Authors: Sean Stewart
Left him.
Dream-slow he stepped toward the fallen body. At its side, a flash of fallen moonlight and a whisper-song, thin steel sliding from a leather sheath.
“Sweetness!” Mark breathed. The most storied of the great weapons, its steelsong lost forever when Stargad the Shrewd challenged the Ghostwood and did not return.
But tonight Mark was back in grandfather days, and Sweetness sang for him.
Desire kindled in Mark. Here was a treasure to wrest from the perilous wood! He stooped to unbuckle the half-sheathed sword from its dead master’s side, averting his eyes from Stargad’s face.
A pale hand crawled from beneath Stargad’s cloak and settled on the pommel of his sword.
Mark leapt back with a yell of fright. Slowly the shadow before him gathered itself to all fours, then knelt, then finally stood.
“You! You’re alive!” Mark breathed.
Stiffly Stargad threw back his hood, showing a face horribly crushed by his fall. “No,” he sighed. “I am the dead.”
“Shite, shite, shite!” Fear jumped and crackled through Mark. He whipped out his sword: it trembled like a dowsing rod in his shaking hand.
“I am the dead,” Stargad repeated. He was a tall man and spare; his face, before his fall, had been long and gaunt. One eye jutted from its socket; the other gazed at Mark with cool sorrow. “And though it gives my heart no joy to say it, you too must die.”
“I mean to die well,” Mark said. “I was thinking of taking another two score years to get ready.”
Fine words, fine words. Tell your shaking swordhand to be so brave
. “What happened up there? What was waiting for you?”
A spasm of pain passed over Stargad’s shattered face. “The brooding Tower have I climbed too many times. Inside one waits who has a soul as cold and hard as iron. Each time he slays me with his touch, and I see my Death within his eyes. Now like all the others I have returned to guard the Keep.”
Sweetness whispered its terrible song. “As I climb, I always on my fifteenth step glance down upon the Great Hall’s shingled roof. Thrice now have I seen Four-fingered Fhilip creep across the slates, and once the larcenous Silverhand, paused before a lamplit window. To his cheek he raised his hand; I knew him by the silver bracer proud round his wrist. I think he wept.”
Stargad gazed at Mark with his one good eye. “Can you guess why we return, Warm One?”
Mark shook his head.
“Because it is our duty. Stay the dagger must, or else the heart will bleed! The heart will bleed… We were wrong, thrice-curst fools to try to break the spell that chains the black wind within these walls. The tines of sharp ambition spurred us forth on this mad quest to wake the dark. As you are spurred.”
Stargad, prince of a line already old in grandfather days, bowed sombrely to Shielder’s Mark. “My greetings to your honoured father; sorrow to your dam. Prepare to die.”
And then Sweetness leapt out with a cry like larksong at first light and cut Mark’s sword cleanly in two, so the top half flew clattering against the wall of the Keep.
Mark flung the haft at Stargad and bolted. Fast as fear his legs carried him, racing back to the door Queen Lerelil had come through. He ran within and slammed it behind him, then stood, chest heaving, listening for Stargad’s footsteps.
Shite. Shite
! His muscles were screaming to run, fight, anything, but he forced himself to stillness.
No sound of pursuit.
Wine and ribbons and all pretty girls defend me! Sweet, sweet air of life
.
He felt a warmth spill down his chest. He’d been cut. It was only a scratch, but he stood halfway to fainting, trembling like a first-day foal.
Hell.
Still no sound.
Maybe Stargad can only prowl the ground he walked when first he came; never got inside, so he can’t come in now
.
A duchy at least
, Mark swore to himself. O God, that bulging eye, that flat, dead voice.
The King owes me at least a duchy
.
Faintness shivered through him, as if he hadn’t eaten in two days. So much for Thief. “Better stick to saving squirrels,” he murmured.
Another chance at honour gone.
Men had dueled, stories said, for the privilege of falling before Stargad’s blade.
But you’re not here for honour lad, nor glory either; just to fetch the dagger and break the spell. Fighting dead heroes is none of your business
, he told himself, gasping against the door, ears straining for any sound of Stargad’s approach.
Running away was just good sense
.
Still no sound of pursuit. He was safe—for the moment.
