The Charnel Prince

by Greg Keyes

  “What am I about to do?” Robert asked, showing a sudden anger. “Does the Queen Mother have the gift of reading the hearts and minds of others? Did a phay whisper in your ear? What is it you so impudently presume I am ‘about to do,’ Highness?

  “Take the throne for yourself,” she said.

  “Oh,” Robert said. “Oh, well, yes, I am going to do that.” He turned to the crowd. “Does anyone object?”

  No one did.

  “You see, Queen Mother, much as we all love Charles, there is no doubt that if he had half a wit, it would be half again what he has now. And as Duke Shale was trying to explain in his more elegant fashion, the court does not like your decisions or, in fact, you, my arrogant sister-in-law. You have made alliance with Liery, slaughtered honest landwaerden, refused the peace with Hansa, and today we’ve seen you insult the praifec, the Church, and everyone in this room. And accuse me baselessly of murder.

  “Meanwhile, our citizens are killed by basil-nix, we have an undeclared war with the forces of Hell on our marchlands, and will soon have a quite certainly declared one with Hansa. And you would object to my leadership because you prefer to cling to power through your poor, saint-touched son? It really is too much, Queen Mother.”

  Muriele did not feel the slightest flinch at his words. “I object to your leadership,” she said, “because you are a fratricide and worse.” She leaned forward and spoke very deliberately. “You know what you are, Robert. I know what you are. You murdered William, or arranged it. Probably my daughters, as well—and I think Lesbeth. You will not have the opportunity to kill my son.”

  His eyes flared with a weird rage when she said that, but she was sure only she could see it. Then his expression changed to chagrin. “Where is Charles?”

  “Safe from you.”

  He looked around. “Where is Sir Fail, and his guard? Where are the Craftsmen?”

  “I sent them away,” Muriele said. “They might otherwise have battled your usurpation, and I would not have blood spilled in these halls.”

  He glowered at her for a moment, then leaned in close.

  “That was very clever of you, Muriele,” he breathed. “I have underestimated you. Not that it will do you any good in the end.”

  He raised his voice and turned to the crowd. “Find His Majesty and take care not to harm him. Arrest his guard and arrest the Craftsmen. If they resist, kill them. As of now, I am assuming the regency of this kingdom and this empire. Tomorrow at this time we will hold court and discuss particulars.”

  Two of his guard had come up. “Take the Queen Mother to the Wolfcoat Tower. Make sure she is comfortable there.”

  As they led her away, Muriele wondered just how long she had left to live.

  Not surprisingly, Muriele had never been in the Wolfcoat Tower—Eslen Castle had thirty towers, all told, if one were liberal with the definition. There was no need for semantic laxity with the Wolfcoat—or more properly The Wolf-Coat’s. It leapt up sixty yards from the eastern side of the inner keep, tightening into a spire so sharp, it seemed a spear aimed at the heavens.

  Maybe it had been—Thiuzwald fram Reiksbaurg, “the Wolf-Coat,” had not been, as the histories recorded him, a humble or altogether sane man, and it had been commissioned by him. Later in the same year it was finished, the Wolf-Coat lay dying in the Hall of Doves, struck down by William I, the first of her husband’s line to rule Crotheny.

  Now she found herself imprisoned there. Robert probably thought he was being subtle.

  He had meant what he had said about making her comfortable, however. Within a few bells the dusty stone apartments had been furnished with bed, armchair, stools, rugs, and the like, though it was notable that none were from her own quarters.

  She had a view, as well. Her rooms were about three-quarters up the edifice and boasted two narrow windows. From one she could see the rooftops and plazas of the southern half of the city, a slice of Eslen-of-Shadows, and the marshy rinns. The other faced east, giving her a magnificent view of the confluence of the Warlock and Dew rivers.

