"You are called Durand?" a voice said.
This was not a place to be surprised. Streaming, Durand lowered the bucket.
A dozen paces across the green stood the Stream Maid, her skin pale in the moonlight. She seemed small, her face white under a green veil. A breeze tugged at the cloak around her shoulders. He could not look away.
"I
...
I ought to have fore
seen." She looked down, and Du
rand felt as though a light had been tipped away from his eyes. "I am afraid I did not anticipate—" ,
Abruptly, Durand re
alized: this was not his Stream
Maid.
"I'm so sorry," she said. The Lady of the Bower.
Durand could not look away. He could not answer. His stare. The stiff mask of his face. Could she see condemnation there? These things registered on his mind, dropping into the balance one by one.
"No," he said.
"I saw something in you," she murmured. "I did not think it was this. I didn't mean
..."
She was beautiful and very sad. He raised his hand. Her cheek cool as snow against his palm, though his fingers found heat where they slipped into her hair. She seemed very young and very delicate. He could feel the calluses of his fingers catch.
She stepped closer, seeking comfort. Her eyes looked straight up into his. "Durand?" She set her hands on his shoulders, and they kissed, sinking down together by the broken ground.
He could feel the stubble of his chin rasp at her throat. Her hands darted over him as soft as pigeons' wings. He couldn't breathe fast enough. He could feel the ghosts of charging knights even as her gasps swirled in his nostrils, in his mouth. It was like the black water of the well once again, pouring over him. The ghosts of horses pounded the earth on every side. He couldn't see. He couldn't think. He could not be close enough.
By feel, he caught at her skirts, pulling them up, baring her white legs without ever lifting his mouth. Her hands were at his waist, pulling at his surcoat and tunic. He felt her cold fingers fumbling against his stomach, at the cord of his breeches. He wanted more of her. On his knees, he slipped his hands under her chemise, sliding them up her sides. In a moment, she was naked against the ground. He kissed her. He nuzzled her chest. She strained her neck to kiss him. He balanced himself over her and brought his weight down. Her heels touched his calves. Her thighs brushed his sides.
When he finally rolled off, exhausted, into the clammy grip of the grass, she moved with him, caught in his arms. He stared over her shoulder into the sky. Her fingers played in his black curls.
But, gradually, the motion of her fingers slowed and stopped.
"Oh"
Her voice was a warmth at his neck. He felt her stiffen suddenly, like an animal.
"Queen of Heaven, only now does it return," she said. She sat up. Her face was half-lost in shadows.
"Return?"
"All these years. So many men, just for this moment. I see them now. I see them all." "I don't—"
'They fought here." She turned at the waist, unconsciously covering her chest with her arms. "My husband. Poor Saewin. Echoes. I think it was something I wanted. I might have stopped it. But now it goes on. I am an echo come to life."
She seemed to see Durand once more.
"You are not very like Saewin. Not really. There was cruelty in him. And Cerlac! The poor boy. He was so little like Eorcan. He did not deserve—"
She caught Durand's twitch. He thought of Cerlac, and of prophecies under the blackthorn.
"Every year it comes again, just like the first." Where there had been moonlight, now there were ashes.
"All this time." She looked out over the battleground. "It wasn't for sere fields and rotten flowers that our Spring Maid grieved, Durand. There were two men, and they were the best of friends.
"And as night closed round Creation, they met on the dying field: Bruna and Ilsander. She had teased them too far. Their war bands brawled for them from dawn to dusk among the gray stalks. And, as the Eye of Heaven sank in blood, Bruna slew his friend."
Bruna of the Broad Shoulders.
He heard the rotten gurgle deep in his memory: the voices of the blackthorn men, the adder girl. Bruna and Ilsander. The fingers of the blackthorn men had felt the blood of Bruna under Durand's own skin. They had named one of their own number Ilsander. This was what Heremund had spoken of.
'That was the cry they speak of when they tell the Maid's tale." She was huddled over him now.
"Who are you?" he asked, unable to think of an answer that he might endure.
"My duke was another Ilsander," she said. "I was so young. If I had told Saewin it was hopeless, they could have ridden off without a quarrel. Now, what has become of us? Poor Eorcan. I have damned us all with smiles."
She gazed at him, and he could see that just sitting close, he cut her raw. His every twitch of guilt and discomfort was broken glass. He could not believe that this child was the woman who had torn a land from Creation.
She reached out to touch the bruise on his chest.
"But I am not the one who suffers," she whispered. "The debt is mine, but I live on. I see now that I have lingered long in this otherworld place. There have been many Eorcans. Many Saewins. And there will come another and another until the end of days."
Durand opened his mouth. "It isn't right. We must fight." He would be more than some echo of the First Dawning. "One sin shouldn't echo forever. There must be some way to break this chain."
Her eyelids fluttered.
"I cannot think. My shame has bloodied your hands, but— but Durand, you live for me to grant you a boon." Durand tried to protest. "I am not powerless, even when the dreams descend upon me. Only Lost."
She found the green veil she had worn when first she arrived.
'Take this token, Durand. Take it with you from Hesperand. You have taken a life for me. In return, I shall grant you the life you wish. I will come for it when you call."
' She pressed the wisp into his fist. Her eyes dimmed, becoming vague, as though her one act of defiance was all the curse would allow her. "The dream descends." Like a child, she curled against the torn green.
