The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [56]
But he’d never seen a greffyn before this year, either, or a Briar King.
“I can take you there, master holter,” Algaf said.
“Your mother just told you to stay away from the forest,” Aspar said. “It’s fine advice. You just tell me where, and I’ll have a look before sundown.”
“You’ll stay with us, will you?” the woman asked.
“I wouldn’t impose,” Aspar said. “We’ll pitch a camp in your field, if we may.”
“Stay in the barn,” the woman said. “It won’t be an imposition—it’ll be a comfort.” She couldn’t quite meet his eyes.
“Well enough,” Aspar said. “Thank you for your kindness.” He motioned to the Wattau. “Ehawk, you come with me. We’ll go see if this thing left any sign.”
Aspar wrinkled his nose at the smell.
“Don’t touch it,” Aspar warned Ehawk, who had bent to trace the track with his finger.
“Why, Master White?”
“I touched a greffyn track once, and it made me ill. Killed smaller creatures outright. I’ve no idea what left that, but it’s nothing I know, and when I see things I don’t know in the King’s Forest, I’ve learned to be careful about ’em.”
“It’s big,” Ehawk observed.
“Yah. And six toes, yet. Do they have anything leaves tracks like this up your way?”
“No.”
“Mine either,” Aspar said. “And that smell?”
“I’ve never smelled the like,” the boy admitted. “But it is foul.”
“I’ve known that scent before,” Aspar said. “In the mountains, where I found the Briar King’s barrow.” He sighed. “Well, let’s go back down. Tomorrow we’ll track this thing.”
“Something’s tracking it already,” Ehawk said.
“Eh? What do you see?”
The boy knelt and pointed, and Aspar saw he was right. There was another set of tracks, small, almost child-size, these in soft-soled shoes. The prints were so faint, even his trained eye had skipped over them.
“Those are good eyes you have there, Wattau,” Aspar said.
“They might be traveling together,” the boy allowed.
“Yah. Might be. Come along.”
Brean was the woman’s name, and she served them chicken stew, probably better than she and the boy had eaten in months. Aspar ate sparingly, hoping to leave them some when they’d gone.
That night they slept in the barn. The dogs, as Brean had claimed, did bark all night, for leagues in all directions and probably out of earshot, too. There was fear in their voices, and Aspar did not sleep well.
The next day they rose early and went utin hunting.
Unfortunately, the tracks didn’t go far—they vanished about twenty yards into the woods.
“The ground is still soft,” Aspar said. “And this beast is heavy. There ought to be tracks.”
“In the stories I heard growing up, utins could shrink to the size of a gnat or turn into moss,” Winna said. “It could be hiding right beneath our feet.”
“That’s just stories,” Aspar said.
“Greffyns used to be just stories, too,” she replied.
“But the stories didn’t have it all right,” Stephen pointed out. “Each tale and account I read of the Briar King had only a few words of truth about him. And the real greffyn was very different from phay-story greffyns.”
“But real, yah?”
“Werlic,” Aspar agreed. “I never trusted those stories.”
“You never trust anything except what you see with your own two eyes,” Winna shot back.
“And why should I? All it ever took to convince me there was such a thing as a greffyn was to see one. All it will ever take to convince me a beast that weighs half a ton can turn into moss is to see it. I’m a simple man.”
“No,” Stephen said. “You’re a skeptical man. That’s kept you alive when others would have died.”
“Are we agreeing about this?” Aspar asked, one eyebrow raised.
“More or less. It’s clear that many things we once considered legend have a basis in fact. But no one has actually seen a greffyn or an utin since ancient times. Stories grow and change in the telling, so no, we can’t trust them to be reliable. The only way to sort out truth from invention is with our own senses.