Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 Read online

Was this what it had meant, that it would act at her command but not necessarily in obedience? She foresaw a lifetime of such journeys, its will set against hers; and gritted her teeth, and said, 'We will discuss later the terms of your oath to me. In the meantime, enough of folly. Tell me where Coren is.'

  'The King's Shadow is yonder, at the cliff s edge beyond the temple. You should go carefully, you are not yet steady on your feet.'

  That was humiliatingly true. She stepped forward with exaggerated care, past the simple temple that guarded the tunnel's mouth, past a crumpled heap of clothing that she thought might hide the body of the imam who had served as watchman before the 'ifrit came - and no, there was no 'ifrit now, unless Coren had killed it or driven it off — and so came to where Julianne's father was an unshifting statue, a silhouette against the glory of the stars.

  Keeping a sensible, almost a Julianne-distance back from the drop, she asked softly, 'What do you see?'

  'Pestilence, and war,' he said gravely. 'I do not see my daughter.'

  'No.' Even those brilliant stars couldn't hope to give light enough for mortal eyes to find her, even from so high a vantage-point. 'We need Marron,' she went on, giving voice to a hopeless yearning, 'his sight might find some mark of her ... ?'

  'Not even his, I fear. And Marron is in the land of the djinn, with Jemel. Leave them there, Elisande.'

  Oh, she would, she would. Desperate for something, anything to justify their coming here, to wash the bitterness of utter defeat from her mouth, she said, 'Esren, you may be able to see more clearly from this height, to find some echo in the spirit-weft...'

  'The weft does not echo, Elisande,' any more than its voice could echo, so cold and unbreathed as it was, 'and I am still untuned to its touch. There is perhaps something, though. There is perhaps a castle, and an army. To the west.'

  Oh, not the Roq, she thought in desolation, let us not have to return to the Roq again. But Roq de Rancon lay a long way further north than west. 'There are no castles in the Sands, and no armies.' None bar Hasan's army of the tribes, at least, that he meant to lead against her own land, unless Julianne could stop him. 'She cannot be in a castle.'

  'No. But she may be, in time to come. I can see no more clearly than that.'

  'To the west lies Outremer, beyond the Sands,' Coren said heavily. 'There are many castles there, and more armies than a man could count. Come, this is poindess. We will not find her by staring into the dark, nor by chasing vainly through the desert. We should go back. I need my bed, and you yours, Elisande. For what little is left of the night, at least.'

  He didn't move, though, not yet; which gave her time enough to say, 'Take me with you, Coren,' and to say it as though he were her only concern, as though she thought he should not go alone. She doubted if she had fooled either one of them, the man or the djinni, but he nodded graciously and took her arm and led her into his golden gleam of light. It afforded her a safe and easy passage back to the valley, and there were times when a girl simply didn't need the challenge of an unruly servant, the threat of another wild ride.

  2

  A World a Man Unransomed

  Anton d'Escrivey stood on the height of the wall at Roq de Rancon, and knew himself possessed; and could not truly have said which of two spirits it was that possessed him, nor which of those two was good, which evil. He knew what his Church would say, he believed that he knew what his God would say, and in this at least they would speak with one voice. Put him to confession, though, or put him to the question, dig for the deepest truth in himself and he could not be certain what his own voice would answer.

  He stood in the last of the daylight, when it was dark already on the plain below. He saw the glimmer of torches on the road, a late patrol riding in; he had some interest in their report and might have gone down to meet them if there had been time. He could hear the news later, though. For now, his eye reached further out, looking perhaps for some other light, some hint of life among the distant hills.

