Sing the Four Quarters (35 page)

Vidor, he'd followed the fugitives to Turnu and through the village. He'd found the flax shed where they'd spent the night. Then he'd lost them.

They hadn't gone back to the track.

They hadn't gone over or around the new shoots of flax surrounding the shed.

It was as though they'd sprouted wings and flown away.

But if they had, they were still flying to Ohrid.

And so was he.

"Annice. They're still doing it." Pjerin stepped forward and the ground rippled behind him, absorbing the imprint of his foot.

"Oh, center it, I forgot to tell them to stop." She lifted her head, wet hair dripping down her face, and softly Sang a gratitude. The earth rippled one last time, then settled into stillness. "I guess they thought it was a good idea."

"Thought?" Pjerin bent and picked the trailpot off the fire. "I didn't know the kigh could think."

Annice shrugged. "I'll tell you what the captain tells the fledglings; all living creatures think." She bit her lip as she remembered Stasya's incredulous, "
Even men
?"

Don't be dead, Stas. I couldn't bear it.

It wasn't difficult to read her emotions from her expression. Pjerin knew he should say something but didn't know what. As there wasn't any comfort he could give, he gently pushed her head forward and poured the warm water in the pot over her hair. "That got the last of the soap. Come over by the fire so you don't get chilled."

"Bards don't get chilled." She rubbed the water off her shoulders and accepted his offered hand. At his snort of disbelief, she pulled herself to her feet and said, "No, it's true. We're incredibly healthy, especially when you consider that we're always so exposed."

His brows went up and she shook her head, pulling on her smock and buttoning it. "That's not what I meant!" But he'd made her laugh and in a much lighter frame of mind she walked over to sit in the small lean-to Pjerin had built upwind of the fire. The reflected heat off the cedar boughs made it almost warm inside.

Although they'd stopped in early evening—rather than a stop to eat and a final stop hours later when they'd nearly lost the light—Annice was tired and she contentedly watched Pjerin refilled the pot from the spring and begin to prepare a meal. Her hands twitched. She wished she'd thought to bring some knitting. "Maybe it's something to do with the kigh."

"Maybe it's the fresh air and exercise."

"Maybe." She yawned. "What are you making?" Before he could answer, something screamed off in the bracken.

Annice jerked erect, but Pjerin raised a hand and smiled triumphantly. "Rabbit stew," he said. "I set the snares earlier."

"Are you sure you're ready?" They were face-to-face, cross-legged under the lean-to, knees touching, the fire just high enough for Annice to see his eyes.

No. He wasn't ready. The last thing he wanted was to once again find himself trapped in his own mind. The loss of control terrified him as much as it enraged him. Wiping his palms on his thighs, he snarled, "Go ahead."

She knew that not all the shadows on his face were caused by the night but knew as well that he'd shake off any offer of reassurance. "I'm going to use the exact wording of the Judgment, even though you obviously won't be able to step forward."

"Just
do
it."

Annice nodded and locked his gaze with hers. "Pjerin a'Stasiek, step forward."

Pjerin jerked as the compulsion hit.

"Pjerin a'Stasiek, you will speak only the truth."

He swallowed, waiting.

Annice took a deep breath. "Did you betray your oaths to Cemandia, agreeing to allow a Cemandian army passage into Shkoder through Defiance Pass?"

It was happening. "Y… yes."

"Is that the truth?"

The pounding of his blood between his ears nearly drowned out the question. "Y… yes."

Annice frowned. "Let's try that another way. When you say yes, are you telling me the truth?"

"No." Pjerin's eyes widened and he stared at her in astonishment. "No. No, I'm not telling the truth! I d… di …" But the momentary control was gone. "I betrayed my oaths."

Hurriedly grabbing his hands, Annice leaned toward him. "Calm down," she said as his chest began to rise and fall with frightening speed and the air barely whistled through his teeth before it whistled out again. Sweat plastered the hair to his temples, reflecting flame as it ran down the sides of his face, and tension radiated off him in a palpable force. "Pjerin! Calm down!"

Pjerin closed his cold fingers around her warm ones. Slowly his breathing steadied, making time with hers, and his heartbeat quieted. "Why," he asked, ready to close his teeth on the words if they began to slide out of his control,

"could I answer that?"

"I think because it's not a question that you'd ever be asked during Judgment because everyone knows you can't lie under Command. There was no need to guard your answer. Do you want to keep going?"

