The Keeper of the Mist

by Rachel Neumeier

  Keri truly disliked Eroniel Kaskarian, she decided. She set one elbow on the table, rested her chin in her palm, and smiled at the Wyvern sorcerer through the steam rising from her teacup. She smiled at him the way she would have smiled at a man whom she did not like but who might purchase an expensive cake. Except what she was trying to sell was a lot more important than a cake, and she was afraid Magister Eroniel might be hard to fool.

  “I hope, Magister,” she said, “that you are enjoying your visit to my Nimmira. Nimmira must seem very small and poor to an important sorcerer from Aranaon Mirtaelior’s own family. You are of the Wyvern King’s own family, are you not? That’s what that ornament indicates, isn’t it?”

  The sorcerer did not return her smile. His thin lips crooked upward, but that was not a smile. It was too disdainful to be anything so friendly. His eyes really were an almost metallic color, like old silver. They reminded Keri of the eyes of a snake, one of the whippy tree snakes seen sometimes in the spring, draped over a high branch. Those snakes had eyes that were just that kind of opaque metallic gray.

  The tree snakes were harmless, mostly. But they ate the eggs of wrens and swallows and finches and other little birds, and sometimes the fluttering birds as well, so they were not as welcome on farms or in gardens as the ordinary black rat snakes.

  Magister Eroniel was leaning back in his chair, his long silvery hair pouring down past its carved arm. Most of his hair was loose, but when he turned his head, the obsidian wyvern Keri had asked about swayed from a single thin twist of pale hair braided with a slender silver chain. The wyvern’s eyes were crystal, glittering in the early sunlight.

  “The wyvern is the badge and the sign of the King’s servants,” the sorcerer said eventually. Softly. His voice was like the voice of a snake, too, if a snake could speak: light and smooth and malicious. “But it is true I have the honor to share close blood ties to the King. Kaskarian is the line founded by our King’s estimable sister, Liraniel Kaskarian, through her three sorcerer daughters, the first sired by sunlight and the second by moonlight and the third by the light of the stars…or so Liraniel always claimed.” He set down his own teacup and lifted his graceful hand to brush the obsidian wyvern. “One assumes the tale is metaphorical. Though who is to say what might be possible for a woman adept in the three greater and four lesser arts?”

  “Fascinating,” said Keri. It even was, in a strange way. She wondered whether Magister Eroniel thought that story about sunlight and moonlight was metaphorical or true, and if it was metaphorical, what it was supposed to stand for. Maybe it would be obvious to anyone from Eschalion.

  “My mother was Liranarre Kaskarian,” added Magister Eroniel. “She was the eldest daughter of Asteriarre Kaskarian, who was in turn eldest daughter of Liraniel Kaskarian, sister of Aranaon Mirtaelior, who is our King.”

  “I see,” said Keri, hoping she wasn’t supposed to remember all those names. She knew she wasn’t going to. But maybe she was only expected to realize how important Magister Eroniel was, as a—what? Great-grandnephew of the King? She had known that Aranaon Mirtaelior had ruled Eschalion for a long time, but he must be even older than she’d thought, if Magister Eroniel was his great-grandnephew. Perhaps sorcerers didn’t age like other people. She wondered how old Magister Eroniel was. Older than he looked, she suddenly suspected. How long would it take to learn to smile that opaque, unreadable smile?

  She said, trying to get the sorcerer to talk about himself so she wouldn’t have to risk talking about Nimmira, “How strange and beautiful the court of Eschalion must be, and how difficult for those of us from other lands to imagine. Have you lived all your life at your uncle’s court, Magister? What is it like there?”

  But Eroniel Kaskarian only lifted one elegant eyebrow and murmured, “Oh, I have dwelt in the white halls of the court now and again. Yes. Now and again. But, indeed, I do not expect your imagination equal to encompassing the court of Eschalion…Lady.” He glanced around the breakfast chamber, as though he could hardly think of when he’d seen so homely a room, which was certainly not fair, since the room was actually very pretty.

