The Border Keeper

by Kerstin Hall

  He strode to the desk and wiped away the word, sending dust spiralling through the dim air. Behind him, he thought he heard stifled laughter, but when he spun around, the study was empty. The maggots squirmed in his throat.

  He left the study and returned to the foyer.

  The stairs leading to the upper floor sagged in the centre, the woven runner brown. He walked on the margin of the staircase. Although the wood groaned and squeaked with every step, it held firm beneath him.

  The second-floor landing grew brighter when he reached the top of the stairs. Drab portraits hung on the walls. All of the same child, and in each painting, some part of the canvas had been cut away, amputating legs, arms, gouging out eyes, punctuating the torso with holes. Vasethe’s eyes narrowed. The smile of the armless boy mocked him.

  Ahead, a faint but regular creaking. The sound grew louder as he made his way down the passage. Most the doors on this floor gaped wide open, except for two at the far end of the corridor. He passed shadowed bedrooms, a sewing room with an ancient spinning wheel, another smaller study overlooking the trees. The lines of portraits stood to silent attention. The creaking grew louder.

  The nursery had been blue once, but the paint had flaked away to reveal yellow plaster beneath, with darker ripples of ochre marking seasons of dampness. The cradle rocked and rocked and rocked, empty. Vasethe brought it to a gentle stop with one hand. The house fell quiet once more.

  When he turned, he saw the scratches scored into the wood around the door frame. Carved by claws. Or fingernails. The grooves ran deep. He glanced back at the cot, then left the nursery.

  Pain seared through Vasethe’s throat, but as he reached up to touch the wound, the sensation vanished.

  He exhaled, disorientated and faintly nauseous. The last door waited. His hand closed on the cold handle, and he pushed it open.

  The woman lay on a four-poster bed, arms crossed over her chest like a corpse. Her dress was clean and white and long, her feet bare, her hair in a single silver braid. A window above the bed illuminated the room in wan starlight, and the light was strongest around her face. Her eyes were open and fixed on him.

  “Remember me?” She smiled.

  The creaking of the cradle started again.

  Vasethe shook his head, although his expression was troubled. “No.”

  “Historians have short memories,” she said.

  “I’ve never seen your face before.” He shook his head again, but his nagging sense of anxiety persisted. “Where is the border keeper?”

  “I must confess, I feel a little torn.” Her smile widened, splitting the corners of her mouth. Blood trickled down her chin. “I hate you, and yet I’m delighted that you’re here.”

  “The border keeper,” he pressed.

  “Such a good dog, hm? She’s coming, which means we’ll have to cut this short. No matter; you’re already where I want you.”

  He stared at her. “Dog? Why—”

  His throat burned, a brief burst of pain. He clutched his neck.

  “Does that hurt?” The flesh of her cheeks gaped raw and fleshy. “Does it hurt, Vasethe?”

  Wood splintered against wood with an almighty crack, and the floor beneath him gave way. The bed slid towards him and the woman was smiling, bleeding, smiling, and then he fell, grasping at nothing. The house swallowed him.

  Air roared past his ears, the world a shadowed blur. Vasethe hit the ground.

  His tibia snapped with the sound of a door slamming closed. He screamed. The splintered bone jutted out from his skin and blood gushed, soaking his leg in warmth.

  Far above, something moved. Air left Vasethe’s mouth in ragged gasps. The world turned red, white, and black; incomprehensible shapes swam before him.

  He gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut, forcing his mind to work. The basement. He had fallen from the second floor into the basement. He coughed and struggled to sit upright. Grit pattered down from the hole in the ceiling.

  He used a broken beam to lever himself into an awkward crouch, breathing through his teeth. A skull crunched beneath his foot. They were everywhere, ancient and gleaming and delicate as eggshells, carpeting the basement floor. Everything had a slick coating of black residue, the same oil that had seeped from the roots of the trees. It stuck to Vasethe’s hands, leached through the gaps between his fingers. He tried to stand, but dizziness overcame him and he collapsed.

  Laughter, the sound of running footsteps.

