Sing the Four Quarters (43 page)

"Just because he was washed and dressed doesn't mean he didn't return to the pleasures of mud," Olina pointed out, drumming her fingers on the arms of her chair. Gerek had obviously become too much for the old woman to handle.

He needed a tutor, and the moment the Cemandian invasion was complete, she'd get him one.

"No, Lady, I spoke with Gitka. He wasn't there. No one has seen him all afternoon."

"No one?"

"No one, Lady. What if he's…" The thought became too much for her and she burst into fresh sobs.

"What if he's what? Hurt? You're not helping him, Jany." Olina stood, lips set in a thin line. Although fond of the child, she had no doubt that he'd be found tucked into a corner somewhere, happily oblivious to the panic he'd caused his nurse. Meanwhile, she could use this incident for other ends. "Find Lukas; he can organize a search of the keep."

Eventually, the search spread out from the keep to the village and the surrounding valley. Torches were lit as night fell and the voices calling his name grew strained and frightened. Parents held their own children closer and remembered all the dangers of the darkness.

Olina stood by the entrance to the old cellars, staring at the stub of the torch and the print of a small foot outlined in crumbling flakes of earth. Gerek had gone into the cellar carrying the torch she had used when they got rid of the bard and then come out again. What had he seen? And what, if anything, had he been told? Things had just become much more complicated.

"Has anyone checked the palisade? He may have gone to watch the work and…"

"Lady!" Urmi pushed her way through the crowd gathered in the outer courtyard. "I've just searched the armory! The due's sword is missing!"

The little fool has probably taken it and trotted off to challenge the king
! Olina slapped control around her relief.
At
least he's not hiding in the keep with what he knows. Now, I can deal with this
. "Has anyone seen the bard?"

No one had.

The server sent to check Stasya's room raced back crying that the bard was gone.

An ugly murmur ran through the crowd. Olina listened and did nothing although she could have stopped it with a word

—reaction would serve her better than reason. She was pleased to see Lukas flash the sign against the kigh and more pleased still to see it mirrored around the courtyard.

"The bard can't have gone far!" Urmi cried. "She's on foot. We have to get Gerek back. We have to go after her!"

"And face the kigh at night?"

Urmi turned on the man who'd spoken, her lip curled. "
I'm
not afraid of the kigh!"

"You should be." Lukas stepped forward, but stayed in Olina's shadow. "You saw what the kigh did to my house and my daughter."

The muttering grew more apprehensive and less militant. Even those who personally despised Lukas couldn't deny that his house had burned and his daughter was dead.

"Remember that this is the bard who took Pjerin to his execution." Olina's voice cut through the babble, leaving a sharply defined line of silence behind it as assumptions were hastily shuffled.

"Shkoder is destroying the Dues of Ohrid!"

The babble became a roar.

"But why?" someone called.

"Because Shkoder is afraid!" came the answer from the back of the crowd. "We're all that stands between them and Cemandia, and suppose we don't want to be a living barrier anymore?"

"His Grace—that is, His Grace's father—saw it coming. He tried to make a deal with Cemandia and they killed him."

Olina hid a smile. It was such a small step from oath-breaker to martyr.

"What has Shkoder ever done for us?"

"Cemandia sends us trade!" bellowed one of the villagers who'd made a handsome profit at that first fair. "Once a year, Shkoder sends us a bard to let us know what we don't have."

"Sends a spy!"

"King Theron's probably coming with an army!"

"Do the bards work for Theron or does Theron work for the bards?"

"He's ruled by the kigh!"

"Kigh are not enclosed in the Circle!"

Again the sign against the kigh flicked out, but this time, hands that had never made it before traced the gesture, caught up in the mass hysteria of the mob.

"Send a message to Cemandia! Let them know what's going on! Cemandia has no dealings with the kigh!"

Well pleased with the result of her suggestion, Olina raised both hands to silence the cries of agreement. "There's nothing more that can be done tonight. Go home. See to your children. And think on how we will greet King Theron when he arrives." With any luck, they'd jump him when he entered the valley and deliver his whole party to her in pieces.

