The Eye of Night

by Pauline J. Alama

  “Perhaps we should stay after all,” I said. “We'd better sing well; if our welcome here cools, it's a long cold road ahead of us.”

  “Keep it up, and we'll never want you to leave,” Alcorel said.

  Just then I saw green-clad hunters emerge from the temple, escorting festival-goers with drinking-horns in their hands. “Look,” I said, “there's Trenara at last.”

  She came toward us, leaning on the arm of her huntsman, a tall slim man with a red leather mask under his green hunter's cap. The hunter's head inclined toward her as if they spoke confidentially. She reached up to touch his masked face, and he removed the mask and hat to reveal an elegant high forehead, piercing gray eyes, and a strong jaw with a blond beard.

  “By the Name of the Turning God,” said Alcorel, “that hunter was Lord Var!”

  “Indeed?” I said, peering at him as he approached us. He was not so young as I had first thought—older than I, perhaps forty—but his vigorous bearing would probably make him seem half youthful even at twice the age. He wore no mark of rank, dressed exactly like the other hunters for the rite. He had no noticeable retinue, unless the Hunt had been composed of his men. If this were a lord, he wore it as lightly as Guthlac of the Red Oak in his tiny domain in the hill country.

  “He seems well taken with your Lady Trenara,” Alcorel said, as the gold head and the dark one again inclined together com-panionably.

  Hwyn frowned and threaded her way through the crowd toward Trenara. I followed as well as I could, and Alcorel came after us.

  “My Lady,” Hwyn began when she was near enough to tug Trenara's sleeve, “are you well? We were worried about you. Come with us: Alcorel has promised us a good hot meal.”

  “We will dine with Lord Var,” Trenara said, then turned to the lord. “These are Hwyn and Jereth.”

  “Players for the festival,” I said, bowing showily.

  “Players? Excellent! We so rarely have any new ones in Berall,” Lord Var said. “My Lady Trenara, will you bring your minstrels to my hall for the feast?”

  Trenara nodded in her slow, dreamy manner; the way he followed the gesture with his eyes, I could see that he read volumes into it, as I once had.

  “Your pardon, Lady,” Hwyn said tentatively. “Surely you will not forget our promise to the farming folk who led us to this town, Alcorel and his family?”

  “They may come too,” said Lord Var. “This feast day calls for a hall full of revelers! Come with us, all.”

  Some of the hunters and hounds of the rite then shed their masks and reclaimed swords from a temple guard, transforming themselves into Lord Var's retainers. Alcorel ran to tell his wife to come quickly; Hwyn and I, with nothing else to do, followed the Hunt to the hall, she reluctantly, I eagerly. I could see that Lord Var was a far cry from Lady Goldifer; as he passed, the people did not kneel, but smiled and called warm greetings, and some of every station—plain men of the soil, craftsmen, merchants—were invited to join our procession to the great hall for the holiday meal. I went along with a lively step, eager to find out more about this lord so well loved by his people—and eager for the feast.

  But in Berall Hall we were greeted at the door by Var's steward, who seemed disinclined to celebrate the feast of reversal in the traditional way. In Swanroad, even in my father's house, there would have been a Beggar King in the seat of honor, while the head of the house poured ale for the laborers. But Var's steward put us each firmly in our place, escorting Trenara to a chair near the head of the table, gesturing the peasants to seats below the salt, and waving us players off to the harpist's corner. From there we watched the steaming trenchers carried to the table, smelled the spices in the stew and the crisped fat on the roast boar, but saw little hope that they would ever come our way.

  Var's household bard, whose name I never did learn, stood by with his harp and air of injured dignity, looking daggers at me and Hwyn. Certainly he cut a better figure than we did, robed in russet silk, his harp gilded. Remembering Hwyn's dream in the Entrails of the Mountain, I expected to see her eying the harp with envy. But she seemed distracted, distant.

  When Var called out, “Well, players! A song, for the Turning God's sake!” Hwyn cast an anguished look in my direction. I did not know what was wrong, but understood the plea in her eyes. I addressed the harpist in my butteriest tone of flattery: “We strolling players give place to our better: noble harpist, will you begin?” Looking somewhat mollified, he played a virtuoso piece full of difficult trills and turns, and played it quite well indeed, but without passion, as though he were merely polishing the silver.

