Gregory Keyes - The Blood Knight

She nodded, put her hands to the keyboard, and played it again note for note.

“You must learn to write your music down,” he said. “Would you like to learn that?”

“Yes,” the girl said.

“Very good. You’ll have to do it yourself. My hands are…” He held them up helplessly.

“What happened to them?” Mery asked again.

“Some bad men did it,” he admitted. “But they aren’t here anymore.”

“I should like to see the men who did that,” Mery said. “I should like to see them die.”

“Don’t talk like that,” he said softly. “There’s no sense in hatred, Mery. There’s no sense in it all, and it only hurts you.”

“I wouldn’t mind being hurt if I could hurt them,” Mery insisted.

“Perhaps,” Leoff told her. “But I would mind. Now, let’s learn to write, shall we? What’s the name of this song?”

She looked suddenly shy.

“It’s for you,” she said. “ ‘Leoff’s Song.’”

Leoff stirred from sleep, thinking he had heard something but not certain what it was. He sat up and rubbed at his eyes, then winced as he was reminded that even so simple a task had become complicated and somewhat dangerous.

Still, he felt better than he had for some time. The visit from Mery had helped him more than he cared to admit to himself, certainly more than he would ever admit to his captors. If this was some new form of torture—to show him Mery again and then take her away—his tormentors would fail. Whatever the usurper had said to him, whatever he had said back, he knew his days were numbered.

Even if he never saw the girl again, his life was already better than it would have been.

“ You’re wrong, you know ,” a voice whispered.

Leoff had begun to lie back down on his simple bed. Now he froze in the act, uncertain whether he had really heard the voice. It had been very faint and raspy. Could it be his ears, turning the movement of a guard in the corridor beyond into an indictment of his thoughts?

“Who’s there?” he asked quietly.

“Hatred is well worth the effort,” the voice continued, much more clearly this time. “In fact, hatred is the only wood some furnaces will burn.”

Leoff couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. Not from inside the room and not from the door. Then where ?

He got up, clumsily lighting a candle and searching the walls as he stumbled about.

“Who speaks to me?” he asked.

“Hatred,” the reply came. “Lo Husuro. I have become eternal, I think.”

“Where are you?”

“It is always night,” the voice replied. “And once it was quiet. But now I hear so much beauty. Tell me what the little girl looks like.”

Leoff’s eyes settled to one corner of the room. Finally he understood and felt stupid for not guessing earlier. There was only one opening in the room besides the door, and that was a small vent about the length of a kingsfoot on each side, too small for even an infant to crawl through—but not too small for a voice.

“You’re a prisoner, too?”

“Prisoner?” the voice murmured. “Yes, yes, that is one way to say it. I am prevented, that is, prevented from the thing that means the most to me.”

“And what is that?” Leoff asked.

“Revenge.” The voice was softer than ever, but now that Leoff was closer to the vent, it was very clear. “In my language we call it Lo Vide-icha . It is more than a word in my language—it is an entire philosophy. Tell me about the girl.”

“Her name is Mery. She is seven years of age. She has nut-brown hair and bright blue eyes. She was wearing a dark green gown today.”

“She is your daughter? Your niece?”

“No. She is my student.”

“But you love her,” the voice insisted.

“That is not your business,” Leoff said.

“Yes,” the man replied. “That would be a knife to give me, yes, if I were your enemy. But I think we are not enemies.”

“Who are you?”

“No, that is too familiar, don’t you see? Because it is a very long answer and is all in my heart.”

“How long have you been here?”

A harsh laugh followed, a small silence, then a confession. “I do not know,” he admitted. “Much of what I remember is suspect. So much pain, and without moon or sun or stars to keep the world below me. I have drifted very far, but the music brings me back. Do you have a lute, perhaps, or a chithara?”

“There is a lute in my cell, yes,” Leoff replied.

“Could you play something for me, then? Something to remind me of orange groves and water trickling from a clay pipe?”

“I can’t play anything,” Leoff said. “My hands have been destroyed.”

“Of course,” Hatred said. “That is your soul, your music, that is. So they struck at that. They missed, I think.”

“They missed,” Leoff agreed.

“They give you the instruments to taunt you. But why do they let the girl see you, do you think? Why do they give you a way to make music?”

“The prince wants me to do something,” Leoff replied. “He wants me to compose for him.”

“Will you?”

Leoff stepped back from the hole in the floor, suddenly suspicious. The voice could be anyone: Prince Robert, one of his agents, anyone. The usurper certainly knew how he had tricked Praifec Hespero. He wasn’t going to let such a thing happen again, was he?

“The wrongs done me were done by others,” he said finally. “The prince has commissioned music from me, and I will write it as best I can.”

There was a pause, then a dark chuckle from the other. “I see. You are a man of intelligence. Smart. I must think of a way to win your confidence, I think.”

“Why do you want my confidence?” Leoff asked.

“There is a song, a very old song from my country,” the fellow said. “I can try to make it into your language if you like.”

“If it pleases you.”

There was a bit of a pause, then the man began. The sound was jarring, and Leoff understood immediately what he was hearing: the voice of a man who had forgotten how to sing.

The words came haltingly but plain.

After the last line he chuckled. “We will speak again, Leffo ,” he said. “For I am your malasono .”

“I don’t know that word,” Leoff said.

“I don’t know if your language has such a word,” the man said. “It is a conscience, the sort that leads you to do evil things to evil people. It is the spirit of Lo Videicha .”

“I have no word for that concept,” Leoff confirmed. “Nor do I wish one.”

But in the darkness, later, as his fingers longed for the hammarharp, he began to wonder.

Sighing, unable to sleep, he took up the strange book he’d been studying earlier and puzzled at it again. He fell asleep on it, and when he woke, something had fit together, and in a burst of epiphany he suddenly understood how he might be able to slay Prince Robert. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

But he would certainly do it, if he got the chance.

Aspar turned at Winna’s scream, just in time to watch as Stephen was pulled from the branch.

It seemed familiar somehow, and it happened slowly enough for Aspar to understand why. It was like a Sefry puppet play, a miniature of the world, unreal. At this distance Stephen’s face was no more expressive than that of a marionette carved of wood, and when he looked up at Aspar one last time, there was nothing there, only the dark spaces of his eyes, the round circle of his mouth.