Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

“What of the dogs?” whispered Erkanwulf. “What if they smell us?”

“Then again you are safer to remain here, where the smell of lime and damp will somewhat cover your trail.”

“And if they don’t know of the tunnel,” said Lavastine quietly, “then they would have no reason to look down here. If they discover you, they’d be as likely to look elsewhere and thus give us time to get out and move for the gates.” He nodded curtly. “Go on.”

Go on. So coolly he considered her death and resolved that it might benefit him.

But Liath only smiled grimly, gave her torch to Erkanwulf, and set off up the stairs.

The curve soon took her out of sight of the soldiers waiting below, but even the memory of torchlight was enough to light her way. She heard the delicate tread of men coming up after her. Soon a thin line of light limned the door that led out onto the nave, but she passed it by and crept on up a narrower set of stone steps that led to the choir.

Here, in a cramped landing, she set her hand on a thick door ring and rested her ear against the rough planks. What she heard from beyond was faint, a teasing melody as light as air. Dust coated the iron ring, slick under her fingers. She gave a nudge with her shoulder. The door cracked open. Daylight blinded her and she had to stand for the count of twenty until her eyes adjusted even to the thin line of light that now edged the stone column around which the stairwell wound. From the nave she heard the sound of flutes.

She tucked her sword against her and eased open the door. The choir walk ran empty, a balcony no wider than an arm outstretched, all the way to the opposite end of the nave. A layer of dust blanketed the floor. Tapestries whose brightly woven stories were muted by dust hung on the walls beneath the huge second tier of windows through which the sun shone, motes of dust everywhere streaming and dancing in the light. Where a few of the tapestries brushed the floor, sagging or half fallen, their bases had been nibbled into ragged ends by rats or mice.

She set a foot forward and eased herself into the quiet walk. A dart of movement startled her, and she froze. But it was only a mouse, bold enough enough to prowl the choir in broad daylight. The sight of it gave her courage. If mice skittered about so freely, then it was not likely anyone lurked up here.

She stepped farther out, hugging the wall, and eased the door closed until it stood with only a crack. Each step left a distinct print behind as she crept forward.

She crouched and made her way along the solid railing. Above, the ceiling vaulted high to span the nave. Flute music echoed below and beside and beyond her. She dared not look at the windows for fear one glimpse of sunlight would ruin her eyes when she needed to look below. Her quiver brushed the rail, and she rose slightly to peer over.

And there, in a shaft of sunlight streaming in through the western windows, sat Bloodheart on his throne.

He played music on flutes crafted of bone, and she shuddered to hear him as the music wafted into the air and twined and curled around as if it were a living thing. And she knew, then: He wove with his flute, wove the very illusions that protected him.

Next to him, almost in his shadow, crouched the skinny Eika priest she remembered. Naked except for a loincloth, he rocked back and forth on his heels in time to the melody. A wooden chest sat tucked against his feet, and one of his clawed hands rested protectively on its painted lid.

And there were dogs, packs of dogs all here and there, panting, lying in heaps, tongues lolling and saliva dripping onto the flagstone floor. Beside the holy altar Bloodheart had let a midden grow, a low mound of garbage, rags and trash and bones and old rusting chains piled up against the most sanctified place in the cathedral. She winced to see the holy Hearth defiled in such a fashion, but no doubt Bloodheart pleased himself by desecrating the blessed Hearth of the Lady.

She knelt, laid her sword down on the dusty walk, and with her heart afire with fear and with an implacable burning determination, she slipped out Seeker of Hearts. In a moment she had an arrow free and loosely nocked to the string.

Light streamed down all around her, the blessed Daisan walking through his seven miracles, each one outlined in glass. Light splintered everywhere, rainbows dancing in the air of the nave, yet if she shifted slightly they would vanish only to reappear if she leaned back. She rose again from her crouch, as silent as the breath of morning—or of fate’s unyielding hand.

The memory of the beauty of the cathedral hit her with doubled force. There the biscop had led Mass. There the congregation had gathered, standing, to sing. There Sanglant and his Dragons had knelt, before the altar, that morning in their last brief moments of life before they rode to their deaths.

Voices. She froze, canting her head back to listen. Let Lavastine and his men not come out yet!

Into the cold emptiness of the nave, below, an Eika strode into her line of sight. He wore the distinguishing marks of a princeling, a skirt of mail fashioned of gold and silver links that draped from hips to knees, winking in and out of the light as he walked the floor between shafts of sunlight, and a torso painted with an elaboration of the same swirling cross pattern that graced Bloodheart’s chest. Strangely, he wore a wooden Circle of Unity around his neck.

Alain’s prince! Could it be?

In her surprise, she must have scuffed her boot on the floor.

The Eika princeling faltered, and for that instant she panicked, not moving and yet with her mind shut like a door, blank and empty. But he only faltered because he stared at the heap of garbage beside the altar, which now stirred, woken by that scuff or by the perfume of her secrecy or by the music of the flutes, to reveal dogs and some kind of ghastly creature, surely not human, heavily chained and clothed in the tattered remains of a tabard marked with a black dragon. Yet it had substance and weight, unlike a daimone; it had unkempt black hair as tangled and ratted as that of a filthy ascetic who has sworn off the trivial clothing of human grooming. It had arms and legs, hands and feet, very humanlike, and a cast of skin made dark by grime. It was a hideous thing, so matted and foul that it might as easily have been a grotesque illusion born out of Bloodheart’s vile magic. Or so she hoped. Then it swung round, shoulders bracing as against an attack, and she saw its face.

“God have mercy,” she whispered, the sound forced from her by a shock so profound that she forgot everything, everyone, and even her purpose for being here: The Eika chieftain who sat, unwitting, below her, an easy target. “Sanglant.”

He uncurled completely from the midden and in that instant with his head flung up like that of a hound tasting a scent on the air, she knew he had heard her.

She knew he recognized her voice.

Lady and Lord have mercy. Trapped. Bloodheart’s prisoner for over a year.

He looked more like an animal than a man.

Her throat burned, and she thought she was going to be sick.

She rose.