In the Eye of Heaven (14 page)

On the way down, Durand and the others passed a nondescript door guarded by two more soldiers. He looked at the face of the thing: black nailheads, a ring pull, wrought-iron hinges, and a heavy bar on the outside. The well chamber. He glanced back to the feasting hall, only a few paces away, and could still see one of the Rooks hunched there.

The Rook turned to him and smiled a crooked leer, setting a silencing finger to his lips.

The next morning
, Durand climbed back up the tower with Mulcer.

"What are we doing?" whispered Durand.

"Radomor will give in," Mulcer said. "He's been cuckolded, but he ain't the first, is he? He'll stew a few days. We'll pack the girl off to Acconel and her family. I don't expect Gireth will like it much, but who'll blame our Radomor?"

With love gone, it was only politics. "He'll set Alwen aside and keep the child," was Durand's grim surmise.

"A man of near forty years doesn't lose his heir lightly. Likely the mother will miss the boy, but Alwen's broken vows to the King
and Queen
of Heaven."

"Even the wise women will not step in."

"It will all be over soon enough," Mulcer concluded.

They had almost reached the top of the stair when a harried-looking burgher with knobbed wrists and a box of tools brushed past them, scrambling down. At the top of the tower hung a new door: iron nail heads, a ring pull, wrought-iron hinges, and a heavy bar on the outside. The image of the well-room door.

As Durand stood before it, he felt the eye of the Lord of Dooms upon him. Lead and stone and timber were no shield. But Radomor would relent; he must. He had been a hero at the king's vanguard. He had nearly died. He was a Son of Atthi, and a king was his grandsire.

Lady Alwen was nearly kin. He remembered her dark, desperate eyes.

Like mockery, the day crept by in silence. Nothing passed the door—neither food, nor water. Night came, and Durand lay all the hours of darkness in the deep undercroft below the fortress thinking of the woman in the tower somewhere above. What would he say for himself before the King of Heaven? They were murdering a duke's daughter. One of the crown's closest allies. Armies could ride.

The next day, he had guard duty downstairs. He thanked the Host of Heaven.

The place was
hot. Uncannily hot.

Gol had him on the feasting hall with orders to make sure that no one left—no one got away. Waves of heat rose from the duke's naked skull like an upturned cauldron.

At noon, shouts erupted from the entry stair. One of Gol's men sprawled into the hall, landing on his backside.

And then, into the silent heat, tramped a double file of strange men in gold robes. They were priests, though a few had the fierce and bearded look of barbarous warriors despite their robes.

The most formidable was the last to enter: a man over six feet tall who sported a beard like a whole black bearskin. As the others took up positions either side of the door, this man strode slowly into the heat and
darkness of the hall. He wore
enough wealth for a prince
. He was the Patriarch of Feran
gore. Where the eye of the merest village priest could leave a man breathless and twisting, exorcism and damnation crackled in the Patriarch's eyes. He and those like him were the fist and heel of the Lord of Dooms in His Creation.

The Patriarch crossed his arms over his vast beard and surveyed the feasting hall, taking in everything. He grimaced at the unnatural heat of the air. Every soldier shunned his glance; they all knew about the girl and her child.

"I summoned you, Radomor," said this man, his voice filling the room. "You did not attend me."

The Rooks were moving, bowing and scraping like snakes and curs round Radomor's ankles. One raised upturned hands and smiled. "His Lordship has been occupied with other matters, Your Grace."

The Patriarch's dark eyes flashed toward the little man for an instant, but he stabbed his fingers at Radomor.

"I have heard what you are doing here! I have seen. My priests attended the fire in the city. You have murdered a man. You have burned his hall. It is enough. Your wife and child, you must free. Already, you have gone beyond the bounds of law and custom in this thing, taking matters into your own hands. Think of your grandfather who lies in the high sanctuary. Think of your father who prays at Mantlewell. I know you are a man who acts in earnest. I know you are an honorable man. A man who does not brook betrayal. But I
tell you, there is more to learn
from betrayal than hatred. Know that the Host Below watches the great ones of Creation." The man's eyes flared in a glance that took in the whole keep and the sickening heat of the air. "Know that the wrath of the righteous is a snare."

Radomor blinked once, slowly. He should not have been able to move under the stare of such a priest The Rooks sneered up from his ankles.

"Radomor, son of Ailnor," said the Patriarch, "truly I tell you that no good will come of your association with these new counselors. Word of what happened at the Battle of Hallow Down has reached us here. The miracle of your recovery. And I tell you: Creation is a precarious thing. Man tampers with it at his great peril. Beyond the protection of Heaven's Host are things past imagining. As real as you or I, the Banished and the Lost are groping now." The man spread crabbed hands against the hot air. "Here. Hunting for the merest flaw in the walls of this Creation. Ask what these men do. Ask them how they scrabble at those cracks."

He stopped, lungs heaving. Sweat rolled and gleamed over his face.

"I have said what I have come to say, Lord Radomor. You have had your warning. Stop now and hope remains for you."

Despite the heat, Radomor's face was dry.

One of the Rooks beamed. "We are very pleased that you have come to speak with us, Your Grace."

His brother Rook nodded. "Yes. Very pleased."

Now the Patriarch held them in his eye. They should have frozen. They should have died.

"It has been most diverting," said one. "Yes," said the other.

"And you have certainly caused us to think." More nodding. "Yes. It is a great deal to think about." "The thought of those things beyond imagining. Groping." He clawed his hands for a moment. "Yes."

