in the sound of wine voluminously pouring into his mouth. At length the flow ceased. Tegid surfaced, belched, and looked around. “I’ve a mighty thirst in me tonight,” he explained unnecessarily.
Paul addressed the Prince casually. “If you’re in a party mood, aren’t you in the wrong bedroom?”
Diarmuid’s smile was rueful. “Don’t assume you were a first choice,” he murmured. “Your charming companions accepted their dresses for tomorrow, but nothing more, I’m afraid. The small one, Kim”—he shook his head—“has a tongue in her.”
“My condolences,” said Kevin, delighted. “I’ve been on the receiving end a few times.”
“Then,” said Diarmuid dan Ailell, “let us drink in joint commiseration.” The Prince set the tone by commencing to relate what he characterized as essential information: a wittily obscene description of the various court ladies they were likely to meet. A description that reflected an extreme awareness of their private as well as public natures.
Tegid and Coll stayed; the other two men left after a time, to be replaced by a diiferent pair with fresh wine flasks. Eventually these two departed as well. The two men who succeeded them, however, were not smiling as they entered.
“What is it, Carde?” Coll asked the fair-haired one.
The man addressed cleared his throat. Diarmuid, sprawled in a deep chair by the window, turned at the sound.
Garde’s voice was very soft. “Something strange. My lord, I thought you should know right away. There’s a dead svart alfar in the garden below this window.”
Through the wine-induced haze descending upon him, Kevin saw Diarmuid swing to his feet.
“Brightly woven,” the Prince said. “Which of you killed it?”
Garde’s voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s just it, my lord. Erron found it dead. It’s throat was… ripped apart, my lord. Erron thinks… he thinks it was done by a wolf, though… with respect, my lord, I don’t ever want to meet what killed that creature.”
In the silence that followed this, Kevin looked over at Paul Schafer. Sitting up on his bed, Schafer seemed thinner and more frail than ever. His expression was unreadable.
Diarmuid broke the stillness. “You said it was below this window?”
Carde nodded, but the Prince had turned already and, throwing open the doors, was on the balcony and then dropping over the edge. And right behind him was Paul Schafer. Which meant that Kevin had to go, too. With Coll beside him and Carde just behind, he moved to the edge of the balcony, swung over the balustrade, hung by his hands a dizzy instant, and dropped the ten feet to the garden. The other two followed. Only Tegid remained in the room, his mountainous bulk precluding the descent.
Diarmuid and Paul had moved to where three men were standing by a stunted clump of shrubbery. They parted to let the Prince in among them. Kevin, breathing deeply to clear his head, moved up beside Paul and looked down.
When his eyes adjusted to the dark, he wished they hadn’t. The svart alfar had been almost decapitated; its head had been clawed to shreds. One arm had been torn through, the shoulder remaining attached to the body only by an exposed strip of cartilage, and there were deep claw marks scoring the naked torso of the dark green, hairless creature. Even in the shadows, Kevin could see the thick blood clotting the dried-out soil. Breathing very carefully, shocked almost sober, he resisted an impulse to be sick. No one spoke for a long time: the fury that was reflected in the mangled creature on the ground imposed its own silence.
Eventually Diarmuid straightened and moved back a few steps. “Carde,” he said crisply, “I want the watch doubled on our guests as of now. Tomorrow I want a report on why that thing wasn’t seen by any of you. And why you didn’t see what killed it either. If I post guards, I expect them to be useful.”
“My lord.” Carde, badly shaken, moved off with the other guards.
Coll was still crouching beside the dead svart. Now he looked over his shoulder. “Diar,” he said, “it was no ordinary wolf that did this.”
“I know,” said the Prince. “If it was a wolf.”
Kevin, turning, looked at Paul Schafer again. Schafer had his back to them. He was gazing at the outer wall of the garden.
At length the four of them walked back to the balcony. With the aid of crevices in the palace wall, and a hand over the balustrade from Tegid, they were all soon in the room once more. Diarmuid, Tegid, and Coll departed shortly