The Charnel Prince

1 Friendships

Anne pulled a comb through her salt-knotted hair and watched the gulls on the strand fight over the scraps of fish and more dubious once-living things. The birds weren’t the only scavengers; twenty or thirty people—mostly children—were also searching the sand for treasure from the waves.

Farther down the shore, the battered hulk of the Delia Puchia was dry-docked in scaffolding, and beyond that lay the huddle of whitewashed cottages that was the Gallean village of Duvre.

It was hard to remember any particulars about the storm. The bells of vicious thunder, snapping spars, and plunging waves all blurred together into a single long terror. It had left them adrift and sinking with only a single makeshift sail and the good fortune to be within sight of shore. They had followed the coast for nearly a day before finding the fishing village and the anchorage it offered.

A cold wind was coming off the sea, but the clouds were gone. The only remaining signs of the storm were its wreckage.

The comb snagged, and she yanked at her hair in frustration, wishing for a bath, but the village didn’t have an inn, as such, just a small tavern. Besides, their money was all but gone. Cazio had the last of it and was trying to buy horses and supplies. Captain Malconio had figured it would be a week before the ship was ready to sail again, and she had no intention of waiting that long.

According to its inhabitants—at least as best as any of Malconio’s men could understand them—Duvre was about ten leagues south of Paldh. They had planned to go by land to Eslen anyway, so they had decided that they might as well get started.

With a sigh, she rose and started back toward the village, to make sure Cazio was doing what he was supposed to be doing, and not playing nip with Austra someplace. The brief solitude had been nice, but it was time to get going.

She found him in the tavern, of course, along with z’Acatto, Malconio, Austra, and a crowd of locals. It was close and smoky inside and smelled overwhelmingly of the dried cod that hung everywhere from the rafters. The two long tables were pitted and polished by use, and the floor—like the walls—was built of a sort of plaster made of ground-up seashells.

Malconio was speaking—something about the wonders of a city named Shavan—and a wizened little man with no more than three or four teeth was making a running translation in Gallean. Children in red and umber tunics of rough wool and women with their hair wrapped up in black cotton scarves all leaned in, laughing sometimes and commenting among themselves. They glanced at her when she entered, but quickly returned their attention to Malconio.

Anne put her hands on her hips and tried to catch Cazio’s eye, but he either hadn’t seen her or was ignoring her in favor of Austra, who—with him—was quaffing wine from a ceramic jug. Z’Acatto was slumped with his head on the table. Impatiently, Anne pushed through the crowd and got Cazio’s attention by patting his shoulder.

“Yes, casnara?” he asked, looking up at her. Austra turned her head away, feigning interest in Malconio’s story, which just rolled right along.

“I thought you were buying supplies and horses.”

Cazio nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” he said. He patted the shoulder of a stout, middle-aged man with a sunburnt face and startling green eyes. “This is Tungale MapeGovan. I’m doing business with him.”

The man—who seemed well on his way to being thoroughly drunk—smiled up at Anne.

“Hinne allan,” he commented, scratching his belly.

“Well, can’t you hurry it up?” she asked, ignoring the disgusting fellow.

“They don’t seem to do things in a hurry here,” Cazio remarked. “My kind of people, really.”

“Cazio.”

“Also, we don’t have enough money,” he said.

“You’ve money for wine, it seems.”

Cazio took another swig. “No,” he said, “we’re earning that with stories.”

“Well, how much do we need?” she asked, exasperated.

He set the jug back on the table. “He wants twice what we have for an ass and four days’ provisions.”

“An ass?”

“No one around here has a horse—even if they did, we could never afford it.”

“Well, one ass hardly seems worth the trouble,” Anne said. “Just buy the food.”

“If you want to carry it on your back,” Cazio remarked, “I’ll settle that right now.”

“If I have to, I will. We can’t wait here any longer.”

Someone tugged lightly on her hair. She gasped and discovered Tungale fondling it.

“Stop that,” she said, brushing his hand away.

“Ol panne?” he asked.

Cazio glanced at the translator, but he was still busy with Malconio’s tale.

“She’s not for sale,” Cazio answered, shaking his head.

That was a little too much.

“For sale?” she shouted.

Malconio stopped in mid-sentence, and the table erupted in laughter.

“Ne, ne,” Tungale said. “Se venne se panne?”

“What’s he saying?” Anne demanded.

The translator smiled broadly, emphasizing his mostly toothless condition. “He wants to know how much your hair costs.”

“My hair?”

“Se venne se?” he asked Tungale.

“Te,” Tungale replied.

“Yes,” the translator said. “Your hair. How much?”

Anne felt her face burning.

“Her hair isn’t—” Cazio began, but Anne put a hand on his arm.

“The ass and food for a nineday,” she said.

Austra turned at that. “Anne, no.”

“It’s only hair, Austra,” Anne replied. She nodded at the translator, “Tell him.”

Despite her brave words, she had to work hard to keep from crying when they sheared it off, with everyone in the room whooping and laughing as if they were watching a troupe perform its antics. She kept the tears in, though, and resisted the temptation to rub the stubble that remained on her scalp.

“There,” she said, got up from her chair, and nearly bolted outside. There she did tear up a bit, not so much from the loss of her hair as from the humiliation.

She heard footsteps behind her. “Leave me alone,” she said without turning.

“I just thought you might want this.”

She looked back, a little surprised to find that it was Malconio. He was holding one of the black scarves the women of the village wore. She stared at it for a moment.

“You know,” he said, “you could have asked me for the money. I’ll have to sell off some goods here anyway to get the ship repaired. Cazio’s too proud, but you could have asked.”

She shook her head. “I can’t ask you for anything, Captain. Some of your men died because of me, and your ship was wrecked. I owe you too much already.”

“That’s true, in its way,” Malconio said. “But sailors die and ships are wrecked. There is such a thing as fate, and it’s a waste of time to wish you hadn’t done something. Better to learn from your mistakes and move on. I don’t hold any grudge against you, Anne. I took you as a passenger because my brother asked me to, and despite what I said earlier, I do have some idea what to expect from my brother and his—situations.”

“Do you know how hard it must have been for him to come to me? But he did, which tells me something about you. That you dragged him away from the Tero Mefio says even more. The Cazio I knew never did much for anyone but himself. If he’s improved, how can I let him show me up?”

Anne managed a little smile at that. “You do love him, don’t you?”

Malconio smiled. “He’s my brother.”

He proffered the scarf, and she took it. “Thank you,” she said. “One day I will be able to repay you.”

“The only payment I ask is that you watch out for my little brother,” Malconio said.

“I’ll do my best.”

Malconio smiled, but the smile quickly vanished as he lifted his head and his eyes focused behind her. “There they are,” he sighed. “I should have known they wouldn’t sink.”

Anne followed his gaze. There, where sea and sky met, she saw sails.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

“They aren’t coming this way,” Malconio said after a moment. “They’re probably looking for a deeper port—she’s missing a mast, you see?”

Anne didn’t, but she nodded. Malconio was right, though—the ship wasn’t sailing toward land, but parallel to it.

“If they see your ship—” she began, but Malconio shook his head.

“It’s not likely at that range, not with the Delia Puchia in dry-dock and without masts. But even if she did, she couldn’t come in—not through those reefs we passed. Her keel’s too deep.” He turned to Anne. “Still, I would go if I were you, and quickly. If they have seen the Puchia, they’ll send men back over land as soon as they find a harbor with deeper water. You could have all the time in the world, but on the other hand, you might have only a day.”

“What if they do come here?” Anne asked. “They’ll kill you.”

“No,” Malconio said. “I’m not fated to die on land. Get the others and make a start. You’ve still got a few bells before sundown.”

Cazio found his brother with his ship.

Malconio scowled when he saw him. “Are you still here? Didn’t Anne tell you we saw the ship?”

“Yes,” Cazio said. “I just—” He fumbled off, suddenly unsure what he wanted to say.

“Good-byes are bad luck,” Malconio grumbled. “Implies that you don’t expect to see each other again. And I’m sure to see you again, right, little brother?”

Cazio felt something bitter suck in his lungs. “I’m sorry about your ship,” he said.

“Well, we’ll talk about that again when you’ve made your fortune,” Malconio said. “Meanwhile, you let me worry about it. It is my ship, after all.”

“You’re making fun of me,” Cazio said.

“No,” Malconio replied. “No, I’m not. You have a destiny, fratrillo, I can feel it in my bones. And it’s your own—not mine, not our father’s, not our revered forefathers’. It’s yours. I’m just glad somebody finally got you out looking for it. And when you’ve found it, I expect you to come to my house in Turanate and tell me about it.”

“I’d like to see it,” Cazio said.

Malconio smiled. “Go on,” he said. “Azdei, until I see you next.” Cazio clasped his brother’s hand, then trudged back up from the strand to where the others waited.

There was only one road out of Duvre, and it was really no more than a narrow track. Cazio led the way, leading their newly purchased donkey, sparing one glance back at his brother’s ship before they entered the trees above the village. He saw Malconio, a tiny figure, working with his men.

Then he turned his eyes to the road ahead of him.

The forest soon gave way to rolling fields of wheat. They saw a few distant houses, but no village even the size of Duvre. Dusk found him building a campfire beneath an apple tree so ancient its lower limbs had drooped to the ground.

Anne hadn’t said much since she lost her hair. Cazio had never seen a woman without hair and he didn’t like the look. It was better when she wrapped the scarf on her head.

He tried to start a conversation with her once or twice, but her answers were terse and didn’t go anywhere.

Austra was quiet, too. He gathered the two girls had had some sort of fight on the ship, and both were still sulking about it. He wondered if the fight had been over him. Austra was taking very well to his attentions; if Anne was jealous, she wasn’t showing him, but she could be taking it out on Austra.

Which left z’Acatto, who had grumbled drunkenly at having been roused from his stupor, but who by the time they started setting up camp was getting pretty garrulous. When Cazio drew Caspator and began a few exercises, the old man grunted, came to his feet, and drew his own blade.

“I saw you attack with the z’ostato the other day,” he said.

“I did,” Cazio said.

“That’s a foolish attack,” z’Acatto said. “I never taught you that.”

“No,” Cazio agreed. “It was something one of Estenio’s students tried on me.”

“Uh-huh. Did it work?”

Cazio grinned. “No. I replied with the pero perfo and let him impale himself.”

“Of course. Once your feet leave the ground, you can no longer change direction. You sacrifice all your maneuverability.”

“Yes.”

Z’Acatto made a few passes in the air. “Then why did you do it?” he asked.

Cazio thought back, trying to remember. “The knight almost had Anne,” he said, after a moment. “I might have reached him with a lunge, but my point would not have pierced his armor and the force of the blow wouldn’t have been enough to stop him. But with the whole weight of my body behind my tip, I was able to topple him. I think I crushed his windpipe through his gorget, too, but since he was a devil of some sort, that didn’t matter.”

Z’Acatto nodded. “I never taught you the z’ostato, because it is a foolish move when fencing with rapiers. It is not so foolish when fighting an armored man with a heavy sword.”

Cazio tried to hide his astonishment. “Are you saying I was right to use it?”

“You were right to use it, but you did not use it correctly. Your form was poor.”

“It worked,” Cazio protested.

Z’Acatto wagged a finger at him. “What was the first thing I told you about the art of dessrata?”

Cazio sighed and leaned on his sword. “That dessrata isn’t about speed or strength, but about doing things correctly,” he said.

“Exactly!” z’Acatto cried, flourishing his weapon. “Sometimes speed and strength may allow you to succeed despite poor form, don’t get me wrong. But one day you will not have that speed and strength, either because you are wounded, or sick—or old, like me. Better to prepare for it.”

“Very well,” Cazio conceded. “What did I do wrong?”

Z’Acatto set his guard stance. “It begins thus, with the back foot,” he began. “It must explode forward, and your arm must already be rigid and in line. You should make the attack to the outside line, not the inside, because it’s closer. After you strike, you pass, perhaps to thrust again from behind, perhaps merely to run away. Try it.”

Under the old man’s guidance, Cazio practiced the motion a few times.

“Better,” z’Acatto said. “But the leap should be more forward—you shouldn’t leave the ground so far behind. The more you go up, the slower it is, and above all this must be quick.”

“What is my target, on an armored man?” Cazio inquired.

“The gorget was a fair choice. If the arm is lifted, that’s good, too, right in the pit of it. If you’re behind, up under the helm. The back of the knee. The eye-slits, if you can hit them.”

Cazio grinned. “Didn’t you once teach me that one doesn’t fight a knight?” Cazio asked.

“One doesn’t fence with them,” Cazio replied. “That doesn’t mean you can’t kill them.”

“Except, apparently, in the case of our present enemies,” Cazio reminded him.

“Most of them are flesh and blood,” z’Acatto scoffed. “The others we merely need to decapitate. We know it can be done.”

He raised his rapier and held it above his head, hilt up and the tip pointed more or less at Cazio’s face. “If the broadsword is held like this, and he thrusts, don’t parry. Counterattack along his blade and void to the side. Never meet a broadsword with a simple parry. Use your feet—wait for the cut, then thrust, watch for the backswing.”

For the next two hours, by firelight, they played at rapier and broadsword, and for the first time in a long time, Cazio felt a return of the sheer joy of dessrata, of learning and practicing with his mestro.

Finally, panting, the old man retired his weapon to its scabbard. “Enough,” he sighed. “I’m getting too old for this.”

“A few more?” Cazio begged. “What if the blow comes from beneath, but—?”

“No, no. Tomorrow.” z’Acatto sagged down onto a rock, wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow.

“When did you fight knights, z’Acatto?” Cazio asked.

Z’Acatto just grunted and looked at the fire.

“Ospero called you Emratur. What did he mean by that?”

“That was a long time ago,” z’Acatto murmured. “Times I don’t like thinking of when I don’t have to.”

“You’ve never said anything about being a commander.”

Z’Acatto shook his head. “I just said I don’t like to talk about it, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Well.” He got up, stretched out on his blanket, and closed his eyes.

Cazio watched him for a long while. The girls were already asleep. It looked like he had the watch.

The next day was cool and clear. The fields continued, and after a bell of traveling, they saw a castle on a distant hill. Cazio could make out the white walls and yellow roofs of a small town that lay beneath it.

Presently they reached a fork in the road. One path led toward the castle; the other continued straight.

“Straight on is our direction,” Cazio said.

“You’re awfully cheerful this morning,” Austra noticed. The two of them and the ass were somewhat ahead of the others. Anne was lagging back a bit, and seemed deep in thought. Z’Acatto was limping. “I suppose I am,” Cazio replied. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’m in the company of a beautiful casnara, the sun is shining, and we’ve escaped danger, at least for the moment. Best of all, we’re not on a ship.”

“There is that,” Austra said.

“And all of this,” Cazio said, waving his arm about. “It’s a change. It’s certainly not Vitellio. Is Crotheny like this?”

Austra shook her head. “This is more like Vitellio, really,” she said. “Crotheny is wetter. There are more trees and the fields are greener, even this time of year. It’s colder there, too.”

“Well, I’m looking forward to seeing it. You must be. You must be ready to go home.”

Austra lifted her shoulders diffidently. “I’m not sure what home is now,” she said. “Everything’s changed. I don’t know if there will be a place for me anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t know if Anne will still want me as her maid.”

“Maid?”

She looked surprised. “Didn’t you know?”

“I didn’t. I thought you were cousins or friends.”

“Well, we were friends.”

He glanced back at Anne and lowered his voice. “I’ve noticed you two haven’t been very friendly lately.”

“We had a fight on the ship,” Austra admitted. “I said some things I shouldn’t have.”

“Well, you’ve known her for longer than I have,” Cazio said, “but she isn’t the easiest person in the world to get along with.”

“She used to be, to me,” Austra said.

“But something’s changed.”

“Yes. She’s changed. Something’s happened to her, and she won’t tell me what.”

Cazio tugged at the mule, who seemed interested in something on the side of the road. “Well,” he said, “you tell me her father and sisters were killed, and someone’s making a pretty good effort to kill her, too. That’s probably had a bit of an effect.”

“Of course. But it’s more than that.”

“Well, I’m sure you two will make up soon,” Cazio said. “Or at least I hope so. I hate to see such long faces.”

They went another few steps in silence. “I’m glad you’re here, Cazio,” she said. “Anne is the only friend I ever really had.”

“I hope I’m your friend,” he said.

“You feel like a friend,” Austra replied. “But not like Anne.”

“No? What sort of friend am I, then?”

“The sort I rarely even dared to imagine,” she replied.

Feeling strange and oddly guilty, he slipped his hand into hers.

Malconio was right. His interest had always been in Anne, though what drove him crazy about that was that he couldn’t exactly say why. But Anne was difficult. She still thought she was in love with this Roderick fellow. He’d thought by showing Austra some attention, he might get Anne to look his way—a lot of women were like that. At times he thought he might be succeeding. At others he felt he was wasting his time.

But meanwhile he had succeeded all too well with Austra. There was no mistaking her affection.

To his surprise, he realized he was genuinely starting to return it. She was kind and intelligent, and in her own way every bit as pretty as Anne. Oddly, every time he looked at her, she seemed prettier. Austra was the sort of girl you wanted to hold and comfort, and tell everything would be all right.

But he still wanted Anne.

A little after noon, they reached the great Vitellian way which was, finally, a real road, wide enough for carriages. One passed them, and Anne watched it go by longingly. She and Austra had traveled to Vitellio in such a carriage, with all the luxuries she had grown up expecting.

Now she was returning home with an ass.

There was one way the two journeys were similar—Austra hadn’t been talking to her much in the carriage, either. She had been punishing her for trying to run away. That argument had been fixed with a promise. She didn’t think this silence could be so easily broken.

Austra had Cazio now, anyway. The two of them had been holding hands all day.

They stayed that night in a barn just outside of Pacre. The farmer spoke a little king’s tongue, and told them they would be crossing into Hornladh soon. Her heart quickened a little at that, and she asked him if he knew where Dunmrogh was. He said it was in the east, but wasn’t sure of the way.

That night she lay awake, feeling guilty for not thinking of Roderick more. She knew she loved him, but so much had been happening.

Deep down, she knew it was more. Cazio had planted doubts about Roderick, and though she knew he was wrong, she couldn’t get them completely out of her mind. She needed to see him again. Was he in Eslen or back home in Dunmrogh?

Perhaps when they reached Paldh, she could find a courier to carry word to Dunmrogh that she was coming home.

The next day, the fields gave way to expansive vineyards that ran over the hills all the way to the horizon. Anne remembered them from their trip in the carriage—she remembered that she had never imagined there were so many grapes in the entire world.

She glanced over at Austra, who for once wasn’t walking twenty yards ahead of her.

“The Teremene River must be up ahead,” Anne ventured. “If I remember from your journal.”

“I think you’re right,” Austra said.

“That was clever of you,” Anne went on, “keeping that journal. At least we know where we are. How many days do you think we are from Eslen?”

“It was five days by carriage,” Austra said. “But we didn’t travel all day, and we spent two nights in Paldh.”

“Six days, then, or seven do you think, if we press hard?”

“That might be right,” Austra allowed.

Anne bit her lip. “Are we going to continue like this?” she asked. “Not talking?”

“We’re talking,” Austra said.

“You know what I mean.”

Austra sighed and nodded. “It’s just—I still love you, Anne, but sometimes I think you can’t love me.”

“That’s nonsense,” Anne said. “You’re my best friend. You’ve always been my best friend. And I still need you.”

“It just hurts, the way you keep shutting me out.”

“I know,” Anne said.

“But you aren’t going to stop.”

Anne sighed. “Let me think about it. But can we call a truce for the time being?”

“We aren’t at war.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Anne said, trying to sound bright.

They chatted after that, speculating about how things would be in Eslen. It wasn’t as comfortable as it once had been, but it was better than the silence.

After about a bell, Austra asked for a break so she could answer the call of nature.

“I’ll join you,” Anne said. “The morning wine’s gone straight through me.”

Cazio and z’Acatto took the opportunity to sit. “Take your time,” Cazio said. “The ass needs a rest.”

The two girls strolled up a hill through long rows of grapevines, until they couldn’t see the men anymore. Anne wished it was the season for grapes—the dried fish and hard bread they’d purchased with her hair hadn’t been good to start with, and she was really sick of it now.

“What’s that down there?” Austra asked, when they’d finished what they climbed the hill to do.

Anne peered in the direction the other girl was pointing. The hill sloped down away from where they had left the men, to form a little valley between it and the next hill. A line of willows marked a stream, but before the stream there was what first appeared to be an irregular wall of red brick. Then she saw there was more to it.

“It looks like some sort of ruin,” Anne said.

“Can we get a closer look?” Austra asked.

Anne didn’t really feel like it—she had had enough of explorations and adventures to last a lifetime. But Austra was talking to her again.

“A small look,” she granted. “We shouldn’t delay too long.” They made their way down the hill. The formal vines ended halfway down and picked up on the next hill, but the valley was unruly, grown up with wild vines, brush, and bushes. The ground was littered with bricks.

“It must have been a castle, or a mansion,” Austra said, when they drew nearer.

Anne nodded in agreement. Grapevines concealed most of the structure. One wall still stood higher than their heads—the rest had crumbled almost to the foundations. Still, they could see the outlines of the rooms that had been there, and it had been a house of considerable size.

Now that they were down here, it was also apparent that there were more buildings, or what had once been buildings. Yet there was something odd about them. Even in ruin, there was something familiar.

Curious, Anne stepped over the remains of a wall and into the nearest ruin. There was a sort of mound not far in, which on closer inspection turned out to be a broken stone box. Something dull and white caught her eye, and she bent to pick it up. It was thin but heavy, and with a start she realized it was a small piece of lead foil. She felt the slight raising of letters on it, and with a gasp dropped it.

“What’s wrong?” Austra asked.

“This is a city of the dead,” Anne whispered. “Like Eslen-of-Shadows.” She backed away from the box, which could only be the remains of a sarcophagus.

“Saints!” Austra murmured, looking around. “But where is the living city? We’re too far from Pacre, and I don’t think we’re to Teremene yet.”

“No one has kept this up,” Anne said. “The city-of-the-quick must be gone, too. Maybe it was farther down the valley.”

“A whole town, gone?” Austra wondered aloud. “How could that happen?”

“It happens,” Anne said. “It might have been a plague, or war—” A shiver went down her back. “Let’s get out of here. These aren’t our ancestors. They might not like having us here.”

“Wait,” Austra said. “Look over there.”

Anne reluctantly followed Austra around another pile of rubble. Beyond it stood a construction that was more or less intact, square, four-walled, though with no roof. The arch of the doorway had fallen in, but the opening was still there. Inside, trees and vines grew so thickly, they seemed nearly impenetrable.

“It’s a horz,” Austra said. “It looks almost like the one back home—where we found Virgenya’s tomb.”

A strange sensation settled on Anne as she realized Austra was right. She felt something turn behind her eyes and the faint whisper of a voice in a language she did not know.

“We have to leave, Austra,” she said urgently. “We have to leave now.”

Austra turned, and her eyes widened. “Your face,” she said, sounding concerned. “Are you all right?”

“I just have to leave.”

The feeling faded as they put the horz behind them.

“What was it?” Austra asked.

“I don’t know,” Anne replied. Then, seeing the skeptical look on Austra’s face, she said, “I really don’t know. But I’m feeling better now.”

Austra suddenly frowned. “Did you hear that?” she asked. “Was that Cazio?”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

Austra started running up the hill, but Anne caught her by the hand. “Wait,” she whispered. “Slowly. Quietly.”

“Why? It sounded like he was shouting.”

“All the more reason,” Anne said. “What if he was trying to warn us?”

“Warn us?” Austra’s voice sounded a little panicky.

They hurried to the top of the hill, crouching low, and peered down through the grapevines.

