In a Time of Treason

by David Keck

  “The Banished wait while we run in our circles,” said Conran. “The wards are breaking, strand by strand. The king wages war within his realm. Ferangore and Acconel are in ruins. The Septarim scattered. The high sanctuaries have fallen. And Errest has not been so bare to the night in twenty centuries. These things do not come singly or by chance. Someone plays a dreadful game in Errest the Old, and even the least part of it is dark to us.”

  As Conran spoke, the Banished spirits settled back into the gloom. “But Radomor is dead . . .” Durand breathed.

  Conran’s glinting eye was on the move lest fiends pour from some unobserved quarter of the horizon. His men held their blades against the dark.

  “Aye, Durand Col. And his sorcerers with him. But our king fights in Windhover while his barons cower behind their walls. And here we stand.

  “In the fastness of the shadows a hand is moving, and none but the Silent King can know from whence our doom will fall!”

  WHILE THE PORTENTS roiled in the northern skies, the column lurched for Acconel. Time and again, Creation flinched and Durand caught glimpses of shadowy watchers along the roadway, of giants on the ridgelines, of spirits in the trees. Until, quite suddenly, Durand’s driver called out, “Whoa!”

  Durand knew the damp odor of the River Banderol in the weeds. They had crossed the bourn of Gireth, their column had halted, and now a stout rider jounced between the roadside and the riverbank breathlessly puffing, “His Grace stands before the Fuller’s Bridge and waits upon Abravanal of Gireth. His Grace stands before the Fuller’s Bridge and waits upon Abravanal of Gireth. His Grace stands before—”

  This breathless knight was Berchard of the One Eye and jolted to a stop at Durand’s side—before his horse could pitch him in the river.

  “Durand?” Teeth flashed in the man’s beard. “That’s enough, I think. The rest will get the message. I’ll be damned if I get myself washed into the mere to tell them.

  “Here. Listen to that.” The sound of hammers hung upon the air, and there was green sawdust on the breeze. “They’re awful quick to rebuild.”

  Durand thought of Conran’s portents. “Conran’s not so sure we’ve won anything yet.”

  “I’m not sure I like the look of the Heavens either. And I’ve seen a thing or two in my day.” He jostled his mount alongside Durand’s bench. He scrubbed his puckered eye. “I ever tell you about this damned thing?”

  “What will Abravanal do?” Durand muttered.

  “Abravanal? I’m waiting for old Severin. Every knight in his retinue has black-barred his colors. Should be a show. He’s up there, a duke in linens! Muck to his hams. Not a cloak between him and the wind and the rain. And I must say, he doesn’t seem himself—though I suppose I don’t know the fellow so well that I can be sure. In any case, as I was saying, we were pulling thieves from the bushes down in Aubairn. These whoresons, they were hiding in the Fey Wood, playing on the infamy of the place. You could always blame a missing caravan on the Lost or the Banished and who’d know different? That was the dullards’ bright idea.”

  Durand blinked. Somewhere beyond the carts ahead, the head of the column must be in the Tenter’s Field yard before the Fuller’s Bridge. Before his mind’s eye, Durand saw the ancient Duke of Gireth walking through a city of soot and sawdust, his heir a girl-child of six winters.

  “We were trailing one pack of fools who reckoned no-body’d notice that some flitting forest pisky was crashing through the woods on eight warhorses and sleeping round a campfire every night—when every trace of the whoresons just up and disappeared.

  “We should have known better than to go poking around. But we started. And we ran across this old woman.

  “Some of us had these arbalests—the really heavy crossbows.” He tapped a fresh scar on his forehead. “Bigger than the bow that bit me. And this old woman blundered out in front of us. And I must’ve touched the trigger. And it was so quick. Snap! and the bolt was gone—like a wasp for the crone’s gray head. I just stared. I’m no crack shot with a crossbow, and I hadn’t taken aim. It could’ve gone anywhere. But she flopped on her backside, and the bolt clattered off half a league through the trees.”

  “Berchard . . .” Durand raised his hand. All around ancient Acconel, the sound of hammers and axes died away. One man somewhere in the vast ruin persisted, and a man could hear the sharp chop, chop, chop.

