In the Eye of Heaven (6 page)

"You drop them in the well so the Old Gods will answer in your dreams. It is what the old priests did when the Col was standing stones."

The boy's eyes were full of suspicion, as though he expected a rebuke and didn't deserve it.

For a time, Durand said nothing.

"Cast it in," he said, finally.

The boy flung his message into the dark.

In a few
moments, Brag's hooves were clattering across the courtyard, past the well and under the long teeth of the portcullis. Durand wondered when he would ever see the gap-toothed fortress again.

Something moved under the gate. A small figure hugged the gate's blocky plinth: the priest's boy looking out at him. He raised his hand, and Durand saw a garnet in his palm—the mark of the nail. Durand raised his own hand in answer, not certain why. Whatever gnawed at the boy's mind, he must have seen a match for his own plight in Durand's. He wondered what the boy's name was, and gave him a sharp nod as he spurred Brag onward. There was nothing like an audience to give a man courage.

For hours, he
rode through the damp wilderness. At first, Brag galloped, then he cantered, and then he fell to plodding. Naked trees and muck gave way to long fieldstone fences that unraveled along the roadside, or undulating hedgerows that humped over the low hills. Durand drifted down between the hills.

He wondered at himself. What business did he have pushing Brag out on a night like this? And it was the wrong time to be on the road. Though Traveler's Night was gone, it was still the Gleaning Moon with all the harvest laborers on the roads. There were rumors of unrest. Winter stalked the wilds, and there was no more work for the hungry and the outcast.

He must build himself a new future, and he must be as careful as a carpenter about it. Gireth was an old duchy in an old nation, bound in oath and custom. From the lowest plowman to the king in Eldinor, a man did what he was born to. Durand imagined returning to the duke in Acconel. He could offer his services there, but what would they do with such an offer?

There wasn't a single sellsword in all the duke's retinue. A wellborn man could not beg charity, or—Durand laughed—a wellborn man refuse to offer it. Appearing in Acconel as he stood would shame the duke and himself both. The Barony of the Col had been in his family's hands since the first Duke of Gireth handed it to his shield-bearer, surviving the High Kingdom's rise and fall and wars beyond the Sea of Thunder. It was an ancient name, and Durand would not tarnish it. He could not go begging to Acconel. In any case, he did not have food enough to travel so far. He had a vision of himself stiff in a ditch like a stray dog as the snow flew.

Apprentices started at fourteen; priests were a different breed. Bakers, weavers, goldbeaters, and bookbinders were all guild crafts and all father to son. There was a reason some men turned to brigandage. But he would not turn up before the Bright Gates of Heaven with the souls of women and children howling round his neck.

Brag plodded on. Wrapped up in thought and a wet cloak, another of night's cold hours passed as he rode between the hills. He hardly noticed Brag's sudden nodding.

He looked up. They had blundered down some sort of ditch, and shapes were uncoiling from the darkness all around.

He saw men on every side, gaunt and hollow. He had blundered into some makeshift camp. Uneasy, he groped for his blade. Knives and knobbed clubs had already appeared from rags.

As he reached for his scabbard, he remembered his sword clattering down the well.

In that heartbeat, Durand judged his battleground. The thugs had moved in before and behind him while a knot of them were climbing out of a shallow cut in the hillside—just out of reach.

If they had waited another moment to spring their trap, he could never have got loose.

In an instant, he seized his chance. Spitting a curse, he wrenched poor Brag toward the empty hillside and set his spurs deep. The hunter vaulted out of the robbers' hands, up from the ravine, lurching high onto the hill above.

Below, the ragged line of pursuers spread across the dark hillside, losing ground. The b
ay hunter quickly left them behind.

Durand stroked the big brute's neck. Dragging the hapless animal out into misery and the dark had been unkind.

They lost their pursuers, riding off among high-flanked hills that put Durand in mind of stories he'd heard about whales on the Winter Sea and how they dwarfed the ships.

He wondered about the men behind him, thinking of his father's words about knights-errant: masterless men roving between the halls of landed men. Some of the robbers by the track might have been luckless knights. But there were other stories about knights-errant. They were the heroes who got the maidens free of their ogres. Or so the skalds would tell you.

The Heavens opened and cold rain plummeted down from the dark, hammering a mist of mud into the air. His breath came in cold shudders, and the greasy hillside seemed ready to slump from under Brag's hooves.

Cursing it all, Durand searched for the hilltops, but could barely make out the joint between hill and Heaven. Poor Brag wallowed ahead.

As they crested a rise, Durand made out a dark smudge against the gray of the next "whale's" back. "Come on Brag, it may be there's some shelter ahead," he said.

As it loomed closer, the black smudge seemed to bristle with tattered branches: yew and bramble. A thicket among the bald hills. He rode close, though Brag lashed his head. "Easy." Durand splashed down the saddle. At the edge of the thicket, the leaves of the undergrowth lay like a blanket thrown over spindly branches. Brag nodded his fright at the wind and weather, but Durand felt the marrow freezing in his bones. There was no way to wedge a horse under the branches. His fingers stiffened in Brag's bridle.

"Hells," Durand said, and gave his cloak to the big hunter before pushing through into the darkness to lie panting until sleep took hold.

Durand woke to
the sound of a screaming horse. Real needles pierced his throat. He coughed.

