A King in Cobwebs

by David Keck

* * *

  BELOW THE BULK of the ancient citadel were galleries cut deep in the living rock by chisels and masons all long since crumbled into dust. Durand and the party of knight-monks walked through blackness in a wobbling circle of torchlight. The rasp and jingle of boots and mail scampered off through leagues of black passageways.

  A hand stopped Durand.

  “Here,” said Durand’s jailer.

  In the wall of the passageway was a low door. A quick tug revealed a featureless void beyond.

  “Inside.”

  Durand glanced round at the weathered faces in the torchlight. Pitchy smoke stung his eyes.

  “What do you have planned for me?” he asked.

  “You’ll stay in this storeroom till your people take their leave of Pennons Gate.”

  It was not a bad bargain. Durand squeezed under the door, and stepped into the blackness.

  “Any hope of a torch?”

  “Well,” said the monk with a quick grimace, “you’re not having mine,” and shoved the door shut.

  Standing blind in his cell, Durand heard a bar scrape home and the monks make their rustling passage back up through the fortress. He laughed.

  * * *

  HIS PATTING FINGERTIPS found nothing so much as a stalk of straw in the frost bristling over the walls and floor. As he settled stoically against the wall, it occurred to him that a storeroom as cool as this might be very suitable indeed. The Solantines could store years of provender in the frigid heart of their mountain. He reckoned that they would have less luck keeping prisoners if alive was how they mean to keep them. With a chuckle, he pulled his cloak tight around his shoulders.

  When Durand next heard movement somewhere among the leagues of passageways beyond his door, the better part of a day had passed in the featureless cell. He forced his stiffening frame to stand and crossed to the exit.

  With a scrape of drawn bar, the door opened.

  Durand winced into torchlight and a gust of tarry-smoke.

  “I hope you’ve brought a blanket or two with you,” Durand said.

  There was a grunt.

  Durand’s dazzled eyes made out a wild face, mostly shadowed by the torch above and beside it: pale skin, a glitter of gray eyes, and a beard of twinkling hoarfrost framing the chin. It was Maedor Greyshield himself, and two of his knights playing torchbearer.

  “The haunted man,” the ancient knight rumbled.

  Durand withdrew a wary step.

  “They are all watching you,” the Constable said. “Once more, Heaven has you in its eye.” There was something in the quivering pressure of the old man’s eyes.

  Durand’s mouth opened. “What—”

  “Still, your time has almost come.”

  Somewhere in the fortress a door must have been opened, for a cold wind poured down the passage from beyond the Constable. The torch-flame lashed, sending tattered sparks and ashes whirling round Durand’s cell. The old Constable’s cloak leapt up like wings, reaching to envelop Durand.

  When the gust subsided, the torch was out and the blackness was pouring in.

  It was in this uneasy darkness that a peculiar light began to arise all around them. If Durand had not known of the fathoms of rock above his head, he would have believed that shutters had been opened on the blue sky. Somehow, he still believed it. The Constable was lifting his upturned hands, fingers hooked. It was as though the Eye of Heaven had found the man.

  His eyes were still fixed on Durand.

  “I must say nothing more, Durand Col. I will not invite the Host Below to answer. I would not free them to move. And they are waiting. But long years have passed since I have looked upon a man of your ilk. Most would have been dead long ago. There are forces at work to oppose you.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Heaven has you in its Eye, Durand Col. Your doom, for good or ill, is woven through many lives.”

  Afterward, Durand would wonder what compelled him to do it. He had seen much and slept little. The Lost were on his mind—and Deorwen, and Almora, and so much else. But he took hold of the old man’s surcoat, as though he would brace the Constable against the wall till he spoke in a straight line.

  He might as well have tried to uproot the mountain. The man seemed locked to the stone, and Durand remembered who he was: Maedor Greyshield.

  Durand opened his hands.

  “Often, we gain most by denying ourselves,” the Constable said.

  Durand put his head in his hands. “Why torture me with this, Brother Constable?”

  “It is my duty to every prisoner,” the ancient knight said. “And, if you had not disturbed me, I might have let you be.” A thought seemed to occur to him. “Did you know they are all here?”

