by David Keck
"Heremund," whispered Durand.
The skald frowned, but continued. 'The Maid, she was the first woman. Or one of them. And she grieved for the death of the living things. She cried out, and every living thing heard her."
Durand understood the silence then, or thought he did. It was the memory of that cry.
The village elder bowed toward his Lady. The Lady nodded. With the sheaf in the crook of his arm, his fingers caressed seed from the brittle head. He bent. A shiver of his hand sowed the first seed of what must be the winter crop. He stroked, bent, and sowed.
Durand saw that some of the knights had shut their eyes.
The man made his methodical progress down the length of the furlong, and, finally, when he had finished his journey, there was nothing left of the sheaf. He turned to his Lady, and she nodded low in reply, she and her maidens all turning back toward the castle. In silence then, the procession of maidens made the walk back between the lines of armored men.
Heremund was shaking his head as the women disappeared into the mouth of the pale castle. "It was the Reaper's Moon. Full. And the cross-quarter day. It is just what the Masters would have chosen."
All around Durand, the knights began to sag out of their rigid lines. Coensar, apparently loath to step into the path that the procession had so recently taken, stepped out behind his troops.
"Just as before," he said.
He seemed to scan the crowd for a moment. His cool eyes fell on Durand, then Heremund. He paused a moment. "He came from the forest," Durand supplied.
"I am called Heremund. A skald."
A trace of something touched the captain's features: hard mirth. "Then you will have sung my song."
The skald was mystified, then he blinked, suddenly flustered. "Aye, well. There is a story," he admitted. Durand tried to remember.
The captain nodded, then left them to call for the attention of Lamoric's conroi. He sounded tired as he spoke to them all.
"I remind you if you've forgotten, or tell you if you never heard: No one sleeps who means to fight. It's the rule of this place."
While it was a mad regulation, Durand was not alone in nodding. What room was there for doubt under the weight of the presence poised over Bower Mead?
THERE WERE SHEEP and wolves as the assembled company broke up, and Durand noted both sorts of creature among the bleary knights. He saw Cerlac wipe his forehead—in bewilderment or relief. Berchard smiled under comically raised eyebrows. Then there were wolves: Guthred giving Durand a hard look, Badan baring his few teeth at Durand's glance, and Baron Cassonel moving through the murmuring flock, as watchful as any stalking beast.
Though Bower Mead seemed an island out of the world, he had brought his enemies with him. At the prospect of retreat, his mind turned to Saewin and the spear over the bridge. There was nowhere he was safe.
"You are a shield-bearer here, then?" said Heremund.
"What do you know of this place, Heremund?"
"Ah," said the little man. "Not enough. A skald's curse: There are more songs than a man can learn even in twice seven winters trying."
"Heremund," Durand pressed.
"It's the story of Hesperand the Lost, Durand. The duke and his Lady." "The duke?"
"And old Saewin, of course."
Durand stopped, taking hold of Heremund as the man tried to trudge on. Thinking he must gain control of something in all this mess, he nearly lifted the skald off his feet.
"In the name of every Power—" the skald spluttered, his protests drawing glances.
Durand released his grip. Then, as indifference replaced disapproval among the passersby, he bent close at the skald's ear.
"Saewin."
"Aye, Durand. Saewin."
"Tell me." And, as the other men slumped about the bonfires, struggling against the dragging weight of sleep, Durand tugged Heremund off to the castle wall.
"Now, Heremund. Please."
Just then, a cloud fluttered at the moon, sending a ripple up the wall toward the feet of the pale watchers overhead. A night breeze curled over the dark green, pulling a whispered roar from the trees.
'Tell me," he repeated.
"It might've been an accident," said Heremund. "But I reckon there's a curse in it somewhere. It has the touch of the Powers about it."
There was a slap of leaves in the wind.
"It was the days of the High King after they'd moved the capital east to the Jewel of the Winter Sea." Heremund winced at a lashing of wind. "But—though they'd not been seen since the Cradle sailed—the Sons of Heshtar had returned. They'd crossed the Sea of Thunder and were marching up the Gray Road. There were rumors and rumblings. But their legions. They outran the screams."
