"That means having her brought up here?"

"If I could do that, I would have already done so," she replied.

"What do you mean?"

"She went hunting with Berimund, yes?"

"Yes, the day after we arrived. Just before I was seized."

"My father isn't a stable man. He condemned your lady to death and ordered my brother to carry out that charge."

Neil stood so violently that the chair went clattering to the floor. "You saw this?"

She sucked in a breath and flinched back.

"Did you?" he asked more softly.

"No. I have spies, as well. But I have seen where my brother took her."

"To murder her, you mean?"

Her eyes focused outward and seemed to glaze. "Berimund won't do that," she said, her voice a bit singsong. "He's taken her someplace to hide. He doesn't know he's been followed."

"Followed? By your father?"

She shook her head. "No. Robert Dare."

Without thinking, Neil put his hand up to his head, where the usurper had struck him with a bottle.

"I have to get to her," he said. "Can you help me do that?"

"I need her, too, and I need her alive," Brinna said. "Alis has agreed to aid me, but I need you, too."

He took a deep breath. "I'll help you escape," he said. "But after we find the queen, I must obey her her orders." orders."

"Even if they are to slay me?"

"Any order but that," he said.

Something bright flitted behind her face but quickly vanished.

"Well," Brinna said. "Are we agreed?"

"Yes."

"That's good," she said. "Because we've already begun, I'm afraid. The interrogator insisted on being with me in this interview, and she got my father to put it in writing that she would be."

"Where is she, then?"

"In the next room, dead. I poisoned her. The men who brought you have also been dealt with. Or at least I hope so."

"They've been dealt with," a quiet voice said.

Neil started and found Alis standing behind him, clad in a dark blue gown. She held something bundled in a cloak.

"I think this hauberk will fit you, Sir Neil," she said. "And you've your pick of these swords."

"I'm sure you would prefer your own," Brinna said. "But those are beyond my reach. I hope one of these is suitable. You're going to need it very soon."

CHAPTER TEN.

AN O OLD F FRIEND.

ASPAR HAD begun to draw the knife before he realized he was losing his mind, that the geos had taken his sense without him even knowing it. begun to draw the knife before he realized he was losing his mind, that the geos had taken his sense without him even knowing it.

Leshya saw his expression and raised her eyebrows.

Fighting down the paranoia, Aspar pushed the eldritch blade back in, unhooked the scabbard, and held it out toward her.

"This is yours," he said. "I should have given it back to you days ago."

"You make better use of it than I would," she said.

"I don't like it," he said.

"Neither do I," the Sefry replied. "It's a sedos thing."

Aspar proffered it for another few breaths, but she didn't reach for it, so he hooked the sheath back on his belt.

"Let's keep Fend's offer to help us quiet for now," Aspar said. "Until we cann what he's up to."

"It could confuse things more than they already are," she said.

He couldn't tell if it was a question. "Yah."

They found Emfrith's bunch setting up camp in a field not too far from the road. Winna came running up as they pa.s.sed the watchmen. She was flushed, and though she seemed excited, it was hard to tell if it was from a good or a bad cause.

"He found us," she said. That sounded happy.

"Stephen?"

Her expression fell, and then she shook her head.

"Ehawk."

Aspar felt a slight lift of his shoulders. "Really? Where is he?"

"Sleeping. He was nearly falling out of his saddle. I don't think he's rested in days."

"Well, I reckon I'll talk to him later, then."

"That's all you have to say?"

"I'm glad the lad's alive," he said. "But I reckoned wherever he was, he was all right. Ehawk can take care of himself. Not like-" He stopped.

"Not like Stephen," she said softly.

"Stephen's fine, too," he said gruffly. "Probably holed up in a scriftorium someplace."

"Right," Winna agreed. "Probably."

Early the next morning, Aspar found Ehawk crouched around the coals of the fire. The young Watau grinned when he saw Aspar.