  Durand was mystified. “Who?”

  “Every man who has fallen, Durand Col. Every knight and common man for uncounted black winters. They all are here. Catacombs in the living rock. From time to time, a sealing slab will fall. A niche will be laid open until one of the brothers finds it. And it is cold here, Durand. And the cold preserves them. So they say. Scores of thousands. But your Lost friends have been at work among them, drumming in the rock. Fumbling at lips and latches. It is ever the way with the Lost, to rummage among dead men’s bones. And stones have fallen on your account, say my men. My brethren have found comrades long dead standing among the frozen corridors. It is no pleasant thing to find dead men abroad in the dark, Durand Col.”

  He turned to the knights at his side.

  “Close the door on him.”

  * * *

  IN BLACK STONE, the vibrating notes of distant bells and, more faintly, the sonorous voices of the Solantines carried word of the advancing Eye of Heaven’s King. There was Last Twilight; the Midnight Invocation with its murmured litany of Powers; First Twilight; Dawn Thanksgiving; the Laud of Noontide and the Plea of Sunset once again. By the time the wheel of prayers had turned once around and started again, Durand was truly dazed by the slow, chilling effect of the stone around him.

  A man might confess terrible things under such pressure, were any questions put to him. A man might well die.

  Durand told himself that he had known colder nights when he’d followed Coensar and young Lamoric around the kingdom. He recalled more than one occasion when he had found his blanket frozen to the ground underneath him.

  He paced to keep warm. He could manage four long strides before a wall caused him to reverse himself. The rhythm of tramp and rasping pivot kept him awake and distracted from his growing hunger. He heard strugglings in the rock: unquiet sleepers. He blunted the edge of thirst with frost scratched from the walls and licked from his fingernails.

  He wondered about his jailers. The Solantines, it was said, did not sleep. They did not rest. They had willed themselves near to the Powers. Their sentries kept their watch for days beyond counting. They lived long.

  He wondered whether they would expect a weaker man to do as well.

  Still, until the cold finished him, he had only his thoughts for companions.

  He thought of golden Leovere, the heir to Yrlac, who spent his days steeped in the grumblings of the outnumbered native lords. The man had likely been very pleased when he met young Almora. A simple marriage vow would make him lord of his Yrlac at a stroke. Moreover, he would gain Gireth as well. A lovely girl. A triumph without blood. A dukedom. Two! He would want the girl.

  But that devil Morcar was another matter. The man had put innocents to the torch simply to draw off the duke’s guards. Morcar clearly saw Abravanal as the key to breaking Gireth’s hold on Yrlac. If Abravanal died, the king would snatch Almora for a royal ward, the dukedom would fall into chaos, and there would be Yrlac, ripe for the native lords to cut free of Gireth. Abravanal wouldn’t give his daughter to any kin of Radomor of Yrlac. Knowing that, Morcar’s plan was ugly, bloody, and wise.

  Leovere wanted Almora’s hand; Morcar wanted Abravanal’s neck. And now they would have their chance without Durand. He could do nothing. He had been a f
ool to let Morcar goad him. He could only hope the price of his stupidity was not too high.

  Bells rang and monks chanted as Durand grumbled about barons, stewards, the Constable, and monks.

  Finally, there was a sound, loud as a crossbow’s snap in the silence. Durand turned to the source—was the rattle coming from the stone of the mountain, or was he facing the door? For a moment, he had lost his bearings. Then a seam of fire split the darkness and light lanced through Durand’s warding fingers.

  There was a shadow in the doorway, an incandescent firebrand in its hand.

  “Sir Durand?” asked a voice.

  “Aye.”

  “They say you can go now.” The voice was Ailric’s, though Durand could not make out his face beyond the torch’s glare.

  “Good,” Durand said, snatching the torch from the young man’s hand. He thrust the flame toward the floor behind him, to save his eyes. He noticed the silvered pelt of frost covering the walls, and how it had been almost completely clawed away. There were thousands of black scars where his nails had raked up moisture.

  The boy’s face was clear in the glow.