  As he finished his piece he gave me the strangest look—I might almost have thought it a look of pity. I struck up a lively tune, and then Hwyn began to juggle apples and pears from the table, but her rhythm seemed amiss, and she did not sing. When the song finished she caught the fruits neatly, but without her usual flair. She seemed preoccupied. “Hwyn, are you well?” I whispered to her as sparse applause echoed on the stone walls. “I don't know,” she said slowly.

  “Good sir,” I said to the servant who'd been pouring wine at table, “my friend is ill. Could she have some water?” The harpist had begun to play again in his cold academic style, and was still playing when the servant returned with a chipped clay mug of water. Hwyn, sitting on the floor, raised her head from her hands to thank the man and take a few sips. She looked be-wildered—in fact she looked more than ever as she had when I first saw her and mistook her for a simpleton. “Should I make our excuses?” I whispered. She shook her head.

  The last notes of the harpist died away and Lord Var called for another song. Starting suddenly to her feet, Hwyn began to sing a song I did not know, her clear, warm voice echoing through the room, and even tossed the apples into the air: one, two, three. And one, two, three fell to the ground, as I had never seen them fall before. The song stopped. “Bones,” she murmured.

  “Hwyn—you're ill. Rest yourself and I'll take over,” I said.

  “There are bones under me! Dead bones! This hall is founded on them!” she shouted, “Founded on murder!”

  “What!” roared a guard, and Var turned blazing blue eyes upon her.

  “You built this hall of them. Brick by brick, bone by bone, castle and tomb. Your sister: dead, murdered. Murdered for your dominion. Her blood flows from your table!” Hwyn screamed. “You can't keep her buried!”

  The guard strode up to us. I wrapped my arms around Hwyn fiercely. “Pay her no heed! She means no harm to the lord. This will pass. It is only a fit, poor child, no fault of her own.” But that did not deter the guard. I renewed my pleas: “Have pity! Can you blame her for her affliction? She can't help being mad.” But the guard seized her shoulder. As he did so, Hwyn cowered closer to me, frightened but not too frightened for one last stratagem. Somehow she'd gotten into one of my pockets: the Eye of Night had passed into my keeping. I recognized it without even being able to touch it: it seemed to burn its way through my garment to my skin, to my very soul. I knew what she'd done not by the sudden heaviness of my pocket but by having to repress a sudden urge to start shouting about Var's sister's bones. That stone had power indeed—and if it called so strongly to me, how much more to a seer like Hwyn? All this passed through my mind in an instant, as the guards dragged Hwyn out of my grasp against both our wills. “It's a mistake!” I screamed. “Can't you see she's no traitor, only mad?”

  “It is the mad that bring our troubles on us,” Lord Var pronounced. “They bring the ghosts and the earthquakes. They bring the Troubles of the North. We may pity them, but not soften: we are duty bound to destroy them.”

  “NO!” I hurled myself at the guards. One of them brought a cudgel down on my head and I dropped like a windfall apple.

  12

  MADFOLK, MAGES AND PROPHETS

  I awoke in the gutter, my head sorer than all the ale in Swevnalond could have made it. It seemed they'd thrown me out, but not imprisoned me, nor—I checked hastily—rifled my pockets. Thank the g
ods for small miracles! The Eye of Night was still there, as were a few small coins I might well need. But our packs and what little food we had bought were still in Berall Hall, and I scarcely dared think where my companions were.

  I rose unsteadily and looked around me. It was early morning. Berall Hall towered over me to the left; to the right, the streets were beginning to fill once more with carts of harvest goods and care-worn northerners hoping to lighten their hearts at the festival. It was not hard to choose my course from there. The hall seemed unlikely to welcome me back, but in the town I might find Alcorel or one of the passersby who had applauded us yesterday, and might like us enough to be willing to help us.

