Fifth Quarter (36 page)

Reaching out and grabbing her shoulder, Gyhard leaned down toward her ear. "What about catching up to the prince?" he asked.

She twisted around, just enough to meet his gaze. "Maybe we already have."

"I think someone in this lot would know him."

"Would they? After what he's been through?" Teeth clamped on her lower lip, she fought for composure. "Maybe they would, but I have to be sure. Now let go of me before I have the kigh shove you out of the saddle."

Vree looped Karlene's reins around her saddle horn and rubbed her palms lightly against each other as Bannon glanced over at Gyhard from the corner of one eye.

"I wonder if she had her own way with him?"

Vree jerked her gaze back to the crowd. "She thinks he's something that crawled out from under a rock."

"So. She knows he's in my body. He must've told her that night they had their little talk. Maybe she's after my body, not him. You think you'd recognize that, sister-mine? Or maybe you wouldn't."

Her head felt as though it were trapped between a pair of battering rams. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about you and him."

"There
isn't
a me and him. There's me and you. There's me and your body. That's all. Just like it's always been."

A layer of silence spread over the chants and the prayers and the speculation, separating her from the world. "Bannon? Are you there?"

He snorted. "Where the slaughter else would I be? I was just thinking about what we really have is
us
and my body."

"No, Bannon." She should have expected him to keep pushing. He was used to getting what he wanted.

Again the silence. Then, "What happens if this
is
the prince? Do we go back to the Capital with his body, or do we keep following Gyhard and mine? He doesn't need
us
to find the old man, so I wonder why he hasn't tried to slip a knife under our ribs some dark night. I wonder why he hasn't tried to get rid of two of the three people who know his secret."

She could feel the slow pulse of his anger.

"Do you wonder, sister-mine?"

"I've just come from the Capital where tombs have been opened along the East Road and bodies taken from them. If I can see these bodies, I might know who they are." Her words pitched to carry over most of the crowd, Karlene used just enough Voice for them to believe her. Then she waited, shifting from one foot to the other, while the priests of Shaebridge's five dominant temples discussed the implications of allowing a foreigner access.

"What gods do you follow?" an elderly woman demanded abruptly, slapping the strap of her short ceremonial flail against the side of her leg as she separated from the huddle.

Since coming to the Empire, Karlene had been asked that question half a hundred times. "I believe that all life and all gods are enclosed within the Circle."

"Oh, that," the old priest snorted. "The northern all-encompassing heresy. Well, there's little enough damage you can do." She stepped aside. "You might as well take a look. You're lucky, they don't smell as bad as they did. I expect the heat's started to dry them out some."

Karlene could feel the attention of the crowd lock onto her as she crossed the open area around the covered bodies. As she passed one of the priests, he sprinkled her with warm liquid and then began to sprinkle everyone within reach. A young—woman or man, she wasn't sure—knelt to one side, surrounded by acolytes, rocking back and forth and moaning, blood dribbling from three or four places where teeth had closed on the edge of soft tissue.

An expectant hush fell when she dropped to one knee and took hold of the canvas. They were waiting for her to solve the mystery. Put name and faith to these discarded shells that underscored their own mortality. Could she? If one of the bodies was—had been—Prince Otavas, would she recognize him after all he'd been through? What marks would a living death cut into flesh?

Her grip leaving a damp print on the heavy fabric, she quickly flipped it back.

Not the prince. Thank all the gods in the Circle, not the prince.

It was the two men who'd taken the prince, recognizable in spite of advanced decay. She pressed the knuckles of her right hand against her mouth as she started to gag, unable to believe that they could have ever smelled worse. They were as unmistakably dead as they'd been that night in the alley but thankfully, no sign of life remained. Breathing shallowly through her teeth, she gently covered them again.

No sign of life
… The hair lifted off the nape of her neck as she stood.
But something remains
…

The kigh nearly knocked her over, their sudden whirlwind dragging the canvas from the ground and spinning it into the crowd. Someone screamed. The prayers grew louder. Backing away from the bodies, Karlene tried to block out the rising noise and concentrate on what the kigh were trying to say. They acted much as they had back in the palace on the night the terror began but, this time, they were able to tell her why.

"Are you all right?" the ancient priest demanded as one of her burly acolytes stopped the bard from sagging to the ground. "You're white as salt."

"I know these men." While that wasn't the problem, neither was it a lie. The kigh drew back to dive around the edges of her vision, the winds died, and she tried to move away from the stranger's arm holding her upright. Her legs buckled and she stayed where she was. "I saw them in the Capital."

"The Capital?" In varying tones of disbelief the revelation rippled through the collected priests and into the crowd.

"These bodies were two of those I mentioned, the ones that were taken from their tomb," Karlene continued. She began to tremble, in relief as much as anything, as Vree appeared at her side and slipped a supporting shoulder under her left arm. "Their rites have been performed, they only need to be sent back."

"Sent back? How did they get this far down the road?"

