The Barrow (58 page)

That had been Arduin's first experience competing in the Grand Tourney. He'd lost in the first round of the jousts, against Sir Naeras Orenge, an honorable loss. In the melee he'd gotten to the third round, finally losing against Lord Austin Lis Red. He could still remember the heady rush, the roar of the crowds, the power of the assembled Court, the pride of his father and younger brothers. He'd sworn to himself that he'd win the Grand Tourney eventually. The next two years were off years for aficionados of the tournament circuit, as they were marred by scandal (Uthella's victory at the Tournament of Flowers and subsequent banishment), disaster (the death of Elgias, Crown Prince of Angowrie at the Tournament of Stones, and a huge fire at the Grand Tourney), and a passing of the torch, as many in that generation of great competitors decided to step back after Derrek's resounding victory. Into that lull stepped Arduin and hundreds of other eager young knights, and he won the melee twice, once at the Tournament of Stones and once at the Tournament of Horns, but then he'd always been better with the sword than the lance and his jousting kept him from being crowned Champion. Finally it had come, in 1459 only miles to the south from where they were now, when he'd won both melee and joust and been crowned the Champion of Flowers.

He'd been so sure it was going to be his year, the year that his sister also happened to come of age and be eligible for selection as a Tourney Queen. His father had chosen to debut her at the Tournament of Gavant, where she'd handily won against all the assembled flowers of eastern Auria, and so she'd gone into the Grand Tourney as one of the four Queens of the Tournaments. Everyone knew she would win Queen of the Grand Tourney; she'd outshone her three rivals the way the sun outshines a campfire.
How perfect, how fun
, Arduin had thought.
My sister the Queen of the Grand Tourney, and I shall be her Champion.
And he'd won the melee, twelve rounds against some of the best swordsmen he'd ever faced, including Sir Bueves, Wallis the Elder,
and
Wallis the Young. But the Wheel of Fortune turned against him, and he'd lost in the seventh round of the jousts to Sir Shale Harlowe, a Dain Danian knight in the service of the Lord of Hingriff and the Earl of Tamatra. He shouldn't have been ashamed; Sir Shale lasted to the eleventh round, and over the next few years he would be a Champion at both the Tournament of Flowers and of Stone, proving himself to be one of the best knights in all the Danias and going on to win great renown in the feuds between Tamatra and Hartford and on campaign with King Derrek.

But at the time it had felt like a crushing blow, and the next year Arduin had been unfocused and off his game. And then the year after that had come the scandal at the Tournament of Gavant, and their fall from grace, and he had not been to a Tournament since the Grand Tourney that year; his last time in the lists, with a lance in his hand.
Blood everywhere, dying blue eyes staring up at him, the silent shock of the crowd, and somewhere someone was laughing . . .

He had been riding, as had been his practice when the roads and fields allowed it, on the left side of his sister's carriage, so that she might speak to him should the fancy strike her, though as far as he could tell she'd spent most of their journey in fitful silence, sliding in and out of dreams and reveries. Ironbound's hooves picked their way through a sea of white clover flower, red poppies, white and pink peonies, and white lily-of-the-valleys as the carriage and its team laid a less discriminate trail, treading roughshod over the brush.

“Brother,” came her voice from the carriage. Startled out of his remembrances, he turned and saw her face in the carriage window. The sight of her brought him crashing back to earth. “This is one of the most beautiful places in the Known World, and should bring back happy memories for you, and yet you seem burdened with nothing but sadness,” she said. He could not read her tone and he searched her face for a moment, but it remained curiously blank.

“Beauty has filled many a man with sadness, dear sister,” he finally said with a tight smile. And then he spurred his horse forward.

The afternoon wore on, and they'd put about eight miles between them and the Scented Hills and were crossing the North Road and up the rise of the plain when Stjepan and Erim heard a sharp whistle from the rear of the caravan. They wheeled their horses about and rode back past the coach and Arduin's knights to find Godewyn and his men sitting up alert in the two rear wagons, slowly unlimbering crossbows as the wagons rolled forward.

Stjepan pulled in and paced Cúlain-mal with Godewyn's wagon while Erim rode past to the rear. Stjepan and Godewyn exchanged glances, and Godewyn nodded back toward the hills. “We're being followed,” Godewyn said, a grin on his face.

Stjepan grunted and pivoted his horse around to join Erim in surveying the land behind them. As he pulled up beside her, she was already pointing at what appeared to be a group of dark specks crossing across the Old Wood Road at the limits of their vision, following the exact same track they had used coming down out of the hills. He pulled out his spyglass and trained it on the dark specks for a moment in silence. The late afternoon sun was behind them to the west, and the distant hillsides to the east were bathed in light. A light wind buffeted their ears. Bees flew around them in small numbers, and one would occasionally come to investigate them.

“Horsemen?” Erim finally asked, uncertainty in her voice as she shooed a bee away. “Kind of hard to tell from this distance, though thankfully they stand out against the hills and the flowers of the plains.”

“Yes. I'd say a small company, maybe twenty or thirty or so. Maybe someone that picked up our trail at Woat's Inn?” Stjepan said, lowering the spyglass. “Could be a patrol of knights from Hagenwall or Burnwall, but I'd have expected them to be coming from the castles directly, not be following our trail out of the hills . . .” He trailed off, squinting at the distant castle of Hagenwall, which could still be seen as a small silhouette against the sky to their east, north of where the horsemen were emerging from the hills. He raised the spyglass to his eye again. “Fuck,” he said after a moment.

