Keeper of the Keys

by Janny Wurts

  He caught the ledge under both elbows as his feet kicked out into air. His body struck the lip of the outcrop, jouncing the breath from his lungs. For a moment Jaric teetered, muscles straining. Then his left hand began to slip. Gravel turned under his palm. Desperate, he hiked his shoulders and lost a torturous inch. A breaker hissed hungrily across the reefs; Jaric shut his eyes and tasted sweat. He twisted sideways and raised his knee, sensed rather than felt a bulge in the stone beneath his body. Trusting friction and luck, he hitched himself up and grabbed left-handed. His wrist slapped the ledge. Two fingers hooked in a fissure and thwarted gravity for one precarious minute.

  Jaric caught his breath with a painful gasp. He knotted tortured muscles and dragged himself higher. Chest, waist, hips, he gained the ledge by slow inches. At last he heaved his torso over the edge of the rock. There he collapsed, exhausted, and for an interval hung with both feet dangling above the sea. Had the cold been less cruel he might have rested until his lungs stopped aching. But air currents off the ice cliffs bit through his sodden clothes and quickly set him shivering. Jaric rolled, brought his knee up, and flopped on to his side, panting like a beached fish.

  Securely on the ledge at last, the boy fumbled with chilled hands for the leather bag strung on a thong around his neck. The hard corners of basalt inside dug into his palms, assurance that the Keys to Elrinfaer Tower's great wards and Anskiere's stormfalcon feather remained with him still. Comforted by the belief that his responsibility to the Stormwarden would shortly be discharged, Jaric looked up, and only that moment discovered he was not alone.

  Not a yard from his position, two points of orange glared like coals from the darkness; starlight traced a hooded figure with folded, six-fingered hands. Jaric hissed through his teeth. His shoulder banged painfully into rock as he sat up. Even as he grabbed for his dagger he knew that defence was futile. The creature confronting him was Llondian, demon and enemy of mankind.

  'No.' The Llondel spoke no word, but its thought-image struck Jaric's awareness like a hammerblow. 'I am here for Anskiere.'

  Cornered against empty sky, Jaric felt a mental tug, and images followed, of sea winds and salt wrack which threaded the demon's pattern for the Stormwarden's name. Speech was alien to Llondian kind; they communicated with thought impressed directly on to the mind, and when they chose, no mortal could inhibit their sending. Neither could man attack Llondel with impunity. Yet Jaric saw no choice. His freedom, and the survival of all Keithland, would be threatened should the Keys to Elrinfaer fall into demon hands.

  That Anskiere might have Llondian allies was surely impossible; unwilling to challenge the demon's falsehood, Jaric phrased his reply like a peacemaker caught in a hostile court. 'Then for the sake of the Stormwarden, let me pass.'

  The Llondel did not move. It regarded the human boy with no flicker of emotion, pupils slitted against irises of burning gold. 'Keeper of the Keys, you may not pass; nor will your bond to Anskiere be completed until you accept the heritage of the Firelord who fathered you.'

  Jaric flinched, haunted with dread, for the Cycle of Fire brought madness along with mastery of a sorcerer's powers. Not even demons could make him forsake his humanity and request such training from the Vaere.

  'No,' said Jaric. Guile would not avail him. Already the demon knew he possessed the Keys; certainly it would strike to kill. 'I must pass. There is no other choice for me.' Sweating with fear, the boy raised his blade.

  The Llondel hissed warning. Its eyes darkened to sultry red, and seamed, six-fingered hands clicked against rock as it stiffened.

  'No harm to you, Firelord's son,' the demon sent; but its image became that of a human body spared a fall on the reefs. The meaning was murder withheld.

  Jaric struck with the full strength of his arm. The demon retaliated before the weapon cut. Images sheared like lightning through its victim's mind, upending all sense of existence. Jaric's blade clanged harmlessly into stone, scattering sparks across the outcrop as he fell limp at the demon's knees.

  Imprisoned by Llondian imaging, the boy heard nothing, felt nothing beyond the sting of steel piercing his shoulder. Plunged through transition and darkness, he emerged, staggering to his feet, in another place, a closed chamber where torchlight glimmered off strangely carved walls. A slight, pale boy struggled in his arms. He held the human close, though it pained him, and with a horrid shock of surprise, Jaric realized that the boy was himself. In the dream he was other; his hands, the same hands which gripped the human child, were grey-skinned, six-fingered, and spurred. In one shattering instant, Jaric recognized the moment: through enemy eyes he shared the agony of the wound the Earl of Morbrith had dealt a Llondian in the sanctuary tower last summerfair. The knife thrust had been intended for the heir of Ivain, but a Llondel demon had died instead.

