by David Keck
All this while, Leovere had been sitting on the rutted turf. Now, a broken, wondering Leovere got to his feet, and Durand took his hand, pulling the staggered man close.
“I charge you, Duke Leovere—should any of us survive—to treat my fellows in Yrlac well. Swear it, and by Heaven I’ll see it done.”
“What are you, Durand Col?”
“Swear it,” Durand said.
Leovere stepped back. “Here is justice, and more than justice. Men of Yrlac, men of Gireth—Sons of Atthi. Let us have peace between us, and, in time, friendship. On this field, made sacred by so much heroes’ blood, I give my vow: Should my doom bring me or my heirs back to Yrlac once more, native lords and newcomers both will have an equal share of justice.”
The disbelieving knights looked on. There was a ragged shout from men tired of fighting.
“Your Ladyship,” said Leovere. “What will you have us do?”
The girl blinked. “Eldinor,” she said. “We must ride for the king’s city and stand ready for what the Powers may give us. We can do no less.” Now the tired men were shouting. But Coensar seemed to have heard none of all this. His eyes were on the forest.
Durand wondered, could the Hornbearer hear over the league of hills between them? And if the monster heard, was it within its power to sneer?
25
The Path of Ashes
They spent a dark hour sorting the able men and horses from those too torn to travel any further. Some bleeding hundreds were left to make their way toward Acconel or, with the help of their own people, down the roads of Yrlac.
They could not bury the dead.
Those fit to ride gathered before the mute bounds of Hesperand, where mist made a wall of the huge trunks.
“Hells,” said Durand. The wall was high and full of memory.
Durand rode in the vanguard with Coensar, Leovere, and the women beside him. It was not an army they were facing in Hesperand.
“If you’re determined to take us into Hesperand, first or last will not matter,” Deorwen had argued. “And you’ll find that these men of yours will march in happily enough if they’ve seen little Almora ride in first.”
Now, it was Leovere who spoke. “You have been this way before?” he asked.
“It is ten years, but … Moryn and Coensar, Berchard and Lady Deorwen have all made this journey.” He thought back on those days. He’d ridden into Hesperand as a shield-bearer and come out a red-handed knight with two dead men to his name. He remembered throwing a villager into a river to save damned Coensar. They had burned a bridge and killed a man for Coensar’s honor.
He eyed Coensar, thinking of how he’d been struck down with the man’s chained flail and thrown from a galloping horse and ought to have died. “It seems long ago,” he said. “Hesperand is half-torn from Creation. The Hidden Masters. They meant to fling the knights of Hesperand at the Enemy. Now, the Enemy has come and gone and come and gone. But Lost Hesperand’s here with their lost duke and his bloody host. With Bower Mead. And their lady.
If Leovere was uneasy because they did not know what might come, Durand was uneasy because he knew. He knew, and he dreaded.
It was worse that Almora was beside him.
With a nod and a tap of his bootheels, Durand spurred the host into Hesperand the Lost.
* * *
THE MIST WAS no mere curtain between Hesperand and the world. Among the giant trees, mist filled the lost forest. Ancient trees loomed like the shadows of giant men. No one could see ten paces, and curious sounds hung in the air between the branches.
They urged the horses forward.
“Is this how you remember it, Durand?” asked Almora.
“Near enough,” he said, but, he realized, it wasn’t true.
“No,” he amended, for now he realized that there was a peculiar note on the air—like a bell: a bell which had tolled long ago. And the sound of chanting. “These sounds. I do not remember them.”
“It is the same king’s prayer, here as at that village sanctuary,” Almora said.
“I’m not sure.” Durand did not think so. Something else was taking place in Hesperand.
They drifted into the shallow ruts of a road that lay under an amber blanket of leaves. Durand could see only a dozen men of the hundreds behind him. It made him uneasy.
Almora pulled her cloak close, her eyes on the trees. “Who do you think turned maragrim around? There is no one here.”
“Heaven knows,” said Durand. “Maybe it didn’t suit them, being not in Creation or out of it.”
“And the maragrim are neither living nor dead. Not devil nor man,” said Deorwen.