"But what of Gerek?" Urmi protested as people began to turn away.

"What good will you do him if the kigh strike you down?" Olina asked her.

"Well, none, but…"

"No. We can only pray that he remains unharmed and plan our vengeance if he is hurt."

"I could ride…"

"Can you track the wind?"

The stablemaster's face fell. "No, Lady."

Olina watched her walk away, watched them all walk away, until there was only Lukas standing beside her on the steps to the Great Hall, the torch he held isolating them in a circle of flickering light.

"What about the boy?" he asked, eyes shifting nervously from side to side. "He
isn't
with the bard." His tongue darted out to swipe at his lips. "Is he?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Olina snapped.

"Then why?"

Olina turned to stare full at him. "Are you questioning my judgment?"

"No, lady. Only… That is…" Lukas took a deep breath and found enough courage in it to carry on. "Do you know where the due is?"

"As he wasn't found in the valley, I can only assume he reached the forest. He probably took his father's sword and went off to challenge King Theron with it."

"But why?"

"I imagine he saw you deal with the bard."

Lukas paled, his face between beard and hair bone white even by torchlight. "Lady!"

"You've nothing to worry about. Haven't I arranged it so that no one will go after him? So no one will wonder about the absence of the bard?"

"Yes, Lady. Thank you, Lady." When she started to walk away, he scuttled after her. "But suppose he reaches the king and…"

"And nothing. The king is still approximately ten days away. Gerek is barely five years old. I'll be very surprised if he even survives the night." She pushed at the weight of her hair and muttered, "The stupid little fool. Had to be a hero.

He's dead—" She turned on Lukas so suddenly he stumbled and almost dropped the torch. "—because you couldn't think past the moment."

"I'm sorry, Lady." He scrubbed his free hand against his tunic, leaving damp smudges of sweat on the fabric. "I couldn't be more sorry."

She stared down at him for a long moment. "Yes, you could," she said at last. She'd been going to mold Gerek, turn him into the kind of due neither Pjerin nor her brother had had the courage to be. And this sweating, stumbling idiot had lost her that immortality.

He was alive because, at the moment, she didn't need any more unanswered questions. When the moment ended, so did he.

Her back against the wall, every piece of clothing from her pack either on her or under her to fight the damp and cold, Stasya considered her companion. The chill air had helped preserve enough integrity that it had been a body, not just dry and dusty bones that she'd found folded in on itself against the far wall. The remains of a tangled beard had given him gender and the intricate carving she could trace on a buckle and a pair of wrist bands suggested he'd been a man of some means.

How long ago
, she wondered, knees tucked up against her chest and arms wrapped tight around them.
How long has
he been down here? Does anyone remember him? How long did he live before he died
?

She rested her head on her knees, eyes closed to give an illusion of choice in the darkness.
Were the ends of his fingers
broken and split from trying to claw his way out through the heart of the mountain? Had he screamed and fought?

What had he done when he'd realized that no one would come
?

Ten days. The king would arrive in ten days.

With luck, Annice and the due would contact Bohdan sooner.

But she had to count on surviving for ten days.

There'd been trail food for a couple of days still in her pack that could be stretched to provide meager rations, but her water skin had been empty. She'd have to lick the moisture off the walls and hope the bit of water she'd crawled through earlier would continue to collect at the lowest point of the floor.

Ten days.

Her head throbbed and standing left her so dizzy that the mountain had to act as her support as well as her prison.

Ten days.

I could made a song out of this that would pull night terrors from the most flint-hearted listener. Let's hope I last long
enough to sing it.

Long past rot, the faint smell of continuing decay was an omnipresent reminder of the alternative.

Tired and hungry, Gerek plodded between the towering trunks of ancient pines, dragging his father's sword behind him. Above him, each needle stood out in sharp relief against an ominous gray-green sky.

The sword caught on a half-buried stick and the sudden jerk threw the small body to the ground. "That didn't hurt," he gasped, getting slowly to his feet and trying desperately hard not to cry.

