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If the name of Prester John provoked any reaction, he did not know how to read it. Nicholas Bo
Farrell said, “I think so.” Beside him Nicholas Bo
Dancing with Aiffe was neither a sinister experience nor a particularly exciting one. She was a deft and meticulous dancer, executing her ruades, her springing cadences, her fleurets, and her high-kicking greves without a flaw or a variation, easily matching her steps to Farrell’s less practiced ones. But her brief interest in him seemed to have lapsed completely: she did not speak or smile, and if she did anything further with her tongue, it must have happened while he was trying to watch Nicholas Bo
She blinked vaguely at him—a long-jawed adolescent, plain as an adult, almost embarrassing in her stark lack of the menace and mystery for which she was prepared to badger hell. It was only during the last strain of the galliard that she spun violently away from him into a jagged, blazing scurry of half-steps that carried her as far as the dais—himself three floundering beats behind her—then wheeling back to end with a high jump like a cry of rage, and a reverence so dazzlingly scornful that Farrell stood flat-footed, feeling as if every woman he had ever known, begi
The music ended, but no one ever bowed to thank the musicians for that playing of the Earl of March’s Galliard, for Aiffe shook her dust-colored hair and cried out, “Now is the geas fulfilled, and now are you free to speak your name to me. For I am a king’s daughter and a maiden, and behold, we have danced a galliard together.” The pupils of her eyes had gone oval, and there was a faint, pulsing corona of yellow-green around each one.
In the clearing, the bright voices were guttering and going out, two and three at a time. The dancers stared and murmured and sidled closer, most moving heavily now in tunics veined with sweat and gowns too damp to rustle. Farrell looked for Julie, but Nicholas Bo
“Aye, indeed,” Aiffe answered clearly. “King Garth that was and will be, first ruler of Huy Braseal and still the longest-reigning.” Farrell liked her just then, for the pride in her voice. He gazed around among the dancers, wondering numbly who her mother might be. Maybe the kid’s a changeling. Maybe he is. Why didn’t Julie tell me?
“My daughter is a princess of many realms,” Garth de Montfaucon said quietly, “whether I am king or no.” Aiffe put her arm through his, and they stood like that, smiling the same long, supple smile at Farrell. It made him think of Briseis’ habit of laying her head alongside Sia’s head, so that they could look at everything together.
“Now we will have your name.” She spoke with the toneless cheer of a clubwoman at a reception filling out gummed lapel tags. Farrell was certain that he could challenge her on a technicality—Garth’s grandchildren will be terrific with animals and metal futures—and knew equally well that he had neither the courage nor the mea
But Julie was pushing past Nicholas Bo
“Come, fair knight,” Aiffe said, “your name.” She hugged her father’s arm, shivering with delight, looking like a puppy gri
There were no names in his head. Later that was to disquiet him as much as anything else; that he—junk-man of the lost, curator of the truly useless, random cherisher, keeper, keener—should come to bay without so much as a third string Round Tabler or journeyman superman out of Italian romances at his call. Aiffe widened her strange eyes, attempting or burlesquing seductiveness, and Farrell found that he could not look away from her. The effort made him dizzy and short of breath, almost sick. He felt Nicholas Bo
Close at hand, a man was singing, or rather declaiming in a high-pitched rhythmic drone that sounded like stones and shells rasping back down a beach with the ebb tide. Farrell had no idea how long the man had been doing this.
Aiffe looked up, and Farrell, released, stumbled a step forward, turned his head and saw Hamid ibn Shanfara. The Saracen’s voice had again played its trick with distance; he was standing alone on a hummock of bare earth near the pavilion, with his shoulders back and his hands tucked into the sash of his white robe. He nodded very slightly to Farrell, touching a forefinger airily to the indigo turban, which was coming loose again.
Farrell laughed, feeling as though his throat were full of old straw. With the laughter came the next lines of the lonesome, gentle, possessed madman’s song. He said to Aiffe, “My geas is still upon me. I may speak my name to no other hearing than yours.”
She lowered her eyes to his again, but no power clenched on him this time, and he could tell that she knew it. She did not move until he whispered mockingly, “Come on, Rosa
When she was very near, he said the name, holding it out between them like holy water or a kitchen chair. “I am the Knight of Ghosts and Shadows.” Muscles crawled in Aiffe’s temples, as though she were trying to lay her ears flat back; her lips all but disappeared. Farrell bowed to her.