In the Eye of Heaven Part 31

Durand shook his head, still smiling, and unshipped both sword and shield. There were six riders, gray and centuries old, lined up across the road. Each man wore a conical helm and hauberk of gray mail. Long shields painted with curling animals guarded their sides, and every man held a lance in his fist Cerlac's gray was quick and steady, but Durand wondered if he could make the animal charge such a line. And, if he pa.s.sed them, he wondered how far they would get two on one horse. He and the girl.

"Milady," said Durand. "I am Durand. Born at Col of the Blackroots. Will you give me your name?"

"Deorwen!" she said. "Deorwen."He smiled.

"Ride," she said. "And Heaven have mercy on us both." The Duke of Hesperand saluted Durand, sword to gray lips. Durand responded in kind, Cerlac's horse dancing awkwardly under its burden. The duke urged his shimmering stallion ahead of his men.

From the vantage of an irrationally good mood, Durand considered the puzzle in front of him with the mad feeling that he could crack it. He did have one advantage over the duke.

Limbering his shoulder, he shocked the jangled gray into motion. The spectral duke spurred his own mount forward.

With Deorwen holding tight and the gray running in a good open gallop beneath him, Durand's grin widened madly. The duke's lance was long; its bright point winked steady as the lodestar. The man would never miss. He wondered how many other men had seen the same blade in these woods.

Flickering horse and rider loomed, but, at the very last, Durand hauled Cerlac's gray for the trees. The duke twisted, his lance striking Durand's shield-not squarely enough to bite. The riders in the track twisted as well, fighting to turn from a standing start.

Durand's one advantage was that he did not give a d.a.m.n about the old duke.

With a whoop, Durand dropped Cerlac's gray back into the roadbed. Now, with the duke's men tangled behind him and the duke himself charging the wrong way, Durand spurred onward with the fog whirling shut behind them.

As the poor gray galloped on-a hundred paces, two hundred paces-he felt its every stride checked by the awkward weight on its back. It was slowing, and the duke's men must overtake them soon.

They rode until, finally, the gray fell into a walk, then stood still, fighting to breathe in the mist.

Durand got his blade between himself and the roadway, knowing he couldn't see far enough to defend them. It had been a good run. But no swords flickered out of the fog to cut them down. Around him, it seemed the light had changed, and the world was a fraction more dim. The gray breathed between his knees as Durand listened. He could feel Deorwen's cheekbone and forehead against his back.

Water dripped, and they breathed.

"Queen of Heaven," said Deorwen. Her hands unlocked, retreating, for a moment, to linger on his hipbones. "We are alive."

Durand turned to look back at her. She was trying to look away, or so it seemed.

"Here. I'll get you down," he said. Durand put his hands on her waist and set her on the ground. For a moment, as he lifted her above the road, she looked into his eyes, surprised. And somewhere in the process, Durand missed a breath.

"I think we'll have to walk this poor brute awhile," he managed, climbing down.

She faced the road behind them. The tunnel of branches vanished fifty paces into the fog. It was hard not to imagine the duke and his men boiling out of the clouds. But, for as long as they stared, there was no sign. Nevertheless, Durand felt the weight of them poised there, ready to thunder down.

"We had best move on, I think," Deorwen said, finally. "Come on."

"Yes," said Durand, tearing his eyes away from the fog.

Deorwen touched him: his belt. She drew the long dagger from his hip. There was a smile. 'The Banished don't like iron," she said.

Both of them glanced back into the mist. There was nothing ahead or behind them.

"Some things must be endured, because we have no choice," said Deorwen.

THEY PUSHED ON into the failing light. If someone had asked Durand where he was going, he would have said, "Away." into the failing light. If someone had asked Durand where he was going, he would have said, "Away."

After an hour or more of walking, Deorwen spoke out."Do you know where this leads?"

He hadn't been thinking at all. "You'll be wanting to get back to her ladyship," he said, realizing. "Bertana. I didn't think. Did she-"

"I don't know what's become of her."

"You're right. We should try to find the others. I should get back to Sir Coensar and-" He nearly said Lamoric's name. "And the Knight in Red. And see you safe with your people." The only thing he could think was they should leave the road and ride north for a time. The bulk of the conroi had been off to his right before he turned back to get Deorwen.

"We could pa.s.s right by and never know it." She looked up into the low gray ceiling. "I think we may be losing the light."

There was no sign of Heaven's Eye, but the light did seem to be failing.

"You aren't saying we should make camp?" "Well, we've found a road."

"Aye," said Durand. They would be mad to leave a good road behind with dark coming on. "Best to make camp now. There will be no moon, I think," he said, and they found a well-drained bit of ground a few paces from the road. Neither one of them had any way to make a fire.

When Durand gave Deorwen his cloak, she gave it back.The sky was growing dark."You won't be much good frozen," she informed him. "I'll keep warm walking."

She had sat down. There was a good thick carpet of turf, and it would make a better bed than Durand had known in the Painted Hall of Acconel.

"All night?" she asked.

Durand shrugged his cloak up around his ears. "I'll be happier keeping watch. You're the brave one if you can shut your eyes in this place."

