The Born Queen Part 22

"No, madame."

"Very well. Have a rest. I would be pleased if you would meet me at my table tonight."

"We would be honored, Majesty."

"Good."

The two older men turned to go, but the younger stood his ground.

"What?" she asked.

"Is that leave to speak, Majesty?"

Despite herself, she smiled a bit. "I suppose it is. Go ahead."

"You asked if we had more bad news. I do not. But I hope you will think I have brought a little good news."

"Delightful if true," Anne said. "Please say on."

Ifwitch took a step toward the earl. "Tam, you shouldn't-"

"Really, Ifwitch, I would like to hear this rumored good news."

He bowed and didn't say anything else.

"It's true, some n.o.bles don't know where their duties lie. I am not one of them. Majesty, I've brought my bodyguard with me, five hundred and fifty of the best hors.e.m.e.n you will ever see. They-and I-are yours."

"King Charles has released you to me?" She asked.

None of them spoke, although Ifwitch reddened.

"I see," she replied. "He hasn't."

"Charles needs the n.o.bles he trusts in Virgenya," the earl said. "It's really that simple. He knows I would never ride against him. But as I am loyal to him, so I am to the empress he he serves, so I have come directly to pet.i.tion you." serves, so I have come directly to pet.i.tion you."

"I didn't think I would hear much pleasing today," Anne said. "I was wrong. I accept your loyalty."

She shot her gaze back at the other two men. "It is a thing in short supply these days."

CHAPTER TWO.

ALONG THE D DEEP R RIVER.

WITCHLIGHTS LED the way as Stephen, Zemle, Adhrekh, and twenty Aitivar descended into the roots of the mountain. The ethereal globes of iridescence flitted about, casting the otherwise bleak gray walls in shades of gold, silver, ruby, emerald, and sapphire. Stephen had never seen witchlights before entering the Witchhorn, but Aspar had spoken of them as a fixture of Sefry rewns. the way as Stephen, Zemle, Adhrekh, and twenty Aitivar descended into the roots of the mountain. The ethereal globes of iridescence flitted about, casting the otherwise bleak gray walls in shades of gold, silver, ruby, emerald, and sapphire. Stephen had never seen witchlights before entering the Witchhorn, but Aspar had spoken of them as a fixture of Sefry rewns.

Oddly enough, the Aitivar didn't seem to know anything about them other than what anyone could observe. Were they alive? Creations of s.h.i.+necraft or some natural product of the tenebres?

No one knew, and no book Stephen could find answered the question. But they were useful, and they were pretty, which was more than could be said about most things.

They were particularly useful just now, as the path they walked was barely a kingsyard wide, bounded on the right hand by the stone of the great central subterrain of the caverns and on the left by the creva.s.se through which the underground river Nemeneth sought its way through stone and earth to feed deeper streams and eventually, perhaps, the Welph, which flowed in turn to the Warlock and thence to the Lier Sea at Eslen. He could hear the rus.h.i.+ng of the Nemeneth, but it was too far below him for the witchlights to reveal.

"Are you sure you're ready?" Zemle asked him.

"I'm sure I'm not," he replied. "I wasn't ready to walk the first faneway I walked. Then I nearly died-maybe did die-just setting foot on another sedos. But Virgenya Dare wasn't ready, either. She just did did it. And I'm not going to wait until the Vhelny or whatever it is that's stalking me has its chance." it. And I'm not going to wait until the Vhelny or whatever it is that's stalking me has its chance."

"Then the journal talks about the faneway?"

"Yes. I was reading an early part, when she was a girl, and the Skasloi took her into the mountains. This This mountain. She felt the faneway below her. Years later she came back and walked it." mountain. She felt the faneway below her. Years later she came back and walked it."

"So she tells where it is."

"Yes. I know where I'm going, if that's what you're asking."

"Is it much farther?"

He smiled. "That's what we used to ask my father on long trips. Have you aged backward to five?"

"No. I don't care how far it is. I'm just curious."

"I reckon it at about half a league. It's in another part of the mountain. Adhrekh, have you ever been this way before?"

"The cavern ends ahead, pathikh."

"You really believe that, or is this just something else you neglected to tell me? Another test to see if I'm really Kauron's heir?"

"It's not a test, pathikh. We've never known where the faneway is."

Stephen stopped. "It's going to stay that way, then. Give me a pack of food and water and return to your rewn."

"Pathikh-"

"Do it. If I even suspect you're following me, I won't go anywhere near the faneway. Do you understand?"

"Pathikh, this place you are going-it is old, very old, and it has been abandoned for a long time. There's no knowing what might lurk there in the dark."

"Stephen, he's right," Zemle said. "Going alone would be foolish."

"They've just admitted they need me to find the faneway. Maybe that's all they ever needed from me. Maybe once I find it, I'm of no use to them."

"Stephen, Sefry can't walk faneways. Any faneways. Why would they want to know where this one is?"

That drew him to a stop. "What? I've never heard that."

