The Charnel Prince by Greg Keyes Read Free Book Online

mixture of fear and annoyance.
    The fear was entirely rational; the sharp end of the weapon was poised only inches from his throat, and the man holding the shaft was large, armored, and mounted on a ferocious-looking steed. His iron-gray eyes reminded Leoff of the pitiless waters of the Ice Sea, and it seemed to him that if this man killed him, he would not even remember him in the morning.
    There was certainly nothing he could do to stop the fellow if murder was on his mind.
    That he should also be annoyed was quite irrational, he supposed, but in truth it had little to do with the armored man. Days before—in the hill country—he’d heard a faint melody off in the distance. No doubt it had been some shepherd playing a pipe, but the tune had haunted him ever since, the worse because he’d never heard the end of it. His mind had completed it in a hundred ways, but none of them were satisfactory.
    This was unusual. Normally, Leoff could complete a melody without the slightest effort. The fact that this one continued to elude him made it more tantalizing than a beautiful, mysterious—but reluctant—lover.
    Then, this morning, he’d awoken with a glimmer of how it ought to go, but less than an hour on the road brought this rude interruption.
    “I have little money,” Leoff told the man truthfully. His voice shook a bit as he said it.
    The hard eyes narrowed. “No? What’s all that on your mule, then?”
    Leoff glanced at his pack animal. “Paper, ink, my clothes. The large case is a lute, the smaller a croth. Those smallest ones are various woodwinds.”
    “Auy? Open them, then.”
    “They won’t be of any value to you.”
    “Open them.”
    Trying not to take his gaze off the man, Leoff complied, opening first the leather-bound case of the lute, which sounded faintly as the gourd-shaped back bumped against the ground. Then he proceeded to unpack the rest of his instruments; the eight-stringed rosewood croth inlaid with mother-of-pearl that Mestro DaPeica had given him years ago. A wooden flute with silver keys, an hautboy, six flageolets of graded sizes, and a dark red krummhorn.
    The man watched this with little expression. “You’re a minstrel, then,” he said at last.
    “No,” Leoff replied. “No, I’m not.” He tried to stand taller, to make the most of his average height. He knew there was little intimidating about his hazel eyes, curly brown hair, and boyish face, but he could at least be dignified.
    The fellow raised an eyebrow. “Then what exactly are you?”
    “I’m a composer.”
    “And what does a composer do?” the man asked.
    “He composes music.”
    “I see. And how does that differ from what a minstrel does?”
    “Well, for one thing—”
    “Play something,” the man interrupted.
    “What?”
    “You heard me.”
    Leoff frowned, his annoyance growing. He looked around, hoping to find someone else, but the road stretched empty so far as the eye could see. And here in Newland, where the terrain was as level as a sounding board, that was very far indeed.
    Then why hadn’t he seen the approach of the man on a horse?
    But the answer to that lay in the melody he’d been puzzling over. When he heard music in his head, the rest of the world simply didn’t matter.
    He picked up the lute. It had gone out of tune, of course, but not badly, and it was only a moment’s work to set it right again. He plucked out the melody line he’d been working on.
    “That’s not right,” he murmured.
    “You
can
play, can’t you?” the mounted man challenged.
    “Don’t interrupt me,” Leoff said absently, closing his eyes. Yes, there it was, though he’d lost the end.
    He started into it, a single line on the top string, rising in three notes, dropping into two, then tripping up the scale. He added a bass accompaniment, but something about it didn’t fit.
    He stopped and started again.
    “That’s not very good,” the man said.
    That was too much, spear or no. Leovigild turned his eyes on