The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [97]
“Witch’s Mountain,” he translated for Ehan’s sake.
“Well,” Ehan considered, “that was easy.”
“And probably still wrong,” Stephen said. “But it’s the best guess I have until I’ve translated the epistle. I think I may have a start on that.”
Off in the distance a clarion note soared.
“You’ll have to finish it on horseback,” Ehan said hurridly. “That’s the alarm. Come on, quickly now.”
He gestured, and two other monks hurried over, packed the scrifti and scrolls Stephen had selected into weather-sound bags, and stooped their way out of the scriftorium. Stephen followed, grabbing a few stray items. He didn’t even have time for one last glance.
Outside, three horses stood stamping, their eyes rolling as the monks loaded them with the precious books. Stephen strained to hear what was upsetting them, but at first even his blessed senses found nothing.
The valley seemed quiet, in fact, beneath a cold, clear sky. The stars shone so large and bright that they seemed unreal, like those seen in a dream, and for a moment Stephen wondered if he was dreaming—or dead. There were some who said that ghosts were deluded spirits who did not understand their fate and tried desperately to continue in the world they knew.
Perhaps all his companions were dead. Anne and her army of shades would batter insubstantially at the walls of Eslen, while its defenders felt little more than a vague chill at their presence. Aspar would slip off to fight for the forest he loved, a specter more terrifying than even Grim the Raver. And Stephen—he would continue to quest after mysteries at the behest of the dead fratrex and the dead Ehan.
When had he died, then? At Cal Azroth? At Khrwbh Khrwkh? Either seemed likely.
He heard it then, the rush of a breath through lungs so long that it sounded a note far below the lowest that could be stroked from a bass croth. It groaned just above the pitch sung by rocks and stones and had at first been hidden in those sounds. Now he felt, more than heard, sand rubbing from stone, limbs snapping, and a vast weight in motion.
The horn stopped blowing.
“What is that?” Stephen whispered.
Ehan stood a few feet away, whispering hastily with another monk, a gray-haired fellow Stephen had never seen before. The two briefly embraced, and the gray-hair hurried off.
“Just come on,” Ehan said. “If it’s what we think it is, we don’t have time to spare. We’ve a few men waiting for us at the lower end of the valley, making sure nothing’s coming that way.”
“What about the fratrex?”
“Someone has to bait it to stay here for a while.”
“What are you talking about?”
His mind raced back to recall the whispered conversation between Ehan and the other man; he hadn’t been paying attention, but his ears ought to have heard it anyway.
He had it now. “A woorm?” he gasped.
Images crowded into his mind, all from tapestries, illustrations, children’s tales, and ancient legends. He stared up at the hillside.
In the faint starlight he saw the motion of trees, a long, snaky line of them. How long was it? A hundred kingsyards?
“The fratrex can’t stay and fight that,” Stephen said.
“He won’t be alone,” Ehan said. “Someone has to delay it here, make it believe its prize is still in d’Ef.”
“Its prize?”
“What it’s after,” Ehan said, the exasperation becoming plain in his voice. “You.”
“FIRE IS a wonderful thing,” Cazio said happily. He used his native tongue so he would understand himself. “A woman is a wonderful thing. A sword is a wonderful thing.”
He reclined on a velvet couch next to the great hearth in the grand salon of Glenchest, one half of him baking and the other pleasantly warm and cushioned. If the fireplace was not lit, a man easily could walk in and stand up; that was how big it was, a giant slice of orange, a half-moon on the horizon, Austra’s smile inverted.
He reached lazily for the bottle of wine the duchess had given him. It wasn’t wine, actually, but a bitter greenish tonic that had far more bite than the blood of Saint