The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [93]
“He set out to find it, ostensibly because he felt that most sacred of documents would be safer there. He left for Vhelnoryganuz but never returned. As you know, the Black Jester had his court where the city of Wherthen now stands, though little remains of the original fortress. But when the Church liberated and consecrated the area, they gathered all the scrifti they found. The evil ones were destroyed, for the most part. Those which were not evil were collected and copied.
“And then there were a few that were kept in the scriftorium because no one was certain what they were. This was one such scroll. Brother Desmond acquired it for me; thank the saints he did not discern its nature. We received it just before your flight from this place. If things had proceeded as we hoped, you would have studied it months ago, and at a more leisurely pace. Unfortunately, things have not proceeded as we hoped.”
“Most unfortunately,” Stephen agreed. He straightened and put his hands his knees. “Brothers, if my time is really so limited, I should go to the scriftorium now.”
“By all means,” the fratrex said. “Meanwhile, we’ll see to other preparations.”
Death was following close behind the woorm.
The Oostish called the cold season winter, but the thing about winter was that it gave farmers and villagers plenty of time to think, shut up in their houses, waiting for the soil to grow food again. When people had too much time to think, Aspar noted, it usually resulted in too many words, Stephen being the perfect case in point.
So the Oostish called winter winter, but they also called it Bearnight and Sundim and Death’s Three Moons. Aspar had never found any reason to give it more than one name, but the last had seemed particularly uninformed. The forest wasn’t dead in winter; it was just licking its wounds. Healing. Gathering its strength to survive the battle known as spring.
Some of the ironoaks the woorm had brushed against had been seedlings when the Skasloi still ruled the world. They had watched in their sturdy, slow way as uncounted tribes of Mannish and Sefry folk passed beneath their boughs and vanished into the distance of years.
They would not see another leaf-bringing. Foul-smelling sap already had begun to seep from cracks in their ancient bark, like pus from a gangrenous wound. The woorm’s venin worked even faster in wood, it seemed, than it did in flesh. The lichens, moss, and ferns that fleeced the trees were already black.
His hand dropped to touch the arrow case at his belt. The weapon inside had come from Caillo Vallaimo, the temple that was the very heart, center, and soul of the Church. He’d been told it could be used only twice, and he had used it once to slay an utin. He’s been ordered to kill the Briar King with it.
But the Briar King wasn’t killing the forest Aspar loved. If anything, the lord of the slinders was fighting to save it. Yes, he was slaughtering men and women, but place their lives against the ironoaks…
Aspar glanced at Winna, but she was staring ahead, intent on the path. Winna understood a lot about him, but these feelings he could never share. Though more comfortable than most in the wild, she still came from the world of hearth and home, the world inside the fences of men. Her heart was tender when it came to other people. But though Aspar loved a few people well, most made little impression on him. Most folk were shadows to him, but the forest was real.
And if the life of the forest could be bought only by the extinction of Mannish kind…
And if he, Aspar, held that choice in his hands…
Well, he’d already had his shot not so long ago, hadn’t he? It was Leshya who had convinced him not to do it, Leshya and the Briar King himself. How many villagers had died since he’d made that decision?
Would the woorm be here now if the Briar King had already perished by his hand?
He didn’t know, of course, and he had no way of knowing. So when he saw the woorm again, should he use the arrow on it or not?
Grim, yes. The monster was killing everything