The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [31]
That brought Stephen to the end of the first sheet. He lifted it and went to the next and saw that it was different. The hand was the same, but the characters weren’t all Virgenyan and neither was the language.
“Like the epistle,” he murmured. “A cipher.”
He lifted his pen to begin the work of translating it and realized with a start that his hand had been in motion while he’d been reading. He looked to see what he had written, and when he did, crawlers went up his neck. It was in Vahiian, and the hand was an oddly angular scrawl not at all his own:
SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS IN THE MOUNTAIN. IT DOES NOT MEAN YOU WELL.
TELL NO ONE YOU’VE FOUND THE BOOK.
CHAPTER SIX
A MESSAGE FROM MOTHER
ASPAR DROPPED belly-down when he saw the greffyn. That put it out of sight, but he still could feel the burn of its yellow eyes through the trees. He glanced up at Leshya in the branches above him. She touched her eye with two fingers, then shook her head no. It hadn’t seen him.
Gradually he raised his head until he was peering down the streambed.
He counted forty-three riders. Three of them were Sefry, the rest human. But that didn’t end the count of the procession. He’d spied at least three greffyns: horse-size beasts with beaked heads and catlike bodies, if one discounted the scales and coarse hair that covered them. Four vaguely manlike utins loped alongside the horses, mostly on all fours, occasionally raising their spidery limbs to grasp and swing from low branches. A manticore like the one he and Leshya had killed that morning finished up the unlikely company.
Grim, Aspar wondered, is all of that really for me?
He all but held his breath until they had passed. Then he and Leshya compared their count.
“I think there may be one more greffyn or something about that size and shape,” she said. “Following a few dozen kingsyards behind and deeper in the woods. Other than that, that’s about the size of it.”
“I wonder what they left up in the pass.”
She thought about that for a moment. “The lead riders. Did you get a good look at them?”
“They were Sefry. Your lot?”
“Yes. Aitivar. But the three leading, those were all three Vaix.”
“Vaix?”
“Aitivar warriors.”
“Only three?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. The Mannish are probably fighting men. But there are only twelve Vaix at any given time. They aren’t ordinary warriors. They’re fast, strong, very skilled, very hard to kill.”
“Like that Hansan knight?”
“Hard to kill, not impossible. But they have feyswords and other arms inherited from the old times.” Her mouth quirked. “My point is, Fend has a quarter of his warriors out looking for you. You should be flattered.”
“Not flattered enough. He’s not with them.” He frowned. “How do you know Fend is their master?”
“Because I believe he drank the blood of the waurm you killed. I think he’s the Blood Knight, which means the Aitivar have won.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Well, this isn’t the time to talk about it,” she said.
“No, that would’ve been sometime in the last four months.”
“I told you—”
“Yah. When there’s a chance, you’re telling me. But sceat, yah, now we’ve got to get out of here. So, back to the question: How many do you think they have in the pass?”
“Too many,” she said. “But I can’t think of another way to leave.”
“I can,” Aspar said.
She lifted an eyebrow.
Aspar grabbed at a scraggly yellow pine as the rotten shale under his foot shifted and then snapped. He watched it turn in the air, the flat fragments almost seeming to glide on their long way down.
He felt the pine start to pull up from the roots and, with a grunt, pushed with the foot that still had purchase—and fell forward.
His target was a sapling growing up from the narrow edge below. He caught it, but it bent like a green bow, and he lost his grip and went back out into the air, turning, flailing for any purchase at all. Everything seemed to be out of reach.
Then something caught him. At first he had the impression of a giant spiderweb because it sagged as his weight went into it. He lay there for a moment, blinking, feeling