A King in Cobwebs

by David Keck

  Heaven knows what they thought, but the knights of Gireth rode in on every side of the reviewing stand, snatching up young women and old men before careering toward the white gates of the Lindenhall. Durand watched as Raimer caught Almora and made for the gates. Sweeping through, Durand led the flight through the tents of the knights’ encampment and up the steep hill to the gates of the castle. Pages and camp followers scattered. Once there, he wheeled his borrowed mount and brandished the billhook. Scores of riders passed him, rushing inside, including the duke and Almora, before he broke free himself and followed them to safety.

  Durand galloped through the gateway and leapt from his saddle, trying to count the people who mattered. Coensar was barking orders. Abravanal huddled with Almora. There were men shouting at the gates. A group of Raimer’s comrades had slotted the bar. For a long moment, he could not spot Deorwen—but then she found him.

  “What in Heaven’s name happened?” she demanded. They could still hear the ringing clash of swords on the bank below the walls.

  “It was Morcar and his dogs.”

  She noticed the bloody hook in Durand’s fists. “And what is that thing? Durand, what have you done?”

  “They got me in a corner.”

  “Oh, Durand.” She knew it for a disaster.

  Coensar was looking on as Durand spoke. “I had best have a look,” he said. Durand gave Deorwen a pleading look and followed the steward up a crabbed stair to the top of the gatehouse. Below, the lists and tents and reviewing stands were a wreck. A crowd of Leovere’s men stormed around the gates.

  Morcar the Toad was stabbing a finger in Durand’s direction as his henchmen fought to keep the man from rushing the walls barehanded. “Throw him down! The murdering pig must answer for this!”

  Coensar raised his hands over the crowd. “Patience!”

  Some in Leovere’s throng snatched up clods of earth, and these pattered down around the parapet. Morcar struggled in his comrades’ arms.

  “We cannot have this!” Coensar shouted down, adding aside, “You will keep your head down, Durand.”

  Durand found his way to an arrow loop a step or two below.

  “Here is Leovere,” said Coensar, quietly. The young lord rode a trotting warhorse through the crowd.

  “You are Atthians,” said Coensar. “Sworn to peace.”

  Morcar launched himself against his friends’ arms. “What do you know of peace, you whoresons? What do you know of oaths?”

  “Restrain yourself, Baron!” barked Leovere, pulling to the forefront. His warhorse danced before the mob. He turned to the parapet. “Black Durand Col has butchered one of my men,” he said. “A man under Duke Abravanal’s protection.”

  “Sir Durand claims provocation,” said Coensar.

  The crowd shouted jeers.

  Leovere’s hand shot up over his people. “This is a tournament of peace, and your man has murdered a peer of Yrlac with a groundskeeper’s hook!”

  Morcar repeated his cry. “Throw him down!”

  The fearsome look Leovere flashed at Morcar stopped the man.

  “We must learn the truth,” said Coensar.

  “Your man is a murderer,” said Leovere.

  “Throw him down!” shouted Morcar again. “Throw him down with a rope around his neck!”

  The duke was at Coensar’s side. To the old man, Coensar said, “They will want a trial.”

  But, looking over the ugly faces of the Yrlaci’s, Durand knew it was no trial they wanted, but blood. Coensar could not have the peace without handing Durand to the mob.

  With a muttered curse and a glance at the helpless duke and yammering multitude, Coensar turned to Durand, pitching his voice to carry: “Sir Durand Col, Duke’s Champion, I ask you to surrender yourself to the duke’s justice.”

  Durand still had the billhook in his fists. He looked into Coensar’s grim, almost despairing expression. Abravanal looked on. There was Deorwen and Almora. One man could not foul the wheels of so great a thing as peace between the duke and his barons.

  The bill clattered from Durand’s open hand.

  Deorwen was shaking her head.

  Coensar nodded, his steel eyes on Durand’s, then turned back to the mob.

  “Gather your witnesses, Leovere. We will settle this matter before nightfall.”

