The Keeper of the Mist

by Rachel Neumeier

  Cort seemed to relax a bit. He gave her a tight little nod. “Yes. Or I think so. I hope so. I know how to get the mist to return—I think. Then, yes, we can tell Lord Osman to get himself and his men back across the border and take his presumptuous handfasting offers with him! If we’re all clear that setting Nimmira aside from the world is our most important goal.” He studied her face and nodded again. “Keri, this will work and then anybody can tell all those foreigners anything, because whatever tale they hear, they’ll take home with them only confusing memories of a land that doesn’t exist, tucked into a spot between Eschalion and Tor Carron where everybody knows there’s nothing but a disputed border.” Intense and forceful, Cort seized her hands and dragged her into a nearby sitting room, sparsely furnished with non-red tables and couches. He pulled her over to a wide window, though it was too dark to see the town as anything other than a scattering of lamps glowing in windows. “Look!” he told her, and pointed, while the startled Tassel stood on her toes and tried to see over their heads.

  “Cort, it’s dark! And the border is much too far away to see from here anyway.”

  He only shook his head impatiently. “It’s because it’s dark you can see it, like the gray line of dawn, only much closer. Just over there, past the edge of town! Look!”

  Keri stared out the window for a long moment. “Cort…”

  “You don’t see it?”

  “I’m not the Doorkeeper! What am I supposed to see? A line like the edge of dawn—what does that even mean?”

  Cort shoved both hands through his hair so that it stood up in all directions. He immediately looked younger, like a boy caught out in some mischief that had gone wrong. He looked, in fact, almost like the boy he’d been years ago, when he and Tassel and Keri had found one ridiculous scrape after another to get into. Before Cort’s father had died and he had suddenly been called on to help his brother run the third-biggest farm near Glassforge; he’d lost his mischief then. And his sense of humor, and his patience, and his temper.

  Then Keri’s mother had died, and Keri had suddenly needed to fight to keep the bakery. She’d understood Cort’s temper much better after that, but she had been far too busy to ever think of telling him so.

  And now here they were, both unexpectedly struggling to keep more than just one farm or just one bakery. Cort wasn’t even a bad choice for the fight. He was actually a good choice, difficult as he could be: stubborn as the solid earth, unyielding as an iron lock.

  Keri knew she should look out the window and try again to see what he saw, because she was the Lady, so she should be able to see anything so important. But she found it hard to look away from Cort. The temper was still evident. His sense of humor was still imperceptible. But somehow the way he hadn’t changed a bit made Keri feel more like herself.

  She asked gently, “Cort? What did my father do?”

  “It wasn’t him. It wasn’t just him. His Doorkeeper, Lyem Aronn—I got Tassel to look up his name—must have helped. It might have been his idea. Your father didn’t have a tenth of your good sense or a hundredth part of your responsibility, but he was Lord; I can’t believe he would have thought of something like this on his own. Curse Lyem Aronn for a grasping, greedy, arrogant— If I found him, I’d—I don’t know, but I’d do something. Keri, I want to strike his name from the rolls of titleholders.”

  Keri wanted to suggest that Cort tell her more about herself, but she was afraid she was blushing already. She hadn’t realized Cort thought she had good sense. Though she ought to have guessed that he would put responsibility first among qualities to admire, because he was the most responsible person she knew. But she only asked Tassel, “Is that allowed?”

  Her friend looked intrigued. “I don’t…I’ll find out.”

  Keri nodded. She wondered, now that Cort had suggested it, whether it might be possible to strike her father’s name from the rolls, too, and what people would say if she did. She was almost certain he deserved to have his name erased from the rolls. Or maybe he deserved to have his name forever remembered as the Lord who opened up Nimmira to satisfy his own greed. Maybe Cort’s predecessor deserved that, too.

  “You find out, then,” Cort said grimly to Tassel. “He didn’t just fail his duty. He deliberately disrupted the boundary.”

  Tassel nodded, her eyes wide. Keri said, “Well, we knew that.”

