Keeper of the Keys

by Janny Wurts

  'Wait.' Jaric stepped back and, with abrupt decision, reached beneath his cloak. 'Steel may not be necessary.'

  Had Corley been amenable to religion, the boy might have begged a blessing from Kordane for understanding. But from a captain trained on Cliffhaven, Jaric knew he could expect no better than a split second of reason before a sword stroke. Wary of the consequences, he pulled the ash flute from his belt.

  Inlay glimmered with the iridescent gleam of shell; not even fading light could conceal the stops, which numbered twelve, too widely spaced to suit even the longest human fingers. Corley studied the artefact, then glanced at Jaric's face.

  He spoke with controlled gentleness. 'That's Llondian, am I right?'

  Jaric nodded, openly distressed; mere possession of demon handiwork was heresy punishable by death should he ever stand trial under the priests.

  But Corley made no outcry. 'Well,' he said quietly, 'if you think that thing will protect us from quick-tempered clansmen, by all means use it.' At Jaric's startled silence, he shrugged. 'Boy, the ways of a sorcerer trained by the Vaere are not those of a man. Anskiere consorted with Llondelei. Even the Kielmark knows.'

  Jaric lifted a hand and carefully tucked Taen's fallen hair back under the blankets. 'You're not afraid?'

  The captain drew a quick breath. 'All right, yes, I'm afraid. Did you think me a brainless fool? I've a half sister who's a hillman's get, and still I can't fathom their ways. But this much I'd bet. Alone, without help, we'll surely end up spitted on clansmen's daggers.'

  Relieved, Jaric summoned courage and struck out from the archway. Corley followed, tense and beginning to sweat. Thornbrakes and meadow grass had overgrown the trade road beyond, muffling their passage to a sibilant swish of undergrowth; dew spangled their boots at each stride. Corley lifted Taen to his shoulders to keep her blankets dry. Silent but for an occasional grunt of exertion, the captain stayed close to Jaric's side until the light of the clansmen's bonfires streaked their faces like ceremonial paint. Close up, the smells of roasting meat and incense mingled with the odours of sweat and the manure of horses. A bowed instrument rasped arpeggios to the stamp of dancing feet. Ragged, painted, and scantily clad in the furred skins of animals, the clansmen and their women spun like shadows between a circle of torches lashed on to poles. Both sexes carried steel. Daggers, short swords, and quoit rings gleamed from belts and shoulder scabbards, and bone-hilted knives protruded from the tasselled fringes of boot tops.

  A stone's throw from the perimeter, Jaric tripped on a branch. Sticks snapped beneath his feet as he scrambled to maintain balance. Corley grabbed his elbow and steadied him, too late. By the fireside, a man whirled and broke away from the dance. He spotted the intruders, pointed, and raised a yammering shout of alarm. The music died as the revellers laid aside their instruments.

  Corley froze between steps. 'Use your whistle, boy.' He pitched his words with urgency, for the interlaced patterns of dancers unravelled like torn knotwork. A fist-shaking mob coalesced around the first man. Shoulder to shoulder with their husbands, women tossed braided hair over their lithely muscled backs. Steel flashed in the torchlight as one clansmember after another drew knives.

  Jaric raised the flute to his lips. He made no attempt to seek the stops, for the Llondel demon by the ice cliffs had instructed him to sound the highest note on the scale. The crowd charged from the fireside with an eerie, quavering scream, just as the boy drew breath and blew into the mouthpiece.

  The flute sang out with a tone so pure it pierced the clamour like a needle through cloth. The very air seemed to shatter. The note swelled, deepened, raising resonant harmonics beyond the range of hearing. Vibrations spread outwards like wind, touching the living essence of plants and livestock, and fraying the thoughts of men into patterns never meant for mortal minds. The attacking hillfolk jumbled to a halt and fell silent, knives forgotten in their hands; and like ripples settling from a stone tossed into water, the seething hordes of the summerfair quivered and stilled and quieted.

  Jaric lowered the flute, leaving the crisp snap of torch flames isolated in a pool of silence. His head rang and his limbs trembled. Somehow he retained the presence of mind to stumble forward. Trusting Corley to follow on his heels, he entered the summerfair; and the torches burnished his hair like gold struck by sunlight.

