“This one still has writing on it!”
“So?”
Stephen pressed his sheet of paper against the stone and began blackening it with his charcoal.
“What in Grim’s eye are you doing?”
“Taking a rubbing—I can study it later. See? The writing comes through.” He held the sheet up, and Aspar saw, indeed, that in addition to the grain of the stone itself and the impressions of lichens, he could make out a number of angular marks.
“Ancient Vitellian,” Stephen said triumphantly. “This marks the boundary of two meddixships, and tells the distance to the next and last guardtower.” He squinted. “But here they call this road the Bloody Trace. I wonder what that means? The maps all mark it as the Vio Caldatum.”
“Why is your head full of this?” Aspar asked.
“It’s my calling—ancient languages, history.”
“Sounds useful.”
“If we have no past, we have no future,” Stephen replied cheerfully.
“The past is dead, and the Bloody Trace is an old superstition.”
“Aha! So you’ve heard the name. Local folklore? How does it go?”
“You wouldn’t be interested.”
“I just said I was.”
“Then you shouldn’t be. It’s old pig-wife talk.”
“Maybe. But sometimes the folk preserve a primitive sort of wisdom that scholarship has forgotten. Real bits of history, packaged up in simple conventions, made entertaining so common people can understand it, distorted here and there by misunderstandings, but still keeping some truth for those with the wits and education to riddle it out.”
Aspar laughed. “Makes me proud to be ‘folk,’ ” he said.
“I didn’t mean to imply you were simple. Please, can’t you tell me? About the Bloody Trace?”
“If you get back on your damned horse and start riding again.”
“Oh—certainly, of course.” He carefully rolled up his paper, placed it in a canvas sack, and remounted.
“Not much to tell, really,” the holter said, as they started along once more. “It’s spelt that long ago, when the demon Scaosen ruled the world, they used to keep humans like hounds, and race ’em up and down this road till their feet wore to the bone. They’d gamble on the outcome, keep ’em going until they all dropped dead. They say the road was ruddy from one end to the other, from the blood of their torn feet.”
“Scaosen? You mean the Skasloi?”
“I’m just telling a story.”
“Yes, but you see, with a bit of truth! You call them the Scaosen, while in the Lierish tongue they are known as Echesl. In Hornladh, Shasl. The ancient term was Skasloi, and they were quite real. History doesn’t doubt them in the slightest. It was the first Virgenyans who led the slaughter of them, with the aid of the saints.”
“Yah, I know the story. Me, I’ve never seen a Scaos.”
“Well, they’re all dead.”
“Then it doesn’t much matter whether I believe in them or not, does it?”
“Well, that’s not a very enlightened attitude.”
Aspar shrugged.
“I wonder,” Stephen said, stroking his stubbly face. “Could this have really been a Skasloi road before it was Vitellian?”
“Why not? If you believe that sort of thing, the whole stretch of it’s said to be haunted by alvs. The old people say the alvs come as white mists, or as apparitions, so terrible in beauty to see them is to die. The Sefry say they’re the hungry ghosts of the Scaosen. People leave them things. Some ask them for favors. Most try to avoid them.”
“What else do these alvs do?”
“Steal children. Bring sickness. Ruin crops. Make men do evil by whispering evil words in their ears. They can still your heart just by reaching their misty fingers into it. Of course, I’ve never seen one, so—”
“—you don’t believe in them. Yes, holter, I think I’m starting to understand you and your philosophy.”
“Werlic? Good. Now, if it please you, could you stop your nattering for a space? So if there be alvs or uttins or booghinns sneaking about us, I’ve me a chance to hear ’em?”
Miraculously, Stephen did quiet after that, studying his rubbing as they rode. After a moment, Aspar almost wished he would start up again, for the silence left him with the uneasy memory of the spring, the dead frogs, the print that had so bruised the earth. It reminded him that there were, indeed, things in the forest that he hadn’t seen, even in all of his days roaming it.
And if some strange beast, why not the Briar King?
He remembered a song they had sung as children, when he lived with the Sefry. It went with a circle game and ended with all playing dead, but he couldn’t remember the details. He remembered the song, though.
“What was that?” Stephen said.
“What?” Aspar grunted, starting from the membrance.
“You were singing.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“I thought you were.”
“It was nothing. Forget it.”
Stephen shrugged. “As you wish.”
Aspar grunted and switched his reins to the other hand, wishing he could forget as easily. Instead, he remembered a verse from another song, one Jesp used to sing.
5
The Princess
“They’ve seen us!” Austra gasped.
Anne leaned around the side of the oak, fingers gripping its rough skin. Behind her, her cream-colored mare stamped and whickered.
“Hush, Faster,” she whispered.
The two girls stood in the shadows of the forest at the edge of the rolling meadow known as the Sleeve. As they watched, three horsemen made their way across the violet-spangled grass, heads turning this way and that. They wore the dark orange tabards of the Royal Light Horse, and the sun glinted from their mail. They were perhaps half a bowshot away.
“No,” Anne said, turning to Austra. “They haven’t. But they are looking for us. I think that’s Captain Cathond in the lead.”
“You really think they’ve been sent out to look for us?” Austra crouched even lower, pushing a lock of golden hair from her face.
“Absolutely.”
“Let’s go deeper in the woods, then. If they see us—”
“Yes, suppose they do?” Anne considered.
“That’s what I just said. I—” Austra’s blue eyes went as round as gold reytoirs. “No. Anne!”
Grinning, Anne drew her hood over her red-gold hair, then took Faster’s reins, gripped the saddle, and flung herself up. “Wait until we’re out of sight. Then meet me in Eslen-of-Shadows.”
“I won’t!” Austra declared, trying to keep her voice low. “You stay right here!”
Anne clapped her thighs against her horse’s flanks. “Faster!” she commanded.
The mare broke from the woods in full gallop, a few leaves swirling in her wake. For perhaps ten heartbeats the only sound was the muffled thumping of hooves pounding damp soil. Then one of the mounted men started shouting. Anne glanced back over her shoulder and saw she had been right: Captain Cathond’s red face was behind the shouting. They wheeled their white geldings to pursue her.