The Keeper of the Mist

by Rachel Neumeier

  “All right,” she said out loud. “We have to wake Cort, because he’s our Doorkeeper and how else are we supposed to find or make a door that will take us back to Nimmira? But we have to get the magic of Nimmira back from Magister Eroniel, too, and we don’t dare draw the attention of the Wyvern King….” She couldn’t imagine how to do any of that. She had no idea how they could even wake Cort. She looked at Lucas.

  “I fear I have no idea what we might do,” her brother said quietly.

  “The sorcerer’s tools in the…other room? Those cold crystals?”

  “I wouldn’t try to use those, or even touch them,” Osman said sharply. “I would advise most strenuously against anything of the sort.”

  Keri felt he was probably right. She made an impatient gesture. “So here we are, in the Wyvern King’s citadel, I suppose, or maybe some prison Magister Eroniel made, and how are we to get out if we can’t wake up Cort? Summon the Wyvern King himself and ask him politely to let us go?”

  “We’d be very foolish to ask for help from the Wyvern King, even if he doesn’t already know we’re here,” Lucas said drily. “I don’t suppose he would serve us all tea and cakes and bid us a neighborly farewell. He’s not Osman’s friend, nor ours.”

  “Aranaon Mirtaelior is nobody’s friend, believe me!” declared Osman.

  “I know,” Keri assured them both. She rubbed her hands over her face, trying to think. She felt she had no ideas about anything. She even looked at Brann, standing a little aside from the rest of them, his arms crossed over his chest but his shoulders slumped in discouragement. He didn’t look like he had any ideas, either.

  Tassel looked drawn and tired. The shadows that fell across her face made her appear older. Osman stood with his hand beneath her elbow as though he thought she needed his support. Maybe she did.

  Keri stepped back to Cort’s side and knelt down. She held Cort’s hand between both of hers and gazed at his waxen face. How could she wake him, or give him back the magic that Magister Eroniel had stolen, or reclaim the magic of Nimmira for herself? How did you free magic once a sorcerer stole it and locked it up inside himself somehow, or whatever it was sorcerers did with magic? Surely it could not be much longer before Eroniel came to check on Cort or gloat over the rest of them. Or remembered Tassel’s magic and returned to take that, too, with his cold black crystals and his cold black sorcery. Keri shuddered, imagining Tassel laid out as Lucas had described Cort.

  Unless Magister Eroniel meant to just leave them here until they died of starvation. Or of thirst, while they listened to the waves break against the cliffs outside their narrow windows. Or of cold, perhaps. Keri shivered again, then found she could not stop. She wondered whether it was actually growing colder or whether it just seemed that way to her because she was sitting still.

  At least they’d found Cort. At least they’d done that much right. She lifted his head to rest on her thigh, hoping that even unconscious, he would somehow know that he was no longer alone.

  She supposed if he died here, the last bit of his magic would be released into the air. Maybe that was what Eroniel was waiting for. Earlier, she had been terrified the sorcerer would come back. She still was, but now she also almost wished he would come. Foolish as that was, she longed for everything to just be over.

  Tassel folded up her legs and sat down. Osman sat down beside her, and she leaned against him. Lucas leaned on his staff, contriving to look bored. Brann glowered at them all. Keri hoped he wouldn’t say anything, not excuse or explanation or even apology. Whatever he might say, she didn’t want to hear it.

  She laid her hand on Cort’s cheek, but his skin was still cool under her fingers, and his breathing did not change. She wanted to shake him, but was afraid she might hurt him. Worse than he had already been hurt. She wanted to wake him with a kiss as though she were the hero of a play, but she knew nothing she might do could possibly wake him.

  Then she decided she didn’t care whether it worked or not. She bent forward…and Tassel said, in a stifled tone, “Keri.”

  Keri jerked upright.

  Tassel wasn’t looking at her. She was staring across the room, at the blank wall where Lucas had found the hidden door and the sorcerer’s secret chamber and Cort. She said, “All those sorcerous things. The candles and the black jewels. I remember something about that. Keri, it was in that book I found, the book from Eschalion, you know, I showed it to you before your ascension? It was about…I don’t know, let me think. All right.” She took a deep breath. “Something like this: ‘Sorcery in black air and in black blood; sorcery frozen by black fire into crystal.’ Something, something, let me see, something about ‘True flame frees magic as condensation holds it.’ Something like that.” She stared at Keri, her eyes wide. “Frozen by black fire—those cold candles Lucas found? Frozen into crystal—those horrible little earrings? But—” She stopped, plainly uncertain. “Probably it’s a foolish idea. Who knows what would happen to Cort if we tried anything like that?”

  “Fire frees magic?” Keri said doubtfully. She held out her hand to Osman for the little bag of tiny black earrings. He lifted a doubtful eyebrow, but gave her the bag. The earrings chimed against one another as he handed it to her, like tiny bells, but discordant. Because the magic of Nimmira was discordant with the magic of Eschalion? Keri poured the crystal earrings out upon the floor, careful not to touch them, and stared down at them. They glittered coldly back at her. They should have seemed harmless: five little crystals. Somehow they looked malevolent. Probably that was just her.

