by David Keck
And the Bittern struck.
Timbers snapped with a sound like a thunderclap. Every man was on his knees, howling.
Durand skidded across the plank bottom as the Bittern jerked like a fish in a dog’s jaws.
“We’re caught broadside. We must get her off the rock!” strained Odemar.
Strakes and gunnels flexed like a snapped limb. Durand could see new white wood in long cracks.
Coensar looked straight at him. “Come on!”
Half the men were on their backsides. Water foamed around either side of a stone the size of a mill. Deorwen had been thrown into the bows. In a moment, the boat would fold around the great stone and they’d be finished.
Durand and the captain fought to push the Bittern free, struggling bare-handed, sliding on wet boots till Coensar spotted the long oars floating all around them. “Here!” he said, and catching up one of the long poles, he rammed it between the gunwale and the stone. Durand grabbed hold and the two heaved.
And Bittern slid—men sprawling—then she stuck fast again. Durand could feel the planks warping as he heaved.
“It must be now,” said Odemar.
Coensar turned on the others. “Every man get an oar. If you aren’t dead yet, get an oar!” And the men, awkward as foals, scrambled to jam their paddles against the stone. At Durand’s hip, Deorwen appeared, stabbing an oar down like a whaler’s spear. Durand strained with his jaws locked as white rents opened, and he didn’t know whether the Bittern would break or go free.
Then she slipped once more.
“Pull!” Coen roared.
And the boat tumbled off. Every fleck of her winter’s paint was left on the great stone as the Bittern pitched into the current, half-awash and beyond controlling.
Men sprawled into the boat once more, putting the oars to their proper use.
Odemar stood in the stern even still, water sloshing to his thighs.
But the Maidensbier had finished with them. The cliff walls fell away, and as the channel widened, the river relaxed its grip. They rode, freezing among floating provisions and splinters, until, finally, Durand heard riverbank reeds brush the Bittern’s hull.
Coensar gave Durand a wry grin.
5. The Glen of Idols
The backwater cove where they arrived was a meadow at the bottom of a steep glen. Among the pines around the meadow’s edge stood stone figures, neckless and squat as tombstones: the Powers of Heaven with bulging almond eyes and sketched limbs.
Under these gray watchers, Durand and the others—oarsmen and knights both—bailed enough icy water from the Bittern that the company could drag her up the bank. Lamoric took Deorwen’s elbow, bringing her ashore. And joined the others, flopping onto the turf and giving thanks to the Host of Heaven for their deliverance.
But it seemed as though the Powers answered back. Strange voices hung over the valley.
When Durand levered his head from the sod, he saw a row of hooded figures, as gray and strange as the stone Powers beyond them.
It turned out that only nine men lived in the Glen of the Idols, and they were anchorites: monks who had shut themselves away from the world. Their knot of stone huts at the valley’s head had no rooms where a man could stand upright. There was no dining hall and no sanctuary. But Coensar persuaded the uneasy hermits to allow their party to use the idols’ meadow as a tenting ground and to cut a tree or two for new planks.
Everyone pitched in, and by dusk they had settled around a bonfire Deorwen had arranged.
“I reckon our Odemar’s still cross,” said Berchard.
The ship’s master was thumping a makeshift plank in place with a lump of firewood. The dull report echoed around the whole valley—as did the oaths he spat when his makeshift mallet missed. These were nearly enough to make even the stone Powers flinch.
“We’ve broken his boat, and now he’s missing supper,” Berchard said. He had a gobbet of wet bread and some slimy cheese. “Say what you like about these horse-loaves. Decent bread wouldn’t hold up to a soaking like this.”
Lamoric was standing. He swung his damp cloak from his shoulders and opened it before the heat. “I wonder what kind of time we’ll make now.”
“I wouldn’t wonder that too near our friend,” Ouen cautioned, waving a bit of sausage.
