[Galazon 00] When the King Comes Home

by Stevermer, Caroline

  The slope upward to the tower was gentle. My knees were still twangling. I mounted and urged the poor beast after Istvan.

  I suppose it is logical to put a tower somewhere high. From near its foot, I could see for miles. From the top, I imagined, one might see all the way to Chersonesa. A lookout post, this had been, for Ardres.

  If there was a flaw in the defenses at Ardres, which commanded the valley so completely, it was that it viewed the hills to the north not at all. A watchtower provided a vantage point.

  A watcher could see far to the north from here. But how could he tell Ardres what he saw? Perhaps a bonfire? It would take a series of bonfires to spread an alarm as far as Ardres. There was nothing larger than gorse growing anywhere near.

  Or were there less tangible means? Maybe I was light-headed with exertion. Maybe I was full of girlish fancies. I thought I heard voices in the wind. Names called out by voices I recognized, voices I didn’t, words, perhaps, in a language I couldn’t understand. I tried to concentrate on catching my breath and staying as dose to Istvan as I could.

  At his command, we hobbled the horses. He circled the tower at a distance. There was no sign anyone was within. I walked with him to the door. It opened. He paused on the threshold, and I realized he was breathing hard. It wasn’t the climb that had made him breathless. His eyes were nearly bulging. He was frightened.

  I ignored what I thought I heard, put my voice into the steadiest register I could manage, and said, “No trees. Are you sure this is the place?”

  He nearly fell off the step. “What?”

  “No trees. You said there were pine trees near the tower.”

  “Perhaps there were once. Or perhaps I was traveling faster than I realized. Or perhaps the pines were farther than I thought. I don’t know. But this is the place.” He crossed the threshold. I followed him.

  There were bird droppings. Problems with the roof, no doubt. Pigeons get in everywhere. There were sheep droppings too. There was plenty of dirt, but beneath it the floor was rough-dressed stone, well made. A flight of steps curved up toward the stout beams of a wooden ceiling What light there was came through the door with us and from above in a few narrow bars of sunlight. Dust motes hung in the angled light. Either the roof was worse than it looked from outside, or there was something like a window up above.

  I started up the steps while Istvan was still looking around, braced in one spot as if some unseen tide was rising past his knees.

  “No one’s here,” I called down. The upper level was full of light and dust. There were three narrow windows, unglazed, and a flue and fireplace in the wall. It looked nothing like the place Istvan had described to the prince-bishop. It showed no more sign of occupation than the ground floor had.

  The steps continued up and so did I. The upper chamber was cramped, windowless and small. In the interests of thoroughness, I found the trapdoor to the roof. It opened with difficulty, but curiosity made me strong. I skinned through to find myself at the zenith, the absolute summit of the world.

  It was beautiful country, even if it was barren. The hills rose and fell all around me. Shadows had moved while we were inside the tower. The sun was almost gone. Only the top half of the tower still caught the light. It gilded the dark stone below me and all the hills south and eastward. Even a meandering loop of the river Lida was visible off in the blue distance, giving back the sky like an arc of light against the dusk.

  To the north, I could see the dark line of the hills of Galazon. Beyond that, so clear was the day, a suggestion of deeper blue against the sky hinted at the round-shouldered mountains of Haydock.

  I closed the trap and clambered down. It took me much longer to descend than to climb, for I was all but blinded by the gloom of the tower after the glory of the world.

  It took me a few minutes to find Istvan. He’d left the tower and gone to stand with the horses, head down and shoulders braced. He looked ill.

  “Now where should we go?”

  He blinked at me.

  “No one is here. What shall we do next? Track them? It looks as if it’s been a month since anyone has been here. That’s judging by the sheep manure. I know my sheep manure, you can trust me on that.”

  He made an effort. Still, I barely caught his words. “Can’t you hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s the wind.”

  “No.” He shivered comprehensively, and the horses shifted away from him, ears flat back and eyes rolling. “It will be here she does it. She’s going to come here because this is where she can do it. Perhaps that sound is souls she hasn’t bothered to finish calling. Maybe that’s what it is.”

