by David Keck
“We should have seen this River Glass,” said Garelyn. “That is what you think. We should have seen it hours ago. Hours and hours, I’d wager.”
“Hesperand is not some a one-street village, Your Grace.”
“Is it not? I’d hardly noticed.” Garelyn turned to Durand. At that moment, someone called out—one of the poor souls on the litters—and Garelyn winced. “What shall we do, Durand Col? Ten men we lose for every league of wandering. And, all the while, the old Hornbearer must be galloping toward Eldinor.”
Durand thought of the Green Lady, and he was sure that she had taken the road from them—that she had turned them a hundred times. Still, what else could he do but drive them forward—as near to north as Ailric and Heremund could manage—and hope that the Lost woman would relent, or that she would, once more, allow him to speak with her? If someone else had led the Host of Gireth, who could know what the Lady might have done?
Still, she had sent the Hornbearer back into Yrlac and robbed the fiend of a day or more. For that, they must be grateful.
Almora was watching. Durand saw Coensar and Vadir and Garelyn and Deorwen.
“Onward,” he said. “We go onward, Your Grace. What is there but to press on?”
Coensar was nodding, but his face was grim. A solution must present itself. They could not wallow aimlessly.
Garelyn gave a sudden grin. “Perhaps there is a duke in you yet, Durand Col. Onward it is.”
* * *
DURAND RODE NEARER the head of the column than any wise commander would, but he had to play huntsman. He set men to range before the company on a very short tether while Heremund quested like a hunting dog, darting off into the fog and reappearing left and right. Without the Eye of Heaven they must steer by moss and dog mercury. Meanwhile, Durand was forced to call a halt twice and listen as men made up new litters. Howls and the reports of axes echoed through the trees.
Almora was the only brightness in the uncanny mist.
She chatted amiably with poor Ailric, quizzing him for hours about his priestly father, his life at the Col and at Wrothsilver. Closed-mouthed Ailric could not help but speak. The pair were even heard to laugh.
As Durand’s horse clattered out onto some half-buried pavement, Heremund appeared from the gloom, grubbing about at the bottom of a broken stone idol.
“The Warders, I think, though they’re as worn as an old man’s teeth,” said Heremund. He peered into the pocks and hollows of what might have been a pair of faces. The idols held each other arm in arm. Durand made out big staring eyes.
Almora’s laughter echoed through the fog.
“A wise girl, that one,” Heremund said. “If she wasn’t gabbing away at that boy, all a man would hear is Hesperand chanting and our poor mad devils howling against their gags.”
“She’s no fool,” said Durand.
“‘It can’t be so bad if Her Ladyship’s still cheerful.’ That will be in everyone’s head.” He jabbed a blunt finger at the face of the twin idol. “Now, there may be some power in these old stones yet, for look: We’re in a bit of a clearing here. On brighter days, the Eye of Heaven must fall upon this place, for upon the cheek of our idol—if that’s a cheek—is a good bloom of yellow lichen and, on his back, a good brush of moss. And so here, the stone reveals north and south, for the yellow lichen loves the Eye of Heaven. I’m told, and—”
Heremund glanced up, ready to expound upon the wind and weather, but his eyes clouded.
“Here, look,” he said, for they were not alone.
Twenty paces through the mist stood a tall man in a white surcoat, his back to Durand. The man had neither moved nor made himself known as Heremund spoke. “That’s one of Garelyn’s riders: Bedwig, I think he calls himself,” said Heremund.
“The vanguard,” said Durand.
A riderless horse nodded among the trees and Durand made out two more men. These were kneeling in mist beside the first.
It would not be long before the column overtook them.
“Come,” said Durand, and the two men moved slowly closer.
Heremund was wincing. “The damn chant is thick in this place.” After days of the sacred litany, Durand paid the chant no heed, but Heremund was right. The air fairly buzzed with it.
