A King in Cobwebs

by David Keck

  “It’s not that kind of maze, to be fair,” said Heremund.

  “Still. I will not have us hemmed in.”

  “Vadir, we’ll have to see about supplies. Horses, maybe. Take a strong party from your vanguard, but men with sense.”

  Vadir, after an affronted stare, gave up his nettlesome nobility and set about gathering some sensible men.

  “Heremund, who is lord of this place? What sort of man is he?”

  “A baron. One of Hellebore’s, of course. Segan, I think. I remember he has thin lips.”

  “I hope he will understand. It’d be best if he was obliging.”

  Heremund laughed. “With an army in his turnip fields, he’ll be happier if he’s agreeable.”

  Durand looked back over fifty conrois of half-starved knights; they would take what they must, and, after fighting the Hornbearer, they would leave any accounting to those who might survive.

  Vadir had pulled together much of the vanguard. Some had even had the sense to bring spare horses for the provisions. Durand eyed Vadir’s men and the wall of thorns with a scowl, thinking that he’d seen enough unnatural greenery to last a lifetime.

  “Now,” said Heremund, “I’ll pay a call on Mother Imma’s hidden man. Someone keep an eye on Hag’s Eye, here.”

  “We’ll all ride in together, I think,” said Durand. And they followed the hedgerow track into Dunnock, left and right, around and around till finally, by gaps and right angle turnings, they worked through thorny alleyways to an entirely ordinary village in the midst of the maze.

  There were inns and thatched houses, shrines and wells and wary villagers looking on. Near the tower shrine was a stone building of a sort very likely to house a local lordling. Durand looked at Vadir. “Take the men. Press our case with this Segan: get what you can short of spilling blood. If Segan will come with us, he and his men are welcome.”

  Vadir cocked his head. “Where will you be, Sir Durand?”

  “I am in Heremund’s hands.” And the little man grinned his gap-toothed grin.

  “I see. Well, I will take these men to see Lord Segan.”

  “Uh. If I were you, I might let the fellow give you his name before you venture to use it, yourself,” said Heremund. “I’m not sure about ‘Segan.’ I might have that wrong. There are many lordlings in Errest, as I’m sure you know.”

  “I will be guided by your wisdom,” Vadir said, and he led his squadron into the town.

  Heremund was already tugging at Durand’s sleeve. And, in a moment, he was leading Durand from the hedges into the rutted streets of the village where shutters slammed. Their arrival conjured a gaggle of laughing children who plagued Heremund, looking to feed his donkey, wondering its name.

  Finally Heremund found his destination: an alehouse not far from the sanctuary tower. The sign swinging above the door was marked with an owl and a young woman.

  “Here,” said Heremund, and they ducked low to enter the dark place, leaving the children giggling at the door—a place that seemed to multiply their amusement.

  From the dark came a fleshy voice. “Get out of it, damn you! Misbegotten devils. I’ve warned you!” A shriveled apple zipped past Durand’s ear, eliciting shrieks of joy from the “misbegotten devils.” One of the boys offered the thing to the donkey.

  Durand felt like they’d arrived at a bear’s den.

  “Heremund the Skald,” said the voice.

  “Is that you, Hagarth?” said Heremund, adding to Durand, “We’ve found our man, I think. Follow me.” And they stepped down into a dark taproom where ruts coiled around the benches and tables.

  “There he is,” Heremund said, and he bowed to a squat figure hunkered in the back of the room. Durand was more worried about bending low enough to dodge the ceiling beams.

  “Aye, here I am. What have you brought me, by Heaven?”

  Heremund added a little flourish with his hat.

  “This is Sir Durand Col, late Duke of Yrlac. Marshal of the Host of Gireth and Yrlac.”

  The man lifted himself from his bench. “Black Durand? The regicide is here?”

  There was a mass of gray curls. A fleshy, jolly face.

  “You’d best come and sit.” The man called Hagarth spread thick hands. “Here, here.” And they joined him. He puffed a good deal, sitting.

  “You have come through Hesperand. It is so, is it not?”

  “We have,” said Durand. “Just about.”

  “An army through Hesperand.”

