In the Eye of Heaven Part 11

With a slow breath, Durand set off once more, searching out a route that would take him into the lowest levels of the fortress. Every keep had a sneaky postern door somewhere down below. As he searched, he wondered how long his partner upstairs would wait. The man would think he'd gone to have a p.i.s.s. Soon he would wonder.

To make his way down, Durand stole close to danger, prowling past turned backs and clinging to shadows. It could be in the lowest levels that he might find his door.

His knotted path led him groping down among the largest stones of the keep: clammy giants in the dark. The air tasted of cellars. There, he found a narrow pa.s.sage cut into the thickness of the walls. If there were going to be a back way out, this would be it. He stepped into the blackness.

"Right," said the gloom. "Where do you think you're going?"

After a moment, a face and knuckles floated in the spitting glow of a candle: another of Radomor's soldiers.

"You're relieved," Durand ventured. The soldier squinted despite the candle, and Durand used the time to walk nearer. The soldier wasn't a big man.

"By the Powers of h.e.l.l. Who's that? The new lad? Durmund?"

He was almost on the man.

"Something like," Durand said. 'They leave you down here all alone?"

"Aye, and all they give me's this hog-tallow candle." Durand could smell the greasy smoke and the bite of onions on the soldier's breath. The man's face was full of bristles. "But I've just got on duty, friend."

Durand stared at the wizened face. In that instant, he was very tired of lying.

"I'm not your relief, friend," he said. It felt good."Then what are-"

"-I'm not going to stand by any longer." Join me, or stop me: an honest challenge.

The soldier raised a knowing eyebrow. "Leaving old Radomor while he's in a bad humor?"

"Aye," Durand said. The man had missed the point; he was smirking.

"Well, it's not His Lords.h.i.+p you ought to watch out for. It's old Gollie-boy. He don't much like folk who take his money and turn their backs. 'Specially after what a man might've seen the last while. I think His Lords.h.i.+p's counselors have got Gollie right jumpy: afraid to make a mistake. And you swanning off now would count as a mistake, friend, in case you're wondering. Embarra.s.sing for His Lords.h.i.+p. You'd cause our Gollie a whole pack of trouble." His too-familiar smile broadened. "I suggest you just turn around and forget the whole thing. In fact, I might forget it ever happened, if you've got the coin."

"I haven't got a clipped penny.""Well, not on you, but-"Durand struck like a tiger. The candle flashed out as he clapped one hand over the man's mouth and rammed him high in the angle between ceiling and wall. He pinned the soldier there, thinking of knives, dreading a brawl in the dark. But the moment stretched. The soldier didn't struggle.

Releasing his grip, Durand felt the man slump bonelessly from his shaking hands. Some Power of Heaven must be watching-he hoped it was a Power of Heaven.

Durand pawed the walls until his fingers slid over hinges and rotten timber. Another moment's work found the bar, and then he was through the door and out into another cool s.p.a.ce between walls. This time, however, the only vault above his head was the open evening sky.

Durand stole out, daring to feel relief. As he slid in close to the ma.s.sive foundations, he heard the croaking of birds. He thrust his head round the comer, and found the courtyard teeming: rooks, ravens, magpies, crows. The stooped things lurched and cackled in all directions. Atop the stained walls of the high sanctuary, the creatures heaped every spire and cornice, sliding on the rooftiles and spilling out across the yard below.

Durand jogged for the stables-where he caught hold of a piebald nag no one would miss-and he clattered through a storm of black wings and down into the city.

IN THE STREETS, he slowed his pace, pa.s.sing strangers in the twilight: laborers trudging homeward, watchmen waiting for the curfew bell to slam their gates. One even commented. "You're lucky. The b.l.o.o.d.y sanctuary bell ought to have gone an hour ago."

Durand thought of the birds, and the fouled icon near Tormentil. He wondered what had become of that fearsome Patriarch. He wanted to spur the stolen horse, but he forced himself to ride easily, pulling the mask of a laborer's boredom over dread. He must reach the last gate.

Finally, the thing swung into view, and Durand knotted his fists a little tighter. He was almost free.

