by David Keck
The inn swung into view. There was a shallow hill to climb, but Durand clenched his teeth and in a few moments they were at the door.
"He'll be right as rain now, though," said Berchard. "Puller's told our man to wash his mouth with malmsey and brine to draw the evil. When he comes round."
Guthred nodded. "They'll go for blood every time, but the spirits love a lick of wine or salt water."
Sir Agryn was waiting at the inn doors.
"He would be better," said Agryn, "to think of the Host of Heaven. But he is Badan."
Coensar noticed the new arrival.
"Hells. Get him in a cart. Lamoric's already headed west."
HALF AN HOUR later, their train jolted through the cavernous Gates of Sunset and out over the West Bridge after Lamoric. Durand fingered his new blade as they rode over the span, thinking that the road to Mornaway led through the domain of the Duke of Yrlac: father or son. During the night, he had looked closely at the sword, noting every notch and ripple in the well-worn blade. While it was neither new nor ancient, the blade was straight, and its apple-wedge iron pommel lent it good balance. He would have to work to deserve it.
His latest borrowed horse stepped down into the Ferangore Road, and they were off.
Coensar guided them north and west as much as he could, fighting the grain of the country to avoid the many routes to Ferangore itself. Each farmstead and hamlet they passed seemed a ripe hiding place for Gol and his thugs. Every rider they passed had Durand twitching for the sword, and every gatepost raven had its eyes on him. In weeks or days, this might be the heart of a civil war.
It was also, however, a lovely day.
The Eye shone in a pale, crisp Heaven. The stony farms of north Yrlac were rich and black after the harvest. On their right hand, the wasteland of granite hills called the Warrens crawled slowly by, dull as cloud in the distance. It seemed impossible that this was the land of Radomor's madness.
Durand glimpsed Lamoric at the head of the company, dark and furious—almost as wild as Radomor.
Guthred was grumbling. "No time. Too far."
Durand smeared his hand over his face and observed the men of his half-stolen company. He could see the backs of all the knights. One-eyed Berchard slumped, asleep as he rode. Sir Agryn used a winking pendant sundial to scry out the precise hour, so that he might say the Noontide Lauds from horseback. Other men honed great swords like belt knives or fussed with the length of reins and stirrup leathers. Badan bled and moaned from the baggage. No one spoke. No matter how badly Lamoric wanted it, they could never reach High Ashes in time.
Every little road-straddling village was empty, except for barking dogs—and babies wailing indoors. Eyes peered from shuttered windows.
They rode through a night as black as a midnight mine, following each other half by sound.
Sometime before First Twilight, a mist or fog descended invisibly, shrouding Creation and turning the wide world into a muffled chamber.
To the north, Durand glimpsed empty lands. No longer the Warrens now, but something stranger in the shifting gray: the Lost Duchy of Hesperand, a region of ghosts and rumors. More than once, Durand watched Sir Agryn draw his dial from his tunic only to drop the useless instrument once more. Twice, buildings swelled from the mist on either side of the track. Durand heard doors thumping shut.
Conspirators, Rooks, and the Host Below could all be circling in the roiling gloom.
As the last hours of this twilit day bled away, the track jogged down a slope of rough pasture and out of the mists. They had come upon a sheep-dotted valley. Half a league away, a gray keep perched on a conical mound with a village sprawled around its feet.
The keep might mean food and warmth.
"Look," said Berchard. The man's finger pointed steadily beyond the valley and its castle toward a lead-dark smudge against the distant mists. It could have been forest. "That is Hesperand out there," he said. Coensar called a momentary halt.
"I want to know how far we've come and how much longer we've got. We'll ride for that castle, see if we can't get a hot meal, and find out what's what."
There was a murmur of assent.
"Guthred, take a few of the boys down to announce us."
Durand volunteered. He would have thrown himself at anything.
HE FOLLOWED GUTHRED and a few shield-bearers down into the valley. Though it was hardly time for curfew, there was no sign of life. At the village boundary they jounced to a halt, scattering a flock of pigs in the road. The streets ahead were empty and still. The horses whickered, and Guthred crooked his fingers into the sign of the Eye.
