The Dark Remains Read Online Free Page B

straightened, and a sly light crept into his permanently crossed blue eyes. “But will they flap or will they sing when they must take her test?”
    Lirith recovered quickly, drawing herself erect. “Fool, we have no time for this. The queen awaits us.”
    The man laughed, dancing a caper in place, the bells on his parti-colored cap bobbing.
    “
Awaits us, our fates us
—
Berates us, for late’s us
.”
    Color touched Lirith’s dusky cheeks, and she opened her mouth for a reply. However, Aryn spoke first, affecting an exaggerated frown.
    “Is that the best rhyme you can forge, Master Tharkis? I’m afraid it’s not much of a poem.”
    The fool scuttled forward. His bony knees protruded from faded green hose, and his pointed shoes were scuffed and muddied. He tangled thin fingers, his wayward eyes bright. “And does my sweet spinstress, in so short a time, fancy she’d weave a cleverer rhyme?”
    Aryn drew herself up. “I believe I could. In fact, I wager I can make a better poem out of your name than you can of mine.”
    Lirith scowled at her, but Aryn ignored the look. Tharkis clapped his hands and grinned again.
    “A game! A game!” He turned another flip in place. “How a fool loves a game. Pray, my lady, make a verse of my name.”
    Aryn drew in a breath. Ar-tolor’s court fool had a tendency to interpose himself in one’s way at the most inopportune times, and playing his game seemed like the swiftest way past him. Only now she wasn’t so certain it had been a good idea. She frowned in concentration. Then, as if by magic, the words came to her, and she spoke them in a laughing voice:
    “
Where hides Master Tharkis?
    That I cannot tell
—
    But the sound that you do hark is
    The chiming of his bell
.
    So swifter than a lark is
    The mischief he’d best quell
—
    For nothing else so dark is
    The deepest dungeon cell
.”
    Aryn couldn’t suppress a satisfied smile as Lirith gaped at her. It wasn’t a bad little poem, if she did say so herself.
    Evidently Tharkis agreed, for the fool sputtered, pawing at his jangling cap so that strands of lank hair escaped.
    “Come now, Fool,” Aryn said. “It is your turn in the game.”
    “Must I beg it on my knees? A moment, spinstress—a moment please!”
    Tharkis turned toward the alcove, back hunched, and muttered under his breath. Aryn didn’t waste the chance. With the way clear before them, she grabbed Lirith’s hand and dashed down the corridor.
    They had already turned a corner when they heard a shrill howl of dismay behind them. The sound spurred them on, feet pounding on stone, until at last they were forced to stop and sag against a wall, gasping for breath and laughing.
    Aryn wiped tears from her eyes. “Was he truly king once, as the stories say? It’s so hard to believe when I see him.”
    Lirith smoothed the tight, black coils of her hair. “Indeed he was, sister. For many years Tharkis ruled the Dominion of Toloria. But one day while out hunting he fell from his horse and struck his head against a stone. When he awoke again he was like this. I fear his brain was addled without repair.”
    Aryn had heard the tale. King Tharkis had neither wife nor heir, and after his mishap Toloria was torn by strife as various barons vied for the throne. Had it not been for Ivalaine—a distant cousin of Tharkis who, within days of reaching the age of eighteen, managed to unite all the barons—the Dominion might have been sundered forever.
    “So Tharkis truly is mad, then,” Aryn said. “Yet it seems cruel to keep him like this. A man who was king should not be the court fool.”
    “And would it be less cruel to lock him high in a tower where none might see him? This is who he is now. And I think, after a fashion, he enjoys it.”
    Lirith was right, of course. All the same, there was something very wrong about Tharkis. The less Aryn encountered him, the better.
    “Come,” Lirith said, “the queen awaits us.”
    “In order to
berates
us,” Aryn said