Nobody’s Son

by Sean Stewart

  Val, he thought suddenly. Val will know what to do.

  He belted a robe around his waist and hurried down to Valerian’s room. You despised him, didn’t you? You thought him a dreamer, a tinkerer, a clever clown who’d never amount to much. Nowt compared to a soldier hero Duke. Kept him around because he made you feel superior, didn’t you?

  Bloody idiot. This, this is the real test. Who stands and who falls, when the horror comes.

  Val will know.

  Valerian looked up from a black book with gold lettering. Mark gasped out his terror, begging for help.

  Valerian nodded, and took his hand; Mark drew strength from his friend’s profound strength. Val’s grey eyes were grave and deep and wise as centuries behind his spectacles. Owlwise, firm as mountains, he held Mark’s trembling hands and said, “These things must you do…”

  Mark woke up. Dread still clung to him.

  Shite.

  What a nightmare. The worst of his life, though it had no monster, no scene of madness: a dream of pure emotion, a dread that stabbed like spears. The echo of it, lingering in his heart, still froze his breath in his chest. His right hand was ice.

  Panic gripped him. He turned over quickly and stared at Gail, sure she was dead.

  Life flooded back into him as she breathed. Her eyelids fluttered open and she looked at him, staring at her. They closed again, and she was asleep.

  …So.

  It wasn’t Gail.

  It was their first night inside his Keep; a thick curtain closed off this end of the Great Hall from the main area where his people slept. Still shaking with fear Mark rolled slowly out of bed and pulled on his pants and shirt. No sword, damn it! He drew out the iron dagger instead, though it felt like frost in his hand.

  Twitching aside the curtain he stepped into the great hall. Two rushlights burned on each of the long stone walls. A double line of pallets stretched beneath them. Slowly Mark walked down the corridor of sleeping men. His friends. His people.

  They’ve put their faith in you: but you’re a cracked pot and you can’t hold it.

  Row on row of sleeping faces, slack jaws, nerveless fingers. A half-step from death, every one. How fragile they are. A child of two could draw the black dagger across each throat. Some will drown, or die of drink, or fever like Ma. Some will go mad with age, like George’s dad, t’awd Smith: railing at the darkness in every heart until his own gave way.

  You’re soft, Shielder’s Mark. Once you were hard as steel and leather tough, headed for your Greatness. But summat at the Red Keep cracked your heart and let a wet draught in, swirling and swirling. Summat rusted out your iron soul: there’s nowt in you but emptiness now, and darkness, and wind.

  That damn Old Man, staring into ashes, ashes, ashes.

  Shite.

  Every hard thing squeezes tears from you like juice from a grape. And now this dream has come and slit you open.

  So many things were clear. Terrible things.

  He lingered by a pallet just under one of the rushlights. A mason sprawled there under a scrap of blanket. His big man’s life beat in his throat; cut it off as easy as stamp a spider under your boot.

  All your life you fought to protect. To build a place where you’d be safe. You whipped yourself into the Ghostwood and broke it open, and soon you’ll have a fine Keep wi’ walls of stone and men in livery to walk ’em.

  It means nowt. You might as well have built the wall wi’ lace and armed your men wi’ flowers. It means nowt because you’re useless. You’ll not stand against the horror when it comes. You can’t protect a damn of what you made or stole or won. You can’t defend one friend, nor Gail, nor the child you mean to get on her. The thought twisted his heart. What kind of father, what worthless piece of shite couldn’t even look after his little boy?

  Mark rose, and walked among his people with dread heavy on his heart. His life was cracked clay around an empty place. His dreams were ashes.

  “I found God,” he said.

  It was early the next morning and he was walking with Valerian down by the river. “Or at least I found why people look for Him.” Mark stopped and stared out over the water, shaking his head. “I always thought that religion was about whether or not you believed in God. You know: is there a great bloody shepherd watching you even when you wash your private parts? But that isn’t it at all. God’s about what you do when the horror comes.” And he told Valerian his dream.

  Val took out his spy-glass and peered across the river with it. “It has often seemed to me that whether you believe in God is a matter of small moment, where religion is concerned. I have not had much luck explaining this, before today.”

