The Charnel Prince

by Greg Keyes

  “I’m not certain myself,” Anne said. “But I need your help, Sir Marcac.”

  “What is your command, Highness?”

  “Take these people down from those stakes, of course, and see that they are given care,” Anne said. “And arrest anyone not nailed to a pole or in my present company. Take control of Dunmrogh Castle, and arrest any clergy you find there, and keep that place until you have heard from Eslen.”

  “Of course, Your Highness. And what else?”

  “I’ll want horses, and provisions, and whatever armed men you can spare,” she replied. “And carry my wounded to a leic. By tomorrow’s sunrise, I ride to Eslen.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE CANDLE GROVE

  THE CANDLE GROVE WASN’T a grove, and though there were lanterns aplenty, there weren’t properly any candles. When Leoff had first heard the name for Eslen’s great gathering place, he’d imagined it to have been named in some ancient time, when bards sang beneath sacred trees in the fluttering light of tapers, but in his reading about its history he quickly saw the foolishness of that.

  The first Mannish language spoken in the city had been that of the Elder Cavarum, then the Vitellian of the Hegemony, Almannish supplanted at times by Lierish and Hanzish, and most lately, the king’s tongue. Areana called the place the Caondlgraef in her native tongue, and readily admitted she had no idea what it meant. It was just an “old name.”

  Still, whatever its origin, Leoff liked the appellation and the images it evoked of an older, simpler day.

  Structurally the Candle Grove was a curious hybrid of the ancient amptocombenus of the Hegemony, the wooden stages traveling actors threw up in town squares to perform their farces, and the Church pestels where the choir sang or performed in acts the lives of the saints. Carved into the living stone of the hill, it rose in semicircular levels, each tier being one long curving bench.

  A large balcony jutted out from the middle of the lowest three levels, forming a separate platform for the regals. There were two stages—one wooden and raised, with space beneath it for trapdoors through which actors and props could vanish and appear—and a lower, stone one where the musicians and singers were situated. The upper stage, following the usage of the Church, was called Bitreis, “The World,” and the lower stage was named Ambitreis, “Otherworld”.

  Those were the two worlds Praifec Hespero wanted to keep separate. He was going to be disappointed.

  Above both stages rose a half-hemisphere ceiling painted with moon and stars and appropriately called “The Heavens.” The royal seating was covered, too. Everyone else risked rain or snow.

  But the sky was clear tonight, and though it was chill, there was no dampness in the air.

  Around the Candle Grove—above the seats, stage, and even “Heaven”—stretched a broad green common, and since noon it had been a feast-ground. Leoff thought the whole city and many from the countryside must have been there—thousands of people. He himself had sat at a long table with the regent at one end and the praifec at the other, and between them the members of the Comven, dukes, grefts, and landwaerds.

  He’d made his excuses and come down early to make certain that all was ready. Now it was; the seats were filling with bodies and the air with the murmur of thousands of voices.

  Not since his first performance, at the age of six, had he felt such a trembling in his limbs and such profound unrest in his belly.

  He looked down at his musicians.

  “I know you can do it,” he told them. “I have faith in all of you. I only hope to deserve yours.”

  Edwyn raised the bow of his croth in salute, but most of them spared him only a quick glance, for they were furiously studying their music which was almost—but not quite—what they had been rehearsing.

  The praifec had monitored his rehearsals, of course, and approved them, because Leoff had rewritten the work to the churchman’s ridiculous specifications. The instrumental pieces were played as introduction to what the vocalists would sing, and then the vocals were done unaccompanied. He had added the material the praifec wanted, and cut parts he had written.

  But despite all that, this would not be the praifec’s performance. Tonight, the instruments and the players would sing together, and the modes and triads and chords would all be altered. And if what Leoff believed was true, after the first notes sounded, the praifec would be helpless to stop him.

