The Black Prince: Part I (2 page)

Callas placed a bowl into his hands, its gentle curve that of a man’s skull. Hart didn’t know who the man had been. He took a deep breath, not pausing but readying himself. And then, raising the bowl to his lips and tipping it back, he drank.

There was a single, stretching moment of clarity before the drug hit.

Mistletoe was more than just something to dandle over a maiden’s head, in hopes of parting her from her innocence. It was sacred. Sacred, and powerful in the hands of an adept. The plant could heal disease, render poison harmless, bring fertility to both men and their livestock, protect them from witchcraft, and ban evil spirits. The plant was so revered throughout the North, by Chosen and non, that enemies who happened to meet beneath mistletoe in the forest would lay down their arms, embrace, and keep a truce until the following sunrise.

From this custom grew the second custom, of suspending mistletoe over one’s door as a token of goodwill. And trust young men the world over to show their goodwill in a particular fashion. Hart had, himself, often enough.

Although the pleasures of the flesh had…lessened to him somewhat, lately.

He blinked. Mistletoe, along with the other ingredients in the bowl, was dangerous. Administered in the wrong quantities, it was fatal. He blinked again, as his world slowed down. How ironic that mistletoe, their sacred emblem, was a parasite. Having no roots of its own, it was dependent on its host tree for survival.

The Chosen taught that mistletoe held the soul of its host tree.

Did that mean that a man’s soul too was a parasite?

He lowered the bowl slowly from his lips, his gaze cold. Everything around him stood out in crystalline detail: the flickering of the torches. How they reflected, sluggish, in the disk oil before him. At the center of the ring was a shallow stone pool, much like an artificial pond.

Hart raised his hands. A drum began to beat, slowly, in time with his heart. He could barely feel himself breathing. Might not be. He didn’t know. He hailed each of the four elements in turn, calling on them to aid him. He asked those present to kneel and press themselves to the cold earth, to feel their connection with her. To recall, in painful detail, their arrogance and thoughtlessness in forgetting her as they destroyed field after fertile field in a mad orgy of swords and blood. How, in so doing, they destroyed their connection to the Divine. He called upon the Lord of the Flies to forgive their pitiable state and the failures it produced, and to remember them in the storm that was coming.

A storm he felt in his bones.

A storm they all did.

His were his own, but not. He followed a script that had been handed down from man to man for generations. How strong it was to stand where those men had stood, and give himself to the same work.

The cold was seeping into his bones. He couldn’t feel his fingers. “Hail, hail, to the Lord of the Flame! The Bringer of Change! The Keeper of the Well and the Tender of the Tree, the Destructor of All Things and the Bringer of Death!” For out of death came life.

“Hear us now!”

“Hear us now,” came the responding murmur.

Anyone who came upon them now would be killed, along with the prisoner.

Another sacrifice to an ever-hungry god.

“From the depths to the heights spans the sacred tree. Sacred tree, grow within us.”

“Sacred tree, grow within us.”

“From the sacred tree is kindled the fire. Sacred fire, burn within us.”

“Sacred fire, burn within us.”

“That our souls, our bodies, and our beings may be consecrated to Your will.”

“Accept our offering.”

From the shadows was brought a massive thing of stripling wood, looking almost like any grandmother’s laundry basket except sized for a giant. The tree was sacred to all Northmen, the symbol of life. This thing too was sacred, having been created from many different trees, all through the forest. Oak trees, that carried mistletoe. Seeing it, the man began to struggle anew. Hart had almost forgotten about him.

Their eyes met.

“Bring the sacrifice,” Hart commanded.

The chanting continued.

He placed his hand on the man’s brow, cold flesh to cold flesh, heedless of his twisting and turning. “O, sacred fire that consumes and transforms! Ancient enemy and firstborn friend of mankind! Accept this offering. Allow it to become for us the living door to the world beyond, through which we might glimpse our Lord’s will.”

He pulled back slightly. “Prepare him.”

