by David Keck
“What becomes of them, Master Hod?” Deorwen asked.
“I do not know, but soon enough they are grinning along with the others. One turns to an old friend and there he stands, smiling as though at an idiot child.”
“Anyone would be fearful,” asserted Deorwen.
“You are kind to say it, Milady,” Hod replied.
“He’s hazarded a great deal, talking to me,” said Heremund. “There’re strange things going on in the Mount of Eagles, and news must get to them who might talk with our Ragnal. I never thought to see this hostage business, mind. I reckon the rebellion’s unhinged him.”
“Slanders!” said Hod.
“What will his allies do?” asked Lamoric. “Host of Heaven, there will be blood spilt in the land when the rest hear. My father must have word of this as soon as it can reach him. He must call the host from their manors. Some of the seed grain should be kept in store against wartime.”
Lamoric stopped on the stairs. “What will Ragnal do when he has no hostage from Gireth? I will have provoked the king against my father, my brother. My house holds Gireth from Saerdan himself.” His mouth opened and closed. “I must go back.”
“That’s mad, Lordship,” said Heremund.
“Skald, great men of my line have given their bodies to preserve the throne of Errest for two thousand years. Will I be the one to dishonor them?”
Hod climbed back to Lamoric, raising his lamp and peering close in the young lord’s eye. “Let these toadies trap you here. Let your father swallow the humiliation of seeing his own son shackled to keep him honest and stomach the shame of his king’s mistrust. Do what these creatures wish. See what your father does then.” The man’s face was hard and yellow in the oily light.
Deorwen clasped her shoulders. “Was every duchy represented at this oathtaking?”
“I don’t think so,” said Hod. “No. There was no one from Yrlac.”
“Of course,” said Lamoric.
“Gireth was absent. Mornaway,” finished Hod.
“I must warn my father,” said Lamoric. “He’ll need a word with Mornaway. There may be some way they can set this right. The king cannot be at war with his Great Council.”
“Let’s start by getting you out of this place,” said Heremund.
Lamoric allowed himself to be led.
On they walked, following Hod. He opened a door seamed with daylight and they climbed scabbed stairs under the churning storm. They threaded dusty passages hidden in the thickness of a great tower’s wall. They crept along minstrels’ galleries in the rafters high above a feasting hall where starlings whispered in circles.
As they returned once more to the darkest bowels of the palace, Deorwen spoke. “Master Hod, how can you know so many secret ways? I do not think there has been so much as one wrong turning.”
Hod saluted her with a wry wave of his lamp. “My Lady, I was tutor once to the Princes Biedin, Eodan, and Ragnal—and such other young ones as were packed off to court by the great houses of the realm. And so it was my duty, from time to time, to travel these paths searching for my enchanting little charges. I nearly lost my head over Biedin. This is the very lamp with which I searched.” He lifted the clay dish and its wavering flame.
“He was the prince who vanished,” Deorwen remembered.
“A little adventure that may well be our salvation, My Lady,” said Hod. He shook his head. “It is a shame to see the sons of Carlomund at odds. Eodan will not come to court at all; Ragnal sneers at the man, remarking on how their father died in Eodan’s lands. And Eodan is too proud to hold his tongue around his brother. Biedin tries to help, I think: he has ridden three times to Windhover since the Blood Moon. But reconciling Eodan and Ragnal is an impossible task. Eodan would not even come to the Tern Gyre council. It is said that a great man’s children learn jealousy at their mother’s breast.
“Here,” said Hod. He bowed, wearing a wistful grin. “Beyond this point, I am as useless to you as I am to my king. Get yourselves free of this place.”
There was nothing but a wall of broken stone before them. The ceiling had collapsed, and there was no sign of daylight. “Hod?” said Heremund.
“Unless you are willing to hop from the curtain wall—and I would not permit you to so mistreat a lady—there is no better way to fly from the Mount of Eagles than this little hole. Biedin was always the most restive and after his mother died, he was always moving. We searched everywhere. I even had the Master of Hounds loose in the rafters with his dogs. But this spot I never found.”
