Keeper of the Keys

by Janny Wurts

  Jaric perched in the window seat. He wrapped his arms around his knees and regarded the towers of Landfast, while sunrise burned the grey east to red, and finally to gold as bright as Ivain's command of flame. On this day, as any other, farm wagons and drays laden with fishmongers' barrels rumbled through the streets, bringing produce to market. The whistles of the milk sellers called buyers to their doors to haggle, and the bell towers sounded carillons at daybreak. Yet the familiar wakening of Landfast reflected precarious tranquillity. Warned by the Llondel on the ice cliffs, and the visions of Felwaithe's seer, Ivain's heir no longer dared presume the black ships and their searchers were anything other than real. More weary than ever he could remember, Jaric reached for boots and tunic. He needed all the courage he possessed simply to face another day in the libraries. As he tied his laces, his hands clenched in terror. Where, for love of all he knew in life, would a backlands scribe like him find strength to combat such as the Thienz, with their ability to steal thought and override the living will of a man?

  * * *

  Five days after the storm the Kielmark's brigantine, Moonless, drifted still in the northwest reaches of the Corine Sea. Far from any land, she lay like a speck upon water flat as sheet metal. The sky glared cloudless indigo overhead. Shirtless, his shoulders bronzed by pitiless sunlight, Corley paced the quarterdeck, the tap of his booted feet measured against the nerve-wearing creak of cord and timber. He strode from wheel to compass to railing, and back, repeatedly, until his officers adopted tact and fell in step with their captain as they reported. The slow-witted who did not received sharp words and a glare biting as frost.

  The ship's healer paused at the head of the companionway ladder; absorbed in his own troubles, he called out without first gauging the prevailing mood. 'Captain? I think you should accompany me below.'

  Corley spun on his toes, hands poised as if he expected attack. 'Best tell me why.' When the healer hesitated, he snapped. 'Quick', man! Is the Dreamweaver dead?'

  The healer shook his head, fed up with eddyless air and the captain's dicey temperament. 'Not yet. But without help she soon will be.'

  'Kor's Fires!' Corley's tone blistered. 'Do you think I can raise the wind? We're no slave-bearing galleass, to row our way out of a calm.'

  The healer gripped the rail and stood in steadfast silence. Presently Corley raised his brows, and his hands dropped loose to his sides. 'I'll come. But nothing under Keithland's sky that I do will be any use.'

  Shadow pooled under his feet as he stepped to the companionway and followed the healer into the airless confines below decks. Taen lay on a pallet in the healer's quarters, her hair spilled like ebony silk across the sheets. Her eyes were open, but misty and unfocused above the curve of her cheeks; worse, her perfectly motionless limbs made her seem a sculpture in wax. Never had Corley seen a girl look so vulnerable. With her indomitable spirit absent, the fact that Taen was a child inhabiting a woman's body became arrestingly plain.

  'Kor's grace, is she breathing at all?' Corley knelt by the pallet in alarm.

  The healer coughed uncomfortably by the companionway, his head bent beneath the beams. 'Her life signs are very weak.'

  Corley lifted the girl's wrist from the sheets. Her bones felt frail as a bird's, and the pulse raced shallow and quick under his finger. But where the consuming restlessness of his character had once driven her awake through a touch, now not an eyelash flickered. Close up, Taen's skin was feverish and dry, the hollows of her face a shadowed, translucent blue.

  Corley raised helpless eyes. The healer, who could not face him, sighed and shook his head. 'I don't know what's ailing her. Only the Vaere could say.'

  At that the Kielmark's sternest captain settled Taen's wrist back upon the coverlet with unabashed regret. 'Damn the wind! After all Taen did for Cliffhaven, she deserves better.' He paused, his lips thinned with conflict. Then he met the healer's glance, and all trace of profanity vanished from his speech. 'You know it's too late, now, for the Isle of Vaere. If the wind came up this minute, I have no choice. Moonless must run straight to the nearest shore for water.'

  The healer remained mute. The captain's decision was not made callously; with empty casks, not a man of Moonless's company would survive to reach the Isle of the Vaere.

  Corley's boots scraped against wood as he rose. 'This will haunt me the rest of my days.' He smacked his fist to his palm in frustration. 'The Vaere warned her, yet she chose to stay and defend. The Kielmark will be bitter when he hears.'