"Yes!"

As he was still under Command, she couldn't doubt his desire, but she watched him closely. She had no wish to provoke the kind of internal conflict that might kill him. "Are your memories of this betrayal true memories?"

"Y… yes."

"Pjerin, please stop fighting this. The answers aren't as important as the questions."

He couldn't look away, but there was nothing to stop him from scowling. "Then ask the right questions."

"I'm working on it." Annice thought for a moment. She had to stay far away from anything that might be asked during Judgment. Considering what they were trying to find out, that shouldn't be hard. "Who told you these are true memories?"

"Albek!" Pjerin's lips drew back off his teeth in a wolfish grin. "Albek," he repeated.

"Interesting when you consider that he essentially made himself useless for any further intrigue by setting himself up as your Cemandian contact."

"You consider it," Pjerin growled. "I'm going to consider wrapping my hands around his neck and squeezing until the bones crush."

"Ow!" Annice managed to maintain eye contact but only just. "The only bones you're crushing are in my hands!" She shook feeling back into her fingers as he released his grip. "All right, now we know who, let's find out how. How did Albek twist your memories so that you'd believe a different truth?"

"I don't know."

"Do you remember him doing it?"

"Yes."

"But you don't know what he did?"

"No."

"Did it happen at the keep?"

"Yes."

"Were the two of you alone?"

"Yes."

"When did it happen?"

"The night before Fourth Quarter Festival."

She shook her head in exasperation. "At this rate, it could be Fourth Quarter Festival again before we get anywhere.

Pjerin, I'm going to Command you again."

"Again?" He tried to drag his gaze free, but he continued to be held in the depths of a pair of hazel eyes. "I'm still
under
Command."

"I know. But it might not be enough. You're not a bard, you're not trained to do recall." She saw he understood. "I won't do it if you don't want me to." She could feel his hands trembling where they touched her knees, so she gathered them up in hers again. He would have to actually break bones to do much more damage than he already had. "Pjerin?"

It seemed that the surrounding night waited for his answer, even the constant piping chorus of frogs pausing to hear.

"Do it."

"Pjerin a'Stasiek, remember the night Albek twisted your memories. Remember and tell me everything that happened…"

"… mulled wine. Your cook has a very fine touch with it."

"I know. How old are you?"

The question seemed to take the other man by surprise. "Twenty-six."

Pjerin glanced down at his accounts and then jerked his head at the other chair. "Sit. If you can. I suppose we can find something to talk about that won't have us at each other's throats."

They started with the weather. Pjerin, used to the extreme conditions of the mountains, considered lowlanders to have no weather at all. Albek didn't change his mind with a vivid description of the wind screaming down over the Cemandian plains, destroying everything in its path but he did grudgingly admit that it might have, as Albek said, "a terrible beauty."

As Albek refilled both cups with the last of the wine, they discovered a mutual love of hawking and that started a conversation that carried them through to the dregs.

"No." Pjerin set down his empty cup and slapped his palm against the desk. He blinked and stared at it for
a
moment, surprised by the amount of noise it made.

"No, what?" the trader prodded, gently.

"No…" Frowning, Pjerin tried to recapture the thought. "No sealing. Cruel to sew a bird's eye shut when a well-made hood works as… works as…" He slumped back in his chair. "Heavy…"

"Tired," Albek suggested.

The due tried to nod. "Yes. Tired."

"Isn't that the door to your bedchamber?"

Pjerin swiveled his head around. "Yes. Door."

"I think I'd better put you to bed. Will your man be waiting for you?"

"My man?" He snorted. "Mountain dues can dress and… undress themselves."

Albek smiled. "Not tonight, I think."

It was cold in the bedroom and the Cemandian swiftly stripped the larger man and slid him under the heavy eiderdown.

"Not… coming in with me," Pjerin warned.

"More's the pity," Albek replied, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Actually, we have some things to discuss, you and I."

He stretched out a long-fingered hand and turned the other man's head to face him. "Can you see what I'm holding, Your Grace?"

"Hunk… of clear rock."

"Technically correct. It's called quartz crystal. It's pretty, isn't it. See how it catches the light from the candle and scatters it about."

