In the Eye of Heaven

by David Keck

  "Sleep all of you," said Coensar. "I promised you beds, and you have them. Now sleep."

  In his alcove of hard-edged slates, Durand rolled onto his shoulder, listening to Agryn's mutter and the thready sounds beyond the door. He wondered what had gone on in Yrlac. Nearly, he prayed that it was Radomor who'd been hounded to his death: a death at the hands of that grim-faced cadre of knights who surrounded Duke Ailnor. It would mean that this was the worst, and that the shock would pass and the kingdom emerge whole and sound. But he had seen Radomor, with his bald skull hot as a cauldron, glowering from his father's throne.

  He must know. It was good they were going to Tem Gyre. The magnates were gathering: Beoran and Yrlac and Hellebore and Windhover and Gireth and all the others. Lying there in the dark, Durand knew that he needed to see what storm had struck the realm.

  As exhaustion pulled him down into sleep, he heard many men threading their whispers with Agryn's muttered prayer.

  WITHOUT WARNING, THE door rattled open, spilling watery daylight across the room. The abbot stooped in the gap, twisted and black as some hieratic sign.

  "First Twilight, Milords. Time you were gone." He paused a mad instant. Then the bells tolled for the daylight. He grinned, saying, 'There. I wouldn't lie to you," and was gone.

  Durand rolled painfully from his stone cot, planting booted feet on the flagstones and scratching fleabites on his neck. "Bricks and beds," said Berchard.

  "Wha?" Badan was grimacing.

  'Two things you shouldn't make without straw," was Berchard's answer.

  Others groaned and brayed like a barnyard.

  "I'll check on His Lordship," said Coensar, hands on his knees. His breath steamed in the chill air. "The rest of you see if you can pry something warm to eat out of these tight buggers. Remember, we'll see Tern Gyre in a few days, right?"

  Durand's first need, however, was the privy. First on his feet, he ducked into the passageway and got directions from the warder monk—too many twists and turns—and set off.

  It was strange seeing the place under the pale twilight after the wild sounds of the night before. Like memory, a mist swirled around his ankles and beaded the carved Powers and. beasts round the doors. Whatever Lost souls had been racketing through the place, they were sleeping now that the Eye had returned to the vault of Heaven.

  Meanwhile, Durand's quest was getting urgent. Twice, he doubled back, certain that he must have gone the wrong direction. Finally, he ducked into a narrow room he had never seen. A stone bench along the wall sported six holes.

  The blind abbot stepped out in front of him.

  "You, is it? Wandering off?"

  Durand wasn't about to explain.

  The man grunted. "You're not at the center yet, but you will be, yes?"

  "Father, that's not where I'm going." "What? What're you going on about?" He grinned in the pale light, showing gaps between wide yellow teeth. "You'll

  find your way to the center yet, mark me. But there'll be trials: fire and water and faith and blood."

  All Durand wanted was to be left alone with the privy bench; he'd had enough of prophecy.

  "Ah," the abbot said. "They've already been at you, haven't they? Have they called you Bruna?"

  Durand took a half step backward.

  "Bruna of the Broad Shoulders. It's a wise woman's game. They'd see Bruna in you, and say nothing—or warn you that honor and treachery are two sides of the same door. Hags. You're a big stone. You'll make ripples. That's all they see. They love to natter about the big stones, the wise women."

  A white brow twitched over one bright, blind eye. There was still a cracked smear of ochre.

  "Don't worry," said the old man, leaning close as a conspirator. "What I see is mine to know. I keep secrets." He was tapping his nose. "All of this business. Oaths and fear. Just remember what we're fighting here."

  "Fighting?"

  "The Son of Morning. His Host. The Banished. This is a kingdom that'll fall hard when it tumbles. It's like a net stretched tight over all those things—a net of knotted oaths. Creation is packed with Lost souls and creeping fiends, and, the Patriarchs of old, they stuck the king in like a finger holding all the knots. You think we're not all fear-mad in this place? That we would not run away if we could? Cop Alder's shaking like a fat man's buckles. But we've sworn oaths fit to curdle the blood, and, if we ran, who would hold the door behind us?"

  The man's pale head nodded. "It is the same wijth you: hemmed in with oaths and fear and dreams and women."

