The Book of Water (34 page)

“My lord, they’ve taken the Prince.”

“What? We had men guarding his tent.”

“Dead.”

Köthen sat up, swinging his legs to the ground. “All?”

“Throats cut, all three of ’em, with the Prince’s own dagger, my lord, conveniently left behind.”

“What of the priest’s men?”

“A showy mess of surface wounds, but all likely to recover, probably by morning if circumstance doesn’t intervene. I’m tempted to let it. Each claims to have seen the Prince fighting ‘like ten thousand demons.’”

“Ah, Carl, poor lad.” Köthen ran angry hands through his sleep-matted hair. “Is there a trail?”

“Two, my lord. The one we’re supposed to find, and then the other. I sent six of our best to follow the second, and came to fetch you.”

“All this without arousing notice?”

Wender smiled, and Erde pitied the man who got on his wrong side. “Aye, my lord.”

“Pray they find him. Pray six will be enough. Have you horses ready?”

“In the copse.”

“Tell that silly boy to douse the torch before he announces us to the entire camp. His little fire should be enough to keep the dark away.” Köthen heaved himself out of bed. “Help me dress.”

Before the torch could be extinguished, Köthen walked into its flickering light. He was naked. Erde tried to look away, but the dream-state did not allow her the luxury of modesty, and in the slowness of dreams where a few seconds can seem an eternity, she found herself made breathless at the sight of him. She’d never seen a grown man naked. She thought men were probably ugly without their fashionably form-altering clothes. Even Rainer, that fine figure of a young man she’d convinced herself she was in love with, even in her most romantic fantasies she’d always pictured him fully dressed.

But this man was beautiful, naked or clothed. She could not help but notice his efficient grace, or how the muscles moved under his skin as he bent to snatch up his clothing, or how the failing torchlight glimmered gold on the hair of his arms and chest and thighs. The intimacy of the moment
shamed her. Surely Baron Köthen would be appalled if he knew. But she could not look away. She thought she could look at him forever.

Then he moved out of the light and threw on his shirt and undertunic. Erde was released from her disturbing fascination and had a moment to consider the dire news about the Prince. She wondered where her father’s hand was in this latest plot.

Wender shook out Köthen’s mail and held it high for the baron to shrug into, easy enough as he was at least a head taller than Köthen and several stone heavier. “It seems this priest will make you King, my lord, whether you like it or not.”

Köthen laughed sourly. He slipped on his blue-and-yellow tabard, then bent to pull on his boots. “And when Otto and his mysterious champion are dead on the field, and I’ve rallied the people around me with the promise of victory and peace, how long do you think I will survive?”

Wender grunted. He turned away and came back with Köthen’s sword and dagger. Köthen took them wordlessly and buckled them on.

Outside the tent, the torch had been upended in the squire’s little campfire. The two men hesitated, straining through the high sighing of the wind to pick out other, man-made noises. The moon was bright. Köthen squinted at it suspiciously.

“Back to bed with you,” he murmured to his waiting squire. “Or at least pretend to be, as if I were still inside asleep as usual. Have you your weapon handy?”

The boy shivered and patted the long knife on his hip.

“Good lad. Protect yourself if the need arises.” Köthen nodded to Wender then, and followed him off into the night.

The horses were waiting with another dozen men in a copse of aspens out of hearing of the encampment. With the moon to light their way, they quickly picked up the trail of those who had gone ahead along the muddied road.

“He hopes they’ll mingle with the track of ordinary travelers,” noted Wender. “But only brigands and soldiers travel in a time of war.”

Köthen grinned. “Well, we know which of us are the soldiers. . . .”

Erde found herself galloping through the moonlit darkness as if she were a hawk on Köthen’s shoulder. She could almost forget she was dreaming, but for the rock and rise of Köthen’s body on his racing horse, in such sharp contrast to her own smooth surreal flight.

But cushioned as she was by the unreality of the dream, she could not shrug off the lurking dread. Köthen’s presence somehow held the dread at bay. She recalled how he had protected her from the priest in the barn at Erfurt, even though she was a stranger and the ally of his enemy. Being with him flushed her whole body with warmth and a sense of well-being. But she knew that this strange euphoria was but a thin tissue between her and the terrible things she sensed were about to happen, and could do nothing to prevent. The dread was real and could not be avoided forever.

