The Widow and the King Read online

  For Peter

  Contents

  PART I: WASTELANDS

  I The Moonlit Throne

  II The Enemy

  III The Man Who Shaved

  IV The Fight at the Falls

  V The Knight of the Wastelands

  VI The Wolf and the Wall

  VII Crossing

  VIII The Widow

  PART II: WISDOM

  IX The Company of the Moon

  X The House of Wisdom

  XI Cellar and Stair

  XII Loss

  XIII Winter Progress

  XIV The Light at Ferroux

  XV Shadows in Develin

  XVI The Secrets of Develin

  XVII The Rider in the Gate

  XVIII Sunset

  PART III: WAR

  XIX The Cup of the World

  XX The March of Tarceny

  XXI Blood and Black Water

  XXII Night on the Knoll

  XXIII The Harvest of Pearls

  XXIV Chawlin

  XXV The Voice of Heaven

  XXVI Torch and Tackle

  XXVII Stone and Steel

  XXVIII Judgement

  XXIX Prince Under the Sky

  PART I

  WASTELANDS

  I

  The Moonlit Throne

  man came among the mountains, hunting his son with a sword.

  In the late afternoon he led his horse along one side of a great, empty valley. On his right hand the slope – all grey rock and patches of low thorns – rose steeply to a high crest. To his left it dropped eerily away, hundreds of feet to the valley bottom, where a stream ran with the opaque blues of glacier water. The path he followed was narrow, threading upwards along the hillside towards a distant ridgeline. A light wake of pebbles trickled down and away behind him, kicked from their places by the hooves of his horse or by his own armoured heels.

  He was a short man, but strong. Within the iron frame of his helmet his face was deeply lined. His surplice was a faded blue and white. Under it, and through the long rents in it, peeped a coat of mail that was brown from weeks on the road. His back ran with the sweat of his climb.

  Now and again he spoke to the horse that followed him.

  ‘Hah-sa, Stefan.’

  ‘Come Stefan, come.’

  The horse was a great, grey animal, bred for carrying a knight across the plains of their home: not for these narrow places where nothing was level. It peered unhappily at the ground and picked its way with care, as it had done all day and for many days before this. On its back it bore the knight's high saddle, his bags and gear and weaponry. A spear clunked remorselessly in a long holster, flicking its tiny point of iron against the sky.

  The sun was setting when they reached the ridgeline. Shadows welled in the valleys, and in the yellowing light of evening the hill-crests were like islands in a rising sea. Far ahead a high, round-shouldered peak rose to ice-fields that glowed in the last sun. A few carrion birds turned in the air, almost level with the man's eyes. Before him the ridge ran on, bare and rocky, dipping to a sudden end in—

  – In a clump of tiled roofs and walls of dressed stone!

  The walls were the same brown-grey colour as the rock on which they were built. That was why he had not seen it at once. That, and because it was the last thing he would ever have expected in this place. The path, running now along the very ridgeback, led down from his feet to a gate between two squat towers. There it ended.

  A house – of all things, a fortified house! Here, after days of journey into the mountains?

  The back of the knight's gauntlet scraped upon his metalled brow. Without thinking, he had put his hand up to rub his eyes. But this was not a dream. His feet were on stone ground. The evening air was chilly in his lungs.

  There was no light showing in the building. There was no smoke from any chimney, no movement or clink or call among its stones. The walls were old – even in this light, he could see that.

  The very smallness of the towers seemed sinister.

  A house – here?

  The mountains were desolate places. Very few people came into them. In the days since entering them he had seen nobody; not even one of the poor, savage hill folk who lived here. Last night he had lain in an abandoned hill village. There had barely been enough room in those mean huts for him to stand upright.

  The hillmen did not build places like this. Nevertheless, it was a house.

  Men might be there now. And if men were there, they might know, or have seen, or be sheltering the one man he was looking for. Raymonde, his son, at last.

  Yesterday he had found the remains of the horse. It had been dead perhaps a week, but still he had known it from his own stables. Raymonde had always been careless with animals.

  Damn him!

  A fugitive might travel far in a week, even on foot. But the dead horse had been the knight's first real finding in days. After searching and guessing for so long, a sign as firm as that one made him feel he must be close. There had only been one path from the deserted village that had looked as though it might go anywhere. It had brought him here. Now it wound down to the silent gate and stopped. There might be other paths, looping and curling out from the buildings across the hillsides, but none could go far. The ridge dropped steeply on three sides. There was no road off it that he could see but back the way he had come.

  So, if Raymonde had followed this path at all, he might be here still. After all these weeks, he might be only a short walk away.

  The knight drew a long breath. His throat was tight and his palms tingling.

  Now?

  But remember what he's done, he said to himself. Remember, remember; all the sick, familiar litany that brought the rage trembling back into his limbs again.

  Remember Varens, your child, his own brother – dead in your keep. Pale and dead and bloody; his eye dull and white fingers clutching at nothing!

  Remember – Raymonde did that. Did it behind your back! The sneaking, snivelling, graceless, treacherous …

  Remember Varens – laughing in the house, leading at the hunt, brave under punishment. Varens – dead.

