The Charnel Prince

by Greg Keyes

  “Maybe so,” Berrye agreed, “but you might have picked another battle. The landwaerden are no longer disaffected with the throne—they are furious at it. Your support in the Comven is weaker than ever, and the rumor in the streets is that you have gone mad. Worst of all, the praifec has begun to speak against you.”

  “Really,” Muriele said. “What does the praifec say?”

  “He suggests pointedly that you have wrested power from your son.”

  “He knows very well Charles isn’t capable of making decisions.”

  Berrye nodded. “That is, I believe, his point. His further point being that your son should be removed from your council and placed under his.”

  Muriele smiled bitterly. “Only a few days ago, he suggested that I allow troops from z’Irbina to camp in this city. Did you know that?”

  “No, but I could have guessed it. The Church is in motion, Majesty. I do not know the exact nature of their agenda, but I think it certain they are ending their long recusion from direct interference in secular affairs.”

  Muriele settled her cup on the arm of her chair. “Hespero said something like that, too,” she said. “Very well—kill him for me.”

  “Majesty?” Berrye’s eyes widened fractionally.

  “I’m joking, Lady Berrye.”

  “I . . . Oh, good.”

  “Unless you think I’ve gone mad, as well.”

  “I don’t think that at all, Majesty,” Berrye assured her.

  “Well, good,” she said sarcastically. “You’ve told me what I did wrong—I’m open to your suggestions of what to do right.”

  “It’s of the greatest importance that you win the landwaerden and merchants back to your cause, Majesty,” the girl replied. “I cannot stress that enough.”

  “Believe it or not,” Muriele said, “I had entertained thoughts along those lines some weeks ago. I commissioned a piece of music to be composed for them and for the common people of the city. The performance was to be some three weeks hence, with a banquet to accompany it. I didn’t know that Lady Gramme had beaten me to it. Now I suppose there’s little point. It will only seem like an apology.”

  “Which is precisely why you should go ahead with it,” Berrye said. “But you must go farther, I think, and consider what laws you might reform to pacify them. I would suggest a formal hearing where they may present their demands.”

  “I’ll do so tomorrow. What else?”

  “Whether you’ve thrown in with Liery or not, everyone thinks you have. You have two choices: either disprove that notion by marrying Berimund, or make it true in every sense by marrying one of the Lierish lords.”

  “No,” Muriele said. “What else?”

  “Free Gramme immediately,” Berrye urged. “You haven’t proved she’s done anything wrong, and if something happens to her while she is in your custody, it will only make you look worse.”

  “I was rather hoping something would happen to her while she was in my custody,” Muriele replied.

  “I hope that’s another joke, Majesty.”

  “It is, Lady Berrye, but just barely. I’ll have her freed within the hour. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes. Make some appearances outside this hall. And get some sleep—you’re getting circles beneath your eyes.”

  Muriele chuckled. “Erren used to comb my hair. Are you going to start that, too?”

  “If you wish, Majesty,” Berrye said cautiously.

  “No, thank you. I think I would find it a trifle too familiar, having my husband’s mistress running a comb through my hair.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “Did you comb his hair?”

  “I— Now and then,” Berrye confessed.

  “Did that strange snuffling noise he made in his sleep annoy you?”

  “I found it endearing, Majesty.”

  “Well. Thank you, Lady Berrye. We’ll speak again when you have more to report.”

  Berrye got up to leave.

  “One moment, Lady Berrye,” Muriele murmured, reaching a reluctant decision.

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  “The assassin who invaded my chambers took something. A key.”

  “A key to what, Majesty?”

  “I’m about to show you.”

  Berrye paused at the edge of the light.

  “Come along,” Muriele said.

  “But majesty, there are no more torches. Perhaps we should return for a lantern.”

  “One shall be provided,” Muriele said. But she turned to the younger woman. “It’s good to know you don’t know all my secrets.”