  * * *

  A GUARD LED Durand to a lightless storeroom under the Lindenhall. But, before the door could close on him, he saw a second prisoner standing in the shadows. The stranger wore the torn hauberk of a fighting man. For an instant, Durand could make out the stranger’s face. Then, just as the door fell shut, he spotted the ruin of a mangled skull and a mustache like a boar’s bristles.

  Durand cursed and the door thumped shut.

  12

  Judgment of the Sword

  Durand huddled in the frigid silence, while the lords above arranged their trial.

  From time to time, he heard the rustle of mail, very close, and felt the ghost of a frigid tongue lapping where the blood seeped from his temple. Dead man after dead man joined him in that cellar room until Durand felt the frost bristling on the stones. He wondered if Lady Alwen were there, and her baby. He could be face-to-face—her pale, drowned visage to his bruised and stubbled cheek—and never know it in the dark.

  “Ah, here you are!” said a Rookish whisper. “Brother, I’ve found him.”

  As he sat, wide-eyed and numb, he wondered. Had the Host of Heaven sent old Berchard and Heremund to the Lindenhall just to witness his end?

  After a glassy age in the dark, there was a “caw!” and scrabble of claws at the door just before the keys rattled in the old lock and the door blazed, banishing the Lost to the darkest corners.

  “Sir Durand, you’ll have to come with us. They’re ready upstairs.” The voice belonged to one of the fighting men from Acconel. A couple of grim-faced but familiar men led him through castle corridors. The babble of an excited crowd echoed through the little castle.

  Finally, they turned a corner onto a fierce light—not the twilight of the keep’s great hall—and an enormous crowd erupted. Pebbles and spittle hailed down. Durand snarled and shielded his eyes as he understood: They meant to hold a trial in the castle’s paved central courtyard. Hundreds of people had crowded in, turning the yard into a round theater. Faces looked down from the battlements as the half-blind Durand was led out like a bull trussed for the slaughter.

  Finally, the tugging hands left Durand’s elbows and he was left to find his bearings. It seemed that the duke’s box from the reviewing stands had been carted up the hill and deposited in front of him. The duke and his court stared out at Durand. Durand winced, wishing—almost—that he had not given up the peasant’s chopper.

  “Sir Durand Col!” Coensar’s voice declared. The man stood, still dressed in his tournament blue, beside the ducal throne. Almora and all the others looked out from the shade of an awning. “You have been called before your duke, charged both with murder and violating your pledge to uphold the terms of His Grace’s tournament.”

  There were jeers close by, but Leovere strode into the circle, glaring his people into silence. He turned to Durand with an eyebrow raised.

  Durand opened and closed his fists, and he looked into the shadows of the duke’s box. One fist was sore. He kneaded the bruised tendons.

  “Tell us how Sir Baradan, Lord of Stonebeck, came to die,” said Coensar.

  “I defended myself. Stonebeck was not alone. He bore a lance.”

  Leovere raised his eyebrows. “Is that all that the man wishes to say?”

  “Durand?” said Coensar.

  “It is the truth.”

  “Sir Durand,” said Coensar, “they’ve an heirloom of the Lost Princes in this place. On it, you must swear your oath.”

  Somewhere, they’d found a priest, and now the dusty old man stepped into the sunlight with a black pillow in his trembling hands. From the black folds glinted a small hand of ivory and gold. On one finger, a fat carbuncle
gleamed like a blob of heart’s blood. Durand imagined the girl Godelind, dead so long ago, lying down among the lindens. In the sunlight, the thing was hard to look upon, flashing blotches into a man’s eyes.

  “Oh,” said a chittering whisper. Somewhere among the battlements, the Rooks were watching. “It is the ring from our dream, brother. The very one. See how the two serpents coil around one red stone, almost as though they are contesting for it? It is very like a drop of blood. Why should we dream of this Prince’s Ring? Why was it mixed among our whispers?”

  “Brother, you are forgetting yourself. Our hero must attend to this Coensar. And it is poignant. Coensar, the old captain. Coensar, like a father. I wonder if the old captain keeps the flail with which he struck his young protégé? Even the marks of it must conjure the memory. The gallant captain sees Lord Lamoric rescued. Sees Durand riding to glory. The pang of jealousy, so unworthy in a great man. The rage and risk of the charge and swing. And then the years, every day, a reminder of shame. Oh, poor Coensar.”