  “Aye,” said Durand.

  “It will be the first. Even Duke Eorcan didn’t get his host from Hesperand.”

  Durand must have clenched his teeth, for Heremund intervened.

  “It’s time that concerns us, Hagarth.”

  “And what a time! The wards in shreds. One king dead, the next uncrowned. The maragrim loose and the priests on their knees.” He sucked a big breath through his lips.

  “That we know,” said Durand. “What we wish to know is how far our enemy has come.” Vadir would’ve collided with the town’s little lord by now. They needed what they could get and Durand feared that it would be all too late.

  “I can tell you a thing or two. Heremund was wise to bring you,” said Hagarth. “You are, at this moment, some thirty leagues from the high sanctuary in Eldinor. Our maragrim friends have fought past the Banderol at Wrothsilver and stand now at the Glass, a dozen leagues west of us. They will run in twenty leagues between dusk and the dawning, though the streams give them problems.” The jowled face twitched a grin at this thought.

  “Thirty leagues to Eldinor.” It was not enough. Thirty leagues might be two days hard riding on a fresh horse, and they had none of those. “With the maragrim covering twenty leagues in a day…”

  “It is not impossible,” said Hagarth.

  “For all your wisdom, you have not seen my men. And how do you know these things? There has been no time for rumors, and I am tired of mysteries.”

  “Very well, then. I will say it plain: You have heard of the Hidden Masters? Well, now you have met one.”

  Durand looked to Heremund, who hardly shrugged at this secret. These were the men who had undone Hesperand in the mists of history.

  “Here, look,” said the man, climbing cumbrously to his feet. “The ceiling.” He waved thick-fingered hands at the low beams. At first, Durand did not see what the man was waving at. Then he made out curving white shapes between the beams.

  “What am I looking at?”

  As he squinted at one such thing, he realized he was looking into the black sockets of a skull’s eyes, deep and hollow as eggshells.

  “Bones, Durand Col.”

  The skull was not a man’s but, rather, a horse’s long skull. Its grooved teeth bristled down.

  Hagarth rose, sweeping his hand over several of the hollow hanging bones that sprung like mushrooms in the dark.

  “These are my informants, Durand Col. A brass nail fixes each to its place. A thread of a maiden’s hair strings one to the next.”

  Durand looked closely. The skulls—sparrow and mouse and fox—were strung, each to each, by half-visible lines in a web that tangled the room from wall to wall. Durand could not imagine the fingers of Hagarth stitching such a web.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  Hagarth smiled. “These are the wards in miniature. Each thread. Every shrine and sanctuary from Eldinor to the marches of Garelyn. So much is broken. At every point in the larger world, I have buried my witnesses. A skull. Another skull. Graveyards and crossroads. And each is twinned with the bone in my web.”

  “The threads are the wards. The bones are witnesses,” said Heremund.

  Hagarth laughed. “And twins! That’s the devil of it. They must be twins, each and all. One twin is hammered here, the other must go to its place in the larger world. I am aided in this by such things as owls and hawks which will do my bidding, but sometimes I must enlist a human confederate.” He gestured toward an ox with a broad curve of horns.
/>   “It would be an unusual hawk who could carry an ox,” said Heremund.

  “Or bury it,” said Hagarth. He brushed past Durand, groping toward a dangling skull: a bird by its look, a gull perhaps.

  “This set up dancing this morning. This skull is twin of another in a road near the River Glass.” For a moment, he stood with his eyes shut and his jaw slack, two fingers jammed against the tiny skull. “I see what they see, but there is little now to witness.” The man held still a moment. “Every worm and insect stands, quivering from the turf like the hairs on a dog’s back, bristling over the road, the verges.” He smiled. “The maragrim will be there, sunk in the mud of Creation where the Eye cannot see.” Again, a smile twitched. “I think the vermin dislike their new neighbors.”

  The squat stranger withdrew his hand. It seemed that every skull buzzed like the strings of a lyre, and it came home to Durand that he stood right next to one of the Hidden Masters.

  “Can you not do something?” said Durand.

