by Anna Thayer
Eamon just had time to shield his eyes as the case smashed down on him. The crack of the thick volumes of poetry and harsh beams of wood beat against him like the sea’s wrath overtaking breakers.
Eamon crumpled to the floor with a cry, the weight of the whole, shattered case upon him. Dust and paper flew into his face and mouth. He was trapped. Cathair’s laughter echoed in his ears; the Hand approached. Eamon tried desperately to lift the filthy maw of wood off his frame.
Suddenly Cathair’s voice was upon him:
So from that bloody lair the knight bewildered crept;
Blind spawn of fleeing snakes that, in his fleeing, wept.
Cathair towered over Eamon through the jagged wood; the Hand seemed enormous in the dust. A flame hovered on his hand, waiting to be loosed.
Cathair looked down at him with a patronizing gaze. “Did you think to stand against me, boy?” he cooed. “Against the Raven who was here when Dunthruik was birthed in the Serpent’s blood? Alone? You have long been a fool, Goodman. Now you have proven yourself one.” With a snide laugh, Cathair let go the flame.
Eamon saw the ball, saw the searing flames and knew that he was lost. But as the fire came he felt a sudden shiver of blue washing through him.
Stand forth, First Knight! it cried.
He cast his hand forward, turning his outstretched palm towards the howling flame as it came down on him. The fire struck his hand, then dissipated along lines of shivering blue that curved protectively around him. With the light about him Eamon rose slowly, awkwardly, from the books and shards. Then he came out from the wreckage.
Cathair stared. “You snake!” he breathed. His voice became a roaring howl. “Snake! Snake!”
“I am no snake,” Eamon answered, his voice strong and fearless. “Nor serve I one. I serve the King.”
“Traitor!” Cathair screamed and in a flurry of rage he sent orb after orb of burning light screeching towards Eamon. But to every one Eamon answered with his palm, for the King’s grace was with him and none of Cathair’s rending arrows could touch him. Each one split as it reached the shield of blue and then bled into the air. Cathair screamed with rage. The dogs howled louder.
“Wayfaring slime! Belly-walker!” Cathair howled, hurling another orb. “There is no scale but a snake’s fit to weigh your lying tongue!”
“You will not burn me, Cathair,” Eamon told him.
“Then I shall drink your blood!” Cathair bawled. He drew his blade and tore down the length of the room towards Eamon.
Eamon’s sword felt heavy and dull in his hand as it jarred with Cathair’s blade. Cathair screamed at him in an unknown language. The words gripped like curses as the Hand cut at Eamon with the savagery of a beast. Eamon’s arms and upper body shuddered with the force of each blow. He knew that he could not turn a single one of them and, realizing it, understood his peril.
With a sounding crack Cathair brought his scimitar down against Eamon’s sword. The metal shivered on impact and gave way; waves of strength buffeted up Eamon’s arm, threatening to break bone.
With a cry Eamon let go of his broken sword and stepped back. Cathair was on him in an instant; Eamon pulled back from a jab aimed at his throat. He dove for his fallen sword and caught the hilt in his hand. The edge of the broken metal was jagged. He wheeled to avoid a returning blow, and sliced Cathair’s arm.
Cathair cried out in agony, then snatched his sword from his bleeding right arm with his left. Eamon drove his broken blade deep into the Hand’s unguarded flank.
Cathair collapsed. Falling, he cast a bolt of red light towards the door. There was a crash. Eamon turned with horror: the door was broken. The incensed dogs charged him.
He tore the scimitar from Cathair’s hand and swung it down across the neck of the leading beast. It fell beneath his first blow, but the other three, enraged by the smell of blood and their master’s howls, were on him within moments.
Eamon fell back before their jaws, but the dogs were faster than he. They leapt and bore down on him not three paces from where he had downed the first. Eamon snatched up his cloak and hurled it at them. Suddenly the world was a mass of swirling black and crushing jaws as he slashed blindly at his foes. A second dog yelped as it fell beneath Eamon’s blade. It crashed into the third dog and knocked it sidelong. Eamon slid his scimitar through the third dog’s ribs. It collapsed in a heap as blood spurted from the wound.
