The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [172]
Leshya nodded. “The gaze of the equudscioh isn’t fatal, not like some sedhmhari, but its blood would infect us.” She cocked her head. “I wonder why it hasn’t infected you. Or why our priest here wasn’t as affected by its song as you two.”
“You know what it is?” Aspar said.
“Only from stories,” the Sefry replied.
“Do the stories explain how it could do that to us just by—by braying?” Aspar demanded. He still missed it, that sound, that perfect feeling. If he heard it again . . .
“There are certain musical notes and harmonies that can affect men so,” Stephen said. “It’s said the Black Jester created songs so powerful that entire armies ran on their own blades upon hearing them. He was inspired, they say, by a creature known as the ekhukh. In Almmanish the same beast is called a nicwer, in Lierish eq odche. I think in the king’s tongue it’s nix, if I remember my phay stories.”
“Fine, I know what it’s called in five languages now,” Aspar grouched. “What is it?”
Leshya closed her eyes and swayed unsteadily. “It’s one of the sedhmhari, as I told you. It isn’t dead, you know, or likely even dying. We should retreat to the hill if we’re to discuss this. And you need to clean the blood off you, for our sakes. Even if you have some sort of immunity, we do not.”
“Werlic,” Aspar said. “Let’s do that.”
They found that despite his injury, Ehawk had crawled halfway down the hill.
“The song,” the boy gasped. “What was that?”
Aspar left the others to explain while he went to wash.
He found a small brooh trickling down the hillside. He stripped off his leather cuirass and shirt and soaked them while he wiped his arm and face with a rag.
By the time he was done cleaning up, Winna and Leshya seemed to be feeling better.
When he approached, Leshya pointed down toward the river. “I saw it from up here, moving beneath the water. We should be able to see it if it emerges again.”
“Yah,” Aspar grunted. “That’s why you left your post.”
“I couldn’t shoot it from up here,” she argued. “Besides, Ehawk was still watching.”
“I’m not chastising,” Aspar said. “The three of us would be in its belly now if you hadn’t come along.”
“Why didn’t its song affect you?” Winna asked, a bit sharply.
“I’m Sefry,” Leshya rejoined. “Our ears are made differently.” She quirked an amused smile at Stephen. “I don’t care for Mannish music that much, either.”
Winna raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t pursue the matter.
Stephen did, however. “Still,” he remarked, “how could you have known it wouldn’t lure you as it did us?”
“I didn’t,” she said, “but it’s a good thing to know, isn’t it?”
Winna regarded the Sefry. “Thank you,” she said. “Thanks for saving our lives.”
Leshya shrugged. “I told you we were in this together.”
“So how do we kill it?” Aspar asked impatiently.
“I don’t think we do,” Stephen replied.
“How’s that?”
“We might be able to prick it to death, given time, but time is what we don’t have. This faneway must be nearly complete. Aspar, we have to stop them from finishing it.”
“But we have the instructions for the last fane,” Winna said.
“Yes,” Stephen said, “which only means they need to send a rider to Eslen to see the praifec. That gives us a little more time, but not until next month. The nicwer has lost its voice, and that’s its most dangerous weapon. We’ll have to leave it to the riverboaters to kill it.” He turned to Leshya. “You called it a sedhmhari. What did you mean by that? It’s a Sefry word?”
“Mother Gastya called the greffyn that,” Winna supplied.
Leshya’s eyes went round. “You spoke to Mother Gastya?” she said, clearly surprised. “I thought she was dead.”
Aspar remembered his last sight of the old woman, how she seemed to be nothing but bone. “Maybe she was,” Aspar said. “But that’s not far nor near.”
Leshya acquiesced to that with a twist of her mouth. “There is no true Sefry language,” she clarified. “We abandoned it long ago. Now we speak whatever the Mannish around us do, but we keep old words, too. Sedhmhari is an old word.