The group peered at the rubble.
“I believe there is an aperture here.” Hod raised his lamp until one black cavity stood out from the stones. “The prince appeared in the high sanctuary three days after he vanished, you see. He never passed the gates.” He pointed at the black gap. “By my reckoning, the high sanctuary is five hundred paces in that direction.” He spread his hands on his stomach. The gap was hardly more than a foot across. “But I have never tested my theory.”
Heremund nodded, scrambling up the rubble. He held his hand out for the lamp, and then peered into the black. “Hod! Did you think you were rescuing weasels?”
“It lets onto some vestige of an antique sewer, or a passage for the Patriarchs to the king. I found black threads among those stones. The boy wore a black tunic after his mother passed. He got through.”
Nodding, they climbed the stones, Durand’s heart pounding as he saw just how narrow the opening was. It was clear that they must get Lamoric and Deorwen free of this place. The black socket exhaled a steady, cool current of air.
“I will go first,” Durand said, mastering himself. It would be like climbing into a pot.
But there was a hesitation behind him. Hod stared up from the floor.
“Come with us,” Heremund said. “Try.”
Hod did not reply for a time. “I stole a bundle of rushlights.” The things were a peasant’s candle: skinned rushes dipped in grease. “I hope your Master of Tapers won’t miss them.” He lit one and passed the rest to Deorwen. “I will be interested to hear if I was correct after all about little Biedin.” The tiny flames fluttered. “Soon, those fiends will realize what has happened. They will be combing the streets for you. There will be men at the docks.
“Help my king,” he said, and left them.
Heremund grimaced at the others where they clung around the tunnel mouth—the lamplight dwindled and disappeared. “I met him when I sang for the princes’ father. All the clerks in the scriptorium, the scene before the Hall of Kings: the starlings would know what Hod did.
“Hod’s a lovely man,” he said. “They will kill him for this.”
Hod’s lamp vanished from sight, and no one said a word.
10. The Dust of Princes Lost
The collapsed section was little more than fifty feet long, and Durand writhed the whole way with the brittle, greasy rushlight spitting in his fingertips, cursing the madness of it all. They had rowed across the whole of Errest, and for what? Ragnal had gone mad. The Mount of Eagles was full of whispers, and they were crawling like vermin in the cellars.
Finally free, Durand slithered down a rubble slope and crouched in an empty tunnel. The rushlight’s flame lit a dozen paces and left a juddering void before him.
“Wonderful,” he said. Somewhere above were the cracked-tooth cobbles of the High King’s Walk. He already knew that the ceiling could fall in.
The others slithered down to join him. Deorwen had a streak of dirt across her nose.
“Hells,” said Lamoric, “I hope there’s another end to this tunnel. If we’ve got to turn back, you can bury me here.”
Durand smiled. “How many rushlights have we got?” he teased gently, lifting his. It was already half-burned.
“You have sworn to be my loyal man, Durand,” said Lamoric. “I remember it distinctly. You were kneeling in the muck. Folk were laughing.”
Durand nodded.
“I do not like this place,” said Deorwen. “We shouldn’t
waste time.”
All but Durand could walk without stooping. On the walls, there was no sign of the crusting you might expect from a sewer.
“I don’t see why Ragnal would take hostages from loyal houses,” said Lamoric. “Mornaway and Garelyn would never have rebelled.”
“Ah,” said Heremund. “Equality. Everyone the same.”
Lamoric’s fist thumped the wall. “He will drive every fence-sitting duchy into Yrlac’s camp.”
“Such grudging loyalty as they showed? It ain’t far from treason. What’re their oaths worth in a pinch? You’re better off with their kin in your tower. When it’s kin against a man’s word, blood’s more certain than breath. That’s the idea.”
A door blocked the passage. Durand squinted at long cracks that jagged across the ceiling stones. He winced at the constant spit of the rushlight. The door stood, stuck shut and subtly twisted, under the weight of the stone above. As he moved closer, his little flame fluttered at a gap too narrow for even Deorwen. A glance showed him the ceiling full of cracks—precarious—with the door maybe serving to prop the load.