  “I know nothing of this place, except that once—not long before he died—His Majesty went someplace in the dungeons, and when he returned he was pale, and would not speak of it.”

  “I did not know this place existed until after William died. I found a key in his room, and the questions it brought up led me here. But no one would admit to knowing what was down here.”

  She stepped into the darkness, and Berrye followed. Muriele felt for the wooden door she knew was there and found its handle.

  “There is no music,” she whispered.

  “Should there be?” Berrye asked.

  “The Keeper sometimes amuses himself by playing the theorbo,” Muriele said.

  “Keeper?”

  Instead of answering the implicit question, Muriele rapped on the door. When no immediate answer came, she rapped again, harder.

  “Perhaps he is asleep,” Berrye said.

  “I do not think so,” Muriele replied. “Come, let us take one of the torches—”

  She was interrupted by the nearly soundless opening of the door.

  The Keeper’s face appeared ruddy in the faint light from up the hall. It was an ancient, beautiful face, not obviously male or female. His filmed, blind eyes seemed to search for them.

  “It is the queen,” Muriele said. “I need to speak to you.”

  The Keeper didn’t answer, but searched toward her with a shaking hand, and Muriele understood that something was terribly wrong.

  “Keeper,” she said. “Answer me.”

  His only response was to open his mouth, as if to scream.

  She saw than that he had no tongue.

  “Saints,” she gasped, backing away, and then with an astounding violence, she retched and stumbled against the wall. She felt as if there were maggots writhing in her belly.

  Berrye was suddenly there, supporting her with surprising strength.

  “I’ll be fine—,” Muriele began, and vomited again, and again.

  When at last the sickness passed, she straightened herself on wobbly legs.

  “I take it he used to have the power of speech,” Berrye said.

  “Yes,” Muriele answered weakly.

  The Keeper was still standing there, impassive. Berrye circled him, peering closely.

  “I think his eardrums have been punched out,” she said. “He cannot hear us, either.”

  Shaking, Muriele approached the aged Sefry. “Who did this,” she whispered. “Who did this?”

  “Whoever took your key, I presume,” Berrye said.

  Muriele felt strange tears on her face. She did not know the Keeper—she had met him only once, and then she had threatened him with the loss of his hearing. She had not meant it, of course, but she had been distraught.

  “His whole life is spent here,” Muriele said, “in the darkness, without sight. Serving. But he had his music and conversation when someone came. Now what does he have?”

  “His ears may heal,” Berrye said. “It has been known to happen.”

  “I will send my physician down.” She reached toward the groping hand and took it in her own. It gripped back with a sort of desperation, and the Keeper’s face contorted briefly. Then he dropped his fingers away, stepped back, and closed his door.

  “What does he keep, my queen?” Berrye asked.

  Muriele strode back up the hallway and wrested a torch from the socket. Then, with Berry
e following, they descended a stair carved in living rock.

  “There are bones in the rock,” Berrye observed as they padded down the damp steps.

  “Yes,” Muriele replied. “The Keeper told me they are older than the stone itself.”

  Beyond the foot of the stair stood an iron door scrived with strange characters. The air smelled like burning pitch and cinnamon, and the echo of their voices seemed to stir other, fainter utterances.

  “Over two thousand years ago,” Muriele began, “a fortress stood where Eslen now stands, the last fortress of the Skasloi lords who kept our ancestors as slaves. Here Virgenya Dare and her army pulled down the walls and slew the final members of that demon race. They slew all but one—him they kept crippled but alive.”

  She approached the door and placed the tips of her fingers against it.

  “This door requires two keys—the one that was taken from my room, and the Keeper’s. Beyond that door is another, through which no light may be brought. And there he is.”

  “The last of the Skasloi,” Berrye said softly. “Still alive after all this time. I could never have imagined.”

  “The Skasloi did not die natural deaths,” Muriele said. “They did not age as we do.”

  “But why? Why keep such a thing alive?”