  “I reckoned they’d wait till Leovere’s men had left this place.”

  “They’ve been gone some time.”

  Durand snorted. “How long have I been locked away?”

  “Two days.”

  The number matched his tally of the monks’ prayers.

  “What’s been going on since I gave that Morcar his little ride?”

  “They’ve all gone. Yesterday at Dawn. Morcar and the others left with Leovere.”

  A question occurred to Durand. “How did they seem together?”

  “Leovere and Morcar? Leovere was not talking much. He wished us all a good journey to the Lindenhall and promised to meet us all there. Maybe Morcar took liberties in Broklambe.”

  Durand grunted. It hardly mattered. Morcar was Leovere’s dog. “What of the duke?”

  “He is nearly recovered, I think. He still coughs, but the great weakness has left him.”

  Durand nodded.

  “When do we leave?”

  “The duke and the others have gone already, after Dawn Thanksgiving. It is past Noontide now.”

  “Ha! I should have guessed. I don’t suppose you thought to bring any food down? Even their twine-and-pea pottage would tempt me.”

  “They said you can eat in the refectory at mealtime. You’ve just missed one.”

  Durand grunted. “These Solantines like their little jokes. We must be on our way.”

  * * *

  THEY HURRIED TO catch the others.

  Like a flea on the face of mighty Pennons Gate, Durand looked out over Fellwood—vast beyond measure and unspeakably ancient. He and Ailric passed through gatehouse after gatehouse on the switchbacking trail down, looking out on a forest as boundless as the sea. Durand was used to the arcane knots of woodland that beetled here and there throughout Errest, but Fellwood was an altogether different thing: old before there were Sons of Atthi. And as Durand and Ailric rode their stitching path between the sheer walls of the pass, they descended below the swells of the green sea and beheld the immense darkness below.

  A guard in Solantine garb stood at the bottom gate—the fortress called the Forest Gate—ordering the monstrous iron portcullis hauled up. There were castles that weighed less than that grill of iron and oak. Beyond it was a mighty breathing silence of trees that loomed like a wall for giants; Rooks coughed and clattered among the remote branches.

  “Be watchful,” said the porter, in a familiar voice. Durand turned to see eyes like black nail-heads. “Fellwood is a demon-haunted place. You will not long be alone once you enter its precincts.”

  “A nice thought,” said Durand.

  The porter laughed.

  “I have a nicer one for you, Durand Col: Do not tarry long here below the Forest Gate. Men and thralls have died in this place beyond counting. The Gorge of Pennons is a place for living men no longer.”

  * * *

  THEY TRAVELED A forest track through halls of oak and alder that made toys of every sanctuary in Errest the Old. The cool air was heavy with vegetable decay. When breezes ran free over the canopy, sunlight pierced the high crowns in glittering waves. A man felt like some worm on the floor of the sea.

  Sometimes, the two men could see for leagues, sometimes no distance at all. Once a sound like a spinning festival ratchet clattered frantically from somewhere in those treed halls and the croak of ravens echoed.

  Few men used Pennons Gate in that age, and few settlements survived along the path. Occasionally, Ailric caught sight of some old foundation or the humped back of a fallen shrine among the roots, but not once did they smell a hearth fire.

  As they rode past an upturned shrine or manor house, a pair of Rooks tumbled from a broken pillar to alight in the branches above the track. A sharp reek of carrion stung the air. It was enough to make Durand blink.

  “Ah,” said a crawling whisper, “here is our man. The hero of our little tale.”

  “Good, good. For a time, I thought we had lost him in that fearsome pass.”

  Under his breath, Durand cursed.

  “There was only ever one way out, brother.”

  “He might have died.”

  “Two then, brother.”

  “And I would not go among those bleak Solantines.”

  “Nor I, brother. They are too dour. Hardly a jot of humor in the whole of Pennons Gate.”

  Durand scowled, but rode on without comment. And, of course, the Rooks followed, lurching ahead, tree to tree among the mossy giants.

  “And now to the Lindenhall, yes? I have heard of the place.”

  “Have you, brother?”