  “You have Hesperand on your mind? Oh, I understand you. But think of what you are saying. Think of what a place Hesperand has become. What a triumph that was! No. We have learned—too well, perhaps. Now, my brethren clutch their hands in fear of unsettling the natural course of events, but we are fools, of course. We have been subtle. The wards. Ill luck here or there. A word in that ear. The skalds. The wise women. The king. But we have not had the ear of the king. Not for long years. It has not been safe at the court. Men, ancient in wisdom, have vanished at the Tower of Eagles. And the wards have fallen and fallen. The patriarchs have not the knowledge anymore, and we have taken up the mantle, understanding the ancient geometries of the thing. Restoring what has been lost. But our labors have been too slow.”

  At the man’s mention of geometry, Durand thought of the rigid hedgerows.

  “The hedgerows…”

  “You are not quite the brute you appear, I see. The hedges are an experiment of my own. They let me sleep. My own wards, you might say.” The man grinned. “The baron’s grandfather thought they would thwart marauders. The plowmen think they’re to keep the things of Hesperand from creeping through the town by night. But the hedges were my notion. The Lost do not like corners. Neither do the Banished. So the ways to Dunnock are a maze of such turnings. And, of course, it helps with my little twin.” He smiled.

  “You see how small we are, Durand Col? We Masters? I have guarded my village. I have tied my twin bones to the crossroads. You would have me repel the Hornbearer’s Host.”

  The old man grunted in self-mockery. “You would do better to set your hopes in the rivers. The Hornbearer will ford the Glass at nightfall. Hellebore, they will pass by midnight tomorrow. Then they will deal with the River Cygnet.

  “You will gain some ground again in Saerdana.” He waved at a region of skulls. “The wards still hold in that part of the realm, which ought to make the devils walk crabwise to get past them. It might mean leagues.”

  Durand shook his head. “You cannot help? Even a message?” His voice was dry as anything that might have issued from the web of skulls. “Eldinor must know.”

  “There is no one with Biedin or the Council now. Even the Septarim are banished; the king turned upon them and their dour counsel. Now there is not a knight of the old order within a day’s ride of Eldinor. And no man of the Hidden Masters.” He shook his head.

  “Word is passing among the wise women, though none of them can reach the court. My spies here tell me that they have carried word to Ragnal’s brother in Windhover.” He waved a hand into the western reaches of the taproom. Many dark eyes stared back. “Or he has heard of Ragnal’s death at least. He has taken a host from Windhover into Errest the Old.”

  Heremund grunted. “A boy on the throne with no one but malevolent counselors on every side? Of course Prince Eodan will come rushing in.”

  “Likely, he will talk of protecting the boy.”

  “Let the king’s people wrangle over the throne if they like,” Durand put in. “Soon, it will be the plaything of the Crowned Hog.”

  Hagarth narrowed one eye. “The Hornbearer, even now, is almost as near to Eldinor as we are. He will take some hours to ford the Glass. In the west, Eodan marches from Windhover with his host. Eldinor is their goal as well.”

  Durand glanced to the beaked skull by Hagarth’s head. An army could not ride twelve leagues a day—not for long. His eyes burned, full of the hot sand of sleepless days.

  “What of the king?”

  “Already, he has come to Eldinor. He will be in the tomb below the high sanctuary. Perhaps he will be awake once more when you reach the city or soon thereafter.”

  * * *

  DURAND AND A grinning Heremund extracted their animals from the gang of children and started to work their way back to the army. In Dunnock, Hagarth’s maze shut out the whole of Creation. Even the Lost, said Hagarth, could not pass them. It made Durand think: a man might find a sort of peace with the Lost stuck outside. But how many people would die if he turned his back? And how thick would the dead crowds be that gathered round Dunnock if he holed up in Hagarth’s inn while the Hornbearer stormed across Errest the Old?

  He laughed and threw a few pennies to the children, letting them scramble.

  * * *

  SOON, THEY HAD managed the crisp switchbacks of the maze to find Almora waiting and the army busy tearing into packs and barrels brought by Vadir’s men. There were great round loaves and slabs of hard cheese. Durand saw fresh horses—a dozen, not hundreds. And a very few volunteers.