  Jaric had no chance to unravel ironies. The dream-image rippled like windblown tapestry. Torch flame spat and flared in the wall sconce, then transformed to a Llondian's glowing eyes. 'One of us perished, Firelord's heir, that you might survive to develop your talents.'

  The implication was damning in its simplicity. Jaric resisted, desperate. 'Why?' His shout echoed in darkness. 'Since when have demons concerned themselves with the affairs of men, except to bring discord and suffering?'

  But exactly as before, the Llondel smothered protest in dreams. Jaric felt himself hurled back to an earlier day when he had scaled the ledges of Cliffhaven to answer the geas set upon him by Anskiere. Soaked and shivering and trapped in the past, he saw rain clouds cleft by new sunlight. Amid sudden, miraculous calm, while storm-whipped seas tumbled raggedly over the rocks, he heard once again the command Anskiere had shaped on the wind.

  'You will recover the Keys to Elrinfaer and hold them safe until they can be returned.' But here Llondian influence twisted Jaric's memory, crushing his spirit with an overwhelming burden of guilt. The human boy had been negligent in his judgement; the Keys to Elrinfaer were endangered still, and Anskiere's request neglected.

  The accusation shocked like a death wound. In hurt pride and raging anger, Jaric protested innocence. He had recovered the Keys in good faith, left his home, renounced friends, even abandoned principles he held dear to complete his bond to the Stormwarden. The Llondel alone prevented his return to Anskiere. The injustice of his quandary whipped Jaric to blind and murderous frenzy. For an instant the demon could not counter the scope of his response. Its hold slipped, and dream-images fled like shadows before fire.

  Jaric roused to cold and darkness and the sour smell of the sea. Sprawled on the ledge at the Llondel's feet, he stirred skinned knuckles. The knife was gone from his hand. He groped after it, brushed a fold of grey cloth, and instantly recalled the ice cliffs and his interrupted purpose. A lump pressed against his chest, proof that the pouch which held the Keys to Elrinfaer remained tucked inside his tunic; still he was defenceless. The demon could steal from him whenever it pleased, and its dispassionate stare made him feel like a mouse teased by a cat.

  Jaric dragged himself to his knees. Before he reached his feet, the Llondel touched his mind again. It grasped the fact that he attributed its interference to cruelty, and the shallowness of his reasoning roused it to rage.

  'Mortal fool,' it sent. 'Ignorant child. Do you not know what the wards over Elrinfaer Tower defend?

  'No!' Pressured beyond caution, Jaric shouted his defiance. 'How should I? All my life I was a scribe keeping records in a backlands keep. Did you think I asked to be involved in the affairs of sorcerers?'

  'You are what you must become,' the Llondel returned equitably and, with pitiless force, overturned his senses.

  Jaric staggered back, blinded by a cruel flash of light. Etched against the night he saw the falcon and triple circle that symbolized the Stormwarden's mastery. The vision had no sooner faded when a second image ripped into Jaric's mind, edged with a clarity that cut to the heart. The Llondel showed him the ice cliffs, but changed in a manner no mortal could perceive. Cascades rose in frozen rungs
above the rocky reefs of Cliffhaven. Their majesty stung Jaric to tears, for here stood a monument to inexpressible sorrow. The expanded perception of the demon revealed a corona of light like lacework across the sky; here shone the wards themselves laid bare, patterns of force which bound the weather to eternal frost. Although understanding of the structure lay beyond the grasp of an untrained mind, Jaric perceived that the Sorcerer had borrowed energy from his own being to balance the existence of his creation. Sadness echoed like a song's edge. Before the boy could contemplate whose grief made him weep, the spell unravelled into night. But darkness offered no reprieve. Jaric plunged into silence and cold without end.

  Frost shackled his limbs. His heart slowed until the bindings of his spirit loosened and his body lay a hairs-breadth from death; yet the existence Jaric shared was another's. Through the guidance of the Llondel, he experienced the fate of the Stormwarden of Elrinfaer whose powers had provoked such hatred among men. Anskiere lay suspended in stasis deep beneath the cliffs, his limbs enshrouded in ice. Though his flesh was imprisoned and helpless, his mind roved a landscape of dreams. Through the window of the sorcerer's memories, Jaric encountered strife and sacrifice, and a tragic understanding of the Firelord who had fathered him . . .

