It was a while before he could continue his inspection. When he did, he found that beneath the sheet he was naked except for bandages. His weapons, armor, and clothes were nowhere to be seen. The bandages suggested someone was well disposed toward him, but that was anything but certain.
Where was he? He tracked along his memory like a hound on a faint trail, pausing at landmarks. He’d come down from the mountains that he knew, clinging to Ogre’s back. He remembered half falling his way down a talus slope and a plummet into a ravine. At some point, he’d fallen off the beast and couldn’t find him again. He had flashes of days clinging to a tree trunk floating down a river, then endless stumbling through hill country that grew steadily flatter. And he remembered something following him, always just behind, making a game of it.
After that, memory failed completely.
He walked backwards up the trail in his mind, back into the mountains, climbing a black tangle of boughs, a song repeating endlessly in his head.
He remembered with sickening suddenness the thing in the living barrow. He is waking. It’s all true.
“Winna!” he croaked. The Briar King be damned. The world be damned. Fend had Winna. First Qerla, now Winna.
He heaved his legs over the side of the cot, ignoring the great waves of agony. Something in his head whirled like a child’s top, but he nevertheless managed to stand. Two steps brought him to the upward-curving wall, and he used it for support to make his way out of the niche.
A black flash passed behind his eyes, and then he was in the larger space, an enormous cave, like a Sefry rewn, but regular, curving high, high above.
No, not a cave. That was stupid. He was inside a building …
His legs weren’t under him anymore. The stone floor abruptly explained to him how foolish he had been to try to walk. Cursing it, he settled for crawling.
A bell tolled somewhere, and the singing stopped. A few moments later, he heard a gasp nearby.
“Gentle saints!” a man’s voice exclaimed. “Sir, you should still be abed.”
Aspar squinted up to see a man in the black habit of a churchman.
“Winna,” Aspar explained, through gritted teeth. Then he fainted.
When he came around the next time, it was to a familiar face.
“Huh,” Aspar grunted.
“I spent a lot of time and effort dragging you here,” Stephen Darige said. The young man was sitting on a stool a few feet away. “I’d appreciate it if you’d not make that labor wasted by killing yourself now.”
“Where am I?” Aspar asked.
“The monastery d’Ef, of course.”
“D’Ef ?” Aspar grunted. “More than sixty leagues?”
“Sixty leagues from where? What happened to you, Holter White?”
“And you found me?” Aspar grunted skeptically.
“Yes.”
He tried to sit up again. “Darige,” he said, “I have to go.”
“You can’t,” Stephen said, placing a hand on his arm. “You’re better than you were, but you’re still badly wounded. You’ll die before you get half a league, and whatever it is you need so badly to do will no more get done than if you rest here a while.”
“That’s sceat. I’m hurt, but not that bad.”
“Holter, if I hadn’t found you, you would be dead, right now. If I hadn’t found you near a monastery where the healing sacaum are known, you would still be dead or at the very least you would have lost your legs. There are three sorts of poison still trying to kill you, and the only thing keeping them down are the treatments you get here.”
Aspar stared into the young man’s eyes, considering. “How long, then,” he snarled, “before I can leave?”
“Fifteen, twenty days.”
“That’s too long.”
Stephen’s face went grim and he leaned forward. “What did you find out there?” he asked in a low voice. “What did this to you?” He paused. “When I discovered you, there was some sort of beast with glowing eyes following you.”
It’s not what I found, Aspar thought bleakly. It’s what I lost. But he looked Stephen in the eye again. He had to tell someone, didn’t he?
“That was the greffyn,” he grunted. “It was as Sir Symon told us. I saw it all. The dead, the sacrifices at the sedos. The greffyn. The Briar King. I saw it all.”
“The Briar King?”
“I saw him. I don’t think he’s fully awake yet, but he was stirring. I felt that.”
“But who … what is he?”
“I don’t know,” Aspar said. “Grim take me, I don’t know. But I wish I had never seen him.”
“But he did this to you?”
“A man named Fend did some of it. His men shot me up with arrows. The greffyn did more.” He rubbed his head. “Darige, at the very least I must get word to the other holters, as soon as possible. And to the king. Can you arrange that?”
“Yes,” Stephen said, but Aspar thought he detected a hesitation.
“This man that wounded me—Fend. He took captive a friend of mine. I need to find Fend.”
“You will,” Stephen said softly. “But not now. Even if you found him—in this state, could you fight him?”
“No,” Aspar said reluctantly. If Fend was going to kill Winna, she was dead. If he had some reason to keep her alive, she was likely to remain that way for a while. He winced at an image of her, spiked to a tree, her entrails pulled out and—
No. She’s still alive. She must be.
The boy was right. He was letting his feelings get in the way of his sense.
Suddenly, something occurred to him.
“You saw the greffyn,” Aspar said. “Up close.”
Stephen nodded. “If that’s what it was. It was dark, but it had luminescent eyes and a beak like a bird’s.”
“Werlic. Yah. But you didn’t get sick? It didn’t attack you?”
“No, that was strange. It acted cross, sort of, and then left. I don’t know why. It could have killed me with a single blow, I’m sure.”
“It could have killed you with its breath,” Aspar corrected. “I fell down from merely meeting its gaze. I know one boy died just of touching a corpse that died of touching the monster. And yet you never even got a stomachache?”
Stephen frowned. “I’d just walked the faneway of Dec-manus. Perhaps the saint protected me.”
Aspar nodded. There was more than one thing he didn’t understand about the greffyn, anyway. It could have killed Aspar any number of times, but it hadn’t. “Can you take that letter for me?”
“I can find someone to do it,” Stephen said. “Right now I have duties.”
“Take it when you can, then. I don’t trust anyone else here.”
“You trust me?”
“Yah. Don’t take it too close to heart. I don’t know anyone else here. You I know a little.” He paused. “Don’t take this for much either—but, ah … thanks.”
The young priest tried not to smile. “I owed you that,” he replied. His face grew more serious. “I’ve something else to ask you. When I found you, you had this.”
Stephen reached into a leather pouch and produced the engraved horn. A shudder ran through Aspar’s limbs when he saw it.
“Yah,” he allowed.
“Where did you find it?”
“I don’t know. There’s a space I don’t remember, after I saw the Briar King. After, I had it with me. You know what it is?”
“No. But the language on it is very old.”
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know.” The priest sounded troubled. “But I intend to find out. May I borrow it for a while?”
“Yah. I’ve no use for the damned thing.”
Stephen nodded and started to rise. “Oh, another thing,” he said. “Your horses showed up a day after I brought you here. No one can get near them, of course, but they have plenty of pasture. They’ll be left alone until you recover.”