In the Eye of Heaven (15 page)

"I am bidden to say, Lordship, that a window is opening that may not remain so for long.
His Grace, the Duke of Cape Earn
e—a man of thoughtless fidelity—is gravely ill. His son has already been informed of the fine he must pay to enter his inheritance." He inclined his head a fraction toward Radomor. "I am asked to say that it is a sum both beyond reason and beyond the ability of the boy to pay."

Radomor's thumb curled in the carved arm of his father's throne. "The balance of the Great Council shifts."

"This I cannot say."

"My father would never agree."

"My duke bids me remind you that yours is the blood of kings. Yours is the sacred lineage unbroken, through invasion to the
Cradle
and the fall of the Shattered Isle. With respect, he asserts that the realm cannot long endure a profligate ruler."

The baron bowed, gaze firmly on the face of the man in the duke's throne. Even in the heat of the hall, a chill passed over Durand. It was patricide they suggested. It was high treason.

"Even now, arrangements are being made," said Cassonel. "Duke Ludegar can make an easy way."

Lord Radomor held his fearsome silence.

"Your men will know how to send your answer," Cassonel concluded. "I must leave you to consider. But remember, the Great Council meets before the snows."

With this, Cassonel stalked toward Durand and the entry stair. Durand ought to have cut the man's head from his shoulders—no matter how futile the act. Instead, Durand stepped aside.

The Rooks followed Cassonel down the stair. Durand stood in the dark with his fists knotted. It was treason. He had seen and been seen, and he was trapped. More of Gol's men watched the door downstairs, and a room full lurked in the hall behind him. He would never get free.

Then, from that hall, Durand heard a whisper. "I'm not sure I like this."

Durand caught his breath. The voice was familiar: Mulcer's whisper skittering down the vaults from somewhere in the Great Hall.

"For God's sake, do as you're told." Durand could hear Gol's clenched teeth.

"I don't know, Gol. All I thought was we're finally catching hold. Getting a place in a lord's retinue. Now, I wish we'd left these two skulking wretches back on Hallow Down."

"You've got no bloody choice."

"What are we doing? Eh? We hire that new lad on. What do we look like? A pack of monsters out of some children's tale."

"We're bloody well doing what we're paid to do. It's too late for backing out now, friend."

There was someone dying upstairs.

As Durand listened for another word, he believed himself to be alone in the dark. Like sorcery, then, two grinning faces emerged in front of him: the Rooks. They held him in their eyes, then each raised a hushing finger to his lips. It was all Durand could do not to bolt.

When the red
fingers of dusk left the arrow loops, Durand left the feasting hall and joined the others sleeping in the undercroft. He worked at his hand. Exhaustion pinned him to the stones and held him asleep.

He woke, hours
later, to a voice, purring, "It is dangerous to be a little wise. Better to be a fool, I think. Too late now. We are sorry to lose you. Oh yes."

Durand's eyes opened in the black vaults of the undercroft.

A voice growled. Durand recognized Mulcer.

Shapes were moving: a black figure—one of the Rooks— squatted over the blond soldier. Mulcer moved, but the Rook raised a hand—just fingertips—though their touch struck the soldier like a pickaxe. He writhed, pinned to the floor like a man in the throws of a seizure. The Rook bent low, close as a grandmother over a cradle. Durand had a dagger, he would use it
.

The Rook was lowering his lips, smiling over Mulcer's rigid face. He reached with his fingers—both hands now— peeling lips apart and prying jaws open. Durand made to snatch the dagger, but sudden as lightning, a spasm clamped him, too. He looked up into the leer of the second Rook, crouching low over him now, as though he had seen into Durand's mind. A finger of the creature's right hand, the longest sat on the pulse of blood in Durand's throat, and with each heartbeat Durand's muscles wound tighter, creaking his clenched teeth and popping the stitches in his boots.

Through it all, Durand could hear something whispering. Not the Rooks. Many voices, like a rumor passing over a crowded room. He could almost feel the breath of their conversations.

