In a Time of Treason

by David Keck

  Yard by yard, he struggled on until his heart thundered and he clenched his face against the prying force of the water’s black fingers. Bubbles burst between his teeth.

  It was then he struck a wall—and couldn’t turn. In a flash, he pictured himself, a fool swimming up some long-blocked conduit the builders had forsaken. And he scrabbled at the wall mindlessly until his splayed fingers fell into a void. It was no wall, but a sudden bend in the tunnel.

  He’d spent nearly every instant of his air in panic. Now, he lashed, twisting fit to burst his lungs and snap his bad ribs. Ouen’s sword clanked and rang. Rising up, he clawed upward: a race between what was left of his will—

  —And he tore clear air from the black skin of the water.

  His own gasps and splashes clattered back in his ears; the racket would be heard by any fool for leagues. Every breath was like a kick in his sides. The great veins of his neck leapt against his jawbone while he gulped and shook. Fathoms above him, a faint disk of gray ceiling hung like another moon.

  When the shuddering elation of clear air let him free, he clung along the wall so that the water might settle while he waited for Deorwen to break the surface.

  And he waited in that well, shaking.

  He waited so long that the sloshing water grew still as midnight glass—as still as a pond after a drowning, shivering only with the beat of Durand’s heart.

  A legion of cold images flooded his mind’s eye: Deorwen trapped, Deorwen thrashing and dying, Deorwen silent in the black—all down below his bare feet, beyond reach. “Hells.” He couldn’t go back for her. He imagined the cost of meeting her in that narrow pipe.

  But then, hands and a hard head collided with his beating legs, and Deorwen burst into the air, gasping and splashing. There was hardly room for both the swimmers and their elbows. But Durand beamed liked the war was won and caught the girl in a bear’s fierce grip, spluttering, “Uh! Thank Heaven.”

  Deorwen laughed, or gasped. “You’ll drown us!” she said, shuddering through the length of her body. “Is it the right place?”

  Durand looked up. How could he know? “It must be.”

  “Swimming under Radomor’s stronghold. Gods. Quiet.”

  “Aye. Right.”

  “Now, how did Aldoin get himself up? I see neither rungs nor rope. Are there handholds?” she asked, but it was not a well with tidy stairs or a neat ladder.

  “We’ll have to think,” Durand growled. He could not imagine having swum so far only to drown like a child in a well. “Hells.”

  The shaft was three feet across and lined with neat courses of masonry that gave no purchase. The crushing chill had them like a torturer’s vise.

  Deorwen gave a scoffing laugh. “We’ll freeze and drown here while they roast and choke below.”

  “No,” said Durand.

  He slapped his hands against the opposite walls, trying to hoist himself up. Pain lanced through his back; he could never climb that way. “No good.”

  “Your legs. Try with your legs.”

  Stirring around in their frigid cauldron, Durand set his feet against one wall and again drove his back into the opposite. “Right,” he grunted. “Maybe.” It was the only way.

  Braced between the walls, he lifted himself. “I remember,” said Deorwen. “I used to climb the chamber doorway. I could get near to the lintel.”

  It was a child’s game, meant to be played by agile children for a few feet up a doorpost. Now, there were four or five clammy fathoms over Durand’s aching head.

  He tried to think of something to say to Deorwen, but nothing came and thinking was a dangerous pastime for him just then. He had no desire to remember who had smashed his teeth, broken his shoulder, scarred his face. With gritted teeth, he walked his wet boots up one wall, twisting his shoulders up the other. It was easier than thinking.

  “Go on,” said Deorwen.

  “There’ll be rope,” Durand grunted.

  His shirt slid up his back as he twisted his shoulders higher. His sword belt tangled round his shoulder. He slid an inch for every inch he gained. “You have it,” Deorwen called. “You must be near.” But Durand found that it helped if he held his breath. Soon, the drops tumbling from his breeches had far to fall. His legs burned.

  “You must be there. You must be.”

  And Durand cracked his head on something hard—his heart shivered.

  “What was that?” Deorwen’s voice demanded from the depths.

