The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [23]
“The praifec has branded me heretic before the world. How can any work of mine be performed now?”
“You will be offered as proof of divine forgiveness and intercession, my friend. Where before you took your inspiration from the darkness, now you will take it from the light.”
“But that is a lie,” Leoff said.
“No,” Robert replied drily. “That is politics.”
Leoff hesitated slightly. “And the praifec will go along with this?”
“The praifec has his hands full,” Robert told him. “The empire, it seems, is a veritable hornet’s nest of heretics. You are lucky, Cavaor Leovigild. The gallows make a constant music of their own these days.”
Leoff nodded. “I hardly need you to repeat your threat, Your Majesty. I quite understood it the first time.”
“So it’s ‘Your Majesty’ again. I take it, then, that we’re getting somewhere.”
“I am at your mercy,” Leoff said. “I wonder if you have a subject for your commission.”
The king shook his head. “No, I haven’t. But I’ve seen your library, and it is stocked with popular tales of the region. I trust you will find some inspiration there.”
Leoff gathered his strength of will.
“One thing,” he said. “I will need helpmates, I grant you. But please show mercy and send Mery back to her mother and Areana back to her family.”
Robert stifled a yawn. “You were told they were dead, and you believed it. I could tell you I had sent them home, but how could you know it was true? In any case, I would rather you not convince yourself that you have made them safe. It might inspire you to some new foolish behavior. No, I would prefer you had their company, to steady you in your purpose.”
With that he rose, and Leoff knew the conversation had ended.
Shivering suddenly, he started toward his cot, anxious to close his eyes and lose himself once more in dreams. Instead he remembered Mery when he’d first met her, hiding in his music room, listening to him play and afraid that if her presence were known, he would send her out.
Instead of retreating to sleep, he turned his path and trudged wearily to the books the king had provided him, then began to read their titles.
THE MAN SCREAMED as the demon-woman plunged her clawed fingers into his chest, through the hard bone and tight skin to the soft, wet stuff beneath.
Anne tasted iron on her tongue as the spinning slowed, stilled, and centered. Her fear suddenly gone, she looked into the face of the monster.
“Do you know me?” the demon roared in a voice that burred through flesh and bone. “Do you know who I am?”
Light flashed behind Anne’s eyes. The earth seemed to tilt, and she was suddenly on horseback.
She was riding with Cazio once more. She remembered Austra gasping behind her and then a terrific stir.
Something struck her to the ground, and then a hard arm wrapped about her, lifting her forcefully into a saddle. She remembered the acrid smell of her abductor’s sweat, the gasp of his breath in her ear. The knife to her throat. She could only see his hand, which had a long white scar that ran from his wrist to the lowest knuckle of his little finger.
“Ride,” someone said. “We’ll deal with these.”
She remembered staring dully over the head of the horse, watching the rise and fall of the snowy forest floor, the trees blurring by like the columns of an endless hall.
“You sit still, Princess,” the man commanded. His voice was low and warm, not unpleasant at all. His accent was educated, slightly alien but unplaceable. “Sit still, give me no trouble, and things will go better for you.”
“You know who I am,” Anne said.
“Well, we knew it was one or the other of you. I reckon you just cleared it up, but we’ll be taking you to someone who knows your face to be sure. No matter, since we’ve got both.”
Austra, Anne thought. They’ve got you, too. That meant