  He gazed up at the royal box. The regent was there, of course, and most of the people who had been at his table. But there were two others. One was striking and unmistakable—Queen Muriele. He still thought of her that way despite the recent revision of her title. She wore a gown of black esken trimmed in seal-skin, and no crown or diadem ornamented her head.

  The other was a woman with soft chestnut hair, someone Leoff fancied he had seen at court once or twice. The two were surrounded by a block of the regent’s black-clad guards.

  “I thank the saints, Your Majesty,” he said under his breath, “that you should hear this.” He hoped she did not despise him for helping her enemies vilify her.

  The regent, Robert Dare, raised his hand to indicate that he was ready.

  Leoff made sure the musicians had his attention then set his fingers to the hammarharp and sounded a single note. The lead flageolet took it up, and then the bass vithuls, and finally all the instruments as they adjusted their tuning. When that was done, silence fell again.

  Fingers shaking, Leoff once more stretched his fingers toward the keyboard.

  “It is meant to be Broogh,” Muriele whispered to Alis as the musicians began tuning their instruments.

  “A very pretty stage,” Alis noticed.

  It was. It depicted a town square, overlooked by the bell tower in the rear, and a tavern on the left, with a shingle that read PAETER’S FATEM. The tavern was cleverly cut away so that one could see the facade, but also the inside of it. A new, small stage had been built some four yards or so above The World to represent an upper bedroom in the building.

  On the right side of the stage stood the famed bridge the town was named for, crossing a convincing canal along which dried flowers had been placed, dyed to resemble living ones. Behind all that, painted on canvas, were the long green fields and malends of Newland.

  As Muriele watched, a young man came out and sat upon the edge of the fountain in the square. He was dressed in the subdued wools of a landwaerden and orange sash of a windsmith, suggesting he’d recently been confirmed as one by the guild.

  The musicians had stopped tuning now.

  “Damned lot of vithuls and croths,” the Duke of Shale muttered, somewhere behind her. “I can’t see why all that is needed. Should make a dreadful racket.”

  As Muriele watched, the tiny figure of Leoff raised his hands above the hammarharp and brought them down.

  And such a sound rose as Muriele had never imagined, a swelling thunder of music with high clear notes ringing to the stars and low drone of bass like the deepest, most secret motions of the sea. It broke straight into her soul and enthroned itself. It was as if the most important thing in the world had been said.

  Yet despite the immense beauty and power of that chord, it was somehow incomplete—aching for resolution—and she knew she could not rest, never turn her eyes away, could never know peace until she heard it made perfect.

  “No,” she thought she heard the praifec say. But then she only heard the music.

  Leoff grinned fiercely as the first chord filled the half-bowl of the Candle Grove and spilled out into the night, a chord that no one had played in over a thousand years, the chord Mery had rediscovered for him in the shepherd’s song.

  That for your wishes, Praifec, he thought.

  Because now that he heard it, he knew no one, not the praifec, not the Fratrex Prismo himself, could stop him before it was done.

  The boy rose from where he sat at the fountain, and his voice suddenly soared with the instruments, as one with them. The language was Almannish, not the king’s tong
ue, which jarred just for an instant and then felt completely right.

  “Ih kann was is scaon,” he sang.

  I know what beauty is

  The wind from the west

  The far-going green

  The curlew’s song

  And her,

  And her . . .

  His name was Gilmer, and he sang of life, joy, and Lihta Rungsdautar, whom he loved. And as he did so a girl appeared from the tavern, young and beautiful. Muriele knew when she saw her that this was Lihta, for she had “tresses like sun on golden wheat” that the boy had just been describing. And then she, too, began to sing, another melody entirely, though it wound perfectly around his. They were as yet unaware of each other, but their songs danced together—for Lihta was as much in love with him as he with her. Indeed, this was they day they were to be wed, as Muriele learned when they finally did see one another and their duet became unison. The music quickened into a lively whervel, and they began dancing.

  As the two lovers stopped singing an older man came onstage, who turned out to be Lihta’s father, a boatwright, and he sang a song both comic and truly melancholy.

