The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [54]
“Grim,” Aspar muttered. “Haergrim Raver, what is happening to my forest?”
Stephen cast a glance at Winna. “He didn’t mean—”
“I know,” she said. “His hardness comes from habit, not from his heart. It’s like those metal shells the knights in Eslen wear.” She kept her eyes on the holter as his figure grew smaller against the loom of black. “He loves this forest,” she said softer. “More than anything. More than he loves me.”
“I doubt that,” Stephen said.
“Don’t,” she replied. “It doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t make me jealous. It’s good to know a man can feel so much, even one who has been through what Aspar has. It’s good to know a man has a passion, and not just hollow bones in him.” She glanced at Stephen, and her green eyes looked almost gray in the overcast morning. “I love these woods, too—I grew up at the other edge of them. But you and I can never know what he feels for this place. That’s the only thing that I’m jealous of—not that he feels it, but that I don’t.”
Stephen nodded. “What about your family? Are you worried about them?”
“Yah,” she said. “Oh, yah. I try not to think of it. But my father, he’d be the first to leave, if things went too wrong. If he had notice. If he had time.”
Aspar had dismounted now, some distance away. Stephen heard the squeak of him coming off the leather saddle. As a novice priest, Stephen had walked the faneway of Saint Decmanis. The saint had improved his senses, his memory—and other things. He heard Aspar curse, too, invoking the Raver.
“Do you have an explanation for this?” Winna asked. “Why this is happening? What those thorns are, exactly? Did you find anything in the royal scriftorium?”
“I know little more than you do,” Stephen admitted. “They are connected in folklore and legend to the Briar King, but that much we already know from experience.”
The fortress of Cal Azroth was still visible behind them, across the Warlock River, a mass of twining thorns and little more. That was where they had last encountered the Briar King. A path of the vines led here, to the forest, where they seemed to have taken hold.
“Why would he destroy his own forest?”
“I don’t know,” Stephen said. “Some stories say he will destroy everything, make the world new from the ashes of the old.” He sighed. “Half a year ago I considered myself learned, and the Briar King was no more than a name in a children’s song. Now nothing I know seems true.”
“I know how you feel,” Winna replied.
“He’s motioning us forward,” Stephen said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Aspar watched his companions approach. He calmed his breathing.
Sceat on it, he thought to himself. What is, is. No use getting all mawkin’ about it. That won’t help a thing. I’ll find the Briar King, kill him, and put an end to this. That’s that.
By the time they’d arrived, he even managed to force a smile.
“Fast-growin’ weed,” he said, tilting his head at the dying forest.
“That it is,” Stephen allowed.
“I reckon all of this sprang from his trail,” Aspar said. “That makes him easy to track, at least. Unless this stuff has already spread everywhere.”
It hadn’t. Only a bell later, they found trees that were only half covered with the stuff, and finally not at all. Aspar felt relief sink down his body and toward his toes. There was still time to do something. It wasn’t all lost yet.
“Let’s see,” Aspar said. “We’ve another two hours of daylight yet, but I expect rain at dusk. Stephen, since we’re working for the praifec now, I reckon you ought to mark all this on your maps—how far this stuff has spread. Winna and I will set up camp,