The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [7]
Remembering the coven, she felt inexplicably calmer, more reassuringly detached. Experimentally, she reached up and touched the corpse’s brow.
A tingle crept up her fingers, passing through her arm and across her chest. As it moved on up her neck to her head, she felt suddenly drowsy.
Her body became distant and pillowy, and she heard a soft gasp escape from her lips. The world hummed with music that would not quite resolve itself into melody.
Her head swayed back, then down again, and with what seemed great effort she parted her eyelids.
Things were different, but it was difficult to say just how. The light was strange, and all seemed unreal, but the trees and the snow remained as they had been.
As her gaze sharpened, she saw dark water bubbling forth from the dead man’s lips. It cascaded down his chest and meandered through the snow a few kingsyards until it met a larger stream.
Her vision suddenly lengthened, and she saw a hundred such streamlets. Then a thousand, tens of thousands of black rills, all melting into larger streams and rivers and finally merging with a water as wide and dark as a sea. As she watched, the last of that man flowed away, and like leaves on a stream there passed the image of a little girl with black hair…
The smell of beer…
The taste of bacon…
A woman’s face more demon than human, terrifying, but the terror itself was already nearly forgotten…
Then he was gone. The liquid from his lips slowed to a trickle and ended. But from the living world the dark waters continued to flow.
It was then that Anne noticed that something was watching her; she felt its gaze through the trees. Inchoate fear turned in her, and suddenly, more than anything, she didn’t want to see what it was. The image of the demon-woman in the dying man’s eyes freshened, the face so terrible that he hadn’t been able to really see it.
Was it Mefitis, saint of the dead, come for him? Come for Anne, too?
Or was it an estriga, one of the witches Vitellians believed devoured the souls of the damned? Or something beyond imagining?
Whatever it was, it grew nearer.
Gathering the courage in her core, Anne forced her head to turn—
—and swallowed a scream. There was no clear image, only a series of numbing impressions. Vast horns, stretching to scratch the sky, a body that spread out through the trees…
The black waters of a moment before were fastened to the thing like leeches, and though it tore at them with a hundred claws, each tendril that fell away was replaced by another, if not two.
She had seen this thing before, in a field of black roses, in a forest of thorns.
The Briar King.
He had no face, only dreams in motion. At first she saw nothing she recognized, a miasma of colors that had scent and taste and palpable feel. But now she could not look away, though her terror was only growing.
She felt as if a million poisoned needles quilled her flesh. She could not scream.
And Anne was suddenly very certain of two things…
She jerked awake and found her face pressed into the pool of blood on the man’s chest. His body was very cold now, and so was she.
She rose, gagging, and stumbled away from the corpse, but her limbs were numb. She shook her head, clearing the last of the Black Mary. She vaguely knew she ought to take the horse and follow the hoofprints that had brought her here back to their source, but it seemed like too much trouble. Anyway, it was snowing harder now, and soon the tracks would be filled.
She folded herself into a crevice in the roots of a huge tree and, as warmth slowly returned, gathered her strength for what needed to be done.
AN ARROW skipped off Neil MeqVren’s helm as he churned his way over the snowbank, the hoarse battle cry of his fathers ringing through the trees. His shield turned aside another death-tipped