Exhaustion had brought him a few hours of fitful sleep tucked in the hollow between two giant roots. A dense layer of fallen needles had made a comfortable enough bed, but with the moon hidden behind cloud and the forest noises so loud and so close, he'd spent most of the night staring wide-eyed and terror-stricken out of his refuge. The scream of an owl heard from the safety of his nursery was not the same sound heard alone in the dark; Gerek had screamed in turn and thrown the protection of his cloak over his head. Fortunately, the larger predators had been hunting elsewhere.

Yanking the sword free, he wiped his nose on his sleeve and started walking again, too young to notice it had grown ominously quiet.

He'd eaten the sausage in triumph when he'd gained the safety of the trees without being seen from the keep and he'd licked the grease from his fingers exactly the way that Nurse Jany always told him not to. At dusk there'd been only water sucked up from the stream to quiet the first rumbling of hunger. At sunrise, he'd left the stream for the easier walking under the pines. At mid-morning, with a sharp ache behind his belt, he'd tried to eat a handful of red berries he'd found in a clearing, hanging plump and thick next to pretty purple flowers, but they'd tasted so bitter he'd spit them out without swallowing and continued to spit for some time.

Now his stomach hurt, and he wondered why his papa was so far away.

Thunder boomed directly overhead and Gerek froze.

A few moments later, he was drenched to the skin as the huge trees bent and swayed like saplings. Nearly solid sheets of water poured through the holes in the canopy. Whimpering, his back pressed hard against a sticky trunk, Gerek lost himself in the fury of the storm. The wind howled like the demons Nurse Jany said still lived in the mountains, and even stuffing his fingers in his ears couldn't keep out their shrieking. When a branch as big around as he was crashed to the ground in a deafening cascade of smaller twigs, he panicked and ran.

Pushed in front of a wind strong enough at times to lift both child and sword from the ground, Gerek scrambled blindly forward, screaming for his father. Oblivious to welts and scratches, he plunged out from under the pines into an area of younger trees and thicker underbrush. The sword caught again.

Sobbing in near hysteria, Gerek yanked on the belt, his only remaining coherent thought that he had to get the sword to his papa. Jammed in a tangle of poplar suckers, the sword refused to move. He threw his weight against the leather. A sudden, violent gust of wind added its strength to his. The sword flew free. Gerek tumbled backward and lost his grip.

Coughing and sputtering, he fought his way back to his feet and looked frantically around him. The rain made it nearly impossible to see. He took two jerky steps forward and clutched frantically at a sapling for support as the sodden earth slid out from under his feet and down into a deep, steep-sided ravine.

Another gust of wind blew the curtain of rain aside just long enough for him to see that the sword lay, half covered in mud, on a ledge a little way down from where he stood.

He had to get the sword to his papa.

Rubbing the water from his eyes, he crouched, still holding the sapling, and stretched out his other arm. The rain pounded against it and his fingers dug into the ground a handbreadth short.

Gerek set his jaw, panic pushed aside by determination. Releasing his anchor, he inched forward. His fingers touched the scabbard, then his hand wrapped around it.

Unfortunately, the sword weighed much more than the child could lift one-handed. It began to slide. Blinking away rain and scowling furiously, Gerek refused to let go. His free hand flailed for the sapling, couldn't reach it, and dug into the earth instead.

The handful he held fell with him.

Wind and rain and the roar of water below drowned out his cries.

"Pjerin, I have to sit." With one hand pressed tight against the curve of her belly, Annice lowered herself to a rock still damp from the recent rain.

"But we just sat out the storm."

"I know." She let the lead rope slide through slack fingers and the mule dropped her head to graze.

Something in her voice pulled Pjerin to her side. He dropped the mare's reins, knowing she wouldn't wander, and peered anxious down at Annice. "Are you all right?"

"I don't know." An attempted smile didn't quite reached her face. "It hurts."

"What hurts? The baby?"

"I think so."

He stared at her in disbelief. "You
think
so?"

"Well, I've never…" The stiff set to her shoulders suddenly relaxed. "It stopped."