The Charnel Prince (50 page)

Including, unfortunately, the bit about love not caring what was right, or good, or what anyone wants.

———«»——————«»——————«»———

Whitraff was there, but even at a distance it looked dead. The air was chill, yet not a single line of smoke traced the sky. No one was in the streets, and there was no sound that might come from man or woman.

Most of the villages and towns around the King’s Forest weren’t all that old—most, like Colbaely, had sprouted up in the last hundred years. The houses tended to be built of wood and the streets of dirt. Aspar remembered Whitraff as an old town—its narrow avenues were cobbles worn shiny by a hundred generations of boots and buskins. The heart of the town wasn’t large—about thirty houses huddled around the bell-tower square—but there had once been outlying farms to the east and stilt houses along the riverfront that went on for some way. It had always been a pretty lively place, for all of its small size, because it was the only river port south of Ever, which was a good twenty winding leagues downriver.

Now the outliers were ash, but the stone town still stood. Looking down on it from the hill above, Aspar noticed that the bell tower was missing. It was simply gone. In its place—on the mound where the tower had once stood—was the now all-too-familiar sight. A ring of death.

“Sceat,” he muttered.

“We’re too late,” Winna said.

“Far too late,” Leshya said. “This was done months ago, to judge by the burned homesteads.”

Aspar nodded. The dead scattered around the sedos looked to be mostly bone.

“Bad luck, that,” he said, “to build your town on the footprint of a Damned Saint.”

“I don’t see how you can joke about it,” Winna said. “All those people . . . I don’t see how you can joke about it.”

Aspar glanced at her. “I wasn’t joking,” he said softly. Lately it seemed impossible to say the right thing around Winna. “Anyway, maybe it’s not so bad as it looks. Maybe the rest of the townsfolk got away.” He turned to the Sefry. “This is a good position. You and Ehawk keep a watch from up here while we go down to have a look.”

“Suits me,” Leshya said.

They took the road in, and despite his words, it was as he’d feared. No one came out to greet them. The town was as quiet as its twin, Whitraff-of-Shadows, just upstream. Of the people there was no sign.

Aspar dismounted in front of the River Cock, once the busiest tavern in the village.

“You two watch my back,” he told Stephen and Winna. “I’m taking a look in here.”

There wasn’t anyone inside, and there were no bodies, which wasn’t terribly surprising. But he did find that a roast on a spit had been allowed to burn to char, and one of the ale taps had been left open, so all the beer had drained out to form a still-sticky mass on the floor.

He went back out into the square.

“They left in a hurry,” he said. “There’s no blood, or signs of fighting.”

“The monks might have thrown the bodies into the river,” Winna suggested.

“They might have, or they might have gotten away. But here’s what I’m wondering—this river isn’t the busiest around, but someone would have noticed
this
, and as Leshya said, this must have happened a couple of months ago, maybe even before we fought Desmond Spendlove and his bunch. Why hasn’t anyone cleaned up the bodies? Why hasn’t anyone moved in, or at least sent word downriver?”

“Maybe they did,” Stephen said, “and the praifec kept it to himself.”

“Yah, but rivermen who saw this would talk it all up and down the river.
Someone
would have come to have a look.”

“You’re thinking the Church left it garrisoned?” Stephen asked.

“I don’t see sign of that, either. Plenty of ale and stores left in the tavern—you’d think a garrison would have tucked into that. Besides, I didn’t see any smoke coming in, and I don’t smell it now. But if it isn’t garrisoned, why hasn’t some passing boatman robbed the tavern?”

“Because no one who’s come here has left,” Winna said.

“Werlic,” Aspar agreed, scanning the buildings.

“Maybe there’s a greffyn here,” Stephen said.

“Maybe,” he conceded. “There was one with the monks back at Grim’s Gallows.” He didn’t mention that it had avoided him.

“I’m going down the waterfront,” he decided. “You two follow and keep me in sight, but not too close. If a greffyn’s been killing boatmen, we ought to find their boats and bodies.”

His boots echoed hollowly as he made his way down the little street that sloped toward the river. Soon enough he made out the wooden docks. Still there. He didn’t see any boats at all. Crouching in the shadow of the last house, he peered intently at the far bank of the river. The trees came right up to the water, and nothing obviously worrisome caught his eye. He glanced back and saw Winna and Stephen, watching him nervously.

He motioned that he was going closer.

A tattered yellow wind-banner fluttered in the breeze, producing nearly the only noise as he approached the planking of the docks. The only birds he heard were quite distant.

Which was odd. Even in an empty town, there ought to be pigeons and housecrows. On the river there should be kingfishers, whirr-plungers, and egrets, even this time of year.

Instead, nothing.

Something caught his eye, then, and he dropped back into a crouch, bow ready, but he couldn’t identify what he’d seen. Something subtle, a weird play of light.

And the scent of autumn in his nostrils that always meant death was near.

Slowly, he began to back up, because he could feel something now, something hiding just beneath the skin of the world.

He saw it again, and understood. Not the world, but the
water
. Something huge was moving just under the surface.

He kept backing up, but he remembered that being far from the water hadn’t helped the people of Whitraff.

The water mounded up suddenly, and something rose above it with the sluggishness of a monster in a dream that knows its victim can’t outrun it. He had only an impression of it at first, of sinewy form and sleek fur or possibly scales, and of immensity.

And then it called in a voice so beautiful that he knew he’d been wrong, that this creature was no destroyer of life, but was the very essence of it. He’d come to the place where life and death changed, where hunter and hunted were one, and all was peace.

Relieved beyond words, Aspar lay down his bow, stood straight, and walked to meet it.

