The Charnel Prince (13 page)

“You’re in the Perto Veto, pretty boy. That makes it our business.”

Erieso’s able men had withdrawn to stand near him. One held his ear, and blood flowed between his fingers. Anne suddenly felt as if she were caught between a pair of lions.

Erieso’s face worked through several expressions before he finally sighed. “That one, the one with red hair. She’s betrothed to Prince Latro, but the stupid little catella is smitten with this fellow here and ran off. I’ve been sent to get her back.”

“Is that so?” Ospero said. “Is there a reward for her return?”

“No.”

“Then why would you be so stupid as to follow her down here?”

“My honor demands it. I promised to get her back.”

“Uh-huh. Prince Latro, eh? The same Prince Latro that put the tariff on our fish, so he can sell his cheaper? The same Prince Latro that hanged Fuvro Olufio?”

“I know nothing of these things.”

“Then you don’t know much. But I’ll tell you this—if cutting off my nose would bring pain to Latro da Villanchi, I’d do it gladly. He’ll get his girl back. From us. In pieces.”

Erieso’s face reddened even further. “You won’t do that. The prince’s wrath would be terrible. He would have the meddisso send troops here. You want that?”

“No,” Ospero allowed. “But we’re modest, down here in the Perto. We don’t much care if we get credit for this sort of thing, only that it happens.”

“But how will you—” Erieso’s eyes widened as the men suddenly surged forward. “No!”

He turned and ran, and his men ran with him.

Ospero laughed as he watched them vanish from sight. Then he turned back to Anne, Austra, and Cazio.

“He was lying, so I guess there
is
a reward for you,” he said to Anne. “I think you’d better tell me what it is, and I think you’d better do it now.”

As if to emphasize his point, Ospero’s men drew nearer.

I’M GOING TO DIE
, LEOFF THOUGHT. It seemed a slow thought, as everything seemed slow, and limned in a peculiar golden light. He could see everything about the man who was approaching him all at once. His hair was light, cut in uneven bangs. It was too dark to tell the color of his eyes, but they were set wide on his face. His jerkin was open almost to his belly. His ears stuck out. He had a rag tied around his head.

And there was the sword, lovely as a viper in the moonlight.

He’d meant to run, but when he looked up and saw how close death was already, he knew he didn’t want it in the back.

Then something came sailing past him, another shard of moonlight, and it hit the man high in the chest. That stopped him. He yelped and looked down. Something metal hit the ground and sang a perfect note. It seemed to hang there, undergirded by a strange set of harmonies.

“Damn,” Gilmer said.

“Silly bugger,” the man said, lifting his sword again. “I’ll have your testicles for that before you die.” But then he hesitated.

The singing Leoff had heard hadn’t been in his head. It was there, below the wall, a spine-chilling sound. It was only reluctantly that he recognized it as men screaming—or crying out, at least, at the tops of their lungs.

The man with the sword was standing just next to the edge, and he looked over.

Then he tried to join the song. His mouth gaped, and the cords of his neck stood out like wire. Finally, he simply collapsed.

“What?” Gilmer started forward to look, as well, but Leoff tackled him to the stone and lay there, trying to hold him down.

“Don’t,” he gasped. “
Don’t
.
I don’t know what was in that box, but I know we mustn’t look at it.”

The man with the sword had fallen so his head was turned toward them. Even in the moonlight they could see that his eyes had gone to ash, just like the eyes of the other dead in Broogh.

There was still shouting below.

“Don’t look at it!”

“Cover your eyes! Let Reev and Hilman get it.”

“It didn’t get them all,” Leoff whispered.

“
What
didn’t get them all?” Gilmer asked.

Leoff noticed that the old man was trembling.

A stronger, more commanding voice rose over the others: “That came from the wall. Someone’s still in there. Find them. Kill them.”

“That means us,” Leoff said. “Come on. And don’t look!”

The two men scrambled down the stairs and back into the silent town.

“How long will it take them to come around?” Leoff huffed, as they raced over rough cobblestones.

“Not long. They’ll come in by the south gate. We’d better hide. Come on, this way.”

He led Leoff through several turns, across the square below the bell tower, and up another street.

“I wonder how many it got, whatever it was?”

“No telling.”

“Shsst!” Gilmer said. “Stop. Listen.”

Leoff did, and though the sounds of his breath and heart cloyed in his ears, he could make out what Gilmer had stopped for—the footsteps of several men approaching the spot where they stood.

“Come on, in here,” Gilmer said. He unlatched the door of a three-story building, and they entered it. They took the stairs to the second story, to a room with a bed and a curtained window. Gilmer went to the window.

“Take care,” Leoff said. “They might have it with them.”

“Auy, raeht. I’ll just peek.”

The smaller man went to the window. Leoff was watching him nervously when a hand clapped over his mouth from behind.

“Shh,” a voice said in his ear. “It’s me, Artwair.”

Gilmer turned at even that faint sound.

“My lord Artwair!” he gasped.

“Hello, windsmith,” Artwair said. “What sort of trouble have you gotten us into?”

“My
lord
?
” Leoff repeated.

“You didn’t know?” Gilmer said. “Sir Artwair is our duke, cousin to His Highness, Emperor Charles.”

“No,” Leoff said. “I did not know that. My lord—”

“Hush,” Artwair said. “This is of no importance now. They’re coming, close on your heels, and they will find you. The basil-nix has a keen nose.”

“Basil-nix?”

“Auy. Our darkest legends come to life, these days.”

“That’s what was in the box?”

