Nobody's Son (24 page)

Old men on battlements, or staring into ashes.

Old men’s magic.

“
This mad quest to wake the darkness
. …”

“The same moonlight we see here is glinting on the mere around the Red Keep,” Gail whispered. “And beneath the water, something feels the light, and sinks yet farther into darkness.”

“It’s all dried up,” Mark said shortly. “I told you that. Nowt but a ditch I walked across to get Sweetness.” His mind fell swiftly back to plans, worries, calculations. “Our last night in pavilions; tomorrow the Hall.”

“O God. Don’t remind me.”

Eh
? “What was that?”

“
This is our last night
!” Gail grabbed his arm. “Don’t you understand? After tonight we are trapped inside that mausoleum. The Duke and Duchess of Ghostwood, with valets and footmen and ladies-in-waiting. Then it will be ten times harder to walk alone by the river on a June night, and smell the moonlight in the air. God, Mark, you don’t even see how beautiful this is. This was my fairy tale: my prince and I alone in the summer night, under the stars. I don’t want to give it up.”

Her grip loosened from his arm.

He reached to hold her hand. “I’m sorry, Gail. I just got to thinking…”

“Not about me, that’s certain.”

“What do you mean by that?”
Steady on, lad. Ease up
. “There’s been a lot of work to do. And it’s not so easy to think about your wife, when she isn’t really…”

“Can’t you just think of me as a friend?”

“Well, no,” Mark said.

Shite. Get out of here. It’s no good talking love at her. Damned if you end up like Deron. If you babble out your feelings you’ll only make a bad thing worse.

“I’m in love wi’ you,” he snapped.

O, great. Very subtle.

He loved her.

He had tried to forget that, tried to lose himself in his duchy. But as he spoke the words he suddenly saw how true they were, as if the moonlight showed him a corner of his heart the sunlight never reached. “I loved you the first time I saw you, with a dagger in your belt and laughing like a fox.”
Marvellous. That’s it you silly bastard. Pull oui your heart and put it in her hand
. “I thought we were a story,” he stammered. “I thought we were meant to be. And after I knew you better, I loved you more. But by then I’d found out we weren’t to be a story after all.”

“Is that what you found out?” Gail said quietly. “Is that what I said when I kissed you on our wedding day?”

Moonlight fell like mist over the world. Willows crouched beside them on the bank, their trailing leaves the hair of hunchbacked old women, hiding their faces, their secret eyes. Beneath Mark’s feet the river bubbled over stone; moonfoam trailed around each rock, glimmering glinting vanishing gone: swallowed by the sweep of shadow.

The moonlight witched their clasping hands from friends’ hands into lovers’. They were touching now, in the darkness; the thought crawled up Mark’s wrist like a spider and scuttled into his heart. Against his thick arm her slender one; one of her woman’s slim pale fingers between each of his.

Then pulling, shifting, her flank pressing against him as she turned, her lips on his like moth wings. “We are,” she whispered. “We are a story.”

She kissed him then. A shock ran deep into him, into his groin, his heart, the hollow of his body: a shock at the press of her breasts against his side, her thin lips now soft and opening for him, against him.

The blood shimmered under his skin; his sex was like an iron bar, enchanted by her nearness.

I’m alive.

His whole body had been dead, or sleeping; now it woke, blessed into life by her warmth, her mouth opening under his, the smell of her hair, the wild near stroke and smell of her hair, beautiful beyond all singing. He slid his hand up the back of her neck, holding her. From her ears dangled hoops of gold, bumping and swinging against his hand, each touch filling him with unbearable desire, made sweeter still because he knew, he knew now that he would have her. The smell of her hair, the warmth of her back against his arm, her lips open under his: these things eternal as the stars, as true.

“Oh God,” Gail whispered.

“Hmmm. M’hmm. Do… d’you think—?”

“Yes.” Gail nodded. She stared at Mark with naked eyes. “Definitely yes.”

O boy o boy o boy. “Let’s get off this bridge. I don’t want to fall off it while, um—”

“Yes.” Gail leaned forward and kissed him again. “You know,” she murmured into his neck, “I’m sure that there’s a way to make love right here. The Maker would have foreseen that this span would be left—”

“And that we would come here…” Mark giggled.

“And that I would want to take off this button here,” Gail whispered.

“We’re in the bloody open, Gail!”

“… and this one here…”

“Gail?”

