“You’re a prisoner, too?”
“Prisoner?” the voice murmured. “Yes, yes, that is one way to say it. I am prevented, that is, prevented from the thing that means the most to me.”
“And what is that?” Leoff asked.
“Revenge.” The voice was softer than ever, but now that Leoff was closer to the vent, it was very clear. “In my language we call it Lo Vide-icha. It is more than a word in my language—it is an entire philosophy. Tell me about the girl.”
“Her name is Mery. She is seven years of age. She has nut-brown hair and bright blue eyes. She was wearing a dark green gown today.”
“She is your daughter? Your niece?”
“No. She is my student.”
“But you love her,” the voice insisted.
“That is not your business,” Leoff said.
“Yes,” the man replied. “That would be a knife to give me, yes, if I were your enemy. But I think we are not enemies.”
“Who are you?”
“No, that is too familiar, don’t you see? Because it is a very long answer and is all in my heart.”
“How long have you been here?”
A harsh laugh followed, a small silence, then a confession. “I do not know,” he admitted. “Much of what I remember is suspect. So much pain, and without moon or sun or stars to keep the world below me. I have drifted very far, but the music brings me back. Do you have a lute, perhaps, or a chithara?”
“There is a lute in my cell, yes,” Leoff replied.
“Could you play something for me, then? Something to remind me of orange groves and water trickling from a clay pipe?”
“I can’t play anything,” Leoff said. “My hands have been destroyed.”
“Of course,” Hatred said. “That is your soul, your music, that is. So they struck at that. They missed, I think.”
“They missed,” Leoff agreed.
“They give you the instruments to taunt you. But why do they let the girl see you, do you think? Why do they give you a way to make music?”
“The prince wants me to do something,” Leoff replied. “He wants me to compose for him.”
“Will you?”
Leoff stepped back from the hole in the floor, suddenly suspicious. The voice could be anyone: Prince Robert, one of his agents, anyone. The usurper certainly knew how he had tricked Praifec Hespero. He wasn’t going to let such a thing happen again, was he?
“The wrongs done me were done by others,” he said finally. “The prince has commissioned music from me, and I will write it as best I can.”
There was a pause, then a dark chuckle from the other. “I see. You are a man of intelligence. Smart. I must think of a way to win your confidence, I think.”
“Why do you want my confidence?” Leoff asked.
“There is a song, a very old song from my country,” the fellow said. “I can try to make it into your language if you like.”
“If it pleases you.”
There was a bit of a pause, then the man began. The sound was jarring, and Leoff understood immediately what he was hearing: the voice of a man who had forgotten how to sing.
The words came haltingly but plain.
After the last line he chuckled. “We will speak again, Leffo,” he said. “For I am your malasono.”
“I don’t know that word,” Leoff said.
“I don’t know if your language has such a word,” the man said. “It is a conscience, the sort that leads you to do evil things to evil people. It is the spirit of Lo Videicha.”
“I have no word for that concept,” Leoff confirmed. “Nor do I wish one.”
But in the darkness, later, as his fingers longed for the hammarharp, he began to wonder.
Sighing, unable to sleep, he took up the strange book he’d been studying earlier and puzzled at it again. He fell asleep on it, and when he woke, something had fit together, and in a burst of epiphany he suddenly understood how he might be able to slay Prince Robert. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
But he would certainly do it, if he got the chance.
8
A Hard Choice
Aspar turned at Winna’s scream, just in time to watch as Stephen was pulled from the branch.
It seemed familiar somehow, and it happened slowly enough for Aspar to understand why. It was like a Sefry puppet play, a miniature of the world, unreal. At this distance Stephen’s face was no more expressive than that of a marionette carved of wood, and when he looked up at Aspar one last time, there was nothing there, only the dark spaces of his eyes, the round circle of his mouth.
Then he was gone.
Then another figure plunged through the frame, caricatured by distance as Stephen, a knife gleaming in his hand as he swung purposefully from the branch into the grove of raised arms and their five-petaled blooms.
Ehawk.
From somewhere near Aspar heard a raw scream of rage. Part of him wondered vaguely who it was, and it was only later, when he felt the soreness of his throat, that he realized it had been his own.
He started forward on his branch, but there was nothing he could do. Winna shrieked again, a sound that somewhat resembled the boy’s name. Aspar watched, his heart frozen, as Stephen’s face appeared once, streaked with blood, and then went back down in the mass.
Ehawk he didn’t see again. He aimed the bow, wondering what target to hit, what miracle shot could save his friends.
But the cold lump in his chest knew the truth: They were already dead.
Fury welled up in him. He shot, anyway, wanting to kill another of them, wishing he had enough arrows to slaughter them all. He didn’t care what they had been before the world went mad. Farmers, hunters, fathers, brothers, sisters—he didn’t care.
He looked at Winna, saw the tear-brimmed eyes, the utter helplessness that was mirror to his own. Her gaze pleaded for him to do something.
His survival instinct made him turn to use. his last few arrows on those slinders who still would be climbing up after them, but to his surprise he realized that they were gone. As he watched, the last of their attackers leapt from the tree, and like a wave retreating after it runs up a shingle, the mass of grotesque bodies flowed away into the twilight.
In but a few heartbeats, there was only the hushed sound of them retreating through the forest.
Aspar continued to crouch, staring after them. He felt incredibly tired, old, and lost.
“It’s snowing again,” Winna said sometime later.
Aspar acknowledged the truth of that with a little shrug.
“Aspar.”
“Yah.” He sighed. “Come on.”
He stood on his perch and helped her down. She wrapped her arms around him, and they clutched there for a few moments. He was aware of the two men-at-arms watching them, but for the moment he didn’t care. The warmth and the smell of her felt good. He remembered the first time she had kissed him, the confusion and the exhilaration, and he wanted to go back to that moment, back before things had become so confusing.
Before Stephen and Ehawk had died.
“Hello!” a voice called up from below.
Looking past Winna’s curling snow-damped locks, Aspar saw the knight Neil MeqVren. The Vitellian swordsman was standing with him and the girl Austra. An oblique black anger stirred. These three and the men-at-arms—they were almost strangers. Why should they be allowed to live when Stephen was torn limb from limb?