The Gathering of the Lost

by Helen Lowe

Lord Falk, standing just inside the chapel door, stopped his captain with a gesture. Erron and Manan were waiting at the far end of the nave, by the desecrated altar, while the tracker, Herun, knelt to one side of the corpse. Carick tried not to look at the body too closely, or the stake and the blood splashed everywhere. Pushing aside the smell was harder, but he swallowed back another lurch of nausea and made himself focus on Lord Falk.

  The Castellan’s pale eyes were remote, but the hand he placed on Carick’s shoulder was firm. “The body must be removed and the chapel cleansed,” he said, “but first I want you to map this room for me. Mark down everything you see: the position of the body and every bloodstain. Can you do that?”

  Carick nodded, not trusting himself to speak. And he did do it, with care and meticulous attention to detail. Gradually, the concentration required for the work took over and he was able to hold his awareness of the body at a distance, at least for the time needed to complete his task. He knew when Ser Bartrand left, his retreating footsteps heavy, and was equally conscious of the four who remained, watching him. They had each retreated to a separate corner of the chapel, and he was surprised, afterward, at their ability to remain unmoving for so long. But at the time his attention remained fixed on his work, until it was done.

  “The stench,” he said, as he placed his drawings in Lord Falk’s hand. “Surely that isn’t right, for a body so newly killed? It smells like the flesh has putrefied.” He hesitated. “And the stake. It looks like a cut-down ladyspike.”

  The Castellan shook his head. “There are many things we have to consider, Maister Carick. So in the meantime, please don’t speak of what you have seen here.”

  Carick nodded again, but his legs were unsteady as he stepped out into the garden, and he sat for a long time on a bench by the gate, his eyes closed. The sun crept around and when he opened his eyes again, Raven was watching him.

  “So now you know what battle is,” the hedge knight said. “There is no field of glory, only the charnel house.”

  Carick shook his head, remembering his dream and how Maister Gervon had advanced on him before the rasp of metal frightened him off. “I saw no evidence of battle,” he said. “But it was certainly a charnel house.” He wondered whether the Castellan’s prohibition on discussing what he had seen included Raven, and decided to err on the side of caution. Besides, he didn’t want to talk the scene over, like a gore-crow picking at bones. “I am beginning to understand,” he added, “how lucky the River is.”

  “ ‘The peace of road and river,’ ” Raven quoted. “Scant pickings for my kind.”

  Carick pushed to his feet. “I think I’ll go back to the inn. Will you let Lord Falk know where I am, if he wants me again?”

  Raven nodded, then spoke again, his voice harsh as that of his namesake. “One more thing. A warning, if you will.” Carick blinked at him, then his thoughts flew to the dream and he fought to keep his expression calm.

  “A warning?” he repeated.

  “You are a stranger here,” the hedge knight said, “marked out by both dress and speech. Now we have a killing with all the hallmarks of a demon slaying, and Maister Gervon’s dislike for you is also well known.”

  “But . . .” Carick’s voice trailed off. I am the Castellan’s guest, he wanted to protest, and appointed to the ducal court. A spurt of anger pushed his tiredness away. “So the foreigner with an accent will do to point the finger at? Is that what you mean?”

  “Don’t be a fool,” said Raven. “It’s the nature of the pack to turn on the outsider, as well as on the vulnerable and the weak—the more so when the pack grows afraid.” He turned back toward the garden. “I advise you to have a care for yourself, that’s all.”

  Carick drew in his breath, unable to think of an assertive answer. Besides, there was something peculiarly daunting about Raven’s turned back. The man’s just a blade for hire, he told himself as he trudged down the hill. What can he know about honest folk and their ways? But Carick remembered what Hamar had said, and the whispering amongst the people gathered in the courtyard, and thought that perhaps Raven was right, after all, and he was a fool.

  The rest of the day passed slowly, but he was not sent for again. Manan only returned to the inn during the late afternoon, and it was evening before she found time to sit opposite him at the scrubbed table. She looked tired, with shadows beneath her normally merry eyes and a frown creasing her brows. “Who do you think killed him?” Carick asked.

  Manan shook her head. “Even if I knew,” she said, “I would not be allowed to say. But truly, I do not know.” The frown deepened, and the tisane between her hands cooled as she stared into its depths.