  Durand twisted his neck and reached up, scrabbling at a barrier of hard corners that stretched from wall to wall across the well mouth. The castle had dropped the grille over the well. It was a siege; this was a way in. They’d dropped the same grille that had drowned Aldoin.

  “Durand?” Deorwen’s voice echoed around him.

  He shoved and the grate clanked against its fittings, barred tight. His boots slid like wet bladders. And the flinch of catching himself snatched his breath away.

  “Durand?”

  “A moment,” he managed.

  The only light above came from around the well chamber’s door—the faintest thread. But he could see large holes and, when he crammed himself as near to the bars as he could, the well’s windlass. Somewhere there would be a bar or latch to pin the thing down.

  Deorwen pressed him: “What is it?”

  “The grille,” said Durand. “Barred.”

  And Deorwen’s answer was slow in coming. “Queen of Heaven,” she breathed, finally. He could feel her eyes on the dark tangle of him struggling under the bars.

  Aldoin had died when these bars dropped. There had been no way out for him: a young man in good health. What did Durand have that Aldoin lacked? The man had been fit enough to swim the pipe and cistern. No one could snap iron bars. Durand scrambled for advantages. They’d left the rope in Aldoin’s burnt house. They’d left the hook with it.

  Abruptly, Durand realized that he did have one thing Aldoin had lacked all those moons ago: the damned sword knotted round his neck. Not waiting an instant, he fed the clattering thing up through the grating, feeling with its steel tip across the irregular grille beyond his sight, hunting for hinges and bars while his back slipped and his hams burned.

  But it worked. Twisting with his fingertips, he felt the blade catch against a sliding bit of bent iron. With a gasp of air, he scrabbled and jabbed, trying to slide the bolt one way or the other at the very edge of his reach and strength. Finally, it jerked free.

  IN COMPARISON, PULLING Deorwen up was simplicity.

  As he held the shivering girl to his chest, she looked up past his chin. “I’ll tell you one thing that’s certain: Those harlots of Heremund’s never swam up that thing. I don’t care what the fool skalds say.”

  DRIPPING AND HALF-NAKED, Durand set his ear to the well room’s door, wincing at memories of the keep beyond it. He would rather have been anywhere else in Creation. “It is a crooked path to the sanctuary,” he muttered. Memories of the hot silence of the hall shouldered back into his thoughts. He remembered Radomor squatting on his father’s throne and Alwen locked in her tower. All of it waited beyond the door.

  But he forced himself to turn the handle—and stepped into a passage echoing with voices. Not too far away, a bench scraped on stone. There were still men in the duke’s hall. He had hoped the place might have been abandoned.

  “Follow me,” Durand whispered and led Deorwen swiftly through the darkness of the keep, putting distance between them and the dark hall. He thought of the puddles left behind them as slams and drags echoed from upstairs.

  “Most of Radomor’s army must be in the streets, but someone is on the move in this place,” Deorwen concluded. Durand kept his blade in his fist, knowing that any corner could hide a guard or God knew what.

  They dripped and hobbled and shivered down into the depths of the keep until—after wet ages—Durand found the slender passage between the foundation stones to the tiny sally port. There had been a man on the little door the last time Durand had
come this way: a small man who’d tried to extort a few pennies from the new boy trying to slip away. But now the dank passage was empty, and when he glanced at his hands, the blood was gone. “I killed a man here,” he said.

  “Open it,” was Deorwen’s answer.

  THE INTRUDERS SLIPPED into a cold alley under a ceiling of carrion birds. They stole between keep and curtain wall, taking only a moment to reach the keep’s ancient shoulder for a glimpse of their goal. The high sanctuary of Ferangore soared gray from the pavement to spires now lost among the wings that tumbled through high windows and choked the Heavens. The West Portal of the edifice—two doors like standing warships—stood flanked by rows of lofty kings and Powers in stone.

  Durand cared little for the artistry of the ancient place; he thought only of distances: fifty paces of open courtyard stood between him and the building, right at the heart of the enemy’s citadel.

  “We are here,” said Deorwen. “Now, if we can only—”

  Durand fixed his aim on the portals between their old kings. Whatever the commotion inside the keep, outside, the entrance to Radomor’s fortress was still. Durand set off running.

