When he looked again on Agryn, the austere warrior's eyes were fixed on the valley wall.
"The Eye of Heaven has left us," he said. "Night has fallen."
On the riverbank, he sank to his knees. Durand left the man to pray. The Glass filled with stars.
He would not wait forever. He would find Deorwen and leam what was in her mind. If it must be done in secret, he would allow her that.
Among the camp's canvas alleys, he passed grooms currying horses. Some tents were dark, but when he came upon Bertana's, it smoldered like a banked fire. He read the shadows thrown against its red skin, picking out Coelgrim's shape and the softer form of Bertana. He saw the shadows stop, as if they had heard him. There was no sign of Deorwen.
Reasoning that the grooms were nearby enough to have seen where she had gone, he walked into the warm fetor of the tethered horses.
"Have you seen a girl?" he asked.
The nearest boy looked at him across a mare's back, his face like an apple. He held a rough blanket.
"Here," Durand said, hauling the blanket over the mare's back. "Have you seen a girl? From the Lady's tent."
"The red hair?" the boy asked.
Durand stared into the boy's face. "Aye."
r
rhe
boy nodded quick and stuck a finger across the camp toward a tall pavilion glowing like a horn lantern among the dark peaks of its neighbors. "That one," he said.
Durand looked at the pale glow and took a deep breath. 'Thank you," he said, then, with a nod to the boy, he walked toward the illuminated pavilion.
He would set it straight. She might be afraid for her honor. Women were. There was always a woman or two among the camp followers who would whore for pennies, and here he had come tramping out of the woods with her alone and she was no whore. A woman might take pains to make it clear.
The dark tents at the heart of the camp made his going hard, and he was sure there was more rope in a camp like this than in all the ships at Acconel quay. He skirted a quagmire where some fool had penned his mounts among the tent stakes.
The lit tent swung nearer. For once, he would not charge in roaring like a fool. He would keep his temper.
Finally, he reached the rear of the glowing pavilion. A murmured conversation was taking place beyond the canvas.
Berchard and big Ouen turned as he stepped out. Both had their eyes wide, more curious than surprised.
"Durand?" Berchard asked.
Durand could only stare. This was the tent. It was the only lit tent. There was movement inside.
"You all right?" asked Berchard. "That Waer's inside now. Fit, by all accounts."
Durand could not nod and pretend with Berchard. He could only stare. The boy might have pointed to any of a dozen tents, but he had not. Here Berchard stood on guard.
Durand's hand went for the tent flap.
"Boy," Berchard said, raising his eyebrows. "They say he's with his wife."
With a twist that surprised the one-eyed knight, Durand slipped past and shoved himself into the pavilion of his liege lord.
Lamoric perched on an oak chest, a surprised look on his face.
Deorwen sat in the young lord's cross-framed chair, her face frozen. Lamoric seemed ready to forgive a necessary intrusion, and they had been doing nothing more than talking. But Durand could no more breathe than fly.
"Durand?" Lamoric said.
Durand managed to take his eyes from Deorwen.
"Well," said Lamoric gamely. "This is a happy chance. You have met my wife? She has told me of your courage in Hesperand."
Durand stood in the doorway. Lamoric knew nothing.
"Since our wedding day, we have been made to creep like adulterers," Lamoric said. "Now, in her father's domain, it is madness."
Deorwen—Lady Deorwen, daughter of Duke Severin of Mornaway—forced her eyes to her husband's.
"It was at our wedding that all this Red Knight business began," Lamoric explained. "My father's fault. My friends had insisted on celebrating on the eve of the great day. There was a great deal of drinking. There were women there, from an alehouse in the town. And though it was not my father whom I wronged—" He bowed to Deorwen. "—he was greatly angered."
Lamoric looked to Durand.
"I thought I would prove him wrong."
"Yes, Lordship," Durand managed. His finger fell on the knotted veil at his belt. The Lady of Hesperand would grant him a life.
"But there's little mystery to the Knight in Red with Lord Lamoric's wife at his side. Guthred's bad enough. Still, my lady has followed again—and through Lost Hesperand."
Durand understood that they had been arguing. Lamoric would have left her behind if she had let him.
When Lamoric looked away, Deorwen's eyes met Durand's, strained and edging on frantic. She thought he might say something: rail against her, or confess. Durand forced himself to croak a few words.
"Wanted to wish you good fortune, Lordship," he said. "For the morning."
"Ah, well, I—"
Durand could wait no longer; he ducked from the tent.
He left Berchard and big Ouen with their mouths open, reeling away to find his own tent—another thing stolen from Cerlac's belongings—and stumbled among his few possessions until he had cleared a space where he could lie down.
She should have told him. Even if she could not tell him whose wife she was, knowing she was married might have been enough. His hand brushed the green veil knotted in his belt. He remembered Saewin and the Lost duke. He had stumbled into the same sin.
In all the time of their slow falling, she should have said something.
Perhaps an hour later, there was a voice at his tent flap, whispering
"Durand."
It could have been the girl, but he did not answer, and she did not come in.
He wondered if this was what Heremund had foreseen.
20. Beneath the Ripples' Gleam
T
he time had come. A hush fell over three hundred souls as Lamoric's retainers stepped out. Music faltered and gossip stumbled. Banners switched in the wind. There was hardly room between the riverbank and the castle wall for another living thing. Above the stockade walls, Heaven was a heavy gray, laden with the threat of rain.