  Carick hesitated, but Manan, he reflected, had been in the chapel and no one else was present to overhear them. “Ser Raven said that it looked like a demon slaying.”

  “Did he, indeed?” The frown disappeared as Manan’s brows rose. “What else did he say?”

  “Not much,” Carick admitted. “Except that I should be careful, because people will be fearful and I am a stranger here.” He watched her closely and saw that he had her full attention now. After a moment the inn-wife nodded, sighing. “He may be right to advise caution. We do what we can, but too many of our people are fearful and ignorant.”

  Carick swallowed, wishing she had said that Raven was wrong and there was nothing for him to be concerned about. Tiredness weighed on him, and for the first time since the pass he was sharply aware of how far he had stepped beyond the safe bounds of the River world.

  His thoughts must have shown in his face because Manan stretched out a hand to cover his. “Caution is prudence, Maister Carick, but Normarch does not give in to superstition and fear. We will not let anyone harm you.”

  We? Carick wondered, and was not surprised when Lord Falk himself came in a little later, Erron a shadow at his back. The horsemaster went to stand by the fire, while Lord Falk seated himself across the table from Carick, his eyes yellow as a fox’s in the lamplight. He smiled at Manan as she set a tankard down, and Carick remembered the tale that they had been lovers, and wondered whether it could have been true, after all. Manan caught his eye and he flushed, looking away, only to be snared by Lord Falk’s stare.

  “It seems, young man,” the Castellan said, “that I cannot do without you. I will try and get a replacement maister when we go to Caer Argent, but in the meantime, we have no one but you to knock some learning into those hotheads on the hill.”

  “That isn’t the method I would contemplate using,” Carick murmured, and the Castellan smiled with an irony similar to Raven’s.

  “From what I’ve heard,” Lord Falk observed, “any method you choose could hardly be worse than those employed by the late Maister Gervon. I suspect he knew that, since he made no effort to hide his dislike for you.”

  Carick felt the full weight of the day settle on him again. “I didn’t kill him,” he said.

  “I did not say that you had.” Lord Falk considered him across the tankard. “We cannot discount any possibility, but you are an unlikely suspect. Neither Ser Bartrand nor Ser Raven is flattering on the subject of your weapon skills, whatever hopes I may have of your scholarship. And whoever wielded that ladyspike knew what they were about.”

  Carick said nothing. He was still uneasy about the similarity between his dream and the circumstances of Maister Gervon’s death, but felt he had made himself into enough of a fool reporting the shadow outside the stable. While he hesitated, Manan told Lord Falk of Ser Raven’s caution.

  The Castellan’s expression was hard to read. “So the Raven croaked out a warning, did he? Well you know what they say of ravens: they are the bird of ill omen, the harbinger of battle and blood. But what do you say, Manan?”

  Her firelit gaze rested on his, her tone thoughtful. “In matters of blood and war, one should heed the harbinger.”

  Lord Falk nodded. “Well, you are better placed than anyone to know, being halfway between castle and village. And close to both as lay
priestess of Imuln.” He leaned back, his shadow leaping as he stretched out his legs. “Well, that’s settled then, Maister Carick. You will teach our charges as best you can and we shall have a care for you while you do. Unless there is something more that you wish to discuss with me?”

  Carick shook his head, pushing back any qualms about his dream. “No, nothing,” he said.

  Lord Falk smiled. “In that case, we must all drink more ale, to seal our bargain and wash away the day.”

  “All the same,” the Castellan said conversationally, when Carick had made his escape after only one handle of the light Normarch ale, “there’s definitely something bothering our guest. We shall have to find out what it is.”

  Manan frowned at the closed door. “Surely you don’t suspect him of this killing?”

  “Of the killing, no.” Falk’s reply was calm. “It is highly unlikely he could have done it. But of being ill at ease about something—yes, I do suspect him of that.”

  Erron spoke from his place by the fire. “It’s Maister Gervon who is the key, or what appeared to be Maister Gervon. Whoever he was, we know that he hated and feared Maister Carick. Everyone noticed it.”

  “But why?” Manan asked softly. Her eyes met Falk’s. “You are quite right, my heart, we must keep him here. Perhaps,” she added, “as much for his own sake as for ours.”