"We'll take turns," she murmured, curling on her side."You first?" Durand offered.

"I would never have believed that this could happen to me," she said. Durand laughed.

"When I was girl, I was the kind who wandered then. Gave my minders fits. Once, I lost myself in a wood on my father's land. I remember being very frightened. The wood was a wild place then. All of my nurse's stories, they made it sound as if every inch were thick with Lost knights, Strangers, and Banished spirits set to lure me. A child sees herself in such stories."

She stared off-seeing that other wood, Durand supposed.

"But as a grown woman ... Those stories. Everyday things weigh them down. It's all the wise women do: whispers of the marriage bed, sour stomachs, and what to wash the babes and bodies in."

She stopped a moment.'This is different. Like my dreams."

Standing under the trees with the wet straps of a shield in his fingers and a blade in his hand, Durand could only nod.

"That wood was like this," she concluded.

To his eyes, the woman looked like a toy, curled there: the small curve of her mouth, her blotched cheek, her hip.

"The wise women say the Lost work in circles," she said. "We all do. You can feel it here. Round and round, old things they can't set down."

Durand nodded, pulling his damp cloak tight. He had seen as much. They were all dancing in circles in Hesperand. The partners changed, but the steps were the same. He tried to pull together the bits and pieces he had seen. He remembered Heremund's talk of a great sorcery knocking the duchy free of Creation, and it was safe enough to guess that Saewin had killed his master. The Lady had nearly said as much. But what did it all mean?

As he looked at the soot and coal forest, the old spell rose before his mind's eye catching them up like a mill could drag a man in by his sleeves or fingers. As the big spell snapped tight round the dead man, all the oath-bound souls tumbled after their master.

And the whole mess was still here, Eorcan still groping after the author of his destruction, and Saewin still hunting for his Lady. It was mad. He thought back to Heremund's talk of echoes. They had broken a world.

Standing in the dark, he thought of the Bower's Lady, trapped in the midst of it all. His finger touched the green knot at his belt. He thought of Cerlac, now dwelling at the Bower Castle. Cerlac's horse tossed its tail, pale against the darkness.

And here he was with Deorwen-now sound asleep and curled like a pup in the gra.s.s. His eyes followed the curve of her hip, and found her lips, dark as her tresses against her pale skin. He wondered about her and tried to imagine what had brought her to this place. Had she been following him since Red Winding? A part of him wanted to believe it. But Lady Bertana's train had blundered into Hesperand on its way west from Red Winding, that was all. The place had drawn a great many in. He wondered where Lady Bertana's holdings actually lay.

He was tired, the air was cold, and the night was as dark as any he had seen, but pacing kept him awake.

HE WOKE TO find a hand on his arm, soft and insistent. find a hand on his arm, soft and insistent.

"Host of Heaven," said Deorwen. He could feel her breath against his jaw. "Durand." "Durand."

Her face hovered an inch from his and upside down. Her eyes were wide. He had a sense there was something around them in the fog.

Baffled, Durand rolled to see.

"Queen of Heaven," Deorwen breathed, a new horror in her voice.

They were surrounded. In every direction, men were waking. Shabby, disheveled creatures levered themselves from the ground only to tip at once into huddled crouches or pitch onto their hands and knees. Scabbards jutted from hips-most empty. He saw madness. The men were shaking their heads and moving their lips, utterly silent. Mute tongues flickered against yellow teeth.

Though he could not have said why, it was like a graveyard had been tipped out and its denizens left to crawl upon the ground. The madmen stared about themselves in horror. Brown blood stained surcoats. Some of the men pawed disbelievingly at round wounds.

He counted dozens."King of Heaven," whispered Durand."You didn't wake me." Her face was close to his."I-" Durand hesitated. "I couldn't."

"They were just sleeping. All round. Till I woke you. Every eyelid snapped open as yours did." Despair shone from their faces like lamplight. The nearest was only a few feet away. His skin was wax against the blue of a rough surcoat, close enough to smell the old sweat caught in the weave-though there was nothing. Durand could see no way to move without stirring them all.

"The green is thick with them," Deorwen said.'The green?" He remembered only a forest track."There's a whole village."

Like clods in a steaming cauldron, the sheds and hovels of a village rose from the fog at the limits of vision. Durand's graveyard was a village green. Deorwen and he lay in the rugged common ground near the road. Muckheaps, a t.i.the barn, and something that might have been a rough manor house loomed out there. More importantly, there was a ring of people: peasants by their small stature and hairy cloaks. Hands clutched a fence of woven hurdles, as the villagers squinted and whispered soundlessly to one another.

'The whole village has turned out. If I did not know I was awake-Queen of Heaven!" She pressed his arm.

The blue-coated man had reared to his feet, planting a boot by Durand's fingers, then staggering off through the others. Heads turned, though every face was confused. They were like men squinting at flies. The blue-coated man had his eyes squeezed shut and his fists locked in his hair. A bit of green cloth was knotted round his knuckles. Others followed, pitching onto their feet and stumbling through the crowd.

The faces twisted into silent rings-mute howls that set the peasants beyond the green running. The frenzy was building.

