The Charnel Prince (56 page)

“The third mode,” Hespero interrupted. “But these aren’t mere triads, these— How many instruments is this written for?”

“Thirty, Your Grace.”

“Thirty? Preposterous. Why do you need three bass vithuls?”

“The Candle Grove is quite large. To project over the voices—but you see, also, here, where they each depart to different themes.”

“I do. This is extraordinarily busy. In any event, to shift from seventh to third mode—”

“From despair to hope,” Leoff murmured.

The praifec frowned and continued, “Is to excite first one passion and then another.”

“But Your Grace, that is what music is meant to do.”

“No, music is meant to edify the saints. It is meant to please. It is not meant to stimulate emotion.”

“I think if you just heard it, Your Grace, you would find it—”

The praifec waved him to silence with his own sheet music. “What language is this?”

“Why, Your Grace, it is Almannish.”

“Why Almannish, when Old Vitellian is perfectly suited to the human voice?”

“But, Your Grace, most of the people attending the concert do not understand Old Vitellian, and it is rather the point that they should understand what is being sung.”

“What is the story, in brief?”

Leoff related the story Gilmer had told him, including the embellishments he had added.

“I see why you choose that tale, I suppose,” the praifec said. “It has a sort of common appeal that will be popular with those for whom it is intended, and it promotes the idea of fealty to one’s sovereign, even unto death. But where is the king in all of this? Where is he in his people’s hour of need?” He paused, crooking a finger between his lips.

“How is this?” he suggested. “You’ll add something. The king has died, poisoned by his wife. She rules through her daughter, who has—against all that is right and holy—been named his successor. The town is invaded, and the people send for help from her, but it is denied. After the girl sacrifices herself, the invaders, overcome with fury, swear to slaughter the entire populace, and it is then we learn that the king’s son—whom all thought dead—is indeed alive. He saves the village and returns to take his rightful place as king.”

“But, Your Grace, that isn’t what—”

“And change the names of the countries,” the praifec went on. “It would be too incendiary to name a Hansan as the villain, given the current climate. Let the countries be, let me see—ah, I have it. Tero Sacaro and Tero Ansacaro. You can guess which is which.”

“Is there anything else, Your Grace?” Leoff asked, feeling himself wilt.

“Indeed. I will give you a list of triads you may
not
include in your piece, and you will not have chords larger than a triad. You may retain your thirty pieces, but only for the sake of volume—you will simplify the passages I mark. And this most of all—voice and instruments shall
not
be joined together.”

“But Your Grace, that’s the whole point.”

“That is
your
whole point, but it is not one you will make. The instruments will play their passages, and then the players may recite their lines. They may even sing them, I suppose, but without accompaniment.”

He rolled the papers up. “I’ll borrow these. Write the new text, with my inclusions. Do it in Almannish if you must, but I will have a complete translation, and likely some amendments, so do not become too attached to it. I will return this to you in two days’ time. You will have two days to alter it to my satisfaction, and you will begin rehearsals immediately after that. Is this all clear?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Cheer up, Fralet Ackenzal. Think of it this way—the patron who originally commissioned this piece is no longer in a position to reward you for it. You are fortunate you still have a position here at all. The regent is your new patron—mind you do not forget that.”

He smiled thinly and turned to leave.

“Your Grace?” Leoff said.

“Yes?”

“If I am to start rehearsals so soon, I must retain the musicians. I have a few in mind.”

“Make a list of them,” the praifec said. “They will be sent for.”

When the praifec was gone, Leoff closed the door and leaned against the hammarharp on balled fists.

And then, very slowly, he grinned. Not because he was happy, or because anything was funny, but because he wasn’t worried or afraid anymore. That had been swept away by a clean, cold fury the like of which he had never felt before. This man, this fool who styled himself a praifec had just sowed a very large field, and soon enough he would reap it. If Leoff was a fighting man, he would take his sword and cut down the praifec, and Prince Robert, and whomever else he could reach.

He wasn’t a fighting man. But when he was done, the praifec would wish Leoff’s weapon was the sword. That he promised himself and every saint he knew.

STEPHEN FIRST THOUGHT THE water itself had drawn up in a fist to smite at Aspar, but then the fist resolved itself into a wide, flat head with yellow-green eyes that glared like huge round lanterns, all arranged on a thick, long neck. It was a shade between olive and black, and looked weirdly horse-like, somehow.

Horse-like
.
That struck a bell instantly in his saint-blessed memory. He jammed his palms up to his ears.

“Winna, cover—” he began, but it was too late, as the beast started to sing.

The note cut through his hands like a hot knife through lard; sliced straight into his skull and began slashing about. It was beautiful, just as the old legends told, but to his oversensitive awareness it was a terrible beauty that stung like hornets and wouldn’t let him think. Through a red shroud, he saw Aspar calmly put down his bow and begin walking toward the creature. Winna was starting toward it, too, tears streaming down her face.

He dropped his useless hands and picked up Ehawk’s bow. It was only seconds before Aspar walked into the creature’s gaping jaws.

He screamed as his shaking hands raised the weapon, trying to cancel the noise in his head, trying to remember the clean motion Aspar used when firing. He drew and released. The arrow skittered harmlessly off the monster’s skull.

The note it sang changed in tenor, and he felt his taut muscles loosen and a strange joy surge through him, like being drunk, happy and warm. He dropped the bow and felt a silly grin spread across his face, then laughed as the nicwer—that’s what it was, a nicwer—curved its muzzle down toward Aspar.

