The Keeper Chronicles: The Complete Trilogy

by JA Andrews

  Night had truly fallen and a boy scurried across the stage adding more torches. Excitement and pride broke Will’s concentration on the woman and her blank hollowness faded from his chest. The extra torches drenched the stage with light, obscuring anything past it. Will shifted on the blanket, trying to shrink back into the shadows, wishing he could see Lady Dreadful. But he might as well be on stage, perfectly lit up and unable to see anything.

  He turned his attention to the next wayfarer woman who’d taken the stage, trying to push Lady Dreadful out of his mind. Tomorrow morning he’d leave with Borto, or following right behind him. The cold woman could stay here in Porreen and rot.

  Borto Mildiani took the stage and Will turned all his attention to the man. It wasn’t difficult. From his first words, the man had the audience enthralled.

  Even more than his face or his name, this set him apart from Vahe.

  Will had forgotten little about the wayfarer’s visit to his childhood home. Vahe had told three tales that morning, tales of danger and suspense. As a child, Will hadn’t been able to pinpoint what he hadn’t liked about them, but he’d told enough stories by now to know. The way Vahe lingered on frightening ideas, the turns of phrase—he enjoyed his audience’s fear.

  Borto, on the other hand, made the festival laugh. The crowd threw themselves into his hands and he rewarded them with excitement and intrigue. He told the tale of a young Roven girl lost on the Sweep who’d called out to the Serpent Queen for help and Will listened closely, absorbing the story to write down tonight. Most stories were easy to remember, this one was so well crafted and told, it would be effortless. The thread of the story ran perfectly true from the lost girl calling for help, to the sinuous, black shape of the Serpent Queen descending from the night sky, and instead of leading the girl back home, changing her into a shadow and bringing her up to live among the stars.

  Will found the Roven myth of the Serpent Queen fascinating. In Queensland, the black cloud-like darkness that wound through the sky was a shadow trail left by the ogre whose constellation sat at one end. Just a lack of stars, a nothing.

  But the Roven viewed the darkness as a serpent, slowly devouring every other star. She was the part of the night sky they claimed as their own, different from the rest and bent on destroying it.

  Borto finished to thunderous applause and Will rose with the rest of the crowd.

  Estinn took the stage long enough to declare Borto the winner of the contest. Will stepped forward to talk to him, but everyone else in the crowd had the same idea and the stage swarmed with people.

  Several wayfarers and even a handful of Roven congratulated Will on his excellent story, but the crowd inexorably pushed him back and shut him out. Borto thundered something enthusiastically to the crowd around him. It would be hours before they left the man alone, but Will didn’t need to talk to him tonight. He’d be back at dawn, just happening to be leaving at the same time as Borto. Only one route led off the Sweep this far south, and they’d have days on the lonely Sea Road to talk before they’d have a chance to go separate ways.

  The obscurity of Will’s room called to him. He looked around for Lady Dreadful, but saw no sign of her. Instead of relief, a wave of vulnerability swept over him, like he’d been tossed into murky water where anything might be slithering past.

  He slipped into the throng moving toward the city gate and with the darkness and the mood of the crowd, reached the unsavory alley leading to the inn with a minimal number of distrustful glances and no sign of a thick copper braid. The moon wouldn’t rise for hours, and the alley sat in heavy shadows. Will paused at the beginning of it. That woman had him rattled.

  Still he hesitated. He let out a huff of annoyance at his own fear, even as he cast out down the dark alley, checking for the vitalle of anyone hiding in the shadows. He found nothing.

  Walking quickly to his room, he slid the insubstantial latch into place, and leaned against the door. Across the dark room on the windowsill he could just make out a lump. It only took a couple steps closer to make it out. A dead mouse. With a small laugh, Will leaned out the window, half expecting an undersized hawk to wing through the sky, but it was empty of everything but distant, cold stars. With a flick, he shot the mouse out the window to land in the alley.

