The Keeper of the Mist

by Rachel Neumeier

  In a way, what most astonished Keri was how impossible it was to get everyone to stop shouting and arguing and casting blame so that they could concentrate on finding some course of action that might be useful. If anything could have forced the entire household to pull together, she would have thought the kidnapping of the Doorkeeper should have done it.

  The idea was utterly appalling. The Doorkeeper of Nimmira was in Magister Eroniel’s hands; the sorcerer was probably trying right now, right this minute, to tear his magic out of him by the roots, dissect it out of his nerves and mind and heart, and if he succeeded, he would be able to break every lock and shatter every door and open up Nimmira the same way. Nothing could be worse.

  Except one thing could be worse. Because maybe Magister Eroniel had already handed Cort over to the Wyvern King. Keri couldn’t even imagine what he might do to Cort, or how fast he might do it. He would master the special magic of the Doorkeeper and through that means create his own entry into Nimmira and master all its magic. She didn’t want to think about how he would break Cort to do it, but she knew it would shatter Cort to be used to pry open Nimmira.

  Everyone argued over and around her, yet she found herself frozen at the heart of all the noise and confusion, unable to think about anything but Cort. Her Doorkeeper. She hadn’t realized how very much she depended on Cort to be her Doorkeeper and keep Nimmira safe, how much she had depended on his solidity, until he wasn’t there to lean on.

  She couldn’t believe anyone could find anything to argue about. It was so obvious they had to do something right away, right now, to get Cort back. Keri didn’t know what; she could hardly think. She was too upset, but the clamor made it worse.

  Everyone had gathered in the Doorkeeper’s apartment, in the big sitting room, which looked far smaller when lots of people crowded into it, none of whom were in any mood to actually sit down. Keri had sent for Tassel, and of course for the Timekeeper, and somehow Linnet had found out, and naturally Linnet had run straight to Domeric. Keri thought she could have done without Domeric’s forceful bellow. And she definitely could have done without Brann. She had no idea who had told him. Probably word had just run through the House and everyone knew everything.

  Her brothers were the ones shouting the loudest. Keri wanted badly to stamp in circles and scream, but that wouldn’t help, either. Though if it made everyone else shut up, she might do it anyway.

  Tassel was mostly quiet and stunned. Her eyes kept straying to the open door that led to the bedchamber and the wardrobe. Keri understood that completely. It must be even worse for Tassel, since Cort was her cousin. He was only Keri’s friend—or not even really her friend, not since they’d been children—but she knew him and trusted him, and she’d been relieved he was her Doorkeeper and not someone she didn’t know. Where was he now? Keri couldn’t keep from looking at the wardrobe, over and over, in case the door into Eschalion might suddenly reappear. She had thrown all the coats on the bed and left the doors of the wardrobe wide open, but this hadn’t helped. From front to back, it was just a wardrobe.

  Then Brann broke into her thoughts, snapping, “We should have made a proper peace with Eschalion while we could still pretend we did so from a position of strength! Now we’ve no choice: we must send to Eschalion right away, make it clear we’re willing to hear any demand Aranaon Mirtaelior makes. Without our Doorkeeper, it’s impossible to close Nimmira against him. If we don’t immediately reach an accommodation on our terms, he’ll realize that, and it will be too late! We’ll have no choice but to accept his terms. This is obvious! Why are we still delaying? Kerianna, are you listening to me?”

  Keri hadn’t been, really. But she realized that what he meant was that they should just surrender Nimmira to the Wyvern King quickly, before he took it by force. That caught her attention in a very disagreeable way. She felt cold and sick just thinking about that. Surrender to the Wyvern King? She knew that was the one thing they couldn’t do, not even to get Cort back safe. She didn’t know whether she should be shocked or offended or dismayed, but she found herself speechless, completely unable to frame any kind of coherent answer. She wanted to shout at Brann to shut up and get out, but she was too angry and too frightened and she couldn’t even manage to collect herself enough for that.

  Domeric answered Brann instead, swinging around and facing him challengingly. “You’re a fool for thinking we can gain anything by yielding to Aranaon Mirtaelior! Eschalion would swallow Nimmira whole and make all our people into slaves.”