The gate pa.s.sed overhead.

But as he had this taste of freedom, someone laughed. Durand twisted. The gate's mouth gaped empty behind him. Another laugh barked out, this time clearly from above his head. A pair of dark blots peered down from the battlements: rooks.

Durand spurred his stolen horse for the horizon.

THE FIRST NIGHT, he rode blind, thinking that the duke's Mantlewell was south somewhere. There was no one to ask. All night, the carrion birds tracked him.

When the Eye of Heaven rose over Creation, Durand threw questions at every bleary line of threshermen or gleaning peasants he pa.s.sed, asking where he must go, and, at every twist, the rooks were never far away. Sometimes the things came near enough for him to shy a rock. He would turn a corner to find them on a signpost or perched and chortling on the stocks in a village green. At other times, they hung so high above him they seemed a pair of black letters inked on the clouds.

Toward noon, he found a boy standing in the road, a blue rag in his hand. Durand reined in his stolen mare. Time had cut the track deep between fields banked up on either side. The boy's mouth hung slack. The blue rag was a sling.

An older man slithered down the bank, his beard and tunic full of chaff. As he reached the boy, he noticed Durand.

"Oddest thing I ever saw," the man muttered. "I've got the boy flinging stones to keep the crows off."

Durand said, "You should get under cover."'This one. It was a lucky shot. Hit the thing square on.""Is there a shrine or sanctuary you could hide in?""And it just come to pieces."Durand felt a chill. "Came to pieces?"

"Like it was all full of maggots. Blowflies. It just come apart. Whack."

Durand made the fist-and-fingers sign of the Eye."Yes. Broad daylight Whack. Bits and grubs and feathers."The boy spoke. "Right through it." "Right through it."Durand peered hard at the older man. "You say 'crow'?"

"I don't know," said the older man. "Raven. Crow. Rook. Something like that. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d didn't know it was dead, I guess. A bad sign."

Durand shook his head. There was a rise a hundred paces off. In the crook of a tree up there, he saw a black shape that could have been the bird. One rook remained, and Durand didn't like the thought of these poor peasants getting caught up in things bigger than they were. "Get to a priest," he said. "I'd hurry."

"Aye." The man nodded and made to take his boy by the collar.

Durand said, "A moment. I am bound for Mantlewell. Can you point me to the road?"

"Yes. Aye. My wife's from that way. You're looking for a stone cliff on the Highs.h.i.+elds road. Highs.h.i.+elds is sort of up on that cliff. With all the mines and that. Things kind of step up on the way to the mountains. The Well is ... cut into that, like. The road goes straight for it."

Durand nodded, thinking of Alwen in her tower. It sounded as if he was getting near.

"May the Warders protect you, and the Champion grant you courage," Durand said and, as father and son nodded goodbye, nudged his borrowed horse into motion. He hoped that one of the Rooks was dead-killed by a little boy with a bit of blue rag-but he didn't fool himself. They were on him. He was a dolt for choosing a swaybacked nag instead of a proper charger. He imagined explaining himself before the Gates of Heaven. "Mother and child died, sure. And sure I am a thief, but it wasn't an expensive expensive horse." The Warders would hurl him straight to the Host Below. horse." The Warders would hurl him straight to the Host Below.

He could feel Gol's men barreling down the road behind him. If he could reach the duke before they caught him, everything might still work out.

Driving the nag on, he soon struck the oak forests of the south where the land began to change. These were not the chalk hills of Gireth. In Yrlac, the land rose in waves of stone. The trail took wild angles, and water ran cold and rusty in the crevices.

Above the forest, on a hill as gray and bare as an oyster sh.e.l.l, he heard voices. At first, nothing moved among the scruffy trees behind him. Then, almost under his feet, a flock of starlings exploded into the air, a few whistling over his head. Gol was closer than he had feared-only a bowshot behind.

Durand pitched horse downhill, abruptly spotting a gray bank a league ahead. A line of cliffs rose over the forest: the step the peasant had spoken of. If he could get that far, maybe Alwen lived.