  Vasethe’s neck erupted in agony, drowning out the pain of his broken leg in a white-hot flare. He thrashed, clawing at his throat, unable to think, unable to breathe, every nerve in his body alight. The bones beneath him fractured and disintegrated; sharp edges sliced through his shirt, drew blood.

  The pain receded. When the world slid back into focus, he could hear someone was in the basement with him. He coughed, shuddering, his neck throbbing with every heartbeat. The person moved towards him quickly, crushing skulls beneath their heels.

  “I am here now,” Eris said. “Wake up.”

  Chapter Five

  HE TOOK A LONG time to wake, floating in nothingness. No thoughts, no feeling, suspended in the dark.

  Her hand rested on his chest, just below his heart. That was the first thing he felt.

  Vasethe heaved for air.

  A heartbeat later, Eris opened her eyes and pushed herself upright. “Vasethe, listen to me. Focus.”

  The world shimmered. He could see the walls of the basement, feel the splintered bone stabbed through his skin, the black residue drowning him.

  “Focus!” Eris insisted, gripping his arm with painful force.

  He was whole and unhurt, he was broken and hunted, he was whole again. Eris disappeared, phantoms flitted across his vision, colours flickered.

  “You must drink.” A cup knocked against his teeth. He tried to swat it away; do not eat the food of Mkalis, you shall be trapped, you shall dwell forever in thrall, you shall . . .

  “Drink!”

  Eris forced his mouth open. Tea scorched his tongue. He choked.

  “Keep drinking.”

  Vasethe swallowed and reality slowly solidified around him. Eris removed the cup, refilled it, tried to press it into his limp hand. With effort, he sat up, leaning against the headboard for support. He felt sick, and turned his face away when she offered him the cup again.

  “Food and drink will anchor you,” she said.

  “It’s hot,” he muttered.

  “If you can complain, you can drink.”

  Vasethe’s hands shook. He grimaced.

  “I’ll do it.” Eris took the cup back and held it to his mouth.

  “Sorry.” He drank. The ghostly pains at his throat and shin faded. He closed his eyes, flashes of the nightmare replaying across the lids.

  Eris sat back with a sigh. “Well, that went badly.”

  “What happened?”

  She frowned. “I located the corpse in Kan Vanailin’s domain, where I planned to start our journey. Vanailin’s gateway to Buyak’s realm comes out right beside the capital; it should have been easy.”

  He groaned. “Corpse?”

  “What, did you think I was going to build you a vessel out of clay? Be grateful it’s fresh.”

  He tried not to think about his new body. “What went wrong?”

  “I’m not sure. I think the vessel was pulled from Vanailin’s realm when your consciousness made contact with it. You ended up in an obscure minor realm that I didn’t recognise. No border restrictions, though, and it had a gateway to Buyak’s domain, so I carried you through while you were unconscious.” She stood up, hesitated. “Before I arrived, did you see anyone?”

  He slowly shook his head.

  “Strange.” She seemed distracted. “Never mind. You need to eat. I’ll make you food, but keep drinking, as much as you can manage.”

  He nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Hm. It’s nothing.”

  “I meant for saving me.”

 
; “Drink your tea.”

  Once he was alone, Vasethe felt his throat. Smooth scar tissue. He rubbed the mark absentmindedly and drank more tea. When he glanced down, he found that his cup was no emptier. The taste of old leaves was acrid in his mouth; he set aside the cup.

  The room had darkened, everything reduced to orange-rimmed silhouettes against the glow of the lantern. For a while he lay there, thinking. Then he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood.

  The room veered sharply and Vasethe staggered as his head spun. He braced himself against the wardrobe and waited for the wave of dizziness to pass.

  He found Eris seated on a chair in the kitchen, her head and arms resting on the table. She snored softly. A pot simmered on the stove, and the fragrance of baking bread mingled with the smells of herbs, vegetables, and paprika.

  Vasethe checked the flatbread in the oven. He went to the pantry and retrieved the opened bottle of muskatel, setting it on the table. The soup was a warm brown, dotted with dark green flecks of thyme and sage, the transparent curves of onions. He stirred it, tasted, added black pepper, found a lemon, and squeezed its juice into the mix.

