“Are you all right? Did they—” Her eyes widened. “You’re bleeding.”
“I think we’re done with rooftops,” he muttered. “Let’s get down to the street.”
“But you’re bleeding,” she repeated.
“I’m fine. We can’t stop to talk about this, Winna. We have to keep moving, and hiding. Eventually we’ll find a way out, or they’ll give up.” Unless Fend knows who he’s chasing. He won’t give up if he knows it’s me. “This time we’ll find a place with no windows.”
In the distance, he heard the horn again, and cursed as the witchlights that hovered around them suddenly flew up, like a colored fountain. They shot up toward the cave roof, then dropped like angry bees back toward Aspar and Winna.
Aspar didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to; Winna understood what had just happened.
“Down,” she said.
Hoof-clacks on cobbles greeted them as they came onto the street, though Aspar couldn’t ascertain exactly where they were coming from. The vast hollow of the cavern and the close walls of the city played sling-stones with noise. He and Winna ducked in and out of alleys more or less at random. Aspar’s feet seemed very distant from him, and he began to wonder if the spear might have been poisoned. Surely he hadn’t lost that much blood.
“Which way?” Winna whispered, as they came to a cross intersection. A post in the center of it bore a carved head with four faces, all with bulging, fishlike eyes.
“Grim!” he muttered. “You choose.”
“Aspar, how badly are you hurt?”
“I don’t know. Choose a direction.” The witchlights had left them again, and they had only the sphere to show the way.
She chose, and chose again. Aspar seemed to lose track of things for a moment, and the next he knew he was lying flat on the cobbles. If he raised his head a little, he could see the ragged edges of Winna’s skirt, and he heard the lapping of water. He was lying at the edge of the canal.
Their witchlights were back.
“… up, you damned fool,” Winna was saying. Her voice sounded more than a little panicked.
He helped her wrestle him to a sitting position.
“You’re going to have to go without me, Winn,” he managed.
“Egg in a snake’s den chance of that,” Winna said.
“Do it for me. They’ll find us, and soon. I can’t have Fend—I can’t have him kill another—” He stopped, and gripped her arm, as something big stepped from the alley. “Turn your head,” Aspar gasped. “Don’t look at it.” He drew out his ax, holding up the flat for a dull mirror. It was spattered in gore, however, and all he could see was the faint yellow glow.
But the greffyn was there, at the end of the alley, bigger than a horse. He could feel the sick light of it against his face.
“The greffyn?” she asked, voice quaking. She’d done as he told her, thank Grim, and was averting her eyes.
“Yah. Into the canal with you. Don’t look back.”
“Into the canal with both of you. Or my boat, if you prefer.” The voice was throaty, hoarse even, as from speaking too much or not enough. Aspar peered into the darkness and barely discerned a cowled figure in a slender gondola, just against the edge of the canal.
Then he found he didn’t have much to say about it. Winna, grunting, rolled him from the canal edge over into the boat, then followed him in.
As the gondola began to move, a sort of burring sound, beginning below the edge of hearing and rising to sudden, intolerable shrillness exploded behind them, and Aspar felt his stomach heave.
Winna began to sob, then choke, then she vomited into the water.
They passed beneath an arch Aspar thought was a bridge, but it just went on, and on, a hole within a hole, the entrance to hell, probably, to the realm of dust and lead. But Winna’s hand found his, and he didn’t care, and yet another sort of nightfall took him away.
He awoke to the familiar scent of spider lily tea and oven-stone, to fingers on his face, and a dull fever in his chest. He tried to push his eyelids open, but they wouldn’t move. They felt as if they had been sewn shut.
“He will be well,” a voice said. It was the same throaty old voice from the boat.
“He’s strong,” Winna’s voice replied.
“So are you.”
“Who are you?” Aspar rasped.
“Ah. Hello, foundling. My name—I don’t remember my real name. Just call me—call me Mother Gastya.”
“Mother Gastya. Why did you save us?”
A long silence. Then a cough. “I don’t know. I think I have something to tell you. I’m forgetting, you see.”
“Forgetting what?”
“Everything.”
“Do you remember where everyone went? The Sefry from the city?”
“They went away,” Mother Gastya grated. “Of course they went away. Only I remained.”
“But the men chasing us were Sefry,” Winna said.
“Not of these houses. I do not know them. And they came with the sedhmhar. They came to kill me.”
“Sedhmhar. The greffyn?”
“As you call it.”
“What is it, Gastya?” Aspar asked. “The greffyn?”
“It is the forest dreaming of death. The shocked gaze be fore the eyes roll up. The maggot wriggling from the wound.”
“What does that mean?” Winna asked.
Irritation finally gave Aspar the strength to open his eyes, though they were ponderous as iron valves.
He was in a small cavern or room, roughly furnished. By witchlight he made out Winna’s face, lovely and young. Facing her was the most ancient Sefry Aspar had ever seen. She made Mother Cilth seem a child.
“Sefry can’t talk straight, Winna,” Aspar grunted. “Even when they want to. They lie so much and so often, it just isn’t possible for them.”
“You find the strength to insult me,” the old woman said. Her silvery-blue gaze fastened on him, and he felt a vague shock at the contact. Her face was beyond reading; it looked as if it had been flayed, cured, and placed back on her skull. A mask. “That’s good.”
“Where are we?”
“In the ancient Hisli shrine. The outcasts will not find us here, at least not for a while.”
“How confident you make me feel,” Aspar said.
“She saved our lives, Aspar,” Winna reminded him.
“That remains to be seen,” Aspar grunted. “How bad’m I hurt?”
“The chest wound is not deep,” Gastya replied. “But it was poisoned with the smell of the sedhmhari.”
“Then I shall die.”
“No. Not today. The poison has been drawn out. You will live, and your hatred with you.” She cocked her head. “Your hatred. Such a waste. Jesperedh did her best.”
“How do you … Have we met?”
“I was born here in Rewn Aluth. I’ve never left it.”
“And I’ve never been here before. So how did you know?”
“I know Jesperedh. Jesperedh knows you.”
“Jesp is dead.”
The ancient woman blinked and smiled, then lifted her shoulders in a polite shrug. “As you wish. But as for your hatred— caring for humans is no easy task, you know. In most clans it is forbidden. Jesperedh might have left you to die.”
“She might have,” Aspar said. “I’m grateful to her. Just not to the rest of you.”
“Fair enough,” Gastya allowed.
“Why did the other Sefry leave Rewn Aluth?”
Mother Gastya clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “You know,” she said. “The Briar King awakes, and the sedhmhar roams. Our ancient places are no longer safe. We knew they would not be, when the time came. We made our plans. All of the great rewns of the forest stand empty, now.”
“But why? Surely all of you together could defeat the greffyn.”
“Hmm? Perhaps. But the greffyn is only a harbinger. Sword and spear and shinecraft will never defeat what follows. When the water rises, we do not wait for the flood, we Sefry. Our boats have long been built.”
“But the greffyn can be killed,” Aspar persisted.