A King in Cobwebs Read online

  “There is to be a tournament in the Fellwood Marches,” said Deorwen.

  Towerknoll squinted. “Fellwood?”

  “There have been messengers,” said Deorwen. “They will meet at the Lindenhall. Over the Pennons Gate.”

  Towerknoll threw up his hands. “Your messengers must have missed old Towerknoll.… So Abravanal means to leave Leovere and Penseval and all of Yrlac behind him. All those men are headed to Fellwood.”

  “He is the Duke of Gireth. He does as he sees fit,” Durand said.

  Towerknoll managed a few quick nods. “So he is … and so he does. He knows of the raiders? Men from Yrlac? All along the river, there are barns and mills in ashes. We’re seeing riders in the daylight now.”

  “It is no secret,” said Durand.

  “And he’s having himself a tourney over the mountains.” Towerknoll gave an odd little pant, his eyes darting. “And you find yourselves separated from the rest, I suppose?”

  “We do,” said Deorwen, warily explaining nothing. “I wonder what else your vigilant reeve saw on the Acconel Road?”

  “He has orders to watch for raiders. That’s what he’s looking for, my reeve. More worried about that drove of naked beggars down at the landing. Willow Hythe, they call that place. A few of their kind you expect near the city, but not here. The duke’s party flushed them, but they settled right back. I had a few hung—making a point, you understand. Riled them up, no doubt. But I wonder what you’re driving at. Not them, surely.”

  Durand decided that the man had heard nothing of Almora.

  “We met one or two of your beggars,” said Durand. He heard the men down in the hall behind him.

  “Yes. I saw one in your baggage, I think.” Towerknoll quirked a bitter smile. “But they’re nothing to do with you or Leovere, I think. More likely to be something in my dear mother’s line. Eh, Mother?”

  The old woman’s face crumpled around her half-eaten nose, and she said not a word.

  “This plan. It’ll keep the duke on the road till, what, the Reaper’s Moon? What do you think will remain when the old man gets back?”

  “That must be in the hands of the Powers,” said Durand.

  “Yrlaci boys have been poling back and forth across old Banderol. Setting fires. Stealing cattle, sheep. Making the duke look a fool and weakling. Killing. I could run a ferry and make a pretty penny, but I’ve put new floors in the old tower and swept the owls out. My hayward and reeve are keeping men on watch. Every blade is sharp. Every window full of archers.”

  He winced an eye shut. “Some of us are lucky we didn’t find ourselves full of arrows, the way we came roving in, I might say.”

  “His lordship’s tricks—” began the old woman.

  Turold twisted. “Don’t start with your nightmares, Mother. Leovere’s men will find my little tower a devilish tough nut to crack. I’ll not give up without a fight.”

  Turold stuck his chin in the air for an instant, gathering himself, and went on. “I saw you in the streets of Ferangore. I was in that street with the fire and the arrows, when there you was with Moryn of Mornaway on your back, half on fire with that hitch in your shoulder and the twist in your lip. I’ve never seen the like of it. Not in forty years’ biting and scratching in one fight or another. No one has. After Radomor was done, Abravanal gave me Maudy, here—or Kieren did—as a sort of prize. She was a widow, you see.” Turold’s wife choked back a sob. “And I got my fists on good Gireth land. Put my hands in old Abravanal’s and knelt on his pavers to swear my oaths for it.”

  “What of it, Turold Towerknoll?” said Deorwen.

  “What of it? Leovere’s coming. They had him surrender at Ferangore, but now it’s been ten odd winters and his people are never quiet.”

  “So you say,” Durand said.

  The old knight rocked. He fixed Durand with a despairing look. “Come on, lad. With Abravanal and the rest over the mountains, Leovere will not wait. You know it, though you’re too stiff necked to speak against the old man. I can see it in your eyes as I saw you in Ferangore. On fire. Bleeding. Abravanal will heed you. Turn him west for Yrlac. Some of those men who fought in Ferangore have land out there without even a river between them and Leovere’s boys. Why not stretch a few necks and show them? Tell him that the tourney’s madness, or Leovere will snatch Yrlac and make a pyre of Gireth. A man like you could make him see.”

