Kigh - Fifth Quarter Part 43

He felt the Song in blood and bone and in the memory of ancient pain.

"There're out there now, looking for me. They'll find me."

They were the demons of his youth. He knew them now. He should have known they would come for his heart. Long ago, they had taken everything else, flayed his spirit, and left him for dead.

But he had survived.

In many ways, he was stronger than he had been then. His gaze gently touched each of his four remaining companions where they rested in the shade. This time, he was not alone.

"I have run from them for too long," he murmured to the dark head on his lap. "We will make a stand and defeat them, you and I, once and for all."

Otavas stirred, his dreams touched by a dark hand. He would have wakened had he been able.

"We can't just charge in like three of the seven armies to the rescue," Gyhard said, his eyes locked on Vree's profile. "We need a plan, and we haven't much longer to devise one."

Vree touched the crossbow tied on behind her saddle. "We kill the old man. Karlene Sings away the dead. The prince goes home."

"I don't think Kars is going to be that easy to kill." The look she shot him lifted the hair on the back of his neck. Obviously, the pair of a.s.sa.s.sins sharing Vree's body thought differently. If they were thinking at all. Because he could do nothing to ease her pain, even if she admitted feeling it, he continued his explanation. "Suppose Kars has told the dead to kill the prince if he dies. If Karlene starts to Sing before he's dead, he'll stop her-remember he's had years of practice Singing a fifth quarter she's only just discovered. And it's going to take her a while to find the right Song. These people have been dead longer and they're all different-one Song isn't going to cover them."

"Isn't it?" Vree asked the bard.

Karlene hadn't actually considered it. Worry about His Highness mixed liberally with worry about Vree had kept her thoughts in turmoil since they left the riverbank. But-as much as she hated to admit it-Gyhard was right, they needed a plan. Two of the dead were from the fis.h.i.+ng village, and she had to a.s.sume that any others- two more at least but possibly three-were from the tombs of the Capital. "Once they're out of their bodies," she replied, "I can Sing them all away at once, but to get them out..." She glanced over at Vree and shook her head. "I'm afraid that may take some time."

"All right." Vree s.h.i.+fted in the saddle, eyes narrowed. "We catch up. We wait until they stop. We go in and slit Kars' throat. Solves everything."

"We go in?" Gyhard asked.

"Bannon and I."

"No."

Vree turned enough to look him full in the face. "Slaughter you, too," Bannon snarled.

"It's too dangerous. The dead don't sleep. I'm not sure Kars does anymore."

"So?"

Gyhard sighed explosively and threw up his hands-an older man's gesture at odds with the body he wore. "What happens if you get killed?" he demanded, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the reins again as his horse headed off the track.

One shoulder lifted and fell. "You get to keep Bannon's body and Karlene Sings one more Song."

"I don't want to die!"

"You think I do?"

"Yes."

She ignored him.

"Do you see them there, coming up the track?" Had her eyelids functioned, Kait would have squinted; as it was she could only lean toward the three tiny figures down below. "Yesss, Fa... ther."

He patted her shoulder proudly. "Of course you do. When they get to that tree..." Kait swayed so she could look along the line of his outstretched arm to where a squat and gnarled trunk lifted twisted, nearly leafless branches to the sky. "... I want you to pull this branch away and then follow us as quickly as you can."

"Yesss, Fa... ther."

He hugged her close, oblivious to the smell. "That's my girl."

Had she been able, she would have smiled.

"Old bones move slowly," he told her as he released her. "We won't have gone far." Leaning heavily on his staff, he began the steep climb back to the top of the bluff where the others waited with his heart.

"Fa... ther?"

Balanced carefully on the loose rock, he half-turned.

"Be care..." Kait worked her mouth but the 'f' was beyond her. "... ul."

Rheumy eyes filled. "I will, child."

"Before you decide to die n.o.bly," Gyhard announced caustically, "I want to talk to Kars." And say? He didn't know. I'm sorry I drove you insane. Don't you think it's time you were dead? Then what?

Bannon snorted. "You think he wants to talk to you after what you did to him?

Do you think he'll just hand you the prince?" Vree finished.

"If he gets the prince, then I get my body back!"

"We're not letting him have the prince, Bannon."

"I want my body back!"

Two spots of color burned high on Karlene's cheeks. "Rescuing His Highness has to be our first priority."

"Our first priority?" Gyhard shook his head. "You presume, Lady Bard, that my priorities are yours. That is not necessarily so.""But Prince Otavas is alive!""So is Kars."

"He's crazy. You said so yourself."

"And therefore deserves to die? I don't think so. Not for that." He reached out

and touched Vree lightly, fleetingly on the arm. "If you can go in and slit Kars'

throat, can you go in and get the prince out instead?"

She slapped at a biting fly and wiped her palm clean with a handful of mane.

"We don't owe you any favors."

