The Charnel Prince

1 The Song in the Hills

Leoff paused to rub his eyes. The notations on the paper before him had begun to blur together, distinct notes melting into meandering black rivulets.

There isn’t time, he thought desperately. There isn’t time to get it right.

But he had to. If he was going to step this far off the edge of the world, it had to be perfect. And it was—almost. Yet he knew something was missing, something he not only didn’t have right, but didn’t have at all.

Frustrated, exhausted, he put his head down on the hammarharp and let his eyes close, just for an instant. His thoughts lost their discipline and began to float about like dust motes in a sunbeam. Then the dust motes became thistledown, and he was lying on the still-green grass of early autumn not far from the charming little town of Gleon Maelhen. He’d seen a purple moon the night before—a true wonder he’d stayed up late into the night to observe. Now he was considering a nap to make up for that, until from off in the hills he heard a melody, played on a shepherd’s pipe. It transfixed him, because it was so beautiful and haunting, yet incomplete . . .

“Fralet Ackenzal—oh, I’ve disturbed you.”

Leoff jerked like a hooked fish, scattering his papers everywhere, realizing in a panic that he’d fallen asleep. If the praifec found him like that and saw what he was doing . . .

But it wasn’t the praifec. It was the lady Gramme.

He stumbled to his feet. “Milady—” he began, all in a rush.

“That’s not necessary,” she said. “I just came to thank you.”

“Then—”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “My men found Mery, just as you said. And I promise you, no harm came to your friend.”

Leoff reflected that he couldn’t be sure of that until he saw Gilmer again, but word had it that the regent’s men were scouring the countryside for the little girl. Gramme had been quick to understand the implications, and had begged him to tell her where Mery was. He’d relented, knowing he was risking his friend’s life, but believing Gilmer and Mery had less to fear from Gramme than from the regent. Once Mery was with her mother, the prince could hardly claim she’d met with foul play at the hand of the queen mother, and if the lady Gramme was discreet, he would never know it was Gilmer who’d watched after her.

“I should like to see her, when it is reasonable,” Leoff said.

“It is reasonable right now,” Gramme replied. “I just wanted to speak with you first, alone. I wanted to know, honestly, why you put yourself at such risk, for no gain I can see.”

Leoff blinked. “I—it just seemed the right thing to do, lady.”

She stared at him, then gave a weary little laugh and before he could react, bent and kissed him gently on the lips. Then she straightened. “Mery’s back in the hall. I’ll send her in.”

He waited, stunned, wondering what had just happened.

Mery came straight to his arms when he saw her, a far cry from the days when she’d hidden in his cabinets.

“How was staying with Gilmer?” he asked her. “Did you enjoy that?”

“He was something of a grump,” Mery allowed, “but he was as nice to me as he could be, I suppose. This one time, we went to the village . . .” He listened as she told him about some adventure of hers, but despite the fact that he was overjoyed to see her, the melody was stuck in his head again, and as she spoke, he began playing at it, the missing notes taunting him like an infuriating itch he couldn’t scratch.

Mery smiled. “That’s pretty,” she said. “May I try it?”

“Of course,” he said. “It’s not finished . . .”

He listened helplessly as she played it—perfectly, of course, but still just as incomplete as his version.

“That’s not quite right, is it?” Mery said.

He stared at her. “No, it’s not,” he said at last.

“What if—?” She glanced up at him, then put her tongue in her cheek, placed her hands on the keys, and pushed them down.

Leoff gasped, absolutely stunned. “Of course,” he murmured. “Saint Oimo, of course.”

“That was better?” Mery queried.

“You know it was,” he said, mussing her hair.

She nodded.

He reached over and gently touched the keys, then did what she’d done—instead of sounding the notes singly as a melody, he played them together, as a chord.

“That’s perfect,” he sighed, as the harmony faded. “Now it’s perfect.”

2 Confluence

Cazio coughed and spit. Through pain-blurred vision he saw bloody spackles appear on the leaves as his head thumped against the ground, and he had an odd sensation of weightlessness, so that for a moment he wondered if he’d been beheaded, instead of struck by the back of a fist.

He briefly considered continuing to lie there, but instead he painfully flopped back to a sitting position—difficult to do with both hands and feet tightly bound.

He lifted his eyes to again regard the man who had struck him. Without his face-concealing helm, the knight looked young—only a few years older than Cazio, perhaps twenty-three or so. His eyes were something between green and brown, and his hair was the color of the dust of the Tero Mefio—not the copper red of Anne’s hair, but a paler and weaker sort of ruddy.

“I apologize,” Cazio said, feeling with his tongue to see if any of his teeth were broken. “I cannot imagine why I called you an honorless, cowardly gelding. How foolish I feel now that you have proved me wrong. But doing is more effective than words, as they say, and nothing proves bravery better than striking a man who is bound and unarmed—unless, perhaps, it is the murder of a woman.”

The man squatted next to him, grabbed him by his hair, and pulled his head back. “Why can’t you shut up?” he asked in thickly accented Vitellian. “By all the ansu together, why can’t you just learn to keep your mouth closed?” He looked over at z’Acatto. “Has he always been this way?”

“Yes,” z’Acatto answered blandly. “Since the day he was born. But you have to admit, he does have a point. That’s why you hit him, because it’s so frustrating when he’s right.”

“I hit him,” the man said, “because I told him to be quiet.”

“Then put a gag in his mouth and spare us all,” z’Acatto said. “You the embarrassment, and him the beatings.”

“Better yet,” Cazio said, pulling his face toward his enemy’s, even at the expense of losing some hair, “why don’t you untie me and give me my sword? How is it that even though you cannot die, you fear to fight me?”

“Are you a knight?” the man asked.

“I am not,” Cazio replied. “But I am Cazio Pachiomadio da Chiovattio, ennobled by birth. What father raised you, who will not fight when he is challenged?”

“My name is Euric Wardhilmson, and my father was Wardhilm Gauthson af Flozubaurg,” the man answered, “knight and lord. And no son of his need favor any ragtag ruffian like you with an honorable duel.” He pushed Cazio’s head back farther, and then released it. “In any event, my men and I have been forbidden from dueling.”

“That’s very convenient,” Cazio said.

“No more convenient than noticing hundscheit in time to step over it,” the knight replied with a nasty smile. “Anyway, it hardly looks like you defeated Sir Alharyi in a duel. It looked more as if someone dropped stones on him from above, then cut his head off while he was down.”

“That would be the gentleman in the gilded armor, back near the coven Saint Cer? The one covered with the murder-blood of the holy sisters? The one who attacked me in the company of another and with the aid of the Lords of Darkness?”

“He was a holy man,” Euric said. “Do not speak ill of him. And if you must know, I am not ansu-blessed as he was. Only one of us at a time is given that honor, and Hrothwulf was the chosen.” He nodded toward another of his captors, a man with hair as black as coal but with skin so fair his cheeks were pink, like a baby’s.

“Well, send him over. I’ll fight him—again, I mean. I’ll sit him down on his ass a second time.”

“I’m starting to like the old man’s suggestion of a gag,” Euric said.

“You haven’t gagged me since I’ve been your captive,” Cazio said. “I don’t imagine you will now.”

Euric smiled. “True. It’s much more satisfying to show you how completely your words don’t bother me.”

“Which is why you struck me, I suppose,” Cazio said.

“No, that was just for the pleasure of it,” Euric countered.

“Don’t make a fool of yourself, lad,” z’Acatto said. “You let him talk because you’re hoping he’ll get you mad enough to untie him. You want to fight him as much as he wants to fight you.”

“Well,” Euric allowed, “I would like to see how he thinks he could beat me with that little sewing-needle of his, yes,” Euric said. “But I’m on a holy mission. I can’t think of myself when my task comes first.”

“There’s nothing holy about chasing two young girls all over creation,” z’Acatto grunted.

“That’s done with,” Euric said, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. “Didn’t you know? We found them just after we caught you. In fact, Hrothwulf thinks you killed them.”

“Killed them?” Cazio blurted. “What are you talking about?”

“They had their throats slit, both of them, just over the hill from where we caught you. There were already ravens pecking at their carcasses. That’s how Auland got hurt.”

Cazio stared at him. “What, the fellow who lost his eyes? The one that died of blood poisoning before the day was even up? You really think a raven did that to him?”

“I saw it myself,” Euric said. But he looked strange, as if somehow he doubted what he was saying.

“Although—” He broke off. “No. I saw them. Their heads were nearly off.”

“You’re lying,” Cazio said. The girls had just gone over the hill to answer nature’s call. He’d only taken his eyes off them for a few minutes. Still, he pictured the girls, brigand’s grins cut in their throats, and suddenly felt a wave of nausea.

“You sons of whores,” he swore. “You get of distempered dogs. I’ll kill every last one of you.”

“No,” Euric said. “You’d be dead already, if we didn’t need a swordsman. But the old man will do, I think, if you’re so very impatient to meet Ansu Halja. Rest assured, you will die, and it won’t be pleasant, so take this time to pray to the ansu you pray to.”

He put a loop of rope around Cazio’s neck and jerked him to his feet. Then he threw the rope over a low-hanging branch and tied it off, so he couldn’t sit down without choking himself.

He left Cazio trying to think of new curses.

That afternoon, more men rode in, most dressed like men-at-arms, but more than a few like clergy. That brought a brief hope, but it didn’t take long to see that they were friendly with the knights.

Cazio had little to do other than watch them work, and try not to fall asleep.

The camp was near a rough mound of earth and stone, the land that in Vitellio were called persi or sedoi, and often had fanes built on them. Those taking holy orders were said to walk such stations in a proscribed order to be blessed by the lords. But whatever was going on here seemed decidedly unholy. The newcomers had captives with them, as well, women and children, and they set about planting a ring of seven posts around the mound then clearing back the vegetation. Others began constructing a stone fane upon its summit.

“Have you any idea what they’re about, z’Acatto?” Cazio asked, studying his enemies as they went about their antlike business.

“Not really,” the old man said. “It’s hard to think without wine.”

“It’s hard for you to stand without wine,” Cazio replied.

“So it should be,” the old man replied. “A man should never be denied wine, especially one who’s soon to die.”

He was interrupted by a commotion of some sort. There was a good bit of distant shouting, and the knights mounted and rode out from the clearing, followed quickly by the five men dressed like monks. They returned perhaps a bell later, leading more captives. These were all men, one of middle years and three younger, the youngest looking barely thirteen. All of them were wounded, though none seemed seriously so.

The older man they tied as Cazio was tied, just a perechi away from him. Then they went back about their business.

When none of the enemy was near, the new captive glanced over at Cazio.

“You’d be the Vitellians, then,” he said in Cazio’s native tongue. “Cazio and z’Acatto.”

“You know us, sir?” Cazio asked.

“Yes, we’ve a couple of friends in common, friends of the fair sort.”

“Anne and—”

“Hush,” the man said. “Pitch your voice very low. I think those are all Mamres monks, but some may be of Decmanis. If so, they can hear a butterfly’s wings.”

“But they’re alive, and well?”

