Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  They passed a while in silence. Allystaire fell into a place within himself he had come to know well. His mind emptied except for the impressions of his senses, his body loose and seemingly still, but occasionally shifting—his shoulders shrugging, his feet flexing within his boots, hands tightening into fists. His perceptions moved into the night around him, its sounds and smells, the feel of it. It was autumn, and no mistaking it—the air was chill enough to feel it moving in the throat and the nose. Bird songs had changed, and the faint smell of rotting leaves rode in the air.

  In this way, Allystaire knew, he had passed many night’s watch—feeling the world around him, immediately attentive to changes with it, while also relaxed, allowing the active part of his mind to take some mild rest.

  It was because of this state that Allystaire was already turning to the doors of the Temple as they opened from within, and Mol emerged. Light spilled from within along with her, from guttering rushlights set along the walls, but also from a brighter and deeper source, that did not waver or bend. Mol’s face was hidden beneath her hood, but her small shoulders were straight, and her head turned towards Allystaire.

  Without words, he understood. They quietly shuffled past each other, and Allystaire heard the banded wooden doors creak closed behind him.

  His eyes searched for the steady source of light, and could find none. Inwardly, his heart sank, for while he felt the Goddess’s presence closely, he knew that She was not precisely present; nor was She absent, really. With a fortifying breath, he walked forward, his armor clanking, till he came to the altar.

  The Hammer that seemed to him to be permanently graven at the top of the Pillar of the Arm glowed faintly, and he knelt before it. His thoughts traveled to his knighthood vigil, in the chapel of Braech in Wind’s Jaw, and he felt his lip curling as disgust welled within him.

  Knighthood, he thought, and he could feel contempt in the word as it rolled across his mind.

  Soon, though, the disdain was mingling with regret, a sadness over something lost. What had I expected, he wondered. And then his mind reeled back to his vigil then, the crude dragon, shaped of stone and roughly polished semiprecious stones that he had bowed before. Though never a religious youth, that vigil had been the culmination of every dream he’d had. Staying up all night in the chapel had not been difficult; the windows had been opened and it was late autumn in northern Oyrwyn. Thankfully, only a light snow had been falling, but no fires were lit save one candle.

  Yet he had made it the night, as he had known he would. The ten years spent getting to that vigil had been harder. He had seen battle, for two seasons, as a squire to Baron Oyrwyn himself, an honor even his father had acknowledged with pride.

  Even so, coming out of the chapel that morning, being received by the Old Baron himself, by his father, by Ufferth of Highgate, by Joeglan of the Horned Towers, accepted as an equal by men who were known and respected across all the baronies—it had been the single finest day of his life.

  Or so he had thought. What had I thought? What was knighthood to me then? It had meant a dream, a dream of leading men and winning glory. And winning the hearts of women, he thought. “Or at least their eyes. At seventeen, their eyes were enough,” he murmured aloud.

  It had been all he had dreamed, all he had been, all he had wanted, as long as he could remember, from the moment his father had brought him to Wind’s Jaw to learn what knighthood meant.

  And then he was, in his mind, six or perhaps seven summers, riding with his father and a small train of knights and men-at-arms. He had been expected, even then, to sit his own horse. He hadn’t ridden on the front of his father’s saddle since he could walk.

  And then walking his pony into Wind’s Jaw—the largest and most terrifying structure he had ever seen, past the huge forward towers that thrust ahead of it on a spur of the mountainside, through and between which the high winds screamed and skirled, granting the place its name in a time lost to any memory. As they approached the gate and entered to the call of a trumpet and a mail-clad warrior yelling, announcing the arrival of Lord Coldbourne, his father—a towering presence behind him, his face and pate shaven to bare, gleaming skin, the blue-grey eyes and sharp nose, smelling of horse and leather and steel—murmuring to him.

