The Charnel Prince

by Greg Keyes

  He answered her knock with a look of vast surprise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “You have heard that Prince Robert has returned?”

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

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

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

  “And you trust your men?”

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

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

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

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

  “But the king, Majesty—”

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

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

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

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

  “And with you, sir,” she replied.

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

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

  CHAPTER THREE

  SWORDSMAN, PRIEST,

  AND CROWN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Invoke whom?” Leshya asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “They may have finished it,” Aspar said.

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

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

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

  And now to the Bent Mound

  The Bloody Crescent

  Blood for the Bent Mound

  Blood of Seven

  Blood of Three

  Blood of One

  Let the Seven be mortal in all ways

  Let the Three be Swordsman, Priest, and Crown

  Let the One be Deathless

  Beat then the Heart of Bent Mound

  Flow from the Spectral Eye

  Flow from the Mother Devouring

  Flow from Pel the Rage Giver

  Flow from Huskwood

  Flow from the Twins, Rot and Decay

  Flow from the Not Dead.

  Here it begins, the way is complete.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Stephen folded his arms across his chest.

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

  “And so?” Leshya asked.

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

  “You know where that is?” Aspar asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Tavata,” Winna read.

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

  “That’s it, then,” Leshya said.

  Aspar made a skeptical noise.

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

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

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

  “Haergrim the Raver?”

  Aspar nodded slowly, his face troubled.

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

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

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

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

  “Or so we hope,” Stephen said grimly.

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

  But when they checked him, the monk was dead.

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

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

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

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

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

  He’d remembered dreams of some sort on first waking, as well, but those were gone, too, leaving only a vague, unclean feeling.

  “What about you?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you so subdued.”

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

  “Don’t talk like that,” Stephen said.

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

  “Not like Leshya, eh?” Stephen said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I don’t—”

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

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

  “But you didn’t. Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Why did you imagine he would care?”

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

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

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

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

  Winna’s brow crinkled, but she didn’t say anything.

  “It’s why the three of us work so well together,” he went on. “He’s the muscle and the knife and the arrow. I have the book knowledge he pretends to disdain, but knows he needs, and you’re sovereign to us both, the thing that ties us all together.”

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

  He blinked. She was referring to the Vadhiian incantation.

  “Well, it is a very old trinity,” he said. “Even the saints break out in threes, that way—Saint Nod, Saint Oimo, and Saint Loy, for instance.”

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

  “That’s not true,” Stephen said.

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

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

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

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

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

  “Do you feel any better at all?”

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

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