They rode hard for a good while until Wender judged they might be closing on the men he’d sent ahead. The ground was half mud, half ice, and pocked with puddles frozen just enough to make a noise when horses’ hooves crashed through them. Where the trees folded over the road, straining out the moonlight, Wender slowed them to pick their way along more quietly, listening ahead. Soon Wender pulled up, his hand raised for a halt. Köthen rode up beside him.

“A light, my lord, though the trees off to the left.”

Köthen cocked his head. “No sounds of battle.”

“No. We’ll go in on foot, in case our men are yet waiting to engage.”

The baron nodded. He seemed to have no difficulty taking direction from an older and more experienced adviser. “Quickly, though, in case they’ve been taken unawares.”

The company dismounted silently and left two men behind with the horses. Köthen drew his sword. Several of the soldiers armed their crossbows. They left the roadside and crept into the trees, seeking the quietest path through the sodden leaves and matted underbrush, avoiding the brighter patches of snow and ice where a man’s footfall would sound as loudly as a shout.

Those ahead did not seem to be making any great effort at silence. They’d lit two torches already and soon a third flared to life. Erde could hear horses milling and snorting, and voices that were restrained but not muffled. Wender waved his company forward, signaling one man to Köthen’s right and taking up the left-hand guard himself.

They were well within range when a voice ahead sounded an alert and the torches were doused in an instant. But that single word of command told Wender what he needed to know. He signaled his men down, then whistled sharply, three ascending notes and one falling.

“That’s Hoch,” he whispered. “I’m sure of it.”

A whistled reply came back immediately, the same four notes in reverse order. Wender rose and moved on ahead.

They came down into a snow-swept clearing, broad enough for a circle of moonlight to make its way through the overhanging trees. Hoch’s men relit the torches while Hoch came forward to meet them. Erde saw in the man’s eyes the dread she’d been shoving aside. Köthen saw it, too.

“What is it, Hoch? What have you found?”

Hoch had a thin, intelligent, worried face. Erde thought he looked more like a guildsman than a soldier. He swallowed nervously but looked his baron in the eye. “The worst, my lord.”

“The Prince?”

Hoch dropped his glance, nodding.

“Dead? Already?”

“Dead, my lord. Within the hour.”

Köthen swore and looked away. Then he glared around at the waiting men as if searching out someone to blame for this outrage he’d been so sure he could prevent. His men stood their ground silently, their heads bowed, absorbing the heat of his rage and giving him back their trust. It moved Erde deeply that Köthen, even as he was at that moment, a dangerous and angry man swinging a naked blade so that it flashed in the torchlight, would never turn his rage on his men. Her father’s men would have retreated well out of range, as far as was possible with honor, in such a situation.

Prince Carl dead. Murdered, she supposed, and she had no doubt by whom. The mad priest’s plot was proceeding.
Was it possible that he—and evil—would somehow win the day?

Finally Köthen took a breath, lowered his sword, and sheathed it abruptly. “Show me,” he growled.

Hoch offered a slight bow. He motioned to one of the torchbearers, and led the way.

The young Prince lay crumpled at the foot of a big tree. He was small for his age, having not inherited his father Otto’s height. His feet were bare and battered. Not at all the figure of a King or warrior, Erde mused. He’d been a studious boy, she recalled Hal mentioning. Her heart went out to him: a scholar, doomed by birth to be a pawn in the vicious games of men more powerful and ambitious than himself. He was dressed in the soft robes he would have worn for retiring to bed. Clearly, he had not been armed. One torn end of a long sleeve had been folded back to cover his face.

Erde searched for blood or wounds. There were none anywhere on his slim body, except on his torn and muddy feet. Then she noticed the rope disappearing beneath the covering sleeve. Hoch took the torch in his own hand and raised it in order to illuminate a stout overhanging branch of the tree. Another length of rope dangled there, its loose end hastily slashed.

Hoch cleared his throat. “We cut him down not five minutes before you came, my lord.”

The men in Wender’s party shifted and muttered.