  Keri pressed her hands over her eyes and tried to think. Domeric was right, everyone must know he was right—except Brann, apparently….

  But then Domeric went on, “We must immediately ally with Tor Carron. Kerianna can handfast Lord Osman if he demands it. We must have his cooperation and his men!” Domeric wasn’t shouting now, but he spoke with the kind of emphatic force that, from him, was a lot like shouting.

  Keri shook her head without looking up. She groped for reasons Domeric was wrong, but the words wouldn’t come. He was wrong, though. But even if she were willing to handfast Lord Osman—which she supposed she must, if it came to that, but there was no longer time to arrange any kind of formal alliance with Tor Carron, it was too late. Even if it would help the way Domeric hoped, and she didn’t think it would. If she did what Lord Osman wanted and allied Nimmira with Tor Carron, it would leave Nimmira visible between Tor Carron and Eschalion, and the last thing they wanted, the very last, was to have the two great countries continue their long, slow war right through the gentle land of Nimmira.

  She started to say so, but Brann interrupted her before she could do more than begin to draw breath.

  “You’re the fool,” Brann snapped at Domeric. “The Wyvern King always wins in the end. We can’t ally with his enemy!” He swiveled to face Keri. “But we can buy time, at least. You must repudiate Cort as Doorkeeper immediately and take back the magic invested in him, force it to settle somewhere else. Then whatever happens to Cort, it won’t matter; Nimmira will be safe! As long as you’ve got the sense to cease all these experiments with neighbors and close the boundary properly.”

  “You think it doesn’t matter what happens to Cort?” Keri said, incredulous. “Anyway, it doesn’t work like that! I can’t just take back his magic!”

  “Even if she could, you can’t imagine we’d just abandon my cousin?” Tassel demanded, stiff with fury. “Even if she could do that, she couldn’t possibly do that!”

  Which wasn’t terribly coherent, but Keri said, “Put it right out of your mind, Brann! We’ll get him back! We’ll think of a way!” She glared at the Timekeeper. She thought he was the one who ought to put a stop to all this argument.

  At her glare, the Timekeeper turned his head a fraction and lifted one hand an inch or so from the arm of his chair, and everyone fell silent at once. Keri found herself holding her breath, trying to will the Timekeeper to say she was right, that they had to recover Cort. And to tell them how.

  Instead, he said, his dry, husky voice compelling all their attention, “Those who hold the magic of Nimmira may not cross its boundaries without consequence. In a short time, Nimmira itself will withdraw its magic from the Doorkeeper and invest that role elsewhere.”

  There was a brief silence. Then Keri said, her voice thin and constricted, “How short a time?”

  The Timekeeper angled his head to look at her, and again she thought that his eyes were as flat and expressionless as the eyes of a serpent. He said without emphasis, “I cannot set the precise time. Longer than one day. Less than two. Then the magic will return to Nimmira. Unless Aranaon Mirtaelior captures it, during those moments when it is free and disembodied. In that case, of course, we will possess no defense whatever against his sorcery.”

  There was another pause. Brann broke it. “And the fool allowed himself to be taken to Eschalion? This is hopeless!” He swung back around to confront Keri. “We must make accommodation with the Wyvern King. At once!”

  Ignoring
him, Tassel seized Keri’s hands in hers and declared urgently, “We have to get Cort back!”

  “I know,” Keri agreed, ignoring Brann.

  “This is your fault, all your foolish curiosity about the Outside, playing with the boundary magic!” Brann raised a hand to grab her wrist, or shake her, or maybe hit her, Keri couldn’t tell. She flinched back, startled, and Tassel, who was closest, shoved at Brann. She couldn’t have stopped him physically, but he stopped.

  Keri, pressed beyond her ability to keep secrets, cried, “You haven’t yet guessed that it was Lord Dorric who interfered with the magic of the boundaries? That all I’ve done is try to hide our weakness from our enemies and repair the damage he caused? Cort was trying to fix things, and he could have, too, if he’d had a chance, but it was Dorric who put us in this position!”

