The Charnel Prince Read Free Page B

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 the waterways, peaked roofs shedding the storm, keeping their quiet inhabitants dry if not warm. A few lights moved elsewhere between the lanes—the queen, it seemed, was not the only one undeterred by the weather, determined to seek the company of the dead this night. The dead could be spoken to on any night, of course, but on the last night of Otavmen—Saint Temnosnaht—the dead might speak back.
    Up the hill in Eslen-of-the-Quick, they were feasting, and until the storm came, the streets had been filled with dancers in skeleton costume and somber Sverrun priests chanting the forty hymns of Temnos. Skull-masked petitioners went from house to house, begging soulcakes, and bonfires burned in public squares, the largest in the great assembly ground known as the Candle Grove. Now the feasts had gone inside homes and taverns, and the procession that would have wound its way to the Eslen-of-Shadows had shrunk from a river to a brooh in the fierce face of winter’s arrival. The little lamps carved of turnips and apples were all dark, and there would be little in the way of festival here tonight.
    Neil kept his hand on the pommel of his broadsword, Crow, and his eyes were restless. He did not watch the moving light of the lanterns, but the darkness that stretched between. If something came for her, it would likely come from there.
    The houses grew larger and taller as they passed the third and fourth canals, and then they came to the final circle, walled in granite and iron spears, where the statues of Saint Dun and Saint Under watched over palaces of marble and alabaster. Here, a lantern approached them.
    “Keep your cowl drawn, milady,” Neil told the queen.
    “It is only one of the scathomen, who guard the tombs,” she answered.
    “That may or may not be,” Neil replied.
    He trotted Hurricane up a few paces. “Who’s there?” he called.
    The lantern lifted, and in its light, an angular, middle-aged face appeared from the shadows of a weather-cloak. Neil’s breath sat a little easier in his lungs, for he knew this man—Sir Len, indeed, one of the scathomen who dedicated their lives to the dead.
    Of course, the appearance of a man and what was inside him were two different things, as Neil had learned from bitter experience. So he remained wary.
    “I must ask you the same question,” the old knight replied to Neil’s question.
    Neil rode nearer. “It is the queen,” he told the man.
    “I must see her face,” Sir Len said. “Tonight of all nights, everything must be proper.”
    “All shall be proper,” the queen’s voice came as she lifted her lantern and drew back the deep hood of her cloak.
    Her face appeared, beautiful and hard as the ice falling from the sky.
    “I know you, lady,” Sir Len said. “You may pass. But . . .” His words seemed to go off with the wind.
    “Do not question Her Majesty,” Neil cautioned stiffly.
    The old knight’s eyes speared at Neil. “I knew your queen when she wore toddling clothes,” he said, “when you were never born nor even thought of.”
    “Sir Neil is my knight,” the queen said. “He is my protector.”
    “Auy. Then away from here he should take you. You should not come to this place, lady, when the dead speak. No good shall come of it. I have watched here long enough to know that.”
    The queen regarded Sir Len for a long