  He saw nothing, only purpling shadows on their peaks and unbroken black beneath. Every day for weeks he had stood here, and seen the same. It was wasted labour to climb so high, wasted time to wait for what would not be there; all of this he knew. The preceptor had opened the Kings Eye more than once at his urging, and each time to no avail. No, there was no sign of the escaped heretic, nor of the baron's runaway wife, nor of his own treacherous squire. They had vanished in the chaos of that dreadful night: vanished by magical means for sure, long before they could have ridden beyond the reach of the Kings Eye. That gift of sight could show little beyond the borders of the Kingdom, but it should not have failed so soon; some evil working must have blinded it, something of Surayon. If that wicked land could hide itself so utterly that none could find it, though its borders were known and had been charted, then no doubt its sorcerers could cast a blanket of darkness over such a party of small souls, so dark that even the King's pure light could not find it out...

  So they said, at least, in the halls and the guardhouses; and so Anton believed, because he must. As he believed because he must believe that all in that small party were long gone from this land, seeking the safety of hidden Surayon or some greater safety further off.

  And yet still he came up here high, each evening; and still he watched for some touch of light that might perhaps be a fire, might just possibly be a sign of one soul returning. Returning part way at least, too frightened to come closer but loath to leave entirely, held as Anton himself was held, to the betrayal of all vows true or false, betraying new companions just as he had betrayed the old ...

  Hopeless watch, but the knight kept it none the less; and did not turn until the great bell called the garrison to prayer, just as the sun fell from sight and that sea of shadow below swept up to engulf him.

  He might have said his prayers there on the castle wall, with Marron's whisper in his head for company. To silence that distracting voice, he might have moved a little along the wall to join the guards who must watch and pray together. He might have gone back to his own chamber and prayed alone, as he used to do.

  But times change, and men must change with them; old habits must be cast off, when men dress for war.

  Anton took the stairs rapidly and then strode through the wards and passages of the Roq until he met the tail of his confreres, a slow procession winding into the great hall, torchbearers before and behind.

  He joined that procession, as he seldom had before this month but now did every night. He paced in steady step with his brethren and left his head uncovered, as some half of them did routinely now, a badge of extra oaths that they had sworn.

  Briefly, he remembered the occasion of those oaths. After he himself had caught and confronted the runaways in the stable yard, after they had laid him low with some numbing, bewildering spell on his mind - after Marron had refused to leave them and come to him, but never mind that now; this was sanctified ground, or that was - and after he had recovered himself and run to the broken gate and seen them riding out, even after so much he had gone back to the stables and discovered worse.

  He had discovered the stalls where a squad of men had been waiting as guards and grooms, where they waited now in an eternal stillness and a bath of blood, their ruined bodies not to be distinguished each from each. Some evil curse had torn them, flesh and bone; and the few bound and terror-stricken survivors had accused Marron himself of doing this thing.

  Marshal Fulke had come then and declared that the source of the work was Surayonnaise, whatever the instrument. There in the stables, among a breathless crowd of men, he had called not vengeance but justice on that wicked state; he had declared a holy war, and asked who would ride with him against this evil.

  Used to orders, unused to invitations, the Brothers Ransomers had hesitated; it had taken the knights, the nobles' sons to push forward first, to make a path that the brothers could follow.

  First among the knights - necessarily first, for his own squire's sake who had been first cause of all th
is horror - had been Sieur Anton d'Escrivey.

  Soon now, any day now, the long ride would begin. Until then, Anton lived as he had not before, side by side and sharing with his confreres. First among equals, his superiors said, though he was not aware of that; he thought himself only a hypocrite and weak, drawing needful strength from others.

  They would ride, and they would find Surayon; and they would destroy it utterly, and that was good.

  He did not expect to find Marron within its borders, and that was good.

  He did expect to find Marron, somehow, somewhere, sometime; and that too, the God forgive him for he himself could not but that too was good, and hungered for.