  But Berchard pressed on. “Aye. Abravanal will be coming soon, I’m sure. But, back in the woods, there she was: this old woman in the track. And the quiet. And I’m thinking, here’s somebody’s grandma. And I bent down over her to see if—maybe, God help me—the bolt had just grazed her. But she’s lying like a sack of corn and there’s this bloody great hole where her eye ought to have been.

  “I was just about sick, her white hair floating all round this bloody slop.”

  “Berchard . . .”

  “I’m nearly there, boy. You see, the old hag gave a sort of twitch. All I could think was: ‘Ugh! And there’s nothing for it but to finish her. And what a day I’m having.’ When, from nowhere, the old bat’s hand snaps out, adder quick. And whack! she’s got hold of my eye! Same one as I’d shot out of her head! And I could feel her knobbed old fingers curling in there as though my flesh and bones were made of clay. No pain. Just these fingers moving, and a sound like scooping up sand.”

  There was no one speaking for a league in any direction and no sound but the river and Berchard as he leaned close. “And she spoke to me. ‘I’ll have what I’m owed,’ she said. And I couldn’t move with her hand. And my mates were too stunned to move. Just as well, though, probably.

  “That’s what I reckon happened to the other bunch, by the way. Think on it: I put her eye out. Imagine if I’d come for her with a blade! I would hate to think if I’d whacked a bolt through her heart.

  “Funny thing is, though, I still see a thing or two sometimes with the other eye. Mostly trees and branches. Dark paths winding through the Fey Wood down there. Sometimes a cellar full of crocks and skulls. Sometimes other things. But I can’t complain. She was owed. And settling scores is a tricky thing.”

  A hollow fanfare moaned from somewhere downriver past carts and the naked dead.

  “Ah here. That’ll be old Abravanal coming out, poor devil. They sent riders ahead to hint, maybe. Poor Deorwen, she and some of the other women cleaned the boy up. He could be sleeping.” He sniffed and looked up at the cart’s load. “This cold is God’s mercy.”

  Here was the gray homecoming of Durand’s lord. Durand had ridden and rowed and marched and killed and betrayed in the man’s service. He wasn’t waiting.

  “Here, where are you going?” Berchard demanded. Durand swung himself down from the bench while Berchard gave clumsy chase on horseback.

  Durand heard the clack of hooves upon the Fuller’s Bridge. All around Durand, men wiped their caps and hoods from their heads—and he pushed forward until, finally, he stood in the first circle of that solemn crowd where Abravanal and Severin faced one another.

  On the bridge, Abravanal sat a pale horse, bent and fragile under the heaps of his regalia. His guard included Kieren Arbourhall and—Durand noted with a flinch—Durand’s father, hunched on a sturdy warhorse.

  Severin of Mornaway tottered out before them all and bowed low at the muddy bridgehead. “Abravanal,” he quavered, “Duke of Gireth, I, your cousin, Severin, Duke of Mornaway, bring you greetings.”

  Abravanal’s flat blue eyes did not blink. “. . . Your Grace. I . . . I am come from Ferangore in the land of your enemy. Your host has fought a great battle. Between the Rushes and the Bercelet where Radomor the Usurper set himself against your host with devices mundane and supernatural, but . . . But the courage of your liegemen. He could not resist.

  “Victory is yours.”

  Abravanal was as still as the stones of the Fuller’s Bridge as water churned around the piers below and the wind sighed over the Warrens.

  Severin knelt. “But this is not the end. What
would I not give if it were? The Barons of Errest have looked on from their strongholds while Gireth sent its sons against our common enemy, friendless and alone. Cowards watched and weighed the best course while your liegemen spent their blood. Of all these craven lords, I . . . I am worst! In terror of losing my own son, I have stood against your house with the enemy of our realm. To the shame of my line, I have attended the slaughter of your liegemen and sacrificed your flesh to save my own. And now—immortal infamy beyond forgiveness or remedy!—your son is among those lost before the gates of the enemy. Bravest of the bravest race! Brightest of the Sons of Atthi, he fell alone, slaying the enemy of our kingdom with his last breath.

  “My crime is beyond forgiveness,” said Severin and the thin old man lowered himself into the ruts and puddles while Abravanal stared down with his flat blue eyes.