Durand thought of the green veil knotted through his own belt "This is madness," he rasped. The things blundered near enough that he had to s.n.a.t.c.h his legs away, but there was no sound. The lips stretched and eyes rolled, but the breath in Durand's mouth was louder than the loudest scream among them. He must get Deorwen free of the place. He had to find the horse.

Deorwen tugged him to his feet.

He spotted Cerlac's animal-two dozen crowded paces off-but, somehow, he would rather touch a drowned corpse than one of these men.

There was motion in the crowd of villagers.

A fierce-looking man stalked up to the hurdle fence. His face was lean and starkly bearded, and he was wrestling himself into the embroidered robe of a priest-arbiter. Beyond them all, the black doors of a squat shrine hung wide.

The priest swung his arms open, and opened his mouth without a sound. He ranted. Spittle flew. A madman touched Durand, shooting a razor-edged tingle up Durand's forearm.

The priest was tugging his sleeves up his own forearms. He held a staff, and there was gold enough st.i.tched through his robes to buy half the village.

Suddenly, he gave his arms a shaking jolt, and Durand's clothing flinched around his limbs.

Every one of the madmen jolted, too, cloaks and surcoats twitching as if in a sudden wind.

"Durand?" said Deorwen, her face ashen.

After another rambling silence, the priest stabbed his staff heavenward, and now Durand felt the push.

He fell. He dropped as though into a well, his ears filling. Everything was wrong. His face and fingers might have been k.n.o.bs of root in a garden.

But, suddenly, he could hear.

"Saewin, Saewin, Saewin," the madmen's voices sloshed in his ears. "I'm not Saewin," he gasped. the madmen's voices sloshed in his ears. "I'm not Saewin," he gasped.

They echoed: "I am not Saewin! I am not he! A mistake. I'm not Saewin."

And Durand realized: They had been saying it all along. Every twitching mouth among the madmen was repeating the words until every beard was clotted with spittle. They had been with the Green Lady and Eorcan had ridden them down.

And, as he thought his mind would come adrift, he heard the dull thunder of hooves. All this, and now Eorcan was on their heels once more.

The men around him might have been ecstatic monks. 'Traitor," they said, and "adulterer" and "oathbreaker." Then, always, "I am not he!"

Deorwen was speaking. He turned to look at her, seeing panic. Her lips were moving, at first with no sound, then her voice came on, all in a rush. His skin was caught in her fists.

"Durand! "

Creation pitched, and Durand reeled from the half-world of the babbling men.

The priest was still speaking, his eyes on the clouds, but now Durand knew that Eorcan was coming. He tried to reach for Deorwen, but found that his hands would hardly answer him. His face felt like so much cold flesh on a butcher's table.

The priest's ranting was some sort of ritual: casting out fiends. Durand's cloak rippled with the man's words. Between the priest and Eorcan they must leave.

"Come on!" Durand managed, fumbling at the woman's hand and hauling her into the crowd. They must get to the horse. Some of the madmen reeled out of their way. Some vanished like brown smoke.

The priest was turning. Up the road, the track crooked into the trees. They would get little warning before the duke was on top of them.

Without time for a saddle, he threw himself onto the horse's bare back and heaved the woman up behind. The priest's eyes glinted, tongue and teeth rattling another frantic abjuration, and Durand could see that his fit was building toward another great climax. G.o.d knew what would happen.

With the woman's arms clamped tight, he kicked the gray into a gallop so wild he could scarcely hold on to the terrified animal's back. He could feel the priest's words shaking Creation behind him, each syllable chopping a bite from the world, catching at his soul with frenzied claws.

The jolt, as it hit, was enough to throw his cloak forward into the wind.

They leapt the hurdle fence and swung into the road. The duke's armored squadron rumbled like a storm, their horns yowling out above the drumbeat of hooves. The woman screamed behind him. They hung on, and gained ground. They swerved between roadside banks. While a good rider could do clever tricks bareback, it took everything to stick to that animal as it careered through the fog, wild beyond controlling, and without bit or bridle. Trees swung down like a battalion of giants. They should have died.

After the better part of a league, the horse began to stagger, and, as it fell out of its cantering rhythm, the drumbeat of the duke's hors.e.m.e.n a.s.serted itself on the road behind them. The duke would overtake them-nothing could prevent it-but a man would not face the Bright Gates of Heaven with a lance in his back.

Dropping into the trail, he hauled his sword free and turned to face his onetime comrades. He would die on his feet.

The woman was shouting at him, but somehow he could not make out what she said. She should run. He tried to make that clear. This had nothing to do with her. It was him they were after, not some woman they had never seen, but it was as though a thunderous wind were s.n.a.t.c.hing the words from his lips.

Two hundred paces down the track, the Host of Hesperand rumbled into sight. He knew them all. He could see lances by the score flickering under the canopy of branches, and hard men on big horses with Eorcan of Hesperand and his tall Peregrine Crown at the forefront. His onetime liege lord would not stop for parley. He had betrayed them all and deserved no reprieve. On Eorcan's dark lance, where there might have been a duke's banner, trailed knots of green rag, some clotted black.