"I know. Can you do it?"

"Not if the old man's put him to sleep."

"If he's awake."

"Yeah. We could."

"Will you?"

Vree glanced over at him out of the corner of one eye. Bannon's body...

"I want it back, Vree!"

His desperation clawed at her, but she'd been trained to ignore pain she could do

nothing about. "I'll think about it," she said at last and kicked her horse into a trot.

"If His Highness dies because of you," Karlene ground out through clenched teeth, "I'll make you sorry you were ever born!" Gyhard smiled at her, Bannon's features adding a feral savagery to the expression. "It won't be the first time," he said and sent his horse after Vree's.

Hands wrapped around the branch, bone beginning to show through rotting fingertips, Kait watched the three riders come closer and closer to the tree.

They would not all arrive at the tree at the same time.

What would Father want her to do?

By the time the question had been sluggishly considered, the first rider had nearly pa.s.sed the tree. Long before she found an answer, the second rider was approaching.

Kait surrendered. She leaned back against the splintered end of the branch and levered it free.

Loaded with rock, the cart began to roll. Shafts dragging behind, it quickly began to pick up speed on the steep slope.

The rumble of the cart whipped Vree's head around and up. Less aware of her surroundings than usual, it took her a moment to find the source of the noise. The next moment she drove her heels into the gelding's sides and bent low over its mane as it leaped forward. The cart, heading directly for the one tree of any size, would pa.s.s behind her. The chunks of hillside accompanying it, would not.

Still some distance from the tree, Karlene saw the cart cras.h.i.+ng down toward the track, half the steep, rocky bluff falling with it. Time seemed to stop as one of the narrow wheels shattered. The cart twisted, splintered, but the fragments continued to lead the swelling wave of destruction.

Yanking back on the reins, she realized that Gyhard was directly in the path of the grinding, wedge-shaped ma.s.s. She hesitated while the bay fought the bit and tried to run, then finally screamed a warning.

He couldn't outrun it. His only chance was to get the bulk of the ancient tree between him and the crus.h.i.+ng avalanche of rock. Jerking his panicked horse off the track, he dove from the saddle, pressed his back up against the gnarled trunk and grabbed on to the gelding's cheek straps with both hands just as the first impact shook the tree.

Whites showing all around its eyes, the gelding fought his hold. With a scream of terror, it tore itself free and disappeared into the rising cloud of dust and debris.

The noise was deafening. Gyhard squeezed his eyes shut, swore as a rock glanced off his thigh, and prayed to G.o.ds he'd forgotten for four lifetimes. He lost himself in the roar and reverberation, unable to tell where he left off and the cataclysm began.

Then a sudden, dry shriek wrenched his eyes open.

One of the tree's ma.s.sive limbs, dead from trunk to tip, dropped toward the ground.

Gyhard barely had time to get an arm up over his head.

Vree left her shaken horse at the edge of the rockfall and clambered back toward the tree. Bannon wailed in the depths of her mind, but it was a sound without words and easy to push into the background. Climbing nimbly over and through the treacherous fan of debris, she swung off the track and down to where Gyhard lay, half buried in rock.

If he's dead...

Bannon's wail grew louder, but Vree hadn't actually been thinking of her brother at all. If he's dead kept repeating over and over, circling the inside of her head, patrolling the perimeter. She couldn't get past it.

There were few rocks directly behind the tree although the area between it and the bluff had been filled to waist level in places. A smashed board from the cart had been flung high into a splintered fork.

Straddling Gyhard's waist, Vree squatted and slid a hand under the branch that pinned him to the ground. Her heart started beating in time to his.

"He's alive," she said as Karlene lowered herself carefully down off the track. A small ripple of dislodged rock bounced away. Both women ignored it.

Karlene had never heard two words spoken with so many layers of emotion. "Is Bannon's body all right?" she asked gently. When Vree turned to face her, the bard wished she'd held her tongue. Vree hadn't forgotten whose body Gyhard wore-couldn't forget-and the last thing she needed was yet another jealous reminder. "I'm sorry, Vree."

The shrug clearly dismissed both question and apology. "We'll have to lift this branch straight off. We'll only do more damage if we drag it." The branch had done damage enough. Midway between wrist and elbow, Gyhard's left forearm bent where it never had before.

"This is broken."

"My body!"

Karlene leaned forward. "Anything else?"

"That's enough!"

"Cuts and bruises. Nothing big." Vree felt the arm move under the gentle

pressure of her fingers and looked up to see Gyhard staring at her through bloodshot eyes. Almost without realizing she did it, she blocked Bannon's frantic leap.

"VREE!" Bannon's shriek flayed her with her name. "I could've had him!"

"And a broken arm," Vree told him, desperately searching for an excuse acceptable to them both. "Do you want that kind of pain?"

"I want my body." But the shriek had become a sob, and she knew he'd clutched