by David Keck
“What does Father want of me, Sir Geridon?” Lamoric asked.
“Lordship, it’s your brother I’m speaking for.”
“Landast.” Lamoric blinked. “Yes. I suppose that is always more likely. I hope he does not expect repayment of his loans to me.” He glanced to Coensar. “If the reports of these Burrstone men are any guide, we shall both be old men before I can free myself of his kindness.”
Geridon frowned briefly. “No, Lordship. Your brother’s spoken of none of this in my hearing. Keeping it quiet, is my guess. It’s other business I’m on. The king’s asked that your father and all the Great Council ride up to Eldinor to feast his anniversary. It’s been five years since he was crowned. Did the writ find you here? Burrstone Walls is on the Beacon Roll. . . .” He saw the paper dangling in Odwy’s hand. “His Highness asks that in honor of the day these great men come, either in person or through someone who represents their blood, to renew their homage oaths, and ‘reaffirm’ that our Ragnal is king in Errest and liege lord of them all.”
“And my father is not fit to travel to Eldinor?”
“Not no more, really. And your brother’s picked up where the old man left off, running this and that. All of these responsibilities? He reckons he cannot leave them unattended.”
As the facts took shape in Lamoric’s mind, the tendons stood in his neck. “Let me see if I have you, Sir Geridon. Brother says that I must—must mind you—leave the Burrstones to travel to Eldinor where I must present myself before King Ragnal and his entire court?”
A crooked grin spread on Lamoric’s face.
“He’s asking, Lordship,” said Geridon.
Father Odwy had both fists in his beard, and looked ready to do himself some injury. “Lordship. The Accounting. We must finish.”
“Aye, best get on with it,” said Geridon, standing. “I return to Acconel with your answer.” He pulled a scroll from his surcoat. “You’ll find here some words for the king and council, Your Lordship. From your father.”
Lamoric nodded, eyes shining. “We must be quick,” he reasoned. “A boat is the only way, so a small party. No horses. I tell you this will make us once more! The heroes of Tern Gyre: Coensar, Ouen, Sir Durand.” An involuntary gasp escaped Deorwen’s lips. Lamoric caught her arm, giving it a shake. “And His Highness will meet my wife as well. We sail for Eldinor tomorrow after First Twilight!”
Durand found the mirror of his own horror in Deorwen’s face. The Burrstones would seem like oceans and continents compared to a tiny boat. They would be side by side for weeks.
As Durand stared up at Deorwen, he found that Geridon had ducked close by his ear. “Don’t think I didn’t see you there, boy. I heard what happened last year with that land your father meant for you. Still, maybe this jaunt’ll sort something out, eh?” He winked and tugged his sopping hood back in place. “Don’t like to be away. It’s dark times. Keep your eyes wide, and stick by old Coensar. He’s been fighting ages. Knows what he’s about.”
3. Signs Before Sailing
Durand climbed a greasy stair into a tower some long-dead lord of the Burrstones had cobbled onto the giants’ old walls. The best way into the old beacon tower was a half-hidden door near Lamoric’s own chamber.
The old tower was black as a barrel, and Durand could only grope his way upward, climbing like a child while a stream of rainwater made a cataract of the stairs.
Around one turning, he found a landing and a crumbling door. A glance through the solitary arrow slit showed him the courtyard a dozen fathoms below the rickety tower. Servants darted through the rain, brown as mice. If a man stoppered the gatehouse, it looked as though the great courtyard would fill like a horse trough—a good place for drowning.
Durand shook his head. It had been a long winter. Their glamorous brawling under the Blood Moon had left Lamoric a lord of pits and hovels, destitute but for his brother’s charity. All winter the young lord had walked the halls of Burrstone Walls unable to sit or sleep, Deorwen looking half-mad. His coffers were empty, his knights must leave him, hope was gone, and the rain and snow had kept the whole lot of them mewed up in a few damp rooms with men like Odwy and the Custom of the manor.