  “I’m losing a daughter and gaining a debt,” it began, and then out came his wife, chastising him for his stinginess, and they, too, sang a duet, just as the young couple began to repeat their song, and suddenly four voices were lifted in an intricate harmony that somehow opened like a book all the ages of love, from first blush through complex maturity to final embrace. Muriele relived her own marriage in a single moment that left her breathless and shaking.

  The aethil of the town joined them next, and townspeople arrived for a prenuptial feast and suddenly an entire chorus was joyfully serenading. It was utterly charming, and yet, even as that first act ended—with the sound of distant trumpets, and the aethil wondering aloud who else might that be coming to the feast—Muriele still longed for the resolution of the first chord.

  The music faded, but it did not die, as the players left the stage. A simple melody began, echoing the joyous one of the banquet, but now in a plaintive key, a vaguely frightening key. As it grew in volume, a palpable sense of unease moved from listener to listener. It made Muriele want to check her feet, to make sure no spiders were climbing her stockings.

  It made her very much aware of Robert.

  The second act began immediately with the arrival of Sir Remismund fram Wulthaurp, the music of his coming so dark and violent—with a skirling of pipes and menacing runs in the deep strings—that she clutched at the arms of her chair.

  She noticed with a strange delight that the player presenting Wulthaurp looked a great deal like her brother-in-law, Robert.

  The story unfolded relentlessly as the wedding banquet became a scene of dread. The props of stage—which before had been transparent as such—now seemed utterly real, as if the Candle Grove really hovered over the empty shell of Broogh, as if they were spying on the town’s ghosts, reenacting their tragedy.

  Sir Remismund was a renegade, chased from Hansa, seeking plunder and ransom where he could find it. He slaughtered the aethil in the street, and his men ran wild through the town. Remismund—on seeing Lihta—made advances, and when Gilmer protested, he was taken prisoner, to be hanged in the square at sunrise.

  Remismund, too proud to take Lihta by force, retired with his thugs to the tavern. And that was the end of the second act.

  And on went the music, without pause, pulling them all irrevocably with it. Even Robert, who must surely have understood what was happening, did nothing, which was more than remarkable.

  Muriele remembered her conversation with the composer, about why the Church forbade such compositions as this, about the powers of certain harmonies and intervals. And now she understood. He had ensorcelled them all, hadn’t he? It wasn’t simply like a spell, it was one. And yet it couldn’t be wrong any more than falling in love or revering beauty was wrong. If the composer was a shinecrafter, then there must be such a thing as good shinecrafting; for there was no evil in this.

  The third act began with a comic interlude in which one of Remismund’s men courted a tavern wench, to no avail. Then entered Remismund and his chief henchman, Razovil, the latter to take a letter for him. He dictated a dispatch addressed to the emperor, spelling in chilling terms how he would break open the dike and drown Newland if he was not paid a king’s ransom. Razovil wore robes that much resembled those of a praifec, and his beard and mustache strongly evoked Hespero. Razovil suggested constant amendments to the letter to put a fairer face on the demand, saying that the saints were much in favor of this enterprise and that the emperor was subservient to the saints. It was funny, the back and forth between the two evil men, but it was also disturbing.

  The tavern maid, having hidden when Remismund entered, heard the whole plot. After the scene, she fled the tavern to tell Lihta and her father the news. The word was sent out and the townsfolk gathered secretly to decide their course of action. Just as the meeting was about to take place, Razovil came looking for Lihta.

  To keep him from discovering their plotting, she went with him to meet Remismund, where the conqueror made another plea for her love, singing thus far the most beautiful song in the play.

  Mith aen Saela

  Unbindath thu thae thongen

  Af sa sarnbroon say wardath mean haert . . .

  With a glance,

  You loosen the bindings

  Of the hauberk which guards my heart.

