In the Eye of Heaven Part 3

That stopped.

In a jumbled instant, Durand's foot shot out. Water exploded. His elbow smacked stone, and he slipped into cold blackness. But something hooked his collar.

"Not that crossing! Not at my hand," a voice rasped.

Durand coughed and spluttered. His collar tightened against his throat. Then he landed.

"h.e.l.ls." He twisted on the stone. "What's happening?" "You've fallen."

After another fit, he tried to right himself, damp fingers adhering to the frigid stone. "Host Below!" "Take care whom you call."

Durand squinted, pawing his forelock from his eyes. There was nothing to see. "I've had my fill of you and your stick, stranger," he managed. But as he gave his stinging fists a twist, he realized that the stranger stood feet taller than any man he had ever seen. He filled the well like a tree.

Now Durand saw the stranger smile: a thing of black pegs. The stranger swung his forked staff against the water. There was no splash. And the pool itself glowed-deep, aurora-fingers reaching for the roots of the world.

"Queen of Heaven." An icy plume rose as Durand spoke.

The light climbed the folds of the stranger's cloak and his staff's convolutions. Durand saw fingers like hog bones wrapped in twine. Under the pilgrim's hat, he caught the edges of a face: a thorn bush of knotted twine spilling from cheekbones where hairy cord knotted like a weapon's grip. Two cold pennies winked in the sockets of the man's eyes: one a nicked black, the other bright silver. There were teeth. They looked like shoeing nails.

"Better." The voice rustled. The voice rustled.It took a lot to square off with the creature.

Through clenched teeth, Durand managed a few words: "Who are you?"

"I am the Traveler."

Durand forced his gaze into that knotted face. Into the glinting coins.

"What?" he demanded.

"Prince of Heaven. Spirit. Lord of Roads. Warder at Crossroads. The Longwalker."

"You're a sorcerer," Durand accused, even as he realized that no breath steamed from the dry jaws above him.

Laughter leapt the walls. "My Brother dreams the World. He set his Eye in the Vault of Heaven, and you do not call him sorcerer."

The Creator, Silent King of Heaven, dreamt the world. Durand had stared into his warm eye every morning at Dawn's Thanksgiving. The brown iron pegs of thing's teeth meshed a fathom over Durand's head.

"You're mad," he said."No."'Then I am!"

The stranger's head tipped abruptly in a gesture that seemed almost birdlike, and allowed the thin light to wink in its tiny penny eyes. "No."

"Host of Heaven!" Durand swore.

"No, no," the stranger corrected sharply. "I miss the days of the Old G.o.ds in these lands, when my Brother and his children had not yet eclipsed the other lights in Heaven. Men knew." knew."

The corded brow flexed. "Imagine a sea," it said, "-an ocean! ocean!-and in it each drop of water sits on the next without mingling. A rattling main of beads without the slightest connection holding one to the next." For a moment, its hand touched Durand's head in a mad, paternal gesture. "Such is the memory of man. I am more than a sorcerer, forgetful one, for I was never born."

Durand stared at the well and the man and the eyes and the staff. "Why have you come for me?"

"I have not 'come for you,' you have arrived. I haunt the crossroads, Durand of the Col." He fingered the burly crook of his staff.

Durand felt the grip of soaked clothing squeezing the heat from him. He felt the ache of his bruised elbow. His lungs were raw.

"What do you want of me?" he said."You are a traveler," the Power said."A traveler... ?"

"You do not see. You little ones are thoroughly trapped in this old dream of my Brother's-no matter that you'll leave it one day." A thousand knots slithered tight to pitch the creature's metal eyes toward the sky. "In my youth I was a wanderer. I walked the tracks of my Brother's Creation. I watched as old spirits preyed on young. And I spent an age at my Brother's side, no help to give, too far to reach. And now I am near." Again, the Power was all narrow chin and brown peg teeth. "But I must be quiet. Quiet or the Host Below must hear."

