The Silver Key

by Emery Gallagher

  Moving stealthily, Charlie crept through the confusing maze of hallways toward her bedchamber, being silent more from habit than necessity, for the thunder covered her footsteps. She had wrapped herself in her cloak to cover the easily visible white of her nightdress, and she cupped one hand around the small flame of her candle to prevent its light from going further than her feet. As she neared her room, she heard a soft thump from the other side of the door. Trying to remember if she’d let one of the dogs into her bedchamber, she grasped the door handle and pushed the door open.

  One of her windows was open, the curtains fluttering in the wind. Puzzled, she crossed the wet floor to pull the shutters closed, wrestling against the wind to close the latch. She had to set her candle down to use both hands, and it guttered out in the draft. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she turned her back to the window to look at her room. Her breath caught.

  On the white linen of her pillow was a piece of parchment, secured to the fabric with a large, glinting silver pin. Cautiously she crept closer, scanning her room for any other abnormalities. Gingerly she grasped the enormous pin and pulled it free of her pillow, sending little bits of goose down into the air. She set the pin aside carefully and picked up the paper. It was a letter. Realizing it was too dark to read, she moved to her writing table and lit a new candle. The letter read:

  My Dearest Charlie,

  You have never met me, but my name is Grandmother. Though we’ve never spoken, and I doubt you have ever heard of me, I have searched for you for years. It is my duty to find certain people and to help them find their destiny, and you are one of those people. You have been chosen to bring back the Order of the Dagger. The future of the Order, and perhaps much more, now rests on your decision to undertake what you will be asked to do or to continue your life without ever trying. If you turn this paper over, you will find a map to the location where you will find me, should you choose to come. You will have to leave apart from your family’s will, and perhaps you will be punished when you return. You will have to come alone. Do not tell anyone about this letter or any of its contents.

  I know you are different, Charlie. I know you are bored by the expectations of girls of your age and station. I know it galls you to be a precious house cat, how unfair it is to be a girl. The adventures you miss, the excitement you are denied, the jealousy of your brothers—all of that can change. You could be so much more than they want you to be. All you have to do is come, and I will tell you how.

  Grandmother

  Charlie carefully folded the letter, thinking hard. The message was very enticing, almost too much so. Everything she wanted had just been offered to her. A chance to escape a life of monotony that she hated and to be something more. To have excitement and adventure for a change. But she was no fool, and she wasn’t easily convinced. She did not know how this woman knew so many things about her. She had never heard of the Order of the Dagger. There was no point in putting herself in danger by being foolhardy.

  Perhaps she would visit this woman though. It couldn’t hurt to just find out, could it?

  * * *

  The day after Charlie received the mysterious summons turned out to be a particularly trying one. She was lost in thought about the tantalizing offer, but unfortunately, Lady Victorina had emerged from her own usual fog long enough to attempt to make up for a few months of neglect toward her daughters in one day. She issued orders with severity and distributed scoldings for the smallest mistakes. Charlie’s distraction quickly made her her mother’s prime target, and the longer she spent inside reviewing the proper order to seat guests around a table and mending the dress she had ripped climbing a fence, the more she thought about the letter. With every broken thread and stabbed finger, she seethed and decided she would run away. Why should she stay? After she was finally released that evening, her temper cooled, and she was able to consider the idea of leaving more circumspectly.

  But even with a calmer head, the idea had taken hold, and Charlie made the decision to go. Her discontent with her daily life had been compounded by the enticement of potential better offers and the friction between herself and her mother to make her long to go anywhere at all. Once the decision was made, her determination to follow it through was absolute. Drawing on knowledge gained from watching her father and brothers pack for traveling by horse, she gathered the things she would need for her trip. She sneaked provisions from the kitchen, finding food and a few small dishes. She packed a few changes of boy’s clothing altered from things her brothers had outgrown and a few necessities, like a comb and soap. She shamelessly filched what she did not own from Matthew’s room, since he wasn’t home to notice. To her dismay, she had to part with some of her supplies when everything would not fit in the old saddlebags that she had found to carry her things. Reducing her daily life into a portable form proved very challenging. Charlie scrounged together as much coin as she could find and threw in a few pieces of old jewelry to sell just in case. She didn’t know how long she would be gone or what all she would need.

  Packing and planning was exciting, but just how to actually leave Windsong turned out to be a harder problem than finding a blanket. If she simply failed to come back from a ride during the day, she would be looked for before she had a decent head start. At night, the hostlers would not allow her to have her horse. Then there were the guards to worry about. The men on watch would see her if she left through the main gate, even if she could open it by herself. Sneaking right past the guards on the wall in the dark was one thing; trying to ride away from Windsong on a horse was another. The watchmen were chosen for their competency, and they took their job seriously. She was surprised to find that all of the precautions designed to protect her also made her a prisoner in her own home. After much scouting of the wall, coupled with her knowledge of the watchmen’s routines, she began to form a plan she hoped would allow her escape.

  Charlie had never once in her life believed that she would run away from her family to go visit someone she had never met. She was almost frightened by how excited and determined she was to do carry out her plan and how little remorse she felt for the trouble she was about to cause. But she had always wanted to be a brave person, and she finally had a chance to know if she could be.