Eamon scrambled to his feet, trembling. The fourth – where was the fourth? He looked wildly about and then stopped.
The fourth hound, bleeding from its foreleg, took up a protective stance over its master. It stood between Eamon and Cathair and growled. Cathair wheezed and choked, coughing up blood.
Swiftly Eamon drew up the tattered remains of his cloak and wrapped it round his arm, bracing it. He was covered in blood and knew that some of it was likely his. He nearly slipped in it as he strode forward from the dogs’ grisly corpses towards Cathair’s last defender.
When he was a yard away, the hound sprang. Eamon shielded himself with his left arm and the beast went for it, driving its long teeth down about his limb. They pierced through the thick cloak to his flesh. The dog bit down harder. As the hound fastened on to his left arm, Eamon thrust his sword into its throat.
The dog crumpled to the floor, dragging Eamon with it. Using the scimitar, Eamon prised the dog’s jaws from his arm, its teeth sharp, slippery. He staggered to his feet and tugged the cloak tight over his wound. His forearm burned. He wriggled his fingers. Pain shot up his arm in an army of tiny knives, but his fingers moved. At last, he turned to Cathair.
The Hand had crawled towards the exit, leaving a long smear of blood across the floor. Gasping, he rolled onto his back and laid a hand at the muzzle of one of his dead dogs. Eamon drew Eben’s dagger.
“Bastard son of the Betrayer!” Cathair wheezed through bloody lips.
“I was once a Master’s man, Cathair,” Eamon told him. “You made me one. I was loyal to him when I went to Pinewood. But when I returned, you broke me. In breaking me, and crushing those I loved, you caused me to remember whom it was I served, and who I was. Know me, Lord Cathair: I am the First Knight of Hughan Brenuin.”
Cathair’s eyes went wide with horror. “The blade shall break and turn true…” he whispered. His face became deathly pale as Ashway’s prophecy spilled from his lips. “It will fall…” Cathair looked up at him with a wretched and violent look. “So be it!” he rasped. “But know that I killed your ‘goodmen’, your precious cadets and ensigns, and I killed your ward, Goodman! I tore the eyes from his face and broke the hands from his wrists, and gorged on his blood!”
“Then know, Cathair, that I forgive you.” The words had been unthinkable to him, but still they came. “I forgive you for the wrongs that you have done me; Mathaiah’s death is not the least among them.”
Cathair stared, unable to comprehend. “You cannot forgive me!” he spluttered.
“I do.”
The Hand fell silent. As Eamon looked at him, he felt new authority filling him.
Courage, First Knight.
“Cathair,” Eamon said solemnly, “you willingly raised voice and hand in deeds of treachery and deceit against the house of Brenuin. You have troubled this land and its people with torment and toil, and you have joyfully served a usurper whose hands have shed blood, and been set to deeds to which yours were gladsome servants. What you have done against this land, by word and deed, deserves death.”
Cathair’s bloody face gaped at him. “You presume to pass judgment on me?” he seethed.
“No,” Eamon answered. “But under the authority of the King, I come to deal it.” Cathair watched him with shallow breath as Eamon paused, weighing Eben’s dagger in his hand. “Cathair,” Eamon said, seeking the Hand’s gaze, “the King is willing to forgive –”
Cathair spat blood at him. “You would offer me the banner of your whore-son star? You would dare to try to turn me?” His face grew paler with each word. He pa
used to snatch his breath. “May your house be consumed by fire and torment and your Serpent fall in treachery upon his own sword!”
Eamon let the words pass through him: his heart was secure. He looked solemnly at his foe. The dagger was in his hand and Cathair lay obdurate and baleful before him.
“Cathair,” he said quietly, “if that is your choice, then I have nothing more to offer you than the final mercy of a swift clean death – a mercy you withheld from Mathaiah and so many others. I do not seek vengeance. What I do, I do for the King.”
“Then do what you must!” Cathair hissed through clenched teeth.
No further words passed between the Raven and the First Knight. In silence Eamon pierced the heart of the Lord of the West Quarter.