The horses walked now, passing houses with hanging shutters until the gray keep at the center of the village brooded over them.
"Don't like it," said Guthred, and men climbed down from their horses, casting about for any sign of the villagers. Durand dropped from the saddle.
As though he'd stepped on some hidden trigger, his landing sent a drawbridge shuddering down in a din of chains. He had hardly got his sword free of its scabbard when a knight on horseback erupted from the castle gate. The knight pitched his horse down the hill at a wild gallop—careering straight for Durand. There was no time or space to step aside. The stranger had a shield tight by his horse's neck and a murderous lance under his arm. Guthred's shield-bearers leapt aside, but there was no time for Durand.
Teeth clenched, he flinched his blade into the knight's path, but caught only the hail of grit as the stranger jounced to a halt. The horse's muzzle nodded an inch beyond the point of Durand's blade.
"Who are you to come armed into the lands of Duke Ailnor of Yrlac?" roared the mad knight.
A huge mustache spilled over his chin, and his eyes bulged like hen's eggs. With a lance at his neck, Durand had to reply. "Sir, we're travelers only. We mean no offense to your duke. I am called Durand."
The egg eyes darted as the stallion danced.
"You would have hospitality?"
"I am a shield-bearer, sir. My captain is Sir Coensar," Durand said, remembering to conceal the Red Knight's name. "On the rise, you'll have seen his men. We're bound for Mornaway."
"I am Beornic, His Grace's steward of the castle and lands of Ydran you see about you." The lance bobbed in his hand. "You'd best come inside."
Durand nodded, keeping his eye on the skittish steward. "I will summon my masters."
THE FEASTING HALL was silent but for the tramping of their boots on its floorboards. A broom lay abandoned by a heap of straw. Tankards stood on the table. Lamoric keeping out of sight, the whole company filed in.
"Sir Beornic," Coensar said, "your village. It is very quiet."
The man nodded, his eyes darting still. The others gathered around the table.
"They have all gone."
Coensar frowned, but Berchard spoke. "What do you mean 'gone'?" "It came yestereve." " 'It'?" said Berchard.
"Word that Duke Ailnor has disinherited his son in favor of his infant grandson. Our wise women stood up right then."
Durand caught hold of this bit of news. The old duke had disowned his own son. Would it be the end of Cassonel's conspiracy? Perhaps the hard warriors around Duke Ailnor had set things right.
"I'm sorry," said Coensar. "I don't understand."
Beornic was nodding. 'There was a court held two days past. A great storm blew up, like the world was ending. It was as the wise women had seen."
"I'm sorry, Sir Beornic," said Coensar.
"A year ago." Beornic's voice was a hollow scrape. "At the Turning of Winter. We sat the vigil in the sanctuary, then midnight came. Out in the snow we went, and the Paling Moon was soaring full, like a cold Eye of Heaven. But, as we passed into the yard, the snow shimmering, we saw... we saw another village. Every man and child, staring back at us beyond the sanctuary wall. Naked they were. Very pale." They could almost see the vision passing before his mind's eye.
"But it was not another village. It was Ydran. My bailiff was there. His three daughters. Everyone. Eac
h of us saw himself standing in the Paling Moon's light, naked in the snow. No one spoke. It seemed as though the dead were reaching, wanting to speak. Then a cloud. A rag of cloud passed, and they were gone.
"Some townspeople were closer to the wall and heard things. Next year and this, face-to-face. The wise women knew. And it would start with these tidings from Ferangore."
"Host of Heaven," Lamoric said. "Agryn, what do you make of it?"
"I cannot say. The Turning is a time between times. Midnight is a time between times. We are granted glimpses. We are under the eaves of Hesperand here."
Berchard was nodding. "I've heard men say it's mad to go in the boneyard at the Turning of Winter." His good eye turned on the dry gray sockets of the arrow loops. Light bloomed into the hall from the west, out over Hesperand.