  In the great hall, on the dais that stood below the sign of the God, Marshal Fulke stepped forward to preach to all the Ransomers, brothers and knights together on their knees. It must look as though we all of us kneel to him. The thought passed suddenly, shockingly through Anton's head, and would not be dismissed. It was a nonsense, of course; there was no arrogance in the man, only great confidence and certainty of purpose that were both of them founded on faith unquestioning, unquestioned. Fulke might stand with his back to that tremendous, overhanging sign, the double loop that spoke of a twinned eternity, but it might as well have been branded on his high forehead, below his receding hairline; it might as well have been contained within his eyes, so that he saw the world in ever-doubled vision. For sure he carried it liquid on his tongue, whether he spoke to one man privately or to an army gathered.

  And yet he was a man and must have all men's faults, however deeply buried beneath the discipline of his belief. How could he face a sight such as this, so many heads bared and faces lifted, so much breathless silence, and feel no possession of the moment? He had been sent by the Church Fathers to be provincial commander of the military arm, no more than that; he was subordinate to the preceptor here at the Roq, and to many men else; and yet this was his army, they were his men, they would rise at his word and he must know it. There was a leashed eagerness in them, they strained to hear that word and to follow him, and he must know that also.

  'My brothers,' he said, his voice soft but carrying, like the whisper of a whip in the air before it cracked, 'all these weeks I have been telling you of the evil nesded like a worm in the heart of Outremer, that nestles also in the heart of each one of you, eating at your virtue. All these weeks you have waited to hear me cry you forth, like hounds upon a hunt. A month back you saw that I was right, when those you had welcomed here turned to sorcerous wickedness, and many brothers died. Since then, you have ached to wreak the God's vengeance on the vile, to ride against the heresy that is Surayon.

  'You need wait no longer. The time is now, and you are the hand that shall strike, hard and clean into the heart of sin, a light to drive out darkness.

  'How can I know this so certainly, you want to ask, only that obedience and awe must hold you silent in this holy place? I will tell you. I have been granted a vision; I have seen our enemy, as clearly as I see your thoughts, your hopes, your doubts.

  'This last night I rose from my pallet and walked abroad while you slept, or else I dreamed that I rose and walked; I cannot tell whether my body in truth left my cell, or whether it was only my spirit that was called forth by the God. No man saw me or spoke to me, no hand touched mine unless it was the God's own hand that gripped me.

  'However that may be, I felt myself drawn to climb high, to a place on the walls where I might overlook that ancient tower which has no doors or windows, to which the King himself gave a name when he was here, the Tower of the King's Daughter.

  'As I stood and gazed upon it, it seemed to me that I saw a misty light shine out through the very stones of the tower.

  They turned to mist and faded, to leave a doorway where there is no door.

  'Out from that doorway, I saw a flood of creatures come: demons I would call them, from the pits of hell. They were black and many-legged like spiders, and they glistened in an unearthly light.

  'I saw them swarm up the wall behind the tower, where there is no walkway and so we set no guards. They were so many and so fast, they seemed to flow like water, like a foul and shining river over the wall and so out of my sight.

  'When they were gone, the tower's stones were restored, and the glow died back to darkness.

  'I have thought all day on what I saw, I have prayed and fasted, and this is my reading of it. There can be no doubt.

  'Whyever it was built and whoever built it, that tower now stands in our eyes for the Folded Land, for Surayon. Think, my brothers! Only think, and you will see that it must be so. No doors, no windows — it exists and yet it is sealed to us, we can gain no access to it. Only sorcery could lead us through its walls. Is this not also true of Surayon, has that land not been closed to us by magical means?

  'And yet, we know, the evildoers of that forsaken country pass its borders to mingle all unrecognised with us. We had one of their kind in our own captivity, under our guard some few weeks since, until he was released by powers beyond our reckoning. You all know what price we paid in that escape; I promise you, the price that Surayon must pay when it falls to us will be the heavier for it.

  'What I saw, though, what the God showed me in His kindness was more than a few wicked men stealing out to work mischief among us. It was what we have long feared, what the Surayonnaise have long been preparing for behind their hidden borders. It was an invasion, an army issuing forth to wreak havoc in the Kingdom, to challenge the rule of the King himself.