Köthen stared up at the offending rope. “He will call it a suicide and discredit the whole of Otto’s line. Why? This Prince was not his enemy. Are there no depths to which this man will not sink?”

No
, Erde wanted to shout at him.
Not a one! I could have told you that! Hal tried to tell you in Erfurt, but you wouldn’t listen!

Köthen raised his voice to be heard around the clearing. “Let not a man of you believe that the Prince died by his own hand!”

Wender laid a feather-light hand of warning on his baron’s sleeve.

Köthen shrugged him off brusquely. “Yes, yes, Wender, I’ll be quiet. For now, at least. But later . . .” He knelt beside the body and briefly lifted the concealing sleeve.
“Forgive me, my Prince. I tried to keep you safe as best I knew how.”

Wender waited, sucking his teeth, then said quietly, “We could undo the shame at least, my lord.”

Köthen gave his lieutenant a shocked look that slowly turned to bleak acceptance. He rose, flicking the sleeve back into place. “Do it,” he said, “then swear the men to secrecy.”

“Aye, my lord.”

Wender sent the men scurrying—to untie the rope from the tree, from the Prince’s neck, to burn the evidence and scatter the ashes, and finally to do the necessary violence to the corpse. Köthen moved away, out of the gathered circle of torches, away from the busy clot of men. He moved like a man in physical pain, sorry for the death of an innocent, Erde thought, but also deeply disturbed by the sacrilege of this pragmatic desecration. Köthen would go to confession and do his penitence, and still carry this guilt on his soul forever, even though he had allowed it for all the right reasons, to honor a monarch he himself was trying to usurp. Watching him brood, she ached for him. Her desire to reach out to him grew so intense that she could almost believe it was possible, by sheer force of longing, to walk out of her dream-state and into Köthen’s reality.

This was a new idea, and even as swept up as she was in dream-induced fantasizing, the fact that she was considering it seriously quite took her aback. Her intention shifted a bit more toward the rational with her sudden realization that she had information that might ease Köthen’s guilt: If what Hal and Rose had surmised about Rainer’s parentage was true, a rightful heir to the throne might still exist, that is, if Köthen and her father hadn’t already killed him off unknowingly. But she had heard Köthen’s brief reference to Otto’s “mysterious champion,” and was sure it could be none other. If Rainer lived, and if he was the true Prince, Köthen could forget all this needing to be regent in order to keep the country together. He could join Hal and establish Rainer as Otto’s heir, and this alliance would crush the offending priest like a bug. And then they could all run the country together. Erde thought it a grand and glorious vision, a future one could look forward
to. It was nearly—minus Rainer—what Köthen himself had offered Hal at Erfurt. It was a perfect plan and would solve everything. The hell-priest would at last be defeated.

She was very aware of being without substance in her dream-state, but her other senses were fully intact. She could see and hear and smell. Perhaps she could simply speak to Köthen without leaving the dream at all . . . why had she not thought of this before? And what harm could it possibly do to try? She focused on him very hard and thought of speaking, as she did when she spoke with the dragons.

—
My lord of Köthen
. . . .

Her dream-voice was like the whisper of night wings. She could hear it . . . but could he?

A thrill shot through her when she saw his head lift slightly and his eyes sweep the darkness in front of him as if listening. She had never expected to make contact so easily and now she was almost tongue-tied. What should she say to him? How should she introduce herself, a person he hardly knew, his enemy? How explain to him what was happening? She recalled how long it had taken N’Doch to accept the joining of minds. Köthen, she suspected, considered himself a rationalist, a pious man but not much given to superstition. How could she put words into his head without him thinking he was losing his mind?

—
My lord of Köthen
 . . .

It sounded so formal. Then she remembered what Hal had called him.

—
Dolph
 . . .

His head jerked this time. His eyes widened. She watched a faint flush of fear race through him. She decided she would not introduce herself at all. It was not her identity that mattered, it was her message, and now she realized she must convey it quickly. Even in her disembodied state, she suddenly felt faint. Each effort to bridge the gap between Köthen and herself sucked energy out of her like water down a drain. It was a greater gap than she’d imagined. She had to tell him her message before she lost the strength to do it.