Rachel the Dragon had once believed in nothing that Father Dreosan did not include in his catalog of churchly acceptabilities, and had doubted that even the Prince of Demons himself could bar her way in a pinch, since she had both blessed Usires the Ransomer and common sense on her side. Rachel was now as much of a believer as her most superstitious chamber-maid, because she had seen. With her own two eyes, she had seen the hosts of Hell in her castle’s Hedge Garden. There could be little doubt that the Day of Weighing-Out was at hand.
Rachel was dragged from her brooding thoughts by a noise in the street ahead. She looked up, shielding her eyes from the stinging sleet. A pack of dogs was fighting over something in the muddy road, snarling and baying as they dragged it back and forth. She moved to the side of the road, hugging the walls of the buildings. There were always dogs running loose in Erchester’s streets, but with so few people left they had become wild in a way they had never been before. The ironmonger had told her that several dogs had leaped through a window in Cooper’s Alley and attacked a woman in her bed, biting her so badly that she bled to death. Thinking of this, Rachel felt a tremor of fear run right through her. She stopped, wondering if she should walk past the creatures or not. She looked up and down the road, but there was no one else about. A pair of dim figures moved in the distance a couple of furlongs off, much too far away to be of any help. She swallowed and moved forward, dragging the fingers of one hand along the wall, the other clutching her purchase close against her body. As she edged past the struggling hounds she looked around for an open doorway, just to be safe.
It was hard to tell just what they were fighting for, since both dogs and prize were splattered with dark mud. One of the curs looked up from the roil of lean bellies and bony haunches, mouth stretched in a tongue-lolling, idiot grin as it watched Rachel pass. The soiled snout and gaping jaw suddenly put her in mind of some sinner condemned to the ultimate pit, a lost soul that had forgotten whatever it had once known of beauty or happiness. The beast stared silently as hailstones pitted the muddy street.
Its attention caught once more by the struggles of its fellows, the dog turned away at last. With a snarl, it dove back into the thrashing pile.
Tears starting in her eyes. Rachel lowered her head and struggled against the wind, hurrying back toward the Hayholt.
Guthwulf stood beside the king on a balcony that overlooked the courtyard of the Inner Bailey. Elias seemed in an unusually cheerful mood, considering the unimpressive size of the crowd that had been brought into the Hayholt to watch the mustering-out of the Erkynguard.
Guthwulf had heard the rumors that passed among his fighting men, stories of the night-terrors that were emptying the halls of the Hayholt and the houses of Erchester. Not only had comparatively few folk appeared to see the king, but the mood of those gathered was restive; Guthwulf did not think he would like to walk unarmed through such a crowd while wearing the sash that proclaimed him King’s Hand.
“Damnable weather, isn’t it?” Elias said, his green eyes intent on the milling riders who labored to hold their horses in place beneath the pelting hail. “Oddly cold for Anitul, don’t you think, Wolf?”
Guthwulf turned in surprise, wondering if the king made a strange joke. The upside-down weather had been the chief topic of conversation through-out the castle for months. It was far, far more than ‘oddly cold.’ Such weather was terrifyingly wrong, and had added in no little part to the earl’s feeling of impending disaster.
“Yes, sire,” was all he said. There was no longer any question in his mind. He would lead the Erkynguard out, as Elias requested, but once he and the troops were beyond the king’s immediate reach, Guthwulf himself would never return. Let heedless, criminal idiots like Fengbald do the king’s bidding. Guthwulf would take those Erkynguards who were willing, along with his own loyal Utanyeaters, and offer his services to Elias’ brother Josua. Or, if the prince’s survival were nothing more than rumor, the earl and those who followed him would go someplace where they could make their own rules, out of reach of this fever-brained creature who had once been his friend.
Elias patted him stiffly on the shoulder, then leaned forward and waved an imperious hand. Two of the Erkynguard lifted their long horns and played the muster-call, and the hundred or so guardsmen redoubled their efforts to form their balking mounts into a line. The king’s emerald dragon-banner whipped in the wind, threatening to pull free from its bearer’s grasp. Only a few of the watching crowd cheered, their voices all but buried by the noise of wind and pattering sleet.
