The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [184]
He handed her his water. “Drink it all,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Aspar—”
“Hush. Don’t die.”
And with that he went softly through the grass, coming around behind the strange growth of trees.
He edged around until he saw the man there and recognized with relief that it wasn’t the Vaix.
He closed his eyes, trying to remember, back through a haze of fever and time. Trying to be sure.
He stepped around. The man looked up.
The passage into the Vhenkherdh wasn’t covered with a door or any such thing. It was just a twisty little path back through the trees.
The man shouted at the top of his lungs, grabbed the hilt of his sword, and started to stand.
Aspar’s ax hit him between the eyes. He sat back down.
Aspar went back and got Leshya. She still was breathing, and her eyes opened again when she saw him.
“Done?”
“Not by half,” he said. “Come along now.”
He took her arrows and put them in his quiver, then carried her to the Vhenkherdh.
“Now, listen,” he said. “I need you to crawl on your belly until you’re in there, do you hear?”
“I don’t understand.”
“When I went in before, it was just for a few moments. For Winna, out here, it was three days. Do you see?”
“I’ve lost most of my blood,” she said. “It’s hard to think.”
“Yah. Can you crawl?”
“It’s stupid, but yes.”
“Just do it,” he said. “It’ll hurt; I’m sorry. But I have to see something. It will help me, werlic?”
He tried not to think about what she was feeling as she drew up onto her elbows and inched into the place. He followed a step behind her, wishing he could help, knowing it had to be this way.
The color of the faint light on her faded, and then she was gone.
He moved up to just that point and drew his hood to cut out any other light, and he saw her again, a bloody shadow.
Beyond Leshya he could make out a few vague shapes, all the dark red ghosts, all apparently immobile. He watched, knowing he had to make the right choices, glad he had a little time.
The Vaix was easy to make out because he held the feysword, and it glowed the color of gore dripped in water. Aspar took careful aim and shot at his neck. The arrow crossed into the same space as Leshya had, faded, and slowed to a snail’s pace.
He shot at the Sefry three more times, then located another target, which, as his eyes grew used to the light, was pretty obviously an utin. Its head was turned away, but he aimed for the ear and then the inner thigh of one of the legs. He spent the rest of his shafts on the thing, because he couldn’t be sure who the other shadows were.
He sat down and sharpened his dirk and then his ax. He had a bite to eat and let it settle. He walked over to the battleground and found a lance, which he broke down into a stabbing spear.
Then he went back to the Vhenkherdh and went in.
As before, his heartbeat sped quickly into a buzz, like a mosquito’s, and time went strange.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AWAKE
NEIL COUNTED only four men with Robert, all in black leather. They all carried themselves as if they knew how to fight.
“All alone?” Robert asked.
Neil didn’t reply, but he noticed that Alis was nowhere to be seen.
He watched them get closer.
“You’ll pardon me if I don’t make a conversation of this,” the prince said. “Given how our last talk went, I doubt that you’re disappointed.”
Robert drew the feysword, which glowed even more brightly than when Neil had last seen it. It looked like it had been forged from a lightning bolt.
“The music offends me,” the prince confided. “An old friend thought I might like it, but he clearly doesn’t know my tastes.” He stopped and looked down at Neil’s sword and hauberk where they lay on the ground. His eyebrows arched, and his eyes glittered oddly in the torchlight.
Neil had killed his first man when he had had eleven winters, with a spear. He had killed his second a nineday later. He wasn’t strong enough to use a broadsword until he was fifteen.
He threw the first spear, feeling the motion come back to him, as natural as walking. His arm didn’t protest at all, and the shaft flew true, straight into Robert’s shoulder,