Cazio and z’Acatto were there, along with some twenty riders. Cazio was down on his knees, his sword several yards away, and one of the men was binding his hands behind his back. Z’Acatto was standing and already bound.

It was the knights and soldiers from the docks.

“They’ve found us,” Anne whispered.

“Cazio,” Austra gasped. Then she opened her mouth to shout it, and Anne had to clap a hand over it.

“No,” Anne barely sighed. “We have to run.”

Austra closed her eyes and nodded. Anne removed her hand.

“We can’t leave them,” Austra said anxiously.

“They didn’t kill them,” Anne said. “They won’t unless they catch us, do you see? But if they do catch us, we’ll all die.”

“They’ll come up here,” Anne said. “We’re lucky they haven’t already, but they recognized Cazio and z’Acatto, so they know we must be somewhere. The only way we can help them is by staying free.”

“I suppose so,” Austra relented.

They started back down the hill, toward the ruins, creeping at first, but when they heard horses’ hooves coming up behind them, they began to run.

2 The Blind, the Deaf, and the Darkness

When Alis Berrye entered, Muriele waved her to a seat.

“Tell me what is happening,” she said. “Tell me how I might die today.”

Berrye frowned and clutched her hands together. “Majesty,” she said, “first I’d like to discuss the matter of the attack on Lady Gramme’s manse.”

“Go on,” Muriele said, reaching for her cup of tea.

“You ordered that because of my suggestion that Prince Robert was there, and that the lady Gramme was plotting against you. I fear I have failed you.”

“Because we did not find Robert?” Muriele took a sip of the tea. “That’s hardly a surprise. That matter went very poorly, but it was not your fault. There should not have been an attack, for one thing. My orders were to surround the place so no one could sneak away. Sir Fail was then to enter with my authority and conduct a peaceful search. Instead, his men were set upon and they reacted like the warriors they are. But Robert aside, it’s fairly clear that Gramme was conspiring to win over the support of the Newland landwaerden. That in itself was worth knowing.”

Berrye continued to look troubled. “Majesty, I could have discovered that myself, without bloodshed.”

“You have the presumption to tell me that sending my men to Gramme’s was a mistake?”

“It is my duty to tell you such things, Majesty,” Berrye replied. “It is in the nature of what you have asked me to do.”

Muriele raised an eyebrow, but Berrye was right. Erren had never shied from telling her when she had been a fool. Of course, Erren had been older, and her friend of many years. Having this girl remonstrate with her was—annoying.

“Very well, I accept that,” she said reluctantly. “I know that it was an unpopular move, particularly in certain quarters. But I felt I had to make some show of force, make some statement that I will not sit passive and be a target.”

“Maybe so,” Berrye agreed, “but you might have picked another battle. The landwaerden are no longer disaffected with the throne—they are furious at it. Your support in the Comven is weaker than ever, and the rumor in the streets is that you have gone mad. Worst of all, the praifec has begun to speak against you.”

“Really,” Muriele said. “What does the praifec say?”

“He suggests pointedly that you have wrested power from your son.”

“He knows very well Charles isn’t capable of making decisions.”

Berrye nodded. “That is, I believe, his point. His further point being that your son should be removed from your council and placed under his.”

Muriele smiled bitterly. “Only a few days ago, he suggested that I allow troops from z’Irbina to camp in this city. Did you know that?”

“No, but I could have guessed it. The Church is in motion, Majesty. I do not know the exact nature of their agenda, but I think it certain they are ending their long reclusion from direct interference in secular affairs.”

Muriele settled her cup on the arm of her chair. “Hespero said something like that, too,” she said. “Very well—kill him for me.”

“Majesty?” Berrye’s eyes widened fractionally.

“I’m joking, Lady Berrye.”

“I . . . Oh, good.”

“Unless you think I’ve gone mad, as well.”

“I don’t think that at all, Majesty,” Berrye assured her.

“Well, good,” she said sarcastically. “You’ve told me what I did wrong—I’m open to your suggestions of what to do right.”

“It’s of the greatest importance that you win the landwaerden and merchants back to your cause, Majesty,” the girl replied. “I cannot stress that enough.”

“Believe it or not,” Muriele said, “I had entertained thoughts along those lines some weeks ago. I commissioned a piece of music to be composed for them and for the common people of the city. The performance was to be some three weeks hence, with a banquet to accompany it. I didn’t know that Lady Gramme had beaten me to it. Now I suppose there’s little point. It will only seem like an apology.”

“Which is precisely why you should go ahead with it,” Berrye said. “But you must go farther, I think, and consider what laws you might reform to pacify them. I would suggest a formal hearing where they may present their demands.”

“I’ll do so tomorrow. What else?”

“Whether you’ve thrown in with Liery or not, everyone thinks you have. You have two choices: either disprove that notion by marrying Berimund, or make it true in every sense by marrying one of the Lierish lords.”

“No,” Muriele said. “What else?”

“Free Gramme immediately,” Berrye urged. “You haven’t proved she’s done anything wrong, and if something happens to her while she is in your custody, it will only make you look worse.”

“I was rather hoping something would happen to her while she was in my custody,” Muriele replied.

“I hope that’s another joke, Majesty.”

“It is, Lady Berrye, but just barely. I’ll have her freed within the hour. Is there anything else?”

“Yes. Make some appearances outside this hall. And get some sleep—you’re getting circles beneath your eyes.”

Muriele chuckled. “Erren used to comb my hair. Are you going to start that, too?”

“If you wish, Majesty,” Berrye said cautiously.

“No, thank you. I think I would find it a trifle too familiar, having my husband’s mistress running a comb through my hair.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Did you comb his hair?”

“I— Now and then,” Berrye confessed.

“Did that strange snuffling noise he made in his sleep annoy you?”

“I found it endearing, Majesty.”

“Well. Thank you, Lady Berrye. We’ll speak again when you have more to report.”

Berrye got up to leave.

“One moment, Lady Berrye,” Muriele murmured, reaching a reluctant decision.

“Yes, Majesty.”

“The assassin who invaded my chambers took something. A key.”

“A key to what, Majesty?”

“I’m about to show you.”

Berrye paused at the edge of the light.

“Come along,” Muriele said.

“But majesty, there are no more torches. Perhaps we should return for a lantern.”

“One shall be provided,” Muriele said. But she turned to the younger woman. “It’s good to know you don’t know all my secrets.”

“I know nothing of this place, except that once—not long before he died—His Majesty went someplace in the dungeons, and when he returned he was pale, and would not speak of it.”

“I did not know this place existed until after William died. I found a key in his room, and the questions it brought up led me here. But no one would admit to knowing what was down here.”

She stepped into the darkness, and Berrye followed. Muriele felt for the wooden door she knew was there and found its handle.

“There is no music,” she whispered.

“Should there be?” Berrye asked.

“The Keeper sometimes amuses himself by playing the theorbo,” Muriele said.

“Keeper?”

Instead of answering the implicit question, Muriele rapped on the door. When no immediate answer came, she rapped again, harder.

“Perhaps he is asleep,” Berrye said.

“I do not think so,” Muriele replied. “Come, let us take one of the torches—”

She was interrupted by the nearly soundless opening of the door.

The Keeper’s face appeared ruddy in the faint light from up the hall. It was an ancient, beautiful face, not obviously male or female. His filmed, blind eyes seemed to search for them.

“It is the queen,” Muriele said. “I need to speak to you.”

The Keeper didn’t answer, but searched toward her with a shaking hand, and Muriele understood that something was terribly wrong.

“Keeper,” she said. “Answer me.”

His only response was to open his mouth, as if to scream.

She saw than that he had no tongue.

“Saints,” she gasped, backing away, and then with an astounding violence, she retched and stumbled against the wall. She felt as if there were maggots writhing in her belly.

Berrye was suddenly there, supporting her with surprising strength.

“I’ll be fine—” Muriele began, and vomited again, and again.

When at last the sickness passed, she straightened herself on wobbly legs.

“I take it he used to have the power of speech,” Berrye said.

“Yes,” Muriele answered weakly.

The Keeper was still standing there, impassive. Berrye circled him, peering closely.

“I think his eardrums have been punched out,” she said. “He cannot hear us, either.”

Shaking, Muriele approached the aged Sefry. “Who did this,” she whispered. “Who did this?”

“Whoever took your key, I presume,” Berrye said.

Muriele felt strange tears on her face. She did not know the Keeper—she had met him only once, and then she had threatened him with the loss of his hearing. She had not meant it, of course, but she had been distraught.

“His whole life is spent here,” Muriele said, “in the darkness, without sight. Serving. But he had his music and conversation when someone came. Now what does he have?”

“His ears may heal,” Berrye said. “It has been known to happen.”

“I will send my physician down.” She reached toward the groping hand and took it in her own. It gripped back with a sort of desperation, and the Keeper’s face contorted briefly. Then he dropped his fingers away, stepped back, and closed his door.

“What does he keep, my queen?” Berrye asked.

Muriele strode back up the hallway and wrested a torch from the socket. Then, with Berrye following, they descended a stair carved in living rock.

“There are bones in the rock,” Berrye observed as they padded down the damp steps.

“Yes,” Muriele replied. “The Keeper told me they are older than the stone itself.”

Beyond the foot of the stair stood an iron door scrived with strange characters. The air smelled like burning pitch and cinnamon, and the echo of their voices seemed to stir other, fainter utterances.

“Over two thousand years ago,” Muriele began, “a fortress stood where Eslen now stands, the last fortress of the Skasloi lords who kept our ancestors as slaves. Here Virgenya Dare and her army pulled down the walls and slew the final members of that demon race. They slew all but one—him they kept crippled but alive.”

She approached the door and placed the tips of her fingers against it.

“This door requires two keys—the one that was taken from my room, and the Keeper’s. Beyond that door is another, through which no light may be brought. And there he is.”

“The last of the Skasloi,” Berrye said softly. “Still alive after all this time. I could never have imagined.”

“The Skasloi did not die natural deaths,” Muriele said. “They did not age as we do.”

“But why? Why keep such a thing alive?”

“Because it has knowledge,” Muriele said, “and sight beyond that of mortal men. For two thousand years, the kings of Crotheny have wrested advice from him.”

“Even the sisters of the coven don’t know about this,” Berrye said. “Surely the Church must not, or they would have had him killed.” Her eyebrows lifted a little. “You have spoken to it?”

Muriele nodded. “After William and my children were slain. I asked him how I could revenge myself on the murderers.”

“And he told you.”

“Yes.”

“Did it work?”

Muriele smiled bitterly. “I don’t know. I cursed whoever was behind the murders, but I do not know who he was. Therefore I do not know whether my curse succeeded. But I felt as if it worked. I felt something move, like a tumbler in a lock.”

“Curses are dangerous,” Berrye cautioned. “They send out ripples like a stone striking water. You can never know what your intent will result in.”

“Queeeeeen,” a voice scratched in Muriele’s head.

“He’s speaking to me,” Muriele murmured. “Can you hear him?”

“I don’t hear anything, Majesty,” Berrye said.

“Queeeen, stink of woman, stink of motherhood. Doors stand between us. Will you not come to me?”

“I cannot,” she said. “I do not have the key.” Something like black laughter rattled in her skull.

“No. He has it. The one you made.”

Muriele’s heart clenched like a fist in her chest. “The one I made? What do you mean?”

“I sing of him, I sing and sing. When the world itself cracks, perhaps I will die.”

“Tell me,” she demanded. “Tell me who it is. You cannot lie to me.”

“You don’t have the key . . .” The voice soughed away, like a wind dying. Muriele’s last impression was of glee.

“Answer me,” she shrieked. “Quexqaneh, answer me!”

But the voice did not return, and by degrees, Muriele calmed herself.

“We have to find out who came here,” Muriele told Berrye. “We must know what he spoke to the Kept about, and I must have my key back.”

“I will do my best,” Berrye said. She sounded a little shaken, and looked very young. Muriele suddenly regretted sharing the secret of the Kept with her, but who else could help her? Sir Fail and his men would be of no help in matters of espionage. Berrye had proved that she had some facility in that area. Constrained as her choices were, telling Berrye was the only thing she could do.

And it was already done, now.

They left the dungeons. She returned to her rooms, summoned her personal physician to attend the Keeper, signed the order for the release of Gramme and her son, and retired early to bed.

Dreams of spiders and serpents and eyeless old men woke her every few hours.

The next day she prepared to hold court, as Berrye suggested. She had avoided it since the attempt on her life, but she couldn’t avoid it forever. So she had Charles dressed, and when Berrye was late, began dressing herself. She chose a gown of purple safnite with a stiff fan of lace around the collar and began working herself into it, though she knew she couldn’t do up the back. It occurred to her that she needed a new maid, but her grief over Unna was still fresh enough that she couldn’t bear the thought of choosing one. She thought she might assign Berrye to the task, and realized just how much she was already relying on the young woman.

She isn’t Erren, she reminded herself. She was your husband’s whore.

But there was something about her so like Erren, a certain confidence that could only come from coven training, that Muriele found herself slipping into old habits.

Old habits could be fatal. She still had no proof that Berrye’s intentions were honest. And she was late.

She was just getting really irritated when the girl finally arrived. She was opening her mouth to complain when she saw Berrye’s expression.

“What?” Muriele asked.

“He’s here, Majesty,” she said, sounding out of breath. “Prince Robert is here. I have seen him.”

So it was true. Muriele closed her eyes. “He’s in the castle?”

“In the throne room, Majesty, waiting for you.”

“Do you know what he intends?” She lifted her eyelids.

Berrye sat and put her palms to her forehead. Muriele had never seen her so upset.

“He has his guard with him, Your Majesty, forty men. The Duke of Shale and Lord Fram Dagen have at least twenty men each. Every other member of the Comven has his guard with him, and there is word of landwaerden militia in the city.”

The room seemed to pulse, expanding and shrinking with Muriele’s heartbeat. She sat heavily in her armchair, unmindful of her half-finished job of dressing.

“He’s here to take the throne,” she said. Her mouth was dry.

“That is my best guess, Your Majesty.”

“It is the only guess.”

“I should have seen this coming,” Berrye said bitterly.

“You did see it coming,” Muriele muttered.

“But not so soon,” Berrye disagreed. “Not nearly this soon. I thought we had time to act, to blunt the blow.”

“Well, we haven’t.” She closed her eyes, trying to think. “Sir Fail has thirty men. There are twenty Craftsmen—if I can trust them—and their men-at-arms, altogether another hundred men I’m not sure I can count on. Indeed, they might well choose Robert as their king.”

“They cannot, by law,” Berrye said. “Not while Charles and Anne live.”

“No one knows Anne is alive, and Charles—they might make exception for Charles due to his nature. Robert might go farther. If he slew the father, he might well slay the son.”

She stood and turned her back to Berrye. “Lady Berrye, would you do my fastenings?”

“You still intend to attend court?”

“I’m still thinking,” Muriele said.

Berrye began latching the fastenings. Muriele could feel the girl’s breath on her hair. Her heartbeat seemed to slow, and an odd calm settled as a plan began sorting itself out.

“You know the passages,” Muriele said, as Berrye latched the third hook. “Do you know the way out of the city?”

“The long passage that goes under the wall? The one that can be filled with water?”

“That is the only one I know,” Muriele replied.

“I know where it is,” Berrye said. “I’ve never been there.”

“But you’re certain you can find it.”

“I studied the plans of this castle at my coven. So far I’ve found no error in them.” She fastened the last catch and the collar.

“Good.”

Muriele strode to her antechamber and summoned the guard outside the door.

“Bring Sir Fail here immediately,” she said.

The knight had taken up residence in Elseny’s chambers, which were just down the hall. He arrived a few moments later.

“Sir Fail,” she said. “I need another favor of you.”

“Whatever you require, Majesty.”

“I need you to take Charles to Liery.”

The old man’s mouth dropped open, and he stared at her for a moment. “What?” He finally managed.

Muriele crossed her arms and regarded her uncle. “Prince Robert, as fate would have it, is not dead at all. He has returned, and I believe today he will seize the throne. I want my son kept safe, Sir Fail.”

“I—surely we can stop him. He has no right—”

“I will not risk that,” Muriele replied. She nodded at Alis Berrye. “You know this lady?”

“Lady Berrye, yes.” He looked puzzled.

“There is a safe way out of the castle, a secret way. She knows it, and will lead you out. You are to collect Charles and leave immediately. Leave me two escorts, and take the rest of your men in case there are enemies at your ship.”

“But of course you’re going with us,” Fail said.

“No, I’m not,” Muriele replied. “That is the favor I am asking, and there is no time to discuss it beyond a simple yes or no.”

“Muriele—”

“Please, Sir Fail. I’ve lost two of my daughters.”

He straightened. “Then yes. But I will return for you.”

“And you will have the rightful king behind you when you do,” Muriele told him. “Do you understand?”

“I understand.” Fail’s eyes misted, and his head sagged. Sighing, she stepped forward and hugged him.

“Thank you, Uncle Fail,” she said.

He squeezed her arms. “Saints be with you, Meur,” he murmured.

Berrye caught her arm. “I’ll be back, after I’ve shown them the way.”

“No,” Muriele said. “Stay with them. Watch my son.”

When they were gone, she returned to her armchair for half a bell, to give them time to get started. Then, taking a deep breath, she rose and left her rooms and marched down the corridor to where Sir Moris Lucas, captain of the Craftsmen, was housed.

He answered her knock with a look of vast surprise.

“Majesty,” he said. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“Sir Moris,” Muriele began, “I have not treated you and your men well, these past months.”

“If you say so, Majesty,” he replied, sounding uncertain.

“That being said, I must ask you to bear a few direct and impertinent questions.”

“I will answer any question Her Majesty puts to me,” the knight assured her.

“Are the Craftsmen faithful to me and my son Charles?”

Moris stiffened. “We are faithful to Charles as king and to you as his mother,” he replied.

“And do you recognize any other claim to the throne?”

Moris’ frown deepened. “Princess Anne has a claim, but she is not, to my knowledge, present.”

“You have heard that Prince Robert has returned?”

“There is a rumor to that effect,” Moris said.

“What if I were to tell you that I think he slew my husband and the Craftsmen and Royal Horse who rode with him to the headland of Aenah?”

“I would call that a reasonable supposition, Majesty. And if you’re asking if I would follow Prince Robert, the answer is no.”

“And you trust your men?”

He hesitated. “Most of them,” he finally admitted.

“Then I lay this geis on you, Sir Moris, and on your men. I want you to leave this castle and this city, even if you must fight your way out.”

His eyes rounded like regaturs. “Majesty? We will stand by you.”

“If you do, you will die. I need you alive, outside of the castle, outside of Eslen, where you can find the support you need to enforce my justice. I want you to take Hound Hat, and I want you to dress one of your men in a heavy cloak and hood, so that it appears you have Charles with you.”

“But the king, Majesty—”

“Is still the king. He will be safe, I assure you.”

Moris absorbed that for several breaths. “Do you want us to leave now, Majesty?”

“Now and as quietly as possible. I want no blood spilled unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

He bowed. “By your command, lady. Saints be with you.”

“And with you, sir,” she replied.

She returned to her quarters, thinking that at least now she would know—once and for all—if the Craftsmen could indeed be trusted. Actions proved better than words.

She put on her circlet, collected the two escorts Fail had left her, and went to court.

3 Swordsman, Priest, and Crown

When Stephen broke the praifec’s seal, he knew he had severed himself from the Church. The seal was sacrosanct, to be opened only by the intended recipient. Punishment for a novice or priest who broke that sacred trust began with expulsion from holy orders. After that, they were subject to temporal punishment—which could be anything from a whipping to death by drowning.

But to Stephen, that was nothing. For the Church to prosecute him for the crime, they would have to know he had committed it, and if he wished to hide that from them, he probably could. No, the reason he broke the seal was because he knew in his heart the rot he’d found in the monastery d’Ef wasn’t just a bad spot on a pear—the whole fruit was rotten, through and through, along with the tree it grew on.

If the fathers of the Church were behind the waking of the Damned Saints, the implications were staggering. And if the Church itself was corrupt, he wanted no part of it—or, rather, no part larger than the one he had already played. He would serve the saints in his own way.

“Stephen?” Winna asked. “What does it say?”

He realized he’d been staring past the inked characters without reading them. He tried to clear his mind and concentrate.

Strange, he thought. Besides the signature and a verse that looked like Vadhüan, the letter was gibberish.

“Ah. It’s some sort of encryption,” he told them. “A cypher.”

“A knot of words you can’t untie?” Aspar said. “I doubt that.”

Stephen nodded, concentrating. “Given time, I could read it. It’s based on Church Vitellian, and an older liturgical language called Jhehdykhadh. But written as it is, it doesn’t mean anything. There is this verse here, though . . .” He trailed off, studying it. It was Old Vadhüan, or some closely related dialect.

“There’s a canitu here,” he said, “in the language of the Warlock Lords, a canitu subocaum—ah, an ‘incantation to invoke.’”

“Invoke whom?” Leshya asked.

“Khrwbh Khrwkh,” he replied, shaking his head. “I’ve never heard of it, whatever that is. But not all the Damned Saints are commonly known. Actually, it sounds more like a place than a person—it means something like ‘bent mound.’”

“Could it refer to a sedos?” Leshya asked.

“Easily,” Stephen replied. “And given what we’ve seen so far, that makes the most sense. It’s just that they’ve prefixed the name with dhy, which usually indicates that the name following will be that of a saint. It’s quite puzzling.”

“In any event,” Leshya said, “it’s pointless to go back to Eslen to alert your praifec, since it seems perfectly clear he’s well aware of what’s going on out here.”

“Well, I’m not clear on it,” Aspar said.

“Neither am I,” Leshya shot back, “but we know now that the Church is waking an old faneway, and it seems just as certain that it’s not a good idea to let them finish it.”

“They may have finished it,” Aspar said.

“I don’t think so,” Stephen said. “I believe these are the instructions for the consecration of this Khrwbh Khrwkh, whatever exactly it might be. And the canitu appears to be part of a longer piece—or more specifically, the end of a longer piece.”

“You’re saying that we have what they need to finish it.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Listen, I’ll try to translate for you.” He cleared his throat.

There was a moment of silence, and then Aspar grunted. “A drinking song it’s not.”

“I’m not sure about all of it,” Stephen admitted. “That bit about swordsman, priest, and crown, for instance. The words here are Pir Khabh, dhervhidh, and Thykher. The first is very particular, a man who fights with a sword. Dhervhidh means ‘someone who has walked a faneway,’ but not necessarily in orders. The third, Thykher, could be anyone of noble blood or it might mean a king specifically. Without better resources, better reference materials, I’ve no way of knowing for sure.”

“What was that about ‘deathless’?” Winna asked.

“Mhwrmakhy,” Stephen said. “It really means ‘servant of the Mhwr,’ another name for the Black Jester, but they were also called ‘anmhyry’ or ‘deathless.’ We don’t know much about them except that they don’t exist anymore.”

“Didn’t exist anymore, you mean,” Leshya said. “That used to be true of a lot of things.”

“Granted,” Stephen agreed, a little diffidently. Something was gnawing at him about the list of “flowing froms.”

Aspar noticed his inattention. “What is it?” he asked.

Stephen folded his arms across his chest.

“A faneway has to be walked in sequence, and the whole faneway has to be awake, so to speak, for its power to flow properly. That’s why something strange happened when I set foot on one, probably because I already have a connection to the sedoi.”

“And so?” Leshya asked.

“Well, if I understand this invocation, the last sedos in the faneway is Khrwbh Khrwkh,” Stephen explained. “We don’t know where that is, obviously, but according to this verse, the first one is the Spectral Eye . . .”

“You know where that is?” Aspar asked.

“In a minute,” Stephen said absently. “I’m still thinking this through.”

“No, please, take your time,” Aspar muttered.

