Aspar’s throat caught, and for an instant he had a terrible fear he might cry in front of the boy. At least he hadn’t lost Ogre and Angel. They’d followed him, the damned stupid, loyal beasts, even with a greffyn behind them.
“I’ll be back when my duties are done,” Stephen assured him.
“Don’t trouble yourself,” Aspar said gruffly. “I don’t need a nursemaid.”
“Actually, you do,” Stephen replied.
Aspar grunted and closed his eyes. He heard Stephen’s footsteps recede.
I’ll find you, Winna. Or I’ll avenge you, he promised.
Fratrex Pell smiled at Stephen as he entered his spare chamber.
“I am most pleased,” he said, tapping the newest sheaf of translations. “No one else has managed even a phrase of this lamina. The saints must have blessed you well.”
“They did, Fratrex,” Stephen replied. “The language itself was not difficult—a dialect of the elder Cavarum.”
“Then why the difficulty?”
“It was written backwards.”
The fratrex blinked, then laughed. “Backwards?”
“Each word, front to back.”
“What scribe would do such a thing?”
Stephen remembered the disturbing content of the lamina. “A scribe who did not want his work widely read, I should say.” He struggled for his next words. “Fratrex, I know we’ve discussed this before, but I feel I must say again that my heart tells me these things are best left encrypted.”
“Knowledge belongs to the church,” the fratrex said gently. “All knowledge. Let’s have an end to your questioning, Brother Stephen, once and for all. I admire your persistence, but it is ill placed.”
Stephen nodded. “Yes, Fratrex.”
“Now, this other thing.” He held up a vellum scroll. “I’m puzzled. I didn’t ask you to translate this.”
“No, Fratrex, but in light of what the holter told us, I thought it pertinent to see what the scriftorium might hold concerning the Briar King and greffyns.”
“I see. I assume you’re doing this in spare time?”
“At night, Fratrex, in the meditation hour.”
“The hour is called that for a reason, Brother Stephen. You should meditate.”
“Yes, Fratrex. But I think this might be important.”
The fratrex sighed and pushed the scrifti back. “The holter was mad with fever when you brought him here, at the quay awaiting Saint Farsinth’s boat. Whatever hallucinations he may have had aren’t likely to be relevant to anything.”
“He was badly hurt,” Stephen admitted. “And yet I know this man, somewhat. He is deeply pragmatic and not given to flights of fancy. When last I saw him, he thought greffyns and Briar Kings no more than children’s fantasy. Now he is convinced he has seen them both.”
“We often mock those things we believe most deeply,” the fratrex said, “especially those things we do not wish to believe. There is much separation between the waking mind and the mind of madness.”
“Yes, Fratrex. But as you see, in the Tafles Taceis, the Book of Murmurs, there is a passage copied from an unnamed source in old high Cavari. In it, mention is made of the gorgos gripon, the ‘bent-nosed terror.’ They are described as the ‘hounds of the horned lord,’ and it is further said that their glance is fatal.”
“I can read, you know,” the fratrex said. “The Tafles Taceis is an enumeration of pagan follies. It goes on to say in the annotation that this was most likely a term used to describe the personal guard of the witch-king Bhragnos, yes? Vicious killers known for their beaked helms?”
“It does say that,” Stephen allowed. “And yet that annotation was written five hundred years after the original passage.”
“By a learned member of the church.”
“But, Fratrex, I saw the beast.”
“You saw a beast, certainly. Lions have been known to come out of the hills, on occasion.”
“I do not think this was a lion, Fratrex.”
“Have you ever seen a lion, in the dead of night?”
“I have never seen a lion at all, Eminence.”
“Just so. If what you saw was one of these beasts, why did
it not slay you? Why were you not poisoned by its mere presence? You should have been, if we take the holter’s ravings seriously.”
“I cannot answer that, Fratrex.”
“I feel this inquiry of yours is a waste of our time.”
“Is it your wish I no longer pursue the matter?”
The fratrex shrugged. “So long as it does not interfere with the tasks expected of you, you may pursue whatever you wish. But to my mind, you’re chasing phantasms.”
“Thank you for your opinion, Fratrex,” Stephen said, bowing.
Why didn’t I mention the horn? Stephen wondered, as he left the fratrex’s presence. The horn was something of a problem. The script on it was one he had seen only twice. It was a secret script used during the reign of the Black Jester. It was decipherable only because of a single scrift—written on human skin—which was accompanied by a parallel inscription in the Vadhiian script.
The letters were unlike any other writing known to the church, and heretofore Stephen had always assumed that it had been invented by the scribes who used it. And yet here it was again, this time recording something in a language so strange Stephen hadn’t the faintest inkling what it might say. The language resembled no tongue he had ever seen or heard.
No human tongue, rather. But the way the words were formed resembled the tiny fragments of the Skasloi language he had seen glossed in elder Cavarum texts.
What had the holter found?
Pursing his lips, Stephen returned to the scriftorium.
A closer inspection of the Book of Murmurs proved frustrating. In the back of his mind, he’d thought that perhaps horned lord might be better translated as lord with horns, but the word in question quite plainly referred to something like antlers, not a sounding instrument made of horn. He sat for a while, staring glumly at the text, wishing he had the original sources the unknown author had drawn upon.
His mind whirred up various roads that went nowhere. He thumbed through the Tome of Relics, hoping to find some religious icon that matched the horn’s description, though without much hope. If the language was really a Skasloi dialect, it probably predated the triumph of the saints over the old gods.
As he was putting the book away, memory intruded, of an evening not long past, when Aspar White had frightened him with the threat of Haergrim the Raver. He remembered his own fanciful connection to his grandfather’s mention of Saint Horn the Damned, and on impulse he tracked down a volume of obscure and false saints peculiar to eastern Crotheny. It didn’t take him long to find it. Since walking the fanes, Stephen found that the scriftorium had become almost like an extension of his own mind and fingers; simply thinking of a subject led him quickly to the appropriate shelves.
The book was a recent one, written by a scholar from the Midenlands, and though its organization was somewhat archaic, he soon found the reference he was seeking. He thumbed to the page and began to read.
The Oostish folk speak in whispers of Haergrim Raver, a bloodthirsty spirit of madness who rides in hunt of the dead. It cannot be doubted that this is none other than a manifestation of Saint Wrath, or as he is called in Hanzish, Ansi Woth, a saint with a strange history. Originally one of the old gods, he was of fickle nature, and at the beginning of the age of Everon did alter his allegiance and become a saint, though a dubious one. He presides over the hanging of criminals, and his blessing is to be avoided, for it unfailingly leads to madness and ruin. The sound of his horn, like that of the Wicker Lord, is said to awaken doom.