The Charnel Prince

by Greg Keyes

  “We have to find them,” Austra insisted desperately. “We have to.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and Anne couldn’t blame her. She’d had her own cry before going back to the horz to collect her friend.

  “We will,” she said, trying to sound confident.

  “But how?”

  “They can’t have gone far,” Anne pointed out.

  “No, no,” Austra said. “We might have been in there for a year. Or ten years, or a hundred. We’ve just been in Elphin, haven’t we? Things like that happen.”

  “In kinderspells,” Anne reminded her. “And we don’t know that it’s Elphin, anyway. I’ve never been gone more than a bell or so. So we ought to be able to follow them.”

  “They might have already killed Cazio and z’Acatto.”

  “I don’t see their bodies, do you?”

  “They might have buried them.”

  “I don’t think those men are the sort likely to do such a thing. If they don’t fear the consequences of murdering an entire coven or cutting up a horz, they wouldn’t pay much mind to leaving a couple of bodies on the road. Besides, the knights had them all bound up, remember? They’re probably taking them back to their ship.”

  “Or Cazio told them some clever lie about where we’d gone,” Austra suggested, sounding calmer now, “and they’re waiting to see if he told the truth before they torture him.”

  “That’s possible,” Anne said, trying not to think about Cazio being tortured.

  “So which way do we go?” Austra asked.

  “Their ship sailed north past Duvé,” Anne said. “So it seems reasonable that they came from farther up the road, the direction we’re going.”

  “But Cazio would have sent them south, to keep us safe.”

  “True,” Anne agreed, staring at the road in frustration, wishing she knew the tiniest thing about how to follow a trail. But even that many horsemen made little impression on such a well-traveled road, or at least none that her untrained eye could find.

  But then she saw it, a small drop of blood. She walked a few paces north and found another, and another after that.

  There were none to the south.

  “North,” she said. “One of them was bleeding by the horz, and I guess he still is. Anyhow, it’s the only sign we’ve got.”

  In some distant age, the river Teremené had cut a gorge in the pale bones of the countryside, but he hardly seemed the sort of river to do that now. He appeared old and sluggish beneath a wintry sky, hardly troubling the coracles, barges, and sailboats on his back.

  Nor did he seem resentful of the impressive stone bridge that spanned him at his narrows, or the massive granite pylons that thrust down into his waters to support it.

  Anne switched her gaze to the village that rested beyond the stone span. She vaguely remembered that it was also called Teremené, and they hadn’t stopped there during their last trip on the Vitellian Way.

  “Austra,” Anne asked, “when we crossed into Vitellio, there were border guards. Do you remember?”

  “Yes. You flirted with one, as I recall.”

  “I did not, you jade,” Anne protested. “I asked him to be more careful inspecting my things! And never mind that anyway. Were there border guards here? This is the border between Tero Gallé and Hornladh. Shouldn’t there be guards?”

  “We weren’t stopped,” Austra confirmed, after a moment of thought. “But we weren’t stopped when we crossed into Hornladh from Crotheny, either.”

  “Right, but Hornladh is a part of father’s—” She broke off as grief bit. She kept forgetting. “Hornladh is part of the Empire. Tero Gallé isn’t. Anyway, it looks like there are guards there now.”

  Austra nodded. “I saw them inspecting the caravan.”

  “So why the sudden vigilance?”

  “The caravan is going into Hornladh, and we were leaving it. Maybe the Empire cares who comes into its territory, and Tero Gallé doesn’t.”

  “Maybe,” Anne sighed. “I should know these things, shouldn’t I? Why didn’t I pay more attention to my tutors?”

  “You’re afraid it’s the horsemen?”

  “Yes—or they may have offered a reward for us, like they did in z’Espino.”

  “Then it doesn’t matter if they’re legitimate guards or not,” Austra reasoned. “We can’t take the risk.”

  “But we have to cross the bridge,” Anne said. “And I was hoping, once in the Empire, we might find some help. Or at least ask if anyone has seen Cazio and z’Acatto.”

  “And get something to eat,” Austra added. “The fish was tiresome, but it was better than nothing.”