SOMEONE BEGAN SHOUTING JUST as Anne and Austra reentered the ruined city of the dead. Anne whipped her head around and saw two fully armored men on horseback charging down the hill.

“They’ve seen us!” she shouted unnecessarily.

She ducked behind the first building, practically dragging Austra with her, looking wildly around for somewhere to hide.

Death or capture lay in every direction—the orderly rows of grapes on either side of the valley offered no real protection; they might elude their pursuers for a little longer, but in the end they would be run down.

Hiding posed the same problem, of course, and there really wasn’t anyplace to hide.

Except the horz. If it was as thickly grown as it looked, they might be able to squeeze into places where larger, armored men couldn’t follow.

“This way,” she told Austra. “Quickly, before they can see us.”

It felt like forever, reaching the walled garden, but as they passed through the ruined arch, the knights still weren’t in sight. Anne got down on her hands and knees and began pushing through the gnarled vegetation, which if anything grew more thickly than in the horz Austra and she used to haunt in Eslen-of-Shadows. The earth smelled rich, and slightly rotten.

“They’re going to find us,” Austra said. “They’ll just come in after us, and we’ll be trapped.”

Anne wriggled between the close-spaced roots of an ancient olive tree. “They
can’t
cut their way in,” she said. “Saint Selfan will curse them.”

“They murdered sisters of a holy order, Anne,” Austra pointed out. “They don’t care about curses.”

“Still, it’s our only choice.”

“Can’t you—can’t you
do
something, like you did down by the river?”

“I don’t know,” Anne said. “It doesn’t really work like that. It just happens.”

But that wasn’t really true. It was just that when she had blinded the knight outside the coven and hurt Erieso in z’Espino, she hadn’t premeditated it, she’d just
done
it.

“I’m frightened of it,” she admitted. “I don’t understand it.”

“Yes, Anne, but we’re going to
die
, you see,” Austra said.

“You’ve a point there,” Anne admitted. They had gone as far into the horz as they could. They were already lying flat on their bellies, and from here on, the plants were woven too tightly.

“Just lie quiet,” Anne said. “Not a sound. Remember when we used to pretend the Scaos was after us? Just like that.”

“I don’t want to die,” Austra murmured.

Anne took Austra’s hand and pulled her close, until she could feel the other girl’s heartbeat. Somewhere near she could hear them talking.

“
Wlait in thizhaih hourshai
,” one of them said in a commanding voice.

“
Raish
,” the other replied.

Anne heard the squeak of saddle leather and then the sound of boots striking the ground. She wondered, bizarrely, if anything had happened to Faster, her horse, and had a painfully clear flash of riding him across the Sleeve in sunlight, with the perfumes of spring in the air. It seemed like centuries ago.

Austra’s heart beat more frantically next to hers as the boot sounds came nearer and the vegetation began to rustle. Anne closed her eyes and tried to work past her fear to the dark place inside her.

Instead she touched sickness. Without warning it swept through her in a wave, a kind of fever that felt as if her blood had turned to hot sewage and her bones to rotting meat. She wanted to gag, but somehow couldn’t find her throat, and her body felt as if it had somehow faded away.

“
Ik ni shaiwha iyo athan sa snori wanzyis thiku
,” someone said very near them.

“
Ita mait, thannuh
,” the other growled from farther away.

“
Maita
?
” the near man said, his tone hesitant.

“Yah.”

There was a pause, and then the sound of something slashing into the vegetation. Anne gasped as the sick feeling intensified.

Austra had been right. These men showed no fear of the sacred.

She pressed herself harder against the earth, and her head started to spin. The earth seemed to give way, and she began sinking down through the roots, feeling the little fibers on them tickle her face. At the same time, something seemed to be welling up from beneath her, like blood to the surface of a wound. Fury pulsed in her like a shivering lute string, and for a moment she wanted to catch hold of it, let it have her.

But then that, too, faded, as did the nausea and the sensation of sinking. Her cheek felt warm.

She opened her eyes.

She lay in a gently rolling spring-green meadow cupped in a forest palm of oak, beech, poplar, liquidambar, everic, and ten other sorts of trees she did not know. Over her left shoulder, a small rinn chuckled into a mere that was carpeted with water lilies and fringed by rushes, where a solitary crane moved carefully on stilt legs, searching for fish. Over her right shoulder, the white and tiny blue flowers of clover and wimpleweed that were her bed gave way to fern fronds and fiddleheads.

Austra lay next to her. The other girl sat up quickly, her eyes full of panic.

Anne still had her hand. She gripped it harder. “It’s all right,” she said. “I think we’re safe, for a moment.”

“I don’t understand,” Austra said. “What happened? Where are we? Are we dead?”

“No,” Anne said. “We aren’t dead.”

“Where are we, then?”

“I’m not sure,” Anne told her.

“Then how can you be certain—?” Austra’s eyes showed sudden understanding. “You’ve been here before.”

“Yes,” Anne admitted.

Austra got up and began looking around. After a moment she gave a start. “We’ve got no shadows,” she said.

“I know,” Anne replied. “This is the place where you go if you walk widdershins.”

“You mean like in the phay stories?”

“Yes. The first time I came here was during Elseny’s party. Do you remember that?”

“You fainted. When you woke, you were asking about some woman in a mask. Then you decided you had been dreaming, and wouldn’t talk about it anymore.”

“I wasn’t dreaming—or not exactly. I’ve been back here twice since then. Once when I was in the Womb of Mefitis, another time when I was sleeping on the deck of the ship.” She gazed around the clearing. “It’s always different,” she went on, “but I know somehow it’s always the same place.”