  Then she knew, from her brother’s stricken look, that Brann had suspected but that it had been cruel to tell him like that, straight out in front of everyone so that he had to face the knowledge. Keri was ashamed of herself, not so much for being angry with her brother, but for letting herself fall into the casting-blame argument that was distracting them all from the far more important question of what to do next. She said more quietly, “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. We have to get our Doorkeeper back. Not just for his sake, but for ours.”

  “The Wyvern King may have broken him already,” growled Domeric. “How would we know? Until he shattered every lock in Nimmira with his mind, I suppose.”

  Keri began to answer, but Tassel beat her to it. Leaning forward, she declared, “No one in the world is more stubborn than my cousin! If the Wyvern King doesn’t kill him, then Cort is still the Doorkeeper of Nimmira, at least for another day—maybe two—and while that’s true, all the doors and gates and roads of Nimmira will still be closed to Eschalion. We’d be fools not to take advantage of this moment while we have it! This is our chance to get into Eschalion and find Cort and get out again, but we have to do it now, before it’s too late!”

  “Yes!” said Keri.

  “No!” said Brann. “It is too late!”

  “It’s not! We mustn’t think about what we ought to give away so we don’t lose everything, but what we can do to win.” Keri looked around, seeing doubt in all the faces about her. Except the Timekeeper’s, which showed nothing. But he gave her a tiny nod that might have meant approval. She drew courage from that and turned her gaze toward the rest of them. “We don’t know what Aranaon Mirtaelior will do, or could do. We don’t know. But Osman the Younger…he might know. He might be willing to tell us everything he knows about the Wyvern King, if we tell him the right story. Or even if we tell him the truth. Part of the truth. His men are soldiers; if we have to break into some guarded prison to find Cort, we’ll need them. Besides, I think Lord Osman does know how to make or use blood sorcery. I’m almost sure. That might be useful, if he’ll admit it, and agree to help us.” Keri stopped and glanced toward Tassel, meaning, Preferably without demanding anybody be handfasted.

  “He might,” said Tassel. “I think he will. After all, if Eschalion takes up the magic of Nimmira, well, just think what that might mean to Tor Carron. We can persuade him. I think.” She looked at Linnet, who nodded firmly and put her hand on Domeric’s arm, so that Domeric, who had plainly been about to argue, said grudgingly, “He will. I think he will. But I wouldn’t tell him the truth, mind you. Not more of it than he’ll likely want to hear.”

  “We opened a way between Nimmira and Tor Carron because we were worried about Eschalion,” suggested Keri, groping her way toward a story that might appeal to Lord Osman, deeply relieved to feel they might at last be moving forward. “Lord Osman is a welcome guest, but letting in a sorcerer from Eschalion, that was an accident. We were making the best of a bad situation, but now we’re worse off than we expected because of Magister Eroniel’s treachery.”

  “What can any normal person look for from a Wyvern sorcerer, other than treachery and a smooth knife blow in the dark?” asked Tassel rhetorically. Despite Tassel’s real fear for her cousin and for them all, Keri could tell her friend was starting to become interested in spinning an elegant story for Osman the Younger. Tassel clasped her hands theatrically to her bosom, assumed a sad expression, and said, addressing an invisible Lord Osman, “What we need now is a brave soldier from an honorable kingdom to advise us regarding all these dark dealings—”

  “Exactly!” Keri declared.

  “Maybe,” Domeric said reluctantly.

  “It’s too late for all this nonsense!” snapped Brann, rising to his feet for emphasis. He took a step and set his fists on one of the room’s low tables, leaning forward, sweeping the room with a stern look that landed on Keri. “It’s too late! It was too late the moment your Doorkeeper let himself be snatched out of Nimmira! Something that wouldn’t have happened if Lyem were still Doorkeeper. We might have been more sensible than to give two of the three posts to inexperienced young people. Now look where we are!”