  A candle sat on a tiny table beneath the window. Will set his finger against the wick. “Incende,” he breathed. His fingertip tingled as energy passed through it and a small flame burst into life.

  He sank down onto the bed, dropping his head into his hands and staring at the floor, letting the silence and emptiness wrap around him like a breath of fresh air.

  “Who are you?”

  The woman’s voice cut through the room and Will’s head snapped up.

  Leaning against the wall, tucked back in the narrowest corner of his room, the candlelight showing barely more than her face, stood Lady Dreadful.

  Chapter Five

  Will shoved himself up off the bed. “Who are you?” he shot back

  She ignored the question. “You shouldn’t be here.” Her Roven accent bit the words off harshly.

  Will stared at her for a moment. “This is my room.”

  Trying to gauge her emotions, he opened up toward her. The same emptiness blossomed in his chest. He focused more, searching until he felt an undercurrent of anger, deep and…old. Foundational. The sort of emotion that had been there her entire life. Anger surrounded by coldness and emptiness.

  He could see her face, but her dark ranger leathers blurred into the shadows. Making her somehow part of the darkness except a glint of silver from a knife hilt at her belt.

  She stepped forward and he forced himself to hold his ground.

  “I’m usually better at reading people.” The shock of her presence quickly wore off and was replaced with anger at her audacity. “I had the impression you didn’t like me. Not that you were headed to my room for a midnight visit.”

  He still felt nothing. This woman exuded less emotion than anyone he’d ever met. His own body, on the other hand, thrummed with wariness and alarm. The door stood between them and Will had the urge to run, but outside this room he would still be just as trapped. A foreigner running down the streets chased by a Roven? That story did not end well.

  “Who are you?” she repeated.

  Will gestured to his bright red shirt. “I thought the shirt made it obvious. And the story I told tonight.”

  She said nothing.

  “I’m a storyteller.” …from Gulfind, he almost added. But the lie felt too blatant.

  Her eyes glittered out of the dimness, giving Will the wild impression that she could see through shadows and somehow into him.

  “You sound like you’re from Queensland.”

  Will’s chest tightened but he kept his voice light. “The people from Queensland and Gulfind sound remarkably alike.” Which was one of the main reasons he’d picked Gulfind as his pretend home. “The countries are on such good terms that the family trees along the border are muddled with folk from both countries.”

  He waited for her to do or say anything. “There’s a whole history behind that, but since I make my living as a storyteller, you’ll have to pay me if you want to hear it.”

  “Leave the Sweep.”

  Her imperious tone was irritating. He sat on the bed and kicked his feet out with a hundred times more nonchalance than he felt.

  “I was just considering staying.” That lie was blatant, but it was worth it to see the scowl deepen on her face. Will shifted farther onto the bed so he could lean against the wall.

  She took a step forward and Will tensed.

  He cast out through the room again, looking for a source of energy. The candle flame held too little vitalle to do anything. If she attacked, he’d have to pull energy out of her. Which was distasteful. And then he’d—do what? The only spells he worked well were subtle and slow.

  His mind offered up outlandish suggestions from old stories: he could split open the ground like Keeper
Chesavia had done. Except even when he told that tale he had no idea how she’d done that. He could call fire from the candle and build it into a wall, pressing her back like Keeper Terrane had done against the trolls.

  Of course when Will had tried to manipulate flames, even with a bonfire to draw from, all he’d managed was a little tumbleweed of fire that had scuttled erratically across the ground before fizzling out.

  He smiled at her, not bothering to make it look sincere. “Now, I think it’s time you tell me who you are, and why you’re lurking in my room. It’s obviously not to hear me tell a story.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe I am. There’s no better way to learn about people than to hear them tell stories, isn’t that right?”

  Will’s stomach clenched at the echo of his words to Borto. “Have you been following me all day?”