Lamoric turned the cloak, letting the flames lick steam from the wool. “No. And he’s right. Another day or two in Burrstone would have mattered little. Now we’ll be spending the time with our stone friends here.” The statues looked down with their protruding eyes.
“Husband, you will burn that,” said Deorwen, motioning to Lamoric’s cloak.
“Where did you say this was, by the way?” Lamoric asked of the company.
One of the oarsmen answered, “A couple of days from Yestreen.” He remembered to doff his cap. “Lordship.”
“Your cloak, husband,” Deorwen repeated.
“Not very far along, then,” Lamoric said, giving the cloak a swish over the fire. “Even if the boat would float. I suppose there’s little point—”
The cloak caught alight: a moment of brilliance and stink beaten out with curses that threw a scroll from under Lamoric’s surcoat. They had last seen the parchment in Sir Geridon’s hand.
Lamoric plucked the scroll from the edge of the flames, and then unrolled the page—mottled as a leopard with running ink. He laughed, seemingly on the edge of tears.
“I could say that it is unreadable: very nearly the truth,” Lamoric said. “Of course, I had already read it before Geridon was a league down the road.”
He looked to the glint of Coensar’s gaze.
“Losing the thing in the river, they might have believed. I am not sure about dropping it in a fire. That might have seemed more than accidental.”
Coensar had not moved, but Deorwen spoke, “Husband, I’ve seen you with this letter. It clearly plagues you. Why won’t you tell us what it says?”
The men from Burrstone climbed to their feet and went to help their master.
“Yes. This is my father’s business with the king. Although I don’t suppose he’d see it as secret. He trusted it to me, after all.”
“What does he say?” asked Coensar.
“I am asked to present the king with a series of requests. Reasonable things. We are to ask if, after the recent vote at the Great Council, the king might waive any fees or fines due the crown for heirs taking up their birthrights, peers marrying widows under royal care. These fines provoked ill feeling in some quarters before the Great Council vote. To hearten the realm, we are to suggest that he forgive them.
“He asks—on behalf of those who voted to forgive the king’s debts—that the king provide relief from certain military obligations. So that they may defend themselves from enemies on their borders.”
Lamoric shook the paper in the air. Durand noticed Deorwen putting one small hand over her eyes.
“I am to tell the king, as I read this, that the Great Council dukes who voted to save the king’s own crown have a list of things they would like. He should forgive taxes, he should forget duties owed, he should let them keep their soldiers close and send him none.
“My father is a gentle old man: earnest, forthright, and pious. He will see this as a collection of kindly suggestions to prevent trouble: advice from those most loyal to him.
“But how will a man circled by every wolf in the kingdom see this? Will he note that his most loyal are whispering about his business? Will he see a long list of demands, and how they’ll empty his coffers, and leave him stripped of an army? You have seen King Ragnal. You have seen how hard-pressed he has been. You have felt his temper. How will he react, do you think?”
Lamoric looked at those around the circle. “Perhaps now you would have me drop this in the fire?”
The flames crackled a hand’s span from the parchment scroll.
By the water, Odemar snarled a string of oaths that filled the glen. After a few silent heartbeats, Deorwen straightened.
/> “That man will need food, the same as the rest of us,” she murmured. “I wonder what survives of our stores?”
The Bittern gleamed in the glen’s last scrap of sunlight. At the boat’s flank, Deorwen bent to speak to Odemar. The boat’s master tugged his forelock, caught like a crab against his boat’s hull by this noblewoman’s kindness.
Her hair was free to flash in the amber light. Durand sipped from the wineskin as it passed, then handed the bottle to Lamoric.
“My troubles can all be traced to one day,” Lamoric said, taking a quick sip from the skin. “We were in Evensands on the sea. My father had arranged a marriage for me when a rider tracked me down with another of his messages.” He smiled. “I remember how I was told about my wedding in the first place! Like a ghost, there was Geridon’s stubbled head in my tent as I made to step out of the flap to enter the lists at Beoran. He grins at me and says, ‘We get to Evensands while the Weaning Moon’s shining, Lordship, and I’ll see you at your wedding.’ From one sea to another in only a few days.
