The Twistrose Key

by Tone Almhjell

  “It’s a safety measure,” Teodor said. “If anyone has learned the secret of the Hearth, their names will be here for the Brotherhood to find.”

  “Figenskar!” Rufus exclaimed, and sure enough, three names above Lin’s, there was the chief observer’s name. The cuts were yellowed and blunt, made some time ago. “Figenskar has been here?”

  “The night he arrived,” Teodor replied. “I found him by the river, drenched and stiff with cold and fear, the most pitiful fresher I have seen. I had no choice but to get him warm quickly, so I brought him here.”

  “That’s why he’s always telling the Winnower legend,” Rufus said. “He can’t find his way back here, and it’s killing him!”

  “I have rued it many a time. That cat always had a fickle, angry heart. For all his pleading and groveling, I didn’t want him in the Brotherhood, and I didn’t want him in the House. But the previous chief observer was free to choose her own successor, and somehow Figenskar managed to sweet-talk his way into her heart. Margaret was Canine. A kind one with a soft spot for strays.”

  “You can’t mean you regret saving Figenskar’s life,” Lin said.

  “No, but in hindsight, I’m fairly certain he would have made it into town.” Teodor squinted toward the windows and the dark woods beyond. “No matter. He can’t defeat the cloak rune.” He pointed at the table, where several half-empty jars and tins were lined up, their lids unscrewed. “Sit.”

  He disappeared into the next room, letting out a smell of herbs and ointments. Lin sat down at the table, but Rufus paced along the walls, admiring the tapestries.

  They resembled the falcon curtain in the Observatory with their rich jewel colors. One showed a Feline running through a forest of apple trees, her basket spilled on the ground behind her. Another depicted a seagull wheeling over a windswept island, clutching a human newborn by the umbilical cord.

  Rufus stopped in front of a scene with a ship that fired its cannons at some obscure menace on shore, while peg-legged rats swarmed across the deck. “These are all places on the other side of the mountains. Lin, we have to go there!”

  “We will.” Lin fingered the jars and tins. The ones that weren’t empty contained a seed or weed of some sort, grains of wheat, pumpkin seeds, and dried bladder wrack snipped into pieces. There were even a few grubby acorns.

  Teodor returned from the other chamber, carrying a box of bandages, tinctures, and salves. But as he shoved aside the jars to make room for his medicine kit, he froze, scrutinizing Lin as if she were a rare specimen, and he an expert taxidermist. “What have you been up to?”

  Lin’s heart pounded. For a moment she was convinced the old fox really could read her mind, that he knew not only about the visit in the turret, but also that she had found the briefcase and the blueprints for the Brain Tapper that Mrs. Zarka had drawn for him. It took her a moment to realize that Teodor was holding out his paw. Her wrist. He was talking about her wrist.

  She gave him her hand, and he unraveled the bandage. Doctor Kott’s spider-leg stitches were torn, and blood seeped out between the edges. “How did you get this cut?” Teodor asked.

  “An accident.”

  “What a most unfortunate girl you are. But we can’t have our Twistrose running around without the use of her arm.” He rinsed the cut with willow drop and began to pluck the stitches out. “Firedrake salve alone will not be enough for this. I have a trick or two up my sleeve, but first I should like to know why you were mucking about in my well.”

  Lin turned to Rufus. It was the same dilemma: They didn’t trust Teodor, but if anyone knew how to open the Winterfyrst Well, he was probably sitting across the table from her. Rufus swished his tail hotly, and Lin agreed. She closed her mouth.

  Teodor sent Rufus a quick glance while he dripped the wound with a blue tincture. “Very well. Then perhaps you will tell me how you got the water to melt.”

  Lin shifted on her chair. “I didn’t mean to. I just touched the carving at the bottom. It flared up, and the ice disappeared.”

  “I see.” Teodor pushed his chair back and shuffled over to the black stove. A cooking pot sat on top of it, and now he touched it briefly, bringing forth a quick glint under his paw. Immediately a most delicious smell of dinner wafted through the room. “I am quite fond of this little cooking rune. Emperor morels from Legenwald, ready and hot when the need arises.” He ladled stew into three bowls. “It will take a moment for the bleeding to quell. You may as well eat in the meantime.”