  Raymonde! You … Murder – theft – witchcraft! In my house!

  Did you think I would never come for you?

  Reaching up on tiptoe he drew his sword from where it hung by the saddle. It was a short weapon, but familiar to him, and the single oak leaf cut and painted on its pommel was the badge of a woman he had once loved. It settled into his palm and was ready there. He peered down through his armoured eye-holes at the gate that he had found.

  Still nothing moved among the buildings. For a moment more he hesitated. But it was no use asking himself if he was ready.

  Remember! ‘Let's get it finished, then,’ he said aloud.

  He led the horse slowly forward. The clank and scrape of their movements sounded in the air. Anyone inside would hear him coming. There was no help for that – except the iron in his hand and the mail upon his body.

  The gates were wood: rugged and old. One door was ajar. Sword in hand, point down, he stepped through.

  No one lurked behind it. He jerked the other leaf open and grunted to his horse, which followed him big-shouldered into the gate-tunnel and out into the space beyond.

  No one.

  The knight stood in a small, paved courtyard scattered with dry goat-droppings. To his left the yard was bounded by a low wall, giving a clear view across the valley to the hills on the far side. On the other three sides were buildings with blank windows and doors shut fast. Between two of the buildings opposite was another arch, half-blocked by a goat-hurdle that had been pushed roughly to one side. He stole through.

  Here was another court, surrounded on three sides by
pillared walkways. And here again there was a low wall to the left, with a view of the darkening mountains across the valley. Shadows gathered in the colonnades. There were more doorways, but they were open. The rooms within were wells of darkness. There was a horrible stillness in this place.

  Nothing for it …

  He stole up to one of the doorways. If there was anyone within they would hear the scrape of his heels upon the stones.

  Wait. Listen.

  His heart was beating hard. Now, in seconds, surely …

  ‘Let's get it finished,’ he muttered again.

  At once he moved, ducking through the opening with both hands on the hilt of his sword, and stepped immediately to his left to set his back against the wall. His thigh banged against something which rocked and gave. There was a huge clatter – things falling, things breaking in the darkness around him. He swore.

  He crouched, with his heart still pounding, and groped. Nothing stirred. The room was empty. His fingers found the leg of the trestle table he had up-ended. In the doorway was a pottery bowl, broken. The remains of some liquid had spilled from it. He sniffed, and smelled the decay of food. No one had been eating that for days.

  And Raymonde?

  Carefully, deliberately, he checked the other rooms around the court. He found sleeping pallets, lamps, a child's writing slate, a crude cup-and-ball toy and the remains of a fire with ashes that were loose but cold. A small number of people had lived here – perhaps no more than two. They had lived not like the hill people, but in the manner of the Kingdom, down in the plains from which he had come. Then they had left.

  Abandoned houses – or wrecked or burned or looted – were nothing new to the knight. There were so many now, in the fields of the Kingdom. But this house, and the hill village he had found across the valley, had been deserted only a few days ago. And a few days ago, Raymonde had been near this place.

  Did that mean anything? There was no knowing. But if Raymonde had come here, he was gone again.

  The knight cursed, wearily. He wrenched the great helmet from his head, and his pale, greying hair tumbled to his neck. He looked around him.

  In the middle of the courtyard, facing away to the low wall and the mountains across the valley, was a throne. It stood on a platform of blocks. A flight of steps ran up to it from the far side. Faded carvings writhed upon its high back, obscure in the growing dusk. The thing was as large as the throne of the King in his city of Tuscolo, away in the heart of the Kingdom. But what king had ever sat here, high in the mountains, with not even a roof above his head?

  The knight paced around it, half imagining that a man, maybe Raymonde himself, might even now be seated upon it, staring out at the peaks that were blackening with the night. But it was empty. There was space before it for a crowd to gather, to hear the words of their lord. Yet that, too, was empty, like all the house.

  Darkness was gathering. The knight turned away. Now that he was sure the house was abandoned, the tension of his search was leaving him. After his surge of anger, the same heavy, empty weariness was stealing on him again, as it did time after time. He was exhausted, and lost. He had no idea where he would head tomorrow.

  Near the throne was a fountain, with a wide bowl about waist height and a spout from which rose a thin stream of water. It must have been fed by some pipe from the higher ground much further along the ridge. He took his horse, patted it and led it to the fountain to drink. He removed its saddle, its harness and his gear. Then he took a lamp that he had found in one of the rooms and lit it with flint and tinder from his saddle bags.

  In the silence he began to hum to himself. He was not a singing man, but noise was what he needed now.

  In the outer courtyard he checked each of the storerooms, finding a little grain, root vegetables, dried fish, dried meats, and firewood cut from the scrub of the hillside. He went on to the gate, which he heaved shut and wedged with small stones. His breath came in gasps that echoed in the gate-tunnel.

  When he had finished he raised his lantern and peered at the walls. Above the inner arch something was carved upon the keystone – a coiling serpent that snaked around and around a disc. The disc itself was blank, except for a break upon its left-hand side where a gash had been cut by some chisel.

