The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [115]
“Sceat,” he murmured. “It worked.”
“Keep him alive,” he told Leshya, waving at the monk.
She was already binding the man’s hand with cords. “If it can be done,” she said. “I’ve a few questions to ask him myself.”
Aspar hesitated. She had helped in the fight. She had probably saved his life when the Briar King came. But trusting her—trusting any Sefry—was a foolish proposition.
She looked back up, as if he had shouted his thoughts. Her violet gaze held his for an instant, and then she shook her head in disgust and returned to her task.
Aspar took another good look around the clearing, then started toward Stephen and Winna, his step feeling lighter.
It grew heavier again when he saw Ehawk. The boy was sprawled on the grass, pawing weakly at an arrow in his thigh. The ground around him was slick with blood. Winna and Stephen were already ministering to him.
“Hello, Aspar,” Stephen said without looking.
“It’s good to see you up and—ah—alive,” Aspar said.
“Yes, it’s good to be that way,” Stephen replied, not looking up from his task. “Winna, put something in his mouth so he doesn’t bite his tongue off.”
“I can deal with that, if you’re not up to it,” Aspar offered.
“No,” Stephen said. “I trained for this. I’ll do it. But I could use some foolhag for this wound, to stop the bleeding.”
Aspar blinked. The last time Stephen had confronted a bleeding wound, he’d collapsed in a fit of vomiting and been useless. Now he bent over Ehawk, his hands slick with blood, working quick, sure, and steady. The boy had certainly changed in the few months he had known him.
“I’ll find some,” he said. “Ehawk, how are you, boy?”
“I’ve f-felt better,” he gasped.
“I’ll bring saelic for the pain,” Aspar promised. “You just breathe deep and slow. Stephen knows what he’s doin’.”
He went after the herbs, hoping that was true.
As soon as Ehawk’s bleeding was staunched and his leg bandaged, they put him on his horse, loaded the still-unconscious monk on Angel, and set off to get as far from the sedos as possible before nightfall.
“We’re going the wrong way,” Leshya said.
“I picked it, I’m in charge, it can’t be the wrong way,” Aspar pointed out.
“We should be following the monk’s trail.”
“What trail? The Briar King’s hunt missed him, that’s all.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “I think he came to bring them a message.” She held up a document with some sort of seal on it.
“That’s a Church seal,” Stephen said from where he was riding by Ehawk, some ten yards away.
“Well, your eyes are still good,” Aspar said.
“Yes.” Stephen smiled.
“How are you?”
“A little confused. I don’t know what’s happened since—well, whatever it was happened.”
“You don’t remember?” Winna asked.
Stephen trotted nearer. “Not really. I remember going into the sedos and feeling strange. Or, rather, not feeling much of anything. The bodies made me sick—I was going to be sick—and then suddenly I didn’t care. They might as well have been stones.”
“The letter?” Leshya interrupted.
“Stephen is our friend,” Winna snapped. “We thought he was dead. You’re going to have to tend your own beehive for a breath or two.”
Leshya shrugged and pretended interest in the forest.
“Was when you came down you fell,” Aspar said.
Stephen shook his head. “I don’t remember that, or anything else until I woke up on the sedos and saw you fighting the monk.”
“That was a nice shot you made. Didn’t know you could handle a bow so well.”
“I can’t,” Stephen said.
“Then—?”
“You remember how I hit Desmond Spendlove with his knife? Sometimes I can see something done and—well, do it. It doesn’t always work, and never with anything complicated. I can’t watch someone fight with a sword and learn how to do it, though I might be able to make some of the strokes. But to know when to do them—that’s different.”
Shooting a bow isn’t that simple either, Aspar thought. You have to know the weapon, allow for the wind . . .
Something was different about Stephen, but he couldn’t say what.
“That was one of the, ah, saint gifts