  Skeptical or no, Lin’s growling belly insisted, and even Rufus came to the table. The stew was thick with barley and golden mushrooms like coins, and it tasted like bonfires and clear October skies. Teodor studied them as they ate. “How goes the search? Any news of our Winterfyrst?” He smiled faintly. “And did you find the item you had lost, young Rufocanus?”

  “What item?” Lin asked, then remembered what Rufus had said: Teodor doesn’t need to know everything, and I’ve got it covered.

  Rufus gave Teodor a morose look, if such a thing is possible while stuffing one’s face with stew. “We have some leads.”

  Teodor straightened his sleeves with crisp movements, but he didn’t press the matter. When they had emptied their bowls, he pulled out a flat case from his coat pocket and opened it to reveal a quill pen. The tip was faceted like a diamond, cut in the shape of a talon. “Since you won’t be sharing your secrets and you’ve already ferreted out mine, I might as well show you what a healing rune can do.” Teodor placed a scrap of leather over Lin’s wrist wound and let the talon quill hover over it. “Now stay very still.”

  Rufus bounded to his feet. His bowl clattered to the floor. “Don’t!” he cried. “Don’t touch her with that thing!”

  Teodor turned to him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, don’t touch her. And don’t try that confused face with me. I’m not fooled by your concerned uncle act and your perfect stew. We know about your plans with Mrs. Zarka. We know about the Brain Tapper!”

  Teodor’s mouth worked in wordless anger, and Lin expected an acid retort. But then the old fox’s face fell, and he put the talon pen down. “You found my briefcase. I knew I would regret running out on it.”

  “That’s right.” Rufus bared his teeth. “How could you even think about using that horrible thing on a poor, innocent boy?”

  “I never asked Mrs. Zarka to make that thing!” Teodor rose, too. “Somehow, she had found a letter I wrote to my colleagues about Isvan and the Winterfyrst plight. The audacious fool thought it was for her.”

  A letter about Isvan and the Winterfyrst plight? Lin lifted her chin. “You’re talking about the letter we found in Isvan’s room! The one where you complain about Isvan’s behavior. The one you two argued about!”

  “I wouldn’t call it an argument,” Teodor muttered. “But yes. That’s the one. I have no idea how it came into Mrs. Zarka’s claws.”

  “Then you don’t consider her a colleague?”

  “I despise her vile Technocraft and everything about it.” Teodor snarled. “Those devices can be used by anyone, and they lend themselves to rash actions and uses that were not in the original blueprints. Technocraft has transformed Wichtiburg from the pride of the Realms to a nest of power-hungry predators.”

  “You mean the kind who would prey on the innocent?” Rufus’s fur bristled with anger. “The kind who would stick thorns into someone’s brain just to get information out of it?”

  “I only kept those plans because I wanted to present them to the House elders. I’ve been trying to convince them to shut down the Machine. But then Isvan disappeared, and I turned all my attention to finding him.” Teodor sank back into his seat. “Isvan is very dear to me. I would never harm him. This I swear to you, and by the Flame may you believe me.”

  Lin was not convinced. “But you stopped visiting him.”

  “He wouldn’t let me in.
He even locked the gate to the Hall of Winter.”

  “Locked the gate,” Rufus scoffed. “You abandoned him.”

  “I left messages. I thought he was just coming of age. That if I gave it some time he would come back to me . . .”

  “You thought wrong,” Lin said. “You were one of the reasons Isvan left. He was scared of you, and he was terrified of Mrs. Zarka. I think he may have found the Brain Tapper plans.”

  Teodor rubbed his forehead. “My briefcase. Someone entered my house and opened it, that’s why I kept it under guard these past few weeks. But I never suspected Isvan did it.” His voice became a weary little croak. “He left? To go where?”

  Lin hesitated. But then she felt Rufus’s hand on her shoulder, pinching her three times. Go further. Look harder. There’s something there. She brought out the page that Isvan had torn from The Book of Frost and Flame. Teodor stared at the illustration as if it depicted a poisonous snake, and not a beautiful ice ax.

  “Isvan went to great lengths to get this,” Lin said. “It was stolen the night before he disappeared.”

