A King in Cobwebs

by David Keck

  The new-minted Duke of Yrlac extended his hand, and Durand took it.

  And, as Leovere stalked away, Durand found that Deorwen had been waiting among the plentiful shadows. “How does he fare after all of this, the fool man?”

  “Well enough,” Durand said. “He will lead his men to Eldinor.”

  “Well enough for that,” said Deorwen.

  They watched Leovere join the circles of his countrymen in the firelight, touching shoulders, playing commander—a little—once more.

  “The shame of this is deep,” said Durand. “He has let an evil into Errest. Already, men have died, and this Hornbearer is far from finished. What can a man put in the balance against such a thing?”

  “But he rides for Eldinor.”

  “Heaven may grant him a moment to set things right.”

  “Or to die. He might die.”

  “He might.” Durand smiled. “And all of us beside him, perhaps.”

  By Almora’s fire, they could see Ailric standing guard while Garelyn snored. Even Mornaway seemed to have drifted off, his dark cloak scarcely stirring. The girl slept, surrounded by her rough court. She was pretty in the firelight, though her face and the curl of one small hand were all Durand could see. She seemed as peaceful as a child.

  “She sleeps like a little girl, and we cannot close our eyes,” said Deorwen. “And you, a duke for days.”

  Durand said nothing, and so Deorwen goaded him.

  “Maybe you would have been happy in Ferangore.”

  “In Ferangore? All things are possible under Heaven, I suppose,” Durand said, though he could not think how. Ferangore was deep in black memory: Lamoric; his sister in that tower; the burning streets; the high sanctuary full of carrion and birds. No, the more he thought of it, the happier he was without the place. If they lived, Leovere could keep it. Perhaps there had been nothing very noble in giving it up.

  “You are a terrible one for blathering on.”

  Durand paused a moment and honestly smiled. “It is a bad habit.”

  Deorwen laughed despite herself, and then there was another space of time.

  “What is it you wish to say?” Durand asked.

  “Ah. It’s just— Durand, you will be good to the girl, won’t you? No sullen silences. This brooding won’t do. She’s young. She has a chance at happiness still. You must— You and your closed mouth and duty. It will not be enough. You have seen how the girl has lived. Locked up in that black hall, nearly as dead as her brothers.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. And opened his eyes to find her staring up. He could not breathe.

  “She’ll stand by you. It is her father’s will, and she’s decent enough to see that you are a loyal man who’s served her family. But that is only duty, and it won’t be happiness.”

  It wasn’t what any of them wanted. There had only ever been Deorwen and all the damned ghosts between them.

  “Deorwen, it was not I who devised this.” He reached out and touched her fingers, and memories choked him: of clinging together in the black siege of Acconel with the streets aflame. But she drew her hand back.

  Firelight glinted over the big black depths of her eyes.

  “No. There must be nothing like that. The girl deserves … You must be hers. Only hers.”

  Around the camp, the Lost roamed in great numbers, licking at bloodied hauberks, bending like courtiers to sniff at the fingers of fighting men.

  By another fire, Coensar paced. The Lost were there too, though Coen didn’t notice the bent throng of charred villagers that milled as he walked.

  Deorwen must have seen the direction of Durand’s glance. “They are still with you, even here?” Deorwen said, her voice small.

  Durand laughed. “They are.” It was like market day on the little hilltop. A fair of the fallen.

  She narrowed her eyes. “And there are more, aren’t there?”

  Durand found he had no desire to speak about them. “Aye,” he managed, “there are. Yes.”

  “I have laid so many of the Lost in Acconel, I cannot count them. So many died, so suddenly in the fires. So many are Lost. But they come to me. They always have. And there is always some sign, something that tells me what I must do if I’m to help them.”

  Durand nodded. For these dead souls, she had no answer.

  “These are mine, I think,” said Durand. “Something is tangled, I don’t know. Our dooms are bound somehow. Some have followed me since I fought for Coensar here in Hesperand. A man I killed for him. I had not understood.”

  Coensar was still walking.