  I walked as though dreaming, silently, through the streets. People glanced at me, then looked quickly away. My heart sank into the pit of my entrails. The only eyes that would meet mine were the painted ones on icons of the Upside-Down God. In this festival time, his image was everywhere: falling, falling, never to quite hit bottom. He seemed a strangely hapless figure. Drawn alone, he was usually hanging by the foot from a tree branch like a tortured prisoner, but smiling as though unaware of his plight. In the Divine Wheel with the other three Great Ones, he sometimes still appeared with a rope on one ankle as though bound to the Wheel and its turning—though it was said that he himself, as the Turning God, started the Wheel's motion and with it time, birth, and death. In other images he simply fell unrestrained, unprotected, helpless, plunging toward a doom always inevitable but never realized.

  The stories told of him were as uncomfortable as his icons. I had heard that he tired the other gods with his constant questioning till they sent him to roam the earth in human form. Here, still, he questioned everything, discomfiting kings and rulers and priests. At last, his own high priests, charging him with blasphemy, captured him and hung him by the foot from a tree to be beaten with flails, mocked, and spat upon. But the weight of the god hanging from the branch was more than the weight of the world; with the roots of the tree as a fulcrum, he had turned the world upside-down and made the World-Wheel turn.

  Some of the stories say the Hidden Goddess rescued him from his bondage, cut him down, and caught him when he fell. Some say he never escaped, and is still bound to the World-Wheel, still mocked and beaten, still turning the world with his weight.

  The god's images unsettled me as much as they always had. Still I stopped to contemplate an icon hanging on the side of a house—a particularly stark image, half naked and covered with whip-weals, still unaccountably smiling—and I murmured to that inverted, inscrutable face, “If one prisoner can help another, then help her now.”

  As the market-square filled with people, I spotted faces familiar from the previous day, but no one greeted me. Instead they seemed to veer away from me, as though afraid my misfortune would jump onto them like fleas. In front of an inn, I saw Alcorel, and quickened my pace to greet him—but without much hope. When he bolted into the tavern to avoid me, I was scarcely even disappointed.

  At last I saw down an alley a one-legged beggar in a gray cassock, who half-smiled at me, his clear gray eyes not averted from mine. I followed him down to a rank corner behind a stable. “Will you recognize me, brother?” I asked.

  “You must have fallen far,” he said, “to call a beggar your brother.”

  “I'm accustomed to calling any man in that garb my brother,” I returned.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “But I doubt you'd dispute that you've fallen far—despite your order's reputation for argument. You're muddy as a frog; spent the night in a ditch, no doubt, and never washed that wound on your brow. Come with me. You need looking after,” said the stranger. So I followed him to a little makeshift shack, scarcely enough to keep the wind out. “My name's Jereth,” I said.

  “I'm Vokh,” said the beggar. “Here—” and he moistened a rag with water from a bucket near the door, and washed the dried blood and dirt from my brow.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You're kinder than I've merited. I give you my old clothing, and you receive me when no one else will. Will the law be after us both now? What will this kindness cost you?”

  “I'll be all right. No one will notice me—they haven't in years, so why begin now?” Vokh said. “But your little com-rade—now there's a desperate case.”

  “Ah, yes,” I said. “It seems the whole town knows my troubles.”

  “News of such an uncanny performance naturally travels fast. She's taken the surest route to the gallows that Lord Var's rule provides. You're a stranger in these parts, so you don't know what means our lord has used to keep order. He's found a way, he says, to turn aside the Troubles. You see, he believes some people call the Troubles to themselves: madfolk, mages, prophets. Kill them, and the Troubles lie quiet in Berall. The people mostly don't complain, because as he promised, we've had peace. But that peace is cruelly purchased, as you know well enough by now.”

  “Where is Hwyn—my friend? She's not—they haven't already—”

  “She's in Var's dungeon,” said Vokh. “They can't hang a criminal during the feast days, lest it offend the god. That gives her three more days. Beyond that, don't raise your hopes. She's run afoul of Var's law in every possible way: if she meant what she said about his sister's death, then she's a rebel and so doomed; if not, then she's mad, and also doomed; and if it should be true that Var murdered his sister—why then she's a prophet, most dangerous of all, and most certainly doomed.”

  “Gods have mercy, what can I do?” I dropped my head into my hands, irritating the sore. “Will they at least allow me to visit her?”

