The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

  ‘I have been here since I left Tarceny,’ she said.

  Ten years – here? What kind of living could she have had here, scraping her keep from these rocky hillsides? After what she had done to bring down Tarceny, she could have been Queen. Or she could have been his own lady. And if she had chosen that, he would have pushed every damned obstacle out of the way to make it so. Instead she had come here.

  Why here?

  ‘Sometimes,’ she continued, ‘when the winters were rough, we would go down to the plains. I still have good friends at Chatterfall, you may remember.’

  Remember? Yes he did. But …

  ‘We?’

  ‘My son Ambrose and I,’ she said. ‘You knew I had a son, Aun.’

  He had known, of course, but he had forgotten. Perhaps he had forgotten deliberately. That she should have had a son – the son of the Count of Tarceny!

  His fingers had begun to fidget in his lap.

  ‘And you, Aun. Is it well with you?’

  What could he say?

  ‘No.’

  ‘You came here looking for someone,’ she murmured.

  He put his head in his hands and grunted, briefly.

  ‘He has been here?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  When? How long ago? Why didn't she say? ‘He has read the book, Aun,’ she said.

  Such a gentle reproach, for what had happened in his house! But he had not yet spoken about Varens. He did not want to.

  ‘Do you know what was in it?’ she asked.

  ‘You know I cannot read.’

  ‘But he can.’

  ‘I came – I came to stop him.’

  He could not tell her what he was planning to do. ‘It is too late, Aun.’

  ‘Too late?’

  ‘Listen.’

  For a long moment they sat side by side. Then he heard the noise again. Out on the hillside, below the low wall that bounded the courtyard, something was moving: something that slithered across the rocks. It was a heartless sound. It made him think of blind evil under the moon.

  He half-rose to his feet, but her hand on his arm stopped him. When she spoke again, it was in a whisper.

  ‘I had bound them, Aun. I came here and trapped them and their master near this place, after Tarceny died. I lived and raised my child here, so that I could be sure they could not escape. But your son read of them in the book. That is why he came …’

  She hesitated. The knight looked sharply at her. For a moment he thought she must have begun to weep.

  But no, she was not weeping. She was frowning; and concentrating, as though for some reason her words had begun to give her difficulty.

  After a moment she said: ‘Tarceny had written of them. That is why your son came …’

  She was repeating herself. Did she think he hadn't heard?

  He knew he was awake, now – fully awake; and she was there and solid beside him. She looked as clear and collected as ever he remembered her. And yet there was something very dream-like about this. She had begun to force her words, still in an undertone, but at the same time as if she feared he was not hearing her properly.

  What was this?’

  ‘It was a week ago,’ she was saying. ‘Maybe it was more. I find it – hard to count time, now. He came up the path. He spoke well …’ She seemed to smile, briefly. ‘He would not say why he had come. But I was pleased to see him, because it is lonely here, and maybe because he reminded me of you. We gave him supper. He talked about the Kingdom, and the troubles that poor Septimus is having, holding onto the crown that you and I won for him …’

  You and I, you and I, she was saying: those days of broken meanings, ten years ago, when she had vanished, and joy had vanished, and left him a sour, rewardless man who beat his own sons: a man to whom laughter and her voice returned only in his dreams.

  But was he dreaming, or was she? The way she spoke made him feel as if he might be in her dream, a thing wavering on the very edge of her mind.

  ‘But when I woke …’ She was stammering now. ‘When I woke he was gone. The door to my house was open. I remembered – that it was to you that the book had been given when Tarceny was killed. Then I followed him. I saw him on the skyline. I tried to stop him, but he struck me. He let them out, Aun. He let them out!’

  ‘Who? What has he done?’

  She gave a helpless gesture, as if this were something she had already explained, or had thought he understood. ‘Them! Him!’ she said, pointing to the low wall. Then she put her hand over her face.

  ‘Ambrose fled,’ she said. ‘I had told him he should.’

  An ugly, hollow feeling was growing inside him. What was it Raymonde had done here? Witchcraft, no doubt of it! Bad enough to drive a boy from his mother – and to empty the village across the valley too, maybe. He had been dreading what his son might do with that book in his hands. Now it had begun.

  But what, exactly? What? Them! Him! What did that mean?

  Hold fast. He must not be distracted, even by her. She had seen Raymonde.

  ‘My son,’ he said, keeping his voice gentle as though he was talking to someone who was sick. ‘Can you tell me where he went?’

  She stared at him. Her face was so close that, even in this light, he could see the veins in her eyes, the shadows beneath them and the little lines upon her skin that ten years ago had not been there.

  ‘Can you tell me where he went?’ he repeated.

  ‘No, Aun!’

  He felt the breath of her exclamation, warm upon his cheek.

  ‘You must not look for your son,’ she said.

  ‘You must look for mine.’

  What? No! He jerked his head away. At once she laid her hand on his arm.

  ‘Aun! Ambrose is twelve years old – just twelve! They are hunting him …’

  He did not need this! To turn aside; let the trail go cold; leave Raymonde's wrongs unanswered, when he was so close? To chase after a boy who might be anywhere? Hopeless.

