No Quarter

by Tanya Huff

  *I think you do.*

  *He’s locked in a shed, Gyhard. If I couldn’t get out of the slaughtering thing, neither can he.*

  *So?*

  *So he can’t be following us yet.* The festival service spilled out of the Center and filled the whole valley with song. *What are they giving thanks for now?*

  He considered lying, decided against it. *Family.*

  * * * *

  After the Blessing, the festival cakes were divided into generous portions and everyone ate. Some of them died quickly, cleanly. Some of them went into convulsions, soiling themselves as they thrashed and moaned. Ales screamed—a short shrill cry that forced Kars to clap his hands over his ears and hum to block the sound—then she ran at a wall over and over until she died in a bloody heap. Kiril had time to gather his dying daughter up into his arms. With her head lolling slack against his shoulder, he collapsed and died searching for his son.

  The musty taste of decay coating the inside of his mouth, his back arched and his heels drumming the floor, Edko stared up into the dark gaze of a girl who seemed made of smoke. If I knew who she was, he thought, desperately trying to push death away, I’d understand. If I knew who she was … The darkness in the strange girl’s eyes spread. It was too heavy. He couldn’t breathe. When he understood, it was too late.

  “Is he dead, Kait?”

  *Yes.*

  They were all dead. He could feel their kigh filling the hall; confused, crying, wanting to return. “Soon,” he told them soothingly. “Soon.”

  Slowly, painfully, he stood and walked past the young and the old and the very young and the very old. There were too many dead. He would not have strength enough for everyone. As he had before, he must choose those who would be part of his new family. It would not be an easy choice but it was never an easy choice. He wanted to save them all.

  All but one.

  Kneeling by Edko’s side, Kars straightened the boy’s contorted limbs and lovingly kissed the pale cheeks. “The demons cannot get you now,” he murmured. “I have done for you what no one would do for me.” The memory of the rod rose and fell. He hunched thin shoulders and endured.

  When it was over, he straightened and smiled. They would never have the boy.

  * * * *

  Enrik heard the Singing as he approached the stockade and moved a little faster. “At least I haven’t missed the entire festival,” he told the half-fledged hawk wrapped securely in his shirt and carried close against his chest. He realized his coming down out of the forest after dark would be considered both dangerous and stupid by most of his extended family, but he personally figured it was only stupid if he didn’t make it. Since he had, it wasn’t. No one knew the forest better than he did. He’d just proven that.

  Feeling more than a little pleased with himself, he picked up his pace, his feet sure on the path between the river and the stockade. “They better have saved me a piece of festival cake, or I’m going to stick my finger down someone’s throat.”

  Then the dogs began to howl.

  The fledgling stirred in his grip and he paused. Except for the dogs—and the Song he could still hear faintly behind their howling—the night seemed ominously still. “Something’s wrong.” A sinuous black shape appeared suddenly out of the darkness. He cried out and leaped back as it brushed against his legs. A moment later, when his heart began beating again, he called himself several kinds of idiot as he realized it was just one of the cats.

  Running away from the stockade?

  Tucking shirt and bird both up into the broad crotch of an ancient willow, Edko ran toward the gate. The large cattle-gate was closed and barred, but when he lifted the latch on the narrow door cut into it, it opened under his hand. He stepped into the yard. The Song ended. Heavy bodies almost knocked him over as the family’s dogs raced past him, flinging themselves through the open door and into the night.

  He pursed his lips to whistle them back but made no sound, suddenly convinced it wouldn’t be a good idea to announce his return.

  In the spill of light from the hall, he could see the cattle crammed tightly against the near end of their pen. He’d seen the bull take on a mountain cat once, lowering its great shaggy head with its huge spread of horns and charging, bellowing in fury at the intruder. Until this moment, he’d thought nothing frightened them.

  The Song began again. The hair lifted off the back of his neck, and although the night air was cool on his bare torso, he began to sweat. It wasn’t a festival Song.

  Every instinct screamed at him to run, to follow the dogs away.

  Something had happened to his family.

  He had to know what it was.

  The Song had ended and begun again before he managed to force his protesting body across the yard. Through the slats in the shutters he could see Uncle Kiril standing with his back to the window, his daughter Anca by his side. Breathing heavily, his weight pressed against the outside wall, Enrik worked his way around to the door.

  It took him four tries to grasp the latch and lift it.

  RUN! RUN! RUN!

  The urge was so great, he half-turned. The small door was still open. The night beckoned from beyond, promising safety.

  He had to know what was wrong.

  Teeth clenched, blood roaring in his ears, he stepped over the threshold and into the hall.

  The toes of his boots pushed into something soft and yielding.

  He looked down.

  His mother stared sightlessly up at him, dried blood around her mouth from where she’d chewed through her lips. The dead were scattered all over the hall. Feeling as though he were dreaming, that none of this could possibly be real, he stepped over his mother’s body and walked toward the place where his uncle and his cousin stood.

  The Song grew louder.

  An old man crouched over the body of his brother Ondro.

  It was the old man who was Singing, Enrik realized suddenly—although how such an incredible Song could come from such a frail form he had no idea. He’s older even than Grandmother. Except that Grandmother was dead, one arm smoldering in the hearth where she’d fallen.