  Comfortable or not, view or not, she was trapped in a prison. The walls of the tower were sheer and smooth. Guards were stationed outside her door—Robert’s guards—and the door was securely locked from the outside. From there it was perhaps two hundred steps down a narrow stairwell, past an entire garrison of guards, to reach the inner keep. She imagined it was time to start growing her hair out.

  Deciding to ration a view that with time would grow wearisome, she sighed and settled into her armchair to think, but found there was little to think about. She had done what she could, and any further decisions had been removed from her, except perhaps the decision to end her own life, which she had no intention of making. If Robert wanted her dead, he would have to do it himself, or at least give the order.

  She heard the outer anteroom door open, then close. There followed a gentle knock on her inner door.

  “Enter,” she said, wondering what new confrontation had come to her.

  The door swung open, revealing a woman she knew.

  “Alis Berrye at your service, Queen Mother,” she said. “I’m to be your maid.”

  Fear thrilled through Muriele, and once again it felt as if the floor she had trusted was gone.

  “You came back,” Muriele said, her tongue feeling like the clapper of a lead ball. She was tired of this game. “Is my son captured? Is he dead?”

  “No, Majesty,” Berrye said in a lower voice. “All went as you planned.”

  “Don’t torture me,” Muriele entreated. “Robert has everything now. There cannot be anything he wants except my torture. Unless you hate me for some reason, just tell me the truth.”

  Berrye knelt before her, took her hand, and kissed it. “It is the truth. I don’t blame you for doubting, but I saw the ship sail. You took the prince completely by surprise.”

  “Then how is it you are here?” Muriele asked.

  “You needed a maid. Prince Robert picked me.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I suggested it. After he sent you up here, I heard him wondering aloud what servant he could find for you that would most annoy. I chose that moment to wish him congratulations, and he laughed. A few moments later I was on my way here. He didn’t know, you see.”

  “You were in the court?”

  “I had reached it only just as you were removed—I missed your cataloguing of the praifec’s offenses, though I wish I hadn’t. There was much discussion of it.”

  “This is true, not some trick?”

  “I am locked in here, just as Your Majesty is. I have no more freedom than you, for Robert would never risk even the possibility that we might grow friendly.”

  “If what you say is genuine,” Muriele said, “if you really have determined to help me, then why are you here? You might have done me more good outside.”

  “I considered that, Your Majesty, but out there I can’t protect you. If you are murdered, any intelligence I gather will be worthless. Here there are a thousand subtle ways they might kill you. I can detect and counteract at least some of them. And who knows, perhaps I will be granted some limited movement, if we act the part of raging hatred when the guards are within earshot.”

  “I asked you to protect my son,” Muriele reminded her.

  “He has protectors,” Berrye explained. “You do not.”

  Muriele sighed. “You’re as willful as Erren was,” she half complained, “and it’s done now. I don’t suppose you know if there are any hidden passages in this tower?”

  “I think there are not,” Berrye said. “It shouldn’t prevent us from searching, but I don’t remember any from the diagrams.” She paused. “By the by, I think it must have been Prince Robert himself in your chambers that night.”

  “From what do you conclude that?”

  “Why didn’t he just put you in your own chambers?” she asked. “He could just as easily have kept you guarded there, and it is the more usual way of the doing these th
ings. Why put you all the way over here, farther from his sight and control?”

  “It’s a symbol,” Muriele said. “The last Reiksbaurg to rule Crotheny built this place.”

  “I think he knows about the passages,” Berrye disagreed. “I think he knows you could escape your own rooms. And that is very peculiar, Your Majesty. Very peculiar indeed.”

  “I don’t see why,” Muriele said. “It’s a wonder everyone doesn’t know about them by now.”

  Berrye laughed. “It is a wonder, Your Majesty, and more specifically a glamour. Men cannot remember the passages.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they can be shown them, they can even walk in them—but a day later they will have forgotten them. Most women, too, for that matter. Only those with the mark of Saint Cer, or the lady I serve, can remember them for any length of time—we and those we choose to give the sight. Erren must have chosen you—but she could not have chosen a man.”

