The Blood Knight

by Greg Keyes

  “Quickly,” she said to the others.

  She ushered them through, stepped in, and pulled the door shut, listening for it to click into place. Then she turned to see what their situation was.

  The six of them just managed to crouch on a small landing in a rough tunnel carved of living stone. After the landing the passage descended rather dramatically. If it hadn’t been so narrow, going down it at anything but a fall probably would have been impossible; as it was, they were able to control their descent by bracing their hands against the walls. Austra handed the lantern back to Cazio, and Anne led, with the light coming from behind her, throwing her shadow down the strange warren. The air was thick with a burned sort of smell, but it wasn’t hot; if anything, she had a chill.

  “He’s down there,” she murmured.

  “What does he want with you?” Austra wondered aloud.

  “I’ve no idea,” she said, “but it looks like we’re going to find out.”

  “What if this is all part of Robert’s trap?” Austra asked. “What if he sent that vision? He might be able to do that.”

  “He might,” Anne conceded. “But I don’t think he could fool me about who he is. And Robert is behind us. I can hear the Kept up ahead.”

  “But a Scaos…”

  “Virgenya Dare made him our slave,” Anne said firmly. “I’m the rightful queen, so he’s my servant now. Do not fear him. Trust me.”

  “Yes,” Austra said weakly.

  Then she continued. “Remember how we used to play in the horz?”

  “I remember,” Anne said. She reached behind her for Austra’s hand. “This is all happening because of that, somehow. Because we found the grave.”

  “Virgenya Dare’s grave?”

  “I was wrong about that,” Anne said.

  “You? Wrong?”

  “It happens,” Anne replied wryly. “Well, now, are we ready to meet a real live Scaos?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t sound confident, though.

  “Then off we go. Cazio, are you still all right there? And the rest of you?”

  “Yes,” Cazio replied, and their companions echoed the reply. “But who, by Ontro, are you talking about? And how did we get into this wretched tunnel?”

  “What was that?” Anne asked.

  “I said, ‘How did we get into this tunnel?’”

  “I think he knows where he is, and he’s remembering it,” Austra said.

  “What do you mean, remembering it?” Cazio asked irritably. “I’ve never been here before. I don’t even remember how I got here.”

  “This place must be older than the glamour,” Anne said. “That’s probably good.”

  “Glamour?” Cazio muttered. “What glamour? The last thing I remember is the Sefry house. Was a spell cast upon me?”

  “It’s the same with me!” one of Leafton’s men, Cuelm MeqVorst, exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Anne replied. “A shinecrafting was done to you, but we’re beyond it, and there isn’t time to go into detail. We are being pursued by the usurper and his men.”

  “Let’s fight them, then,” Cazio said.

  “No, there are too many,” Anne said. “But those of you in the rear, keep watch. Be ready. If somehow they find the way into here, we will have to fight.”

  “They can only get to us one at a time,” Cazio pointed out.

  “True,” Anne said. “You might be able to hold them off long enough for us to die of thirst.”

  “What do we do, then?” MeqVorst wanted to know. His voice was edged with panic.

  “You follow me,” she said firmly. “You may hear or see strange things, but unless there’s an attack from behind, keep your hands still unless I say so. Do all of you understand?”

  “Not entirely,” Cazio said, and the other three men murmured agreement.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The only way left to us. Down.”

  The scorched odor became stronger, at times stifling, and Anne fancied she smelled mingled with it the acrid scent of fear coming from those behind her.

  “I hear it now,” Austra gasped. “Saints, he’s in my head.”

  “We can’t go farther,” MeqVorst protested fearfully. “Men I can fight, but I’m not going to be food for some great bloody spider.”

  “It’s not a spider,” Anne said, wondering as she said it if that was true. After all, no one knew what the Skasloi looked like, at least not that she’d ever read or heard. They were known as demons of shadow whose true forms were hidden by darkness.

