The Born Queen

"Fratir Stephen?" He drew back on the reins and brought the carriage to a halt.

"Casnar!" Stephen replied. "You're a coachman now."

Cazio was momentarily at a loss for words. He didn't know the fellow well, but he did know him, and the odds seemed against a chance meeting. And there was that other thing…

"Everyone thinks you're dead, you know," he said.

"I expect so," Stephen replied. "The slinders did make off with me. But here I am, fit and well."

He did look well, Cazio thought, not dead at all. Although there was something about the way he spoke and carried himself that seemed very different.

"Well," he said for lack of something better, "I'm glad you're well. Did Aspar and Wi

"Were they trying?"

"Yes. They went after you. That was the last I saw or heard of them."

Stephen nodded, and his eyebrows pinched together for an instant. Then he smiled again.

"It's good to have friends," he said. "Where are you off to, Cazio?"

"Eslen," he said, feeling guarded. The whole encounter seemed stranger every moment.

"You're looking for help for Austra."

Cazio shifted Acredo to a better grip. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"What are you talking about? You know me."

"I knew Fratir Stephen. I'm not sure that's who you are."

"Oh, it's me more or less," the man said. "But like you, I've been through a lot. Walked a new faneway, gained new gifts. So yes, things are revealed to me that are denied most. I can put my gaze far from me. But I'm not an espetureno or estrigo if that's your fear."

"But you aren't here by coincidence."

"No, I'm not."

"What do you want, then?"

"To help you. To help Austra now and A

"A

"Know what?"

"A

Stephen's eyes widened with what appeared to be genuine disbelief, and for the first time his new cockiness seemed to fail him.

"How is that possible?" he said, speaking so low that Cazio could barely hear him. "There's something going on here I'm missing. But if A

He raised his voice. "We'll sort that out later. Cazio, I can help Austra. But you have to come with me."

"Come with you?"

"Get her," Stephen said. "Him, too."

Cazio jerked his head around to see who the fratir was talking to, but all he saw was a weird wavering, like the air above hot stones. Then something wrapped itself firmly around his waist and lifted him into the air. He shrieked involuntarily and stabbed his blade into the invisible thing, but then something grabbed Acredo and wrenched the blade from his grasp.

Then they were hurtling through the air, all three of them, born by the Kept, and there was nothing Cazio could do about it but curse and imagine what he was going to do to Stephen when he could get to him.

After a while, Cazio finally had to give in to the fact that he was enjoying himself, at least a little. He had wondered often what it might be like to fly, and once the initial terror had worn off, it was exciting. They were whisked over the poelen and canals, covering in a bell what would have taken him days in the carriage. Eslen appeared in the distance, a toy castle far below them.

"Hubris," Stephen said. "It's always the death of me. But I can't turn my eye in every direction at once, can I? Especially with the others interfering."

"What are you talking about?"

They plunged suddenly not toward Eslen but toward the dark necropolis south of it.

"But he doesn't know about Austra," Stephen went on. "That'll be his undoing. He killed A

Cazio tried to catch that thought. Austra did seem to have some of the same gifts as A

It had to, didn't it?

"See," Stephen whispered. "Hespero moves."

Cazio's attention was suddenly drawn to the several hundreds of men fighting in front of the gates of Eslen-of-Shadows, but he only had a glimpse of that before they rushed down into the city itself, over the lead streets and into a mausoleum as large as some mansions. The Kept settled them in front of it. The two guards at the door started toward him, but then their eyes glazed over, and they sat down rather suddenly.

Cazio suddenly found himself free. He started toward Stephen.

"Don't," Stephen said. "If you want Austra alive and well, don't."

With that he swung open the doors.

Inside, on a large table, lay A

"I need my blade," Cazio told Stephen.

"Pick it up, then," Stephen said.

Cazio turned and found it lying on the ground. Austra was still in the Kept's invisible grip.

"By the saints, what is this?" the man shouted. "Demons!"

Stephen held up his hand. "Wait," he said. "There's no need for that."

This wasn't what he had expected. This was where he had sensed the throne, not A

He could feel the sedos force pulsing just where she was.

"How did she die?" he asked, a suspicion suddenly born in his mind.

"Stabbed," the girl said, her eyes red from crying. "The Fratrex Prismo murdered her. There was so much blood…"

"Stabbed where?"

"Under the ribs, up into her heart," the Sefry woman said. "Then her throat was cut."

Stephen stepped forward.

"No, by the saints," the man shouted. "Who are you?"

Stephen silenced him as he had the guards. It wouldn't hurt him permanently, but his thoughts would be too disordered to allow him to, say, move his limbs.

He saw the line where A

Stephen felt a sort of coldness ringing in his ears.

It was a scar.

"Oh, screaming damned saints," Stephen sighed.

Austra gave a sudden gasp behind him, and he felt a tremendous surge around him as the throne exploded into being.

And the throne, A

It was the face from his Black Marys.

"Hespero," she whispered, and then, at the top of her lungs, screamed the name.

She didn't even glance at him, or Cazio, or any other person in the room.

"Qexqaneh," she said, and Stephen suddenly felt his control of the Vhelny utterly dissolve and heard the demon laughter in his ears. All the hair on his body suddenly stood up, and then A

Aspar still could feel the geos in him when they entered the high valley where he first had seen the Briar King. He reckoned that meant Wi

Maybe Leshya wasn't bringing her there at all.

Sir Roger and his men were there, however, camped and entrenched around what appeared to be a lodge of some sort, though Aspar knew it had been formed from living trees. He'd been in it; it was where he had found the Briar King sleeping.

"I count seventeen," Fend said. "Four of them Mamres knights."

Aspar nodded. "That's what I see."

"I don't see your three friends."

"No."

"Always the conversationalist," Fend said. "Well, let's get this over with."

"We're not in a hurry," Aspar said. "You just pointed out that Wi