Behind Durand, the men in the camp had begun to run through the dark, catching at tent flaps and guyropes. Each gust blew the bonfires down, like a breath of darkness. Durand held his ground. "On, Heremund."
'The High King: Allestan. He felt it! The falling of cities in Aubairn. The death of liegemen. The sack of sanctuaries. He called them up, the war host of the High Kingdom. Ships sailed from Parthanor. Armies rode from Vuranna. From Caldura. From Errest the Old!"
Heremund staggered at a gust. "And here in Hesperand, at the heart of Errest, Duke Eorcan. He stayed behind. Folk wanted a home guard. Someone to hold court. The thousand other small things. He kept a household guard. That's your Saewin, one of them. Saewin's brother; he rode south!"
Durand held fast to the thread of the story despite the rage of Hesperand.
"We should get under cover!" said Heremund.
But Durand needed to know. It was Hesperand trying to stop them. "Finish it!" he said.
Heremund shook his head. "God. Saewin and that brother, they were close. They cut lances. The same ash tree. Each a twin of the other's. They cut their palms. Made vows."
Above them, clouds swept across the moon, pitching the fields into darkness. Durand could hear shouting from the camps and the scream of horses. The wind hauled at his cloak.
"Gods, lad," said Heremund.
'Tell me!"
"The younger brother. He rode off. No one knew how bad—there'd been no word.
"But that first host. They rode straight into it. The thralls of Heshtar. Maragrim. Writhen men. Braying men. Whispering giants, stooped like oxen. Nightmare things not seen before or since. They had come in creaking ships by the tens of thousands. Wild things. Spirits. Slaves.
'The Atthian armies. They came piecemeal. They died. The men of old Errest most of all.
"And no one knew. Beyond the Blackrooted Mountains, there'd been no battle. The Sons of Heshtar wove darkness over the battlefields." The skald winced into the wind. 'The Hidden Masters. They dreamed empty dreams. They saw nothing in their quicksilver but their own long beards. But Saewin's lance. It told another story."
Durand had to lean close to hear over the wind of Hesperand.
"It wept, Durand. Fresh blood! .Oozed down the ash wood's grain. Saewin's, his brother's, the blood of the thralls of Heshtar, it bled. And Saewin knew: His brother and with him half the Sons of Atthi were in mortal danger. And, worse—as Saewin leapt up ready to hazard his life—three hundred leagues away.
"Imagine Saewin talking Eorcan into it! Showed him that spear. But Duke Eorcan, he called on the Hidden Masters. More than whispers, then. Any wellborn man could find them. And they tapped the deepest powers. The powers of the duke's land. And set a great sorcery in motion. Every peer in Hesperand made ready. Five battalions. Their mounts and arms. Three hundred leagues to meet the thralls of Heshtar. He clung against the wind.
"But it went wrong! Terrible oaths bound the duke to his land, and his men to him. Then as now. Bonds and bonds knotted men and lands tight. It was them the Masters used: pulled Eorcan's host into the spell. And those bonds. They caught Hesperand and its hundred villages. They tore it all from Creation."
"It went as planned. The moon—the Reaper's Moon— rolled into place. The Eye of Heaven swung round. The cross-
quarter day of Harvest dawned," Heremund said, pointing with a chop of his hand toward the black horizon, "Errest shivered. Then there was desolation!"
With a single crack of thunder, the wind collapsed.
It dropped cloak and tent and tree. Bower Mead filled with silence.
Heremund looked off toward the distant village and up at the pale fortress. Men scattered around the valley did likewise, stooped among their ruined tents.
Heremund laughed, short and hollow. Durand shook his head.
"There's precious little left of the rest," said Heremund. "They took it with them. But somehow, Saewin and the duke, they weren't ready. Since then, most reckon there was a tournament held on the night, though no living man knows why. And this tournament, this tournament all around us is, maybe, an echo of it. At the Lady's castle of Bower Mead."
Durand remembered Saewin's ranting. Accusing. "My Lady awaits me," he had said. What had happened?