  The fox eyes gleamed. “That consideration, too, had not escaped me. And my foster brother would not be at all pleased if we were to lose his precious cartographer.”

  Chapter 16

  Summer’s Eve

  Normarch buzzed following Maister Gervon’s death: first with speculation, then unease when no ladyspikes were found to be missing from the castle armory. No one besides the maid had been seen either going into or out of the garden, and rumors multiplied, widening to include the Oakward, the legendary protectors of Emer.

  It was not entirely clear to Carick, listening to these tales, whether the Oakward were spellcasters, or a dedicated order of priests, or simply demonhunters, although often they sounded like a mix of all three. He was not sure why he was so fascinated by the stories, since folklore was not his study, but listened avidly whenever the subject came up. Perhaps, he reflected uneasily, it was another aftermath of his last nightmare about Maister Gervon, which he could not quite shake off.

  The whispers, which had started to die down after the first few days, built again when reports of bolder raids by outlaw bands, this time accompanied by demons that were half man, half beast, began to filter in from outlying settlements. Lord Falk doubled the Normarch patrols in an effort to counteract the growing fear with bright steel and a show of strength, but the disquiet persisted.

  “Werewolves, evil spirits, and blood-drinking ghouls,” Raher said with relish, one evening in the inn kitchen.

  Arn shrugged. “Everyone in the inner wards says that even the Oakward is just superstition, a hangover from the bitter years that followed the Cataclysm. They don’t believe in a secret circle that pushed back evil anymore.”

  Girvase raised one eyebrow, but Audin interposed a comment about the Summer’s Eve vigils, and the conversation turned to the subsequent Midsummer tourney in Caer Argent and whether they should ride in it as a company. “My cousin, Ser Ombrose, says they’re looking for companies on the southern border with Lathayra.” Audin stretched. “And that way, some of us could stay together.”

  But not all, Carick thought. He had learned, since Malisande first mentioned the Midsummer tourney, that not everyone would go to Caer Argent. Many of the new-made knights would return to their family homes after Summer’s Eve, and if they did proceed on to the tourney would ride in the companies of their clans or close kin.

  Gradually, Summer’s Eve became the main topic of Normarch conversation again and Carick found it difficult to keep his students’ minds on their lessons. Most made no secret of the fact that they found scholarship dull, despite both Audin and Ghiselaine showing genuine interest. Or was it more, Carick asked himself, that Ghiselaine was interested and Audin wanted the excuse to be in her company?

  Girvase began to show application once he realized that mathematics could be applied to siege engines and tunneling, while Alianor, Malisande, and Hamar usually made a decent appearance of attention. But watching Hamar and Girvase practice with swords, or Malisande working with Manan—well, Carick knew that they were being polite about their lessons, but that was all. He had some hopes for Alianor, though, when she took an interest in the maps. “They’re practical,” she said, “not just another thing Lord Falk wishes us to learn.”

  Unlike the other girls, Alianor rarely smiled, but next to Malisande, Carick knew her best of all the damosels. She was Sond, from one of the great families, but spent as much time at the inn and in the stable as she did at the castle. Carick suspected that was partly to spend time with Girvase, who was openly her sworn man—far more openly than Audin was Ghiselaine’s. “I feel sorry for them,” he said to Malisande, one rainy, wild evening shortly before Summer’s Eve.

  “Alianor and Girvase?” Malisande looked surprised. “You need not be. Ar may always marry Sond, even if it cannot inherit the titles.”

  “And Audin and Ghiselaine?” Carick asked.

  Malisande shrugged. “She’ll be Duchess of Emer. She will have to be content with that.”

  Carick was surprised by her coolness, but the door opened before he could reply and Ghiselaine and the other damosels trooped in. To help Manan make sugared sweets for the festival, they said—but really, he decided, retreating to a settle by the fire with his book, to complain about the weather.

  “We’ll never get to the Temple in the Rock if it’s like this!” exclaimed Selia, who had recently returned from a visit to the south. Her silvery-blond hair fell almost to her knees, and now she tossed it back in exasperation—or to make everyone notice it? Carick wondered, looking up.