  * * *

  Ivain had not always been mad. At one with a younger Stormwarden, Jaric knew the twilight dimness of an enchanted grove. For Anskiere, the place held memories within memories. Once a Prince of Elrinfaer, he had waited in the selfsame place and renounced his royal heritage for the powers of wave and weather. Now he sought the Vaere to answer a demand of his own, for a grievance weighed upon his heart. The Stormwarden called repeatedly, but the fey being who trained him to mastery did not appear.

  In frustration, Anskiere shouted, his voice an echo among the cedars. 'In the name of Kordane's mercy, what have your gifts brought Ivain? Of us both, he was the better man. Did you mean to break his mind? Answer!'

  The Stormwarden held his breath and listened, but nothing moved in the grove. No shimmer of air disturbed the silvery gloom. The cedars brooded in breezeless stillness. Anskiere clenched his fists. 'I spoke with the seeress at Cael's Falls. She said each time Ivain summons fire, the flame that he masters consumes his living flesh. He does not burn, she said, nor does he consciously suffer agony, not since the Cycle of Fire seared his soul to a cinder. He has no nerves left to feel. Did you know that the torment would steal his humanity from him?

  He once was the gentlest of men. Now he is spiteful and cruel, and cursed by his own kind.'

  But the Vaere did not answer. Heartbroken by that silence, Anskiere left the grove. Through the trials to come he never ceased mourning the ruin of the minstrel's son who had been his dearest friend. Although the Vaere never accounted for Ivain's broken mind, years and experience tempered Anskiere's sorrow. As he wielded his powers to hold Keithland secure, he found enemies more ruthless by far than any Vaere. The deadly wiles of demonkind eventually made Anskiere understand that mankind's chances of survival were slight without the defence of a firelord's skills. Twisted as Ivain became, the Stormwarden never forgot compassion for his friend, even on the day the two sorcerers battled the most terrible demons ever to threaten mankind.

  The Llondel's imaging replicated Anskiere's recollection of that betrayal; the circumstances were not at all as common men believed. The surviving Mharg-demon was ancient, broken in mind and body from Kordane's Fires; his wings were too scarred to fly, and his breath barely sufficient to wither the lichens he devoured for sustenance. Yet he had life and hatred enough to fertilize one last, lost clutch of eggs, forgotten since the Great Fall until demons recovered it from the sea bottom. The Mharg-male buried his brood in the heart of Keithland before he died. In time, they hatched and flew over the Tors of Elshend, to wreak final vengeance upon mankind. In the towns, the priests prayed for Kordane's mercy. Had their faith been the land's sole defence, all Keithland would have been laid waste. But the Vaere sent Stormwarden and Firelord against the Mharg-hatchlings. No archive at Landfast held record of the conflict; the priesthood dared not credit sorcerers, lest the faithful cease to supply the temple coffers with their silver.

  Slogging through reeds in the lowlands west of Telshire, Anskiere wasted no thought on the priests' petty pride. But Ivain cursed long and vehemently, his resentment sharpened by the suck and spatter of mud beneath his boots.

  'Prostrated themselves so zealously for Kordane's mercy they bruised their kneecaps on the prayer carpets. And Great Fall, the hangovers from the rites! You know they sucked the temple wine stores down to the lees?' Ivain tossed back red hair and regarded Anskiere with dark, unreadable eyes; eyes whose set and colour were the same stamp as Jaric's, but old in a manner no mortal could comprehend. 'If a song of blessing for our efforts strains their sotted throats overmuch, may they slip while pissing and drown in their jakes.'

  Ivain kicked a clod of grass. A marsh thrush started up with a whir of barred wings. Its cry rang over deserted fields, for the folk of Tor Elshend had fled the peril of the Mharg-spawn. No one remained to tend the hearth fires in the cottages. Ivain swore as if the emptied landscape could respond to the vicious anger in his heart.

  'It's you, I think, who overindulged in drink last night.' Anskiere said mildly.

  Ivain laughed, a wild sound that frightened the marsh thrush's mate from her nest in a nearby bush. She took wing after the male, a scrap of brown and white against the overcast sky. Ivain flicked his fingers. The bird burst into flame, transformed by his malice to a conflagration of feather and bone.

