by David Keck
Perhaps, here, was the way forward, the way out.
He needed Deorwen. Who knew how many Lost souls she had sent to far Heaven in Acconel?
Durand tore his horse from the line, drawing the glances of the Lost. He rode through black snares of juniper.
Ailric and Almora and Deorwen were some way back in the column, but he soon found them. Deorwen did not look up.
“Your Grace,” said Ailric. He ducked near to Durand, barring passage.
“What is it, boy?” said Durand.
“We think—Lady Almora is uneasy. Lord Moryn has tried—”
Almora looked on, dismayed. Deorwen herself sat her dun palfrey, not acknowledging anyone, even as Durand urged his mount to lurch into step beside hers.
“I was sleeping,” said Almora, “I should have noticed at once. I ought to have.”
Deorwen had her arms clasped tightly about herself, and rode as stiffly as if she were a wooden idol in some village procession. Her eyes seemed to be fixed on her horse’s black mane. Only her lips moved—mouthing quick skittering sounds. Durand reached out, catching her around the shoulders, pressing his body as close as his borrowed horse allowed.
“Deorwen? Deorwen, can you answer?” And, nearly forehead to forehead, her eyes met his. Already Mornaway, Garelyn, Almora, and Heaven knew who else were watching. Durand’s hands curled tightly in her cloak.
“What is this, Deorwen?”
“They have found you, Durand?” Her eyes widened, full of he knew not what. “It is like Acconel once more. The Lost. They rave, Durand, for rest. Like the dead in Acconel, but so many more, so long!”
“No, Deorwen.”
In Acconel, they had haunted her dreams in clamoring masses. Now, here she was in Hesperand, where a whole realm had been Lost.
Deorwen closed her eyes. He felt her pitching toward him, but she held on. Her hands found the saddlebow of her palfrey and her eyes sprang wide. “Durand, I tell you, I cannot. Another night, I cannot…”
“No,” said Durand. Here was Durand’s hope of finding a way from Hesperand.
Moryn, Almora, Ailric, and Garelyn were looking on as Deorwen slumped against the neck of her palfrey. Someone must’ve called a halt. Durand saw several ranks in the dark, watching.
“She is fighting,” said Ailric, “but she won’t last another night.”
There were nods, but Garelyn scowled. “A hundred more are likewise on the knife’s edge,” he said. “We must leave this place.”
Durand glowered at the man. How easy it was to know the right path when you did not have the power to choose it.
But Garelyn was not wrong: Hesperand would soon take Deorwen—and many others besides.
Durand spurred his horse and tore from the company, bowling back toward the head of the column. Coensar was gone. Deorwen would soon join him.
Durand rode past the vanguard and out into the fog, alone.
“You have us!” he shouted, up into the billows and half-visible trees. “You have us all! I don’t know your mind, but you have us. You have me! I cannot escape this place.”
His mount danced, uneasy at the shouting, likely in pain from the lashing branches.
“It has been you this whole time, hasn’t it? You have led us round in circles. You have wrought your vengeance on me. I was meant to die, I think. I was not meant to call you from this place, to take your favor from Hesperand. But this place is death, going round and round the same story.”
Despite himself, he blushed. He was shouting at the trees. Or so it seemed.
“If I have caused the end of this place, it is time. Hesperand is a living death. And you have heard our cause, I think. I have seen you shadow us, riding close beyond the branches. You have seen how these people suffer. They ride to meet their deaths. What else can come of standing against such an enemy?”
Durand faltered. He supposed that his voice might reach his men. It was possible.
What would it be like, he wondered, to ride himself off among the trees, all alone? To let Garelyn try to save them? To let it all be the problem of another man?
Then, some ways ahead, he thought he saw something motionless among the pale billows of mist.
“It is time,” he said. “You know it is time. You do not need to hold us here. There is nothing left.”
For an instant, Durand thought he saw the Lady of Hesperand on horseback. She sat in the midst of her household guard—dead men all. Then the mist swung shut between them and there was nothing.