“Mmm?”

“Just this once, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll take off this bonny hat you gave me.”

She laughed into his neck and they rolled over into the grass together. “Never!” she whispered.

Chapter Ten
The Broken Bridge

O sweet devils
! Mark thought some hours later, flushed and alive.
You’re not going to sleep again this night
! A warm wind blew in his blood. He left Gail snoozing in their ducal tent, dressed and crept out into the June moonlight.

He picked his way into the Keep and entered the Great Hall, a dark cavern smelling of cedar beams and sawdust. The stone flags had all been washed and strewn with rushes gathered from a fenny spot a few miles down the river. A flood of moonlight welled in from tall mullioned windows, dappling the floor with diamonds.
Orrin’s making damn quick work of it. Two windows each side he said, ready in a week. But here are three each side, already fitted! Must have been inspired
.

A door had been hung in an archway at the back of the hall. Intrigued, Mark walked through it. Tomorrow he would be hungry for sleep, but he didn’t regret being up now. Throughout Mark’s life this hour, the last before dawn, had always been the time of his secret mastery. Now it was good to be alive in the night, tasting his happiness.

It was also good to see how Master Orrin was getting on; the business of governance was taking up most of Mark’s attention these days.
Lay some of that on Deron? Surely he would have learned to be a gentleman
.

Oh, right. Third sons are warriors: they do death, not taxes. Damn.

The door led to a corridor, the corridor to other passages.. Mark was impressed. The corridor ended in a flight of stairs. Mark went up, testing each one: he didn’t want to step off into space if the flight was only half built. Stepping through a door at the top, he found himself in open air, on the western battlements. “By the Devil’s thumb, that’s quick work,” he muttered, grinning like a fool.
Lerelil’s Son came through a door just like this before you thwacked him and pinched his dagger, remember
?

The memory drove a nail of ice through Mark’s palm and he gasped with pain. He felt the dagger too, like an icicle belted at his hip.

The door behind Mark opened and a figure stepped lightly through, then stopped. “Dost a right, mate?”

Must be one of the workers
. Mountain stock, to judge by the accent. Mark nodded; the pain was fading to pins and needles, as if his hand had fallen asleep and were just now waking. “Nowt but an awd scratch. Gets me sometimes.”

The newcomer nodded sympathetically. “I’ve one in me shoulder. Devil’s brach when the weather turns. Fletcher’s Bill, hight I.”

“Out late or up early?” Mark asked, deciding not to let on who he was. If Bill didn’t recognize the Duke, so much the better.

His companion laughed softly in the gloom. “Early, sure. A damn sight too early, I wis. But I promised lad I’d shew him a tiff o’ sword-play. Is nae time on duty, and his mother’s agin it, so an it be fine, we meet afore cock-crew.” The stranger yawned hugely; Mark could just see his teeth and his sleepy smile.

“Damn good of you,” Mark said softly. “It’s a lot of trouble.”

Bill shrugged. “Well, it’s my son, isn’t it?” Suddenly he winced. “Shite.”

“What’s bit you?”

“Damn. I thought to get loaned a second sword, but I baint memorized to. And nowt’s bloody stirred at ilka hour.”

Swiftly Mark unbuckled Harvest.

“O, no call, friend! Simon’ll last well enow one day wi’out—”

“Take it,” Mark said. “Don’t make your son wait, not even a day. Please, take it. I don’t use the damn thing anyway. Not any more.”

“Mercy, master,” Bill said slowly. “I’ll oath to bring it back by cock-crew.”

“Oh no you don’t! I mean to be sleeping! I’ll collect it from you. Fletcher’s Bill, right?”

The other man took the sword and put out his hand. “Certes. And who mun I mak Simon courtsey to?”

“… Mark. Just Mark.”

The two men shook hands, and then Bill hurried away; Mark listened to his footsteps patter softly into the darkness. Then all was quiet again, save for the sound of the river.

Simon, eh? Another boy up before the dawn to learn his swordplay.

Only Simon wasn’t alone, lunging and thrusting and stumbling over molehills. He had a father to be there with him.

A grief grew in Mark, but did not make his happiness less. More strongly than ever he felt his feelings come alive, like roots stirring at the touch of spring rain. The joy he’d felt with Gail, for one; the heart-knowing that they were meant for one another.
You’d given up on that a time or two. You’ve got summat to look forward to, all right
.

