The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince (10 page)

Whoever did it stabbed more deeply than he knew, for the heartstrings of a dozen of the King-in-Waiting’s men were fastened to those beasts. Bonded as those Witted were to the horses, it was to them as if their beloved wives had been slaughtered in their sleep. The deaths struck them all, some with wild mourning and some with silent grief and some with outright madness, so that all was uproar within Buckkeep, and many wild vows of vengeance made. Most wounded of all seemed to be Lord Elkwin of Tower Rock, he who had slain Lord Ulder in honorable challenge. He knelt by his slain horse and tore his hair and his beard until the blood ran, and clawed his own face and screamed like a woman in childbirth.

Finally a healer was called, with both herbs and leeches to drain the madness from him. For many a day and many a night, Lord Elkwin lay in his bed in his darkened chamber and spoke no word to any man, not even when his own prince called upon him to beg him to return to his rightful senses.

It must be told here that although Charger’s favorite spotted mount was slain, the Piebald Prince was not unmanned by it. He grieved, as any horseman would, and for his Witted fellows he was full of sympathy and solicitation. But if the coward who slew horses in their stalls had hoped to wound the prince that way, he failed. For his horse was not his Wit-beast, as had been long supposed. The beast that shared Prince Charger’s heart and mind was a matter he kept very private, and even among his Witted followers few were trusted with the knowledge of which creature shared its life with the King-in-Waiting. So Charger, although filled with anger and grief for his friends, kept a calm voice, even though all around him members of the Motley Court called for bloodshed. Despite the King-in-Waiting’s promise that the culprit would be found and punished some among them complained loudly that no punishment could be sufficient for such a cowardly crime.

Even so, perhaps calm heads could have prevailed, save that on the following day the king himself stiffened in his bed, thrashed and then died. The healer attending him swore that at the moment of his passing a black bird rose cawing from the parapet right outside his window, just as if the bird rejoiced in the death of the king. On so little a thing as this tale were the rumors of foul deeds and darkest betrayal based. Some in their ignorance said that the black bird had stolen the king’s life essence and flown off with it. Others said it was the Wit-beast of one of the Motley Court, and that it flew off to spread the joyous tidings of a death that would bring their prince to the throne. Some said it was the king himself, turned to a black bird and condemned to live as that creature by his bastard grandson’s magic. Many another wild or foolish tale was based on the healer’s words about a black bird flying and cawing, and all as if that were not the most natural thing in the world for a bird to do. All of these tales were fuel to the simmering feud within the court.

So it was that although both Canny and Charger cut their hair in mourning and their respective courts followed their example and the king was honored in the proper way, few spoke of his passing in sorrow and respect. No. All the talk was of whether the dukes would recognize the Piebald Prince as their rightful king or declare for Lord Canny; or if the Six Duchies would split and civil war bloody the land. Too quickly was good King Virile forgotten. To this day, few recognize how cleverly he had kept peace in his land.

Now, it must be recalled that it was the younger lords and ladies of the land who had so openly avowed loyalty to one or the other of the rivals. While younger hearts might sing aloud, older heads rule, as the saying goes, and so it was when the time came for the dukes to confirm King-in-Waiting Charger as the full king. Each in turn rose, and not a single one missed the chance to remind all that the Six Duchies had enemies on every border who would not hesitate to strike boldly if they did not stand together as one. As each duke or duchess spoke, so did he or she declare afterward for the Piebald Prince.

Last of all to stand was Strategy Farseer, Duke of Buck. His wife, the duchess, sat behind him, white to the lips, and his son sat behind him, and the eyes of Canny Farseer were so black that it seemed no life was in them at all. When Strategy spoke, he said he spoke the words not only of himself but also of his son Canny who would reign as Duke of Buck after him. The wish of him and of his line was that the Six Duchies would not be divided into quarreling states, but would remain as one and strong. For none in his family, he said, loved anything more truly than their homeland. The welfare of all the people of the land, he said, was a more important concern than the ambition of any one man, and so he would bow his knee to Charger as his rightful king, since his brother had chosen the young man to succeed him. Then, to the surprise of all, his son rose and knelt beside his father, bowing his head to his rival.