  “Then Sir Fail won’t remember how he escaped the castle?” Muriele asked.

  “No, he won’t. Nor will his men, or Charles. It is a very old and very powerful charm.”

  “But you think Robert remembers?”

  “It is one explanation for why he moved you. The only one I can presently discern.”

  “Robert is a highly suspicious man, as you recently pointed out,” Muriele said. “He may have merely feared that I would have some way to escape.”

  Berrye shook her head. “There’s more. The key—who else would want the key to the chamber of the Kept? And the cruelty done the Keeper very much suggests Robert.”

  “That’s two good points,” Muriele admitted. “But if you’re right, then he’s somehow immune to the spell.”

  Berrye nodded. Her face drew up almost with a look of pain, as if she had bitten her tongue.

  “He isn’t normal,” Berrye said. “There’s something unnatural about him.”

  “This I know,” Muriele said. “I have known it for a long time.”

  “No,” Berrye averred, “this is something new. Some quality about him that was not there before. My coven-sight aches when I look at him. And the smell—like something that is rotting.”

  “I didn’t notice a smell,” Muriele said, “and I was near him.”

  “The scent is there.” She folded her hands together and gripped them into a fist. “You said the Kept gave you a curse—a curse against whomever killed your husband and children.”

  “Yes.”

  Berrye nodded. “And you carried it through.”

  “Yes. Do you think Robert is cursed?”

  “Oh, certainly,” Berrye responded. “That is part of what I sense, though not the whole of it. But what sort of curse was it? What was it supposed to do?”

  “I’m not sure,” Muriele admitted. “The Kept told me what to write, but the cantation was in a language I did not recognize. I wrote it on a lead sheet and put it in a sarcophagus below the horz in Eslen-of-Shadows.”

  “Below the horz?”

  “Underneath it, actually. It was very peculiar—I don’t think anyone knew it was there. The entrance to it was far in the back, where the growth is thickest. I was forced to crawl on hands and knees to find it.”

  Berrye leaned forward and spoke urgently. “Do you know whose tomb it was?”

  “No, I’ve no idea,” Muriele said.

  “The cantation—do you remember any of the words? Do you know what saint they were addressed to?”

  “The words themselves were too strange. The saint was one I’ve never heard of, Mary-something.”

  Berry’s lips parted, and then she put one hand to her mouth.

  “Marhirheben?” she said, and her voice quavered.

  “That sounds right,” Muriele said. “There were several h’s in the name, I remember. I remember wondering how it could be pronounced.”

  “Holy saints,” Berrye said weakly.

  “What did I do?”

  “I—” she trailed off. She seemed terrified.

  “What did I do?” Muriele insisted.

  “I can’t be sure,” she said. “But nothing can prevent that curse, do you understand? Nothing at all.”

  “I don’t understand,” Muriele said. “You say Robert is cursed. From my point of view there’s nothing wrong with that—it’s precisely what I wanted.”

  “If you cursed a man in Her name, Majesty, nothing could save him from it, not even death. And if he was already dead when you cursed him . . .” She looked down at the floor.

  “It would bring him back?” Muriele asked, unbelieving.

  “It would bring him back,” she confirmed. “And there is something about the prince that feels—dead.”

  Muriele put her forehead in her palms. “These things, they are not real,” she said. “They cannot be.”

  “Oh, they are very real, Majesty,” Berrye assured her.

  Muriele looked back up at her. “But why do you suspect that Robert died? After all, it was his plan to assassinate William.”

  “Plans go wrong. William had faithful men with him, and there was a fight. In any case, there were plenty of people who hated Robert enough to kill him—and he was absent from the court for an awfully long time.”

  “This is still conjecture,” Muriele said.

  “It is,” Berrye said. “But it would explain other things I have heard about. Terrible, unnatural things that ought not to be.”