“I had to ask him who the girl was to be.”
Lamoric raised the wineskin in Deorwen’s direction. “I was fortunate in his choice. But my father was bent on safeguarding his legacy,” Lamoric said. “He’s not a young man. My mother’s gone. He wanted his kin and his people safe. In the east, he married Landast to Garelyn. In the west, he married Alwen to Yrlac. And I was to marry Mornaway in the north.”
This was a tangle of thorns. Durand winced.
“Simple enough,” Lamoric said. Gireth would have family on every side. “And so I found myself in Evensands, the heart of Mornaway, on the eve of my wedding. If Father had a duty for a wastrel son like me, I reckoned, I would take it with both hands. I would prove . . . whatever I thought I must prove. But then they brought the news.”
By the water, the glen’s deep shadow was swallowing the Bittern and Deorwen. Odemar, now, was chatting with Deorwen—at ease and munching sausage and cheese.
“Messengers from Ragnal had swept into my father’s hall. It hadn’t been a week since Geridon told me I was to be married, and the Marches were on fire. Mad Borogyn and his Heithan princes had rebelled and the Host of Errest was to assemble on the border. My father could not send Landast, his heir, off to command the peers of Gireth. But he could send me.”
He sneered at himself. “Some news for the eve of a man’s wedding! Husband and commander. All of it. All at once. It was only right to mark the event—something of that sort must have been in my head. And a little skittishness on the eve of a great day.
“When Landast hauled me out of whatever alehouse he found me in, the marriage went ahead. I remember a lot of gray faces looking back at me.
“And so my father sent the old Baron of Swanskin Down to lead the riders of Gireth. And, in my stead, my father sent the king a bag of silver to hire a good man. I might have gone from wastrel to great man of the kingdom in a morning. Now, here we are.”
Durand imagined Lamoric at peace, a man easy with his responsibilities, a man with time and sense enough to know his new wife. A great deal turned on one night’s hard drinking.
Lamoric held the wineskin before his nose for a moment, then tossed it to Badan across the fire. “Perhaps a year has taught me better sense.”
He drew himself up. “I should have told you. These are my worries, not yours. Message and monarch must meet, but you are not bound to follow me.”
He took Durand’s shoulder, a gesture of reassurance, and rose for bed.
“I tell you all: there are villages enough nearby, and you will find better men than me in most of them—brave knights of my father’s host. Each of you may take my good word to any of these men. This is my errand. I have been coward not to confess. The long winter has me desperate, I think. But you return home, find some better lord, and leave me to my fool’s errand. We’ll have a laugh about it all when I see you next.”
He left with a bow, and the rest soon draggled after him to their own tents and lean-tos.
Durand watched Deorwen trail across the grass to her husband’s tent.
UNDER A BUNDLE of damp blankets, Durand lay with the cold mist from the Maidensbier tightening knots in his bones.
He found himself thinking of Alwen, Lamoric’s dark-haired sister who’d married for peace with Yrlac. He found himself back in that tower over the gloom of Ferangore where he had caught her by the arm. Where he had stared into her desperate eyes—she might have known him from her father’s hall—and then stood guard by her door. He remembered her baby’s wails.
The voices of the anchorite monks filled the Glen of the Idols. They did not simply chant the Plea of Sunset or Last Twilight, but wove one prayer into the next from hour to hour.
Even after Durand had confessed his part in Alwen’s death, Lamoric had taken him in. Now, he could not get Deorwen from his mind. He should put kingdoms between himself and the man’s wife. But he could not abandon Lamoric in the midst of all this. He resolved to see Lamoric safely to Eldinor and then leave—there must be other women in the world for him.
The monks’ voices mingled high above the solitary darknesses of their cells.
When Durand opened his eyes, he found Deorwen crouched before him. She was always tinier than he expected.
“Lord of Dooms,” he breathed. “You cannot be here.”