Durand called to the three men in the trail. “Here, you three. What’ve you found? You’ll need to do more than stand there.” But the men made no move.
Durand now saw three horses wandering, untended and untied.
“I think this must have been a town,” Heremund said. Across the clearing lumps and hummocks bulged under the leaves. “That’ll be what’s left of a wall over there.”
Bedwig knelt beside his fellows.
Heremund was whispering—“It’s three more for the litters”—as Durand reached a square-edged hump in the ground. Durand raised his foot. A step—and it was as though he had stepped on a mangonel’s trigger.
Creation changed.
In an instant, the tall arch of a door swept above him into the dark. A candlelit sanctuary stood open before him, rich with the scent of wax and dead man’s balsam. Durand saw knights in shining hauberks kneeling before the altar, keeping some holy vigil. Each man had laid his belted sword upon the altars.
This was the eve of the great enchantment.
Durand’s mind was filled with it all. They were waiting for the coming of the dawn. Every man, woman, and child of the village stood at Durand’s back, filling the yard before the sanctuary threshold. At dawn, the strength of Hesperand would be hurled in the face of the Enemy. The glory of it filled Durand’s heart and he smiled a wild smile. Upon the altar, candle flame caught in the jeweled fittings of the swords like a golden twilight full of stars.
He reached for his sword belt.
And felt a hand catch his arm.
In an instant, he was jerked from the jeweled dark and back into the clammy wastes of the forest where a squat man looked up at him.
“Durand Col, where have you been?” For a long moment, he could not recall the homely face or the name it had pronounced.
Old Heremund gave Durand’s ear a sharp twist.
“You’d best tell me what’s been happening,” Heremund said.
With his hands over his eyes, Durand told the skald of the sanctuary. Only ten paces away, Bedwig and his mates knelt in the mush where the altar step had been.
Heremund narrowed one eye. “Ah. It’s the sorcery of that night, don’t you see? The holy vows, the bonds of man to man, lord to lord, king to land. This is how the Hidden Masters meant to haul the Host from Hesperand. Now, the sanctuary is caught up in the old magic. Look at the floor.”
Before Durand could object that there was no floor but leaves, Heremund had given him a shove over the threshold and, once again, he stood in that midnight jewel box of a shrine, waiting the fire of dawn. And, upon the floor were tiled signs: the Eye of Heaven. The Powers of Heaven. Giddy loops and lines of power.
Another tug on Durand’s arm brought him back.
Heremund was speaking. “It is the Wards of the Ancient Patriarchs. It is sacred ground. Our men will have set foot on these tiles and been snatched away.”
“Is there nothing we can do for them?” Durand said.
“They may be too far gone.”
“All right. I won’t have the column see this. We will have to move quickly.”
As the vanguard of the column jingled into the clearing, Durand was snarling orders. He turned the column, sending them out among the trees to avoid the sunken village, and he grabbed a few men to throw lines around Bedwig and his comrades and add the three to the column’s train of madmen. They made up litters as the column nodded past. It was hard, hurried, and dirty work, always with the threat of the column blundering into some other peril as Durand labored among the baggage to add three more knights to the scores of raving and lost men at the column’s end.
Durand wiped sweat and grime from his forehead.
“This is good,” said Heremund.
>
“You had best explain yourself. This will make twice in an hour I’ve thought of sending you to join the Host of Hesperand.”
“Now, now. We have been worried about direction, and now we know which way we’re headed. First we had the yellow lichen and the moss.”
“And the idols.”
“And now we have the sanctuary.” He grinned his toothless grin. “Always, the altar stands in the east to greet the dawn! It is a certain sign.”
Durand laughed.
“I have to tell you: this moss business is nothing but the wildest chance. You were mad to trust me. Come, Sir Durand! This is a great windfall.”
And, together they rode up the length of the column. “With east planted firm, we know we’re pointed north as sure as if the lodestar were before us.”
At this, Heremund’s donkey tramped into deep water. The animal stopped short and Heremund tumbled in upside down.