'They say Duke Eorcan still rode at the head of his host. Still rides mere—and there's a place for him saved at the Great Council wherever they sit—but that he and his men were all of them spirits, sleeting through the thralls like a killing rain.
"And Hesperand came adrift. Shaken from the heart of Errest as the bonds of oathtaking snapped tight around it. And so now it is as you have seen it: sometimes there, sometimes not. A place of ruins, or a place of living men—and every child is more ancient than the oldest elder of the Atthias beyond."
The light was returning to Bower Mead.
"Heremund. When you saw me... why were you so shaken?"
"It happened here." He pointed to the earth. "Right here. This is the heart of the heart of it. Something grim enough to tear Creation at its seams. I cannot say how great a magic is required to accomplish such a thing. And every tournament at Bower Mead, it kills a man."
Durand nodded, slow. The death fit the place, and the Harvest ritual. His mind filled with the face of Saewin in the forest as the warrior raged against his doom—whatever that was. There was a great secret moving around them.
The stories of this place. He had heard of men walking safely through empty woodlands. Hearing voices. Men wandered into meadows humped with green ruins or stood in the halls of castles surrounded by living strangers. They were lost here forever or fell to bones and ashes when they stepped on mortal soil.
Durand resolved that there were secrets enough in Hesperand.
"Heremund," he said stiffly, "I've been short with you, and I'm sorry for it. I've seen things. Done... things." He stopped, sucking a breath through his nostrils. "I am not the man I was when I left you at Tormentil."
"Lad—"
"Join the others if you wish, Heremund. I have to think."
He left Heremund then and walked to the empty ground beyond the camp and its firelight.
Alone, he looked out over the village from near the green brink where the Lady of the Bower had stood. It was as the priests would say: The Son of Morning and his Host snare a man by his pride or greed or fear, and draw you in until you can no longer see your way out. Until it is easier to go along.
But a man must make choices.
He stopped in the gloom.
"My man Guthred," said a voice. "He'll wonder why you're skulking out here in the dark."
Durand spun. A faint trace of firelight caught the hard edges of a man's features, and set tiny points alive in his eyes. It was Coensar, hardly ten paces from him. The captain was playing with a stone.
“Well done with old Ouen," he added. "Lucky. If you hadn't trapped his blade at your own throat, he would have looked damn foolish, and you would have made a new enemy." The captain paused. "It's a mistake to make enemies...."
Durand nodded and silence hung between them. He could feel Coensar's eyes on him still.
"Has he told you?" the captain said, finally. "This skald friend of yours?"
For a moment, Durand was lost, then he remembered Heremund's brief confrontation with the captain. There had been a story there as well: another secret But there was no time.
"Sir Coensar—"
"It's a dry old joke now." Coensar turned a wry smile. "Baron Cassonel's story." Coensar turned his attention square on Durand. "Do you know it?"
Cassonel was famous for one thing only. "He took on a conroi."
Coensar nodded. "At Tern Gyre. His Grace, Ludegar, Duke of Beoran, refused to fight Cassonel in the lists." "You were with the duke?" There might have been a smile.
"Cassonel was young. A boy. There he is, throwing down the gauntlet. The duke laughed. Then we got word that something had gone wrong down at the quay. The ship. Every man's fortunes in armor and horses all sinking. The whole lot of us ran down, but found nothing but seagulls and sailors with blank looks. When we climbed back to the postern gate, there was Cassonel. It was hardly more than a door at the top of the stair, but Cassonel threw his gauntlet at Beoran's feet a second time. The only way His Grace would pass was as Cassonel's prisoner. The duke sent every last one of his men and Cassonel defeated them in turn—like the Warders at the Bright Gates, standing his ground in that narrow doorway. There were twenty-seven men, and finally the duke."
"Lord of Hosts," said Durand.
Twenty-seven battle-tested knights. Who needed Hidden Masters and legions of darkness to be a hero?
"I was Beoran's champion at the time. He was talking about an heiress—a baron's widow—who had sixty manors. Damaryn. She needed a husband. She did not look so bad to me. In the hall beyond that postern door stood all the peers and heroes who had gathered to honor the Lost Princes that year. King Ragnal was there, though he was only a young prince at the time."
