The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [28]
“And lost again.”
“Can you tell me where she is?”
“No.”
“There, then,” Fend said. “The others lost her—they can find her again.”
“You had the queen in your grasp and did not kill her,” Pavel said.
“Yes, yes,” Fend replied. “It seems someone is always reminding me of that. An old friend of mine showed up and put something of a damper on the whole business. But as I understand it, the queen is not as important as Anne.”
“She is important—and have no fear, she will die. Your failure there will cost you little. And you are correct in one thing—the daughter is everything, so far as your master is concerned.”
For the first time, Fend seemed surprised. “I wouldn’t call him a master—you know whom I serve?”
“He came to me once, long ago, and now I smell him on you.” The woman lifted her chin, as did Pavel, in grotesque parody.
“Is the war begun?” the corpse asked.
“How is it you know so much concerning certain matters and nothing concerning others?”
“I know much of the large, but little of the small,” Pavel said, and chuckled at the word play. Behind him, the woman just stood there, but Anshar could see her eyes now, a startling violet color.
“I can see the sweep of the river, but not eddies and currents, not the ships upon it or the leaves following it seaward. Your words supply me with that. You say one thing, and I see those things connected to it—and thus I learn the small things. Now. Has the war begun yet?”
“Not yet,” he replied, “but soon, I’m told. A few more pieces are moving into place. Not really my focus, that.”
“What is your focus, Fend? What did you really come here to discover?”
“They say you are the mother of monsters, O Sarnwood Witch. Is it true?”
“The very earth is pregnant with monsters. What do you seek?”
Fend’s smile spread, and Anshar felt an involuntary chill. When Fend answered her, he felt another, deeper one.
CHAPTER SIX
THE EYES OF ASH
IT WAS ONLY MOMENTS before smoke started boiling up through the stairwell and the crackling of flame rose over all other noises. The floor began to heat, and Leoff realized that if the malend were an oven, he was just where the bread ought to be.
He went to the window, wondering if the fall would break his leg, but jerked his head back when he saw two figures watching the malend burn, their faces ruddy in the light spilling from the door.
The brief glimpse he got wasn’t reassuring. One of them was nearly a giant, and Leoff could see the glint of steel in both their hands. They hadn’t searched the malend—they were letting the fire do it for them.
“Poor Gilmer,” he murmured. They had probably killed the little man in his sleep.
Which would probably be an easier fate than what lay in store for Leoff. It was already getting difficult to breathe. The flame was climbing for him, but the smoke would surely find him first.
He couldn’t go down; he couldn’t go out the window. That left only up, if he wanted to live even another few moments.
He found the ladder and climbed it to the next level. It was already smoky there, too, but not nearly so much as the level he had just left.
And it was dark, very dark. He could hear the gears working again, and something squeaking nearby. He must be in the machinery of the thing now.
He found the final ladder and went up it with trembling care. He had an image of getting a hand—or worse, his head—caught in an unseen cog.
The final floor wasn’t very smoky at all. He faintly made out a window and went to it hopefully. But they were still down there, and now the drop was ridiculous.
Trying to calm himself, Leoff felt around in the dark, and nearly shrieked when he touched something moving. He caught himself as he realized it was a vertical beam, turning—probably the central shaft that drove the pump.
Except that the shaft he’d seen on the first floor wasn’t rotating; it was moving up and down. The motion must be translated somehow on the floor just below.
That still didn’t seem right. The axis of the—what had Gilmer called it? The big veined spokes? Saglwic. Their