A King in Cobwebs

by David Keck

  Durand saw all this from the arrow loops of Vadir’s castle.

  In the castle yard, he watched grooms and shield-bearers checking cinches and loading gear with grim alacrity. The men who’d ridden north with Abravanal made ready with the tense haste of a squadron preparing for war.

  Durand cursed the king’s name as the full scope of his plan came clear. That madness at the Lindenhall had been a lever to prize Abravanal from his capital. Now, the king and the grasping barons of his Great Council held the city. Abravanal, in the midst of his grief, would be fighting for his every land and title.

  Baron Vadir had joined the duke’s party, unwilling to let the old man ride into this obvious snare alone, and Durand could not fault the baron in this.

  But Durand would not be there. He too was making ready, bundling up what provisions he could carry and slipping away. With a few gruff words, he’d convinced one of Vadir’s grooms to bring a pair of stout horses to a small gate in the rear of Wrothsilver Castle.

  Durand was bound for the mountains.

  He lugged the packs, avoiding the press in yard. There was no sense in what he was doing. What fool could believe that the girl still lived? He had seen the Hornbearer; he knew what it was. The girl was dead. The brute had dashed her brains in, had crushed her, had torn her asunder—all in an instant, and all in that same night. It was certain. But Durand could not let it be.

  Still, he would undertake his fool’s quest alone.

  Vadir’s groom should now be waiting at the small gate, but it had taken too long to get the few supplies together. And a dozen little things might yet go wrong: the groom might be intercepted, questioned about horses and back doors. The man might begin to wonder why Durand had chosen that odd door at all. Durand hurried onward.

  Yet as he swung around a castle corner, he ran into Abravanal himself. For a moment, Durand wondered if the man had died, joining Durand’s train of Lost souls, but the man’s crabbed hand caught Durand’s surcoat. Somehow the duke had evaded his nursemaids. He had been waiting.

  “I saw you with Vadir’s man, Durand Col. I knew what you would do.” The duke sucked a deep breath through his nose. “I’m not always the fool you think me.” He shot a glance down the castle passageway toward the chaos of packing. “I know she must be dead, but it is not enough. Lamoric, Landast, Alwen … and now Almora? I cannot allow it; it is too much. I cannot think of mountains and dooms and horrors and strong men who have given all, and the king’s men coming now like the coils of a serpent. But you know that, too. You must take her back!”

  He stopped a moment, his eyes on Durand’s chest. “The things we’ve done to you. All the things I have let be done to you.…”

  “There is no need.”

  He gripped Durand with shaking hands, as frail as a bird. “And yet I ask. Do what I cannot. Ride from all this, and damn the king! I am the wandering, grief-addled dotard. In a moment, they will come for me, to coo and stroke my head and bundle me in blankets.”

  “I will take her back,” Durand promised.

  “What I have to give is yours, but there is nothing that can aid you. And every moment I spend here brings my minders nearer. The king’s men might have something to say about my Champion riding off. And they will have men on the road.” He twitched a sour frown as he heard a call from the passageway behind him.

  “They are coming for me. So take her. From death or doom or Heaven, I do not care. They cannot have her. Go!” And, with a nod, the duke tottered into the path of the stream of handlers and henchmen, allowing himself to be caught up again in the tide that would soon have him mounted and riding to hollow, empty Acconel. And Durand was free to make his way down to the rear door.

  But where he expected to meet Vadir’s man, he found Ailric. The shield-bearer waited in the alcove by the sally port, his hands on the bridles of two sturdy horses. Berchard and Heremund grinned in the shadows.

  “I see I can have no secrets,” said Durand.

  Berchard’s smile broadened. “Is it a secret that the hammer falls when the hand is opened?”

  Durand smiled. “I am riding for the pass. We have two horses.”

  Heremund nodded, giving Durand a square look. “It is not the pass for me. They have taken Hod. They have the king of Errest bound in knots and snares.”

  “Hod was a good man,” said Durand.