“So far as I know. My name is Artore, and I was helping them to find you. It looks as if I’ve done at least part of my job, though I would prefer that the circumstances were different.”

“But they escaped? The knights didn’t see them?”

Artore shrugged. “I can’t say for certain. My sons and I held them off as long as we could, but the monks are deadly shots. They wanted us alive, or we wouldn’t be.”

“How can the Church be part of this?” Cazio whispered. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“All men are corruptible,” Artore said, “and the more easily if they can tell themselves they are doing holy work. But in fact, I don’t know much more about this than you do. My wife would be the one to ask.” He looked glum. “I would have liked to see her one last time.”

“Well escape somehow,” Cazio promised. “Just watch. I’ll find some way.”

But as he pulled at his intractable bonds, he still couldn’t imagine how.

Neil sat his horse, his hands crossed on the pommel, thinking he didn’t like the looks of the forest that lay before him. He didn’t know much about forests to start with—there weren’t any on Skern, and besides the pretty thin ones he’d passed through on his way to Vitellia, he hadn’t seen much of them on the mainland, either. But once, when he was about fifteen, he’d gone north with Sir Fail de Liery to Herilanz. The trip had started as an embassy, but they’d been set upon by Weihand raiders. It had come to a sea fight which they’d won, but not without damage, and so they had put ashore for repairs. Beyond the narrow, rocky strand there had been nothing but forest, a holt of fir and pine and black cheichete that seemed to Neil like one vast cave. Facing your enemies on the open heath or the great wide sea was one thing, but fighting where concealment was everywhere was quite another. They’d gone in to find a good mast, and come out with half their number, pursued by a tribe of tattooed howlers that recognized no king or crown.

This forest had that look, only worse, for while the one in Herilanz had been of straight, clean-boled trees, these twisted and wove together like a gigantic bramble-bush.

It hadn’t been hard to follow the Hansan knights. The land between Paldh and Teremene was a rural one, the kind of place where people noticed strange things. A group of foreign armored knights and men-at-arms traveling hard and asking after two girls was a bit out of the ordinary. Even though he was a stranger himself, it wasn’t hard to start people talking if he was polite and bought something.

Near Teremene he’d met the knights at a bend in the road, headed back toward Paldh. By the time he realized who they were, it was too late to try and hide. Instead he could only ride forward, reckoning that they wouldn’t recognize him. They didn’t, and the girls weren’t with them.

There wasn’t much he could do then but keep going. Either they had found Anne and Austra and killed them, or they had given up the chase. The last seemed unlikely, and so it was with a heavy heart that he entered Teremene. It was there, with a few well-placed questions and paying three times what he ought for a beer, he’d discovered that a few of the knights, “the really unpleasant ones,” had gone off north, and some even said they had captives with them, a couple of Vitellian men.

And now, a few days later, Neil paused in front of a dark forest on a horse he’d named Prospect, wondering how deep it was.

“Well, Prospect,” he sighed, “let’s see what sort of nightkinders haunt this place, eh?”

He switched the horse’s reins and started in, but hadn’t gone more than a few yards before something ahead caught his eye, a flash of gold, and then something running into the trees. It stopped behind one of the big oaks.

Grimly, he dismounted, pulling his blade, wincing at the balance in his hand. The horse wasn’t a warhorse—he wasn’t sure what would happen if he tried to fight mounted, especially in these woods.

A head peeped around the tree and he caught a flash of a familiar face. Then the head jerked behind the trunk. He heard a muffled shriek, and he heard footsteps crashing off through the forest.

Austra.

Sheathing the sword, he ran after her, puzzled, certain she had recognized him.

She wasn’t trying to hide anymore, but was instead running as if all the demons of the sea were coming after.

“Austra!” he called, trying not to shout it too loudly, but it only seemed to spur her to redouble her efforts. Still, he was the faster runner, and here where the trees were big there wasn’t much undergrowth.

She was perhaps ten yards ahead of him when a man on a horse suddenly cut across her trail. She shrieked and dropped to her knees.

The man had on armor but no helm. He’d swung one leg over the black mare he rode, the start of a dismount, when he saw Neil.

The armored man didn’t have time to cry out. Neil launched himself like a javelin, hitting him at the waist. Still on the horse but not well balanced, he pitched over the other side and landed with a thud and a clank. The impact canceled Neil’s forward flight and dropped him on his side of the horse, so he rolled beneath its belly, drawing his sword. The other fellow managed to get his mail-covered arm up in time to stop his first cut, but Neil heard bone snap. He was sure now that it was one of the Hansan men-at-arms, if not one of the knights. He knew he ought to fight by the code of honor, but so far these men had proved only that they disdained the code.

He cocked back to cleave the man’s naked head off, and suddenly realized he’d forgotten the horse. He dropped and rolled as hooves pawed the air and stamped where he’d just been standing. He backed away from the raging beast and that gave the knight time to regain his feet. He opened his mouth, and Neil suddenly understood that he was about to call for help.

So he did the only thing he could—he threw the sword. It tumbled and struck the man across the chest and face. His shout came out as a yelp, and blood spurted from a crushed nose. Neil charged, ducking under the man’s wild head cut, and punched him in the throat, feeling cartilage crunch. The knight flopped to earth like a scarecrow cut from its pole.

Unwilling to take any chances, Neil picked up the man’s sword and decapitated him. It took two chops.

He turned, panting, to find Austra still whimpering, curled up on the ground.

“Austra? Are you all right?” he asked.

“Stay back,” she gasped. “You’re one of them. You must be.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw you die!” she wailed.

“Oh,” he said, suddenly understanding. “No, Austra. The cut wasn’t that bad, and a lady had her men fish me from the water. I almost died, yes, but I’m not a nauschalk.”

“I don’t know that name,” she replied. “But Cazio cut one’s head off, and it was still moving.” She was looking up at him now, her eyes flooded with tears.

Neil glanced back at the man he had just decapitated. He didn’t seem to be moving. “Well, I’m not like that,” he said. “Cut my head off, and I’m dead, I promise you.” He knelt and took her by the shoulders. “Austra,” he said, gently, “I fought them, remember? So you could board the ship. Why would I do that if I were one of them?”

“I—suppose you’re right,” she said. “But the shock, too many shocks, you know. Too much of this. Too much.”

He felt pity for the girl, but he didn’t have time to indulge it. “Austra,” he asked, gently but firmly, “where is Anne?”

“I don’t know,” Austra replied despondently. “She’s supposed to be with Artore and his sons, and they were supposed to be going to Eslen, but then I saw them bring Artore into the camp, and I thought one of the monks must have heard me, though I was a hundred yards away—”

“Austra, are there more of these fellows in the woods?”

She nodded her head.

“Okay, then—quietly, let’s go somewhere safer, and then you’ll tell me everything, yes? Sort it out in your head while we ride.”

“We have to save Cazio,” she mumbled.

“Right. We’ll save everybody, but first I have to know what’s going on, and I don’t think it’s wise we talk here. Come on.”

In a knightly contest, Neil could rightly claim the victor’s arms, armor, and horse as the spoils of victory. And though this battle had been fought on less-than-knightly terms, he reckoned the same still applied.

The fellow’s sword was a pretty nice one, made of good steel and with a better balance and edge than the one he’d purchased in Paldh. In a melancholy mood, he named the new weapon Cuenslec, “Dead Man’s Sword,” and hoped it did not prove to be a prophecy that would continue to fulfill itself.

The byrnie of chain mail fit him, if a bit loosely, as did the breastplate and gauntlets. The greaves were too long, however. The helm was tied to the horse, along with two spears, but the beast was unapproachable.

In fact, the horse was something of a problem. It would probably return to camp, alerting the dead man’s companions to his fate. Of course, they would know eventually, when he failed to return, but later was better than sooner. Still, he didn’t feel like killing the poor beast. Instead he took the rope he tethered Prospect with at night, made a lasso, and after a few tries captured him. Then he tied the other end of the rope to a tree.

Thus equipped, he and Austra returned to Prospect and rode back out of the forest, over a little hill and beyond sight of both the forest and the road, which felt safer than hiding in the woods. There he listened as Austra told her story and described the scene at the seid.

“You shouldn’t have left Anne,” he told her.

“I don’t see how you can say that, after she betrayed you,” Austra snapped. Then, looking chagrined, she went on, “Besides, she was safe, or I thought she was. Cazio and z’Acatto weren’t.”

“Yes, but how did you reckon to take on those knights by yourself?”

“I thought I might sneak in and cut their bonds,” she replied, “but so far I haven’t been able to get close enough.”

“And you haven’t seen Anne at all.”

“No,” Austra said.

“Do you think they’ve killed her?”

“I don’t know,” Austra said miserably. “They’ve got Artore and his sons. They must have killed one of them, because they brought an extra horse. But I counted, and there wasn’t a horse for Anne.”

“So you believe she got away?”

“I hope so,” Austra said. “This is all my fault. She would never have come here except for me.”

“There’s no point in worrying over that,” Neil soothed. “Concentrate on what you can do, not what you could have done.” He was surprised to hear himself say the words, and even more surprised to realize that he actually meant them—not just for Austra, but for himself.

Yes, he had failed, several times now. He would probably fail again, but the thing a man did—the thing his father would have told him to do—was to keep trying.

“If Anne’s alive,” he reasoned, “she’s on the other side of the forest. We can’t go through on the road, or they’ll ambush us the way they did your friends. But we have to go through—we have to find out if she’s still alive.”

“But Cazio—”

“There are at least two knights left, one of them a nauschalk. How many priests and men-at-arms? How many would I have to fight altogether?”

“Some of them come and go,” she said. “But I think maybe five monks and fifteen fighting men.”

“That’s too many,” Neil said. “They’ll kill me, and kill you, and then kill your Cazio and z’Acatto, and we won’t have served the queen—or Anne—very well. Our duty is to them first, do you understand?”

Austra bowed her head. “Yes,” she agreed.

“And you won’t try and run off again?”

“No.”

“Good. Then let’s get going, while we still have the light.”

Austra just nodded again, but continued to stare at the ground. Neil lifted her chin with his finger. “I swear by the saints my people swear by, once we know one way or the other about Anne, I’ll do what I can for your friends.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Right. Let’s go then.”

He took them into the forest off the road and swung wide around it, keeping his bearings by the sun. To his relief, it was less than a bell before he saw light through the trees. The forest, it seemed, was great in length but narrow in breadth. By that time the sun was setting, but in the dim light he made out a castle—and farther away, a village.

“Do you know that place?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Well,” he said. “Let’s ask in the village.”

Neil took them warily along the road, though it was all but deserted. They only had two encounters; the first was where the road split into branches headed toward the village and castle respectively. The only light was a crescent moon, but they heard the rumble of a carriage coming from the castle. Neil could only make out a shadow, but reckoned it was still a few hundred yards away. He twitched Prospect onto the town road, and the noise of the carriage soon faded behind them.

The second encounter came on the outskirts of the village, when he made out four horsemen coming toward them. He tensed in the saddle, putting his hand on Cuenslec’s pommel. In outline they didn’t seem to be armored.

“Who’s there?” a man’s voice barked from the darkness—in the king’s tongue.