  “You might watch what you suggest, Turold Towerknoll,” said Deorwen.

  But Durand stopped her. “No,” he said, for he understood this man. He’d won Towerknoll with blood and pain and, though the place no great prize, it was all he had. And now he’d gone to ground in this tower. “I won’t keep the truth from this man.” Not all of it.

  “There will be no turning Duke Abravanal, Turold Towerknoll,” Durand said. “This thing is the king’s will, not some notion of the old man’s. Ragnal wants the men of Fellwood to know the reach of their king. And all of that business in Ferangore was a long time ago. His Grace must ride south.”

  Towerknoll kept his eyes on Durand’s for a long moment. If Yrlac crossed the river in force, places like Towerknoll would be the first to fall. “I see,” he said. “The king. Raise the banners of Errest over Fellwood, and make great Abravanal jump. That explains much. But then it is me and my wits, here in Towerknoll.”

  The man’s mother-in-law pulled a great wheezing breath through her ulcerated nose. “Your tricks will avail you nothing, Your Lordship. For soon Errest the Old will—”

  “Be choking on nightmares. Aye, Mother.” He slipped a hand under his bed, very deftly, and dragged out a bright-honed axe. “They must come if they choose.”

  And this was how things were on the border.

  * * *

  WHEN DURAND SET his head on his arm and stretched out on the rushes of Towerknoll’s hall, he expected to sleep, but he had forgotten the dead.

  The first he saw was his moon-faced giant. The thing had ducked near, pale and as close as a lover above him.

  But soon there were many more tottering, slinking, or skittering in pointless circles among the sleepers in Towerknoll’s hall.

  So Durand lay awake on the rushes. The breathing of mercenaries and serving men sighed about him like stagnant waves. The blood knotted thick in the wool and linen of his gear drew the Lost closer even than before.

  Men shivered without knowing why.

  Durand set his teeth and lay there, desperately tired but enduring it, waiting for morning, picturing Almora vanishing like a pearl in a black ocean while the tongues of dead men found blood on his skin and clothing. Cold as slugs and eels.

  Hours must have passed in this horror when, suddenly, the pack of dead things froze all at once, every slack face jerking toward the door. Durand seized the moment to break away. He struggled to his feet, following their gaze to where the door of the hall waited.

  In a fit of something like anger or courage, Durand lurched up and blundered to the door, throwing the thing wide on the dark village. He saw the sanctuary in the faltering light of the hagfire, and made out a gangling figure just visible by the sanctuary yard. Its head swung back and forth, back and forth, back and forth—like the rhythm of a loom. Durand set one bare foot on the step. In the gloom of Calends, he could see little but the stranger.

  “Sir Durand?” a voice said, close by.

  Ailric had found the door—and a good dozen dead men had joined him, packed tight like a basket of rotten pears. The boy looked cold.

  “Find what rest you can,” Durand croaked. He stepped outside, more than half certain that he’d lost his mind.

  Out in the yard, the vault of Heaven was full of stars and otherworldly mists. Only the figure by the tower was visible. Durand felt his way across the unfamiliar ground with the soles of his feet. Somewhere that big village watchdog they’d heard as they arrived was still growling.

  Durand fumbled his way through the ruts and tussocks toward the stranger.

  “What do you want of me?” h
e said. “It’s me you’re after, isn’t it?”

  The stranger turned, and Durand knew the graybeard madman at once. His face was like a few brushstrokes of white grease on the black night, and there were missing angles where the tree trunk had clopped home.

  “Why do you pursue me?” Durand asked. “You leapt upon me. You would have taken people I care about. A man has a right to fight for his own life.”

  The thing lurched off along the wall of the sanctuary yard, and Durand wove after it, his footfalls swishing through wet grass where the beggar was silent.

  Then the shade stopped, turning to face the yard. And Durand recognized the spot: they had fetched up where Durand had tipped the corpse over.