  ‘I cannot leave here, not yet,’ she was saying. ‘I – I am only beginning to learn how to move again. I cannot help him. You can. Aun, he needs … Aun, you must …’

  Must? Why must he?

  Why must this be put to him?

  He would not look at her. He set his chin on his hand and thought of Raymonde, while the woman he had once loved pleaded at his elbow.

  ‘He is just twelve,’ she repeated.’

  ‘They are hunting him …

  ‘I cannot leave!’

  Again she was speaking as if in a fever or a dream, as if he were fading from her, and she was desperate to make him understand.

  ‘No!’ he said, and shook his head and shut his eyes. And again he said, ‘No.’

  Then he cursed and rose to his feet. He stood with his back to her, with his arms crossed in front of him and his shoulders hunched against whatever she might say next.

  ‘Raymonde's been here,’ he said. ‘That's what matters.’

  There was a long silence. He heard her let out her breath. In the quiet, his mind began to pick over what she had said, listening to her words for the first time. He turned.

  ‘Did he hurt you?’

  She shook her head. ‘There is nothing else you can do for me.’

  He looked at her; at her face in the moonlight. Her eyes were down. Dreaming or not, she had understood him well enough. He hated to see her so. With a sour feeling inside him he turned away from her again. After a moment he began to pace the courtyard. His mailed feet scraped loudly on the moonlit flagstones.

  ‘I thought the Angels had sent you to me, Aun,’ he heard her say. He did not answer.

  The sky was clear. The moon was high overhead, pouring its colourless light over the world. Around him the buildings were drenched in silver. The peaks watched him, their faces marbled in grey and white. His own shadow was black on the paving beside him, squat and armoured, clinging to him like grief.

  He had left his living, his house and his manors, and maybe he would
never return. One purpose alone remained to him. How could he give that up? How could he begin a goose-chase through the mountains while Raymonde, damned Raymonde, went free with his brother's blood on his hands and witchcraft that could bring the Kingdom down?

  And – and what good, what possible good would it do? What good could a man like him do for any child? His name was evil and his fatherhood cursed. The boy would be better without a man whose sons became men like Raymonde. Better to let him go where he was going – to those friends at Chatterfall, as like as not. Surely they would do well enough for him there, if he could get to them.

  And if he could not?

  Well … all men suffered equally in the end.

  It was Raymonde that mattered.

  He had strayed to the low wall that bounded the courtyard. Without thinking, he looked over and down. Under the wall was a drop of twenty or thirty feet to a slope, strewn with great stones, that declined steeply away from him – far, far away into dimness at the bottom of the valley. The light of the moon silvered the rocks and low thorns with elusive depth, as though it struck through clear water. The mountainside was vast, and still.

  Don't show yourself at the wall.

  The enemy – witchcraft!

  There, on the slope below him!

  They were man-sized but not man-shaped. Or if they were men, they were bagged and cowled in such a way that they might have been any shape. They were watching him.

  His blood was lurching. His hands gripped the stonework. Unthinking, his eye had begun to count them, as a man counts his enemies in the moments before the swords come out. Three, four … But that was not one of them. That was his own shadow – his head and shoulders rising above the shadow of the wall, which the moon had flung down among these creatures to look back up at him …

  One of the figures moved. It raised an arm – perhaps it was an arm – towards him. In the uncertain light he thought that its fingers were longer and thinner that any man's. It seemed to be trying, hopelessly from down there, to reach him. A feeling of appalling grief – grief and horror – washed though him, as if the thing had drawn its fingers across his heart. He looked into its face and could not see the eyes beneath its hood.

  His feet carried him away, stepping back from the wall. He tripped, but recovered. He was breathing hard. His hand went to the sword at his side, but it was not there. It lay beside his pillow, where his horse stood still in the moonlight. He was defenceless. He waited.

  Nothing happened.

  Nothing. They were watching, not attacking.

  I had bound them here, after Tarceny died.

  Fates, what things! What things – savage and lost and pitiful; beckoning to him!

  In the moonlight he looked at his hands, as if they might lengthen before his eyes and twist themselves into the terrible shapes that he had seen clawing the air from below.

  He was shaking.

  They're down there, he told himself. I am not. I am still a man.

  In his mind he saw the creature again, stretching its limb towards him. Look, it had seemed to say.

  Look. The man will let a son die. So that he may make his own son die.

  And his shadow had lain among them.

  He drew a long breath, and sought to shake his mind of what it had seen.

  Raymonde, he thought. But …

  Look. The man will let a son die.

  But …

  But if Raymonde had found what he wanted here, then Raymonde would be returning to the Kingdom now.

  So he must follow, anyway.

  Whatever he did, he must retrace his steps through the mountains. And Chatterfall, he remembered, was a manor house at the northern end of the lake – a week's journey, perhaps, from where he stood; not more than a day's ride from Watermane and other gateways to the Kingdom. A child on foot, finding his way through the mountains, would go slowly. If he turned and made his way back now, he might yet catch the boy before he got to the lake. If not, it would not be very far aside to go to Chatterfall. A day or two out of his path – what difference would it make?