  She ignored his question again. “When you tell stories, all I hear are lies,” she said, her voice cold. “Go back to…whereever you are from, Will.” Her lip curled as she said his name, as though she doubted even that. “You are not what you seem.”

  Will flinched, and tried to cover it up by running his hand through his beard. “What exactly do you think I am?”

  She narrowed her eyes and Will opened up toward her one more time. But her emotions were still clamped down out of his reach. She took two more steps, moving within arm’s reach, glaring down at him. The clay wall pressed unyieldingly against his back.

  “Go home. Things will not go well for you if you stay.”

  Irritation flickered at the threat and he took some grim pleasure in letting it show on his face. A bit of breeze slipped into the room swirling the scent of grass with the woman’s worn leather and causing the candle to stutter. She glanced toward it and Will’s heart stuttered with the flame.

  She leaned closer and the uneven clay wall pressed harder into Will’s back. “I see you.” Her accent dragged the smallest bit along the s, almost like a hiss.

  The words cut through him. It took everything he had to not shove away from her.

  “Leave.” She held his gaze for a long moment before turning and striding the few steps to the door. She glanced back at him with her hand on the latch. “There is much to fear on the Roven Sweep…” Her eyes flickered toward the candle. “For a man like you.”

  The door closed, leaving Will in the darkness of the empty room. He strained to hear her in the hall. The flickering candle and the wobbling shadows it cast were the only movement.

  How long had she been here waiting for him? His gaze searched the room as though it would give him a clue.

  His books—

  With a rush of fear that splintered like shards of glass, he dropped to his knees and his fingers scrambled back under the bed. For a heart-stopping breath he felt nothing. Then he brushed against the bundle and dragged it out. He clutched the books for a moment, the scarf around them undisturbed, before shoving them into his bag.

  He could leave tonight. He could head down the sea road, find a place far from Porreen to wait out the night and wait for Borto to catch up.

  He glanced into his mostly empty bag. He needed supplies. Dawn would have to be good enough.

  There was no way the woman could prove he had used magic to light the candle, but justice on the Sweep rarely worried about things as trivial as proof. The Roven weren’t against magic, but if they found out he could do it, they’d know he wasn’t just a storyman. And if they knew anything about Gulfind, they’d know that almost no one there used magic. The questioning from there could only go downhill.

  He blew out the candle, dropping the room into darkness.

  A raised voice echoed down the alley. Will crawled quietly to the window, and lifted his head just high enough to look out.

  Two men stumbled drunkenly down the street. No clan warriors coming to arrest him, no empty woman with narrow eyes.

  Will looked for something to push in front of the door, but the only furniture in the room was the light table and the bed. And if Roven warriors came for him tonight, it wouldn’t be furniture or weapons he’d have to use against them. If they came, he’d just have to hope he woke up quickly enough to work some magic.

  He let his head fall back against the wall. Except he didn’t exactly have an arsenal of magic at the ready.

  Blackness bloomed around him, managing to be both smothering and empty. Normally manageable fears grew and shifted, looming like living things. Tentacles of anxiety pried him open.

  Even assuming he could befriend Borto, would he find out where Vahe had taken Ilsa? Would Borto even know? It had been twenty years, even if he found Vahe, would the man remember?

  Dawn couldn’t come soon enough. The hope he’d been feeling faded, strangled out by questions. The fear of failing surrounded him like a wall. No, a wall was too thin. It surrounded him like the grassland outside, vast and empty. He rolled back onto his bed. Fears that felt too real swirled around him. He pushed them back over and over, waiting for sleep that didn’t come.

  Life felt like one long search after another. He’d spent a year on the Sweep searching for an army that didn’t exist, and for Kachig the Bloodless who was dead.

  And it hadn’t started here. How many years had he spent looking for children born with the skills to be Keepers?

  For the past two centuries, Keepers had appeared every seven to ten years with barely a gap.

  Until Will.