King Charger, King-in-Waiting no longer, received that homage, going first so white that the color upon his face was like black mold on a white cheese, and then so red that the vein hammered in his temple. For with this act, not only Duke Strategy but also his son Canny won the acclaim of all the court, for it was perceived as a noble sacrifice of honorable men. So it was that by conceding the throne to his rival, Canny and his father won the hearts of many a man who had not thought so well of them before.

Some say it was also in that moment that Canny won the heart of Lady Wiffen. That is a chancy thing for any minstrel to sing, of the moment when a lady’s heart joins itself to a lord’s, so Redbird cautioned me to say only that so it seemed to be, for at the feasting of the new king she chose to sit beside the heir to the duchy of Buck even though she had been offered a place of honor at Charger’s left hand. It was a strange celebration, for the man honored had eyes only for the lady who seemed to have dismissed him, and many who sat at his table were still hollow-eyed with grief over the loss of their Wit-beasts, and spoke little and ate even less. Surely it was not an auspicious omen of a hearty reign to follow, and so it proved.

Now King Virile had died when spring was venturing toward the land, and by Springfest King Charger wore the crown of the Six Duchies upon his Witted brow. Yet as the days lengthened, the new king’s reign did not prosper, but shriveled. The rains continued chill and heavy past the time when the soil should have been warming. Those who planted lost their first sowing to rot, and the coastal storms slowed trade to a crawl, with many a cargo delayed or spoiled. Some minstrels will sing that such dreary weather foretold all that followed, but in truth, as Redbird bade me tell it, it was only weather which cares nothing for the affairs of men.

In the sodden spring, a lone flower seemed to bloom and that was Lady Wiffen’s opening heart. Lord Canny’s courtship of her had prospered, and so sweet a couple they made that minstrels made song of the fondness that gentled her and stirred Lord Canny to acts of greatness on her behalf. In her name, he slew the bear that had taken more than a dozen cattle from a Buck farmer’s herd. Many a feast he held in her honor, and when she presided over his table she was decked as royally as any queen in the jewels and furs and silks he bestowed upon her.

It was announced that they would wed as soon as her kinfolk could make the journey to Buckkeep to witness the nuptials. For Lord Canny himself went to King Charger and asked of him that they be allowed to say their vows before the Witness Stones of Buck and dance their wedding dance in the Great Hall. King Charger could hardly refuse this favor without looking both mean and spiteful, and so he said it might be so, but any could see that it clove his heart to do so. As fate would have it, no sooner was the joining announced than the weather turned kind, and spring seemed to rush over the land as if to make up for the lost days.

So it was that King Charger presided over the wedding feast of the woman he had hoped to claim. He sat Lord Canny upon his right hand, and Lady Wiffen upon his left, and his mouth smiled but his eyes were empty. After the couple had danced their first dance as wedded partners, then did Lord Canny, smiling all the while, offer his wife’s hand to his king, that he might lead her in a dance upon the floor. What Charger said to her while they trod their measure no true minstrel heard and hence no true minstrel can say. Some with black tongues say that he threatened the vengeance of the Witted upon her family and home if she did not yield herself to his wishes, and some say that he whispered to her with his father’s wily tongue that could spell any maid, and some say that he but spoke from his own broken heart, words of disappointed love and dashed hopes that would have wrung any maiden’s heart. No man can know what was truly said as they spun and bowed, and so no true-tongued songster will sing of it. But whatever words passed between them, all remarked that it was a chastened Lady Wiffen that the king returned to her lord’s hand, and that afterward she did not seem so merry of heart, nor so light of foot. Often and often that evening her eyes turned from Canny to Charger, and some say they saw her regret her choice as the lovelorn king sat brooding alone at his high table.

However that may be, it was too late to change it, then or now.