  The breakfast chamber was in a part of the House that Keri hadn’t seen before. The chamber itself was more a porch than a room, floored with smooth flagstones and surrounded by latticework rather than ordinary walls. There was a gate in the lattice, in case anybody should want to descend the two steps necessary and walk in the tiny walled garden beyond. Keri hadn’t known the garden was there, either. She couldn’t quite visualize what part of the town must be on the other side of the stone wall of the garden.

  Except she could, actually, if she didn’t think about it too hard. She was aware that the street of clothiers and weavers was just there, on the other side of the wall, with the town square around to the east. She was aware of the click of looms and the sound of voices and the play of water from the fountains. Someone was selling small puffs of sugared bread, children running to buy it. Overhead, the swifts darted in complicated figures through the sky.

  She blinked, bringing her awareness back with some difficulty to the little garden and the open chamber and the girls clearing away the remnants of the eggs and fried mushrooms and bringing in bowls of apricots with cream and honey, and more tea. And to the elegant sorcerer lounging gracefully across from her, smiling his scornful, humorless serpent’s smile. He had hardly tasted anything but the tea. She couldn’t tell whether he disdained barbarian food or simply lived on moonbeams and cobwebs, but either way, she was inclined to resent it.

  She started to ask something about how he had become a sorcerer. She suspected Eroniel Kaskarian would brush her off with some sort of Oh, I hardly think your understanding equal to the complexities of the sorcery we practice in Eschalion. Certainly he seemed to need no encouragement to take her lightly. But at that moment, there was a crisp rap on the door, and Cort strode in without waiting for an answer. Keri put down her cup and sat up straight in her seat. “Doorkeeper?” she asked sharply.

  Eroniel Kaskarian steepled his hands before him and gazed over his fingertips at Cort, his eyebrows slightly elevated, as though he only barely restrained himself from murmuring something about impetuous youth. Or maybe impetuous peasants.

  Keri ignored the sorcerer with some effort, asking Cort, “What is it? Something’s happened?” Immediately she wished she hadn’t asked, because if her Doorkeeper answered, he might well give too much away to the Wyvern sorcerer.

  But Cort only said tightly, “Forgive me for interrupting you, Lady, but I think I may have found…the thing we sought last night.”

  “Oh!” said Keri. She was afraid that might have been a little too intriguing, but she supposed Cort was so straightforward that he wasn’t used to subterfuge. Turning to Magister Eroniel, she explained, “This is a trivial matter, Magister. My Doorkeeper seems to have found a…a missing key to one of my father’s chests.” Did that sound even remotely believable? She was afraid she was no better at subterfuge than Cort, but forged on since she had no choice. “It seems to be an important chest, and naturally we have been curious to learn what it may contain, but I’m sure it is nothing very important. You were going to tell me about the court of Eschalion, so impossible for ordinary folk to imagine….”

  “Please,” murmured the sorcerer, turning one palm up with gracious condescension. “You wish to attend to this inquiry, of course. You are still familiarizing yourself with your new estate…of course. Do not allow me to detain you, Lady Kerianna.”

  Somehow when he said it, it sounded like an insult, even when he was saying something perfectly polite. Keri pretended not to notice. She couldn’t even blame him, really: it might have been insulting for Cort to rush in like that, and maybe he had realized she’d made it up about the key. But she couldn’t think how to repair the situation now, and she disliked the sorcerer so intensely that she couldn’t bring herself to try. She waved at the dishes that had just been brought to the table. “You’re so kind, Magister Eroniel, but don’t
let me interrupt your breakfast. The apricots are very good this year. Or if you don’t care for apricots, you must ask for whatever you wish. My household will try to please you, I am sure.”

  “Of course,” the sorcerer agreed softly.

  Even that sounded somehow like an insult, or a warning, but Keri didn’t linger. She was glad to escape, though she hoped this wasn’t too obvious. She nodded to Cort. “Doorkeeper?”

  “Yes,” Cort said, and took her arm, not so much in a courteous gesture, but almost pulling her along. Keri pretended not to notice until they were out of the sorcerer’s sight, but she freed herself as soon as they’d left the breakfast chamber. Cort let her go without seeming to realize he’d ever gripped too hard, which, Keri knew, was almost certainly the case. She liked that about Cort, though: the way he poured all his attention into whatever was urgent and forgot about niceties.