Neil gripped his weapon tighter, for though the voice sounded familiar, he couldn’t place it.

“Put that away, Aspar,” another voice said. “Can’t you see who it is?”

“Not in this light. I don’t have sainted vision, like you do.”

“Well met, Sir Neil,” the lighter voice said. “I suspect we have a lot to discuss.”

3 Ceremony

Anne found herself staring again at the girl in the mirror, recognizing her even less than she had the last time she looked, only a few hours earlier. This time she wore a bride’s wimple of pale gold safnite brocade that concealed even the few wisps of hair that remained to her. The gown was bone, with long fitted sleeves and edgings in the same color as the wimple. The face surrounded by all this seemed lost and strange.

Vespresern seemed rather pleased by the effect. “It fit you nearly without alteration,” she said. “A good thing, too, as we had little enough time to spare. My lord is in a terrible hurry.” She patted Anne’s arms. “He does so love you, you know. I’ve never seen him go against his father in even the slightest matter, before this. I do hope he’s right about everything.”

Vespresern waited, plainly looking for a response.

“He is always in my heart and my thoughts,” Anne said at last. “It’s my greatest desire to bring him all the happiness he deserves.”

She meant that much, anyway.

“It’s rare that anyone in your position is able to marry for love, my dear,” Vespresern blithered. “You cannot know how lucky you are.”

Anne remembered Fastia telling her the same thing, on more than one occasion—Fastia, who had married so unhappily. Fastia who had once played with her and made her garlands of flowers, whom she had left in argument, whom she could never apologize to.

Fastia, now meat for the worms.

Anne heard footsteps in the corridor.

“Here he comes,” Vespresern said. “Are you quite ready, my dear?”

“Yes,” Anne responded. “Quite ready.”

“Here,” the old lady said. “We’ll bundle you up in this old weather-cloak. There shouldn’t be anyone to recognize you, but safe is what we’ll be.”

Anne stood still as Vespresern draped the woolen garment over the gown. A knock sounded at the door.

“Who will that be?” Vespresern asked—disingenuously, in light of her former statement.

“It’s Roderick,” the answer came. “Is she ready? This is the time.”

“She’s ready,” Vespresern said.

The door creaked open, and Roderick stood there, looking regal in a deep, rust-red doublet and white hose.

“By the saints,” he said, staring at her. “I’ve a mind to see you in the gown this moment.”

“That’s ill luck,” Anne said. “You’ll see it soon enough.”

“Yes,” he said. “I cannot believe I was without you for so long, Anne. Now even a bell seems far too long to go without gazing on your face.”

“I missed you, too,” Anne said. “I spent long nights at the coven, wondering where you were, what you were doing, praying you still loved me.”

“I can do nothing else,” he said. “The saints have inscribed you in my heart, and there is no place for anyone else there.”

You don’t know how truly you speak, Anne thought. Indeed, you do not.

“Come, let us go,” Roderick said. “Vespresern, you go ahead to spy the way. We’ll go down the servants’ stair and through the kitchen, then out the Hind Gate, where the stables are. I know the guard on duty there, and he will not betray us.” He took Anne’s hand. “You have nothing to fear now,” he said. “Your troubles are over.”

“Yes,” Anne said. “I see that.”

Roderick knew his castle and people well—they met nearly no one but an old man in the kitchen, baking bread, and the guard Roderick mentioned. The baker didn’t even seem to notice them. The guard clapped Roderick on the back and said something in Hornish that sounded encouraging and perhaps a bit risqué. It seemed strange to her—the guard was Roderick’s friend, as she and Austra were friends. How could someone so ripe with betrayal, so filled with it, be loved by anyone?

Perhaps they could not, in truth, in the heart. Perhaps that was the real reason Austra had left her—because in her soul she no longer loved her—perhaps even hated her. Not for any particular thing she had done, but because there was nothing left in Anne to love.

But let that pass. It no longer mattered. All that mattered now was finishing this, however it would finish.

Then they were alone in the carriage. Vespresern rode with the driver, wrapped in a heavy cloak. Outside the last of day’s light was fading and shadows crept along the ground. The moon was a narrow horn thrust into the horizon. In another night it would be new.

“Kiss me, Roderick,” Anne said after the carriage had rattled along a bit. “Kiss me.”

He reached for her, and then hesitated. “Shouldn’t we wait for the ceremony?”

“We’ve kissed before,” she pointed out. “I can’t wait, it’s been so long—don’t make me wait.”

There was no lantern, and she could not make out his face, but she felt his fingers trace the line of her jaw, and then rest gently at the back of her head as she felt his lips on hers, warm and soft. She remembered that night in Eslen-of-Shadows, how his hands had burned on her like metal just come from the forge, how her breath had quickened and her heart had raced, and how she had loved him—and just for the tiniest instant she really remembered and really loved him again, the way only a girl can love for the first time.

Their lips parted, but she pulled him back, both her hands clasped behind his head, and kissed him with all the darkness in her heart, pushing it into him, filling him through his mouth until it rushed out. He moaned, but could not pull away from her as—in her mind’s eye—she erased his face. Then, still gently, she pushed him away. He began to shudder and sob.

“I . . . Anne . . . ah, Saints!” his voice rose to a hideous shriek, and the carriage jarred to a halt.

“You are nothing, Roderick of Dunmrogh,” she said. She opened the carriage door and walked out into the night, ignoring the protestations of the driver and Vespresern. She limped back along the road, toward the forest, or where she thought it was. She hoped her leg wouldn’t start to bleed again.

As the moon rose higher, Anne felt more and more certain of her way, and though the crescent’s light was vanishingly pallid, she found that with each step it seemed to brighten and bleed through the shadows. A bell sounded in the distance, and then another, and the music of it seemed to float by like a breeze. She was somehow both calm and angry. She wondered abstractly what precisely she had done to Roderick, but didn’t feel too concerned about it. Something bad, and permanent—that was certain, she could feel it in her bones.

She stepped beneath the groping trees as the eleventh bell sounded, and there she stopped. She knelt on the damp earth and closed her eyes and pushed away the world.

When she opened them, she was in a different forest, but it was still night, the moon still a sickle above. In front of her stood a woman she had never seen. She wore an ivory mask and a black gown that glinted with jewels.

“The fourth Faith,” she said.

The woman bowed her head slightly. “You have called me, and here I am.” She lifted her head back up. “You should not do this, Anne. You are free—return to Eslen.”

“No,” she said firmly. “I’m tired of running. I won’t run anymore.”

The woman smiled faintly. “You feel your power waking, but you are not yet complete. You are not ready for this trial, I promise you.”

“Then I will die, and that will be the end of it,” Anne said.

“It will be the end not just of you, but of the world as we know it.”

“I do not much care for the world as we know it,” Anne confided a little haughtily.

The woman sighed. “Why did you come here?”

“To tell you. If you are so certain that I must live, then you will help me, I think.”

“We are already helping you, Anne. My sisters and I have strained ourselves, woven as much into the web of fate as we dare. We foresaw this moment, and there are two paths. One is the path home, to Eslen. At this moment your mother is locked in a tower, and the man who murdered your father sits the throne. A moment approaches there, also, and if you aren’t there to greet it, the result will be terrible beyond imagining.”

“And the other path? The one in which I face my pursuers and free my friends? The one I’m going to take?”

“We cannot see past that,” she whispered. “And that is gravely worrisome.”

“But you said you foresaw this moment.”

“Yes, but not your decision. We feared you would take the unseeable, and have provided all the help we can. I do not think it will be enough.”

“It will be enough,” Anne said, “or you will find another queen.”

The monks had been piling wood in a huge cone all day, but soon after it grew dark, they lit it. Cazio watched the flames lick hungrily up toward the oak branches above.

“Do you suppose they’re going to burn us?” he asked z’Acatto.

“If they meant to do that, they should have tied us up to the logs. No, boy, I think they’ve something more interesting in mind.”

Cazio nodded. “Yes. Something to do with those.” He meant the seven posts the monks had erected earlier, but he also meant the newer, somewhat more worrisome detail they had added only a few moments before—three hanging nooses suspended from a low tree branch.

“You always said I would end in a noose,” he told the old man.

“Yes,” z’Acatto agreed. “I never imagined I would be joining you, however. Speaking of which, how is your plan coming along? The one you promised Artore?”

“I’ve got the broad strokes of it laid out,” Cazio said. “I’m mostly lacking in details.”

“Uh-huh. How are you going to slip your bonds?”

“That, unfortunately, is one of the details.”

“You work that out while I get some sleep.” z’Acatto grunted.

They were silent for a while as Cazio watched the play of light from the fire. It seemed as if giants made of shadow were leaping from the trees into the clearing and then retreating again—doing footwork, as a dessrator might. He glanced longingly at Caspator, where the sword lay with the rest of his effects.

His bonds were loosening again, but if experience was any guide, someone would be along presently to tighten them.

Cazio himself was tiring, and was almost dozing when it finally started. The monks were leading captives to the perimeter of poles around the mound and securing them there. It took the first of their screams for the drowsy Cazio to understand that they weren’t tying them there.

“Oh, buggering lords, no,” Cazio said, redoubling his efforts at the ropes. He watched helplessly as a girl who could be no more than five had her arms stretched above her and nailed there.

“No!” he screamed. “By all that’s holy, what do you think you’re doing?”

“They’re waking the sedos,” Artore whispered. “Waking the Worm.” He looked frightened, which he hadn’t before.

“How can . . .” Cazio stumbled off, overcome by the horror of it. “How can men do things like this?” he finally managed.

“I don’t think we’ve seen the worst,” Artore predicted. “And I think I’d best bid you farewell now.”

Cazio saw someone coming in their direction. He lunged at the robe-clad monk, but the rope went taut around his neck and jerked him back.

“Stop it!” he screamed as the man cut Artore’s leash. Artore was faster than he looked. He head-butted the monk in the face. The man jerked back, and then moved with blinding speed, striking Artore in the pit of his stomach. The man gagged and fell to his knees, and the monk took him in an arm-lock and conveyed him to the post.

“Z’Acatto?” Cazio said feeling his breath coming suddenly short.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“What for?”

“For dessrata. For everything.”

The old man didn’t say anything for a moment. “You’re welcome, boy,” he finally answered. “I could have spent my life worse. I’m glad to be here with you.”

A monk was coming for z’Acatto. Euric was coming for Cazio.

“Don’t get too sentimental,” Cazio said. “I’m still going to get us out of this, and then you’ll feel silly.”

The men were almost on them. Cazio tried to relax, so he could move quickly. He would have just an instant when the rope was slack, and he would have to use that instant well.

Euric smiled and punched him in the jaw. Cazio felt his teeth snap together, and suddenly he was choking. Just as quickly, the pressure released, and he stumbled forward, dragged by the knight who had him from behind in a wrestling hold.

“Can’t kill you yet,” Euric said. “You’re one of the guests of honor. I thought I would have to play your part, and I was ready, too, but then we found you.”

“What are you babbling about, you filthy sod?” Cazio snarled.