His eyes bulged. He strained to find Mulcer. The man struggled with the Rook locked on his mouth. Rhythmic convulsions pried Mulcer's shoulders from the floor, and the Rook was a puppeteer, riding him, drifting above him, pulling with long fingers. Never did he let go. The man's back arched higher and higher, cracking like knuckles.

All the while, the whispering grew louder. Durand could feel their words. The whisperers were coming. An uncanny glow swelled into Creation, filling the room. Durand's eyes rolled to find the source. From every sleeping mouth a tongue of pallid flame now wavered, as the Rooks' pull was drawing out their souls. Any moment, it would all come to pieces.

Then, with a hollow groan, Mulcer collapsed. There was silence.

The Rook grinned to his brother. He seemed to notice Durand, and his smile broadened. A grotesque bulge in the Rook's throat distracted the man a moment then he set a silencing finger over his lips.

The nearby twin released his grip, and Durand sagged free. Mulcer was dead.

And Durand could hardly move.

7. Mantlewell

H
e was on the door again. He was never alone. Two days had passed with the door shut From time to time, the baby's piping cry stirred. He knew the door would never open, and that he could not face the King of Heaven if he allowed things to stand as they were. Too much was happening. He would not help Lord Radomor murder his wife, no matter how she had betrayed him. More than Cassonel's treason,
this
ate at Durand's mind.

His first impulse was to grab the bar and rush the woman and her child down the stair. The guard standing beside him would have to be put down, of course. Durand could take the man's sword. There would also be the men at the bottom of the stair, the guards in the feasting hall, the men on the keep doors, and a whole city kicked alive like an anthill.

The sword would help there. Oh yes. A smart man wouldn't take on an entire city without, at least, a good sword. Another tack.

He eyed the dull curve of the guard's helmet. If he knocked the man down and yanked opened the door, he might be able to lower the woman and her child to the courtyard from her window without worrying about Radomor's retinue in the keep. It worked for skalds: heroes with bed linens shinnying down towers.

He tried to picture it: fifteen fathoms to the cobblestones with a woman and her baby twisting at the end of bedsheets. A good bedsheet might get him five feet. If Alwen happened to have twenty stout blankets in that room, he stood a chance.

He closed his eyes, mentally changing tacks once more. He must set aside the hopeless heroism. A man might reason with Radomor. Confront him. He saw himself, a stranger in that dark feasting hall, ranting about the man's adulterous wife. It was hopeless, but he could think of no one in all the realms of Creation who stood a better chance. Poor Lady Alwen could not do it. Only the Rooks spoke to the man now.

But Durand had forgotten: This wasn't Radomor's land. Ferangore and Yrlac didn't be
long to him; they were old Duke
Ailnor's holdings. This was Ailnor's house, and, by all accounts, the Duke of Yrlac was an honorable man who must see all this for the insanity it was.

Sadly, the duke was not in his city.

Durand pawed the back of his neck, grinding out the frustration he must hide from the other guard.

What use was the duke when he was leagues away? Durand looked at the ironbound door. The duke might return at any time, but there was a real danger that Lady Alwen could wait no longer. And how long could the baby live? A few days more, at most. If there was no water locked in that chamber with them, it must be less.

Before he could work out the odds, Durand turned to the other guard. "Going downstairs." The man blinked back at him, more surprised than Durand—just. "You'd best watch here till I get back," he added, and slipped into the stairwell.

This time, before Durand reached the oven heat and armed guards of the Great Hall, he ducked into a side passage. Here, he found himself in a corridor lined with arches.

Taking a breath of free air, Durand glanced down the first of these hollow arches, and found himself looking down on the bald head of Lord Radomor himself. Both Rooks twitched from their perches at the touch of his glance—black robes trembling like the legs of spiders. Durand flinched back. They would kill him but that was the least of it: There was more than just his life at risk.

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 piss. 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 passage 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 Hel
l. Who's that? The new lad? Dur
mund?"

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 Lordship 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 Lordship'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. Embarrassing for His Lordship. 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 space 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 massive 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.