The Stone Key

by Isobelle Carmody

  We were almost upon it before I realized that the stone knoll was no more than shoulder height, and the rest was a wall rising up from the edge of the knoll formed of stone blocks mortared snugly together. No light showed above it or through any of the spy slits. The rain prevented me from sending out a probe to search for watchers, but it would have been useless in any case due to the strength of the taint in the wall. This, more than anything else, assured me that this was Ariel’s residence.

  We followed the knoll until we came to a corner. I marveled at the fact that the mound was as squared off as the wall atop it. The angle was so sharp that I stopped to examine the knoll, expecting to find that it had been deliberately shaped to match the wall’s corner, but there was neither chisel mark nor any sign that nature had not shaped the stone. Still pondering this, I rounded the corner and stopped to stare, for the wall that stretched away was at least twice as long as the one we had already paced out. We had not gone far along it before we came to a gate at the top of a set of steps hewn into the knoll.

  Through the gate I could see a strange wide building, quite square, with a queer flat roof that ended abruptly at the walls like a giant box. I was reminded of the skyscrapers of the Beforetime laid down on their sides, for the building did not rise more than a single level above the ground. I no longer wondered if Salamander and his crew had stayed here, or if the slaves to be transported to the Red Queen’s land were kept here, for why else build such a massive residence?

  With no windows in the front, there was no way to see if the building was occupied, but to my surprise, Gilbert withdrew from his pack a Herder robe, donned it, then bade us stay back and went to hammer and shout at the gate. There was no response. Still warning us to keep back, he reached into his backpack and drew out a short metal bar with one end flattened to a wedge and the other tapered to a point. He pushed this into one of the gate hinges and heaved on it. There was a slight grinding sound, barely audible over the relentless hissing of the wind, and then with a snap, the metal gate sagged inward with a creak. Despite the tension of the moment, or maybe because of it, I found myself stifling the urge to laugh, for if faced with the same locked gates, I would have exhausted myself opening the lock, never thinking of attacking the hinge. There is a lesson there, I thought as Gilbert slipped through the gap.

  When the rest of us would have followed, he held up a hand and shook his head, but Andorra made a clicking sound with her tongue. Gilbert looked back questioningly. She tapped her chest. He considered a moment, then nodded, and she slipped through the gap to join him, drawing a thick, short-bladed knife from a hip sheath and carrying it point down like a great fang. They crossed the yard to the door at the front of the building, and Andorra pressed herself flat to the wall beside it, knife at the ready. Gilbert adjusted his sword and knocked loudly.

  There was no response. I saw Gilbert reach for the handle of the door and all at once I remembered the premonition I had experienced at the door to Ariel’s chamber in the Herder Compound. I gave a roar and raced across the yard.

  Gilbert swung around in surprise, and I gasped out an explanation. Then he and Andorra stood back as I laid my hand over the lock. To my relief, it was merely a rather simple lock, so I focused my mind to turn the tumblers and opened the door.

  It was too dark to see anything. I stepped inside and sent out a general probe. Then I turned to Gilbert and Andorra, who had entered behind me. “Either there is no one here or someone is trying to make it seem so. There are just two places I can’t probe.”

  Gilbert nodded and knelt to remove a lantern from his pack; then he rummaged for a tinderbox with which to light it. Andorra had gone to summon Jak and the Sadorian man, and they arrived just as the lantern wick caught. We all stared about at the room we had entered. There was not a piece of furniture and no rug on the floor or hanging upon the stone walls, but there was a large hearth where a fire had been laid but not lit and three doors other than the front one. Gilbert went to light the fire, for we were all wet and shivering with cold. I sent out a probe again. Still there was nothing, but I had not truly expected to find anyone.

  “The place seems empty,” Gilbert said, regarding the fire critically before prodding two pieces of wood into different positions. Then he looked up at me and frowned. “You’d better stay here and thaw out a bit. You too,” he said to Jak. “The Sadorians and I will take one of those doors each and make a preliminary search of the place?” He phrased it as a question, and the Sadorians nodded as one. After they had gone, I turned back to the fire.