The track spooled onward-he heard hooves on the stone behind him-but no matter how he drove his horse, the cliff yielded no sign of monastery or village ahead. He had images of fighting it out with Gol's thugs against the stone because he'd missed a turning. Abruptly, the track shot sideways across the face of the vast wall, and before Durand's eyes, the wall seemed to uncurl like a sorcerer's fist, revealing an echoing place of ferns and mosses.

A stream poured out of the rock, and Durand's nag splashed into the shallow water, startling a hushed score of pilgrims. They had the look of neighbors whispering at a sickroom door.

Durand slipped down from the nag's back, wondering what he had stumbled onto this time. He walked past the staring pilgrims into the gorge. The stream ran over the stone floor, filling it with a sound that sent Durand back to the keep at Ferangore and its well. Here though, no grate blocked the sky. A few fathoms over his head, ivies clung in the sunlight. It was like walking in a snail's sh.e.l.l. He teetered and balanced over the cool water. Otherworldly voices played in the air.

At the heart, the gorge opened into a cavernous granite well soaring over a pool. Bushes clung to the higher walls, knotted with strips of linen. They might have been swaddling clothes.

He faced the backs of a half-dozen tall men-wellborn by their surcoats and stature. Beyond them at the pool's edge, a figure knelt. The instant Durand's eye fell on the long back and flowing silver of the man's head, he knew he had found Duke Ailnor, the son of King Carondas's winter years.

"Your Grace-" said Durand.

Though there was gray in the hair and beards of the duke's men, their fists had twisted in Durand's collar before he could flinch. Blades glinted. Faces glared, tight-lipped as skulls.

"It is almost noontide when it is said that the light of Heaven's Eye falls on the water of the pool." The bent duke sighed. "But, this day as the last, clouds obscure the Eye. There will be no healing."

The kneeling man stood. For a moment, he was the image of all holy men and kings-a face on coins from the loose silver of his beard to the unflinching stare-but then he seemed to find something in Durand's eyes.

"You!" Ailnor tottered, alarming the guards locked on Durand's arms. For an instant, Durand was a steer in the butcher's hands. The knights twisted their blades.

"No! No." The duke steadied himself. He waved his wary followers back and stepped close until he cupped Durand's face in his hands. His eyes were gray and full of something like awe.

"Such dreams I have had," he breathed. Durand had no answer.

"I have seen your face. As it is ... and much changed. I have seen terrible things, so that now I would sooner lay my bones in the crypt of my fathers than sleep. I sought to escape them." He shot a glance at the pool, then returned his avid gaze to Durand. He looked like a man trying to read his future in a stone.

Durand forced himself to remember why he had come. "I bring grave tidings, Your Grace."

"I think it is beginning," whispered the duke, close as kissing. whispered the duke, close as kissing.

"Your son ..." Durand said.

The gray eyes closed. What was Durand meant to say? His long night's ride seemed to take hold of him. How could he go on?

"At Tormentil we had news," Durand said. "From Ferangore. Aldoin of Warrendel-"

"They played as children. Hobby horses. I remember young Radomor battering Warrendel from our stable with a wooden blade."

"He is dead," said Durand.

Cool air turned in the empty well above their heads. Eyes . still shut, Ailnor said, "Drowned." Cold fingers slithered in Durand's guts. "Was it drowned?" "Was it drowned?"

"Yes," Durand said, though no one could know. "He was drowned."

"And Alwen?" the duke asked."It is why I've come.""The child. My grandson?"'In the Lady's bower. Locked inside.""It was my wife's chamber," Ailnor said.

Durand took a breath, forcing himself on. "He has them locked up and guarded. No one comes or goes. It will be their tomb."

The duke nodded. Durand would have said more. He would have spoken of Ca.s.sonel and Beoran and the plot, but Duke Ailnor staggered back, his shoulders tilted like the yard of a broken s.h.i.+p.

"I must think," he said, and waded past Durand toward the mouth of the gorge. For Durand and the duke's aged retinue, there was nothing to do but follow.