  “I’m sure it’ll clear.” Alianor shook sugar from a cluster of sweets. “What do you say, Herun?” she asked, looking over to where the castle tracker sat with Raven and Col, sharing a jug of ale.

  “Rain’ll pass.” If possible, the tracker was even quieter than Erron. “Likely this is the last spring squall.”

  Linnet spread out her skirts before the fire, trying to get rid of the damp. “It can’t pass soon enough for me. I’ll never get used to this wet.”

  “The weather’s always best in Ormond,” said a damosel called Brania, smoothing back coppery curls. Her expression was guileless, but there was an edge to her voice and Carick remembered Alianor telling him that Brania’s grandfather, lord of the Murreward, had died in the last great battle with Ormond. She was distant kin to Lord Falk, on her mother’s side, and had always seemed friendly with both Ormondians. Linnet just shrugged and looked at her sideways beneath sleepy lids, more than a little like a cat.

  “We’ll be in Caer Argent from Midsummer, and the weather’s drier there—” Alianor began, but stopped as footsteps drummed across the yard and Jarna came in with a rush, rain thick on her dark hair.

  “Maistress Manan!” the squire called, then checked perceptibly, seeing the gathered damosels. Linnet’s brows rose in delicate question, while Selia looked Jarna up and down.

  “Do you smell something?” she asked, a general query of the room. “I thought I caught a whiff of stable dung.”

  Several of the damosels giggled, including the yellow-haired girl that Carick had first met at the practice ground and now knew was called Ilaise. “Horses and sweat,” another girl said. Alianor made a movement as if she intended intervening, but Linnet forestalled her.

  “What would one expect,” she murmured, with the slightest lift and fall of one shoulder, “of one whose skills are more fitted to the stable than the training ground?”

  Jarna turned a dull red from neck to brow, groping behind her for the door latch. Carick set the book down and rose to his feet. “Is this the famed courtesy of the ladies of Emer?” he asked. From the corner of his ey
e he saw Raven, Herun, and Col watching, their ale jug forgotten. The damosels looked startled, and several, including Ilaise, glanced down or away. Selia’s eyes were narrowed on him, but it was Linnet who spoke.

  “But I, Maister Carick, am of Ormond. What care I for either the tradition,s or”—with a brief, contemptuous glance at Jarna—“the sweaty, commonplace squires of Emer?”

  Now everyone was tense, recognizing a challenge to the fragile unity of Emer. The colorful, illuminated page of a book Carick had read shortly before leaving Ar flashed into his mind. “ ‘Fair Ormondie,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘high home of courage and of courtesie, the very pattern and mirror for the valor of Emer.’ Or do I have that wrong, Damosel Linnet?”

  “No,” said a new voice, and every eye flew to Ghiselaine, standing in the stillroom door with Malisande at her shoulder. The young countess moved into the room, the lamplight shining on the red-gold bell of her hair. “You have it exactly, Maister Carick. We stand rebuked, and rightly so.”

  Selia turned white, but Linnet was frowning. “Who is he to rebuke us?” she demanded. “He is of the River, nothing more than a common clerk for hire.”

  “Common is as common does,” said Ghiselaine, her clear gaze fixed on her cousin, although Carick knew she spoke to the whole room. “And speaks. A lady owes a duty of courtesy to all, whether of high or low degree. We must strive to see past appearances to true worth, whether in scholar or squire.” She looked from Linnet to Selia. “I believe squire Jarna is owed an apology—and Maister Carick also.”

  Linnet bit her lip, but she would not, Carick guessed, go against Ghiselaine. “I apologize,” she said tightly, addressing Jarna. Her gray eyes did not quite meet Carick’s as she dipped her head. “To you also, Maister.”

  She looked as though the last words would choke her, and Carick thought that Selia might not get them out at all, her lips were pressed together so tightly. “I apologize,” the blond damosel muttered finally, echoed a moment later by Ilaise and the rest of the gigglers, who all kept their eyes down. Jarna looked wretchedly ill-at-ease and made her escape upstairs, looking for Manan, while Carick bowed to Ghiselaine and resumed his seat and his book. On the far side of the room, Raven and his companions went back to their ale. Alianor placed the last of the sweets in a covered crock and handed it to Malisande, for the stillroom. “I think we should all go, Ghis,” she said.