The Charnel Prince (10 page)

At last they came to a spring-fed pool of clear water whose banks were thick with moss and pale—almost white—ferns. The trees here were black and scaled, with drooping leaves that resembled saw-toothed blades. Empty gazes stared down at him from the human skulls nestled in the crooks of the branches. Anshar felt himself trying to back away, and he crushed the instinct with his will.

He smelled something musky and bitter.

“This is it,” Fend murmured. “This is the place.”

“What do we do now?” Anshar asked.

Fend drew a wicked-looking knife. “Come here, both of you,” he said. “She’ll want blood.”

Obediently, Anshar stepped to the Sefry’s side. Pavel did, too, but Anshar thought he saw hesitation there.

Meanwhile, Fend drew his blade across his palm. Blood welled from the line, and Anshar was half-surprised to see it was red as that of any human.

He glanced at the two of them. “Well?” he said. “She’ll want more than this.”

Anshar nodded and drew his own blade, and so did Brother Pavel.

Anshar was cutting his palm when he caught a peculiar motion from the corner of his eye.

Brother Pavel still stood there, his knife across his palm, but he was jerking oddly. Fend was facing him, holding his hand to Pavel’s head, as if to hold him up . . .

No
.
Fend had just thrust a knife through Brother Pavel’s left eye. Now he removed it and wiped it on Pavel’s habit. The monk continued to stand there, twitching, the remaining eye fixed on his half-cut palm.

“A lot more blood,” Fend amplified. He gave Pavel a push, and the monk toppled face-first into the pool. Then the Sefry looked up at Anshar. He felt a chill, but stood his ground.

“You aren’t worried you might be next?” Fend asked.

“No,” Anshar said. “If my fratrex sent me here as a sacrifice, a sacrifice I’ll be.”

Fend’s lips twisted in a grudging smile. “You Churchmen,” he said. “You have such belief, such loyalty.”

“You don’t serve the Church?” Anshar asked, surprised. Fend just snorted and shook his head. Then he sang something in a peculiar language Anshar had never heard.

Something moved in the trees. He didn’t actually see the motion, but he felt and heard it. He had the impression of vast, scaly coils dragging themselves through the forest and contracting around the pool like a great Waurm of legend. Soon, he knew, it would poke its head through the tree trunks and open its vast, toothy mouth.

But what did step from the trees was very different from what his impressions had led him to imagine.

Her skin was whiter than milk or moonlight, and her hair floated about her like black smoke. He tried to avert his eyes because she was naked, and he knew he shouldn’t gaze upon her, but he couldn’t help it. She was so slim, so exquisitely delicate, that he first thought she was a child. But then his eyes were drawn to the small cups of her breasts and the pale blue nipples that tipped them. To his surprise he saw she had four more, smaller nipples arranged down her belly, like on a cat, and he suddenly understood that she was Sefry.

She smiled, and to his shame, he felt a surge of lust equaled only by his terror. She lifted a hand toward them, palm up, beckoning, and he took a step forward.

Fend stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“She’s not calling you,” he said, pointing to the pool.

Pavel suddenly gathered his arms and legs beneath him and pushed himself clumsily to his feet. He turned to face them.

“Why have you come, Fend?” Pavel croaked.

“I’ve come to speak to the Sarnwood Witch,” Fend replied.

“You’ve found her,” Pavel said.

“Really? I’d always heard that the Witch was a terrible ogress, a giant, a thoroughly ugly creature.”

“I have many appearances,” Pavel’s corpse said. “And there are many foolish stories told of me besides.” The woman cocked her head. “You killed the Dare princesses,” she said. “I smell it on you. But there were three daughters. Why didn’t you kill the third?”

Fend chuckled. “I thought my sacrifice entitled
me
to have
my
questions answered.”

“Your sacrifice only ensures that I won’t slay you without hearing what you have to say. From here on out, you’ll have to stay in my good graces if you want anything more than that.”

“Ah,” Fend said. “Very well. The third daughter—I believe her name was Anne—was not present at Cal Azroth. Unknown to us, she was sent away.”

“Yes,” the corpse said. “I see. Others found her in Vitellia, but they failed to kill her.”

“So she’s still alive?” Fend asked.

“Was that one of your questions?”

“Yes, but it sounds as if it’s someone else’s problem now.”

“Earth and sky are being bent to find her,” Pavel said. “She must die.”

“Yes, well, I know that,” Fend replied. “But if, as you say she has been found—”

“And lost again.”

“Can you tell me where she is?”

“No.”

“There, then,” Fend said. “The others lost her—they can find her again.”

“You had the queen in your grasp and did not kill her,” Pavel said.

“Yes, yes,” Fend replied. “It seems someone is always reminding me of that. An old friend of mine showed up and put something of a damper on the whole business. But as I understand it, the queen is not as important as Anne.”

“She is important—and have no fear, she will die. Your failure there will cost you little. And you are correct in one thing—the daughter is
everything
, so far as your master is concerned.”

For the first time, Fend seemed surprised. “I wouldn’t call him a
master
—you know whom I serve?”

“He came to me once, long ago, and now I smell him on you.” The woman lifted her chin, as did Pavel, in grotesque parody. “Is the war begun?” the corpse asked.

“How is it you know so much concerning certain matters and nothing concerning others?”

“I know much of the large, but little of the small,” Pavel said, and chuckled at the word play. Behind him, the woman just stood there, but Anshar could see her eyes now, a startling violet color.

“I can see the sweep of the river, but not eddies and currents, not the ships upon it or the leaves following it seaward. Your words supply me with that. You say one thing, and I see those things connected to it—and thus I learn the small things. Now. Has the war begun yet?”

