The Widow and the King (59 page)

‘Don't look,’ came the word down the column of armed men. ‘Orcrim says, don't look.’

Ambrose looked, and kept looking as they straggled past.

It was impossible to guess how large she was, or how far away. At one moment he thought she must be no taller than his own mother, sitting at a distance of a hundred paces from them. The next he imagined himself walking and walking towards her, mile after mile and watching her grow as he approached until she was the size of a mountain. And whichever way he walked around her, she would always have her back to him.

And she would never see him. And she would never listen. And she would never, ever, cease from weeping.

‘Don't look,’ said Hob.

Weeping, weeping. A lost child, and all the loss of all the world. Mar and Develin and Bay. Aunt Evalia, dead with her arms around him. And Adam diManey. And he must make peace with the killer.

‘Don't stop,’ said Hob urgently, beside him.

He
had
made peace. Why?

Because he must. Because if he did not, he must make
a corner in his heart that would be like that, like that. That endless rage and weeping.

‘Damn you, come on!’ said Hob. He dragged at the mule and it lumbered forward, leaving Ambrose last of all the Company.

Like a child in someone's arms over a vast gulf, Ambrose felt completely safe. He looked at the creature that was Beyah. He could hear her: that unending cry that shook the world. But it did not shake his heart. He had made his peace. He would hold to his purpose. All he could do now was beg the dead to forgive
him
.

Suddenly, he laughed.

He was still laughing when he caught up with Hob and the mule. Hob looked at him, frowning, but Ambrose could not explain. As he struggled up out of the cleft, following the line of march, he began to feel elated. And ahead of him were his men, whom he had brought to his place. His banner was black against the sky. Light-headed, he remembered that the moon would be full tonight. And if he lived to see it (and why should he not live?), he could make the moon on his banner full, too. He would remove the stain from it. There would be no more doubting. He could do it if he chose. He could do anything!

The slope eased. The Mother of the World was hidden behind them in the cleft. The eye of Capuu appeared as they climbed, away on the rim of the world. Before them, the ground continued rising gently for perhaps fifty paces. Then it dropped again among great boulders into what seemed to be a pit. Around the edge of the pit stood a number of upright stones, like sentries, like teeth. Ambrose knew them, for he had seen them in the living world. It
seemed a very small place, now that he saw it in all that wide land.

There was a gap in the ring, directly before them. A number of the standing stones lay headlong on the brown rocks, their bases protruding over small depressions in the ground from which they had been uprooted. One seemed to have disappeared. There was a hole, like the others, very near the edge; but the stone had gone.

‘Horses go no further,’ said Orcrim. ‘Get them lined up.’

Warily, the Company made their way up to the rim of the pit.

It was not deep. The bouldered slopes dropped little more than the height of a man, to a ragged shore of stone around a pool of dark water. The surface was still. There was no sign that any creature, living or undead, had ever stirred in this place. Peering over, Ambrose felt the weight of an impossible depth beneath the water, sucking him downwards to the heart of the pit. The droning of the Mother of the World poured in his ears like a waterfall.

Below his feet, on the narrow shore, lay the last stone. In the living world, Ambrose remembered, it had fallen some fifty feet from the thorny cliff-top to the poolside. He had seen it from his shelter among the thorns. It had fallen close to the point where Mother had disappeared into the water.

She stood on the edge of the pit, looking down.

‘He is aware of us, Orcrim,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Don't falter.’

Orcrim glowered at the black water. Then leaning out, he spat. Ambrose watched the flecks of white drift
downwards to settle like snow upon the surface, and disappear. There was a rasp of iron as Orcrim's sword came free.

‘The Moon is High,’ he said in a loud voice to the Company.

‘Hah, Tarceny!’ called several voices.

‘Under-craft Prevails!’ roared Orcrim.

‘Hah, Tarceny!’
cried the riders.

‘Iron of Tarceny!’

‘Ho!’