  “Now it is you who is forgetting himself, brother.”

  “Just so.”

  “It is not Coensar for whom we should feel sorrow. Not today.”

  Coensar spoke. “With your right hand on the Prince’s Ring, swear that you have spoken truth.” Durand had sworn oaths aplenty in his days upon Creation, but as he looked upon that old ring, he could feel—he could see—Creation twist around that dark and gleaming stone as though the world could scarcely bear the weight of the thing, and the sorrow and misery and hopelessness and faith that had weighed it down.

  With the briefest sigh, Durand reached out for the ring regardless. And there was Deorwen at Almora’s shoulder, gazing upon him. Not with admonition, but with dread: a raw and open terror that struck Durand to the heart.

  Very suddenly, he wished that he might live.

  Durand reached out and swore upon his soul and on all the sorrow in that old stone. For an instant, the air in that white courtyard seemed to tremble: uncountable golden motes shivering. Durand took his hand from the fat, blood-dark stone, and he felt, almost, that the crowd was a thousand leagues from him.

  “Now let his accuser step forward,” said Coensar.

  Leovere turned to his man and Morcar tramped into the center of the court.

  Coensar looked down upon the man. “Morcar, Baron of Downcastle, cousin to the dead man, what have you to say?”

  Leovere thrust his chin at Morcar. “Tell him. What is your testimony?”

  “Only that your Durand is a liar and coward who would not have been chased if he hadn’t run, who would not have been outnumbered if one man could have brought him to ground.”

  They had not restrained Durand. There was nothing keeping him from Morcar’s throat. He thought only of Deorwen and the long-lost girl in the wastes.

  Morcar snarled in Durand’s direction. “This man here is the worst sort of coward. He hacked my cousin down with a peasant’s bill despite the duke’s peace! The king’s tournament! And there was Baradan armed with a blunted spear—a toy!”

  “No,” said Durand. No one could even have heard, but Morcar rounded on him.

  “That lance of his you spoke of, it had no bloody point. Just like every other spear in the lists. Would the heralds have let it pass? Could he hide a sharp lance under his surcoat? I tell you, there was no one but Durand Col with a blade in his fist.”

  Morcar addressed the crowd. “How many of you saw us have words at the duke’s table? How many saw Baradan laughing at this bastard? And now Baradan’s dead.” There were plenty of shouts in answer.

  Durand could not remember. Had there had been a blade on the man’s spear? Certainly he’d taken a beating.

  Morcar pressed on. “Whether it was cunning or rage, we must put my cousin in the ground, and it was no sickness or act of war that slew him. It was murder—and here is the man who slew him!”

  The men of Yrlac bellowed. The men of Gireth were grim.

  From the courtyard’s bear-pit thunder, Durand looked to Coensar. The steward was eyeing the crowd, his eyes swiveling gray as steel beads. “Silence!” Coensar commanded.

  He brushed white hair from his eyes, and called for the priest once more.

  “Morcar of Downcastle,” said Coensar. “Your oath upon the Ring of the Lindenhall.”

  And Morcar gave his chin a defiant lift and raised his hand over the red stone.

  “Enough,” said Coensar. “Your oath.”

  Durand thought he saw a twitch in the man’s jowls as his fingertips touched the stone. “I swear,” he said, cowed for an instant despite himself. In a voice free of bluster, he said, “Baradan was unarmed. A toy only. Durand struck him with a peasant’s bill. It’s murder.”

  After the accused and accuser had spoken, the duke’s men brought forth such evidence as there was. All the while, Durand stood in the midst of the circle like some brute beast in a pit. Out came the blunted lance, the bloody hook, and the slick wreck of Baradan’s helm. Next came oath-helpers: men who would swear along with the accuser and the accused, adding the weight of their own oaths to the testimony before the court. Each of the men who had beaten him stood to lay their hand upon the ring.

  Durand had no witnesses. At the last, he’d been alone. Ailric had not seen. Even he could not be sure: had there been a blade? He knew nothing.

