by David Keck
“He will be through the streets in moments, and then it is the high sanctuary and the little Prince. Have you not seen him? In his eyes there is murder enough for an army of nephews.”
“All alone, bar the priests.”
“And they can do nothing, brother.”
“He is the boy’s uncle.”
The prince had indeed gone on. Biedin’s cloak flapped once as he darted through the sally port and left the battlefield.
The Atthians were dying.
The maragrim drove deep into the Atthian line, leaving men cut off, breaking up the heavy phalanx. But then the knights of Hesperand struck once more, harrying the flanks of the nightmare mob. Even the Lost could not hammer a horse into such a solid mass. What would become of them all?
In the midst of this chaos, something rippled over the moon. Thinking to see another shipwreck sailing down, Durand glanced, but to his astonishment, he found, not some monster of the Hornbearer’s flock, but instead, the naked eye of the Traveler staring down upon him. The flat glint of that silver coin and, black against the Heavens, the bare suggestion of the black disc and socket of the other eye.
Creation was still and silent under that expressionless gaze.
And, in that instant, Durand saw a beckoning figure at Biedin’s secret door. There was the Herald of Errest extending his hand.
Eodan stumbled into Durand at that moment, and the world crashed back into tumult. “Durand, what are you gaping at, man?”
“The boy,” said Durand. “I think he’s gone for the boy—”
Now Eodan gaped.
Durand stared at the door. He heard the battle around him. They were fighting for nothing, and death must take them all before long.
But then he seemed to see the door anew.
Durand turned to Eodan.
“The door!” He gestured. The thing looked very small. A tall man must stoop to pass.
“A door?” The army heaving all around them seemed like an enormous thing.
Almora and Deorwen were nearby. The land held by the Host of Gireth amounted to a few dozen yards.
“What are you saying?” asked Almora.
“We pass the door.” Durand swept his hand across the parapets. Only here and there could they see a defender in the gapped teeth of the parapets.
“Durand,” Eodan was saying. “Perhaps the women…”
“No,” said Durand. “I cannot argue. I must go.”
“We will die like a rabbit in a snare.”
“No,” said Almora. She could see it. She strode forward, calling to the commanders: Garelyn, Mornaway. “We will take the wall! The door! The sally port.” Her father’s man, Vadir, was listening.
“Baron Vadir, make ready to take a squadron to the battlements. We must have the wall! Archers if you find them.”
Eodan said to Durand, “And what will you do?” There were rear guards and counter charges and harrying attacks to mount, but Durand had seen the Herald and the surreptitious escape of Prince Biedin.
“Your brother has gone armed into the city.” The boy-king’s tomb was there. He was helpless. “Alone.”
Eodan raised his eyes to the city and the Mount of Eagles somewhere within. “No,” he began, but faltered. “He would not.” Doubt passed over his face. And there was nothing like time for explanations.
Durand turned from the fight. Berchard was there, and Heremund—like a boy with a bulldog on a lead.
“My Windhover men will shield the retreat!” Eodan was shouting.
And Durand ran, scrambling toward the door.
31
Lost Princes
The Herald stood in the sally port under the wall, as uncanny as the damned Traveler in the sky.
“Durand?” Deorwen called after him. As Durand slid and squeezed for the sally port, she chased him. He scrambled up the bank. The Rooks he might doubt, but the Traveler gave him pause. The Powers of Heaven told a man damned little before he must make up his mind.
The Herald handed him up.
“It cannot have the boy,” said the Herald. “Errest the Old cannot fall.” The tall man darted into an alleyway.
“You have spoken!” Deorwen said. This was no royal message. It had been two centuries. He must pay a price, surely.
The tall man broke into a street beyond.
“‘It.’ What do you mean, ‘it’?” Durand called.
The Herald’s broad brow furrowed for a moment and he gripped Durand’s shoulder.
“It was a cruel mercy, Durand Col, and many have paid who were blameless. Onward, please. He will not wait.”
The man was off again, almost running. His hands slapped the walls.
