The Eye of Night

by Pauline J. Alama

  He had dropped the dagger, and Hwyn lost no time in snatching it up. She dared not touch the white stone, but hovered over it lest anyone else should take it. Trenara ran to her side. I meant to join them, but I felt somehow transfixed, fascinated by the seven phantoms. All I could do was to stare at them, at their flashing swords and burning eyes. They did not look at me, however: all seven grim faces turned toward Lord Dannoth Kelgarran.

  At last the tallest and grimmest of them spoke: “For thirty years we have been your prisoners, Dannoth. Now you are ours.” The specter pointed a long finger at his prey, and Lord Kelgarran winced and moaned from some unseen wound. He seemed to shrivel with age even as I watched him. “You will suffer as we suffered for your profit.”

  “Mercy! I did not understand—” the lord protested.

  “You understood enough,” the ghost said. “You knew you held us bound. You used us for your power. You kept us from the wanderings by which we must earn our peace at last. You understood all this, even if you did not know the full measure of our pain. Now your stronghold shall fall shattered, and you with it.”

  “Lord Conor Kelgarran,” I addressed the ghost, “what do you mean to do? Surely you will not sweep away your liberator along with your jailer.”

  Despite my fear, it was gratifying to see the look of astonishment on the ghost's face. “You know me.”

  “And all your brothers: Tellion, Mirron, Delvon, Tor, Tabon, and Garrith of Kelgarran.” With each name I pointed to one of the phantoms. “The Seven Slaughtered Brothers, brought low by the treachery of his ancestor,” I pointed to Lord Dannoth, “some two centuries ago.”

  “Ah, Tarvon priest, the Gift of Naming has not failed you,” the ghost said. “Ask what you will of me: I am bound to answer.”

  “I'm not a priest now,” I muttered compulsively.

  “What's a vow more or less? You have the gifts of one,” Conor said. “Surely you don't mean to give up the right it gives you?”

  I shook my head, and met the ghost's challenging eyes. “What is that stone, and what power does it have over you?”

  “You disappoint me, to ask a spirit what any of these mortals could no doubt answer. How were you caught up in this struggle, if you knew not the Eye of Night, the Sky-Raven's Egg? Nothing within the wheel of the world is beyond its power. But it is no tool for the hands of mortals, as our kinsman will learn to his grief.” Conor pointed with his sword at the cowering Dannoth. “This wretch, true descendent of the cousin who slew us, heir of the land usurped from us, has imprisoned our spirits for thirty years by power of the Eye of Night enclosed in a magic circle. Our spirit-force upheld his power and his prosperity. Although the Eye of Night could not have stayed in his power forever, it might have continued much longer, at terrible cost to us and to the world. But someone has taken it out of the Circle of Power. That was not you, Tarvon priest, for you did not even know the Eye when you saw it. Who took it?”

  “I did,” Hwyn spoke forth.

  “She speaks the truth,” I said.

  The seven phantoms turned and bowed to her. “We owe our freedom to you; you shall have a gift in return. Take the Eye of Night now. We will not hinder you,” Conor said.

  “Your pardon, sirs, but that I would have done with or without your permission,” Hwyn said as she slipped the white gem back into her pocket. “It is no more yours to give than it was his,” she pointed at Dannoth, “to keep. It is not mine either, but I take it only to set it free.”

  Conor scowled, but another of the phantoms spoke up: “Well spoken, wise maiden,” said silver-eyed Mirron of Kelgarran, the sole diplomat in a family of warriors. “We would not give you what is not ours. Take it by right. You know well what must be done with it.”

  Conor spoke again. “The Eye of Night is not the gift I offer. Choose what you would ask of us: our power is great tonight, in the first rush of freedom. One boon, too, we grant to the Tarvon Priest who restored our names to us.”

  “We need safe passage away from here,” I said when Conor turned to me. “These two women and I will have enemies enough in Kelgarran when this night's deeds are known. Will you help us escape?”

  “That is a small thing to ask,” said Conor. “And you, my liberator? What will you have?”

  “Mercy for the people of this house,” Hwyn said, her voice shaking. “Most of them must be innocent of your torment: Dannoth kept his secret well. But even for the guilty, I ask some share of clemency. It becomes you well, Lord Conor: you were always known as a merciful lord.”