Swords drew in a clatter of steel. The long blades wavered in the hands of the fighters like thorn-fronds in a thicket. No one spoke. They waited.

Nothing moved in the pool, or among the rocks around it.

ll right,’ said Orcrim at length. ‘If he's going to give us space, we'll use it. Get the rig and the levers – Hob has them – and we'll hitch the pulling-teams to … to this one here.’ His boot struck one of the stones. ‘That looks the kindest …’

Sophia had stayed with the horses. She saw the group on the lip of the pool break up. Men came and unfastened freshly cut lengths of stout wood from their saddles. Endor and another man dragged Hob's rig forward to the lip of the pool. Ambrose appeared at her elbow.

‘And
Watch for Who Comes
,’ he said.

‘Watch for Who Comes, indeed,’ said the woman on the far side of him. ‘Where did you learn that?’

‘Sophia and I looked at a scroll in Develin. It had Trant on it. Sophia,’ he said, ‘this is my mother.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

His mother, whom Sophia had thought of all her life as the Whore of Tarceny. But there was no space to think about that now. There was no space to think of anything until the enemy who had destroyed Chawlin had himself been destroyed. That was what mattered. The pulling-horses
would have something to do with it. She would not let go of their bridles until it was done.

Her arm still ached and throbbed within its dark bandage, as it had done through all the long march. It looked and felt as if blood was still seeping into the cloth. But if she called attention to it they would only make her sit down. She pushed the pain and the sickness to one side again, and let the fingers of her good arm open and close on the bridle to remind herself that this was all real. This was not a dream, despite the world of stones in which she stood – despite the awful, awful figure of the weeping woman she had seen, and the horror that had curled around her heart as she had looked away.

Or if it was a dream, it was a dream that would be endless; and there was still something that must be done.

‘Develin was a good place,’ she heard the woman murmur. ‘I'm glad you went there.’

‘They suffered for it.’ That was Ambrose again.

‘That is another reason why we have come.’

Sophia opened her hand upon the bridle, and closed it again. The horse blew warmly on her knuckles, like the breath of a lover who lived and lay close.

Hob came up the line of horses. ‘We've hobbled most of them,’ he said. ‘Those that will take it. But I'm not going near
him
.’ He jerked his head at Aun's war-horse, which towered near them at one end of the line. ‘Unless Lackmere comes back to do it. And I don't think he's going to. You'll have to keep him quiet. If he goes, they'll all want to.’

‘I'll do my best,’ said Ambrose.

Hob turned to the pulling-teams.

‘You sit down,’ he said to Sophia. ‘Never handle horses with an arm like that.’

‘You can't take both teams,’ Sophia snapped.

‘My lady can do it. Sit down.’

‘No.’

‘Michael's Knees … !’

‘She can help me, Hob,’ said the woman.

‘I've barely touched a horse in ten years.’

Hob gave up. He took the head of the team on her right.

Strange how quickly they obeyed, even though they had hated her! And no doubt she could have managed the horses by herself with ease. But she would let Sophia help her.

‘Thank you,’ Sophia whispered.

They watched the men at the rim of the pool.

Around the fallen stone the two tripods stood, and a cross-bar had been lashed between them. Two small things dangled from it – the pulleys from Aclete. Half a dozen men clustered around the rig, stooping to work the ends of their levers beneath the stone. The rest – no more than another half-dozen – were spaced around them in a wide half-circle, at the edge of the pit and on either side, facing out with weapons in their hands. They had put on their helmets. Their frail shapes were clear against the sky, flanked by the stones that had stood for centuries.

‘Steady, friend,’ she heard Ambrose say to Stefan.

The endless, dreary moaning of the place throbbed in the back of her mind. She wondered if the horses could hear it too.

As she watched, one of the armoured figures picked up the big banner. He stood there for a moment, speaking with the men on the levers in words she could not hear. Then he lifted the banner, and swung it in a big figure-ofeight so that folds opened and the maimed Moon of Tarceny flew clear on the black cloth.