  “These devils have woven their net around the king. Whatever Ragnal might have been, there is little left of him but blindness and venom. The maragrim thralls pour down the high passes, and the King of Errest the Old lays snares for old men.

  “In Windhover, the kingdom is broken. You’ve heard of the fighting there? Prince Eodan, the king’s own brother, holds his Windhover title in defiance of the king. The king, with his debts, has been at odds with the Great Council these many years. Yet now, he joins the Council and turns on his most loyal men.

  “With Yrlac and Eodan and a hundred smaller struggles, we have heard more of rebellion and backbiting in these last dozen years than in the fifty years before. Someone is behind these webs and snares and nets. Something tugs the strings and unravels the kingdom, and I will learn nothing more by following you into the mountains.” Heremund would follow the duke, to learn what had become of Hod. And his curiosity would have him gnawing at that knot until someone slew him.

  Berchard laughed. “I have no such high-minded purposes. And I hope a blind old man has all the excuses he needs. The mountains are no place for me. I will follow Heremund, here. But search for the girl, Durand. She was a fine little thing at Acconel when Yrlac’s men were all around and the castle was like a pot on the fire. She deserves better.”

  Durand caught each man in a quick clinch. Though he would miss them, he could move faster without the skald and the old man. “Farewell.”

  Durand and Ailric slipped from the sally port of Wrothsilver Castle down into the streets of the town, quickly losing themselves in the whitewashed alleyways. Ailric led them, by a hundred swift turnings, out of the Wrothsilver and, unseen, onto the shaded green shoulder of the hill.

  The air was dank with wet grass, but they could see across the leagues to the high blue massif of the Blackroots. A farmer’s track led over the hip of the promontory down toward the Pennons Gate Road. It seemed so easy, but he knew the long leagues to the pass and the mighty climb to the ring where the duke had camped. And he knew the blood-drenched fiends that roamed each track. The girl was far away.

  Ailric’s blade hissed from its scabbard. “Behind us, Sir Durand.”

  Durand turned, but knew the newcomer at once. For the second time, Deorwen had found him as he left to search for Almora. She led a bay mare down from the gate, her eyes glinting dark and wild.

  “No,” said Durand.

  “I was there when the Hornbearer descended upon the camp,” she said. “We lay side by side. Her hand clutched mine as the thing tore her away. I have as much right as you.”

  “The maragrim are loose in the foothills. They will come for us at nightfall. I do not know how many.”

  “Still I must come.”

  Durand made no argument.

  * * *

  THEY RODE LIKE fools toward the Banderol Road, quickly taking the measure of their borrowed horses. Durand’s roan was a rolling thickset bruiser with a coat like snow on black slate. As they bowled down from the citadel, Durand was relieved at the horse’s courage, for they waded into droves of refugees—haunted survivors from outlying villages scrambling to reach Wrothsilver before night fell once again. The crowds were thick for an hour or more as they rode south. And, even from the saddle, a man could see the waking nightmares still shimmering in their wide, hollow eyes. There was no one foolish enough to ride toward the Blackroots now.

  When they broke free of the multitudes and were riding only among the stragglers, Deorwen said, “It is all very well our following you, Durand, but how do you mean to go about this?”

  Durand checked his pace a bit and faced the others. He had on
ly the rudest fragments of a plan in his mind, and it took him a moment to speak. “We must get into the pass. You will know where this thing came down. We will turn our Ailric loose in the place of the attack, and maybe he will find something when he reads the ground. I would pit Ailric against any of the duke’s party as huntsman and tracker. The thrall will have left some sign of its passage.”

  Deorwen pulled her mantle close. “Cause for hope, then. And, of course, I doubt there is another man alive as bullheaded as Durand Col.”

  “I will not leave her up there.”

  “I know, Durand. Now, what of these maragrim?”

  “If we reach Pennons Gate by nightfall, then we must put our faith in the wards upon the high passes.” Deorwen held her tongue, but Coensar had surely trusted to those selfsame wards, and it had done them no good. “There is no other choice.”

  “If we would not risk the mountains, we should not have set out. I agree. But are you sure that we can reach the mountains by eventide?” It was a perilously long journey, and the grim days and nights of the last week lay heavily upon them.