  “What if she’s already done it?”

  “Listen to it. It—expects her.”

  “We wait for her then?”

  He nodded.

  “Where?” I looked around at the empty ridge. The closest cover was back the way we’d come, down in the folds of the hillside. “Inside the tower? There’s a sort of loft just under the roof.”

  The thought of going back inside the tower seemed to dismay Istvan. “If there’s light enough, we can see her coming.”

  “If she comes tonight.”

  “It will be tonight.” Istvan opened the blanket folded and rolled behind his saddle. A heavy bundle of oiled linen fell into his hand. Gingerly, he unfolded the fabric and showed me the pistol he held. “Amyas told me what I would need. I stole it from the palace. Did you ever use one?”

  I regarded the expensive weapon with respect. “Even Amyas doesn’t use one. Put it away.”

  Reluctantly, he folded the linen around it, but he did not replace it in the blanket roll. Instead he tucked the bundle tenderly under his arm, as if it were a borrowed book. “I will use it when she arrives. If the light allows.”

  “How much did Amyas explain about such devices? Did he show you how to reload? You do realize you only get one try with it?”

  “He told me the theory. Never point it at anything I don’t wish to kill.”

  “Well, practice would be wise. It isn’t loaded, is it?”

  Istvan brought it out again, examining it with incomprehension that made me wince. It was loaded.

  “Let me take it.”

  “You don’t like it. I can tell.”

  “I know more about it than you do.” I was exaggerating just a trifle. My experience with firearms consisted of accompanying Amyas once when he “borrowed” Father’s pistol and went out potting rabbits. We didn’t hurt anything. So little damage had we done that going to bed supperless was considered punishment enough.

  “You wouldn’t use it.”

  “I’ll hand it to you when it’s time.”

  “When I fire, will you reload it for me? I have everything Amyas told me I needed.” He brought another bundle, lighter but a little more bulky, out of the blanket roll and handed it to me. Istvan was thorough, I must admit. He had brought it all: powder, wadding, balls, even an extra flint.

  “I’ll try. But it won’t be much use in the. dark.”

  “Practice if you need to. I’ll hide the horses.”

  “I would rather practice braiding snakes.”

  He left me there, crouched in the wily grass. I ignored the two linen-wrapped bundles in my lap. My hands were cold, so I folded my arms and pretended that it was a pleasant change from the heat of the summer day. I watched the first stars come out. I listened to the things the wind said. The night came up the hill like a river rising, like the tide coming in, like the world ending.

  When Istvan rejoined me, it was so dark I couldn’t see him; but I could tell easily enough that he was shivering, and I could smell that he was sweating. I even guessed the reason. It was because he knew we were going to have to go back up into the tower. It was far too dark to hope to keep watch anywhere else.

  I led the way. He didn’t want to climb the steps. He didn’t want to crouch in the cramped, dusty little chamber under the roof. He didn
’t want to stay quiet. I made him do all that, even though I had to lean against him to be sure he’d stay still. No wonder I dozed off, propped against his back for hours.

  When he moved, I thought he was going for the door. Instead, he put his hand over half my face. He meant to silence me. I nearly suffocated before I freed myself. “It sounds like lots of people,” I gasped finally.

  His voice was hardly a breath in my ear. “Six, at least.”

  One of the six was in the chamber below us, making a steady whimpering sound that was more painful to listen to than the wind itself. Someone else was giving orders. I couldn’t quite catch the words, but the inflection was impossible to mistake. The voice was pitched soft and low, very pleasant. I thought it was a woman’s voice. From Istvan’s shuddering, I judged it had to be Dalet.

  The whimpers broke off for a while. The voice ordered, quite distinctly, “Guard this place. I won’t lose more time through your carelessness.” Four sets of footsteps departed, clattering back down to the ground floor. One set of footsteps continued, swift and light, around and around the plank-floored chamber below us. The rhythm of the steps turned and varied, as if in a dance without music. Or a dance with no more music than muted whimpering and a relentless cry of voices on the wind. It was impossible to listen to anything but the pattern of those steps.