  That moment an eldritch cry split the stillness. An ancient woman burst from the mass of clansmen. Clothed in garments of knotted leather, she raised fleshless arms and swayed towards Jaric. Corley hung back as, in the singsong syntax of trance, the crone raised her voice and spoke in the tongue of the clans. Her guttural syllables chilled Jaric like the touch of winter ice. His step faltered, and he stopped, alone within the ring of flame-light. He knew whom he faced. A year past he had met this woman's counterpart in a backlands settlement called Gaire's Main; the prophetic words spoken then still broke his sleep with nightmares. As priestess of the spring on the isle of Tierl Enneth, the woman was crazed through a lifetime dedicated to ritual dreams and oracular vision. Her word superseded all law among the clans, and should she speak against them, very likely he and Taen and Corley would perish at the hands of her maiden initiates.

  The woman uttered one last word and snapped her jaw shut. Beaded locks of hair rattled around her shoulders as she stamped her foot, spun around, and ran to the tailboard of a wagon piled high with wreaths of ceremonial flowers. Nailed to the wagon's crosstree was the traditional offering to the Blessed Flame, a circlet braided from the fire-lilies which bloomed only at solstice. Jaric held his breath as the priestess leapt, snatched, and landed bearing the sacred circlet. Before he could move a muscle, the woman whirled. For a single suspended instant, his frightened gaze locked with the blind pearl-white of her eyes.

  Then the priestess stamped again. She whispered in the common tongue of Keithland, yet her words reached the boy as if she spoke in his ear. 'Aye, so, ye are the one.' And she threw the wreath.

  Orange, gold, and butter-yellow, the flowers fluttered through the air and landed squarely on the crown of Jaric's head. The clansmen gasped. Though not a man among them spoke, they knelt as one on the packed earth. Only Jaric and Corley and the blind priestess remained on their feet in the torchlight.

  Corley stepped swiftly to Jaric's side. 'Best move on. The Lady has granted us safe-conduct.'

  The boy roused with a start. Fire-coloured petals tangled with strands of his hair as he twisted to face the captain. 'Do you know what she said?'

  Corley answered with reluctance. 'Yes.' But to his surprise Jaric did not demand a translation.

  In a voice half-choked with misery, the boy said, 'Please, if you can, will you tell them to get up?'

  Corley swore. Clutching Taen closely to his chest, he shouted in the coarse tongue of the clans. With a ragged rustle of movement, the people rose to their feet. Someone shouted at the far edge of the crowd, and a drum boomed through the night.

  'Go now,' said Corley in Jaric's ear.

  The drumbeat quickened, then broke into wild rhythms of exultation. Though Jaric longed with all his heart to flee, he forced himself to step forward with dignity. Painted, braided, and reeking of sweet oil and the exertion of their revels, the clansfolk parted and deferentially permitted him to pass.

  With Corley at his shoulder, the boy strode through a living corridor of flesh which extended the breadth of the summerfair. Hands plucked at his clothes; children peeped with unblinking eyes from the fringes of their parents' leggings, and grandmothers murmured over the blanket-wrapped Dreamweaver cradled in Corley's arms. Dazzled by the glare of the torches, Jaric kept on, though his knees trembled and his knuckles blanched against the shaft of the ash flute long before he crossed the final perimeter of wagons.

  Darkness closed over him on the far side. The priestess shrieked again at his back, and flutes and fiddles joined the drums' rejoicing. The hillfolk resumed their solstice dances beneath torches which smoked and streamed in the wind. Jaric plunged gratefully through the
dew-drenched grass of the meadowland. He did not speak, even as the summerfair shrank behind, and the camp-fires dwindled to orange glimmers down the valley. The land became rough, cut by ravines and small, rock-strewn streams. At length the moon rose, round and full in the east. The pine forest which bordered the fells loomed ahead, outlined in silvery light. Still Jaric showed no sign of slowing. Corley shifted aching shoulders and wondered whether he dared to pause for a rest. Suddenly, with a queer and desperate violence, Jaric stopped.

  He yanked the wreath from his brow. The soft bells of the fire-lilies crushed between his fists as he drew breath and demanded to know the meaning of the priestess's prophecy.

  Aware how close the boy was to breaking, Corley answered with patience. 'She called you Firelord and Demonbane. She said danger would track you as winter follows spring.' Slowly, with painstaking care, he eased the Dreamweaver to the grass and continued. 'She told her people not to obstruct us, for the sake of the girl who would defend all men from the Dark-dreamer yet to come.'

  Something in the captain's manner cued Jaric to the fact that there was more. 'Go on.'