  “It was so…brutal,” Mark said, shaking. Where had the warrior in him gone? He felt like a leaf twisting in the wind. “It was so wicked, Val…Something so horrible it shouldn’t be allowed to exist.”

  Valerian took down his spy-glass. “‘Faith is a candle where Reason is the sun; no one needs a candle: until darkness falls.’”

  “Until darkness falls,” Mark murmured. He brushed aside a curtain of willow wands and sat down with his back against the tree’s rough trunk. The old willow’s gnarled roots clung to the riverbank like miser’s fingers. The yellow fronds overhung an eddy, small but deep, studded with grey stones. Bass under there. Must come back some day wi’ rod and line, if there’s ever rest from Duking.

  “I’ve got to find God,” he said. He glanced at the black dagger at his hip. “When I was younger, I didn’t care. But I’ve a wife now, and friends, and subjects. It’s just lazy not to have religion, Val. A boy can go without, but a man has responsibilities. Folk count on me. They deserve a Duke who can face the darkness for them. And I can’t do that without help.”

  Valerian settled down beside him. “Nobody can.”

  “Belief isn’t the question any more,” Mark said grimly. “I need a, a shield-mate, for when the horror comes.” He poked Val in the ribs with his elbow, and gave a faint smile. “So? Tell me! Where can I find this God friend of yours?”

  Valerian laughed and shrugged. “You are not the first person to ask!” He held up his spy-glass. “Look. Listen. If you look hard enough, you will see something; if you listen closely enough, you’ll hear. After all,” he said wryly, “God is everywhere in everything. Women, now: women are elusive.”

  “But what does God sound like? Astin’s herald, with a voice like a well? Will he shout at me from behind a bush some day?”

  “Look for Joy: that’s God’s echo, and his footprint. Happiness…happiness and wittiness and cleverness do not count for much when darkness falls. Joy is tougher. And in the dark you need that candle.”

  Slowly Mark nodded. Better find your God in a hurry, lad: especially if a second Time of Troubles is sweeping out of the Wood. You’re running out of time.

  Lord, wouldn’t that be good? To run out of Time, and into some other place. No more day after weary day of Duking, struggling, building, fearing. To run out of Time like a deer leaping from under the forest eaves and into sunshine.

  “Water,” he said, some time later. “God’s in running water for me. And in wind.”

  “Music,” Val said. “Definitely music. Remember Janseni’s wedding melodies?” His eyes widened and he shivered, like a fluffing bird. “Those were angels’ songs for skipping rope, and seraph’s lullabies.”

  Finding a twig in the grass, Mark tossed it into the river. It spun slowly past him, then slid downstream, picking up speed until it was swallowed by the rapids. “How’s Deron? Out here nursing a broken heart, is he?”

  “Badly fractured,” Val agreed. To Mark’s surprise Val’s face, so serene when he talked of God, was now awkward with confusion and shame. “I tell you, Mark, sometimes I do not comprehend the female sex at all. Consider Deron: handsome, brave, clever, and devoted, yet Janseni will have naught to do with him. Can you explain it?” He turned his hand-glass over and over between his fingers. “You can fill your heart with courtesy and throw it at a woman
’s feet, and it doesn’t matter.”

  Mark spat and shook his head. “Life is so hard, Val. Janseni knows it. They all know it.” Don’t mention Lissa, whatever you do! “A—worshipper isn’t much of a lover. No one wants a mate who only offers weakness. When the darkness comes for Janseni, she’s going to need someone with steel in his back. She wants a husband, not a subject or a son. She wants someone to stand back to back with her, swords drawn, when the wolves come in.”

  Valerian smiled faintly. “A shield-mate.” Slowly he pulled up a strand of grass and nibbled the white stem. “That’s what you see in Gail, I think, and she in you. You are persuasive, Mark. Almost you convince me that women are not mad. But your words hold little hope for me.” He opened his plump hands and waved down at his soft body. “There’s lead in me, and wind, but not much steel.”

  “You were t’only man I knew who could stand against the darkness,” Mark said softly. “That counts.”