Yet even as he thought this he was looking back, turning to face a shadow that had followed him from the Ghost-wood: the shadow of a little cottage where a mother sang her boy to sleep, and an angry father rummaged for his things, about to leave. About to leave again.

Mark stood upon the western wall and wept while the eastern sky paled, pink at last as the inside of a rabbit’s ear. He cried steadily and silently, spilling into the morning, weeping for what he had found, and what he had lost. Once by chance he raised his right hand and wiped away his tears; they stung on his scar like salt on an open wound.

At last the rain stopped streaming from the cloud within his breast. He left the Keep, and lay down beside Gail just as the sun was rising.

“Mark?”

Val.

Ugh
. “G’way. I’m dead.”

“Milord, I think you would do well to rouse yourself.”

Something in Val’s voice drove away sleep. Mark blinked and shook his head. Gail had risen and was nowhere to be seen.
Bright. Must be well into morning
. “What is it?” Mark mumbled, pulling on a pair of pants.

“I think you would do better looking for yourself,” Valerian said nervously.

Great. All I need in life is a valet who loves surprises
. He buckled on his belt and frowned:
where’s the damn sw
—
Oh, right. Fletcher’s Bill. Hat, hat: oops. Down by the river, in that little grassy place where… Must look for her earring before someone finds it in the tall grass shite
…

“Well?” he said, stepping out and squinting in the sunshine. “Hey!” he said, frowning. “Where’s the west wall?”

Master Orrin and Valerian exchanged startled glances. “We can’t possibly begin work on the west wall this year,” Orrin said.

“But—!” Something writhed and twisted in Mark’s gut.

Of course the west wall wasn’t up. None of the walls were up. “But I was there,” he whispered. “I’d swear I was there last night.” He shivered. “Must have been a dream…”

“Perhaps you dreamt, but I doubt it.” Valerian gestured at one of the workers. “We resurrected this from underneath the rubble of the western wall,” he said grimly.

Mark leaned forward, and felt an icy fist close slowly around his heart. The workman held a sheet of canvas between his hands. Harvest lay upon it. The beautiful blade was now in three pieces, and so pitted with rust he could barely make out its pattern of vines. The silver wire around the haft had tarnished into nothing and the gem in the pommel had fallen out. Lying next to the pitted steel were a few rags of what might once have been red leather.

“From the condition and the placement of these fragments, I would guess your sword has been lying in the rubble for many centuries.” Valerian’s high brows arched as he met Mark’s eyes. “I find that very curious. Don’t you?”

Leaving Orrin to manage affairs, Valerian, Mark, Gail and Lissa withdrew to a shady spot behind the ruined northern walls. It was a hot day, but the moss-covered stones on which they sat were cool.

Gail shuddered. “Ghosts!”

Lissa smiled in her cool, ironic way. “Now consensus is complete: first two, now four among our merry band believe in ghosts.”

“Wonderful! I knew you’d come around. Nobody could tell stories like you did and not believe in magic. But what made you change your mind?”

Swiftly Lissa told Gail and Val about seeing the terrible Ghost on the battlements of the High Holt.

“And think on this,” Mark added, as his mind turned to the mysterious events at the Holt, and its equally mysterious past. “Jervis says their family name used to be one titch longer: it began wi’
Nobody’s
, back in grandfather days. They used to have a tricked-up coat of arms too, but somewhen all but the silver sword were blanked out.”

“Nobody’s son? Their shield blanked and stripped of charges? We must infer some great humiliation in the line, some terrible disgrace,” Valerian mused. “Even those accused of treason do not have their charges censured so.”

“Well, summat must have caused the Time of Troubles,” Mark said slowly. “Why did Duke Aron have to lay the ghosts and their horrible King? Were they always abroad, or did summat wake ‘em from their graves?”

“Clearly something happened, and it happened at the dreadful crimson Keep whose challenge you alone have met,” Val said excitedly. “It must be so. Duke Aron drove the darkness to the Ghostwood, this we know, and so the direful time was closed. Now, what did he do? By your tale we know ‘twas always the same day at the scarlet Keep. My guess is that Duke Aron cast a spell to trap the Red Keep in time, to never let it go past the day the spectres first arose. He spread his magic like a bandage on the wound through which the spirits bled; no consequences from that day could spring, trapped in a coil of eternity. Until…” He looked up at Mark, eyes widening.