Child of Flame (Page 135)

Heribert looked at him in surprise. “We are all of us dependents in one manner or another. Regnant and skopos, too, are vassals of God. How is this different?”

“Does God force regnant and skopos to be whores against their will?”

Chief among the servants and the one who stood somewhat removed from the others, directing the flow of food and drink into he hall, was a remarkably pretty young woman whose handsome features were marred only by a scar along her lower lip, as if she’d been bitten hard enough to draw blood. Lord Hrodik seemed determined to make an ass of himself by continually calling her over and making much of her presence, although any idiot could see that the poor woman had fallen completely under the spell of Prince Sanglant’s charisma. Trying not to stare at the prince, she made it all the more obvious that she was trying not to stare at him. “Ai, Lord,” said Heribert with a rueful smile, “there is one woman who has caught Sanglant’s eye.”

“How can you tell? It seems to me he looks at her no differently nor more often than he does the others.”

Heribert chuckled softly. “Does it seem so to you? Yet I think it seems otherwise to her. She’s both shapely and handsome, and I fear me that our prince is particularly susceptible to women like her.”

“Pretty enough,” agreed Zacharias, who did not object to admiring handsome women and in years past—before his mutilation—had fallen short of his vows a handful of times. “Perhaps it’s your own chastity you must watch over, friend, rather than the prince’s.”

Heribert blushed slightly. “Nay, friend, the charms of women hold no power over me. Pity poor Lord Hrodik. He fades quickly when seated beside Sanglant, and the more so because of his incessant bragging.”

“Truly, he wouldn’t have lasted a day among the Quman tribes For all that they were savages, no man among them dared boast of his exploits unless he were truly a warrior and hunter.”

“Lord Hrodik’s retinue is agreed that he shot a buck last month so perhaps he can be accounted a hunter.”

Zacharias laughed, unaccustomed to hearing the fastidious cleric resort to sarcasm.

Prince Sanglant’s head came up at the sound, and he stood abruptly. The poet broke off in confusion, staring around wildly as if he thought an armed party might thunder into the hall.

“I pray you, Brother Zacharias,” said the prince, turning to address him across the length of two tables, “if you can recite the hymn to St. Herodia, then do so. You know it perfectly, do you not?”

Zacharias rose, handing the wine cup to Heribert. “I can recite it, Your Highness, if it pleases you.”

“It would please me greatly.” Sanglant left the high table and came to sit beside Heribert, throwing himself into Zacharias’ seat and gulping down what was left of the wine in his cup, leaving only dregs. “Ai, God,” he said in a low voice, “I have no more patience for that pup’s tail wagging nor for that truckler who claims to be a poet.” He looked around desperately, lifting his cup, and the handsome servingwoman rushed forward to fill it, pouring the wine through a silver sieve that filtered out most of the dregs. Sanglant stared at her frankly, and she did not lower her eyes, so that this time it was the prince who looked away first, coloring somewhat, although a blush was hard to see against his bronze complexion. Lord Hrodik called to her sharply, and she hurried away to attend to him.

“Ai, Lord,” muttered the prince. “I am not fit to be a monk.”

“Our lord prince needs distraction,” murmured Heribert to Zacharias.

When young, Zacharias had devised a way of memorizing the hymns and verses he loved so much by thinking of them as beasts tied up in a stable, each one in a separate stall and each stall marked by a bird or plant to remind him of its first unique word or phrase, something to launch him into the words. Walking down that stall in his mind’s eye, he found a figure of a vulture, known as the prophet among birds, carrying a stalk of barley, called hordeum in Dariyan and sharing enough sounds with “Herodia” that it was easy to recall the second out of the first. It took him as much time as it took the prince to drain another cup of wine to gather the first words onto his tongue.

“Let us praise the first prophet, called Herodia,

Who walked among the streets and temples of Jeshuvi

And did not turn her eye away from mortal weakness,

Nor did she fear to speak harshly to those who

transgressed God’s law.”

Once he had begun, the words flowed freely, one linking itself to the next in an unbroken chain. It was the genius, so his grandmother had said, that the gods had granted to him. The frater who had brought the word of the Unities to their frontier village had praised him, telling him that he had been named well, for truly the angel of memory, Zachriel, had visited a holy gift upon him.