Keeper of the Keys

by Janny Wurts

  Clouds smothered the stars, and the ocean heaved black as a pit. Jaric huddled in damp clothing, the play of wind over Callinde's sails his sole means to hold course. On a clear night with the polestar visible, such crude measures might have worked, but not now. Squalls and mists meant changeable weather, and under such conditions the wind would not blow consistently from one direction. Sooner or later, Jaric knew he must take a compass bearing to check his course. The lamp he had trimmed and tended earlier waited, hooked still to Callinde's thwart. The tin shutters were latched closed, and the wick dry and ready; still his hand shrank from the striker. Loath to make a light lest he give his position away to the Thienz, he made no move from the helm.

  Callinde sailed on through the dark. Slave to the demands of his boat, Jaric rested his head on crossed wrists while the thrum of water over the steering oar translated through bone and flesh. Despair ate at his heart, though no Thienz appeared to attack. Staring, morose, at the tail of phosphorescence kicked up by the keel, Jaric saw a brief flicker of lightning astern. A squall moved in from the east, sure sign the wind had shifted radically. The compass check could no longer be delayed, unless he wished to risk doubling back and sailing head on into the demon fleet. Bending with the taste of fear in his mouth, Jaric reached for striker and lamp.

  He slid aside the shutter on the lantern, the grate of metal on metal a scream against the natural sounds of water and wood and canvas. Jaric's fingers shook as he snapped a spark. He gave the flame barely an instant to catch and steady before he snapped the shutter down to a slit. Light yellow as a pen stroke parted the blackness of the night. Jaric wrestled the steering oar into the crook of one elbow, then raised the lantern over the binnacle. The compass revealed a disappointment. Callinde currently sailed due west, and had done so for an unknown span of time. Until the stars or sun could be seen for navigation, Jaric could not fix his position. Worse, to reach Skane's Edge, the old boat's poor performance to weather would force him to tack.

  Jaric hardly bothered to curse the cruelties of the sea. With the breath gone ragged in his throat, he hauled the steering oar round, then burned his forearm as a chance wave jostled the heated frame of the lantern into his flesh. Reflex made him flinch, and another jerk as Callinde wallowed broadside over a swell caused the north-facing shutter to slide open. Light slashed across the water; it caught like sparks on a shear of foam, and the wet-black glisten of timber. Jaric stifled his scream of terror. Not a stone's throw off his thwart sailed one - no, two - no, three Thienz vessels. How long they had stalked him in darkness he could not guess, but that they were within range to attack was beyond all remedy. As if the weather mocked him in his weakness, the wind lay in favour of the demons.

  Jaric slammed the shutter back over the lantern. He looped the carry ring over a hook, even as Thienz yammered their cry of attack. Their collective psychic assault ripped his mind as he slammed his full strength against the steering oar. The effort came too late. Jaric's defences sheared away like slivers under a joiner's chisel. The demons knew his inadequacies; through the frenzy of their bloodlust leaked the satisfied memory of the night they had stalked and studied him. No cranny of his mind was unknown to them, no weakness, no strength, and no resource. The force of their compulsion was beyond any power in Keithland to deny, for the Thienz had shielded against outside intervention. This time no Vaere-trained Dreamweaver could break through to wrest their quarry away. Ivainson-Firelord's-heir-Jaric-Thienz-quarry would perish now, for the compact and the glory of Scait.

  The boy wept tears of fury and frustration, even as his hands disobeyed his inner will and did the bidding of enemies. The steering oar turned on its pins, and Callinde's bow swung obediently through the eye of the wind. Jaric thrashed, in vain. He owned no Firelord's defences to counter the grip that shackled his will. Callinde's prow turned inexorably south. Her sails whipped taut and she shouldered ahead, directly towards Thienz who lusted to rend the son of Ivain Firelord limb from limb. Their excitement charged the contact, bruising their victim with images of blood and torn flesh; once he was aboard their black boats, his dying would be horrible and slow. Spurred to inspiration by extremity, Jaric attempted the unthinkable. He stopped struggling against his captors, without warning pitched his efforts into concordance with theirs. His own added strength drove Callinde's helm hard over in the direction their compulsion demanded. The abruptness of her swing caught the demons by surprise. With a yammering yell of dismay, they slackened their designs upon Jaric, but already the heavy, curved prow of Mathieson's fishing boat sheared wide of the course they intended.