“Swordsman, Priest, and Crown,” the knight said, unhelpfully. “And one who cannot die. We’ve got a priest, and a royal, though she doesn’t know it yet, I’m afraid—and now we’ve got our swordsman. As for the undying—well, you’ve already met Hrothwulf.”

“Is any of that supposed to make sense?” Cazio asked, as Euric hustled him up the mound and stood him up on a block beneath the gallows tree, then set the noose around his neck. Another man brought Caspator and stuck the blade point-first into the ground in front of him. Cazio gazed greedily at the weapon, so close and so unreachable.

Now he had a good view of all the victims nailed to the posts. He could see their faces in the firelight. Z’Acatto already hung with them, blood drizzling from his crossed palms, not more than six perechi away.

Artore was there, too—and he’d been right. It was getting worse. Going widdershins—one by one—the monks were carefully cutting their victims open and pulling out their intestines. They stretched these to the next post and nailed them into the arms of the next victim, then cut his belly, too. As this happened, a sacritor on the mound began chanting in a language Cazio had never heard before.

Meanwhile, a new party entered the clearing, a richly dressed man and woman. The man was tall and austere, with graying mustache and beard. The woman looked younger, but it was hard to make out her features from this distance, partly because she was bound and gagged.

“There’s our royal,” a voice said, just near Cazio’s ear. He turned and saw one of the monks step onto the block beside him and calmly place the noose on his own neck.

“I honestly never knew,” Cazio distantly heard himself say. “Never. I have seen cruelty, and malice, murder, and casual mayhem. But I never in my worst dreams ever imagined such sick depravity as this.”

“You don’t understand,” the monk said softly. “The world is dying, swordsman. The sky is cracking and soon will tumble down. And we’re going to save it. You should be honored.”

“If I had my sword,” Cazio said, “I would show you what I honor and how.”

The woman was placed on the third block. Her eyes were wild with terror.

He turned his attention back to the circle. It was half-complete, and z’Acatto’s turn was coming. There was nothing Cazio could do but watch.

4 Khrwbh Khrwkh

Cazio closed his eyes as the knife-wielding monk stepped up to z’Acatto, but then forced them open again. If the only thing he could do for z’Acatto was to watch him die, then he would do that. So he set his teeth and promised himself he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of any more outbursts.

Z’Acatto suddenly did something really odd. He jerked his feet into the air, levering both legs out straight and kicking them as high as his head—an impressive show of agility and strength for a man his age. Then he swung them rapidly back down, slapping them into the post. His face was strangely serene, despite the pain he must have been feeling. The nails ripped through his hands as he arched forward from the force of the reversal, tumbling him to the ground. He bounded up immediately, driving his bloody right hand into the monk’s throat. The fellow dropped the knife, and z’Acatto immediately scooped it up, then sprinted toward Cazio.

Almost everyone else was watching the invoker, so that his mestro had closed more than half the distance before a shout of alarm went up. The monk next to Cazio wasn’t bound, since he was a volunteer, and he quickly reached to extricate himself from the rope around his neck. But with a muffled cry Cazio tucked his chin against the noose, pulled his legs up, and kicked him with both feet. His own noose went instantly tight, though, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe as both his block and the one the monk perched on toppled away.

Black butterflies began to flutter in his vision, as the rope turned him forward again and he saw z’Acatto getting up from the ground. The long black shaft of an arrow stood quivering from the older man’s back and he was cursing steadily and inventively. He scrambled up the mound as another hail of arrows fell around him. He was hit again, this time in the calf, but he did not fall.

Another turn, and Cazio saw the monk, hanging like he was, but with both hands on the rope above him, trying to pull himself upward with one, and loosen the knot with the other. Z’Acatto denied him success, cutting the churchman’s throat in one long slash, then with the next whip of his hand severed the rope that was just short of killing Cazio.

Cazio thudded to the ground, gasping for air. He couldn’t see z’Acatto anymore, but he felt his bonds part, and with a hoarse shout he bounced to his feet and yanked Caspator from the ground. He turned to find z’Acatto with a third arrow in his ribs, his breath coming in rapid gasps, his eyes going glassy.

“Stay down, old man,” Cazio told him. “I’ll take care of this.”

“Yes,” z’Acatto wheezed. “Excellent idea.”

Euric and two men-at-arms were first on Cazio’s menu. They were a few perechi away, charging, meat-cleavers drawn. Cazio was a little surprised he hadn’t been made a riddle by arrows, as z’Acatto had, but a quick glance around the clearing showed the archers lowering their weapons, and he smiled sardonically as he realized they wanted him alive so they could hang him.

He set his stance, slipping the noose off his neck with his off weapon hand.

Besides their broadswords, they all wore armor, though none of them had helms. Cazio put his blade out in a line aimed at Euric’s face. The knight beat at his blade to remove it, but with a twist of his fingers Cazio dipped his point beneath the searching blade, quickly changed his line, and sidestepped. Euric’s momentum took him past Cazio, as Caspator’s tip caught one of the men-at-arms in the throat. Using the weapon as a lever, Cazio jumped forward and to the left, turning the man to place the corpse-to-be briefly between Euric and the other warrior. This gave him shelter to withdraw the blade and set his stance again. The unfortunate fellow fell, blood bubbling from the hole in his trachea.

“Ca dola dazo lamo,” Cazio forcefully informed his foes.

The second man-at-arms thrust past Euric, lifting his hand for a cut, perhaps forgetting they were supposed to keep Cazio alive long enough to hang. Cazio countered into the attack, a fast, straight lunge that hit the man on the underside of his wrist.

“Z’estatito,” he explained as the man grunted and dropped his weapon. Euric’s blade was streaking down from his right, a blow apparently meant for his leg, so Cazio caught it in an outside parry, then thrust into the eye of the man-at-arms, who was still standing there, staring uncomprehendingly at his bloody wrist.

“Zo pertumo sesso, com postro en truto.”

He ducked Euric’s vicious backswing, because his blade was still stuck in a skull. As he yanked it out, Euric charged inside the point, grabbing his neck and bringing the broadswords pommel down in a vicious blow aimed at his nose. Cazio managed to turn his head so the hilt grazed along the side of it instead of striking it square, but that was still enough to set the world singing. He returned the favor by striking Caspator’s grip into Euric’s ear, and both men fell.

Cazio scrambled up, and so did Euric. From the corner of his eye, Cazio saw three of the monks running toward him with ridiculous speed, and knew he had only a heartbeat left to act.

“You won’t escape,” Euric promised him.

“I’m not trying to,” Cazio said.

And so—as he had practiced with z’Acatto only a few days before—he flung himself forward like a spear, his body nearly parallel to the ground. Euric’s eyes went wide, and he threw his own blade up in defense, far too late. Caspator’s point hit Euric’s teeth with the full weight and momentum of Cazio’s body behind it. They shattered, and the steel continued over the tongue and through the brain. Euric blinked, clearly puzzled by his death.

“Z’ostato,” Cazio grunted.

Cazio had barely hit the ground before someone struck him from behind and caught him in a wrestling hold. It felt like an iron yoke around his neck. Then he was yanked roughly to his feet, and he found himself surrounded. One of the crowd was the fellow in the noble clothing.

“That was extraordinary,” he said. “At least we can be certain that you are a true swordsman, now. But now we need a new priest and regal. My wife seems to have had an accident.”

Cazio looked up at the mound and saw that the woman had somehow fallen off her perch and been hanged. He hoped he hadn’t done it in the struggle.

“We have to hang you all together, you see,” he said.

Cazio spat in his face. “You sacrificed your wife, you rabid dog?”

The man wiped his face without any other obvious reaction. “Oh, I would sacrifice much more than that to bring this faneway alive,” he said. Then he laughed, a bit bitterly. “I suppose I will have to, actually—I don’t have time to find my son, and I’m the only one here with royal blood, I think.”

“No,” a familiar voice called. “There is one more here with noble blood.”

They all turned, and Cazio saw Anne standing at the edge of the woods. Her voice rose in a commanding tone Cazio had never heard her use.

“I am Anne Dare,” she said, “daughter of the Emperor of Crotheny, Duchess of Rovy. I command you all to lay down your arms and release these people, or I swear by Saint Cer the Avenger, you will all die.”

For a few heartbeats, the clearing was silent except for the crackle of flames and the moans of the dying. Then the nobleman next to Cazio uttered a single barking laugh.

“You!” he said. “I’ve been looking all over for you, you know. All over. Slaughtered an entire coven to find you. My men told me you were dead—and now you walk right into my arms. Outstanding. Come here, girl, and give us a kiss.”

“You will not mock me,” Anne said steadily. “You will not.”

“I think I will,” the man replied.

Anne stepped steadily nearer to the man. “You are Roderick’s father,” she said. A part of her was trembling with fear, but that part of her seemed to be sinking away, melting like snow in spring. “Of course. Roderick’s father and his Hansan knights. And why did you chase me over the great wide world, Duke of Dunmrogh? What fear was in you that made you do that?”

“No fear,” the Duke said. “I was doing what my lord commanded.”

“Which lord is that? Which lord commanded my death?”

“How foolish of you to think I would ever name him,” Dunmrogh said.

“Foolish is the man who does not ask what his lord fears of a single girl,” Anne spat. She felt, suddenly, the sickness around her, a pulsing fever in the very earth itself, and something turning slowly in the dirt, opening one eye. It was like that day with Austra, in the city of the dead, when they had escaped the knights, but stronger. She took a breath and felt herself expand with it.

“He only fears a queen in Eslen,” Dunmrogh said, suddenly sounding the slightest bit uncertain.

“No,” Anne whispered. “Like all men, he fears the dark of the moon.” She took another breath and felt it turn as black and thick as oil in her lungs.

“Hang her,” Dunmrogh said.

She let the breath out—and out, feeling the Worm pull up through her feet and flow through her. Dunmrogh screamed like an hysterical infant, but she did not stop with him.

She sent it on—through the monks, through the men in armor, shuddering, hearing herself laugh as if she were mad.

Dunmrogh bent double and vomited blood. Some of the monks started toward her, but it was as if they were moving against a wind too hard to overcome. She spared Cazio and the fading z’Acatto, but every other man was her slave, bowing to her power.

Except one. One man was still coming for her; the knight, the one who had cut Sir Neil. Her will sleeted through him as if he wasn’t there, and the Worm would not know him. He quickened his pace, drawing his sword. She was dimly aware of Cazio trying to stand, raising his own weapon.

Then something in her twisted and diminished, and she felt as if she were falling. The last thing she saw was the knight, charging to take her head.

Cazio saw Anne fall, even as the knight came into striking range. He wasn’t sure what had happened, wasn’t sure he wanted to know. The only thing he knew was that he was free, and Caspator was in his hand, and there was an enemy in front of him.

Unfortunately, this one had his helm on, and his sword was the weird, flickering, glowing one he’d seen shear through plate armor in z’Espino.

Cazio thrust into the knight’s downward cut, parrying and attacking with the same movement, but his blade scratched only the steel of a breastplate. The knight reversed, slicing back up from the downswing, trying to split Cazio from crotch to shoulder, but Cazio was already moving aside and punching his hilt into the knight’s visor, trying to knock it off.