“What is he talking about?” Deorwen demanded, but Durand knew no more than she.
“Make haste,” said the Herald, “or it will not end!”
The huge man was stalking into the city, leaving Durand and Deorwen no choice but to scamper.
“The truth is not easily buried! It rots. It rises.”
The Herald spoke in backward snatches as he walked with his towering strides, covering ground so swiftly that Deorwen could only run to stay with him.
“They did not know what to do with it, when it came!”
“What is all this supposed to mean?” said Deorwen.
Durand was scurrying like a child. “You must speak plainly, Herald!”
They were running toward the high sanctuary. “It was found in the South of Errest. Coming from the passes of the Blackroots.”
“Name this thing, Herald!” said Durand.
Durand had a glimpse of the man’s ashen face. “They brought it to Eldinor, Heaven help us. Bound in a coffer of oak and iron. They rowed it to the sally port and carried him by night through these very streets.”
“‘Him,’” said Durand. Men talked of the maragrim this way, always “it” and “him.” “Kandemar. Who did they bring here?”
“Willan Blind knew him at once. Perhaps his blindness let him see. So many would not.”
They jagged through the abandoned reaches of the city, every street uncannily silent after the wild brawling at the wall. A man might have thought that Eldinor had fallen a century before.
“King Willan, he meant to redeem it. Or heart-sickness stayed his hand. Or perhaps it was the crown. Willan Blind was third-born.”
“Who did they find? Who did they bring to Eldinor?” said Durand, though now Deorwen tried to restrain him.
The great Herald stopped, fetching up against a lime-washed wall. They were nearing the high sanctuary. He hung his head and did not turn. The wall was support.
“A vassal knight. He carried it from Gireth. Bound in a chest of oak and iron, between two files of priests. It had passed the mountains. Such things sometimes did. But the wards had caught it. King Willan was no longer young. The thing must have been creeping north fifty winters or more.” The man straightened a fraction. “Coming home.”
Durand hung back with Deorwen. “Who was it, Herald?” she said.
“We ought to have destroyed it. The High Patriarch of that time, he demanded we should. A thrall of the Enemy. But Willan, he bade every man depart. All but the Patriarch and me, who could not speak. Alone, Willan Blind came to the black chest, and something hissed within, like snakes.
“Willan spoke to the thing in the box. ‘This is no place for thee now. Thy time to work good or ill upon this world has ended. Thy long home awaiteth thee.’ But from within the box came only hatred.
“The Patriarch commanded that Willan bring the thing to its end.
“‘We will prepare a room for him,’ was Willan’s answer.
“‘There can be no homecoming for such a thing as this.’
“But the king managed only, ‘He is home.’”
Without warning, the Herald lurched off once again, covering ground so swiftly that even Durand must run to keep pace with the limping man. His hand fumbled on alley walls to keep him upright.
Durand saw blood.
&nb
sp; “What does all this mean?” said Durand.
The big man pitched against the corner post of some shop. “Willan, he caused the box to be carried. No guest chamber. No high tower. But under the city. Below the Mount of Eagles. A strong room where Willan and the Patriarch both could keep watch.
“And it was not mercy, but a wound.”
The Herald faced them. For the first time, they could see a gruesome darkness spreading down the front of his surcoat. A neat wet hole glistened a finger’s breadth below the man’s breastbone. He had been stabbed. The Herald dropped to one knee. Deorwen, with better presence of mind, caught him and was suddenly his only support. She slowed his fall as Durand snatched at his arm like a fool. A man could not stop the working of such an ancient doom.
“The prince,” the Herald gasped. “Caught up in all this. Fool boy.” The Herald must have known what Biedin intended. Here was proof of Biedin’s madness, if any was needed.
“You will need care,” Deorwen said. “We might still find a surgeon.” But they had an entire city to search.
The Herald planted both hands and pitched himself onto his side. “The young king. Biedin will kill him,” said the Herald, and he set his temple on the flagstones. He shut his eyes. And, his life’s breath, he freed upon the air.
