“All right. Let’s get started. We’ll circle around the village, pick up the road about five miles outside it. Not likely anyone around here would know the prince by sight, but it’ll save questions. Has the kid got a hood? Get it on him. And keep it on him.” He cast a disgusted glance at Alfred’s satin-coated, knee-breeched, beribboned, and silk-stockinged finery. “You stink of the court a mile off. But it can’t be helped. Most likely they’ll take you for a charlatan. First chance we get, I’ll bargain with some peasant for a change of clothes.”
“Yes, Sir Hugh,” Alfred murmured.
Hugh stepped out the door. “We’re leaving, Your Highness.”
Bane danced up eagerly and caught hold of Hugh’s hand. “I’m ready. Are we going to stop at an inn for breakfast? My mother said we might. I’ve never been allowed to eat at an inn before-”
He was interrupted by a crash and a stifled groan behind him. Alfred had encountered the door. Hugh shook the boy’s hand free. The child’s soft touch was almost physically painful.
“I’m afraid not, Your Highness. I want to get clear of the village while it’s still early, before people are up and stirring.”
Bane’s mouth drooped in disappointment.
“It wouldn’t be safe, Your Highness.” Alfred emerged, a large knot forming on his glistening forehead. “Especially if there is someone plotting to … uh … do you harm.” He glanced at Hugh as he said this, and the assassin wondered again about Alfred.
“I suppose you’re right,” the prince said with a sigh, accustomed to the problems of being famous.
“But we will make a picnic under a tree,” added the chamberlain.
“And eat sitting on the ground?” Bane’s spirits lifted, then fell. “Oh, but I forgot. Mother never allows me to sit on the grass. I might catch a chill or get my clothes dirty.”
“I don’t think that this time she will mind,” Alfred replied gravely.
“If you’re sure . . .” The prince put his head on one side and looked intently at Alfred.
“I’m sure.”
“Hurrah!” Bane darted forward, skipping lightheartedly down the road. Alfred, clutching the prince’s pack, hurried after him. He’d make better time, thought Hugh, if his feet could be persuaded to travel in the same general direction as the rest of his body.
The assassin took his place behind them, keeping both under careful surveillance, hand on his sword. If Alfred so much as leaned over to whisper into the kid’s ear, that whisper would be made with his last breath.
A mile passed. Alfred seemed completely occupied with the task of staying on his own two feet, and Hugh, falling into the easy, relaxed rhythm of the road, let his inner eye take over guard duty. Freed, his mind wandered, and he found himself seeing, superimposed over the body of the prince, another boy walking along a road, though not with cheerful gaiety. This boy walked with an air of defiance; his body bore the marks of the punishment he had received for just such an attitude. Black monks walked along at his side. . . .
. . .”Come, boy. The lord abbot wants to see you.”
It was cold in the Kir monastery. Outside the walls, the world sweat and sweltered in summer heat. Inside, death’s chill stalked the bleak hallways and kept court in the shadows.
The boy, who was not a boy any longer, but standing on the threshold of manhood, left his task and followed the monk through the silent corridors. The elves had raided a small village nearby. There were many dead, and most of the brothers had gone to burn the bodies and do reverence for those who had escaped the prisonhouse of their flesh.
Hugh should have gone with them. His task and that of the other boys was to search for charcrystal and build the pyres. The brothers pulled the bodies from the wreckage, composed the twisted limbs and staring eyes, and placed them upon the heaped oil-soaked faggots. The monks said no word to the living. Their voices were for the dead, and the sound of their chanting echoed through the streets. That chant had come to be a music everyone on Uylandia and Volkaran dreaded to hear.