  And Coensar’s face was beyond reading. The steward watched the crowd. He stared long into Durand’s face. When the testimony ended, he spoke with the duke, and Abravanal stood.

  “As Durand Col is my own Champion, I must allow my counselors to advise me in this.” He glanced to Coensar. “My steward. Name whom you will and I will be governed by your counsel.”

  Coensar nodded. “Cassonel is a ranking liegeman and friend of neither accused nor accuser.” And he found a few others among the throng. Banner knights, but not a man was of Coensar’s standing. With a strange coldness, Durand understood that his life had been delivered into the hands of his murderer. Ten years had passed since Coensar lashed out and Durand fell. For ten years, Coensar had lorded it over Yrlac and Gireth, but always with Durand’s scars to remind him.

  Durand saw Deorwen among the throng, their eyes found each other just as the guardsmen took hold. Her glance was raw and rending.

  As the guards hauled Durand down, the old Rooks surprised the priests of Lindenhall and snatched their ring away. “Haw! Haw!”

  * * *

  IN THE STOREROOM, Durand waited. He blinked as he felt Baradan’s cold tongue lick at the blood on his jaw. He kneaded his bruised right hand. He could see no way out. Baradan was dead, and Morcar’s faction must be appeased or halls would burn. Innocents would bleed. Coensar must hand Durand to the mob. What choice did the man have? But Durand wondered about his old captain’s mind. Duty, honor, peace, and justice had tied the man’s hands. But what would be in his heart? Relief? Guilt? Or a measure of both? Durand wondered what he deserved. Both Ailric and Deorwen had bothered him about how many Lost souls followed him. How many had he slain since he left his father’s hall ten years ago?

  In the haunted dark, Durand remembered Deorwen looking down, her gaze untainted by all the disappointments of ten foolish years. And he wished once more, despite burning halls and lapping specters, that he might live.

  * * *

  FINALLY, THE CELLAR door rattled wide once more. Durand blinked into the open air as the Lost fled, and he saw Coensar’s face. The dusty priest was with him.

  “I must tie your hands,” the steward murmured. It might as easily have been, “It is death. We’ve decided.” But Durand could only nod. He remembered the months of fighting at this man’s side, besting Radomor, proving his worth to this man more than Lamoric or any of the others. He locked his hands behind his back and Coensar led him up an unfamiliar stair. Almost, he wished he had never seen Deorwen in the courtyard.

  “You must prepare yourself, Sir Durand,” said the priest.

  As Coensar helped him from the dark, Durand be
came conscious of a curious shrilling on the air. The inner courtyard was bare and empty.

  “We’ve led them out,” murmured Coensar. “This way.” And the steward took Durand up a narrow stair that rose from the cobbles to the battlements along the wall overhead.

  The Rooks perched among the battlements. For an instant, the fat carbuncle winked in one black beak.

  “You can see it in his eyes, brother. He is the sacrifice. As every new king spends his three days in the tomb before he may be crowned, cleansing himself for the kingdom.”

  “Three days under stone!”

  “Though this will be a different sacrifice—an offering of blood for peace. A few moments in the air. This is in our man’s mind. But, in his soul, perhaps he wonders whether he should have died long ago.”

  Durand set foot on an uneven stair.

  “In the siege, brother!”

  “When Coensar, his mentor, struck him down. Before so much that he loved came apart.”

  “A simpler life. The hero! No muddled years of guilt and misery, on and on, year after year. Betrayed. His woman grieving for her secret love, lost.”

  “But the king lives on after his three days in the tomb, does he not, brother?”

  “True. True. Durand will be a more … complete sacrifice. Ah. And here is the Herald as well. I think we will give the fellow a wide berth.”

  Durand climbed the shadowed steps up into the red glare of sunset. There was Abravanal. Kandemar the Herald watched like a thing of alabaster staring into Durand’s soul. And the men of Yrlac roared like a tide beyond the notched ring of the battlements. Coensar was a step behind him. The whole of the tournament crowd spread below the high wall.

  And somewhere, Abravanal’s boys had set up a grindstone. The mysterious shrilling would be Gunderic’s Sword of Judgment. They were grinding the edge of the outsized blade, sharp as razors.