He cleaned his blade on the edge of his bloody cloak. Fatigue rushed through him.
Cathair was dead.
For a moment he stood and stared. The silence of the wrecked room overcame him.
He stepped over to Cathair’s scimitar and took it up in his hand. His own sword, which he had carried since he had joined the West Quarter College, lay in shards.
He returned to the cooling body and cut Cathair’s head from it, binding it up first in his cloak and then in Cathair’s. He gathered up the ends of the second cloak into his fist, and easing the ring of the West Quarter Hand from the blanched fingers, he laid the scimitar down over Cathair’s breast. Then he returned to the alcove.
The Nightholt seemed a grisly jewel in its hiding place. If Cathair had not put it there… then who had?
The time for such questions was past: he could let no other take the book to the Master.
He lifted the tome from the alcove, shuddering. Drawing a deep breath Eamon turned his back on Cathair’s library.
Eamon emerged from the long corridors into the dying sunlight, the weight of the head in one arm and the burden of the Nightholt in the other. As he left the doors of Cathair’s hall the college courtyard opened out before him with the walls of the palace and the bustle of Dunthruik beyond.
Men stood in the courtyard: Waite and dozens of Gauntlet ensigns and officers, and a small group of shaking servants. Arlaith paced among them. As Eamon stepped down, the watchers stared through the dull light, as though trying to see which Hand looked back at them.
Eamon descended slowly. He knew that he was bloody and torn; his arm raged where the dog had mauled him and there was dust and sweat and splinters in his hair. But his heart was clear.
As he reached the courtyard path, Arlaith blenched. Only Waite came forward. His eyes glanced at the bundle Eamon bore, then to the book, then back to Eamon’s face with awed dread.
“Come you from victory, my lord?” the captain asked quietly.
Eamon matched his gaze, then looked at the gathered spectators. “It is the Master’s will that I have performed this day, captain.”
“My lord?”
“Cathair acted treacherously against the Master.” He did not know whether it was true.
Waite paled. “I knew nothing of this, Lord Goodman,” he whispered.
“You knew only of its effects,” Eamon answered. “Cathair’s treachery entailed the death of many at this college.”
Waite’s look grew grim.
“Cathair alone was at fault,” Eamon told him consolingly. “No other man in the West will pay.” Waite nodded, relieved, but the man shook. “The dogs’ bodies are to go to the Blind Gate,” he said quietly. “Cathair’s will go to the pyres. I must go to the Master.”
Arlaith was suddenly at his side. “May I accompany you, Lord Goodman?”
The Left Hand seemed a bird of prey circling the lost tome. Eamon met his gaze sternly. “You may not,” he replied. “I will go alone.”
He went through the streets of Dunthruik with Cathair’s head in one hand and the Nightholt in the other. Men stopped and stared to see the Right Hand riding thus, a creature of blood. He halted for none of them. Resolutely, he rode to the palace and crossed the Royal Plaza, going directly to the throne room.
The doorkeeper was there. When he saw Eamon he grew pale.
“I will see the Master,” Eamon told him. Wordlessly, the doorkeeper opened the door.
Eamon strode the length of the hall with confidence. He did not see the paintings or the fine mosaics, and barely saw the Master’s secretary, who stood by the foot of the throne in conversation with the throned. Eamon passed him by and climbed the steps to the dais. Reaching the very floor of the throne, he dropped to one knee.
“Master.”
“What do you bring me, son of Eben?” the throned asked. There was grim anticipation in his voice.
“I bring you the head of Lord Cathair,” Eamon answered, laying the bloody bundle down before him. Suddenly he shook. “And I bring you the Nightholt.” So saying, he held the book forward on his palms.
The throned rose to his feet; the air about him quivered. He lifted the dark tome with dreadful, ravenous eagerness. Fire sparked across the book’s lettering; the Nightholt knew and rejoiced at the touch of its Master.
Edelred held the book for a long moment, caressing its cover, touching its pages. He looked back to Eamon.
“How I love you, son of Eben!” As he spoke he pressed a kiss hard against Eamon’s forehead, a kiss made passionate by long years of grim and bloody searching. Eamon received its fire with quaking limbs, for it brought with it the vision of a battlefield strewn with corpses, over which the Master and his Nightholt rode.
