The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [5]
A look back showed their attackers already following.
Martyn reached over and took Ehawk by the shoulder. “News of this must reach the praifec. Do you understand? Praifec Hespero, in Eslen. It’s much for me to ask of you, but you must swear to do it.”
“Eslen? I can’t go to Eslen. It’s too far, and I don’t know the way.”
“You must. You must, Ehawk. I lay it as a dying geos on you.”
Several of their pursuers splashed into the stream, swimming clumsily.
“Go with me,” Ehawk desperately begged. “I cannot do it without you.”
“I’ll follow if I can, but I must hold them here, and you must ride as hard as that horse will take you. Here.” He detached a pouch from his belt and thrust it into Ehawk’s hand. “There’s coin there, not much. Spend it wisely. Within is also a letter with a seal. That will get you before the praifec. Tell him what we’ve seen here. Do not fail. Now go!”
Then he had to turn to meet the first of the madmen emerging from the stream. He split the fellow’s skull like a melon, then shifted his footing and prepared to meet the next.
“Go!” he shouted, without looking back. “Or we all have died in vain.”
Something snapped in Ehawk then, and he spurred his horse and rode until the mare stumbled in exhaustion. Even then, he did not stop, but kept the poor beast at what pace it could maintain. Sobs tore from his chest until it ached, and then the stars came out.
He rode always west, for he knew it was somewhere in that direction that Eslen lay.
PART I
SHADOW DAYS
The Year 2,223 of Everon
The Month of Novmen
The last day of Otavmen is the day of Saint Temnos. The first six days in Novmen are, in their turn, Saint Dun, Saint Under, Saint Shade, Saint Mefitis, Saint Gavriel, and Saint Halaqin. Taken together, these are the Shadow Days, where the World of the Quick meets the World of the Dead.
—FROM THE ALMANACK OF PRESSON MANTEO
And after twelve long months he grieved
His lover’s ghost rose from the deep
What do you want from me my love
That troubles my eternal sleep?
I want a kiss, oh love of mine
A single kiss from thee
And then I’ll trouble you no more
I’ll let you sleep in peace
My breath is ice and sea my love
My lips are cold as clay
And if you kiss my salt wet lips
You’ll never live another day
—FROM “THE DROWNED LOVER,” A FOLK SONG OF VIRGENYA
He shall be cursed to live, and thus bring ruin to life.
—TRANSLATED FROM THE Tafles Taceis OR Book of Murmurs
CHAPTER ONE
THE NIGHT
NEIL MEQVREN RODE WITH his queen down a dark street in the city of the dead. The tattoo of their horses’ hooves was drowned by hail shattering on lead cobbles. The wind was a dragon heaving its misty coils and lashing its wet tail. Ghosts began to stir, and beneath Neil’s burnished breastplate, beneath his chilled skin and cage of bone, worry clenched.
He did not mind the wind or frozen rain. His homeland was Skern, where the frost and the sea and the clouds were all the same, where ice and pain were the simplest facts of life. The dead did not bother him either.
It was the living he feared, the knives and darts the dark and weather hid from his merely human eyes. It would take so little to kill his queen—the prick of a tiny needle, a hole the size of a little finger in her heart, a sling-flung stone to her temple. How could he protect her? How could he keep safe the only thing he had left?
He glanced at her; she was obscured in a wool weather-cloak, her face shadowed deep in the cowl. A similar cloak covered his own lord’s plate and helm. They might appear to be any two pilgrims, come to see their ancestors—or so he hoped. If those who wanted the queen dead were grains of sand, there would be strand enough to beach a war galley.
They crossed stone bridges over black water canals that caught bits of the fire from their lantern and stirred them into gauzy yellow webs. The houses of the dead huddled between