"I could not follow," Beomic was saying, staring off.
"Where have they gone that you could not follow?" Coensar peered close.
"They saw it coming. The old king's line breaking in Yrlac. That is how it begins."
"Where did they go?" Coensar pressed.
'The wise women gathered them up. They've gone into the forest."
"Hesperand?"
"Aye." They would step from Creation to escape the doom they saw for themselves. "But I could not follow. I am His Grace's steward of the castle and lands of Ydran. I have sworn it on my soul, my hands between his hands."
'They've gone into Hesperand." The man's eyes were wide. 'To stay and to stay. They will drink the water and eat what grows."
No one breathed.
Coensar was the first to catch hold of himself.
"Guthred, lads," he said, "take Sir Beornic out of here. Find him strong drink. Get him out of this fool hauberk." For once, Guthred gestured to another shield-bearer, and Durand was still there as the little man shuffled out.
Lamoric put his head between his hands. "Nothing to do with us."
Coensar muttered something about wise women.
"What do you think is going on?" Lamoric wondered.
"Things like these," said Agryn. "Each man must respond to an omen as he will. And who is to say what will happen here? I would have said that a man cannot slip his doom. The wise women know much of dreams. Birth and dying."
"Radomor is disinherited and my sister is dead," said Lamoric. "What has happened?" He pressed his palms tight together, and turned a fierce look on Coensar. "Where is this place, Ydran?"
"We've not come very far yet, Lordship."
Quietly, Agryn drew out his sundial, moving into a shaft of light. The little pendant glinted. "The day is not yet done," he said. "I read it the eighth hour under the Eye of Heaven. And, though the hours of night are longer, we might yet put five leagues or more behind us."
Lamoric nodded; they must go.
GUTHRED LEFT A shield-bearer, called Eorman, to stay with the mad steward until some arrangement could be made, while the rest set off once more. They followed the rutted track west where they must veer toward Hesperand before heading round it Everyone was uneasy. It was misty as a mountaintop.
Guthred squinted like a mariner into the fog. "Don't like this weather." The forest seemed to loom close and then sink into the mist like a shape under the skin of a lake. Durand was sure he was not alone in seeing the villagers of Ydran before his mind's eye, shuffling into the trees to be lost forever. Or staring back from the mist.
After an hour or two of this eerie march, a tug of the north wind hauled the great curtains of mist wide, and the company faced the forest eaves of Hesperand. Men cursed. Durand set his teeth. Above and beyond them was the Lost Duchy. The wind was full of the sound of branches.
"Hold up," said Coensar. Horses were already rearing, one cart jerked half out of the roadway.
The rutted track under their feet veered sharply from the face of Hesperand, running south for Ferangore and the long way round. Ahead, the wall of trees that was Hesperand opened into an arcade of green archways over a wide road that ran straight for Mornaway.
Lamoric looked down the Ferangore track in the pasture muck. "South then," he said. "The Ferangore track."
"There is a great arm of woodland between us and High Ashes," said Coensar.
"It will slow us down?" It was hardly a question.
"It is Hesperand" said Coensar. "We'll be days getting round it"
They would miss Lamoric's tournament. Every man there must understand it. Right there, they were deciding whether to disband and scatter themselves on the winter roads of Errest, or to press on—no matter where they must ride.
"So we ride harder and get around it," Lamoric replied.
"Lord Moryn said six days."
"And what are you saying, my captain?"
"It is sixty leagues, Sir Lamoric. Skirting it will be days, not hours."
"If we left the packhorses?"
"We might borrow arms. But, after Silvermere, none of these animals is fit for heroics."
There was a long silence. Every man was listening closely.
From his place in the line, Durand could see Lamoric bend. There had been enough moisture in the air that his black hair hung streaming.
"Sir Agryn," Lamoric began carefully. "I have heard that men have passed safely through Hesperand."
It was like some play; they might almost have rehearsed it.
Austere Agryn was very still as he regarded the forest. There was a strange quality to the light in that green corridor.