  Durand ducked past the man's leer, stalking down the narrow room. He could wait no longer, and, when he looked up, he saw that the ancient abbot had not left.

  "Remember what is at stake," the blind man said. "Remember it is everything!"

  No ONE WAITED in the refectory when he found it; everyone was crammed in Cop Alder's tall kitchen. He heard Lamoric's voice before he saw him. Durand took the last steps to the doorway warily.

  "As soon as we're able, we must go. It was clear as—" he hesitated, staring from startled knight to startled knight before snatching up a knife. "As this blade, I tell you. Every bit of it.

  "The banners rippling over the headland like fresh blood. Blades and helmets flashing. Knights and warhorses storming the lists by the hundred. Wooden stands steep as a thousand siege ladders thrown against the walls' all around. And everyone was there."

  Pale as a candle, Lamoric stood in the midst of his retainers, eyes shining like a pair of fat pearls. He still held the knife.

  "You were wrapped up in it, Badan. And Coensar." He spotted Durand hesitating in the entrance. "And you, Durand, you were there. Powers of Heaven..." He goggled like a fish, while Berchard and Heremund and even Deorwen shot Durand looks from apologetic to pleading. "Walking on the horses, by my oath. Walking on the horses with that old sword flashing. And Agryn." He wheeled to face Agryn. "I saw you. You were riding. Riding all wrapped in your yellow gear. I saw yellow everywhere."

  Deorwen's face was stricken.

  Durand tried to make sense of what he was hearing. "Was it a dream?" asked Durand. "Have you had a dream?"

  "Aye," said Lamoric. "While I lay in that infirmary. I've had one of Deorwen's dreams! They were cheering us, Durand. Cheering us! The whole kingdom was looking on and cheering us! I should tell the wise women.

  "We must thank these holy men for their hospitality, and then make all haste to Tern Gyre! Come on!" -

  Lamoric tottered past Durand and out of the kitchen. A dumbfounded troop of knights and serving men churned in the room, then snatched up loaves and cheese, and followed their lord. Durand felt the first stirrings of something like a crusader's frenzy in his heart and was carried along on the. tide.

  He caught hold of Heremund in the press.

  "Did he really have the dream, Heremund?" A man could fall from Creation with his eyes shut. He might have glimpsed Tern Gyre.

  "I reckon so," hissed Heremund with a glance around, "But Deorwen, she went to the infirmary door for him. The monks said there was screaming. All night, he was wild with fever and screaming."

  "Heaven's King," breathed Durand.

  "Aye," said Heremund. "We are not finished yet, friend."

  22. Wings of Memory

  A day's ride from Cop Alder, the Lawerin Way sank into a coppiced wood near Medlar. There, between little Medlar and a nameless hamlet, the party pitched wet tents and ·gathered around a double campfire to fight the chill. The skald plucked the first notes of a hollow tune from his mandora. He had hardly played in days.

  Pulling a blanket up around his ears, Ouen let the firelight flash in his gold teeth. "I'm going to get me a wife and hall somewhere. Settle down before I catch one the monks can't patch. What's fame for if not land and women? And not just anyone, either. Only the fairest widows for Sir Ouen. He was with the Knight in Red at the Gyre, eh?"

  Beside him, Lamoric laughed out loud. It was hard not to believe in the young lord's dream, gleaming over the dark of bruises and omen. Eve
ry man had caught his ardor. "That's the way, isn't it?" said Badan, leering. He grappled , with his belt and jingled the pennies in his pouch. "Gets them every time."

  Across the fire, Lady Bertana clucked her tongue. Glancing up, Durand caught a look from Deorwen.

  He had not allowed himself one word with her since he had learned the truth. He wanted to forget everything that had happened between them and simply be the man the others thought he was. But she took his breath. With the smallest of gestures, she let him know that she wanted to step away.

  He would not leave.

  "What about you, Heremund?" asked Lamoric. "Will you fight beside us?"

  "Me?' The skald smiled. "I'll be singing 'the Red Knight of Tern Gyre.'" He startled a chord from the gut strings of his mandora.

  Deorwen had begun to stand, her eyes on Durand. He felt the pressure to join her.