“The second one, ‘Mother Devouring’—that’s the fane I went in, I’m certain of it. The first one Leshya led us to. That’s one of the titles of Marhirehben.”

“Aspar, back when you were tracking the greffyn, after you sent me off to d’Ef, you said you found a sacrifice at a sedos. Where was that, exactly?”

“About five leagues east of here, on Taff Creek.”

“Taff,” Stephen considered. Then he reached into his saddle, back where his maps were rolled up. He selected the one he wanted, then sat down cross-legged and rolled it out on the ground.

“What map is that?” Leshya asked, peering down at it.

“Stephen is in the habit of carrying maps a thousand years out of date,” Aspar said.

“Yes,” Stephen said, “but it may have finally done some good. This is a copy of a map made during the time of the Hegemony. The place-names have been altered to make sense to the Vitellian ear and to be written in the old scrift. Where would the Taff be, Aspar?”

The holter bent over and studied the yellowed paper. “The forest is different,” he said. “There’s more of it. But the rivers are near the same.” He thrust his finger at a small, squiggling line. “Thereabout,” he said.

“See the name of the creek?” Stephen asked.

“Tavata,” Winna read.

Stephen nodded. “It’s a corruption of Alotersian tadvat, I’ll wager—which means ‘specter.’”

“That’s it, then,” Leshya said.

Aspar made a skeptical noise.

Stephen moved his finger over a bit. “So the one on the Taff is the first. The one I stepped into is the second, and about here. That last one was about here.” He placed his finger on curved lines indicating hills. One, oddly, had a dead tree sketched on its summit.

“Does that mean anything to you, Aspar? Do you know anything about that place?”

Aspar frowned. “It used to be where the old people made sacrifice to Grim. They hung ‘em on that Naubagm tree.”

“Haergrim the Raver?”

Aspar nodded slowly, his face troubled.

“I’ve never heard of Pel,” Stephen allowed, “but the fact that both he and Haergrim are connected to rage is interesting, isn’t it?”

“I follow you now,” Leshya said. “So far, the monks have been moving east, and we’ve seen the first three of them. So where is the fourth?”

“Huskwood. In Vadhüan, Vhydhrabh.” He moved his finger east, until it came to rest on the d’Ef River. There was a town labeled Vitraf.

“Whitraff!” Winna exploded. “It’s a village! It’s still there!”

“Or so we hope,” Stephen said grimly.

“Yah,” Aspar said. “We’d best go see. And let me know when our prisoner wakes. He might be convinced to tell us more about this.”

But when they checked him, the monk was dead.

They gave the monk a holter’s funeral—which amounted to nothing more than laying him supine with his hands folded on his chest—and set off across the Brog-y-Stradh uplands. The forest often dissolved into heathered meadows and lush, ferny cloonys. Even with winter set to pounce, in these parts, the King’s Forest seemed to teem with life.

Stephen could tell that Aspar and Leshya saw things he didn’t. They rode at the front like dour siblings, guiding Ehawk’s mount. Winna had ridden with them for a time, but now she dropped back. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

“I feel fine,” Stephen said. But it wasn’t completely true—there was something nagging at him. He couldn’t tell her, though, that when he had awakened on the mound and grabbed Ehawk’s bow, he’d very nearly put an arrow into her instead of the monk.

Those first few heartbeats, he had felt a hatred that he couldn’t have imagined before, and could not now truly recall. Not for Winna specifically, but for everything living. It had faded so suddenly that he almost doubted he’d truly felt it.

He’d remembered dreams of some sort on first waking, as well, but those were gone, too, leaving only a vague, unclean feeling. “What about you?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you so subdued.”

She grimaced slightly. “It’s a lot to take in,” she said. “I’m a hostler’s daughter, remember? A few months ago my greatest worry was that Banf Thelason might get drunk and start a fight or Enry Flory might try and run off without paying for his ale. Even when I was with Aspar when he was tracking the greffyn, it was pretty simple. Now I don’t know who we’re supposed to be fighting. The Briar King? The praifec? Villagers gone mad? Who does that leave out? And what good am I?”

“Don’t talk like that,” Stephen said.

“Why not? It’s what Aspar has been saying all along. I’ve denied it, come up with excuses, but down in the marrow, I know he’s right. I can’t fight or track, I don’t know much of anything, and every time there’s a brawl, I have to be protected.”

“Not like Leshya, eh?” Stephen said.

Her eyes widened. “Don’t be cruel,” she whispered.

“But it’s what you’re thinking,” he said, surprised to hear such bold words coming from his mouth. “She’s beautiful, and more his age. She’s Sefry and he was raised that way, she can track like a wolf and fight like a panther, and she seems to know more about this whole business than the rest of us put together. Why wouldn’t he want her instead of you?”

“I—” She choked off. “Why are you talking this way?”

“Well, for one thing, I know how it feels to think you’re useless,” he said. “And no one can make you feel as perfectly useless as Aspar. It’s not something he does on purpose—it’s just that he’s so good at what he does. He says he doesn’t need anything or anyone, and sometimes you actually believe him.”

“You, useless?” she said. “You’ve saint-given talents. You’ve knowledge of the small and the large and everything between, and without you we wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do.”

“I wasn’t saint-blessed when Aspar met me,” he pointed out, remembering vividly the holter’s undisguised contempt, “and Aspar certainly thought I was dead weight. By the time we parted, I thought he was right. But I was mistaken. So are you, and you know it.”

“I don’t—”

“Why did you follow Aspar, Winna? Why did you leave Colbaely and your father and everything you knew to chase after a holter?”

She bent her mouth to one side, a habit he found winsome. “Well, I never maunted to actually leave Colbaely,” she said, “not for this long. I thought Asp was in danger and went to warn him, and then I reckoned I’d go back home.”

“But you didn’t. Why?”

“Because I’m in love with him,” she said.

That pricked a peculiar feeling in Stephen, but he pressed on through it. “Still, you must have been in love with him for a while,” Stephen said. “It didn’t happen that fast, did it?”

“I’ve loved him since I was a little girl.” She sighed.

“So why, suddenly, did you do something about it?”

“I didn’t intend to,” she said. “It’s just—I found him all laid out on the ground. I thought he was dead, and I thought he would never know.”

“Why did you imagine he would care?”

She shook her head and looked miserable. “I don’t know.”

“May I tell you what I think?” Stephen asked.

Winna tossed her hair out of her face. It had been cut short when he met her, but now it was getting pretty long. “Why not?” she said morosely. “You’ve been about as blunt as I can imagine already.”

“I think you saw in that moment that Aspar was missing something. He’s strong and determined and skillful, and he’s smart, in his way. But he doesn’t have a heart, not without you. Without you, he’s just another part of the forest, wandering farther and farther from being human. You brought him back to us.” He paused, retracing the words in his mind. “Does that make any sense?”

Winna’s brow crinkled, but she didn’t say anything. “It’s why the three of us work so well together,” he went on. “He’s the muscle and the knife and the arrow. I have the book knowledge he pretends to disdain, but knows he needs, and you’re sovereign to us both, the thing that ties us all together.”

She snorted. “Swordsman, priest, and crown?”

He blinked. She was referring to the Vadhüan incantation. “Well, it is a very old trinity,” he said. “Even the saints break out in threes, that way—Saint Nod, Saint Oimo, and Saint Loy, for instance.”

“I’m not a queen,” Winna said. “I’m just a girl from Colbaely who’s gone off where she doesn’t belong.”

“That’s not true,” Stephen said.

“Well then where does she fit in?” she asked, jerking her nose toward Leshya.

“She doesn’t,” Stephen said. “She’s another Aspar, that’s what she is, and he won’t get a heart from her, nor she from him.”

“Aspar’s never much wanted a heart,” Winna said. “Maybe what he needs is a woman who’s more like him.”

“Doesn’t matter what he wants,” Stephen said. “Love doesn’t care what’s right, or good, or what anyone wants.”

“I know that all too well,” Winna said.

“Do you feel any better at all?”

“Maybe,” she said. “If I don’t, it’s not for lack of trying. Thank you, Stephen.”

They rode silently after that, and Stephen was glad, because he wasn’t sure he could defend Aspar much longer without breaking faith. He hadn’t lied—everything he’d said was true.

Including, unfortunately, the bit about love not caring what was right, or good, or what anyone wants.

Whitraff was there, but even at a distance it looked dead. The air was chill, yet not a single line of smoke traced the sky. No one was in the streets, and there was no sound that might come from man or woman.

Most of the villages and towns around the King’s Forest weren’t all that old—most, like Colbaely, had sprouted up in the last hundred years. The houses tended to be built of wood and the streets of dirt. Aspar remembered Whitraff as an old town—its narrow avenues were cobbles worn shiny by a hundred generations of boots and buskins. The heart of the town wasn’t large—about thirty houses huddled around the bell-tower square—but there had once been outlying farms to the east and stilt houses along the riverfront that went on for some way. It had always been a pretty lively place, for all of its small size, because it was the only river port south of Ever, which was a good twenty winding leagues downriver.

Now the outliers were ash, but the stone town still stood. Looking down on it from the hill above, Aspar noticed that the bell tower was missing. It was simply gone. In its place—on the mound where the tower had once stood—was the now all-too-familiar sight. A ring of death.

“Sceat,” he muttered.

“We’re too late,” Winna said.

“Far too late,” Leshya said. “This was done months ago, to judge by the burned homesteads.”

Aspar nodded. The dead scattered around the sedos looked to be mostly bone.

“Bad luck, that,” he said, “to build your town on the footprint of a Damned Saint.”

“I don’t see how you can joke about it,” Winna said. “All those people . . . I don’t see how you can joke about it.”

Aspar glanced at her. “I wasn’t joking,” he said softly. Lately it seemed impossible to say the right thing around Winna. “Anyway, maybe it’s not so bad as it looks. Maybe the rest of the townsfolk got away.” He turned to the Sefry. “This is a good position. You and Ehawk keep a watch from up here while we go down to have a look.”

“Suits me,” Leshya said.

They took the road in, and despite his words, it was as he’d feared. No one came out to greet them. The town was as quiet as its twin, Whitraff-of-Shadows, just upstream. Of the people there was no sign.

Aspar dismounted in front of the River Cock, once the busiest tavern in the village.

“You two watch my back,” he told Stephen and Winna. “I’m taking a look in here.”

There wasn’t anyone inside, and there were no bodies, which wasn’t terribly surprising. But he did find that a roast on a spit had been allowed to burn to char, and one of the ale taps had been left open, so all the beer had drained out to form a still-sticky mass on the floor.

He went back out into the square.

“They left in a hurry,” he said. “There’s no blood, or signs of fighting.”

“The monks might have thrown the bodies into the river,” Winna suggested.

“They might have, or they might have gotten away. But here’s what I’m wondering—this river isn’t the busiest around, but someone would have noticed this, and as Leshya said, this must have happened a couple of months ago, maybe even before we fought Desmond Spendlove and his bunch. Why hasn’t anyone cleaned up the bodies? Why hasn’t anyone moved in, or at least sent word downriver?”

“Maybe they did,” Stephen said, “and the praifec kept it to himself.”

“Yah, but rivermen who saw this would talk it all up and down the river. Someone would have come to have a look.”

“You’re thinking the Church left it garrisoned?” Stephen asked.

“I don’t see sign of that, either. Plenty of ale and stores left in the tavern—you’d think a garrison would have tucked into that. Besides, I didn’t see any smoke coming in, and I don’t smell it now. But if it isn’t garrisoned, why hasn’t some passing boatman robbed the tavern?”

“Because no one who’s come here has left,” Winna said.

“Werlic,” Aspar agreed, scanning the buildings.

“Maybe there’s a greffyn here,” Stephen said.

“Maybe,” he conceded. “There was one with the monks back at Grim’s Gallows.” He didn’t mention that it had avoided him.

“I’m going down the waterfront,” he decided. “You two follow and keep me in sight, but not too close. If a greffyn’s been killing boatmen, we ought to find their boats and bodies.”

His boots echoed hollowly as he made his way down the little street that sloped toward the river. Soon enough he made out the wooden docks. Still there. He didn’t see any boats at all. Crouching in the shadow of the last house, he peered intently at the far bank of the river. The trees came right up to the water, and nothing obviously worrisome caught his eye. He glanced back and saw Winna and Stephen, watching him nervously.

He motioned that he was going closer.

A tattered yellow wind-banner fluttered in the breeze, producing nearly the only noise as he approached the planking of the docks. The only birds he heard were quite distant.

Which was odd. Even in an empty town, there ought to be pigeons and housecrows. On the river there should be kingfishers, whirr-plungers, and egrets, even this time of year.

Instead, nothing.

Something caught his eye, then, and he dropped back into a crouch, bow ready, but he couldn’t identify what he’d seen. Something subtle, a weird play of light.

And the scent of autumn in his nostrils that always meant death was near.

Slowly, he began to back up, because he could feel something now, something hiding just beneath the skin of the world.

He saw it again, and understood. Not the world, but the water. Something huge was moving just under the surface.

He kept backing up, but he remembered that being far from the water hadn’t helped the people of Whitraff.

The water mounded up suddenly, and something rose above it with the sluggishness of a monster in a dream that knows its victim can’t outrun it. He had only an impression of it at first, of sinewy form and sleek fur or possibly scales, and of immensity.

And then it called in a voice so beautiful that he knew he’d been wrong, that this creature was no destroyer of life, but was the very essence of it. He’d come to the place where life and death changed, where hunter and hunted were one, and all was peace.

Relieved beyond words, Aspar lay down his bow, stood straight, and walked to meet it.

4 Borderlands

Someone began shouting just as Anne and Austra reentered the ruined city of the dead. Anne whipped her head around and saw two fully armored men on horseback charging down the hill.

“They’ve seen us!” she shouted unnecessarily.

She ducked behind the first building, practically dragging Austra with her, looking wildly around for somewhere to hide.

Death or capture lay in every direction—the orderly rows of grapes on either side of the valley offered no real protection; they might elude their pursuers for a little longer, but in the end they would be run down.

Hiding posed the same problem, of course, and there really wasn’t anyplace to hide.

Except the horz. If it was as thickly grown as it looked, they might be able to squeeze into places where larger, armored men couldn’t follow.

“This way,” she told Austra. “Quickly, before they can see us.”

It felt like forever, reaching the walled garden, but as they passed through the ruined arch, the knights still weren’t in sight. Anne got down on her hands and knees and began pushing through the gnarled vegetation, which if anything grew more thickly than in the horz Austra and she used to haunt in Eslen-of-Shadows. The earth smelled rich, and slightly rotten.

“They’re going to find us,” Austra said. “They’ll just come in after us, and we’ll be trapped.”

Anne wriggled between the close-spaced roots of an ancient olive tree. “They can’t cut their way in,” she said. “Saint Selfan will curse them.”

“They murdered sisters of a holy order, Anne,” Austra pointed out. “They don’t care about curses.”

“Still, it’s our only choice.”

“Can’t you—can’t you do something, like you did down by the river?”

“I don’t know,” Anne said. “It doesn’t really work like that. It just happens.”

But that wasn’t really true. It was just that when she had blinded the knight outside the coven and hurt Erieso in z’Espino, she hadn’t premeditated it, she’d just done it.

“I’m frightened of it,” she admitted. “I don’t understand it.”

“Yes, Anne, but we’re going to die, you see,” Austra said.

“You’ve a point there,” Anne admitted. They had gone as far into the horz as they could. They were already lying flat on their bellies, and from here on, the plants were woven too tightly.

“Just lie quiet,” Anne said. “Not a sound. Remember when we used to pretend the Scaos was after us? Just like that.”

“I don’t want to die,” Austra murmured.

Anne took Austra’s hand and pulled her close, until she could feel the other girl’s heartbeat. Somewhere near she could hear them talking.

“Wlait in thizhaih hourshai,” one of them said in a commanding voice.

“Raish,” the other replied.

Anne heard the squeak of saddle leather and then the sound of boots striking the ground. She wondered, bizarrely, if anything had happened to Faster, her horse, and had a painfully clear flash of riding him across the Sleeve in sunlight, with the perfumes of spring in the air. It seemed like centuries ago.

Austra’s heart beat more frantically next to hers as the boot sounds came nearer and the vegetation began to rustle. Anne closed her eyes and tried to work past her fear to the dark place inside her.

Instead she touched sickness. Without warning it swept through her in a wave, a kind of fever that felt as if her blood had turned to hot sewage and her bones to rotting meat. She wanted to gag, but somehow couldn’t find her throat, and her body felt as if it had somehow faded away.

“Ik ni shaiwha iyo athan sa snori wanzyis thiku,” someone said very near them.

“Ita mait, thannuh,” the other growled from farther away.

“Maita?” the near man said, his tone hesitant.

“Yah.”

There was a pause, and then the sound of something slashing into the vegetation. Anne gasped as the sick feeling intensified.

Austra had been right. These men showed no fear of the sacred.

She pressed herself harder against the earth, and her head started to spin. The earth seemed to give way, and she began sinking down through the roots, feeling the little fibers on them tickle her face. At the same time, something seemed to be welling up from beneath her, like blood to the surface of a wound. Fury pulsed in her like a shivering lute string, and for a moment she wanted to catch hold of it, let it have her.

But then that, too, faded, as did the nausea and the sensation of sinking. Her cheek felt warm.

She opened her eyes.

She lay in a gently rolling spring-green meadow cupped in a forest palm of oak, beech, poplar, liquidambar, everic, and ten other sorts of trees she did not know. Over her left shoulder, a small rinn chuckled into a mere that was carpeted with water lilies and fringed by rushes, where a solitary crane moved carefully on stilt legs, searching for fish. Over her right shoulder, the white and tiny blue flowers of clover and wimpleweed that were her bed gave way to fern fronds and fiddleheads.

Austra lay next to her. The other girl sat up quickly, her eyes full of panic.

Anne still had her hand. She gripped it harder. “It’s all right,” she said. “I think we’re safe, for a moment.”

“I don’t understand,” Austra said. “What happened? Where are we? Are we dead?”

“No,” Anne said. “We aren’t dead.”

“Where are we, then?”

“I’m not sure,” Anne told her.

“Then how can you be certain—?” Austra’s eyes showed sudden understanding. “You’ve been here before.”

“Yes,” Anne admitted.

Austra got up and began looking around. After a moment she gave a start. “We’ve got no shadows,” she said.

“I know,” Anne replied. “This is the place where you go if you walk widdershins.”

“You mean like in the phay stories?”

“Yes. The first time I came here was during Elseny’s party. Do you remember that?”

“You fainted. When you woke, you were asking about some woman in a mask. Then you decided you had been dreaming, and wouldn’t talk about it anymore.”

“I wasn’t dreaming—or not exactly. I’ve been back here twice since then. Once when I was in the Womb of Mefitis, another time when I was sleeping on the deck of the ship.” She gazed around the clearing. “It’s always different,” she went on, “but I know somehow it’s always the same place.”

“What do you mean?”

“The first time it was a hedge maze. The second time it was a forest clearing, and on the ship it was in the midst of the forest, and dark.”

“But how? How did we come here, I mean?”

“The first time I was brought here by someone,” Anne explained. “A woman in a mask. The other times I came myself.”

Austra folded down into a cross-legged position, her brows knitted. “But—Anne,” she said, “you didn’t go anywhere, those other times. I wasn’t there in the womb of Mefitis, but you were still on Tom Woth, that day. And you were still on the ship.”

“I’m not sure of that,” Anne said. “I might have gone and returned.”

“I’m not certain about Tom Woth,” Austra granted her, “but I am sure about the ship. I didn’t take my eyes off you. That means, wherever we think we are—or wherever our shadows have gone—our bodies are still there for the knights to find and do with as they please.”

Anne raised her hands helplessly. “That may be, but I don’t know how to get back. It always just happens.”

“Well, have you ever tried? You brought us here, after all.”

“That’s true,” Anne conceded.

“Well, try.”

Anne closed her eyes, trying to find that place again. It was there but quiet, and seemed in no mood to stir.

Austra gasped.

Anne opened her eyes, but didn’t see anything immediately. “What is it?”

“Something’s here,” Austra said. “I can’t see it, but it’s here.”

Anne shivered, remembering the shadow man, but there were no shadows now. A warm wind was picking up, almost summery, bending the tops of the trees and ruffling the grass. It had a scent of festering vegetation about it, not exactly unpleasant.

And it blew from every direction, toward them, forcing the trees, ferns, and grass to bow as if she and Austra were lords of Elphin. And at the edge of her hearing, Anne heard the faint, wild music of birds.

“What’s happening?” she murmured.

Suddenly they came, over the treetops—swans and geese, fielies and swallows, brieches and red-Roberts, thousands of them, all swirling down into the clearing, clattering, cawing, and screeching toward Anne and Austra. Anne threw up her hands to cover her face, but a yard away the birds spiraled around them, a cyclone of feathers whirling up to cloud the sky.

After a moment, the fear faded, and Anne began to laugh. Austra looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

“What is it?” Austra asked. “Do you know what’s happening?”

“I’ve no idea,” Anne said. “But the wonder of it . . .” She needed a word she didn’t have, so she stopped trying to find it.

It seemed to go on for a long time, but the winds finally subsided and went to their quarters, taking the birds with them, leaving only the crane, still fishing for his catch. The sound of the birds faded at last.

“Anne, I’m sleepy.” Austra sighed. Her panic seemed to have left her.

Anne found her own lids suddenly very heavy. The sun was warmer now, and after the rush of events, natural and otherwise, she felt as if she had been awake for days.

“Faiths, are you here?” she asked.

There was no answer, but the crane looked up and regarded her before going back to his task.

“Thank you,” Anne said.

She wasn’t sure whom she was speaking to, or what she was thanking them for.

She woke in the horz with Austra beside her, still clutching her hand. They were both covered in severed limbs and foliage. The knights had done it—they had defiled the sacred garden. She and Austra lay at the terminus of their destructive, sacrilegious path.

Well, she thought. We’re not dead. That’s a start. But if Austra was right, and the land of the Faiths was just a sort of dream, how could their assailants have missed them?

She listened quietly for a long time, but heard nothing except the drone of an occasional insect. After a time, she woke Austra.

Austra sat up, took in their return, then mumbled a faint prayer to Saint Selfan and Saint Rieyene. “They didn’t see us,” she said. “Though I can’t imagine why not.”

“Maybe you were wrong,” Anne said. “Maybe we didn’t leave our bodies behind after all.”

“Maybe,” Austra said dubiously.

“You stay here,” Anne said. “I’ll go out and have a look.”

“No, let me go.”

“If they catch you, they’ll still come after me,” Anne said. “If they catch me, they’ll have no reason to come in after you.”

Austra reluctantly consented to that logic, and Anne went back out of the horz, walking this time through the torn and trampled vegetation.

Near the entrance she found a pool of dark, sticky liquid which she recognized as blood. There was more outside, a trail of it that abruptly stopped.

She poked around a few of the ruins, but the horsemen seemed to be gone. They weren’t on the road, either, when she climbed the hill and looked down.

Cazio, z’Acatto and the horsemen were gone.

“We have to find them,” Austra insisted desperately. “We have to.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and Anne couldn’t blame her. She’d had her own cry before going back to the horz to collect her friend.

“We will,” she said, trying to sound confident.

“But how?”

“They can’t have gone far,” Anne pointed out.

“No, no,” Austra said. “We might have been in there for a year. Or ten years, or a hundred. We’ve just been in Elphin, haven’t we? Things like that happen.”

“In kinderspells,” Anne reminded her. “And we don’t know that it’s Elphin, anyway. I’ve never been gone more than a bell or so. So we ought to be able to follow them.”

“They might have already killed Cazio and z’Acatto.”

“I don’t see their bodies, do you?”

“They might have buried them.”