"Yes, Lordship. Men have come and gone. Some see nothing but wastes and foundation stones. Those who keep the King of Heaven firmly in their hearts can—"
Berchard was standing in his stirrups. "—If they take no food and drink no water. I mean no offense, brother Agryn, but this is the Otherworld, or close enough. What's us is us; what's them is them. There are rules and rules and rules inside."
"It is true," said Coensar. His words steamed in the clammy air. He had been staring into the tunnel ahead, remembering or marshaling himself. Now, he looked back to the others. "I've seen it. Years ago now. Me and my lads rode in, and we rode out again, and I am here to speak of it."
Lamoric nodded carefully.
"I do not wish to turn back," he said.
Now, the young lord turned to his retainers. Somewhere, they must have known that this had been in his mind since Acconel. Somewhere, they had already consented. Still, Lamoric had to speak.
"Lord Moryn has called me out. You, all of you, saw it. And he's promised that the Herald of Errest will be there to witness. Unlooked-for, we have been given a last chance. There will be no others." His eyes took on the gaze of every man, even Durand's. "There is providence in this," he said. "We must go on."
Not a man said a word.
Lamoric spurred his horse and rode into the tree-lined path. Every man followed.
A SEA OF leaves whispered and set the Eye of Heaven to winking.
Durand happened to turn his head. For an instant, the world swam, and he might have been a drowning man at the bottom of a flooded world. Then it settled.
"Keep your wits about you," Guthred chastened. "I can see it lulling you. If we're to get through, you can't be dozing. I've talked to poachers in Hellebore. They'll slip through now and again. Treat every leaf like a scorpion."
At the head of the party, Sir Coensar was grave and watchful. The sword and shield in the man's hands told Durand more than any spoken warning. Still, the place was green and bright. He could understand why the peasants of Ydran would choose to hide here rather than face whatever doom awaited them in their hovels. The air even smelled better. In Yrlac, it had been dank, full of sopping grass and muck. Here, a man's mind turned to the warm days under the Reaper's Moon: the last days of summer. Here, mere were green leaves; in Yrlac there were none. Still, Sir Coensar went armed.
But, as every sentry knows, any danger grows routine in time. After another hour, Durand felt as though he had slept last night under a summer moon and woken to greenery and humming flies. The track climbed
down into a winding maze of stony hillocks where the scabbed trees twisted toward the sky. The jostling of the trail had shuffled the riders. Wide trails narrowed or bent tight under the trees. In the process, he and Guthred had fetched up near the head of the column, just behind Coensar, Agryn, and Lamoric. Durand felt now that he was bodyguarding them all.
"I don't understand what it means," Lamoric said. "Why would he disinherit his son? And what happened to Alwen?" After a silent moment, he changed tacks. "Poor father. His masterstroke is ruined now."
Coensar kept his eye on the convoluted trail.
"Lordship?" asked Agryn.
"Sorry. That wedding. I'd seen hardly thirteen winters— still a page in Windhover—when Father announced that he would give Alwen to Radomor of Yrlac. I thought that it was nothing but politics, tying loyal duchies and old bloodlines. With one wedding and another, he'd bound Mornaway, Yrlac, and Gireth all together for the king." He gestured with the edge of his hand. "Then I saw the man.
"I was home for the Sun Wheel at the Turning of Winter. Alwen, she had a bit of a sharp way of speaking, and one of my father's liegemen, Sitric Gowl, he muttered a name: snipe or shrew or some such nonsense. I remember thinking he was a whoreson, but Radomor! He loomed up like a thunderhead between Sitric and my sister. It ended in the tiltyard with Radomor lifting Sitric right up from the ground. By the neck. Hanging the fool like a one-man gallows, just with his own two hands. That wedding was more than noble houses among the Sons of Atthi. He knew her, he married her, and he fought for her."
Durand looked up between the trees. He thought of the Eye of Heaven upon them all.
"Now old Ailnor's cut him off, and what kind of death does my sister have? Almora seeing her in that boat? Mockery. I thought she must be happy, when I thought of her. There was a child."