  Twenty paces into his breakneck charge, however, there was a strangled yelp at Durand’s heels—Deorwen had followed him. She pointed up at the dark mouth of the covered stair of the keep’s entrance.

  “I don’t—” Durand began, but stopped when he heard a rumble pouring from the mouth of the keep stair. Deorwen had heard it first, but Durand knew the sound as well as any in Creation: armored men thundered down those stairs.

  The two invaders stood in the midst of an open yard. For a moment, Durand was sure that he had killed them both, then he saw the narrowest of bolt-holes: among the feet of the sanctuary’s portal kings were shadows. “Run,” said Durand, even as the hinges of the keep door began to squawk.

  In a headlong rush fit to break bones, they pelted toward sanctuary. Durand knew the door was swinging wide behind them. He dove, throwing Deorwen, and the two tumbled into a heap at the royal feet a pace from the great portal’s steps. Durand fought not to howl like an animal at the bruises left by the cobblestones.

  “Very still, Durand,” said Deorwen. “And breathe.”

  And she was wise, for the armored men came marching and only the merest film of shadow covered the intruders. The path of the soldiers took them within paces of the sanctuary. But as they came, Durand realized that these were not merely a few laggard men marching late to the battle. Between the two files of grim soldiers, he saw the green wings of a lord’s mantle gaping as wide as if he might climb into the flocks above the city. Here walked Radomor of Yrlac himself.

  In an openmouthed moment, Durand saw that he might end the siege with one flash of steel. Through the whole long assault on the citadel, he’d kept his sword. Radomor’s boys would be flat-footed at finding an armed enemy in the heart of the citadel. But there were so many guards. And any movement must draw the eyes of more men than he could hope to stop. His eyes twitched to Deorwen, imagining what would become of the girl.

  So he watched, shivering as coldhearted as any of the carved things on the flank of the sanctuary porch, numbering the bodyguard, feeling Deorwen’s fist on his arm as she read his strangled thoughts.

  Radomor marched near, then, just as he would have passed, a voice croaked from the sanctuary steps, hardly a pace from the long gray portal kings.

  “Highness!” it called, and like a flash of claws, every blade was bare among Radomor’s guard.

  Radomor, himself, did not turn more than his bald head. “Do not seek to check me in this, sorcerer.” His eyes glittered like black glass in a furnace.

  “Oh, Your Highness, never! It is only that I am surprised to see you venture forth,” continued what was clearly one of the simpering Rooks. Durand heard the devil’s black sleeves swish upon the steps, the fiend bowed so low. “There is little need.”

  Radomor’s guards had not sheathed their swords.

  “There is every need,” Radomor rumbled. “This boy Lamoric championed Ragnal’s cause before every lord of Errest the Old. Now, Acconel is burned and I am driven even from its ruins.”

  “But he must die in any case,” the Rook reasoned. “The boy is caught in a snare of your devising; his death can hardly be prevented.”

  As Durand shivered by the sanctuary step, a thick reek seemed to flow around him. The guardsmen winced and swallowed while the birds stormed round.

  “There are times when death does not suffice,” said Radomor. “I must end this with my own hand. You know little of kingship if you imagine I can do less.”

  “Yours is the blood of kings, Highness. My brother and I, we are but servants. It is only that, had we realized what you intended, we might have made your Champion available to you. But we are caught up in our little explorations just now. Harvest time, as it were. It is all a bit of a jumble, Highness,” he added confidingly.

  “Play your games if you must, but I grow weary of the reek. I do not need those old bones to watch over me.” The man’s head sank the smallest fraction. “I will do as I must with or without him in attendance. I am not a child.”

  “No, Highness.” Again, the Rook’s sleeves slapped the sanctuary steps. “We will await news of your triumph.”

  Durand watched as the Duke of Yrlac turned from his sorcerer and stalked toward the battle—and Lamoric. He tried to convince himself that there had been nothing he could do.

  A sniff and chuckle hissed from the sanctuary’s porch, and the sorcerer’s soft footfalls retreated into the great nave.

