Nobody's Son (25 page)

“Until
I broke the spell
,” Mark whispered. “Like pulling out the keystone from a dam. That’s what Stargad meant when he said that without the dagger the heart must bleed.” He remembered how he had felt, sitting on the bank looking at the Red Keep with his boyhood stirring in his breast, the wash of miracles rushing by him into the world. “When the spell was broken, time started running again from in the Red Keep, and all the magic and all the ghosts bottled there so long started spilling out!” Mark stared at Gail. “Oh shite, your father was right! All this really was my fault!”

“We cannot say for sure,” Lissa said. “And even were it true, there was no way you could know.”

“I wonder if the Ghost King will return?” Valerian mused.

Mark looked desperately from one face to another. “Why? Why the bloody decree, that the King should grant one wish to the man who broke the Ghostwood’s curse, if that curse was all that kept the Time of Troubles back?”

Valerian winced. “My guess is, they forgot.”

“Forgot!”

“Duke Aron has been dead nigh on a thousand years,” Val murmured. “More than enough time for people to forget what exactly waited in the Wood. And in time no one believed in spectres any more. No one believed in ghosts, and the Wood was just a place of menace, and finally no more than an inconvenience.”

“Is bravery cowardice too? Is light dark? What else do I have wrong?” Sitting in the shadow of Borders’ crumbled northern wall, Mark felt the past rising like a flood within his breast.

You were a fly in spiderwebs at Court, boy, but this is worse, far worse. Court you can dodge: but the past is everywhere. “Nobody” has a son who has a son and so on for fifty generations, and even now every bloody thing Duke Richard does is framed by things a thousand years old he doesn’t know a thing about. His life touches yours, yours Gail’s, Gail’s Lissa’s and so it goes, everyone thinking they’re on solid ground, but really just floating on the river of the past.

Mark felt empty as an eggshell, as brittle; his hollow insides swirled with diamonds of moonlight and the scent of Gail’s hair, rotted red leather and the sound of a dead man teaching sword-play to his son.
Father and son now both dust. They might be sticking to your boots, or blown against this very rock you’re squatting on
.

Mark swore and jumped to his feet.

“The Ghostwood was a dark place: that was at the root of things.” Valerian’s voice was soft with wonder. “Duke Aron’s magic perished with him, and with it all enchantment else. Perhaps the end of magic was the price they paid to chain the ghosts within the Wood. One mighty spell, one terrible sacrifice: a dam, Duke Aron built, that trapped not just ghosts but all magic else behind it. When Aron died, and his line faltered, the secret of the Ghostwood faltered with it. It was a dark place, a blot upon the kingdom.

“If my memory serves, Jasper II it was who offered first a princely sum to any hero who could free the kingdom from the pall that crept o’er it from the west. This is twenty generations later, understand. Duke Aron’s line was long gone into dust, and its secrets lost. Jasper blamed the evils of his day upon the wood. An easy gesture. Probably he never thought to pay, for who could do what mighty Aron left undone?”

“What a stroke of genius!” Lissa said admiringly. “Thus did he the Crown absolve by making of the Wood a wellspring for all woes: a scapegoat that need never suffer persecution, yet would never go away. Add to this that many charismatic knights of proven worth—the sort of men who otherwise might challenge for the throne—would undertake the Ghostwood Quest instead. Very neat.”

“How do you know so much about these ancient proclamations?” Gail muttered. “Don’t tell me history is another one of your hobbies.”

“Er,—well, um, actually…” Val fumbled with his spectacles, and avoided answering. “Im—, er, imagine if you will what happened after Fletcher’s Bill returned from practice with his son. No doubt he asked around for Mark; but no man did he find who could claim such a name, and such a blade.” He pointed at Harvest’s rusted bones. “He thinks,
I must have seen a ghost
!” Valerian’s brown eyes looked far into the past. He was almost chanting now. “From time to time as his life passed, Fletcher’s Bill would draw a pint and tell a new acquaintance of his meeting on the wall. Did he think you walked unquiet without your blade in hand? Or did he fear he had been cozened, tripped up by the Devil into unholy bargain when he took the fancy weapon from its hellish master? Perhaps as he lay dying he bade his son to lay the blade beneath the wall where you had met, in hopes to end his bargain with his life.”

