"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 grass 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.

The geos stung him, but he held his ground against it, because now the only way to convince Winna that they should be doing this entailed telling her part of the truth.

It was such a relief, he almost felt like crying.

"Listen," he said softly. "I learned some things from the Sarnwood witch, from my trip into the Bairghs. What you see here-what we'll see ahead-it's not stopping with the King's Forest. It'll keep spreading until everything is dead, until there are no woods or fields anywhere. There's nowhere I can take you where you and the child will be safe, not for long."

"What are you telling me?"

"I'm spellin' that our only chance is to stop this somehow."

"Stop it?"

He explained in brief about the Vhenkherdh and the possibility of "summoning" a new Briar King. He didn't tell her how Leshya had come by her knowledge, and of course he made no mention of Fend's assertion that her unborn child was to be the sacrifice that would save the world. He still wasn't sure he believed that himself. When he was done, she looked at him strangely.

"What?"

"There's still something I don't understand," she said. "I accept it's true that there's no place where this rot won't eventually reach me. But there are places that will be safe from it for a while longer. The Aspar I know wouldn't have wanted me along for this…attempt, not in my condition. He would have had Emfrith take me as far from the King's Forest as possible while he went to fight and maybe die. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm glad you didn't do that."

"I think Fend's after you, too," he said.

"Then why doesn't he send an utin for me?"

"The wyver attacked you, remember?"

She nodded uneasily. "Is that the only reason?"

"When I saw Fend last, he told me as much," Aspar said.

"But why?"

"You were his captive for nearly a month. What do you think? Fend hates me, he's barking mad, I love you. How much reason do you maunt he needs?"

"Right," she said. "Right. It's just-something doesn't feel right."

"Nothing is right," Aspar replied.

"I know," she said calmly. "But we're going to fix it, werlic. So our child can grow up."

"Yah," he said, his voice tight.

"I've thought of names," she said.

"The Ingorn don't name children until they're two years old," Aspar said roughly.

"Why not?"

"Because most don't live," he said. "If you don't name them, they can try to be born again. Them with names die true deaths."

"That's stupid," Winna said. "Why name anyone, ever?"

"Because eventually our names find us, just like our deaths."

"This child isn't going to die, Aspar. I know that in my heart. I don't know why you would try to-" Her voice cracked.

They rode along for a moment.

"What names?" he asked.

"Never mind," she answered.

He glanced over at her. "I always thought Armann was a good name," he said.

She frowned, and at first he thought the conversation really was over. But then she nodded. "Yes," she allowed. "My father would like that."

"And if it's a girl?"

"I like Emmer," she said. "Or Sally."

A bell later the wind shifted to blow from the woods, and the scent of corruption was so strong that Aspar gagged and lost his breakfast, then lay over his horse's neck dry-heaving.

"For the saints, Asp, what's wrong?" Winna asked.

"The smell."

"Smell?" She sniffed at the air. "I smell something a little rotten," she said. "Nothing to be sick over. Are you all right?"

"Yah," he said.

But he wasn't. When they got nearer, he saw some others wrinkling their noses, but to him the stench was so overpowering that he could hardly think. He wanted anger to hold him up, get him through it, but mostly he felt sick, tired, and sad. Something deep in his chest told him it was time to lie down and die, along with the forest he had known.

Because it was gone.

Every natural tree had rotted into viscous black slime, and growing from their putrefied corpses were the triumphant black thorns he first had seen growing from the footprints of the Briar King.