  “I only cursed Robert—”

  Berrye shook her head violently. “Majesty, if he came back from the dead, you have done more than curse one man. You have broken the law of death itself, and that is a very bad thing indeed.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A CHANGE OF PATRONS

  PLEASE,” LEOFF BEGGED THE soldier, “can’t you tell me what’s happened, what I’m supposed to have done?”

  “Don’t know,” the soldier said. He was a short fellow with a puffy red face and an unpleasant nasal voice. “Word was left at the gate to grab you if you turned up—and you turned up. That’s all I know. So just keep moving and don’t make my life difficult with a lot of questions I can’t answer.”

  Leoff swallowed, but resigned himself to waiting.

  They were in a part of the castle he hadn’t been in before—not that that was a surprise, because he hadn’t seen most of the castle. They’d already passed the court, so they weren’t going there. They went down a long hall with high arches and a red marble floor, then into a large room of alabaster. Light streamed in from broad windows trimmed with pale green and gold drapes. The rugs and tapestries were done in similar colors.

  When he saw the men who waited in the room, he felt his scalp prickle, and his heart jerked erratically.

  “Fralet Akenzal,” one of the men said, “or shall I call you cavaor?”

  Leoff did not know the face, but he knew the disharmonic voice instantly. It was the man from the dike; the one Mery had said was Prince Robert.

  “I—I’m sorry, my lord,” Leoff stuttered, bowing. “I don’t know how to address you.”

  The other man, of course, was the praifec. “You would not know Prince Robert,” he said, “but he is now your regent. You may refer to him as ‘Your Highness’ or ‘my Prince.’ ”

  Leoff bowed again, hoping the shaking in his legs wasn’t visible. Did they know that he had heard them, somehow? Did they know?

  “It is my great honor to meet you, Your Highness,” he said.

  “And mine to meet you, Fralet Ackenzal. I hear you performed a great service for our country in my absence.”

  “It was nothing, my Prince.”

  “And I’ve also heard that you’re excessively modest, a trait I’ve little understanding of.” He stood and put his hands behind his back. “I’m glad you’re well, though I see you’ve been injured.” He pointed at the bandage on Leoff’s head. “You were at the lady Gramme’s ball, were you not?”

  “I was indeed, Your Highness.”

  “A tragic thing, that,�
�� the prince opined. “It won’t happen again.”

  “My Prince, if I may ask, has something happened to His Majesty?”

  The regent smiled an unpleasant little smile. “I did not have you brought here, Fralet Ackenzal, so that you could question me. You will understand the situation in due course. What I would like to know at the moment is where you have been.”

  “Wh-where I have been, Your Highness?” Leoff stammered.

  “Indeed. You were nowhere to be found when the smoke cleared at Lady Gramme’s and now, five days later, you suddenly reappear at the gates of the city.”

  Leoff nodded. “Yes, Sire. As you might expect, I was frightened and disoriented. My head injury made me dizzy, and I became quite lost in the dark. I wandered until I collapsed. A farmer found me and took care of me until I was able to travel.”

  “I see. And you were alone, when this farmer found you?”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  The prince nodded. “You know the lady Gramme’s daughter, Mery, I believe? You were instructing her in the playing of the hammarharp?”

  “I was, my Prince.”

  “You did not see her at the ball?”

  “No, Sire. I wasn’t aware that she was there.”

  The prince smiled and scratched his goatee. “She was, and now no one can find her. An attempt was made to kill the lady Gramme and her son when they were in the queen mother’s custody, so we fear the worst.”

  Leoff tried to look upset. It wasn’t difficult. “I pray nothing has happened to her,” he said. “She is a wonderful child and a gifted musician.”

  The prince nodded. “I had hoped you knew something of her whereabouts.”

  “I’m sorry, my Prince.”

  The regent shrugged. “How did you escape from the manse? The entrances were well guarded.”

  “I don’t remember, Sire,” Leoff said. “I was very confused.”

  “Ah,” the prince said. “Ah.” He crossed the room, settled into an armchair, and snapped his fingers. A steward immediately brought him a cup of wine.