of them sleeping. If he extended his senses, he could make out the murmur of at least a thousand of them, if not more. A few of the very young ones were crying, but other than that he heard nothing that he would characterize as fear, anguish, or despair.
He couldn’t be certain how much of what the girl and Dreodh had told him was true, but one thing seemed certain: These children were not captives, at least not captives of anything they feared.
He pushed farther into the ancient city, seeking solitude. He knew he should be looking for a way out, but it seemed unlikely that his captors would let him wander freely if there was any chance of escape. Besides, at the moment he was too curious to really want to escape.
If Dreodh was telling the truth, Aspar and Winna were safe enough, at least from the slinders. If he was lying, his friends were almost certainly dead already. He didn’t—wouldn’t—believe that or even think too much about it until he had some evidence of it. But the chance to find out more of what was going on, what the Briar King wanted—well, that was what they were all looking for, wasn’t it?
What good would he have been trying to help a princess regain her throne? He wasn’t a warrior or a strategist. He was, he mused, a scholar with an interest in the past and in languages common and obscure. Surely I can do more good here than marching to Eslen.
Following his curiosity, he tried one of the doors. It was wooden and not too old. The Halafolk, he reasoned, must have traded constantly with their aboveground neighbors. They had to eat, after all, and while subterranean lakes might produce some fish and some sort of crops might be grown without sunlight, surely most of their sustenance had come from the surface.
Stephen wondered briefly how that trade had been accomplished while keeping the location of the rewns secret, but the answer was so obvious, he felt stupid for the three heartbeats he had wondered at it.
The Sefry. Those who traveled above, in the caravans—they were the suppliers.
The door pushed easily inward, revealing an apartment of stone. The place smelled faintly peppery. The hard floor was softened by a carpet woven of what appeared to be wool. Could sheep live underground? He doubted it. The pattern was vaguely familiar, a little like the colorfully abstract swirls painted on Sefry tents and wagons. Four cushions formed a loose ring around a low round table. In one corner a loom waited patiently for a weaver. Had the carpet been woven on it? Nearby wicker baskets overflowed with skeins of yarn and wooden tools he didn’t recognize.
The room seemed rather lived in, as if the Halafolk hadn’t taken much with them when they left. Perhaps they hadn’t.
Where had they gone? Had they fled the Briar King or the mysterious illness of which the Dreodh spoke?
Not long after they had met, Aspar had said something about the forest “feeling sick” to him. Aspar had lived his whole life in the pulse of the woodlands, so he should know.
Then they had encountered the greffyn, a beast so poisonous that its mere footprint could kill, and soon afterward the black thorns that sprang up in the footprints of the Briar King and grew to smother every living thing they crept over. Then even more monsters from Black Marys had appeared: utins, the nicwer—sedhmhari, Dreodh had called them. The best translation Stephen could make of that was “sedos demon.”
Did the monsters, like human priests, walk the faneways and gain gifts from them?
Something about the utins in particular troubled him. He had almost been killed by one, but by now he had been almost killed by several things. No, there was something more…
Then he realized what was bothering him.
The utin that had attacked him was the only one he had ever encountered, yet for some reason he was thinking of them in the plural. There had been only one greffyn, though Aspar had seen another after slaying the first. But