“Auy.” He grinned tightly. “When I arrived, they were walking the streets with it, shining it about like a lantern. I saw the last of the townspeople die. I have my old nurse to thank for my life, for only from her tales did I understand what was happening. I averted my eyes before its gaze turned my way. Of course, when you burst its cage, I nearly died again, because I was watching. Still, that was clever. I think you killed more than half of them before they got the thing covered again.”

“You saw?”

Artwair nodded. “I was watching from the south tower.”

“How did they manage to capture and cover the thing?”

“They have two blind men with them,” he said. “They serve as its handlers. The rest walk behind. The cage is like an aenan lamp, closed on all sides but one. It makes a light, this thing, and once you have seen it, you can resist only through the greatest contest of will.”

“But the cage is shattered now.”

“Auy. And so they must take greater care, and so must we.”

“We must flee, before they find us.”

“No,” Artwair said softly. “I think we must fight. Two men remain at the dike. It will take them longer, but they will still open it if we give them time. We can’t allow that.”

“No,” Gilmer agreed. “Not after Broogh gave its life.”

“But how can we fight something we cannot look at?” Leoff wondered.

Artwair lifted something near the door. Two flasks of blue glass, filled with liquid. Bags had been stuffed in the top.

“Here is my plan,” Artwair said.

Moments later, Leoff stood facing down the stairs. Artwair stood below him on the first landing, a shadow with a bow held before him, and an arrow nocked. Gilmer crouched behind Leoff at the window, with his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

“They’re here,” Artwair’s voice came up. “Be ready.”

Leoff nodded nervously. He gripped a candle in one hand and one of the flasks of oil in the other. Gilmer was similarly armed.

Leoff heard the door open, and the bow sang a low pitch.

“They have a bow!” someone yelped.

“Move up!” another voice commanded. “They can’t hit what they can’t see. If they open their eyes, they’ll die.”

Footsteps started up the stairs. The bow whined again, and again, and someone shouted in pain.

“A lucky shot,” shouted the person who seemed to be their leader. “Up, and quickly.”

“Now!” Artwair hollered, and ran back up the stairs.

Leoff lit the oil-soaked rag.

And he saw a light suffusing the landing. It was beautiful, golden, the most perfect light he had ever seen. A promise of absolute peace filled him, and he knew that he could not live without seeing the source of that light.

“Now, I say!” Artwair shouted.

Distantly, Leoff heard glass breaking and a renewal of shouts from below. Gilmer must have thrown his flask, aiming for the entrance to the house. But Gilmer didn’t see the light, didn’t understand . . .

Leoff suddenly remembered the corpses in the inn. He remembered their eyes.

He threw the flask at the landing Artwair had just vacated. The light was brighter now, more beautiful than ever. Even as flame blossomed like a many-petaled rose, Leoff leaned out to catch a glimpse, just a small glimpse—

And then Artwair knocked him roughly to the floor.

“By all the saints, what do you think you’re doing? You
cannot
look!” he snarled.

More screams. It was a night for screams. The oil burned quickly, and so did the mostly timber house.

“Gilmer!” Artwair shouted. “Did you hit the doorstep?”

“Auy, that I did,” Gilmer replied. “I reckoned it was worth risking a peek, since they had the thing on the stairs. My aim was true.” He scratched his head. “‘Course, now we’re trapped in a burning house.”

“So are they,” Artwair said. He went to the window, pushed open the curtain, and set an arrow on the bow. “Now is the reckoning,” he said. “Watch the stairs. If any get through, call out.”

The stairwell was already an inferno, and choking smoke boiled up. This was also a night for fire, Leoff mused. He was destined to burn, it seemed.

He heard the bow twang over the roar and over the screaming. And again, as Artwair fired at something in the street.

A shadow came up through the flame then, something the size of a small dog, but serpentine. The flames turned golden.

Leoff snapped his eyes shut.

“Close your eyes,” he screamed. “It’s come up.”

“Follow my voice,” Artwair returned. “The window. We have to jump.”

“Here,” Gilmer said. He grasped Leoff’s hand and pulled him up. The smell from earlier was all around, and he felt his skin tingle from more than the heat.

Then he touched the window frame, and driven by terror he gripped it, stepped through, hung for an instant by his fingers, and dropped.

His belly rose to his head, and then the ground seemed to explode under his feet. A pain brighter than any sun lit him up.

Someone tugged at him. Gilmer, again.

“Get up,” the small man said.

Leoff tried to answer, but he gagged on his tongue instead.

Artwair’s face appeared in the ruddy firelight.

“He’s broken his leg. Help me move him.”

They dragged him away from the fire, which had begun to spread. Darkness crept in with the pain, and Leoff lost track of what was happening a time or two. The next thing he knew clearly was that they were in a boat, on the canal.

“Stay with him, Gilmer,” Artwair said grimly. “I’ve two more to deal with. Then we can go.”

“Go where?” Gilmer said, and for the first time despair colored his voice. “My malend, my town . . .” He was weeping now.

Leoff lay his head back, watched the smoke rise against the stars as the boat rocked gently on the canal. He tried not to think about the pain.

“How’s the leg?” Artwair asked.

“A dull ache,” Leoff replied, glancing at his limb. It had been splinted tight, but even so, every jounce the wagon made in the deeply rutted road sent a throb up his thigh, even with the hay bales to cushion it. Artwair had hired the cart and the untalkative fellow who drove it.

“It was a clean enough break, and should heal well,” Artwair said.

“Yes, I suppose I’m lucky,” Leoff said glumly.

“I mourn for Broogh, too,” Artwair said, his voice gentling. “The fire claimed only a few buildings.”

“But they’re all dead,” Leoff said.