Durand looked up and found the square of the high sanctuary lying empty under the Vault of Heaven. Kandemar had brought them to the threshold.
“Come, Durand,” said Deorwen. “The boy is in the sanctuary.” And they left the Herald, running too quickly for conversation.
They raced into the high sanctuary’s square. On one hand, beyond the broad plain of cobbles, the hundred rooms of the Mount of Eagles soared. Directly above them, however, the high sanctuary of Errest the Old towered. Its steps rose like a mountain.
They vaulted the stairs and found themselves in a cavernous, candlelit dark where five hundred holy men prayed in perfect unison. The air shivered with their voices. Every eye was shut. Overhead, windows of colored glass hung like curtains of black scales. And, down the whole length of the sanctuary, the wet footprints of the prince gleamed.
Durand spotted the altar, a bowshot down the columned aisle. He pointed. “The crypt is there. I see the tracks. They tend that way.”
“He means to do it,” Deorwen concluded.
And so the two pelted between the files of priests and sacred murmurs, splashing in the prince’s wake, and sliding to the dark portal where the valves of the royal crypt lay open like a codex of gilded bronze. Here was tall Patriarch Oredgar of Acconel and a stooped ancient who could only be High Patriarch Semborin of Eldinor. Neither opened his eyes.
There were no stairs, and the floor was two fathoms down.
Durand called Biedin’s name. And then he leapt—a heartbeat of falling—before he struck the floor, mashing candles in a scalding collision with the sacred stone.
From a war and a battlefield, Durand had come through a silent city and a praying sanctuary to this strange, quiet chamber at the heart of it all. This was a place where the crowned prince was meant to lie alone. The wards swirled in their sacred glyphs and curls, a mandala around the cist where the would-be king must keep his vigil. Even the Patriarch of Errest had not lingered. The priests had simply lowered Prince Reilan into the coffin hole, said their words, and left him to his delirium among the sigils and the dead.
Biedin peered up. The mud-plastered prince dangled his feet in the cist like a fisherman at a dock. It felt strange to see this great nobleman here, by himself. All around him candles burned. Their flames caught and glittered in the curves and arcs that the patriarchs had incised in the marble tiles. Ragnal’s Evenstar Crown gleamed at the head of the cist where a thousand arcs met.
It was Biedin, Durand, and the secret boy, all alone at the heart of Creation.
Biedin had a yard of honed steel in his hand.
Durand got to his feet. From his new vantage, he could see down into the man-shaped hole. He could see the boy sleeping there with his father’s heavy sword on his breast, like something from a knight’s tomb. In the bay, so many were dying to keep this boy from harm.
And the point of Biedin’s long blade glinted at the child’s throat.
It was only then that Biedin took note of Durand.
“Durand Col,” he said.
The man’s blade winked in the candlelight.
“He is only a child,” Durand said.
The prince blinked. “You will not understand, of course.” He showed his teeth in a far-from-charming grin. “Though, you are a second son, are you not?”
“It would be better if you got back from the boy, Your Grace.”
A small movement of the prince’s hand caused the candlelight to spark and slither down the honed edges of his blade. The point cast reflections over the child’s chin.
“I have been third since I was born. Ragnal was the Crowned Prince, and Eodan behind him.”
Deorwen called down from among the murmuring priests. “Durand?” But Durand did not dare to glance.
“Your Grace,” said Durand, “you are a prince of Errest the Old. A hero, perhaps.” An army had followed him to Eldinor.
“Yes, I do see what you are saying, but it is too late now. You see, I was promised a secret way, and I listened.”
Durand edged nearer. “The Whisperer.”
“Ah! Yes. I suppose. ‘Whisperer’ is as good a name as any. He gave no name to me and I dared not ask. But I listened: I deserved more than I got. My brothers were unfit. Errest should be mine. That sort of thing.”
He made another parody of a smile. His left hand flipped. A shrug, almost.