  Aware that his voice was painfully altered, he stopped, pushed past the pallet and departed. The healer stared mutely at Taen's face, death-pale, but still possessed of an innocent and unearthly beauty. The girl was doomed, surely; for the closest landfall was the deserted shore of Tierl Enneth.

  IX

  Ash Flute

  In a fourth-floor garret of Landfast's main library, a single candle guttered, and wax dribbled and froze like old ice against the base of the stand. The flame flickered out as Jaric closed the book he had finished reading. He made no move to strike a fresh light, but lifted another volume from the table and hitched his stool closer to the window. Far beneath the sill, blots of shadow underhung the people and wagons which jammed the square; diminished by distance, the noise of the traffic through Lionsgate sounded thin as the clatter of toy figurines. Jaric paid no heed. Propped on one elbow with his fingers jammed into tangled hair, he leafed through the pages of yet another history of the Great Fall. This book was far older than the others. The covers were cracked and worn, and the text archaic. Jaric touched the lettering, felt a texture that differed from inked parchment or reed paper. He knew a moment of excitement. Perhaps this account contained information the others lacked. Driven by the conviction that time was growing scarce, the boy perused the older writing eagerly. Hope died as he read. The most ancient record in Landfast's stacks only repeated the same events, beginning with Kordane's Blessed Fires which had seared down from the divine province of Starhope and set men and demons upon Keithland to contend for survival. There followed the usual lists of First Elders and their offspring, who had dispersed and settled, establishing the civilized bounds of Keithland.

  Defeated, Jaric bit his lip. His eyes ached, and his stomach cramped with hunger; in the weeks since his audience with the Grand High Star, he had neglected meals and sleep while he poured every spare minute into studying the records of Landfast. As he had guessed, his efforts brought him no nearer to safety than the moment he had encountered the Llondel demon upon the rocks of Cliffhaven. Tired and disheartened, the boy flopped the book closed and buried his face in his hands. The spiel of a fish seller drifted through the opened casement, underscored by the clatter of hooves and wagon wheels. In daylight, amid the bustle of Keithland's most populous city, his beginnings at Morbrith felt very far away; Emien and the perils of Shadowfane seemed unreal as the tales told by firesides to frighten children. But at night, dreams of black boats and demons continued to break his sleep. Then the leather bag which held the Keys to Elrinfaer weighed all too heavily. Ivainson stirred and dropped his hands. As he reached dispiritedly to replace the book on the stack, his fingers snagged an edge where the glue had loosened on the binding.

  The damage made him pause out of instinct. His earliest training had been by an archivist concerned with the preservation of ancient records, and repairs had been part and parcel of the daily chores. Jaric examined the worn place, and discovered a protruding corner of parchment that logically should not have been there.

  The leaf was yellowed and flecked with age. Jaric bent closer and perceived traces of lettering, faded nearly illegible. Certain the fragment was not an integral part of the book, he tugged it gently free. The parchment fell into pieces as he uncreased its tight folds. He lined up the edges in the sunlight, and saw lettering. Written in an informal hand rather than the script of a trained scribe, the message itself proved cryptic: 'What I write here is forbidden, since the charter established by the Landfast Council. But
how else can a man protest what he knows to be futile? With the Veriset-Nav unit lost in the crash, no ship can find the way back to Starhope; the heritage so carefully sealed in the sanctuary towers will inevitably prove useless. If the Council's policy endures, will our children's children ever know their forefathers ruled the stars?'

  * * *

  Jaric frowned, fingers tapping anxiously on the tabletop. Nowhere within the records had he encountered anything to match the context of this strange note. No archives mentioned an artefact called Veriset-Nav unit; Anskiere might command wave and weather, but how could a man hold influence over stars? Even the sorcerers knew them as lights in the sky, changing with the seasons, and useful only for navigation. Perplexed, Jaric considered the city beyond the window. The Landfast Council still ruled the Free Isles' Alliance, but the sanctuary towers were the perpetual domain of the priests. Now, as never before, he distrusted the platitudes of the Grand High Star of Kor's Brotherhood. Their secrets were perhaps deeper than anyone guessed. The knowledge he sought might indeed lie locked within the great, cream-coloured spires which notched the sky above Lionsgate.

  The door latch clicked sharply. Jaric started from contemplation and glanced around as a blue-robed priest entered the chamber. He strode towards the table by the window with an air of querulous admonition, his mouth pursed and 'his brows drawn into a frown.