  Stooped over Taen's still form, Corley sighed. The Lady said one day you will go forth and steal power from the very heart of Shadowfane. If you survive that quest, mankind will endure to see Kor's Fires rekindled in the heavens.'

  Jaric hurled the wreath to the ground with a wrenching cry of anguish. 'Shadowfane?' His voice held a raw edge of fear. 'Do you know how misguided her faith is? Great Fall, I'm no man's saviour!'

  'You're Ivain Firelord's heir.' Corley said matter-of-factly.

  The scent of mangled flowers hung heavily on the air between them. Jaric twisted his face away, eyes shut hard against tears. 'Ivain was a murderer. I've no intention of following in his footsteps.'

  Corley, who knew men, had wisdom enough to keep silent as Jaric whirled and ran. Aware the boy must come to terms with his fate by himself, the captain sighed and gathered the Dreamweaver from the ground. He followed at a walk towards the forest.

  The Llondelei waited at the edge of the pines, their grey cloaks mottled like smoke in the moonlight which spilled through the boughs. Confronted by a hiss, and movement, and a glowing circle of eyes, Jaric started back and slammed into Corley.

  Both humans froze as thought-image knifed into their minds. 'Danger stalks from behind.' The Llondelei dealt a shadowy glimpse of creatures rustling through what looked like scrub grass. Before their meaning entirely resolved, they added a fleeting likeness of Taen's face, the glossy black of her hair crowned with myrtle. Silent, impatient, the tallest of the three demons lifted six-fingered hands towards the girl.

  Pressed tight to the captain's side, Jaric felt Corley shrink in the dark. 'Let them take her,' the boy said quickly. The demons would use force if they resisted.

  Yet already the Llondelei had sensed the captain's hesitation. They acted without warning. Jaric felt a jab in his head like hot wire. He tumbled, his eyes full of moonlight, and never felt his body strike the ground. Two Llondelei stepped across his prone form; they caught Taen as Corley's knees buckled. Thought-images passed briefly between Llondian minds. Then, with a mournful whistle, the female among them bent and stripped Jaric of his sword and dagger. She grasped the wrists of the Firelord's heir and hoisted him on to her back. More silent than the rustle of a leaf, she bore her burden after her fellows and vanished into the forest.

  XI

  Corinne Dane

  Corley awoke to birdsong and the cold trickle of dew down his collar. Daybreak brightened the tops of the pines, and a six-legged tree pecker rattled the branches overhead, stabbing for grubs beneath the bark. Alarmed to discover Taen and Jaric missing, the captain rolled to his feet and gasped at the pain of stiffened shoulders. Fully alert, and frantic with concern for his companions, he searched the ground for sign of the Llondelei. Yet the surrounding mat of pine needles showed no trace of a track. Only a sword and dagger of Corlin steel remained; surely, after his experience with Brith, the boy would not have abandoned his weapons, except under duress.

  Corley swore and brushed twigs from his hair. Whatever beneficent connection Anskiere might have with the Londelei, Taen and Jaric lay in demon hands with no human weapon to safeguard them. The captain would not give them up without a search. Though his stomach was pinched with hunger, and his body ached from his night in the open, Corley never hesitated. He gathered Jaric's weapons from the ground and set out to seek his companions.

  Mountains thrust like the armoured spine of a lizard down the length of the island. The forests cloaking their slopes proved dense and seamed with gullies, too rough for a single man to cover effectively. Faster, more efficient than most, Corley quartered acres of remote dells, occasionally crossing the rutted tracks cut by the clan tribes' wagons. He startled satin deer from their grazing, and brush pheasants from their nests, but encountered no sign of the Llondelei.

  Only as the day wore on, he felt increasingly unsettled, as if he sensed something following. Time and again he checked his back trail, yet nothing arose to justify his suspicion. Slowed at last by hunger, he paused by a stream to whittle snares in the late afternoon. The facts of his predicament were not reassuring. If the demons intended Taen and Jaric harm, by now no man could help them. Yet the Kielmark's orders had been explicit; Corley saw no alternative but to return to the harbour and wait. If his two charges survived, surely they would return to Tierl Enneth and Callinde.

