Keeper of the Keys

by Janny Wurts

  The probe must have been cruel, for despite the restraint of the Thienz, the boy's body arched against the floor. His scream echoed piteously off the vaulted ceiling of the hall; but no mercy was shown him. Scait Demon Lord arose from his examination with the satisfaction of a scavenger sated upon carrion. Yellow eyes glittered with excitement as he transmitted his findings to the Thienz.

  'He has abilities, this manling stolen from Keithland! A sorcerer's latent potential, did-you-not-see: had he not forsaken loyalty to his kind, he might-have-gone to the Vaere and caused-us-sorrow, even as Ivain and Anskiere before him.' Here the demon croaked in sour irony. 'Now he is ours. Let him be called Maelgrim, for when his talents are mature, he will both be deceived, and act the part of deceiver, our tool and the bane-of-his-kind.'

  The group spokesman cleared its throat with a croak. 'Lord-mightiest, there is more. Marlson-Emien-Maelgrim has a sister of equal talent. She has trained already with the Vaere, and walks Keithland as Dreamweaver.'

  The demon on the dais swore in slit-eyed fury. 'Corinne Dane, Accursed! How can this be?' Spurs clashed against ankle ornaments as he sprang precipitously to his feet. 'Explain!'

  The spokesman for the Thienz bobbed in deference. 'High-mightiest, when the shape-shifter, Tathagres'-ally, perished during the assault on Cliffhaven, it sent a message most-strange through its death-link. The Karas claimed it was Dreamweaver-betrayed. This boy has memories of a sister who proves-this-was-truth.'

  Listening, Taen felt as if a sliver of ice pierced her heart. She struggled to influence her dream-sense, bend it away from the horrors of this place; but her effort dissipated, smothered by dark. Powerless to control her Sathid-enhanced talents, she had no choice but to observe as Scait bent for the second time over the prone form of her brother. Emien flinched from the touch. He whimpered and writhed as the Demon Lord ransacked his mind for information. The Thienz before the mirror pool clustered together, trembling and hissing softly among themselves. Their discomfort translated across the link and oppressed Taen's dream-sense with foreboding.

  Yet even this did not prepare her for the violence of Scait's reaction. His spurred grip tightened on Emien's flesh, almost drawing blood. Then, as the import of his findings registered, he recoiled as if burned. His whistle of alarm struck echoes off vaulted stone ceilings; beneath the dais the Thienz stilled utterly as their overlord's yellow eyes lifted and fixed upon them.

  'Cowardly toads! Fools! The sister-Taen-Dreamweaver is no threat to Shadowfane, dying as she is of her Sathid. But the other, Ivainson-Firelord's-heir-Jaric! That one could inflict death and sorrow upon-us-all.' Scait bared his teeth and, agitated as never before, raised his long hackles before inferiors.

  The Thienz wailed in alarm, almost tumbling over each other as they shrank from the wrath of their lord. Scait harried them with imprecations and curses, but Taen ignored their meaning. Terrified for Ivainson Jaric, and consumed with the need to warn him, she struck out with all her strength against her prison of dreams. Yet her struggle accomplished no more than the frenzied wingbeats of a moth. Taen felt her dream-sense ripple, darken, and refocus on the same stone chamber at Shadowfane.

  On the dais, Scait flexed his spurs and crouched once again over Emien. 'The sister can show us where. Weakened as she is by changes in her Sathid, she might be vulnerable if we seek to manipulate through the affinity that remains between her and this, her brother.'

  The Thienz spokesman whuffed its gills. 'Your will, mightiest.'

  Stillness fell, broken by a rasping scrape as Scait honed the edges of his teeth by grinding his jaws together. As the Thienz pressed closely around him, he reached a last time for Emien.

  Taen never felt the Demon Lord and his minions combine their powers. She knew only a moment of red-hazed perception, as the minds of Kor's Accursed encompassed her brother. Then their probe struck, a blazing arc of force that stabbed like sword metal into her awareness. She recoiled, unable even to cry out. The defences that should have answered her Sathid mastery failed utterly, sundered as she was from control. Demons snapped her frail web of denial. With a thrust like pain, they seized upon the subject of their desire and plundered. Two words they tore from her, Cliffhaven, and Landfast; both would be searched for the purpose of destroying Ivainson Jaric.

  Taen barely noted Scait's fierce crow of triumph.