“Stop it. You’re scaring me,” Gail said sharply.

“You are right to be afraid. I am. I wonder at the scar that pains your husband’s hand; I wonder at his cold black knife. That iron dagger at his hip was buried in this kingdom’s heart; and when he drew it forth, blood gushed from the wound.”

“What blood?” Gail demanded. “What gushes from the Red Keep?”

Valerian shrugged. “Poetry.”

“Magic,” Lissa added.

But Mark said, “The past.”

He drew in a long breath. A dark tide was running into him, a strange flood of old griefs and ancient sorrows. He felt it each time his right palm ached.
That wound’s a chink through which the draughty past comes creeping in
.

And yet…

And yet the sun was shining overhead, the sky was blue, the summer day was warm and full of life. The air rang with shouts and orders, the chink of hammers, horses whiffling as they cropped the grass; farther off, the river’s hiss and chatter. Larks sang amongst the chestnut trees. On a stone nearby a grey thrush hopped, glancing at them warily, hunting for beetles.

Mark looked at his friends: Valerian enchanted by the strangeness of things, Lissa inscrutable, Gail frowning and determined and a little scared. “You know,” he sighed at last, “for the life of me I just can’t seem to hang on to my damn swords.”

Lissa laughed. “Good thing they took dead Stargad’s weapon from you! The King would not be pleased, to see Sweetness gone so sour,” she said, pointing at the heap of rust that had once been Harvest.

“Father won’t be happy as it is,” Gail said glumly. “And that was your wedding present too.”

“When I was a lad,” Mark said dreamily, “I wanted to be a famous hero and have a sword with a name. For a long time it was to be a great two-handed blade named
Head-Slicer
.”

Gail and Lissa burst out laughing. “Head-slicer?”

“I was young. When I got older, I changed the name to
Decapitator;
it sounded more grown up.”

“Oh, infinitely more adult,” Val said.

“Then I went through a noble period. Longswords, mostly: a knight rode through town wearing one that moved me greatly.
Justice
was a favourite, and
Defender
.” Mark was smiling now, looking back over so many years. These were his secret boy’s thoughts; and silly as they seemed, they had flowered into the man he was today.

“
Thief, Sweetness, Harvest
,” Valerian mused. “It seems to be the kiss of death when you name your swords, Mark. What will you call the next one? May I suggest
The Sword That Has No Name
?”

“How about ‘
Spear’
?” Lissa suggested. “A cunning name to baffle your misfortune.”

“‘
Overcoat’
!” Gail cried. “The garment that keeps off death!” She toppled off her stone seat, whooping, and even Lissa cackled with glee. Mark wiped tears of laughter from his cheeks. “Mebbe I’d better do wi’ nowt for awhile. Giving me a sword’s a waste of good steel.”

Master Orrin came hurrying around the side of the building. “Ah. Enjoying yourselves, are you,” he said, pursing his lips. “I’m glad you can take this morning’s events so lightly. Pray, do me the honour of coming around to the Main Gate. I think I can give you yet more cause for hilarity.”

There was something in his pinched face that stilled the laughter on their lips.

“I sent one of your Vagabonds to clean the arch,” Orrin explained when they had assembled, along with the rest of the men, in front of the main gate. Master Orrin pointed up to the centre stone at the top of the archway. “And that’s what he found.”

The old arch had been cleared of ivy, and the moss scraped from its stones. There, clearly carved to hang above the gate, a symbol now appeared: a large, coiling serpent, with its tail in its mouth, and dark sockets where once garnets might have flashed for eyes. It was the same design as on Husk’s wooden charm, the same as on the amulet Queen Lerelil had given Mark; only here it was graven into stone.

Valerian whistled. “Steady now. The answer to this mystery is not hard to find: Queen Lerelil must have come from Borders, and come into the Red Keep’s clan by marriage.”

“But her husband wasn’t at the Red Keep,” Mark objected. “Leastwise, she never mentioned him. I’d swear her son was cock-o’-the-walk there.” Mark spat and sighed. There was so much he didn’t know: the past was lurking under everything he touched these days, like bass in a deep pool. From time to time he caught a glimpse of tail, a flash of fin: Lerelil’s bracelet or Duke Richard’s family name.

