“For now. If I change my mind again, that’s the way it will be, understand?”
Her face hardened again, and he felt a little wind suck out of him. “Yah,” she said at last.
The next morning the sky pulled on a gray hood of clouds, and the air was as wintry as Winna’s mood. They moved almost silently, save for the snorting of the horses and wet plod of their hooves on the leaves. More than ever, Aspar felt the sickness of the forest, down in his bones.
Or maybe it was arthritis.
They found the trail of black thorns and followed it into the Foxing Marshes, where the ancient yellow stone of the Lean Gable Hills broke into steps for a giant to walk down to the Warlock. For normal-size folks like Aspar and his companions, the steps were a little more difficult to negotiate—they had to hunt for the places where rinns had cut their way and then gone dry. Where the thorns hadn’t choked everything, the land was still green with ferns and horsetails that grew almost as high as the heads of the horses. Leaves from hickory and witaec drifted as constantly as a soft rain.
And it was quiet as if the earth were holding its breath, which kept Aspar’s spine crawling.
As always, he felt bad for being hard with Winna, which irritated him in its own turn. He’d spent most of his years doing exactly what he wanted, the way he wanted, without any leave from much of anyone. Now a smooth-handed praifec and a girl half his age had him dancing like a trained bear.
Sceat, Winna thought he was tame now, didn’t she? But how could she understand what he was, at her age? She couldn’t, despite the fact that she somehow seemed to.
“The Sefry came this way,” Ehawk said softly, interrupting Aspar’s quiet fume. He looked down to where the Wattau’s chin was pointing.
“That’s awfully clear sign,” he muttered. “Is that the first you’ve seen of ‘im?”
“Yah,” Ehawk allowed.
“Me, too.” Of course he’d been so busy thinking about Winna, he’d missed even that.
“Looks like he’s trying to lead us off again,” Ehawk said.
“South.” Aspar nodded. “He figured we’d come this way, following the thorns, and now he’s left a roadsign.” He scratched his chin. Then he glanced at Winna. “Well?” he asked.
“Well, what?” she retorted. “You’re the leader of this expedition, remember?”
“Just checking to see that you do,” he grumbled back. He studied the lay of the land. South was upcountry again, a stretch of ground he knew pretty well, and he had a feeling he knew where the Sefry was going.
“You two backtrack to the clearing we passed at noon,” he said. “I’m going to follow this trail a bit. If I’m not back by morning, then I’m probably not coming back.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Winna asked.
Aspar shrugged.
“What do we do if you don’t come back?”
“What we discussed earlier. Head back to Eslen. And before you start thinking it, the reason I’m going alone is because I can move more quietly that way, and not for any other reason.”
“I wasn’t arguing,” Winna said.
His heart dropped a little, but at the same time, he felt a bit of satisfaction. “Well, then. That’s good,” he said.
If Ogre resented climbing back up the hills he’d just come down, he didn’t let on, ascending without the slightest whicker to the high-canopied forest of oak. By the time they came to the relatively flat tableland, Aspar was certain where the trail was headed and quit following it, in case some unpleasant surprise had been left in his path. Instead he circled around so as to approach the place from another direction.
The sun was slanting hard and orange through the trees when he heard voices. He dismounted, left Ogre near a stream, and crept closer on foot.
What he found wasn’t really a surprise, but he still wasn’t fully prepared for it.
The place was called Albraeth by those few who still called it anything. It was a cone-shaped mound of earth, bare save for a few struggling, yellowish weeds and a single gnarled tree, a naubagm with bark like black scales and leaves like drooping, serrated knives.
Some of the branches dipped low, and the rotting remains of rope still clung to some, though it had been years since the king’s law had forbidden their use. It was here that criminals had once been hanged in sacrifice to Grim the Raver. It was here that Aspar had been born, on that sickly grass, below a fresh noose. Here his mother had died.
The Church had worked to end those sacrifices. Now they were busy with their own.
A perimeter of wooden beams had been planted in the ground around the mound, each about four kingsyards high, and to each beam a man or woman had been nailed, with their hands above their heads and their feet pulled straight down. Aspar could see the blood leaking from the holes in their wrists and ankles, but there was plenty more blood to see.
They had been cut open, each of them, and their entrails pulled out and arranged in deliberate designs. Some were still being arranged, and those who were doing so wore the robes of the Church. He wasn’t certain what order. Stephen would know.
He counted six of them. He had twice that many arrows. Mouth tight, he pulled out the first, considering how to go about what had to be done.
He was still working that out when a greffyn paced out from behind the mound.
It was smaller than the one that had almost killed him, its scales darker and sheened with green, but there was no mistaking its hawk-like beak and the sinuous, catlike play of its muscles. He could feel its presence, even at this distance, like heat on his face, and he felt a wave of dizziness.
The touch of the beast—even its glance—was deadly poison. That he knew from hard experience, and from the corpses of its cousin’s victims. So poisonous, in fact, that even those who touched the corpses contracted gangrene, and most died. Even maggots and carrion-eaters would not touch a greffyn’s kills.
But the monks weren’t dying. They didn’t even seem concerned. And to his astonishment, one even reached out to stroke it as it walked by.
He took a deep breath, trying to sort that out, wishing Stephen were with him. He would recall some ancient tome or legend that would force this all to make sense.
Six monks would be hard to kill, especially if they were of the order of Mamres. Six monks and a greffyn would be impossible—unless he used the arrow again.
But that one was meant for the Briar King.
First one, and then all the monks suddenly straightened from their tasks and looked to the east, as if they had all heard the same secret call. Their hands went to their swords, and Aspar tensed, realizing that he would have to run from this and find help.
But then he understood that they hadn’t found him out at all, that something else had their attention. He could hear it now, a distant howling, like dogs yet unlike dogs, terribly familiar and utterly alien.
Grim.
He remembered when he’d first met Stephen, they’d been on the King’s Road when they’d heard howling off in the distance. Aspar had recognized them as the hounds of Sir Symon Rookswald, but he’d fed the boy’s fear, told him it was Grim and his host, the hounds that carried off the damned souls who haunted the King’s Forest. He’d put a good scare in the lad.
Now he found his own heart beating faster. Had they summoned Haergrim? Had they summoned the Raver?
The howling grew louder, and there was a rushing through the leaves. He realized his hand was shaking, and felt a momentary anger at his own weakness. But if the hidden world was waking, why not Grim? Grim the heafroa, the one-eyed god, the lord of the birsirks, the bloody wrath, as mad as any ancient, pagan god could be.
The greffyn had turned at the sound, too, and the sparse hairs along its spine stood straight. He heard it snarl.
And behind him he heard a voice, whispering soft in the Sefry tongue.
“Life or death, holter,” it said. “You have a choice to make.”