The neck suddenly snapped back like a whip, the wonderful song cut off by an anguished bellow. Something whispered by his ear, and his eyes caught the blur of an arrow in motion. It struck the nicwer beneath the jaw, and he saw there was already an arrow there, buried in a sort of sack or wattle he hadn’t noticed before.

He turned in the direction the arrow had come from and saw Leshya running down the street toward them, still fifty yards away.

She was supposed to still be up on the hill, but he was glad she wasn’t. He picked up the bow and ran toward Winna.

———«»——————«»——————«»———

Aspar felt as if everything good in him had been ripped out—mornings waking in the ironoaks, the quiet of the deep forest, the feel of Winna’s skin—everything wonderful was gone. All that was left was the ugliest beast he had ever seen about to take a bite out of him with sharp, gleaming, serrated black teeth. With a hoarse cry, he threw himself aside, suddenly noticing a stench like the bloated belly of a long-dead horse or the breath of a vulture.

He came back up with his dirk and ax out, feeling silly. He saw it better now, as it heaved itself up on the dock. Its head was otter-like, as wedge-shaped as a viper, and twice the size of the biggest horse skull he had ever seen. Like the greffyn and the utin, it was covered in scales, but also with oily green-black fur. At first he thought its body was that of a huge snake, but even as he reckoned that, it suddenly heaved up onto the dock with short thick forepaws. The feet were webbed and had talons the length of his arm. Silent now save for a sort of gurgling whistle, it lurched toward him, dragging the rest of its mass up from the river. He backed away, unsure what to do. If he let it sing again, then he would surely walk stupidly back into its jaws, as he had almost just done.

At least he knew what had happened to the people of Whitraff. They had walked smiling down to the river and been eaten. He remembered an Ingorn story about something like this, but he couldn’t remember what it was called. He’d never much cared for stories about nonexistent creatures.

Another arrow appeared in the sack below its throat, but aside from being unable to croon its damning call, the beast seemed relatively untroubled. It was all out of the water now, except for its tail. Its rear legs were as squat as the front, and as far from them as the length of two horses, so that its belly dragged along the wooden planks. Although it
looked
clumsy, once on land it moved with a sudden speed Aspar wouldn’t have guessed at. It lunged at him and he dodged aside, cleaving his ax at the back of its neck. To his surprise, the blade sheared a notch in the scales, albeit not a deep one.

He was still surprised when the head swung violently into him, knocking him off his feet. He rolled, feeling as if his ribs had been cracked, and came up to find the head darting toward him once more. From his crouch Aspar twisted away, cutting at the exposed throat with his knife and feeling the tissue part in a long, ragged slash. Blood sprayed his arm, and this time he dodged the counterattack and came to his feet running.

As soon as he was clear, arrows began pelting the beast. Most were bouncing off; for now it was tucking its head down to protect its vulnerable throat. Aspar saw that Leshya and Stephen were doing the shooting.

The monster was bleeding, but not as much as Aspar had hoped. Still, after a brief hesitation, it seemed to decide it had had enough. It sprinted back to the river, slid in, and vanished beneath the surface, leaving him panting and wondering if the thing was poisonous, like the greffyn. But though he felt a mild burning where the blood had touched his skin, it was nothing like the sick and immediate fever he’d felt confronting the other beast.

Leshya and Winna were a different story. Winna was on her hands and knees vomiting and Leshya was leaning on her bow, the blue veins of her face prominent beneath her skin.

Stephen seemed fine.

Aspar went to Winna and knelt by her. “Did it touch you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

“It’ll be fine, then,” he murmured. He reached out to stroke her head.

“Don’t,” Leshya snapped. “The blood.”

Aspar stopped inches short of touching Winna, then pulled his hand back and walked away. “Werlic,” he acceded.

Leshya nodded. “The gaze of the
equudscioh
isn’t fatal, not like some
sedhmhari
, but its blood would infect us.” She cocked her head. “I wonder why it hasn’t infected you. Or why our priest here wasn’t as affected by its song as you two.”

“You know what it is?” Aspar said.

“Only from stories,” the Sefry replied.

“Do the stories explain how it could do that to us just by—by
braying
?
” Aspar demanded. He still missed it, that sound, that perfect feeling. If he heard it again . . .

“There are certain musical notes and harmonies that can affect men so,” Stephen said. “It’s said the Black Jester created songs so powerful that entire armies ran on their own blades upon hearing them. He was inspired, they say, by a creature known as the
ekhukh
. In Almannish the same beast is called a nicwer, in Lierish
eq odche
. I think in the king’s tongue it’s nix, if I remember my phay stories.”

“Fine, I know what it’s called in five languages now,” Aspar grouched. “What
is
it?”

Leshya closed her eyes and swayed unsteadily. “It’s one of the sedhmhari, as I told you. It isn’t dead, you know, or likely even dying. We should retreat to the hill if we’re to discuss this. And you need to clean the blood off you, for our sakes. Even if you have some sort of immunity, we do not.”

“Werlic,” Aspar said. “Let’s do that.”

They found that despite his injury, Ehawk had crawled halfway down the hill.

“The song,” the boy gasped. “What
was
that?”

Aspar left the others to explain while he went to wash.

He found a small brook trickling down the hillside. He stripped off his leather cuirass and shirt and soaked them while he wiped his arm and face with a rag.

By the time he was done cleaning up, Winna and Leshya seemed to be feeling better.

When he approached, Leshya pointed down toward the river. “I saw it from up here, moving beneath the water. We should be able to see it if it emerges again.”

“Yah,” Aspar grunted. “That’s why you left your post.”

“I couldn’t shoot it from up here,” she argued. “Besides, Ehawk was still watching.”