  “The maragrim have reached the Glass at the frontier of Hellebore,” he told Almora. “It’s only a dozen leagues from here.” He glanced across the fields, past the men around Vadir’s feast.

  Almora straightened. “The maragrim are swift. I have seen them, don’t forget.”

  Durand nodded.

  “We are no nearer Eldinor than they.” Almora paused a moment, then gave a quick nod, saying, “I will tell them.”

  Without another word, the girl spurred her palfrey to canter up and down the sprawled army. Though she carried no banner, soon the men looked up from the food and beer, and when she stopped, every eye was upon her.

  “The thralls are at the Glass. They will cross soon after sunset. By our Hesperand road, we have kept pace with the Hornbearer, but we have many leagues yet to ride. And we know what the maragrim are. They must fear Heaven’s Eye. We may ride by night and by day. They are prisoners of the darkness. And so we must not squander a moment under the Eye. We will kindle the beacon fires. We will send messengers before us. Dunnock has left us fleet horses.” From around her neck, she slipped a long chain. Hanging from it was heavy ring. “They will bear my father’s seal to Eldinor with word that the enemy marches—and that the Hosts of Gireth and Yrlac are riding to join the fight.”

  A hundred knights volunteered, and, finally, she chose two from their number.

  They were all as dizzy as drunken men.

  She spoke again. “There is no king in Eldinor. There are no patriarchs in Errest the Old. We must trust to hearts and to Heaven. Either they will write our names in the chronicle of our people—or there will be no one left to write at all!”

  She beamed at the army. “Now, to Eldinor! To Eldinor for Errest the Old!”

  And Durand roared along with the men of the company.

  * * *

  FROM DUNNOCK, THEY rode into the fields of Hellebore, dizzy with exhaustion. Vadir’s men ranged before the column, foraging for remounts and provisions. At nightfall, the foragers were met with cheers when they returned, leading a cart of wine barrels.

  Weariness snatched at them, like drowning.

  Man slept in their saddles and rode the horses of dead men. And always, Durand thought of the maragrim waiting to begin their mad rush north.

  Through the moonlight, under the eyes of distant sullen villagers as they juddered through country tracks and shadows, Durand found himself nodding. He had slept only in snatches since
Acconel. On either side of the column, the Lost stirred in a broad phalanx among the furrows. Durand peered across the group and noticed that some of the knights he’d led to Hesperand had now joined the throng. Faces too white. Eyes too dark. Under his breath, he cursed them all.

  For a moment, he closed his eyes and Creation pitched away from him.

  The dead turned his way, but he could not waken.

  He was falling from Creation as if he were a man stepping into a dark ocean.

  This was the Otherworld, where sleepers of Creation sometimes go when they sink below the depths of their own troubles and leave themselves behind, breathless and near to dying.

  In that black and drifting place, Durand heard a whisper. It ran with the echoes of the stone kings in the high mountains and chilled his marrow.

  The ocean of blackness moved to the whisper, and the soul of Durand Col was drawn by it like a leaf on the surface of a river.

  He plunged and spun.

  He tumbled through leagues of whispering darkness till he felt himself fetch up into a dark cold place—a real place: a narrow tomb of stone where even the soul of a dreaming man could not move.

  And the nebulous whispers ceased, leaving Durand in the close gloom with only the certainty that the source of the whispers was very near—very near and watching him in that lightless space.

  “These threads,” said a voice. Muffled. A nobleman’s by its accent. Not from within the silent chamber, but as if through a heavy door. “Each thread tightens. There is Leovere in Yrlac with his jealousy and pride, the fool in Windhover, the Great Council, and our Ragnal, poor thing. Each thread strung tight. The kingdom is bound like a giant by a thousand slender threads.”

  Durand thought he heard laughter.

  “I am better off now than I was with Radomor. All is safer with the boy. Safer. Ten years I have wasted, but the boy is like a blacksmith’s iron tongs in my hands. Let him lie under stone. Let him risk Heaven! Let him hold the wards. With him, I will pluck up the crown.”

  There was a pause. Durand, alone in cist or grave or tomb, was sure that something crouched beside him, listening too.

  “You are silent,” said the voice beyond the door.