  “Another haunted man: Coensar,” said Deorwen. “You poor boys. But it’s you who’s haunting the Steward, no? It was Coensar, was it not?” She gestured to the scarred right side of Durand’s face. “No one has ever told me.”

  Durand could not find an answer for her now, but he could not think why.

  “You ought to have killed him, or let him live,” said Deorwen.

  How Durand might have answered this he would never know, for, abruptly, Deorwen was looking elsewhere.

  For a moment, Durand saw only the living and the Lost on the hilltop, but then Deorwen’s hand clutched Durand’s wrist, despite all she’d said before about the girl and duty.

  All around the camp, soldiers were popping up from their firesides, hauling swords into the cold air.

  And Durand realized that, among the Lost, a row of knights had appeared at the hill’s edge, most in the arms of generations long past. In their midst rode a slender woman, sidesaddle. She wore green. Her eyes were clear and wide, and the thick plait of her hair was the red of new blood. The woman cast an imperious look over the Host of Gireth and Yrlac. An invading army? Unworthy guests, blood-soaked and beaten? But before she could give voice to her disgust, she found Durand among them all.

  Her glare shot him through.

  In a black bolt of memory, he was thrown back to the long-ago tournament at Bower Mead and the dizzy night he had spent with this Lost woman thereafter, a dead man’s blood still upon him. This was the Green Lady of Hesperand. And, in that moment upon the hilltop, she knew him, and her dread gaze flickered from Durand to Deorwen’s hand upon his arm. And Durand was sure that, despite the armed host around him, death would follow.

  He dropped to one knee and nodded his head low in the most abject bow. His host must pass Hesperand. So much else depended upon it.

  And he stayed bent in this way for many beatings of his heart as he waited for any word from the Lady—or any blade from her men.

  But, when he finally dared to look up, all sign of the Green Lady and her guard of dead knights had gone.

  26

  A Labyrinth of Dreams

  After this grim awakening, the host gathered themselves up to leave. Leovere pulled his contingent into a vanguard for the day’s march, but as Morcar led the column down the hillside, the ground gave way beneath his horse’s hooves, and he and his mount plunged through the side of the hill.

  After a great flap and panic, the company approached the gash in the hillock only to find Morcar staring up. The Yrlaci baron was as pop-eyed as dead King Ragnal, for he and his horse had fallen through a rooftop and landed among a family of living bondmen, all as still as idols. Under the turf of that low hill, the company found signs of a village. Roping Morcar from the peasant hovel, men found that they could perceive other houses through the windows of Morcar’s hut. It seemed that they were clustered as tight as eggs in a nest, but that centuries of leaves and dust had drifted deep between them. And centuries of roots and trees had veined them all until a thousand men could sleep on the mound of it, and none the wiser.

  * * *

  AFTER THIS DELAY, the road forked, and the commanders held council. It seemed that they might travel north, up the length of Hesperand, or take a short road west and leave the Lost dukedom.

  Garelyn scratched his long, red-stubbled neck. “Right,” he said. “We must settle on our plan. There is a choice here.” He squinted up one track.
“This will be west, I think. The Mornaway Road. The quickest way out. And the other way will take us through Hesperand by the straight road to Hellebore and Eldinor beyond. Skald, what say you?”

  Heremund had already peeled off his rumpled hat. The air was heavy. “The Hellebore Road will take two or more long days’ riding, all of it through this sort of country. Or so I would wager. Men do not go that way in this age.”

  “And west?” said Garelyn.

  “The Mornaway Road means turning from Eldinor and riding west to the cross the River Glass, and the Glass again on the border of Mornaway. The river swings north, then back west.” He sketched an undulating path in the air. “That means finding a ford, a bridge—and we could spend seven leagues or more marching west before we can strike north again in Mornaway. But,” he allowed, “we are free of Hesperand.”

  Leovere looked to Durand. “A day lost.”

  Durand only prompted Heremund.

  “Aye,” said the skald. “Likely enough.”

  “Then it cannot be,” said Leovere. “We are days still from Eldinor. The Hornbearer will not wait while we tarry. There is no choice. There is but one road.”

