Description: In the Eye of Heaven 1. The Path of Knots T raveler''s Night was coming on, and the horses were uneasy. It was almost as if they knew the numbering of days. Durand scratched the back of his neck, peering through drizzle and branches. He was meant to be riding home, guiding his lord up familiar tracks, but now he couldn''t see for trees, and every breath of wind had the old forest alive with a sound like whispers. In an hour, it would be dark, and they would be caught on the road. On Traveler''s Night, no one slept outdoors. Sir Kieren joked, "If I had known your father lived so far up in these wilds, I would have said, ''No reason to climb the forests of Gireth for your father''s handouts, we''ll have you knighted in the clothes you''re wearing.'' It isn''t fine linen that makes a knight, after all. Now, I begin to wonder. In these wilds, a baron will have a house? Walls? Will he have a roof? Lad, if it''s a bear''s den, I won''t think any worse of you--so long as I know.''" Durand glanced back. They called old Kieren "the Fox" and he looked the part: A small-boned man, he sported silver-tipped red mustaches that made him look as if a pair of the creatures had just jumped up his nostrils. It had been Sir Kieren''s idea to make the journey, and, from the glint in the man''s eye, Durand judged that the Fox knew how lost they were. "He''s not quite a bear, Sir Kieren," Durand said. "And this village? Your inheritance? I would like to see little Gravenholm, I think. And meet this poor old Ossericwhose grief gets you your fiefdom. The man whose son was lost upon the waves. Who lives alone in his forest hall knowing that his lord''s obdurate youngest boy will have every stone of it one day." "Not this time, Sir Kieren." Durand meant to give Gravenholm a wide berth and head straight for his father''s stronghold. The tracks he''d chosen would lead them leagues from Gravenholm. "I knew you had come down from the wilds," Kieren was saying, "but now I wonder what sort of--Host of Heaven!" As his master swore, Durand''s head crashed into the branches. Brag, his big bay hunter, screamed and pawed the air so that only a wrestler''s grip kept Durand in the saddle. He fought the maddened animal for a look at what had spooked it and caught a glimpse of a pair of yellow eyes flashing up from the track. Then Brag was rearing, and it was all Durand could do to hang on. After a moment, he found a better grip and took a look. Something had appeared between Brag''s hooves: a pup, mottled leaf red and iron gray, and he could see the little fellow looking up with those yellow eyes, shrinking against the earth as hooves chopped down around it. "Come on, Brag," Durand said. "Come on. Calm now." And, though Brag was no warhorse, the steady pressure of Durand''s voice calmed the hunter enough that he could step back. The pup shivered against the clammy track and looked up as Durand smeared bark and grit from his face. Suddenly he was not so sure the beast was a dog after all. He turned to say: "You know--" And the monster must have stepped out just then, for Durand found the Fox''s face stiff and pale, his blue eyes fixed on something. Slowly, Durand turned back. Gray and more massive than a man, a wolf flowed into the track only a few paces away. Never had Durand seen such a beast at close quarters. In the wastelands, a wolf was a sob on the wind and a winter thief of children, not a thing a man blundered across. Now, the brute''s corpse-candle eyes caught Durand. Lost, and leagues from any village, he could not lookaway--lost things were what this monster hunted. Beyond the glowing eyes rose a rumble deeper than dungeon chains. While Durand and his master--both armed men--sat frozen, the wolf cub rolled to its outsized paws and nuzzled at the monster. The tiny creature paid no heed to the long spines of the brute''s hackles. The wolf lowered its leering head. For a moment, black lips touched the pup''s muzzle, gentle as a kiss. "God, it''s--" Durand began--he was ready to confess surprise. He was ready to say he''d been wrong about wolves. But then the wolf''s jaws sprang wide, swallowing the pup. Durand said, "Hells!" The word caught the beast''s ear. It stared, and blood welled between its yellow teeth. For a long moment, the wolf held Durand in its gaze, then it tossed its head back and gulped the cracking bones. Impossible. Durand wrenched the sword from his gear. The wolf watched. Bulges moved against the walls of its belly, kicking and pawing more slowly and more slowly. "Host Below," Sir Kieren said. "It''s a prodigy." His small hands twitched into the fist and spread-fingers