  Anne’s stomach was rumbling, too. For the moment it was just unpleasant, but in a day or two, it would be a real problem. They didn’t have even a copper miser left, and she had already sold her hair. That only left a few things to sell, none of which she cared to think about.

  “Maybe when it gets dark,” Austra proposed dubiously.

  Something moved behind them. A little rock went bouncing down the slope and past their hiding place. Gasping softly, Anne swung around to see what it was and discovered two young men with dark hair and olive complexions staring down at them. They wore leather jerkins and ticking pantaloons tucked into high boots. Both had short swords, and one of them had a bow.

  “Ishatité! Ishatité, né ech té nekeme!” the man with the bow shouted.

  “I don’t understand you!” Anne snapped back in frustration.

  The shouter cocked his head. “King’s tongue, yes?” he said, coming down the slope, arrow pointed squarely at her. “Then you are the ones they look for, I bet me.”

  “There’s one behind us now,” Austra whispered.

  Anne’s heart sank, but as the two moved closer her fear began to turn to anger.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

  “Want you,” the man said. “Outlanders come by yesterday, say, ‘Find two girls, one with red hair, one with gold. Bring them or kill them, make no difference, but bring them and get much coin.’ Here I see me girl with gold hair. I think under that rag, I see hair is red.” He gestured with the weapon. “Take off.”

  Anne reached up and removed the scarf. The man’s grin broadened. “Try to hide, eh? Doing not so good.”

  “You’re a fool,” Anne said. “They won’t pay you. They’ll kill you.”

  “You say,” the man replied. “I think not to trust you.” He stepped forward.

  “Don’t touch me,” Anne snarled.

  “Eshrije,” the other man said.

  “Yes, right,” the bowman replied. “They say red-hair is witch. Better just to kill.”

  As he pulled back on the bow, Anne lifted her chin in defiance, reaching for her power, ready to see what it could really do. “You will die for this,” she said.

  A brief fear seemed to pass across his face, and he hesitated.

  Then he gasped in pain and surprise, stumbling, and she saw an arrow standing from his shoulder. He dropped his bow, groaning loudly, and the other man started shouting.

  “Stand away, Comarré, and the rest of you, too,” a new voice said. Anne saw the owner, farther up the hill—a man in late middle age, with a seamed, sun-browned face and black hair gone half-silver. “These ladies don’t seem to like you.”

  “Damn you, Artoré,” the man with the arrow in his shoulder gritted. “This no business of yours. I saw first.”

  “My boys and I are making it our business,” the older man replied.

  Their attackers backed away. “Yes, fine,” Comarré said. “But another day, Artoré.”

  At that, an arrow hit him in the throat, and he dropped like a sack of grain. The other two had time to cry out, and then Anne found herself staring at three corpses.

  “No other day, Comarré,” Artoré said, shaking his head.

  Anne looked up at him.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that, ladies,” he said. “Are you well?” He stepped closer.

 
; Anne grabbed Austra and hugged her tightly. “What do you want?” she asked. “Why did you kill them?”

  “They’ve had it coming for a long time,” the man said. “But just now I figure that if I let them go, they’ll go tell that pack of Hansan knights, then they come looking for me, burn down my house—no good.”

  “You mean you aren’t taking us to them?”

  “Me? I hate knights and I hate Hansans. Why would I do anything for them? Come, it’s dark soon, and I think you’re hungry, no?”

  Anne numbly followed the man named Artoré along a rutted road delimited by juniper and waxweed, into the hilly country that stretched beyond sight of the river. There they were quickly joined by four boys, all armed with bows. The setting sun lay behind them, and their shadows ran ahead in the subdued dusk. Swallows cut at the air with crescent wings, and Anne wondered once again exactly what had happened in the horz, why the knights hadn’t seen them.

  They strolled past empty fields and thatch-roofed houses built of brick. Artoré and his boys chatted amongst themselves and exchanged greetings with their neighbors as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  “This is Jarné,” Artoré informed her, patting a spindly, tall young man on the shoulder. “He’s the eldest, twenty-five. Then there’s Cotomar, the one with the chicken nest in his hair. Locheté, he’s the one with the big ears, and Senché is the youngest.”

