A King in Cobwebs Read online

  Out on the floor, the men of Swanskin Down were shaking their heads and raising the fist-and-fingers sign.

  “It was a question of honor,” said Coensar while the thing that had been Euric stared. “He fought bravely. No man could be ashamed.”

  Ailric straightened. “Your Grace.”

  “Young man,” said the duke, “we are sorry and sorely embarrassed. You should never have found your master thus. We have only just heard ourselves. It is a great shame. But you came in some haste, I think. And though we must not ask you to divulge anything you had in confidence from Baron Vadir, if the matter is of great consequence, you must decide whether or not you must speak.”

  The shield-bearer frowned a moment while his late master gawped past his ear.

  “I should say that my tidings were meant for Your Grace, in the end. Baron Vadir of Swanskin Down says: Two nights past, raiders forded the River Banderol from Yrlac and struck three holdings. Two of these were the personal lands of Baron Vadir. There was great damage to property: a shrine, two mills, and a manor house belonging to Sir Euric. They were put to the torch.”

  “Leovere,” Abravanal growled. There were snarls among the Swanskin men as well.

  Ailric nodded sharply. “Your Grace. It may be.”

  “And he wishes my daughter’s hand,” said the duke, glancing to Coensar. “Why do I suffer him to keep his seat in Penseval when he will not swear fealty? I’ve had a bellyful of that devil. What say you, Durand, my champion?”

  Durand blinked. “Of Leovere?”

  Coensar shot him a warning look, but Durand was more than distracted: Euric gaped right by his shield-bearer’s side. “These raids. Men are dead. Men sworn to you. But he will not swear, though he holds your lands. Yrlac rallies round him, and there is no peace.”

  “You see?” said Abravanal, stabbing a finger at Durand. “You see! Here is honest counsel. Leovere will not take my hand! Yrlac will not rest. He is a thorn in my rump! A knife at my throat! It is past bearing. It is too much. Fat lands would I give the man who finally put an end to this devilry!”

  More than a few ears pricked at the duke’s tirade, and the rivers of baggage were still for a moment.

  Coensar stood, giving Durand a stiff glance.

  “Ailric, our riders are on the road to Vadir as we speak,” said Coensar. “The duke rides south for the high passes and the Fellwood beyond. We will see Vadir in two days’ time, but only on the way to Fellwood.”

  Ailric blinked. “Fellwood.” When there was open fighting in Gireth itself. The Baron of Swanskin Down was certain to be astonished. “I see, Lordship.”

  The young man spent a sober moment looking straight into Durand’s face.

  Kieren spoke next. “The duke thanks you for your tidings, Ailric. We will see to your accommodations while you recuperate from your journey.” As Kieren stepped from the dais, he passed close-as-kissing to Euric’s revenant. The thing tottered nearer to Durand.

  “Host of Hell,” Coensar said. “We are thick with omens once more.”

  Kieren was walking the shield-bearer away. “You spoke of a death in your family. I hope I am not pressing too far if I inquire?”

  “My father,” said the young man. “Priest-arbiter to the Baron of the Col. He was not young.”

  “The Col?” said Kieren. “That is the home of Sir Durand’s kin. Had you met Durand?”

  “Yes,” said the young man. “In the Col, once. On the head of Merchion, later.”

  And Durand was taken back to a moment, more than ten years ago, when he’d chased one of the Powers of Heaven down a well in his father’s keep. He remembered the boy’s flinty stare at the top of a well in the Col. The boy had thrown a wish of folded lead down the old well, and its hard corner had struck Durand by mistake. Durand’s own father had found this boy a place with Swanskin Down. He might otherwise have become a priest.

  Durand’s knuckle had drifted up to the spot where the lead prayer had cut his brow. Many scars had followed that one.

  Dead Euric shuffled closer, gaping like a boiled calf.

  “I remember,” said Durand.

  * * *

  HE MARCHED OUT. Dead Euric. Live Ailric. It had been too much.

  He nearly collided with Almora in the chamber stair.

  “Isn’t it exciting!” she exclaimed.

  It took him a moment to comprehend the girl.