“Perhaps you should let me go down to them. Majesty,” Guthwulf said quietly. “The horses are anxious in this storm. If they bolt, they will be among the crowd in a moment.”
Elias frowned. “What. do you worry about a little blood beneath their hooves? They are battle-bred: it will not harm them.” He turned his gaze onto the Earl of Utanyeat. His eyes were so alien that Guthwulf flinched helplessly. “That is the way it is, you know,” Elias continued, lips spreading in a smile. “You can either grind down that which stands before you, or else be ground down yourself. There is no middle ground, friend Guthwulf.”
The earl bore the king’s glance for a long moment, then looked away, staring miserably at the crowd below. What did that mean? Did Elias suspect? Was this whole show only an elaborate setting for the king to denounce his old comrade and send Guthwulf’s head to join the others that now clustered thick as blackberries atop the Nearulagh Gate?
“Ah, my king,” rasped a familiar voice, “are you taking a little air? I could wish you a better day for it.”
Pryrates stood in the curtained archway behind the balcony, teeth bared in a vulpine grin. The priest wore a great hooded cloak over his usual scarlet robe.
“I am glad to see you here,” Elias said. “I hope you are rested after your long journey yesterday.”
“Yes, Highness. It was an unsettling trip, but a night in my own bed in Hjeldin’s Tower has done wonders. I am ready to do your bidding.” The priest made a little mock bow, the top of his pale bald head revealed for a moment like a new moon before he straightened and looked to Guthwulf. “And the Earl of Utanyeat. Good morningtide to you. Guthwulf. I hear you are riding forth in the king’s behalf.”
Guthwulf looked at Pryrates with cold distaste. “Against your advice, I am told.”
The alchemist shrugged, as if to show that his personal reservations were of little account. “I do think there are perhaps more important matters with which His Majesty should concern himself than a search for his brother. Josua’s power was broken at Naglimund: I see little need in pursuing him. Like a seed on stony ground, I think he will find no purchase, no place to grow strong. No one would dare flaunt the High King’s Ward by giving such a renegade shelter.” He shrugged again. “But I am only a counselor. The king knows his own mind.”
Elias, staring down at the quiet assembly in the courtyard below, seemed to have ignored the entire conversation. He rubbed absently at the iron crown on his brow, as though it caused him some discomfort. Guthwulf thought the king’s skin had a sickly, transparent look.
“Strange days,” Elias said, half to himself. “Strange days…”
“Strange days indeed,” Guthwulf agreed, drawn to reckless conversation. “Priest, I hear you were in the Sancellan on the very night of the lector’s assassination.”
Pryrates nodded soberly. “A ghastly thing. Some mad cult of heretics, I hear. I hope Velligis, the new lector, will soon root them out.”
“Ranessin will be missed,” Guthwulf said slowly. “He was a popular and well-respected man, even among those who do not accept the True Faith.”
“Yes, he was a powerful man,” Pryrates said. His black eyes glinted as he gazed sidelong at the king. Elias still did not look up, but an expression of pain seemed to flit across his pallid features. “A very powerful man,” the red priest repeated.
“My people do not seem happy,” the king murmured, leaning out against the stone railing. The scabbar
d of his massive double-hiked sword scraped the stone and Guthwulf suppressed a shudder. The dreams that still haunted him, the dreams of that foul sword and its two brother blades!
Pryrates moved forward to the king’s side. The Earl of Utanyeat edged away, unwilling to touch even the alchemist’s cloak. As he turned, he saw a blur of movement from the archway—billowing curtains, a pale face, a dull glint of exposed metal. An instant later a howling shriek echoed through the courtyard.
“Murderer!”
Pryrates staggered back from the railing, a knife handle standing between his shoulder blades.