  Ondro twitched. His hand rose to clutch at the air.

  Looking for an explanation, any kind of explanation, Enrik turned to Kiril.

  Both his uncle and his cousin were dead.

  They were standing.

  They were looking at him.

  They were trying to speak.

  But they were dead.

  The belief he was dreaming washed away in a horror so overwhelming it had to be truth. Enrik could smell the stink of flesh burning, of bowels voided, of vomit, of death. Everyone he loved was dead in this room. He began to shake as a scream built behind his ribs, pressing against the bone that confined it.

  But worst of all, somehow, the old man’s Song had made Kiril and Anca dead-not-dead.

  Enrik charged forward screaming as Ondro, his dead brother Ondro, opened his eyes.

  Kait, lost in the Song, reacted too slowly.

  The old man looked up and saw death approaching. He pulled the living kigh from the charging body, held it within the Song until it stopped wailing and Sang it back in again.

  Enrik’s body dropped, knees slamming into the floor. It swayed back and forth and finally fell.

  Kars crawled to its side and, with an effort, managed to turn it over. The chest rose and fell. The heart continued to beat. But a dead man looked up out of the hazel eyes.

  Too far gone in madness to understand the unease he felt, Kars forced himself to pat Enrik’s hand and murmur, “It’ll be all right. You’ll see.”

  * * * *

  The kigh rose up under Annice and dropped her forward onto her knees. Hands braced against the ground, gulping in desperate lungfuls of air, she fought to free herself from an overwhelming feeling of horror.

  The basic tenet of her faith promised that all things were enclosed within the Circle.

  But some things were not.

  * * * *

&nb
sp; “Maggi! What is it? What’s wrong?” Gerek grabbed his sister by the shoulders and shook her until she looked at him. Her eyes focused and high-pitched shrieks turned to frightened whimpering. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his chest. “I have you. You’re safe. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Something horrible,” she managed, then shook her head and started to cry.

  Gerek looked over at Vree, who stood ready for a fight, a dagger in her hand. They’d stopped to catch a few hours of sleep before dawn brought pursuit, and although Gerek had insisted on standing watch, Magda’s terror had woken them both. “She has nightmares sometimes,” he explained. “Always has, ever since she was little.”

  “No.” Magda pushed herself out of his embrace and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “Not a nightmare. Something’d happened. Something so horribly wrong it woke me.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.” She sank back on her heels, swallowing bile, suddenly very glad her stomach was empty. “But I can find it.” A deep breath, intended to steady her voice, had no noticeable effect. “And when I do, we’ll find Kars.”

  Eleven

  Eyes wide, heart pounding so loudly it nearly drowned out the sound of steel-clad wheels rolling over dressed stone, Prince Otavas stared around him in horror at the high sides of the cart and the old man who held him prisoner.

  “I have lost my heart,” the old man said quietly. “I only want to find it again.”

  “I am not who you think I am!” Otavas cried as he had a hundred times before. “They know me!” He gestured toward the dead who sat silently watching, but they looked at him with no sign of recognition on decaying faces and, all at once, the prince knew that he’d never seen these people before.

  Rising, he searched among the motionless men and women for a familiar face and found only strangers.

  This is wrong, he thought. There’re too many. There had only ever been two in the cart at a time and now he pushed past row after row of the dead/undead.

  When he finally struggled through to the back of the cart, he found a tall, brown-haired man dressed in rough work clothes standing at the tailgate and gazing back the way they’d come. This man, too, was a stranger but, Otavas realized with a surge of joy, he was alive. His broad chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm and a vein pulsed in his throat at the edge of a day’s stubble.

  “I’m so glad I’m not alone,” he sighed and took hold of the other man’s arm. “Sometimes I think I’m the only living person left in the world.”

  Slowly, jerkily, as though he were not entirely comfortable in his body, the man turned.

  “No …” Otavas tried to back up a step but was held in place by the unyielding press of bodies behind him.

  “I live, but I am dead. I am dead, but I live. I live, but I am dead. I am dead, but …”

  “NO!” Dripping with sweat, Otavas jerked up in the bed and fumbled with the lamp. He turned up the wick until the flame danced over the edge of the glass chimney and the shadows withdrew far enough to be endured.

  Heart pounding, the prince lay back and stared at an unfamiliar ceiling. The dream had been so real, so terrifying and the worst he’d had for weeks. It left him feeling as though the life he’d lived since his rescue was the dream and his return to terror was the reality. He could see the old man’s face, feel the rumble of the cart, see the countless pairs of endlessly staring gray and filmy eyes, hear a trapped and despairing voice say, “I live, but I am dead.”

  The words resonated, echoing forlornly over and over inside his head. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw, not the dead/undead but the living/undead, and that was infinitely more horrible still. It soon became apparent when the terror refused to recede, he’d be sleeping no more that night.

  With trembling fingers, he pulled on a robe and picked up the lamp. He needed air; needed to stand under the stars and know he was no longer the captive of an insane—and an insanely lonely—old man. There was a terrace off one of the corridors in the royal wing that he thought he could find his way back to.

