The Briar King (44 page)

“You embody the power of the written word,” Stephen continued, in the liturgical language. “You
gave
us ink and paper and the letters we make from them. Yours is the mystery and the power and the revelation of recorded knowledge. You move us from past to future with the memories of our fathers. You keep our faith clean. I surrender to you.”

In the inconstant light, the statue of the saint seemed to be laughing at Stephen, a gentle but mocking laugh.

“I surrender,” Stephen repeated, very faintly this time.

When the candle was half-gone, and his vigil was complete, nothing had changed; he felt no different. With a sigh he reached to snuff the flame with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

The flame hissed out, and for a heartbeat Stephen understood something was wrong, but couldn't place what. Then he realized that he hadn't felt the flame at all. Or the wick.

He rubbed his fingers together, and again felt nothing. From the tips of his fingers to his wrist, his hand was that of a
ghost. He pinched it until the blood welled red, but he might as well have been pinching a piece of roast.

Stephen's astonishment turned quickly to horror and then to brittle panic. He bolted from the fane, out into the empty chapel, where he fell to his knees and heaved dry, croaking sobs from an empty belly trying to be emptier. The dead thing that had been his hand disgusted him, and he suddenly found himself tearing into his pack, looking for the little wood-chopping ax.

By the time he found it, he had gotten around to asking himself what he wanted it for. He sat there, wild eyed, switching his gaze from the ax to his unfeeling hand. He felt like a beaver with its foot in a trap, preparing to gnaw it off.

“Oh, saints, what have I done?” he groaned. But he knew; he had put himself in their hands, the saints' hands, and they had found him wanting.

Trembling, he put the ax away. He couldn't chop it off, now that the moment of madness was passing. Instead, still shaking and occasionally retching, he lay on the stone, staring up at the light coming through the stained glass, and wept until he was almost sane again. Then he rose shakily, retrieved his candle, and said another prayer to Saint Decmanus. Then, without looking back, he went through another door—a small one, which led outside to where the trail began.

Bleakly, he looked at the trail. From this point it went in only one direction. He could stop now, admit failure, and be done with it. His father would despise him, but that would hardly be anything new. If he quit now, he could escape it all—Brother Desmond, the awful texts, Fratrex Pell's demands, this cursing by the saints. He could be free.

But a hard resolve came after his panic. He would see this through. If the saints hated him, his life was done anyway. Perhaps, when they had punished him enough, they would offer him absolution. If they didn't—well, he would find out about that. But he wouldn't turn around.

The path went in only one direction.

He reached the fane of Saint Ciesel a few bells after noon, under a sky already dimmed by clouds, in a grove of ashes. It was fitting, for the story of Saint Ciesel was a dark one.

Once he'd been a man, the fratrex of a monastery on the then-heathen Lierish Isles. A barbarian king burned Ciesel's monastery and all of his scrifts, many of which were irreplaceable, then threw Ciesel in a dungeon. There, in the dark, the saint had written the destroyed scrifts again, from memory— carved them into his own flesh with his fingernails, sharpened by filing them against the stone of his cell, using the oily filth from the floor to darken the scars. When he died, his captors threw his body into the sea, but Saint Lier, lord of the sea, delivered the corpse to the shore of Hornladh, near a monastery of Ciesel's own order, where the monks found him. Ciesel's skin had been preserved and copied through the ages. The original skin was said to be preserved in salt in the Caillo Vallaimo, the mother temple of the church in z'Irbina.

Stephen burned his candle and made his ablutions. He left the fane without feeling in the skin of his chest.

Two bells later, Saint Mefitis, patroness and inventor of writing to the dead, took the sensation from his right leg. He camped a little later, and while building a fire to keep the beasts at bay, he was surprised to discover blood on his breeches. He had hit his leg a glancing blow with his ax and not noticed. The wound was minor, but he could have chopped the foot off and it would be no different.

He did not sleep, but dreamed of terror anyway. It hovered beyond the light of his fire; it had invaded his body. If he finished the fanewalk, he would surely die.

The first triad of fanes had been aspects of knowing connected with the written word; the next three were wilder, as reflected by the cruder, more primitive carvings. Saint Rosmerta, the patroness of memory and poetry, was picked out in almost savage simplicity, barely recognizable as human. She took the use of his tongue. Saint Eugmie took his hearing, and from then on Stephen stumbled through the forest in eerie silence. Saint Woth took the sight in his left eye.

When he woke to all of this on the third day, he wondered if
he was already dead. He remembered his grandfather talking about how death prepares the old by taking their senses one at a time. How old did that make Stephen now, a hundred? He was crippled, deaf, and half blind.

The next day seemed better; the fanes were to Coem, Huyan, and Veiza—aspects of wisdom, cogitation, and deduction. So far as he could tell, they took nothing from him at all, and by now he was getting used to walking on an insensible leg.

He was settling into the silence, too. Without birdsong or creaking branches or the sound of his own feet, the forest became a dream, so unreal that Stephen could no longer imagine danger in it. It was like his memory paintings, an image or series of images to which he was only distantly connected, that seemed to have very little to do with the here and now.

But when he started to build his fire that night, he didn't know how to do it. He rummaged through his possessions, knowing that he had the tools he needed. He could not recognize them. He tried to picture the process, and failed in that, as well.