Durand blinked. "You cannot stay here," he said, thinking of the cold.
She shivered. "But I shall," she said.
"I will not leave you," he said.
"But you shall," she said.
He would do one thing. Putting conversation aside, Durand gathered the woman from the grass and crossed the broad green to the walls of the castle. Pale knights filed down to meet him, and the air smelled of beeswax. Scores gathered round him, candle-pale and awful in their breathless silence. Without surprise, Durand understood that the strange knights were dead men. He saw empty wounds. They took the Lady from his arms as gently as priests, and he knew she would be safe.
And as he turned, his eyes fell on one pale knight. Ashen though he was, in the gray curves of his face, Durand saw the image of Cerlac.
The lead-dark gleam of his eyes was in Durand's mind until he returned to the camp and sleep claimed him; the Green Lady's token was in his fist.
16. Terns above th
e Glass
H
e awoke the next morning in his low tent, a light in his face.
It was not yet dawn.
Durand twisted among his blankets, groping for a blade. Then he saw Coensar's face and a lantern.
"First Twilight," the captain said. "I've waited long enough for life to hand me what I want. Now, I will act. Get up and pack your gear. I am not a young man any longer."
"I cannot go without—"
"Quick and quiet!"
Durand crawled out. Vaguely he saw that one of Guthred's boys was already tearing the tent off his back.
As he blinked into the predawn glow, he wondered where he was. Impossibilities crowded round. A thousand tons of dressed limestone had been snatched away like a page from a book. There was no castle, but there were leaves. Where the shining castle had stood, hulked a mountain of jumbled stones choked with black leaves.
Durand rolled, thick bushes catching at his tunic. He fetched up against a tree trunk. The knights' encampment was alone now, their tents stretched and tangled over a nest of bracken. Wild forest overhung the dripping place on every side.
Coensar, already moving off, said, "It was this way last time."
They were moving. Durand fell in step with the others as, dazed and silent, every man in the conroi stumbled off through the bracken and back into the gray-columned track. He could feel the castle ruin looming like some ogre in the dark. He thought of the woman inside. Though he knew this was Hesperand, he had not understood what that might mean.
Now, the woman he had touched—the woman whose wild-flower scent still lingered on his hands—was less than dust. He thought of the pale knights and the feast of the long tables. It was all gone.
All but the veil that tangled his fingers.
Soon, the River Glass churned in the mist. Lamoric's men stood as a band of shadows at the high arching bridge, now mossy green and bone gray. Though it seemed an age must have passed since they last stood by the span, every man of Lamoric's conroi had survived. Badan the toothless wolf was riding now. Berchard scratched himself even as he stared into the trees. Stepping onto the planks of the bridge, Durand looked into the swift water only to see fish waving like dark banners in the current behind each pier. They fought the cold flow that threatened to carry them off to the foggy Winter Sea.
Coensar stalked past Durand on the bridge and rounded on the men.
"We are safe enough," he began. "It may be Hesperand, but this is just as it happened seven winters past."
"Aye, well it's bloody strange," said Berchard.
Coensar nodded. "It is. But we're not likely to change it, so we might as well come to the business at hand." The captain cocked his head. "I've pulled you all from your blankets on a night you'd rather sleep than do most things. Yes?"
There was an equivocal grumble from among the men. Waking early was the least of their concerns. The river pounded under his feet. Droplets glistened in beards and cloaks.
"And I'd better have a bloody good reason for it, yes? Well, that you may judge for yourselves. I want old Cassonel," said Coensar. "All of you know that." Men nodded. "Well, I don't mean to wait another day, if I can help it." He drew Keening, the ancient blade sobbing once in the fog. "Cassonel barred a doorway. I will keep a bridge from him."
The conroi was still. To Durand, it seemed that this kind of thing belonged to the other world: the world of fey castles and green ladies that had left them in the night for this ordinary world of damp bracken and sore bones. Men would speak of this at noble hearths in all the Atthias. Coensar would block the bridge and fight above the Glass.
"We will hold Cassonel at the bridge," said Coensar. His eyes flashed like lanterns. He leaned forward. "We will hold Cassonel at this bridge, and we will do his old ballad one better!"
Big Ouen nodded to Berchard, and, even as their fierce grins spread through the conroi, Heremund spoke.
"Oh Gods."
He stood almost at Durand's elbow, and was looking out through a cage of his fingers.
"What?" the captain demanded.
Heremund said nothing. Coensar stepped down from the bridge, Keening still in his fist. "What is the matter?"
The skald stepped from the others, his dark eyes moving. He clawed the cap from his head.
"Sir Coensar, I take no joy in saying it, but I think the Glass is bridged in two places."
"There's only
one
road," pressed the captain.
"I came round on the forest side. Not the main track, but some of them others might know. I came by a bridge at a town. They were calling it Sengreen. It can't be far."
Coensar looked into the mist, staring up the river. "A man is a fool to fight his doom."
Lamoric reached out "It is a bad end to a good idea."
'The storm was fierce out here," Heremund offered. "Perhaps it has fallen."
"This
bridge has not fallen," replied Coensar.
The stiffened lines of the captain's face threw Durand back to his own stupid heroism in the melee, and the lance that put Cassonel out of the captain's reach.
"Is it stone?" Durand breathed.