“It is a strange, chill place,” said Almora.
“It is,” said Durand, and, as he spoke, one of the great trees on the roadside seemed to shiver at their approach. Abruptly, the whole giant collapsed. Twenty fathoms of towering oak burst and crumbled, collapsing into a cloud of ash.
Tree after sentinel tree followed, all collapsing into gray ash and white cloud.
Among all of this ash and madness, Durand spied a row of mounted men, forty paces across the forest. In their midst sat a noblewoman, and her eyes were upon him.
“The Lady of Hesperand,” Durand breathed.
But the shifting mists had cloaked the Lady before anyone else could see.
* * *
TREES CRUMBLED. CLOUDS and shadows mimicked the solid forms of watching men and beasts. And the uncanny prayer murmured on. This Hesperand was little like the one Durand remembered.
Two abreast, they followed the red road despite the voices and the bells, steeling themselves to the impossible falling of trees.
Soon, Durand realized that not all the shadow forms accompanying them through the forest were tricks of mist. Some wore shapes he knew: a limping man, furtive stooping things. There was the moon-faced giant, huge and white. There was Waer, the tournament fighter from Tern Gyre who’d fallen to his death at Durand’s hands. There, Euric, Ailric’s man. There, the drowned Lady of Yrlac. There, the beggar king. There, the poor villagers of Broklambe.
They appeared and disappeared between the trees, and Durand did his best to keep his back straight and his shoulders square, grateful that Deorwen and the others were preoccupied with the gulfs of mist before them. His starts and twitches passed unnoticed.
A familiar voice broke the sea-bottom stillness. “Here. Where’s Sir Durand. I want a word. Pass me along forward. Is someone blocking my way?”
Berchard blundered forward, bluff and gray-bearded with his one patched eye. He had Heremund the skald in tow. The rumpled skald in his hat and cloaks and blankets looked like a heap of rugs on the donkey’s back. They got themselves between Durand and Deorwen, Coensar and Almora. The dead looked on like drowned sailors.
“You should not exert yourself, Heremund,” Deorwen was saying.
“I didn’t like bouncing along like so much baggage—even after the Mere and the maragrim.” He coughed into his fist. “Always been curious. So, I’ve come to learn what passes among the wise commanders of our company.”
“‘Wise commanders,’” Durand repeated. None of this seemed wise.
“And I’ve been putting my nose in among the ranks.”
“You should rest,” Deorwen said.
“The men are not happy,” Heremund said.
“We had better say it,” said Berchard. “Sometimes it takes courage to complain.”
“No one would call you coward, Berchard,” said Deorwen. She reached out and touched his arm.
“Not if complaining is the measure.” Berchard nodded a little bow.
“Here,” said Heremund. “I’ve heard a cross word or two about you. You know you’ve given away the Duchy of Yrlac? The luxury? The fawning courtiers? Feasting and high living? All gone.”
“It is true,” said Durand.
The strangled king of Errest, nearest of the Lost, trailed along at Heremund’s shoulder, big as a bear, his coat winking with fat cornelians and lumps of
sard.
Heremund quirked one thick eyebrow. “There’s been some guesswork as to why, as well.…”
“You and Leovere have been mates since Ferangore,” supplied Berchard. “That’s one.”
“You’ve gone mad,” said Heremund. “That’s another.”
Deorwen made a disapproving noise. “With all this, they’ve nothing better to occupy their minds?”
“Or some say it’s Leovere’s thralls: they have some hold on you,” said Berchard. “Or it’s a stratagem. That you’ve some trick in store for Leovere.” Leovere rode in the third row, not far behind.
“Or there’s a storeroom of Radomor’s silver in Penseval and it’s all yours for this.”
“No one said that,” admonished Berchard.
Heremund shrugged from under his heap of cloaks. “The roomful of silver was one of mine.”
“Not the trap?” asked Durand.
“Setting traps? Not Durand Col. You were always the straightforward type.”
Berchard gave a vigorous nod. “Right at them.” He smacked his fist. The sound was loud enough in that strange place that Berchard checked himself, listening for a moment. “You’ve a talent,” he concluded.