  “Take off the coat so the heat can get to you,” Jak said through chattering teeth, removing his own. I obeyed, and he took both and hung them on hooks by the hearth. Then he rummaged in his own bag and withdrew a wide metal pan and a small pot, which he carried outside.

  “It will take hours to fill them,” I protested. “Surely there is a supply of water in this place.”

  “I have set them under a downpipe from the roof,” Jak said mildly, squatting down and stretching his hands out to the flames. “We will certainly need something to warm us after we search this building. It is a queer chilly place to call home, I must say, yet mayhap it matches the strange cold shape of Ariel’s soul.”

  I stared down at him, startled to hear a teknoguilder wax poetic. Then I turned, too, and squatted to be closer to the flames. It would be some time before the fire emitted much real heat, but the brightness was heartening. Shortly, Gilbert and the Sadorians returned to say they had found nothing to suggest that the building was inhabited. I was ready to begin searching, but Jak said he would make some porridge, for we would all search the better for eating. I disliked wasting time, but I was hungry, and I was as glad as the others to accept a bowl and devour it.

  Warmed inside and out, we were then ready to begin searching in earnest. As we ate, Jak had told us what we ought to be looking for. Now he warned us very seriously to touch nothing and summon him if we found anything that looked like a room a healer might use or perhaps a dye worker or even a candle or perfume maker.

  We split into two parties, for one of the passages leading back from the entrance had led only to a door that opened into an enormous rain-swept courtyard. Jak would take one of the other passages with the Sadorian man, named Hakim, while Andorra and I would take the third with Gilbert, who had found a store of lanterns and oil for us to carry.

  “What bothers me is where the servants are,” Gilbert said as we walked along the hall. We did not bother opening any doors, because he had already checked this area.

  “I suppose Ariel dismissed them when he left,” I said, “though it seems it would have been too far for people from Cloistertown to travel each day. Maybe they stayed here. There are certainly bedchambers and common chambers enough for an army of servants. He might also have used the nulls. That is what he did on Herder Isle.”

  We reached a turn in the passage where Gilbert looked back to say that henceforth we must search, for this was as far as he had got earlier. Gilbert moved ahead, saying Andorra should check one side of the corridor and I the other.

  To begin with, every door I opened belonged to a bedchamber, but unlike those closer to the front door, these had locks and, therefore, must be slave accommodations. Each chamber was as bare as most of the rooms and halls, equipped with a bed, chest, shelves, and a mat on the floor. I flipped over each mat until Gilbert noticed and asked me why. I told him that I was looking for trapdoors, and he reminded me that the whole place was built on a great raft of solid rock.

  As we continued, I found myself thinking of Domick and Rushton, who must also have traversed these halls. Had they been conscious, walking with their hands chained behind their backs, or had they simply awakened in cells? Long ago I had experienced a vision of Domick in a cell, and I was suddenly convinced that cell was here. I shivered, profoundly glad that Rushton was safely aboard the Umborine.

  Thoughts of the ship turned my attention to Brydda and the Sadorian who had mastered the thir
d ship boat and the rest of Gwynedd’s armsfolk ashore. I could only pray that they had merely missed the entrance and had returned to the greatship. How would I tell Brydda’s parents if he perished? How would I bear his loss?

  Then I thought of Gwynedd, wondering if he and the others had reached Cloistertown safely, and what sort of reception the Per had given them. Brydda had told me that Gwynedd had no intention of revealing that he was kin to the last Norse king unless he needed to induce the Norselanders to help him. I could not help but wonder why he imagined they would believe him, but according to Brydda, the Norselander had no doubts on that account.

  Gilbert and Andorra were walking more quickly than I, and a little pool of darkness had opened between our lanterns. I hastened to catch up as the horrible thought crept into my mind that, despite my certainty of Ariel’s departure from Norseland, I had no proof of it. I might come face to face with Ariel here as I had done so often in the dark and twisting passages of my dreams.

  “Come to me,” he had whispered many times. And now I had.