  The man grunted. He knew it.

  ‘The Doubting Moon. Is that it, now?’

  It was a sign to him, as sure as the dead horse had been.

  ‘Tarceny!’ he snarled.

  It was the badge of an enemy ten years dead. And it meant witchcraft.

  It meant the small, heavy book they had given him, with the moon upon the cover, the night the Count of Tarceny had died under the claws of his own demons.

  Take the book into the south, the King had said. Keep it in your home, and let none approach it without my permission.

  Poison of Tarceny! He could not read the thoughts his hell-beguiled enemy had written within it – nor would he have ever wanted to. He had locked it in a chest in a high chamber, and had locked the chamber door. He had spoken of it to no one but his own sons. And so down the years he had kept faith with his monstrous charge – until the day when he was abroad and Raymonde had come creeping along the corridors with the iron keys of chamber and chest in his hand …

  Had taken the book and …

  … cut – Varens – down … … when the boy had stood in his way.

  And the knight knew his honour was blasted. Men would damn him for what had happened in his house. And they would damn him again for what he must do to avenge it.

  ‘Tarceny!’ he cursed again, and felt his limbs ache with weariness.

  And here was Tarceny's sign, cut into the gate of a house at the end of the world. That was not chance. Raymonde had been coming here. Something he had read in the book would have brought him. And what?

  Again, there was no knowing.

  Night had come. Around him the mountain-shapes rose like a huge, still sea. Treading in his bubble of light he made his way to where his horse stood. Company was company, even when it was four-footed and dumb. He found its nosebag and filled it with grain from the storehouse. Then he rooted in a sleeping room for more blankets, and lay down by the low wall with his head pillowed by his saddle and bags. He did not want to sleep indoors, here. If something came to the gate he had fastened, he wanted to hear it. If something disturbed his horse, he wanted to see. He was uneasy. It was better to be aware.

  At last, with an effort of will, he blew out his light. He sniffed at the smell of the wick, and wondered how even such a thing as ordinary lamp-oil had found its way to this place.

  Above him the stars stood clear in the mountain sky. Somewhere the real moon, nearing its full, must already be rising. An hour or so would see it lift above the ridges to cover the world in dark silver.

  ‘Aun.’ It was a voice of a woman, calling softly. 'Aun.’

  With a long, breathless struggle, like rising through dark water, he woke. Fragments of a dream still flitted in his mind: Varens, living, laughing; the hall at home; the book safe in his hand. But he was no longer dreaming. He was awake, in the courtyard of a ruined house, almost a week's march beyond the nearest living hearth.

  And he knew, with the empty jolt of his heart, that Varens was dead.

  In his dreams, the knight thought, he might go home; but in the waking world, maybe never.

  He cursed and struggled to a sitting position. The moon was up, paling the stars and pouring silver light over the courtyard. The air was chilly and his breath hung like a frosted cloud before him. It was almost never cold enough for that, down in the plains.

  He was sick with half-sleep.

  ‘Aun.’

  It was a woman's voice, from somewhere close. He looked around. There was a figure, wrapped in a cloak, sitting on the lower steps of the throne. It took him a moment to realize that she had used his given name, as an old friend might. He had not heard it spoken for so long.

  The moon was on her face. He knew her at once, bu
t did not believe it.

  ‘Am I still dreaming?’

  She seemed to smile. ‘No, you are awake.’

  He had not seen her for ten years. It was hard to tell if she had aged at all, in this light. A very little, he thought.

  ‘What are you … ?’

  ‘Hush!’ Her finger was on her lips. ‘Come away,’ she said, softly but urgently. ‘Come away.’

  Enemies? Close? As softly as his swimming head allowed, he rose and made his way to sit beside her on the throne-step.

  ‘Speak low,’ she said. ‘And don't show yourself at the wall.’

  ‘What is it?’ he murmured.

  ‘What you would call witchcraft.’

  ‘Tarceny?’ he asked sharply.

  She put a finger to her lips. He held his breath to listen.

  Silence.

  Then a scraping noise from below the walls, like stone drawn across stone.

  That wasn't a man down there, he thought. No man moved like that. It might have been a beast. But – he could not imagine what sort of beast it could be.

  The noises faded into stillness.

  ‘They are around the house,’ the woman said. ‘They know you are here.’

  ‘Will they come in?’

  She shook her head. ‘Maybe not. I think their orders are to watch, only. But if they see us, it may madden them.’

  He held his breath again, but now he could hear nothing.

  Witchcraft. Raymonde had been coming here, with that book in his hands. What had he done?

  And – and why was she here – she of all people, who had disappeared from the world ten years ago?

  He bit his lip, and wondered if he was still dreaming. No, it truly was her: Phaedra, the bride of Tarceny, after all this time. Her skin, which he remembered as olive-coloured, seemed very pale under the moon. Her long dark hair was hidden within a hood, but the arch of her brow was clear upon her face: clear, and soft as a cold kiss.

  She was still listening – listening for something moving beyond the wall. No sounds came. At last she sat back with a slight sigh, and the cloud of her breath silvered in the moonlight.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. His voice was hoarse.