  “Exciting. Yes, Almora.” A little more excitement and he’d join the Lost. “It must seem so,” he allowed.

  “You are fully as sour as they say, Sir Durand. Gulping like an old carp.”

  “Aye, well. Yes, Ladyship. There’s excitement enough, I’ll warrant. So many packing so quick, and riders charging off in every direction.” He swallowed, trying, for the moment to forget dead men. “Sure that’s excitement.”

  She hugged herself. “I never imagined that this old castle could come to life again! It’s like finding that a mountain can shake off the dust and march away. There have been nothing but whispers here for so long, Durand.”

  Durand ventured a nod. To him, this live and chirping girl seemed more impossible than a range of marching mountains. “The castle will seem all the more empty when they’ve gone, I suppose,” was all he could manage.

  Almora stiffened at his words, her head suddenly a-tilt.

  “You say, ‘they,’ Durand? When ‘they’ have gone?”

  “Aye,” Durand said. Oh, he was dull that day. Only then did he mark all the traveling clothes bundled in the girl’s arms: a waterproof cloak she’d brought in from the stables, a pair of strong boots. Only too late did he realize that she had been packing her possessions with her heart set on getting free of the old place, of leaving the castle and the city.

  “Oh. Almora. The mountains and Heaven knows what awaits us in Fellwood. These are the wild places of Creation. Your father won’t have a soul along but armed men.”

  “He will never let me leave this place,” Almora said, her words as dead as the Lost.

  “Your father thinks of nothing but your safety.”

  “It is the custom, I think, to wait for a woman to die before walling her up in her tomb. But he would have all of us entombed: both of his sons, and both his daughters.”

  Deorwen had been in the girl’s room. At this moment, she stepped into the corridor, then shoved past Almora and slammed the door, leaving her startled charge on the wrong side. The bang startled a leathery snap and rustle from a pair of birds silhouetted in a passage window: black birds with dagger beaks and bald faces. The things must have been there all the while.

  Deorwen rounded on Durand.

  “What have you said, Durand Col?”

  “I only told her that she’s not to come.”

  “Of course she’s not to come! His Grace would hardly take his daughter through rebels and mountains to the haunted Fellwood, now would he? And it was to be the work of hours, I thought, to talk her around to seeing it her father’s way. But you found a hastier method.”

  “I didn’t see that she was packing.”

  “No, you would not. You say you protect her. You watch over her—men have died over it—but I find that you know precious little about her. Here you are, year in and year out, and yet you scarcely know the first thing about the girl!”

  One of the birds in the windows cawed. There was no glass in the window, and so the strangely human sound racketed around the passageway. He’d seen too many carrion birds with Radomor and his Rooks.

  “What’s the matter with you?” said Deorwen.

  She was too near. His head spun with memories.

  First, rooks in the windows of Acconel—just like in Radomor’s war. And now, Deorwen. They’d done such terrible things. In the fear and despair of Radomor’s siege, they had lain with each other, night after night, though she was his master’s wife—his friend’s wife. And now, these long years later, they lived on with Lamoric in his tomb. He should have put leagues between them, but he had not. And so, in ten years,
he’d come to know a thousand forms of shame.

  But it was like drowning, still, to stand near her.

  “I didn’t think,” Durand managed.

  “Haw!” said the rooks.

  And Durand got free of her—of all of it—abandoning the woman at Almora’s door so that she might manage the feat of persuading the girl to open up and to stay behind in Acconel.

  “Durand?” Deorwen called. “Durand!”

  But he shambled down the passageway, the birds harrying him. He heard their laughing racket at the windows, following sill to sill, goading him on.

  Just for a moment, he wanted free of it all: the Lost, damned Deorwen, himself—and now Radomor’s Rooks.

  He had killed the Rooks up in Ferangore: Radomor’s necromancers. Killed them. But he was sure he heard a whisper: “Durand Col?” It scratched and tumbled round his skull, and he clapped his hands to his head.

  He found a corner.

  But then, very suddenly, he found himself face-to-face with a solemn young stranger. It was Ailric, late Euric’s shield-bearer. At the very moment of their meeting, an eerie metallic note chimed through the old castle.