THE STRICKEN DUKE walked into a spray of flying water as Gol's horses hammered down the streambed. Durand saw the old man throw up his hands, then the duke's guard had barred Gol's way with flas.h.i.+ng swords. walked into a spray of flying water as Gol's horses hammered down the streambed. Durand saw the old man throw up his hands, then the duke's guard had barred Gol's way with flas.h.i.+ng swords.

Gol raised a fist, holding his men at bay. Durand could not believe he had ever been one of the leering fiends behind that man. They were not knights, no matter how they styled themselves. The duke's guard stood in a semicircle around their lord while the water flowed.

"What is the meaning of this?" demanded the duke.

"We were tracking a fugitive," Gol snarled, jerking his chin toward Durand. "I see you've found him."

" 'A fugitive,'" the duke repeated, advancing a step through the line of his guards.

"Aye, Your Grace. Worked for your son. He'd hardly started, and now he's deserted his post." Durand's nag was tied to a bush right at the bank. "That's the horse he stole. And he killed one of my men. Hagall. Crushed his skull." Durand wondered if this were true.

The duke stood like a sorcerer before a storm."He has brought me news, this fugitive of yours."

"I'm sure he has, Your Grace, but think on who's telling the tale before you go too far believing it."

"I will, Sir Gol."

The old captain made a face, this game of courtesy not coming easily to him.

"Your Grace, I've been charged with taking this man back to Ferangore," said Gol, though it seemed more likely that the man had planned to string Durand up the instant he laid hands on him.

"Events draw me to Ferangore as well, Sir Gol," said the duke.

"Well then. You have an escort, haven't you? We'll keep an eye on this Durand for you. Make sure he doesn't find a chance to slink off. Keep everyone nice and safe."

The duke narrowed an eye but nodded nonetheless."To Ferangore," he said.

As THEIR UNEASY THEIR UNEASY company rode, Gol watched Durand like a dog at its chain's end. company rode, Gol watched Durand like a dog at its chain's end.

By evening, the leagues of riding were wearing hard on Durand, though he was not about to ask for rest-he regretted each instant he had spent standing in that tower. He could have ridden for Mantlewell on the first day.

As he blinked at exhaustion, the track turned sharply around the roots of an enormous stone. He lost sight of Duke Ailnor's men, and, in that instant, he felt a razor edge catch at his throat "Now," snarled Gol. "You've made a fool of me, boy. In front of Lord Radomor and those two b.l.o.o.d.y counselors of his. I'll wait a lifetime for another chance like this. I've waited longer than you can know, so I'm telling you: You've shown where your loyalties ain't. You think His Lords.h.i.+p wants folk running around who know what's happened? Hmm? Think on it, pig"

Then Durand was free. They'd snaked back into sight, and one of the duke's guard had turned, his lined face all suspicion. But there was nothing to see; Gol had chosen his time well. Durand remembered Fulk and digging the shallow grave in the woods for the outlander. There were three wounds like harlots' mouths on the pale body: hand, chest, and back. Gol had not even been breathing heavily. Durand touched his neck; his fingers came away slick.

As THE THE E EYE of Heaven rose over the plain, Ferangore seemed a fortress island. From Durand's spot in the line, he could make out the keep and, almost eclipsed by the spire of the Patriarch's high sanctuary, the tower prison of Alwen and her son. of Heaven rose over the plain, Ferangore seemed a fortress island. From Durand's spot in the line, he could make out the keep and, almost eclipsed by the spire of the Patriarch's high sanctuary, the tower prison of Alwen and her son.

Duke Ailnor was like a man in a dream. Something s.h.i.+vered in his gray eyes that shot chills through whoever looked at him. Durand recalled the horror of recognition in those eyes when they first saw his own face.

"No bells," the duke said, his voice loud in the dawn stillness. 'The Patriarch should be ringing the dawn."

"It could be a wind, Your Grace," said one of his knights.

His mind was not lost now. He said with grim certainty, "There were no bells."

8. The Night of Two Hills

The folk of Ferangore watched their party with sidelong glances. Now, the gatekeepers held their tongues. To Durand, the people seemed like sailors hunkered down on deck, staring up at the belly of a storm.