“Grim,” Aspar muttered. “Haergrim Raver, what is happening to my forest?”
Stephen cast a glance at Winna. “He didn’t mean—”
“I know,” she said. “His hardness comes from habit, not from his heart. It’s like those metal shells the knights in Eslen wear.” She kept her eyes on the holter as his figure grew smaller against the loom of black. “He loves this forest,” she said softer. “More than anything. More than he loves me.”
“I doubt that,” Stephen said.
“Don’t,” she replied. “It doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t make me jealous. It’s good to know a man can feel so much, even one who has been through what Aspar has. It’s good to know a man has a passion, and not just hollow bones in him.” She glanced at Stephen, and her green eyes looked almost gray in the overcast morning. “I love these woods, too—I grew up at the other edge of them. But you and I can never know what he feels for this place. That’s the only thing that I’m jealous of—not that he feels it, but that I don’t.”
Stephen nodded. “What about your family? Are you worried about them?”
“Yah,” she said. “Oh, yah. I try not to think of it. But my father, he’d be the first to leave, if things went too wrong. If he had notice. If he had time.”
Aspar had dismounted now, some distance away. Stephen heard the squeak of him coming off the leather saddle. As a novice priest, Stephen had walked the faneway of Saint Decmanis. The saint had improved his senses, his memory—and other things. He heard Aspar curse, too, invoking the Raver.
“Do you have an explanation for this?” Winna asked. “Why this is happening? What those thorns are, exactly? Did you find anything in the royal scriftorium?”
“I know little more than you do,” Stephen admitted. “They are connected in folklore and legend to the Briar King, but that much we already know from experience.”
The fortress of Cal Azroth was still visible behind them, across the Warlock River, a mass of twining thorns and little more. That was where they had last encountered the Briar King. A path of the vines led here, to the forest, where they seemed to have taken hold.
“Why would he destroy his own forest?”
“I don’t know,” Stephen said. “Some stories say he will destroy everything, make the world new from the ashes of the old.” He sighed. “Half a year ago I considered myself learned, and the Briar King was no more than a name in a children’s song. Now nothing I know seems true.”
“I know how you feel,” Winna replied.
“He’s motioning us forward,” Stephen said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Aspar watched his companions approach. He calmed his breathing.
Sceat on it, he thought to himself. What is, is. No use getting all mawkin’ about it. That won’t help a thing. I’ll find the Briar King, kill him, and put an end to this. That’s that.
By the time they’d arrived, he even managed to force a smile.
“Fast-growin’ weed,” he said, tilting his head at the dying forest.
“That it is,” Stephen allowed.
“I reckon all of this sprang from his trail,” Aspar said. “That makes him easy to track, at least. Unless this stuff has already spread everywhere.”
It hadn’t. Only a bell later, they found trees that were only half covered with the stuff, and finally not at all. Aspar felt relief sink down his body and toward his toes. There was still time to do something. It wasn’t all lost yet.
“Let’s see,” Aspar said. “We’ve another two hours of daylight yet, but I expect rain at dusk. Stephen, since we’re working for the praifec now, I reckon you ought to mark all this on your maps—how far this stuff has spread. Winna and I will set up camp, meantime.”
“Where do you think we are?” Stephen asked.
Aspar took a slow look around. His bearings had been thrown off a bit by the unfamiliarity of what they had seen earlier.
The forest was more or less west of them, running north-south. East were the rolling fields of the Midenlands. He could make out five or six small farmsteads, a scattering of sheep, goats, and cows on the gentle hills. The tower of a small country church stood perhaps a league away.
“Do you know what town that is?” Stephen asked.
“I make it to be Thrigaetstath,” Aspar said.
Stephen had his map out and was scrutinizing it. “Are you sure?” he asked. “I think its more likely Tulhaem.”
“Yah? Then why ask me? I’ve only traveled these woods my whole life. You, you’ve got a map.”
“I’m just saying,” Stephen said, “that this is only the third town I’ve seen since passing Cal Azroth, which ought to make it Tulhaem.”
“Tulhaem’s bigger than that,” Aspar replied.
“It’s hard to tell how big a town is,” Stephen said, “when you can only see the top part of a bell tower. If you say it’s Thrigaetstath, I’m happy to mark it that way.”
“Werlic. Do it then.”
“Still, Thrigaetstath ought to be nearer—”
“Winna,” Aspar asked, “where are you going?” She had quietly started her mount walking down the hill, away from the forest.
“To ask,” she said. “There’s a farmstead just down there.”
“Bogelih,” Aspar grunted. “Are you sure?”
The boy—a straw-headed lad of fourteen or so named Algaf—scratched his head and seemed to think hard about the question.
“Well, sir,” he said at last, “I’ve spent my whole life here and never heard it called nothin’ else.”
“It’s not on my map,” Stephen complained.
“How far are we from Thrigaetstath?” Aspar asked.
“Ogh, near a league, I reckon,” the boy said. “But ain’t nobody living there now. Them black brammels grew over it.”
“The whole town?” Winna said.
“I always said it was too near the forest,” a female voice added. Aspar’s gaze tracked the sound to a woman of perhaps thirty who was clad in a brown homespun dress and standing near the stonewalled pigpen. Her hair was the same color as the boy’s, and Aspar reckoned her for his mother.
“Pride, that’s what it was,” she went on. “They went over the boundary. Everyone knew it.”
“How long ago was this?” Stephen asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Before my grandmother’s grandmother. But the forest thinks slow, my grandmother said. It doesn’t forget. And now the lord Brammel has waked, and he’s taking back what was his.”
“What happened to the folk of Thrigaetstath?” Aspar asked.
“Scattered. Went to their relatives, if they had any. Some went to the city, I reckon. But they’re all gone.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re him, aren’t you? The king’s holter?”
“I’m the holter,” Aspar acknowledged.
The woman nodded her head at the small buildings of her farm. “We built outside the boundary. We respected his law. Are we safe?”
Aspar sighed and shook his head. “That I don’t know. But I intend to find out.”
“I’ve ney husband ner family that will take me,” the woman said. “I’ve only the boy there. I can’t leave this place.”
Stephen cleared his throat. “Have you heard anything about other villages being abandoned? About people who run—pardon me—naked, like beasts?”
“A traveler from the east brought tales like that,” the woman said. “But travelers often bring tales.” She shifted uncomfortably. “Still, there is something.”
“What?” Aspar asked.
“Things come out of the brammels. The animals smell them. The dogs bark all night. And yesterday I lost a goat.”