  With a word,

  My fortress is taken

  And the towers crumble down

  With a kiss,

  I would make you my queen,

  And amend my evil ways

  Despite his earlier actions, he sounded deeply sincere, and Muriele thought perhaps that she had been mistaken about Remismund. Here was a man, not a monster. His earlier actions must have some justifiable explanation, if he could love and court so artlessly.

  Lihta told him she would consider his suit and left. As soon as she was gone, Remismund sniggered and sang aside to Razovil:

  How tender, how winningly guileless, gullible, foolish.

  One night of love, and I’m done with her.

  Then he and his churchish sycophant shared a laugh together, and the music became merry—and somehow demonic.

  That ended the third act, as the instruments throbbed almost away. Muriele found that for the first time since the play had begun, she felt slightly released—that she could speak if she wanted to. She glanced over at Robert.

  “I’m very much enjoying this play, Lord Regent,” she said. “My thanks for allowing me to attend.”

  Robert glared at her.

  “I think you misjudged my composer,” she added.

  Robert’s breath was coming a little hard, as if he had been trying to lift something too heavy. “It’s a meaningless farce,” he said. “A silly show of bravado.”

  “No,” Hespero averred, “it is a perfidious act of shinecraft.”

  “If you’re looking for shinecraft, amiable Praifec,” Muriele said, “you need look no further than our dear regent. Stab him with a blade, and you will see that he does not bleed, at least not the same stuff men do. I’ve come to think you quite selective in which diabolic forces you despise and which you cozy up to, Praifec Hespero.”

  “Hush, Muriele,” Robert snapped. “Hush before I have your tongue cut out.”

  “As you cut out the tongue of the Keeper?”

  Robert sighed and snapped his fingers, and suddenly a gag was forced into her mouth from behind. Once the first shock was passed, she did not deign to struggle. It was beneath her dignity.

  The praifec started to say something, and then the instruments began building a tower of melody to welcome Lihta back to the stage.

  The girl stood near the gaol where Gilmer was imprisoned and once again the two exchanged vows of love. Gilmer told her that he had heard the town would rise up at midnight. He spoke of his fears that they would all be killed, his frustration at not being a
ble to join them, and most of all the pain of never having her for wife. He begged her to flee the town before it was too late. The croths and vithuls lifted his heartache into the air and offered it to the very stars.

  Lihta followed his song with hers, and Muriele suddenly caught the echo of the tune that Ackenzal had played for her the first time she went to see him, the one that had brought such unwelcome and unaccustomed tears to her face. Now it brought the tantalizing sense that the final note was coming, the harmony that would at last release her from the first. But then the melody became unfamiliar again, as Lihta reminded Gilmer that his duty was her duty also. Suddenly they were singing the “Hymn of Saint Sabrina,” the saint who protects Newland, and a thousand voices suddenly joined the pair, for it was a song everyone in the audience knew. It was a mighty sound.

  The lovers parted with the hymn dying on the wind. But before exiting the stage, Lihta met the tavern girl again, who asked her where she was going.

  “To my wedding,” Lihta replied, and then she was gone.

  The tavern girl, distraught, took the news to Gilmer, who sang in anguish while the girl tried to comfort him.

  Then, unseen by them, Lihta reemerged, wearing her wedding gown of silvery Safnian brocade, the sum of her father’s fortune. As Gilmer wept, and the clouds gathered in the deep strings, Lihta went to Remismund. She met Razovil first, who made mock of her while at the same time suggesting several lascivious notions. Then she repaired upstairs, climbing slowly, stately, to Remismund’s room above.

  On seeing her, Remismund resumed his charming facade, told her he would bring her joy and riches, and then excused himself to set his guard on watch, as he was soon to be preoccupied.

  When he sang that, Muriele gasped through the rag in her mouth as she felt again Robert’s body upon her, his hands pushing up beneath her gown. Her gorge rose, and she feared she would vomit into the gag, but suddenly Alis’ hand reached and gripped hers tight. The terrible memory passed from visceral to merely unpleasant.