  An hour later, I opened a door to a large bare dining chamber containing a long trestle and some twenty un-adorned and uncushioned chairs. It was the second I had seen, but the first had been a smaller and far more luxuriously appointed room with a thick red rug on the floor and embroidered chairs. There had also been two sitting rooms, one as large and bare as this dining chamber and another about half its size, with soft couches and embroidered chairs with beaded cushions. It looked as if Ariel used the bare rooms to entertain his official guests and kept the smaller more lavish versions for his own use.

  “Come and look at this,” Gilbert murmured, beckoning. Andorra and I joined him at an open door to see a lavish bedchamber filled with every conceivable color, texture, and ornament, as well as every conceivable comfort.

  “Which of them used this one, I wonder?” Gilbert murmured, gazing at the bed hung with scarlet Sadorian double silk with golden embroidery.

  I said nothing, but I thought it must belong to Salamander, for Ariel had always preferred to wear white clothing that set off his pale golden beauty. Whoever had slept in this room had wished to ravish his senses with beautiful fabrics and textures. An array of exquisite cut crystal bottles sat atop the hearth’s mantel. I opened one, and the sweet heady smell of pure incense filled the air. Replacing the stopper, I noticed that the fire was made up here just as it had been in the entrance chamber, and I wondered what this meant. The only reason I could think of for the carefully prepared hearths was that Ariel’s departure had been sudden and unplanned.

  I noticed a book lying half hidden under the golden fringe of the bed covering and bent to pick it up. I was astonished to see that the words on the cover were in the coiling gadi script that I had first seen on the carved panels of Obernewtyn’s original doors. Since the Sadorians never scribed in gadi, this book must have belonged to the Gadfian raiders who had preyed upon them. If I was right, this was surely evidence that they had not died out. Indeed, it seemed proof that there were still Gadfians somewhere with whom Salamander had some commerce that resulted in his acquiring a gadi-built ship.

  A thought came to me that was so shocking it took my breath away. What if Salamander had not just traded with the Gadfian raiders but was one of them! What if he hid his face and form as fanatically as he did, not to keep his identity secret, but to hide the color of his skin! This would explain not only the resemblance between the Black Ship and the Sadorian spicewood ships, but also the slaver’s relentless viciousness, since ferocity and the need to oppress seemed characteristic of the Gadfian people.

  I slipped the book into the bag I carried over my shoulder, thinking that when I was back aboard the Umborine. I would show the book to Jakoby and see what she made of my theory.

  “Ye gods!” Gilbert muttered.

  He had opened the door to a cupboard, and I went to see what had made him sound so astounded. Looking over his shoulder, I saw that the clothes on the shelves were not men’s. I reached into the cupboard and drew out a long gown of roughened silk, beaded in an exquisite pattern that mimicked the intricate shadings of some strange large-eared feline.

  “One of them must have kept a woman,” Gilbert muttered. “An expensive woman. I suppose she went with them when they left.”

  “Sandcats,” Andorra said, fingering the silk. “They live in the desert lands, and they are mad.”

  “There are sandcats near Murmroth, too,” Gilbert said. He stooped to pick something up off the floor. “Here is another one.” He opened his hand to reveal a small silver clasp fashioned into the likeness of a sand-cat. It was a pretty, intricate piece and positioned so that only one eye showed—a tiny yellow topaz.

  “It is one-eyed, like your cat friend,” Gilbert said. “Why don’t you keep it?”

  I was revolted by the thought of stealing something that had belonged to Ariel or Salamander, but instead of putting it down, I found myself looking at the brooch again. Finally, I slipped it into my bag with the book. It did remind me of Maruman, but it was the exquisite craftsmanship, not the design, that made me take it, for such work might be tracked back to its source.

  “You know what troubles me,” Gilbert said after we left the chamber. “I can’t see any woman leaving all those beautiful, expensive clothes and gewgaws if she was never coming back again.”

  “Maybe they didn’t give her time to pack,” I said. “Or maybe she knows there is more where this came from and did not mind leaving it. Whoever lavished all of this on her was hardly going to keep her wanting.”

  As we continued, I remembered that when Salamander had first appeared in the Land, there had sometimes been mention of a beautiful woman who spoke for him. Perhaps the room belonged to this woman, in which case she might be more of an accomplice than merely an object of love or desire.

