“No, my Lord,” said Erland with a gracious bow. “I am, as you say, exhausted and would prefer to retire to my own room.”
Arik’s lips drooped in childish disappointment. “Ah, well. No matter,” he said. Then he raised a hand and waved it limply. “You may go then.”
Relieved, Erland turned for the door. “But before you leave,” added Arik, “fetch that young page boy down the hall, the one that brings me my scrolls from the Ministry. Fourth door down. Tell him he’s wanted here. He’ll understand.”
Erland felt the bile rise in his throat, but he nodded, and let himself out. When he reached the fourth door down the hall, he hesitated. What was he doing? He was obeying the Minister of Hestoria, that’s what he was doing. He was assuring his own safety.
He rapped on the door. A moment later, the door opened a crack and a face peered out. The top of the boy’s head only came to the middle of Erland’s chest, and his dark skin was smooth and unblemished. The boy blinked blearily. “Master Erland?” he asked, followed by a yawn.
Erland bit down on his molars. The boy couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve. Erland found he could not look the child in the eyes.
“The Minister says to come to him at once.”
There was a moment of silence. Erland forced himself to look at the boy to make sure he had been heard.
The boy was staring, not at Erland, but at some unseen spot in the distance. His mind, Erland realized, had already withdrawn to some other place.
The boy nodded, and Erland moved on. He had delivered his message. He had obeyed his orders.
Later that night, the sound of reluctant footsteps moving down the hall behind him sounded in his brain in a continuous, torturous loop.
1
Jayson said nothing during the journey from Ralen-Arch back to Ashlin. Teak and Dianis spoke occasionally in hushed tones but did not attempt to draw Jayson into their conversation. It had been difficult to explain to them what he had found. The words had caught in his throat. Dianis, with her usual fury, had insisted on seeing for herself, but Teak had thankfully convinced her otherwise, a feat of the greatest kind. Jayson could only assume the sincere urgency in Teak’s plea and the empty shock in his own eyes was enough to turn her around and return home.
It wasn’t until they had taken their horses to the Ashlin stable that the squabble began.
“If you had listened to me in the first place,” said Teak to Dianis, “none of this would have happened.”
Dianis draped the wool padding from the horse’s back onto a wooden brace, then she spun on Teak. “All of it would have happened. We just wouldn’t have known about it.”
“I told you to stay behind.” Teak’s frown deepened.
Dianis slapped the dust from her tunic. “Did you? I don’t quite recall—”
“Stop it, Dianis. I’m in no mood for your games. With our wedding just days away, the least you could have done was not put yourself in harm’s way.”
“I was never in harm’s way.” Dianis stared him down. “What should I have done, Teak? Stay home, eat my wedding cake, dance and make merry while innocent people were being slaughtered like pigs?”
Teak gritted his teeth. “You know what I meant.”
“No, Teak, actually I don’t.”
Teak stepped up to Dianis. She started to back away but he took her arms in his hands and held her firmly in place. “What would I have done if something had happened to you? If you’d arrived when the Vatéz were still in the village?”
“I would have fought them.”
“Exactly. And you might not have come home again. And my life would have ended.”
Dianis went silent, and she stiffened as Teak tried to pull her closer. “I have to feed my horse,” she said.
“Dianis!” Teak gave her little shake, restrained anger tugging at his voice. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”
Dianis lifted her eyes to his. “I heard you. I always hear you.”
“But you never listen.”
Teak released Dianis, turned heel, and marched out of the barn. Jayson reached for a brush and chuckled.
“What are you laughing at?” snapped Dianis. “My future husband has got his hackles up, and you think it’s funny?”
“I do,” said Jayson. He pressed the brush’s bristles against the horse’s spine and drew it down its back. “Teak loves you, you know. He worries about you.”
“He shouldn’t. I’ve always been able to take care of myself. Does he expect me to be someone different than who I am just because I will be his wife? If he thinks that—”
“No, that’s not it at all.” Jayson peered into Dianis’s eyes. There was a time when she had been in love with him, but she had been young and impetuous, and Jayson’s heart belonged to Ivanore. After that, they had become the closest of friends. But he, too, worried about Dianis’s often reckless behavior.
“Teak doesn’t want you to change, Dianis. He wants you to be careful. He wants to protect you—”
“I don’t need protecting!”
“He needs to protect you. He’s a man, and being a man means keeping your family safe. At least let him do that.”
Dianis huffed. “Fine,” she said, though Jayson sensed resistance in her voice. “I won’t run off again. At least not until after the wedding. Satisfied?”
Jayson rolled his eyes, smiled, and turned his attention to his horse. “I’ll take care of all this,” he said. “Go find Teak. Smooth things over.”
Dianis grinned, satisfied, then stepped over to Jayson and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you,” she said. Then she hurried out of the barn.
Jayson watched her go, shaking his head. She was so reckless, so full of fire and spirit. She could be dangerous at times, her tendency to rush in without considering the consequences putting them all at risk today. But she was also compassionate, always thinking of others before herself. Jayson respected her, and he admired the man who had somehow captured her heart.