  Almora had been watching all this. Listening. Now, Garelyn turned to her.

  “Ladyship, it will mean more of this place. More Hesperand. Two or more days of God knows. And us without so much as a drop of water we didn’t bring from Gireth—or Yrlac. We will lose good horses to the colic.”

  Even before Hesperand, they’d had no real baggage train. Leaving Gireth, there had been no time.

  Leovere drew himself up in his saddle. “Ladyship, what we have is yours.”

  All along, Durand had known that it must be Hesperand and the Hellebore Road north. But, now, they were agreed. Leovere spun his charger to dart back to his men, and soon every panier was open. Laughing men of both duchies weighed out skins of wine and water and made what rough divisions they could.

  It was then, as their ad hoc council broke up, that Durand thought he saw someone moving among the trees: a gray figure among the beeches, a woman, her eyes fixed on Durand across a hundred paces.

  Here and there, a tree still fell into clouds.

  Garelyn spoke. “Who are you?” he said. His voice was very close, and it sounded dead in his mouth. The others were about their business, climbing aboard horses, riding back to their various contingents. Durand and Garelyn were alone.

  The distant figure of the Lady of Hesperand moved beyond the gray screen of trees, but it was still bluff Garelyn who spoke: “What do you want here? Was it you who did this?”

  Durand glanced between Garelyn and the distant Lady, then lost her among the trunks.

  Garelyn was blinking; his long mustaches jumped.

  “Right, then,” he said. “If we’ve made up our minds, there’s no sense waiting.”

  * * *

  THE FOG DREW closer and closer as they followed the great trails north. Uncounted leagues they trudged, up one gray warren and another, coming upon places where the tracks brawled into a broad meadow, or where walls of trees and banks fell away to leave them utterly adrift in the fog. More than once, a track died away entirely and they were forced to bull down animal trails. Heremund was often consulted, but no one truly knew their way, and the fog did not spare them even a glimpse of Heaven’s Eye.

  In the densest of these fogs, there was no one but Durand and Deorwen in Creation. Their two horses plodded along, side by side, as the fog swallowed trees and bushes and the riders ahead and behind, until they were alone on an island scarcely larger than a crofter’s table.

  He wondered if he perceived figures in the fog.

  “It is eerie,” said Durand.

  He thought he could make out sounds. Creation was strangely close. Though there must be acres of mists and trees, Durand might have believed they rode under the heavy thatch of a bondman’s cottage.

  Then Deorwen spoke. “It returns to me,” she said. “Your face. Your bearing. I remember these things.”

  Deorwen was staring at him, slack-faced. Durand searched the opaque mists all around them. Somewhere among the shadows, the Lady of the Bower accompanied him. He heard the clink of tack and the stiff clop of hooves on the forest floor. But he could not be sure where the Lady rode.

  “Let her go,” he called. “She’s nothing to do with you.”

  “I remember,” said Deorwen. “You were mine. You rode in the lists at Bower Mead. I witnessed it.” She paused. Durand saw Deorwen’s teeth and tongue working through tangled mutterings as the Green Lady fought the confusion of centuries. That tourney, Durand knew, had been fought many times with scores and scores of lovers acting the same roles.

  “Oh! And we lay together. Host of Heaven. In the very grass where you fought. I could not help myself,” said Deorwen.

  Durand’s horse shied. And there, at his elbow, rode the Lady of Hesperand. Her hair was as red as a fresh gash across a her white brow. She gazed up into his face, avid. But there were many moods in her eyes.

  “Ladyship, we only wish passage to Hellebore,” Durand ventured. It was hardly a breath. “The Enemy is in the kingdom, marching on Eldinor. And our only hope to outrace them is to cross your lands.”

  The woman gazed, and Deorwen’s voice pronounced her thoughts. “You left. I gave you my veil. What did you do?”

  Just then, Durand heard a sound behind him, and the Green Lady glanced, startled.

  “And who are all these? What do you mean to do here? An army?” It was as though she was only then discovering the host, as though she had only just realized that there were hundreds of riders in the fog. “You have brought an army into my husband’s dukedom?”