The next moments passed with dreadful slowness: the lassitude of Guthwulf’s movements and the dull, doomed progression of his thoughts made him feel as though he and all the others on the balcony were suddenly immersed in choking, clinging mud. The alchemist turned to face his attacker, a wild-eyed old woman who had been thrown down to the stone floor behind him by the priest’s spasmodic reaction. Pryrates’ lips skinned back from his teeth in a horrible doglike grin of agony and fury. His naked fist lifted in the air and a weird gray-yellow glow began to play about it. Smoke seeped from his fingers and around the knife wagging in his back, and for a moment the very light in the sky seemed to dim. Elias had turned as well, his mouth a black hole of surprise in his face, his eyes bulging with a panicky horror such as Guthwulf had never dreamed he would see on the king’s face. The woman on the floor was scrabbling at the stone tiles as if swimming in some thick fluid, trying to drag herself away from the priest.
Pryrates’ black eyes seemed almost to have fallen back into his head. For a moment, a leering, scarlet-robed skeleton stood over the old woman, bony hand smoldering into incandescence.
Guthwulf never knew what spurred his next action. A commoner had attacked the king’s counselor, and the Earl of Utanyeat was King’s Hand; nevertheless, he found himself suddenly lurching forward. The noise of the crowd, the storm, his own heartbeat, all swelled together into a single hammering pulse as Guthwulf grappled with Pryrates. The priest’s spindly form was solid as iron beneath his hands. Pryrates’ head turned, agonizingly slowly. His eyes burned into Guthwulf s. The earl felt himself abruptly pulled out of his own body and sent spinning down into a dark pit. There was a flash of fire and a blast of incredible heat, as though he had fallen into one of the forge-furnaces beneath the great castle, then a howling blackness took him away.
When Guthwulf awakened, he was still in darkness. His body seemed one dull ache of pain. Droplets of moisture pattered lightly on his face and the smell of wet stone was in his nostrils.
“…I did not even see her,” a voice was saying. After a moment, Guthwulf was able to identify it as the king’s, although there was a subtle, chiming tone to it that he had not marked before. “By God’s head, to think that I have become so slow and preoccupied.” The king’s laugh had a fearful tinge. “I was sure she had come for me.”
Guthwulf tried to respond to Elias, but found that he could not form the proper sounds. It was dark, so dark that he could not make out the king’s form. He wondered if he had been brought to his own room, and how long he had been senseless.
“I saw her,” Pryrates rasped. His voice, too, had taken on a ringing sound. “She may have escaped me for a moment, but by the Black Eon, the scrubbing-bitch will pay.”
Guthwulf, still struggling for speech, found himself amazed that Pryrates should be able to speak at all, let alone be standing while the Earl of Utanyeat lay on the ground.
“I suppose now I shall have to wait for Fengbald to return before I can send out the Erkynguard—or perhaps one of the younger lords could lead them?” The king sighed wearily. “Poor Wolf.” There seemed in his strangely tuneful voice little sympathy.
“He should not have touched me,” Pryrates said contemptuously. “He interfered and the slattern escaped. Perhaps he was in league with her.”
“No, no, I do not think so. He was always loyal. Always.”
Poor Wolf? What, did they think he was dead? Guthwulf strained to make his muscles work. Had they brought him to some curtained room to lie in waiting for burial? He fought for mastery of his body, but all his limbs seemed coldly unresponsive.
A horrible thought came to him suddenly. Perhaps he was dead—for who, after all, had ever returned to say what it was like? Only Usires Himself, and he was the son of God. Oh, merciful Aedon, would he have to stay trapped in his body like a prisoner in a forgotten cell, even as they laid him in the wormy ground? He felt a scream building within him. Would it be like the dream when he touched the sword? God save him. Merciful Aedon…
“I am going, Elias. I will find her, even if I must crush the stones of the servant’s quarters into dust and flay the skin off of every chambermaid.” Pryrates spoke with a sort of sweetness, as though the savor of this thought was as splendid as wine. “I will see that people are punished.”
“But surely you should rest,” Elias said mildly, as though speaking to a froward child. “Your injury…”
“The pain I inflict on the chamber-mistress will take my own pain away,” the alchemist said shortly. “I am well. I have grown strong, Elias. It will take more than a single knife thrust to dispatch me.”