  “You are the son of Anthelme Coldbourne and the grandson of Gideon Coldbourne,” he had said, his voice a rough, grating thing, shouted hoarse over the battlefield so often it had nearly given out. “The Coldbourne name means you will be harder than any other boy here. Stronger than any boy here. And if you aren’t that, and much more besides, they’ll break you for an upstart. And you’ll deserve it. I’ll have no shame attach to the name my father won.”

  A group of men who seemed to the young Allystaire much like his father had come to meet them in the courtyard, after others had taken their horses. At the head of them, dressed in grey silk trimmed with ermine, had been the Old Baron, Gerard Oyrwyn. He was not, Allystaire knew now, a particularly large man, but in the moment he had seemed huge, for he commanded the men around him by his very presence, his booming voice. He had a well-trimmed beard and his hair was held back by a simple silver circlet of office; both had once been brown but were by then half grey.

  He was shorter than Anthelme, shorter than Allystaire would be when he began to approach manhood, but the way he carried himself, his back as straight as a blade, his dark grey eyes focused intently on whoever or whatever was before them, made him seem, somehow, the largest man the young Allystaire had ever seen.

  After exchanging loud, expansive warrior’s greetings with his father, the Baron had looked down at the son, those eyes focusing sharply upon him. Allystaire distinctly remembered that the man—his liege lord, he knew, without understanding all that implied—had not spoken down to him as so many adults had, but instead, had spoken to him in the same direct way he had to the warriors and knights that surrounded him.

  “What is your name, lad?”

  “Allystaire Coldbourne, my lord,” he had replied, meeting that steady grey gaze with his own curious eyes.

  “Looking a man straight in the eye, any man, is a good habit, Allystaire. Keep it,” he had said. “Now, why have you come to my home?”

  Allystaire cleared his throat, and carefully recited the words he’d been taught the past week. “To become a knight in the service of my Lord Baron of Oyrwyn. To defend with my life his rights, lands, and people; to strike with all my skill against his enemies. To prove my courage and temper my soul in his service, and the service of his descendants, till the end of my life.”

  Allystaire noted the Baron’s eyes flit towards the towering presence of his father, and he nodded an almost imperceptible, but approving, nod. He looked back to the boy.

  “I accept your service, Allystaire Coldbourne, on my behalf and for my descendants, till the end of your life. For faithful service, I will give faithful reward: food at my table, space under my roof and by my hearth. My treasure and my spoils I will share fairly in measure of your service, and the lands, titles, and possessions of your father’s shall be yours in time. Break faith with me, or my heirs, and you will face exile and death.”

  The boy knew what to do next. He knelt, his right knee touching the rocky dirt of the courtyard, and lowered his head—but he did the last slowly, bearing in mind the Baron’s advice about looking a man in the eye.

  He felt the Baron’s hand, strong, and with the hard ridges of rings on two of the fingers, settle atop his head. “Rise, Allystaire Coldbourne, and begin your life in my service.”

  The boy hopped quickly to his feet, full of energy, brimming with excitement, unsure of what to do next.

  The Baron was still watching him, and said, “You’ll begin your training immediately, boy.”

  “What am I to learn, my lord? The sword? The lance?”

  There was a smattering of laughter from the gathered warriors, but they were silenced by
a quick look from the Baron, who said, “There is nothing wrong with being eager, lad. Yet what you’re to learn first, and every evening from now on, is not steel or horseflesh, but vellum and ink. No man is fit to be a knight in my service who cannot read, write, and think.”

  Allystaire had felt his cheeks flush at the laughter, but gathered himself to say, “I am already lettered, my lord.”

  “Good,” the Baron boomed. “That’s more than I can say for half of this lot. Still, there’ll be much reading for you to do. Now, off you go—tell the Castellan you’re to meet the tutors.”

  Allystaire knew enough to realize he was dismissed, so he hurried on through the gates of the keep, into the beginning of the life he had dreamed of since he knew what it meant to dream.

  Suddenly Allystaire was back in the Temple, his knees aching as he knelt in front of the altar. He shifted his weight, lifting his left knee with a click so that he rested only on the right. It had taken more than ten years from that day for him to come to his vigil and his knighthood, years of sweat and blood and pain, with his father’s words, and the Baron’s, always driving him on.