Heremund nodded. “One way or another, Durand is a traitor, no matter how they slice it.”
“And it doesn’t matter, as long as you’ve got Her Ladyship.”
“Aye,” said Heremund. He gave a cramped nod to the girl. “She’s a lucky stroke.”
“But there’s more that must be said.” Berchard gestured behind him. “They are finished back there, though you’d be hard-pressed to find one to admit it. They are riding in a stupor, that lot, and this here ain’t exactly the place.”
“We meant to get ahead of the maragrim, to use daylight and Hesperand to outrun the devils.”
“These men have just fought a battle at the end of a long day’s ride,” said Berchard, carefully. “Hesperand can’t be crossed in one night.”
“What do you say, Heremund?” said Durand.
“If the River Glass is still out there in the midst of all this, we might reach the bridge near Bower Mead tomorrow at noontide. Maybe it’s eight leagues. Then another twenty to the borders of Hellebore.”
“And if we ride for Eldinor, no turning?”
“Through Hesperand. Three or four days. Four days, Durand.”
A whole thicket of trees collapsed then: a thousand skeletal crowns plunged into vast trunks billows of dust.
They watched on still beasts. The whole column stopped.
Durand winced into the gloom ahead, recalling the dead hounds and horses of the duke’s hunt, remembering the Lady of the Bower. Her lips. Her eyes. The squadron of cold knights who rode with her to Tern Gyre. Durand felt lost then, with so many days and leagues before them. Perhaps sleep was needed.
“A little longer,” he said. “There might be a better place than this.”
* * *
NOT MORE THAN an hour later, Durand looked back through the murk. Leovere looked too dull to raise his eyes when an oak tree as big as the moon vanished like a smudge of ink. Berchard was no fool.
“Right,” said Durand, and, when the road curved around a low hill, Coensar called a halt, ringing the high ground with sentries and sending squadrons of mounted men out to watch the road, north and south.
The hillock sat like an island in a stewpot, steam all around. Here and there, Durand could make out the vague shapes of the largest trees, looming like neighboring islands. Up they climbed, leading the horses.
On the island hill, exhausted men searched for baggage. They had lost many animals at Ydran and no one had really counted the cost. Already, there were banner knights bedding down on the spongy turf. Someone had managed to light a fire. The plain copper flames caught every eye, so normal did they seem.
Coensar took a moment to warn the company. They must not eat or drink what they found there. Not them, or their horses, though the horses would need no warning. “A shepherd and a sheep? The old ewe will wander home. But the man will have plucked an apple or supped a handful of water, and he’ll be here still somewhere, snapped out of the centuries by the old sorcery.” He pointed off into the mist. “Do that and you will be part of their world and Lost with them. Touch the ground in Errest the Old, and those lost winters will catch you up like those trees by the road. Dust and ashes is all you’ll be.”
The moonlight struck a gleam of pewter in the captain’s gray hair and glinted in his tired eyes. Clouds ran like faded banners under the Farrow Moon. All of them knew the morning would arrive before long, and the thralls were marching. Men hobbled horses and settled under cloaks.
Meanwhile, the Lost mounted the hill, passing the sentries. They found brown blood here and there, knotted into surcoats and sleeves. Durand recognized the blue-coated villager from the bridge on the Glass. The first man he had killed, but Durand had more concern for the living. He saw Almora by a fire with Mornaway and Garelyn close by. Ailric had not been more than two steps from the girl since Ydran.
Leovere’s men huddled like victims of a shipwreck. Hardly a hundred souls survived from his rebellion, and Leovere himself could not rest. He paced, putting his hands to his head. Morcar and the rest sat in a grim circle around their own fire.
It seemed to Durand that a great deal depended on Leovere of Penseval. If they could outrace the maragrim to Eldinor, Leovere’s numbers might tell. Even crossing Hesperand, the men of Yrlac might need someone to lead them.
Durand walked the few paces between the fires.
“Duke Leovere,” he said, and the man looked up. Firelight shivered in his eyes.