  'Young man, why are you idle? Does our guild pay you copyist's wages to sit staring at sky?'

  Jaric leaned on his forearm, covering the scrap of writing he had found; the note's contents were certainly heretical, and if he wished continued access to temple records, the Brotherhood must never find reason to question his faith. Jaric met the priest's suspicion with a show of boyish innocence. 'I thought Brother Handred was making the rounds today.'

  The priest sniffed. 'You're impertinent. Brother Handred is busy. Now answer me. Where are your pens?'

  Jaric sighed. 'This is my day off.' Slowly, surreptitiously, he closed his fingers over the parchment.

  The priest coughed. 'Well then. Who gave you permission to disarrange the stacks and leave books piled all over the library?'

  'Brother Handred,' Jaric said sweetly. With the paper safely crumpled in his palm, he rose. 'I'm finished anyway.' In a move designed to provoke, he reached across the table and lifted a book by its pasteboard cover.

  The priest flinched. 'Stupid boy!' He snatched the volume from Jaric's hand and smoothed the pages closed. 'Brother Handred will hear about this! How ever did you get hired without knowing the proper way to handle a book?'

  Jaric shrugged, then flexed his wrists, that he might appear more like a sailhand caught out of his element than a trained copyist.

  'Well,' huffed the priest. 'Get along, boy. I'll tidy your mess.' He clutched the piled books protectively against his chest, and glared until Jaric passed the doorsill.

  In the cool shadow of the stairwell, Ivainson paused and slipped the parchment with its strange writing into the bag along with the stormfalcon's feather and the Keys to Elrinfaer. He tugged the drawstrings taut and replaced the thong beneath his collar with a curse of sharp frustration. Lacking an initiate's training and vows, he had no way to gain entry to the sanctuary towers of Landfast. The guards and fortifications that surrounded them were enough to daunt a small army, far less a determined thief.

  Light slanted steeply through the doubled arches at the base of the stairwell, showing noon was now past. Jaric hastened across the tiled foyer, wary of being late for sword practice. Brith's lessons were always tougher when his students forgot to be punctual. Midday glare whitewashed the marble paving beyond the main floors. Jaric stepped out into heat and the busy press of traffic. Sweat slicked his back beneath the thick linen of his tunic. Startled to remember that solstice lay barely a fortnight off, he realized a full year had passed since Anskiere's geas had driven him from Morbrith Keep.

  'Boy! Watch yerself!' A carter's whip cracked, and his team of draught horses curvetted sideways with a deafening rattle of hooves. Jaric dodged the spinning rims of the cartwheels. No longer intimidated by the press of Landfast's streets, he passed the snapping row of pennants which marked the council hall of Landfast, then turned into the street of the potters' guild. The guest house where he had lodgings lay in the alley beyond. Hoping to avoid the landlady's chatter, the boy ducked through the pantry entrance; usually the kitchen was deserted at this hour of the day.

  Jaric grabbed a fresh roll from the bin. He chewed with wolfish appetite as he climbed the back stairway to his garret room. From the chamber opposite, he heard the carping voice of the downstairs tenant complaining of moths in the blankets. The landlady returned an epithet and tartly suggested he admit his paid woman through the door instead of the casements; then perhaps the insects wouldn't fly at the candles and end up nesting in the bedclothes.

  'But I put the flame out before I let her in!' whined the tenant; a silence developed as he realized what he had been tricked into admitting.

  Jaric grinned and gently closed his door. He threw off sword belt and tunic and piled them on his bed. Then, with one hand busy loosening laces at his throat, he opened the lid of his clothes chest and rummaged inside in search, of summer-weight garments. The shirt he wanted lay folded beneath his trapper's woollens. Jaric tugged impatiently. The cloth pulled free of the chest, and a light, slim object tumbled out, clattering hollowly across the floorboards.

  Breath stopped in the boy's throat. Chills pricked his neck as the Llondian flute he had smashed and sunk in the harbour rolled to a stop beside his knee. Shell inlay gleamed in the light from the dormer. The delicate wooden shaft lay unmarked, as if no breakage had occurred. Jaric shuddered. With the shirt balled up in his fist, he settled back on his heels. The forester, Telemark, had once told of a Llondian demon which had waylaid him after a storm of sorcery had destroyed the contents of his cabin. When the forester recovered from the encounter, he had found his shattered flasks miraculously mended and restored to the shelves, and every displaced item in his cabin set to rights. Now, confronted by the flawless surface of the ash flute, Jaric wondered whether Telemark had trembled with fear as he did now. The powers of the Llondelei were beyond human comprehension.

