Gregory Keyes - The Charnel Prince

“No. I was sent away in secret. No one was supposed to know.”

“But then you dispatched a letter to your beloved—a letter I delivered to the Church cuveitur myself—and in a matter of ninedays those knights came to the coven. Doesn’t that strike you as suspicious?”

It did strike—it struck like tinder in Anne’s breast.

“You go too far, Cazio. You have slandered Roderick before, but to suggest—to imply . . .” She stammered off, too angry to continue, all the more because it made a sort of sense. But it couldn’t be true, because Roderick loved her.

“The knights were from Hansa,” she said. “I knew their language. Roderick is from Hornladh.”

But silently she remembered something her aunt Lesbeth once told her. It seemed long ago, but it was something about Roderick’s house being out of favor at court because they had once supported a Reiksbaurg claim to the throne.

No. It’s ridiculous.

She was about to tell Cazio that when Austra suddenly burst into the courtyard. She was out of breath, and her face was flushed and wet with tears.

“What’s wrong?” Anne asked, taking Austra’s hands.

“It’s horrible, Anne!”

“What?”

“I s-s-saw a cuveitur. He was giving out the news in the square, by the wine shop. He’d just come from— Oh, Anne, what shall we do?”

“Austra, what ?”

Her friend bit her lip and looked into Anne’s eyes. “I have terrible news,” she whispered. “The worst in the world.”

Leovigild Ackenzal stared at the spear with a mixture of fear and annoyance.

The fear was entirely rational; the sharp end of the weapon was poised only inches from his throat, and the man holding the shaft was large, armored, and mounted on a ferocious-looking steed. His iron-gray eyes reminded Leoff of the pitiless waters of the Ice Sea, and it seemed to him that if this man killed him, he would not even remember him in the morning.

There was certainly nothing he could do to stop the fellow if murder was on his mind.

That he should also be annoyed was quite irrational, he supposed, but in truth it had little to do with the armored man. Days before—in the hill country—he’d heard a faint melody off in the distance. No doubt it had been some shepherd playing a pipe, but the tune had haunted him ever since, the worse because he’d never heard the end of it. His mind had completed it in a hundred ways, but none of them were satisfactory.

This was unusual. Normally, Leoff could complete a melody without the slightest effort. The fact that this one continued to elude him made it more tantalizing than a beautiful, mysterious—but reluctant—lover.

Then, this morning, he’d awoken with a glimmer of how it ought to go, but less than an hour on the road brought this rude interruption.

“I have little money,” Leoff told the man truthfully. His voice shook a bit as he said it.

The hard eyes narrowed. “No? What’s all that on your mule, then?”

Leoff glanced at his pack animal. “Paper, ink, my clothes. The large case is a lute, the smaller a croth. Those smallest ones are various woodwinds.”

“Auy? Open them, then.”

“They won’t be of any value to you.”

“Open them.”

Trying not to take his gaze off the man, Leoff complied, opening first the leather-bound case of the lute, which sounded faintly as the gourd-shaped back bumped against the ground. Then he proceeded to unpack the rest of his instruments; the eight-stringed rosewood croth inlaid with mother-of-pearl that Mestro DaPeica had given him years ago. A wooden flute with silver keys, an hautboy, six flageolets of graded sizes, and a dark red krummhorn.

The man watched this with little expression. “You’re a minstrel, then,” he said at last.

“No,” Leoff replied. “No, I’m not.” He tried to stand taller, to make the most of his average height. He knew there was little intimidating about his hazel eyes, curly brown hair, and boyish face, but he could at least be dignified.

The fellow raised an eyebrow. “Then what exactly are you?”

“I’m a composer.”

“And what does a composer do?” the man asked.

“He composes music.”

“I see. And how does that differ from what a minstrel does?”

“Well, for one thing—”

“Play something,” the man interrupted.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Leoff frowned, his annoyance growing. He looked around, hoping to find someone else, but the road stretched empty so far as the eye could see. And here in Newland, where the terrain was as level as a sounding board, that was very far indeed.

Then why hadn’t he seen the approach of the man on a horse?

But the answer to that lay in the melody he’d been puzzling over. When he heard music in his head, the rest of the world simply didn’t matter.

He picked up the lute. It had gone out of tune, of course, but not badly, and it was only a moment’s work to set it right again. He plucked out the melody line he’d been working on. “That’s not right,” he murmured.

“You can play, can’t you?” the mounted man challenged.

“Don’t interrupt me,” Leoff said absently, closing his eyes. Yes, there it was, though he’d lost the end.

He started into it, a single line on the top string, rising in three notes, dropping into two, then tripping up the scale. He added a bass accompaniment, but something about it didn’t fit. He stopped and started again. “That’s not very good,” the man said.

That was too much, spear or no. Leovigild turned his eyes on the fellow. “It would be quite good if you hadn’t interrupted me,” he said. “I almost had this in my head, you know, perfect, and then along you come with your great long spear and . . . What do you want with me, anyway? Who are you?” He noticed distantly that his voice wasn’t shaking anymore.

“Who are you ?” the man asked placidly.

Leoff drew himself up straight. “I am Leovigild Ackenzal,” he said.

“And why do you approach Eslen?”

“I have an appointment to the court of His Highness, William the Second, as a composer. The emperor has a better opinion of my music than you do, it seems.”

Bizarrely, the man actually smiled. “Not anymore, he doesn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s dead, that’s what I mean.”

Leoff blinked. “I . . . I didn’t know.”

“Well, he is. Along with half the royal family.” He shifted in his saddle. “Ackenzal. That’s a Hanzish-sounding name.”

“It is not,” Leoff replied. “My father was from Herilanz. I myself was born in Tremar.” He pursed his lips. “You aren’t a bandit, are you?”

“I never said I was,” the fellow replied. “I haet Artwair.”

“You are a knight, Sir Artwair?”

Again, that ghost of a smile. “Artwair will do. Do you have a letter proving your claim?”

“Ah, yes. Yes, I do.”

“I would very much like to see it.”

Wondering why Artwair should care, Leoff nevertheless rummaged through his saddle pack until he found a parchment with the royal seal. He handed it to the warrior, who examined it briefly.

“This looks in order,” he said. “I’m returning to Eslen just now. I’ll escort you there.”

Leoff felt the muscles of his neck unknotting. “Very kind of you,” he said.

“Sorry if I gave you a fright. You shouldn’t have been traveling alone, anyway—not in these times.”

By noon, the infant-eyed sky of morning was cataracted an oppressive gray. This did nothing to improve Leoff’s mood. The landscape had changed; no longer totally flat, the road now ran alongside some sort of embankment or ridge of earth. It was so regular in shape, it seemed to him that it must be man-made. In the distance he could see similar ridges. The strangest things were the towers that stood on some of them. They looked as if they had huge wheels fixed to them, but with no rims, only four big spokes covered in what looked like sailcloth. They turned slowly in the breeze.