  The great, patched main caught wind with a bang. Callinde lurched and Jaric slammed forward. His shins barked into the sail locker, yet he clung to the oar, dragging his boat another two points to port. The grand old vessel responded, gathered way, and lumbered into a heel that parted the swell, straight for the Thienz vessel that centred the enemy fleet.

  Wails arose from Thienz crewmen. Demons unravelled like crochetwork from their perches on the rails, while the helmsman of the centremost boat jerked the tiller hard to starboard to avert collision. The sloop jibed, but not handily enough. The iron-banded edge of Callinde's keel post hammered crunching into her side, while Jaric slammed head-first into the steering oar. The force of the collision stunned the Thienz hold upon his mind.

  Bleeding from a cut lip, and confused by the hellish toss of shadows thrown by the lamp, Jaric retained barely enough presence of mind to keep his grip on the helm. He reacted on nerves and instinct. With his boat locked still to the enemy's, he kicked the heavier Callinde into a jibe.

  Timber grated and shrieked. The bolted iron fittings which reinforced Callinde's bow savaged the lighter sloop. Splinters gouged up; pale and pointed as knives in the lamplight, they showered into the foam. Jaric glimpsed the riven boat. Its attendant pack of Thienz were very close, the eyes of each gone wide and liquid with fear.

  The malice of their curses slapped stingingly into his mind. Then a swell shouldered the locked craft. The high curve of Callinde's prow grated another point to port and hooked a stay on the enemy boat. The Thienz who manned the sheets shrieked alarm.

  Strain snapped water like smoke from the cable. Jaric had only an instant to brace his body before the floorboards shuddered and the following wave heaved up and under Callinde's bow. The stay on the demon boat snapped with a whipcrack report. Thienz crew scrambled over themselves in attempt to slacken lines, but none could act swifter than wind. A gust thundered into the sloop's mainsail; canvas bellied and her unsupported mast screamed and cracked. Thienz wails rent the air. The backstay knocked the helmsman flying as the shorn timber scythed sideways. Canvas braked its descent, lent a stately, deceptive grace to impending disaster; then spars and tangled rigging bore downward, ploughing a furrow of death among the Thienz. They scattered across the deck, tripped by ropes and battered down by trailing blocks. Jaric watched the carnage with numb horror, while the sloop's tackle and sails settled towards the waves.

  The impact kicked water sixteen spans into the air. Billowing yards of canvas followed and scooped sea with a jerk that ripped the sloop's chain plates from her bow. The Thienz vessel heeled, glistening like a fish. The following swell drove her hard against the butt end of her fallen mast, impaled her timbers with a boom like a battering ram. Dark toad-shapes spilled screaming into the waves. Salt water burned the tender flesh of their gills, smothered their cries to silence. The ranks of demon survivors abandoned the energy patterns of coercive attack. They moaned in communal anguish as the boy who had been their quarry clung to Callinde's backstay.

  He shouted in savage elation, while drowning Thienz spun death-dreams before the waves extinguished their memories forever.

  Callinde drifted free, her timbers gouged with scars. Old Mathieson's craft mark had been sturdiness, not style, not speed, and not grace. Jaric could have wept for love of the quirks of north-shore fishermen, but two other boats filled with Thienz gave no surcease. Even as one ve
ssel hove to in an effort to rescue the demons still clinging to the wreck, the second jibed and bore down on Callinde-. now the heaviness of her hull worked against Jaric. The sloop the enemy had stolen from the more affluent fisherfolk of Felwaithe was lighter, leaner, and faster. To race her with Callinde would be the errand of a fool.

  Jaric did not try. As the Thienz drove their craft to take him, he bent and wrestled his cask of oakum from beneath the stern seat. The lid proved stuck fast. He prised and split his fingers on the seal, to no avail. The gabble of Thienz voices drew inexorably closer. Spray carved up by the sloop's bow dampened the boy's cheeks, even as he swore and reached for his rigging knife. He hammered the cask top with the blade. Splinters gouged his skin as he ripped through and seized a tarry mass of caulking compound. By now the Thienz vessel shadowed Callinde's quarter. Only seconds remained before the death-dreams of the less fortunate ceased to preoccupy those enemies who pursued.