“What?” she asked, squinting toward Hagenwall.

“Movement.”

He handed her the spyglass and she stared at Hagenwall until she saw it as well. A line of horsemen streaming down the road from the castle. “Shit,” she said. “A second patrol, riding out to join the first?”

They stared at the two small lines of dark specks coming down out of the hills.

“They won't be able to catch up with us before the sun is down, and if we're lucky and the clear sky holds, we'll be able to move for a while in the evening without lighting torches, using the stars to light our way,” Stjepan said, glancing up at the skies. “Well, I suppose we should tell everyone to speed up a bit. Take rear guard, and keep an eye on those columns if you can.” He wheeled Cúlain-mal and rode off, leaving Erim staring gloomily at their distant pursuers.

“Fantastic,” she muttered to herself, then brought the spyglass to her eye again.

Moving through the flowering fields and brush of the plain was easier than Erim had hoped it might be, and some sort of luck seemed to hold for them and the coaches and wagons did not get stuck or snagged. Beneath the flowers and brush the earth seemed smooth and largely unbroken, with rough spots well telegraphed. There was an unnatural quality to the Plain, and from more than just the flowers themselves; it was as though some great magic or perhaps the gods themselves had some design in mind in making it the way it was. As the Dusk Maiden rose and Helios set in the west, the skies remained clear and by star- and partial moonlight they wound their way through a dark blue landscape. The Spring Moon had passed and the Axe Moon had risen, but it was only showing a small sliver of itself, not yet even a quarter full, and Erim kept wishing they could light torches and lanterns. She was afraid Cúlain-mer would trip and stumble in the bramble, but her horse seemed content to pick its way in the evening dark as though it knew where it was going.

Stjepan had consulted his compass and turned them more northwesterly once the sun went down and they were no longer visible to their pursuers, in the hopes that the change of direction might throw off those behind them. They were moving inexorably upward at a slight but noticeable incline, as though the plain were actually a hill and it was slowly leading them up to some final destination. She lost track of the number of hours they'd been moving in the dark, but at least the Midnight Star had not yet risen when there was a muted hue and cry from up ahead. A low ridge presented itself as the plain's slope began to crest, and she urged her horse up and over the first genuine obstacle that they'd encountered. The coach and wagons had found a small break in the ridge for an entry path to ease their way over to the top but she was able to ride up the ridge side without too much of a worry. But a shiver went down her spine when she crested the ridge and saw the
menhirs
silhouetted up ahead of them against the night sky.
My horse knew exactly where it was going
, she thought.

The caravan slowed and circled around in a large, pleasant meadow set halfway between the standing stones at the top of the rise and the eastern edge of the small ridge that she had just crossed. From that crest of the plain's summit they would have a relatively unobstructed view of the lands back to their east. The squires and Godewyn and his crew began laying out the camp, putting the Ladies' coach in the center. The two wagons formed walls to the south and east, and the picket line of horses on the northwestern side of the camp between the coach and the stone circle formed the third leg of the triangle around the coach. They weren't bothering to break out the tents; the sense that they were being followed was too keen upon them. She found Stjepan and Arduin standing in the middle of the fields and arguing.

“. . . you've led us right to the standing stones,” Arduin was saying angrily. “This is a place of the Forbidden Gods.”

“The Old Gods, perhaps, but not the Forbidden,” Stjepan said.

“There is little difference to a true devotee of the Divine King,” Arduin said sharply.

“This is Hallorenge, my Lord, and it is a sacred place to the Old Religion, and though the Nameless might scheme to corrupt and taint it, they have ever met with failure in trying,” Stjepan replied calmly. “I hope our pursuers would not think that we would take refuge near a place of power, and even if they discover us here that they would think twice about attacking us if that is their intent.”

“But . . . but we will be in danger here from the stones themselves!” Arduin said.

“No, my Lord,” said Stjepan. “The
menhirs
may be rune-marked, and full of ancient wisdom, but the stones can do us no harm unless they were to topple over on top of us, and I would suggest that is highly unlikely. They were standing here, already old, when the first Danians and Daradjans came to this land, and have stood unchanged for over two thousand years. We will not enter the stone circle itself except as a last resort and if we do we will enter within it with reverence and respect, and so should have no reason to fear.”

Arduin looked skeptically at the Athairi. “What is this place for?” asked Arduin.

“Depends on who you are, I suppose. Magicians often come here to tap the magical power in the site and perform rituals here. The
fae
and followers of the Old Religion come here to make offerings to Geniché, the Queen of the Earth and the Dead, and to Yhera, the Queen of Heaven. It's one of at least four stone circles that are thought to be somehow interconnected, there's Hallorenge here, and then the labyrinth and standing stones at Cullrenge by the Temple of the Hunt, and then a labyrinth and standing stones at Taraden in the Tiria Wold, and supposedly another labyrinth that might have some standing stones at Falrenge, an isle in the murk of the Tirris Mire,” Stjepan said, waving over his shoulder over to their north and west. “No one knows what they're for, really, but folks tales say there's something special to them if you do all the labyrinths in the right order and know the right rituals.”