She couldn't say she didn't know and be believed, so she asked a question of her own. "How do the dead arrive anywhere?"

The ancient priest looked disgusted. "Well, I don't imagine they walked. I suppose the pertinent question is, who brought them this far and where is that person now?" She turned away from Karlene and began issuing orders. Someone protested that her god had no more right to control the situation than any other, and in another moment, they'd all forgotten the stranger existed.

As Vree took most of her weight, Karlene pressed her cheek against the smaller woman's head. "Get me away from here," she murmured. "Please."

She didn't know how Vree did it—she suspected she didn't want to know—but the crowd melted away before them. It took two attempts to gain the saddle and she was barely in it before she began urging her horse up the road. She heard Gyhard begin a question and heard Vree answer it, "
She has to get away
."

"We have to leave the road," she explained as they caught up and flanked her. "I have to Sing."

"Why?" Gyhard understood the bardic emphasis even if Vree didn't.

Karlene tried to tell them but found she couldn't form the words. To actually say it aloud would make it too real to bear. The kigh continued to skirt the borders of her sight.

"What's going on?" Vree asked, dropping back and then guiding her gelding up against Gyhard's outside leg. The bard looked like soldiers she'd seen sitting in the midst of battle, surrounded by carnage, untouched by sword or spear but wounded just the same.

They left the road at the first opportunity; followed a lane that edged a field of cotton, became a path, then disappeared. Karlene reined in at a small hollow and slid to the ground. She dried her palms on her thighs, took a deep breath, and stared at a clump of wild lilies swinging violently in a sudden breeze.

"Well?" Gyhard asked at last.

She sketched confusion in the air. "I don't know
what
to Sing. The air kigh…" Her hands traced the area around the lilies. "… they say that the kigh from those two bodies are still around."

Vree felt the skin along her spine crawl and only training kept her from checking back over her shoulder—toward the road. "Still in the bodies?"

"No. The air kigh say that the other kigh should go away, but because of what Kars did to them, they're lost. They don't know where away is or how to get there." A trickle of sweat ran from hairline to collar. "I'm supposed to Sing and fix it."

"And while you do…" Gyhard glanced up at the position of the sun. "… your prince moves farther from us."

"I
can't
leave them like this."

"Neither can you accept responsibility for every life, pardon me, every death that Kars has discarded. He's older than you think and has been doing this for a very long time." Implicit in his tone was the declaration that he, Gyhard, had personally accepted as much responsibility as he was going to.

"Fine. Not all of them." She sent a silent apology to the rest. "But these two are here and I am here."

Gyhard wrapped one leg around the saddle horn, braced his elbow on his knee, and dropped his chin into his cupped palm. "So Sing," he sighed.

"Sing what?" Karlene flung up her arms, frustration chasing the terror chasing the sorrow chasing the Song. "I don't know where away is
or
how they get there."

"What about the air spirits?" Vree glared suspiciously from a ripple in the grass to a strand of mane blowing out just a little farther than the rest.

"They're no help. They keep repeating
away
like I should know."

"So sing what you do know. You can talk to spirits, talk to these."

"It isn't that
simple
," Karlene insisted.

Vree shrugged impatiently. "It had better be. Or how were you planning on laying the prince to rest?"

How had she planned on laying the prince to rest? She hadn't. Karlene swallowed.
Here I come, galloping to the rescue with no idea if a rescue is even possible
. Talk to them. Call them. Not the notes that called fire or water or air. She could only Sing three of four quarters, how was she suddenly to Sing a fifth when until a few days ago no one believed a fifth quarter existed?

She wet her lips and Sang, repeating the little she knew about the two lost kigh in every combination of note and tone she could think of.
I
can't do this. I don't know enough about them. I don't know enough about the fifth kigh. I
…

I have a kigh.

She strongly suspected that pausing to think it through would tie her tongue in knots. But the Song wasn't about thought; it was emotion, it was touching the past and the future, it was sharing pain and joy and truth and self.

Maybe it
was
that simple after all. Maybe the bards had never needed to learn to Sing the fifth quarter because they couldn't not Sing it. Every time they touched an audience, or one listener, or one hundred, they were Singing the fifth quarter.

Karlene took a deep breath, more for courage than for her voice, and put herself into the Song.

Between one note and the next, they were there; frightened, hurt, twisted by the darkness within which they'd been forced to exist. They clutched at her, pleaded for an end. She couldn't heal them, so she Sang them comfort, Sang them their love for each other. Sang them peace.

How had she planned on laying the prince to rest?

Eyes closed, her voice wrapped around them and, just for an instant, she crossed the line and
became
the Song. For that same instant, she knew what the kigh meant by
away
and she knew how to get there. She Sang them how it should have been and then they were gone.

She managed to Sing a gratitude although to who or what she didn't know. The knowledge of
away
faded with the Song, but the loss didn't matter because she knew how to find it again.

"Are you going to fall over?" Vree asked.