Durand raised his hand before the others. “Stand back.”
“Maybe we should try our luck with the guards. If we find the right man, we could walk out the gates,” said Lamoric.
“If there were such a man, Master Hod would have introduced us, I think,” Durand concluded. They had cost Hod his life. “We must get as far as we can before they know we’ve gone.” He would kick high where the door was caught against the jamb.
Heremund touched his shoulder. “If you’re flattened under fifty cartloads of rock, I hope you won’t mind if we try Lamoric’s scheme.”
Deorwen’s eyes were very wide as Durand handed the rushlight to Heremund. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking—just that there was desperation. The smudge was still there across her nose.
“A little more room first,” Durand said.
The initial kick brought dust sifting down like snow. The second started a rain of sand pouring down Durand’s neck.
The door gave way on the third kick, and the ceiling fell in as they ran through.
“Praise Heaven,” said Durand as he counted three live people behind him.
THEY MOVED THROUGH a space lined with doorways and alcoves. The warmth of Heaven’s Eye had never reached this place.
“I reckon these were cut in after,” said Heremund, peering at the masonry. “Cells or cellars. Storerooms maybe.”
“A long way to go for a cask of claret,” said Lamoric, “though it’s cold enough.” They were too far under the ground, and the air was thin and dank.
“Durand, here,” said Deorwen. On the floor, a collection of litter marked what must have been someone’s campsite. “These are candle ends. This is no place to stop.”
“Maybe it is only a storeroom after all,” ventured Lamoric. “We know nothing else.”
But their party was surrounded by cells, Durand was sure—places to put a man away so that he’d never be heard from again. There were no pretty carvings. Some spots had been rudely walled in.
He hoped Ragnal’s whisperers would never hear of the place.
“In any case, let’s hope the path goes straight on,” Heremund grunted. “I wouldn’t like to have to root through these holes.”
FINALLY, A DOOR appeared: the passage’s ending. This was no improvised addition to the tunnel. Sinuous lines adorned its marble surface: the Eye of Heaven blazed above a Creation full of elegant trees. A pair of idols flanked the door: the Warders of the Gates of far Heaven. In the stories, the Warders wore coats they’d improvised of iron nails. The carver had chiseled every one.
“Is there some magic formula we must say?” Lamoric wondered.
Durand raised his rushlight for the others to see, and they all came closer, Deorwen setting a hand on his arm.
“Perhaps there is, but I think there’s a handle as well,” said Heremund. “Just here.” An elbow of copper jutted from a tear of green verdigris.
“Just as well,” Lamoric decided.
“A little room again, I think,” Durand said and took the handle, feeling big cogs turning under his fist. The door broke free. No light. With the rushlight high, he peered through the widening crack, not knowing what eyes might be on the other side.
And eyes there were: empty skulls stared back at him. Papery corpses. The room beyond was heaped with bones.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Heremund.
Sucking a breath through his nose, Durand said, “There’s no one here. I can’t see if there’s a way through.”
With no way around, he pushed straight in, climbing onto the sagging, crackling heap. Swimming, nearly, as dry things slid from their winding sheets and yellow grins rolled against his chin.
A plain bronze door beyond the ossuary opened at Durand’s first touch. It might have been another panel in the walls. Durand summoned the rest on, and once free of the ossuary, the group stepped into a chamber of massive pillars where the air hung thick with beeswax and balsam.
Lamoric slapped dust from Deorwen’s dress. “Perhaps we were better off to leave the courtly costumes home.”
“All of those people. They were priests and rich men,” Deorwen said. “I saw amulets.” Tangled in neck bones and ribs. “There was a fat sapphire on one hand. I think the priests have been moving bones here from tombs and graves. If it is like most cities, there is no room to bury within the walls unless space is made.”
“My skin’s alive,” said Lamoric. “Like the fleas are marching over me.”
“This will be the crypt under the high sanctuary,” Heremund said.