“I don’t think those men are the sort likely to do such a thing. If they don’t fear the consequences of murdering an entire coven or cutting up a horz, they wouldn’t pay much mind to leaving a couple of bodies on the road. Besides, the knights had them all bound up, remember? They’re probably taking them back to their ship.”

“Or Cazio told them some clever lie about where we’d gone,” Austra suggested, sounding calmer now, “and they’re waiting to see if he told the truth before they torture him.”

“That’s possible,” Anne said, trying not to think about Cazio being tortured.

“So which way do we go?” Austra asked.

“Their ship sailed north past Duve,” Anne said. “So it seems reasonable that they came from farther up the road, the direction we’re going.”

“But Cazio would have sent them south, to keep us safe.”

“True,” Anne agreed, staring at the road in frustration, wishing she knew the tiniest thing about how to follow a trail. But even that many horsemen made little impression on such a well-traveled road, or at least none that her untrained eye could find.

But then she saw it, a small drop of blood. She walked a few paces north and found another, and another after that.

There were none to the south.

“North,” she said. “One of them was bleeding by the horz, and I guess he still is. Anyhow, it’s the only sign we’ve got.”

In some distant age, the river Teremene had cut a gorge in the pale bones of the countryside, but he hardly seemed the sort of river to do that now. He appeared old and sluggish beneath a wintry sky, hardly troubling the coracles, barges, and sailboats on his back.

Nor did he seem resentful of the impressive stone bridge that spanned him at his narrows, or the massive granite pylons that thrust down into his waters to support it.

Anne switched her gaze to the village that rested beyond the stone span. She vaguely remembered that it was also called Teremene, and they hadn’t stopped there during their last trip on the Vitellian Way.

“Austra,” Anne asked, “when we crossed into Vitellio, there were border guards. Do you remember?”

“Yes. You flirted with one, as I recall.”

“I did not, you jade,” Anne protested. “I asked him to be more careful inspecting my things! And never mind that anyway. Were there border guards here? This is the border between Tero Galle and Hornladh. Shouldn’t there be guards?”

“We weren’t stopped,” Austra confirmed, after a moment of thought. “But we weren’t stopped when we crossed into Hornladh from Crotheny, either.”

“Right, but Hornladh is a part of father’s—” She broke off as grief bit. She kept forgetting. “Hornladh is part of the Empire. Tero Galle isn’t. Anyway, it looks like there are guards there now.”

Austra nodded. “I saw them inspecting the caravan.”

“So why the sudden vigilance?”

“The caravan is going into Hornladh, and we were leaving it. Maybe the Empire cares who comes into its territory, and Tero Galle doesn’t.”

“Maybe,” Anne sighed. “I should know these things, shouldn’t I? Why didn’t I pay more attention to my tutors?”

“You’re afraid it’s the horsemen?”

“Yes—or they may have offered a reward for us, like they did in z’Espino.”

“Then it doesn’t matter if they’re legitimate guards or not,” Austra reasoned. “We can’t take the risk.”

“But we have to cross the bridge,” Anne said. “And I was hoping, once in the Empire, we might find some help. Or at least ask if anyone has seen Cazio and z’Acatto.”

“And get something to eat,” Austra added. “The fish was tiresome, but it was better than nothing.”

Anne’s stomach was rumbling, too. For the moment it was just unpleasant, but in a day or two, it would be a real problem. They didn’t have even a copper miser left, and she had already sold her hair. That only left a few things to sell, none of which she cared to think about.

“Maybe when it gets dark,” Austra proposed dubiously.

Something moved behind them. A little rock went bouncing down the slope and past their hiding place. Gasping softly, Anne swung around to see what it was and discovered two young men with dark hair and olive complexions staring down at them. They wore leather jerkins and ticking pantaloons tucked into high boots. Both had short swords, and one of them had a bow.

“Ishatite! Ishatite, ne ech te nekeme!” the man with the bow shouted.

“I don’t understand you!” Anne snapped back in frustration.

The shouter cocked his head. “King’s tongue, yes?” he said, coming down the slope, arrow pointed squarely at her. “Then you are the ones they look for, I bet me.”

“There’s one behind us now,” Austra whispered. Anne’s heart sank, but as the two moved closer her fear began to turn to anger.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

“Want you,” the man said. “Outlanders come by yesterday, say, ‘Find two girls, one with red hair, one with gold. Bring them or kill them, make no difference, but bring them and get much coin.’ Here I see me girl with gold hair. I think under that rag, I see hair is red.” He gestured with the weapon. “Take off.”

Anne reached up and removed the scarf. The man’s grin broadened. “Try to hide, eh? Doing not so good.”

“You’re a fool,” Anne said. “They won’t pay you. They’ll kill you.”

“You say,” the man replied. “I think not to trust you.” He stepped forward.

“Don’t touch me,” Anne snarled.

“Eshrije,” the other man said.

“Yes, right,” the bowman replied. “They say red-hair is witch. Better just to kill.”

As he pulled back on the bow, Anne lifted her chin in defiance, reaching for her power, ready to see what it could really do. “You will die for this,” she said.

A brief fear seemed to pass across his face, and he hesitated. Then he gasped in pain and surprise, stumbling, and she saw an arrow standing from his shoulder. He dropped his bow, groaning loudly, and the other man started shouting.

“Stand away, Comarre, and the rest of you, too,” a new voice said. Anne saw the owner, farther up the hill—a man in late middle age, with a seamed, sun-browned face and black hair gone half-silver. “These ladies don’t seem to like you.”

“Damn you, Artore,” the man with the arrow in his shoulder gritted. “This no business of yours. I saw first.”

“My boys and I are making it our business,” the older man replied.

Their attackers backed away. “Yes, fine,” Comarre said. “But another day, Artore.”

At that, an arrow hit him in the throat, and he dropped like a sack of grain. The other two had time to cry out, and then Anne found herself staring at three corpses.

“No other day, Comarre,” Artore said, shaking his head.

Anne looked up at him.

“I’m sorry you had to see that, ladies,” he said. “Are you well?” He stepped closer.

Anne grabbed Austra and hugged her tightly. “What do you want?” she asked. “Why did you kill them?”

“They’ve had it coming for a long time,” the man said. “But just now I figure that if I let them go, they’ll go tell that pack of Hansan knights, then they come looking for me, burn down my house—no good.”

“You mean you aren’t taking us to them?”

“Me? I hate knights and I hate Hansans. Why would I do anything for them? Come, it’s dark soon, and I think you’re hungry, no?”

Anne numbly followed the man named Artore along a rutted road delimited by juniper and waxweed, into the hilly country that stretched beyond sight of the river. There they were quickly joined by four boys, all armed with bows. The setting sun lay behind them, and their shadows ran ahead in the subdued dusk. Swallows cut at the air with crescent wings, and Anne wondered once again exactly what had happened in the horz, why the knights hadn’t seen them.

They strolled past empty fields and thatch-roofed houses built of brick. Artore and his boys chatted amongst themselves and exchanged greetings with their neighbors as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“This is Jarne,” Artore informed her, patting a spindly, tall young man on the shoulder. “He’s the eldest, twenty-five. Then there’s Cotomar, the one with the chicken nest in his hair. Lochete, he’s the one with the big ears, and Senche is the youngest.”

“I didn’t thank you,” Anne said guardedly.

“Why should you? Figured we were going to take you to town, just like Comarre planned. Eh?”

“Are the knights still in town?” Anne asked.

“Some of them. Some of them are out in the countryside, and three of them went east with a couple of fellows they had all tied up.”

“Cazio!” Austra gasped.

“Friends of yours, I take it.”

“Yes,” Anne said. “We were following them, hoping for a chance at rescue.”

Artore laughed at that. “I wonder how you thought you were going to manage that.”

“We have to try,” Anne said. “They saved our lives, and as you said, they are our friends.”

“But against men like that? You’re braver than you are smart. Why do they want you?”

“They want to kill me, that is all I know,” Anne said. “They’ve chased us all the way from Vitellio.”

“Where are you trying to get to?”

Anne hesitated. “Eslen,” she finally said.

He nodded. “That’s what I figured. That’s still a long way, though, and it’s not the direction they’re taking your friends. So which way will you go?”

Anne had been thinking about that a lot, since Cazio and z’Acatto had been captured. It was her duty to go back to Eslen, she knew that. But she also had a duty to her friends. As long as their captors had been headed north, she hadn’t been forced to choose. Now she was, and she knew without a doubt which choice her mother—and the Faiths—would call the right one.

The thing was, whichever way she chose, she didn’t have much chance of surviving, not with Austra as a companion.

“I don’t know,” she murmured.

“Anne!” Austra cried. “What are you saying?”

“I’ll think of something,” she promised. “I’ll think of something.”

Artore’s house was much like the others they had passed, but larger and more rambling. Chickens pecked in the yard and beyond, in a fence, she saw several horses. The sky was nearly dark now, and the light from inside was cheerful.

A woman of about Artore’s age met them at the door. Her blondish hair was caught up in a bun, and she wore an apron. Wonderful smells spilled through the doorway.

“There’s my wife,” Artore said. “Osne.”

“You found them, then,” she said. “Daje Vespre to you, girls.”

“You were looking for us?” Anne said, the hair on her neck pricking up.

“Don’t be frightened,” the woman said. “I sent him.”

“But why?”

“Come in, eat. We can talk after.”

The house was as cheery inside as it looked from the outside. A great hearth stood at one end of the main room, with pots and pans, a worktable, ceramic jars of flour, sugar, and spices. Garlic hung in chains from the rafters, and a little girl was playing on the terra-cotta-tile floor.

Anne suddenly felt hungrier than she had in her life. The table was already set, and the woman ushered them to sit.

For the next half bell, Anne forgot almost everything but how to eat. Their trenchers were sliced from bread still hot from the baking. And there was butter—not olive oil, as it always was in Vitellio but butter. Osne ladled a stew of pork, leeks, and mussels onto the bread, which in itself should have been plenty, but then she brought out a sort of pie stuffed with melted cheese and hundreds of little strips of pastry and whole eggs. Added to that was a sort of paste made of chicken livers cooked in a crust, and all washed down with a strong red wine.

She felt like crying with joy—at the coven, they’d eaten frugally—bread and cheese and porridge. On the road and in z’Espino they had lived near starvation and eaten what they could find or buy with their meager monies. This was the first truly delicious meal she had eaten since leaving Eslen, all those months ago. It reminded her that there could be more to life than survival.

When it was done, Anne helped Osne, Austra, and the two youngest boys clear the table and clean up.

When they were finished, she and Osne were suddenly alone. She wasn’t sure where Austra had got off to.

Osne turned to her and smiled. “And now, Anne Dare,” she said, “heir to the throne of Crotheny—you and I must talk.”

5 The Port of Paldh

Swanmay was as good as her word. They reached the mouth of the Teremene River five days after she made her promise.

By that time Neil could stand, and even walk, though he tired quickly, so when he heard that land had been sighted, he pulled on the clothes that Swanmay had supplied for him and went up on deck.

A cloud cover was breaking up with the rising of the sun, painting the landscape with long brushes of light. Corcac Sound, Neil reflected, was what Newland would have been, without the canals and malends and the sheer force of human will to keep the water back—a thousand islands and hammocks, some of which vanished at high tide, and all green with marsh grass and ancient oaks. They sailed past villages of houses raised on stilts and men in skiffs hauling in cast-nets full of wriggling shrimp. Beyond the river channel, a maze of creeks and waterways wandered off to the flat horizon.

He found Swanmay near the bow.

“We’re nearly there,” she said. “I told you, you see.”

“I did not doubt you, lady.” He paused uncomfortably. “You said the men who attacked me are the same men you fear. Yet they did not recognize your ship in z’Espino. Why do you fear they will recognize it now, if they are in the port of Paldh?”

A hint of a smile touched her lips. “In z’Espino they didn’t yet know they were looking for me. Another day or so there and the news would have reached them. For certain, it has reached Paldh by now.”

“The news of your escape?”

“Yes.”

“Then—if I may—I would propose not to hold you strictly to your word. Put me off here, before we reach port. I’m sure I can find the mainland.”

She looked out over the marshes. “It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it?” She seemed to ignore his suggestion.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“I’ve never seen anything like it.” She turned to him. “It’s kind of you to think of me, Sir Neil.”

“It’s nothing compared with what you’ve done for me, lady. I would not see you hurt.”

She shrugged. “I’m in no physical danger. They will not kill me, if that is what worries you.”

“I’m grateful for that,” he said.

“I accept your offer,” Swanmay decided. “There is only a small chance that I will escape the Lier Sea now, with my head start gone. But it is a chance, nonetheless. I may yet win my game of fiedchese.”

“I pray you do, Lady Swanmay,” he told her gravely.

“That isn’t my real name, you know.”

“I didn’t,” he replied. “I wish I knew your real name.”

She shook her head. “I will provide you with a boat and some supplies.”

“That isn’t necessary,” he said.

“It won’t cost me anything, and it will make your life easier. Why shouldn’t I do it?” She lifted her head. “But if you would repay me for the boat, I have a suggestion.”

“Anything, if it is in my power.”

“It is. A kiss—just one. It’s all I ask.”

In the light of the sun, her eyes were bluer than any sky. He suddenly remembered the words to a song he’d liked when he was a boy, “Elveher qei Queryeven.”

But when Elveher bent to kiss the Queryen lady, she stabbed him in the heart with a knife she had concealed in her sleeve.

With her otherworldly beauty, Swanmay might as easily be Queryen as human.

“Why should you want that, lady?” he asked.

“Because I may never have another,” she replied.

“I—” He suddenly realized she wasn’t joking.

“Anything in your power, you said.”

“I did.” he admitted, and he bent toward her, held by those strange, beautiful eyes. She smelled faintly of roses.

Her lips were warm and somehow surprising, different from any lips he had ever kissed, and with their touch, everything seemed oddly changed. When he pulled away, her eyes were no longer so mysterious. They held something he thought he understood.

“My name is Brinna,” she said. There was no knife in her hand.

Before the next bell he sat in a smallboat and watched her ship until he could no longer see the sails. Then he began to row upstream. Each time the oars dipped in the water, he seemed to hear Fastia telling him he would forget her.

The tide came in and eased his journey, but Paldh was several leagues upstream, and he was still very weak and had to rest frequently. Still, the exertion felt good, and the salt-marsh smell pleased him. Near sundown, he made dock at a fishing village, where a sandy-haired boy of about twelve took his bowline. He checked the wallet Brinna had given him and found coins in it. He selected a copper for the boy, but turned it in his fingers before giving it to him. It bore a sword on one side, but no inscription. He took a gold out and looked at that. It had the likeness of a man on it, and an inscription that read marcomir anthar thiuzan mikil. Marcomir was the king of Hansa.

He sighed and returned the coin to his purse.

The boy said something in Hornish, which Neil knew only a few words of.

“Do you speak any king’s tongue, lad, or Lierish?” he asked, in the best Hornish he could command.

“Tho, sure, I speak king’s tongue,” the boy said, in a slow, lilting accent. “Do you need a place to stay? The Moyr Muc has a room in it.” He indicated a long building built of leather planks and a shingled roof.

“My thanks,” Neil said. “Say, what’s your name, lad?”

“Nel MaypPenmar,” the boy told him.

Neil smiled. “That’s almost the same as my name. I’m Neil MeqVren. Nel, do you know your ships?”

The boy swelled his chest out a little. “Tho, sir, I sure do.”

“I wonder, have you seen a Vitellian merchantman come through here in the past few days, the Delia Puchia?”

“I’ve seen that ship,” the boy said, “but not lately.”

“What about a big brimwulf with no name or standard?”

“That one I saw, three days ago. She caught that storm and was listing hard, needed a new mast.”

“Storm?”

“Tho, a bad one. Some ships went down in that one—one of ‘em out of here, the Tunn Carvanth.”

“Maybe the Delia Puchia came by and you didn’t notice?”

“Maybe,” Nel said dubiously. “You can ask around in the Moyr Muc. Why? You have kin on it?”

“Something like that,” Neil replied. “Thanks.” He got his things and started toward the inn.

Beside the door was hung a placard with a painting of a porpoise on it, confirming Neil’s idle suspicion that “Moyr Muc” was the same as meurmuc, which was what they called dolphins on Skern. It meant “sea-pig,” which he’d always thought was a poor name for such a beautiful creature. Of course Neil meant “champion,” a name he didn’t much deserve, either. He had lost his armor and his sword, and now it might be that the princess he had been sent by his queen to retrieve was at the bottom of the Lier.

None of the handful of people in the Sea Pig allowed that they had seen the Delia Puchia, but they pointed out that the shallow-drafted Vitellian ship could have made port at half a dozen other places to weather the storm. That made Neil feel a little better, but the larger problem remained—if Anne was still alive, it was because the Delia Puchia had done just that, which meant once again he had lost her trail.

Not too surprisingly, no one in the village of Torn-y-Llagh owned a sword, but he managed to buy a fishing spear and a knife, which was better than nothing. He ate a supper of boiled cod and bread, enjoying the simple familiarity of it. The next morning, feeling even stronger, he set out once more for Paldh.

Paldh was an old city. When the great harbors of Eslen were still marsh, before the building of the great Thornrath wall, it had been the only deepwater port of any size for a hundred leagues in either direction. In those days before the Crothanic Empire, Crotheny, Hornladh, and Tero Galle had all relied upon Paldh for their shipping. They had battled over it with their navies, and before them the Hegemony and the Warlock Kingdoms.

How many thousands of ships lay rotting in the channel of the Teremene River, no one could know, but the oldest of them had not been built by human beings.

Nor had the oldest walls of the city, most of which appeared to stand on a regular gray cliff thirty yards above the highest tide. Neil had never before seen them, but now that he paddled alongside he saw that what he had heard was true; above the barnacled high-water mark, one could still discern the faint seams that stretched between the original blocks of stone. When he reached the harbor, the massive barrier swept in an enormous semicircle that was something over a league in length, and here an ancient quay of the same stone provided the anchor for the floating docks.

The quay was perhaps a hundred yards in width, and a sort of sailor’s city had grown up on it—taverns, inns, gambling houses, and brothels all crowded against the artificial bluff. Even from afar Neil could see that the dock town was teeming with colorful life.

He made out the brimwulf almost immediately, because he passed the dry-docks on his way in, and there she was, up on scaffolding with workmen scurrying about, making a music of hammers and saws. There were a number of other ships there, none of them the one Anne had sailed on.

He thought back to his fight in z’Espino. The brimwulf had been far down the docks from the Delia Puchia. The sailors on her wouldn’t have seen the fight—and he’d been in armor anyway.

He paddled his boat over to the quay and tied her up near the ship, then climbed out onto the time-smoothed stone.

He waved at one of the nearer sailors.

“Hello, there,” he attempted in Hornish.

“Ik ni mathlya Haurnaraz,” the sailor replied.

Neil forced a laugh, and switched to Hanzish. “Neither do I,” he said. “It’s good to hear you speak—I’m so tired of trying to understand the gibberish around here.”

The sailor smiled and poked a rough finger at Neil’s boat. “You come all the way here in that?”

Neil shook his head. “No, the ship I served on was beached in the storm the other night. I bought this from a fisherman.”

“Bad storm, that,” the sailor said. “We almost went down in it.”

“Pretty good blow,” Neil conceded.

“What ship was that you were on?” the man asked.

“The Esecselur, out of Hall.” That seemed safe enough—Hall was one of the most remote and least visited islands in the Sorrow chain, and it was—last he’d heard—one of the few under Hanzish rule.

“Ah, explains your accent,” the fellow said. “Well, what do you need?”

“I wondered if you might use another hand, at least until the ship is repaired. I’d work for a place to stay and a coin or two until I can get a berth on something headed home.”

The sailor scratched his head. “Well, the captain did tell the mashipmanna to hire some local help, but I’m sure he’d rather have someone who speaks the godstongue.”

Neil hoped he didn’t flinch at that. He’d spent most of his life fighting people who spoke Hanzish. The fact that they thought their language was the language of the saints was just a reminder of why.

He must have hidden his feelings well, for the sailor then introduced him to the firstshipman, who looked him up and down, asked him the same questions the other fellow had, and then shrugged.

“We’ll give you a try,” he said, “But I’m telling you now you won’t pull a berth with us. The lord whose ship this is is peculiar about who he takes aboard. But if you’re still interested, it’s a schilling a day plus a middle meal, and you can sleep in the tents.”

“That’s fair enough,” Neil said.

“And your name?” the man asked.

“Kniva,” Neil improvised. “Kniva Berigsunu.”

“You ever trim out a mast?”

“Before I was six,” Neil answered.

“Over there, then. If I don’t like your work, you don’t get paid.” Working on the mast was a good place to be—it allowed him to see all who came and went. He didn’t see anyone he recognized, though, and certainly none of the knights or their men-at-arms. That was a good sign, probably—it suggested that they were still looking for Anne and her companions.

It made him feel itchy, working side by side with his enemies, but after a time he relaxed. The other men toiling on the mast seemed to take him for who he said he was, and he managed to get friendly with a couple of them. They were both from Selhastranth, an island off Saltmark, and their language and bad blood aside, Neil’s island boyhood had been much like theirs.

So at the end of the day, as they collected their schillings, he wasn’t surprised when Jan and Vithig asked him along to the tavern.

The curm vale the inn served was bitter and thick, not that different from the ale they brewed on the islands—and Neil knew he ought not have much of it. He’d never been a big drinker, and it had been a long time since he had imbibed more than a little wine.

Jan and Vithig showed no such inhibitions, swaging it down as if it were water. By the time their portions of eel stew arrived, they were well on their way to Saint Leine’s hall.

After a round of bragging about various exploits at sea, Neil leaned forward. “I’ve seen strange things lately,” he said, in a low voice. “Uncanny things. I’ve heard the draugs singing and seen a dead man walk on Ter-na-Fath. My fah says the end of the world is coming.”

Both of their faces scrunched up at that. Jan was a big, ruddy man with a bald crown and dark eyes, while Vithig’s face was so angular, it looked as if he had swallowed an anvil and it had stuck in his head.

“You don’t have to tell us things is weirding,” Vithig said. “We’ve seen things—”

Jan put a hand on his arm. “No, don’t do that,” he said.

Vithig nodded sagely. “Aiw, I know. But it’s not right. I’ve said His Lordship’s men aren’t men at all, some of ‘em—and I’ll say it again.” He punched a finger at Neil. “Just you be glad they won’t offer you a berth, is all I’m saying.”

“Vith, keep it down,” Jan growled.

“I didn’t see anything strange aboard ship.”

“Aiw—they’ve gone, thank Ansu Hlera, off south to chase—”

“Vith!” Jan pounded the table so hard, their bowls and mugs rattled.

Neil took another swallow of his ale. “No fighting lads,” he said. “I didn’t mean to stir up any trouble. How does the saying go? ‘Wise is the man who guards his lord’s Rune-hoard.’”

“Here, that’s what I’m saying,” Jan said.

“Well spoken,” Vithig murmured. “I admit I’m not wise, not when Ansu Woth’s blood is in me.” He raised his tankard. “May we die in warm seas,” he toasted.

“To wisdom,” Neil replied, and took his swallow. “Now, let me tell you about the great wurm we sighted in the Sorrows.”

“You never saw any wurm,” Jan protested.

“Aiw, but I did, and a great monster it was.”

He launched into a story his grandfather used to tell, and by the end of it, Jan had calmed down and Vithig was threatening to sing. Bold as he felt, Neil didn’t reckon to take any more risks by pressing—it would be nice to know what lord owned the ship, but he already knew what he wanted to know, and with only a single day lost.

Much later, they staggered back to the tents, and Jan and Vithig fell straight into ale slumber. Neil considered killing them, but didn’t for several reasons. A fair fight would draw attention, and slitting their throats while they slept would destroy what little honor he had left. He doubted the sailors would make any connection between their comments and his absence the next day, and if they did, they would just reckon they had scared him off.