Ancient signs that made the present shiver as they darted to snap the surface, and then were gone.

Only you’re the fly
, he thought glumly.
Buzzing ower that water wi’ nowt to keep you from the jaws of the past
.

It was a bad day. The past hung heavy on Mark’s back. Gail grew troubled and irritable, worried that she might have gotten pregnant when they made love. They fought before going to bed.

That night Mark dreamt a terrible dream. In it, he woke in his own bed in the finished Borders. It was night, and dark; the taper on the wall had burned down to the nub.

A shadow fell over his soul.

something

Like black water running into a foundering ship, dread filled his feet, his legs, his groin. It rose into his chest; touched his heart; and he was lost. It struck down his soul and everything alive in him could only lay face down, grovelling, and wait for the coming horror.

in the house.

A
long time later he breathed. Dread had crushed his heart to a hard cold thing, a pebble rattling in his ribs. Slowly he got out of bed. He reached for his sword and walked around the room to reassure himself.

something

He saw nothing, heard nothing: but still the dread grew, heavier and heavier, rising up from the floor, pressing down from the darkness overhead.

something in the house.

The words whispered in his heart.

Something that should be
outside
, that should never be allowed in. Something dark and evil had crept into his walls, his home, his heart.

Evil. He’d never known what the word meant before now.

Evil. Like a wild animal, evil had come, drawn by the light of his fire.

Evil was in the house. He couldn’t keep it out. He couldn’t resist it. If it came on him, on his wife and friends and family, he would lie coward in the dirt and pray it did not see him. Shielder’s Mark, the great hero, soldier, Duke, would fall on the floor and weep and cower. He would sell them all rather than see its face. They would cry to him for help and he would fail.

Val
, he thought suddenly.
Val will know what to do
.

He belted a robe around his waist and hurried down to Valerian’s room.
You despised him, didn’t you? You thought him a dreamer, a tinkerer, a clever clown who’d never amount to much. Nowt compared to a soldier hero Duke. Kept him around because he made you feel superior, didn’t you
?

Bloody idiot. This, this is the real test. Who stands and who falls, when the horror comes.

Val will know.

Valerian looked up from a black book with gold lettering. Mark gasped out his terror, begging for help.

Valerian nodded, and took his hand; Mark drew strength from his friend’s profound strength. Val’s gray eyes were grave and deep and wise as centuries behind his spectacles. Owlwise, firm as mountains, he held Mark’s trembling hands and said, “These things must you do…”

Mark woke up. Dread still clung to him.

Shite.

What a nightmare. The worst of his life, though it had no monster, no scene of madness: a dream of pure emotion, a dread that stabbed like spears. The echo of it, lingering in his heart, still froze his breath in his chest. His right hand was ice.

Panic gripped him. He turned over quickly and stared at Gail, sure she was dead.

Life flooded back into him as she breathed. Her eyelids fluttered open and she looked at him, staring at her. They closed again, and she was asleep.

…
So
.

It wasn’t Gail.

It was their first night inside his Keep; a thick curtain closed off this end of the Great Hall from the main area where his people slept. Still shaking with fear Mark rolled slowly out of bed and pulled on his pants and shirt.
No sword, damn it
! He drew out the iron dagger instead, though it felt like frost in his hand.

Twitching aside the curtain he stepped into the great hall. Two rushlights burned on each of the long stone walls. A double line of pallets stretched beneath them. Slowly Mark walked down the corridor of sleeping men. His friends. His people.

They’ve put their faith in you: but you’re a cracked pot and you can’t hold it.

Row on row of sleeping faces, slack jaws, nerveless fingers.
A half-step from death, every one. How fragile they are. A child of two could draw the black dagger across each throat. Some will drown, or die of drink, or fever like Ma. Some will go mad with age, like George’s dad, t’awd Smith: railing at the darkness in every heart until his own gave way
.

You’re soft, Shielder’s Mark. Once you were hard as steel and leather tough, headed for your Greatness. But summat at the Red Keep cracked your heart and let a wet draught in, swirling and swirling. Summat rusted out your iron soul: there’s nowt in you but emptiness now, and darkness, and wind.