  “Well, sir,” said Durand, finally. “If you would speak, you’d best do it.” Man or spirit, Durand would hear.

  “Sir Kieren wishes a word, sir.”

  “His Lordship is in the Painted Hall?”

  “Not quite, sir. He’s here,” the young man answered.

  And Kieren puffed into the passageway, climbing the last steps from the Painted Hall.

  “My thanks,” Durand said to the stern young man.

  “Durand,” said Kieren. “Coensar will certainly be pleased to have your thoughtful answers to His Grace’s questions. You’ve plopped a fox among the poor man’s pigeons, but perhaps it is in the best interest of a knight to make sure there is a ready supply of battles? In any case, I’ve come about our Ailric here. You remember? Your father sent that priest’s boy to the old Baron of Swanskin Down? Bound the boy as page up there?”

  As Kieren spoke, the two black rooks peered through an arrow loop some few paces down the passage beyond Ailric, and Durand heard the metallic ring once more. And so it took an effort of will for Durand to turn to the boy, taking a good hard look. His eyes were like black beads in his square face.

  “He’s been Euric’s shield-bearer,” said Kieren. “Haven’t you, man?”

  “I was sorry to hear about your father,” said Durand. Durand hadn’t known the old priest-arbiter, but it must have been hard.

  Ailric nodded.

  Now the two carrion birds lolloped into the passage itself, staying upright on the stone floor only with an awkward effort of their wings. And there was another metallic chime beyond walls. Clink.

  “You were with the barons back during the siege, were you not?” said Durand. “I’d just swum across the bay searching for them. You were there.”

  “He was,” said Kieren, nodding for the shield-bearer. “He’s been page and shield-bearer for old Swanskin Down since before the war. Capable, by all accounts. Though I cannot speak to the quality of his most recent master; we must not speak ill of the dead, after all. In any case, now, Durand, Ailric’s a masterless man.” As, once, Durand had been.

  Ailric had waved from the gate of the Col as Durand rode out to fight and find his way.

  As Durand looked into the half-stranger’s face, a sourceless whisper reached him: “Poor Durand, he can hardly leave the lad behind now, can he? What choice has he got, brother?” And the words skittered through Durand’s skull like a shower of earwigs and spiders.

  He was sure he flinched.

  He began to see shapes on the stairs. The moon-faced man. Creeping things. Twitching claws. Pale against the gloom, bladder-faced Euric came lurching up, step by step.

  Ailric lifted his chin, wary.

  Kieren raised his palms. “Now, I suppose I might send him down to the Swanskin knights, but it was your father sent him there, won him a place. And I thought I had better acquaint you with the situation.”

  The Lost now surrounded Kieren, earning not a single glance despite their grotesque appearances—though a wary crease stitched Ailric’s forehead as the boy stared. He was no fool, and Durand was no great actor. Something was wrong.

  Kieren scowled at the black birds. “Cheeky devils.”

  “My gratitude to you, Sir Kieren,” managed Durand. There was nothing for it. He must be haunted by grave Ailric and dead Euric both. “Ailric,” said Durand. “It seems I have a shield-bearer.”

  The crows—the Rooks, Durand was certain—hopped a lame caper.

  And then, with the dead rising all around Kieren and this new shield-bearer, another metal chime trembled in the air. Ting. It came from the stairs. The black eyes of Moon Face twitched like a falcon’s, and Euric’s face was as empty as a skin bag.

  Durand gave his head a firm shake. “Yes. Ailric. To begin.” He blinked. “There is work in the hall. The Painted Hall. They will need every hand.”

  Ailric nodded slowly, and departed.

  “Ah, excellent,” said Kieren. “I was not sure what you might say, but I am happy to hear that young Ailric will not be cast out upon the roads. Are you well, Durand?”

  “And a shield-bearer for the gallant champion. Brother, was it not the cruelest oversight to deprive our poor champion of such a stalwart aid? But what is this? Our hero falters?”

  Indeed, as the Rooks filled his head with their scurrying whispers and the dead loomed closer, Durand tottered a half step. He saw Kieren peering up. “Durand?” asked the Fox. “Are you well?”