Anyway, sailors didn’t talk to their officers and lords any more than they had to, and killing them was much more likely to make people wonder where he had got off to. Finally, Jan and Vithig were decent fellows who didn’t deserve a bad end at his hand just because they had said something they shouldn’t have.

So before anyone woke, he gathered his things and left, climbing the ramp up into the city of Paldh. There, with the money Brinna had given him, he found a sword he could afford. The blacksmith balked at selling it to him, so Neil showed him the cut on the back of his hand and small silver rose pendant at his neck—the two things he still had that marked him as a knight.

“Anyone can cut themselves,” the blacksmith pointed out, “and you might have taken the rose from a dead knight.”

“That’s true,” Neil allowed. “But I gave you my word I’m a knight of Eslen.”

“Carrying Hanzish coin,” the blacksmith countered dubiously.

Neil added another gold coin to the five already on the table. “Why did you make this if you don’t want to sell it?” he asked. “What knight commissioned it?”

“The city guard buys from me,” he said. “I’ve license to sell to them.”

“And surely to a knight who has lost his effects,” Neil said. “Besides, I’m leaving Paldh, and not likely to return.”

The blacksmith found a cloth and wrapped the sword up tightly. “Just keep it hidden until you’re out of town, hey?”

“That I’ll do,” Neil said. He took the sword and left. At a stable on the road outside of town, he purchased a horse that seemed to have a bit of intelligence in its eyes, and some tack for it, leaving him only a few schillings for food. Thus mounted he set out south on the Great Vitellian Way.

The sword wasn’t much of a sword—it was more of a steel club with an edge—and the horse wasn’t much of a horse. But then, he wasn’t much of a knight, though at last he felt something like one again. What he would do when he found the uncanny knight and his men he did not know, but he was ready to figure it out.

6 The Return

The court that greeted Muriele and the two men of her bodyguard was absolutely still. This was, she reflected, a miracle, something that heretofore she would have thought impossible in a place so plenty with gabbling fools. After her guards took their positions at the door, the only sound was the tap of her heels upon the marble, and that ceased when she sat in the queen mother’s throne.

“Well,” she said, putting on her absolutely false smile, “the prime minister will not be attending court today, so I’ll take the issues in the order they come to hand. Praifec Hespero, does the Church have any business with the throne today?”

Hespero frowned slightly. “Queen Mother, I wonder where is His Majesty Emperor Charles? He really should attend court.”

“Yes,” Muriele replied. “I told him that, but His Majesty can be quite stubborn when he has a mind. And I wonder, Your Grace, when you stopped addressing me as Majesty?”

“I am sorry, Queen Mother, but by all of our laws, it isn’t proper to address you so. Only the king and queen are thus referred to, and you are neither at this time. The court has continued to address you so from respect and in deference to your grief.”

“I see. And now it must be that you no longer respect or grieve with me. Such a shame.” She was amazed at how calm she felt, as if the whole thing were a parlor game.

“Queen Mother,” the Duke of Shale interrupted, trying to make his comically rounded face seem somehow stern, “the Comven has posed grave questions concerning the recent conduct of the throne—indeed, we question the very legitimacy of that conduct.”

Muriele leaned back in the throne and feigned surprise. “Well, by all means, discover to me these questions, gentlemen. I am eager to hear them.”

“It is more the question of legitimacy that is at issue,” Shale explained, his blueberry eyes showing sudden wariness.

“Do you or do you not have questions for me?” Muriele wondered.

“No specific questions, Your Highness, only a general—”

“But my good Duke—you said that the Comven has raised grave questions concerning the conduct of the throne. Now you say you have no questions about that conduct. You are either a liar or a buffoon, Shale.”

“See here—”

“No,” Muriele interrupted, her voice growing louder. “You see here. By every law, Charles is king and emperor, and you are his subjects, you palavering, feckless miscreants. Do you honestly think I don’t know what you are all about, today? Did you believe I had walked into your childish trap unawares?”

“Queen Mother—” the praifec began, but she cut him off.

“You, hold your tongue,” she said. “Your place by absolute decree is limited to council, Praifec.”

“It is all I have offered, Queen Mother.”

“Oh, no,” Muriele demurred. “You have gossiped like the meanest prostitute in a brothel. You have incited, you have conspired, and every person in this room knows that because they are the ones with whom you have done so. You have offered to occupy this kingdom with Church troops and you have threatened to lend them to Hansa if we won’t have them. You have tendered me your goodwill with one hand and a knife with the other, and you are certainly the poorest excuse for a man I have ever seen, much less a man who pretends to holiness. So enough from you, and enough from your Comven puppets and your petty aspirations. Let him come before me. Let the murderer whom you fools would place on the sacrosanct throne of Crotheny stand before me, so I can see his face.”

The crowd erupted, then, as if they were all hens and someone had just thrown a cat amongst them. The praifec alone was silent, gazing at her with a perfectly blank expression that was somehow the most threatening gaze she had ever met.

As the crowd began to quiet its frenzy, it parted, and there he came—Robert Dare, her husband’s brother.

He wore a black doublet and black hose and held a broad-brimmed hat of the same dark hue in one hand. His face was paler than she remembered, but with the same handsome, sardonic cast, the same small goatee and mustache. He smiled, and his teeth were white. He swaggered from the crowd, his effetely narrow sword wagging like the tail of a braggart hound, and bent one knee to her.

“Greetings, Queen Mother.”

“Rise,” she said.

And there he was, when her eyes met his—there was her husband’s murderer. Robert could not hide a thing like that, not from someone who knew him. His glee was too obvious.

“I am sorry to find you so distraught,” he dissembled. “I had hoped this all might proceed more reasonably.”

“Had you?” Muriele mused. “I would imagine that’s why so many of your personal guard can be seen skulking about. Why landwaerden militias gather outside the city, and why your toadies on the Comven have brought so many swords. Because you think what you’re about to do is reasonable?”

“What am I about to do?” Robert asked, showing a sudden anger. “Does the Queen Mother have the gift of reading the hearts and minds of others? Did a phay whisper in your ear? What is it you so impudently presume I am ‘about to do,’ Highness?”

“Take the throne for yourself,” she said.

“Oh,” Robert said. “Oh, well, yes, I am going to do that.” He turned to the crowd. “Does anyone object?”

No one did.

“You see, Queen Mother, much as we all love Charles, there is no doubt that if he had half a wit, it would be half again what he has now. And as Duke Shale was trying to explain in his more elegant fashion, the court does not like your decisions or, in fact, you, my arrogant sister-in-law. You have made alliance with Liery, slaughtered honest landwaerden, refused the peace with Hansa, and today we’ve seen you insult the praifec, the Church, and everyone in this room. And accuse me baselessly of murder.”

“Meanwhile, our citizens are killed by basil-nix, we have an undeclared war with the forces of Hell on our marchlands, and will soon have a quite certainly declared one with Hansa. And you would object to my leadership because you prefer to cling to power through your poor, saint-touched son? It really is too much, Queen Mother.”

Muriele did not feel the slightest flinch at his words. “I object to your leadership,” she said, “because you are a fratricide and worse.” She leaned forward and spoke very deliberately. “You know what you are, Robert. I know what you are. You murdered William, or arranged it. Probably my daughters, as well—and I think Lesbeth. You will not have the opportunity to kill my son.”

His eyes flared with a weird rage when she said that, but she was sure only she could see it. Then his expression changed to chagrin. “Where is Charles?”

“Safe from you.” He looked around.

“Where is Sir Fail, and his guard? Where are the Craftsmen?”

“I sent them away,” Muriele said. “They might otherwise have battled your usurpation, and I would not have blood spilled in these halls.”

He glowered at her for a moment, then leaned in close.

“That was very clever of you, Muriele,” he breathed. “I have underestimated you. Not that it will do you any good in the end.”

He raised his voice and turned to the crowd. “Find His Majesty and take care not to harm him. Arrest his guard and arrest the Craftsmen. If they resist, kill them. As of now, I am assuming the regency of this kingdom and this empire. Tomorrow at this time we will hold court and discuss particulars.”

Two of his guard had come up. “Take the Queen Mother to the Wolfcoat Tower. Make sure she is comfortable there.”

As they led her away, Muriele wondered just how long she had left to live.

Not surprisingly, Muriele had never been in the Wolfcoat Tower—Eslen Castle had thirty towers, all told, if one were liberal with the definition. There was no need for semantic laxity with the Wolfcoat—or more properly The Wolf-Coat’s. It leapt up sixty yards from the eastern side of the inner keep, tightening into a spire so sharp, it seemed a spear aimed at the heavens.

Maybe it had been—Thiuzwald fram Reiksbaurg, “the Wolf-Coat,” had not been, as the histories recorded him, a humble or altogether sane man, and it had been commissioned by him. Later in the same year it was finished, the Wolf-Coat lay dying in the Hall of Doves, struck down by William I, the first of her husband’s line to rule Crotheny.

Now she found herself imprisoned there. Robert probably thought he was being subtle.

He had meant what he had said about making her comfortable, however. Within a few bells the dusty stone apartments had been furnished with bed, armchair, stools, rugs, and the like, though it was notable that none were from her own quarters.

She had a view, as well. Her rooms were about three-quarters up the edifice and boasted two narrow windows. From one she could see the rooftops and plazas of the southern half of the city, a slice of Eslen-of-Shadows, and the marshy rinns. The other faced east, giving her a magnificent view of the confluence of the Warlock and Dew rivers.

Comfortable or not, view or not, she was trapped in a prison. The walls of the tower were sheer and smooth. Guards were stationed outside her door—Robert’s guards—and the door was securely locked from the outside. From there it was perhaps two hundred steps down a narrow stairwell, past an entire garrison of guards, to reach the inner keep. She imagined it was time to start growing her hair out.

Deciding to ration a view that with time would grow wearisome, she sighed and settled into her armchair to think, but found there was little to think about. She had done what she could, and any further decisions had been removed from her, except perhaps the decision to end her own life, which she had no intention of making. If Robert wanted her dead, he would have to do it himself, or at least give the order.

She heard the outer anteroom door open, then close. There followed a gentle knock on her inner door.

“Enter,” she said, wondering what new confrontation had come to her.

The door swung open, revealing a woman she knew.

“Alis Berrye at your service, Queen Mother,” she said. “I’m to be your maid.”

Fear thrilled through Muriele, and once again it felt as if the floor she had trusted was gone.

“You came back,” Muriele said, her tongue feeling like the clapper of a lead ball. She was tired of this game. “Is my son captured? Is he dead?”

“No, Majesty,” Berrye said in a lower voice. “All went as you planned.”

“Don’t torture me,” Muriele entreated. “Robert has everything now. There cannot be anything he wants except my torture. Unless you hate me for some reason, just tell me the truth.”

Berrye knelt before her, took her hand, and kissed it. “It is the truth. I don’t blame you for doubting, but I saw the ship sail. You took the prince completely by surprise.”

“Then how is it you are here?” Muriele asked.

“You needed a maid. Prince Robert picked me.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I suggested it. After he sent you up here, I heard him wondering aloud what servant he could find for you that would most annoy. I chose that moment to wish him congratulations, and he laughed. A few moments later I was on my way here. He didn’t know, you see.”

“You were in the court?”

“I had reached it only just as you were removed—I missed your cataloguing of the praifec’s offenses, though I wish I hadn’t. There was much discussion of it.”

“This is true, not some trick?”

“I am locked in here, just as Your Majesty is. I have no more freedom than you, for Robert would never risk even the possibility that we might grow friendly.”

“If what you say is genuine,” Muriele said, “if you really have determined to help me, then why are you here? You might have done me more good outside.”

“I considered that, Your Majesty, but out there I can’t protect you. If you are murdered, any intelligence I gather will be worthless. Here there are a thousand subtle ways they might kill you. I can detect and counteract at least some of them. And who knows, perhaps I will be granted some limited movement, if we act the part of raging hatred when the guards are within earshot.”

“I asked you to protect my son,” Muriele reminded her.

“He has protectors,” Berrye explained. “You do not.”

Muriele sighed. “You’re as willful as Erren was,” she half complained, “and it’s done now. I don’t suppose you know if there are any hidden passages in this tower?”

“I think there are not,” Berrye said. “It shouldn’t prevent us from searching, but I don’t remember any from the diagrams.” She paused. “By the by, I think it must have been Prince Robert himself in your chambers that night.”

“From what do you conclude that?”

“Why didn’t he just put you in your own chambers?” she asked. “He could just as easily have kept you guarded there, and it is the more usual way of the doing these things. Why put you all the way over here, farther from his sight and control?”

“It’s a symbol,” Muriele said. “The last Reiksbaurg to rule Crotheny built this place.”

“I think he knows about the passages,” Berrye disagreed. “I think he knows you could escape your own rooms. And that is very peculiar, Your Majesty. Very peculiar indeed.”

“I don’t see why,” Muriele said. “It’s a wonder everyone doesn’t know about them by now.”

Berrye laughed. “It is a wonder, Your Majesty, and more specifically a glamour. Men cannot remember the passages.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they can be shown them, they can even walk in them—but a day later they will have forgotten them. Most women, too, for that matter. Only those with the mark of Saint Cer, or the lady I serve, can remember them for any length of time—we and those we choose to give the sight. Erren must have chosen you—but she could not have chosen a man.”

“Then Sir Fail won’t remember how he escaped the castle?” Muriele asked.

“No, he won’t. Nor will his men, or Charles. It is a very old and very powerful charm.”

“But you think Robert remembers?”

“It is one explanation for why he moved you. The only one I can presently discern.”

“Robert is a highly suspicious man, as you recently pointed out,” Muriele said. “He may have merely feared that I would have some way to escape.”

Berrye shook her head. “There’s more. The key—who else would want the key to the chamber of the Kept? And the cruelty done the Keeper very much suggests Robert.”

“That’s two good points,” Muriele admitted. “But if you’re right, then he’s somehow immune to the spell.”

Berrye nodded. Her face drew up almost with a look of pain, as if she had bitten her tongue.

“He isn’t normal,” Berrye said. “There’s something unnatural about him.”

“This I know,” Muriele said. “I have known it for a long time.”

“No,” Berrye averred, “this is something new. Some quality about him that was not there before. My coven-sight aches when I look at him. And the smell—like something that is rotting.”

“I didn’t notice a smell,” Muriele said, “and I was near him.”

“The scent is there.” She folded her hands together and gripped them into a fist. “You said the Kept gave you a curse—a curse against whomever killed your husband and children.”

“Yes.”

Berrye nodded. “And you carried it through.”

“Yes. Do you think Robert is cursed?”

“Oh, certainly,” Berrye responded. “That is part of what I sense, though not the whole of it. But what sort of curse was it? What was it supposed to do?”

“I’m not sure,” Muriele admitted. “The Kept told me what to write, but the cantation was in a language I did not recognize. I wrote it on a lead sheet and put it in a sarcophagus below the horz in Eslen-of-Shadows.”

“Below the horz?”

“Underneath it, actually. It was very peculiar—I don’t think anyone knew it was there. The entrance to it was far in the back, where the growth is thickest. I was forced to crawl on hands and knees to find it.”

Berrye leaned forward and spoke urgently. “Do you know whose tomb it was?”

“No, I’ve no idea,” Muriele said.

“The cantation—do you remember any of the words? Do you know what saint they were addressed to?”

“The words themselves were too strange. The saint was one I’ve never heard of, Mary-something.”

Berry’s lips parted, and then she put one hand to her mouth.

“Marhirehben?” she said, and her voice quavered.

“That sounds right,” Muriele said. “There were several h’s in the name, I remember. I remember wondering how it could be pronounced.”

“Holy saints,” Berrye said weakly.

“What did I do?”

“I—” she trailed off. She seemed terrified.

“What did I do?” Muriele insisted.

“I can’t be sure,” she said. “But nothing can prevent that curse, do you understand? Nothing at all.”

“I don’t understand,” Muriele said. “You say Robert is cursed. From my point of view there’s nothing wrong with that—it’s precisely what I wanted.”

“If you cursed a man in Her name, Majesty, nothing could save him from it, not even death. And if he was already dead when you cursed him . . .” She looked down at the floor.

“It would bring him back?” Muriele asked, unbelieving.

“It would bring him back,” she confirmed. “And there is something about the prince that feels—dead.”

Muriele put her forehead in her palms. “These things, they are not real,” she said. “They cannot be.”

“Oh, they are very real, Majesty,” Berrye assured her.

Muriele looked back up at her. “But why do you suspect that Robert died? After all, it was his plan to assassinate William.”

“Plans go wrong. William had faithful men with him, and there was a fight. In any case, there were plenty of people who hated Robert enough to kill him—and he was absent from the court for an awfully long time.”

“This is still conjecture,” Muriele said.

“It is,” Berrye said. “But it would explain other things I have heard about. Terrible, unnatural things that ought not to be.”

“I only cursed Robert—”

Berrye shook her head violently. “Majesty, if he came back from the dead, you have done more than curse one man. You have broken the law of death itself, and that is a very bad thing indeed.”

7 A Change of Patrons

“Please,” Leoff begged the soldier, “can’t you tell me what’s happened, what I’m supposed to have done?”

“Don’t know,” the soldier said. He was a short fellow with a puffy red face and an unpleasant nasal voice. “Word was left at the gate to grab you if you turned up—and you turned up. That’s all I know. So just keep moving and don’t make my life difficult with a lot of questions I can’t answer.”

Leoff swallowed, but resigned himself to waiting.

They were in a part of the castle he hadn’t been in before—not that that was a surprise, because he hadn’t seen most of the castle. They’d already passed the court, so they weren’t going there. They went down a long hall with high arches and a red marble floor, then into a large room of alabaster. Light streamed in from broad windows trimmed with pale green and gold drapes. The rugs and tapestries were done in similar colors.

When he saw the men who waited in the room, he felt his scalp prickle, and his heart jerked erratically.

“Fralet Ackenzal,” one of the men said, “or shall I call you cavaor?”

Leoff did not know the face, but he knew the disharmonic voice instantly. It was the man from the dike; the one Mery had said was Prince Robert.

“I—I’m sorry, my lord,” Leoff stuttered, bowing. “I don’t know how to address you.”

The other man, of course, was the praifec. “You would not know Prince Robert,” he said, “but he is now your regent. You may refer to him as ‘Your Highness’ or ‘my Prince.’”

Leoff bowed again, hoping the shaking in his legs wasn’t visible. Did they know that he had heard them, somehow? Did they know?

“It is my great honor to meet you, Your Highness,” he said.

“And mine to meet you, Fralet Ackenzal. I hear you performed a great service for our country in my absence.”

“It was nothing, my Prince.”

“And I’ve also heard that you’re excessively modest, a trait I’ve little understanding of.” He stood and put his hands behind his back. “I’m glad you’re well, though I see you’ve been injured.” He pointed at the bandage on Leoff’s head. “You were at the lady Gramme’s ball, were you not?”

“I was indeed, Your Highness.”

“A tragic thing, that,” the prince opined. “It won’t happen again.”

“My Prince, if I may ask, has something happened to His Majesty?”

The regent smiled an unpleasant little smile. “I did not have you brought here, Fralet Ackenzal, so that you could question me. You will understand the situation in due course. What I would like to know at the moment is where you have been.”

“Wh-where I have been, Your Highness?” Leoff stammered.

“Indeed. You were nowhere to be found when the smoke cleared at Lady Gramme’s and now, five days later, you suddenly reappear at the gates of the city.”

Leoff nodded. “Yes, Sire. As you might expect, I was frightened and disoriented. My head injury made me dizzy, and I became quite lost in the dark. I wandered until I collapsed. A farmer found me and took care of me until I was able to travel.”

“I see. And you were alone, when this farmer found you?”

“Yes, Sire.”

The prince nodded. “You know the lady Gramme’s daughter, Mery, I believe? You were instructing her in the playing of the hammarharp?”

“I was, my Prince.”

“You did not see her at the ball?”

“No, Sire. I wasn’t aware that she was there.”

The prince smiled and scratched his goatee. “She was, and now no one can find her. An attempt was made to kill the lady Gramme and her son when they were in the queen mother’s custody, so we fear the worst.”

Leoff tried to look upset. It wasn’t difficult. “I pray nothing has happened to her,” he said. “She is a wonderful child and a gifted musician.”

The prince nodded. “I had hoped you knew something of her whereabouts.”

“I’m sorry, my Prince.”

The regent shrugged. “How did you escape from the manse? The entrances were well guarded.”

“I don’t remember, Sire,” Leoff said. “I was very confused.”

“Ah,” the prince said. “Ah.” He crossed the room, settled into an armchair, and snapped his fingers. A steward immediately brought him a cup of wine.

“Suppose,” the prince said, “I tell you what happened?”

“Your Highness?”

The regent took a sip of the wine and made a face. “You were taken prisoner,” he said, “by the queen’s Lierish guard, and kept in a dank cell for five days, until report reached me that you were there. I then had you freed.”

Leoff frowned. “My Prince—”

“Because if that isn’t what happened,” the prince went on, examining the fingernails of his right hand, “I might have to accept the report from a nearby village of a man who looked like you and a girl who looked like Mery traveling together. I would then have to conclude that you had lied to me, which would be a capital offense, even if you did it to protect a little girl you rightly thought was in danger from the queen mother.” He looked back up at Leoff. “I should think you would like my story better.”

“I—yes, Your Highness,” Leoff replied, feeling thoroughly miserable.

Robert smiled and clapped his hands together. “We have an understanding then,” he said. “And if you happen to hear from Mery, or learn her whereabouts, her mother misses her, and she is no longer in danger from the queen mother, so let someone know, would you, please?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Very good. Now, I am given to understand that you were commissioned by the queen mother to produce a musical performance of some sort?”

“Yes, Your Highness. For the Yule celebration, in the Candle Grove. There was to be a feast and general invitation to the people of the city and countryside.”

“A wonderful idea,” the prince said. “Please submit the work to His Grace the praifec for review.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Leoff said.

“Fine. I’m done with you now.” He dismissed Leoff with a wave of his hand.

As soon as Leoff was alone, he leaned against a wall, his limbs feeling like water. What was he to do? If he told them where Mery was, what would happen to her? To him? Did they know or suspect that he and the girl had heard their plot? Were they still looking for her?

But he had to do something, and in this he could have only one ally.

He squared his shoulders and continued walking.

“Yes?” the footman said. “How can I help you, Fralet?”

“I must speak to Her Ladyship,” Leoff said. “It is a matter of utmost importance.”

The footman looked irritated, but he nodded and left. He returned a few moments later. “Follow me, please.”

He led Leoff to a sitting room with an immense pastoral tapestry covering one wall. Shepherds and rustically dressed women picnicked beside a pool, entertained by a goat-legged man with a harp and three nymphs playing flute, lute, and sackbut.

Gramme looked drawn and disheveled, but rather than diminishing her beauty, disorder somehow augmented it.

She didn’t waste any time on her usual pleasantries.

“Do you have news of my daughter, Fralet Ackenzal?” she barked.

“She is alive and well, my lady,” Leoff assured her.

“Are you quite out of your mind?” she snapped. “Do you know the penalty for kidnapping?”

“Please, my lady,” Leoff said. “I did not kidnap her—I was only trying to keep her safe. I was afraid for her life.”

“Well,” Gramme said, looking down and ticking her finger on her armchair. She took a deep breath and let it go before meeting his gaze again.

“You are not a father, are you, Fralet Ackenzal?” she asked.

“No, lady, I am not.”

“Do not become one,” she advised. “It is tremendously annoying. I never wished for a daughter, never once, you know. She has been nothing but a liability to me, and yet, despite all reason and very much against my will, I find I have feelings for her. I thought she was dead, Fralet Ackenzal, and you are to blame for that.”