  He glared at Keri, just as though the manner of the succession had been her idea from the first. It was clear that he meant to include her as one of those inexperienced young people. It was even fair, in a sense, but the way he said it wasn’t fair at all. Tassel had drawn herself up in outrage. Keri got there first. “I don’t know, Brann. Your friend Lyem might indeed have been able to lock fast the boundaries of Nimmira, since, as you will remember, he’s the one who breached them in the first place. Apparently in order to profit from a secret trade in wheat and jewels that led to hardship for everyone else. And then fled, leaving us in this situation, instead of advising Cort about anything he might do to fix the magic he ruined.” She stared at him. “Did I miss anything?”

  Brann was looking at her with profound dislike. But he said nothing.

  “And where is Lyem Aronn now?” said Tassel hotly. “Not in Nimmira. In Eschalion, maybe? Explaining everything he knows about Nimmira to the Wyvern King? I wonder what that might mean for Cort, and for us all.”

  “If you think—” began Brann, turning on her with a kind of savage satisfaction, clearly glad to have a chance to shout back at her if he couldn’t shout at Keri.

  “Experience,” said the Timekeeper, without emphasis, “is something one obtains through the passage of time. Unlike integrity.”

  Brann, cut off in midsentence, looked at the Timekeeper and closed his mouth without a word. He had now gone rather white. He didn’t argue, but he turned on his heel and walked out.

  “Lyem Aronn really was his friend, you know,” Linnet said cautiously, in the tone of someone determined to be fair.

  “Friend, ha!” growled Domeric. “Lyem Aronn knew how to flatter him, that’s all. There’s a useful kind of friend for a man to have.” He gave Linnet a significant look. “A lot of people learned how to flatter Dorric Ailenn. And once they had the habit, easy enough to flatter Brann.”

  The girl’s mouth twisted in wry acknowledgment. “Undeniably.”

  Domeric, turning to Keri, said, “It’s well thought, to ask Lord Osman for advice and counsel. His men might be useful, for all I doubt he’s got any real sorcery about him. He’ll like being asked, whatever we do. But I tell you, it’d be better still to forge a solid alliance, as quick as possible, in case—well, in case! We should do that now.” He gave Tassel a grim little nod. “Just as your Bookkeeper there said.” Then he looked, probably involuntarily, at the Timekeeper.

  Everyone looked at the Timekeeper. Keri, too. But the Timekeeper seemed to have said everything he meant to say when he’d driven Brann from the room with that one cutting statement. He seemed now, upright and unbending in his stiff chair, almost like the statue of a man rather than any ordinary person. Keri suppressed an urge to ask him questions one after another until he was forced to answer them. She also suppressed an urge, possibly more reasonable, to ask him why, in all the world under the broad sky, he refused to use the long years of his experience to help them now, when it really mattered.

  At leas
t she didn’t doubt his integrity.

  What she said aloud was, “Very well, Domeric, you had better tell Lord Osman I request another chance to speak with him. Perhaps in an hour? Or, no, two hours would be better. And, Tassel, maybe you could lay your hands on some sort of account of other countries’ dealings with Eschalion? See what you can find, all right?”

  “Probably what I’ll find are accounts that end suddenly, as soon as they’ve been conquered,” Tassel pointed out, but more calmly now that Keri was asking her for something she thought she could do, something that might actually help.

  “If there are any that don’t end that way, find those first,” Keri told her. “Before I speak with Lord Osman.”

  “Yes,” Tassel agreed, her expression growing abstracted. “Yes, I think I can do that. And I think I’d better start an account of our own about all this, too. In case someday…” She didn’t complete that thought, but plucked the pen from behind her ear, and, from nowhere, a little book with, Keri saw as her friend flipped it open, all its pages blank except for a scattering of little birds drawn down the margin. “A true, complete account,” Tassel repeated absently. “I’ll start it with your ascension, Keri—or no, before that. You know, I’m not sure where the story does start.” She frowned down at the little book.

  “I just wish this were all over and you could write the ending,” Keri muttered. “And then they all lived happily ever after would be good.”

  “You don’t get endings like that except in plays,” Domeric snapped.

  “She knows that,” Linnet murmured soothingly, patting his arm.

  Keri barely heard either of them. She said, “All right. I’m going to go back to my apartment and think.”