  “You’ve found the other gap in the boundary?” she asked.

  “Yes,” snapped Cort, striding along the hallway without regard for Keri’s shorter legs. The hallway ran beside the gardens, latticework on one side so anyone could enjoy the fragrance of the lilacs planted along the way, but he showed no signs of noticing the flowers. He said, still snapping, “I should have found it much earlier. I should have recognized it the instant I saw it. I’m such a fool.”

  Keri liked that, too, she decided. It would have been easy to resent how demanding Cort was, except anybody could see he was even more demanding of himself. “We’ve all been busy,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, but—” Cort flicked a sideways glance at her. “Where would you put a secret doorway if you wanted to be able to step into Eschalion and back again with no one the wiser? Someplace convenient, yet someplace where no guest or servant would stumble unexpectedly out of one land into the other. Remember, we’re not talking about tons of wheat and wagonloads of peaches. You can carry a handful of jewels in your pocket.”

  “Oh,” said Keri. “Your own apartment?”

  “The Doorkeeper’s apartment, exactly, curse the man! The biggest wardrobe in the bedroom! I should have looked through all the rooms, I should have looked there first, not wasted my time searching ridiculous places like the attics. Who would put a secret door in a cursed attic, where you couldn’t even keep track of it? Oh, no, of course you’d put it in your own cursed apartment and just order the servants to keep out of it. The son of a lizard even labeled it. And I missed it anyway.”

  “Labeled it?”

  But Cort only shook his head, a sharp, annoyed gesture, as he led her up a flight of stairs and along another, broader corridor, this one lined with large portraits on either side. He didn’t pause to look at them. Keri, having to stretch to keep up, didn’t have time to steal more than a glance, though she realized many of those portraits must show some of her own ancestors.

  “I didn’t see it until one of the staff asked if he was permitted to put my things away in the wardrobe and it came out that no one was allowed to mess with the Doorkeeper’s best coats, which is what he told them was in there. They are, too. The gap’s behind the coats. You shove them aside and there you go—Eschalion.”

  Cort put out a hand and pushed open the door to his apartment. A couple of servants who had been dusting or whatever looked up; one jumped to his feet and said uncertainly, “Doorkeeper?”

  “Out,” Cort ordered them shortly. He slammed the door behind their hasty departure and led Keri through the apartment.

  At least these rooms hadn’t been decorated in red. There was a lot of heavy, fancy, carved furniture, though, and sumptuous hangings and deep carpets, and the lamps and candlesticks were all set with garnets. Nothing about the reception room, or the sitting room that followed, or the bedchamber beyond that, looked the least bit like anything Cort would appreciate or want to live with. Keri thought he would look far more at home in a place with simple pine furniture, nothing carved or heavy, with plain rugs on the wooden floor and ordinary lamps of brass. But there was no sign Cort had even noticed how little his predecessor’s possessions suited him. He stopped in the middle of the bedroom and glowered at the wardrobe.

  It was in fact enormous: a freestanding piece of polished dark wood taller than a man and wider than Keri could have reached with both arms. The thing must have weighed ten stone or more, and how anyone had ever gotten it up the stairs and into this room, she could not imagine. Its gleaming doors were intricately carved with fanciful trees and animals, which was all very well, but above the doors curved the long snakelike shape of a wyvern, its wings half spread and its elegant, narrow head turned back over its shoulder. No wonder Cort had said his predecessor had labeled his doorway to Eschalion.

  Other than the wardrobe’s enormous size and the choice of carving, nothing about it seemed unusual to Keri. But, of course, the wyvern was startling enough. Judging by Cort’s expression, he was deeply offended that it had taken him so long to find the gap in Nimmira’s magic hidden within it. She didn’t blame him.

  “How can a gap in the boundary be in there, when this room is nowhere near the boundary?” she asked.

  Cort spared her a glance, though he was plainly mostly concentrating on the wardrobe and his own dark thoughts. “There’s a kind of involution. He folded the boundary in and twisted a bit of it into a loop right here. The boundary basically swoops in and folds around and swoops out again, so fast it looks like there’s no interruption.”