  “I didn’t thank you,” Anne said guardedly.

  “Why should you? Figured we were going to take you to town, just like Comarré planned. Eh?”

  “Are the knights still in town?” Anne asked.

  “Some of them. Some of them are out in the countryside, and three of them went east with a couple of fellows they had all tied up.”

  “Cazio!” Austra gasped.

  “Friends of yours, I take it.”

  “Yes,” Anne said. “We were following them, hoping for a chance at rescue.”

  Artoré laughed at that. “I wonder how you thought you were going to manage that.”

  “We have to try,” Anne said. “They saved our lives, and as you said, they are our friends.”

  “But against men like that? You’re braver than you are smart. Why do they want you?”

  “They want to kill me, that is all I know,” Anne said. “They’ve chased us all the way from Vitellio.”

  “Where are you trying to get to?”

  Anne hesitated. “Eslen,” she finally said.

  He nodded. “That’s what I figured. That’s still a long way, though, and it’s not the direction they’re taking your friends. So which way will you go?”

  Anne had been thinking about that a lot, since Cazio and z’Acatto had been captured. It was her duty to go back to Eslen, she knew that. But she also had a duty to her friends. As long as their captors had been headed north, she hadn’t been forced to choose. Now she was, and she knew without a doubt which choice her mother—and the Faiths—would call the right one.

  The thing was, whichever way she chose, she didn’t have much chance of surviving, not with Austra as a companion.

  “I don’t know,” she murmured.

  “Anne!” Austra cried. “What are you saying?”

  “I’ll think of something,” she promised. “I’ll think of something.”

  Artoré’s house was much like the others they had passed, but larger and more rambling. Chickens pecked in the yard and beyond, in a fence, she saw several horses. The sky was nearly dark now, and the light from inside was cheerful.

  A woman of about Artoré’s age met them at the door. Her blondish hair was caught up in a bun, and she wore an apron. Wonderful smells spilled through the doorway.

  “There’s my wife,” Artoré said. “Osne.”

  “You found them, then,” she said. “Dajé Vespré to you, girls.”

  “You were looking for us?” Anne said, the hair on her neck pricking up.

  “Don’t be frightened,” the woman said. “I sent him.”

  “But why?”

  “Come in, eat. We can talk after.”

  The house was as cheery inside as it looked from the outside. A great hearth stood at one end of the main room, with pots and pans, a worktable, ceramic jars of flour, sugar, and spices. Garlic hung in chains from the rafters, and a little girl was playing on the terra-cotta-tile floor.

  Anne suddenly felt hungrier than she had in her life. The table was already set, and the woman ushered them to sit.

  For the next half bell, Anne forgot almost everything but how to eat. Their trenchers were sliced from bread still hot from the baking. And there was butter—not olive oil, as it always was in Vitellio but butter. Osne ladled a stew of pork, leeks, and mussels onto the bread, which in itself should have been plenty, but then she brought out a sort of pie stuffed with melted cheese and hundreds of little strips of pastry and whole eggs. Added to that was a sort of paste made of chicken livers cooked in a crust, and all washed down with a strong red wine.

  She felt like crying with joy—at the coven, they’d eaten frugally—bread and cheese and porridge. On the road and in z’Espino they had lived near starvation and eaten what they could find or buy with their meager monies. This was the first truly delicious meal she had eaten since leaving Eslen, all those months ago. It reminded her that there could be more to life than survival.

  When it was done, Anne helped Osne, Austra, and the two youngest boys clear the table and clean up.

  When they were finished, she and Osne were suddenly alone. She wasn’t sure where Austra had got off to.

  Osne turned to her and smiled. “And now, Anne Dare,” she said, “heir to the throne of Crotheny—you and I must talk.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE PORT OF PALDH

  SWANMAY WAS AS GOOD as her word. They reached the mouth of the Teremené River five days after she made her promise.

  By that time Neil could stand, and even walk, though he tired quickly, so when he heard that land had been sighted, he pulled on the clothes that Swanmay had supplied for him and went up on deck.

