“I came upon such a track,” Aspar said. “That’s all I know.”
“The Sefry are old, Aspar, especially the Halafolk. They know a great deal. They say the greffyns have returned. And the lord of the greffyns, of all unholy things that slink in this wood, is the Briar King. If they are awake, he is awake, or soon to be. They do his bidding, the greffyns.”
“Greffyns,” Aspar White repeated. His tone somehow made the word mean ludicrous.
“Can’t you tell me more of this?” Stephen asked. “I might be able to help.”
“I don’t need your help,” the holter said bluntly. “Tomorrow, you continue to d’Ef. Play your games of maps and stories there, if you wish.”
Stephen flushed, his tongue temporarily stilled by helpless anger. How could anyone be so arrogant?
“The Briar King has always been here,” Sir Symen whispered. “Before the Hegemony, before the Warlock Wars, even before the mighty Scaosen themselves, he was here. Ages turn, and he sleeps. When his sleep is troubled enough, he wakes.”
He turned rheumy eyes upon Stephen. “That’s the real reason the King’s Wood exists, though most have forgotten. Not to furnish a vast hunting park for whatever family rules in Eslen. No. It is so that when the Briar King rouses, he is not displeased.” He grasped Aspar by the arm. “Don’t you remember? The old tale? It was a bargain struck between the Briar King and Vlatimon the Handless, when the Scaosen were slaughtered and the kingdom of Crotheny established. The forest would be kept for him, from the Ef River to the sea, from the Mountains of the Hare to the Gray Warlock. The bargain was that if that were left untouched, Vlatimon and his descendants could have the rest.
“But if the bargain is broken, then every living thing shall perish, as it did before, and the Briar King will raise a new forest from our bones and ashes. When we say it’s the King’s Forest, you see, we don’t mean the king of Crotheny. We mean the true lord of it, the undying one, the master of the greffyns.”
“Symen—” Aspar began.
“We’ve broken Vlatimon’s ancient vow. Everywhere, the borders are compromised. Everywhere, trees are cut. He wakes, and he is not pleased.”
“Symen, the Sefry have muddled your brains. Those are old tales, no better than the stories about talking bears and magic ships that sail on land. Something strange is about, yes. Something dangerous. But I will find it, and I’ll kill it, and that will be an end to it.”
Symen didn’t answer but just shook his head.
Anything further was interrupted by the arrival of the food, escorted out by a plain, cheerful woman of middle years and two young girls. They settled two steaming pies, a platter of roast pigeons, and black-bread trenchers on the table. The girls hurried off without speaking, but the woman put her hands to her hips and regarded the three of them.
“Well, hello there, Aspar, and hello, young sir, whoever you might be. My name’s Anfalthy. We were ill prepared for guests, but I hope this will please you. If there’s anything missing y’would like—anything at all—I’ll see what I can do. I make no promise but that I’ll try.”
“Lady, anything you bring will please us, I’m sure,” Stephen said, remembering his manners.
“Game has been scarce,” Symen muttered.
“He hasn’t been droning on about the end of days again, has he?” Anfalthy asked. “Look, Sir Symen, you’ve not even touched your wine. Drink it! I’ve mixed in herbs to cheer your mood.”
“No doubt.”
“Don’t mind his dark mutterings, you two. He’s been at that for months, now. A trip abroad is what he needs, but I can’t convince him.”
“I’m needed here,” Symen insisted.
“Only to gloom up the place. Eat, you fellows, and call for more if you need it.”
The pie, compounded of venison and boar and elderberries, was a little gamey to Stephen’s taste, but the pigeon, stuffed with rosemary and marjoram and pork liver, was delicious.
“I’ll go tomorrow to Taff Creek,” Aspar promised. “Now do as Anfalthy said. Drink your wine.”
“You’ll see, when you go,” the old knight said, but he did sip his wine, indifferently at first, but in ever larger gulps. As the evening wore on, the rest of the household joined them; it seemed there were about twenty people resident in the tower. Within a bell, the board was crowded, and pies, roast boar, partridge, and duck covered it from end to end, so that Stephen wondered how they ate when game wasn’t scarce. The conversation grew boisterous, with children and dogs playing about their feet, and the force of the old knight’s doomsaying faded.
Still, it nagged at Stephen, and more so, the holter’s gruff dismissal of anything Stephen might have to add. So when the mead courage finally came on him, he leaned near Aspar White.
“You want to know what I think?” he asked.
The holter frowned, and for a moment Stephen thought that the older man would tell him, once again, to be silent. He decided not to give him the chance. “Listen,” he rushed on. “I know you don’t think much of me. I know you think I’m useless. But I’m not. I can help.”
“Oh? Your thousand-year-old maps can help me with this?”
Stephen’s lips tightened. “I understand. You’re afraid I know more than you. That I might know some damned thing that might be of use.”
Even as the words tumbled out of his mouth, Stephen knew the mead had brought him to a bad end. But the holter was just so damned smug, and Stephen was too drunk to feel fear as more than the distant whisper of a saint.
Then to his vast surprise, the older man laughed bitterly. “Plenty I don’t know,” he admitted. “Go ahead. Tell me what you make of all this.”
Stephen blinked. “What?”
“I said, go on. What do you think of Sir Symen’s story?”
“Oh.” For a brief instant there were two Aspars, then one again. “I don’t believe it,” Stephen said, pronouncing each word very deliberately.
The holter raised an eyebrow. “Really.”
“Really. First of all, too many of the details aren’t right. Vlatimon, for instance. He didn’t found Crotheny; he wasn’t even of the Croatani, the tribe the country was named for. Vlatimon was Bolgoi, and he conquered a small kingdom in the Midenlands, and that lasted only a half century before it was gobbled up by the Black Jester in the first Warlock War.
“Shec … secondly, the whole notion of some old forest demon who has that sort of power—the power to punish the entire world—flies straight in the face of church doctrine. There are powers, yes, and the church tolerates that they be called saints, or angels, or gods as it might please local custom—but they’re all shub … shubordin … they all serve the All-in-One. Not to get too technical, but—”
“And yet you were the one who said these tales carry some truth in them. Is that the case only when the truth doesn’t clash with the teaching of your church?”
“It’s your church, too.” But of a sudden Stephen doubted that. Might the holter be heretic?
“The church, then?”
“The answer is yes and no. I recall now that in Virgenya we have phay stories about a character named Baron Greenleaf, who is also said to sleep in a hidden place and wake to avenge wrongs done the forest, very mush … mush … like this Briar King. Baron Greenleaf and the Briar King are probably both based on a real person—one of the early warlock kings, perhaps, or even a Skaslos who survived beyond the rest.
“Or perhaps he is a misunderstanding made manifest. After all, the church teaches that the Alwalder demands a balance between cultivated and wild ground. As each village must have a sacred horz, where things grow wild, so too must the world itself have wild places. In the imagination of the folk, perhaps this forest is the horz of the world, and the Briar King a personification of the punishment that comes from violating it.”