by Tad Williams
A furlong or less from where they stood, the streambed vanished into darkness as it entered a vast hole in the hillside, an arched mouth whose dressed stones had been almost completely engulfed by a clinging blanket of moss.
Einskaldir struck with his axe head; a flint spark jumped, igniting the torch. Its growing yellow light brought forward other stones that shone pale beneath the overgrown frontage. Trees of great size and age had thrust out from the hillside above the arch, pushing aside the facing in their reach toward the sun.
“A tunnel all the way through the hill?” Deornoth gasped.
“The Old Ones were mighty builders,” Geloë said, “but never better than when they built around the things earth had already grown, so that city lived together with forest or mountain.”
Sangfugol coughed. “It looks ... an abode of ghosts,” he whispered.
Geloë snorted. “Even if so, they are not the dead that you should fear.” She seemed about to say something else when there was a hiss and a smack. Suddenly an arrow was shivering in the trunk of a cypress near Einskaldir’s head.
“You who would flee,” a cold voice called, echoing so that it was impossible to discern its source, “you must surrender now. We have spared you thus far, but we may not allow you to cross through. We will destroy you all. ”
“Aedon preserve us!” Duchess Gutrun wept, her great courage finally weakening. “Save us, Lord!” She sagged down onto the wet turf.
“It is the torch!” Josua said, coming up quickly. “Put out the torch, Einskaldir. ”
“No,” Geloë said, “you will never find your way in the dark.” She raised her voice. “Hikeda’yei,” she cried, “do you know who I am?”
“Yes, we know you, old woman,” the voice said. “But whatever respect you might deserve was lost the moment you threw in your lot with these mortals. The world could have spun on, leaving you undisturbed in your solitary house—but you would not let well enough alone. Now you also are unhomed, and must go naked like a crab with no shell. You too can die, old woman.”
“Douse the torch, Einskaldir,” Josua snapped, “we can light another when we have reached shelter.”
The Rimmersman stared at the prince for a moment. Darkness had arrived: but for the torch’s rippling flame, Josua would never have seen him smile.
“Don’t wait too long to follow me,” was all Einskaldir said. A moment later he had dashed away down the riverbed toward the great arch, the flame held high over his head. Arrow hissed past his companions as the Rimmersman, now only a leaping spot of light, swerved and dodged.
“Go! Up and run!” Josua cried. “Help the one nearest you. Run!”
Someone was shouting in an alien tongue—indeed, the whole forest seemed suddenly alive with noise. Deornoth reached down and caught at Sanfugol’s arm, dragging the wounded harper to his feet, and together they plunged through the overhanging greenery after the dwindling spark of Einskaldir’s torch.
Branches slapped at their faces and snatched at their eyes with cruel talons. Another shout of pain rang out before them and the shrill cries redoubled. Deornoth turned to look briefly over his shoulder. A swarm of pale shapes were sweeping forward over the misty ground, faces whose pitchy eyes filled him with despair, even from afar.
Something struck the side of Deornoth’s head violently, staggering him. He could hear Sangfugol sobbing in pain as the harper tugged at his elbow. For a long moment it seemed to the knight that it would be easier just to lie on the ground.
“Merciful Aedon, give me rest,” he heard himself praying, “in Your arms will I sleep, upon Thy bosom I will take my peace ...” but Sangfugol would not stop pulling at him. Dazed, irritated, he stumbled to his feet once more and saw a scatter of stars gleaming through the treetops.
Not enough light to see under the hill, he thought, then noticed he was running again. But running or not, Deornoth thought, he and Sangfugol were moving very slowly: the dark smear on the hillside didn’t seem to be getting any closer. He put his head down and watched his feet, dim, shadowy shapes slipping on the muddy streambed.
My head. I’ve hurt my head again ...
The next thing Deornoth knew, he had plunged into darkness as abruptly as if someone had thrown a sack over him. He felt more hands take his elbows and help him forward. His head felt curiously light and empty.
“There’s the torch, ahead,” someone said nearby.