  “It’s nothing,” Durand managed. “I must see to something. You will excuse me, I hope.”

  And, with nothing else but a sort of flinching nod, Durand stepped past Kieren and Euric and plunged through the spiderweb throng of the Lost and down the stairs.

  “Oh, where the stalwart hero of yesteryear?” the Rooks lamented as he made his retreat.

  But, half-stumbling down the stair, Durand decided that he would find the source of the ringing. He was not simply escaping Kieren, or the dead, or the Rooks, or Deorwen, or the boy who conjured memories of a father’s hall long ago. And so Durand descended through the fortress, flashing past the light and noise of the Painted Hall and finally leaving even the Rooks’ whispers behind as he descended into the clammy stillness of the castle’s depths. Through living rock, he descended after the shimmering note, like a diver after a tumbling silver coin until the chill gloom swallowed him.

  Ting.

  Blind in the ultimate depths of the tower, Durand stumbled upon an impossible chamber. The empty dark rang with voices, but he could feel the walls pressing close. There could not be space enough for so many living beings so deep in the earth.

  After a moment’s dread, Durand made out a patch of light in the middle of the room, as well as traces of a hole in the vaulted ceiling and a matching hole in the floor. This was the well chamber, and every floor of the tower echoed down. Durand damned himself for a fool, hearing a bench groan over a stone floor, a cleaver struck deep in some butcher’s block, a door rattled on its hinges. And Durand remembered the last time he’d come to this room.

  Ten winters had passed since he had been confronted by the Powers of Heaven, but this was the very spot.

  No sooner had this realization dawned upon him than a sudden note clanged in the empty room—clink—only a few paces away. Durand snapped straight.

  Somewhere beyond the wellhead, soles rasped on gritty flagstones.

  “You have returned,” came the enormous whisper. Now, a towering figure unfolded itself from the gloom beyond the well, a broad hat brushed the ceiling three fathoms above Durand’s prickling scalp.

  “Host Below,” Durand said. He knew this thing of bones and rags and knots. There was a long, forked staff in the giant’s hand, its brass heel winking at the well’s edge.

  “Traveler,” Durand said.

  The Power lifted its chin, allowing the feeble li
ght of the well shaft to play in its wild beard of knotted grass and the plowshare planes of its face. A coin glinted in one eye.

  “You have returned, Durand Col.”

  “Have I?” said Durand. The Traveler was the Power of roads, of crossroads: places fit for madmen, beggars, and gibbets. And Durand was as tired as if he’d fought for a year and a day.

  But the Power simply passed its dry hand over the room in a gesture like a slow shrug. Not a soul alive could mistake the bone and twine thing that stared down upon Durand for a living man.

  “You have stepped upon the road once more.”

  “Long years have passed since first we met,” Durand said. He could not forget. He had been promised a great deal then: land and love and position. But now here he was, mad, haunted, and useless.

  “Are you not your liege-lord’s champion?”

  Durand opened his hands, peering up into the shadows of the old Power’s face. “Champion? Yes, I am that.” Durand rubbed his face, going further. “Lord, I am content. Ten years have passed.” He meant to tell the thing that he’d had enough.

  “‘Content.’” The face turned a degree, like an insect, a mantis. “I am Lord of Ways. Warder at Crossroads. Prince of Mazes. He whom the lost alone may find. And you have returned to my Kingdom.”

  “Lord.” He had never felt more beaten. “I am not the man I was.”

  The Power raised its staff, like a gibbet swinging high. The staff hung poised over the wellhead. Durand remembered another well where the Traveler had swung its staff, striking prophecy from deep water.

  “No,” said Durand. “No prophecy.”

  But he found nothing in the idiot blackness of the Power’s old-penny eye. The giant settled like some shabby dragon on its haunches. Its skeleton jaw opened—a wide, death’s-head leer over its beard of knots. Slowly, with no change of his expression, the Power tipped the outsized head of its staff down toward the mouth of the well.

  “Please,” Durand said.

  “Everything you desire.”

  “Please. Lord, I am content. It is enough.”

  But the Power thrust the forked staff, striking the wellspring of Acconel, every road and trail and river ringing to this blow of its ancient master.