The knotted face twitched. What such a gesture portended, Durand could not understand. "You are a strange breed, you men, and I have learned that only the lost will heed me." Durand was too near, like a mouse on a blacksmith's anvil. Starlight sparked in the Power's eyes like lightning. This thing was brother to the King of Heaven. Durand could feel the Traveler's spirit thundering out beyond the castle walls, beyond the fields-the flash of a smith's hammer on the world.

The coin eyes fixed Durand's. "You must be a traveler or lost."

Durand had no answer. Every road that stretched over Errest the Old twitched under the weight of the same Power. "What is to become of me?" Durand rasped. "The question."

The Power turned toward the glowing pool. For a moment, the wide brim obscured its terrible face. The light seemed to reach fathoms down. "How deep?" Durand found himself asking.

The empty eyes turned on him, one winking, one suddenly bottomless. "It was old when the Cradle's Cradle's prow first sc.r.a.ped the sh.o.r.e at Wave's Ending to found your nation. It runs to the days of the Old G.o.ds." prow first sc.r.a.ped the sh.o.r.e at Wave's Ending to found your nation. It runs to the days of the Old G.o.ds."

It had been more than twenty centuries, twenty-three. He spoke of a time before time.

'There are bones down below," the stranger said. "And jewels and swords and the brazen s.h.i.+elds of chieftains; lambs for the wild G.o.ds, and fallen children. The water curls in every bone and hasp." The Traveler stretched his staff out once more and struck the surface. Again, the water rang. It turned, finally, to Durand. "What would you know?"

Durand clenched his teeth and forced himself to stare into the metal eyes. "Is there a place? Will I find a place?"

The Traveler said nothing, though its great limbs creaked in their knots. Its eyes hesitated on Durand's face, waiting, and as the flat metal glinted, Durand felt himself drawn to speak.

"Will I succeed? I-What point is there in striving if..."

The Traveler would not turn away, and Durand felt suddenly uneasy at what he was doing. Maybe he was wrong. Did he want the answers? It might be better to leave some things down among the bones. This thing called the Lord of Dooms its brother. What would Durand do if the Power spoke the wrong words? He tried to tell himself that it didn't matter, that when he came before the Warders of the Bright Gates of far Heaven, all that mattered was how well he had lived the life he'd been given. And still the Traveler waited.

A question came unbidden. "Will I..." but Durand stopped. Surely some things were too much to say. But he could not help but think: What woman would want some vagabond thug, a tramp with nothing to offer.

"What of a family?" he said.

At this, the vast Traveler nodded. It turned to the wavering disk of water. As it pa.s.sed its staff over the still surface, the light stirred below, moving in loose tendrils. Huge, glowing branches swept through the gloom, drifting in the current.

'There are answers here," the Traveler said. "Many answers."

Durand looked deeper, seeing finer and finer branchings weaving in the blue. He looked to the Traveler. The light shone in the knotted curves of its face.

"Ah. Yes. I see the place you crave. Yes. And a share of glory." The Power stopped suddenly, almost starting. By the Host," By the Host," it whispered. it whispered.

The Power's jaws opened, and a weak thread of vapor climbed the well like a wisp of incense, like a prayer. "There is success."

Durand tried to face the Power. "And the rest?"

"Yes," the great Power murmured, and it seemed angry then. "A beauty. Soon, you will find her." It withdrew its heavy staff, the dry fingers stroking whispers from the wood.

"Are these things true?""Yes," the Power answered."Without doubt?" Durand pressed."Yes."

They were so close that the breath of the stranger's words stirred in Durand's mouth. He tasted the earth. After a long moment, the great Power stirred. There was a stiffness in its movements as though it had only just remembered the Ages it had seen. It raised its staff and glanced down on Durand, its expression unreadable. "It's no easy path."

The staff dropped and struck the water, leaving only blackness.

Durand knew at once: Both the Traveler and the light were gone.

Durand bared his teeth, breathing hard against the chill of stone and water. He looked up at the circle of pale cloud high above and the mirroring ring down the well. It seemed as if the distant Heavens were reaching for him. Then something dropped out of the sky-a tight black flutter. He extended his hand, but the flutter missed his fingers and struck him-hard-taking a bite from his forehead. It clattered between his boots.