  Finally, Abravanal spoke into the silence: “I will take you at your word,” he said. “You have said that you would give much, and I know what I would have of you.” Durand felt his neck prickle in the airless moment as Abravanal breathed. The man blinked his pale eyes. “With your own bargain, you will repay me. Your son for mine. And you, Severin of Mornaway, I will hold for his murder.

  “Bind them! I will not have them wander free while my son is bound in death. Creation will not suffer them to see another dawn!”

  DURAND CAME LATE to the shocked feast that followed, mounting the entry stair through silent ranks of servants. No man could wish to feast at such a time. But the Powers must be thanked, even with the world at its end and the victory so costly. And a man of Lamoric’s retinue could not escape without offending his master’s memory.

  As Durand stepped into Abravanal’s Painted Hall, he found a room as deep in madness as Radomor’s hall in Ferangore. He had entered at the bottom of the feasting hall, and, though hundreds sat at the long tables inside, not one man uttered a word. Every face was grim, every eye in motion. And, at the hall’s distant head, Duke Abravanal sat in dull finery, his barons arrayed on each hand, everyone sitting in the wary glitter of his hauberk, a sharp blade at his hip.

  One thing explained the unease of that place: like beasts before some dark altar, Severin and his son lay chained in rags before Abravanal’s high table while five-score knights of Mornaway sat among the guests.

  Gunderic’s ancient Sword of Justice gleamed upon the cloth before Abravanal’s seat.

  Durand shook his head. Had he torn Moryn from the Rooks, had he freed Mornaway from Radomor’s trap, only to watch them battle here? Near the entry arch, Berchard had saved a place and Durand stole to it. Heremund Skald took him by the shoulder as he sat. The little man ducked close to whisper, “Seems little call for players this afternoon.” Durand’s answering glance should have killed the skald like Berchard’s basilisk, but the fool merely shrugged his apologies.

  On the benches, the long rows of Mornaway’s troops sat with their mouths shut tight. Not one had so much as an elbow on the table. And no wonder. There, under their very noses, lay their liege lord shackled to the floor, and there was his heir. And the men of Gireth were armed.

  Heremund was looking too. “The Patriarch has his beard in knots over the signs in the north. He’s standing like a sailor with the deck awash, waiting for the end. The old spirits stirring. The wards of the Ancient Patriarchs parting—everywhere there are stories of things unseen in ages now abroad. Errest is as deep with monsters as the sea, and if the last ward passes, we shall all meet our dooms. But I’m not sure we’ll live so long. Oh, and I’m pleased to see that you’ve not got yourself killed, by the by.”

  “The lad did his best,” muttered Berchard. “He really did.”

  At Abravanal’s right hand, a seat stood empty: for Lamoric or Landast or both. At the duke’s left was little Almora. Already, the girl had found Deorwen. Almora sat with her chin scarcely over the table, chatting with wide eyes. Deorwen’s eyes darted from the little girl to her own father, her own brother. Durand wondered what the child was saying.

  The feast should begin; they needed a priest to start it.

  “Abravanal spent every instant staring from Gunderic’s Tower,” said Heremund. “Watching, with the child playing round him like a robin. Kieren has been Lord of Gireth in his master’s absence; and your father, its marshal. I suppose, together they—”

  Just then, every head turned to the entry stair and Oredgar the Patriarch stalked into the room. The tall priest scowled, disapproving of the gathering. Grease and soot streaked his beard. And he wore no fine vestments. But still, he stalked to the top of the hall and stood by the high table. “Peers of Errest. Lords, ladies. Serving men. Sons and Daughters of Atthi. Praised be the Silent King of Heaven and the dread Powers of his Host,” he said into the silence.

  “A great victory has been won. And we are wise to render the Powers their due thanks.” The tall priest swiveled his sea-eagle’s fierce gaze over the tables, and men of both dukedoms mumbled gratitude.

  For a moment, he closed those piercing eyes and clamped his mouth tight shut, then he began as Durand had heard him begin before: “The Westering Sea is broad, Saerdan’s Cradle sailed many days, and the Sons of Atthi knew thirst. Some despaired of reaching the far havens, turning back for the sunset, though the brave pressed on as days and weeks crept by upon the empty ocean and the last crumbs were gobbled down and the hairy dregs drunk up. But I will go farther. Madness crept among those aboard that ship. The weak slept to their deaths, and poor bleeding wretches died staring at the Heavens.”

