The Barrow (69 page)

“We don't actually know it's his barrow yet, my Lord Arduin. Right now it's just a mystery hole in the ground,” Stjepan said quietly.

“What, do we just walk into it?” asked Godewyn, peering into the dark maw.

Stjepan's initial instinct was to say
yes
, but he looked up at the skies, tracking some dark carrion birds flying in the distance, and thinking better of it, shook his head. “The sun's setting too quickly. We shouldn't try to enter with night almost upon us. The sun is our friend in this, gentlemen, the dark our enemy, may the Queen of Night forgive me for saying so.”

No one offered an argument. With looks of relief they took up their lanterns and slowly backed away until they felt safe enough to turn around and head back to the camp, leaving the hole into the earth to call out silently behind them in the looming darkness.

After some small debate, they had set up their camp between and around the two vulture-head stone statues, within sight of the hilltop and the entrance into the ground. Leigh could find no evidence of enchantment about the statues, and so Stjepan and Godewyn had both agreed that they should be used as walls and defensive obstacles. They detached one of the tail boards from one of the wagons and had a set of the horses drag it around behind them by the heavy chains of their harnesses to tramp down an increasingly large circle in the grass and weeds. Once they were satisfied with the basic shape of the camp, they moved in with shovels and scythes to finish prepping the ground. Their campfires had gone in the center, between the two statues, and then the various tents around them. The two wagons and the coach were brought up and arrayed on the eastern side of their camp, placed front to back to create a wall facing the east and the vale of the Black Tower. Behind them they ran the picket lines for the dozens of horses; the young squire Brayden and the Theos were brushing the horses down, and checking their feedbags. Some of the horses seemed quite content to nibble at the tall grasses that covered the rolling hills, and Brayden collected and piled some of the cut grasses for them to munch on.

Colin Urwed stood guard by the Ladies' Tent while his brother set up their own tent nearby. Sir Holgar worked on a weapons' rack of polearms and unstrung bows and crossbows, while Caider Ross and Pallas Quinn finished the last of the other tents around the central campfire, where Wilhem Price was already preparing a meal. Erim had been the first to return, and she sat brooding by the fire. Giordus Roame and Too Tall were the next to reach the camp, and after their labors digging into dirt and thicket they had little inclination left to do anything other than just stumble back to the fire next to Erim and start digging again, this time into several bread loaves and one of the barrels of wine. Cole Thimber was a bit slower but right behind them. Arduin, Sir Helgi, Gilgwyr, Godewyn, and Stjepan were the last to return.

Stjepan saw that Leigh was marking the edge of their camp where the grasses still stood upright, whispering his ritual over a wider perimeter than usual of stones and chalk dust poured from his bag. He broke off from the others and walked over to Leigh as the former Magister straightened from marking the last of the four cardinal rocks with a rune.

“I am almost out of my ward marker,” Leigh said in greeting. “Perhaps enough for two or three more encampments, and then we will just have to trust to the campfires alone.”

“We'll move faster on the way out, so hopefully we can reach Mizer quickly,” said Stjepan. “And then afterwards, perhaps we can return by a more central route, and not spend so much time so far from civilization.”

“Civilization,” Leigh said, and then laughed. He turned and looked up at the hilltop, a black shape against the dark of the blue-gray evening sky. “You know, I have a great deal of experience being far away from civilization. And yet, so close to the Black Tower of Azharad, in a land as haunted as the Bale Mole, I can barely tell whether one place is more evil than the next . . .” he said softly. He paused, his eyes closed and his body swaying for a moment, and then opened his eyes again. “But my hackles do not like being here. I think it
is
the barrow we seek.”

Stjepan squinted at Leigh. “We'll find out soon enough, I suppose,” Stjepan said.

They returned to camp to see most of the others gathered about the fire. Malia appeared from the Ladies' Tent and approached Stjepan, smoothing her dress as she did. “Forgive me, Master Stjepan, but my Lady has something to tell you,” she said. Leigh grunted and nodded nearby as he settled into a seat.

“Lead the way, Mistress Malia,” said Stjepan.

They began walking through the other tents toward the Ladies' Tent and Sir Colin and his greatsword. “Our patron has a message for you? Perhaps she has a message for me too, Black-Heart!” Godewyn called out after them.

Stjepan ignored him. Malia bit her lip, looking up at him with uncertainty as they walked, then began to speak in a quiet voice. “At first I was happy that we were out and about, no matter the reason; over the last few years she has gotten worse and worse, and I feared she might take her own life, so much did she despair in her isolation. I wish . . . I wish you had seen her long ago, when she was in her element at Court. When she was happy. But now I don't know what to think. She seems so strange of late, Master Stjepan . . .”

Stjepan stopped, and Malia stopped with him. “How so?” he asked quietly.

“I'm not sure when it started to happen,” Malia said slowly. “The week after her brother's death she was feverish and ill, barely able to speak or stand. She got better once we were traveling. She spent a great deal of time in the coach drifting in and out of fits of sleep. I thought she was still recovering from her illness.” Malia looked toward the tent, with a look that approached fear on her face. “But it was while we were traveling that I started to notice. Little things, small differences in tone or word choice, a small confusion here or there about some word or deed misremembered from the past. Sometimes my Lady catches herself, and pauses, confused, and then makes a correction. Other times she blithely carries on, not realizing her mistake. I have been ever at her side for most of my life. I'm not sure I know who she is anymore.”

“She is not herself,” Stjepan said drily. He glanced back toward the main campfire. “Would that I could say the same for all of us.” He took her hand in his. “If Fortune looks kindly upon us, her ordeal will soon be over and she will be freed of the map, and you will have your mistress back, herself once more.”