Durand reined in sharply. Heremund spat curses.
Through the shifting veils of fog, Durand made out banks of sedges and tall reeds standing in a still pool that went on as far as the fog let him see.
“Is this the river, Heremund?” he asked.
The fog stirred, opening long, gloomy caverns over dark water. It was too much water: half a league or more and no shore beyond. And so it could be no river.
“Was there a lake on your route, skald?”
Heremund cursed. “It’s not a lake. There is no lake in Hesperand. There are no lakes north of Yrlac. Only the sea, leagues and leagues beyond Hesperand and Hellebore.”
Yet this was freshwater.
By now, the commanders had broken from the column and ridden up.
Coensar looked out over the water. In the man’s face, Durand saw the mirror of his own restless, suffocating dread. They were lost; they might be anywhere in Creation or beyond, and they did not have a moment to spare for it.
“No lake in Hesperand?” Garelyn was saying. “Not even on the high ground? Hells. You know the thralls are covering leagues every night.” He glanced about for anyone who might overhear. “Who knows what chance we have, skald? We cannot afford to spend a day turning circles. We cannot lose an hour.”
“Enough!” Durand swung from his saddle, helping the skald from the water. Heremund collected himself with what dignity he could muster and set about wringing the water from his garments as the main body of the column loomed and jingled from the fog. “This is some nameless pond or puddle, or it is the Silvermere. Yes, Heremund?
Heremund groused. “It’s madness. If I get a mouthful of this, I’ll be playing for bloody old Duke Eorcan and his Host of Hesperand for the rest of my days. I’ll bet it’s the same tune around and around with them.”
Durand was tempted to wring the old skald’s neck himself.
They must have a direction at once: there were a thousand exhausted men behind him. None had slept and all were gnawed by hunger and fear. If they knew that the company was wandering pointlessly, whatever hope remained would be lost. He had to think.
“If we’ve come around the Warrens somehow and butted into Silvermere, the north will be on our left hand,” he said.
Heremund’s shapeless hat was still in the water. “Damn me,” he said, bending back toward the water. Durand sloshed in himself, snatching the hat and slapping it in the skald’s hands.
“By now, there are a hundred pairs of eyes on us, yes?” Durand said.
“Ah,” said Heremund. “Ah, yes. I see now.”
“We try to skirt this. We take the left-hand way. We hope to Heaven we’ve not been walking east since first light.
“Aye,” said Hermund. “Aye, left.” But the flint-brown eyes narrowed. “Heaven help us if it’s the Mere. We only just saw that shrine. We just saw it. We can’t have marched east for a day.” Both men squelched back into their saddles. Durand would get more riders ranging out before the column. Whether this was Silvermere or some nameless pond, it wouldn’t do to follow every twist in the shoreline.
“All decided then?”
“Aye,” said Durand. “Forward!”
And, in an hour, the outriders found a break in the saw-edged reeds and the Host of Gireth was once again able to leave the shore and swing north into a delirious and shapeless gloom that seemed as broad as the open ocean.
More men fell to the madness of the accursed dukedom. Their cries piped through the fog.
And Durand wondered how long they could endure the Green Lady’s wrath.
* * *
A MOMENT CAME when the last light ebbed away. The army was crumbling on the march. Coensar rode up and down the column for all the world like a shepherd’s dog; the most he gave Durand was a grim shake of his head.
Heremund could no longer ride ahead. “There is no sign,” he said. “Not yet, but we cannot continue this way. I think that there has never been a night so black.”
“We cannot have another night waiting among the dripping trees and another day with the forest working evil upon the men,” said Durand. “No.”
It could not be so. He had seen pines while there had been light. The sticky scent was still on the breeze, and so Durand called a halt. “Let us see what can be done.” Coensar took the men who had the field craft out among the pines. Some of the trees seemed mortal enough. And, with the homely crack of axes among the trees, Durand and many of the barons built a stubborn bonfire to get the makeshift torches going.