Durand thought back to the night when he first set out on his own, and the promises that had been made to him. He’d heard rapping in the dark, and, in a well in the midst of the castle yard, he’d found one of the Powers of Heaven waiting for him: the Traveler. A giant in rags with silver-penny eyes and a forked staff that shook the world. As Durand left his father’s hall, that Power had foreseen love, glory, and a place in the world for him. The winter had got him wondering.
Durand shoved the crumbling little door wide—
—And got a face full of furious, smothering confusion.
Dark shapes beat his head and warding arms. Hard hooks and needles shot past him and gushed from the arrow loop behind. He pitched on his shoulder, half falling from the landing—countless birds stormed between the battlements of Burrstone Walls. Starlings.
And he was left, sitting on the stairs as feathers fluttered down around him like snow.
“Hells,” he snarled. It seemed that the tower was a coop for every starling for ten leagues and they’d all been inside to wait out the rain. Durand pushed his way into a white-crusted room whose every crevice was chinked with straw and feathers, and followed a caked ladder to a trapdoor among the ceiling beams.
In the rainy gloom above, dim trees bristled for acres beyond the walls. He had just made out the dark silence of the Maidensbier flowing below when something far too near shrieked to life.
Durand tottered on the edge of the trapdoor, fighting his blade into the darkness. Right by the door, a man of some sort screamed like mad, all white forearms, knees, and elbows. It was all Durand could do to stop himself falling down another set of stairs.
“Host of Hell!” Durand snarled. But it seemed that Durand’s words—and the hulking shape of Durand atop the dark tower—were too much for the cowering creature. The pale man scrambled for the battlements, looking as if he meant to throw himself over the brink.
“What are you doing?” said Durand.
“I’m Osbald. I’m Watcher!”
It took him a moment to remember. “Aye. Osbald. Right.” He held out a calming hand—in part to catch his balance.
“You aren’t to come up here,” said White Osbald.
“Too late for that.” Durand scrubbed his neck. “How do you get past the bloody birds?”
“Birds?”
“Downstairs.”
White Osbald grimaced in extreme discomfort. “I’m Watcher.”
“You don’t go down?”
“I’m Watcher.”
“Right. Daft of me to forget.” He spread his hands and sat on the floor while his heart’s wild pounding slowed. “You think you could leave me for a while? I’m to check the beacon. Have you got firewood?”
“There.”
Beyond the trapdoor, the rooftop was empty except for a massive iron fire basket. The pale man had half-curled himself round one of its iron legs. From the position, the Watcher pointed up at fagots so rotten they looked like rolls of shaggy, gray carpet. This was the firewood.
“Right, Osbald. Why don’t you go down and see if you can find us some dry wood? I’ll bet that’s meant to be a storeroom downstairs. We’ll get some dry stuff up here, and it’ll be right as rain.”
Osbald had uncoiled a degree or two here and there.
“Go on,” Durand said. “Firewood. This here’s older than the Cradle. And we haven’t got much of a beacon without a fire. The king says we’re to light it.”
“The king?”
“And this old stuff won’t burn.”
White Osbald bobbed his head and, with a last, wary glance at Durand, swarmed down the ladder.
Durand hauled another deep breath, looking out over the Maidensbier. A stick of the firewood in Osbald’s fire basket—when examined—turned out to be little more than slime and scabs.
“I should never have set foot in the Burrstone,” he muttered. After Tern Gyre, he should have put a hundred leagues between himself and Lord Lamoric’s wife. Instead, he filled the dark days riding the hog-wallow tracks around the manor, keeping himself from the temptation of stray glances and chance touches in the narrow passages of Burrstone Walls. A stronger man would have said farewell to Lamoric and Deorwen and the rest back at Tern Gyre and never set foot in the Burrstones. Instead, he would now be trapped in a boat with them all and nowhere to hide.
“Damn me for a fool.” He’d thought of talking with Coensar. A man like the captain would have found somewhere to sell his sword as soon as the roads were dry; he’d been fighting in the tourneys of Errest since most knights were boys, and a man felt better riding with a fellow he could trust.
Now, though, it was too late for any of that, and he had to wonder if he’d ever really meant to go, if he’d planned to stay here by Deorwen forever, pining love-struck till the dripping Burrstones rotted him away.