  “Because it has knowledge,” Muriele said, “and sight beyond that of mortal men. For two thousand years, the kings of Crotheny have wrested advice from him.”

  “Even the sisters of the coven don’t know about this,” Berrye said. “Surely the Church must not, or they would have had him killed.” Her eyebrows lifted a little. “You have spoken to it?”

  Muriele nodded. “After William and my children were slain. I asked him how I could revenge myself on the murderers.”

  “And he told you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did it work?”

  Muriele smiled bitterly. “I don’t know. I cursed whoever was behind the murders, but I do not know who he was. Therefore I do not know whether my curse succeeded. But I felt as if it worked. I felt something move, like a tumbler in a lock.”

  “Curses are dangerous,” Berrye cautioned. “They send out ripples like a stone striking water. You can never know what your intent will result in.”

  “Queeeeeen,” a voice scratched in Muriele’s head.

  “He’s speaking to me,” Muriele murmured. “Can you hear him?”

  “I don’t hear anything, Majesty,” Berrye said.

  “Queeeen, stink of woman, stink of motherhood. Doors stand between us. Will you not come to me?”

  “I cannot,” she said. “I do not have the key.”

  Something like black laughter rattled in her skull. “No. He has it. The one you made.”

  Muriele’s heart clenched like a fist in her chest.

  “The one I made? What do you mean?”

  “I sing of him, I sing and sing. When the world itself cracks, perhaps I will die.”

  “Tell me,” she demanded. “Tell me who it is. You cannot lie to me.”

  “You don’t have the key . . .” The voice soughed away, like a wind dying. Muriele’s last impression was of glee.

  “Answer me,” she shrieked. “Quexqaneh, answer me!”

  But the voice did not return, and by degrees, Muriele calmed herself.

  “We have to find out who came here,” Muriele told Berrye. “We must know what he spoke to the Kept about, and I must have my key back.”

  “I will do my best,” Berrye said. She sounded a little shaken, and looked very young. Muriele suddenly regretted sharing the secret of the Kept with her, but who else could help her? Sir Fail and his men would be of no help in matters of espionage. Berrye had proved that she had some facility in that area. Constrained as her choices were, telling Berrye was the only thing she could do.

  And it was already done, now.

  They left the dungeons. She returned to her rooms, summoned her personal physician to attend the Keeper, signed the order for the release of Gramme and her son, and retired early to bed.

  Dreams of spiders and serpents and eyeless old men woke her every few hours.

  The next day she prepared to hold court, as Berrye suggested. She had avoided it since the attempt on her life, but she couldn’t avoid it forever. So she had Charles dressed, and when Berrye was late, began dressing herself. She chose a gown of purple safnite with a stiff fan of lace around the collar and began working herself into it, though she knew she couldn’t do up the back. It occurred to her that she needed a new maid, but her grief over Unna was still fresh enough that she couldn’t bear the thought of choosing one. She thought she might assign Berrye to the task, and realized just how much she was already relying on the young woman.

  She isn’t Erren, she reminded herself. She was your husband’s whore.

  But there was something about her so like Erren, a certain confidence that could only come from coven training, that Muriele found herself slipping into old habits.

  Old habits could be fatal. She still had no proof that Berrye’s intentions were honest. And she was late.

  She was just getting really irritated when the girl finally arrived. She was opening her mouth to complain when she saw Berrye’s expression.

  “What?” Muriele asked.

  “He’s here, Majesty,” she said, sounding out of breath. “Prince Robert is here. I have seen him.”

  So it was true. Muriele closed her eyes. “He’s in the castle?”

  “In the throne room, Majesty, waiting for you.”

  “Do you know what he intends?” She lifted her eyelids.

  Berrye sat and put her palms to her forehead. Muriele had never seen her so upset.

  “He has his guard with him, Your Majesty, forty men. The Duke of Shale and Lord Fram Dagen have at least twenty men each. Every other member of the Comven has his guard with him, and there is word of landwaerden militia in the city.”