  As Durand made to raise a mollifying hand, there were hoofbeats. Tack and armor. Durand heard the gusty breath of a horse. And—in the instant when Durand glanced—the Lost woman vanished.

  A sudden, heavy form collided with Durand: a horse and rider blundered against him. The horse’s big shoulder gave Durand’s leg a wrenching twist. But Durand caught at the fool, his fingers scrabbling over canvas and mail till he got hold.

  The man was straining and gulping.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Durand snarled in the man’s face. It was a knight from their own company. Others rode up, jouncing to a halt all around: the Duke of Garelyn, Coensar, Duke Leovere, some of the men who had ridden with Raimer.

  “Here, I’ve got him,” said Durand. “Lend a hand.” They got their fists on the bridle of his horse, Garelyn taking a sturdy elbow in the jaw for his trouble. But, as others caught hold, they got a good look at the snarling face.

  “Host of Heaven!” said Garelyn. “It’s one of Baron Vadir’s boys.” He had come with them through the Pennons Gate without a whimper and now here he was.

  “What’s wrong with you, man?” demanded Durand.

  One of the man’s comrades spoke up. “He’d been muttering,” he said. “Growling at nothing.”

  Now the man strained against them, twisting an arm loose and lashing out.

  Almora was looking on, Deorwen’s arm around her. Garelyn noticed the woman. “Here,” he said, “Lady Deorwen, have you anything that might help him?”

  “I … I am sorry. I hardly know what is happening.” She was still coming around. God knew what she could recall of the Green Lady’s conversation—nothing, most likely.

  Garelyn nodded sharply and said to the man’s comrades. “Bind him. You cannot let him get free in this place. It will be the last you see of him.”

  * * *

  ONCE THEY HAD the poor man squared away, Durand realized that all sign of the road had vanished with the Green Lady.

  They had not moved from it, but now there was not a rut or a mark anywhere among the leather-brown leaves at their feet. And the fog remained so thick that Durand could hardly believe that there could be whole battalions in the gray wastes with him. He wondered if it was the Lady’s doing.

  Thus, blindly, they wandered while the Lost voices chanted in t
he mist.

  And it was not long before madness visited them again.

  Soon, they discovered that ten men had gone missing—and a half dozen more were wild and unreachable, but still with the column. For these, Durand found horse litters. Durand had riders try every exhausted horseman, probing for a joke or grumble. There were men on horseback who would not answer when called and seemed not to know even their comrades.

  Hours passed as more and more knights drifted away. And all the while, Durand was thinking that they were meant to have struck the River Glass by noontide. With the vault of Heaven as opaque as an oyster’s shell, no man could judge the time, but he was sure that they had passed noon and ridden on toward nightfall.

  Finally, Durand summoned the skald and the commanders of the host.

  “We must be leagues past the River Glass,” said Durand, “yet we’ve seen nothing.”

  Coensar nodded. Under his breath, he said, “We ought to have seen it by now. We cannot afford to lose so much time and so many men.” It was the closest to Coensar’s thoughts Durand had been in long years.

  “We’re walking in circles. That’s what’s happening,” said Garelyn. “This fog has bedeviled us, and we’ve more men on litters every league. Actually, I think it might be a race between lame horses and madmen to see what stops us first.” He pawed at his neck.

  “Gives a man chills, seeing these fellows. One man pitched right out of his saddle in front of me. That Ailric of yours was wondering whether we’d be better off banning fires. Wondered whether breathing the smoke was the same as drinking the water.”

  “Clever lad,” said Heremund.

  “What of the Glass, Heremund Skald?” asked Durand. “Have we walked by the river somehow? We might be leagues north of it.”

  “We cannot have missed the Glass. It must be ahead. Even if we had a mind to get round it somehow, it could scarcely be managed. And we’ve been riding straight at the river since we stepped into Hesperand. I’ve had that Ailric with me and we’ve had an eye on the trees, the moss, the branches. Knowing that the fall of land runs east down to Silvermere, we’ve been cheating uphill a might. Maybe my guess at the timing was a little off. Maybe we’re a wee bit slower than we think.”