May the gods be with him.
Jayson heard the crunch of boots on the barn floor behind him.
“Wondered when you’d get wind we’d come back,” he said without turning.
Gerard stepped up beside Jayson and leaned an elbow on the stall rail. “The other men returned hours ago. You took your time coming home.”
“Had a lot to think about.”
“So I heard. I understand the Vatéz hung a man, took more than twenty others captive.”
“That’s right.”
“You followed them?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you find?”
Jayson stopped brushing the horse. He set the brush aside and ran a hand across the mare’s sleek coat. “The Vatéz walked the men to a main road that passes a number of villages. Probably connects that entire region to the coast, hundreds travel along it every day, I imagine. Perfect place to send a message about the Guilde.”
“What message?”
“A bloody one. The Vatéz are trying to find us,” explained Jayson. “They want someone, anyone to come forward with information.”
“But we’ve had almost no contact with anyone for years. We’ve intentionally stayed hidden.”
“The Vatéz don’t care. Maybe they want people to go looking for us. People will do anything to protect their families.”
“Jayson, what did they do to those men?”
Jayson did his best to describe what he had seen. Gerard listened, his face twisted in shock and sorrow.
“They’ve gone too far,” said Gerard finally. “And they won’t stop at this. You know they won’t. What are we going to do?”
“Do?” replied Jayson. “Nothing.”
“How can you say that? Innocent men died today. Not to mention that their families are now destitute.”
Jayson picked up the brush again, his grip tight. The muscles in his arms and shoulders went rigid. He didn’t want to argue with Gerard. He owed him so much, but he’d also spent a
good deal of time thinking about the Vatéz. “If we get involved,” he said, “we’ll be giving Arik and the Vatéz exactly what they want. They don’t want the villages. They want you, Gerard, and me. They want all of the Guardians, their wives, their children. They want all of us dead. If we play into their hand, the Guilde will be extinguished forever.”
Gerard sighed, signaling that he knew Jayson was right. But he wasn’t finished yet. “Is this really about our lives, or is this about Ivanore?” he asked, his voice low. “Ivanore is the Seer, and the Guilde are supposed to be her protectors. Well, we haven’t done a very good job of it lately, have we? It’s hard to protect a Seer who doesn’t want to be a Seer. But if we all die, there will be no one left to defend her, will there?”
Jayson said nothing. Gerard’s reference to Ivanore abandoning her call to be with Jayson was utterly clear.
“Have it your way,” said Gerard, exasperated. “We have our hands tied anyway, what with plans for the waterway and the wedding coming up. I’ll leave it for now. But when all that is settled,” he added, wagging a finger in Jayson’s face, “you and I are going to visit this again.”
2
The lock had not clicked shut when Erland left Ivanore’s room. Had he simply forgotten to lock it? It was late at night after all, and he had been distracted with seeing to her injuries. He had been kind to her, gentle, but he had wanted, expected something more, something she could not give him. Even if Jayson wasn’t her husband, she could never love a man with innocent blood on his hands. Despite Erland’s excuses, he was nothing more than a murderer in her eyes. And besides, someday she hoped to find Jayson again. That was why she had come to Hestoria in the first place, wasn’t it? To find him and to bring him home.
Ivanore laid on her bed, gripping her aching ribs. She stared at the door handle, waiting for Erland to realize his mistake and return with the key. But as the minutes passed, he did not return. No one came to lock the door.
Had he done it intentionally? No. He would never do that. Since she’d first arrived at Auseret, Arik had kept a meticulous watch over her. The door was unlocked only in the morning when she was accompanied to breakfast by a guard, and then locked again each evening on her return. When she was allowed out of the room there were always guards with her. She was never left unattended.
It wasn’t that locks themselves were a problem. In the first year here, she had used her magic on two separate occasions to unlock her door and escape, but her attempts had failed. The first time, she fled through the tower only to run headlong into a contingent of armed guards. She had fought them with magic, but she could not bring herself to kill any of them. They were nothing more than servants, she knew, as bound to Arik and the Vatéz as she was. So in the end she was taken back to her cell, and Arik had her whipped. Her back still bore the scars to remind her.
Her second attempt had been during feast time. Arik had allowed her to join him at the head table. She had managed to slip a note to a young servant girl, a note asking to be delivered to the Guilde. She did not know if the girl would even know what the Guilde was or if she would know anyone who could find them for her, but she had to try to get word out that she was still here in Hestoria, that she had never made it to Imaness.
She had not been as discreet as she had thought. Another servant noticed the exchange and reported it to his superior, who in turn reported it to Arik. This time Ivanore was not punished. Instead, the servant girl was flogged in her place.
After that, Arik had brought one of the senators of the Ministry, the strongest of the Vatéz or League of Magicians, all the way from Nauvet-Carum to cast a spell on the iron workings both in her door and in the outer gate so that her underdeveloped magic had no power to manipulate them. Then, to make sure the spell could never be undone, Arik had sliced the senator’s throat. Before the man could even register what had happened, he was dead.
Ivanore had not tried to escape again.
