The Stone of Farewell (99 page)

Lord save our souls. The holy lector murdered, and demons and spirits walking the night, even in the Hayholt itself.
She shuddered, thinking of the sight she had seen from the window of the servant's quarters one night not long ago. Lured to the window, not by any sound or sight, but rather by some undefinable feeling, she had silently left her sleeping charges and clambered up onto a stool, leaning on the window casement to look out on the Hedge Garden below. There, amid the shadowy shapes of the hedge-animals, had stood a circle of silent, black-robed figures. Almost breathless with terror, Rachel had rubbed at her old and treacherous eyes, but the figures were no dream or illusion. Even as she stared, one of the hooded shapes had turned to look up at her, its eyes black holes in a corpse-white face. She had run back and leaped into her hard bed, pulling the blanket up over her face to lie in sweaty, sleepless fear until dawn.

Before this year of derangement, Rachel had trusted her own judgment with the same iron faith she extended to her God, her king, and the sanctity of tidiness. After the comet came, and particularly since Simon's cruel death, that faith had been badly shaken. The two days following her midnight vision she wandered through the castle in a daze, mind only half on her chores, wondering if she had turned into the kind of daft old woman she had vowed to die before becoming.

But as she quickly discovered, if the Mistress of Chambermaids was mad, it was a contagious madness. Many others had also seen such pallid-faced specters. The diminished marketplace along Erchester's Main Row was full of whispered talk about the things that walked by night in both countryside and city. Some said that they were ghosts of Elias' victims, unable to sleep while their heads were spiked above the Nearulagh Gate. Others said that Pryrates and the king had struck a deal with the Devil himself, that these undead hell-wights had thrown down Naglimund on Elias' behalf and now waited upon his bidding for further unholy tasks.

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 chambermaid, 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 throughout 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.”

Pryates 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 scabbard of his massive double-hilted 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.