That sounds like Josua’s voice, Deornoth decided. Is he under the sack, too?
He staggered on a few steps and saw a light glowing. He looked down, trying to make sense of it all. Einskaldir sat on the ground, leaning against a stone wall that rose and curved overhead. The Rimmersman held a torch in his hand. There was blood in his beard.
“Take this,” Einskaldir said to no one in particular. “I’ve got ... arrow in ... back. Can’t ... breathe ...” He sagged slowly forward against Josua’s leg. It looked so odd that Deornoth tried to laugh, but couldn’t. The empty feeling was spreading. He bent forward to help Einskaldir, but instead found himself down a deep black hole.
“Usires save us, look at Deornoth’s head... !” someone cried. He didn’t recognize the voice, and wondered who it was they were so upset about ... Then the darkness had returned and it was hard to think. The hole that he had fallen into seemed very deep indeed.
Rachel the Dragon, the Hayholt’s Mistress of Chambermaids, lifted her bundle of wet linens higher on her shoulders, trying to find the balance least trying to her aching back. It was useless, of course: there would be no ending to the pain until God the Father gathered her up to Heaven.
Rachel was feeling distinctly un-Dragonlike. The chambermaids who had given her the name long ago, when the force of Rachel’s will had been all that stood between the age-old Hayholt and the tides of decay, would have been surprised to see her as she was now—a bent, complaining old woman. She was surprised herself. A chance reflection in a silver serving tray one recent morning had shown her a gaunt-faced harridan with dark-circled eyes. It had been many a long year since she had thought much about her looks, but still, this seemed a shocking transformation.
Had it been only four months since Simon died? It felt like years. That had been the day when she felt things beginning to slip away from her. She had always lorded over the Hayholt’s vast household like a tyrant river-captain, but despite her young charges’ whispered complaints, the work had always gotten done. Mutinous talk had never bothered Rachel much, in any case: she knew that life was but a long struggle against disorder, and that disorder was the inevitable winner. Rather than leading her to accept the futility of her role, however, this knowledge instead had whipped Rachel on to greater resistance. Her parents’ fierce northern Aedonite faith had taught her that the more hopeless the struggle, the more crucial it was to struggle valiantly. But some of the life had leaked out of her when Simon died in the smoking inferno that had been Doctor Morgenes’ chambers.
Not that he had been a well-behaved boy—no, far from it. Simon had been willful and disobedient, a woolgatherer and a mooncalf. He had, however, brought a certain irritating liveliness to Rachel’s life. She would have even welcomed the sputtering rages into which he provoked her—if only he were still here.
In fact, it was still hard to believe he was dead. Nothing could have survived the firing of the Doctor’s quarters—caused when some of Morgenes’ devilish potions had caught flame, or so members of the king’s Erkynguards had informed her. The fused wreckage and shattered beams made it impossible to suppose anyone in the room could have lived for more than a few moments. But she could not feel that he was really dead. She had been almost a mother to the boy, had she not? Raised him—with the help of her chambermaids, of course—since his first hour, when his mother had died in childbirth despite all Doctor Morgenes’ attempts to save her. So shouldn’t Rachel know if he was truly gone? Shouldn’t she feel the final severing of the cord that had bound her to that stupid, addle-pated, gawky boy?
Oh, mercifu
l Rhiap, she thought, are you crying again, old woman? Your brains have gone soft as sweetmeats.
Rachel knew of other domestics who had lost actual birth-children and still talked about them as if they were alive, so why should she feel any differently about Simon? It didn’t change anything. The boy was undeniably dead, killed by his love for hanging about with that mad alchemist Morgenes, and that was that.