For the first time he looked around. He was in the Red Keep’s large courtyard. A line of stables had been built against the Keep’s west wall. Mark stood facing the Great Hall. At night the servants would have rolled out their mats and slept there. Two buildings flanked the Hall: on one side, an elegant wing the size of a great manor house. Where the royalty lived, no doubt. A squat wooden building jutted from the other side of the Hall: kitchens, probably.
And where the manor house touched the Keep’s eastern wall, the Scarlet Tower stood, its flanks flushing with the dawn.
Frustration clenched in him.
If Stargad failed scaling the Tower, you’ve got no bloody hope, lad. That was your best idea, your ace to play to break the spell.
Now he didn’t even have a sword. After a lifetime of training he had run out of plans.
Why didn’t Duke Aron get around to this place when he was thrashing the Ghost-King in the Time of Troubles, eh ? Wi’ no spells, how can a man hope to
…
Unless…
He blinked.
Must be something wrong wi’
…
Shift the ground, shift the ground. If you don’t have the answer, change the question!
By God you’re a genius, Shielder’s Mark
! He let out his breath in a long soft sigh. “You’re a genius.”
He scanned the courtyard: emptiness, silence. He slipped quietly across it until he stood under the eaves of the Great Hall. He stopped, listened, waited. Nothing. He crept toward the Tower. As he passed one of the open kitchen windows, a gleam of ruddy light caught his eye and he froze. Light? No torches burned in the Red Keep’s brackets, no lamps hung above the stable doors. Unless he disturbed things, the Keep should be as silent as the grave, as dark.
Mark peered through the window.
An old man sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor, stirring in the ashes of a tiny fire, all dull coals and cinders. His head was pale as a mushroom, bald and wrinkled with age. He sat in profile to Mark; the white line of an ancient scar ran raggedly down behind his right ear.
If the Old Man saw Mark, or heard him, he gave no sign, but only sat and stirred his ashes, as if looking for a secret hidden in the cinders.
But I didn’t do nowt to summon this Awd Man
, Mark thought.
Uncanny awd bastard
.
Like a rock rising from a river the Old Man jutted from the Red Keep’s enchanted sleep. He seemed real, where even Stargad had been half a dream. Fear flowed from him, and age, and terrible patience. The darkness of death was in the Old Man’s black robes; in the shadows that mantled him; in the coals from which he did not raise his eyes.
So why, cased within his fear like a seed within a nut, did Mark feel a great desire to go to him?
He shivered.
You’ve a job to do, Shielder’s Mark. If you aren’t here to battle heroes, then you aren’t here to hark to an awd man’s tales neither; your business is wi’ the dagger, nowt else
.
He forced himself to go on, passing the kitchen, until the red glow of the little fire was lost.
Why had Stargad said he should not take the dagger? Enchanted, of course. Obviously each failing hero was enspelled to defend the treasure he came to steal.
And yet…
On t’other hand, t’Awd Man wants you to take it.
Angrily Mark shook his head. Why should he think such a thing? The Keep was whispering strange thoughts into his heart.
When he reached the east wall it took him only a few moments to find what he was looking for, a stair leading up to the battlements. Reaching the parapet, he walked swiftly to where the outer wall abutted the east wing of the manor. As he had expected, there was a door there: this was the way someone coming from the royal apartments to the East Tower must pass.
He knew Queen Lerelil’s son meant to kill his father with the dagger of which the Queen and Stargad had both spoken. Either he had come to the Tower from the Great Hall, crossing the courtyard, or he had come from his own chambers. On balance, Mark thought his chambers more likely.
The door was a solid one of iron-banded oak, and opened outward. Mark drew his knife and reversed his grip, holding it like a club. Then he pulled the door open, stepped into the shadows behind it, and waited for the Prince to come out. Because of course the Prince must have come this way, and closed the door: and must do so again when Mark left it open, sure as any summoning. This way Mark could get to Prince and dagger before they ever came to the Tower. This way he would never have to face whatever had killed Stargad.
It only took a moment for a tall, proud man in his early forties to emerge, clenching a black dagger in his fist as if it were an adder. As he closed the door, Mark clubbed him. He fell with a groan and lay twitching on the parapet.
Got to practise that.
The fallen man moaned. He was badly dazed, but when Mark tried to take the dagger from him he clutched it fiercely. “Thief!” he cried.