“You were at Ferangore,” he said.
“I was,” said Durand.
“You saw me at the surrender.”
“I did,” said Durand.
“Aye, well. It rankled, though any man could see what Radomor had been doing.”
Durand nodded heavily. “The streets.” The stones drank the blood of the slain. “The high sanctuary. The carrion birds.”
“It was devilry. I knew it then.”
Durand gave another nod.
Leovere cast his eyes on the Heavens, the trees, the fires. “Why?” he said. “You could have taken my head. Or had them string me up. Why did you do this thing, Durand Col?”
Durand touched the pommel of Ouen’s sword, running his thumb over the worn knuckle of it. “It seemed right,” Durand said. “What peace could we have had with an outlander in Yrlac?”
“Maybe,” said Leovere. “Still, not many would have done it. You should know that. I don’t know that you do.” He closed his eyes. “What was that Ragnal doing? It wasn’t for Yrlac that you killed him.”
“It was little Reilan, the boy.” Durand had no wish to say more. Ragnal was a dead man; Durand could see his shade on the periphery of camp. The pop-eyed king looked up, blindly, as though he had heard something.
“I don’t know,” Durand muttered.
“Whispers,” said Leovere.
Now, Durand winced at the man. “What would you say of whispers?”
“I’ve heard them. I could see it in Ragnal. Did you see how he clasped his head.”
“The pain of the realm is visited upon the king. It is in the wards.”
“But I knew it. I saw the clenched teeth. It was the whispers.” The man quirked his head, peering up at Durand. “But you knew it also.”
Durand could only nod. “We met beggars in the Banderol Road. And in the mountains, we heard more,” Durand said. “About the girl and the Hornbearer.”
“Yes!” said Leovere. “The whispers, they required her death.” He raised his hands as though he was holding a puzzle box before his eyes. “It was necessary. She was to die, and then Abravanal. Well, it was clear enough that without an heir, the old man could not hold Yrlac. But I could not let her die!”
Men looked. And the new Duke of Yrlac patted the air. “I could not. I’d known her since—I don’t remember. A long time. She deserved�
��”
But here was a mystery. “Did you direct the Hornbearer then?”
“I thought so. I thought that I held it back. But then I thought it would fight under my banner at Ydran, and you saw how it obeyed me.
“Durand Col, I had kin at Penseval. Cousins. Some are here. Some died in that place when the men of Gireth came burning. But you have given me what I could not take.” The man did not finish the thought; instead, he clasped his head again.
“For years, the whispers. They began by picking at my pride. They whispered of my people, and about justice and—they are silent now. The whispers have what they required now, I think. They played upon me until they had what they required. Even this battle. It pleased the whispers that we should battle at Ydran. I did not understand.”
“There is something at work behind all this. It was there, too, in Radomor’s day.” Durand thought of Alwen. Of her lover. He remembered the damned Rooks and Heremund’s starlings. “A strong man was undone.”
“We will stop them at Eldinor. There are knights at the capital. The barons bring more. We will stop them somehow.”
“Go to your people, Duke Leovere. Soon enough, we will be back in the saddle, but we will need a week to reach the Bay of Eldinor and no man can ride seven days without sleep.”
“You will not understand: what I’ve done, I cannot undo. But the Hornbearer is loose in the land.” Durand noticed that the man had the Horn of Uluric; both his hands worked upon it. “First of all the sons of Errest the Old I have let this evil loose among our people.”
Hours ago Durand would happily have sent the man to the Hells. Yet now …
“Leovere,” he said. “Hear me. We cannot know the Creator’s mind, but you are here in Hesperand, alive still. And by those fires are men who have followed your banner into a Lost land. Surely a man can read something in all this.”
There were dozens of huddled fighting men in the fire-lit circles of the Yrlaci camp. “I do not know,” said Leovere. “There is something here. But, in this place, I cannot see how we can stand against the maragrim or hold them even an hour. Still, there is truth in what you say. We are not the Powers of Heaven, and the Silent King will not disclose the dooms of men. Something may yet fall in our path to cause the maragrim pain.”