  Cunning old mind, he thought again. You always are when you deceive yourself. What if you find the boy? If Chatterfall cannot keep him, what then?

  What child deserves to be long in your care?

  And yet – I am still a man.

  And Angels! I am tired.

  Slowly he made his way back to the foot of the throne where his bundles were lying.

  ‘I think … Best you tell me about this enemy who is hunting your son,’ he said.

  There was no answer.

  The throne-step was empty. She was gone – gone, and he had not seen her go. He looked around him.

  ‘Phaedra,’ he called softly, using her name for the first time. ‘Phaedra.’

  Nothing stirred among the shadows of the colonnade. No sound came from the dark doorways of that place.

  ‘Phaedra – I will go.’

  She was gone. And though he walked through the rooms and courtyards, calling softly, and sat up hour after hour by the moonlit throne, there was no answer but the emptiness of the mountains.

  II

  The Enemy

  mbrose was still very small when his mother pointed out the carved moon to him, on the arch above the gate of their home. He was interested at once, because she said his father had put it there. He had never known his father.

  So he would often look up at it, in the years when he spent so much time playing with his white pebbles in the outer courtyard. And later, when he was old enough to take the goats along the mountainside to the pasture or to go down to the stream and fish, he would pause beneath it for an instant before leaving the house. And sometimes he would go to it in idle moments, between chores or even during them.

  The moon was a blank disc, chiselled in deep cuts on top of older, fainter carvings that he could barely see. It had a jagged mark on its left-hand side, and it lay within a coiled serpent that snaked around and around it. The serpent was Capuu, his mother said. Capuu was good, because he held the world together. Ambrose understood that the moon itself was not so good, even though his father had put it there. She hadn't told him why, but he thought maybe it was not good because of the mark on it. Or maybe it was like his family name, Tarceny, which was never used because she said people did not like it any more. But he didn't worry very much about that until some time after his tenth birthday.

  Then a nightmare came to him without warning.

  He dreamed he was a small child, awake in a dark room. Perhaps it was a room at Uncle Adam's house, far away at Chatterfall. There was a window, and the sky outside was paler than the darkness in the room. And something moved between him and the window. It was a shape, with a curved back or shoulder that could not have been a man's.

  That was all he saw.

  He woke in a rush, thrashing and crying. His heart hammered, and he stared around in the darkness, in case the thing he had seen was already standing beside his pallet.

  The Thing! He could not remember what it had looked like. He thought … He did not know if this had been in the dream, but he thought that the curved shape had had long hairs on it, that stood up like bristles, and a neck that had slumped to a head that …

  He hadn't seen the head.

  But it had been there, in the room. It had been looking for a way past a line of his white pebbles; looking for a way to where he sat wide-eyed in the darkness.

  ‘Mother!’

  She rose, warm and sleepy, from where she lay on the other side of the room. And although he normally did not hug her very much, he curled up and clung to her like a little child. She murmured to him, and rocked him, and told him it had only been a dream. But she could not comfort him, because he knew it was more than that. Somewhere, long ago, he had seen the Thing before.

  ‘You were safe, my darling,’ she said after a while. ‘They could not come at you.’

  So he knew it was a memory. Something had really happened. Anything that had happened onc
e might happen again. He clung to her tightly and could not speak. They both stayed awake until dawn.

  ‘Very well,’ she said at last, as if she had decided something.

  With the light strengthening at the window she made him get up and dress. She led him out of the house before they had even had breakfast.

  She led him along the path, down into the chilly mountain-shadow. Then they turned left and began a long scramble straight up towards the ridge that soared away above them.

  They were climbing up towards the places where he was never, absolutely never, allowed to go.

  She did not allow it, because it was dangerous. It was not the same sort of danger there was at the streamside, because once she had taken him down to look at the water in spate, and had made him promise to take care, she had let him roam there at will. And it wasn't the sort of danger there was from the occasional wolf or lynx that she pointed out to him on the hillside, either. She always seemed to have her eye on the ways over or round to that side of the ridge, and whenever she saw him on them, or looking at them, she would call him sharply away.

  Now they were going there together. And it had something to do with his dream.

  He did not want to meet his dream. Not even in daylight. Not even with his mother by his side.

  His heart was beating hard with the climb, and his limbs felt hollow from effort without food. By the time they reached the top his whole body seemed to be trembling. He gathered breath, looking about him at the far mountainscapes: ridges and silent peaks, veiled with wisps of cloud. Opposite him, the mountain Beyah rose high in the sunrise.

  The ridge on which he stood was narrow. The ground was level for only a few paces. On the far edge was a tall white stone standing like a sentry among low thorn bushes. Beyond the sentry-stone the ground dropped again. He picked his way over to look down a slope he had never seen before. And he gasped.

  Sunk into the hillside before him was a great, circular pool. It lay among steep, tumbled sides to which thorns and scrub clung in patches. At their lowest, opposite him, the cliffs were little more than the height of a man. But from the highest point, near where he stood, they fell some fifty feet to the bottom. And all around the cliff-tops stood a ring of tall, grey-white stones.