  Durand twitched up from the pavement. And, with Radomor’s men still jingling for the gates, two intruders in clinging linens slipped into the reeking sanctuary of Ferangore.

  BEYOND THE MIGHTY portals, the sanctuary gaped like a gutted mountain choked with carrion birds. Columns dripped like the ribs of some putrid leviathan. Every surface seethed with worms. Durand could scarcely breathe, and gales of black wings spun through the light of the sanctuary’s greasy candles.

  “A ribbed darkness,” Deorwen said under feathered din and again at Durand’s side. “The resting place of Radomor’s people back to the dawn of ages—some interred here sailed with Saerden Voyager.” Stone tombs crowded the pillars. “If he heaps these atrocities upon his ancient kin, what will he have done to my poor brother?” she wondered.

  “There,” Durand said. “That is where they’ll be.” He would not play guessing games about the depravities of the Rooks with Deorwen; they would soon learn more than either of them could stomach.

  “There are so many here. Lost. So very many. Hundreds. Thousands. The air is thick with them. These devil birds.”

  Durand turned to her and found eyes spinning. “Deorwen!” There was no time.

  “Every mouth is full of howling. So much despair. Durand, I cannot think. Hopelessness to the ceiling. To the sky! It is too much. I cannot see.” Almost, she fell, but Durand caught her shoulders.

  At the very moment Deorwen fell, a scrap of laughter issued from the putrid warren of one side arcade. And Durand was trapped, feeling as though he’d been left alone without warning.

  Deorwen seemed beyond reason, overwhelmed by the necromancers’ stinking hell. Filth smeared every inch of the floor under Durand’s feet. Birds wheeled.

  “I can feel them all—every snatched breath. Their dreams, uprooted. Devils!”

  Durand pressed his hand over the girl’s mouth. Whatever her wise woman’s sight revealed to her, she could not see him.

  “For the world, I would not drag you farther, but I cannot leave you here,” Durand said, and tugged Deorwen down the aisle. He raced through a hundred desecrations: relics smeared with feces, Powers hung by their heels, choked with rags, or robbed of their heads. Still, he pressed on, barefoot, till he spotted the bent shape of their quarry flapping round a distant pillar, vanishing down.

  Durand pulled Deorwen into a loping run—he would not lose his man—and found a twist of stairs cu
rling into the sanctuary’s bowels. He had no doubt that he must find Moryn with these fiends, and this had been the Rook’s destination. Though Durand could see the putrid air standing before him as thick as a stagnant pool, he forced himself to duck low and descended.

  The birds from above now spun through a crypt that stretched like a sunken forest, choked to its horizons with mounds that glistened abhorrently. The birds lit upon these wet heaps in a frenzy.

  Durand’s Rook capered around one such pile to make his way toward the rotten head of the crypt and out of sight.

  “What have they done?” Deorwen said. “What is this?”

  “Shh,” Durand said. “I am here.” And lifted his slender blade between them and the madness.

  Oily stalks crowded every niche in the walls and every sarcophagus on the floor. Durand’s bare toes slithered, and, when the knuckles of his sword hand glanced across something bulbous in the muck, he found a skull grinning back at him. Someone had packed the thing’s eyes with red muck. And white-edged knots of bloody symbols had been cut in the raw bone.

  Before Durand could shudder back, a crow lit upon the thing. The bird seemed to whisper in the skull’s ear—its stony beak dabbling—then the creature flashed back into the dark. Durand thought of the raven who’d landed on the dying sentry back on that first parapet. Here was the errand of every crow and kite in the city, flying from the mouths of the dead to this cavern of hollow, painted bones.

  “Lost,” breathed Deorwen. “And bound here. Poor Moryn!”

  “Please,” said Durand. Again he covered her mouth with a shaking hand while her eyes started. “They will not have done this to your brother. A hostage must live.” He hoped it was so.

  He might have said more, but now he heard the Rooks’ voices.

  “Brother,” called the nearest. “It is as you suggested.”

  From somewhere at the head of the crypt, a voice answered, “His Highness cannot resist.” Durand could hear the wet clicks of vigorous work with a knife. “He is a slave to appearances.”