Durand stared up through the whispers. Lamoric's men were all round him now.
"Our king is not some roving gallant free to beguile his realm with false promises."
"Oh pride, pride, Beoran"
"Every plowman owes the service he's sworn to. Should not the king be held to the same high standard?" Beoran asked. "He has made his promise, and to his promise he must hold. Through guile he has pocketed our money, and now the time has come to repay it And, if he has not the coin, then he must pay the forfeit." Now half the hall was roaring, baying like hounds. Half the hall was on its feet. 'The forfeit he, himself, chose!"
Jeers and shouts resounded in the feasting hall, but Radomor sat on, grave as the dead. His Rooks took it all in, amused at the braying and howling around them.
"Enough!" pronounced Ragnal.
He was up, both hands braced against the high table. Even the storm seemed to heed him.
"While I am still king here, we will have silence or sweep this hall of rabble. The Heavens' protest is enough."
All around Durand, friends and strangers stood cowed.
'Wow
we see the king as the battling warlord, berating his Council and his lords before their vote."
But the hall did not remain silent, and soon murmurs stewed and lightning flashed.
Durand noticed that Ragnal's black-clad functionaries were still picking at their food.
"You have heard the arguments for and against," said Ragnal, "and now I call upon my priest-arbiter."
The stooped prela
te stood, smoothing the brocade
over his chest. An Eye the size of a gold plate bobbed there. Finally, he nodded that he was ready.
"Is this a matter for the Great Council?" Ragnal demanded.
"It is, Sire. The issue is between the sovereign and his Great Council. His is the debt, and theirs is the power to forgive it."
"And the Crown?"
"It is within the rights of a king to set his kingship aside, as evinced in living memory by the ..." The man hesitated. "By the abdication of Carondas, King of cherished memory."
"Have we spoken to you of our Radomor?"
squirmed the voices in Durand's skull.
"Then we will hold the vote," said Ragnal.
"There he was on the battlefield Among the Heithan barrows. Struck down doing his king's bidding. Struck down by chance. His career was a star rising, Durand Dashed in a moment."
The arbiter's beard waggled. "There are several systems. The black and white stones. The split wands. The—"
"Is the choice mine?"
The arbiter blinked up into his king's face.
"Not wounded, only, but dying, you see. This is how we found him. Not a limb could he move, nor a finger lift. Everything he had made was laid waste in the Heithan muck. All lost."
"The choice is yours, Majesty."
Ragnal's savage grin spread, flickering in the stormy night.
"It is in such moments that a man takes up his doom. What is the sacrifice of a few picked men? Who would miss them or guess where they went in a battle?"
Creation raged at the windows like a city on fire, like refugees screaming over the walls before an invader's wrath.
"Then it will be an open vote. We will ask and each will answer. This is no time or place for games."
"It is permitted, Majesty," the arbiter hedged, but Ragnal only nodded his grim satisfaction. His liegemen must deny him to his face.
"Then," the king said, "we will begin.
"My Duke of Garelyn, we will put our question first to you. Come forward."
The tall lord walked through a paroxysm of thunderclaps, but fought his way around the table to kneel before his lord.
"We have petitioned this, our Great Council, that our debt be lifted. You must answer us, 'yea' it should be as we desire or 'nay' it should not. How say you Garelyn?"
"Garelyn answers 'yea.'" Durand could scarcely hear him, even without the storm and the Rooks rustling in his brains. "The debt should be forgiven."
Ragnal nodded sternly.
"He is wise to call first upon his allies. Perhaps he will cow the weak-willed among his enemies.
The Book of Moons
tells us that a slender reed cannot stand against the gale."
"We thank you Garelyn and call upon Windhover to answer."
A short dark man—not the blond Prince of Windhover— stalked through the howls of the Heavens and dropped to his knee.
"What is this?"
the spinning words gabbled.
Is Prince Eo
dan not a tall man and blond as his brother? Where is our poor king's brother, do you think? Why does he linger in Windhover at such a time ? "
Durand strained to watch the dais as the Rooks' whisperings rattled at his mind, round and round. The dark man handed up a scroll under a black clot of sealing wax. He saw it swung to Ragnal's arbiter. "I bear a writ under the prince's seal, Majesty, and have been sent to speak his will."
The arbiter gave his nod.
"We have petitioned this council that our debt be lifted," said Ragnal. "You must answer us, 'yea' or 'nay.' How says Windhover?"
"How this question rings with double meaning now."
"Windhover answers 'yea,' Majesty," said the messenger. "The debt should be forgiven."
"How relieved our king must be. To have been put in such a place by his brother? It is beyond imagining."
Ragnal only nodded, calling the next duke to stand before him. Lamoric's elder brother took his father's place. Lord Moryn knelt at the feet of his liege lord, pale and rigid with the effort. Hellebore and Highshields cast their lots—this time, with apologies, against the king.
The Rooks teased the widow Maud as she surprised the Council with her steadfastness, lowering herself before the king and casting the votes of Germander and Saerdana both for forgiveness. Durand breathed like a runner, thinking that this was real hope.
"And she had them all guessing, while they fawned and circled her"
said the thronging whispers.
"Pride again, or vanity. Look at Hellebore there. The man makes faces as though someone has poked a lemon past his lips. Your king must be pleased It has all gone as he would hope."