"You were hard to find," he said. "Like tracking a ghost. Lost you before the cold river up there."

"The Welph."

"I don't like those trees. It's like always being at the snow line in the mountains."

"Yah," Aspar said. "Different. Anyway, you should have just waited like Winna. I would have just come to you."

"I couldn't do that," the Watau boy replied. "Winna didn't wait, either. She made Emfrith look for you, but once her belly started swelling, he wouldn't go far." He stirred the embers with a stick. "He didn't want to find you, anyway."

"Yah, I conth that," he said.

Ehawk nodded and pushed back his pitch-dark hair. His face looked leaner, older. His body was catching up with the man inside.

"So where are we going?" he asked.

"Mountains of the Hare. The western ranges, near Sa Ceth ag Sa'Nem."

"Ah." The boy shook his head. "You're seeking the Segachau, then."

"What?"

"The reed-water-place," the young man said. "The well of life. The hole everything came out of at the beginning of time."

"Grim's eye," Aspar swore. "You know something about it?"

"My people have lived in the mountains for a long time," the Watau replied. "That's a real old legend."

"What do they say?" Aspar asked.

"It gets pretty complicated," Ehawk said. "Lots of tribes and clan names. But really, when you simple it, the story spells that in the ancient times everything lived beneath the earth: people, animals, plants. There was also a race of demons under there that kept everything penned up. They ate us. So one day a certain man got out of his pen and found a reed that went up into the sky. He climbed it and came out here, in this world. He went back down and led everyone else up here, too. That man became the Etthoroam, the Mosslord-him you call the Briar King. He stopped the demons from following, and he made the sacred forest. When he was done, he went to sleep, and he told the people to worship the forest and keep it from harm or he would wake and take his revenge. And the place where he came up is called Segachau. They say you can't always find it."

Aspar scratched his chin, wondering what Stephen would make of that story. The Watau didn't have writing or libraries. They didn't follow the ways of the Church any more than his father's Ingorn people did.

And yet in two ways at least, Ehawk's story agreed with Leshya's tale of the Vhenkherdh. Both said the Briar King came from it, and both agreed it was the source of life.

Other than that, though, the Watau story was very different from the Sefry's, and that made him feel suddenly better about the whole thing. He'd learned from Stephen just how twisted time could make the truth; maybe no one, not even the Sarnwood witch, had all the facts. Maybe when he got there, Aspar could find some way to surprise everyone. Come to think of it, he probably knew at least one thing no one except maybe Winna did.

"It's good to have you back, Ehawk," he said, patting him on the shoulder.

"'Tis good to be back, master holter."

Aspar's improved mood didn't last long.

Another two days brought them to the Then River, and the land was starting to warn Aspar what to expect on the road ahead.

Green fields gave way to sickly yellow weeds, and the only birds they saw were high overhead. At the banks of the Then, some tough marsh gra.s.s still clung to life, just barely.

But across the stream what once had been rich prairie was brittle and brown, dead for a month or more. There was no birdsong, no buzz of crickets, nothing. It was wasteland.

The villages were dead, too. They found no one alive, and the bones that remained were gnawed and crushed as no natural beast could manage.

The next day, the edge of the King's Forest appeared, and Aspar prepared himself for the worst.

Winna, who hadn't been talking much to him lately, rode up beside him.

"It'll be bad, won't it?" she said.

"Yah." He already could see how wrong the tree line was.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I know how it hurts you."

"I'm the holter," he said. "I'm supposed to protect it."

"You've done your best," she said.

"No," he replied harshly. "No, I haven't."

"Aspar," she said gently, "you have to talk to me. I need to know why we're coming here, where everything is dead except for monsters. I trust you, but you usually tell me what's going on. Fend's not even trying to catch us, and Emfrith is starting to question our direction, too. He's wondering what happens when we run out of supplies."

"Emfrith can ask me himself," Aspar snapped.

"I don't think this is about taking me someplace safe," Winna said.