“Hells,” said Durand. If she did not listen, he did not know what they would do.
But, after a moment, an eye-watering light shot through the fog, penetrating from among the high branches. High over Hesperand, the Eye of Heaven blazed above the mists.
The Host of Gireth found him in only a few moments. Creation was bright and bare. There was no sign of the woman.
“Come,” said Durand, and the multitude followed.
* * *
DURAND LED THE half-disbelieving host under high bright clouds.
He watched.
A thin, cold rain fell, but still they moved freely down a sloping, open country. Durand began to feel that soon he would see the rolling fields of Hesperand and ride out into some village pasture to the lasting astonishment of the plowmen there.
The road dropped once more, leaving the crowding undergrowth of the wildwood behind for an open grove where beech trees stood in a rolling pasture. Durand checked his pace on the threshold though he saw nothing to concern. The chants which had followed them since Ydran ebbed away and there was no sound but the dull rumble of horses and the jingle of tack. A few raised fingers stopped the host.
Durand and the old skald ventured alone into that place, the smallest of vanguards. Heremund favored Durand with a long look, and Durand thumbed the pommel of Ouen’s old sword.
The road brought them under the branches of one enormous tree, its tangled canopy of bone-bleached branches spread just over Durand’s head.
From every branch hung a knot of green cloth.
Once, he had carried just such a thing. The last time he’d tried to leave Hesperand, he’d been chased by the duke and his dogs with the Green Lady’s favor knotted in his belt. He remembered falling into the old myth, into the ancient ritual of the place.
Only Deorwen had saved him.
“What is this?” said Heremund, from the back of his donkey. The tree was dead. All of its leaves were green rags. Many of the peeled limbs groped down near enough that a mounted man might touch them. Blood blackened every knot.
All but one.
Amid the blood-stiff multitude, Durand saw one bright rag, new and green, unlike any of the others. And he knew that it could only be his own: the one he’d taken from Hesperand. The Lady of the Bower had taken it from his hand in Cape Erne.
Every bit of green was another death, a rag for every man-at-arms who had won the Lady’s favor—and who lay with her under the moon thereafter. And met her husband then. Durand marveled. How many men had the old duke run down, tournament after tournament? How long had Hesperand been trapped? Heremund was reaching. And, before Durand could call out, the skald had touched one hanging rag.
Durand caught the man’s hand, too late.
“I suppose it was a risk. Still, a man cannot resist it.” A fat drop landed on the back of the skald’s hand, falling between them. Every rag on every branch—all but one—now sopped with blood, the drops falling. Rain. A downpour that brimmed the road.
A shadow passed over the Heavens.
Durand twisted. “We must get free of this place.” The host was behind them.
Already the ancient trees were falling. Creation filled to the vault of Heaven with crashing branches and exploding ashes all around. The way back was lost in choking clouds.
Now, through the blood and ashes, Durand saw the Lady of the Bower and her men. She met his eye across the madness. And in her gaze was the calm of a woman trapped beyond all hope of aid.
“It is ending,” Durand realized. “All of it is ending.”
Like some vast living thing, a cold wind swept down from the Heavens set to dash the entire grove from Creation. Ashes burst and boiled to the very heights of Heaven.
“Durand, we must fly!” said Heremund.
Vadir and a hundred others struggled with terrified horses. They could not remain in Hesperand.
“Ride! Hesperand’s ending! We must ride or all be lost!”
Durand swung his sword in great circles. He called them on as the trees crashed one into another, falling and bursting on the storm winds. The whole of Hesperand crumbled around them, sliding before the wind. Durand roared, Ouen’s blade flashing, as the host barreled past him. “Ride! And pray for Hellebore!”
When Durand saw Deorwen’s half-mad palfrey blunder past him, he spurred after her. Ailric had the reins, but Durand snatched her from her saddle—he would not have her lost. He would not risk leaving her here. And as he set his spurs, he spotted the green rags too. He saw the unmarked green one, and, with a fierce lunge, he snatched it down.
