by JA Andrews
Sora let out a laugh too, a rippling, free sound that filled the room. “I thought you were being mopey. But you really are bad at this.”
“I’m bad at everything that goes into being a Keeper.”
Alaric glanced up at him in surprise, his finger set on one of the runes. “You don’t believe that. Do you?”
“Name one thing I’m good at.”
“People,” Alaric answered, as though it was too obvious to be worth saying.
Sora sat down across the table from them, her eyes shifting between Will and Alaric, utterly amused by the conversation. Will shot her a glare before answering.
“People. That’s your answer? I’m a Keeper who’s fairly useless at magic and terrible at reading.” He stabbed his finger at the book. “It took me over a day just to figure out those runes were stacked. And I’m not even going to let you see my attempts at translating them.”
Alaric looked at Will as though he were speaking a different language.
“Could anyone but Alaric read them this quickly?” Evangeline asked.
“Probably not,” Will answered. “Your husband is irritatingly good at everything. And he’s freakish about runes.”
Her eyebrow rose.
“No offense,” he added.
Evangeline laughed. “That’s my point. Alaric’s obsessed with runes. He has notebooks color coded based on region of origin, but organized by meaning. And there are three extra notebooks cross referencing it all.”
Alaric shrugged. “Runes are like puzzles. Like there’s some enormous game going on and everyone uses the same pieces, but not always the same rules.” He turned to Will earnestly. “They’re like a story.”
Will groaned. “No. They’re not. They’re nothing like a story. I want to think it’s weird that you’re this studious, but really, it proves that you are just better at all things Keeper.”
“Except people.”
“You’re good at using grass,” Rass piped up from where she sat, munching on a piece of hard bread Douglon had found her.
Will shot Rass an irritated look and received a cheerful grin in return.
“People?” Will demanded of Alaric. “What does that mean? The Shield sends you to court because you’re the one who’s good at talking crazy noblemen down from weird schemes, at giving the queen rational, useful council. That all involves people.”
Alaric let out an annoyed breath and cast around the room. He jabbed a finger at Hal. “Why is he mad?”
Hal, still stood near the bedrolls, his arms still tied behind his back. The giant man’s eyes were smoldering with anger, and Will could see his jaw clenched even through the bushy beard.
“He’s mad,” Will began, pulling out the most obvious reason, “because he just found out that the man he’s been friends with his entire life endangered everyone they both love in the pursuit of power.”
Hal’s gaze snapped over to Will’s face.
“And he’s angry because he would have done anything for that man, and now he doesn’t know if that’s been a mistake. He’s mad because all this time he thought Killien was being honest, and now doesn’t know how much he’s been hiding.”
Hal glared at Will and turned away.
“And he’s still mad at me,” Will continued, quieter, “because he thought we had a friendship before all this fell apart. So that’s two friendships he’s afraid have never been real to anyone but him. If I were him,” he finished, “I’d be mad too.”
The cave was silent for a long moment.
“See?” Alaric turned back to the book. “I would have said he’s mad because no one’s bothered to untie him yet.” He ran his finger down the page again. “You effortlessly understand people in a way I never have. In a way maybe no Keeper ever has.”
Will scowled at the side of Alaric’s head. “I have an advantage in reading people.”
“Were you using it?”
“No.”
“Then you had no advantage. The Shield has said more than once that having you be the Keeper the world meets might be the best thing that’s happened to us in a hundred years.” Alaric leaned closer to one of the runes, squinting at it. “Understanding people is considerably more complex than understanding runes.”
Hal glared into the corner of the room. Will nodded to Sora’s unspoken question, and she cut Hal’s ropes.
“I know Killien thinks I’m his enemy,” Will told Hal, “but I’m not. I used to think that he and I might work together toward some kind of peace, but lately…”
Hal rubbed at his wrists and nodded. “He’s changed,” he admitted.