Coensar brought the parties in from the woods and Almora joined the stern gathering at the bonfire. She smiled around at the determined men. They were splattered with green chips and old blood as the firelight hooked deep shadows over their features. But they watched Almora, and only when she nodded did the whole group touch torches to the fire.
Fierce and giddy smiles passed among them all.
Only Durand and old Coensar looked on, grim-faced. Durand would not lead these people into this disaster and leave them. They would die on the march or they would break through.
Somewhere among the trees, he was sure, the Green Lady watched.
27
The Passage of Honor
Like some Patriarch’s torch-lit procession, the company rode through that sanctuary of dark trees and they rode deep into the night by tangled ways, listening as their comrades moaned and the ghosts of Hesperand kept up their uncanny chanting. The mist retreated, but the dazzled eyes of men see little beyond the light of a torch, and, when the wind stirred in the forest, it plunged the whole column into a guttering darkness that half-stopped the hearts of the bravest among them.
Heremund drove the army through thickets. In the dark, they came upon tracks and animal trails, shrines and crossroads and ditches. The skald could only curse and guess their route. Moss smoked as he thrust pitchy splinters at the bases of trees.
Soon, of course, the merry torches winked out. An hour’s light consumed three or more of the best, and so what began as a train of lights flickered and dwindled, so that in a few hours a thousand men bumbled like a string of blind beggars with only a torch here or there to show that they had not ridden right out of the world.
Durand was soon joined by a sweeping phalanx of Lost souls, limping and drifting and groveling over the forest floor.
They struck a road or ravine, their path sinking deep between root-veined walls of earth nearly the height of a mounted man; the Lost peered down. Beech trees knotted in the torchlight overhead while the horsemen jostled knee to knee in the sunken roadbed. They might have been riding in their own graves.
The eerie roadway rang louder and louder with the ceaseless chanting.
Durand became certain that they must all die, and their kingdom fall. He had mishandled the Bower Lady, and now they were, all of them, cursed to wander till madness took them. But, as he ground his teeth at these thoughts, something glinted in the dark beyond the roots and torchlight: armed men, he was sure. She was out there! Durand spurred his mount up the bank and bowled through Lost souls and into the trees.
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bsp; The sudden rush battered his torch into blackness, and the baffled horse shied at the sudden gulf of dark that overwhelmed them.
“No!” Durand shouted. The glint of the knights was vanishing as he watched: The whole squadron of them slipping away like a school of minnows in some black millpond. “No! Come back!”
But there was no one to hear him.
The constellation of his army stretched behind him in their ditch. They must not hear him raving, begging at the top of his lungs for the Lady of Hesperand to free them.
Coensar and a cadre of men had found a break in the bank. They rode out.
The man looked grimly into Durand’s face.
“I saw knights,” said Durand. “It’ll have been the Lady of Hesperand, Coen.”
Coensar gave Durand a careful nod.
“It’s all caught up with her,” Durand explained. “All of this.”
Coensar’s men looked to each other. They would have seen plenty of men ride off. They had tied many more to litters, and they were likely getting set to take another, but Coensar swiveled, flashing a cautioning glance over the rest. “It’s all right. We’ve all seen ’em. Best see if anyone else lit out while we weren’t looking.”
Reluctantly, Coensar’s men left them.
“If that horse hadn’t pulled up.… Maybe you’d be as lost as the rest of her lads, Durand. You know this place as well as I.”
“What else could I do?” Frustration had him practically writhing. “We are melting away. We are like a sword of ice. Every day, we have fewer fighting men. Even now, if we can ever reach Eldinor, what good can we do?”
But Coensar was blinking.
Durand had hardly noticed. The Eye of Heaven was rising. The light was in Coensar’s face, and Durand could see the rag-tag string of knights that he’d brought from Yrlac, rubbing their faces and staring in astonishment.