  After Will had joined the Keepers twenty years ago, not a single new Keeper had surfaced. There should have been at least two more, maybe three. Instead, the existing Keepers grew older and weaker until only Alaric and Will ever left the Stronghold. When fifteen years had passed, Will had begun searching in earnest, traveling Queensland as often as possible, visiting even the smallest towns while the Keepers worried that no more would ever come.

  And he’d searched for twenty years for Ilsa. Twenty years of rumors and dead ends. Would this time be any different?

  Sometime in the interminable hours of darkness, sleep must have crept into his room, because early morning sounds from the street and a gust of chilly air woke him. The sky had lightened to pale slate, anticipating the dawn.

  With as little movement as he could, Will glanced around the room, finding it empty.

  Of course it was empty. He rolled his eyes at himself. It was time to get out of the Sweep. He was going to turn into a paranoid mess if he stayed any longer.

  The sky was clear. He searched it for a moment, looking for Talen, before rolling up his bedroll and grabbing his bag. Half uneasy, half annoyed with himself for the uneasiness, he cracked the door open just enough to peer into the empty hallway.

  It was obviously too late to stop himself from turning into a paranoid mess.

  The smell of warm bread floated upstairs from the common room. He let the homey, daytime scent fill up the hollowness that lingered from last night’s fear and followed the smell down to where the squinty-eyed innkeeper puttered in the kitchen. Will bought several small loaves and some smoked fish.

  Near the door, something rustled. A shadow shifted and the morning light caught on a coppery-red braid.

  Chapter Six

  Will’s hand clenched his bag. The woman gestured out the door.

  “Didn’t guess Sora was here for you.” The innkeeper leaned his elbows on the counter. “Careful, storyman. That’s not a woman t’ be taken lightly.”

  “I’d noticed,” Will said. She stood between him and the door. Not that running was an option. Everyone who saw him would vividly remember the black-haired foreigner who’d run through the street. Like a coward.

  Even as Will opened up, he knew it would be useless. The innkeeper’s curiosity darted into him with an eager brightness, but Sora was nothing but emptiness. In the grey-blue morning light, she looked less like a vicious sliver of darkness and more like a woman. A hostile, unreadable woman, but still a woman.

  Behind her the alley lightened. Borto’s wagon could be trundling down the road already, the d
istance between them stretching like a cord. Frustration surged up, battling against his fear. He loosened his hand on his bag.

  “Good morning…Sora.” He tried to cram as much of his irritation into her name as possible. “Coming to my room wasn’t enough last night? You needed to come back this morning?”

  A spike of shock and amusement came from the innkeeper.

  “Come with me,” she ordered.

  Will looked around for any other option, but she stood at the only exit. He leaned against the bar, focusing only on her, blocking out the emotions coming from the innkeeper. “No.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but he felt nothing from her. “Your services are required.”

  “That’s flattering, I suppose. But I’m going to have to decline.” He felt the slightest irritation from her.

  “Last night,” he pressed, looking for more, “you snuck into my room like a gutless thief”—her lips pressed into a thin line—“and ordered me to leave the Sweep. Setting aside the fact that I don’t take orders from you, I’ve decided it’s time for me to go home.”

  He pushed himself off the bar and walked toward the door, but she didn’t move out of his way.

  “So,” he continued, “if your plans for me have changed, and I’d like to point out that it’s strange that you have plans for me, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.”

  She crossed her arms. “It’s not my plans that have changed. This morning the Torch requires your services.”

  A cold fear stabbed into his gut. The clan chief?

  “You’d be wise to come with me. I’m your polite invitation.”

  “Yes, you’re like a beam of sunshine.”

  The edge of her mouth quirked up the slightest bit. “If you refuse to come with me, the next people Killien sends won’t be as pleasant. And if you try to leave the city…it won’t go well.”

  The walls of the dingy inn pushed in a bit closer. He’d never heard of any foreigner taken to a Torch for a pleasant reason.