  “Not like this! I’m telling you!” Cort pointed out the window. “He made a hole in the boundary. You can see it—all right, maybe you can’t, but I can see it. It’s like looking at the line of dawn, only there’s a gap where the sun isn’t rising.” He hesitated, giving her an uncharacteristically uncertain look. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s what it looks like. Like a hole in the sunrise, out there, just south of town. It’s not that the mist is thin or the boundary narrow—there’s nothing there, no mist at all, and even with the boundary magic failing, that’s not right! It’s just empty air for a good quarter mile. And I think the gap is getting wider every minute we fail to close it up properly.”

  Keri looked out the window and, seeing nothing but the nighttime town, shook her head. She thought about holes in the boundary, about her father somehow blowing the true mist away and filling the air with—what? An illusion of mist? Or nothing at all, not even illusion, hiding it with no more than branches swept across the road or something? It seemed incredible.

  She said, trying to get it straight in her own mind, “So they made a gap. My father and the old Doorkeeper. They made a gap somehow, and when my father died, not only did the whole length of the boundary start to thin, but also the empty part started to spread. Is that right?” That was bad enough, but she realized something else before Cort could even begin to answer her. “Wait, wait, even before my father died, anybody who followed that trail could have stumbled right out of Nimmira into Tor Carron or back the other way, is that what you mean? A couple looking for a private tryst, a boy after a stray sheep, anybody just curious to see where a path might go. Anyone.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Nimmira made him Lord. And he did this? How could he?”

  Tassel said, “When he was a young man, he must have been the right choice. I suppose later he became—” She hesitated. “Overconfident.”

  “Overconfident! He became selfish, thoughtless, and careless,” snapped Cort. “And Lyem Aronn, too! The trail’s hard to spot, I’ll allow. At least that worthless dog’s puke did that much. I checked. But it’s a working track, and once you’ve been so blazingly stupid as to tear open a hole in the boundary mist, there’s only so much you can do by ordinary means to disguise a trail like that. Maybe he used some kind of illusion, some little player’s charm or whatever, but even that would hardly suffice to hide a road that people are actually using.”

  Keri stared out the window again. She thought maybe she could see…something. Like a pearlescent line curving through the sky. So the mist hadn’t failed completely, not yet. It had faded, yes. But a trace of the magic lingered. And, now that Cort had pointed it out, she thought she could after all see—or maybe feel—a totally empty gap south of Glassforge. It was a bit like realizing a step wasn’t there before you put your foot on it. Was it possible to see a hole by its emptiness? “Cort, you’re sure you can tell exactly where the true gap is, even with the boundary fading all along this part of its length?”

  “The boundary’s certainly thinnest right here by Glassforge,” Cort conceded. “But even here, the mist hasn’t blown away completely, and the line of the boundary is still there, the line where it ought to be. That’s why I think I might be able to close the gap. And if I can—look, Keri, do you actually know how Lupe Ailenn first raised the mist and made the boundary? Because I never did, until I looked it up just now, but he wasn’t my great-great-great-grandfather or whatever.”

  “Five greats,” Keri said absently. “I thought everyone knew. He went right around Nimmira, him and Summer Timonan, whom they called the Borderkeeper afterward, though she didn’t really keep th
e border, did she? She made it, but she never had a chance to keep it. A drop of blood every step, for three hundred and seventy-eight miles, and she died at the end—” She broke off. “Cort, what are you thinking?”

  “A drop of blood every step,” Cort repeated. “Summer Timonan’s blood, and Lupe Ailenn’s weaving.” He gripped the windowsill, staring out at the night, the muscles of his back and shoulders tight with intensity. “Almost four hundred miles. Even if it wasn’t literally a drop of blood every single step…I can’t even imagine. But the gap out there isn’t large at all. Maybe a quarter mile all told.” He turned, leaned his hip against the windowsill, crossed his arms over his chest, and met Keri’s eyes. “I can do it. My part of it. I don’t know exactly how, but…” He jerked his head in a gesture like a shrug, meaning none of them really knew anything and it hadn’t mattered so far. “If we do this, if we make it work, we might have the boundary mist back up by morning. And if we don’t, it’ll just keep getting worse and harder to fix. So. You up to trying it?” He gave her a look that made it clear he had no doubt she was.