‘Slowly now,’ grunted Hob, and he began to walk backwards, leading both his horses.

Sophia had never led a pulling-team in her life, or controlled horses from the ground at all. But she spoke to her horse and tugged at its bridle. It hesitated. So did the horse of the woman beside her. Sophia's horse was the leader.

She pulled again, more firmly.
Come on, you
.

It came. They both came.

‘Slowly!’ said Hob.

For a few paces they were moving freely. Then she heard the flat jingle of the chains clinking taut, and the creak of rope. The horses halted, straining in their harness.

‘Hah-sa,’ grunted Hob to his team.

‘
Hah
-sa!’

Sophia saw her leader put one more foot down, and then lift it again. They were not moving.

‘Right, back!’ said Hob, who must have seen a signal from the rig. He put his hand on the chest of his leader. His team backed. Sophia's team copied them. The ropes and harness were slack again.

‘Is that all they are going to do?’ she heard Ambrose say.

‘Little by little is the way,’ the woman said. ‘When I did this before, I had my hillmen camp by the stone we were raising – it was much bigger than this, but there was
only one of it. They dug and they lifted for four days, until it was done …’

Four days!

Four days for one stone. There were eight to lift, and one of them was down by the edge of the pool.

Ambrose must have been thinking the same thing.

‘We can't last,’ he said. ‘Not for days in this place. And he may not even be inside the ring.’

‘No. Most probably he is not. It would be too much to expect to catch him the same way twice. But his powers come from the pool, and must return there, and so must he. And no, I do not expect Orcrim to lift and haul for days without rest. We are showing the enemy that we have the means. If he does nothing, in the end his powers will be trapped again.’

‘What will he do?’

‘He will not do nothing.’

They waited. The men at the pit loitered around the stone, easing in small boulders to wedge it or to lever against. Sophia's team stood with their heads down. The ceaseless deep humming of the place ached in her head.

The banner waved once more.

‘Hah-sa!’ said Hob to his horses.

‘Hah-sa!’ she said, and brought hers into a shambling walk. The pulling-teams leaned into their harness. The tackle creaked. Looking up, Sophia saw the slight shift of the rig as it took the strain. The men around the stone had thrown their weight on their levers. One man was moving among them, rolling small boulders into the space beneath the stone. The banner swung again.

‘Back!’ said Hob. They backed teams and the ropes dropped. The lever-men rose, and rested.

‘Under-craft prevails,’ said Hob.

‘Inch by inch.’ They did it again.

And again.

Sophia could see the stone had risen, now, and was propped at a low angle from the ground. The further it came up, she thought, the less easy it must be to find purchase for the levers. The pull of the team would matter more.

‘If it goes as well as this for another hour, I will take us into the day again,’ the woman said. ‘We can camp, keep watch, and go back to it when you are all rested …’

There was a cry from the poolside.

One of the sentries was standing on the skyline, pointing with his blade at something down in the pit. There was horror and loathing in his voice. Other shouts sounded among the men. Orcrim was bellowing, gesticulating. Men left the levers and hurried to the cliff edge. Swords wavered against the colourless sky.

‘Now Michael guard us!’ said the woman.

‘Michael guard us!’ Ambrose repeated, staring at the skyline.

Behind Sophia one of the hobbled horses was beginning to whinny and struggle at the sounds of alarm. Hob cursed and left the head of his team. Stefan was snorting and shaking his head.

‘Steady, friend,’ she heard Ambrose say. ‘Stay by me.’

A flurry of shouts broke from the hillside above them. The men had grouped in three places at the edge of the pit. As she watched, a man in the middle group stooped and swung his sword at something below them that was hidden from her. Others joined him. Metal rang and rang
as if on stone. For a moment something like an arm – an arm of appalling length – reached up from the ground to claw at them. The men yelled and struck again and again.