  He had been harder than the other boys, and stronger. Anthelme Coldbourne had made sure of that. The Old Baron had been as good as his word on that day, nearly thirty years ago: riches, spoils, honors.

  And so had the Young Baron been: exile, for broken faith.

  “Does breaking that oath bother you, My Knight?”

  The Goddess’s voice startled him out of his reverie, and he was suddenly intensely aware of Her presence, behind him, of the muted song, the steady, warm light.

  “It…I do not know, my Lady,” Allystaire replied. “I did not break it while the Old Baron lived, only with his son. I could never have broken faith with Gerard Oyrwyn. I do not truly know if I would judge him a good man, as I see such things now. It is likely that I would not, yet I loved him like a grandfather. It is not in my heart to renounce that now.”

  He felt Her hand settle on his shoulder, felt the tangible weight of it even through the steel he wore.

  “Love, honestly borne, can never be a sin, My Arm,” She said. “Why do you not turn and face me?”

  He felt his cheeks grow hot. “It feels presumptuous, my Lady.”

  She laughed. “The Baron’s advice to look men in the eye may apply to such as me as well, Allystaire. If Braech Himself were to confront you, would you not look Him in the eye?”

  “I would,” Allystaire admitted, his cheeks still flushed, though a tiny trill of anger at the mention of the Sea Dragon rolled through him.

  “Then why do you not offer me the same courtesy?” He felt Her hand lifting him to his feet, and he turned around, meeting Her face to face.

  She was, as always, beauty and power barely contained in a feminine figure. A soft, golden radiance, warm and inviting, filled the space around Her, emanating from Her skin, clear and smooth, without line or blemish.

  She did not appear young, nor old, not as his mind could measure such things and make sense of them. She simply was.

  “Much of what that man taught you has merit, Allystaire,” She said, Her eyes—golden, without pupils or irises—searched his face, and, he suspected, his thoughts. “There is no good or ill in knowledge itself, or in the skill of your hands, and much of both comes from Gerard Oyrwyn.” Her hands then closed upon his, and he shivered from the power of Her touch. His eyes closed, but he forced them open again, half-lidded.

  “Do you know why you have the second part of this vigil, Allystaire?”

  “It is the order that you came to us, Called us,” he replied, his voice wavering slightly, for She still clasped his hands.

  “Yes, though there is more to it. We are not in the deepest and darkest part of the night; that is for My Shadow. Yet we stand where the memory of the sun is as faint as the hope of its return. The only light is what we might make ourselves, what we bring with us. You must be that light, Allystaire—you and Mol and Mourmitnourthrukacshtorvul—steady, and still, and bright enough in the darkness so that all who see it may remember the sun, and know that the dawn is coming.”

  Allystaire tried to think on Her words, to understand them as they came and take them into his mind and his heart, but the touch of Her hands was so overwhelming that it seemed he might miss things he should understand. Then, in a flash, something came to him, and before he knew it, he was speaking.

  “If the order we were Called, and the order of the Vigil we stand, is…then Gideon…”

  She smiled, though it was something of a sad smile. “Is like unto the dawn,” She said. “And it may be your greatest task to see that he is not a false dawn, my Knight.”

  “There is so much he needs to know,” Allystaire said, a sudden trace of desperation creeping into his voice and his features, eyes narrowing. “He could be a great man, and a good one. I think he wants to be. Yet there is so much no one has ever taught him.”

  She smiled at him, fully, with nothing held back and no hint of sadness weighing upon her features, and for a moment, all thought fled. “My Knight, there is much he knows that you do not. Be mindful that you learn as well as teach.”

  He nodded, took a deep and slightly strangled breath.

  “What is wrong, my Allystaire?”

  He cleared his throat and closed his eyes, dipping his head slightly so as to avoid the full force of Her eyes. “Your touch is overwhelming, Mother,” he replied.