  Keri imagined dawn rising on a secure border, and had to close her eyes for a moment, she wanted it so badly. “Just let me change out of this dress.”

  They could do this. She almost thought they could. Then, once things were a lot less exciting, she could get her balance as Lady. Then, once things were normal, she could prove to Domeric and Brann and the Timekeeper and everyone that she really could be much better than her father. Even the people who had worked with her father in his schemes would be glad she was Lady, once they understood how near their own greed had brought them to complete disaster.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. “Tassel, you can stay here and keep an eye on…on everything. And think of how to handle Lord Osman! But if we can bring the mist back, no matter what happens then, it won’t be like this. It’ll be something we can deal with.”

  —

  A drop of blood every step. That turned out to be trickier than Keri had thought, even for a smallish gap like this one. A pricked finger would only bleed for a minute, and then the tiny wound would close up and you had to prick another finger. From Cort’s steady cursing, this wasn’t pleasant. But if you made a real cut, you might actually hurt yourself, not to mention get far too much blood all at once, so most of it would be wasted. “Details!” Cort snapped furiously. He held a small, sharp knife in one hand, angling his other hand as he tried to decide how and where to make a cut. “Details in those records would have been nice! Didn’t it occur to anyone that maybe someone someday might need to know exactly how Summer Timonan did this?”

  “After what happened to her, they probably hoped no one else ever would. Who’d think of opening up holes like this? No, don’t cut across your wrist, there are all those tendons and things! Maybe if you poked the base of your thumb? We should have asked a bonesetter….”

  “Want to return to town and get one?” Cort asked shortly.

  “Yes!” Keri snapped back. “That would be better than watching you slice yourself up and maybe cripple yourself! But you’re too stubborn, that’s the trouble!”

  Cort started a sharp answer, then surprised her by stopping with a short laugh. He still sounded angry, but it was a real laugh even so. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll give you that one. But it would take an hour to get back to town on foot, and longer still to find a bonesetter, and what would we tell him? No, I’ll get this.”

  Keri had to admit that she didn’t really want to delay, either. “All right. You’re right. But be careful!”

  “I’ll try a slightly bigger cut,” Cort decided, and muttered under his breath while he carefully sliced across the tips of the two smallest fingers on his left hand. Keri flinched and looked away, but after a moment, Cort said, “There, that should do it,” his tone both grim and satisfied.

  They had found the wagon trail without difficulty. Cort had found it; he had actually led them straight to it. Keri had recognized it only afterward, belatedly, with a sense of inevitability that annoyed her. If she’d known all the time, why not really know, in the front part of her mind, where it would do some good? She wondered if Tassel might be able to find any books on how to be Lady, how to best harness the intrinsic magic of Nimmira. Probably nothing so useful existed. Maybe she could write one herself, once she figured things out. If she could only get through these next few days.

  The trail itself had proved to be rutted, but passable. The turn onto the trail from the road was disguised: you had to push through a stand of cedars and pines, and it seemed that someone had taken care to sweep fallen needles over the bare dirt of the track, too. So her father hadn’t been so reckless as to trust entirely to illusion to hide the path—or maybe he’d been so very reckless he hadn’t pulled illusion across the gap at all.

  Either way, once you were past the cedar grove, the wagon trail was obvious enough, even by lantern light. Both Keri and Cort carried lanterns. They had brought almost nothing else, other than Cort’s knife. Keri wanted to tell him again to be careful, but bit her tongue because she knew it would only annoy him. Then he said, sounding grim, “I think that’s done it,” and left the trail, heading off north one stride at a time, with a tiny hitch at every step as he paused to make sure a drop of blood fell from his cut fingers to the ground.

  Keri stared after him, almost more alarmed than relieved. Suddenly she wanted to say, Stop, wait, I don’t know what I’m doing! But then she realized that she could actually feel every drop of Cort’s blood hit the ground. That she could feel every drop of blood turn to pale mist and wreathe back into the air. The mist glimmered in the air, and she hurried to follow Cort. It seemed unlikely that one drop of blood for every step could give rise to enough mist to work with, but then it wasn’t exactly mist. Cort was doing something to the drops of blood as they fell—anyway, something was happening to them—he was putting himself between Nimmira and the outer lands. Keri couldn’t have done it. That wasn’t her magic.