The man was lifted bodily, still screaming, into the basket. He thrashed to and fro, lunging at his captors and trying to bite them as the lid was forced on and tied with rope. Every effort was made not to stun the man; his full consciousness was required for the ritual.

“Accept your fate with dignity,” Hart said, this time in his normal voice. “And please the Gods.”

But the man didn’t respond. Only screamed. For what, Hart didn’t know.

“Prepare the sacrifice.”

The basket was lifted, those responsible for tending it straining at the weight, and placed into the center of the pool. They were very careful not to touch the oil. Hart held out his hand for a torch. “O, sacred bough, bless us that your fragrant smoke might reach its intended destination.” He stilled, and then spoke again. “The dank of caves, the secret birthing place, the sacred dark from which all come. The Bringer of Night, the Consort of the Crone. We invoke thee! We invoke thee! We invoke thee!”

He threw the torch.

T
he girl ran her hands over his smoothly muscled chest. She was naked and lovely, if emaciated from the long winter. He could see the faintest suggestion of her ribs, beneath the swell of her small breasts. They were alone in an upper room of one of the city’s finest inns, a room that smelled of leather and wood smoke. Or perhaps that was only him.

He hadn’t been prepared for the screaming. A high-pitched, inhuman sound that had gone on for hours, long past the point where the man could have been alive. And yet he was. Somehow he was. They’d waited until the end, because the ritual required them to. Hart most of all.

And then he’d come here, with Callas, to a bowl of stew and a warm fire and a minstrel whose last set had just begun. He’d juggled prettily, then sung them a tale about love. Callas had eaten well and enjoyed himself enough but Hart’s mind was elsewhere. The whole affair had been…anticlimactic. He didn’t know how else to describe it, even to himself. He’d sacrificed a man to the Dark One and then he and his friend and gone out to eat.

He’d finally drunk his beer, or some of it, thinking that he was absurd.

He’d left the glen with a head like lead, barely able to stand. He’d made the trek back to his horse through sheer force of will, swinging into the saddle without ever really feeling the beast beneath him. He hadn’t known how he was going to ride but, of course, he hadn’t admitted as much to Callas. He supposed there was still some part of his old self remaining, after all.

That thought had brought a rueful smile.

The ice-cold wind had done much to sober him, buffeting their small party as they’d ridden across the exposed tor. When he’d arrived at the inn, he’d felt almost normal. There was still a faint halo around everything, especially near the fire. He’d learned the trick of appearing sober, though, over the years, a trick that came in handy now.

If Callas was any the worse for wear, he gave no sign.

Callas had drunk. They’d all drunk. The poison was the gift of life, a gift from their lord and He would—or so their lore claimed—protect the worthy. Only those who should not be there, who’d earned his disfavor, need fear the cup.

In summer, these rituals were followed by another kind of ritual: that involving women. Maidens, mostly willing, were to borrow the local parlance put to the cock. Veteran mares, eager for the game, were exercised under a number of stallions. Their identities didn’t matter, only the pleasure they brought. The kind of thing that until recently would have turned Hart’s stomach, as lusty as he was.

What protests occurred, Callas assured him, were staged. The women enjoyed a little struggle as much as the men, making the ultimate pairing that much sweeter. No woman was brought to the glade against her will, although Hart could imagine that more than a few had gotten cold feet on arrival. He’d only been involved in one orgy, for all his claims of conquest, and it hadn’t been much fun. He’d wanted to leave but couldn’t, as he had a reputation to keep up. And so he’d manfully pressed forward, even though he’d rather have been sleeping off his earlier carousing in the stables with his pet pig.

Their libations to Freyja, Goddess of Love, bonded them. Just as this different kind of sharing had, tonight. A brotherhood like none other, with more love between them than was lost between most brothers. Or sisters. Hart thought of Rowena briefly, but his expression betrayed no emotion.