  The shirt slipped from the boy's hand as he reached to retrieve the instrument from the floor. The instant his trembling fingers touched the wood, Llondian images snared his mind. His perception of walls, floor, and room buckled, replaced by a lonely, wave-washed shoreline. The hills beyond stood crowned with jaggedly gapped walls, and houses that were roofless and forsaken to the elements. Gulls dived and swooped against empty sky. Pilings thrust blackened stumps through the seethe of the swell, the wharves and shops they once had supported torn cleanly away. Jaric understood he viewed the ruins of Tierl Enneth, the city blasted to wreckage by the powers the witch Tathagres had stolen from Anskiere's staff.

  Yet, through Llondian perception, the boy observed that the landing of what had been the richest city in the Alliance was not deserted. A ship's boat drove through the booming froth of the breakers, her oarsmen trained and steady, and their stroke expertly timed. The man in the stem was Moonless's boatswain; and as if Jaric's recognition were a cue, the Llondian image tightened and focused solely upon the boat.

  The craft held other familiar faces. Hatless, his shoulders glistening with spray, Corley sat in the bow with a cloak-wrapped form in his arms. By the strands of black hair which looped his wrists, Jaric realized whom the Kielmark's captain sheltered. In anguish he cried out Taen's name; the empty beach and dismembered dwellings beyond echoed his despair over and over to infinity.

  'Not dead,' soothed the Llondel presence in his mind. 'Yet your Weaver of Dreams is very ill. The landing you view will not occur for another fortnight, but unless you sail to the shores of Tierl Enneth, and there summon help with the ash flute, Taen will perish. Heed well, little brother of your race. Should the Dreamweaver die, the hopes and the efforts of your forebears will have been in vain.'

&
nbsp; The image of the longboat wrenched out of existence, replaced by the screams of frostwargs etched against the silence of ice-bound caverns. For an instant, Jaric shared the icy vigil of the Stormwarden of Elrinfaer. Then his perception turned, vanished, and coalesced into the peat-smoke dimness of a fisherman's shack where the niece of Mathieson Keldric grieved for an uncle buried in the tide. Cut by a keen edge of sorrow, the boy cried out and abruptly wakened to the touch of a hand on his shoulder.

  'Are you ailing, boy?' Solicitous with concern, the landlady smoothed the hair from his brow.

  Jaric drew back from her touch. 'I'm all right. Just tired.' Worried lest she notice a demon artefact beneath her roof, he glanced at the floor. But the ash flute no longer lay on the boards beside his knee.

  Skirts swished softly as the landlady straightened. 'You work far too much, you know. Boys your age should be carefree. Haven't you the time for a girl?' She clasped her hands at her waist and ran an appreciative glance over Jaric's muscled shoulders and the finely drawn line of his brows. 'That's a pity, don't you see?'

  'No.' Embarrassed by the elderly woman's regard, the boy spoke curtly. 'I've trouble enough without adding girls to the tally.' He reached to recover his fallen shirt and froze as he discovered the flute beneath the cotton.

  The landlady retreated to the door. 'Well, boy, I'll allow you the wisdom in that. Some men spend their whole lives, and never learn.' With a snort of annoyance which had more to do with the downstairs tenant than any vagary of Jaric's, the woman ducked into the hallway and departed.

  Her step faded on the stair. Jaric rose swiftly. He unwrapped the flute and tugged the thin shirt over his head. Leaving the lacings at cuff and collar untied, he pulled cloak and sea boots from the closet. Concern for Taen left no room to question the Llondel's intentions. Jaric emptied the clothes chest and tossed his few belongings into the folds of his cloak. As he knotted the wool into a bundle, his thoughts leapt ahead to the difficulties of passage between islands. Tierl Enneth lay eighty leagues to the north across a shoal-ridden strait. Safer waters lay eastward, around the tip of the archipelago, but that route might take too long, particularly if the wind blew from the north. Callinde's shallow draught was better suited to avoiding reefs than making time on a windward heading. Grimly Jaric buckled on his sword and dagger. He left a neat pile of coins on the clothes chest to pay for his bed and board, then slipped out by way of the pantry stair.