The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [85]
“Drink some,” he told Winna. He pushed a bit with the knife. “If it kills her, you go next,” he said.
“Give me some first,” the man said. “I’ll prove it’s not poison.”
Winna lifted the blue bottle, took a swallow, and made a face. For a long moment nothing happened.
“That feels better,” Winna said. “Everything isn’t spinning anymore.”
Aspar nodded, took the bottle, and drank some himself. It was foul, like boiled centipedes and wormwood, but he felt almost instantly better. He stoppered the bottle carefully and put it in his haversack.
“What are you helping Fend with, anyhow?” Aspar asked. “What are you supposed to finish before he gives you the antidote?”
“We’re just supposed to follow him and kill anything the woorm doesn’t.”
“Yah. Why?”
“He’s after killing the slinders, is part of it,” he said. “But there’s also some fellow he’s supposed to find; I don’t know the name. Supposed to be with you, I think.”
“Fend sent the utins after him?” Aspar asked.
“Yah. They went ahead and didn’t come back.”
“Where does Fend get these monsters?”
“He got the woorm from the Sarnwood witch, or so ’e said. But the monsters, they don’t serve Fend. He and the monsters serve the same master.”
“And who would that be?”
“None of us know. There’s a priest, from Hansa, name of Ashern. I think he knows, but he’s with Fend on the woorm. The Sefry just hired us for the loot. Said we could have anything that turned up in the woorm’s trail. Then he told us we were poisoned and let Galus die to prove him werlic.
“Please, holter, I’m begging you.”
“That’s all you know?”
“That’s all.”
Aspar flipped him over on his back. He winced and shut his eyes. Aspar shook the bottle; it was more than half-full.
“Open your mouth.”
The man did so, and Aspar dribbled in a few drops.
“Tell me something new,” Aspar said, “and I’ll give you a little more. If you last long enough, the woorm’s venom might work out of your system on its own, yah? Or you could find a shinecrafter to help you. A chance for you to live to see another full moon, anyway. Better than you have now.”
“Yah. What do you want to know?”
“Why did Fend have the girls kidnapped?”
“Girls?”
“On the border with Loiyes. Where he sent the utins.”
The man shook his head. “Those men? We had nothing to do with them. The woorm and the utins found your man; they scented him somehow. Those other fellows—we killed some of them when we happened upon them. Fend told us if we saw a couple of girls to just kill them, too, but not to go out of our way. ‘It’s not our job, that,’ he said. ‘Let the others worry about that.’”
Aspar dribbled a few more drops onto the man’s tongue.
“What else?”
“I don’t know anything else. I didn’t understand what I was getting into. I’m just a thief. I’ve never even killed anyone before. I never believed these things existed, but now I’ve seen ’em, I just want to go away. I just want to live.”
“Yah,” Aspar said. “Go, then.”
“But the poison…”
“I’ve given you all I can. I’ll need the rest to find Fend, kill ’im, and take his antidote. Do you know what it looks like?”
“No.”
“I could still just kill you…”
“I really don’t know.”
Which means it might well not exist at all, Aspar thought grimly.
“Come on, Winna,” he said. “I’ve a feeling we’d better get started.”
PARALYZED BY TERROR, Anne watched the tapestry lift and darkness appear behind it.
The candles had all gone out, and though the only light was that of the moon, she could see every detail of the room clearly. The pulse in her head was so strong, she feared she would faint, and she wanted to look away from what was coming.
She had dreamed of Fastia with worms in her eyes, going behind that tapestry, opening a secret door. Now she saw that the door was really there and something was coming out of it. Here, in the waking world.
Or was she awake?
The figure that stepped into the room, however, wasn’t Fastia. At first it seemed a shadow, but then the moonlight resolved someone dressed all in black, masked and hooded. A slight figure, a woman or perhaps a child, carrying something