  Eris started from her doze. She opened her mouth, then shook her head.

  “You were a cook once,” she said.

  He nodded. “I worked in a bar in the docks of Naiké. Not that the fishermen were all that interested in fine dining.”

  “Your legs are shaking.”

  “I must be cold.”

  “You nearly died.”

  He adjusted the pot. “Is that what happens if the surrogate body is destroyed?”

  She sighed. “Not exactly, but you wouldn’t wake up.”

  “So, I’d take even longer to decay.” He stirred and then offered a spoonful of soup to her.

  She shook her head again. “I don’t eat or drink.”

  “More credit to your cooking, then.”

  “Stranger, sit down.”

  He returned to the stove.

  “You are infuriating.”

  “So I have been told.”

  They did not speak for a while. Vasethe lifted the pot off the heat and ladled a portion of the soup into a bowl, took a tumbler out of the cupboard, and retrieved the bread. Eris poured muskatel into his glass.

  “Why don’t you eat?” he asked, taking the tumbler from her.

  “Not possible. It would lay down roots, compromise my status as the border keeper. I can’t be aligned with either Mkalis or Ahri.” She watched him drink. “I’m dual-souled; I have bodies on both sides of the shadowline. If I feed the one, the other starves. So, I don’t eat or drink. Anywhere.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “It is?”

  “I think so,” he nodded. “You’ve never tasted cherries?”

  She smiled and raised her head from the table. “That’s specific.”

  “Or new tide clams in butter? You’ve never been drunk?” He inclined the tumbler towards her.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Doesn’t that make you sad?”

  She gazed out the window. The stars gleamed on the railway tracks, and she was quiet for a while.

  “If you live a long time, small, passing things hold less weight,” she said.

  Vasethe rested his spoon in the bowl. The silence stretched. Eris kept staring out the window and her voice was low and flat.

  “I remember my deaths,” she said. “The first few are clear, and the latest ones. Those in between can be hazy, but some days I wake up and the memory of a half-forgotten dying hits me, and I think, ‘That person is gone.’” She shook her head. “So, no, life without cherries isn’t nearly as painful as you would think.”

  He broke a corner off the flatbread and dipped it in the soup. “Do you think of your incarnations as different people?”

  “I guess, although it’s more complex than that. My vessels have their individual quirks, but all of us hold old memories. And old feelings.”

  “So, ‘Eris’ is the name of a dead woman?”

  She smiled slightly. “Five hundred years dead. But you already knew that.”

  “I didn’t.”

  She cocked her head to one side. He shook his head and drank.

  “Then why did you choose it?”

  “Is it true that you were once known as Midan, Lord and Defender of Ydrithano, favourite of the God-King Yett?”

  She leaned back in her chair and waited.

  Vasethe sighed. “Okay. An answer for an answer. Agreed?”

  She lowered her head in acquiescence.

  “I made a promise which led me here. The person I made the promise to called you ‘Eris.’”

  Her brow furrowed. “That raises more questions than it answers. Very well. Yes, I was Midan and all the rest. I can adopt male bodies, if there are no willing girl children around. I just prefer not to.”

  “That wasn’t the source of my curiosity, to be honest.”

  “Oh?”

  Vasethe pushed the bowl away and sat back. “You fell in love with a god.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “And?”

  “How was that?”

  “Good. Until it wasn’t.”

  “Until his death?”

  “Until his murder. Why are you stirring this up?”

  “And you went from Midan to Wrengreth?”

  “An answer for an answer, stranger. Where did you hear of Midan?”

  He rubbed his eyes. “Okay, okay. I studied history. My research delved into the role of the border keeper in post–Demon War treaty negotiations. So I’m familiar with some of your more famous incarnations.”

  She stared. “You studied me?”

  “I studied historical accounts, which may have been inaccurate. Probably inaccurate.”

  “I take it back: I would give a lot for a drink. Although I suppose it explains how—”

  The wards stirred against the fence outside. They both stiffened.