He’d heard stories of these frolics, far less secret than the rituals preceding them, and heard too that any children conceived from them were considered blessed and taken care of well. He’d assumed, at first, that the women involved were harlots but had come to learn that many came from the best families in the region. Many were
wives
.

There was no shame in what they did, and their having chosen to honor the Gods—and their own appetites—in their own fashion was no bar to courtship or marriage. Hart wasn’t certain if the same permissiveness applied to tumbles taken outside the glen but a casual liaison this was not. Even so, this attitude was so different from what Hart had grown up with that he found it difficult to credit. He’d always disagreed with the notion that a woman should be shamed for taking the same sport as a man, where a man was lauded, but…to consider an issue in theory was one thing.

Northerners were, oddly, more reserved in public than their Southern counterparts. There was none of the half-dressed barmaids being dandled on laps and bawdy talk so common to inns in Ewesdale. The servitors were, indeed, mostly men. The innkeeper’s sons, here, Hart had surmised. Rather, the women sat quietly by the fire. Some conversed in low tones, either with patrons or each other, while some appeared deep in meditation.

A woman waited for an invitation, to join the table. An invitation that was politely given, or the would-be patron was excused. And handily. Hart had seen it happen. The innkeeper—or pimp, he supposed, what did it matter—liked to keep a certain air of decorum.

As all Northerners did. Was he a Northerner now? He supposed so.

His lips quirked in a small smile.

“What?” Callas asked.

“Nothing.”

And then Callas summoned over the girls. Hart hadn’t seen them before, but that wasn’t surprising. There were always new faces in the Northern capital. One of the girls was particularly lovely, young and slim-hipped, with the flaxen hair of the far north. Her breasts were enticing, beneath her wool shift. His breath caught. And she, seeing that, smiled.

Their conversation was easy, as she supplied most of the words. She was used to soldiers, he’d imagined. He studied his beer, and then her, and then finally he’d taken her upstairs.

And now here they were.

He touched one breast. Even more perfectly formed than he’d imagined. She was little more than a child, but no stranger to the art of love. Still, he didn’t think her reticence was feigned. She seemed pleased that she was pleasing to him.

He was horribly conscious, in that moment, of his power. She knew who he was, of course. Everyone did. As new to Tristan’s inner circle as he was, he’d already become a figure of dread. What wasn’t known was speculated, and rumor followed him like a shadow. Of his lovemaking. Of his cruelty. Of his devotion to the Dark One.

She undressed him carefully, her small hands deft on the buckles of his quilted vest. He waited, patient. Studying her in the low light. Where once he’d smelled of pig, now he smelled of valerian. She smiled slightly, a quirk of the lips that was there and gone. Her eyes weren’t on his but on her task; the faint expression hadn’t been for him.

Removing first his vest, and then his shirt, she placed them carefully on the chair. And then she touched the brand over his heart, gentle fingertips questing. He gave her no explanation, only waited. There was no explanation he could give, that she’d be allowed to hear.

“You’re handsome.”

He favored her with a small smile of his own. Lissa, her name, meant honey in one of the northern tongues. He wondered if she’d be as sweet as that suggested.

“And dangerous.”

“Are you frightened?”

She paused. “Yes.” And then, “I’m glad its me. I saw you arrest that man. The tailor. I was across the street.” There was a perfume shop across the street, he now recalled. “I…men like that deserve….” She dropped her gaze, studying some spot on the floor.

Sliding a finger under her chin, he tilted her head up. Her eyes were a pale gray-green, the color of lake water in fog. “Thank you,” he said.

“I want to please you.” Her words were barely above a whisper.

He lowered his lips to hers. His touch was light at first. Gentle. Just the merest press of lips. He gave her time to consider him. To respond. Gradually, she opened her lips to his. She did taste of honey, and smelled of roses. He was paying, he knew, for the full experience. For the best. Still, she was a woman and he a man. She hadn’t eaten much since the snow had fallen and he’d sold his soul to the Dark One.