“Not yet,” he replied, “but soon, I’m told. A few more pieces are moving into place. Not really my focus, that.”

“What is your focus, Fend? What did you really come here to discover?”

“They say you are the mother of monsters, O Sarnwood Witch. Is it true?”

“The very earth is pregnant with monsters. What do you seek?”

Fend’s smile spread, and Anshar felt an involuntary chill. When Fend answered her, he felt another, deeper one.

IT WAS ONLY MOMENTS BEFORE smoke started boiling up through the stairwell and the crackling of flame rose over all other noises. The floor began to heat, and Leoff realized that if the malend were an oven, he was just where the bread ought to be.

He went to the window, wondering if the fall would break his leg, but jerked his head back when he saw two figures watching the malend burn, their faces ruddy in the light spilling from the door.

The brief glimpse he got wasn’t reassuring. One of them was nearly a giant, and Leoff could see the glint of steel in both their hands. They hadn’t searched the malend—they were letting the fire do it for them.

“Poor Gilmer,” he murmured. They had probably killed the little man in his sleep.

Which would probably be an easier fate than what lay in store for Leoff. It was already getting difficult to breathe. The flame was climbing for him, but the smoke would surely find him first.

He couldn’t go down; he couldn’t go out the window. That left only up, if he wanted to live even another few moments.

He found the ladder and climbed it to the next level. It was already smoky there, too, but not nearly so much as the level he had just left.

And it was dark, very dark. He could hear the gears working again, and something squeaking nearby. He must be in the machinery of the thing now.

He found the final ladder and went up it with trembling care. He had an image of getting a hand—or worse, his head—caught in an unseen cog.

The final floor wasn’t very smoky at all. He faintly made out a window and went to it hopefully. But they were still down there, and now the drop was ridiculous.

Trying to calm himself, Leoff felt around in the dark, and nearly shrieked when he touched something moving. He caught himself as he realized it was a vertical beam, turning—probably the central shaft that drove the pump.

Except that the shaft he’d seen on the first floor wasn’t rotating; it was moving up and down. The motion must be translated somehow on the floor just below.

That still didn’t seem right. The axis of the—what had Gilmer called it? The big veined spokes? Saglwic. Their axis would have to be horizontal, so
that
motion must be translated to
this
shaft.

Which meant that there was something still above him.

Groping carefully above, he found a great-toothed wheel of wood at the top of the shaft. It was rotating. A little more feeling about, and he discovered the second wheel, set above the first and at right angles, so that the teeth meshed at the bottom of the second wheel to turn the first. Leoff figured that the shaft turning the second wheel must be connected to the windwheel itself.

He found that and followed it, not sure what he was looking for. The smoke had discovered him again, as had the heat.

The shaft passed through a greasy hole in the wall only incrementally larger than the smoothed beam itself.

He began to understand what he was looking for.

“There must be
some
way to repair the saglwic— Yes!”

Below the shaft he found a latch, and lifting it allowed him to open a small square door. He cracked it open and peered out.

A pale moon sat on the horizon, and by its light he saw the spokes of the malend turning in the wind, and beyond that the waters of the canal, shining like silver. He saw no one below, but there were shadows enough to hide anything.

A shudder ran through the building, then another. Beams were collapsing below. The tower ought to stand, though, since it was made of stone.

A blast of hot air and a fist of flame followed the thought and came punching up through the ladder hole.

Saints, I don’t want to do this
!
he thought.
But it’s this or burn
.

Holding his breath, he followed the slow rhythm of the rotating spokes until he felt it with everything he had. The song of the malend came back to him, filled him up, and now he breathed in time with it.

He jumped on the downbeat. His legs jerked when he did it, and he nearly didn’t make it, but one hand caught the wooden latticework of the windsail. Without warning he found himself turning upside-down, but he managed to claw his other hand into the fabric. His stomach churned with fear and disorientation as the landscape retreated impossibly far below him. Then it was rushing back at him again, and he started climbing down the vane.

As it dipped near the ground, he hastened his pace, fearing to make another rotation, but it was still too far away. He clung tight as his perch swung up again, and oddly enough, his fear began to turn into a sort of exhilaration. His head was toward the axis now, and something seemed to be tugging at his feet, even when his feet were pointed toward the sky, as if the saints didn’t want him to fall. He went with the tug, climbing on even while upside-down, and when next the vane moved earthward, he was low enough to drop.

He hit the ground hard, but not breaking hard, and lay there in the grass for a moment.

But not for long. Keeping low, he moved away from the burning malend and toward the canal. He had almost reached it when a strong hand gripped his arm.

“Ssh!” a low voice commanded. “Quiet. It’s just me, Gilmer.”

Leoff closed his eyes and nodded, hoping his heart would not explode through his breastbone.

“Follow,” Gilmer said. “We’ve got to get away from here. The men who did this—”

“I saw them, on the other side of the malend.”

“Auy. Stupid, they are.”

“Well, there are no windows on this side to watch.” They reached the canal. Leoff saw that a small rowboat was moored there.

“Quickly,” Gilmer said, untying the rope. “Get in.” Only a few moments later they were out in the center of the canal, with Leoff pulling on the oars as hard as he could. Gilmer had taken the tiller.

“I was afraid you were dead,” Leoff said.

“Nay. I’d stepped outside to watch her turn. Heard ‘em come in and what they were talking about. I didn’t reckon I could stop ‘em.” He looked back at the malend. Flames were bursting from the top, and the windsails had caught like torches. They were still turning. “Sorry, love,” Gilmer said softly. “Rot ‘em for doing that to you. Rot ‘em.” Then he turned away.