The two men stopped and smiled at the Patriarch.

The old priest grimly raised his chin and looked beyond the Rooks to Radomor, enthroned. "Remember my words," he said. And, after a long look at every man in that room, he abandoned the Great Hall of Ferangore.

The Rooks chuckled into the vaults.

Only the Rooks
moved freely as the vigil wore on.

Though Durand was a guard, he had become a prisoner. This much was clear to him. And the longer he remained, the more certain he became that Radomor would never relent and that Alwen and her son were doomed. Gol had his eyes on them all, waiting for the first of them to move.

Once more saved from the high tower, Durand played guard now at the top of the keep's entry stair. The oven heat of the feasting hall was on his face and the chill dark of the steps on his neck.

Red blades of dusk had begun to probe the gloom when Durand heard an excited slapping of soles down below. The bottom door rattled, and conversation murmured. As Durand peered down, a stranger was marching up the stairway from the entrance with a Rook at either hand.

Sleek, agile, and armed, this was no Patriarch.

For an instant, Durand, the Rooks, and the stranger crowded at the top of the stair. Then one of the black creatures flashed Durand a grin and scurried into the Great Hall. The remaining Rook favored Durand and the stranger both with a grin as cordial as a corpse's leer.

Durand stood his ground, barring the stranger's passage. Though the man seemed half Durand's size, he stood poised on the balls of his feet, even at his ease. Black hair swept from a face of wide cheekbones and intelligent eyes. There were threads of gray at his temples. White linen slashes marked his black fighting surcoat A sword hung from a knight's belt about his hips.

The Rook kept up his sickly grinning.

Meanwhile, the Rook's brother had bowed low before Lord Radomor.

"Milord, I am sorry to intrude."

Radomor's dark eyes moved.

"There is a guest," the Rook pressed. "A deputation. This one, I think, you will wish to see. Baron Cassonel of Damaryn."

Durand woke up at the name. The stranger raised an eyebrow.

"Baron Cassonel is high i
n the employ of the Duke of Beo
ran," said the Rook. "Was his champion. Now is his greatest liegeman. If you indulge us, Lordship, my brother will conduct him into your presence."

The stranger, Baron Cassonel of Damaryn, looked from Durand's face to the feasting hall of Ferangore, and Durand stepped aside. Every fighting man in Errest knew of Baron Cassonel. One in ten thousand, he had fought his way from knight-errantry to a place at a duke's side. The sword at his hip was Termagant, a High Kingdom blade of a thousand winters. There was a story of him at the prince's tournament in Tern Gyre, when Durand was a boy, besting every fighting man in the retinue of the Duke of Beoran, one after another. Now he was a baron and the duke his liege lord. As the man stalked out, everyone in the hall held still.

Cassonel bowed.

"His Grace, Ludegar, Duke of Beoran, sends greetings," the man said. His voice fit him well: circumspect "He bids me to offer his respect and admiration to his cousin the Lord Radomor, heir to Ailnor, now Duke of Yrlac."

Radomor leveled his gaze upon the newcomer and uttered the first words Durand had heard from the man since the tower. "Not to my father himself?"

"Your Lordship," Cassonel confirmed.

"And you ride messenger?"

"I believe His Grace chose his messenger to demonstrate the esteem in which he holds his cousin."

Radomor closed his eyes. "What would my cousin have you say?"

Cassonel glanced around the room, even meeting Durand's stare for an instant. Some twenty people would overhear any word that might be uttered. Some men shifted.

"You may say what you will, Baron Cassonel," Radomor said. "It does not matter."

The swordsman-lord made a slow, shallow nod. "Among the magnates of the kingdom, there is concern over the policies and practices of His Highness, Ragnal,
now King of Er
rest: his intervention in the Heithan Marches, the debacle in Caldura, the patrols on the far borders of the East. In five short years, they have emptied the treasury and thrown the king into the hands of moneylenders."

"I fought in the Heithan Marches, Baron Cassonel."

"Last survivor of the king's vanguard at Hallow Down. Your heroism is well known."

"Since my grandfather's time, many men have come to this court," Radomor said. "Always, the answer has been the same."

Cassonel nodded a grave and shallow bow. Durand found his gaze drawn to the man's blade. Cassonel rested his hand on the pommel.

"I am sure it is so, Lord Radomor. But I am bound to press the case. Your grandsire, great Carondas, is a king of cherished memory. Only in his winter years did he set aside the Evenstar Crown, childless and fearful that Errest would suffer if he should die without issue. It was for the kingdom that he passed the Evenstar to Bren, his brother. It was for the kingdom that he married the lady of Yrlac and took this seat. He could not know that he would father a child so late in his life. Many wonder at the miracle of your father's birth, and its meaning."

Radomor shifted. "And still, Ragnal is king."

"A king who, I am asked to explain, has stripped the domains of minor heirs in his wardship beyond recovery. Who has sold possessions, stolen moneys set aside for the maintenance of the land. Orchards have been sold for timber. Forest and common lands have been put to the plow."

"Many times," Lord Radomor said, "my father was asked this same question."

"Duke Ludegar bids me remind you that he has seen widows forced into disadvantageous marriages as merchants and freed peasants buy their way into land and titles. The sons of our countrymen are made to pay extortionate fines to enter the lands of their forefathers. The wellborn of Errest are taxed without consent to the ruin of our lines."

"And I, Baron Cassonel," said Radomor, "am not the Duke of
Yrlac."

The baron took a moment to glance over the faces standing round, just a fingertip now on the pommel of ancient Termagant.