  Dazed by the demon's whirlwind withdrawal, her battered human awareness grasped only fragments of the instructions he gave to his underlings; vaguely she understood that the demon compact at Shadowfane would meet to hear tidings. Emien would be trained as a weapon against Keithland, and assassins would sail to hunt Jaric. This was the will of Lord Scait.

  The Thienz wailed mournfully in consternation, for saltwater immersion was a hazard to them. But their spokesman grovelled before the dais without protest. 'Your will, Grand-mightiest.' Its crested headdress rattled as it shuffled back among its colleagues. Then, croaking among themselves, the Thienz gathered Emien between them and marched him unprotesting from the hall.

  The impact of implication became too much for Taen to endure. Grief for her lost brother and fear for Ivainson Jaric momentarily upset reason. She cried aloud, every fibre of her being revolted by the betrayal she had been entrapped to commit. Sundered by the violence of her rejection, the thread of the vision snapped. The demon's vaulted council hall vanished, swept away in the torrent of her Sathid change. Sound beat against Taen's ears, shrill as wind through winter branches. Orientation crumbled with it; the girl's awareness tumbled over and over, banished into darkness and primordial cold. Ice cracked like old bones around her, shackled her feet to bedrock stillness. Stars sprang into being, needle pricks against an endless field of night. Solitary, aching, Taen sought but found no landmark from any place she knew. No effort availed her. Again and again she spun thought, only to strike against impenetrable bounds of nightmare. The strange words spoken by demons whispered and sighed through her thoughts, indecipherable as the tracks of ghosts.

  '. . . Dreamweaver ... no threat. . . dying as she is of her Sathid. . . . Ivainson-Firelord's-heir-Jaric . . . could inflict death and sorrow upon-us-all. . . .' And always, with a tearing edge of pain, her concern circled round to Emien. '... came of his own will. . . did murder. Let him be called Maelgrim ... our tool and the bane-of-his-kind.' Horror and memory blended, until one became inseparable from the other.

  Taen struggled afresh to escape her prison of dreams. But the images she wrestled muddled like ink only to blossom anew in her mind. Her endeavours earned her no respite. Dream-sense returned nothing but the desolation of absolute emptiness, and in the end, frayed to a febrile sleep of exhaustion, she drifted forgetful of her purpose.

  The presence stole upon her unawares. A soft chink of bells and the click of beaded feathers at first passed unnoticed, an insect rustle of sound teasing the limits of awareness. Nailed to immobility by the vacuum brilliance of the stars, Taen ignored the interruption. But the disturbance waxed insistent, and was joined after a time by a ruddy glimmer of light. The girl felt her consciousness caught and bridled by a touch so light she never thought to protest. Dream-sense aligned like mirrors in her mind. Light cut like a blade across blackness. Taen recovered self-awareness like a sleeper wakened, and found herself in the presence of Tamlin of the Vaere, the same who had trained her in the ways of power.

  Fey, impertinent, the creature had changed not at all since her departure for Cliffhaven. Scarcely half the height of a man, he stood with his clay pipe tucked amid an unkempt nest of whiskers. Skin crinkled around eyes unfathomable and dark as jet. From folded arms to stitched calf boots, Tamlin radiated an impression of quickness and reprimand.

  'Girl-child, you broke faith. That's trouble.' The tiny man shrugged in irritation, and bells and beads danced on the thongs laced through his sleeves. 'I warned you, made you swear. You should have left Cliffhaven long since.'

  Tired to the marrow of her bones, Taen had to gather energy simply to answer. 'I had to stay.'r />
  'Did you so?' Tamlin snorted through his pipe, and smoke rings lifted, silvered by the light of his presence. 'Now your life is endangered.'

  A spark of resentment rose in Taen. 'Would you rather the demons won Landfast? Had I left, the Kielmark's defences would have fallen. Who would have guarded Mainstrait against invasion then?'

  'You're ignorant. Foolish as well.' Tamlin twirled the end of his beard between his fingers, and a thoughtful crease appeared between his brows. 'Listen now, or perish. Your dream-sense has become unbiddable because you left my guidance before your cycle of mastery was complete. The Sathid crystal you bonded to extend your talents now reaches maturity within your body. The process should have been overseen by the Vaere. Yet you left Cliffhaven too late for our helping.'

  Taen felt cold touch her heart. 'I can't awaken out of this?'