Heremund, who'd been making the rounds in silence, touched Durand's shoulder, not saying a word. The touch went through Durand like a shock on a cold morning. A shattering pain shot through his skull.
Radomor sat as grim as ever. The Rooks were smug. The big Champion sat near the high table. The bloom of mildew over the walls had spread still further. In the space of a few breaths, the whole hall would be smothered over. They must get Deorwen from the castle.
But Duke Ludegar of Beoran was walking around the high table, a blade bobbing in fittings of black leather and bright steel.
The man knelt, and Ragnal spoke the formula.
"We have petitioned this council that our debt be lifted. You must answer us, 'yea' or 'nay.' How says Beoran?"
Durand tried to wring thoughts from his crowded mind, even as he felt blood slip from his nose. With the tide turned, now was the duke's chance to save face. Without Maud, the best he could hope for was a tie. They could not vote the king down.
Durand pawed a drop from his lip. The black smear—it was not blood—glistened for an instant, then flew like dry soot. Another wet drop landed.
"Beoran answers 'nay,' Majesty, and says the debt should be paid."
Ragnal nodded slowly, his face all stiff slashes under his beard.
"Now it comes,"
said the whispers, each syllable creaking at the sutures of his skull.
"Now it comes."
Heremund and Berchard were speaking to him. He felt the not-blood running from his chin. The storm outside was madness now, howling fit to tear the stones from the old headland. His friends' hands were on him.
"We thank you Beoran, and call upon Yrlac to answer."
Now, Duke Radomor took his feet, slowly. Grime streaked his face. Tattered armor hung from his twisted shoulders. He crossed the dais and, locking the dark lodestones of his eyes on Ragnal's face, lowered one knee to the stone, and twitched a broad mantle wide over the dais.
"What will he say—will he say—will he say? "
"We have petitioned that our debt be lifted," said the king. "How say you, my Duke of Yrlac?"
Candles lashed and shuddered as Radomor stared up, his face brimming with defiance. "Yrlac answers 'nay,' cousin," Radomor said. "A man should pay his debts." He stood then, face-to-face with Ragnal. Even with his twisted back, the Duke of Yrlac looked down on his king. Somewhere outside, a great mass of stones fell thundering into the sea.
"Now watch, friend. Watch."
Durand caught hold of his blade once more.
"What is the vote?"
But it was tied. Unless Radomor meant to cut the king down before them all, it was finished. Beoran and Yrlac had both voted against their king, knowing they didn't have the numbers to carry it. You could not vote a man down with a stalemate.
A confused murmur arose in Tern Gyre as realization dawned among those loyal to the king: They had won.
"I don't understand," said Heremund. "I don't understand." Then, "Gods, Durand, are you all right? What's the matter?" Radomor had not left the dais.
"Sit down, Duke Radomor," said Ragnal, "you have not won today."
Radomor's bald skull tilted, only a fraction.
"You have been a loyal man," continued the king. "Now you must see where Beoran has led you."
Radomor looked from Ragnal without turning. "Priest," he said, "what is the vote?"
The arbiter, surprised, glanced to the parchment where he had been recording the events. "There are fourteen votes cast: seven for forgiveness, seven against."
Radomor hardly moved, simply listening: the only solid thing in the storm.
"And is a petition granted by a tied vote such as this?"
"Gods,"
said Heremund; Durand did not understand.
"Does a motion pass when it does not prevail in the vote?" Radomor pressed.
The arbiter stammered. "It
...
it does not."
Durand felt the world falling from under him, but only Radomor's dark eyes moved—a spark.
"Then, you have
lost
your bid for clemency, I think. You have asked, but your Great Council has not agreed."
As the duke smiled—a stained row of pearls—a dark wind bowled through the feasting hall, snatching flame from candles, and causing the blaze in the hearth to cringe against the stones. Radomor's cloak opened like wings.
A man could see little but the wink of the duke's teeth. Durand could hardly watch for the crushing pain in his skull.
"Here, here we have it. Now it is come."
"I have defended you," Radomor said. "I have shed my blood, and thrown my life in the balance to save yours. And, all the while, you have tripped and blundered and raged and stumbled until our realm is strained to the point of breaking, cousin." No king could have foreseen the chain of petty rebellions and hard harvests Errest had weathered. "Now, you have risked the very crown of our realm on a fool's wager."
It was happening, despite all they had done to stop it. Every window screamed like the climax of torture. Under the floor, the rock itself groaned. Through the bone-breaking agony in his skull, Durand imagined the entire realm quaking. He saw the hag stir under the walls of High Ashes. He saw the monks of Cop Alder, walking their glyph of soil. He saw the blackthorn men and the mad folk in the wastelands.
"There will be no new last chances. The time has come, cousin," Radomor said and raised his hands for the crown.
Then, as though some monstrous thing had settled its wings over the headland, a vast silence fell over Creation. It bulged at Durand's ears.
Durand blinked through flashes of pain, gulping to keep air in his chest. He thought of lands torn from Creation by smaller things than this. He had walked the trails of Hesperand and seen the duke and his lady lost. Somehow, he must do something. He was halfway to his feet, groping for his blade when a chance glimpse of Deorwen reached through the confusion.
Without Deorwen, that Lost Duke of Hesperand would have had him.