Выбрать главу

They fled to chase after Accerese. It was the chancellor who found and followed the fugitive’s trail to the postern and down to the water’s edge, the company of guardsmen in his wake. “Thus it ends,” sighed the Captain of the Guard. “None could swim that moat and live.”

But Rebozo glanced back fearfully at the keep, as if hearing some command that the others could not. ‘Take the hound into the boat,“ he ordered. ”Search the other bank.“

They went, quaking, and the dog had to be held tightly, its muzzle bound, for it squirmed and writhed, fearing the smell of the monsters. Several of them lifted huge eyes above the water, hut Rebozo muttered a charm and pointed at each with his wand. The great eyes closed, the scaly bulges slid beneath the oily, stagnant fluid-and the boat came to shore. Wild-eyed, the dog sprang free and would have fled, but the soldiers cuffed it quiet and, as it whined, cringing, made it smell again the feed bag that held Accerese’s scent. It began to quest here and there about the bank, gaining vigor as it moved farther from the water. Its keeper cursed and raised a fist to club it, but Rebozo stayed his hand. “Let it course,” he said. “Give it time.”

Even as he finished, the dog lifted its head with a howl of tri­umph. Off it went after the scent, nearly jerking the keeper’s arm out of its socket, so eager was it to get away from that fell and foul moat. Rebozo shouted commands, and half a dozen soldiers ran off after the hound and its keeper, while a dozen more came riding across the drawbridge with the rest of the pack, led by a minor sorcerer in charcoal robes. Down the talus slope they thundered, away over the plain, catching up with the lead hound, and the whole pack belled as they followed the trace into the woods. They searched all that day and into the night, Rebozo ordering their efforts, Rebozo calling for the dogs, Rebozo leading the guardsmen. It was a long chase and a dark one, for Accerese had the good sense to keep moving, to resist the urge to sleep-or perhaps it was fear itself that kept him going. He doubled back, he waded a hundred yards through a stream, he took to trees and went from branch to branch-but where the hounds could not find his scent, sorcery could, and in the end they brought Accerese, bruised and bleeding, back to the chancellor, who nodded, eyes glowing even as he said, “Put him to the question!”

“No, no!” Accerese screamed, and went on screaming even as they hauled him down to the torture chamber, even as they strapped him to the rack-where the screaming turned quickly into hoarse bellows of agony and fear. Rebozo stood there behind his king, watching and trembling as Maledicto shouted, “Why did you slay my son?”

“I did not! I did never!”

“More,” King Maledicto snapped, and Rebozo, trembling and wide-eyed, nodded to the torturer, who grinned and pressed down with the glowing iron. Accerese screamed and screamed, and fi­nally could turn the sound into words. “I only found him there, I did not kill… AIEEEE!”

“Confess!” the king roared. “We know you did it-why do you deny it?”

“Confess,” Rebozo pleaded, “and the agony will end.”

“But I did not do it!” Accerese wailed. “I only found him… YAAHHHH!”

So it went, on and on, until finally, exhausted and spent, Accerese told them what they wanted to hear. “Yes, yes! I did it, I stole the dagger and slew him, anything, anything! Only let the pain stop!”

“Let the torture continue,” Maledicto commanded, and watched with grim satisfaction as the groom howled and bucked and writhed, listened with glowing eyes as the screams alternated with begging and pleading, shivered with pleasure as the cracked and fading voice still tried to shriek its agony-but when the broken, bleeding body began to gibber and call upon the name of God, Maledicto snarled, “Kill it!”

The blade swung down, and Accerese’s agony was over. King Maledicto stood, glaring down at the remains with fierce elation-then suddenly turned somber. His brows drew down, his face wrinkled into lines of gloom. He turned away, thunderous and brooding. Rebozo stared after him, astounded, then hurried af­ter. When he had seen his royal master slam the door of his private chamber behind him, when his loud-voiced queries brought forth only snarls of rage and demands to go away, Rebozo turned and went with a sigh. There was still another member of the royal family who had to be told about all this. Not Maledicto’s wife, for she had been slain for an adultery she had never committed; not the prince’s wife, for she had died in childbirth; but the prince’s son, Maledicto’s grandson, who was now the heir apparent. Rebozo went to his chambers in a wing on the far side of the castle. There he composed himself, steadying his breathing and striving for the proper combination of sympathy and sternness, of gentleness and gravity. When he thought he had the tone and expression right, he went to tell the boy that he was an orphan. Prince Boncorro wept, of course. He was only ten and could not understand. “But why? Why? Why would God take my father? He was so good, he tried so hard to do what God wanted!”

Rebozo winced, but found words anyway. “There was work for him in Heaven.”

“But there is work for him here, too! Big work, lots of work, and surely it is work that is important to God! Didn’t God think he could do it? Didn’t he try hard enough?”

What could Rebozo say? “Perhaps not, your Highness. Kings must do many things that would be sins, if common folk did them.”

“What manner of things?” The tears dried on the instant, and the little prince glared up at Rebozo as if the man himself were guilty. “Why… killing,” said Rebozo. “Executing, I mean. Executing men who have done horrible, vicious things, such as murdering other people-and who might do them again, if the king let them live. And killing other men, in battle. A king must command such things, Highness, even if he does not do them himself.”

“So.” Boncorro fixed the chancellor with a stare that the old man found very disconcerting. “You mean that my father was too good, too kind, too gentle to be a king?”

Rebozo shrugged and waved a hand in a futile gesture. “I cannot say, Highness. No man can understand these matters-they beyond us.”

The look on the little prince’s face plainly denied the idea- denied it with scorn, too. Rebozo hurried on. “For now, though, your grandfather is in a horrible temper. He has punished the man who murdered your father…”

“Punished?” Prince Boncorro stared. “They caught the man? Why did he do it?”

“Who knows, Highness?” Rebozo said, like a man near the end of his fortitude. “Envy, passion, madness-your grandfather did not wait to hear the reason. The murderer is dead. What else matters?”

“A great deal,” Boncorro said, “to a prince who wishes to live.”

There was something chilling about the way he said it-he seemed so mature, so far beyond his years. But then, an experience like this would mature a boy-instantly. “If you wish to live, Highness,” Rebozo said softly, “it were better if you were not in the castle for some months. Your grandfather has been in a ferocious temper, and now is suddenly sunken in gloom. I cannot guess what he may do next.”

“You do not mean that he is mad!”

“I do not think so,” Rebozo said slowly, “but I do not know. I would feel far safer, your Highness, if you were to go into hid­ing.”

“But… where?” Boncorro looked about him, suddenly help­less and vulnerable. “Where could 1 go?”