  “That is a hard request,” the phantom said. “Think well: would you have me spare the man who nearly killed you and your friends?”

  “I don't ask you to release him armed. But I owe him at least some gentleness in return for two favors: he stopped his kinsman from beating me, and invited me to sit at his table. Honor binds me to remember these things. For that kindness, be lenient with him.”

  “What good can be said of a man who is kind in the great hall and cruel in the secret chamber?”

  “For your own sake, then—for you will come nearer to your long-denied peace by mercy than by vengeance,” Hwyn persisted.

  “For your sake, rather,” Conor said, “I will be lenient. I cannot forestall his doom: he has meddled with the Eye of Night, and must fall as deep as the height to which he raised himself.”

  Dannoth looked up from the floor, and it seemed that he had already aged twenty years since the ghosts had appeared. He cast a pleading look on Conor with bleary, sunken eyes.

  “Nevertheless,” Conor continued, “I will not prolong his pain, for your sake alone, my friend.” He bowed again to Hwyn. “Because you have not sought power over us, as you might have done, you will be well provided. Go to the shore of Lake Garran. Under a clump of willows you will find a boat prepared with all you need. Now make haste.”

  We fled down the corridor to the front gate. As we ran, the walls of the house began to shake and a wind seemed to rise within its halls. When we reached the gate, the guards had abandoned their posts. The very stones of the stronghold seemed to be howling in pain, the seven towers shaking in fear. We ran through the drowsing streets of the city, spiraling down toward the lakeside, watching as one by one shutters opened and bleary-eyed citizens gaped at the towers of Kelgarran Hall in horror. When I looked back once I saw people pouring out of the castle gates in a disordered mob.

  Hwyn grabbed me by the arm and pulled me on with her. Only when we reached the shelter of the willows at the lakeside did she herself look back. On the heights, the spires of Kelgarran Hall loomed somber in the dawning light. But even as we watched, one of its towers began to totter and crumble until it fell, scattering the escapees farther from their former home. The wind lifted their cries to us. I looked at Hwyn, and saw a shiver run through her at the sound.

  “Let's go,” she said, brushing away tears with her sleeve. “Someone may think of connecting the night's guests with the night's trouble.”

  I nodded, and we turned to inspect the boat that awaited us as Conor had promised: a clinker-built boat with a broad, flat bottom, a single mast, and one square sail. I waded into the reedy water and lifted Trenara aboard, then little Hwyn. Then, up to my thighs in Lake Garran, I examined the boat from stem to stern before climbing aboard. Despite what I had seen of the boat, its rocking comforted me, as though some part of me felt that for years the world had been all too still under my feet. I was raised on the seaside, and coming aboard was like coming home.

  “Look—there's traveling packs with food and water-skins— even a tinderbox—everything we need for the journey, as he promised,” Hwyn gloated.

  “Everything but a rudder,” I said. “That Conor's an old joker. Has he at least given us an oar to steer with?”

  Hwyn gave me a look as blank as Trenara's. There was no oar.

  As I examined the boat further to make up my mind how to proceed, Hwyn fussed over the burn Dannoth's henchman had left on Trenara's hand, cooling it with wet leaves.
Then, without warning, the boat unfurled its own sail, cast off, and lurched away from shore, steered by no mortal hand.

  “Did you—?” Hwyn began.

  “I haven't done a thing,” I said.

  “The ghost's at the helm, then,” she said. “Nothing for us to do but sit back and try to enjoy it.” So we did sit back—it was a good-sized boat for three—and we tried to keep our heads as the craft skimmed along at an alarming speed, churning the placid lake-water to spume.

  “He's taking us northward. That doesn't bother you?” I said.

  “Should it?”

  “It bothers plenty of people these days.”

  “You among them?” she asked.

  “Not me. What have I got to lose?” I said. She scrutinized my face a moment with that sort of desperate squint that marks weak eyes, but said nothing. For a while we only watched the boat's rough progress and the sun's struggle over the horizon.

  “Look,” Hwyn said after a while, pointing at Trenara with a grin. The lady was sleeping in the bow, undisturbed by the spray that kissed her dark hair. “Only Trenara could fall asleep at a time like this.”