She crouched with a glance at the darkness. “Last year, in the spring, my mother died. It took a long time. Three years of wasting, hot and pale as candles. I am the eldest daughter. It was my place to care for her while my father paced or snapped at the serving men. I lived with wise women every day. We bathed her with cloths. They spoke of signs and dooms and herbs and dreams. Near the end I would watch her eyes darting like tadpoles under the skin. I dreamt beside her. She slipped back and forth across the border of the Otherworld. It was an open door. I dreamt upon the threshold. You could see her passing.
“Then she slipped a final time. It was the Sowing Moon. Suddenly she was gone. And Father said I was to be married.”
“Deorwen,” said Durand.
“I had seen Lamoric—at a wedding: his elder sister’s, I think. And he was far from ill-favored. I was sick to death of sickrooms and herbs and the wisdom of old women.”
Deorwen took a deep breath, staring into the Heavens.
“He was so crushed when his father turned his back. He was a hollow man when his father’s host rode off under another captain.
“It’s been a year since my mother passed,” she said.
She seemed very small as she walked off through the echoes of chanting.
FOR AN HOUR or more, Durand lay still while monks sang and the earth froze under his shoulder. He might have been in the blackness beyond Creation, so dark was the night.
And then the river shimmered.
An Otherworldly light played upon the wavelets, spreading wider, until the prow of a solitary boat appeared, as light as a willow leaf. Here was Lost Lady Aralind once more with her warning for the men of Gireth that trouble was coming to the dukedom.
He looked away before he had seen more. He needed no further reminders. Sometimes the Powers whispered; sometimes they roared. Lying back, he fixed his eyes on the black dome of Heaven and wondered how the old duke’s wife had managed to get around the tough bit by the falls.
HE DREAMT THAT he was sleeping on a blanket spread over a thousand heaving others. Their limbs slithered and bulged against his body.
When dawn shone over the far bank, Durand peeled his hair and blankets from the frost and swore. The world was white and glittering.
Beyond it all, the monks were still singing; their chant had not ceased for an instant.
A cord sandal tramped by his fingers.
One of the anchorites wove toward the water, balancing a yoke of buckets—empty by their bobbing. Durand could hear the others singing Dawn Thanksgiving.
He tore a green patch from the frosty turf and lurched after the little man. Others were stirring.
> “You should not have slept here,” the monk said.
“Your huts are on the only other flat patch of ground, brother.”
The monk’s path had Durand trailing toward the remains of the bonfire, which suited him fine. The voice of the remaining monks still circled the valley overhead. “Do you never stop, brother?”
“We have found that we can do what we must. The Powers often arrange it so.”
If Durand could get a straight answer, he thought he would help the monk with his buckets. Badan—still under a heap of rugs—crouched by the fire, jabbing the embers with a half-burnt stick.
“Do you sleep?” asked Durand.
“Is not Creation dreaming?” The man stopped and turned to Durand at the edge of the fire ring. His eyes were black as beads. Every inch of his face and neck was as yellow as an old bruise. “The Wards of the Ancient Patriarchs are slipping. It is all we can do to keep them bound.”
“Durand! Did I see someone by your tent yesternight? Thought I heard a voice . . .” said Badan, too loudly. The man’s leer left his eyeteeth standing like a doorjamb round the gap Durand had made for him last year. Nothing had happened, but there were ears to hear him.
The monk looked at the ground.
“I don’t know what you heard, Badan.”
“Oh, I just wondered. Midnight visitors. And sweet of voice, I thought, but who—Host of Hell!” Badan snarled, throwing himself from the ashes like he’d prodded a nest of adders. The Bittern’s folk all around the meadow stared. A few had blades in their hands.
Durand was baffled, but the man’s game was done, his eyes fixed on the ashes.
“I think they’re alive down there!” he breathed.
Durand stepped past the monk. They had made their fire, without particular thought, in the center of the circling idols. Now, the scorched patch was a scar in the skin of turf, laying bare what had been hidden.