  * * *

  In a place of purplish twilight, shadows danced in patterns on tree trunks. Wind rustled through alien foliage; no, Jaric decided, the sound he heard was not wind, but spring water singing over pebbles in an underground channel. Enveloped in the overlapping images generated by collective Llondian consciousness, the boy strove to separate dream from waking reality. He lay on a mat woven of rushes, surrounded by the earthy confines of a cavern that was surely the Llondian demons' burrow. Yet even as his mind framed the concept, an influx of images contradicted; this here-now dwelling was a place of misery and exile. Home raised memories of moist air and shadows, of endlessly whispering breezes and lacy tendrils of vegetation. That wood was other, a place inconceivably distant from Keithland's forests. The sun there shone red, little more than a dim star overhead.

  Jaric puzzled to fathom how any sun might resemble a star. Disoriented by the waking dreams of the demons who sheltered him, and troubled with concern for Taen, he propped himself on one elbow. An oil lamp shaded by panes of violet glass dangled from a chain overhead.

  A weak flicker of flame illuminated a chamber bare of furnishings, except for the grass mat and a clay ewer of water cradled in a three-legged stand nearby. The earthen floors were beaten smooth. Walls shored with timber bore incomprehensible patterns of carving, and scarlet hangings curtained the archway to an alcove beyond. Uncertain whether he was prisoner or guest, Jaric wondered whether the structure concealed a door. According to Kordane's Law, prolonged exposure to Llondian imaging could drive the human mind to madness. Yet the boy would not consider leaving without searching for Taen.

  Leave, Kordane's Law; Llondian consciousness plucked fragments of thought from his mind, and the unfathomable caprice of their kind melded the concepts. The illusions the demons employed in place of spoken language overwhelmed Jaric's senses, and the cave's board walls shattered into a starburst of light. Disoriented, the boy fell back on the mat. He threw his hands over his face, but the light endured. Indelibly impressed on his mind's eye, he saw the conflagration streak earthward across blackness spangled with stars. A roar like thunder filled Jaric's ears. Deafened, his vision blistered by forces too awesome for comprehension, he endured as Llondian memory unveiled the glory of Kordane's Fires at the time of the Great Fall.

  'Corinne Dane, probe-ship.' Borrowed human words strained to encompass inconceivably strange concepts. 'Stole Llondelei from Homeworld,' that place of soft shadows and rich soil and magnificent, towering trees. Jaric experienced a withering flash of hate. 'Your kind, stole
us away, Homeworld.' Star-sun, lost sun, red as a stab wound in the sky. Wrung by hostile emotions, Jaric cringed and cried out.

  The image shifted like a jarred kaleidoscope. 'Peace; this human is Ivainson Firelord's heir, let him be.' Restored to the unthreatening interior of the cave, the boy felt the demons' enmity subside.

  Shaking, Jaric unclenched his hands. He pushed sweat-soaked hair from his eyes and sat up. Two coals of orange glowered from the alcove where the curtain hung; a Llondian demon watched him from the dark.

  Jaric forgot his fear. 'What have you done with Taen?'

  'She who spins dreams?' The Llondel stepped into the chamber, a grey, six-fingered hand extended to steady the boy as he rose. 'Come.'

  Jaric shrank from the demon's touch. He reached his feet unaided and discovered with distress that his weapons were missing. 'Where's Corley?'

  The Llondel hissed. Its spurred fingers flinched into a fist, and, like a slap, Jaric received an impression of a sunny forest glade. There crouched the Kielmark's chestnut-haired captain, toasting fish on a stick over a campfire. Yet the image did not reassure. Disquiet troubled Jaric, as if something evil lurked in the shadows beyond Corley's campsite. But the Llondel allowed him no chance to explore the premonition.

  The image dissolved abruptly into dark, lit by baleful eyes. 'Follow.' The demon pushed the curtain aside and beckoned.

  A narrow corridor extended beyond, minimally illuminated by lamps paned with the same violet glass. Left no choice but to obey, Jaric stepped forward. His heels clicked against tiles of glazed ceramic. Unable to see as well as the demon who guided him, and curious what might lie behind the doorways which opened at intervals off the hallway, the boy lagged slightly behind. His footsteps reverberated within the burrow, bewildering his ears with overlapping layers of sound; imperceptibly, his self-awareness frayed into dreams. Jaric stumbled. He pressed a hand against the wall for balance as, adrift in the flux of Llondelei consciousness, his mind crossed the far borders of Keithland. Inside stone towers at Shadowfane, he perceived a young man crouched with his arms locked over his ears. A strange, reddish aura shimmered over his form; unsure if the phenomenon, was induced by imagination or Llondian prescience, Jaric looked closer. Through the shifting curtains of light he saw scarred fingers and a familiar tangle of black hair.