So off the couple went to their marriage bed, with many a lusty jest thrown after them. After they had departed, the rest of the court continued to dance and eat and drink to their happiness and to many children for them. The king, too, remained in his high seat, cheerful as a corpse, and many of those who came to join him at his high table as the evening progressed were likewise grim, for they were among those who had lost their Wit-beasts in the stable slayings. Some false minstrels will sing that that was the first time Lord Elkwin of Tower Rock had been seen clothed and on his feet since his horse was slain. But it was not so. Redbird had seen him, walking in the garden on his lady’s arm, grave of mien but correctly garbed and clear of eye, every morning for nearly six days before the wedding feast. That is the truth of it and so it should be sung. Yet it is true that this was the first feast he had attended since his Wit-beast had been slain, and that he dressed and moved still as a man in the madness of mourning. So were many soberly garbed, despite the gay occasion, and some drank in a manner that was more to drown sense and sorrow than to celebrate a wedding. It seemed, some say, that a darkness began to seethe at the end of the hall where the Motley Court gathered, and that what came next was planned at the king’s own high table, but as no true minstrel witnessed it, no true minstrel will sing that as so.

However it might have been, before two nights had passed, before the wedding guests had departed the court for their own homes, before Lord Canny had borne his bride off to his high hall in Buck Duchy, murder was done in Buckkeep Castle. The little daughter of Lord Curl of Blackearth, brother of the slain Ulder, was found in the stable. She was not yet seven years old, and had no reason to be in the stables at night, yet there she was found in the morning. Her throat had been slashed and she lay in the very stall where Lord Elkwin of Tower Rock’s Wit-steed had died. Some minstrels will say that this alone is proof that he did it, but any fool with or without a song in his mouth can as easily see that it could be proof that he did not, for what sane man would leave such a clear signature to his guilt if he wished to commit such a heinous crime?

This, indeed, is what King Charger said to his court when his nobles convened to hear the charges that Lord Curl of Blackearth brought against Lord Elkwin of Tower Rock. That was a proceeding that brought satisfaction to no man, for again and again those who sought to speak were shouted down. The Motley Court on one side of the room accused Lord Curl with both word and glare of the slaying of the Wit-steeds, and the Canny Court shouted back that the slaying of a hundred horses could not be seen as good cause for the murder of a child. And from the rear of the crowded room rose the voice of a man far more vicious than brave, for he shouted that the dukes were fools to expect justice from the son of a Chalcedean beast-wizard. Then even the eyes of the king, who until them had seemed most in control of himself, went narrow with fury and some minstrels sing that his nostrils flared like an infuriated stallion as he flung his head back at that insult.

But others sing more truly, as Redbird did, that he was visibly incensed and yet clenched his lips and let no intemperate words escape them. The ugliness of the insult spread through the room like congealing blood and for an instant a silence fell. Then the shouts arose again, and the words that were flung were angry and wild.

No order could be brought upon them, not even though King Charger called in his own guard and ordered them to see that no noble spoke out of turn. Finally, he commanded his guard to clear the room and announced that in three days they would reconvene in the hope that justice and common sense could prevail. Yet the Canny Court muttered that he did not put Lord Elkwin in a dungeon with a guard upon it, but only sent him back to his own guest quarters in the castle, and that the men the king put upon his door were ordered to protect him from attack but not to confine him to those rooms., They muttered, too, that the king had already made up his mind, and that he put the life of a spotted horse above that of a tender, dancing daughter of his realm.

Lord Canny of Buck might have been trying to calm the waters when he stayed up late with his closest followers, with Lord Curl of Blackearth in their midst, and added his voice to his wild mourning. But perhaps he was not.

The angry muttering grew to a roar, and no peace was added to it when the rumor was uttered that while Canny was drinking with his men the king was seen walking by moonlight in the garden, and that he was not alone, but that Lady Wiffen of Buck walked with him, her hand in his.

This rumor burned through Buckkeep like a summer fire, and Lord Canny of Buck confronted the king with it as he descended the stair the next morning for his breakfast, clutching his wife by the wrist. Her face was white, her eyes red with weeping and her hair was wild upon her shoulders. Before all Canny accused the king of attempting to cuckold him, and his marriage not a week old. Before all the court, they quarreled, not as king and lord, but as cousins and rivals, with many a wrathful word and a reminder of old injuries flung between then.