“You’re not our prisoner.” Will motioned toward the entrance the dragon had attacked. “I don’t think the way we came in still exists, but at the next exit we find, you’re free to leave.”
For the first time since finding them, the anger faded off Hal’s face, and he looked Will in the eye. “Thank you.”
“There’s an exit an hour east of here,” Douglon said. “The rest of us can continue back over to the Scales. A day and a half from now you can be on your way down the other side of Kollman Pass into Queensland.”
“We can take supplies from here.” Patlon went over to the shelves and started rummaging. “Torgon keeps up the western storerooms and he can be counted on to keep things stocked. We’ll have plenty of supplies.”
“I can’t leave the Sweep,” Will said.
Everyone turned toward him.
“Killien has Ilsa.”
There was a breath before Alaric’s eyes widened. “Your Ilsa?”
Will nodded. “And there’s more. When she was taken, the wayfarers were actually trying to get me.”
Alaric’s expression clouded. “Why?”
“Because I was going to be a Keeper. The Morrow Clan has been sending wayfarers into Queensland for over thirty years, searching for children who have the ability to do magic, and bringing them back to the Morrow to be the Torch’s personal slaves. They tried to get me, but when I wouldn’t go, they took Ilsa.
“And they’ve found others. Killien has two slaves, Lukas and Sini, who are both from Queensland and can both do magic.” He turned to Hal. “And Rett too? That would explain why Killien has him.”
Hal hesitated, then nodded.
“Three?” Alaric sank down onto the bench. “They found three Keepers before we did?”
“I don’t care if he did it for the good of his clan,” Will said to Hal. “Killien abducts children and keeps them as his own personal slaves because they have powers he wants. Three children, Hal.”
The giant man looked down for a long moment. Then his gaze flickered up toward Will’s face, troubled. When he spoke, it was almost too quiet to hear.
“There used to be four.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The room fell into silence as every head turned toward Hal.
Will took a step toward him. “What do you mean, ‘used to be’?”
Hal met his gaze for a breath before looking down at the floor. “It was before Killien was Torch.”
Will opened up toward Hal. An old, worn out mix of sadness and anger rolled into his chest.
“Killien’s father, Tevien, was the one who started trying to bring people with powers to the Morrow. He knew Mallon was from Queensland, and he turned out to be more powerful than any of our stonesteeps.”
Alaric watched Hal with narrowed, searching eyes. “Mallon was from Queensland?”
Will nodded.
“Tevien learned about Keepers,” Hal continued. “Thinking they would bring the Morrow power, Tevien spent a fortune on stones able to recognize people with powers, and sent them to Queensland with some wayfarers.
“The first time they brought anyone back, it was twins.”
Alaric shot a questioning glance at Will. There had been three sets of twins in the history of the Keepers. The latest pair, Matton and Steffan, were nearly a hundred years old and so identical that Will had given up trying to tell them apart years ago.
Since they were never away from each other, there really was no need.
“Rett was big, even for a twelve year old. His sister Raina was average sized, but it was hard to remember that because she looked so small next to her brother.” Hal fixed his eyes on the floor, his voice low. “The twins were the same age as Killien and I, and we spent a lot of time with them. Raina was quick and funny and brave. And Rett was stronger than me, by a lot. The two of them were inseparable. Raina told me once that she could almost hear Rett’s thoughts, that she could catch a shadow of them.” He let out a small laugh. “They were constantly trying to read each other’s minds. Killien was half in love with her, although he hid it well from his father.”
Hal shifted his shoulders. “Tevien became obsessed with training Rett and Raina into a pair who would be more powerful than any stonesteep. He wanted them to try something from a book years beyond their training. It involved both of them putting a bit of themselves into a stone, and storing it there. Rett thought it would never work, but Raina wanted to try.”
He blew out a long breath. “I think she thought that if parts of each of them were really connected, they’d finally be able to speak into each other’s minds.” He pressed his eyes closed for a moment, and when he opened them, they were flat. “Raina went first. The stone glowed this eerie green and when she touched it—” His voice caught.