  The room seemed to pulse, expanding and shrinking with Muriele’s heartbeat. She sat heavily in her armchair, unmindful of her half-finished job of dressing.

  “He’s here to take the throne,” she said. Her mouth was dry.

  “That is my best guess, Your Majesty.”

  “It is the only guess.”

  “I should have seen this coming,” Berrye said bitterly.

  “You did see it coming,” Muriele muttered.

  “But not so soon,” Berrye disagreed. “Not nearly this soon. I thought we had time to act, to blunt the blow.”

  “Well, we haven’t.” She closed her eyes, trying to think. “Sir Fail has thirty men. There are twenty Craftsmen—if I can trust them—and their men-at-arms, altogether another hundred men I’m not sure I can count on. Indeed, they might well choose Robert as their king.”

  “They cannot, by law,” Berrye said. “Not while Charles and Anne live.”

  “No one knows Anne is alive, and Charles—they might make exception for Charles due to his nature. Robert might go farther. If he slew the father, he might well slay the son.”

  She stood and turned her back to Berrye. “Lady Berrye, would you do my fastenings?”

  “You still intend to attend court?”

  “I’m still thinking,” Muriele said.

  Berrye began latching the fastenings. Muriele could feel the girl’s breath on her hair. Her heartbeat seemed to slow, and an odd calm settled as a plan began sorting itself out.

  “You know the passages,” Muriele said, as Berrye latched the third hook. “Do you know the way out of the city?”

  “The long passage that goes under the wall? The one that can be filled with water?”

  “That is the only one I know,” Muriele replied.

  “I know where it is,” Berrye said. “I’ve never been there.”

  “But you’re certain you can find it.”

  “I studied the plans of this castle at my coven. So far I’ve found no error in them.” She fastened the last catch and the collar.

  “Good.”


  Muriele strode to her antechamber and summoned the guard outside the door.

  “Bring Sir Fail here immediately,” she said.

  The knight had taken up residence in Elseny’s chambers, which were just down the hall. He arrived a few moments later.

  “Sir Fail,” she said. “I need another favor of you.”

  “Whatever you require, Majesty.”

  “I need you to take Charles to Liery.”

  The old man’s mouth dropped open, and he stared at her for a moment. “What?” He finally managed.

  Muriele crossed her arms and regarded her uncle. “Prince Robert, as fate would have it, is not dead at all. He has returned, and I believe today he will seize the throne. I want my son kept safe, Sir Fail.”

  “I—surely we can stop him. He has no right—”

  “I will not risk that,” Muriele replied. She nodded at Alis Berrye. “You know this lady?”

  “Lady Berrye, yes.” He looked puzzled.

  “There is a safe way out of the castle, a secret way. She knows it, and will lead you out. You are to collect Charles and leave immediately. Leave me two escorts, and take the rest of your men in case there are enemies at your ship.”

  “But of course you’re going with us,” Fail said.

  “No, I’m not,” Muriele replied. “That is the favor I am asking, and there is no time to discuss it beyond a simple yes or no.”

  “Muriele—”

  “Please, Sir Fail. I’ve lost two of my daughters.”

  He straightened. “Then yes. But I will return for you.”

  “And you will have the rightful king behind you when you do,” Muriele told him. “Do you understand?”

  “I understand.” Fail’s eyes misted, and his head sagged. Sighing, she stepped forward and hugged him.

  “Thank you, Uncle Fail,” she said.

  He squeezed her arms. “Saints be with you, Meur,” he murmured.

  Berrye caught her arm. “I’ll be back, after I’ve shown them the way.”

  “No,” Muriele said. “Stay with them. Watch my son.”

  When they were gone, she returned to her armchair for half a bell, to give them time to get started. Then, taking a deep breath, she rose and left her rooms and marched down the corridor to where Sir Moris Lucas, captain of the Craftsmen, was housed.