The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [138]
“Right,” she said. “Right. It’s just—something doesn’t feel right.”
“Nothing is right,” Aspar replied.
“I know,” she said calmly. “But we’re going to fix it, werlic. So our child can grow up.”
“Yah,” he said, his voice tight.
“I’ve thought of names,” she said.
“The Ingorn don’t name children until they’re two years old,” Aspar said roughly.
“Why not?”
“Because most don’t live,” he said. “If you don’t name them, they can try to be born again. Them with names die true deaths.”
“That’s stupid,” Winna said. “Why name anyone, ever?”
“Because eventually our names find us, just like our deaths.”
“This child isn’t going to die, Aspar. I know that in my heart. I don’t know why you would try to—” Her voice cracked.
They rode along for a moment.
“What names?” he asked.
“Never mind,” she answered.
He glanced over at her. “I always thought Armann was a good name,” he said.
She frowned, and at first he thought the conversation really was over. But then she nodded. “Yes,” she allowed. “My father would like that.”
“And if it’s a girl?”
“I like Emmer,” she said. “Or Sally.”
A bell later the wind shifted to blow from the woods, and the scent of corruption was so strong that Aspar gagged and lost his breakfast, then lay over his horse’s neck dry-heaving.
“For the saints, Asp, what’s wrong?” Winna asked.
“The smell.”
“Smell?” She sniffed at the air. “I smell something a little rotten,” she said. “Nothing to be sick over. Are you all right?”
“Yah,” he said.
But he wasn’t. When they got nearer, he saw some others wrinkling their noses, but to him the stench was so overpowering that he could hardly think. He wanted anger to hold him up, get him through it, but mostly he felt sick, tired, and sad. Something deep in his chest told him it was time to lie down and die, along with the forest he had known.
Because it was gone.
Every natural tree had rotted into viscous black slime, and growing from their putrefied corpses were the triumphant black thorns he first had seen growing from the footprints of the Briar King.
But it wasn’t just the vines now. They had been joined by trees with long saw-toothed leaves, barrel-shaped plants that resembled giant club moss, leafless, scaly bushes. He recognized some of them as being like those he had seen in the Sarnwood, but although unnatural, those had seemed healthy. These were not; like the ironoak, yew, poplar, and pine they had sprung from, these plants were dying, too.
So were the beasts. They came across the corpses of a greffyn and an utin. It looked like the first had killed the second, started to eat it, and then died of its own wounds.
Later they came across other sedhmhari that appeared simply to have dropped dead, perhaps of hunger.
There were no birds at all, no sounds except those they and their horses made. And for Aspar the smell only got worse and worse as they climbed up into the Lean Gable Hills and then back down along the edge of what once had been the Foxing Marshes but were now noisome meres infested with the giant scabby mosslike plants. There were things still moving in the water, big things, but none came close enough to see.
“This is insane,” Emfrith said as darkness started to settle in and Aspar hunted for a campsite. “What could have done this?”
Aspar didn’t feel like answering and didn’t, but the knight persisted.
“And what refuge do you hope to find in this desert? And where will we find supplies? We don’t have that much food or wine left, and I wouldn’t drink from any of the springs we’ve seen. There’s nothing to hunt.”
“I know a place where we might find supplies,” Aspar said. “We can be there by tomorrow.”
“And then what?”
“Then we head into the mountains.”
“You think they won’t be like this?”
No, Aspar thought. They’ll be worse.
They reached the White Warlock the next morning, crossing the ancient Brew Bridge, a narrow span of pitted black stone. The river was no longer the clear stream that had inspired its