“You mean to use the Crepling passage. That is the reason you have come.”
Anne glanced at Sir Leafton. “Can you repeat what she just said?” Anne asked the Craftsman.
Leafton opened his mouth, then looked puzzled.
“No, Your Highness,” he said.
“Sir Leafton,” Anne said. “Organize the rest of our defense. I’ll be fine here for the moment.”
“I’m not very comfortable with that, Majesty,” he said.
“Do it. Please.”
He puckered his lips, then sighed. “Yes, Majesty,” he said, and hurried off to direct his men.
Anne turned back to the Sefry. “What is your name?” she asked.
“They call me Mother Uun.”
“Mother Uun, do you know what the Crepling passage is?”
“It is the long tunnel,” the woman said. “It begins in the depths of Eslen castle, and it ends in Eslen-of-Shadows. I am its watcher.”
“Watcher? I don’t understand. Did my father appoint you? My mother?”
The old woman—or at least Anne had the impression that she was old—shook her head. “The first queen in Eslen appointed the first of us. Since then, we have chosen from among ourselves.”
“I don’t understand. What are you watching for?”
The eye grew wider. “Him, of course.”
“Him?”
“You do not know?”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about now.”
“Well, now. How interesting.” Mother Uun stood back a bit. “Would you mind continuing the discussion inside? The sunlight hurts my eye.”
She stood farther aside as six Craftsmen approached, wearing only their padded gambesons. The old woman repeated the instructions she’d given Cazio, and they went past her into the house.
“You Highness?” the Sefry prompted.
But before Anne could answer, Austra’s stifled shriek drew her attention. Her blue eyes were focused high above, and Anne quickly followed the arrow of her gaze.
She saw a tiny figure—Cazio—somehow working himself up the wall above the high, steepled roof. It didn’t look like he had far to go, only a couple of kingsyards.
But on the wall, two armored soldiers with spears were rushing to meet him.
11
Sarnwood
The man looked Aspar up and down with piercing gray eyes and one eyebrow lifted.
“You’re a dead man,” he said.
The fellow didn’t look far from dead himself. He was as spindly as a skeleton, and his gray hair was thin and mussed. The flesh of his face was sun-browned and hung from his skull like an unshaped mask. His words were simple, unironic, and unthreatening, an old man telling things as he saw them.
“You ever seen her?” Aspar asked.
The old man gazed off at the green line of the forest.
“Some say it’s best not to even speak of these things,” he replied.
“I’m going in after her,” Aspar said. “You can help me or not.” He paused. “I’d rather you helped me.”
The old man raised an eyebrow again.
“That wasn’t a threat,” Aspar said quickly.
“Eyah,” the fellow said. “I’ve lived all my life a stone’s throw from the forest. So eyah, I reckon I’ve seen her. Or what she wanted me to see.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean she’s not always the same, ’swhat I mean,” he replied. “One time a bear came down into the hollow. Big black bear. I might have shot it—would have shot it—till she looked at me, let me know. Sometimes she’s a flock of crows. Sometimes a Sefry woman, they say, but I’ve never seen that. Them that see her in Sefry or human shape don’t usually have many breaths left in the lands of fate.”
“How would you know? I mean if anyone saw her…”
“Some of ’em live a little while,” the man said. “So they can tell us. So the rest of us can know.” He leaned nearer. “She only talks to the dead.”
“Then how do people talk to her?”
“They die. Or they take someone dead.”
“What the sceat does that mean?”
“It’s just what they say. She can’t talk the way we do. Or leastwise, she won’t. I reckon she might, only she prefers murder as often as she can get it.” He looked glum. “I reckon every day she’s gonna come out to claim me.”
“Yah.” Aspar sighed. “Anything else you can tell me?”
“Eyah. There’s a trail’ll take you to her. Stay on it, though.”
“Good enough,” Aspar said, turning back toward Ogre.
“Traveler!” the old man called out.
“Yah?”
“You could stay here tonight. Think it over. Have some soup; that way at least you won’t die on an empty stomach.”
Aspar shook his head. “I’m in a hurry.” He started to turn, then glanced back at the man. “If you’re so scared of her, why do you still live here?”
The man looked at him like he was crazy. “I told you. I was born here.”
The old man wasn’t the only one who worried about the Sarnwood. A long picket of poles topped with cow, horse, and deer skulls suggested that others might have given the place an anxious thought or two. Aspar wasn’t sure what the bones were supposed to accomplish, but some of the poles had little platforms about halfway up, made of plaited willow branches, and on them he saw the rotting remains of sheep and goats, bottles he reckoned to be filled with beer or wine, even bunches of blackened flowers. It was as if they figured the witch might be appeased by something but didn’t know exactly what.
The forest itself lay just beyond, slouching down from the hills into the wide valley of the White Warlock. The river itself vanished into its ferny mouth a couple of bowshots north of him. He crawled his regard across every bit of the tree line he could see, trying to take its measure.
Even at a glance it was different from the King’s Forest. The familiar fringe of oak, hickory, witaec, larch, and elm was replaced by high green spears of spruce and hemlock, thickly bunched though currently leafless heads of ironwood, and stands of birch so white that they resembled bones against the dense green conifers. Off toward the river black alder, twisting willow, crack willow, and pine dominated his view.
“Well, Ogre,” he grunted. “What do you think?”
Ogre didn’t opine until they were closer, and then he did it silently, with a bunching of muscles and a studied hesitation that was uncharacteristic of the stallion. Of course he was tired, hungry, and still feeling the effects of the woorm’s poison, but even so…
Aspar found himself trying to recall how old Ogre was as the trail led them beneath the first branches of the Sarnwood. He remembered, didn’t like the answer, and started wondering instead why there should be a path in a forest no one dared enter. What kept it clear?
He had a few hours of daylight left, but the overcast sky and high-reaching evergreens brought dusk early to Aspar and his mount. He strung his bow and rested it on the pommel of his saddle, felt the shifting of massive muscles beneath his thighs as Ogre continued his reluctant way forward, trudging through the frequent streams that Aspar reckoned came from snowmelt in the foothills. Despite the cold, the understory was already verdant with fern, and emerald moss carpeted the ground, as well as the trunks and branches of trees. The forest appeared healthy to the eye, but it didn’t smell right. Even more than the King’s Forest, it seemed somehow diseased.
He thought they were probably about a league in when it finally got dark enough to make camp. It was cold, and Aspar could hear wolves waking up not far away, so he decided he didn’t much care how the witch felt about fire. He gathered tinder, twigs, and branches, set them up in a cone, and with a spark brought it all to life. It wasn’t a big fire, but it was enough to keep one side of him warm. He sat on the corpse of a linden tree and watched the flame feed, wondering glumly if Winna was still alive, if he should have stayed as she had asked.
To hear her last words? Sceat on that.