The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [198]
“Then we still cannot.”
Lady Berrye shook her head. “You don’t understand. The key is to the main entrance and takes you to the antechamber outside his cell. Outside, you understand? So that he sits within the walls of ancient magicks. So that he can be controlled. Anne, we are in his cell.”
As she said it, the walls seemed to shift like vast coils, and Austra pinched the lamp out, plunging them into utter darkness.
“What?” Anne cried. “Austra?”
“He told me to—I wasn’t—I couldn’t—”
But then the voice was back, no longer whispering but shivering through the stone and into her bones.
“Your Majesty,” it said in a mocking tone. Anne felt acrid breath on her face, and the darkness began a slow, terrible spin.
LEOFF SMILED at the little flourish of notes Mery added to the normally staid and melancholy Triey for Saint Reusmier.
She had permission to do so—the triey form encouraged extemporaneous elaboration—but where most musicians would have added a doleful grace note or two, Mery instead offered a wistful yet essentially joyful reiteration of an earlier theme. Since the piece was a meditation on memory and forgetfulness, it was perfect despite its novelty.
When she was done, she glanced up at him, as always, for approval.
“Well done, Mery,” he said. “I’m amazed someone your age understands that composition so well.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, scratching the side of her nose.
“It’s about an old man thinking back to his youth,” Leoff expanded. “Remembering happier times, but often imperfectly.”
“Is that why the themes fragment?” she asked.
“Yes, and they’re never quite put together completely, are they? The ear is never quite satisfied.”
“That’s why I like it,” Mery said. “It’s not too simple.”
She shuffled the music on her stand.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“That may be the second act of Maersca,” he said. “Let me see.”
Suddenly his heart felt cast in lead.
“Here,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Give me that.”
“What is it?” Mery asked, glancing at the page. “I don’t understand. It’s mostly shifting chords. Where’s the melody line?”
“That’s not for you,” Leoff said with a good deal more force than he meant to.
“I’m sorry,” Mery said, drawing her shoulders in.
He found that he was breathing hard. Didn’t I put that away?
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault, Mery,” he said. “I shouldn’t have left it out. It’s something I started, but I’m not going to finish it. Don’t give it another thought.”
She looked pale.
“Mery,” he asked, “is anything wrong?”
She peered up at him with wide eyes.
“It’s sick,” she said. “The music—”
He knelt and clumsily took her hand with his maimed one. “Don’t think about it, then,” he said. “Don’t try to hear it in your head, or it will make you sick. Do you understand?”
She nodded, but there were tears in her eyes.
“Why would you write something like that?” she asked plaintively.
“Because I thought I had to,” he said. “But now I think maybe I don’t. I really can’t explain more than that. Do you understand?”
She nodded again.
“Now, why don’t we play something happier.”
“I wish you could play with me.”
“Well,” he said, “I can still sing. My voice was never extraordinary, but I can carry a tune.”
She clapped her hands. “What shall it be, then?”
He fumbled through the music on his desk.
“Here we go,” he said. “It’s from the second act of Maersca. It’s sort of an interlude, a comical side story to the main plot. The singer here is Droep, a young boy scheming to, ah, visit a girl at night.”
“Like my mother used to visit the king?”
“Umm, well, I wouldn’t know about that, Mery,” Leoff temporized. “Anyway, it’s nighttime, and he’s under her window, pretending to be a sea prince from a very distant land. He tells her he speaks with the fish of the sea, and he explains how word of her beauty has come to him under the waves and across the world.”
“I see it,” Mery said. “The bream tells the crab, and the crab tells the bluefin.”
“Exactly. And each has a little theme.