  “I can find out for you,” Vokh said. “You wait here. Don't let anyone see you until I come back.”

  Suddenly I remembered my other companion. “What of the Lady Trenara? Is she also a prisoner?”

  “People say she is still Lord Var's guest, not blamed for the defects of her servant. But they say she does nothing but cry.”

  “She cannot be safe there,” I said. “The lady is not what she seems. She—”

  “No.” Vokh cut me short. “Don't tell me what or who she really is. Don't tell me what Hwyn is, or why you are here, or where you are going. My debt is to you, not to your friends or to whatever fool's errand brought you into this pitiless town. I don't want to know whether you are all traitors, prophets, or lunatics. I know too much already—I know that your Hwyn spoke true, and that you all bear a heavy weight of secrets. I don't want to share that weight. If I can slip in unobserved—and I may, for beggars are common enough at Var's gate—I will ask the lady to meet you outside town. If I cannot, I will conceal you as long as need be, then wish you good fortune and send you on your way.”

  “That's already more than I could ask,” I said. “Knowing what you do—the truth of Hwyn's sayings—you must have been close to them once, Var and his sister. I am not the only one to have fallen far.”

  Vokh put a finger to his lips. “No more. Let us both keep our counsel.” He left me then and I, still weak from injury, slept till he returned.

  I woke to a blast of wind as the door opened and shut. I raised myself and made room for Vokh on the sleeping pallet, which was all the furniture he had. He propped his crutch on the wall and sat down next to me. “The news is as good as may be expected,” he said. “There's no warrant for your arrest. The townspeople may shun you, but you can probably move about and even ask to visit your jailed friend without landing in the same trap. I couldn't get to see the other one, the Lady Trenara, but I've heard of no further stir at the hall, so it seems that whatever she may have to hide remains hidden.”

  “There's no sign that the lord might soften toward Hwyn— that my lady might prevail with him to spare her?”

  Vokh smiled sadly. “I am sorry.”

  “I must go see her now, if I can,” I said. “You've been kinder than I deserve. I wish I'd given you something of real value. Will you have this?” I offered my cloak.

  “No, brother,” Vokh said. “I couldn't accept it. Why, I'd be accused of
stealing it from some clothier's stall! Go now to your friend. Will you be back?”

  “No,” I said. “I would not link you to our trouble. And trouble there will be, for I will not abandon her.”

  “You're a bold man, Jereth. May the Turning God grant you a better turn of fortune.”

  “And to you,” I said, “may he bring good harvest.” I hastened to leave, before he could notice the coins I'd left in the sleeping pallet, the last remnant of the previous day's bounty.

  The guards at Berall Hall were not put out at my request to visit a prisoner. The dungeon, it seemed, was easy to enter, if rather harder to leave. As the door clanged closed behind me I wondered if they ever meant to let me out—and what would happen to the Eye of Night if they did not. I reached into my pocket to finger the mysterious stone, reawakening that sense of panic I'd felt when Hwyn first slipped it into my pocket. Touching the Eye, I seemed to see around me bricks of human bone mortared with blood. The reality that greeted my earthly senses was scarcely less gruesome. The damp air reeked of excrement and sickness, so that I hated to touch anything in that foul place. And yet I had to keep one hand on the wall lest I lose my step. It was midday, but light barely penetrated Var's dungeon. As I hesitated, a voice pierced the darkness: “Jereth? Is that you?”

  “Hwyn!” I hastened toward her, and to my relief found her running toward me, not shackled or chained.

  “I recognized your footsteps,” she said. “I'm so glad to see you. When they hit you on the head I was afraid … Jereth, you are a visitor, not a prisoner?” she asked anxiously.

  “Yes, I'm all right, Hwyn, but worried sick about you. They say that madfolk and prophets are both condemned to hang in this evil place. That is how Lord Var keeps the Troubles at bay and earns the love of his people.”

  “So I gathered,” she said. “In a sense the lord's right,” she mused. “I did come to Berall carrying the Troubles. They lie curled up inside the Sky-Raven's Egg, awaiting birth. Var can't kill the Troubles by killing me, but he hasn't chosen the wrong victim, this time. I am everything he fears.”