And, suddenly, the world was not crashing to an end.
28
Dunnock of the Hedges
Durand followed the Host of Gireth from Hesperand into the presence of an astonished flock of sheep. The green cloth was still wrapped around his fist.
A thousand wild-eyed horsemen tore from the storms of Hesperand into the green sheepfold. In a moment, the flock had bolted—leaving an aging shepherdess standing alone, leaning on a blackthorn staff, and blinking up with a look of wounded dignity into the face of an army. The Eye of Heaven shone high and the buttercups were nodding in the grass.
As they came to a stumbling halt, men were actually laughing. Durand felt Deorwen stir: she struggled like a child waking in a strange bed, and Durand set a hand on her back.
“A moment,” he said, before she could throw herself.
She twisted enough to give him a wincing look. “They have gone,” she said.
Hundreds of knights were climbing stiffly from the backs of battered horses. Not a few men kissed the turf of Hellebore. Many animals dropped their heads, cropping what should have been the sheep’s fodder as the horsemen argued whether green feed or nothing was best till they could turn up mashed or good old gruel.
“Durand,” said Almora.
“I think Deorwen is recovered—or nearly.”
Meanwhile the old shepherdess stood her ground, peering from beneath a man’s shapeless hat.
Durand climbed down, taking help from Almora and Ailric to get Deorwen settled safely among the buttercups. “Where are we?” Almora asked. They were close together. “We will have to tell the men something.”
Durand searched the hills for some sign of where they’d come out. The maragrim were tireless, and there were thirty leagues or more of Hellebore and Saerdana yet to cross. He knew of the monastery, Cop Alder, not far from the forest, but he saw little except hillsides and tufted trees from where he stood.
Heremund had led Berchard from the forest, and was peering about them. “Perhaps we ought to ask our host?” he said with a wink toward the old woman.
“Go, Durand,” said Almora. “We will see to Deorwen.”
“I don’t need seeing to,” said Deorwen, but she could hardly get her head from the grass no matter how she squawked.
Almora nodded, so Durand approached the woman, the skald and Berchard trailing behind.
The woman looked as though she was rooted to the meadow.
“You are Black Durand Col,” she said. “Haunted man. You came to Hesperand before.”
At this, Durand could not help but scowl. Hesperand had given him his fill of the uncanny.
“And this,” she continued, “is Heremund Crookshanks. And with you is old Berchard of the Hag’s Eye.”
“I find I quite like that,” declared Berchard. “I hadn’t heard it before.”
He seemed impervious to her sour look.
The woman turned on Durand. “Betrayed and betraying, haunted man. It is a great weight of guilt and grievance you carry. Have they told you?”
Durand turned to see the forest giants of Hesperand like a sea.
“We ride for Eldinor,” said Durand.
The old woman scratched at her side. “And it was you with the king too.”
Durand had had more than enough of augury and prophets and far too little sleep to suffer much more of the old woman’s sharp tongue. Heremund, however, could not contain his amusement.
“You are the wise woman?”
“Imma.” It was probably her name.
“The horses, mother,” said Heremund. “They will need water.”
“It’s a crime, those animals.”
“She is right,” said Berchard.
“Over that hill,” she said, gesturing with the most meager twist of her head. “Dew pond. The water is cold. Let them take it slow.”
“And we’ll need to know where we are. What village is this, mother?”
“No village, skald. A steading near Hesperand.”
“You never know what’ll pop out of the wood, eh?” Heremund ventured. “What is the next village?”
Durand thought he had heard the name, but it was no great town, and whether it lay in Hellebore or the Fellwood Marches he could not say.
“I know it well. Where shall we find it then?”
“Take the Corpse Road north and east.” She inclined her head much as before. “Over the hill.”
“Corpse Road?” said Durand.
“There’s hallowed ground in Dunnock, Black Durand Col. We don’t lay our dead here.” She crossed her hands on her stick. “It is two hours under the pall. Maybe your lot won’t move so solemnly.”