“Ah.” The king’s voice was emotionless. “Good. That is good.”
Guthwulf heard Pryrates’ bootheels clocking against the tiled stone floor, striding away. There was no sound of a door opening and closing, but another shower of moisture spattered the Earl of Utanyeat’s face. This time he felt the chill of the water.
“L…L…’Lias,” he managed to say at last.
“Guthwulf!” the king said, gently surprised. “You live?”
“Wh…where…?”
“Where is what?”
“…Me.”
“You are on the balcony, where you had your…accident.”
How could that be? Had it not been morning time when they had watched the Erkynguard muster? Had he lain here lifelessly until evening? Why hadn’t they moved him to a more comfortable place?
“…He’s right, you know,” Elias was saying. “You really shouldn’t have interfered. What did you think you were doing?” The odd ringing sound was beginning to fade from his voice. “It was very foolish. I told you to stay away from the priest, didn’t I?”
“…Can’t see…” Guthwulf managed at last.
“I’m not surprised,” Elias said calmly. “Your face is badly burned, especially around your eyes. They look very bad. I was certain you were dead—but you’re not.” The king’s voice was distant. “It’s a pity, old comrade, but I told you to watch out for Pryrates.”
“Blind?” Guthwulf said, his voice hoarse, throat seizing in a painful spasm. “Blind?!”
His rasping howl broke across the commons, bouncing from wall to stone wall until it seemed a hundred Guthwulfs were screaming. As he vented his agony, the king patted him on the head as though soothing an old dog.
The river valley waited for the oncoming storm. The chilly air warmed and grew heavy The Stefflod murmured uneasily and the sky was gravid with angry-looking clouds. The travelers found themselves speaking softly, as if they rode past the sleeping form of some huge beast who might be awakened by disrespectful loudness or levity.
Hotvig and his men had decided to ride back to the rest of their party, who were nearly four score all told, men, women, and children. Hotvig’s clanfolk and their wagons were following as swiftly as they could, but they were no match for the speed of unencumbered riders.
“I am still amazed that your people would uproot themselves to follow us into an unknown and ill-omened wilderness,” Josua said at their parting.
Hotvig grinned, showing a gap in his teeth earned in some past brawl. “Uproot? There is no such word to the folk of the Stallion Clan. Our roots are in our wagons and our saddles.”
“But surely your clansmen are worried about riding into such strange territory?”
A brief look of concern flickered across the Thrithings-man’s face
, quickly supplanted by an expression of disdainful pride. “You forget, Prince Josua that they are my kinfolk. I told them, if stone-dwellers can ride there without fear, can the people of the Free Thrithings shy away? They follow me.” He pulled at his beard and grinned once more. “Besides, it is worth many risks to get out from under Fikolmij’s hand.”
“And you are sure he will not pursue you?” the prince asked.
Hotvig shook his head. “As I told you last night, the March-thane has lost face because of you. Anyway, our clans often split into smaller clan-families. It is our right as people of the Free Thrithings. The last thing Fikolmij can do now is to try to keep us few from leaving the greater clan. That would prove beyond doubt that he is losing his hold on the reins.”
When they had all gathered around the fire after their encounter in the dark, Hotvig had explained how Fikolmij’s treatment of his daughter and Prince Josua had caused much disgruntled talk around the wagons of the Stallion Clan. Fikolmij had never been a popular leader, but he had been respected as a powerful fighter and clever strategist. To see him so bedeviled by the mere presence of stone-dwellers, to the point where he would lend aid to Fengbald and others of the High King’s men without consulting his clan chiefs, had made many wonder out loud whether Fikolmij was still capable of lording it as March-thane of all of the High Thrithings.
When Earl Fengbald had arrived with his fifty or so armored men, swaggering into the wagon camp like conquerors, Hotvig and some of the other randwarders had brought the men of their own clan-families to Fikolmij’s wagon. The March-thane had wished to set the Erkynlanders quickly on the trail of Josua’s party, but Hotvig and the others had stood against their leader.