“Lady, forgive me for the worry I’ve caused, but I think if I had not acted as I did, she would be dead now.”

Gramme sighed. “I am distraught, and you have a point. An attempt was made to poison my son and me when we were in the queen mother’s ‘protection.’ No doubt she intended to kill Mery, as well.” She took a deep breath. “Very well, let this be forgotten. The prince wants to tell a different story of you anyway, and I think it unwise to stand in his way on that matter. Just tell me where I can find my daughter.”

“I would prefer to fetch her myself, Your Ladyship,” Leoff said. “If you could provide me with a horse or carriage—”

Her brow furrowed again. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“It is a marriage, Your Grace, of drama and music.”

“Like the lustspell one hears in the streets?” Hespero asked disdainfully.

“No, Your Grace—and yes. The lustspell are narrated by song, and the actors mime the parts. I propose to have the actors themselves sing, accompanied by the orchestra.”

“That doesn’t sound substantially different to me.”

“But it is, Your Grace. Her M—the queen mother asked me to write something not for the nobility, not for the court, but for the people, to give them hope in these dark times. They are—as you say—familiar with the lustspell. But while the street performances I have seen are vulgar in content and poorly drawn, I intend to give them something that will stir their souls—as you say, uplift them.”

“As you uplifted them in Glastir, by starting a riot?”

“That was an unfortunate event,” Leoff said, “but it was not the fault of my music.”

Hespero didn’t say anything, but continued leafing through the pages.

“This triad is in the seventh mode,” he noticed.

“Indeed, Your Grace has an excellent eye.”

“Triads in the seventh mode are not to be used,” the praifec said firmly. “They have a disharmonious influence on the humors.”

“Yes, yes,” Leoff said. “Precisely, Your Grace. This is a point in the piece where all seems lost, when it appears that evil will triumph. But if you turn the page here, you see—”

“The third mode,” Hespero interrupted. “But these aren’t mere triads, these— How many instruments is this written for?”

“Thirty, Your Grace.”

“Thirty? Preposterous. Why do you need three bass vithuls?”

“The Candle Grove is quite large. To project over the voices—but you see, also, here, where they each depart to different themes.”

“I do. This is extraordinarily busy. In any event, to shift from seventh to third mode—”

“From despair to hope,” Leoff murmured.

The praifec frowned and continued, “Is to excite first one passion and then another.”

“But Your Grace, that is what music is meant to do.”

“No, music is meant to edify the saints. It is meant to please. It is not meant to stimulate emotion.”

“I think if you just heard it, Your Grace, you would find it—”

The praifec waved him to silence with his own sheet music. “What language is this?”

“Why, Your Grace, it is Almannish.”

“Why Almannish, when Old Vitellian is perfectly suited to the human voice?”

“But, Your Grace, most of the people attending the concert do not understand Old Vitellian, and it is rather the point that they should understand what is being sung.”

“What is the story, in brief?”

Leoff related the story Gilmer had told him, including the embellishments he had added.

“I see why you choose that tale, I suppose,” the praifec said. “It has a sort of common appeal that will be popular with those for whom it is intended, and it promotes the idea of fealty to one’s sovereign, even unto death. But where is the king in all of this? Where is he in his people’s hour of need?” He paused, crooking a finger between his lips.

“How is this?” he suggested. “You’ll add something. The king has died, poisoned by his wife. She rules through her daughter, who has—against all that is right and holy—been named his successor. The town is invaded, and the people send for help from her, but it is denied. After the girl sacrifices herself, the invaders, overcome with fury, swear to slaughter the entire populace, and it is then we learn that the king’s son—whom all thought dead—is indeed alive. He saves the village and returns to take his rightful place as king.”

“But, Your Grace, that isn’t what—”

“And change the names of the countries,” the praifec went on. “It would be too incendiary to name a Hansan as the villain, given the current climate. Let the countries be, let me see—ah, I have it. Tero Sacaro and Tero Ansacaro. You can guess which is which.”

“Is there anything else, Your Grace?” Leoff asked, feeling himself wilt.

“Indeed. I will give you a list of triads you may not include in your piece, and you will not have chords larger than a triad. You may retain your thirty pieces, but only for the sake of volume—you will simplify the passages I mark. And this most of all—voice and instruments shall not be joined together.”

“But Your Grace, that’s the whole point.”

“That is your whole point, but it is not one you will make. The instruments will play their passages, and then the players may recite their lines. They may even sing them, I suppose, but without accompaniment.”

He rolled the papers up. “I’ll borrow these. Write the new text, with my inclusions. Do it in Almannish if you must, but I will have a complete translation, and likely some amendments, so do not become too attached to it. I will return this to you in two days’ time. You will have two days to alter it to my satisfaction, and you will begin rehearsals immediately after that. Is this all clear?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Cheer up, Fralet Ackenzal. Think of it this way—the patron who originally commissioned this piece is no longer in a position to reward you for it. You are fortunate you still have a position here at all. The regent is your new patron—mind you do not forget that.”

He smiled thinly and turned to leave.

“Your Grace?” Leoff said.

“Yes?”

“If I am to start rehearsals so soon, I must retain the musicians. I have a few in mind.”

“Make a list of them,” the praifec said. “They will be sent for.”

When the praifec was gone, Leoff closed the door and leaned against the hammarharp on balled fists.

And then, very slowly, he grinned. Not because he was happy, or because anything was funny, but because he wasn’t worried or afraid anymore. That had been swept away by a clean, cold fury the like of which he had never felt before. This man, this fool who styled himself a praifec had just sowed a very large field, and soon enough he would reap it. If Leoff was a fighting man, he would take his sword and cut down the praifec, and Prince Robert, and whomever else he could reach.

He wasn’t a fighting man. But when he was done, the praifec would wish Leoff’s weapon was the sword. That he promised himself and every saint he knew.

8 The Nicwer

Stephen first thought the water itself had drawn up in a fist to smite at Aspar, but then the fist resolved itself into a wide, flat head with yellow-green eyes that glared like huge round lanterns, all arranged on a thick, long neck. It was a shade between olive and black, and looked weirdly horse-like, somehow.

Horse-like. That struck a bell instantly in his saint-blessed memory. He jammed his palms up to his ears.

“Winna, cover—” he began, but it was too late, as the beast started to sing.

The note cut through his hands like a hot knife through lard; sliced straight into his skull and began slashing about. It was beautiful, just as the old legends told, but to his oversensitive awareness it was a terrible beauty that stung like hornets and wouldn’t let him think. Through a red shroud, he saw Aspar calmly put down his bow and begin walking toward the creature. Winna was starting toward it, too, tears streaming down her face.

He dropped his useless hands and picked up Ehawk’s bow. It was only seconds before Aspar walked into the creature’s gaping jaws.

He screamed as his shaking hands raised the weapon, trying to cancel the noise in his head, trying to remember the clean motion Aspar used when firing. He drew and released. The arrow skittered harmlessly off the monster’s skull.

The note it sang changed in tenor, and he felt his taut muscles loosen and a strange joy surge through him, like being drunk, happy and warm. He dropped the bow and felt a silly grin spread across his face, then laughed as the nicwer—that’s what it was, a nicwer—curved its muzzle down toward Aspar.

The neck suddenly snapped back like a whip, the wonderful song cut off by an anguished bellow. Something whispered by his ear, and his eyes caught the blur of an arrow in motion. It struck the nicwer beneath the jaw, and he saw there was already an arrow there, buried in a sort of sack or wattle he hadn’t noticed before.

He turned in the direction the arrow had come from and saw Leshya running down the street toward them, still fifty yards away.

She was supposed to still be up on the hill, but he was glad she wasn’t. He picked up the bow and ran toward Winna.

Aspar felt as if everything good in him had been ripped out—mornings waking in the ironoaks, the quiet of the deep forest, the feel of Winna’s skin—everything wonderful was gone. All that was left was the ugliest beast he had ever seen about to take a bite out of him with sharp, gleaming, serrated black teeth. With a hoarse cry, he threw himself aside, suddenly noticing a stench like the bloated belly of a long-dead horse or the breath of a vulture.

He came back up with his dirk and ax out, feeling silly. He saw it better now, as it heaved itself up on the dock. Its head was otter-like, as wedge-shaped as a viper, and twice the size of the biggest horse skull he had ever seen. Like the greffyn and the utin, it was covered in scales, but also with oily green-black fur. At first he thought its body was that of a huge snake, but even as he reckoned that, it suddenly heaved up onto the dock with short thick forepaws. The feet were webbed and had talons the length of his arm. Silent now save for a sort of gurgling whistle, it lurched toward him, dragging the rest of its mass up from the river. He backed away, unsure what to do. If he let it sing again, then he would surely walk stupidly back into its jaws, as he had almost just done.

At least he knew what had happened to the people of Whitraff. They had walked smiling down to the river and been eaten. He remembered an Ingorn story about something like this, but he couldn’t remember what it was called. He’d never much cared for stories about nonexistent creatures.

Another arrow appeared in the sack below its throat, but aside from being unable to croon its damning call, the beast seemed relatively untroubled. It was all out of the water now, except for its tail. Its rear legs were as squat as the front, and as far from them as the length of two horses, so that its belly dragged along the wooden planks. Although it looked clumsy, once on land it moved with a sudden speed Aspar wouldn’t have guessed at. It lunged at him and he dodged aside, cleaving his ax at the back of its neck. To his surprise, the blade sheared a notch in the scales, albeit not a deep one.

He was still surprised when the head swung violently into him, knocking him off his feet. He rolled, feeling as if his ribs had been cracked, and came up to find the head darting toward him once more. From his crouch Aspar twisted away, cutting at the exposed throat with his knife and feeling the tissue part in a long, ragged slash. Blood sprayed his arm, and this time he dodged the counterattack and came to his feet running.

As soon as he was clear, arrows began pelting the beast. Most were bouncing off; for now it was tucking its head down to protect its vulnerable throat. Aspar saw that Leshya and Stephen were doing the shooting.

The monster was bleeding, but not as much as Aspar had hoped. Still, after a brief hesitation, it seemed to decide it had had enough. It sprinted back to the river, slid in, and vanished beneath the surface, leaving him panting and wondering if the thing was poisonous, like the greffyn. But though he felt a mild burning where the blood had touched his skin, it was nothing like the sick and immediate fever he’d felt confronting the other beast.

Leshya and Winna were a different story. Winna was on her hands and knees vomiting and Leshya was leaning on her bow, the blue veins of her face prominent beneath her skin.

Stephen seemed fine.

Aspar went to Winna and knelt by her. “Did it touch you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

“It’ll be fine, then,” he murmured. He reached out to stroke her head.

“Don’t,” Leshya snapped. “The blood.”

Aspar stopped inches short of touching Winna, then pulled his hand back and walked away. “Werlic,” he acceded.

Leshya nodded. “The gaze of the equudscioh isn’t fatal, not like some sedhmhari, but its blood would infect us.” She cocked her head. “I wonder why it hasn’t infected you. Or why our priest here wasn’t as affected by its song as you two.”

“You know what it is?” Aspar said.

“Only from stories,” the Sefry replied.

“Do the stories explain how it could do that to us just by—by braying?” Aspar demanded. He still missed it, that sound, that perfect feeling. If he heard it again . . .

“There are certain musical notes and harmonies that can affect men so,” Stephen said. “It’s said the Black Jester created songs so powerful that entire armies ran on their own blades upon hearing them. He was inspired, they say, by a creature known as the ekhukh. In Almannish the same beast is called a nicwer, in Lierish eq odche. I think in the king’s tongue it’s nix, if I remember my phay stories.”

“Fine, I know what it’s called in five languages now,” Aspar grouched. “What is it?”

Leshya closed her eyes and swayed unsteadily. “It’s one of the sedhmhari, as I told you. It isn’t dead, you know, or likely even dying. We should retreat to the hill if we’re to discuss this. And you need to clean the blood off you, for our sakes. Even if you have some sort of immunity, we do not.”

“Werlic,” Aspar said. “Let’s do that.”

They found that despite his injury, Ehawk had crawled halfway down the hill.

“The song,” the boy gasped. “What was that?”

Aspar left the others to explain while he went to wash.

He found a small brook trickling down the hillside. He stripped off his leather cuirass and shirt and soaked them while he wiped his arm and face with a rag.

By the time he was done cleaning up, Winna and Leshya seemed to be feeling better.

When he approached, Leshya pointed down toward the river. “I saw it from up here, moving beneath the water. We should be able to see it if it emerges again.”

“Yah,” Aspar grunted. “That’s why you left your post.”

“I couldn’t shoot it from up here,” she argued. “Besides, Ehawk was still watching.”

“I’m not chastising,” Aspar said. “The three of us would be in its belly now if you hadn’t come along.”

“Why didn’t its song affect you?” Winna asked, a bit sharply.

“I’m Sefry,” Leshya rejoined. “Our ears are made differently.” She quirked an amused smile at Stephen. “I don’t care for Mannish music that much, either.”

Winna raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t pursue the matter.

Stephen did, however. “Still,” he remarked, “how could you have known it wouldn’t lure you as it did us?”

“I didn’t,” she said, “but it’s a good thing to know, isn’t it?”

Winna regarded the Sefry. “Thank you,” she said. “Thanks for saving our lives.”

Leshya shrugged. “I told you we were in this together.”

“So how do we kill it?” Aspar asked impatiently.

“I don’t think we do,” Stephen replied.

“How’s that?”

“We might be able to prick it to death, given time, but time is what we don’t have. This faneway must be nearly complete. Aspar, we have to stop them from finishing it.”

“But we have the instructions for the last fane,” Winna said.

“Yes,” Stephen said, “which only means they need to send a rider to Eslen to see the praifec. That gives us a little more time, but not until next month. The nicwer has lost its voice, and that’s its most dangerous weapon. We’ll have to leave it to the riverboaters to kill it.” He turned to Leshya. “You called it a sedhmhari. What did you mean by that? It’s a Sefry word?”

“Mother Gastya called the greffyn that,” Winna supplied.

Leshya’s eyes went round. “You spoke to Mother Gastya?” she said, clearly surprised. “I thought she was dead.”

Aspar remembered his last sight of the old woman, how she seemed to be nothing but bone. “Maybe she was,” Aspar said. “But that’s not far nor near.”

Leshya acquiesced to that with a twist of her mouth. “There is no true Sefry language,” she clarified. “We abandoned it long ago. Now we speak whatever the Mannish around us do, but we keep old words, too. Sedhmhari is an old word. It means ‘demon of the sedos.’ The greffyn, utin, and nicwer are all sedhmhari.”

“They’re connected to the sedoi?” Stephen asked.

“Surely you knew that,” Leshya said. “The greffyn was walking the sedoi when you first saw it.”

“Yah,” Aspar said. “It’s how the churchmen were finding them.”

“But you’re implying a deeper connection,” Stephen persisted.

“Yes,” Leshya said. “They are spawned by the power of the sedoi, nourished by them. In a sense, they are distillations of the sedos power.”

Stephen shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. That would make them distillations of the saints themselves.”

“No,” Leshya said carefully, “that would make the saints distillations of the sedos power, just as the sedhmhari are.”

Aspar almost laughed at the way Stephen’s jaw dropped. For an instant he seemed the same naive boy he had met on the King’s Road, months ago.

“That’s heresy,” he finally said.

“Yes,” Leshya said dryly. “And wouldn’t it be terrible to contradict a church that’s sacrificing children to feed the dark saints? I’m very ashamed.”

“Yet—” Stephen didn’t finish his thought, but his expression grew ever more furiously thoughtful.

“It seems to me most of this is moot, at the moment,” Winna interrupted. “What matters is finding that last sedos, that Bent Hill.”

“She’s right,” Aspar concurred. “If we don’t have time to kill the nicwer, we don’t have time for you two to stand here and go all bookish for a nineday.”

Stephen reluctantly conceded that with a nod. “I’ve looked on my maps,” he said, “but I don’t see anything marked that looks at all like Khrwbh Khrwkh. Logic dictates that it has to be to the east.” He knelt and flattened the map on the ground so they could all view it.

“Why?” Aspar asked.

“We know the order of the faneways from the invocation, and we know where the first one was. These others have been leading steadily east. Most faneways fall in lines or arcs that tend to be regular.”

“Wait,” Winna said. “What about the faneway they meant to sacrifice me at? That was near Cal Azroth, and so would be north.”

Stephen shook his head. “They did a different ritual there, not the same thing at all. That wasn’t part of this faneway, but a sedos used for the single purpose of possessing the queen’s guards. No, this faneway goes east.”

Aspar watched as Stephen’s index finger traced a shallow curve, across what must be the Daw River and into the plains near where Dunmrogh was located now.

“That’s the Daw there, and the Saint Sefodh River there?” Aspar asked.

“Yes,” Stephen replied.

“The forest extended that far—all the way into Hornladh? It’s no wonder the Briar King is angry. The forest is half the size it was.”

“A lot of it was destroyed in the Warlock Wars,” Stephen said. “The Briar King can hardly hold that against us.”

Leshya snorted. “Of course he can. He doesn’t care which particular Mannishen destroyed his forest, only that it was destroyed.”

“There’s still a stand of ironoaks in Hornladh,” Aspar said. “I passed through there on my way to Paldh once. Had a funny name—Prethsorucaldh.”

“Prethsorucaldh,” Stephen repeated. “That is a strange name.”

“I don’t speak much Hornish,” Aspar admitted.

“The ending, caldh, just means ‘forest,’” Stephen said. “Preth means a ‘copse,’ like a copse of trees. Soru, I think, means a ‘louse’ or ‘worm’ or something like that.”

“Copse-Worm-Wood?” Leshya said. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why would they call it a copse and a forest in the same name?”

Stephen nodded. “Doesn’t make a lot of sense, which means it probably wasn’t originally a Hornish name. It was something that sounded like Prethsoru, so over time they substituted words that made sense to them.”

“What do you mean?” Leshya asked, sounding as lost as Aspar felt.

“Like this place, Whitraff,” Stephen explained. “In Oostish, it means ‘White Town,’ but we know from this map that the original name was Vhydhrabh, which meant ‘Huskwood,’ corrupted through Vitellian to ‘Vitraf.’ When Oostish speakers settled here, they heard the name and thought it meant White Town, and so it stuck. You see?”

“This is hurting my head,” Aspar said. “Is there any point to this?”

“Preth-whatever doesn’t sound anything like Khrwbh Khrwkh,” Winna tentatively pointed out. “At least not to me it doesn’t.”

“No, nothing like it at all,” Stephen mused. “But it reminds me . . .” He paused. “The map is Vitellian, made just as the Hegemony was taking control of this territory. Most of the names on it were originally Allotersian or Vadhüan. But later on, there must have been Vitellian names for towns and landmarks.”

“Do you have another map from later on?” Leshya asked.

“No, not of that region,” Stephen told her. “And I still don’t see how Khrwbh . . .” He stopped again and seemed to stare off into the weird. It worried Aspar, sometimes, how quickly and oddly Stephen’s mind worked, ever since he walked the faneway of Decmanis. Not that it hadn’t worked strangely to start with.

“That’s it,” Stephen murmured. “It has to be.”

“What’s what?” Aspar asked.

“They translated it.”

“Translated what?”

“Names of places are funny,” Stephen said, his voice growing more excited—as it always did when he’d figured something out. “Sometimes, when a new people with a new language come along, they just keep the old name, not knowing what it means. Sometimes they bend it so it does mean something, as with Whitraff. And sometimes, when they do know what the old name means, they translate it into their own tongue. Ehawk, what do your people call the King’s Forest?”

“Yonilhoamalho,” the boy replied.

“Which means?” Stephen pressed.

“The King’s Forest,” Ehawk responded.

“Exactly. In the language of the Warlock kings, it was named Khadath Rekhuz. The Hegemony called it Lovs Regatureis, and during the Lierish Regency it was Cheldet de Rey. In Oostish it’s Holt af sa Kongh, and when Virgenyan became the king’s tongue we started calling it the King’s Forest. But the meaning remains unbroken after a thousand years, you see?”

“All that to spell what?” Aspar asked, a little put off that he still didn’t see where this was going, and knowing he was going to feel stupid when Stephen reached his conclusion.

“I think Prethsoru came from Vitellian Persos Urus,” Stephen replied triumphantly.

“Hurrah,” Aspar said. “What the sceat does that mean?”

“Bent Hill,” Stephen rejoined, too smugly. “Do you follow me now?”

“Sceat, no, I didn’t follow any of that,” Aspar shot back. “It’s a bridge made of mist.”

“Probably,” Stephen admitted.

“And if I take your meaning, you’re saying we should ride hell-bent for a forest in Hornladh based on nothing more than this silly wordplay?”

“Exactly,” Stephen promptly replied.

“And—let’s get this clear—even you don’t think you’re right about this?”

“A blind shot in the dark,” Stephen allowed.

Aspar scratched his chin. “Let’s get going, then,” he said. “That’s twenty leagues if it’s a yard.”

“Wait!” Leshya protested. “If he’s wrong—”

“He’s not wrong,” Aspar said.

“What about the nicwer?” Ehawk asked. “We still have to cross the river.”

“There’s a ford a league downstream,” Aspar told him. “If it follows us there, at least we’ll be able to see it. After that we can double back to the Old King’s Road. It goes straight to Dunmrogh.” He nodded at Stephen and Winna. “You two help Ehawk get mounted. Leshya, you come with me and we’ll get some supplies from the tavern.”

He saw Winna’s frown, and felt a flash of exasperation. Leshya was the only one of them immune to the song of the nicwer. Didn’t Winna know it made more sense for the Sefry to go back to town with him? After all, there might be more than one of the beasts in the river.

He didn’t say anything, though. He wasn’t going to embarrass himself by explaining something that ought to be understood. Winna still had a lot of learning to do.

“Keep a close watch on the river,” he said instead. “Yell if you see anything. And put something in your ears.”

“You should do the same,” Winna shot back.

“Then I couldn’t hear you yell, could I?” he countered, starting off toward town, Leshya a pace behind him.

9 Sorority

For a moment Anne’s tongue was frozen by surprise. “I’m sorry?” she asked, finally. “Who do you mean? I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

“I haven’t,” Osne said. “Word came to me that you might pass this way. Do you think it coincidence that my husband found you?” She placed her hands on the table, palms up. “Sister Ivexa,” she said softly. “One sister of the coven Saint Cer did not die in the attack, and the coven has many graduates and allies across the land. Word has spread quickly both of your plight and of your pursuers.”

Anne felt as if all she had to walk upon was a sword’s edge beneath her feet. The simple thought that someone actually knew who she was and wanted to help her instead of kill her was nearly too much to accept. It ran hard up against the fact that this could just be another betrayal in fair disguise.

She was far too tired to parse out which was more likely. “If you wanted me dead, you could have had that,” Anne said.

“I do not wish any harm to you, Anne,” Osne assured her.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to easily trust words like that.” She placed one hand flat on the table, feeling the solidity of the wood. “Who survived the massacre?” she asked.

“You did not know her as a sister,” Osne said, “and in some ways she is not, but more.”

Anne knew then, without thinking, as if she had always known. “The countess Orchaevia.”

Osne nodded. “Unfortunately, you fled her estates before she was aware of what was happening. But now you are among friends again.”

“What do you want from me?” Anne asked warily.

Osne reached across the table and took her hand. “Only to help you return to Eslen and your destiny.”

Anne felt the callused hand in hers, as substantial and real as the table.

“You—you are a sister of the coven, Osne?”

“I attended,” the older woman said. “I did not take my vows, but still when they call, I will answer. I would not risk all for the coven Saint Cer—not my life, or the life of my husband and sons—but I will risk them for you, Anne Dare. I have seen. The Faiths have sent me dreams.”

“The Faiths!” Anne exclaimed. “You know of them? Who are they?”