“As you know so much,” said Heremund, “I wonder what you have heard of besides my friend here.”
“The Hornbearer has come into the land. Is that what you wonder, Heremund Crookshanks? And Ragnal is hanged. The prince rides from Windhover. Young Reilan has sailed the Red Winding and lies under stone with his forbearers. The Banished are uneasy in their bonds.”
Heremund nodded. “Aye. Right.” He set aside his ingratiating manner. “These men here have ridden days through that old wood, and all on the heels of a battle. Have you heard where the thralls have come?”
The old woman knotted deep, her eyes shut. “Swift as wild horses, they come, but Errest teems with rivers, and the Eye of Heaven’s King drives them down among the roots and stones. More than this I cannot say.” She paused a moment, squinting at the thought. “There is one who hides in Dunnock. He and his kind are not what they were of old, but he may know more than we, the old fool.”
Heremund nodded and turned to Durand.
“Dunnock of the Hedges. I know the man she’s hinting at. As soon as we find the pond.”
Berchard nodded. “The pond first.”
* * *
THE KNIGHTS OF southern Errest led their horses up that hill of buttercups to a pond like a bowl of glass near the Corpse Road to Dunnock. On that hilltop of green and glass and nodding gold, not a soul glanced back into the trees behind them. Like worshipers at some high altar, they worked under the shining Eye of Heaven, and even those whom the dark journey had driven from their reason seemed to awaken in the bright light on that lofty place of wildflowers, water, and horses.
Only after he’d settled the army, did Durand seek out Deorwen. He found her sitting in the grass with her face in her hands, speaking softly to Almora.
“There were so many,” she said. “It had been so long, and they were blameless, caught up and tangled and never freed. Seasons they cannot count, the ages passing.”
Almora took Deorwen’s hand in hers. After all of Deorwen’s years settling the Lost of Acconel, this had been too much.
Durand reached out. He meant to touch her cheek.
She stopped him. The green favor he’d taken from Hesperand was still there, wrapped around his knuckles.
“What is that?�
�� said Deorwen. “I thought she’d taken it back.” And it was true. Ten years before, the Lady of Hesperand had taken her favor back with her from the Great Council vote.
Durand gripped Deorwen’s hand in both fists, breathing his thanks to every Power under Heaven. They had escaped only just in time.
* * *
FAR TOO SOON, they left that hilltop over Hesperand.
By the Corpse Road, they staggered on through shuttered hamlets and wary farmsteads until Heremund spotted the sanctuary tower of Dunnock.
“How can you be sure?” said Berchard. “There will be a hundred hamlets in Hellebore.”
“Not like this one.”
“You sound as if it’s your old mother’s town.”
“No. It’s— Here. Picture a spire.”
“Aye.”
“It’s jutting like the gnomon of the vast sundial of these odd fields. They’ve planted great hedges, this way and that like a maze. You don’t take two straight steps on the way to Dunnock, and you can’t see a thing.”
Berchard stretched his neck. “Good. Yes. Now, I’ll ask that you tell me what a ‘gnomon’ is.”
“The bit that stands up!”
“I’m not sure that’s what the girls my way called it.”
“Oh, very good,” said Heremund. “Very good. And the realm in peril, too.”
They took the road to the foot of the hedges. The green darkness loomed ten fathoms high, far more daunting than any wall of stone. Old oaks stood in knotted ranks, barbed with ancient blackthorns. The road led in, and then turned sharply, and sharply again.
Here and there, they could see townspeople. Plowmen and goodwives scowled at them, fingering bills and cudgels.
“Is this how the town is supposed to be?” asked Durand.
“Aye, this is Dunnock of the Hedges, all right. Left right, left right. A maze of hedges.”
“Tell him about the gnomon,” said Berchard.
Durand muttered a curse. “Let’s see what we can do about food, water, and remounts.” He looked to Vadir. “We won’t have the host ride into that. We’d never get out again.”