Durand noted the creases around the iron glints of the man's eyes and the dead silver of his hair.
"That Termangant sword of his is quick," the captain said.
"How long?" Durand murmured.
"Hmm. Seven winters I fought to gain Beoran's favor; fourteen since I lost it."
"Hells." Twenty-one years: Durand's lifetime.
"And now he's here, old Cassonel, Baron of my Damaryn, the rung that slipped from my hands. It's been a long time. I've been waiting."
'This is the first—"
"No. But nearly. I met him here seven years ago." His face twisted in a wry smirk. "He should never have been at a tournament, let alone this one. Beneath him, really. But then we were thrown on the same side of the melee, and I could not honorably oppose him."
"You've found other chances?"
Coensar's teeth glinted. "He's a baron now. He fights for Beoran. There's no need for him to risk his neck in a tournament. He has sixty manors. Ponds of fish. A hundred mills. Sanctuaries. Hunting preserves."
"And now he's here ..." Durand said.
"Lady Damaryn has a mustache like a Heithan prince," Coensar said.
But Cassonel and the tournament explained every look Coensar had given him since they'd made camp. Guthred was his own man and slow to trust by his nature. For Coensar, it was all about Baron Cassonel. In light of this realization, Durand saw that his secrets had poisoned everything around him.
"Sir Coensar," Durand said, "I was with Radomor in Yrlac. In Ferangore. Cassonel came. He spoke treason, trying to convince Lord Radomor. It's Beoran and others. I don't know who. They are moving."
The captain hefted the stone in his palm, smiling into the dark.
His eyes glinted Durand's way, and he pointed into the green. "Do you see that?" The grass was soft and gray under the moonlight. "Captain?"
Coensar nodded at the green, and then he threw his stone. The rock soared out, and, when it landed, the field came alive. The uneven gray slope broke into thousands of round bodies, scattering like beads on a stone floor. It might have been Creation crumbling away.
Durand stared.
"Rabbits," said Coensar. "I don't know if it's the storm around this place. There're always rabbits here in moonlight."
HE SAID NOTHING more. Durand turned back toward the fire-lit camp, numb. He had ma
de his choice and confessed. Now, there was nothing left but to allow the world to mete out the consequences. There was a little more to tell, but he felt a shaky sort of peace, like a man waking from a broken fever.
The jumble of pavilions seemed like black silhouettes clipped from the glow of bonfires, every one empty despite the hour. He wondered where Cassonel was among them. The baron would be sitting at one fire or another, in a squad of soldiers. Durand could hear laughter.
He had just begun to smile when a shape darted among the canvas alleys near Lamoric's camp, conspicuously bent and careful. Durand thought of Moryn and Cassonel and Saewin and the shapes beyond the forest edge.
Wrestling his sword free, he rushed toward the thing: an inky figure against a canvas wall.
Only a pace beyond the reach of Durand's blade, the shadow turned. Red hair flew around a face he knew. It was the woman from the stream, now wide-eyed with terror.
"God," Durand said. Quickly, he lowered the sword. "I... I am sorry. I—"
"Is it you?" the woman faltered.
"It is. Durand. From the river. And Red Winding." He spoke gruffly, trying to think. Surely, she had followed him. How else could she come to be there with him in the middle of this accursed land?
"Yes," she gasped.
Durand looked to the sword. "I thought... someone so close to.. ." He realized he couldn't name his master, and concluded lamely: "I would not have frightened you for the world." He slid his sword home.
And found they stood very close, unobserved by the world, her eyes looking up at his, dark and wide. Durand stepped closer, and felt a pressure to say something. "You will watch the tournament tomorrow?"
"Yes," she said. Wary, thinking.
The scent of her hair filled his head: a flower—purple swathes on summer hills.
"How ... how did you come to be here?" he asked.
'This place," she said. "We could not have found it for our lives. Lady Bertana ..."
She was very close now, her eyes like the flash of the moon at the bottom of wells, of an animal on the point of bolting.