  Just then, a sharp knock among the trees turned every head back toward Cop Alder. No one moved.

  Coensar was still as a hawk, watching.

  Another knock followed, then a pop sharper than anything coming from the campfires.

  Durand got to his feet.

  "Right," said Coensar. "See what's out there. And take Agryn." Agryn nodded, standing. "Any trouble, come right back."

  Without a word, the two men stepped from the firelight and into the gloomy damp. Durand had left Deorwen, and, even facing God-knew-what in the dark, there was relief in walking away.

  After thirty paces, the gloom and the noises beyond pushed Deorwen from his head. The roads teemed with madmen and thieves; he had seen as much with his own eyes.

  Another dull report echoed down the road. Durand touched the worn pommel of his sword.

  "How far?" he whispered.

  Agryn rubbed his jaw. "They are some way off still, I think."

  "I suppose we ought to get a look at them," Durand said. Neither of them wore armor. "Aye."

  "Now I could use that blind old man and his second sight," Durand joked.

  Agryn took a moment to peer into Durand's face.

  "He had things to say," Durand admitted.

  "Such folk do not always realize that we are not all like them."

  Something in the man's look hinted. "He spoke to you as well, didn't he ..." After a moment's stillness, Agryn let out a long breath. Just then, something moved up the track. They heard murmured voices.

  "Let us come upon them from the forest," Agryn whispered, and led Durand silently up the roadside bank and into the trees.

  Within twenty paces, Durand could see firelight. The wet tang of stables reached his nostrils. Men were laughing.

  Durand spotted a screened approach, and, hooking a finger toward Agryn, wormed himself behind a knot of blackthorn right at the camp's edge. Agryn pointed to the canvas of one tent wall: Lord Moryn's blue and yellow diamonds.

  In the branches, something scrabbled to life right over Durand's head.

  A maze of oak branches stretched against the Heavens. Half-lost among the crabbed lines moved black and shaggy forms: rooks.

  One brute flapped its wings, dropping a rain of debris into Durand's eyes: loud.

  "What's that?" said a voice from the camp. Durand knew the bullying tone from his wrestling match.

  "Spirits in the bushes, you reckon? Should we go have a look?"

  Durand grabbed his sword, but saw that Agryn seemed ready to come out of hiding. His hand was nowhere near his blade.

  Recognizing their difference of opinion, Agryn nodded toward the trees, and the two faded back into the woods—a sensible compromise.

  THE NEXT DAY, an oxcart was all it took to catch two companies of mounted knights-at-arms.

  As Lamoric's men wound their way north, the Lawerin Way sank between steep banks until only a mounted man might see the mills and towers of passing villages from the road. The ancient way narrowed, trees crowded close, and a vast oxcart lumbered in the track ahead of them.

  There was no way around, and soon Lord Moryn's party was right on their heels.

  Durand found himself at the head of the party, driven nearly into the back of the tall cart.

  A ragged black shape alighted on a branch overhead.

  "I suppose my father will have sent Landast," Lamoric was saying, voice muffled in the red helm he must wear with so many of Moryn's men right behind them. "I don't imagine he'll stir himself to travel as far as Tern Gyre this time of year."

  As the cart lumbered on, Durand saw more of the black birds. They hopped and chortled among themselves.

  "Your father's not a young man," Coensar answered.

  "And my brother will carry his vote to the council with great care. Landast does everything with great care."

  Coensar smiled indulgently.

  All around now, black mockers lurched and chuckled in the canopy of branches. Others had begun to notice. There were scores, thick as the leaves of a black summer.

  "Durand," inquired Lamoric, "Coen was meant to say, 'He must be a comfort to your father' just then, was he not?"

  Durand blinked. "Yes, Lordship."

  "You see?" Lamoric said.

  Two of the ragged black birds swung in to squat on the roof of the cart. Jet eyes glittered.

  As Durand's mouth opened, someone at the tail of the party began to cause a commotion. Durand twisted to see Waer, the wrestler, arguing with some of Guthred's men. Horses and men jostled in the narrow roadway.

  In the commotion, the huge cart jerked out of the ruts to crash in a bawl of oxen. The rooks croaked into the air, abandoning their roost and chuckling at some private joke.