His adversary whirled and his weapon soughed a third time, and though Cazio managed to get Caspator up to meet it, the force was square on, right on the strong part of his blade, and his knees buckled from the strength of it. The knight’s mailed foot came up and kicked him under the chin, and the bright smell of blood exploded in his nostrils as he flopped onto his back.

The knight turned away, ignoring him, moving back toward the prostrate figure of Anne. Cazio struggled to his feet, knowing he would never make it in time.

Then two arrows spanged into the armored man, and he staggered. Cazio looked in the direction the shots had come from and saw a man on a horse charging toward them. The arrows hadn’t come from him—he carried a sword in one hand and a wooden shield in the other. They came from another pair—a slight, hooded figure and a rangy-looking man in a leather cuirass.

Cazio tried to use Caspator to push himself up and noticed, with a shock, that the strong part of his blade had been notched halfway through by the weird knight’s weapon. Caspator was made from Belbaina steel, the strongest in the world.

The nauschalk was stooping toward Anne’s motionless body when Aspar’s and Leshya’s arrows found him. The pause gave Neil just the time he needed to reach him. He cut hard with Cuenslec, and felt the solid, satisfying shock run up his arm. He didn’t understand why the rest of the men in the clearing weren’t fighting, or even on their feet, but he wasn’t going to question it. Some of them were starting to get up, anyway, and when they did, he and his newfound companions would be very much outnumbered.

His horse reared and shied, so Neil quickly dismounted, facing the knight as he rose back up, wielding the arcane blade.

“They say Virgenya Dare’s warriors had weapons like that,” Neil said. “Feyswords. Weapons for heroes, weapons to fight evil. I don’t know where you got that, but I do know you aren’t fit to carry it.”

The nauschalk pushed up his visor. His face was pale and pink-cheeked, and his eyes were as gray as sea waves.

“You,” he murmured, almost as if in a dream. “I’ve killed you once, haven’t I?”

“Only almost,” Neil replied. He lifted his shield. “But by Saint Fren and Saint Fendve, this time I will die or you will.”

“I cannot die,” the man said. “Do you understand? I can’t.”

“Forgive me if I’ll not take your word for that,” Neil replied. All along he’d been shuffling forward, finding his distance. Now he slowly began to circle, his gaze fixed on the eyes of the nauschalk, a red fire kindling in his belly as the rage began.

Then the nauschalk blinked, and in that instant Neil attacked, leaping forward and cutting over the shield. His enemy replied with a swift thrust from a stiffened arm to Neil’s shield, a good fighter’s instinct, for it should have stopped Neil’s attack by keeping him at sword’s length.

But the feysword sliced through the shield just above Neil’s arm. He still had to arrest his blow to keep from impaling his face on the glowing weapon, but he twisted the shield down, taking the stuck feysword with it, and chopped a second time. Cuenslec rang against the armored joint of neck and shoulder, and Neil felt the chain links part. The visor clanged down with the force of his blow, and once again Neil’s enemy had no face.

He dropped the shield before his opponent could carve the deadly blade through his arm and drew back for another blow, but the feysword whirled up too quickly. Neil let the assault come but faded back from it, so the attack missed him by the breadth of a hair. Then he made his own counterattack.

He had reckoned on the knight having to recover the momentum of his attack before making the backswing, but he’d reckoned wrong. The weapon must have weighed almost nothing, because here it came, shearing up into his attack. Only by scrambling quickly back did he avoid being gut-sawed.

Neil’s breath was coming raggedly already, for he was still weak from his last fight with the fellow.

The nauschalk, seemingly not tired at all, advanced.

“What’s happening here, Stephen?” Aspar asked as he got Ogre still and took aim at a monk. The churchman had been down on the ground when they arrived, and was now rising shakily to his feet. Aspar let fly. The fellow never saw his death coming; an almost motionless target, the arrow took him in the heart and he sank back to his knees.

Around the clearing, more and more of the formerly motionless figures were rising again. Aspar aimed at the most active.

“I don’t know,” Stephen replied. “I felt something as we were approaching, something strong, but it’s gone now.”

“Maybe they never got the instructions from the praifec,” Leshya guessed. “Maybe they did something wrong.”

“Maybe,” Aspar allowed. “But whatever happened, it seems to be to our advantage. Stephen, you and Winna go get the princess. Hurry.”

Neil’s battle with the armored knight didn’t seem to be going that well. The knight’s sword flickered like the knife Desmond Spendlove had planned to use to assassinate Winna, the one—he now recalled—the praifec had confiscated for “study.”

He shot a man and selected another target, but this one saw him in time and dodged the shaft. Then he was running toward them, faster than an antelope. To his left, on the other side of the clearing, Aspar saw another.

“Leshya, take the left one,” he grunted.

“Yes,” she said.

Aspar took careful aim and fired again, but the monk spun aside without stopping, and the dart just grazed him along the arm. He was closing the distance so swiftly, Aspar figured he had only one more shot coming.

He released it at five yards, and still the man nearly dodged it. It hit him in the belly and he grunted as he took a wild, unbalanced swing at Aspar with his sword. Aspar wheeled Ogre and avoided the blow, then spurred the beast to give him distance to shoot again, but the monk kept coming, much too quickly, leaping through the air. Aspar managed to deflect the sword with his bow. But the force of his antagonist’s leap knocked him out of the saddle.

Aspar managed to untangle himself from the monk and kick clear to draw his dirk, but even as he regained his feet he found the sword slashing toward him, a bit slower than Aspar was used to from the warrior-priests, whether due to the belly wound or whatever had gone on just before their arrival, he could not say. He managed to duck the blow and step in, grabbing the swordsman’s wrist and slashing viciously at his inner thigh with the dirk. A spray of blood hit him in the face, and he knew he’d got the knife where he wanted it.

The monk didn’t know he was dead yet, though. He grabbed Aspar by the hair and kneed him in the face, and as the holter fell back in sudden agony, closed his hands around his throat and began to squeeze. Aspar stabbed the dirk into his ribs and twisted it, but he felt something cracking in his throat, and black stars blotted out the mad green eyes glowering down at him.

Then the strength went out of the man’s fingers and blood poured from his mouth, and Aspar was able to push him off.

Just in time to see another of the fratirs, only a yard away, sword raised for the kill.

The nauschalk came at Neil, and it was all he could do to evade the blows. Fighting in plate armor was less a contest of sword-skill than it was about who had the best armor. Fully armored knights didn’t really parry; they just took blows and gave them. But in this case, Neil knew from experience that even the superior armor he’d worn in z’Espino was no match for the glistering feysword. And though Neil had spent most of his fighting life in mail or leather hauberk—and thus knew full well how to parry—he didn’t really dare do that, either, not when each blow against his weapon of mere steel left it diminished.

He had to keep the battle rage at bay and think, watch for one more good chance before he was exhausted.

The knight cried out and drove forward, just as Neil realized he’d been backed up to the mound. He stumbled, and almost lazily saw the radiant weapon descending toward him—then suddenly he knew exactly what to do.

He lifted his own blade in high, direct parry, taking the entire brunt of the blow on the edge, rather than on the flat, where a parry ought to be made. The force of the cut slammed his weapon down onto his shoulder, and then the feysword sheared through Cuenslec and into his byrnie.

Ignoring the shattering pain, he released his sword and caught the nauschalk’s weapon hand with both of his, spun so that he had the arm turned over his shoulder, and snapped it down. The articulated harness kept the arm from breaking, but the sword fell glimmering to earth.

The knight punched Neil in the kidney, and he felt the blow through the chain, but he gritted his teeth, kicked back into the nauschalk’s knee for leverage, and threw him heavily to earth. Then, before taking another breath, he grasped the hilt of the feysword, lifted it, and plunged it into the cut he’d already made at his foe’s shoulder. The nauschalk shrieked, a wholly inhuman sound.

Gasping, Neil raised the blade once more and in one fierce stroke cut off the head.

An arrow swifted by Stephen’s face as he reached the unconscious princess, but he ignored it, grimly trusting that Aspar and Leshya could keep any attackers off them until they’d gotten her to safety. Not for the first time, he wished he had more proficiency in arms than his saint-touched memory sometimes freakishly gave him.

“Cazio!” someone shouted, and Stephen saw that the girl, Austra, was right behind Winna.

The man trying to stand near the princess glanced up at them. “Austra, Ne! Cuvertucb!” he shouted.

It was a modern dialect, not the Church language, but Stephen understood it well enough.

But the warning came too late. What remained of the monks and other fighting men had recovered from whatever torpor had afflicted them. They were rallying behind a man who wore the blue robe of a sacritor. Stephen counted eight bowmen, all monks of Mamres, and ten armed and armored men advancing on them.

Aspar raised his arm up in pointless defense, then flinched as an arrow hit the monk in the forehead with such force that it kicked his chin up toward the sky. Looking back, he saw that Leshya had made the shot from less then two yards away.

“Stop, or I’ll shoot,” she said flatly as the monk toppled like a felled poplar.

“Sceat,” Aspar managed weakly. He scrambled to his feet, reacquainting himself with his bow, only to find the string snapped.

He saw the men advancing on Stephen and the rest.

“We can still escape,” Leshya said. “Someone must know of what happened here.”

“It will take only one of us to tell it,” Aspar said. “And I maunt that’s you.” He swung himself up on Ogre. “Come on, lad,” he muttered.

Neil used what seemed the last of his strength to sprint to join the little group clustered around Anne. He placed himself with Cazio, squarely between her and their attackers. Cazio shot him a feeble grin and said something that sounded fatalistic.

“Right you are,” Neil replied, as the bows of the monks trained on them.

“Wait!” the sacritor called. “We need the princess and one of the swordsmen alive. Leave them, and the rest of you may go.”

Neil heard horses’ hooves behind him, and turned to see Aspar. The warriors were moving steadily closer.

Neil didn’t feel the need to dignify the ridiculous suggestion with a response. Apparently, no one else did either. He cut his eyes toward the archers, calculating whether he could get to even one of them before they killed him. Probably not, from what he had seen of their skill.

“Yah,” Aspar said, as if hearing his thoughts. “They’re good shots. But they aren’t getting any worse. We might as well go get them.”

“Wait,” Stephen said. “I hear horses, a lot of them, coming this way.”

“That’s not likely to be good news for us,” Aspar pointed out.

Stephen shook his head. “No, I think it might be.”

Aspar thought he heard horses, too, but he’d just noticed something else—a shadow moving at the tree line. When an arrow suddenly struck one of the archers in the back of the neck, he knew it was Leshya. The remaining monks turned as one and fired into the woods.

Aspar kicked Ogre into motion, determined to make what use he could of the distraction. He was halfway to them before they started firing. He saw black blurs, and a shaft thumped hard into his cuirass, driving though his shoulder and out the back, leaving him dimly curious as to how many pounds these fellows could pull. It didn’t hurt yet, though.

Another hit him along the cheek, cutting deep and taking part of his ear with it, and that hurt quite a lot. Then Ogre screamed and reared up, and Aspar floated for an instant before slamming into the ground.