  'Be silent.' Tamlin bit down on his pipe, hands stilled against the fawn cloth of his jacket. 'Remember this, whatever befalls. If you cannot reach the enchanted isle, seek the makers of Jaric's flute. They alone can save you.'

  'Riddles?' said Taen, frightened now, for Tamlin's presence had suddenly begun to fade. The glow of his pipe reddened like a coal, and slowly diminished. Sharp in the ebbing twilight, the Dreamweaver recalled an image; again she saw the scarred fingers of Ivainson Jaric tense, twist, and the delicate shaft of a holed instrument snap into splinters and bent wire.

  Tamlin, the flute you mention is broken!' Taen's protest echoed across emptiness; the Vaere was gone. The darkness of his passing closed over Taen's head, even as the green waters of Landfast harbour had once swallowed the fragments of the flute which offered her sole hope of survival.

  VIII

  Search

  The days lengthened towards summer, and in Landfast, oldest settled city in Keithland, the fruit sellers' stalls smelled fragrant with ripe strawberries. Unmarried girls wove ribbons in their hair for the dances to celebrate the planting, and though the season made them eager for courting, Jaric could only stare wistfully at their smiles. Days he spent copying manuscript in the towers where the archives were stored, and in the long hours before twilight he met Brith in the training yard for arms practice. His sailor's tan faded, but his calluses did not. He cleaned and oiled his steel each night as the lampsmen made rounds to light the wicks along the Lionsgate stair. Then, as Brith and his cadre of off-duty guardsmen gathered, laughing, to visit their alehouses and taverns, Jaric slung his weapons across sweating shoulders. Bound by Anskiere's geas, he stepped into the gathering dark to begin his search for means to safeguard the Keys to Elrinfaer.

  He went first to Kordane's shrine. An acolyte met him within the tiled arches of the forecourt. The man wore a robe of blue, the single gold star which adorned his collar showing he had sworn life service barely one year past. He could not have been much beyond Jaric's age, yet he carried himself with an arrogance that seemed common to all junior officials in Landfast. The acolyte regarded the baldric, sword, and dagger slung across the visitor's shoulders, and his lips pursed with disdain, even as he executed the bow of ritual welcome.

  'Have you come to worship?' The acolyte straightened, chin lifted for the negative he expected would come.

  Jaric stared at him, the disappointment inspired by such brusqueness politely kept hidden. 'I wish to speak with the head priest.'

  'Head priest?' The acolyte sighed, loftily amused. 'You're backlands-born, aren't you, soldier? We have no head priest here. Only his holiness the Master Grand High Star.'

  Jaric accepted this without the least sign of discomfort. His hands gently shifted the sword belt. 'Does he have a shorter title?'

  '"His Eminence" will do.' Nettled by the chime of steel cross guards, the acolyte added, 'You don't need those in here.'

  'But I didn't come to worship,' Jaric reminded. 'If his Eminence is too busy with devotions, please mention that the matter concerns Keithland's defences.'

  The acolyte raised his brows at this, as if he doubted any connection a boy with a north-shore accent might have with the preservation of civilization. Still, the single star on his collar was no match for sharpened steel if argument arose; he spun with a flap of dark robes and jerked his head for Jaric to follow.

  The anteroom of Kor's shrine was lamplit and chill, the walls being faced with black marble, and the floor polished stone with no carpets. Dark hangings with the gold-sewn sigil of the priesthood seemed to swallow what little light was available, and the raised dais with the reliquary and public altar were shadowed and dim with mystery. Footsteps and voices echoed under lofty vaulted ceilings; the few worshippers clustered by the offering chests spoke in whispers, and acted apologetic if their children made noise or their sandals scraped inadvertently. Jaric waited where his guide indicated. Still holding his weapons, he dropped no coins in the offering chest; nor did he ask the attendant on duty to light any lamps for loved ones. Taen deserved such a courtesy, he knew. But the thought of crossing the chamber was daunting; and a particularly demanding practice with Brith had left his muscles in knots. Weary, hungry, and anxious to be quit of the Keys, Jaric debated the propriety of sitting down on the floor where he stood. Then the acolyte returned and beckoned him through a door into the inner sanctuary.