“We shot roots down among the foundation stones of my brother’s power. My father died with Eodan blamed. The marches rebelled. We caused a great man to turn traitor.” He chuckled. “And debts piled high till the Great Council howled for Ragnal’s crown. You will remember all of that.” He glanced at the glinting crown on the floor beside him. He might have touched it, but he did not.
Durand marveled. This was the man who had saved Durand’s life in Acconel. Durand was stealing another inch closer when the man looked up.
“Ten years, I have considered, and here, I think, here is the issue. You must cast your mind back. Our games with the king and Radomor had upended the kingdom, and I was ready to slay my idiot brother. But the Heavens raged! I shock you with this business of murder. You would not have known. But do you remember the skies, Durand Col? The Banished and the Lost were howling at their bonds. I saw it all! Without a king, Errest must be torn apart.” Biedin sucked a breath through his nostrils. “Errest must have a true king. But how could I lie in this place? I saw it at once: I had gone too far in darkness ever to lie in this tomb. If I seized the kingdom, I could not hold it for an hour.”
With every small distraction, Durand inched toward the man.
“Had my Whisperer failed me? Was I betrayed?” Biedin stopped for an instant, saying, finally, “I did not speak to my Whisperer for many moons thereafter.”
His lips were a hard, gray crease.
“I let Ragnal live, and the Banished were still, and I took myself back to Tern Gyre and suffered my Whisperer to call me craven.
“This next—I am only just now seeing all of this. This is new, you understand? I should not have heeded that thing! But it wheedled. It cajoled. And I began to wonder. What if I had been wrong?” He tapped his skull with the heel of his free hand. “Such a fool! But perhaps I had been a coward. What if I’d let a kingdom fall through my fingers? What if the kingdom had been too much for the Banished and the Lost?” He rubbed his face. “But I had seen the Vault of Heaven. I had heard the Banished raging. I knew better, but I listened!”
He panted through an inward smile, and Durand stole another inch.
He looked into the cist. “Then there came this boy, like a gift from the Powers. Little Reilan would be like a rag around a pot handle. He could stand the rite. An innocent! Through him, I could lift the crown.<
br />
“My Whisperer, he could arrange events in such a way that Ragnal’s boy would have the crown, and I would rule.” He looked at Durand. “We would handle the Great Council to ensure they named me regent, of course: Eodan would be a red-handed rebel. Abravanal, as well-liked and unthreatening as he was, needed care.”
How many had Biedin killed? “Why the Hornbearer?” Durand said, despite himself.
“A hero must have a villain!” Biedin laughed. “I was to face the old devil down. There I’d be at the head of the host. My brother might die, try as I might to save him. But the Great Council? That old tortoise Patriarch Semborin? What could they do but proclaim me regent?”
He made the sword flash over Reilan in the cist. “Regent, and king in all but name. No rite. No tomb. And, perhaps, a few thralls of my own to help me manage the barons and the Council and the marches.” He twitched a few teeth at Durand. “This is what I imagined. The Hornbearer at my command. The king in a cell. This is what we had arranged, my Whisperer and I. But the Whisperer, he wants neither king nor kingdom.” He finished very quietly. “I know this now.”
Durand had inched forward, handspan after handspan until he was almost in sword’s reach. Biedin’s blade touched the boy’s throat. The point pressed a small pale triangle in the skin.
“Do you know that they call me the Lost Prince from time to time?”
“I have heard it, Your Grace.”
“I slipped away from my tutors and found a passage underground. It was there that I first heard the voice.” Durand had seen the man there. He had dreamt it. “You know the Hornbearer did not heed me? I commanded; it did as it pleased.
“Ragnal, Leovere, Radomor, Eodan—each of us another dupe, another tool. What will the Whisperer do with a boy on my throne? Do you know I was lost three days before anyone found me?”
They were alone: two men and a sleeping child. “Leave the boy, Your Grace.”
“Three days under stone. Three days not far from here. A very different vigil! Now it would be this boy?”
The man’s nostrils flared. Durand saw his knuckles go white on the sword’s hilt.