  Anskiere flinched as the pitiful handful of cinders tumbled over and over in the air and crashed with a hiss in a reed bed. 'That was ill done. Her fledglings will now die also.'

  Ivain shrugged without remorse. 'All Keithland might perish as easily. Have you forgotten? The priests have, and how convenient it is for them! We who are their true defence against demons are feared, spat on, outcast, and unsung.'

  The cries of the marsh thrush's mate filled a comfortless interval of silence. Anskiere had no word to speak on behalf of Kordane's sacred brotherhood. Ivain's accusation was true, but much of the people's ill will towards sorcerers stemmed from his own spiteful nature. Anskiere could not share the Firelord's bitterness. What man could sow fields and raise children, knowing his family lay continually in peril? Kordane's priesthood offered faith, cloaked in illusions of tradition and security. Would a sorcerer be resented any less if men understood the truth, that they were helpless as ants before the threat of demons? Anskiere thought not. But Ivain continued to taunt his complacency as they hiked to the site where the Mharglings had broken nest.

  'We could show them, smash one of their pompous little towns to wreckage.' Ivain flicked a tick from the ragged edge of his cuff and laughed again. 'You haven't the stomach for that, though, if you'd mourn the charred corpse of a thrush. Had the bird been a child, would you weep, or would you puke? Perhaps you'd discover a way to manage both at once.'

  Anskiere clenched his jaw. Unwilling to yield to anger, he regarded the fresh fronds of the willows, so like the palace grounds of his boyhood. Tor Elshend lay on the southern borders of Elrinfaer, and the stream-laced meadows and forested hills prompted remembrance of his royal sister and the times they had gathered wildflowers and herbs for the healer's cupboards. Now, in the boots of a Vaere-trained sorcerer, he did not leap the hummocks or pause to skip stones in the pools. Foxglove and faerylace crumpled under his step, and no memory could ease his longing for the Ivain who had first met the Vaere, a ready smile and a whistle on his lips.

  But presently even nature offered no distraction from the Firelord's soured spirit; the wind brought a taint of rotted earth and the hills rose scabbed like, old wounds between areas of new growth. Abruptly Ivain ceased carping. Shaken by the ruin of the tor's bright beauty, he walked at the Stormwarden's side and spoke no more of birds or vengeance. The grasses turned sere and brown underfoot. As the sorcerers neared their destination, the hillsides st
ank and oozed, and their feet slogged through a gelid slime of dead plants. No living thing remained of the forest or the wildlife which once had inhabited Tor Elshend. The Mharglings were not far distant.

  Suddenly a hiss cut the morning stillness. Tension raised sweat on Anskiere's neck. Though the air was mild with spring, he felt chill down to his bones. Ahead, where maples had once lifted full crowns to the sunlight, he saw branches stripped like the beams of a burned croft. A scaled head arose above them, patterned iridescently emerald, turquoise, and gold. The creature's snout was flat, slitted with four sets of nostrils; centred within a maze of scarlet stripes, its single eye glared, black as a bead, and intelligent.

  'By the Vaere,' said Anskiere. In size alone the demon was daunting. 'We'll be lucky to finish this alive.'

  Ivain shrugged. Sarcasm sharpened his reply. 'Does it matter? Never doubt, the Vaere has chosen our successors already.'

  The Mhargling spotted their approach. It opened toothless jaws and hissed warning, membranes glistening through the fumes which issued from its throat. If its bite was harmless to man, the vapours were not. Ribbed rows of ducts emitted caustic digestive gases, and the breath of the Mharg-spawn rotted forests, fish, and animals into slime with killing speed. The creatures lapped the remains to feed. In a season they could ravage every living acre of Keithland, and afterwards neither soil nor ocean would support any life.

  Anskiere licked dry lips. 'Are you ready?'

  Ivain replied with an obscenity. Without warning he ripped a fireball out of empty sky and dropped it in the Mharglings' midst.

  Four heads snapped erect, warbling screams of fury over the crackle of flame. Membranous wings thundered on the air as the Mharg-spawn took flight, talons unsheathed for battle. Enraged and deadly and fully sixty spans long, they wheeled and dived at their attackers. Though nettled by Ivain's precipitous action, Anskiere was not caught off guard. He raised his hands with speed and wove a whirlwind in the demons' midst. Squalling surprise, the Mharglings tumbled, tangled, and pin-wheeled earthward in a knot of threshing wings. They struck amid a blinding explosion of flame.