  A cloud cover was breaking up with the rising of the sun, painting the landscape with long brushes of light. Corcac Sound, Neil reflected, was what Newland would have been, without the canals and malends and the sheer force of human will to keep the water back—a thousand islands and hammocks, some of which vanished at high tide, and all green with marsh grass and ancient oaks. They sailed past villages of houses raised on stilts and men in skiffs hauling in cast-nets full of wriggling shrimp. Beyond the river channel, a maze of creeks and waterways wandered off to the flat horizon.

  He found Swanmay near the bow.

  “We’re nearly there,” she said. “I told you, you see.”

  “I did not doubt you, lady.” He paused uncomfortably. “You said the men who attacked me are the same men you fear. Yet they did not recognize your ship in z’Espino. Why do you fear they will recognize it now, if they are in the port of Paldh?”

  A hint of a smile touched her lips. “In z’Espino they didn’t yet know they were looking for me. Another day or so there and the news would have reached them. For certain, it has reached Paldh by now.”

  “The news of your escape?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then—if I may—I would propose not to hold you strictly to your word. Put me off here, before we reach port. I’m sure I can find the mainland.”

  She looked out over the marshes. “It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it?” She seemed to ignore his suggestion.

  “Yes,” he agreed.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it.” She turned to him. “It’s kind of you to think of me, Sir Neil.”

  “It’s nothing compared with what you’ve done for me, lady. I would not see you hurt.”

  She shrugged. “I’m in no physical danger. They will not kill me, if that is what worries you.”

  “I’m grateful for that,” he said.

  “I accept your offer,” Swanmay decided. “There is only a small c
hance that I will escape the Lier Sea now, with my head start gone. But it is a chance, nonetheless. I may yet win my game of fiedchese.”

  “I pray you do, Lady Swanmay,” he told her gravely.

  “That isn’t my real name, you know.”

  “I didn’t,” he replied. “I wish I knew your real name.”

  She shook her head. “I will provide you with a boat and some supplies.”

  “That isn’t necessary,” he said.

  “It won’t cost me anything, and it will make your life easier. Why shouldn’t I do it?” She lifted her head. “But if you would repay me for the boat, I have a suggestion.”

  “Anything, if it is in my power.”

  “It is. A kiss—just one. It’s all I ask.”

  In the light of the sun, her eyes were bluer than any sky. He suddenly remembered the words to a song he’d liked when he was a boy, “Elveher qei Queryeven.”

  If you’ll not stay and share my bed,

  The lady of the Queryen said

  Then all I ask is for a kiss,

  A single kiss instead.

  But when Elveher bent to kiss the Queryen lady, she stabbed him in the heart with a knife she had concealed in her sleeve.

  With her otherworldly beauty, Swanmay might as easily be Queryen as human.

  “Why should you want that, lady?” he asked.

  “Because I may never have another,” she replied.

  “I—” He suddenly realized she wasn’t joking.

  “Anything in your power, you said.”

  “I did.” he admitted, and he bent toward her, held by those strange, beautiful eyes. She smelled faintly of roses.

  Her lips were warm and somehow surprising, different from any lips he had ever kissed, and with their touch, everything seemed oddly changed. When he pulled away, her eyes were no longer so mysterious. They held something he thought he understood.

  “My name is Brinna,” she said. There was no knife in her hand.

  Before the next bell he sat in a smallboat and watched her ship until he could no longer see the sails. Then he began to row upstream. Each time the oars dipped in the water, he seemed to hear Fastia telling him he would forget her.

  The tide came in and eased his journey, but Paldh was several leagues upstream, and he was still very weak and had to rest frequently. Still, the exertion felt good, and the salt-marsh smell pleased him. Near sundown, he made dock at a fishing village, where a sandy-haired boy of about twelve took his bowline. He checked the wallet Brinna had given him and found coins in it. He selected a copper for the boy, but turned it in his fingers before giving it to him. It bore a sword on one side, but no inscription. He took a gold out and looked at that. It had the likeness of a man on it, and an inscription that read MARCOMIR ANTHAR THIUZAN MIKIL. Marcomir was the king of Hansa.