  “Stay calm, all of you,” she said. “He can’t hurt you as long as you’re with me.”

  “I…it feels…the voice…” The warrior’s voice trailed off, and Anne thought she heard him weeping.

  The murmurs grew louder but remained unintelligible until they finally reached level earth once again. Then they seemed to subside as they encountered yet another dead end.

  Again Anne knew where the hidden entrance was. She found the latch, feeling as she did so a peculiar tingle.

  The wall in front of them silently swung open, and lamplight poured from the tunnel into a low, round chamber.

  Something shifted in the new light, something wrong, and she stifled a shriek. Austra didn’t manage to, and her scream reverberated in the hollow depths.

  Anne stood stiffly, heart pounding, vision swimming.

  It was only after several slow, thundering pulses of her blood that she understood that she was looking not on some sort of monster but at a woman and a man. The man was horribly disfigured; his face had been cut, burned, and who knew what else. His filthy rags covered very little of his body. The woman’s face was smudged and bloody. She wore men’s clothing of a dark hue.

  To her amazement, Anne recognized her.

  “Lady Berrye?”

  “Who’s there?” Lady Berrye asked sluggishly. She sounded drunk. “Are you real?”

  “I am.”

  Lady Berrye laughed and squeezed the man’s shoulder. “It says it’s real,” she told him.

  “Everything says it’s real,” the man gruffed with a strange accent. “But that’s what we tell ourselves, walking in the graveyard, yes?”

  “You were my father’s mistress,” Anne said. “You’re hardly older than me.”

  “You see?” Lady Berrye said. “It’s Anne Dare, William’s youngest daughter.”

  “Yes,” Anne said a bit angrily. “It is.”

  Lady Berrye frowned at that and swayed to her feet. Her expression grew trepidatious.

  “Please,” she whispered. “I can’t, not again.”

  She came closer, and Anne saw how gaunt she was. She had always seemed cheerful, a woman just leaving girlhood, with cheeks ruddy and smooth. Now her skin lay close to her skull, and her bright blue eyes seemed black and feverish. She reached a trembling hand toward Anne. Her fingers were torn and dirty.

  The man was also pushing himself up, muttering in a language Anne did not know.

  The instant Berrye’s fingers brushed Anne’s face, she jerked them back to her mouth, as if she had burned them.

  “Saints,” she said. “She is real. Or more real than the others…”

  Anne reached for the hand.

  “I am real,” she confirmed. “You see my maid, Austra. These others serve me, as well. Lady Berrye, how did you come here?”

  “It has been so long.” She closed her eyes. “My friend needs water,” she said. “Do you have any?”

  “You both need water,” Anne said apologetically. “How long have you been down here?”

  “I don’t know,” Lady Berrye replied. “I might be able to work it out. I think it was the third day of Prismen.”

  “Twice a nineday, then.”

  Cazio passed her his waterskin, and she handed it to Berrye. Alis quickly took it to the scarred man.

  “Drink slowly,” she said. “Carefully, or you will not hold it down.”

  He had a few sips, and then a fit of coughing wracked his body, causing him
to fall. Berrye had a little, then knelt to give him a bit more. As she did, she began to speak, though her gaze stayed on the man.

  “I am your mother’s servant,” she began.

  “I doubt that very much,” Anne replied.

  “I am coven-trained, Your Majesty. Not from the Coven Saint Cer, but I am a sister nevertheless. My task was to be your father’s mistress. But after his death, I sought out your mother.”

  “Why?”

  “We needed each other. I know it is difficult for you to believe, but I have served her as well as I could. I came down into the dungeons to free a man named Leovigild Ackenzal.”

  “The composer. I’ve heard of him.” She glanced at the mutilated man. “Is this…?”

  “No,” Lady Berrye said. “Ackenzal would not come with me. Robert has hostage people he cares for, and he refused to risk their injury for his freedom. No, this is, so far as I can tell, Prince Cheiso of Safnia.”