  “Maybe she's the wisest of us,” I said. “Lake Garran goes a long way north; even at this pace, we have a long journey ahead of us, with none of the sailor's work to do ourselves. What can we do but sleep?”

  “Talk,” said Hwyn. “I so rarely have anyone to talk to. How did you know the seven ghosts? That was a fine piece of work.”

  “The Gift of Naming was something I learned in the Tarvon Order. Or rather, something that comes to you in the Order. I never thought it would stay with me when I left for good.

  “Unfortunately,” I said, “it only seems useful for disembodied spirits—not fellow travelers. I misnamed you most foully, and judged you most unjustly.”

  “Don't speak of it. You risked your life for us! That was magnificent, you know, when you threw yourself at Lord Dannoth.”

  “I thought it was rather inept,” I said, my face hot.

  “But don't you see, that's the glory of it. A man who knows nothing of fighting hurls himself unarmed at a belted knight. That's courage,” she laughed, looking at me through the lashes of her right eye. The left one was permanently turned inward, no doubt blind as a stone.

  “You took some fool's chances yourself,” I said. “Talking back to the phantom warrior. And tossing the Eye of Night to your enemy—or did you know, then, that the phantoms would come out of it?”

  “I gambled,” she said. “At least I knew it wouldn't break if it fell—which Dannoth seems not to have known, the way he dove for it.”

  “What will you do with this Eye, now that you have it?”

  “Take it where it wants to go,” Hwyn said, looking away from me.

  “You don't want to tell me, do you? Well, that's all right. We all have our secrets. But you must tell me something, at least, about yourself. For instance, is Hwyn your real name? It isn't, is it?”

  She laughed again. “Are you sure your gift doesn't apply to the living? When I passed through the town of Gwilth, a man spotted me from a distance and ran toward me, waving his arms and shouting, ‘Hwyn! Is it really you?’ But of course, once he came within a few yards of me he said, ‘You're not Hwyn.’ He sounded so downcast, and it had been so good to see him running toward me, calling and waving, that I said, ‘I'll be Hwyn if you want me to.’ We went to a tavern then, laughing and telling stories, and got as full of ale as St. Bridwen's Well. I hoped he might come with me, but we parted company the next day. I kept the name. I wonder who it was that he could have been so glad to see, that looked like me.” She bit a fingernail, studied it, then continued.

  “Instead of him, I got Trenara as a companion,” Hwyn said. “She had me fooled, all right, just as she fooled you. I sat half the night in a pub in Torun, telling her my troubles as she gave me that understanding smile. I thought she was such a good listener. It took hours for me to realize that she was just listening to the sound of my voice.”

  I didn't blame her. Hwyn's voice, I had begun to notice, was as beautiful as her face was ugly, when she wasn't distorting her speech to play the fool. It had a fluid, warm tone, like the large end-blown flute my little brother used to play, which had washed ashore sodden and useless with his body seven years before.

  “I stayed in Torun a while. I had work there, at decent wages,” Hwyn went on. “I knew the ways of the town, and it didn't shock me to learn what a pretty girl like Trenara did to get by. What did make me lose control one day was to see her bawd clout her for losing money. I told him to take his hands off her; he laughed, and challenged me to stop him. And I … I let things get out of hand.

  “I'm talking too much,” Hwyn broke off suddenly, turning away from me. “It's been so long since I've had anyone to talk to. So much silence—it eats away at the soul.” She looked at me sidelong, furtively, then turned away again. “Sometimes I think the day I was born, a sword-blade was set between me and humankind to keep me apart, alone. And now I am on a journey that will take me even further from any hope of companionship, so that I sometimes think I will die with all my words trapped unspoken inside me like unquiet ghosts. And sometimes I wonder if it even matters. It's not as if anyone would mourn for me. I am scarcely human, after all.”

  I could tell by her voice that she was weeping again, though she still faced away from me. I laid a hand on her shoulder. I was unused to such gestures, and it felt awkward to me, like a priest's ritual blessing where a friend's touch is needed. Still, her hunched shoulders seemed to relax under my hand, and at last she spoke again. “You see I cry easily,” she said. “That part of the idiot act was real.”

  “It's not idiotic,” I said almost fiercely. “As for me—I couldn't even cry when my family drowned.”