  Eris placed a finger to her lips and stood. She left the kitchen without haste and Vasethe stayed slumped on the kitchen chair. The rattling of the wards grew louder. For the first time, he could hear another sound below it—a deep grinding noise, rising and falling in volume.

  He got up and joined Eris in the yard.

  The Ageless had increased in number. The first two stood sentinel a few steps from the line. The third had no jawbone, and its torso was riddled with ragged, coin-sized holes. It stood perhaps fifty yards behind its siblings, frozen in mid-step.

  Vasethe sat down on the shale slab beside the door and pulled the knife from his boot. He laid it across his lap. Then he leaned against the wall and waited, while the bright moon tracked its course across the sky and the wards chattered and the railway tracks shone.

  Chapter Six

  ERIS DID NOT SUGGEST crossing to Mkalis again and Vasethe did not ask. She now held him at a wary, oscillating length, at times cold and at others curious. While she made her mind up about him, Vasethe endeavoured to be helpful.

  Although he stayed out of her bedroom, the kitchen and yard were fair game. He scrubbed the stove and refitted the oven door so that it no longer sagged from its hinges. The pantry was emptied, dusted, rearranged, restacked. The taps were polished, the drains cleared, the chairs fixed. Over the course of several mornings, the kitchen was transformed.

  The butane lantern presented more of a problem. He could not repair cracked glass, so he needed to replace the damaged pane. Unfortunately, this meant bringing up the subject with Eris.

  “You do realise I could stamp my foot and this place would transform into a palace?” she said.

  Nevertheless, she directed him to the basement storeroom, the entrance a trapdoor at the rear of the house.

  The heat hung in the air like a heavy curtain. Vasethe hesitated before descending into the cool, dark underground. The memory of a rocking cradle lingered in his mind.

  Decades of accumulated dust covered crates and boxes, and he sneezed. Eris had left a lumpy wax candle at the base o
f the stairs. He lit it and surveyed his options.

  Although the storeroom was cramped and decrepit, determining exactly where the walls were proved difficult. No matter which way Vasethe turned, the space before him was always larger than expected, the edges just beyond the candle’s reach.

  He found a pile of Atvanian burl walnut, the wood buried beneath jars of pickled vegetables and shafei fur coats. Books teetered on high stacks, well-read tomes written in alphabets long forgotten. Paintings and sketches—lovely or ugly—were treated with equal neglect.

  Porcelain figurines, predominantly waterfowl, with their heads snapped off. Priceless Ebri jewellery, the relics of a lost civilisation, draped over coral from the Xet Gulf. Untouched manuscripts from Utyl University on the topics of skin necrosis and Pol etiquette, on haemomancy and the extinct lizards of Chenash.

  He also found a number of lanterns. Some ordinary, some crafted from materials unfamiliar to him. One shaped from grape-coloured gel, another from greenish bone.

  When he emerged from the storeroom, grey with dust and pleased, Vasethe held a small brass lantern. The panes were black with soot but it was whole and suitable.

  He sat on the rock under the awning. It took time to scrub away the layers of grime, revealing rose glass panes, delicate filigree catches. He loosened his shoulders and his face relaxed.

  Once his prize was spotless, Vasethe took down the old lantern and replaced it with the new. Evening fell; the Pearl Star appeared in the southeast, solitary in the vastness above, and the front room glowed pink and warm.

  “Didn’t your mother tell you not to rub old lamps?” Eris asked grumpily.

  Vasethe sat in the corner on his freshly laundered cushions and fell asleep scheming.

  In the dark morning chill, he returned to the basement. The walnut beams were heavy, and getting the wood out through the trapdoor took effort. As the sun emerged above the horizon, the wood grew golden and rich with honeyed whorls. Already sweating, Vasethe hunted through the storeroom until he found an array of tools: saws and chisels, hammers and screws.

  He measured lengths, sawed, and squared off the beams. The grain of the wood felt like velvet beneath his hands and smelled of distant forests, earthy and drenched in rain.