“Some claim they are merely very powerful seers, others say they are as old as the world, goddesses of fate. Even the sisters of the coven argued over their nature. I think the truth lies somewhere between, myself. What cannot be denied is their wisdom. Whether they are centuries old or eons old, they have seen more of this world than we, and they know much more of its future.” She paused. “You have seen them, spoken to them?”

“Three of them,” Anne said.

Osne sighed. “I have never been so blessed as to be called. I have heard their voices in my dreams, caught glimpses of what they see, that is all. You are a lucky young woman.”

“I don’t feel lucky,” Anne said. “I feel trapped.”

“We are all trapped,” Osne said, “if that’s how you want to think of it.”

“Is there another way?” Anne asked.

“Yes,” Osne said. “We are all vital. Each of us may be just a thread, but without the threads, there is no tapestry.”

“Then how can one thread be more important than the others?”

“Some threads are warp and some are weft,” Osne said. “The warp must be there to weave the other threads through. The warp must be there first.”

“You’re as bad as the Faiths.” Anne sighed.

Osne smiled and gripped her hand more tightly. “They’ve told you what you must do, haven’t they? And given you at least some hint of why.”

Anne conceded that with a nod. “It’s not that I’m fighting it,” she said. “I’ve been trying to return to Eslen.”

“And now you shall,” Osne vowed. “My husband and sons will take you across the river and past your enemies in town. They will escort you to Eslen.”

“I can’t go straight home,” Anne told her. “Not yet.”

“But you just said that was your goal,” Osne said.

“The two men who rescued me at the coven, and have been protecting me since, were captured by the horsemen. I have to rescue them first.”

Osne’s brow bunched in worry. “I’m sorry about your friends,” she said, “but they aren’t your first duty.”

“Maybe not,” Anne said, “but I won’t leave them to die. I have to do something.”

Osne closed her eyes. “That’s not the path you’re supposed to walk.”

“I can choose another path?”

Osne hesitated. “Yes. But then the future becomes cloudy.”

“Let it. If I’m not true to my friends, whom can I be true to? What good am I to anyone?”

Osne closed her eyes for a moment. “How many horsemen are with your friends?”

“Artore saw them. He said three.”

“Then I will send Artore and my sons after them, and find a safe place for you until they return.”

“No,” Anne said. “I want to go with them.”

“They may not succeed,” Osne said softly. “If one of the knights is a marevase, they might not succeed.”

“A what?” Anne asked.

“One who cannot die. They have other names.”

“Oh,” Anne said. “One of them is like that,” she said. “Maybe more.”

“Then you know the risk is great.”

“You’d send your husband and sons to their deaths, just to get me to Eslen?”

“I’d rather not,” Osne admitted. “I’d rather you let them escort you home. There would still be some risk in that, but not like sending them to battle a marevase.”

“You don’t understand,” Anne said. “These men—Cazio and z’Acatto—risked everything for us.”

“And so would we, dear.”

“I see that,” Anne flared. “I’m tired of people dying for me, do you understand? I can’t take any more of it.”

“People die for their queens,” Osne exclaimed. “That is a burden you must accept, or there is no point in you reaching Eslen. There are much harder decisions than this ahead of you, Anne.”

“Cazio and z’Acatto know nothing about my supposed destiny,” she said. “And I’m sure if I do nothing they will die. But how can I risk your family, too?”

“Because we do accept your destiny, and our role in it. If it is your decision to follow the horsemen, we will abide by your decision.” Her eyes became more intense. “I could have drugged your wine,” she said. “Artore could have simply taken you home. But a queen who cannot make her own decisions is a poor queen indeed.”

Anne rubbed her head. “I hate it,” she snarled. “I hate it all.”

“They may be dead already,” Osne pointed out. “If the horsemen believe they have lost you, I can’t think of any reason they would keep your friends alive—except perhaps as bait, in the hopes you will follow.”

Anne felt tears on her face. She remembered Cazio, when she first met him, brash and teasing and full of life. To think of him dead hollowed her out.

But her father was dead. Elseny was dead. Fastia was dead.

“I will go to Eslen,” she said, and a great sob tore from her chest. Osne came around the table and took her in her arms, and Anne let her hold her like that, even though she hardly knew the woman. She wept, and Osne rocked her as night eased through the window and into her heart.

Anne and Austra were given lodging in a windowless room. By lantern light, the plaster looked dark yellow. It was simply furnished with a bed, a basin of water and towel on a wooden stand, and a night pan beneath the bed. Away from the hearth it was cold, and Anne slipped quickly into the nightgown Osne had given her, then beneath the thick woolen comforters. Austra was already there, asleep, but she woke when Anne settled in beside her.

“That was a long talk,” Austra said. “What was it about?”

Anne took a deep breath. Her chest ached from crying.

“Osne was at the coven Saint Cer, many years ago,” she explained. “She knows who we are because the countess Orchaevia sent word along the roads to look for us and keep us safe.”

“The countess? How odd.”

“It’s not odd,” Anne said. “The countess was a member of the coven, too.”

“That’s even odder, in a way, but it makes some sense. The countess must have known who you were, to go to so much trouble.”

“I’m supposed to be queen, Austra.”

Austra started a laugh that never quite finished. “How do you mean?” she asked.

“Father, you remember. He had the Comven legitimize Fastia, Elseny, and me to succeed him. Fastia and Elseny are gone, and only I remain.”

“But Charles is still alive,” Austra said. “The cuveitur said nothing about his death.”

“Our enemies don’t care about Charles,” Anne said. “They do not want a queen in Eslen. They fear a queen.”

“Why?”

Anne explained then, about everything. About the Faiths, about the dark man in the forest, about her dreams. When she finished, Austra’s eyes were round with wonder.

“Why couldn’t you have told me all of this before?” she asked.

“Because I didn’t believe it myself,” Anne said. “Because I thought it might somehow put you in more danger. But now I know I have to tell you.”

“Why? Because I’ve been to where the Faiths are?”

“No, because tomorrow Artore and his sons are going to sneak us across the river and take us to Eslen.”

“But that’s wonderful,” Austra said, then started, and her voice dropped in tone. “You mean after we rescue Cazio.”

Anne shook her head. “No, Austra. We can’t go after them. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t understand. With Artore we can save them.”

“Artore and his boys are no match for those knights,” Anne said.

“You don’t know that, Anne, you—”

“I can’t risk it, don’t you understand?”

“No! How can you even imagine leaving them to die?”

“Austra, I know how you feel about Cazio, but—”

“No! No you don’t—you can’t.” She was crying now. “We can’t just give up.”

“We’ve no choice,” Anne replied.

“We do!”

“You have to listen to me,” Anne said. “This is hard for me. Do you think I want to do this? But if we go after them, and it’s a trap—which it probably is—then not only do Cazio and z’Acatto die anyway, but so do Artore and his sons, and so do we.”

“I never thought you a coward,” Austra said.

“If it was just our lives I was risking, I would be following them this instant,” Anne said. “If it was just these few men, I would still do it. But if I am to believe the Faiths, and Osne—and Sister Secula, for that matter—then I cannot risk my life here. I must return straightaway to Eslen.”

“And why do you believe them? Why should I believe you? You, a queen who can save the world from destruction. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”

“I do. But I’m starting to believe it.”

“Of course you do! You’re to be queen and savior of all that’s good. Your head is as swollen as a melon!”

“Austra—”

“Oh, no,” Austra said. “Don’t try. Don’t talk to me. Don’t ever talk to me again.”

She turned her back, sobbing again, and Anne’s own tears returned, albeit silently this time. She lay awake for a very long time before exhaustion finally claimed her.

When she woke the next morning, Austra was gone.

“It looks like she took a weather-cloak and some bread,” Osne said. “But no one saw her leave.”

“Austra is no thief,” Anne said.

“I know that. I’m sure she feels as if her need outweighed everything, and equally sure she intends to return the cloak. It isn’t of any consequence—I would have given her those things anyway.”

“Well, she can’t have gone far,” Anne said. “If we hurry, we’ll find her.” She knew she was going against everything she had said the night before, but this was Austra, and besides, she wouldn’t have caught up with the horsemen yet. It should be safe.

“We’ll have to go that direction for a few leagues anyway,” Artore said. “And we’d best get started now.”

“The horses are ready, Atte,” Cotmar, the second eldest boy, said. “And Jarne has seen to the supplies.”

“Osne, get the princess outfitted, and we’ll be on our way.”

Osne dressed her in one of the boys’ clothes—riding breeches tucked into leather boots, a cotton shirt and heavy woolen overshirt, weather cloak and battered, broad-brimmed hat. They rode out before the next bell.

“That’s her mark there, Atte,” Cotmar said, pointing to something on the path that Anne couldn’t see at all.

“Te, somebody told her about the upper crossing,” Artore mused. “She must have stopped and asked Vimsel. Smart girl.”

“Well, we knew better than to try to cross the bridge at Teremene,” Anne said. She patted her horse’s mane. “What’s his name?” she asked.

“Tare,” he told her.

“Tarry,” Anne repeated. “I hope he’s faster than his name.” Artore gave her an odd look, but didn’t say anything. They continued along, with the road following close to the river, until they reached a rickety-looking rope bridge. The chasm was even deeper at this point than it had been at Teremene, and Anne tried hard not to look down as she swayed across its span. They picked up Austra’s trail on the other side, where it intersected a way that was broad enough for wagons.

The chalky road led them higher into the hills, wandering along ridge-tops when it could and reluctantly dipping into valleys when it couldn’t. The hills themselves were slumped and worn, virtually treeless. Gray and white sheep grazed on the slopes, along with the occasional goat or horse. They saw scatterings of houses built mostly of undressed stone with thatched roofs.

“Te, there’s the horsemen, I’ll wager,” Artore said, after a time.

“How can you tell?” Anne asked. This time she could see the marks of horses, at least.

“One dismounted here. See the scuff of his spurs? The horseshoes have a funny shape, too, and there’re three of them.”

“And Austra?”

“She took a horse from that farm back there,” he replied. “This is her.” He pointed to a slurred sort of track. “Trotting him. She’s in a hurry.”

“How far ahead?”

“She’s about an hour ahead, and they’re more than half a day.”

“Can we speed up?”

“Sure, but if she leaves the road, we might miss it.”

“She can’t track the way you can. She’ll stick to the road, and hope the men who have Cazio do, too.”

“Well, then,” Artore said. He urged his horse to a trot.

“Come on, Tarry,” Anne said. At first she just matched the trot, but, just to see what he could do, she encouraged the horse to a run and then a hard-out gallop, and for an instant, despite it all, she found herself grinning. She loved riding, and while Tarry wasn’t as quick as her own steed, Faster, he was a good runner, and she hadn’t been on a horse in a long time. She’d almost forgotten what it was like.

She knew she couldn’t push him like that for long, however, so she went back to a trot and they traveled like that, alternating. The leagues between them and Teremene lengthened as their shadows did, until at last night came, with the prints of her stolen horse the only sign of Austra.

They camped on a hill overlooking the road.

“We’ll catch her tomorrow,” Artore promised. “She’s wearing her horse out, and he’ll be slower. That should put us near the Dunmrogh road, and we can take that west toward Eslen.”

“Dunmrogh,” Anne said. “We’re near Dunmrogh?”

“About five leagues, I’d say. Why?”

“Just curious. I know someone from there.” Roderick. He would help—his family had troops, surely. With his aid, they could go after Cazio and succeed.

But he was more than likely in Eslen. Still, if they were going to be so close, it wouldn’t hurt to find out, would it?

But on the heels of that thought came Cazio’s suspicions. What if her enemies were going to Dunmrogh? What if he really was in league with them?

She put speculation from her mind.

Tomorrow she would know.

The hills sloped gently down into a plain Artore named Magh y Herth, the “Plain of Barrows.” Anne didn’t see any barrows, only leagues of yellowed grass and the occasional line of trees marking a stream. Geese streamed overhead and occasional herds of cattle cropped by the side of the road. Now and then side roads led off to small villages, made visible by their bell towers.

Around midday, a line of green appeared on the horizon, eventually resolving into a forest. The road led them beneath the huge, arching branches of ironoak, ash, everic, and hickory. The hoofbeats of their horses were muffled here by falling leaves. The forest felt old and clingy, like a decrepit man trying to hug her.

“Prethsorucaldh,” Artore said, gesturing at the trees. “You would call it ‘Little Worm Wood.’”

“That’s an odd name,” Anne said. “Why is it called that?”

“I’ve heard some tale about a monster of some sort that lived in the ground, but I don’t recall any details. They say it used to be a part of the King’s Forest, but during the Warlock Wars an army of fire marched on either side of the Saint Sefodh and cut it off. Since then it’s been shrinking. Now it’s the Lord of Dunmrogh’s hunting preserve.”

“An army of fire what?”

“That’s what the stories say—Sverfath of the Twenty Eyes summoned an army of fire and sent it against his enemy—oh, what was her name?—Sefhind the Windwitch. Some say it was an army of flaming demons, others that it was a living river of fire. But those are stories, you know? I’ve never read the sober histories. But if it was fire, it wasn’t an ordinary one, because the trees never came back. You’ll see when we get to the other side—not a tree between here and the river.”

“Atte!” One of the boys shrieked, Anne wasn’t sure which one, and in the space after his cry she heard a peculiar noise, almost like rain though the leaves, but with a peculiar whirring to it. Jarne—who was riding ahead—clutched at his heart and jerked weirdly, then fell off his horse. Everything came into focus then, as she understood that arrows where riving the air around them.

“Go!” Artore shouted, and slapped at Tarry’s tail. The horse started forward violently. Pulse racing, Anne lay close to the stallion’s mane and gave him his head. A couple of arrows hissed by her, so close she could feel the wind, and she wondered what it would feel like when one hit her.

As it turned out, it felt like a hard sort of thump—she thought she’d hit a branch or something. But when she looked down, she saw a long feathered shaft in her thigh. Just as she was wondering why it didn’t hurt, it began to, and her head went light.

Tarry screamed, and she guessed he’d been hit, too, though she couldn’t see where.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Anne gasped. She wasn’t sure who she was talking to. Everyone, she guessed.

Tarry kept running, and after a few long moments Anne realized the arrows had stopped. She looked back and didn’t see anyone at all.

“Artore!” she shouted. Her leg was throbbing now, and she felt feverish and weak.

When she turned back around she saw a horseman, coming from the other direction.

10 Overtures

Muriele woke to soft humming. Sleepily, she opened her eyes and looked for the source.

“Ah,” a male voice said. “Good morning to you, Queen Mother.” She went rigid when she saw that it was Robert, seated lazily in her armchair. Alis Berrye was in his lap.

“Get out of my room,” Muriele commanded.

“Well, it’s not actually your room, you know,” Robert countered. “It belongs to the Crown, and that belongs to me at the moment.”

Muriele didn’t answer, because there wasn’t anything to say. She couldn’t call for the guards, because they wouldn’t come. She looked around, searching for something—anything—to use as a weapon, but there wasn’t anything. Berrye giggled.

“Come now, dear,” Robert said to the girl. “Off we go. I’ve some things to discuss with your lady here.”

“Oh, can’t I stay?” Berrye pouted.

“This will be grown-up talk,” Robert said. “Go into your room and shut the door.”

“Well—I will. But she’s been very rude to me. I think you should punish her.” With that, she got up and vanished into her quarters. Robert stayed where he was, stroking his mustache.

“That was quite a surprise the other day,” he said. “I commend you—I didn’t think you had the resources to even know I was coming.”

“Did you kill my daughters?” Muriele demanded. “I’ve no doubt about William.”

“Well, I can’t be two places at once, can I?” Robert challenged reasonably.

“No. But you can arrange for others to do your evil work. I imagine you wanted to kill William with your own hand.”

He laughed. “You know me so well, Muriele. Yes, so I did want that satisfaction, and you know? It was harder than I thought it would be. William was—well, he was right brave there at the end. A credit to our name. Of course, if he hadn’t been such an utter buffoon, it would never have happened. Even you have to admit, my dear, that he wasn’t much of a king.”

“He was a better king than you will ever be, and a far better man, you septic dement.”

He sighed. “As to your daughters, I didn’t order that, though I knew it would happen. William killed them, really, when he legitimized them to take the throne.”

“The praifec was behind it?”

Robert wagged a finger. “Ah, no, that would be telling you more than you need to know. Anyway, the truth is so much larger than you can imagine. I don’t wish to tax your powers of comprehension. Though, again, you are more canny than I thought you were.” He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Here’s the thing. I need you to put an end to any hopes you might have of a countercoup. There really are problems facing us that require a united front. I know you’re a bit angry at me right now, but you’re a practical woman—”

“Really?” Muriele interrupted. “You think I’m a bit angry with you? Robert, you’ve lost what little sense you ever had. I would far sooner die than cooperate with you in the least fashion.”

“Yes, you see? That’s what I was talking about. You’re angry. That’s why I’m so disappointed Charles isn’t here—then I would have a life dearer to you than your own to hold in balance. As it is, I must appeal to reason.”

“Lesbeth,” Muriele snapped. “Why did you kill Lesbeth? She could never have been queen.”

His face pinkened. “Surely you know why,” he said.

“How can you expect me to even begin to understand someone who would kill his own sister?”

“No one loved Lesbeth more than I,” Robert asserted, starting to look truly angry. “No one. But some things can’t be forgiven; some slights can’t be taken back.”

“What slights?”

“That you know!” Robert shouted, bounding to his feet. “Everyone knew! It was beyond belief.”

“Pretend that I do not,” Muriele said through gritted teeth.

He looked at her as if she were the one who had lost her mind. “You will really feign that you don’t know?”

“I so feign,” Muriele said.

“She—she didn’t ask my permission to marry,” he growled, his voice rising steadily in volume. “She asked William, oh yes, but she did not ask me.” The last word reported from his lips like a cauldron exploding.

Frost seemed to settle on Muriele’s spine. “You’re quite mad, you know,” she whispered, suddenly terrified, not so much of Robert as at things that must be in his head.

Some unidentifiable emotion worked across his face, and then he vented a bitter snicker. “Who wouldn’t be?” he muttered. “But enough of that. Why do you continue to distract me with these questions? The Craftsmen are camped outside the city and refuse to see me. Why?”

“Perhaps they don’t recognize the legitimacy of your claim, my lord.”

“Well, then, they’re going to die, which is a pity, because they will doubtless take many of the landwaerden forces with them. It’s just going to make people like you less, you know, and weaken us as a nation that much more.”

“You would set pikemen against knights? That is despicable.”

“They forfeit their knighthood in opposing the Crown,” Robert said. “I’m not going to wait for them to move against me. There are already reports that they are gathering their own foot forces.”

“And of course, there is Liery,” Muriele said. “They will hardly stand still for what you’ve done.”

Robert shook his head. “I’ve made it clear to the Hansan ambassador that we will not object if their fleet sails against Liery.”

“The covenant between Crotheny and Liery is sacred,” Muriele said. “You cannot break that.”

“You broke it when you took a Lierish guard and used it against the landwaerden,” he retorted.

“That’s utter nonsense,” Muriele said.

He shrugged and stood. “In any event, if I were you, I would not look to help from Liery.”

“Nor can we look to their help when Hansa attacks us,” Muriele said. “We can’t be divided from them. Robert, this is insane.”

“You keep using words like that,” he said. “I wonder if you really know what they mean.” He waved his hands, as if to fan her words out the window. “Look, look, you can prevent this, Muriele. Call back the Craftsmen, bring back Charles. I remain as sovereign with you by my side, and all will be happy.”

“Are you actually suggesting that I marry my husband’s murderer?”

“For the good of the nation, yes. It is the most elegant solution possible, I’m sure you agree.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the window casement.

“Robert,” Muriele said, “I’m sorely tempted to do exactly as you suggest in order to get the chance to drive a knife through your heart while you’re sleeping, but I could never keep up the charade for that long.” She crossed her arms, too. “How does this sound? You relinquish the throne, send your guard away, and disband the landwaerden army. I will bring Charles and the Craftsmen back, and then we will hang you. Does that suit you as elegant enough?”

Robert quirked a smile and walked toward the bed. “Muriele, Muriele. Time has not blunted your tongue or your beauty. Your face is as lovely as ever. Of course, they say the face goes last, that age works from the toes up. I’ve a mind to discover if that is true.” He grabbed the cover and yanked it from the bed.

“Robert, do not dare,” she commanded.

“Oh, I should think I shall,” he said, reaching for her breast. She put up her hands to stop him but he clamped her wrists in fingers like steel bands and pushed her roughly back. Very deliberately he flung one leg over her and pulled the other up until he was straddling her, then lowered himself until his body crushed against hers and his face hovered two hands above. Never taking his gaze from hers, he let go one of her hands and reached with the other down between her legs and began hiking up her nightgown. He planted one knee between her thighs and began prying them apart.

He seemed to grow heavier, pinning her to the bed, and his face was now so near hers, it was distorted, the face of a stranger. She remembered Robert as an infant, as a little boy, in the court, but she couldn’t make any connection between that and what was happening to her, this thing with his hand in her privates. She felt her limbs go limp as he started to undo the fastenings of his breeches, and rolled her head to the side so she could not see his face. His hands moved on her like giant spiders, and he smelled like carrion, just as Berrye said. She let her gaze slip along Robert and past him and saw Berrye creeping toward Robert’s back, something held tightly in one hand. Muriele shook her head and mouthed the word no.

Then, lazily, feeling as if she had all the time in the world, she reached for the hilt of Robert’s knife, drew it, and stabbed it into his side. It went in easily. She’d always imagined it would be something like cutting into a pumpkin, stabbing someone, but it wasn’t like that at all.

Robert jerked, grunted, and sat up on her, and then she drove the blade into his heart. He fell back with a moan, and she squirmed from beneath him, still holding the knife. She was just starting to shake when Alis was suddenly there, supporting her, murmuring reassurances.

Robert picked himself up off the floor, his breath coming in harsh wheezes.

“First the husband, then the wife,” he gasped. “I’m beginning to hate this family.”

There wasn’t any blood, Muriele noticed—or at least not very much. Something was oozing from Robert’s wounds like syrup, but it wasn’t red. She looked at the knife, still in her hand. It was coated with a sticky, clearish resin.

She flinched as Robert staggered across the room, but he seemed to ignore her and slouched once more into the armchair.

“It does still hurt, though,” he said absently. “I wondered about that.” He glanced up at her. “I suppose we won’t marry after all.”

“Robert, what have you done?” Muriele whispered.

Robert glanced down at the wound in his chest. “This? I didn’t do this, love. I was minding my own business, dying—William managed to stab me, you know, against all reason. And then I did die, I think, and now—well, I’m as you see.” He wagged a finger at her. “You did this, naughty girl. The Kept told me so.”

“So it was you in my room, that night.”

“Of course,” he confessed, wiping his brow. “It’s so strange that I didn’t know about the passages. That’s how you got Charles out, isn’t it?”

Muriele didn’t answer. She dropped the knife and clung to Alis.

“You two seem very friendly,” Robert noticed. “Alis, were your attentions to me fraudulent? I mean, I knew they were, but I supposed they came from a desire to resume your place as a palace whore.”

“Please leave her alone, Robert,” Alis said. “If you want someone, take me.”

“Oh, no, the mood has quite left me,” Robert said. He rolled his head back. “Let’s see,” he mumbled. “There was something else I was going to tell you, what was it?” He scratched his chin. “Right. That affair you planned at the Candle Grove—that was a good idea. I’m going ahead with it. And since it was your idea, I’m arranging for you to be present. Consider it an apology.”

He pushed himself up. “I’d better get this seen to,” he said, “and then decide whether I must kill the physician.” He bowed. “I bid you ladies good morning.” Then he left.

When he was gone, Muriele began to shudder.

“Sit,” Alis said.

“No,” she gasped. “No, not in that chair. Not on the bed, never—never again.”