"It's true," Adhrekh said.

Stephen frowned and leafed quickly through his saint-blessed memory. No Sefry had ever joined the Church and walked a faneway; that much was true. But there was something...

"As soon have a Sefry walk a faneway as give s.h.i.+veroot for the gout," he cited.

"What?" Zemle asked.

"From the Herbal of Phelam Haert. It's the only thing I can think of that supports your claim. Anyway, maybe they have someone in mind to walk it other than me."

"Who? Not Fend, obviously. Hespero? Then why did they fight him?"

You can trust the Aitivar.

Stephen blinked. Everyone was looking at him strangely.

"What did you say?" Zemle asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You were just babbling in some other tongue."

Stephen sighed and ma.s.saged his forehead. "Nothing," he said. "Never mind. All right, Adhrekh. You can come."

Adhrekh acknowledged that by bowing, and they continued the descent. As the Sefry had predicted, the roof of the cave came sloping down to meet them even as the angle of the trail sharpened and finally became stairs. The churning of the river grew louder, and eventually the stairs ended on a bed of gravel and sand at its banks.

Stephen had been trying not to think about this part, but now he was there, and he felt his breath shorten. It wasn't how he had imagined it; it was much worse.

Upstream, where the Aitivar dwelt, the Nemeneth was a relatively placid stream. Here, she came cras.h.i.+ng down from a series of shoals and waterfalls to form a great vortex. The cave roof was only two kingsyards above that, and across the river was only stone.

"No," Zemle said. "Oh, saints, no."

"I'm afraid so," Stephen said. He was trying to sound brave and nonchalant, but his voice quavered. He hoped they couldn't hear that over the steady thrumming of the river-size drain.

"This can't be right," she said, and turned to Adhrekh. "Haven't any of you ever tried this?"

Adhrekh actually coughed out a little laugh, something Stephen had never heard the man do before.

"Why?" he said. "Why would anyone do that? I could live seven hundred years if I'm careful."

Stephen sat on the s.h.i.+ngle and tried to take deep, slow breaths. The witchlights seemed slower now, calmer.

"Stephen?"

"I have to," he said. He took a few more breaths, levered himself up, and walked toward the rus.h.i.+ng whirlpool. He knew he couldn't pause, and so he leapt in, aiming his feet toward the center of it.

It took him with incredible violence. The power of the water was absolute, and nothing his limbs could do had any effect. All he could do was try to hold on to his air, not scream and let it all out, and he suddenly knew with absolute certainty that he somehow had been tricked. He was a dead man, and knowing that, he lost the power of thought entirely.

When it came back, he remembered being ground against sand and stone and then expulsion and the grip of the flood easing. Now he lay on gravel in utter darkness, coughing out the water that had forced its way into his lungs.

A golden glow rose up in front of him, and then a deep red one. A few heartbeats later the witchlights were all around him again.

He lay on a strand not very different from the one he had just left, but here there was no high-vaulted chamber, only a tunnel two kingsyards higher than the river flowing through it. Water crashed through the roof in a great column on his right, and on his left the pa.s.sage went on much farther than his luminescent companions could reveal.

He heard violent coughing and saw the silhouette of a head and shoulders rise from the pool: Adhrekh.

"Zemle!" he gasped. Had she tried to follow him, too?

More Aitivar appeared, but he didn't see her.

"Zemle!" he repeated, this time at the top of his lungs.

"I have her," someone said. In the stir he couldn't tell where the voice was coming from exactly.

"Who is that?"

Then he made out one of the Aitivar cradling a limp figure. He waded up onto the beach.

"Saints curse me," Stephen snarled. "Is she-"

The fellow shrugged and lay her down. Her head was smeared with black, which Stephen realized was blood rendered dark by the colored lights. For a moment he felt paralyzed, but then she coughed, and water bubbled out of her mouth.

"Bandages," he told Adhrekh. "Get me bandages and whatever unction you might have."

Adhrekh nodded.

"Zemle," Stephen said, stroking her cheek. "Can you hear me?"

He took the sleeve of his s.h.i.+rt and pressed it to her wound, trying to see how deep it was. Her eyes opened, and she shrieked.

"Sorry," Stephen said. "Can you hear me?"

"I can hear you," she said. "Can you hear me?"

"Yes."

"Good. Because I hate you." She felt toward her brow. "Am I bleeding to death?"

"I think it's a shallow cut," he replied. "There's a lot of blood, but I don't think your skull broke."

Adhrekh returned with linen cloths and some sort of paste with a sul-fury smell and set about bandaging Zemle's head. He seemed to know what he was doing, so Stephen didn't interfere. His pulse finally began slowing down, and he felt unexpected exhilaration flood through him.

Who was he to brave such things? Not the Stephen Darige who had left Ralegh for the monastery d'Ef, what, not even two years ago?

Even Aspar might be proud of him.

"Did we lose anyone?" Stephen asked Adhrekh.

"No, pathikh," the Sefry replied. "All accounted for."