The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [183]
“Now, that’s just silly,” Stephen said. “You won your position through lies, murder, and betrayal, and now you’re asking for my loyalty? Would you like me to lie down and let you piss on me, too?”
“You aren’t Stephen Darige,” the fratrex said.
Stephen chuckled, then reached out with his full might. “You’re going to wish you were wrong about that,” he said.
Hespero reached back, and the lands of fate shrank away, and Stephen was holding Hespero, a waurm, Winna, Zemlé, himself…
It was the same fight all over again, the fight to keep himself whole as he had on the faneway, except before he had had Kauron’s help. This time he was Kauron, the Jester, the Black Heart of Terror.
Which meant he was alone.
Still, Hespero’s gifts seemed made to be broken by his. Until, that is, lightning ripped them apart and sent Stephen sprawling, his muscles pulled into balls like snails trying to retreat into their shells, pain shattering his concentration. He knew that somehow, against the odds, Hespero had won.
But he hadn’t, Stephen realized as he opened his eyes and found Anne standing there, shimmering as if he were gazing at her through the heat of an oven.
“What have we here?” she asked.
It wasn’t easy, but Stephen ignored her as best he could, because to stand a chance he needed Hespero’s gifts and needed them now. The fratrex was unconscious, and that made it easier. He drank greedily from the well that was Hespero.
“I know you,” Anne said, wagging her finger at him.
“You threatened me in the place of the Faiths. Not in that skin, but it was you.”
A barrier of some sort suddenly snapped down between him and the churchman.
“Stop that,” Anne said. “Listen to me when I’m talking to you.”
Stephen backed away, trying to reestablish his connection with Hespero and finish the job, but the Fratrex Prismo might as well have been a thousand leagues away.
He looked at Anne and laughed.
“You think it’s funny?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper in its fury.
“That was me,” he said, “but I didn’t know. Dreams, you see? It was all in my dreams. Except in my dreams it was you terrifying me, when I believed I was only Stephen Darige. In your dreams it was me terrifying you, when you believed you were only Anne.”
He rose up from his knees. “And now we are both almost who we were in our dreams. And I’ll say now as I did then: We should join together, you and I, bright king and dark queen. Don’t you see? We’re male and female principle of the same thing. Nothing could stand against us.”
Anne just stared at him for a long moment, those awful eyes slitted to hint at the mind whirling behind them.
“You’re right,” she said. “I see it now. I understand. But you know what? I don’t need you. Nothing can stand against me as it is.”
When Aspar was sure he wasn’t being followed, he bound his wounds and slept for a few bells in the crook of a tree. Then he started back to the valley.
He reached it just before dawn and waited until there was enough light to see who, if anyone, was still there.
He made out a still figure in the grass about fifty yards ahead of him.
Closer, he saw it was Leshya, lying propped against a stone. Her head turned slowly as he approached.
“Another bell,” she coughed, “and you wouldn’t have seen me at all.”
She glanced down and he saw that she was holding her bowels in.
“Doesn’t really hurt anymore,” she said.
He dismounted and pulled out his knife. He pulled off his broon and shirt and began cutting the shirt into wide strips.
“No point in that,” Leshya said.
“There might be,” Aspar said. “I know something Fend doesn’t know, something you don’t know, something only I and the Briar King know.”
The slit down her belly was fairly neat. Fend’s work, for sure.
“He wanted me to tell you he’ll find you,” she said. “Said he never imagined you could be such a coward.”
“Werlic,” Aspar replied. “He went in the Vhenkherdh, but he hasn’t come out, has he?”
“No.”
“Did he leave anyone to guard?”
“One fellow, hidden just in the entrance. I see him now and then. He’s careless.