  He raised a woolly eyebrow and scanned the crowded hall once more.

  “I think of that packed ship now—alone upon the broad back of the ocean,” he said. “Of the hold, empty. The barrels, dry, and the bleeding gums, the weeping sores. And the secret doubts of every man who knew he’d sailed his family onto the empty deeps beyond hope of return. For that is what Saerdan’s story means; do not be deceived!”

  Oredgar looked over the room as if daring some fool to deny it.

  “But then! There came a last day upon that still-empty deep when the Voyager sounded the fathomless sea—beyond hope of land and with shaking hand, he heaved his leadline out and—at the very last fathom with the last wisps of line in his fingertips—he felt the tap of the bottom far below. A touch he could scarcely feel. The horizon was as bare as a ring of steel, but the sea was not fathomless. And he hauled that line back as if he were reeling in the far shore and that old lead came back to him stuffed with mud—with silt, sweet with the taste of rivers. At the darkest. At the last cast.”

  The Patriarch turned to Abravanal, to Severin, to the assembled peers, and he thrust his bearded chin high.

  “I stand before you as cities lie in ashes. The king wages war. Sanctuaries fall. And I think of Saerdan’s final heave of the lead—plunging through the darkness, reaching down, down for the very bed of the sea when all was lost.

  “Now, when you have done here, there is a mighty funeral beginning. For this, I think, we shall mark the night in procession. There may yet be holy ground enough at the old sanctuary.”

  With that, Oredgar left the denizens of the Painted Hall in fierce and shamefaced silence.

  HOW LONG THEY sat in that dark hall, Durand could not say. But after an age served in grim celebration, a runner slipped through the crowd to Kieren, like a bird winging in through a sickroom window. And, in moments, Abravanal was on his feet and stalking from the hall with his robes flapping behind him.

  Durand got up to follow and found that he was not alone as barons, lords, and fighting men joined. And the crowd became a baffled procession groping through the narrow spaces of the castle and pouring out into the twilit marketplace where the duke hesitated. Alone, the old man gaped at a vision that spread before them in the gloom: thousands of men and women had climbed the ruined citadel. Their silent multitude now gathered round the ruins of a high sanctuary whose broken walls stood in an island of rushlight and torches.

  They blundered after Abravanal like nursem
aids on a sleepwalker’s heels as the old man staggered through the charred city, until soon the towering blades of the sanctuary’s walls pitched near and their makeshift procession was among the mute crowd. People cast their eyes down and parted to let the procession through to the eerie place in the midst of the gathering. It seemed to Durand that Oredgar had rebuilt his sanctuary with a press of living men in place of dead stone. Above, the purple Heavens gaped with twilight. But on the tiles at their feet lay every man who’d been carted from Ferangore, blue-pale and as still as eternity. Slack skin shone with oil, and the air was thick with balsam and ginger.

  The Patriarch of Acconel spread his arms at the head of the candlelit multitude. “Join as we sing the Last Twilight and walk the hours of darkness as they did in the days of the High Kingdom. For now, our land is laid bare to the Otherworld, the Banished groan at their ancient fetters, and the Lost spin above our heads. But we shall not despair. And neither shall we sleep, for the prayers of the priests and Knights of Ash suffice no longer, and we must take the burden in our own hands. Those who lie in this place faced death and disaster for our sakes and we must do likewise now. The wise women have prepared them and now we must wait the dawn to send them onward. Over this last night, we must keep vigil. We shall not sleep so that our brothers may rest untroubled until their passage through the Bright Gates of far Heaven.”

  “Dawn,” Abravanal said. “One night is not enough to bid him good-bye! My son!” And Durand wondered if the old man knew how Lamoric had fought for just such a sob—for anyone to think him worth it. Abravanal doubled over and Kieren, nearest, rushed to his elbow. But the old man reared up.

  “It will be here!” he said, turning to the crowd. Facing them all, wild-eyed. “We will build a gibbet here where all can see what becomes of traitors! Of traitors and killers all! They shall not see the dawn. They shall not see it!” Men took hold of the old man, though Kieren gave a quick and reluctant nod to the duke’s mad orders: they would build a scaffold in the funeral’s midst.