  “Oh, indeed. Its founding brought comment throughout the Atthias.”

  “It escaped my notice, I fear.”

  “You’ve heard of the Lost Princes?”

  “Ah, well, yes. I think. Princes of Old Errest. They died, the poor things, as I remember it. Years back.”

  “Princes Calamund and Heraric, eldest sons of the Crusader King Einred of Errest. They fought so famously over the Sea of Darkness. Both valiant. Both lost in a day. A wound at the heart of Errest, even as the war was won.”

  “What was that battle again, brother?”

  “The battle? You will feel foolish if I tell you, brother.”

  “Then I must feel foolish; there is no help for it.”

  Durand cringed.

  “‘Lost Princes,’ brother. ‘Lost Princes’ they call it.”

  “Lost Princes. You were right to warn me. Lost Princes. The poor devils.”

  The Rooks flapped to a new perch. Durand saw feathers and maggots tumble at the shock of their clumsy landing.

  “But what has this to do with our Lindenhall? It is, unless I am very much mistaken, not beyond the Sea of Darkness. It is quite near.”

  “Well, when Princes Calamund and Heraric left Errest to sail into danger and to fight and to die beyond that foreign shore, they left a girl behind them.”

  “One girl, brother? They shared her between them, did they?”

  “Hardly, brother. They contended for a while, but the eldest won the young girl’s heart. Godelind she was called. Perhaps her head was turned by Calamund’s being Einred’s heir. And Calamund left her with a great gold ring set with a fat carbuncle, dark as heart’s blood. They say it was Heraric’s, but when Heraric knew that Godelind would belong to his brother, he passed on the ring.”

  “Very big of him.”

  “And this Godelind is meant to have suffered.”

  “When the ships returned!”

  “The black sails, to tell Old Errest that they had lost their favorite sons: the dashing princes.”

  “I feel foolish that I didn’t remember: Lost Princes. How could anyone forget such a thing?”

  “I did warn you, brother.”

  “And so, the Lindenhall?”

  “The girl, Godelind, it is she who brings the Li
ndenhall into the story.”

  “I struggle to comprehend, brother.”

  “You must imagine her, waiting for her prince.”

  “And he, Lost.”

  “But not knowing. And there she was in Tern Gyre when the ill-omened ship returned. Its black sails winged into harbor with its terrible news. The ship that brought the news that the Princes were Lost, you see. There was Willan, the youngest prince, who must then be king. Poor Calamund. Poor, big-hearted Heraric. Princes who would never be king. And she took it badly.”

  “Well, she might, brother.”

  “One can sympathize.”

  “You are no monster.”

  “Perhaps some would argue.”

  Leaves and feathers and maggots scattered as the birds lurched to another branch while every syllable the devils uttered caught and scrabbled around Durand’s head like whispers down a well. It was maddening.

  “In any case, the girl,” said one of the rotting birds.

  “The girl. Godelind.”

  “The news drove her from her perfect mind. By all accounts, she bolted from the court of Prince Willan, slipping away when no one watched her, so stricken was she by these dark tidings.”

  “Slipping away?”

  “Perhaps she did not believe the news. Not truly. But she walked from the court at Tern Gyre, trending south.”

  “Willan blinded himself, did he not?”

  “Possibly, brother, but we are thinking of the girl now. Godelind. South and south again.”

  “I can almost see her. They will have told her ‘no’ and ‘it is not safe, you must not pass the mountains.’”

  “But she followed her path south like a spirit drawn beyond her will to the Pennons Gate and then, with the warnings of the Solantines in her ears, south again into trackless Fellwood of the lost kingdoms and thralls.”

  “No! Not alone! Fellwood was a waste and haunt of devils!”

  “And the Solantines were the last to see her as a living woman.”

  “As a living woman, brother? How else?”

  “Well, there we find the Lindenhall, you see.”

  “Now, here you have missed your guess, brother, for I do not see, in fact. Not at all.”

  “Through the Fellwood, our girl drifts like a spirit. Lost to song. Lost to story. And finally, Lost altogether. And nigh unto three hundred winters sift their downy burdens over her resting place among the trees.”