  I farsent Jak to tell him what we had found, and he told me that he and Hakim had discovered some animal pens, their size and stink suggesting they had recently been occupied by dogs. He sounded subdued and uneasy, and I knew that he was remembering that Ariel had taken particular delight in using brutal and sadistic methods to train dogs to kill.

  As I withdrew from Jak’s mind, Gilbert beckoned to me. He looked into a smallish chamber with a single large comfortable chair set facing an enormous window that overlooked the large central courtyard. Just outside the window stood a beautiful ravaged tree, which had either lost all its leaves to the savage wind or was dead.

  “Looks like some sort of contemplation room,” Gilbert said, nodding to the chair. He shivered and I realized my own teeth were again chattering with cold. Gilbert suggested returning to the entrance chamber to warm ourselves, but Andorra gestured to a small hearth where yet another fire had been laid. I lit it while Andorra went back to raid a clothes cupboard she had seen, and Gilbert found two more chairs. He set all three to face the fire, but instead of sitting down, the armsman went to the window to gaze at the twisted black form of the tree outside. “A grim sort of place to plant a tree,” he muttered. “The soil would have to have been brought in, and the tree would never be able to put down deep roots. No wonder it died.”

  My heart sank as he looked over to where I sat, for his eyes were full of yearning. I had thought our earlier conversation had ended any hopes he might have harbored, but clearly it was not so. I willed Andorra to return, for there was an intimacy in this small room that might better be avoided. Then I decided that it was cowardly to avoid being alone with the armsman, given that I had accepted Gilbert’s sincere offer of friendship.

  “I meant what I told you aboard the ship,” I said, wishing that embarrassment would not render my tone so harsh.

  He smiled sadly. “I know it. Only what I feel is not so easily set aside. But I will not trouble you with any declarations. I, too, meant what I said aboard the ship.” He hesitated and said, “This might be a good moment to confess that I asked Gwynedd to send me with you.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  H
e shrugged and said lightly, “Let us say that I am not too proud or foolish to see that half a loaf of good bread is still nourishing.” But immediately his expression became serious. “No, I speak too flippantly, a habit I am trying to break. You are far from half a loaf, Elspeth Gordie. What you have done is the stuff of tales told over and over around firesides; they set the hearts of everyone who hears them to racing and dreaming. In truth, I never had any right to aspire to you. What you did before—opening that lock and then reaching out with your mind to Jak—I realize you would never be satisfied with an ordinary man like me.”

  I felt my face flame and wished he would stop. This was far worse than any declaration of love! I tried to get up, but he caught my hand. “Please, let me speak.”

  I expelled a breath and said urgently, “Listen, most of my life I have been in danger of being burned for the Talents you seem to feel are special. I don’t think that I am better than you.”

  “I think it,” he said flatly, and released me. “Yesterday afternoon, after we had spoken, I thought of my bondmate, Serra. I began to wonder if perhaps the mystery she had wanted from me was no more than the part of me that I had laid to rest when I thought I saw you die. Maybe she understood that I was withholding the best of myself, not only from her but from my children. I had felt myself cheated by life when I thought you had been snatched away from me. I never considered that you had not been mine in the first place. I got it into my head that you had been my shining destiny, and your loss was another example of the ill luck that had dogged me all my life.

  “But lying in my cabin last night, with the storm raging outside, I thought of all you had said, and suddenly I saw everything from another angle. I was not unlucky. Indeed, luck has walked beside me constantly. My mother died birthing me, but I lived. My father was a good and honest man who loved me, though I had killed his beloved bondmate. I was away from the Druid’s camp when the firestorm struck, so I was one of the few to survive. A plague came to the west coast, but I was not infected, and when there was the possibility of a second plague, which none would have survived, you prevented its spread. What have I to complain about? Nothing. I had acted like a spoiled child who could not have a toy that did not belong to him in the first place. I petulantly locked up all that was good in me. But last night in the midst of that raging storm, it occurred to me that I might die. That was when I realized that it was not too late to become a whole man again.”