  Durand twisted, a warning on his lips, just in time to catch a furtive stranger scrambling in the back of the cart.

  They were ambushed.

  "Down, Lordship!" he hissed, as armed men scrambled into view on every side. Only two paces from Lamoric's throat, a brown hand yanked the cart's cover wide and thrust a crossbow forward.

  Durand was already leaping. He got his hand out. With a finger-numbing clank, the heavy weapon snapped its bolt into the Heavens. A second man inside was just raising his bow, and Durand could see no way but to hurl the first attacker into the second. In an instant, a bloody steel point stood from the hapless assassin's ribs.

  Then there was someone scrambling in front of the cart. Durand leapt over the driver's bench and out among the hobbled oxen. One of the brutes screamed and kicked from the ground. Beyond it, stood a figure from another world: Gol Lazaridge, with his glass-chip eyes flashing and his head cocked in surprise.

  "Bloody Durand, I don't believe it," he sneered and, with a smooth gesture, drew his sword.

  Hopelessly, Durand noted that the man—a better swordsman than Durand already—wore a coat of mail rings. Durand had only his surcoat and tunic between him and the man's blade.

  "Gol," he said, as coldly as he could manage.

  "You cost me a plum spot, lad." The captain grinned to show the black slot where most of his upper teeth should have been. "But I'm working everything out now with this little surprise." He nodded toward the fighting, then paused. "A gift for my master, eh? And now here you are, a gift for me as well. The Lord of Dooms can surprise one."

  Durand got his hand on his own sword just in time. With a sudden lunge, Gol's blade shot the distance between them. Only Durand's mad dodge and the half-freed blade of his sword saved him.

  Gol was smiling.

  Durand got his sword up between them, feeling as though any breeze could cut him. His blade was shaking. He needed a mail coat. Meanwhile, Gol settled in behind his shield, leaving Durand with nothing but shins and glinting eyes to swing at.

  The old captain moved again, blinding Durand with his shield and whipping cuts at his shins and ankles. Durand blundered back into the legs of the kicking ox.

  Then Gol stepped away.

  Already, blood pounded lights in Durand's eyes. He could hardly breathe. The whole world had dwindled to five paces of cart track. He heard cloven hooves scrabble against the cobb
les. All the dreams and fears in Creation wouldn't help him now, if he didn't find a way to beat the man in front of him.

  When Gol lunged, Durand attacked.

  A lad in the Acconel yard once told him you could beat a dog by ramming your arm down his mouth, and that's what Durand tried. Beating Gol's blade aside, he leapt down the man's sword arm.

  In the collision, Durand caught Gol around the neck. The man snarled. Shield and mail and swords caught the man's hands like shackles. He scrabbled backward. Durand twisted. They were bound together, sword and sword, and arms straining.

  Durand could not let go.

  Then the old captain dropped. Though Durand held on, he lost his grip on Gol's sword. He could feel the wet shock of the man's blade—too close for a proper swing. Both men sucked at the air and strained. All Gol needed was an instant to leap off, and Durand was done. The captain smashed back, using his skull to crack Durand's nose. Durand could feel his fingernails slide and tear against chain links. An elbow rammed the last air from his lungs. There were only heartbeats left.

  Gol had a knife at his belt.

  In a scrabbling instant, Durand's fingers caught the weapon. Gol must have realized, but Durand was on the man's back and already ripping the blade free. The captain's hands locked in Durand's face and hair, but Durand drove the dagger's point upward, scrabbling over mail-shirt and collar. He could feel the man's nails screwing into his eye, then, finally, the dagger slipped from iron links and shot home, deep in the captain's throat.

  Durand lay half-pinned in the road. It was as though someone had overturned a cauldron of blood. As the gore ebbed among the cobblestones, he heard the rooks laughing.

  23. The Broken Crown

  The rooks spun and tumbled down the Lawerin Way, a cackling cloud of rags. Beyond the cart, the sounds of fighting were finished.

  Numb, Durand stepped past the crippled ox—still gulping convulsive breaths—and shuffled to where he was sure to find a killing ground. He remembered crossbows and figures moving on the banks, too close and too many. Some—or all— would be dead.