Pjerin wet his lips and stared dreamily up at the spinning crystal. It was pretty. Spinning around and around and around. Orange and yellow and white. And around and around and around. It seemed to be catching the liquid cadences of Albek's voice and throwing it about as well. And around and around.

"Your eyelids look very heavy, Your Grace. Why don't you close them."

They were heavy. He couldn't remember them ever being so heavy. He didn't so much close them as just stop keeping them open—they fell closed on their own.

Albek's voice filled the darkness. "What I'm going to tell you, Your Grace, you will remember as the absolute truth every time you hear the phrases 'Pjerin a'Stasiek, step forward,' and 'Pjerin a'Stasiek, you will speak only the truth.'

You have betrayed your oaths to Shkoder…"

"… and then he told me that I would remember nothing of what he'd done. I'd remember only that we'd talked until the wine was gone and then he'd left." He was panting as though he'd just run a race and sweat ran down his face and neck.

"Pjerin, how would you describe Albek's voice?"

"Beautiful. Like music."

Annice broke eye contact. "Witnessed," she said softly. They'd heard all they had to.

Pjerin's head fell forward.

Although she wanted to give him a moment's privacy, Annice knew that after so long in one position she wouldn't be able to stand without his help. Because there wasn't anything else she could do, she twisted sideways as much as the unyielding bulk of her belly allowed and began to rebuild the fire from the stack of dead branches they'd gathered and left ready.

When the flames licked again at the darkness, she reached out and gently touched his shoulder. His hand whipped up and snared hers, the action strangely impersonal, as though the memories continued to hold him. She could still only see the top of his head. There was a danger in being too long under Command and Annice began to fear that in Commanding him the second time she'd passed the barrier. "Pjerin?"

"He must have drugged Olina, too. She certainly gave him enough opportunity." Slowly, he lifted his head.

Knowing that he had been helpless and under Albek's control made him feel violated, his will raped. "I'm going to be there when he comes back through that pass and I don't care if he has the whole unenclosed Cemandian army behind him, I'm going to tear him limb from limb."

The power of that promise lifted the hair on the back of her neck and ran a line of ice down her spine. Annice pulled her fingers free. She understood Pjerin's anger and to an extent she shared it, but hers was directed in another way. "I feel sorry for him."

"Who? Albek?" He glared at her in disbelief. "Annice, he's a spy and saboteur and… and…"

"And in Shkoder, he would've been a bard."

Pjerin surged to his feet, stumbled, and caught himself on the edge of the lean-to. "What are you talking about?"

"You must know what Cemandians do to those who show signs of being able to Sing the kigh. If they can't be
reeducated
, they're executed. Albek's got the ability or he could never have twisted you around and made it hold up under Command. He's had to repress it all his life, but he's managed to find the one acceptable thing he can do with it that won't get him killed."

"Wrong. I am going to kill him."

She rubbed the back of her hand over her cheeks and nodded. "I know. He might even thank you."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"I was instructed to deliver my message to the seventh Due of Ohrid, Lady."

Olina steepled her fingers together and looked over the triangular peak of buffed nails at the messenger.

He squirmed.

After a long moment, she spoke. "Were you not informed that the seventh Due is a five-year-old child?"

"Yes, Lady, but…"

"And did it not occur to you that your news would cause this child great distress?"

Having been distinctly uncomfortable at the thought of recalling his message for a little boy, he fidgeted with the edge of his tabard, the crowned ship over his heart warping first one way then the other. "Yes, Lady, it did."

"Then give the message to me." Her smile held the promise of deliverance.

He clutched at her offer. "Yes, Lady."

Under her scrutiny, it took him three tries to slip into the memory trance that the bards had taught him and he thought, for the first time since he was found to have the ability, that maybe the quiet, stay-at-home life of a crier might have been the better idea. "Theron, King of Shkoder, High Captain of the Broken Islands, Lord over the Mountain Principalities of Sibiu, Ohrid, Ajud, Bicaz, and Somes, did sit in Death Judgment on Pjerin a'Sta-siek, sixth Due of Ohrid, and did find him guilty of treason, condemned by his own mouth. Pjerin a'Stasiek, sixth Due of Ohrid was executed according to law on the twenty-first day of the third moon of First Quarter. Gerek a'Pjerin is as of that day the seventh Due of Ohrid. His Majesty expresses the desire that, treason routed out and destroyed, Ohrid and Shkoder will continue to observe their historical loyalties."