But things had certainly seemed to go wrong since then. A cloud had descended on her beloved Hayholt, a fog of discomfort that crept into every corner. The battle against untidiness and dirt had swung against her, becoming lately a thoroughgoing rout. All this, despite the fact that the castle seemed emptier than it had any time she could remember—at least at night. In daylight, when the clouded sun shone through the high windows and lit the gardens and commons, the Hayholt was still a riot of activity. In fact, with the Thrithings mercenaries and South Islanders now flooding in to replace the soldiers Elias had lost at Naglimund, the castle’s environs were noisier than ever. Several of her girls, frightened by the scarred, tattooed Thrithings-men and their rough manners, had left the Hayholt entirely to live with country relatives. To Rachel’s disgust and increasing dismay, despite the hordes of hungry mendicants roaming Erchester and camped around the walls of the Hayholt itself, it was almost impossible to replace the departing chambermaids.
But Rachel knew that it was not just the castle’s wild new inhabitants that made it hard to find new girls. Crowded with brawling soldiers and disdainful nobles as it was during the light of day, by night the Hayholt seemed as uninhabited as the lich-yard beyond Erchester’s walls. Echoes and strange voices floated through the corridors. Footfalls sounded where no one walked. Rachel and her remaining wards now locked themselves in at night. Rachel told them it was to keep out the drunken soldiery, but she and her chambermaids both knew that the carefully-checked door bolt and shared prayers before retiring did not come from fear of anything as easy to name as a besotted Thrithings-man.
Even stranger—although she would never, never admit it to her Blessed-Rhiap-preserve-them charges—Rachel had found herself lost a few times in recent weeks, wandering in corridors she did not recognize. Rachel herself! She who had bestrode this castle as confidently as any ruler for decades, now lost in her own home. This was either madness or the folly of age ... or some demon’s curse.
Rachel thumped down the sack of wet sheets and leaned against a wall. A trio of older priests eddied around her in their passage, talking heatedly in Nabbanai. They gave her no more of a glance than they would a dog dead in the road. She stared after them as she fought to catch her breath. To think that at her age, after all her years of service, she should be carrying around sodden bed linens like the lowliest downstairs maid! But it had to be done. Someone had to carry on the fight.
Yes, things had been going wrong ever since the day Simon died, and did not look to get better soon. She frowned and hoisted her burden once more.
Rachel had finished hanging out the wet bedding. Watching the linen flap in the late-afternoon breeze, she marveled at such cool weather. Tiyagar-month, the middle of summer, and still the days were as cold as early spring. It was certainly better than the deadly drought that had ended last year, but even so, she felt herself longing for the hot days and warm nights that were the yearly summer’s-due. Her joints hurt and chill mornings only made the hurting worse. The dampness seemed to slip stealthily into her very bones.
She crossed back across the commons, wondering where her helpers had gotten to. Having a sit-down and a giggling conversation, no doubt, while the Mistress of Chambermaids labored like a yeoman. Rachel was sore, but there was enough strength still in her good right arm to sting a few girls into service!
It was too bad, she reflected as she made her way slowly around the Outer Bailey, that there wasn’t somebody who could take a strong hand to this castle. Elias had seemed like the type after blessed old King John had died, but Rachel had been sorely disappointed. The apple, she thought, had fallen quite a bit farther from the tree than anyone could have guessed. But that was no surprise, really. It was just men, was what it was. Swaggering, bragging men—exactly like little boys, when you got down to it, even the grown ones acting no smarter than young mooncalf Simon had been. They didn’t know how to deal with things, men didn’t, and King Elias was no exception.
Take this madness with his brother. Now, Rachel had never much liked Prince Josua. He was a sight too clever and solemn for her, obviously one who thought himself pretty blessed smart. But to think that he was a traitor—well, that was just foolishness and anyone could tell it! Josua had been too bookish and high-minded for such nonsense, but what had his brother Elias done? Gone dashing off to the north with an army, and through some trick pulled down Josua’s castle at Naglimund and slaughtered and burned. And why? Some damned man’s pride on King Elias’ part. Now a lot of Erkynlandish women were widows, the harvest was going badly, and all the Hayholt and its inhabitants were—Lord Usires pardon for her thinking it, but it was only the truth—going straight to Hell.
The back of the Nearulagh Gate loomed before her, its long shadow painting the walls on either side with darkness. Quarreling birds, kites and ravens, fought over the few remaining scraps of the ten skeletal heads fixed on pikes atop the gate.