  “It is not darkness I must stand against,” Val said gloomily, “but blue eyes and perfume. O God, Mark, that scent she wears! Warm rain falling on the roots of my heart.”

  “Good mope.”

  “Can you blame a knee for bending, if it pass before an altar?”

  “Just don’t let the altar see you at it! Not yet, anyway. If there’s one thing Lissa doesn’t need, it’s another person to take care of on top of Gail.”

  “And you.”

  Mark scowled. “Thanks.”

  “The woman is so…elegant,” Valerian sighed. “The way she looks, the way she acts. The way she thinks; her mind spies round corners. I am very vague. Abstract. Puttery. I putter,” he said with disgust. “But Lissa’s world is a shifting field of people in play, ambitions, dreams, desires…Each time we talk she opens my eyes to undiscovered continents of character.”

  “Now that’s a good line for a wedding night,” Mark said. “Romantic, flattering, heartfelt. But if you start wi’ such stuff—”

  “Down my hopes will topple before a scythe of scorn, and lie stricken on the field of love.”

  “Dead as a drowned rat,” Mark agreed.

  “So how do I let the lady know I live and breathe, if I cannot give my heart a tongue?”

  “You can tell a lass you fancy her without spreading like a cowpie at her feet, Val! What about the knowing smile, the quick wit, the gallant flirting? I thought the gentry were good at that.”

  “Not this gentle,” Val grumbled.

  Mark spread his hands. “So you’re shy.”

  “So I am a eunuch.”

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Mark said firmly. He grasped Val’s shoulder and turned him around. “If you want to court a woman, you’ve got to be a man, Val. You respect her strength; you’ve got to show her yours. That doesn’t mean brawling and swearing and acting the lout: it means showing the strength you have, here,” (tapping Val’s head), “and here,” (tapping his heart). “If I can go looking for God, you can at least cast around for a little extra…”

  “Manhood.”

  Mark slowly nodded.

  Val stood and brushed off his pants, then walked out from under the willow. “I wonder if the ladies too have talks like this. Are they confused and hapless when it comes to matters of emotion? Could it be our loved ones struggle also as we do, through the dim obscurities of the heart?”

  Val and Mark stared at one another.

  “Nah,” they said.

  You’re changing, Mark thought as the days went by. Looking back, he saw his whole life had been driven by the terrible pressure to protect, to hold. When at last he realized he would never be truly safe, he was an older man: freer than he had ever been, but cold too, and afraid. It was the freedom that a beggar knows, cast out into a dangerous world.

  It was slow and it was hard, but he figured he was becoming a man.

  As June wore into July, and July smouldered into August, finding God seemed more and more important. Terrible rumours came one upon the other. Ghost stories came with the steady stream of refugees that trickled into Borders, mostly from the High Holt. Men said the Time of Troubles had returned, and darkness was loosed in the land. The pilgrims came because they thought Shielder’s Mark, the mighty Hero, could save them from peril, if anybody could.

  Poor bastards.

  Their trust galled Mark. It made his search for God—for a shield-mate—ever more desperate.

  But what Mark needed was time, time to sort through his life, time to listen for the joy that Val said was God’s echo.

  Time was what he didn’t have.

  His people were confused and afraid. As their numbers swelled he had to spend ever-longer hours comforting them, setting tasks, organizing work parties, farming parties, hunting parties. They built two mills. The second, downstream, lay on its side, according to Valerian’s plan. To Mark’s surprise it worked.

  Then building got harder as the skilled workmen Astin had sent fled back to the capital, uneasy under the shadow of the Ghostwood. More refugees streamed in every day. Soon it would be autumn; winter would follow fast behind.

  And it wasn’t only Mark’s duchy that gave him problems. After he made love to Gail on Mid-summer night he had expected they would grow together. Instead, they drifted apart. Gail was furious with herself for giving in to a moment of passion, and at Mark for taking advantage of her.

  Bitch.

  She prowled around the Keep, pale and venomous, until Lissa was the only one who dared to speak to her. You’d have thought she had dodged Death when the blood finally came. That’s how glad she was to know she wasn’t carrying any brat of yours.