  He opened the wardrobe, shoving expensive embroidered coats out of the way and tossing several indifferently aside to better expose its rear. Where a wooden back should have been there was…not exactly mist, and not exactly shadow, but something indistinct that hinted of distance and secrets.

  “That looks…strange,” Keri admitted. She moved forward, leaning past Cort, and pushed a beautiful dark green coat with silver buttons to one side. “I can’t believe your predecessor left those,” she commented. “He must have been terribly vain.”

  “Or needed an excuse for such a big wardrobe. He probably didn’t want to take the time before getting out of Glassforge….Curse the man! Keri, after we sort this out, I want you to tell me where he is and I will track him down.”

  Keri considered this. She said thoughtfully, “You know, I don’t think he’s in Nimmira any longer….”

  Cort snorted. “Then we know why he left the coats, don’t we? Heavier to carry than jewels. He walked directly through this gap into Eschalion, I expect, and if he knows what’s good for him, he will never come back. Look at this.” He stepped right up into the wardrobe and thrust his hand straight back. His hand didn’t exactly vanish. Not exactly. But his fingers looked suddenly hazy and…not quite connected to his wrist, as though seen through water.

  “Don’t do that,” Keri said uneasily. She grabbed his arm, pulling him back a step. “You can close this…involution. Right? And then we can close the big hole south of town once more, and this time it will stay closed. Right?”

  “The tricky part will be—” Cort began.

  But before he could explain what he thought, a sharp little snap interrupted him. It was like the sound when you cracked open an almond shell, or the pop when you broke a dry bit of kindling, or the snap when a glassblower twisted a cooling bowl or vase off the strand of glass that would be left behind. It was like all those things, but not really like any of them. It was like the air behind you breaking open to let something, or someone, step through. Keri turned quickly.

  Eroniel Kaskarian stood there behind them. Of course he did. Keri was not even surprised. She was already backing away when the sorcerer stepped forward; she was already beginning to say something, she had no idea what, maybe she meant to scream, or call for help, she didn’t know. But Magister Eroniel caught her wrist before she could do more than draw breath, and brushed the fingers of his other hand across her throat, and then she couldn’t make a sound. His grip was as cold and indifferent as metal, and as irresistible, as he drew her toward the wardrobe. She couldn’t twist away; she cou
ldn’t slow the sorcerer’s steps toward the gap into Eschalion; she couldn’t even cry out. She caught at the heavy bedpost; she could do that. He tore her away, and she dragged at the velvet hangings, her breath coming short and sharp in her throat, and in that instant Cort flung a fancy coat heavy with embroidery over Magister Eroniel’s head, picked up a garnet-studded lamp, and smashed it across the sorcerer’s wrist where he gripped Keri’s wrist.

  Eroniel Kaskarian did not let go. He didn’t cry out, either. He made a low hissing sound like an angry cat and flicked the back of his other hand toward Cort, like a man flicking water off his fingers.

  Cort staggered and caught the carved door of the wardrobe for balance, flung himself back upright, slammed his arm like a bar across the sorcerer’s chest, and snapped furiously—he hadn’t lost his voice, apparently—“All doors are barred to you, all roads are closed before you, all—”

  Magister Eroniel cut him off with a wordless, startled cry. He let Keri go, caught Cort’s arm instead, and leaped up and into the wardrobe, flowing like water, blurring into silver and pewter, yanking Cort with him the way a river in spring flood might carry away a heavy-rooted tree or a great boulder. The Wyvern sorcerer vanished, and Cort, shouting and struggling without effect, was dragged after him.

  The shout cut off as though sliced by a knife. The wardrobe was suddenly perfectly empty—empty, at least, of everything but heavy coats, swaying gently on their hangers. Its back, where the blurring gap into Eschalion had wavered only a moment ago, had turned to ordinary polished wood. The gap had closed, and Keri was left panting and clinging to the edge of the bed and its draperies, staring at the empty wardrobe. She didn’t even know whether the Wyvern sorcerer had closed that gap, or whether it had been Cort. But she knew she had no way to open it again, even if she dared.