The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [144]
She approached the door and placed the tips of her fingers against it.
“This door requires two keys—the one that was taken from my room, and the Keeper’s. Beyond that door is another, through which no light may be brought. And there he is.”
“The last of the Skasloi,” Berrye said softly. “Still alive after all this time. I could never have imagined.”
“The Skasloi did not die natural deaths,” Muriele said. “They did not age as we do.”
“But why? Why keep such a thing alive?”
“Because it has knowledge,” Muriele said, “and sight beyond that of mortal men. For two thousand years, the kings of Crotheny have wrested advice from him.”
“Even the sisters of the coven don’t know about this,” Berrye said. “Surely the Church must not, or they would have had him killed.” Her eyebrows lifted a little. “You have spoken to it?”
Muriele nodded. “After William and my children were slain. I asked him how I could revenge myself on the murderers.”
“And he told you.”
“Yes.”
“Did it work?”
Muriele smiled bitterly. “I don’t know. I cursed whoever was behind the murders, but I do not know who he was. Therefore I do not know whether my curse succeeded. But I felt as if it worked. I felt something move, like a tumbler in a lock.”
“Curses are dangerous,” Berrye cautioned. “They send out ripples like a stone striking water. You can never know what your intent will result in.”
“Queeeeeen,” a voice scratched in Muriele’s head.
“He’s speaking to me,” Muriele murmured. “Can you hear him?”
“I don’t hear anything, Majesty,” Berrye said.
“Queeeen, stink of woman, stink of motherhood. Doors stand between us. Will you not come to me?”
“I cannot,” she said. “I do not have the key.”
Something like black laughter rattled in her skull. “No. He has it. The one you made.”
Muriele’s heart clenched like a fist in her chest.
“The one I made? What do you mean?”
“I sing of him, I sing and sing. When the world itself cracks, perhaps I will die.”
“Tell me,” she demanded. “Tell me who it is. You cannot lie to me.”
“You don’t have the key . . .” The voice soughed away, like a wind dying. Muriele’s last impression was of glee.
“Answer me,” she shrieked. “Quexqaneh, answer me!”
But the voice did not return, and by degrees, Muriele calmed herself.
“We have to find out who came here,” Muriele told Berrye. “We must know what he spoke to the Kept about, and I must have my key back.”
“I will do my best,” Berrye said. She sounded a little shaken, and looked very young. Muriele suddenly regretted sharing the secret of the Kept with her, but who else could help her? Sir Fail and his men would be of no help in matters of espionage. Berrye had proved that she had some facility in that area. Constrained as her choices were, telling Berrye was the only thing she could do.
And it was already done, now.
They left the dungeons. She returned to her rooms, summoned her personal physician to attend the Keeper, signed the order for the release of Gramme and her son, and retired early to bed.
Dreams of spiders and serpents and eyeless old men woke her every few hours.
The next day she prepared to hold court, as Berrye suggested. She had avoided it since the attempt on her life, but she couldn’t avoid it forever. So she had Charles dressed, and when Berrye was late, began dressing herself. She chose a gown of purple safnite with a stiff fan of lace around the collar and began working herself into it, though she knew she couldn’t do up the back. It occurred to her that she needed a new maid, but her grief over Unna was still fresh enough that she couldn’t bear the thought of choosing one. She thought she might assign Berrye to the task, and realized just how much she was already relying on the young woman.
She isn’t Erren, she reminded herself. She was your husband’s whore.
But there was something about her so like Erren, a certain confidence that could only come from coven training, that Muriele found herself slipping into old habits.
Old habits could