“By this service to me, son of Eben,” the Master told him in a thrilling whisper, “you redeem your line.”
Only then did Eamon realize what he had done.
The Master watched him, his gaze radiant with a father’s pride. But in his horror, Eamon could scarcely hear or feel, for his sight was the thrall of the Nightholt and he had delivered it into the hand of its Master.
CHAPTER VIII
Visions of fire and sword whipped through him, struck him, impaled him.
Eben fallen upon by Hands veiled in darkness. The broad wastes of Edesfield. The churning mud choked with corpses that emanated blood-light. Arlaith, begging clemency. Cathair, mired in his own blood. The fangs of dogs deep in his flesh where the throned’s kiss still lingered. The Nightholt in the Master’s hands from whence poured ubiquitous red light. His heart pulsed out the promises of his blood. Every token of those promises cast down in the dark letters that marked the Nightholt and his flesh.
Besieged on every side by vision, thought, memory, and dream, Eamon trembled as he knelt. He heard faint sounds of others moving in the room – perhaps the Master’s secretary? – yet he could not turn to look at them.
He could not undo what he had done.
“Let the city ring with jubilation!” called the Master’s voice, a raging torrent in his ear. “Let every household in this city, from servant to lord, from maid to mistress, receive a case of the Raven’s brew. For that carrion fowl has been felled by my Right Hand, and I am the more pleased with him.”
The Master’s hand fell on his brow. Powerful fingers drew across Eamon in a gesture of terrible tenderness, then that same hand was beneath his chin, bidding him to rise. Unsteadily he obeyed its command; weariness flooded every limb.
“Your glory, Master,” he whispered.
The throned’s grey eyes searched his. “Have the Right Hand taken to his quarters; send my physician to him,” he commanded. The Master took in every line of sweat and blood and youth on Eamon’s face. His tone became suddenly as soft and wistful as the touch with which he had caressed Eamon’s brow. “His blood is precious to me.”
Eamon’s blood thrilled through his veins.
The secretary was soon beside him, guiding him to the doorway and entrusting him to two of the Master’s own guard. Yet as he was escorted from the hall, Eamon saw the Nightholt. It remained in his thought with every trembling step.
Rumour flew swifter than a crow through Dunthruik. The corridors by which the Master’s guards took Eamon to
his own quarters were flooded with people, all of whom bowed low; as he passed they whispered the name of the one who had struck down the Raven.
He climbed the stairs to his halls, weak in limb and scarce in breath. The guards steadied him as he faltered and swayed in the stairwell. His head swam. He felt trammelled by blood and filth.
The doors to his quarters were opened; his strength left him and his knees buckled.
“My lord,” said an alarmed voice. It was Fletcher’s. Within moments he was at Eamon’s side.
“Lieutenant.” Eamon raised one hand to his head. “The doctor is coming…”
“He is here,” spoke a voice from the doorway. Doveton strode swiftly in.
“May I sit?” Eamon asked quietly.
“I would encourage it,” the doctor answered, dismissing the guards.
Eamon sank into the long couch. As he gave over his weight, his trembling increased. His breath came in gasps. He had delivered the Nightholt… and Eben writhed and screamed before him. Eamon put his hands over his eyes and a moan escaped his lips. He tasted blood on them.
The doctor turned to Fletcher. “Lord Goodman will be in need of a very long bath.”
“I will have the maids draw it.” Fletcher hurried off. Eamon scarcely heard them as they spoke; the world passed him by like distant rumblings, obscured by visions of darkness.
A hand touched his shoulder. “Where are you hurt, Lord Goodman?” Doveton asked.
Eamon forced himself to focus on the doctor’s face. “I do not know,” he rasped at last. “I do not think my life stands in any peril,” he added as the doctor took hold of his arm. Eamon hissed with pain.
“I shall need a closer look at this at least. It would seem that you have rendered your shirt quite useless,” Doveton mused. “I would not even send what remains of it to the scullery for swabbing the paving stones. I am going to remove it.”