  Anne gasped, feeling as if she had been slapped. “Lesbeth’s fiancé?”

  At the mention of her aunt’s name, the man began to groan, then cry out incoherently.

  “Hush,” Lady Berrye said, stroking his head. “This is her niece. This is Anne.”

  The ravaged face turned up toward her, and for an instant Anne could see the handsome man he once had been. His eyes were dark, and worlds of pain poured from them.

  “My love,” he said. “Always my love.”

  “Robert accused him of kidnapping Lesbeth and giving her to the enemy. I thought he had been executed. I found him searching for a way out after I discovered that Robert had sealed off most of the passages.” She looked suddenly a bit frantic. “Your uncle, you know—”

  “Isn’t human? I’m aware of that.”

  “Have you taken the throne from him? Is his reign ended?”

  “No. He’s searching for us even now. This was the only tunnel he hadn’t blocked.”

  “I know. I hoped I could find a way out in the warrens around the Kept. Instead he has caught us here.”

  “You’ve met the Kept?”

  “No. Your mother came to see him once, and I was with her. But Robert has the only key I know of. We could not gain entrance.”

  “Then we still cannot.”

  Lady Berrye shook her head. “You don’t understand. The key is to the main entrance and takes you to the antechamber outside his cell. Outside, you understand? So that he sits within the walls of ancient magicks. So that he can be controlled. Anne, we are in his cell.”

  As she said it, the walls seemed to shift like vast coils, and Austra pinched the lamp out, plunging them into utter darkness.

  “What?” Anne cried. “Austra?”

  “He told me to—I wasn’t—I couldn’t—”

  But then the voice was back, no longer whispering but shivering through the stone and into her bones.

  “Your Majesty,” it said in a mocking tone. Anne felt acrid breath on her face, and the darkness began a slow, terrible spin.

  LEOFF SMILED at the little flourish of notes Mery added to the normally staid and melancholy Triey for Saint Reusmier.

  She had permission to do so—the triey form encouraged extemporaneous elaboration—but where most musicians would have added a doleful grace note or two, Mery instead offered a wistful yet essentially joyful reiteration of an earlier theme. Since the piece was a meditation on memory and forgetfulness, it was perfect despite its novelty.

  When she was done, she glanced up at him, as always, for approval.

  “Well done, Mery,” he said. “I’m amazed someone your age understands that composition so well.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, scratching the side of her nose.

  “It’s about an old man thinking back to his youth,” Leoff expanded. “Remembering happier times, but often imperfectly.”

  “Is that why the themes fragment?” she asked.

  “Yes, and they’re never quite put together completely, are they? The ear is never quite satisfied.”

  “That’s why I like it,” Mery said. “It’s not too simple.”

  She shuffled the music on her stand.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “That may be the second act of Maersca,” he said. “Let me see.”

  Suddenly his heart felt cast in lead.

  “Here,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Give me that.”

  “What is it?” Mery asked, glancing at the page. “I don’t understand. It’s mostly shifting chords. Where’s the melody line?”

  “That’s not for you,” Leoff said with a good deal more force than he meant to.

  “I’m sorry,” Mery said, drawing her shoulders in.

  He found that he was breathing hard. Didn’t I put that away?

  “Don’t be. It’s not your fault, Mery,” he said. “I shouldn’t have left it out. It’s something I started, but I’m not going to finish it. Don’t give it another thought.”

  She looked pale.

  “Mery,” he asked, “is anything wrong?”

  She peered up at him with wide eyes.

  “It’s sick,” she said. “The music—”

  He knelt and clumsily took her hand with his maimed one. “Don’t think about it, then,” he said. “Don’t try to hear it in your head, or it will make you sick. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, but there were tears in her eyes.

  “Why would you write something like that?” she asked plaintively.

  “Because I thought I had to,” he said. “But now I think maybe I don’t. I really can’t explain more than that. Do you understand?”

