The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [48]
“You reckoned I’d be more gullible.”
“I didn’t ask you to believe it,” she snapped.
“Yah,” he muttered, waving at the darkness. “So Fend’s after me because he works for the Vhelny thing and he’s afraid the Briar King might have told me something or other.”
“Either that or Fend’s just using his power to indulge a personal vendetta. You did take one of his eyes.”
“Not a lot of love between us,” Aspar admitted. “Not much at all.”
“Any other questions?” Leshya asked, her voice sounding stiff.
“Yah,” he said. “Just what are you hoping the Briar King passed on to me?”
She nodded and was still for a long moment. “We made the Briar King,” she finally said.
“What?”
“The Skasloi. The Xhes and sedos thrones existed before any history I know. We may have created them, or some elder race, but we believe they were created.”
“I thought the saints created the sedoi.”
“Not the saints as your people worship them. We simply don’t know. But the Vhen—the essence of life and death—that was in everything, and it had no throne, no being that controlled it. After we brought the world back from the brink of death, the Skasloi decided that the Vhen needed its own guardian, its own focus. So they created the Briar King—or, more specifically, they created the Vhenkherdh, the heart of life, and from that he was born.”
“And you hope he told me where that place is?”
“Did he?”
“No.”
But suddenly he did know.
She saw it on his face. “You’ve been there. That’s why you want to go back. Not to just die there.”
“It’s only a feeling,” he said.
“Of course. I’ve been stupid. He wouldn’t have put a map in your hand.”
“But he’s dead. What can we do now?”
“Without his protection, everything will die. But if he is reborn, we might have a chance.”
“You think that’s possible?”
“I don’t know. But it’s something, isn’t it?”
“Then why haven’t you been in more of a hurry to leave?”
“Because I think you’re the key to whatever must happen, and I didn’t want you to die before you knew where to go or die on the journey from starting too early.”
“Well,” he said. “Well. I need to chew on all of this for a while.”
“Fine. Shall I take first watch?”
“I’ll take it.”
She didn’t say anything else, but he heard the rustle of her situating herself. He suddenly felt heavy and stupid. He listened to her breathing.
“Thanks,” he said. “I don’t always mean to be like I am. I just—I like things simple.”
“I know,” she replied.
He went outside. The stars were out, but the moon was no more than a faint glow in the west. He studied the sky, watching for something dark moving against the constellations, straining his ears for any distant warning.
The Aitivar had been mounted. If they stayed that way, they would have to go back up and out of the pass and wind their way here. That could put them far behind, but if he really had seen some sort of flying beast…
But he didn’t see or hear anything, so he let his thoughts wander ahead. Tomorrow they ought to be out of the hills and into the river plain of the White Warlock. If they were where he thought they were, another day or two would get them to Haemeth, where he’d left Winna and Ehawk.
But if he was dragging a war band of monsters after him, was that really what he wanted to do?
What did he want to do?
That hardly mattered, did it? Because he would have to do what the Sarnwood witch had geosed him to do.
He hadn’t told Leshya about that, had he? Why?
He didn’t have the answers, and if the stars and the wind did, they weren’t telling. And so his watch passed, and then he slept.
The next morning he and Leshya marched across the Fells, hugging the thin tree lines that followed streams for cover, keeping their thoughts to themselves. But at midday they were working their way down the last line of leans, and he caught a glimpse of the Warlock in the distance before they slipped beneath the comforting branches of a small wood. There wasn’t much old growth. Wood was cut here, and often. Mannish trails were everywhere. Still, it kept them out from under the sky, at least for a little