“Well, come into my room, then. I’ll make some tea. Come on.”

“Thank you, Alis,” she said.

She let the girl lead her into her apartment, and sat on the bed. Alis went to the little stove there and began to kindle it.

“What is he, Alis?” Muriele asked. “What exactly have I made?”

Alis stopped and turned halfway, then went back to her work with the stove. “In the coven,” she began, “we studied the rumors of a creature like this. But in all our histories, it is only once recorded that the law of death was broken—by the Black Jester. He made himself as Robert is, deathless and yet not truly alive. But once the law of death has been broken, it is a simpler matter to make others. One of the Black Jester’s titles was Mhwr. Those he created were called the Mhwrmakhy. In the Chronicles of the Old North Kingdom, the Black Jester was called the Nau, and his servants the nauschalken.”

“Those last are easier to wrap my tongue around,” Muriele admitted.

She still felt his hands on her, his weight pressing down . . .

“Wait,” she said, in an effort to keep her mind elsewhere. “If the Black Jester broke the law of death, how could I have broken it again?”

“It was repaired, at great cost,” Alis said.

“But it can be repaired,” Muriele said hopefully.

“We no longer know how,” she replied. “Those who did it perished in the doing.”

Muriele bowed her head, despair filling her up. “Then I deserved—”

Alis took three quick steps from the stove and slapped her, hard.

Muriele looked up at her in utter astonishment, the sting still on her cheek.

“No,” Alis said. “Do not say it. Never say that, and do not think it.” She knelt and took Muriele’s hand, and there were tears in her eyes.

Muriele ached to cry, but could not find her own tears. Instead she curled up in the bed, closed her eyes, and searched behind them for a forgetful sleep.

Leoff answered the light rap at his door and found Areana there, looking puzzled and quite pretty in a dark blue gown.

“You sent for me, Cavaor Ackenzal?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Please call me Leoff.”

She smiled nervously. “As you wish, Leoff.”

“Please, come in, have a seat.” He noticed an older woman in the hall beyond her. “And you, lady, if you please.”

Areana looked chagrined. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just—I’ve never been in the palace, and it’s all so—well, I’m nervous, as you can see. This is my governess, Jen Unilsdauter. I thought it appropriate . . .” She trailed off, as if unsure of what she meant to say, or worried she’d already said the wrong thing.

“You are most welcome, Lady Jen,” Leoff told her. “Most especially if you can speak for Areana’s parents.”

“I’m no lady, young man,” she replied, “but I appreciate a compliment.”

“Please, sit, both of you.”

When they had, he returned his gaze to Areana, who was blushing.

“Leoff,” she began, “I—that is to say—”

He got it then. “Oh, no, you misunderstand, I think,” he hurriedly assured her. “I didn’t ask you here for—not that I don’t find you charming . . .” He trailed off. “This is getting worse and worse, isn’t it?” He sighed.

“Well, it’s certainly becoming more and more confusing,” Areana agreed.

“It’s this, you see,” Leoff said, patting the score on his workable.

“This is why I’ve asked you here. You’ve heard about the performance to be given at the Candle Grove?”

“Of course,” she said. “Everyone has. I am very much looking forward to it.”

“Well, that’s good,” he said. “That’s very good.” He hoped he hadn’t insulted her.

“And?” she queried.

Leoff realized he hadn’t actually explained. “Right,” he said. “I would like you to sing the lead role.”

Her eyes widened improbably large. “Me?”

“Ah, yes,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Or at least audition for it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I was struck by your singing voice at Lady Gramme’s. It’s not only lovely, but precisely the voice I’m looking for for this performance. I think you’ll understand when you’ve read the part.”

“The part?” she said, frowning in puzzlement.

“Yes, yes—it’s a new sort of thing, somewhat like a lustspell but a bit more—um, elevated.”

“I should hope so,” the governess huffed.

“Oh, hush, Jen,” Areana said. “You enjoy the lustspells as much as I do. We only pretend to disdain them, remember?”

“Yes, but a girl of your position—”

“Hear me out,” Leoff said, “Please. It’s the story of Lihta, from Broogh. You know the tale?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You would sing the part of Lihta.”

“You mean act it,” Areana corrected.

“No, no, look here,” he said, showing her the music. “You can read, can’t you?”

“She reads very well,” the governess asserted. As Areana looked over the pages he saw comprehension begin to dawn.

“You see?” he said.

She looked at him doubtfully. “It’s my Newland accent you want, isn’t it?”

“In part,” he conceded. “And I also believe that if this play is going to be for the people of Newland and Eslen, one of you should be in it. But you have to understand, I would never compromise my music for such a whim. You have a sort of—of—innocent boldness that any other singer would have to feign. In you it is pure.”

Areana blushed again, more deeply this time. “Now I really don’t know what to say,” she said.

“Well, here, let’s try a bit of it,” he suggested.

“All right.”

He chose Lihta’s first air, which she sang beautifully, and then the trickier bit he called a spellsing, a sort of cross between talking and singing. Well before she was done, he knew his instincts had been correct.

“It’s lovely,” she said.

“When sung with such a voice, it cannot help but be,” Leoff told her. “I truly hope you will consider the part.”

“If you really think me suitable, I would be honored,” she gushed.

“You are as perfectly suitable as can be,” Leoff said, beaming. Then he coughed, and composed his features more seriously. “But I need to tell you something rather important. It may change your mind.”

“And what is that?”

“Praifec Hespero has expressly forbidden the performance of this as written. When we defy him, he will be angry. I think I shall bear the brunt of his displeasure, and will certainly take all responsibility, but there is some danger to everyone involved, you included.”

“Why should the praifec disapprove?” Areana demanded. “There is nothing unholy here, surely?”

“Not in the least, I assure you.”

“Then—”

“The praifec is a man of the saints,” the governess suddenly interjected. “We certainly cannot go against his word.”

“But it doesn’t seem reasonable—” Areana began.

“Areana, no,” her governess warned. “You shouldn’t get mixed up in this.”

Areana faced Leoff. “Why do you take this risk?” she asked. “Why do you ask me to?”

“Because it will be magnificent,” he said softly. “I know in my heart it is right, and I will not be deterred. I told you I would never compromise my music, and I never will, not when I know I have created something worth hearing.”

Areana continued to stare at him, biting a little at her lip. Then she lowered her eyes.

“Jen is right,” she said. “I believe you, Leoff. I believe in you. But I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”

He nodded, feeling disheartened. “Thank you for your time, then. It was good to hear you sing a bit of it once, anyway.”

“The honor was mine, sir,” she said. “And thank you for your honesty.”

“Come,” the governess said. “We might be in trouble even for coming here.”

They left, and Leoff sat back down, disheartened, hoping all the auditions didn’t go this way.

It was a bell later before the next arrived, and Leoff felt a ferocious smile widen his face when he saw who it was.

“Edwyn!”

Edwyn Mylton was a tall man, gangly as a scarecrow, with a face that seemed at first glance long and sorrowful until you got to the eyes, which positively gleamed with mischief and goodwill. Edwyn grabbed him in a bear hug, slapping him on the back.

“Court composer, eh?” he said. “I always knew you would make well in the world, Leoff.” He lowered his voice. “Though it’s a bit shaky around here, isn’t it? Was there really a coup?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so—but my performance goes on, er—in a sense. How have things been with you? I never dreamed to find you turning up at my doorstop. I thought you were still playing for the dreadful Duke of Ranness, a hundred leagues from here.”

“Ah, no,” Edwyn said. “We had a bit of a falling out, me and the duke. Or perhaps I should say a throwing out—of me. I’ve been in Loiyes, at the court of the duchess there, a delightful if taxing creature. I heard about this performance from Rothlinghaim, who received your invitation but could not come. I hoped to present myself as a suitable replacement.”

“A very suitable replacement,” Leoff agreed.

“Well, don’t keep me waiting, man, show me the piece.”

“A moment, Edwyn,” Leoff said. “I need to make plain a few things first—about the performance.”

He explained to Edwyn the same things he’d told Areana, but with a bit more detail about the particular objections.

“But he can’t actually do anything, this praifec, can he?” Edwyn objected. “He has no temporal power.”

“No, but then again, he has the ear of the prince, whom I don’t know at all. I cannot say what will happen when he finds out that I’ve deceived him.”

“But won’t he attend rehearsals?”

“I’m sure he will. But I think with careful planning, we can rehearse the piece the way he wants it and perform it as it should be done.”

Edwyn nodded. “How serious do you think it will get?”

“At the very least I will lose my position. At the very worst I shall be burned as a shinecrafter. I expect something in the middle. I honestly believe the risk is much smaller, if not negligible, for my musicians, but I can in no way promise it.”

“Hmmph. Well, let me see that. I’d like to know what all the fuss is about.”

When Edwyn saw the first page, his face and body went still, and he said nothing until he’d read every last word and note. He looked up at Leoff then.

“Saints damn you, Leoff,” he sighed. “You knew I would risk death to perform this.”

“I’d rather hoped,” Leoff replied. “Now, let’s only hope we can find twenty-nine more such like-minded souls.”

“You will find them,” Edwyn said. “I shall help you.”

By the end of the day he had recruited eight more players and had sent as many away. The next day went better, because word was starting to get around, and only those with stronger resolve showed up. He didn’t worry that anything would get back to the praifec at this point—he trusted everyone he had invited, and the musicians’ guild was tight-lipped about its members and their business, as a matter of principle.

He was nearly ready to end his day when he heard another tap at the door. He opened it and found Areana there, this time without her governess.

“Hello,” Leoff said uncertainly.

She held her head high. “If you haven’t filled the part of Lihta,” she said, “I would very much like to sing it.”

“But your governess—your parents—”

“I have some money of my own,” she said. “I have taken a room in town. I know my parents, and they will come around.”

Leoff nodded. “That’s wonderful news,” he said. “I just want to be certain you really understand the danger you might be in if you join me in this.”

“I understand, cavaor,” she said. “I am prepared to face whatever punishment should be pronounced upon me.”

“I hope that will be none at all,” Leoff said, “but I thank you for your courage.” He gestured toward the hammarharp. “Shall we begin rehearsal?”

“It would be my pleasure,” she returned.

And all Leoff’s doubts vanished—but for one.

11 Roderick

As Anne wheeled her mount from the road and into the forest, a wind blew through, resurrecting the dead leaves into aerial dancers pirouetting in vorticose ballet. A faint chorus of women’s voices attended them, thin and without depth, as if the song had fallen from a great height and been stripped and broken as it fell until nothing was left but a memory imprinted in the air, with that fading, too.

She thought she heard her name and then only the thumping of Tarry’s hooves and her breath, which seemed almost to hover around her rather than come from inside. The tree boles went by hypnotically, one by one, rows of columns that never seemed to end.

Tarry leapt a fallen log and nearly stumbled on the slope beyond, but he recovered, and then the slope evened out. For that brief moment when she seemed to float, sunlight seemed to explode around her, melting the trees down into green grass and misty rinns far below, and she was again on Faster, hurtling down the Sleeve, terrified, giddy, and blissful with life.

For an instant she held it, but then it was gone, and she realized with a leaden heart that that, too, was only a memory of something irrevocably lost. That life, that childhood, was gone forever, and even if she made it home it wouldn’t be the home she knew.

Tarry squealed and stumbled again, legs buckling, and in a fog of golden light Anne hurled forward through the dancing leaves and fertile smell of promised rain. She hit the ground and bounced, heard something snap, and pain like nearby thunder detonated in her thigh. She felt the flesh skinning from her elbows and arms as she wrapped them to protect her head, and finally fetched to a stop against a stump amidst the scents of turned earth, blood, and broken roots.

For a time she forgot where she was, and puzzled at the branches above, wondering what they could be, as something beat toward her like an approaching drummer.

She saw a face she ought to know but couldn’t quite place, before it—like the wind and her childhood—faded.

Something lapped around her like the tongue of a giant dog, or waves on the strand, irregular in rhythm, soothing. Anne tried to open her eyes, but they seemed infinitely heavy, so instead she looked through the lids and saw her room—except it wasn’t her room. It resembled her room, but the walls were falling in, and through a great hole near the ceiling red light streamed in that terrified her even to look at, and nearby—from the corner of her eye—she saw the door opening, and someone stepping through who shouldn’t be there, whom she couldn’t look at, and she knew suddenly that she hadn’t awakened at all, but was still in some Black Mary of waking.

She tried harder to wake, then, to force her eyes open, to pry apart the wall of sleep and step through. But when she did, she was back in the room, and the red light was stronger, the door swung wider, and the shadow stepped in. Her skin felt a thousand stings, as if she lay in a bath of scorpions, and she woke, and it all started again . . .

She sat up and heard a voice screaming, which she took a moment to understand was her own. Her chest heaved as she clutched at strange bedclothes and prayed this was finally an end to sleep, and not another trick of the Mary. Then she felt the pain in her leg where the arrow had pierced her, and looked around in a fresh panic. She’d awakened before, not knowing where she was, not recognizing anything, and then gradually realizing she was in a familiar place made strange by the linger of dream. But as she stared about the room, it did not become familiar.

The lapping of her dream turned out to be the fire in the hearth a few yards away. Heavy tapestry drapes covered the windows, so she couldn’t tell if it was day or night. A wolf pelt lay flat on the floor, and near the fire there was a loom and a stool to sit at it. Other than that, there was only a door, wooden and solid with iron bands.

She threw back the bedclothes. She wore an amber dressing gown worked with golden roses on the hem. She pulled it up until she could see her leg, and found it bandaged. She felt clean, as if she had been scrubbed, and a lilac scent seemed attached to her.

Anne lay there another moment, trying to remember what had happened. She remembered Tarry falling, and after that very little that could be separated from phantasm.

Whoever had found her, it couldn’t be the Hansan knights. They had never shown any interest in taking her captive, much less in bathing her and bandaging her wounds.

Experimentally, she swung her legs over the bed and eased down to the rug upon the flagstone floor. When she put weight on the damaged leg it ached, but not so much that she couldn’t bear to limp upon it, so she limped to the window and pushed the tapestry aside.

It was twilight outside. The sun was gone, but clouds of royal purple trimmed in gold and verdigris lay across the eastern sky. A light rain was falling, misting the thick glass of the window, which was cold to the touch. Plains or pasture stretched out and away to a dark green haze in the distance that might be forest, all resembling a painting that had been dipped in water while still wet.

She let the tapestry drop and hobbled to the door. As she had more than half expected, it was locked. Sighing, she turned back to examine the rest of the room—only to recoil at a sudden movement at the edge of her vision.

She fixed her eyes in that direction and saw a woman staring at her. She had almost opened her mouth to demand who she was when Anne understood that she was looking into a full-length mirror.

Her reflection was gaunt and hollow-cheeked, and the area around her eyes seemed bruised. The thin frizz of red hair was weird and shocking. Her freckles had darkened and enlarged from long days in the sun—but more than that, her face had actually changed. Grown older, not merely metaphorically, but in fact. The very shape of the bone was different—her nose seemed smaller, and for the first time ever she caught a glimpse of her mother in her.

How long since she had seen herself in a mirror? How much could a woman change between sixteen and seventeen?

And she was seventeen now, though she had missed her birthday. She had been born in Novmen, on the eighth. It had come and gone without her ever knowing or thinking about it until now.

There should have been a party, and dancing, and cakes. Instead she couldn’t even remember where she had been, because she didn’t know the date now, except that it was well past the month of Novmen. Indeed, the Yule solstice had to be approaching—if that, too, hadn’t passed her in the night.

Unable to gaze long on what she had become, she searched the room for anything that might be useful as a weapon, but the only thing she found was a spindle. She took it in her hand and limped back to the bed, just as somewhere near the vespers bell began to toll.

Before the next bell, the creak of the door opening disturbed her. A stooped little woman in a gray dress and black shawl entered. “Highness,” she murmured, bowing. “I see you are awake.”

“Who are you?” Anne asked. “Where am I?”

“My name is Vespresern, if it please you, Princess Anne.”

“How do you know me?” Anne demanded.

“I have seen you at court, Highness. Even with your hair shorn so, I would know you. Is there anything I can get for you?”

“Tell me where I am and how I came to be here.”

“My master asked that he be allowed to explain that himself, Your Highness. He asked me to fetch him when you woke. I’ll find him now.”

She turned and closed the door behind her, and Anne heard a key turn the lock into place.

Anne went back to the window and unlatched it. The air outside was wet and chill, but it wasn’t the weather she was concerned with, but rather what sort of building she was in and how great the distance to the ground. What she found wasn’t encouraging. Gray stone walls winged away in both directions. She could make out battlements above her and a few more windows below. The drop was perhaps twenty yards, and that to a moat of ugly-looking water. There weren’t any ledges she could see other than the narrow casements of the windows. If she tied her bedclothes together, she thought she might decrease the jump by half, and the water might break her fall, if it was deep enough.

She closed the window and sat on the bed to think. Her leg was really bothering her, and she wondered how long such a wound would take to heal. Would it mend entirely, or would she limp for the rest of her life?

About a bell later, she heard the key scraping in the door again, and, clutching the spindle, she waited to see who it was.

A man stepped into the room, and immediately she knew him. Deep down she’d known she would.

“Well,” he said. “I mistook you for a boy once before, and did so again when I saw that hair.”

“Roderick.”

“Well, I’m glad you remember me now,” he said. “After meeting you on the road, I wasn’t so sure you hadn’t quite forgotten me.”

“Roderick,” she repeated, searching for something plausible to say.

His tone sobered a bit. “You terrified me, you know. I thought you were dead.”

“I’m in your father’s castle, then?” she asked.

“Yes, welcome to Dunmrogh.”

“I had friends back in the forest. We were attacked.”

“Yes, I know—I’m sorry, they were all slain. Brigands, I suppose. We’ve had our troubles with them, lately. But look, Anne—it’s impossible that you could be here. How in the name of Saint Tarn is it that you are?”

She studied his face, the face she had dreamed about for so long.

While hers had seemed older, his seemed younger, and not as familiar as it ought to. It came to her that she had really known him for only a few days, not even a month. She’d been in love with him, hadn’t she? It had felt like that. Yet now, looking at him, she didn’t feel the overflow of joy she’d been expecting.

And it wasn’t just because she knew he was lying.

“Stop it, Roderick,” she said wearily. “Please. If I ever meant anything to you at all, just stop it.”

He frowned. “Anne, I can’t say I know what you mean.”

“I mean my letter,” she said. “The one I sent from the coven. Cazio did have it delivered after all.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I doubted him.”

“You’ve left me behind someplace, Princess. I thought you would be happy to see me. After all, we—I mean, I thought you loved me.”

“I don’t know what love is anymore,” Anne said, “and there’s too much else in the way of me wanting to remember.”

He took a step forward, but she held up her hand. “Wait,” she said.

“I’ve no intention to harm you, Anne,” Roderick said. “Indeed, quite the opposite.”

“I ask you once again, don’t lie to me,” Anne said. “It won’t do you any good. I know you betrayed me. I’ve been chased over all the earth by men who tried to kill me, but when I finally started chasing them, where did they come? Here. They’re here, aren’t they?”

Roderick stared at her for a moment; then he shut the door and locked it. He turned and walked back toward her.

“I didn’t have a choice, can you understand that? My duty to my family—that’s always first. Before king, before praifec, before love.”

“It was no accident that we met,” she accused. “You were looking for me, that day on the Sleeve.”

He hesitated. “Yes,” he said at last.

“And my letter—you showed it to them.”

“Yes, to my father. And then I hated myself—I still hate myself for what you went through. The whole thing began as a charade, to get you to trust me. But I got stuck in it somehow. Do you know how I’ve dreamed of you these months? Everything faded when I thought you were dead. I wished to die myself. And then, by a miracle, I found you here.” He put his right hand to his forehead. “The dreams, Anne. The dreams of you, of holding you—I cannot sleep.”

Roderick’s voice shook with desperate sincerity, and she suddenly remembered the day she had met him. She and Austra had gone into the tomb of Genya Dare, below the old horz in Eslen-of-Shadows, and they had written a curse against Fastia on a lead tissue and placed it in the coffin so Genya could take it to Cer, the avenger of women. Only she hadn’t really cursed Fastia, but simply asked that her sister would be nicer. And on a whim she had added, “And fix the heart of Roderick of Dunmrogh on me. Let him not sleep without dreams of me.”

“Oh,” she murmured to herself.

Roderick dropped down on his knees and reached for her hand so quickly, she did not have time to withdraw it. He clutched it desperately.

“No one knows you’re here except for Vespresern, and she won’t tell because she loves me more than my own mother does. I can save you from them, Anne. I can make everything up to you.”

“Yes? And how can you do that, Roderick?” she asked. “Can you return Austra, Cazio, and z’Acatto to me? They are here, too, aren’t they?”

He nodded, his face a misery. “They’re going to do something to them, something in the woods to do with the Old Worm Fane. I can’t do anything about that, Anne. You don’t understand—I would if I could—but it’s too late.”

“Who are they?”

“I’m not sure, really. They’re from everywhere, although a lot of the knights are from Hansa. They serve the same lord as my father. A lord of great power, but I’ve never heard his name or where he lives.” He reached to stroke her face. “You have to forget them, if you want to live. I can’t hide you here forever.”

“Then you will help me escape?” Anne said.

“What good would that do?” Roderick asked. “They would only find you again, and this time you won’t have anyone to protect you. They will kill you, and I will live in Hell. I can’t allow that to happen.”

“What is your solution, then?” Anne asked.

“You’ll marry me,” he said. “If you marry me, you will be safe.”

Anne blinked in utter astonishment. “What makes you think—?” She bit off her reply, which was to end with “I would rather die by hanging than marry you.” She thought a moment, and amended the question.

“What makes you think I would be safe as your wife?”

“Because then you could never be queen in Eslen,” he said. “Yes, I know that much. They do not wish you to become queen. If you were my wife, you could not, according to the law of your Comven. And my father would have to protect you as his daughter-in-law. It’s perfect, don’t you see?”

“And my friends?”

“They are beyond saving. They die tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes. And we shall marry—while my father is away, distracted by the ceremony in the woods. I’ve engaged a sacritor to perform the union. He will register it with the Church in the morning, and we shall have the protection of the saints and my family.”

“This is very sudden,” Anne said. “Very.”

Roderick nodded vigorously. “I know, I know. But you must believe in your heart as I do in mine that we were meant for each other, Anne.”

“If that is so,” Anne asked stiffly, “how could you have betrayed me?”

“The letter came to my father,” he said, without blinking. He apparently had already forgotten admitting he had given it to his father himself. “He opened it ere I saw it.” He gripped her hand until she thought it would break, and tears started in his eyes. “I wouldn’t have told them where you were, my love. I would not have.”

Anne closed her eyes, her thoughts churning, and she suddenly felt his lips against hers. She felt a wave of revulsion and wanted to push him away, but she knew now that he was her only chance. The curse had driven him past reason, and his insane love for her was the only weapon she had.

So, trying to remember how she kissed when she wanted to, when she meant it, she reached her arms around him and kissed him back. It went on for far too long.

When he finally pulled his tongue out of her mouth, he gazed gently down at her. “You see? You feel it, too.”

“Yes, I love you, Roderick,” she lied. “But you can never betray me again. You must swear it. I could never go through that sort of hurt again.”

His face practically split in two with joy. “I swear it, by Saint Tarn, I swear it and may he strike me down if I lie.”

“Then let us be married,” she said, “as quickly as possible. If what you say is true, we will have only this one chance.”

He nodded excitedly. “The sacritor is in Dunmrogh village. He expects us a bell before midnight. I will see to the preparations. You rest now. I’ll take care of you. You will be happy, Anne—I swear that on my life.”

Then he was gone again, and the door locked once more, and Anne was alone, wishing she had soap and water to wash the taste and smell of him from her.