  I don’t know what Istvan was thinking. I forgot everything but that relentless dance. The pistol, the urgency that had brought us here, the certainty that had held us here, the vigil we kept, all faded.

  I put my fingers in my ears and squeezed my eyes shut, despite the dark, until stars bloomed under my eyelids.

  The stuffy warmth beneath the rafters of the tower grew cold. I bit my tongue to keep silent. The footsteps quickened their pace. Beside me, Istvan was shivering. The whimpers crumbled into muffled sobs. The sobbing seemed to make the voices worse. It stirred them.

  I crossed myself and began to whisper the Paternoster beneath my breath.

  “Stop it.” Istvan caught my hand and nearly crushed it in his. His words were little more than warm breath in my ear. “She’ll know. She can smell out the good. Be still. Don’t even think.”

  I nodded. He released me. In the darkness, the voices fluttered everywhere, above us, below us, piping, squealing, dragging out their strange syllables in painful need.

  The footsteps halted. The silence dragged at me. I could no longer hear the voices in the wind. The sobs were still there, a weary counterpoint to my own hushed breathing. I shrank against Istvan, but the stone of the tower would have offered as much comfort.

  The voice was very pleasant, soft and musical. Pitched to command, I found her words unmistakable. “Come down, lambkin. I hear your prayers. Come down to me.”

  TEN

  (In which I pray.)

  I could not keep myself from moving. As I got clumsily to my feet, Istvan rose too. He brushed past me, not gently, and he took the pistol away from me as he did. With sword and pistol he went down to her. With a squeak of relief, I huddled alone in the darkness. But I’d been the one she called. After a deep breath, I followed. I was half down the steps to the room below when my knees betrayed me. I huddled on the steps and stared.

  Dalet was surprised to see Istvan. Her voice betrayed that much, though all she said was, “Lambkin—”

  Istvan fired the pistol. The screaming began. It was all around us, not just from the room below. Every voice in the air around us protested. I winced, and winced again when the pistol hit me. Istvan had thrown it back up the steps to me and I’d missed it, my eyes squeezed shut against the noise.

  Reload it. I scrambled to retrieve the pistol, to find the bundle that contained the ammunition.

  Heavy footsteps coming up from the ground floor—her sentries—and the stamp and clash of swordplay.

  I pawed at the bundle of cloth, set the materials out on the step beside me by touch. Primer. Charge. Wadding. Ball. Was that the right order? I squeezed my eyes shut again, hard, only because I couldn’t squeeze shut my ears. All I could do was make my own racket.

  Aloud, and very loudly, I said the Paternoster as I fumbled my way through reloading the pistol. Was it done properly? I had so little faith in myself that I took it up in my left hand when I was done. In a tower full of necromancy, with death and madness waiting for me, I took the trouble to hold that pistol in my left hand, lest anything untoward happen to my right.

  I do not say this was a sensible precaution, nor even a realistic or useful one. It is what I did, that’s all, and I think it may serve to show how, even when farthest from the tranquil concerns of art, the true artist is mindful of her destiny.

  No. Not true. Even I am not quite that full of porridge. I held it in my left hand because I was sure I’d done it all wrong and somehow it would blow to bits even as I held it.

  It says something about Istvan’s skill that the fight was still going on, even after all the time I’d taken attempting to reload the pistol.

  I peered downward. Two guards had fallen already and lay motionless. A third was falling, and the fourth hesitated, terrified equally of Istvan and Dalet. There was a man lying supine between them, bound hand and foot, his sobs and whimpers silenced. By the fireplace, Dalet leaned against the wall and only a dark stain on her sleeve showed that Istvan’s very first attempt at a pistol shot had done anything at all. I saw the gleam of gold on her finger and at her breast. The ring that had summoned Istvan? I wondered. And the other? I looked, but I couldn’t see well enough to be sure.