  'By the Gods grace, we have been warned; by your strength and faith, we can forestall it. More, and better: we can use this knowledge, this chance to strike at last against that canker that lurks at the heart of our land.

  'One man may slip silently, unseen through a curtain; an army cannot. The sorcerers of Surayon must open their borders, to send forth their strength. If we are there and ready when they do, we can pass inside; and then the God's vengeance will be ours to enforce.

  'I have spoken with the preceptor, and this is our plan. Already birds are flying, messages have been sent; the lords of Outremer will rally at this news, we will build an army of our own to meet the men of Surayon. Even magic-workers are mortal, and may be slain. But we, the Order of Ransom, knights and brothers both will hold ourselves apart from that batde; we will ride into Surayon as soon as the way is clear, and there we will work the God's will against that heretic people, and so bring the King's most wayward daughter back into the heart of her family, from where she has been too long lost. Prepare yourselves, my brothers, cleanse bodies and minds, confess if that is needful; you must come pure to your trial, and we march in the morning.'

  There was more, the marshal was a master at setting fires to burn in men's hearts; but Anton's attention drifted. He remembered how he had seen Marron and the others, the night they fled — how they had been grouped in the court below his window, at the foot of that same Tower of the Kings Daughter, all lit by a glowing ball of fire. That had been a sharp blue witchlight, not at all what Fulke described - but still, it was all of a piece. They had looked like travellers balked, or warriors defeated. That had been his thought then, and was still his thought now. He had wondered ever since, why there? It was the furthest part of the castle from the gate, not guarded perhaps but overlooked by all the knights' windows, a nonsensical place to meet. Unless they'd had some other objective, another way to leave perhaps, some mystical door that the prisoner from Surayon could open, except that they had found it closed against them ...

  He thought that what Marshal Fulke had seen was no sleeping vision; he wondered if perhaps it was not either a visitation from the God, but rather simple truth. This was after all a land of miracles and magic, and not all beneficent. There had been ample proof of that, when Marron had slaughtered his troop in the stables. With a blood-demon by all reports, a monster of terrible strength - something that he had perhaps come by within the tower? For sure the boy had owned no supernatural powers earlier, Anton himself
could testify to that; only the native charms of shyness and beauty, a pair of eyes that could snare a man's heart...

  It might be blasphemy, he thought, to question a divine vision. It was certainly disobedience to his vows, to question the affirmation of his superior. Well, let it be so. One further sin on his conscience, what did that matter, one among so many? And no, he would not be confessing it before they marched.

  Having no squire now, he made what use he could of his confreres', what little time he could beg their servants from them - he who had been so independent for so long, forced to plead for service; he had been spoiled in more than the one way, he thought, by a few short weeks of Marron - and was still kept unaccustomedly busy on his own account, packing and preparing for what must be a lengthy absence, what could be months of campaigning in the field.

  And so it wasn't until the following morning, when the castle and all the chaos of a dawn march lay hours at his back, when he had at last the peace of a steady horse below him and the silence of his brethren all around him, that he found the time and the space to think a little. Even that silence had been slow in coming, for all the rigour of the Order's rules. Young men who ride to battle will be talkative, and his fellow knights spoke to Anton now as though he were one of their own: only a little older than most and a finer swordsman than any, a favourite of Marshal Fulke's too and so very much worth their time. He was still not used to that. A sudden popularity was hard to deal with, harder to set aside.

  Eventually, though, the weight of cloak and armour under a fierce sun beat down the most insistent tongue. With his hood drawn up and its rim hanging low to shade his eyes from the glare, Anton could feel himself alone amid a crowd, as he had been for so long before this. Before Marron ... For some few years he'd all but hidden at the Roq, given implicit licence to hide by virtue of his name and fame. Or infame, rather, the truth and rumours that attached to any whisper of that name. He'd rarely left the castle walls, except to patrol the borderlands where there were none to whisper, only wild tribes who fled at sight, the occasional Sharai raiding-party to be tracked or attacked.