The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [150]
“Well, it is a very old trinity,” he said. “Even the saints break out in threes, that way—Saint Nod, Saint Oimo, and Saint Loy, for instance.”
“I’m not a queen,” Winna said. “I’m just a girl from Colbaely who’s gone off where she doesn’t belong.”
“That’s not true,” Stephen said.
“Well then where does she fit in?” she asked, jerking her nose toward Leshya.
“She doesn’t,” Stephen said. “She’s another Aspar, that’s what she is, and he won’t get a heart from her, nor she from him.”
“Aspar’s never much wanted a heart,” Winna said. “Maybe what he needs is a woman who’s more like him.”
“Doesn’t matter what he wants,” Stephen said. “Love doesn’t care what’s right, or good, or what anyone wants.”
“I know that all too well,” Winna said.
“Do you feel any better at all?”
“Maybe,” she said. “If I don’t, it’s not for lack of trying. Thank you, Stephen.”
They rode silently after that, and Stephen was glad, because he wasn’t sure he could defend Aspar much longer without breaking faith. He hadn’t lied—everything he’d said was true.
Including, unfortunately, the bit about love not caring what was right, or good, or what anyone wants.
Whitraff was there, but even at a distance it looked dead. The air was chill, yet not a single line of smoke traced the sky. No one was in the streets, and there was no sound that might come from man or woman.
Most of the villages and towns around the King’s Forest weren’t all that old—most, like Colbaely, had sprouted up in the last hundred years. The houses tended to be built of wood and the streets of dirt. Aspar remembered Whitraff as an old town—its narrow avenues were cobbles worn shiny by a hundred generations of boots and buskins. The heart of the town wasn’t large—about thirty houses huddled around the bell-tower square—but there had once been outlying farms to the east and stilt houses along the riverfront that went on for some way. It had always been a pretty lively place, for all of its small size, because it was the only river port south of Ever, which was a good twenty winding leagues downriver.
Now the outliers were ash, but the stone town still stood. Looking down on it from the hill above, Aspar noticed that the bell tower was missing. It was simply gone. In its place—on the mound where the tower had once stood—was the now all-too-familiar sight. A ring of death.
“Sceat,” he muttered.
“We’re too late,” Winna said.
“Far too late,” Leshya said. “This was done months ago, to judge by the burned homesteads.”
Aspar nodded. The dead scattered around the sedos looked to be mostly bone.
“Bad luck, that,” he said, “to build your town on the footprint of a Damned Saint.”
“I don’t see how you can joke about it,” Winna said. “All those people . . . I don’t see how you can joke about it.”
Aspar glanced at her. “I wasn’t joking,” he said softly. Lately it seemed impossible to say the right thing around Winna. “Anyway, maybe it’s not so bad as it looks. Maybe the rest of the townsfolk got away.” He turned to the Sefry. “This is a good position. You and Ehawk keep a watch from up here while we go down to have a look.”
“Suits me,” Leshya said.
They took the road in, and despite his words, it was as he’d feared. No one came out to greet them. The town was as quiet as its twin, Whitraff-of-Shadows, just upstream.
Of the people there was no sign.
Aspar dismounted in front of the River Cock, once the busiest tavern in the village.
“You two watch my back,” he told Stephen and Winna. “I’m taking a look in here.”
There wasn’t anyone inside, and there were no bodies, which wasn’t terribly surprising. But he did find that a roast on a spit had been allowed to burn to char, and one of the ale taps had been left open, so all the beer had drained out to form a still-sticky mass on the floor.
He went back out into the square.
“They left in a hurry,” he said. “There’s no blood, or signs of fighting.”
“The monks might have thrown the bodies into the river,” Winna suggested.
“They might have, or they might have gotten away. But here’s what I’m wondering