Durand flung the green veil into the wind.
As he brought his head up, though, he saw something through the sheets of spray: a tall figure also struggling with the broken path. He saw a staff like a single gray stroke of a monk's brush. He could not believe that anyone else would be walking on a day like this. The figure stopped, turning—tall and gaunt under the onslaught. Somehow, the man had seen Durand. In a moment, however, winds and rain pulled a hundred veils over the figure.
Durand staggered on, half-realizing he was walking through a full gale. One wave scrambled over the rocks to catch at his boots. The gelding shrieked.
Despite it all, he heard a shout, this time from behind.
Another murky shape—smaller—was picking its way down a rubble slope a few dozen paces behind him. Durand reeled forward, jerking on the lead reins. A man could not be alone in this world. Not even a madman on a storming beach.
"Durand!"
In what felt like an instant, Heremund the skald was at his elbow. How slow had he been walking?
"Hells, boy. You're killing these horses of yours." He had to shout. "Durand? Is that what you want? Ah. Screw it, I'm getting you under shelter." He peered ahead, one hand locked in Durand's cloak. 'There's a cave ahead. Can't be far. Here!" Suddenly, the little man was moving, bowed legs pumping almost faster than Durand could follow.
They came under the shadow of the vast chalk wall. Durand pitched against the stone, having trouble getting his breath.
"Oh, for God's sake," said Heremund. Under the little man's feet, the rubble had been ground into a narrow trail.
"It's just ahead here," he said. He patted a tall upright blade of stone. "Ah. I thought those were the Gatekeepers. Here it is."
The man turned a hand, revealing the mouth of a cavern half-choked with ferns. The little man waddled inside, turning to say, "There'll
just
be room enough for horses."
He stepped in.
A thousand white figures, kings and the Host of Hell, stared from every surface with empty eyes. For an instant he could see. Some knifepoint had cut them into the walls. Then the rump of Cerlac's rouncy blotted out the light In the sudden dark, he did not know where to put his hands.
"What is this place?"
"Here, I'll try to light a fire." Durand heard the man scuffling around. "Now, if there's a bit of driftwood up here, we're in luck." "What is this place?"
"Ah." He stopped a moment. "Sure you want to hear it?" Durand could think of nothing the man might say that could do more harm.
"Well, it's got to do with the festival back on the cliff top. Were you ever there?"
Durand shook his head. He could hear the horses stamping behind him.
"Tern Gyre's royal land, yes? Since Saerdan shot the Barbican Strait King Einred the Crusader took two of his boys with him. The Battle of Lost Princes. The Herald. Einred left only the youngest at home. Up there," Heremund pointed beyond the ceiling to the fortress on the headland.
Durand made out more and more of the walls as the skald spoke. A thousand tiny figures with gash mouths and splayed limbs covered the walls and ceilings of a long cave. Durand could only barely make out Heremund's finger as it pointed up to the Gyre.
"And the priests, they were prophesying victory. Victory, victory, victory, every one of them, goading the men into the boats and down to the Dark Sea. All but one." He scrambled up from his haunches, and began grubbing around in the dark.
"Maybe we can find it here somewhere. You heard of Blind Willan?"
Heremund tramped deeper into the cave, and Durand followed, empty and rattling as an old cart. Something like a stone bench or tiny altar stood in the dark.
"Here it is." Heremuhd was reaching down. Durand heard something like a metal clink. "Here," he prompted. "Can you feel it?"
Durand bent low, ignoring distant agonies. In the middle of the floor, someone had fixed a cold metal ring.
"This is where they chained him."
"Who, Heremund?" Durand breathed. 'This Willan?"
"No. Well, yes and no. Willan was the king's son. The youngest who stayed at home. As youngest, he was Steward of Tern Gyre—like our Biedin back upstairs. And this prophet of doom, the one voice not chanting victory, he was Willan's own chaplain. A foreigner, they say, name of Hugelin. An honest man."
Durand found himself wavering where he stood. He held his right arm close, the long slashes stiffening at their dried edges like parchment. He still couldn't get his breath.
"Oh, for God's sake," said Heremund. He caught hold of Durand's arm for an instant. Durand wanted nothing more than to fall. "Sit down, before you fall on your head. What
did
that Guthred pack you?"
Heremund riffled Durand's saddlebags.
"These poor horses. You know better." There was a pause. "Ah. Here we go. I knew it." Durand heard a slosh. "Get some of this down you. And some water." The little man thrust a wineskin into Durand's hands. The stuff tasted foul.
"Drink it. You've lost blood."
The little man continued digging in the packs.
"Anyway, this Hugelin, the other priests all up and down the country said the king and his sons would come home safe. Hugelin carped that he would never see the day. The Crusade might scatter the Sons of Heshtar like ashes, but the king should leave his sons home. The Patriarchs barked at him, but he wouldn't relent and, despite his grumbling, the armada of Errest sailed. And no one liked to hear Hugelin after."
Durand took another long pull on Guthred's skin. It was thin stuff, watered. As the horses shifted in the entrance, the half-light under the storm glowed into the cave.
"And when the news came back, they liked him even less, constantly grumbling and muttering and talking of dead men on the Plains of the Skull or the Waste of Fettered Bones. Seeing it all. Demanding they pray. Forcing death rites on them all.
"Finally, Willan had his fill of it. You can't imagine how angry he was. His men seized old Hugelin. They remembered what he said about never seeing the day, and curled their thumbs in his eyes. And he was no man to go quiet. They hoisted him by the armpits and dragged him. But, now as then, it was bad luck to touch a priest. They could feel the Eye of Heaven on their backs, watching every move. And they didn't cut his throat. He was lucky. They took him down the cliffs. But they didn't drown him. They dragged him to a narrow cave: a wormhole in the rock. They shackled him. One of the men hauled out a mallet and hammered a ring into the floor, and they chained him there without thought of food or water and they trekked back up the cliff to their beds. He was his Creator's to keep or kill, they reckoned, and the great hall was quiet."