From the courtyard, Durand heard a strange metallic tapping-not the Traveler's staff this time. Confused and more than tired of mysteries, he mounted the stair.

At the well's edge was a boy, driving a nail through a dark, folded bundle with a shoeing hammer. For an instant, the child remained absorbed, then he took note of Durand standing over him and the hammer clattered to the stones. "Host of Heaven!" His eyes were wet and wide. Durand pictured himself, towering against the sky, hair dripping in oily rivulets. "Easy," he said.

The boy stared, paralyzed. His eyes followed Durand's shaking hand. It was, Durand saw, black with blood. He pictured himself, a blood-soaked monster rising from the dark of a well. He smiled, wiping the blood away between his hands. "I'm really no one to be frightened of," he said, almost sighing. "Flesh and blood. Less blood than before you threw that thing down the well, but still flesh and blood." "What were you doing in the well?" asked the boy. "What are you doing hammering past curfew?" "Asking questions," the boy whispered.

"Well," Durand said, "one of your questions has struck me in particular."

The boy only looked at the folded question in his hand. Durand crouched. "I fell in," he offered and tried the smile again.

The boy was not so easy to win over. "May I see?" Durand ventured.

The boy opened his hand, revealing a small dark parcel shot through with an iron nail. There was blood in the seams of his palm.

"It's lead," the boy said."A bit of the roof, looks like," Durand said.

"You hammer a sheet, then write your question. Or your wish, or whatever. You scratch with the nail, and a bit of blood. And then you knock the nail through. Has to be the same nail."

"You write?" Durand asked. "I only read faces." "You have to," the boy said. "Who told you these things?" "Everyone around here knows."

"You're from the Col?" He had never seen the boy, but he supposed that meant very little.

"No," said the boy. "My father is the priest."

"Oh." The priests had been trying to rid the peasants of their old, wild G.o.ds since the Cradle Cradle skidded ash.o.r.e at Wave's Ending. "A priest taught you these things?" skidded ash.o.r.e at Wave's Ending. "A priest taught you these things?"

"My father is a Vairian and a scholar!"

That might explain it. The Vairians were the strangest of priests, binding sc.r.a.ps of hearsay to stretched skins with knots of ink. They made good scribes.

"Your father is my father's priest-arbiter?"

The boy squinted. "Yes, Milord. Milord. He studied at the library in Parthanor. And he's a scholar." He studied at the library in Parthanor. And he's a scholar."

"And he taught you?"

"No. I learned it from your mother's women. They know all these things."

The cold was overtaking Durand. He might have known. Patriarchs for law, wise women for birth and death and fortune. "Why the well?"

"You drop them in the well so the Old G.o.ds will answer in your dreams. It is what the old priests did when the Col was standing stones."

The boy's eyes were full of suspicion, as though he expected a rebuke and didn't deserve it.

For a time, Durand said nothing."Cast it in," he said, finally.The boy flung his message into the dark.

IN A FEW moments, Brag's hooves were clattering across the courtyard, past the well and under the long teeth of the portcullis. Durand wondered when he would ever see the gap-toothed fortress again. moments, Brag's hooves were clattering across the courtyard, past the well and under the long teeth of the portcullis. Durand wondered when he would ever see the gap-toothed fortress again.

Something moved under the gate. A small figure hugged the gate's blocky plinth: the priest's boy looking out at him. He raised his hand, and Durand saw a garnet in his palm-the mark of the nail. Durand raised his own hand in answer, not certain why. Whatever gnawed at the boy's mind, he must have seen a match for his own plight in Durand's. He wondered what the boy's name was, and gave him a sharp nod as he spurred Brag onward. There was nothing like an audience to give a man courage.

FOR HOURS, HE rode through the damp wilderness. At first, Brag galloped, then he cantered, and then he fell to plodding. Naked trees and muck gave way to long fieldstone fences that unraveled along the roadside, or undulating hedgerows that humped over the low hills. Durand drifted down between the hills. rode through the damp wilderness. At first, Brag galloped, then he cantered, and then he fell to plodding. Naked trees and muck gave way to long fieldstone fences that unraveled along the roadside, or undulating hedgerows that humped over the low hills. Durand drifted down between the hills.