Mark looked around in panic, waiting for the rush of torches, servants’ running feet. He clubbed the Prince again, much harder, and grabbed the dagger from his nerveless fingers.
Magic lay in the iron dagger, heavy as time; sorcery clotted its dull blade like blood. It burned ice-cold; Mark yelped with the touch of it. Swiftly he flung his old knife over the battlements into the moat, and jammed the iron dagger into its sheath. He sprinted down the stairs and burst into the courtyard.
No servants had come at the Prince’s call, just as no one had come at the ring of steel when Mark and Harler fought. Mark slowed to a walk, grinning like a madman. He had done it!
Then the earth began to heave. The air filled with a weird, sighing sound. A dark wind gusted in the courtyard.
Mark quickened his pace. In the breaking daylight a shadow shuddered across the courtyard. Looking up, Mark saw the Scarlet Tower begin to sway. Running grooves appeared in its tall granite walls, as if its stone were melting into crimson cloud, cut by the wind rising throughout the Keep.
Mark yelped and ran.
The dagger was a spike of ice along his leg; suddenly he had the feeling that it was not the stone walls and towers that were weightless, but the dagger that was heavy. Like a real knife stuck through a painting, it was the one true thing in this night of dreams. It was the dagger’s weight alone that kept the rising wind from whirling him up like a leaf, or blowing him apart like a man of mist.
Mark leapt through a small door in the outer walls; a blast of wind roared out with him, wild and damp as a spring storm.
Fierce exultation gripped him, a delight almost like rage. He yelled—
—until a horrible thought cut his triumph short.
What if the Queen’s buggered off?
He almost cried with relief when he saw her crouched among the rushes. “You haven’t left!”
“There’s some words weightier than thine,” she said haughtily. “I told tha: I am Queen.”
Mark gripped her by her astonished shoulders and bussed her on both cheeks. “And pretty as a milkmaid,” he cried. “Now, into the boat! We’re almost free!”
The Queen stood her ground. She squinted in the grey morning light. “Caught a gash you have, boy.” She moved his shirt gently to one side just below his right collarbone.
“It’s nowt but a scratch. Look, this whole Keep is coming down around our ears, so get—”
“Where earnest tha by thy talisman?” Queen Lerelil whispered, staring fascinated at Husk’s charm. She ran her fingers over the crude carving as if not trusting her eyes in the dawnlight.
Mark shrugged impatiently. “Its nowt but a trinket some awd madwoman gave me.”
“Some old madwoman…” Lerelil murmured, still as a statue. “Tha saved my life, boy. I have not forgotten it. There is a gawd I would joy to give you.” And so speaking she reached under the collar of her elaborate gown and pulled out a golden chain from which hung a silver medallion. On it, a golden serpent with ruby eyes was biting its own tail.
Mark touched the wooden charm hanging around his neck, staring at the Queen’s gift.
By God it’s a bastard child of Lerelil’s amulet
! His eyes met hers, standing by the rushes of the eastern marge of the Red Keep, and for a moment they shared a mystery.
A great ghostly murmuring rose from behind the walls, a babble of faint voices, barking dogs, clattering horse-hooves, shouts and orders, screams and whispers. Overhead, the Scarlet Tower began to melt and run like a great red candle consumed by a terrible heat.
“You waste our time!” Lerelil cried. Dropping her medallion over Mark’s head she turned to clamber into the boat. He jumped in behind her, and pushed off with one tremendous shove. Rushes swayed and creaked around them, and then they were gliding across the moat. Dawn-light turned the water grey as dead men’s flesh; cherry blossoms clotted their prow. When they were almost becalmed he risked one hard, chopping oarstroke, forcing himself not to look down even when he felt his oar snag and then tear free of something like seaweed, or tangled hair.
Mark shipped his oars when they reached the far shore. Lerelil stepped from the prow, and began to fade. “No!” Mark shouted, but understanding came too late, and he could only watch as with one stride she stepped from the one eternal night of the Red Keep and into the future.
And then she was gone, a year from him, or twenty, or a hundred, and he had so much left to ask her.
Shaken, Mark held the dagger well before him when he stepped from the boat. The very air tightened against him. For one sickening moment it was like walking against a hurricane; he feared he would slip back and fall into the moat.