  For the second time that evening, Teodor seemed not worried, not shocked, but afraid.

  “Frostfang unlocks the Winterfyrst Well,” Lin continued. “That’s why we were ‘mucking about’ down there. So if you’re telling the truth about your love for Isvan, you will help us get in.”

  “He went to the Winterfyrst Well?” Teodor picked up one of the empty jars and set it down again. “Stupid,” he muttered. “Unprepared!”

  “Unprepared for what?” Rufus asked.

  “The well outside this house is carved with a melt rune, but it is still a simple hole in the ground. The Winterfyrst Well is no such thing. It is a secret glacial cathedral, and no one but the Winterfyrsts themselves know where it is hidden. But I knew Isvan’s mother, and she told me one thing.”

  “What?” Rufus’s eyes were already shining.

  “The Well is outside the Palisade of Thorns.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Caravan Road wound up the mountain in sharp, steep turns.

  Lin buried her fingers deep in Ursa Minor’s fur. She had ridden Uncle Anders’s horse up the trail to Buttertop a few times, but sitting bareback on a huge, brown bear was a different matter altogether. The great back lurched and swayed, and she had to shift her weight for every step. Behind her, Rufus had one arm around her waist, one hand grasping Minor’s coat, and his tail looped around one of the bear’s hind legs. “There’s really no need for that,” Minor said. “I won’t let the little human girl fall, and not you, either.”

  “So you say, but Rodent bones are brittle. I’m just making sure you keep your word.”

  “An Ursa always keeps his word,” Minor rumbled, but the swaying lessened some.

  They had found Minor waiting for them by the Caravan Road, sharing a bag of caramel oats with Teodor’s Hoof friend, Fabian. It turned out they had met the Ursa on their way out of Sylveros and brought him along. “For protection,” Teodor had muttered, but he wouldn’t say why.

  The Flamewatcher sat lost in thought in Fabian’s painted saddle, eyes trained on the twin spires of Whitepass. After the healing rune, he had not spoken much. Lin wriggled her wrist. The rune had closed the wound and removed all pain. There wasn’t even a scar.

  She had braced herself for the magic, expecting her magic ears to hurt and bleed. But except for the scratching of the diamond talon pen against the leather, the only sound she had heard was a faint singsong hum. “Teodor?” Lin smiled uncertainly. “Can I ask you something?”

  The old fox didn’t turn, but he swung an ear toward her. “Your healing rune didn’t hurt at all, but Mrs. Zarka’s Machine made my ears bleed. Why?”

  “Technocraft is crude. It rips and shreds, leaving loose ends and ugly holes. For those with magical otopathy, the strain of it can be dangerous.”

  “I’ll make sure I stay away from the Machine Vault.” Lin said.

  “And the Observatory,” Rufus added. “That’s not Technocraft, but your ears bled there, too.”

  Teodor whipped around. “The Observatory? Ah, I should have thought of that. You were in the mirrors.”

  Lin raised her brows. “How did you know?”

  “To answer that question,” Teodor said, “I need to tell you the story of the Observatory.”

  “Here comes another history lesson,” Rufus muttered, but he settled down to listen.

  “A thousand years ago, in a frozen, lonely valley far to the north, a traveling Flamewatcher discovered an underground cage. Inside it lay the remains of a giant Starfalcon.”

  Teriko’s cage, Lin thought. Marvin had said something about it having once trapped a Starfalcon.

  “The Flamewatcher knew she would never get the colossal skeleton out, so she created a chimney and burned the bones. As she watched the smoke rise, she had a compelling idea. She would make a bond between this world and Earth in the form of six great mirrors. One would be for remembrance, and the other five for children in need. And she used the Starfalcon’s ashes to create the Observatory.”

  “That’s how Sylver was founded?” Lin asked. “Because of the Observatory?”

  “Just so. When the Petlings of the Realms heard of the magical mirrors, they flocked to the snowy valley to settle down. And so the Sylverings began their long vigil. They named the mirrors after the gifts the Observatory could offer: Strength, Courage, Luck, Comfort, and Hope, and when a child appeared there, the Sylverings wrote it down on a special index card. We believe the gifts noted there will somehow find their way to the child.”