  Jaric straightened just as the demons grappled his mind. His hand jerked towards the sheet line, urged by Thienz compulsion to let the sails run free and allow them to overtake and board. The boy resisted. Crying out for the pain, instead he closed his fingers over the lantern ring. Nerve, bone, and sinew, his will was resisted by the Thienz. Determined, whipped onward by fear and love for Taen, Jaric heaped oakum through the shutter and on to the flaming wick.

  Pitch-soaked fibres flared like lint. Seared by a wash of flame, Jaric felt the Thienz within his mind shift beyond reach of his pain. He seized the small instant of reprieve, spun, and flung the lantern.

  It arced hissing over water. The moment of flight seemed to span eternity, or the dark end of time. Then the brand crashed tumbling against the headsail of the oncoming Thienz vessel. Flaming clots of oakum spattered forth, to cling and burn and ignite.

  The Thienz squalled in fury. Backlash through their mind-probe stung Jaric like a whip, and energies savaged the channels of his nerves. The torment unravelled his control. He crashed backwards against the stern seat, gasping. The shaft of Callinde's steering oar jerked abandoned circles above his head. But the wood stood in stark silhouette against leaping veils of flame. Powerless to move, Jaric wept in triumph. His enemies were defeated. The Thienz sloop burned, sails and rigging, and presently the hatred that gouged the boy's inner awareness receded as the attacking demons were forced to abandon their prey and contend instead for survival.

  Battered, bruised, and sticky with pitch from the oakum, Jaric crawled to his feet. No Thienz engaged to prevent him. He set blistered hands to the steering oar, and tenderly swung Callinde's bow downwind. Her main filled with a bang that stung his ears, and the lines whumped taut. Spray shot from the bow, jewelled carnelian and ruby in the light of the conflagration astern. Then old Mathieson's boat did what she was best suited for: she gathered herself and raced before the wind.

  The oar steered to a feather touch downwind. Jaric sank wearily against the sternpost, his feet stuck to the decks by spilled gobs of oakum. His only knife lay buried somewhere beneath the tarry mess, which would have angered Corley. Jaric closed his eyes. His imagination showed him Taen, teasing like a harridan over the black pitch that would rim his finger and toenails throughout the coming fortnight. But the humour and the exultation suddenly soured. Thought of the Dreamweaver's reaction to the fate he had narrowly avoided caused Jaric to shudder, then explode into racking sobs. Almost he had lost everything, the Keys to Elrinfaer and Keithland's future. Aftershock overturned equilibrium, left him feeling reamed and empty and lost. But throughout the tempest of reaction, the boy clung to his purpose. Callinde held to her course like a bird migrating before the killing storms of winter.

  The glare of fire receded astern. Jaric shook tangled hair from his face, surprised to find that hunger pinched his middle. He had forgotten meals for what seemed like days. Determined to concentrate on the ordinary, he prised sticky fingers from the helm and sought out the biscuit cask. But once the food was in hand, he found himself too frayed with exhaustion to eat.

  Spray waterlogged the hardtack in his fist. He licked at salty crumbs and adjusted lines, and stubbornly refused to look back in the direction of the carnage his hand had wrought among the Thienz. The boat which remained would come for him. Of that he had no doubt. Somehow, against hope, he must be ready when demon attack carved his inner will into a weapon. Jaric forced himself to take sustenance. He sailed, wary with nerves and determination, and never guessed so inconclusive a victory might alter the stakes against him.

  * * *

  Callinde had vanished over the horizon by the time the Thienz had rescued their last survivor from its perch on a floating spar. They hauled it on deck, where it crouched dripping and mewled of its misery, for waves had splashed it, and its gills burned unmercifully. Fluid clotted its lungs from even so brief an exposure, and perhaps-near-to-certainly its companions would be sharing its death-dream by dawn. At last, irritated, the seniormost Thienz cuffed it to silence. The chastened one scrabbled sideways into a corner and licked its webbed fingers, while companions undamaged by salt water laid out the crushed bodies of their dead, communed with their wounded to ease the pain, and crooned laments for the lost. The night was all but spent before the survivors who were Jaric-defeated gathered beneath the mainmast to pool resources and send word of their plight to Shadowfane.