  “Is it this? Is it your carcass that’s bothering you? Let me get it for you!” In a stride, Durand was past the specter and swinging his leg over the wall into the sanctuary yard. He reached into wet grass and darkness, scrabbling for the dead man’s corpse. Finally, he caught hold of stiff flesh: the beard and the crook of a rigid armpit. “Is this what you’re after?”

  There was a monumental snarl. Creation itself seemed to shudder.

  In the sanctuary yard stood a dog.

  Enormous.

  Moving and not moving.

  Without a step, the spirit flickered between trunks and hummocks, more massive than a bear. Its eyes were bowls of green glass, and a slithering flame crawled over a black pelt.

  In the road, Deorwen screamed his name.

  But the vast darkness of the monster loomed over him now, its eyes spilling green light over the grass and the dead man. He felt blind in the face of it, seeing in flashes like the squeeze of fingers at black eyelids. There was a muzzle, packed with dagger teeth. One snap of the thing’s jaws would take Durand’s head and both shoulders.

  “Slowly backward, Durand. Slowly back.” He could hear Deorwen’s footfalls on the grass and then on the stiff muck of the road. The darkness spun with the green slither of the dog’s fire.

  “That’s a good lad,” he said, “Good lad,” as if the thing were someone’s ill-tempered lapdog. And he took his hands from the corpse and eased back toward the wall.

  A sickening flame spun in the globes of the dog’s eyes.

  Durand had edged a foot closer to the wall, almost ready to throw himself over, when, finally, the monster seemed to apprehend his intentions. In a sudden snapping lunge, the teeth flashed. Durand moved. And, with a twist of every muscle in his frame, he threw himself over the wall.

  When he landed, winded, at the foot of the wall—alive—Deorwen stood over him. A single bound should have brought the dog down on her.

  But it was not Deorwen who spoke. “They say it is guilt that binds them.” Towerknoll’s mother-in-law was mostly a voice. He could not see her out there with her cane in the dark. “But the boneyard’s as far as the grim may go.”

  Durand set his back on the stones. “Host of Heaven,” he said, though the beast’s growl rumbled on.

  The woman chuckled. “You might choose to leave Heaven out of it,” she said. “Such a grim as this is priestcraft, after all.”

  “Priestcraft?” The thing had seemed more devilish than heavenly.

  “As old as Gunderic’s Sword, no mistaking.”

  “Durand, what were you doing in the yard?” Deorwen asked. She stood a pace or two from him. “What is happening with you?”

  Durand hadn’t slept an hour since Euric died. At least twice, he’d been thrown from a horse. He’d been battered first by Euric and then by the crossroad beggars. He’d faced one of the Powers of Heaven. And the Lost were coming nearer. Even now, the things had left Towerknoll’s hall and were tottering across the hummocked yard.

  The moon-faced giant stood in the doorway of Towerknoll’s hall.

  “Durand?” said Deorwen, her voice aching.

  The old woman clicked her tongue. “It’s no strange thing, for a fighting man to see the Lost. But that’s not all with you, is it?”

  Dead Euric half-floated past her, his face more pale and shapeless than ever. Durand held his tongue.

  “You were going to fetch the body,” breathed Deorwen.

  Durand must have glanced—maybe shown confusion—for the old woman snorted. “Ach, you dullard! She’s not peering into your head. You growled nearly that much when you hopped over the wall.”

  The dead had drawn up in a great crowd now, like a knot of gawpers around an overturned cart.

  “You must tell me what afflicts you,” Deorwen pressed.

  The old woman shivered in her place among the dead. “Trying to appease the dead man, were you? Not daft, that. But the boneyard is no place for a man when the Eye has set. Our old grim, he nearly had you. The nights’ll be long, for him. Sleepless, I expect, watching among the dead. Waiting for the next to die. He’ll be eager.”

  It was all Durand could do to think. Mangled shades from the gates of Acconel loomed all around. A man who’s been caught in the teeth of a portcullis is no pretty sight. “This devil lives in the middle of your village? What sort of priest allows such things?” Durand said.