  Lin sincerely hoped this was true. She remembered the girl in the Courage mirror, the one with the menacing blotch on her nightgown.

  “But tonight,” Teodor continued, “something unforeseen came to pass at the Observatory. A human child came visiting, and for some reason, while she was inside the building, she appeared in one of the mirrors.” He narrowed his eyes. “Or perhaps even several mirrors?”

  “Four,” Lin whispered. “They said I was in dire need.”

  Teodor made a soft crowing sound in his throat. “The Observatory answered by granting you those gifts—all four of them—immediately.” He reached out a bent, old claw and touched her hand quickly, as if it were charged with electricity. “And that is why you set off the melt rune in the well. Lindelin Rosenquist, you are brimming with magic.”

  Rufus’s grip around her waist tightened. “So you’re saying Lin is filled up with magic? Won’t that be dangerous for her otopa-thing?”

  “Otopathy.” Teodor frowned at him. “It may aggravate it, yes. But as she spends the magic, the danger should lessen. Besides, it’s not all bad. She may need those gifts tonight.”

  “How do I use them?” Lin asked. The thought that she might have magic in her blood had her belly tickling, dangerous or no.

  “I don’t think you can, by choice,” Teodor replied. “The gifts—whatever they are—will choose their own moment. Some may already have done so.”

  “At least one,” Lin said, disappointed. She should have known something was wrong when she had the strength to climb the chain in the cage.

  They scaled the crest of the hill and found themselves at the mouth of a gorge, sunk into the shoulder between two mountaintops. An icy gale sprang up to meet them, whipping up Teodor’s coat flaps. “We are here.”

  Halfway into the pass, where two great cliffs leaned in to form a bottleneck, a great shadow barred the gorge. The Palisade of Thorns.

  As they rode closer, Lin realized that the Palisade matched her street in Oldtown for length, and Mrs. Ichalar’s house for height. Its shadow closed around them, broken up here and there by starlight that filtered through, dappling the ground in patterns of leaves and thorns. For the Palisade was not a wall or a stockade, but a giant, living hedge.

  The wind ripped itself t
o shreds on the thorns, and on the tatters, there was a long, ululating scream. Fabian shied some steps to the side, and even Ursa Minor’s great scruff rose. Lin had heard a scream like that before, on the hilltop when she had just passed through the scargate from Mrs. Ichalar’s cellar. “What is that?” Rufus cried.

  “Something nasty come to sniff at the border.” Teodor scanned the top of the hedge. “You two fleet-feet, follow me.”

  They left Fabian and Ursa Minor on the ground and climbed a series of wobbly ladders and platforms until they reached a ledge at the top of the Palisade. Treacherous gusts tore through the branches, and Lin kept reaching out to steady herself. But she daren’t risk being cut by the curved thorns, which were the size of sabers. Rufus, however, gripped the thorns as if they were life buoys, edging sideways on the ledge.

  On the Nightmare side of the border, the snow had been scraped away by the cruel winds. At first Lin saw only a bleak landscape of moss and ferns between towering walls and jagged summits in the distance. But then she noticed it: an occasional scuttling out in the pass, like cockroaches darting over a closet floor.

  Teodor shot her a sideways glance.

  “Do you recognize them?”

  Lin shook her head. Her pulse raced and her skin crawled, and it was not just because of the scuttlers. The air seemed different across the border. Brooding and shifting, full of unseen horrors.

  Teodor grunted. “Remember I told you that the dreams and thoughts of children shape this world? Well, not all dreams are pleasant. These mountains are home to your secret fears. That is how they got their name.”

  “Nightmares!” Rufus held on to a thorn with both hands. “I never knew there were so many of them this close to the border. What are they doing?”

  “I do not know,” Teodor said. “They usually shun the Palisade. But tonight, more and more of them enter the Whitepass by the hour. Something draws them here, the Wanderer perhaps, or some instinct, or . . . this.”

  He led them to a patch of hedge where the leaves and thorns had been cleared away, exposing a massive, writhing branch. It carried three-tongued marks within three-tongue marks, all filled with the Flamewatcher signs of lines and dots. The largest and most elaborate rune they had seen so far. Surrounding it was a circle of deep, ugly bite marks that split the wood right through the rune.