Rachel shuddered despite herself as she made the sign of the Tree. This was something else that had changed. Never in all the long years she had kept house for King John had there been such a show of cruelty as Elias had made of these traitors. They had all been beaten and quartered in Battle Square down in Erchester, before a restive and uneasy crowd. Not that any of the executed nobles had been particularly popular—Baron Godwig, especially, was much hated for his ill-rule of Cellodshire—but everyone had sensed the wispiness of the king’s accusations. Godwig and the rest had gone to their deaths like men astounded, shaking their heads and protesting their innocence until the cudgels of the Erkynguards had smashed the life out of them. Now their heads had stood above the Nearulagh Gate for a full two weeks while the carrion birds, like clever little sculptors, slowly brought the skulls to the surface. Few of those who passed beneath them stared for long. Most who looked up turned away quickly, as if they had glimpsed something forbidden instead of the abject public lesson the king desired.
Traitors, the king called them, and as traitors they had died. Rachel thought they would be little missed, but still their deaths brought the fog of despair down a bit closer.
As Rachel hurried past with eyes averted, she was almost knocked down by a young squire sloshing through the muddy road leading a horse. After she had scrambled to a position of safety against the outer wall, Rachel turned to see the riders pass.
They were all soldiers—all but one. Where the armored men wore the green tunics of the king’s Erkynguard, the other wore a robe of flaming scarlet, a black traveling cloak, and tall black boots.
Pryrates! Rachel stiffened. Where was that devil going with his honor guard of soldiers?
The priest seemed to float above his companions. As the soldiers laughed and talked, Pryrates looked neither right or left, his hairless head rigid as a spearpoint, his black eyes fixed on the gate before him.
Things had truly begun to go wrong when the red priest arrived—as if Pryrates himself had put an evil spell on the Hayholt. Rachel had even wondered for a while if Pryrates, whom she knew had not liked Morgenes, might have burned down the doctor’s rooms. Could a man of Mother Church do such a thing? Could he kill innocent people—like her Simon—for a grudge? But the rumors did say that the priest’s father was a demon, his mother a witch. Rachel made the sign of the Tree again, watching his proud back as the party ambled past.
Could one man bring evil down on everyone, she wondered? And why? Just to be doing the devil’s work? She looked around carefully, embarrassed, then spat in the mud to ward evil. What did it matter? There was nothing an old woman like her could do, was there?
She watched Pryrates and the
company of soldiers ride out through the Nearulagh Gate, then turned and began trudging toward the residences, thinking about curses and cold weather.
The late afternoon sun slanted in through the trees, making the thin leaves glow. The forest mist had finally burned away. A few birds trilled in the treetops. Deornoth, feeling the pain in his head diminishing, stood up.
The wise woman Geloë had nursed Einskaldir’s terrible wounds all morning before leaving him at last to the ministrations of Duchess Gutrun and Isorn. The Rimmersman, feverish and raving while Geloë had applied poultices to the arrow-spites in his back and side, now lay quietly. She could not say if he would live.
Geloë had labored the rest of the afternoon on the other members of the company, treating Sangfugol’s festering leg wound and the many injuries the rest of the party had suffered as well. Her knowledge of healing herbs was wide and her pockets were well-stuffed with useful things. She seemed certain that all except for the Rimmersman would be quickly improved.
The forest on this side of the hill-tunnel was not much different from that which they had just left, Deornoth thought—at least in looks. The oaks and elders grew close here, too, and the ground was powdery with the remains of long-dead trees, but there was something different in the heart of it, some faint grace or inner liveliness, as if the air were lighter or the sun shone more warmly. Of course, Deornoth realized, it might only be that he and the others in Prince Josua’s party had lived another day longer than they had expected.
Geloë was sitting on a log with Prince Josua. Deornoth started to approach, then hesitated, unsure of his welcome. Josua smiled wearily and waved him over.
“Come, Deornoth, sit down. How is your head?”
“Sore, Highness.”