“It happened so fast. She started screaming, and it just pulled everything out of her. She went from laughing and talking and living…to nothing.
“Rett went crazy. He tried to rip the stone out of her hands, but as soon as he touched it, it started to take him too.” He squeezed his eyes shut again, twisting away from the memory.
“It was Killien who stopped it. He wrested the stone away from them both. But by the time he did, Raina was dead and Rett was…empty. He still had some abilities, but there’s nothing left of him.” He drew in a deep breath, and blew it out. “Killien and I have never been able to figure out if he even remembers who Raina was.”
“That’s why Rett likes glowing green stones, isn’t it?” Will asked.
Hal let out a growl. “Lukas gives him those… Something in him must remember because he watches those stones like he’s waiting for something. And when the green light fades, he’s heartbroken.”
“Is Lukas trying to be cruel?”
Hal shook his head. “Rett begs him for them and sometimes Lukas gives in. And while they glow, he’s so happy, it almost feels like the right thing to do.”
“How did Killien save him?” Alaric asked. “Why didn’t the stone just take him too?”
Hal closed his mouth.
“Because magic doesn’t work around Killien,” Will said. “Does it?”
Hal clenched his jaw, but didn’t disagree.
“That’s why I couldn’t do anything near him.” Will turned to Alaric. “He was sitting at a table with me. I could feel the vitalle from everyone around us, but when I tried to grab it, it just slipped through my fingers. I don’t know what kind of magic he has in one of those gems he wears, but I couldn’t do anything near him.”
Alaric’s hand felt absently for something at his chest that he didn’t find. “Could you touch the vitalle at all?”
Will started to shake his head, then paused. “It was like smoke. I knew when I had reached it, but there was nothing to hold.”
Alaric turned his eyes up to the ceiling. “Fascinating.”
“What’s fascinating,” Hal said, his face dark, “is that after all your protesting, Will, you obviously did try to use magic against Killien.”
“Once. After he’d drugged me, imprisoned me, forced me to translate an evil book, and threatened to kill my sister. After all this, you can hardly expect me to give the Killien the high moral ground.”
“What happened to Raina and Rett is why Killien is the way he is,” Hal fired back. “Why he studies everything as extensively as he can before he does anything. Why he spends the Morrow’s money on as many books as he can find.”
“Like this?” Will pointed to Kachig’s book. “What we need to do is free Lukas. Then Killien won’t have the power to do anything.”
“You can’t do that to Lukas,” Hal objected.
Will stared at him. “I think he’d be in favor of being freed from slavery.”
“He won’t leave Killien. His limp isn’t from a normal injury. A few years ago he was attacked by a stonesteep. The healers fixed his leg, but the pain never went away. It’s driven by some sort of magic because if Lukas is close to Killien, it stops.”
Will sank back. “That explains a lot.” The closeness to Killien. His foul mood anytime he was away from the Torch. How his limp seemed to change in severity. “Why doesn’t Killien just give Lukas one of the gems that stops magic from working around him? Is it in one of his rings?”
Hal fixed him with a look that clearly said Will didn’t know what he was talking about.
A thought struck Will. “Unless it’s not in a gem. It’s something about Killien himself.”
Hal scowled more deeply.
Alaric’s eyebrow rose. “Killien can nullify magic?”
Will shrugged. “I only tried to move vitalle around him once, but if it’s like that all the time, I’d say yes, he can nullify magic.”
Both Keepers looked at Hal questioningly. Hal’s shoulders sank. “I don’t know how it works,” he admitted, “but no magic works near Killien. He’s been like that since we were boys. So Lukas stays near Killien as often as he can. Even at night. The room he sleeps in shares a wall with Killien, and that’s close enough.”
Alaric’s eyebrows rose more. “He can do it through walls?”
Hal nodded.
