“And why not?” Lady Mintha demanded, striding forward until she stood nose to nose with Leta. She was a good head taller than the girl, and her height was worthy of the House of Gaheris. “Don’t tell me what I can do. Foolish little mincing ninny! Do you think the earls will stand idly by if they hear my son lies stricken upon his bed? They witnessed Ferox himself declare a freak his heir! They’re already licking their chops. If they know Alistair is broken like this, they’ll fall upon us like crows on a gibbet.” She bared her teeth and growled. “My family has held this mastery for two hundred years. I will not see the House of Gaheris fall!”
Her hand bit cruelly into Leta’s arm, and she dragged her away from the bed and toward the door. “Go! Get yourself ready for the funeral. Leave your page to serve my son; it will be enough for now. You must attend my brother’s interment as though nothing were amiss. And if Earl Aiven hears a word of this, I will know whom to blame.”
“Lady Mintha,” Leta protested, trying to pull from the lady’s grasp, “I can’t leave Alistair now.”
“Don’t play games with me,” Mintha snapped. “No one believes you love him. Now do as I say.”
With those words, Mintha drove Leta from the chamber. Then she turned to Mouse, addressing him as though he could understand her. “Stay by your master. I’ll return when I can.”
The next moment, she was gone, slamming the door like that of a dungeon. Mouse sat in the near darkness beside the stricken lord. Beyond the window, the world turned from black to gray. Mouse huddled down into the space between the bed and the wall, near Alistair’s prone form but hiding his head so as not to see it.
“This has nothing to do with me!” he whispered.
Ferox had never been more gloriously clad in the rich robes of Gaheris. Not that either gold or fur could bring him comfort in the darkness of his coffin as it was borne from the castle into the courtyard.
The Chronicler stood unseen in the shed, gazing through a crack in the door upon the gathered crowd. Ten earls of the North Country, ten of the strongest, stood with their entourages about them. Earl Lebuin of Aiven, majestic in his mourning garb, loomed over his daughter, who stood with hands folded and head bowed so that the Chronicler could not see her face.
Alistair was not among the company. Words were exchanged among the various earls, curious glances stolen. Someone whispered questions to Lady Mintha, but her stoic face gave the Chronicler no answers. And soon all of them were lost to his sight in the crowded courtyard.
Another solitary watcher observed the courtyard from a higher, more distant prospect. Mouse stood at the window of Alistair’s chamber, gazing down at the gathered mourners like so many black crows in the yard. He shivered and turned to the fevered lord upon his bed. The wound in his shoulder was turning black around the edges.
Down below, the funeral service began. Mouse could not understand the words. Even those who spoke the language understood little of what was said. A cleric of uncertain order recited in rhythmic cadences old words he did not believe. But Leta, standing beside her father, picked out pieces here and there that were familiar to her:
“Beyond the Final Water falling,
The Songs of Spheres recalling . . .”
She searched the downcast faces of those around her. Did any of them recognize those words? Did any of them know the song from which it was taken? The Chronicler would know. Even if he did not believe, at least he would know.
But his face was not among the mourners. She was alone in the crowd beside the statue-like frame of her father.
The cleric, somber in sable robes, stood before the door of the Gaheris family crypt, the coffin of the earl before him. He sprinkled water that was supposed holy; he scattered spices that were deemed virtuous. He spoke prayers that were not prayers but empty words.
And behind his words, Leta heard another sound.
A scritch-scratch upon heavy wood.
Then a voice like a demon’s whisper flowed from a dark place of echoes.
Open the gate.
She ceased to breathe. The world stopped—all sounds, all movements, everything swallowed up in that voice.
Open the gate!
She felt the tension in her father’s body. Dragging herself back into the cold present, she looked up at Earl Aiven and saw that his face was ashen, saw a straining vein in his neck and tightness under his eyes. Did he hear it too?
The cleric paused in his ritual. He stared out at the assembled crowd, and words failed him.
Open the gate.
Then it was gone, disappearing like spider webs caught upon a wind and borne far away. The cleric continued the ceremony, and the mourners breathed again.
But Leta thought, There is something in that crypt.
She opened her mouth to speak. Even as pallbearers lifted Ferox’s coffin onto their shoulders; even as Lady Mintha, with great ceremony, nodded permission to Earl Clios; even as Clios’s hands were on the latch, turning, pulling, Leta meant to scream, to warn them all: “Don’t let them out!”
The latch turned.
And the ancient door exploded.