Heremund chuckled. "But the bastard lived."
The light shifted over the thousand tiny faces, but then it was stranger, almost as though the shadows were alive upon those almond faces and hollow eyes.
"And the Lost Princes didn't. Einred sent his flagship,
Eagle,
with its wide sail black and the Eye of Heaven ember red. The Lost Princes were gone."
Durand found his gaze playing over the shadowed carvings. He saw a ship there. Its sail marked with Heaven's Eye. His mouth opened.
"They rowed
Eagle
straight for Tem Gyre, those men, because Willan was heir now: crowned prince. What's it, seven hundred leagues? He saw the black sail. He saw the grim faces of the oarsmen. He saw it all and he knew, right? His brothers were dead. He was heir or
Eagle
wouldn't be sliding under his cliffs. His mind went right to the man in the cave."
Durand could see the narrow scratches of shipped oars around the little warship: a galley. He saw the prince and the fortress on the rock.
"And so he came down, past the men hailing him on the pier and on to the cave where he'd shackled old Hugelin. And he let the old man free. He'd been living on God knows what, drinking from the rock and eating whatever crawled into the cave. The prince's men were watching. Some of them, the lads who had hauled Hugelin down in the first place. He made them put out his eyes, did Willan. The Crown Prince of Errest. Grown men, soldiers, they were sobbing like boys as they did as he bid them, and he made them shackle him to the floor.
"Hugelin only nodded, then he pointed to the walls. 'I have written it all down,' he said, 'so a blind man might read it.'"
Heremund shrugged.
"How long?" Durand asked.
"Well, it had been fully two years before word of the princes set Hugelin free. Willan stayed that long. He drank from cracks in the rock, and fed on crawling things that reached the cave. And they've been doing it ever since, with a few exceptions, the Prince-Stewards of Tern Gyre. Popping down for a night's vigil before the tournament. I don't see Biedin down here, though he may come. That's this tourney. The anniversary of those tidings. It's meant to remind.
"They say the future of princes is carved on these walls."
Durand exhaled. Heremund crouched in the middle of the room. Suddenly, a flame bloomed in his hands, and all the eerie figures were dancing.
"Here we go," he announced. "Who'd have thought horses' arses would make a good windbreak, eh? We'll warm you.up yet, if the place can stand the smoke." He had the saddlebags heaped around him. He laughed, something striking him. "They used to call our
Biedin
'The Lost Prince.' He was a quiet lad. Those two big brothers always harrying him. One day he wandered. When anyone bothered to notice, they couldn't find a trace. King Carlomund's men swept every road for a hundred leagues. Three nights passed. They halfway thought he was dead. But then the lad turned up, wandering like a ghost in the high sanctuary. Three nights lost, right in the king's own high sanctuary."
Heremund groped in one saddlebag. "I think Guthred's stuck some of his wound salve in here as well. I suppose the weather's washed most of those cuts out by now. We'll see if you can stand putting this stuff on them. If I were someone else, I'd look at stitching that arm, too. You're going to have some scars to scare the grandchildren, that's certain."
Durand laughed, a wry puff through his nose.
The little man crabbed over, peeling back Durand's sleeve and setting to work with an apologetic wince and a finger full of pork grease.
"Host of Heaven," he muttered. "I'd say it wasn't going to hurt, but you know that's lying."
Durand closed his eyes. A few cuts wouldn't kill him, if he watched them. As Heremund worked, he opened and closed his stiffening hand. He could feel the ache setting in to fuse his bones.
"The fingers move, anyway," Heremund said. Durand looked the man in the face. "You know that I heard. I was near enough to hear why Waer died, I mean."
Durand swallowed. He closed his eyes; then, as steadily as he could, asked, "Does Lamoric know?"
"I don't think so. I don't know if everyone caught it, and then Waer was dead and there was the prince and the king. I don't know."
"Good. She doesn't deserve..." He faltered. She had watched her husband and her lover lose everything for her: house and lands and all. She didn't deserve any of it. Lamoric shouldn't be heaping anything more on her because Durand was a fool. He didn't want that.
"They never do, you know?" said Heremund.
"No. They never do." He thought of Lamoric's sister up in that tower, with him outside standing guard, and it pulled him in. Lamoric, Alwen, Radomor, Deorwen, the men on the cliffs packing everything they had left to stagger out on the roads in time to meet the snow. He saw Alwen drifting down the Banderol, curls tumbling over the rail. He had visions of frozen shoulders at the roadside, humps in the snow. He saw Deorwen, shocked and watching him leave.
"Something else," managed Durand. If they must talk, it must be about something else.
"Right. Right. Get that legging off, and I'll see to that jab Waer gave you. I don't suppose it matters. Gods, you'll never save these woolens."
The battered leggings were tied at his waist cord, but, with the skald's help and some salt water, he managed to peel the bloody sticking thing from wounds and hair.
"Now I get a look at it," Heremund said, "it doesn't look so bad." The little man spat, muttering some formula. Durand winced down to see him opening the wound like a red mouth. "I'll give it a good stiff washing out though and tempt the spirits with a bit of strong wine. I don't think you've done anything serious. You're meant to let it seep a while and just keep an eye out."
None of it mattered. He'd told Deorwen good-bye only to get them both caught—maybe. And here he was, fully across the realm from where he had begun. If he sold everything he had, he could just manage to make his way home to grovel at his father's gates.