His eyes snapped open, and something jerked away from his neck with a many-tined pluck. There was nothing but dark for an instant, then he made out a little cavern of branches. Starlight winked between leaves. He remembered the bramble.

Something rattled in his lungs, and he choked. The spasm jerked him upright and into the branches. After a moment, the fit gave way, and he took his hand from his lips. He wasn't dreaming: there was blood.

He looked around.

In the darkness where the ceiling of the bramble cave grew higher stood a mass of blackthorn like a column of knives and wire. And there seemed to be clots of darkness among the thorns. He peered at the shapes, unable to make sense of anything. Then the wind stirred the canopy and freed the glow of the Gleaning Moon to shine in a dozen pale eyes.

A moan slipped from Durand's throat.

The shapes unfolded, unwrapping themselves from stalks and branches. Wisps of hair floated over nut brown skulls. They were withered men. Ears as long and sharp as pea pods curled from the bare lumps of their skulls. Fingers unfolded and unfolded, armed with black needle claws.

"Host of Heaven."

The first figure set its hand on the ground to crawl toward him. Its talons sprang wide like a crab's legs, longer than any man's fingers.

Durand's hand scrabbled at his scabbard—empty—and he knew then that there could be no fighting them. He must break loose.

At the instant his hands touched the ground, the floor of the cavern came alive. Every fallen leaf was suddenly spinning, afloat on the backs of dark bodies. Spiders exploded over his arms and thighs, over and under wool and linen. A cloud of thread swelled around him.

He launched himself. His fingers touched the wall of leaves. The mist of silk clenched tight. It swathed his face and limbs, and his jaw pulped a hundred spindly bodies when he crashed down.

Bound, he roared
until his throat was hoarse, and still he lay there rasping. He could not reconcile himself to this death; he would be pitched before the Gates of Heaven screaming.

Time passed where he and the wind made the only sound, and then the tentative blackthorn men surrounded him. Needles played over his back and sides. "He is grown," a voiced croaked.

For a time, Durand thrashed like a landed fish. They waited.

A talon knotted itself in his hair, jerking his head up. He saw a face. It was as brown and stiff as long-tanned leather. The nose was puckered like a rotten fruit.

"What do you want?" Durand breathed.

The face split, baring teeth like yellow knives. It turned to the others. "It speaks to us," it hissed.

"Who was he?"

"I do not know. It becomes more and more difficult." 'The old lines cross and recross." "Not this one."

"No. This one runs pure back to the beginning."

The voices rasped and bubbled and whined. Durand closed his eyes and strained against the swaddling web as the brutes circled, stroking him with fingers that snagged at his tunic and leggings.

"Could he be Bruna himself?" one asked, speculatively. It was a name from the first pages of the
Book of the Moons.
First of forefathers.

There was a pause, then answers circled him.

"Yes."

"Yes."

"Another Bruna." "Bruna o
f the broad shoulders." "He was
a strong man." "Too strong."

"I remember his smile in those days after the first dawn," one said close by. Its long-fingered hand took Durand by the face and lifted his head until he gagged. He could feel the fingers meet and slither at the nape of his neck, long as a bat's wings. Then the leather-faced thing inserted its fingers into Durand's mouth, and pulled his lips apart. "Yes."

"Yes, Ilsander! I see Bruna in him."

"Do you think so? Bruna? What a chance! I remember him walking the hills with us when we were known to the Creator. Him smiling. Him with his brittle honor. Circling. Speaking hollow truths. And on the fields before our Maiden. And the Mother."

"She should have come before."

"She should have come in time."

"And here he is, Bruna of the broad shoulders. Bruna the slayer. Betrayer. He breeds true. And he lives in the light, while we must cringe in copses. He lives through this one while we wither among the thorns." The monster's eyes closed for a moment, in a kind of fixed rapture—suddenly a peaceful corpse. "I can see his face as though I close my eyes and return to the dawn of Ages."

Then the face soured, and the hand let Durand's head fall. He gasped for air.

"How she looked at him. I remember how he strutted. The gift of the Mother was full upon us. I remember how he struck. Oh, how I remember the scream!"

"Injustice, Il
sander. It is injustice."

"Perversion," a voice bubbled.

Fingers ran over his buttocks and back and played through his hair. Their claws were black, needle-pointed, and glistening. They seized him and rolled him firmly onto his back. Somehow, the sight of the things was worse than their voices alone. They minced around him, staring. Sack bellies swung between their shins.

He had felt the pommel of his knife dig as he rolled, and all his thoughts fixed on its angular hilt.

"The perversion."

One stepped in, and its talons skittered across his chest, finding his nipples through his surcoat and tunic.

"The Mother's mark is upon them all."

"The Creator ought to have known there would be death for us. He should have known there would be pain."

"Bruna and his ilk should not have been saved while we suffered. Who would fashion a world with one birth and a thousand deaths?"

"He did not know."

"The Lord of Dooms? The King in Silence? The Mother should have brought birth before so many of us were lost." The horror that spoke lifted its monstrous hand, curling its fingers. 'Their blood lives while ours curdles and putrefies in our veins."

Durand worked his fingers under the tight threads. "If she had brought birth to the world only a little sooner..."

"Bruna's blood is so warm in him. Oh, that Bruna's progeny still live, while I, so long ago, was slain. I can feel the blood mocking us. Spinning through these veins."

"Oh, Ilsander! It is an abomination!" one shrieked, overcome with despair.

"We are dead and he lives."

"Perversion!"