  * * *

  On the night of her escape, Charlie leaned cautiously out her window, studying the courtyard for signs of life. Finding none, she adjusted the clasp that fastened her cloak around her throat and lifted the saddlebags she would take on her journey. Then, feeling a touch of anxiety, she set the bags down again and turned to the mirror that stood against the wall.

  Her reflection gazed solemnly back at her, a little hazy in the moonlight. She had always known she was beautiful, been told so until the words were meaningless, but now she tried to see past her face, attempting to memorize this last moment. Her thick black hair was tied back out of the way, and her blue eyes stared back at her from under thick lashes, wide with some unknown emotion. She was dressed in breeches, a tunic, and riding boots; she had a knife tucked into her belt and another in her boot. She fingered the hilt of the sword her father had given her years before, thrilled to get to wear it on her hip instead of hiding it under her bed. The sword and the memory of her father strengthened her resolve. The dress she had taken off lay across the bed like a cast-off life, faintly visible behind her in the mirror. Charlie shivered and turned away. The clothes and the weapons made her feel braver and stronger than she was, but she wasn’t sure the girl in the mirror was the same Charlie she had always been.

  She slid her saddlebags out the window’s opening, being careful not to let them slide down the roof. She had chosen to leave from her own room though it involved a jump so that she could bolt her bedroom door behind her. After climbing out of the window herself, she pulled the shutters closed and allowed herself to slide slowly across the peaked roof. When she reached the edge, Charlie dropped gently to the ground, her booted feet almost silent. After another quick look around, she shoulde
red her saddlebags and crept silently through the garden to the shed where she had left her saddle, a proper traveling saddle instead of a lady’s sidesaddle. Hoisting it awkwardly, she made her way to the paddock where she had ordered her horse to be left for the night.

  Mystic nickered curiously as Charlie approached. She stood still while Charlie saddled her and fastened the saddlebags and bedroll securely, though she seemed to know something unusual was happening. Charlie never took her for rides at night. The bay mare shifted her weight nervously, ready to spook at any curious sounds.

  Charlie paused to study the location of the guards on the wall. They were almost opposite her now. She hoped even if they saw her, the way she was dressed would convince them she was only a stable boy or a young trainee from the garrison. Quickly she led her horse toward the wall to put the livestock barn between them and the watchmen. Her heart pounded furiously as she walked. Any second she expected somebody to call out to her or Mystic to give them away. But the horse stayed quiet, and no shout came. She reached the small door in the wall meant to admit the late-coming shepherd or hunter after the main gate was closed and managed to open it without trouble, having unlocked and oiled it earlier that day. She convinced her horse to lower her head enough to walk through the low opening. On the other side, she shut the door as quietly as she could and swung into the saddle, wincing as the leather creaked softly.

  She wasn’t safe yet. There was a huge expanse of open ground between the wall and the shelter of the forest. Charlie turned her horse straight toward the woods, staying quiet until she was well away from the castle. She imagined the stares of the castle on her back, and she felt a rush of fear and adrenaline like she had never experienced before. Every leaf that crunched under her horse’s hooves sounded like a boulder being dropped from a height. There was nothing but silence behind her. Once far enough away that she couldn’t be heard, she simply went as fast as the horse could go toward the forest. She had to get as far as possible before anyone came after her.

  * * *

  “Ouch, Mystic, that’s my foot,” Charlie growled, leaning against the mare to shift the horse’s weight from her foot. This was made more difficult by the fact that Charlie had been in the act of unsaddling the horse and didn’t have a free hand to push with. Finally the mare snorted and removed her hoof from her mistress’s toes.

  “Thank you,” Charlie grumbled. She wasn’t really angry at Mystic—the mare had been wonderful about being ridden hard all night, something Charlie hadn’t been certain her light riding horse could do—but she was tired and emotional herself from the excitement and anxiety.

  Charlie’s secretive departure from home seemed to have been successful. Though she looked over her shoulder every few minutes, there was no one following her or searching for her. Her horse was doing well, and she had traveled quite a distance during the first night. She was far into the forest now, and the best she could tell from the map that had been drawn on the back of the letter, she would be traveling for nearly a week.

  Traveling turned out to be more difficult than Charlie had anticipated. She knew camping wasn’t easy, but she had made the mistake of thinking she knew enough about it that she could handle the responsibilities. She was very wrong. She knew how to start a fire, how to tie her horse safely, and even how to cook for herself. The problem was that knowing was not the same as doing. At home, her fire was started before she woke in the winter, her food was prepared for her by a cook, and her horse was cared for by the stablemen.

  The first fire she started sputtered out quickly, and it took her two more tries before she got it to stay lit. Mystic didn’t seem to know about being tied the same way Charlie did. It took her only a few minutes to tangle herself up, and she panicked until Charlie managed to get her loose. While she was straightened her horse out, the food she had been cooking burned black and crisp. She also soon realized just how spoiled she had been at home and how much she had taken for granted. In the woods there was no soft bed, no warm water to wash with, and no extra hands to help in a pinch. Very soon she was dirty, tired, and occasionally a little lost as she struggled to follow the map she had been given. But she learned from her mistakes and shrugged off the discomforts by reminding herself of where she was headed.

