The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [36]
“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.
The seed in winter lies dreaming
Of the tree it will grow into
The Cat-Furred Worm
Longs for the butterfly it will become
The Tadpole twitches its tail
But desires tomorrow’s legs
I am hatred
But dream of being vengeance
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.
A SPAR 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