  She turned to me, startled. “How did that happen?”

  “We were merchants, returning from a trading voyage to Iskarron, when the ship sank. I was the only survivor.”

  “I'm sorry,” she said. “How can you sit so calmly on this boat? It must speak death to you!”

  I shrugged. “I was born on shipboard. I grew up on ships and boats and shipyards. They are birth, life, and death to me—and even I am not so far gone as to fear all three.

  “But it was different seven years ago. I turned my back on the sea, gave away everything I had inherited, and joined the Tarvon Order to serve the Upright God.”

  “That's one of the celibate orders? Poverty, chastity, and whatnot?” Hwyn said with a sardonic smile.

  “And obedience—you left the worst for last,” I said. “Luckily in my order final vows are taken after seven years, and I stayed for six. I began to wonder whether holiness lay as close to order as I'd been taught.”

  “I offer you chaos,” Hwyn said, “and the chance for new life.” She slipped the Eye of Night into my hand.

  The lustrous white stone looked cool, but felt warm, and seemed to stir ever so slightly in my hand. “It feels alive!” I gasped.

  “It is alive. It is an egg, the Sky-Raven's Egg.”

  “When will it hatch?” I asked.

  “I don't know. Not today. Perhaps this year; perhaps many years in the future. Lord Dannoth, and others before him, kept the life within it from growing by imprisoning it in magic circles. I am trying to set it free.”

  “By bringing it into the North, into the Troubles,” I guessed. “Isn't that your destination?”

  “Yes—and Trenara's as well, I think. I've tried more than once to leave her in a safe place—with an order of penitent ladies, or a couple whose only daughter had died—but she followed me each time,” Hwyn spoke softly, looking anxiously at Trenara to make sure she remained asleep. “She slows me down, and she's about as much company as a statue, but until I reach Larioneth I may be stuck with her. I've come to think she has a quest of her own. Maybe she'll find her lost wits in the north country.”

  “And you—what will you find? What drives you into the North?” I pressed.


  “Dreams have chased me there,” she said. “These past seven years I've been driven by dreams—as you have.” She paused, and I thought she was closing up again, but soon she spoke:

  “What's really happening in the North? Trouble, they say. Chaos. Rulers cast from their thrones; tremors in the earth and sky; graves thrown open, and the dead walking about.

  “Maybe I can say what's happening there. Night is falling; nothing worse,” she declared, her voice level but tense with feeling. “Night has a bad name on the earth; we fear the dark as children, and scarcely put away that fear when we come of age. But what would become of the world without night?” Hwyn demanded of me.

  “No rest for the weary laborer,” I said, “and no cool nights to relieve the summer's heat.”

  “Very true,” she said, “yet there is more: no private time for wife and husband, no sheltering darkness for lovers. And graver: every flowering plant and seed-bearing tree on the earth times its seasons of flower and fruit by the changing cycle of night and day. Without night there can be no flowers, no fruits, no grains. Picture the earth barren, hungry, and hot under an endless, weary day.

  “Whatever hatches from this egg,” Hwyn said, “will be a child of Night. It may be terrible; I may be cursed for releasing it. I fear it as a child fears the dark. But I know this much: it cannot be held back. Like the night, it is necessary. Dannoth Kelgarran and other learned fools have been trying to hold back the nightfall—to hold back the Trouble. And how can I blame them? Who wouldn't want to hold back pain?”

  “That's what I was doing in the Tarvon Order,” I said, “holding back the pain of my family's deaths, praying when I couldn't weep, learning to discern strange spirits but unable to lay my own ghosts to rest. Of course, it was doomed to failure.”

  “Then maybe you can understand,” Hwyn said, “why I'm running headlong into the Troubles; why I have to release the hatch-ling from the Raven's Egg, even though I fear it. Why I'll consent to be a midwife to the Night.

  “Childbirth, after all, is a fearful trouble. Women suffer pain in childbirth that would undo strong men. Women often die in childbirth, or labor in vain to bring forth a dead child. But what if some magician had the power to hold back this deadly pain, to keep the troublesome child trapped in the womb? Both mother and child would die, and not alone, but the human race with them. No less with the Troubles in the North. The mighty cast down from their pride, the dead cast up from their graves: are these the pangs of death, or of birth?”