  Her magic was all about knowing what belonged to Nimmira and what did not and what could go either way, all about knowing where the boundary lay and, yes, making it real somehow, real in a way that Cort couldn’t quite manage. Defining this as Nimmira and that as Outside and making the land itself understand which side of the boundary it lay on.

  She walked behind Cort, and where she stepped, the mist rose up and spread out and thickened: not exactly mist, but the magic of misdirection on which Nimmira depended, so that even though a careless step or flit of wings might lead a man or fox or sparrow into the narrow border between Nimmira and other lands, somehow neither man nor beast nor bird ever quite took that step or fluttered in quite that direction. It was exactly as though, to anyone outside it, Nimmira were not there at all. Anyone drawing a map would show the border Tor Carron shared with Eschalion as though little Nimmira did not exist.

  Ahead of Keri, Cort stumbled and missed a step, and Keri drew up short and waited anxiously as he cast back and forth, muttering, until he found the true line once more. He had to slice the knife across another finger, and he muttered about that, too. But it was working. Keri could see it was working. Cort was repairing the boundary, filling in the gap, and in the morning everything would be fine, everything would be back to normal. She was conscious of an enormous relief, even though Osman the Younger and his men would still be on the wrong side of the border, even though Magister Eroniel would still be waiting, no doubt, for the promised private breakfast. Keri had no idea how they would get rid of either the Bear soldiers or the Wyvern sorcerer even after they fixed everything else.

  But they would think of something. She clung to that thought every painful step as she followed Cort over the rough ground and through the dark, back toward the unseen town. It seemed a long quarter mile. But it was working. She knew it was working.

  Until Cort stopped, and she stepped up beside him, and they both turned to look back the way they’d come and found the mist sinking and thinning behind them, dispersing
into the chilly night air, like moonlight dimming as clouds slide across the sky. The emptiness of the gap was reasserting itself. They had failed after all.

  “What is that?” Cort demanded, sounding thoroughly offended.

  “It was working,” Keri protested. “I know it was working. I could feel it working.”

  But they could both plainly see it had not worked. Staring out at the boundary that rose and thinned and poured itself into the empty sky and disappeared, Keri struggled not to burst into tears. This was all too hard and too infuriating, and it wasn’t her fault it was like this, but she had to fix it, she and Cort, with his poor bloody fingers, and it wasn’t fair.

  “There’s another hole somewhere,” Cort said suddenly. He sounded disgusted, but not at all close to tears. “Another gap! Of course there is. A road to Tor Carron; naturally there’s also some way to get to Eschalion. A gap, a door, a crack…Where is it? Where would it be?” He turned slowly in a full circle, his eyes narrowed, studying something Keri couldn’t see. “I can’t find it,” he said furiously, as though this were a deliberate insult someone had done him.

  Keri tried to think. “It has to be somewhere logical, doesn’t it? Somewhere someone could get to it easily. It wouldn’t have to be very big. It might be just a door, like you said—”

  “It could be anyplace,” snapped Cort. “Anywhere in Glassforge. How am I to find it—walk back and forth in the House and the streets and the private homes till I trip over a gap in the light?”

  “Tassel,” said Keri, feeling as though she were grasping at straws. “Tassel might be able to figure it out.”

  Cort grimaced. He had, Keri thought, wanted badly to finish this right now. To finish it and take up his proper role, keeping the proper boundaries of Nimmira and not some half-absent flickering echo of the proper magic. Cort, with his drive to get things right, might have wanted that even more than she did. But he said at last, “She might, at that. Very well.” He glowered once more around at the dark, opened and closed his cut hand in silent but bitter commentary about this failure, and said grimly, “Well. It’s a long walk back to the House, and dawn not so far away anymore.” And he stepped aside, gesturing Keri past him with hard-held patience, to begin the trek to town.