He wondered at himself. What business did he have pus.h.i.+ng Brag out on a night like this? And it was the wrong time to be on the road. Though Traveler's Night was gone, it was still the Gleaning Moon with all the harvest laborers on the roads. There were rumors of unrest. Winter stalked the wilds, and there was no more work for the hungry and the outcast.

He must build himself a new future, and he must be as careful as a carpenter about it. Gireth was an old duchy in an old nation, bound in oath and custom. From the lowest plowman to the king in Eldinor, a man did what he was born to. Durand imagined returning to the duke in Acconel. He could offer his services there, but what would they do with such an offer?

There wasn't a single sellsword in all the duke's retinue. A wellborn man could not beg charity, or-Durand laughed-a wellborn man refuse to offer it. Appearing in Acconel as he stood would shame the duke and himself both. The Barony of the Col had been in his family's hands since the first Duke of Gireth handed it to his s.h.i.+eld-bearer, surviving the High Kingdom's rise and fall and wars beyond the Sea of Thunder. It was an ancient name, and Durand would not tarnish it. He could not go begging to Acconel. In any case, he did not have food enough to travel so far. He had a vision of himself stiff in a ditch like a stray dog as the snow flew.

Apprentices started at fourteen; priests were a different breed. Bakers, weavers, goldbeaters, and bookbinders were all guild crafts and all father to son. There was a reason some men turned to brigandage. But he would not turn up before the Bright Gates of Heaven with the souls of women and children howling round his neck.

Brag plodded on. Wrapped up in thought and a wet cloak, another of night's cold hours pa.s.sed as he rode between the hills. He hardly noticed Brag's sudden nodding.

He looked up. They had blundered down some sort of ditch, and shapes were uncoiling from the darkness all around.

He saw men on every side, gaunt and hollow. He had blundered into some makes.h.i.+ft camp. Uneasy, he groped for his blade. Knives and k.n.o.bbed clubs had already appeared from rags.

As he reached for his scabbard, he remembered his sword clattering down the well.

In that heartbeat, Durand judged his battleground. The thugs had moved in before and behind him while a knot of them were climbing out of a shallow cut in the hillside-just out of reach.

If they had waited another moment to spring their trap, he could never have got loose.

In an instant, he seized his chance. Spitting a curse, he wrenched poor Brag toward the empty hillside and set his spurs deep. The hunter vaulted out of the robbers' hands, up from the ravine, lurching high onto the hill above.

Below, the ragged line of pursuers spread across the dark hillside, losing ground. The bay hunter quickly left them behind.

Durand stroked the big brute's neck. Dragging the hapless animal out into misery and the dark had been unkind.

They lost their pursuers, riding off among high-flanked hills that put Durand in mind of stories he'd heard about whales on the Winter Sea and how they dwarfed the s.h.i.+ps.

He wondered about the men behind him, thinking of his father's words about knights-errant: masterless men roving between the halls of landed men. Some of the robbers by the track might have been luckless knights. But there were other stories about knights-errant. They were the heroes who got the maidens free of their ogres. Or so the skalds would tell you.

The Heavens opened and cold rain plummeted down from the dark, hammering a mist of mud into the air. His breath came in cold shudders, and the greasy hillside seemed ready to slump from under Brag's hooves.

Cursing it all, Durand searched for the hilltops, but could barely make out the joint between hill and Heaven. Poor Brag wallowed ahead.

As they crested a rise, Durand made out a dark smudge against the gray of the next "whale's" back. "Come on Brag, it may be there's some shelter ahead," he said.

As it loomed closer, the black smudge seemed to bristle with tattered branches: yew and bramble. A thicket among the bald hills. He rode close, though Brag lashed his head. "Easy." Durand splashed down the saddle. At the edge of the thicket, the leaves of the undergrowth lay like a blanket thrown over spindly branches. Brag nodded his fright at the wind and weather, but Durand felt the marrow freezing in his bones. There was no way to wedge a horse under the branches. His fingers stiffened in Brag's bridle.