  “The pass is a great distance. We must trust that the Powers of Heaven will throw some shrine or sanctuary in our path.” He glanced to Ailric.

  “There are hamlets and shrines in Errest the Old, beyond counting,” said Ailric, though there was little comfort in his eyes. Few were the places of refuge in the high country of Gireth—and fewer still on the road to Pennons Gate. This, they all knew.

  “Then if this is our plan, we had better ride!” said Deorwen.

  * * *

  BY NOONTIDE, THE road was empty, and the vacant track made space for memory. Durand thought of the bright, damnable girl running away, riding her sugar-white palfrey away from Acconel.…

  The road dipped and something caught the attention of Durand’s big blue roan. Ahead, the track twisted around a towering old oak tree. And, as Durand watched, he saw something in the high branches, large and secretive. “Here, stop,” Durand said, raising his hand. He pulled old Ouen’s blade. The flail had been worthless against the maragrim.

  “I will look,” he said. “It may be nothing.” He shot a grim glance back at both of them. “Stay together.” And he drove the blue roan bowling toward the oak, hauling up to peer into the crown of the tree. A few crows scattered, churning above the branches. There was movement in the high shadows: an awkward shape larger than a man. With a quick twist, Durand unshipped his shield, but reminded himself that the Eye of Heaven was still high and the maragrim must cling to shadows. He let the roan dance a step or two and tried to make sense of what he saw. There was something knocking and swinging. The light fell on a heavy wheel. He saw the blunt horns of oxen and the dangling hooves. “Hells,” Durand muttered. Something had slung an oxcart into the branches. The thing was five fathoms high. And he thought he made out other dangling shapes higher in the branches. Another cart lay broken over the roots of the giant oak.

  As his companions caught up, Durand heard the harsh chuckle of carrion birds over his head. They would be perched on every dangling carcass.

  “This will be the maragrim,” said Deorwen, as she reached him.

  “We should get past this place. There’s nothing to be done.” He wanted to get a half-dozen leagues behind them before they hunkered down for the night.

  “It is sobering,” Deorwen said. “How many have died? Is anyone left in Gireth?” One of the swinging burdens in the tree creaked and groaned, and Durand heard the birds hop and chortle. “There has not been so much as a plowman. Not for an hour or more.”

  Ailric had been giving the wreckage a scholarly eye. He now frowned at the Banderol Road. “Ladyship, Wrothsilver is now too distant for a man on foot. A man still on the road at this hour could not reach the sanctuary before Twilight. The roads will be empty now, even of living men.”

  There was another croaking snigger from the tree. Durand squinted up. He saw beaked shapes sidling along the horn of one piebald ox. He saw their heads quirk.

  “We must hope you are right,” agreed Deorwen. “We must hope that they live and are more clever than we think.”

  The Rooks’ rough laughter echoed over the road.

  “She is charming! After all she’s seen, brother, I had not expected hope.”

  “Not in the face of these mute witnesses. What grandeur these maragrim possess. To imagine that the common folk could face them? And what sorcery! To bind a man’s soul for so long.”

  “We should expect some to have survived,” Ailric was saying. “I do not know how many maragrim the Hornbearer commands, but they did not seem to be marching as one. I should think that many will have escaped, especially once they realized that the Eye of Heaven could protect them.”

  “What a power had the Enemy. These thralls. It is like finding that a child’s top is still spinning two hundred winters after the child’s hand last touched it.”

  “And such variety of expression!”

  “Beasts, men, things from the sea, horrors of every combination, animal and mineral.”

  “Man and nightmare.”

  “And all bound with such gossamer thread: fear and shame and guilt and dread.”

  Durand shook his head impatiently. The words of the Rooks had begun their insect scurrying through his skull.

  They were under the tree.

  It was Deorwen speaking now. “The people are strong. And they are no fools. The priests and wise women will have remembered something of these maragrim. By now, they will be taking every advantage of the streams and holy places. We must do likewise if we are to reach the mountains.”