He couldn't even remember the word
fire
, he realized, with swelling dismay. Or his mother's name, when he tried, or his father's.

Or his own.

But he remembered fear perfectly, if not what it was called, and spent the night huddled over his knees, praying for the sun, praying for an end to everything.

Dawn peeked over the trees, and he wondered who he was. The only answer he got was
I am walking this path
. He stopped in the various buildings he encountered. He couldn't remember why he was doing it and he didn't care. When he reached the last—somehow he knew that it was the last, and he was nearly finished—he was a cloud with a single eye, moving through a jumble of unfamiliar colors and shapes, many alike, all different. He passed like less than a wind, and the only sensation that remained was a rhythmic beating that
the Stephen of a few days before might have recognized as his heart.

When he walked into the last fane, that beating stopped, too.

CHAPTER FIVE
DUEL IN THE DARK

AN EYE OF FIRE BLINKED OPEN in the darkness, just to Cazio's right, and Cazio found himself leafed in lamplight. Another lantern was unshuttered near his right hand. Both were Aenan lamps, which directed their light strictly in one direction by means of a mirror of polished brass enclosed in a tin hood.

Now Cazio's enemies could see him quite well, but he could see only vague shapes and the occasional gleam of steel.

He turned slowly, relaxing his shoulders and thighs, holding Caspator almost languidly in his fingers. He hoped fervently his attackers had only swords. Bows were forbidden inside the city gates to all but the guard, but in Cazio's experience, murderers didn't care whether they broke the law or not.

One of the men grew bold, and the long tip of a sword cut into the light, in a slice aimed at Cazio's hand. Cazio laughed, stepping away easily. He let the tip of his weapon drop to touch the ground.

“Come, you brave fellows,” he said. “You have me outnumbered and nearly blinded. And still you begin with this timid bit of poking?”

“Keep it shut, lad, and you may still have a heart beating when we leave you,” someone said. His voice sounded vaguely familiar.

“Ah!” Cazio said. “It speaks, and sounds like a man, yet demonstrates none of the equipage. Do you keep a bag of
marbles tied between your legs, so none will know in daylight how fainthearted you are beneath the moon?”

“I warned you.”

A blade slashed into the light, swinging up for a cut from overhead. This wasn't a rapier, but a heavier sword suited for cleaving arms and heads from shoulders. In that instant, as the fellow cocked back for the cut, Cazio saw his forearm, limned by the lamplight. He hit it with a stop thrust, skewering through the meat and into the elbow joint. The man never completed his swing. The weapon clattered to the ground, as its owner shrieked.

“You
do
sing soprano,” Cazio said. “That's the voice I imagined for you.”

The next instant, Cazio found himself defending against three blades—two light rapiers and another butcher's chopper— and now he knew where his opponents were, sort of; attacking him, they entered the beams of light. He parried, ducked, lunged from the duck and very nearly pricked a surprised face. Then, very quickly, he spun and bounced toward one of the lanterns. A quick double lunge, and his point went right into the flame and on through. The startled bearer let go as oil spurted, caught fire, and turned the lantern into a torch.

Cazio spun again. Burning oil rushed along the length of his blade. Lifting his boot, he kicked the flaming mass that was clinging to the end of it, sending it flying toward his antagonists. They appeared in the sudden burst of light, and with a shout Cazio leapt toward them. He push-cut one along the top of his wrist, leaving a second man who couldn't hold a sword, then he bounced after another, rapier still flaming. He recognized the face—one of the household guards of the z'Irbono family, a fellow named Laro-something.

Laro looked as he might if Lord Ontro were come to take him to hell, which cheered Cazio considerably.

Then something struck him in the back of the head, hard, and pale lilies bloomed behind his eyes. He swiped with his weapon, but the blow was repeated, this time to his knee, and he toppled with a groan. A boot caught him under the chin, and he bit his tongue.

And then, suddenly, he was lying in the street, and the attack upon him had ceased. He tried to rise on his elbow, but couldn't find the needle of strength in the haystack of pain.

“This is no concern of yours, drunkard,” he heard Laro say. “Move along.”

Cazio finally managed to lift his head. The burning lamp lit the alley fully, now. Z'Acatto stood at the edge of the light, a carafe of wine in one hand.

“You've done wha' y'came for,” z'Acatto slurred. “Now leave 'im alone.”

“We're done when we say so.”

Behind Laro, holding the other lantern, was daz'Afinio, the man Cazio had dueled earlier that day. One of the men nursing his hand was Tefio, daz'Afinio's lackey.

“This man took me unawares and robbed me,” daz'Afinio asserted. “I merely return the favor.”

“I'll fix him, my lord,” Laro said, lifting his foot to stamp on Cazio's outstretched hand. “He won't play his sword games after this.”

But Laro didn't stamp down. Instead, he pitched over backwards as z'Acatto's wine carafe shattered on his face and broke his nose.

And, somehow in the same instant, z'Acatto had his blade out. He stumbled forward unsteadily. One of the other men made the mistake of engaging z'Acatto's blade. Cazio watched as the old man put it almost lazily into a bind in
perto
, then impaled the man in the shoulder.

Cazio wobbled to his feet, just as daz'Afinio drew his weapon and launched an attack—not on z'Acatto, but at Cazio. He managed to straighten his arm in time, and Caspator sank halfway to the hilt into daz'Afinio's belly. The noble-man's eyes went very round.