The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [165]
“I don’t see why,” Muriele said. “It’s a wonder everyone doesn’t know about them by now.”
Berrye laughed. “It is a wonder, Your Majesty, and more specifically a glamour. Men cannot remember the passages.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they can be shown them, they can even walk in them—but a day later they will have forgotten them. Most women, too, for that matter. Only those with the mark of Saint Cer, or the lady I serve, can remember them for any length of time—we and those we choose to give the sight. Erren must have chosen you—but she could not have chosen a man.”
“Then Sir Fail won’t remember how he escaped the castle?” Muriele asked.
“No, he won’t. Nor will his men, or Charles. It is a very old and very powerful charm.”
“But you think Robert remembers?”
“It is one explanation for why he moved you. The only one I can presently discern.”
“Robert is a highly suspicious man, as you recently pointed out,” Muriele said. “He may have merely feared that I would have some way to escape.”
Berrye shook her head. “There’s more. The key—who else would want the key to the chamber of the Kept? And the cruelty done the Keeper very much suggests Robert.”
“That’s two good points,” Muriele admitted. “But if you’re right, then he’s somehow immune to the spell.”
Berrye nodded. Her face drew up almost with a look of pain, as if she had bitten her tongue.
“He isn’t normal,” Berrye said. “There’s something unnatural about him.”
“This I know,” Muriele said. “I have known it for a long time.”
“No,” Berrye averred, “this is something new. Some quality about him that was not there before. My coven-sight aches when I look at him. And the smell—like something that is rotting.”
“I didn’t notice a smell,” Muriele said, “and I was near him.”
“The scent is there.” She folded her hands together and gripped them into a fist. “You said the Kept gave you a curse—a curse against whomever killed your husband and children.”
“Yes.”
Berrye nodded. “And you carried it through.”
“Yes. Do you think Robert is cursed?”
“Oh, certainly,” Berrye responded. “That is part of what I sense, though not the whole of it. But what sort of curse was it? What was it supposed to do?”
“I’m not sure,” Muriele admitted. “The Kept told me what to write, but the cantation was in a language I did not recognize. I wrote it on a lead sheet and put it in a sarcophagus below the horz in Eslen-of-Shadows.”
“Below the horz?”
“Underneath it, actually. It was very peculiar—I don’t think anyone knew it was there. The entrance to it was far in the back, where the growth is thickest. I was forced to crawl on hands and knees to find it.”
Berrye leaned forward and spoke urgently. “Do you know whose tomb it was?”
“No, I’ve no idea,” Muriele said.
“The cantation—do you remember any of the words? Do you know what saint they were addressed to?”
“The words themselves were too strange. The saint was one I’ve never heard of, Mary-something.”
Berry’s lips parted, and then she put one hand to her mouth.
“Marhirheben?” she said, and her voice quavered.
“That sounds right,” Muriele said. “There were several h’s in the name, I remember. I remember wondering how it could be pronounced.”
“Holy saints,” Berrye said weakly.
“What did I do?”
“I—” she trailed off. She seemed terrified.
“What did I do?” Muriele insisted.
“I can’t be sure,” she said. “But nothing can prevent that curse, do you understand? Nothing at all.”
“I don’t understand,” Muriele said. “You say Robert is cursed. From my point of view there’s nothing wrong with that—it’s precisely what I wanted.”
“If you cursed a man in Her name, Majesty, nothing could save him from it, not even death. And if he was already dead when you cursed him . . .” She looked down at the floor.
“It would bring him back?” Muriele asked, unbelieving.
“It would bring him back,” she confirmed. “And there is something about the prince that feels—dead.”
Muriele put her forehead in her palms. “These things, they are not real,” she said. “They cannot be.