Stubbornly, he pushed himself up, yanking out his throwing ax, determined to kill at least one of them before becoming porcupined.

But they weren’t paying attention to him anymore. Some twenty horsemen thundered out of the woods, armed and armored except for the fellow leading them, a young man in a fine-looking red doublet and white hose. He had his sword drawn.

“Anne!” the lad screamed. “Anne!”

He only got to shout it twice, for an arrow hit him high in the chest, and he did a backflip off the horse. The archers scattered with saint-touched speed, continuing to shoot at the horsemen. Aspar chose the nearest, threw his ax, and had the vast satisfaction of seeing it buried in the man’s skull before his knees gave way.

When Aspar went for the archers, Neil and Cazio charged the swordsmen. Neil reckoned if he was in close enough combat, the archers would have a harder time making a shot. He wasn’t sure what Cazio reckoned, but it didn’t matter. Within a few breaths they were fighting shoulder to shoulder. The feysword was light and nimble in his hand, and he killed four men before the press bore him down. Then someone struck his head, hard, and for a time he didn’t know anything.

A man’s voice woke him. Neil opened his eyes and saw a troop of mounted men. The leader had his visor pushed up and was staring down at him.

He said something Neil didn’t understand and gazed around the clearing, face aghast.

“I don’t understand you, sir,” Neil said, in the king’s tongue.

Behind him, Anne moaned.

“What in the name of Saint Rooster’s balls is happening here?” the horseman demanded.

Neil pointed to the man’s tabard. “You’re a vassal of Dunmrogh, sir—you should know better than I.”

The knight shook his head. “My lord Dunmrogh the younger, Sir Roderick—he brought us here. I thought he was mad, the things he told us, but—sir, you must understand that I knew nothing of these events.” He held up both hands as if somehow to include the mutilated corpses that hung on the stakes and the general carnage scattered about the clearing in a single gesture. His roaming eye settled on the corpse of the Duke of Dunmrogh, and his eyes tightened. “Tell me what happened here,” he demanded.

“I killed Dunmrogh,” a weak female voice said. “I did it.” Neil turned to see Anne standing, supported by Stephen and Winna.

Her gaze touched him, and her mouth parted. “Sir Neil?” she gasped.

Neil dropped to his knee. “Your Highness.”

“Highness?” the mounted man echoed.

“Yes,” Anne said, turning her attention back to him. “I am Anne, daughter of William the Second, and before Dunmrogh or any other lord, you owe your allegiance to me.”

It sent a chill up Neil’s back, how much she sounded like Queen Muriele in that moment.

“What is your name, sir?” Anne demanded.

“My name is Marcac MaypCavar,” he replied. “But I—”

“Sir Marcac,” one of his men interrupted. “That is Princess Anne. I’ve seen her at court. And this man is Neil MeqVren, who saved the queen from one of her own Craftsmen.”

Sir Marcac looked about, still plainly confused. “But what is this? These people, what happened to them?”

“I’m not certain myself,” Anne said. “But I need your help, Sir Marcac.”

“What is your command, Highness?”

“Take these people down from those stakes, of course, and see that they are given care,” Anne said. “And arrest anyone not nailed to a pole or in my present company. Take control of Dunmrogh Castle, and arrest any clergy you find there, and keep that place until you have heard from Eslen.”

“Of course, Your Highness. And what else?”

“I’ll want horses, and provisions, and whatever armed men you can spare,” she replied. “And carry my wounded to a leic. By tomorrow’s sunrise, I ride to Eslen.”

5 The Candle Grove

The Candle Grove wasn’t a grove, and though there were lanterns aplenty, there weren’t properly any candles. When Leoff had first heard the name for Eslen’s great gathering place, he’d imagined it to have been named in some ancient time, when bards sang beneath sacred trees in the fluttering light of tapers, but in his reading about its history he quickly saw the foolishness of that.

The first Mannish language spoken in the city had been that of the Elder Cavarum, then the Vitellian of the Hegemony, Almannish supplanted at times by Lierish and Hanzish, and most lately, the king’s tongue. Areana called the place the Caondlgraef in her native tongue, and readily admitted she had no idea what it meant. It was just an “old name.”

Still, whatever its origin, Leoff liked the appellation and the images it evoked of an older, simpler day.

Structurally the Candle Grove was a curious hybrid of the ancient amptocombenus of the Hegemony, the wooden stages traveling actors threw up in town squares to perform their farces, and the Church pestels where the choir sang or performed in acts the lives of the saints. Carved into the living stone of the hill, it rose in semicircular levels, each tier being one long curving bench.

A large balcony jutted out from the middle of the lowest three levels, forming a separate platform for the regals. There were two stages—one wooden and raised, with space beneath it for trapdoors through which actors and props could vanish and appear—and a lower, stone one where the musicians and singers were situated. The upper stage, following the usage of the Church, was called Bitreis, “The World,” and the lower stage was named Ambitreis, “Other-world”.

Those were the two worlds Praifec Hespero wanted to keep separate. He was going to be disappointed.

Above both stages rose a half-hemisphere ceiling painted with moon and stars and appropriately called “The Heavens.” The royal seating was covered, too. Everyone else risked rain or snow.

But the sky was clear tonight, and though it was chill, there was no dampness in the air.

Around the Candle Grove—above the seats, stage, and even “Heaven”—stretched a broad green common, and since noon it had been a feast-ground. Leoff thought the whole city and many from the countryside must have been there—thousands of people. He himself had sat at a long table with the regent at one end and the praifec at the other, and between them the members of the Comven, dukes, grefts, and landwaerds.

He’d made his excuses and come down early to make certain that all was ready. Now it was; the seats were filling with bodies and the air with the murmur of thousands of voices.

Not since his first performance, at the age of six, had he felt such a trembling in his limbs and such profound unrest in his belly.

He looked down at his musicians.

“I know you can do it,” he told them. “I have faith in all of you. I only hope to deserve yours.”

Edwyn raised the bow of his croth in salute, but most of them spared him only a quick glance, for they were furiously studying their music which was almost—but not quite—what they had been rehearsing.

The praifec had monitored his rehearsals, of course, and approved them, because Leoff had rewritten the work to the churchman’s ridiculous specifications. The instrumental pieces were played as introduction to what the vocalists would sing, and then the vocals were done unaccompanied. He had added the material the praifec wanted, and cut parts he had written.

But despite all that, this would not be the praifec’s performance. Tonight, the instruments and the players would sing together, and the modes and triads and chords would all be altered. And if what Leoff believed was true, after the first notes sounded, the praifec would be helpless to stop him.

He gazed up at the royal box. The regent was there, of course, and most of the people who had been at his table. But there were two others. One was striking and unmistakable—Queen Muriele. He still thought of her that way despite the recent revision of her title. She wore a gown of black esken trimmed in seal-skin, and no crown or diadem ornamented her head.

The other was a woman with soft chestnut hair, someone Leoff fancied he had seen at court once or twice. The two were surrounded by a block of the regent’s black-clad guards.

“I thank the saints, Your Majesty,” he said under his breath, “that you should hear this.” He hoped she did not despise him for helping her enemies vilify her.

The regent, Robert Dare, raised his hand to indicate that he was ready.

Leoff made sure the musicians had his attention then set his fingers to the hammarharp and sounded a single note. The lead flageolet took it up, and then the bass vithuls, and finally all the instruments as they adjusted their tuning. When that was done, silence fell again.

Fingers shaking, Leoff once more stretched his fingers toward the keyboard.

“It is meant to be Broogh,” Muriele whispered to Alis as the musicians began tuning their instruments.

“A very pretty stage,” Alis noticed.

It was. It depicted a town square, overlooked by the bell tower in the rear, and a tavern on the left, with a shingle that read Paeter’s Fatem. The tavern was cleverly cut away so that one could see the façade, but also the inside of it. A new, small stage had been built some four yards or so above The World to represent an upper bedroom in the building.

On the right side of the stage stood the famed bridge the town was named for, crossing a convincing canal along which dried flowers had been placed, dyed to resemble living ones. Behind all that, painted on canvas, were the long green fields and malends of Newland.

As Muriele watched, a young man came out and sat upon the edge of the fountain in the square. He was dressed in the subdued wools of a landwaerden and orange sash of a windsmith, suggesting he’d recently been confirmed as one by the guild.

The musicians had stopped tuning now.

“Damned lot of vithuls and croths,” the Duke of Shale muttered, somewhere behind her. “I can’t see why all that is needed. Should make a dreadful racket.”

As Muriele watched, the tiny figure of Leoff raised his hands above the hammarharp and brought them down.

And such a sound rose as Muriele had never imagined, a swelling thunder of music with high clear notes ringing to the stars and low drone of bass like the deepest, most secret motions of the sea. It broke straight into her soul and enthroned itself. It was as if the most important thing in the world had been said.

Yet despite the immense beauty and power of that chord, it was somehow incomplete—aching for resolution—and she knew she could not rest, never turn her eyes away, could never know peace until she heard it made perfect.

“No,” she thought she heard the praifec say. But then she only heard the music.

Leoff grinned fiercely as the first chord filled the half-bowl of the Candle Grove and spilled out into the night, a chord that no one had played in over a thousand years, the chord Mery had rediscovered for him in the shepherd’s song.

That for your wishes, Praifec, he thought.

Because now that he heard it, he knew no one, not the praifec, not the Fratrex Prismo himself, could stop him before it was done.

The boy rose from where he sat at the fountain, and his voice suddenly soared with the instruments, as one with them. The language was Almannish, not the king’s tongue, which jarred just for an instant and then felt completely right.

“Ih kann was is scaon,” he sang.

His name was Gilmer, and he sang of life, joy, and Lihta Rungsdautar, whom he loved. And as he did so a girl appeared from the tavern, young and beautiful. Muriele knew when she saw her that this was Lihta, for she had “tresses like sun on golden wheat” that the boy had just been describing. And then she, too, began to sing, another melody entirely, though it wound perfectly around his. They were as yet unaware of each other, but their songs danced together—for Lihta was as much in love with him as he with her. Indeed, this was the day they were to be wed, as Muriele learned when they finally did see one another and their duet became unison. The music quickened into a lively whervel, and they began dancing.

As the two lovers stopped singing an older man came onstage, who turned out to be Lihta’s father, a boatwright, and he sang a song both comic and truly melancholy.

“I’m losing a daughter and gaining a debt,” it began, and then out came his wife, chastising him for his stinginess, and they, too, sang a duet, just as the young couple began to repeat their song, and suddenly four voices were lifted in an intricate harmony that somehow opened like a book all the ages of love, from first blush through complex maturity to final embrace. Muriele relived her own marriage in a single moment that left her breathless and shaking.

The aethil of the town joined them next, and townspeople arrived for a prenuptial feast and suddenly an entire chorus was joyfully serenading. It was utterly charming, and yet, even as that first act ended—with the sound of distant trumpets, and the aethil wondering aloud who else might that be coming to the feast—Muriele still longed for the resolution of the first chord.