Alaric eyes were bright with curiosity. “Fascinating,” he repeated.
“If Killien nullifies magic, why does he wear all the rings and have the runes on his leathers?” Will asked.
“Only a handful of people know he has the ability. He thinks it’s more valuable if he keeps it a secret.”
“This is all very interesting,” Douglon interrupted, hefting a crate off a shelf and bringing it over to the table, “but if we’re not leaving the Sweep, where are we going?”
“I need to go where Killien has Ilsa,” Will said.
“He’s in the rift,” Hal said. “We were supposed to leave for the enclave tomorrow, but after everything that happened, I’d imagine he’s waiting impatiently for us to bring you back.”
“How are you going to reach her?” Sora asked.
Will scrubbed his hand through his hair. “I don’t know, but I can’t leave her there.”
“It’s gonna be tricky sneaking Queenslanders and dwarves into a Roven rift,” Patlon pointed out. “We don’t blend in.”
That was true. It would be stupid to take this group into the Sweep. Will dropped his head into his hands. There was no way any of them were going to get anywhere near the rift, never mind Killien’s own house, without the Torch finding out.
The room was silent for a few breaths while Will searched desperately for an idea. It was Hal who broke the silence.
“I can take you in.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Will looked up at Hal sharply. “Somehow I don’t think walking into the rift with you will work out much better for us.”
“We’ll go in the back entrance. There’s a tunnel that leads from the Sweep directly into the back of Killien’s house.” He ran his fingernail along a groove on the table. “Ilsa’s been helping Lilit recover since the baby was born. That’s where she’ll be.”
“Who knows about the entrance?” Sora asked.
“Killien, Lilit, Me. Lukas.” Hal turned to the dwarves. “Do you have an exit closer to the rift?”
“There is one,” Douglon answered. “Only a couple hours away.”
“Cousin,” Patlon warned. “The High Dwarf isn’t fond of foreigners in the tunnels.”
“I don’t see Horgoth here, cousin.”
“He’s going to
be furious.”
“That’s hardly new.”
“Can we get into Killien’s house without being seen?” Will asked.
“If we go during the night,” Hal answered. “We’ll have to avoid rangers, but we’ll have Sora with us.”
“And me,” Rass said. “Rangers stomp around so much you can hear them long before you can see them.”
“The hours before dawn would be the easiest,” Sora said. “But what if we run into Killien before we find Ilsa?”
“Trade me for her,” Hal said.
Will glanced at Sora. “Would Killien make that trade?”
“Hal’s family owns half of the herds in the Morrow Clan. Killien would be stupid not to. But if we run into Killien, we won’t be in a position to trade.”
“Then let’s not run into Killien.” Will turned to Hal. “Are we going to be able to find her?”
“The tunnel comes out in a back storage room near the slave’s quarters. Killien’s sleeping room is one floor up. If we’re quiet, we can go in, talk to Ilsa, and leave before Killien knows you’re there. I’ll find a different way back into the rift once it’s daylight.”
Sora’s face was hard. “Why are you helping Will?”
Hal ran a hand through his hair. “Ilsa’s served Lilit for a long time, and she seems like a good person.” He glanced at Will. “And the Torch hates you with a ferocity I haven’t seen before. I don’t think Ilsa should be a pawn in that. You’re letting me go. Killien’s letting her go. It’s fair.”
Sora’s mouth pressed into a reluctant acceptance, before she turned back to Will. “And what if Ilsa doesn’t want to come?”
Will’s stomach tightened at the words.
“Will you be able to leave her there?”
“I’m not taking her against her will.” He pushed aside the memory of how she’d flinched away from him. “But when she hears the truth, I hope she’ll come.”
Sora leaned on the table and fixed him with an expression that told him how likely she thought that was. “You’re following a man who’s angry with you, into the home of a man who hates you, to try to convince a woman who’s terrified of you, to leave everything she’s ever known.”