sign that mirrored the true Eye of Heaven. Durand gripped his blade. "Aye," he whispered. A prodigy: a sign scrawled by inhuman hands, pointing. The lamp eyes blazed as the brute smacked its jaws. Then, as suddenly as the monster had appeared, it coiled behind its leer and sprang in a long arc that cast it beyond the branches--it might as well have leapt right out of the world. All around them, Durand had the feeling that the Powers of Heaven and Hell were stepping between the trees, full of death and promises, with their eyes on his neck. A cold shiver passed up his sword, drawing the heat from his knuckles. Blood pounded in his throat. Sir Kieren spoke. "What doom does this foretell?" "I cannot guess," said Durand. "A priest might read something more in it." "It''s always something with you around. I remember the Patriarch, old Oredgar, he held you in his eye one time: alwayswondered what he saw." Durand was about to question the man, but the old knight set the subject aside. "Let''s see if there isn''t somewhere in this wood we can get under shelter." They urged their horses on. And rode onto the doorstep of a village, the first in twenty leagues of lost wandering. "What is this place?" breathed Kieren. Durand stared, and, quite suddenly, understood where they had arrived. "--Gravenholm," he said. His own voice came like the wolf''s rumble. " Your land?" Kieren whispered. After all this way, to strike his tiny inheritance after the wolf ... Durand managed a nod. "Hells," Kieren murmured. His hands formed the Eye of Heaven. There wasn''t much for Durand to say. In the failing light, plowmen''s furlongs crosshatched the fields. A stream meandered heavily toward the manor house. They called the river Plaitwater. He knew the house. He had stood in the hall, sat at the table, and listened to the old man''s grief. "Gravenholm ..." murmured Kieren. "Your doorstep." "One day." Now, however, the current owner still lingered inside, a widower alone at the end of a dead lineage. Durand winced. "Bugger me," said Kieren in a cloud of breath. "Right, there''s nothing for it. It''s just a house. I want out of the weather. Come on. I don''t think my heart can stand much more of this nonsense." The knight urged his little roan into the fields and began to pick a course from bank to headland. Somewhere, far off, a fiddle was playing. "Ah, listen there. That''s better," Kieren said. Durand could see the pale squares of the peasants'' windows hanging in the mist. Closer, long-horned cattle stared over the Plaitwater. They looked as though they were drinking hot broth. "And this must be Osseric''s hall." A barn hulked by the water, flanked by a hall like a mountain of thatch on swollen timbers. "It''s not so bad a place, though it would want a prop here and there if it were ever to serve as a fortress." One day, Durand would live in that hall, but that night he felt like a housebreaker moving through the master''s rooms. Dusk had caught them, though, and they really had no time. Sir Kieren''s eyes twinkled. "Which one''s the barn, did you say?" "Not sure," Durand said. "It''ll do me, whichever." "Surely. You are lucky to have the place. And I''d guess this moat is more to keep the stock from getting to the barley. Nothing unusual for a manor of this size. Not the mighty citadel of Acconel, but your father doesn''t have a lot of liegemen. If it''s all he could find ..." It was more than Durand had any right to expect; there was little left for second sons in Errest the Old. "Good for ducks," the old knight continued. "Geese, a passing salmon, beaver. That sort of thing." "And me," said Durand. He''d spent fourteen years working to earn the place. His father could give him the old widower''s lands, but, among the Sons of Atthi, only a knight could inherit a knight''s land. They skirted the moat, Kieren setting a dawdling pace. Durand squinted into the heavy gray ahead where the gloom of sky and forest blended, thinking that Heaven''s Eye would be there sinking beyond the clouds. They had almost run out of daylight. "Sir Kieren," Durand said, "we''ll have to ride hard to make my father''s stronghold by nightfall, I think." "Lad," Kieren said, "night''s fallen. The baron must wait another night for his son." "It''s hardly a league," Durand said. The sound echoed too loudly from old Osseric''s walls. "It''s a league to the Crossroads Elm, at most, and then it''s straight on to the Col." They could be at his father''s hall in no time. "It''ll be full dark before we cross the fields, lad." Kieren leaned close, eyeing the smudge of f

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