  The thought grew between them like a cancer.

  The few moments Mark had to himself he meant to look for God, but somehow he ended up daydreaming instead. He saw his castle finished, his children playing on the grass, saw himself walking with Gail by the river, listening gravely to Sir William explain some affair of state. More and more of his dreams involved Sir William, that wise gentle hardy man with greyshot beard and strong hands. Mark dreamt of William fixing medals to his chest as a young boy dreams of his first kiss.

  So the search Mark meant to make for God was put off from one sunrise to the next. The Hall was finished, the east wing and the kitchen started. They would be lucky to get to any of the walls before winter. Master Orrin stayed after most of his men had left, obsessed with his plans. He said the towers would have to wait at least two summers; it might be three years before the broken bridge could be made whole again.

  They would just make one crop of rye and a selection of fall vegetables: pumpkins, squash, carrots and maybe some potatoes. Mark knew it would be touch and go to feed his people. Hope they like chestnuts, he thought grimly.

  Summer burned up into fall, and every day sunk into night. Ghosts walked out of the shadows after sunset, and darkness was running into more hearts than just Mark’s own.

  His right palm ached constantly and never warmed. He stopped shaking hands.

  One other thing remained from his night upon the battlements with Fletcher’s Bill. All that long summer the sun beat down upon Borders; on their breaks the men threw themselves gratefully under the shady chestnut trees. But Mark stayed by the Keep through the long afternoons; as the sun sank into the west, the day seemed cool to him, cooler than it did to others. Then the light dimmed.

  By August Mark began to guess what it meant. By September he was sure.

  There was a shadow over the Keep that only he could feel, a shadow that grew sharper as the days went by. It crept out from the rubble just after noon, and lengthened until evening. It was the shadow of a western wall, thirty feet high, that only Mark could see.

  The first frost came in mid-October, and brought Duke Richard with it. “The farmers now foretell a bitter winter,” he remarked, a splendid guest at their meagre board. “Grieved I am to hear it. I do not care for cold. If I were God I would declare it summer all year round, that men might sun themselves in January and eat peaches through December.
Tragically, such is our degenerate age that even Dukes may never make the weather what they please.” He sighed and winked, provoking laughter from the table.

  “How thoughtless of God,” Valerian said blandly.

  “By the devil, yes I say! What say you Mark: we are two men of substance in the world. Shall we try to reason with this God, or shall we simply order his dismissal?” Richard sat at the head table with Mark and Gail, Lissa and Valerian, and Master Orrin. Orrin looked uncomfortable at the honour. Fitly, the place should have gone to Sir Deron, but he had begged off, saying that he had enjoyed Duke Richard’s company more than enough before now.

  Richard looked well. Frost had crept a little further into his beard, but his straight hair was still coal-black, his face quick and lively when he spoke, his hand still strong and sure when he cut his meat.

  “And to what do we owe the honour of this visit?” Gail inquired. Tension sat behind her eyes. Shamed, Mark thought. Embarrassed to greet her father’s greatest vassal in a half-made house wi’ rubble for walls.

  Richard’s face grew sombre. “There you touch upon a tragic tale,” he said at last. “I have come out of my way to give you warning. My visit here will be but brief; I am on an urgent course to Swangard, where I seek succour for my people.” He lowered his voice, that he might not be heard beyond the head table. “I spoke too rashly in the spring when I declared there could not be such things as ghosts.”

  “You have seen the old man?” Lissa asked uneasily.

  Slowly Richard nodded. “At last I saw him for myself. Four days since he burst into my Hall of Audience, a ghastly ancient with haggard brow and dreadful eye.” Duke Richard leaned back and shrugged. “I sent my new steward Berol to inquire into the apparition’s needs and send it on its way. In this I freely call myself at fault, for Berol I had judged a man of courage. But he blanched and quaked, and when at last he challenged the spectre his knees knocked and his tongue stammered on his teeth. The Ghost reached out and touched him on the chest, and then my steward fell dead in the centre of the room, stricken by pure fright.”