  She nodded again.

  “Now, why don’t we play something happier.”

  “I wish you could play with me.”

  “Well,” he said, “I can still sing. My voice was never extraordinary, but I can carry a tune.”

  She clapped her hands. “What shall it be, then?”

  He fumbled through the music on his desk.

  “Here we go,” he said. “It’s from the second act of Maersca. It’s sort of an interlude, a comical side story to the main plot. The singer here is Droep, a young boy scheming to, ah, visit a girl at night.”

  “Like my mother used to visit the king?”

  “Umm, well, I wouldn’t know about that, Mery,” Leoff temporized. “Anyway, it’s nighttime, and he’s under her window, pretending to be a sea prince from a very distant land. He tells her he speaks with the fish of the sea, and he explains how word of her beauty has come to him under the waves and across the world.”

  “I see it,” Mery said. “The bream tells the crab, and the crab tells the bluefin.”

  “Exactly. And each has a little theme.”

  “Until we get to the porpoise, who tells the prince.”

  “Exactly. Then she asks what he looks like, and he tells her he is the fairest of all who live in his country, which is true, in a way, since he’s made the country up.”

  “No,” Mery said. “That’s still a lie.”

  “But amusing, I think,” Leoff said.

  “The melody is, anyway.”

  “Ah, a critic already,” Leoff said. “But to continue, she asks to see him, yet he swears that only by magic was he able to come to her, and if she gazes on his face, he must return home, never to come again. But if she should lay three nights with him without seeing his face, the spell will be broken.”

  “But then she’ll know he lied,” Mery said, puzzled.

  “Yes, but he reckons that by then he will have managed to, well, ah, give her a kiss.”

  “That’s a lot of trouble to go through for a kiss,” Mery said dubiously.

  “Yes,” Leoff said, “it is. But that’s how it is with boys his age. You wait until you’re a little older, and you’ll see exactly how much trouble the young men will go through to win your attentions. Although I suggest that if one should ever claim to be from some far-off land, one you’ve never heard of—”

  “I should insist on see
ing his face.” Mery giggled.

  “Exactly. So, are you ready to play?”

  “Who shall sing the woman’s part?”

  “Can you?”

  “It’s too low for me.”

  “Well, then,” Leoff said, “I shall sing falsetto.”

  “And the duet?”

  “I’ll improvise,” Leoff replied. “Here, we’ll skip the part where’s he’s introducing himself and get straight to the song.”

  “Very well,” Mery said. She put her fingers to the keys and began. Under her influence, the accompaniment bounced even more boisterously than he’d imagined it might.

  He cleared his throat as his cue arrived.

  I have heard from the sea,

  From the denizens of the sea,

  Across a thousand leagues

  The report has come to me

  Of a lady so lovely

  In such a far country

  That I, the prince of Ferrowigh

  Must hurry here to thee

  You were bathing near the birm,

  Admired by a bream

  Who told his friend the crab

  Who came scuttling by just then

  And the crab told old bluefin

  Who told a skate or ten

  That I, the prince of Ferrowigh

  Must come your heart to win…

  For the first time in a long time it occurred to Leoff that he was happy. And more than that, optimistic. The terrors of the past months receded, and he felt as if good things actually might happen again.

  He realized that he believed Ambria’s promise of escape, had believed it from the moment she’d told him. But in a way, it didn’t matter now.

  “Well, aren’t we all jolly?” a feminine voice interrupted. He jumped.

  Areana was standing inside the doorway, watching them. She hadn’t spoken to him since the morning she had found him with Ambria.

  “Areana!” Mery cried. “Won’t you join us? We really need someone to sing the part of Taleath!”

  “Do you?” she said skeptically, her gaze fixed on Leoff.

  “Please,” he said.

  She just stood there.

  “Come on,” Leoff said. “You must have heard us. I know you want to sing it.”