Durand saw a score of great sarcophagi within the range of their light, the first traces of a vast arc that must circle the whole of the high sanctuary, below the floor. You could wind a good horse, riding from side to side through the dark. Feet rested on hounds, eagles, and Powers. Royal feet.
Lamoric spun.
“This is where the new kings must keep their vigil, yes?”
“Aye,” said Heremund, “I reckon so. ‘Three days under stone,’ they say before they’ll crown ‘em. It’s here somewhere that a crown prince bides that time in darkness.”
“They have all lain here. All the kings of twenty centuries,” whispered Lamoric. “We should be struck dead for trespassing in this place. I am surprised that we have breathed this long.”
“Ain’t too late,” said Heremund.
The floor was chased with sweeping symbols, arcs and rays of gold. The intersecting curves circled a shape cut at the chamber’s heart: it could have been the shadow of a tall man upon the floor.
“There,” Durand said, and all four refugees trailed across the honey-shining marble to find a rough silhouette of a man hacked in the floor: head, shoulders, and the long shape of the body. Durand’s fingers tingled. He raised his light. The cist was deep, penetrating a fathom or more into the stone of the island.
Heremund raised an eyebrow. “It’s here the Patriarchs lay the young prince down, droning their great thaumaturgies, filling the air with smoke and Powers. And finally leave him to darkness and dreams. Half of the old spell’s carved in these stones.”
Deorwen shuddered, and Lamoric puffed out his cheeks. “Days in the dark, starving with the kings and Patriarchs rustling in their tombs.”
The tombs beyond were nearly invisible.
“There are stories of men consumed,” said Heremund. “Men whose hearts couldn’t take a long look from the Eye of Heaven.”
“Who could? Who could stand it?” Deorwen said.
“A man must know his heart before the Patriarchs lower him down,” said Heremund.
“I have heard that, afterward, the king dreams,” said Deorwen. “He hears the whispers of his subjects.”
“Well. He’s knotted into the Ancient Patriarchs’ old bindings, that’s sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if they creak a bit, those knots. They’re surely pulled tight some days.”
“I d
on’t find myself pitying this king just now,” said Durand. There was always a large entrance to an Atthian crypt, for the priests must be free to throw the place open at winter’s ending—when Heaven’s Eye wins its battle with the long nights of winter. “Here.” Durand spotted the first broad steps of a processional stairs, and they moved off, finding a doorway. “What is our plan?”
“Hmm. A point,” said Lamoric. “The sanctuary sits at the heart of Eldinor. We’ll be free of the tunnel but trapped in the midst of the city. I suppose the Patriarch knows his flock, and there’s a shrine on every corner.”
The flame spat between them.
“Heremund,” asked Deorwen, “did the Patriarch attend this hostage-taking?”
“He did, aye. I didn’t see it all; the man was roaring.”
“The king would never take the Patriarch hostage!” Lamoric declared.
DURAND EMERGED FROM the crypt right beside a small man in priest’s robes. Durand got a glimpse of pale, bulging eyes above a cloud of copper beard before the man collapsed, overcome by the sight of filthy, ragged strangers erupting from the grave.
Deorwen crouched to check on the luckless priest—and, somehow, looking up at Durand, she saw something more.
“Durand, look up,” she breathed.
As he looked into the vaults above, Creation spun. A field of gold leaf soared more than thirty fathoms above his head, light as silk banners. Powers gazed down. Pillars ringed the dome, sweeping higher than towers like loops of woven gold thrown to tether the vault to Creation.
They had come up in the golden heart of Eldinor, a pace or two before the high altar itself. They stared into acres of leaded glass and forests of pillars.
“Why does Creation seem larger when you throw a roof under it?” wondered Heremund.
The priest was shaking his head.
Deorwen set a hand on his arm. “I am sorry if we have startled you, but we would very much like to speak to the Patriarch.”
The fellow leapt onto his bandy legs.
“You—Madam, who are you?” Eyes jutting, the red-bearded priest thrust the fist and fingers of the Eye of Heaven sign between himself and his sudden visitors. He circled as Deorwen rose.