The music faded, but it did not die, as the players left the stage. A simple melody began, echoing the joyous one of the banquet, but now in a plaintive key, a vaguely frightening key. As it grew in volume, a palpable sense of unease moved from listener to listener. It made Muriele want to check her feet, to make sure no spiders were climbing her stockings.

It made her very much aware of Robert.

The second act began immediately with the arrival of Sir Remismund fram Wulthaurp, the music of his coming so dark and violent—with a skirling of pipes and menacing runs in the deep strings—that she clutched at the arms of her chair.

She noticed with a strange delight that the player presenting Wulthaurp looked a great deal like her brother-in-law, Robert.

The story unfolded relentlessly as the wedding banquet became a scene of dread. The props of stage—which before had been transparent as such—now seemed utterly real, as if the Candle Grove really hovered over the empty shell of Broogh, as if they were spying on the town’s ghosts, reenacting their tragedy.

Sir Remismund was a renegade, chased from Hansa, seeking plunder and ransom where he could find it. He slaughtered the aethil in the street, and his men ran wild through the town. Remismund—on seeing Lihta—made advances, and when Gilmer protested, he was taken prisoner, to be hanged in the square at sunrise.

Remismund, too proud to take Lihta by force, retired with his thugs to the tavern. And that was the end of the second act.

And on went the music, without pause, pulling them all irrevocably with it. Even Robert, who must surely have understood what was happening, did nothing, which was more than remarkable.

Muriele remembered her conversation with the composer, about why the Church forbade such compositions as this, about the powers of certain harmonies and intervals. And now she understood. He had ensorcelled them all, hadn’t he? It wasn’t simply like a spell, it was one. And yet it couldn’t be wrong any more than falling in love or revering beauty was wrong. If the composer was a shinecrafter, then there must be such a thing as good shinecrafting; for there was no evil in this.

The third act began with a comic interlude in which one of Remismund’s men courted a tavern wench, to no avail. Then entered Remismund and his chief henchman, Razovil, the latter to take a letter for him. He dictated a dispatch addressed to the emperor, spelling in chilling terms how he would break open the dike and drown Newland if he was not paid a king’s ransom. Razovil wore robes that much resembled those of a praifec, and his beard and mustache strongly evoked Hespero. Razovil suggested constant amendments to the letter to put a fairer face on the demand, saying that the saints were much in favor of this enterprise and that the emperor was subservient to the saints. It was funny, the back and forth between the two evil men, but it was also disturbing.

The tavern maid, having hidden when Remismund entered, heard the whole plot. After the scene, she fled the tavern to tell Lihta and her father the news. The word was sent out and the townsfolk gathered secretly to decide their course of action. Just as the meeting was about to take place, Razovil came looking for Lihta.

To keep him from discovering their plotting, she went with him to meet Remismund, where the conqueror made another plea for her love, singing thus far the most beautiful song in the play.

Despite his earlier actions, he sounded deeply sincere, and Muriele thought perhaps that she had been mistaken about Remismund. Here was a man, not a monster. His earlier actions must have some justifiable explanation, if he could love and court so artlessly.

Lihta told him she would consider his suit and left. As soon as she was gone, Remismund sniggered and sang aside to Razovil:

Then he and his churchish sycophant shared a laugh together, and the music became merry—and somehow demonic.

That ended the third act, as the instruments throbbed almost away. Muriele found that for the first time since the play had begun, she felt slightly released—that she could speak if she wanted to. She glanced over at Robert.

“I’m very much enjoying this play, Lord Regent,” she said. “My thanks for allowing me to attend.”

Robert glared at her.

“I think you misjudged my composer,” she added.

Robert’s breath was coming a little hard, as if he had been trying to lift something too heavy. “It’s a meaningless farce,” he said. “A silly show of bravado.”

“No,” Hespero averred, “it is a perfidious act of shinecraft.”

“If you’re looking for shinecraft, amiable Praifec,” Muriele said, “you need look no further than our dear regent. Stab him with a blade, and you will see that he does not bleed, at least not the same stuff men do. I’ve come to think you quite selective in which diabolic forces you despise and which you cozy up to, Praifec Hespero.”

“Hush, Muriele,” Robert snapped. “Hush before I have your tongue cut out.”

“As you cut out the tongue of the Keeper?”

Robert sighed and snapped his fingers, and suddenly a gag was forced into her mouth from behind. Once the first shock was passed, she did not deign to struggle. It was beneath her dignity.

The praifec started to say something, and then the instruments began building a tower of melody to welcome Lihta back to the stage.

The girl stood near the gaol where Gilmer was imprisoned and once again the two exchanged vows of love. Gilmer told her that he had heard the town would rise up at midnight. He spoke of his fears that they would all be killed, his frustration at not being able to join them, and most of all the pain of never having her for wife. He begged her to flee the town before it was too late. The croths and vithuls lifted his heartache into the air and offered it to the very stars.

Lihta followed his song with hers, and Muriele suddenly caught the echo of the tune that Ackenzal had played for her the first time she went to see him, the one that had brought such unwelcome and unaccustomed tears to her face. Now it brought the tantalizing sense that the final note was coming, the harmony that would at last release her from the first. But then the melody became unfamiliar again, as Lihta reminded Gilmer that his duty was her duty also. Suddenly they were singing the “Hymn of Saint Sabrina,” the saint who protects Newland, and a thousand voices suddenly joined the pair, for it was a song everyone in the audience knew. It was a mighty sound.

The lovers parted with the hymn dying on the wind. But before exiting the stage, Lihta met the tavern girl again, who asked her where she was going.

“To my wedding,” Lihta replied, and then she was gone.

The tavern girl, distraught, took the news to Gilmer, who sang in anguish while the girl tried to comfort him.

Then, unseen by them, Lihta reemerged, wearing her wedding gown of silvery Safnian brocade, the sum of her father’s fortune. As Gilmer wept, and the clouds gathered in the deep strings, Lihta went to Remismund. She met Razovil first, who made mock of her while at the same time suggesting several lascivious notions. Then she repaired upstairs, climbing slowly, stately, to Remismund’s room above.

On seeing her, Remismund resumed his charming façade, told her he would bring her joy and riches, and then excused himself to set his guard on watch, as he was soon to be preoccupied.

When he sang that, Muriele gasped through the rag in her mouth as she felt again Robert’s body upon her, his hands pushing up beneath her gown. Her gorge rose, and she feared she would vomit into the gag, but suddenly Alis’ hand reached and gripped hers tight. The terrible memory passed from visceral to merely unpleasant.

Lihta was alone now, gazing out at the night. The eleventh bell struck, and somewhere in the distance rose the faint chorus of the townsmen assembling for their hopeless battle against Remismund’s men.

Then, in the high strings, something began to glide down, a bird returning to earth in many turns, here lifting a bit, but always going lower, until it faded entirely.

Then, alone—almost imperceptibly at first—Lihta began her final song.

Her voice was tears made sound, but now Muriele heard it, the triumph embedded in the despair, the hope that could die only when belief in hope died. It was the melody from that day, the one that had decided her to commission the piece.

Lihta’s solo voice was joined by a single flute and then a reed, and then the croths with their sweeping glissando elegance. It no longer mattered what words she sang, really—it was only the fear, and the grief—and as the vithuls and the bass vithuls joined her voice, the desperate courage and determination. Tears poured down Muriele’s face as Remismund reappeared, unheralded by any music, but swaggering into hers. Lihta was standing by the window, wringing her veil in her hands as he took hold of her, and for an instant it seemed as if the music faltered, as if Lihta’s resolve had failed.

But suddenly her voice rose, climbing ever higher while below her the music arranged itself in a mountain, like the very foundations of the world and there, there it was, the perfect chord that brought rushing everything that had come before, the beginning meeting its end, its completion . . .

Its triumph.

Lihta leaned up as she sang, as if to kiss him, slipped the veil around his neck, and hurled herself out the window. Surprised, his hands occupied with her, Remismund had no time to react. Both plummeted to the street. And though Muriele remembered that the stage was not really very high, and that she suspected some sort of mattress lay disguised beneath the window, it did not seem so now. It seemed as if they fell, and fell, and died on cobbles far below.

And still the harmony hung there, Lihta’s voice taken up by the instruments as if to show that even death could not silence that song. A march began behind it, as the townsfolk rushed upon Remismund’s men, who, disheartened by his death, fled or died.

And when silence finally settled, it lasted for a long time, until someone shouted—no one important, just a person high in the gallery. But it was a ragged, glorious, triumphant shout, and then someone joined him, and then all the Candle Grove came to its feet roaring.

Everyone, that is, save Robert and Hespero.

Leoff gazed at the dumbstruck audience, then turned his regard to the praifec, whose glare was the match for any basil-nix. Leoff bowed stiffly, and heard a single loud cheer. Then the crowd seemed to explode. He knew that this was the greatest moment of his life—the like of which he would never know again—and felt not so much pride as the most profound contentment imaginable.

He still felt it half a bell later, when—as he was congratulating his musicians and blushing from a kiss Areana had impulsively given him—the guards came.

Robert’s guard dragged Muriele and Alis unceremoniously through the crowd and pushed them into the carriage that was to carry them back to their prison. But all the way back to the castle, she could hear them—the people—singing the Hymn of Sabrina. She couldn’t stop crying, and when the gag was finally removed, she sang with them.

That night, she could still hear them through her windows, and she knew that once again, the world she knew had changed profoundly—but this time for the better.

It felt—for the first time in a very long time—like victory.

That night she slept, and dreamed, and the dreams brought not terror—but joy.

6 Yule

Aspar winced as the leic pulled the needle through his cheek a final time and tied off the gut.

“That’s done,” the old man said. “You were lucky in both wounds. The shoulder should heal well.”

“I’m not sure any wound is lucky,” Aspar said, relieved to find that the wind no longer whistled through his cheek when he talked.

“It is when another fingerbreadth could have brought your death,” the leic replied cheerfully. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve more of you to tend to.”

“What about her?” Aspar said, pointing with his chin to where Leshya lay, bundled up in wools, her unconscious face pale even for her.

The leic shrugged. “I don’t know much about Sefry,” he said. “The wound was pretty bad, and I did what I know to do. She’s in the hands of the saints now.” He patted Aspar’s unwounded shoulder. “You had better rest, especially if you’re really so foolish as to try to ride tomorrow.”

Aspar nodded, still regarding the Sefry. The ride to the castle was a memory seen through a fog of pain and blood loss. Winna had stayed with him, though, keeping him in his saddle. She’d left only a few moments ago, answering a call from the princess.

He understood that Sir Neil and the Vitellians were pretty banged up, but Leshya had the worst of it by far. They’d found her pinned to a tree by an arrow.

He put his hands on his knees and pushed himself up, went over to stand by her in the candlelight. His shadow fell across her face, and she stirred.

“What—?” she gasped, eyes fluttering open.

“Be still,” Aspar said. “You’ve been hurt. Do you remember?”

She nodded. “I’m cold.”

Aspar glanced over at the fireplace. He was sweating, himself. “I thought you’d taken off,” he said.