  Beyond lay a draughty expanse of stairwell. The stonework was pierced at intervals with lancet arches open to the outside, and by the lack of glass Jaric guessed the acolyte had led him through the oldest portion of Kor's sanctuary. Here at one time the openings would have been covered by siege shutters, for the walls were dressed and buttressed like a fortress, and the risers worn by the generations of tramping feet.

  'Tell me your name,' wheezed the acolyte. Since he was a man unaccustomed to exertion, his second ascent of a very steep climb exacted a punishing toll.

  'Kerainson,' Jaric replied, and winced inwardly as his tired legs protested the length of the stair. Yet he managed with better grace than the acolyte, and finally took pity as the man began to gasp. 'If you tell me where, I can go on my own.'

  The acolyte rolled his eyes. 'His Eminence would send me to fast. Don't tell him?'

  Jaric shook his head, then memorized what seemed an unduly complex set of directions. Three flights and two corridors later, he knocked on the one door he found that had the Brotherhood's star and fireburst inlaid in gold into ebony.

  'What!' barked an impatient-sounding voice from within. 'If it's the accounts from the grain tax, leave them for tomorrow, will you?'

  'I'm not the accountant,' called Jaric. Gently he lifted the latch.

  A grey-haired man in a rumpled smock jumped up and peered over the papers piled on his desk. The lamp which burned by his elbow lit apple cheeks, a harried frown, and hands better suited to a farmer. 'Ah, the visitor, yes, do come in.'

  Jaric took a startled step into the room. 'You're his Eminence the Grand High Star?'

  'Eh? No.' The man noticed the sword and dagger slung across his visitor's shoulder and blinked. 'You don't need those in here.' Then, belatedly remembering the question only partially answered, he said, 'I'm his Eminence's secretary. Tell me why you came, and if the matter warrants, I'll refer you.'

  The boy made no move to lay aside his blades. Neither did he speak, but instead reached one-handed to his collar and lifted a sweat-stained thong over his head. A small leather pouch dangled from the ends. He loosened the drawstrings with his teeth, then dumped the contents on to the only square of desk not littered with paperwork.

  A heavy object tumbled out. Black, cube-shaped, it clattered like a die and stopped with a device inlaid in one side uppermost. Lamplight flickered over the triple circle and falcon, sigil of Anskiere, once Stormwarden and sworn defender of Tierl Enneth. The secretary sucked in a surprised breath, then bit off an exclamation as a second item settled with a whisper of sound beside the first. Scratched wood framed the black-and-gold-barred length of a stormfalcon's feather; even here, fenced by papers and pens and the clutter of sheltered living, the spell-wrought thing radiated the chil
l of gales driven by sorcery.

  'Kor have mercy,' murmured the secretary. He directed a nervous glance at Jaric, as if seeing him for the first time. 'Where did you come by those? Are you the Stormwarden's emissary? You knew his powers levelled Tierl Enneth? Four thousand people drowned, they say. Should Anskiere ever again set foot on any isle of the Alliance, he stands condemned to death by fire.'

  Jaric said nothing. For an extended interval, the flash and gleam of lantern flame over Anskiere's gold seal was the only movement in the room. Then the secretary jerked open a drawer, raked out a pair of spectacles, and jammed them over his ears. 'Wait here, boy. Wait.' And near to shaking with agitation, he burst through the door behind his chair.

  * * *

  A taller man stepped through a moment later, the secretary tagging anxiously behind. The newcomer wore no robes but trousers and shirt dose-fitted to his body. The fabric was knitted rather than woven, the emblem of office in sewn silver and indigo on his chest. More agile than the secretary, with a face barely wrinkled and hair dusted grey at the temples, he turned sharp, dark eyes upon Jaric, then glanced at the desk, to the items isolated between tiered stacks of accounts.

  His voice proved as authoritative as his attitude. 'Kerainson? Pick those up and bring them in.'

  Brisk but not unkindly, he held the door open while the boy filed past. The chamber beyond was sumptuously carpeted. White-painted walls contrasted with polished stone sills; but Jaric had no eyes for the view of Landfast which sparkled four storeys down, alight with lanterns and life. He stared instead at row upon row of bookshelves laden with gold-stamped bindings and rare texts.

  The lettering was scribed in religious runes, which he lacked the schooling to decipher. Yet the promise of new knowledge offered fascination enough; surely Kordane's Brotherhood possessed means of holding the Keys to Elrinfaer secure from demons.

  'You're standing on the sacred symbol,' admonished a voice at his back.