The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [148]
“You know where that is?” Aspar asked.
“In a minute,” Stephen said absently. “I’m still thinking this through.”
“No, please, take your time,” Aspar muttered.
“The second one, ‘Mother Devouring’—that’s the fane I went in, I’m certain of it. The first one Leshya led us to. That’s one of the titles of Marhirheben.
“Aspar, back when you were tracking the greffyn, after you sent me off to d’Ef, you said you found a sacrifice at a sedos. Where was that, exactly?”
“About five leagues east of here, on Taff Creek.”
“Taff,” Stephen considered. Then he reached into his saddle, back where his maps were rolled up. He selected the one he wanted, then sat down cross-legged and rolled it out on the ground.
“What map is that?” Leshya asked, peering down at it.
“Stephen is in the habit of carrying maps a thousand years out of date,” Aspar said.
“Yes,” Stephen said, “but it may have finally done some good. This is a copy of a map made during the time of the Hegemony. The place-names have been altered to make sense to the Vitellian ear and to be written in the old scrift. Where would the Taff be, Aspar?”
The holter bent over and studied the yellowed paper. “The forest is different,” he said. “There’s more of it. But the rivers are near the same.” He thrust his finger at a small, squiggling line. “Thereabout,” he said.
“See the name of the creek?” Stephen asked.
“Tavata,” Winna read.
Stephen nodded. “It’s a corruption of Alotersian tadvat, I’ll wager—which means ‘specter.’ ”
“That’s it, then,” Leshya said.
Aspar made a skeptical noise.
Stephen moved his finger over a bit. “So the one on the Taff is the first. The one I stepped into is the second, and about here. That last one was about here.” He placed his finger on curved lines indicating hills. One, oddly, had a dead tree sketched on its summit.
“Does that mean anything to you, Aspar? Do you know anything about that place?”
Aspar frowned. “It used to be where the old people made sacrifice to Grim. They hung ’em on that Naubagm tree.”
“Haergrim the Raver?”
Aspar nodded slowly, his face troubled.
“I’ve never heard of Pel,” Stephen allowed, “but the fact that both he and Haergrim are connected to rage is interesting, isn’t it?”
“I follow you now,” Leshya said. “So far, the monks have been moving east, and we’ve seen the first three of them. So where is the fourth?”
“Huskwood. In Vadhiian, Vhydhrabh.” He moved his finger east, until it came to rest on the d’Ef River. There was a town labeled Vitraf.
“Whitraff!” Winna exploded. “It’s a village! It’s still there!”
“Or so we hope,” Stephen said grimly.
“Yah,” Aspar said. “We’d best go see. And let me know when our prisoner wakes. He might be convinced to tell us more about this.”
But when they checked him, the monk was dead.
They gave the monk a holter’s funeral—which amounted to nothing more than laying him supine with his hands folded on his chest—and set off across the Brog-y-Stradh uplands. The forest often dissolved into heathered meadows and lush, ferny cloonys. Even with winter set to pounce, in these parts, the King’s Forest seemed to teem with life.
Stephen could tell that Aspar and Leshya saw things he didn’t. They rode at the front like dour siblings, guiding Ehawk’s mount. Winna had ridden with them for a time, but now she dropped back.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“I feel fine,” Stephen said. But it wasn’t completely true—there was something nagging at him. He couldn’t tell her, though, that when he had awakened on the mound and grabbed Ehawk’s bow, he’d very nearly put an arrow into her instead of the monk.
Those first few heartbeats, he had felt a hatred that he couldn’t have imagined before, and could not now truly recall. Not for Winna specifically, but for everything living. It had faded so suddenly that he almost doubted he’d truly felt it.
He’d remembered dreams of some sort on first waking, as well, but those were gone, too,