  The content of their news roused much consternation. Scait's favourites and the senior members of the compact convened hastily in the main hall. Though the Lord of Shadowfane was feeding, none dared assume the risk of leaving him uninformed. A wailing junior Thienz was despatched through the door of the dining pit to summon him. It lost an arm, before the meaning of its message penetrated the instincts that drove Scait's frenzy. Reason returned to the Lord's savage eyes. He bridled his appetite before he succumbed to the urge to slash the errand-Thienz's throat; but the anger roused by its message spiked the Lord's hackles with malice. He granted the underling's heroics no reward, but left it moaning and bleeding amid the hacked remains of his meal.

  The Sovereign Lord of Shadowfane stalked from his dining pit and joined the meeting in the great hall with his lips and his foreclaws unwashed. His jaws still crunched the finger-bones of the underling who had informed him of Jaric's escape, and only the most ambitious of his favourites were not cowed. Those bold ones watched with predatory patience as he strode across the floor.

  'So, Ivainson-Firelord's-heir-Jaric is a human with courage to be reckoned with.' Scait paused, licked his teeth, and glared at the rows of cringing favourites. 'A curse on the seed of his father, he must be dealt with.'

  No demon stirred around the mirror pool as their overlord ascended the dais and sat. Claws scraped softly on cured human flesh as he settled on his throne and glared down at the wizened Thienz who hastened forward to crouch at his feet. 'Show me Jaric's aura, Thienz,' commanded Scait. 'As he lives now, not the inadequately translated memory of Taen-brother-Maelgrim.'

  Beads clashed as the Thienz elder rose. It blinked wrinkled lids at the Lord on the throne and insolently flapped its gills. Then, having established the fact that it had not been intimidated into compliance, it squatted and offered an image.

  Scait shared with his eyes narrowed to slits. Thienz-memory gave him Jaric, poised by lanternlight on Callinde's decks; to the eye he was still a human boy, muscled from his hours at the helm, and tanned and tangle-haired from exposure. But demon senses perceived more than flesh. Surrounding Jaric's form spread intricate patterns of energy startling for their complexity.

  The Lord of Shadowfane bared his teeth. Seven decades he had studied the enemy. In that time, he had arrogantly presumed to claim knowledge of humanity's native endowment for psychic development. In depth he had dissected the inborn talents of Merya Tathagres and, most recently, Marlson Emien. He had once even gazed upon a Thienz-wrought image of Taen Dreamweaver. But never before had the aura of a man birth-gifted with a Vaerish sorcerer's potential been unveiled to demon sight prior to training and mastery. For th
e first time Scait realized how rare, and how precious, and how fearfully strong was the ability latent in the individuals chosen for dual Sathid bonding. Yet, paired with the staggering capacity for power, this boy who sailed to claim his right to the Cycle of Fire owned a naivete, a defencelessness born of the fact that he had yet to access the well of resource within him.

  This observation bent Scait's thinking into change. His eyes stayed hooded, but his favourites did not mistake the expression for sleepiness. Their Lord's very stillness bespoke warning, and the experienced among the council waited in poised anticipation for their master to stir and straighten.

  Scait chose speech to communicate, which confirmed that he plotted deep, yet would not confide indiscriminately in his underlings. The risk he intended to take was perhaps a greedy one, but Jaric's talents offered possibilities whose dangers were two-edged. More than the Keys to Elrinfaer might be won for humanity's downfall. If Ivain's heir were captured alive, the compact might develop and enslave his vast potential through bonding to a previously mastered Sathid. Then all his Firelord's powers might be used to rip Keithland into chaos. The vengeance planned for centuries against humans might be completed at a stroke.

  Scait's lips widened into a leer as he spoke his will to the ancient Thienz. 'You will assemble a third fleet to sail in support of the dozen vessels still quartering the south reaches.' A murmur arose in the chamber, stilled by a gesture of Scait's forelimb. 'No more inexperienced young will be entrusted. By my command, only the strongest and eldest Thienz will embark upon this voyage, for I wish the pawn Maelgrim to go along. He will use his training to secure my desire. Let him not fail. Ivainson-Firelord's-heir-Jaric is to be captured and delivered living to me.'