Faced with the sudden stillness, Lamoric nodded a shallow bow to the gawkers and led his men through the mob to the bank of the old Glass channel.
Durand shuffled along with the others as the silent throng allowed them to reach the riverbank. The first rank of peasants had their toes in the slime.
"Where are the lists?" muttered Coensar.
"The island," Lamoric said, jostl
ed as Guthred jerked at straps and buckles, cinching him in.
"There's hardly room to stand a horse, let alone ride," grunted Guthred.
"No horses," Lamoric answered. "Just a punt and boatman to get you there."
Guthred's nod was tense. The mounted pass gave every decent rider a chance, but foot combat had a way of squeezing luck and accident from a tussle. "You'll be fine," Guthred lied.
Durand pawed hair from his eyes, not thinking of Moryn's suffocating speed and anger. Not thinking that this was their last chance to reach Tern Gyre. Deorwen must be out there among those teeming faces. She would be looking at him, and he could do nothing about it. As Lamoric's sworn man, he could never do anything about it. "
Firmly, he fixed his eyes on the thin gleam of the severed channel. With the Glass racing down its ancient course once more, the water around the humpbacked islet lay murky and slack. Peasants had supplied a weathered punt for Lamoric's use.
As Durand was wondering whether the thing could hold an armored man's weight, something stirred the crowd.
"That'll be them," growled Guthred.
Duke Severin tramped out in the midst of his barons. A heap of moss-green cloak balanced on his shoulders as he chattered at a stranger: the Herald of Errest, a man who had seen three centuries and walked the Halls of Heaven.
Like a figure of alabaster, Kandemar the Herald stood over six feet tall. His hair hung pale as ash over a bloodless brow. But, at his hip, Durand spotted the slender chased-ivory trumpet that had sounded before the walls of the Burning City. Ancient sigils traced its mouth in silver.
Mornaway's household guard opened an aisle through the crowd, conducting the procession to a reviewing stand at the stockade.
"I have kept it just as it was," the duke was saying. "Although the keep itself is perhaps small for our needs, there is adequate accommodation in the yard, and the few good beds provide something for my liegemen to squabble over." To Durand, the man seemed distracted, his eyes darting across the cut while he spoke.
The Herald, like some Power in a sanctuary frieze, hardly noticed. As the duke spoke, the ancient man's attention slid to the island and then—to Durand's horror—to Durand's face.
His guilt was scrawled as plainly as black letters on parchment. To be held in the ancient eyes of the Herald was almost to face the Throne of Heaven.
Before Durand could suffocate, a sturdy priest stood in the reviewing stand, shooting a pointed glance at Severin.
"I see it is time to begin," the duke apologized.
The murmurs of the crowd dwindled away under the rumbling Heavens.
The duke tried a smile.
"We are gathered once more, here on the banks of the Glass." He hesitated. "We have come to remember. In the Atthian Chronicle, is written the history of this place. Or so the priests explain." He looked to the sturdy priest, but found little encouragement.
"In this time of whispers and strange tidings, it is wise to remember that it was the king, Ceodan, son of Saerdan the Voyager, who commanded that the founder of Mornaway, Mircol the Hunter, travel to the Valley of High Ashes."
Ouen grunted, muttering, "And here I'd forgotten."
"Mircol came to put down the king's enemies. He pursued them with iron and fire until they turned at bay, on a meadow thereafter called the Barrow Isle, and met their doom at his hand." The old man raised his own hand, upturned.
"It was on this land Mircol fought. And, for his victory, the Voyager's son granted him this place. The Glass, it is said, was turned by his word to cover the remains of slaughter."
As the duke spoke, the wind rose, but Durand hardly noticed. Instead, he searched the crowd for any sign of Deorwen—the Herald be damned. He only wanted to look. Beyond it all, great volumes of cloud rolled against each other, churning like a summer storm.
"And now my own son, Lord Moryn, my heir and heir to ancient Mircol's domain, has come to High Ashes under the Blood Moon as once I did, and my father, and his father, knights and lords back to old Mircol's day. Here he will set his life at hazard in memory of the deeds of that first king's man to hold this land."
A sharp gust caught the duke's robe, causing an avalanche of green cloak from his shoulders.
Duke Severin raised his voice over the wind. "Most here will know the customs of this combat. Knight in Red, you fight on the Barrow Isle. You must go armed with sword and shield and fight on foot. If you—or Lord Moryn—should be too sorely wounded to continue, you may yield without loss of honor. There are no spoils to be taken. The vanquished man must cast his arms into the Glass: sword and shield." Some of Lamoric's men grunted at this. A good sword was nothing to throw away.
The wind lashed around the old man. His cloak struggled like an animal.
"Make your peace with the King of Heaven both of you," the old man said. 'The time is upon us." Durand had not found her face.
Heralds blasted a fanfare against the wind, and it struck Durand that he had not seen Lord Moryn either. Just then, like a fiend summoned by his thoughts, a shape slid from beyond the island, standing in the bows of a low boat: Lord Moryn, tall and straight as an icon in procession. Waer worked a heavy pole to thrust his master from the far bank.
Blade drawn, Lamoric stalked into the prow of the gray punt, almost as if he meant to walk to the island. Hands caught the gunnels. And the Host Below fanned a black hope in Durand's heart: What would become of Deorwen if Lamoric were to die?
Just then, the young lord turned, and, raising his sword, picked Durand from all the people crowded round. The sword's point winked at Durand's breast.