  “Shame is no gossamer, brother. Guilt no mere thread.”

  “You say not, dear brother?”

  “I flatter myself that I have made a little study of it. An example: Guilt can drag a man from safety through a haunted land into the hands of a very devil, brother.”

  “Are you alluding to our hero and his friend? What guilt should they feel?”

  “Poor Durand knows little but remorse, brother. You must specify.”

  “Over this wayward girl, then?”

  “His charge, brother? Lost? Neglected?”

  “I see. It is that simple?”

  “Damn you,” said Durand. He had the sense that the others were looking his way now.

  “I would not say simple! Think on it a moment, brother. The girl’s father was Durand’s lord from childhood. The young Durand grew up in that hall. He was trusted. There were oaths, indeed. Add into this Lamoric. And Lamoric’s wife. The betrayals. How can he discharge such a debt? Such shame.”

  Durand pitched, catching the saddlebow for an instant. Every hiss the Rooks uttered had a life of its own, chattering in spirals through his head. Somewhere near the fallen cart, Durand dropped to the road, his jaw smacking hard against a tree root. He heard the others calling out. He heard his name, but it was all he could do to breathe.

  “It is too much, brother. The girl is not her father. She is certainly not the cuckold Lamoric.”

  “But these ties—though they seem less than a breath of air—are real to a stanch fellow such as our Durand, and strong as chain: he is oath bound. He must watch the girl. His debt he pays with vigilance, with loyalty. And the girl, she slips away. It is the beginning.”

  Durand groped the roadbed, knowing that he should have held on to the saddlebow. He had endured these devils before, but by what right did they cackle over the business of a man’s soul? “Shut up!” he cried. “Shut up!”

  “A thousands steps led the girl to that pass. Could our hero have turned a key on her in Acconel? Could he have sent her back at Wrothsilver when Vadir smiled too broadly?”

  Durand snarled. The fall had knocked him stupid. The Rooks’ mutters were running round and round, filling his head like the boiling tide at Gulf of Eldinor that had nearly drowned him so long ago. He saw the gray beams of the wrecked cart standing before him in odd angles, saw something moving below the cart. Durand screaming: a distant, al
ien thing.

  “If our hero had checked his temper at the Lindenhall, he might have been at her side, blade bare to defend her. It is the same for the woman.”

  There were hands clutching at him, but Durand saw a face. Under the cart it was, and soot-blackened with wide blue terrified eyes. He lifted his hand, stretching out.

  “He can be made to do most anything when the ropes of guilt are tightened round him. How can he refuse a fellow sufferer? Shame is the leash that makes men tame. It can make a man do anything. It can make him die. Look here at Durand—”

  The whispers exploded. They burst like flies from his head with a force that threw him from the cringing shape under the cart.

  Durand rolled, gasping onto his back. And saw Ailric, white-faced and armed with a stone—a second stone. Black feathers and maggots tumbled down, landing on the man’s hair.

  Deorwen’s fist was in his collar, her weight on his lungs.

  “You were reaching for that thing under the cart,” she said. “Cursing and twitching. We couldn’t pull you away.” She crawled off.

  Durand stood, shaking his head and giving Ailric a good hard look.

  There was, indeed, something under the cart. He could see it moving in the shadow of the planks.

  “What is it, Durand? What is going on?”

  Durand stooped, seizing a cart shaft. The thing cowering underneath twitched like a broad spider. And, with a glance at the Eye of Heaven, Durand flipped the cart over. Underneath were two identical horrors, each larger than a man. Each slate-black thing bore four taloned arms. Below their sapphire eyes was a tongue like a wicked blade. They spun, backing into the earth—into the cracks in the ground, lashing the roots and road with wild desperation until only the glint of blue eyes remained in the shadowed crevice.

  “What was that about, Durand? What is happening?” said Deorwen. “The horses will be half a league down the road.” But Durand had no words. They had nearly killed him, the Rooks. If not for Ailric’s stone, Deorwen would have watched him die. The Champion of Gireth caught like a miller’s hand between the grindstones.