Malia looked at the ground and curtsied.

Sir Colin nodded to them both as they approached. Stjepan pushed through the tent flap into the brazier-lit interior, and then he held it open for Malia as she followed him in.

Stjepan noted that Malia had become quite good at arranging the simple luxuries that they carried with them. Indeed, it struck him that after their stop in Hartford that the insides of the tent were now more heavily decorated than what he had seen of Annwyn's chambers back in her father's city house in Therapoli. Malia curtsied and gestured to the set of screens set about the center, and Stjepan stepped within them.

Within the screens, on a mound of furs and fabrics, reclined Annwyn, her back to Stjepan. He paused for a moment in slight surprise. She wore nothing but some jewelry. Her hair was a wild tumult barely contained by jeweled combs and bindings. The bits and pieces of the map moved about on her skin, appearing and disappearing, fading in and out. There was a large mirror set to one side that he did not remember them setting up previously, in which Annwyn was studying her reflection. In the mirror he could see that the amulet from Mizer dangled around her neck and between her breasts. His map-making kit was already open and waiting on a small folding table, next to the folding x-chair that acted as his proper seat.

Annwyn did not look at him. Her eyes were fixed on her own image in the mirror. “You say we are here, you say we have reached our destination, but would you be surprised if I told you the map is still furious inside me?” she asked him. “There is yet more to come.”

Stjepan said nothing for a moment, then finally stirred. “I had indeed hoped you would be rid of the map by now,” he said.

Annwyn rolled before the mirror, tracking a new set of letters that slid over her skin; she moved without hesitation or shame, and a fear awoke somewhere in the back of Stjepan's mind. “It matters not,” she said lightly. “I have grown to think of it as a part of me. In some ways, I now find it beautiful to watch, the shapes of the letters rising in my skin. And you? Have you . . . learned to enjoy your work?”

Stjepan moved to stand next to the mirror, and looked down upon her. His eyes narrowed as he tracked and followed the same word that she was watching in her reflection.

“Yes, there is more . . . that's new, there,” he said, pointing with his chin to icons and lines that were sliding over her hip. “As are some of the words. There are some that I do not recognize from before.”

Stjepan drew up a seat by the mirror. He drew his notebook out from his satchel, selected a quill from the small table, dipped it in ink, and then began making some notes. Annwyn watched in the mirror and tried to move her body so the new images and words were always facing toward Stjepan. She smiled, and almost giggled, as though it were a game.

“Have you ever been in love?” she suddenly asked.

Stjepan looked up at her face, a bit surprised. “An odd question, given the circumstances, my Lady,” he said guardedly.

“Is it?” she asked, smiling softly. “For all our . . .
talks
, you keep yourself at arm's length. You are not entirely unknown to me, you know. Harvald had a habit, you see.” She rolled over again, this time deliberately putting her back to him. “He and I had been each other's confidantes when we were younger, once upon a time. He was my younger brother, the youngest of the Orwains of Araswell, and so we had always acted as though we had a special bond. He could spend all day with me, sometimes, just watching and following me.”

She said nothing for a while, as if remembering something.

“Later, after my . . . scandal, he would come to me, and he would still act as though we were young and little again, sharing secrets,” she said softly. “But as we get older his stories grew darker, and were sometimes about filthy things, things that made me blush to hear them, things that he knew I could never dare tell anyone else.”

She turned around and looked at him straight in the eye. “Some of those stories were about the two of you. The things you were off doing, the adventures you were having, the maps you were following, the treasures you were seeking, the women you seduced, the men you killed,” she said, studying his reactions intently. He kept his face a blank. “He told me once about a woman that the two of you shared one night. A barmaid at some tavern in Truse. He was quite graphic in his details . . . the sights, the sounds, the pleasures the two of you could wring out of her. How it felt being so close to you. His memories of skin, and flesh, and sweat.”

Stjepan's eyes narrowed.
Ninava, at the Flying Cat
, he thought with surprise.

“He said it was one of the most amazing experiences of his life,” she said dreamily, looking at him with surprisingly wise eyes. A half-smile played on her face, and then she looked away. “I knew there were things he was leaving out, little secrets here and there that he wasn't sharing; I was no longer young and foolish enough to think that he told me everything. But I could never tell if he outright lied to me.”

She looked at him. “Have you ever lied to me, Stjepan?” she asked.

He said nothing as she crawled closer. She reached down, seemingly for his lap, and Stjepan tensed, but her hand closed on the hilt of his dagger. She slid it from its sheath, holding it up before him.

“Have you ever had to kill a woman before?” she asked.

That broke his mask, and Stjepan looked at her face with surprise and suspicion. He studied her for a long moment before speaking gently. “My Lady? Do you not feel safe with me?” he asked.

“I am sure that if he were somehow looking on us from the afterlife, Harvald would be pleased . . . by the restraint you have shown in the company of his sister,” she said.

Stjepan waited a moment. “Restraint, my Lady?” he finally asked, with the slightest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Annwyn smiled slightly, and Stjepan looked back down at her skin, and resumed writing and sketching into his notebook. Annwyn watched him work for a while, and then resumed staring at her reflection. She pointed at the new words on her skin with the tip of the dagger. “I knew there was more to the map! Do you think it knows we are close? Perhaps the map would show you a path through this place of death, a safe path only it knows . . .” she said.

“Perhaps, a safe path, yes. We shall see,” said Stjepan.

“Then I am still of use to you,” Annwyn said.