  Within a few days, Charlie had learned how to survive reasonably well, though she had already made a list of things she needed or had forgotten. Sleeping in the woods didn’t bother her anymore because she was so tired she fell asleep almost immediately, and she had seen no other people. Her fires stayed lit, and her food, tasteless as it was, didn’t burn. She got a little sunburned, and even developed a callous or two on her soft hands. Mystic clearly missed her life of sleeping warm in a barn, but she adjusted to the traveling just as Charlie did, no longer spooking at every bird call. By the time a week had passed, they both had a steady pattern of eating, riding, and sleeping down. Charlie was even starting to enjoy herself.

  * * *

  The end of Charlie’s journey left the road behind and followed only an instruction to ride in a certain direction. Her destination must be very close now. The sun had barely made its way over the tree tops, and its warmth combined with her growing excitement inspired Charlie to canter her horse down the deer trail she was currently following through the Eastern Forest. She wondered how she would know this place when she found it, if perhaps she had passed it already or turned away from it in her continuous attempt to keep her path pointed northeast. As the horse rounded a tight corner, something dark and imposing rose up before Charlie’s eyes. Fearing a collision with the object, she drew her horse up sharply.

  Charlie slid off Mystic’s neck where she had landed awkwardly and back into the saddle. There was a set of huge iron gates, about twelve feet tall and twice as wide, standing incongruously in the middle of the forest, bisecting the little path she had been riding along. There was no fence accompanying the gates, only a cleared-out path parallel to them as if a fence had been planned but forgotten. Perhaps the gates were merely meant to mark the entrance to someone’s property; the trail continued to the other side as if someone walked there routinely enough to trample the grass.

  Pretentious gates or not, this was the direction she needed to go. With an indifferent shrug, she directed her horse around the gates, meaning to rejoin the path on the other side. Mystic halted at an imaginary line parallel to the gatepost and stubbornly refused to continue. Charlie kicked and clucked her tongue, but the horse just rolled her eyes and jigged from hoof to hoof, anxious but refusing to move. For several minutes Charlie struggled to convince her wayward horse to move forward, but no amount of coaxing, threatening, or ordering could make the mare take a single step. She tried the other side of the gates with the same result.

  “Look, Mystic, there is nothing there.” Charlie thrust her hand out in annoyance at what she thought was only air. She struck something so hard that the back of her hand stung fiercely, and she could have sworn she heard metal ring. She yanked her hand back to her chest in disbelief.

  Recovering from her unintentional injury, she reached out again, more carefully this time, until her hand brushed something hard. Carefully feeling the surface, she realized there really had been something there the entire time. Judging by its shape and texture, it was likely the fence she had claimed did not exist.

  After apologizing to Mystic, Charlie returned to stand before the gates. Apparently she would actually have to go through them. She leaned forward to find the catch to open them. But even after much squinting and a little prodding, she couldn’t find any sort of latch. Instead of fastening with a chain, lock, or bar, the gates’ edges closed tightly together. She grabbed hold of an iron bar and shook it to see if the gate would move. It didn’t even tremble under her meager strength.

  “Maybe they’re magic, and you have to say a certain word to open them,” she wondered aloud, shaking her head at the ridiculousness of the idea. “Shouldn’t they have some inscription with a riddle to solve or something?”r />
  Thoughtfully she put a hand on the gates. No one was watching anyway; might as well try. “Could you open, please?” she asked very nicely. “Let me in?”

  Instantly the gates swung apart, revealing a smooth, even path that was not the faint deer trail she had been able to see through the bars. Charlie stared in wonder. The gates had actually opened by themselves. Unnerved, she didn’t move. Mystic, however, seemed to find nothing unusual about gates opening and plodded down the path, taking her stunned rider with her.

  Charlie shook the odd feeling the gates and their invisible fence had given her and focused on what was in front of her. From the other side of the gates, she had only seen forest, but now rolling, grassy fields stretched before her, bordered evenly by the trees. The only break in the symmetry of the green pasture was one corner that was rounded inward instead of sharply cut. Behind her she could still see the forest forming a neat line of trees at the edge of the clearing. As she rode down the broad, well-tended path cutting cleanly down the center of the field, she realized she wasn’t sure if this was where she was supposed to be going. She had tried to go around the gates because they were blocking her path, but she had only gone through them because Mystic had walked through them. Still, curiosity propelled her forward—she could turn back if she found nothing of interest.

  When she reached the end of the path, Charlie turned Mystic toward the irregular corner where she found a small, cleared channel that led into the heart of the miniature forest. In the center of the ring of trees was a clearing. A house, what might have been a barn, and another small building she couldn’t identify stood in the little clearing. All three structures looked as though they had been squashed slightly into the ground, partly because they were the same earthen color as the dirt. The place had an abandoned feel; there was no smoke from a cooking fire or tools left lying about. It was very still and quiet, the air heavy and foreboding. Even the birds seemed subdued.