  Dalet had the straight, silky kind of red hair, not wild like Saskia’s. Her eyes were too widely spaced, her chin too sharp, her mouth too narrow for good proportion, and her long neck too long. Yet the first thought anyone would have of her was beauty. The second thought was likely to be more prudent, for the burning eyes and pallid complexion spoke of zealotry, scholarship, and a rich diet. She was like a child’s drawing of a princess.

  Dalet was watching the fight with avidity. She was waiting, I thought, for a little more bloodshed, a little more excitement before she intervened. Even though she’d been injured, her confidence was unshaken.

  Istvan engaged the fourth guard and the vigor of his attack backed the puffing man a step or two closer to the stair. I could see Dalet’s appreciation of the maneuver. Any more, and the man’s retreat would send him backward down the flight of steps. Instead of warning him, she licked her lips. Waiting.

  Our Father who art in heaven. I steadied my left hand with my right, brought the barrel down as steadily as my loathing would let me, and squeezed the trigger.

  The gunshot made me scream.

  Dalet screamed louder.

  It hurt her no more, I think, than the first had, but I managed by luck to injure her other arm. The surprise was a greater factor than either injury. She sprang up, calling out in a voice that made all the voices in the air fall silent. Then there was an owl where she had been, a white owl, small but fierce, its wings barred with scarlet.

  She flew to the window and was gone. The fourth guard recoiled—and was gone—a step too many and the stairs took him in a series of ever-diminishing thumps.

  Istvan panted and looked around and cleaned his sword. I lowered I the pistol as soon as I realized I was still aiming it, my arms gone stiff, elbows locked, at the spot where Dalet had stood.

  Istvan knelt beside the captive. In better times, the bound man : would have had a steady strength about him. He seemed stocky, yet well made, like an oak in a grove of beech trees. Not a young oak either. From his thinning hair, the lines on his face, his calloused fingertips, I would have guessed this man had spent at least sixty years working hard, with his brain as well as his back. He had fainted, apparently, and the strain of his captivity shadowed his slack features.

  When Istvan released his bonds, the sound of the knife on the ropes seemed loud, that’s how quiet the tower was once the voices had fallen silent. It was so quiet that Istvan’s indrawn breath sounded like cloth tearing.
>
  “God’s bones. I’m too late. That damned dance of hers … . When the crying stopped, that’s when the change took place. It must have been.”

  It took me several moments to understand Istvan’s loss of composure. Then I saw the resemblance in brow and chin, breadth of chest, jut of nose. Julian again. This time, the king as he had been, perhaps in Vienna, when the fever (or the poison, if the tales are to be believed) brought his reign to a close. Good King Julian, worn and weary, come home at last to Lidia.

  Istvan put out his hand, as if to touch Julian’s face, but he stopped himself. The delicacy with which he’d touched the donor panel in the Archangel Chapel was brusque in comparison to the gentleness with which he finally touched the king’s face.

  I couldn’t watch. It was private, never meant for my eyes. Istvan had forgotten I was there. I knew that much. I busied myself retrieving the flintlock and the parcels I’d left in the upper chamber. By the time I was finished reloading the pistol, Istvan was kneeling beside the king, who was blinking up at him sleepily.

  “Istvan. I’ve just had the strangest dream … .” His voice was like the very best India blue, well ground and perfectly compounded, smooth and rich, deep and heart lifting. He broke off at the sight of me. His face betrayed his curiosity, but his courtesy, even in these extremes, was too perfect to allow him to ask the obvious question.

  “Allow me to present Hail Rosamer, my Lord.”

  I found my knees knew how to curtsy, even if the rest of me had never been sure.

  “Your lady fair, Istvan?”

  “My bailiff, more like.”

  “You’ve long needed one, heaven knows. I give you good evening, Mistress Rosamer. Keep a careful watch on this fellow. He needs steady sharp eyes like yours to look after him.”