White Osbald appeared in the hatchway, his pasty face twitching with the effort of hauling a bushel basket of firewood through the trapdoor. Durand took the basket. “Here. For Heaven’s sake.”
The beacon’s fire basket would take another five loads. Osbald’s hands, wide as baker’s paddles, were already shaking.
“We’ll get the next ones together, eh? We’ll need you in shape to light the thing when the time comes, right?”
When they had finished lugging their baskets to the tower, the hour was late. Durand ordered White Osbald down to warm himself by the fires: he had had some of the kitchen boys start some tallow melting. A little fresh grease would make sure the old wood lit. They would lug it up and get some sleep.
Tonight, he was hauling wood and melting grease. Tomorrow, they were heading for the heart of Errest the Old. He pictured King Ragnal, a caged lion of a man, in robes as heavy with gold and jewels as a Patriarch’s Book of Moons. He remembered the hop and cackle of the man’s train of functionaries. He remembered the Lady of Hesperand appearing like a Power to set the Great Council right. He remembered the fury of Radomor, the Hero of Hallow Down and usurper Duke of Yrlac.
There might still be gratitude in Eldinor if they searched for it. The winter’s snows had fallen before Lamoric’s men could catch the king and bow before his benevolence. There might be lands and titles waiting. But he wondered: they had handed Radomor a defeat, but he was not dead—and neither were those two black-robed Rooks of his.
Durand eyed the deepening gloom. River, bare trees, and naked fields crumbled like a landscape of cinders under the drizzle. Somewhere in the wet Heavens, thunder rumbled. He pulled his cloak tighter. He had only small problems: one fool and one heart. Under the Blood Moon, half the king’s Great Council had cast their votes for Radomor of Yrlac—the kingdom’s troubles might be large.
In the trapdoor, something shuffled. Durand glanced, but White Oswald hadn’t poked his head up.
Durand wondered what the king meant to prove with this little party and its hilltop candles. It seemed an empty sort of gesture.
Now, light rose from the starling chamber. Durand would have to get poor Oswald started down there with a broom: a task that might take the Lambing Moon and the Sowing Moon beyond it.
The light moved, and all at once Durand pictured White Oswald—with a candle and a sloshing kettle of running grease with all the clutter in that room. The mooncalf would burn the tower. Durand shoved his head into the trap.
And found himself staring down upon a slender young woman.
The woman had a candle in her hand, but the flame burned in slow tendrils that clung and swirled as she moved. The light it shed was the murky glow of a pond’s depths. Shadows lapped. At the touch of it, Durand’s nose and mouth were stopped with a stench of stagnant weeds.
And the room around her—in the wavering green light—was not the crusted old storeroom. Neat stacks of wood shivered in alcoves where the green shafts touched. Someone had brought a rumpled pallet: the padded canvas rippled in the undulating shadow. There was a wine pot.
He could not breathe. He might as well have had his head in the river.
He must have made some sound then, for the maiden turned, her hair rippling like a slow streamer in the green light. Her neck was pale as a fish’s flesh. He saw the shape of her jaw. But before her eyes could fall upon him, Durand flinched from the trapdoor.
There was no air in the green light of the maiden’s candle. And Durand was glad he had not seen her eyes.
It took only instants for him to realize that he was not safe, even on the rooftop. The green shafts of Otherworldly light swelled between the floorboards. Heaven was a black well above him as the light reached higher and higher. In his mind’s eye, the strange woman mounted the ladder and rose in the hatchway. But then the light ebbed away, leaving him in the darkness.
For a moment, he breathed in relief, then he remembered where the stairway went: to his master’s chamber. To Deorwen’s door. There was only one stairway down.
Mastering himself, Durand dropped into what was now, once again, an empty storeroom. Bird shit crunched under his soles, its acid stink in his nostrils. But the greenish light still brimmed in the stairwell. And Deorwen was down below—and Lamoric and others—all a whisper from that tower door. He followed, finding the stairwell air thick with cool reeds and slime.
He chased a long tendril of the woman’s hair as it slithered upon the green air and vanished into the passage before Deorwen’s door. The woman’s tresses coiled before him, alive. And her hand rested on the black face of Deorwen’s door. Durand could neither move nor breathe. The pale dome of the maiden’s forehead dropped against the wood, her eyes closed and streaming tears.
