“I remember hearing that he wakes only when the land is ill,” Winna said.
“In Dolham town they spell he wakes every year,” Aspar grunted. “That he begins to toss and turn in autumn, cracks his eye in the dead of winter, then rolls over and falls asleep again by spring. All of the stories tell a different tale. It’s why I don’t trust ’em. If they were true, they ought to say the same thing.”
“Not completely different,” Winna said. “They all seem to think it’s a very bad thing for him to be awake.”
“Except for your beer-pouring fellow in Glangaf.”
“Even he did some hard things. I remember one fellow who had been judged an adulterer by the town Comven. The Briar King dumped hog sceat on him, right in the middle of the town square, and then rooted up half his potato crop. Anything the Briar King did to you, you had to bear. After the spring festival, no one wanted to see him, because that usually meant he was coming to punish someone. And he had to do it, you see? It was part of the geas laid on him by being chosen.”
“Odd town, Glangaf. After his year was up, what happened to the fellow who was made king?”
“Everyone pretended to forgive him. Usually they didn’t.”
“How did they decide who the king was each year?”
“The men drew lots. The loser had to be king.”
“Where did the trail go?” Winna asked.
Aspar was asking himself the same question, and he didn’t like the answer that was suggesting itself. They stood facing a cliff of the same crumbling yellow rock that had sheltered them the night before. Behind it the foothills rose precipitously. A stream drizzled from the top of it, pattering into a pool some twenty paces in diameter. A stream from the pool continued downhill to the Slaghish lowlands. To the south, the vague blue outline of the Mountains of the Hare reared up into untroubled clouds.
The trail led into the water.
“Don’t touch it,” Aspar warned.
“I know better,” Winna replied, as Aspar dismounted and began an examination.
No tracks, no dead fish. Probably the storm had flushed the pool out pretty well. In fact, since by his calculations they were at least three days behind the beast, he doubted that any of this water had been here when the greffyn was; it was all down in the Slaghish now, on its way to the Warlock and eventually the Lier Sea.
Still, he wanted to be sure. He found a talus slope that let him ascend to the top of the cliff. There was no sign of the greffyn’s passage on top.
He went back down.
“It’s in the water?” Winna asked.
“It went into it. I don’t think it came out.” He started stringing his bow.
“You mean you think it drowned?”
“No.”
“Then—” She started backing up.
“Look,” he said, pointing.
On the surface of the pool, water-skaters wove ripple-webs, and small fish chased away from the edge.
“If it was still in there, these wouldn’t be alive, I don’t believe.”
“Unless it can choose when to kill and when not to. In that case it might be hiding, waiting for you.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think the pool is that deep.”
“What then?”
“Jesp—the Sefry woman who raised me. She used to talk about this place. She claimed there was a Halafolk rewn in these hills.”
“A what?”
“The Halafolk live in hidden caves. They call ’em rewns.”
“I thought that was just phay-story dust.”
Aspar shook his head. “If I remember right, this one is named Rewn Aluth. I’m guessing Jesp was telling the truth.”
“The Halafolk,” Winna repeated. “Down there.”
“Yah. I’ll bet there’s an entrance below the water, there. Typical.”
“You—you’ve been in one of these rewns before?”
He nodded. “Most people think the Sefry and the Halafolk are two different people. They aren’t. The caravaners are the wanderers, the restless ones. But they return home, now and then. When I was a boy, they took me with them.” He sat on a rock and started unlacing his cuirass.
“What are you doing?” Winna asked.
“Those tracks we’ve been following—the ones with the greffyn—they could just as easily be Sefry as human.”
“You mean you think the two are connected? That the Halafolk are responsible for the killings?”
“All of the dead I’ve seen have been human. We’ve been trying to clear the Sefry out of the royal forest for decades. Maybe they got tired of it.”
“If that’s so, you can’t just go in there yourself. Even if the greffyn doesn’t kill you, the Halafolk will. You need an army or something.”
“If the king is to send an army, he needs reason. I don’t have anything to give him but guesses, yet.” His shirt was off. “Wait here,” he said.
The pool was just deeper than he was tall, and clear enough that he had little problem finding what he was looking for—a rectangular opening in the rock face that led into the hill and slightly down.
He came back up.
“There’s a tunnel,” he said. “I’m going to see where it goes.”
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
He unstrung and recased his bow and placed it back on Ogre’s saddle along with his armor. He made sure he had his dirk and ax, took several deep, even breaths, then a deeper one, and dived.
The tunnel was roomy enough, and smoothed, but he had no trouble pushing himself along. What he did have trouble with was the darkness. Daylight faded quite quickly behind him, as his lungs started to ache. He remembered, too late, that the Halafolk were known for making false entrances into their havens. Traps designed to kill the unwary.
And it occurred to him that tunnel was too narrow to turn around in easily. Could he back out quickly enough to save
his life?
No, he couldn’t.
He swam harder. Colored spots danced before his eyes.
And then air. Damp and gritty-smelling, but air, and total darkness. He took a few moments to breathe before exploring further.
He was in another small pool, not much larger than the one he had entered. Aspar determined by feel that it was surrounded by a stone-walled chamber, rough and natural, which seemed to go on in one direction.
Good enough. He would return the way he had come, get all of his weapons and some torches, come back and find out where the passage went. And somehow convince Winna to stay behind. That was going to be the hard part.
He was just thinking that when he heard a splash and a gasp of breath behind him. He yanked out his dirk, holding it between himself and the unknown.
“Aspar? Aspar, are you there?”
“Winna—I told you not to follow me. And keep your voice down!”
“Aspar!” She did lower her voice, but he caught the frantic, panicky quality.
“Just after you went in—some men came up, on horses. Three, maybe four. They started shooting arrows at me. I didn’t know what to do, I—”
He had been feeling for her the whole time. Now he had her, and at his touch she stumbled through the water into his arms, gripping him with more strength than he knew she had. In the dark, it was easy to grip her back.
“Three or four, you say? Could it have been more?”
“Maybe. It happened fast, Aspar. Ogre and Angel are still loose—”
“That’s best. You did right, Winna. You think fast, girl!”
“What now, though? What if they follow me?”
“Were they human or Sefry?”
“I couldn’t see their faces very well. They wore cowls.”
“Probably Sefry, then.”