But now she sat face to face with an impossible opportunity.
Ignoring the pain left behind by Arik’s earlier assault, Ivanore sat up. Then, rising to her feet, she cautiously crossed the room. She felt a little stronger now, the anticipation of what she would find sustaining her. When she reached the door, she slipped her fingers around the handle and pulled. To her surprise, the door opened an inch, enough to peer through it into the hall, which was empty. She had always believed a guard was posted outside each night, but perhaps she had been wrong. Why would she need a guard with a magically locked door?
Ivanore’s heart raced. She glanced behind her into the room. It was late, nearly midnight if her measurement of the moon outside her window was correct. It would be hours before the servants awoke. Surely there would be guards posted downstairs, but perhaps, if she was careful…
She moved to the chest at the end of her bed and opened it, revealing the few possessions Arik had allowed her. She dressed in her simplest gown, unadorned and lightweight for passing long, tedious days in her room. She donned her shoes and packed the apple and what remained of her evening meal into a cloth pouch, which she slipped over her shoulder. She wished she could bring water with her, but she had no means to carry it. She also wished she had a weapon, but Arik had made certain never to leave anything in her room that could be used as such. She considered breaking the pottery water jug. A shard of that might be useful, but it would make too much noise.
She was keenly aware at how quickly time was passing. If she was going to do this, she had to go now, and yet at the door she hesitated. Was it fear that held her in check? No. The emotion she felt was more akin to disbelief, awe.
She pushed the door open wider. The hinges creaked, sending a spark of fear through her veins. Then she stepped into the hall, laced with shadow and firelight from the single torch burning in the sconce. She considered taking the torch with her, but decided against it. It would draw too much attention.
Fear spiked through Ivanore with every step she took down the deserted hall. At first, she moved slowly, her breaths coming hard and irregular. She expected a guard to turn the corner at any moment, but she reached the hall’s end without a sign of anyone.
Strange, she thought. Where is everyone?
She turned the corner down a second hall, which led to the top of the main staircase. She moved swiftly past three additional floors, each as empty and silent as the one above it. Only once she reached the bottom level and the edge of the interior courtyard did she spot the first sign of danger. There she found more than three dozen guards standing at attention. The entire perimeter of the courtyard was ablaze with light from tall torches stuck in the ground. And there she found Arik, too, standing before the guards. He was speaking to them, but she was too far away to hear above the constant drone of the crashing waves. She looked up and saw that the night sky was swollen with clouds. She could feel the moisture and nip of cold in the air, the promise of a coming storm. She wished she had brought her quilt with her.
Taking in the scene before her, Ivanore clung to the recesses of the courtyard’s exterior path. She stayed clear of the torchlight as best she could as she skirted the area, passing behind the gathered soldiers, keeping low as she headed for the stone archway leading to the castle gardens. She had been through that archway hundreds of times before, enough times to know how to navigate her way even in the dark.
She slipped through the archway, astounded by her good fortune at not having been seen. She pressed her back against the wall, waiting to hear some signal or shout from the guards, or Arik, that her escape had been discovered. But all she heard were the crashing waves on the opposite side of the tower from where she was now.
Once more, she glanced behind her through the archway at the soldiers in the courtyard, and beyond that, the massive gate that guarded the entrance to the castle. There was no way she could reach it without being seen, and even if she could, the gates were always locked and sealed with magic, except when Erland and his men were coming or going.
; But she had no intention of escaping through the gate.
Instead, she moved with the silence of a shadow through the garden, now a dormant forest of brittle stems and abandoned rows of soil. Come spring, seeds would be planted and new life would blossom, but today it had been all but forgotten.
Ivanore, grateful for the cloak of night, made her way across the uneven earth to where the back wall stood covered in dense, partially dead vines. A hint of jasmine still touched the air, echoes of the white blossoms long withered with the coming winter.
She darted glances over each shoulder before raising her palms, shaking with fear, to face the wall. The rusted loop of metal she had spotted through the shrubbery that first summer here still winked at her. Ivanore closed her eyes. It had been years since she’d summoned her magic, a talent she intentionally suppressed. After Arik killed the senator who had cursed the locks, he had, one by one, killed all the senators, replacing them with powerful non-magical men who were loyal only to him. Soon, only Ivanore remained as a remnant of the age of magic, and Arik hoarded her seeing powers to himself.
Ivanore opened her eyes and felt the slow, steady flow of magic move from the deepest part of her through her arms to her fingertips. She could only hope that no one, especially Arik, knew about this old door in the garden wall. She had tried to open it only once, but the lock was rusted shut. After that, she purposely avoided going near it for fear someone besides her would discover its presence. Now, she focused her attention on the rusted metal. There was a low, resentful squeak of metal waking from an endless sleep, followed by a dull pop. Next, the door’s weathered, rotting wood shifted toward her on tired hinges, pushing against the vines that held it captive. Some of the vines snapped and fell away, and the door opened just wide enough for Ivanore to slip through. Then, using her magic again, she closed the door behind her and did her best to coax the dormant vines back into place.
The Crystal Keeper BoxSet Page 11