  “Are you a child, Durand Col? There’s many a boneyard has its grim in Errest the Old, though the patriarchs might wrinkle their noses now. The dead needed keeping, in the old days. And our grim, he’s a watchdog, or nearly so. Some poor priest will have bound the grim in Towerknoll when the land was wild hereabouts. And a quick and bloody binding must have been easier than staking out the hallowed ground and calling Heaven down. Or maybe the Wards of the Ancient Patriarchs had yet to be woven. But you will find them here and there. Your priest slays a dog under the cornerstone, plays his priestly games, and there is our grim for two thousand winters.” She gestured to the sanctuary. “Keeps the departed safe in their graves.” He thought the woman winked. “But you’ve seen that much, have you not?”

  The dead shuffled, peering uncomfortably here and there, closer.

  Durand shut his eyes. “A dog,” he said. “Even pickled for a thousand winters…” He felt like a blind man.

  The woman snorted. “The dog’s nothing. The shape of the first buried: dog, goat, sheep. Men sometimes. It don’t much matter. And the dog’s shape is little more than the cloak of the watchman. The priestcraft begins with some black boarhound and a young priest’s knife, but the shape of the dog or goat or sheep or man is worn by the latest to be buried in that yard. Watch after watch, down the long winters. Each watching for those who went before, soul after soul in turn. There must be a sin or two weighing the poor devil down, but, so long as there is a pang of guilt to catch hold of, the dead must take their watch. They’re caught and they serve till the next one comes.”

  Deorwen was shaking her head. “It is an abominable practice—to die only to wake in the burial ground, surrounded by the fiends of the night.”

  The woman gave Deorwen a noncommittal grunt. “Priestcraft. Not the best sort. Makeshift.” Then she turned on Durand, stumping near to bend low above him. “But you, Durand the Champion.…” She squinted, her eyes glinting in her broad shadowed face like chips of glass. “What was this beggarman to you that you leapt into the grim’s jaws? Hmm? Someone slain by your hand? Was that the blood?”

  “The blood was mine, like as not,” said Durand.

  She grunted. “So. How many are they? A shadow’s no easy thing to count on Calends night, but they’re here, ain’t they? This moment?”

  Deorwen took a step backward, stumbling into the Lost crowd. “Durand?” she said.

  “They are,” said Durand.

  The stout woman cast about, scenting the air like a sow. “All about, I reckon. And you’ve slain more than one. Are you a haunted man, Durand Col, as fierce as you are? Is that it?”

  The gathering of specters thickened until the beggar king was just one more among the great throng at the graveyard wall, with the grim rumbling just out of reach. And there were the old woman and Deorwen standing among them. Durand wondered how many men he had slain. How many could there be? />
  Beyond sanctuary and tower, Durand thought he could make out the first blue traces of dawn.

  6

  His Grace’s Shadow

  When dawn took hold in the east, they scrambled back onto the road. They found the marks of laden carts and hooves enough to make them sure that the duke had come that way. There was no sign of the girl, but they rode as though hope was certainty.

  When they were hungry, they tore at hunks of Towerknoll bread and cheese. Never did they dare leave the saddle. They took no time to speak. The girl might be around the next bend.

  Soon the Blackroot Mountains hung like a blue smudge of cloud beyond the lowland hills. In Gireth, a man could always find the mountains. From high places near Acconel, you might see faint traces, but now the Blackroots stretched across the whole of the southern horizon. This was where Abravanal’s column was bound, and soon this blue image would tower as large as a shipwrecked moon. It was hard to imagine that a man might climb the vast face of such a smudge, dwarfed by every crack and tumbled pebble. Durand had grown up at the foot of the Blackroots.

  They rode hard, hoping to overtake the girl.

  Before Noontide Lauds, every print in the roadbed clay seemed so fresh and sharp that Durand was certain that they must have been cut within the hour. As he lifted his fingers from one clean print, Deorwen loomed over him.

  “Perhaps you will tell me how many Lost souls are haunting you,” suggested Deorwen. She had managed to nudge her mare into the track beside Durand.

  Durand closed his eyes. “I do not count them, Deorwen. They are many; the old woman said as much. But none now.”

  “Not in daylight.”

  “No, not in daylight. In shadows, maybe. You’re better off worrying about the girl.”