“Yes,” she murmured, closing her eyes. “Couldn’t do that, could I?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Don’t you? But—doesn’t matter. I didn’t.”

“Werlic. Thank you.”

She nodded, and her eyes opened again. They shone like violet lamps.

“I have to go with them tomorrow,” he said, “to Eslen.”

“Sure,” she said. “I know that.”

“Well, the thing is, I need you not to die while I’m gone,” he explained.

“. . . Don’t take your orders, holter,” she said. “But stay here with me until you leave, yes?”

Aspar nodded. “Yah.”

He settled on the floor next to the bed, and soon fell asleep. When he woke again, it was morning, and Winna was gently shaking him awake.

“It’s time to go,” she said.

“Yah,” Aspar said. He looked over at Leshya. She was still breathing, and her color looked better. “Yah.”

Cazio dribbled a bit of water onto z’Acatto’s lips. In his sleep, the old swordmaster grimaced and tried to spit it out.

“Well,” Cazio said, “that’s a good sign.”

“He has to drink,” the healer said. “He’s lost a lot of blood, and blood is made from water.” The Hornish healer spoke Vitellian with a funny accent, as if he were singing.

“Blood is made of wine,” z’Acatto contradicted, cracking one eye half-open. “The original wine, the wine of Saint Fufiono, that’s what flows in our veins. Water is what they drown babies in.”

The healer smiled. “A little watered wine wouldn’t hurt,” he said. “I’ll find some.”

“Wait,” z’Acatto wheezed. “What country are we in?”

“You’re in Hornladh and the Empire of Crotheny.”

Z’Acatto winced and let his hand drop. “Cazio,” he said, “do you know that no drinkable wine has ever been produced north of Tero Galle?”

“We don’t find our wines difficult to drink,” the healer said.

“Please,” z’Acatto went on, “I have no wish to insult, but that only means you have no sense of taste, at least not a cultivated one. How did I come to this hellish place? A man’s last drink should remind him of all that was good in life, not send him to Lord Ontro weeping.”

“First of all,” the healer said, “you aren’t dying, not that I can tell.”

“No?” z’Acatto’s brows lifted in surprise.

“No. You’ll be long in bed, and longer recovering your strength, but I’ve stopped your bleeding, and none of your wounds seem likely to go septic.”

“You’re mostly bone and gristle, in other words,” Cazio put in.

“If I didn’t know better,” the healer said, “I would say whoever shot you was intentionally trying to wound, not kill. Since no one is that good a shot, I’d say you have the saints to thank.”

“I’ll thank Saint Fufiono if there’s some Vitellian wine around here,” z’Acatto said, “and much thank the man who brings it.”

“I believe there is some Gallean Barnice et Tarve in the cellar,” the healer replied. “That will have to do.”

“Eh,” the swordmaster said. “That could work out until I can come across something better.”

The healer left, and z’Acatto grumbled a little under his breath, then fixed his eyes on Cazio.

“We’re both still alive, I’ve noticed.”

“Indeed,” Cazio said. “Although it’s unclear to me exactly how.”

“You’re hardly scratched.”

Cazio glanced down at the copious bandages and dressings that covered his body. “It’s true,” he replied, “All thanks to that practice we had.” He then explained, as best he could, the events of the night before.

“Well,” the old swordsman said, when Cazio had finished, “these are matters that . . .” He trailed off, and for a moment seemed to fall asleep, but then he perked back up. “When are we going home?”

“I thought you were the one who said I ought to get out and see the world.”

“Well, we’ve seen plenty of it,” z’Acatto replied. “Now it’s time to lie in the sun and drink something from a good year for a while, don’t you think? It might even be safe to go back to Avella by now, but if it isn’t, I’m sure the countess would take us in again.”

His eyes narrowed at the expression that must have crept across Cazio’s face. “What?”

“Well,” Cazio said, “as it turns out, Anne is Princess of Crotheny.”

“You don’t say?” z’Acatto snorted. “Don’t you remember when the news came about William’s death, how those girls got so upset?”

“Well, yes, but I thought they were just upset because their emperor had died. I didn’t know it was her father.” He remembered how when he’d first met Anne, he had held back his own minor title to impress her at the most opportune time. Now he felt silly about that, as about so many things.

“You might have told me,” Cazio said.

“If I don’t make you use your own brain, it will turn into meal-mush,” z’Acatto retorted.

“Anyway,” Cazio pressed on, “her kingdom has been usurped and her mother taken prisoner. She’s asked me to come along and help reclaim the one and free the other.”

“Not your country,” z’Acatto said, suddenly serious. “Not your business.”

“I feel as if it is,” Cazio said. “I’ve come this far—I think I’ll finish it.”

“There is no ‘finishing it,’ boy. What you’re riding into is war, and that’s something you don’t want any experience with, I promise you.”

“I’m not afraid of war,” Cazio told him.

“Then you’re a fool,” the swordmaster spat. “Remember how I told you fighting a knight was nothing like one of your noontime duels?”

“I remember,” Cazio said. “You were right, and thanks to your advice I’ve survived.”

“Then listen to me one more time, even if it’s the last time,” z’Acatto said. “Whatever you imagine war is, you’re wrong. It’s terrible, and being brave doesn’t help. It’s not dying in a war that’s the worst thing, it’s living through one.”

Cazio held his gaze firmly. “I believe you,” he said. “And I believe you speak from experience, though you won’t talk about it. But I feel this has become my duty, z’Acatto. I think I belong in this fight, and I think I should have earned enough respect from you that you wouldn’t imagine I still make decisions like a boy. I may not know exactly what I’m walking into, but my eyes are open.”

Z’Acatto sighed and nodded. “You’ve traveled farther than your leagues, Cazio,” he said at last. “And you have learned some judgment. I finally see the character I knew you had in you starting to come through. But take my council on this. Go home with me.”

“You can’t travel now,” Cazio said, “but when we’ve set things right in Eslen, you can join us there.”

“No,” the old man said. “As soon as I can travel, I’m returning to Vitellia. If you go north to this mess, you’ll go without me.”

Cazio drew his damaged blade and raised it to attention. “I salute you, old man,” he said. “What you did last night was beyond belief. I will never forget it as long as I live.”

“You’re going,” z’Acatto said flatly.

“I am.”

“Then go. No more pretty words. Go. Azdei.”

“Azdei, mestro,” Cazio replied. He was suddenly terribly afraid that he was going to cry.

Neil knelt before Anne and tried to hold himself steady on one knee, but his body, racked by pain and exhaustion, betrayed him, and he fell. He caught himself with his hands.

“Ease yourself, Sir Neil,” Princess Anne said. “Sit, please.”

He hesitated, then stood and slumped onto the bench. Bright and dark spots danced before his eyes. “I’m sorry, Your Highness,” he mumbled. “I’m just out of breath.”

The princess nodded. “You’ve been through much, Sir Neil,” she observed, “and some of it has been because of me. I did not trust you in z’Espino.”

“That is clear to me, Your Highness.”

She tucked her hands behind her back and regarded him with a solid gaze. “I wronged you,” she said. “And you almost died. But I had my reasons. Do you doubt me?”

Neil found that he didn’t.

“No, Your Majesty,” he said. “I understand what your position was. I should have made more of an effort to convince you.”

“I am not queen, Sir Neil,” the princess said softly. “You should not address me as ‘Majesty.’”

“I understand, Your Highness,” Neil replied.

She lay a hand on his shoulder. “I’m glad you survived, Sir Neil. I am most glad.”

Neil heard the apology there—an apology without weakness. A very regal sort of apology that sent a little thrill through him.

I serve someone worthy, he caught himself thinking. He hadn’t known Anne before, not really. But he did know she hadn’t been like this. Something basic in her had changed; she had been a girl. Now she was something much stronger.

“Ah, Cazio,” he heard Anne say. Neil glanced up to see the Vitellian had joined them.

“Mi Regatura,” Cazio said, a bit cockily. But then, as if the gesture pained him, he dropped to one knee.

Anne regarded him for a moment, then nodded and said something to Cazio in Vitellian.

“I must see someone else, now,” she told Neil.

Neil made the sign of blessing, and Cazio made a similar sign, then they both rose. As Anne left, the Vitellian looked at Neil.

“I speak not well your tongue,” he managed in an incredibly thick accent. “But I listen, no? You brave man. You brother.” He held out his hand.

Neil clasped it. “It was an honor to fight beside you,” he said.

“She—” the Vitellian pointed after Anne, struggling for words. “Not the same,” he finally managed.

“No,” Neil breathed. “She is a queen now.”

Anne gazed down at Roderick’s corpse. Vespresern had already washed him and laid him in a winding-sheet. Now she stood weeping as Anne and Austra looked on.

“He died bravely,” Anne ventured.

Vespresern turned hard eyes on her. “He died for you,” she said. “I can’t imagine you’re worth it. He loved you. He was mad with love for you.”

Anne nodded, but she didn’t have anything to say. After a moment, she left, with Austra following her.

The two women went up to the battlements, so Anne could feel the wind. The threat of rain was long gone, and stars blazed in the night sky.

“I thought I loved him,” Anne said, “and then I thought I hated him. Now I don’t feel much of anything but pity.”

“Why?” Austra said. “Anne, his father must have told him to court you. They planned to kill you all along, and Roderick was an instrument of that plan.”

“I know. And if I hadn’t cursed him with love, he would have killed me himself, I’m sure. But I did curse him, and cursed him again. He died for something he didn’t even understand. Like that horse, remember? Duke Orien’s horse? It broke its leg, and we were hiding in the hayloft and saw them kill it? You could see in its eyes, it didn’t understand what was happening to it.”

“I suppose.”

“And if I had never been so foolish as to write him, still none of this would have happened. His love was first counterfeit, then shinecraft. Mine was neither—it was just a foolish girl’s game. So whose shoulders should this all fall on?”

“You can’t take it all on yourself.”

“Oh, but I can,” Anne said. “I must. I went there again, Austra. I saw the fourth Faith, and she told me that my mother has been imprisoned and my father’s throne usurped. That’s why we’re leaving here tomorrow.”

“That can’t be true,” Austra said.

“I believe it,” Anne replied. “First they kill half of us and then they take our throne. That seems like a pretty logical course of events. But they missed me, and they’re going to regret that.”

Austra regarded her for a long moment. “I believe they will,” she said. She started to say something else, but seemed to struggle for a moment. “I’m sorry I disobeyed you,” she said finally.

Anne looked frankly at her. “Austra, you are truly the only person I can claim to love. I know that now. I can’t even say that about my mother or Charles, not honestly. You are the only one I love.”

“I love you, too,” Austra said.

“But you can’t disobey me again,” Anne said, taking her hand. “Ever. I might be right, and I might be wrong, and you may try to convince me when you think I’m wrong, but once my word is spoken, it is your word, too.”

“Because you’re the princess and I’m a servant?” Austra murmured.

“Yes,” Anne replied.

They set out the next morning—Anne, Austra, Winna, Aspar, Neil, Cazio, and twenty horsemen from Dunmrogh. The clouds were back, and a midday snow began to fall, the first snow of winter. It was Yule; from now on, the days would only get longer.