  Ashamed of the control the past still seemed to hold over him, the prince moved silently by the door to his valet’s tiny chamber. Of all his household, only Bannon understood. Had Bannon been guarding his sleep, there would have been a quiet voice and a strong hand to help chase the terror away. Without Bannon, he would have to exorcise the dark memory of the old man and the cart on his own.

  The halls of the Palace were deserted. No guards stood outside the heavy wooden doors of individual suites, for only the most trusted of retainers came this far into the heart of the Citadel. Safe within his small circle of light, Otavas traced a path he struggled to remember, marble floors cold beneath bare feet.

  To his astonishment, the terrace door was open and, through it, he saw a slender figure bending over a pipe pointed at the sky. When the figure straightened and stepped back, Otavas recognized the profile silhouetted against the night.

  “Please put out that lamp, whoever you are. I don’t want my eyes to have to adjust all over again.”

  He understood just enough of the language to lick thumb and forefinger and quickly pinch off the end of the wick. The darkness jumped in at him and lest it show him memories he didn’t want to see, he hurried out to stand by his cousin. “What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”

  Without any sign of the shyness she’d worn like armor during the three unending banquets they’d spent sitting side by side, Princess Jelena switched to Imperial and said, “Watching for falling stars. There’re always a lot out toward the Broken Islands around Third Quarter Festival.”

  As his sight adjusted, he saw that she was bending over the eyepiece of a distance viewer—a much larger one than the sailors used and much, much larger than the collapsible leather cylinders used by the marshals of the Seven Armies. “Don’t you have to be up before dawn for the sunrise part of the festival?” he wondered.

  “Uh-huh.”

  He smiled at her preoccupied agreement. “Won’t you be tired?”

  “I’ll stay up until after it’s over. I’ve found it’s easier that way.” Apparently satisfied with what she saw, she straightened again and turned to face him. “What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”

  “I had … that is …” Something in the pale oval of her face, so nearly at a level with his own, made him think she’d understand. “I had a nightmare about … about what happened and I couldn’t sleep.”

  “About the kidnapping?”

  Otavas nodded and waited for her to tell him that he had to forget about it.

  Her hand closed cool around his wrist—he could feel the sympathy in the touch—and after a moment, she tugged him forward. “Would you like to look through my starviewer?”

  The sky held more stars than he’d ever suspected, and he backed away a little overwhelmed.

  “I know.” Jelena nodded. “It was like that for me at first, too.”

  “How did you get interested in …” Mere words didn’t seem enough. Otavas waved a hand at the night.

  She shrugged. “When I was younger …”

  His grin flashed white. “Younger?”

  “I’m fourteen, almost fifteen. And you needn’t sound so superior, Your Imperial Highness who’s barely three years older.” But she smiled back at him before continuing. “When I was younger, I was afraid of the dark—I had to sleep with a lantern lit and everything. It was so bad that they even had me checked out by healers, and everyone started worrying that I’d never outgrow it.”

  “But you did.”

  “When I was ten, Jazep went to my grandfather and asked if he could try. His Majesty agreed and Jazep started teaching me about how the night is more than an absence of light. He taught me about the animals that live in it. About the flowers that bloom in it. And he showed me the stars. I haven’t been afraid since.”

  “Jazep?”

  She drew in a long breath and slowly let it out. “He
was a bard.”

  Now Otavas knew why the name sounded so familiar. “The one who died?” When she nodded, he was surprised to feel a sense of loss, even though he’d never met the man. “He sounds like he was a really nice person.”

  “He was. He told me, well, he sang me a song, about falling stars being the lamps that light the way for babies being born.” After a moment, she sighed and tossed her head, the dreamy tone—suitable for fables—gone from her voice. “There’s a scroll in the Bardic Library from a stargazer in the south, the Sixth Province of your Empire, I think, and he says that the stars are suns like ours and that the world isn’t flat, it’s round.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Maybe. I had the bards ask the kigh. Air and fire and water seemed to think it was a stupid question and wouldn’t answer. Earth said, The world is.” Thumbs tucked behind her belt, she rocked back on her heels and stared out toward the harbor. “When I’m Queen, I’m going to send ships out into the ocean as far west as they can go and see if they end up in the east again.”

  Otavas tended to agree with the kigh. It was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard—but somehow, it didn’t seem so stupid when Jelena said it. “When you are Queen,” he murmured, wondering where his tongue-tied little cousin had gone.

  A wind, smelling of the sea, whipped around the edge of the terrace and he shivered.

  “Well, no wonder you’re cold,” Jelena declared, tugging at the billowing sleeve of his robe. “Look at all you’re wearing. You’d better go in before you freeze.”

  That, he wholeheartedly agreed with.

  “Tavas.”

  He paused, one hand on the terrace door, and turned.

  “If the night gets too dark, and the dreams come back, remember the stars.”

  * * * *

  The Emperor had been wrong. Lying back on the pallet, mapping the graduations of dark on dark within the confines of a prison he couldn’t escape, Bannon turned that truth over and over in his mind. The Emperor had been wrong; Gyhard was not controlling Vree. He’d fought beside Vree for too many years not to know when he was fighting against her.