  One of Her hands left his, but suddenly cupped his chin and lifted his head to meet Her eyes once more. “Why do you call me that?”

  He straightened up, took quick breath. “It seemed appropriate.”

  She thought on this a moment, and Her eyes moved from his face. It was both the lifting of a weight off of him, and a cause for despair. Quickly, the twin golden eyes rested once more on him. “I suppose it might. Yet I would ask you to remember that I am not your Mother.”

  Allystaire’s mouth went dry, and he felt that if Her hands had not been holding him up, his knees may have buckled. “I…do you have a name, My Lady?”

  “I have had many names, in many places,” She replied. “Some of them even I have forgotten. Is it important?”

  “I…it may be to the people, your people—to have a name to give you.”

  “Then let them give one to me, if they wish,” She said, smiling again. “If I were to name myself, I would be limited, captured, defined by the name I chose.” She laughed, and his heart thrilled at the sound, pounding against his chest. “Gideon will understand what I mean. A name given to me would be a symbol, and thus only a part of what I am. A name given by me would be the true thing. That would be a dangerous thing to loose upon the world, a tool in the hands of our enemies, and they have tools enough as it is.”

  “My Lady, forgive me if I speak out of turn—you have spoken to me, more than once now, of enemies, and of a darkness to come. Who do you mean? The Church of the Sea Dragon? The sorcerers? The Baron?”

  “All of them and more,” She replied. “I do not wish to be at odds with my brother Braech—but what He has become, I will not abide.” She sighed, and Allystaire felt a sudden surge of desire.

  “The longest night of the winter, my Arm—that is the time you must prepare against.”

  “Is there any more that you can say?”

  “Only what I have told my Voice. She knows my mind as closely as any mortal can.”

  Allystaire nodded, gathered his breath and his wits, and said, “My Lady, I am hesitant to make boasts to you, to offer vainglorious promises of impossible victory. Yet if the Churches and the Barons and all the sorcerers of the world arrayed themselves against your people, I would stand between them, even if I had to do it alone.”

  “You are never alone, My Arm. I am always with you. And My Shadow, My Wit, My Will—do you think they follow you only because I came to you before I came to them? They s
ee what I saw. I Ordained you my paladin not to make you a better or a greater man, Allystaire. I chose you because my Gifts could draw forth the greatness—and the goodness—that was already within you.”

  Then suddenly, She leaned forward and kissed him, Her mouth against his, Her hands clutching his, supporting him, for surely he would have fallen to the ground had She not. It was not a chaste kiss, and the heat and the power of it was so overwhelming that he could not have recalled his name if he were asked. He was not Allystaire, not a knight, not a paladin—he was a man being consumed by desire, by love, by something beyond him or any words he could put to it.

  And then She stepped back, and he fell heavily to a knee before Her, gasping for breath.

  “I have given you every Gift I can, save one, Allystaire,” She whispered, Her voice thick. With desire? The question floated dumbly across his mind. “The longest night,” She said, her voice growing faint, Her form fading from his adoring eyes. “Be a lamp in its darkness, My Knight.”

  And then, She was gone, and Allystaire’s heart sank, if only for a moment. Once Her presence had receded, he could think again. He realized his heart was still thudding against his chest, and he closed his eyes and held his breath for a moment, till its pace slowed, then levered himself back to his feet.

  “Well,” he said aloud, with a slight chuckle rattling in his dry throat, “that was considerably better than a vigil in the Sea Dragon’s chapel.” He rolled his shoulders, stretched his legs, loosened his hammer in his belt, and began to pace, finding himself full of nervous energy. His steps echoed around the stone, his armor clanking and settling around him.

  The doors creaked open. He felt, as much as saw, Idgen Marte step inside.

  “Has it been two turns already? Surely not.”

  “Aye, it has,” Idgen Marte said.

  As they passed each other, they clasped hands and forearms for a moment, and Allystaire thought he felt the light that hovered around the altar take on a different quality, dimming and flickering.