Durand had no power to change a gesture.
But the maiden seemed to master herself. She turned from the door.
Durand shrank away, gulping air in the clammy dark of the stairs. If she returned to the stairwell, the Hells would have him in a heartbeat.
But it seemed that she pressed on elsewhere, for the light in the chamber passage ebbed away.
Durand followed it onto the landing high above the feasting hall. His mouth opened, and he nearly dropped his blade. The feasting hall of Burrstone Walls brimmed with visions. Long shields and rippling tapestries hung over the bare walls he knew. Familiar men lay on strange floors; wolfhounds curled where cachepots had stood. Spears leaned in bundles, and Durand knew it all for the dreams or memories of the spectral woman who drifted through. Her candle was the only light.
Durand saw her falter at the distant end of the hall, her eerie candle held high at the courtyard door. And he stole after her as she stepped into the courtyard and out through the gates of Burrstone Walls. He had to know where she was going.
Soon, he was following the flickering image down through the slabs and sagging earth of the Burrstones until the river moved in the dark. Durand made out a new light between stones and willows to match the candle in the woman’s hand: a slender craft along the bank.
Durand opened his mouth. He knew this scene. He knew the boat: a pale thing that might have been carved by a harp-maker. He had dreamt it under the Blood Moon.
Before him, the maiden caught hold of a willow, a wobble in the candle’s flame sending shivers high into the bare tendrils of the willow branches. They might all have been on the floor of the Silvermere.
The woman stepped into the slim craft and sagged back. Her black curls tumbled into the water.
Durand knew the tale. On the Maidensbier—then known by some forgotten name—an ancient duke’s young wife, her secret love witnessed by one of the duke’s loyal men. The young bride who drank foxglove and set herself adrift upon the river.
She settled, the candle balanced on her chest. One long sleeve dangled in the water. He heard a sigh: the only sound in a mute Creation. He saw her fingers open, and knew, even as the night breezes tugged the craft into the current, that it was finished.
It was just as he had seen it when Radomor or his Rooks had set Lamoric’s sister adrift—sending another adulteress to pass her family’s city in parody of this night.
Boat and bride drifted downstream, light as a curl of dry leaf. Durand shook his head.
Something moved behind him.
On the stony bank all around, people had gathered: villagers by the dozen wrapped in hairy blankets. Most were women: mothers and daughters. To his astonishment, Deorwen stood closest of all. She wore only a linen shift, the touch of night breezes pressing the pale fabric close.
“What are you doing here?” Durand managed.
“You see her so clearly,” said Deorwen. “This was Vigand’s hall. Duke Gunderic went off to attend old King Saerdan. He left his bride with one of his men: Baron Vigand. They’d been close. They were meant to have won half of Gireth together. It all happened here. Aralind fell for Vigand. She was seen. Poison was the only way. They say Duke Gunderic’s ship pulled into the Handglass in time to see her pass—he among all his men, she laid out as if in a coffin.”
Durand looked past Deorwen into the shadowed faces of half a village: squat and stolid women to match men like Odwy and Odmund. Deorwen glowed like a lily among the nettles. The darkness was closing thick around them.
“They see the old duke’s bride whenever there is danger for Gireth—and she’s come to our door every night since the Wandering Moon in deep winter. There is little to do but watch. Lamoric won’t listen, but neither can he sleep.” She closed her mouth a moment. “Most do not see what is right before them.”
“What was her name?” Durand asked.
“Aralind, she was called,” she said, wavering where she stood. The winter had been hard.
Durand nodded. “Aralind.” The village women were looking one to another.
“I must get back,” Durand managed.
Deorwen looked down.
4. The Bittern and the Bier
When Lamoric tramped from the gates of Burrstone Walls, the sopping earth was frozen. His knot of household knights yawned and stumbled after him, frost crunching under their boots. In Lamoric’s haste, poor Odwy had been made to pray First Twilight before he had seen even a trace of light in the mist. Every blade and twig bristled with needles of ice.