Stephen dropped Aspar’s bow from trembling hands. He’d been trying to shoot the greffyn, but he’d feared hitting Aspar, and now, incredibly, the beast was dead.
Winna, by his side, started forward, but he held her back.
“There’s nothing you can do for him,” he said. “If you go near, you’ll die, too.”
“I don’t care,” she said huskily. “I don’t care.”
“But he would,” Stephen told her. “I’ll not let you.”
She opened her mouth, probably to argue further, but then around the corner of the keep, wading up the canal, came what could only be the Briar King, dragging a train of thorns behind him. One great step brought him out of the water, and with large and purposeful strides he started toward the King’s Forest.
But then he paused and lifted his nose as if scenting something, and his antlered head turned to regard the fallen figures of Aspar and the greffyn. It moved toward them purposefully.
“It’s happened,” Stephen whispered. “Saints, but it’s happened.” He saw in his mind’s eye the scrifts and tomes he had pored over, the bits of time-shattered clues, the terrible prophecies. And he felt something, in the earth and sky, as if something were broken and sifting away, as if the world itself was bleeding.
As if the end had truly begun.
Which meant nothing much was worth doing, was it?
But he ought to try, he supposed.
He picked up the bow and shot the single remaining arrow. He didn’t know if he actually hit the monster or not, but it certainly didn’t notice. It stooped first upon Aspar, and vines writhed all about him. Then it left him there and moved on to the greffyn. Stephen saw him lift the slain beast in his arms, cradling it like a child, and then walk away, leaving a trail of black springlings in his footsteps.
Behind them, the stones of Cal Azroth began to slowly shatter as the vines pulled it down.
15
Observations Quaint and Curious
“Stephen Darige?”
Stephen glanced up at the page, who wore orange stockings and a fur-trimmed coat of black. He supposed, from his brief acquaintance with her, that this was the best the duchess of Loiyes could do in the way of mourning clothes for her servants, at least on short notice.
Observations and Speculations on the Multicolored Popinjays, he began in his head. Or, the Assorted Maladies of Royal Blood.
“My lord,” the servant repeated, “are you Stephen Darige?”
“That I am,” Stephen allowed wearily, his gaze languidly tracing the carefully manicured lawns of Glenchest. In the distance he could see Crown Prince Charles, the poor saint-touched oaf, playing a game of jackpins with his Sefry jester. Stephen had met the prince four days earlier, on their arrival at Glenchest. Charles hardly seemed aware of the butchering of his family. He hadn’t been in the keep at Cal Azroth when Fend and the changelings came, but was sleeping in the stables after a day of childlike play.
The small footguard assigned to him had much to be grateful for, for they were the only survivors of the household guard that had accompanied the royals to Cal Azroth. While the fortress was rent to pieces by the unnatural thorns of the Briar King, they had easily managed to get Charles out of danger, then sent to Glenchest for help.
“Her Majesty Muriele Dare requests your presence in the Chamber of Sparrows.”
“At what bell?” Stephen asked.
“If you please, you are to follow me.”
“Ah. This instant?”
“If it please you, lord.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
The page looked confused. “Lord?”
“Never mind. Show me the way, good fellow.” He wished the page would stop calling him lord, but the duchess insisted all of her guests be treated as nobility, in address at least.
He followed the boy through the hedges and up a path overarched with twined willows. He mused that while he had once enjoyed such gardens, he found them somehow claustrophobic now. He remembered the great trees of the King’s Forest and had a sudden, powerful urge to be among them, even if it meant enduring Aspar White’s sarcasm and disdain.
What good did I think thousand-year-old maps would be? he wondered. Sometimes it was hard to comprehend that earlier Stephen Darige, so much of him was gone now.
Faint voices touched his saint-blessed ears, intruding on his thoughts.
“… found the bodies. They were monks, as was said, but then so is this Stephen Darige. And of the same order, too.” That was Humfry Thenroesn, councilor to the duchess of Loiyes, such as he was. Stephen could smell the sour brandy of the fellow’s breath on the autumn breeze, though they still hadn’t even entered the manse.
“Darige risked his life for my children. He took wounds for them.” And that was the queen herself.
“So he says,” Thenroesn replied. “We have only his word for that. Perhaps he was one of the invading force, and when he saw they were losing—”
The queen interrupted. “The holter with him slew half of the remaining assassins, and the greffyn, as well.”
Thenroesn sniffed. “Again, Majesty, that is based on hearsay. It is a grave risk to trust this Darige.”
Stephen passed into the arched foyer of the manse. He noticed the walls were patterned with gilded sea serpents.
Humfry’s voice grew prouder. “I have sent a rider to his eminence, Praifec Hespero,” he boasted, as if taking such initiative deserved high praise. “He will surely send someone to confirm Darige’s story. Until such time, I recommend that he be incarcerated.”
There was a pause in which Stephen heard only his own footsteps, and then the queen’s voice came, so chill that even at this distance Stephen shivered.
“Am I to understand that you contacted the praifec without my knowledge?” she asked.
Stephen followed the page down a long hall as Thenroesn suddenly became defensive. “Your Majesty, it is within my prerogative to—”
“Am I to understand,” the queen asked again, “that you contacted the praifec without my knowledge?”
“Yes, Majesty.”
“Duchess, do you have a dungeon in this … this place?”
Stephen recognized the duchess of Loiyes answering. “Yes, dear Majesty.”
“Have this man placed in it, please.”
“But, Your Majesty,” Humfry Thenroesn began, then the duchess cut him off, just as Stephen came to the entrance to the chamber.
“You really should be more careful not to offend my sister-in-law, dear Humfry,” the duchess said. She turned to one of her guards. “Drey, please escort Lord Humfry to one of the danker cells.”
The queen glanced at Stephen, as he stood in the doorway, waiting to be admitted. She was as beautiful as her reputation, but her features were tightly composed. She might have been in fury, or despair, or felt nothing at all, if one had only her expression to read. Yet to Stephen’s senses her voice revealed a heart in turmoil and a soul in torment.
“Dispatch a rider to intercept Lord Humfry’s courier,” the queen told the duchess. “Do no harm unless needs be. Just return him here with his message.”
The duchess signed, and another of the Loiyes guard bowed and rushed off on that errand.
The queen turned her attention back to Stephen.
“Fraleth Darige. Please join us,” she said.
Stephen bowed. “Your Majesty.”
The queen sat in a modest armchair and wore a gown of black brocade with a collar that stood stiffly up her neck. The duchess, seated in a chair next to her, was also clad in black, though her neckline was less modest.
“Fraleth Darige, two of my daughters are dead. Tell me why.” To Stephen, her voice was a raw wound, despite its flat and measured tone.
“Your Majesty,” he said, “I do not know. As I told the duchess and her councilor, I discovered the plot by chance at the monastery d’Ef, when Aspar White, your holter, came to us injured. We followed Desmond Spendlove and his men to near here, where they met with Sefry outlaws and performed forbidden encrotacnia. I believe that is how they had the gates of your keep opened from the inside.”