  Keri took a breath, glanced around at the others, and said, in a voice that surprised her by its very normality, “Does anybody have a candlelighter?”

  Osman produced one, handing it over with a flourish.

  “You are useful,” Keri told him, taking it.

  “This is dangerous,” Brann declared. “Even if the crystals do crack in the fire, who knows what magic will be released? Or what it would do? Those earrings are nothing of Nimmira. Probably anything we do will free Eroniel’s magic, not Cort’s, and he’ll come immediately to see what’s happened—had you thought of that?”

  “Well, we can certainly do nothing at all and see how that works out,” Keri told him tartly. She flicked the candlelighter and held it down so the flame licked over the black crystals. Glass did sometimes crack in heat, she knew that. Artisans in Glassforge occasionally heated glass or ceramics to get special crazed patterns of cracks in their glass or their fancy glazes. Whether crystals would crack in a little flame, she had no idea, nor whether Magister Eroniel’s crystals would break like ordinary glass.

  But she did not expect the crystal earrings to shatter the moment the flame of the candlelighter touched them. She did not expect them to melt like ice, or for wisps of magic like black steam to whisper suddenly into the air. The smoke or magic or whatever it was smelled awful, like burning feathers, like burning blood. Keri flinched back, dropping the candlelighter. Osman wrapped an arm around Tassel, lifted her off her feet, swung her around, and deposited her well away from the area of potential danger. At almost the same moment, Brann, quicker-witted than Keri would ever have expected, whipped out a thin gold coin and cast it down among the rising wisps of magic, which settled heavily toward the coin as though blown downward by some unseen breath. Lucas had stepped forward and lifted his staff, though what he thought he could do with it was not clear to Keri: beat the fire out, possibly, but Brann’s coin seemed to have ended the danger. Now he lowered his staff, cautiously.

  Brann stepped back and glowered at them all, as though everyone in the room had deliberately conspired to play a prank on him and were now going to laugh.

  Keri had never felt less like laughing. With Cort’s head still resting on her thigh, she could not back away. But nothing seemed about to happen. Whatever magic had been released by burning those earrings, it did not, at least, appear to have made things much worse. So far as she could tell. She gave Brann a stiff nod. He scowled at her, but nodde
d back even more stiffly.

  Then Keri looked down at Cort and found him gazing back up at her, awareness and sense gradually returning to his expression. He took a slow, deep breath and shifted his weight, groaned almost inaudibly, blinked, and shook his head slightly. Then he met Keri’s gaze again, and his eyebrows drew together in puzzlement.

  Keri took his hand in hers, trying to smile.

  “Well, well,” murmured Osman, giving Tassel a respectful nod. “Well thought after all! I admit I was not quite certain there for a moment, but it seems your Bookkeeper’s gift once more has proved its usefulness.”

  “It’s worked out well enough, I suppose, ill considered as it was,” Brann said ungraciously.

  “Well enough?” Keri demanded, jerking her head up. “It was worth the risk! It has to have been worth the risk! Getting Cort back is everything. Now he’ll figure out how to make a door and get us out of here, how to get us back to Nimmira and away from Magister Eroniel!”

  “I doubt he can even stand up,” snapped Brann.

  Lucas, smiling, took a breath, and Keri realized she ought to have known that of them all, Lucas would be the one to start a real argument just because he was bored and tense and enjoyed provoking Brann. And she also remembered that it was her job to make everyone cooperate and to stop anyone from arguing. Even with Brann. She started to tell Lucas to either say something useful or be quiet, and just at that moment, Magister Eroniel arrived in a ripple of silvery light that ran like water against the walls.

  Suddenly everything seemed to happen at once.

  Magister Eroniel came a step forward, his cold gaze taking in the scene, and exclaimed, “Fools! What have you done? The King cannot have missed that. Now he will surely come! Unless—” He swept up his hands, filled with pale light, and turned sharply toward Cort. Keri leaped to her feet and put herself between them, and the sorcerer extended a hand to sweep her out of his way, and Lucas started forward, lifting his staff, and Cort, groaning, got an elbow under his body and began to pry himself off the floor—much too slowly—and Tassel was hurrying to help him, but she wouldn’t be in time, Keri saw that, and she had no idea what she could do against Magister Eroniel—nothing, she could do nothing, he had her magic and Cort’s magic, and she had nothing—her efforts had been for naught after all—

  And then, before Eroniel could take another step, color washed suddenly all around them like a breaking wave of warmth and light—crimson and gold and orange like leaping flames—and they were surrounded by warmth and by the colors of fire. Brilliant sunlight caught, glowing, in rich honey-colored filigree window screens and fell across soft rugs patterned with flames so vivid it was hard to believe they did not burn. The breeze that wandered in through the wide windows was warm with summer and scented strongly with roses. Roses climbed up past the windows. Red roses, all the shades of red—crimson and scarlet and carnelian—heavy with scent. But beneath the fragrance of the roses, Keri was sure she could smell not just the brine of the sea, but the coppery taint of blood.

  With Tassel’s help, Keri hastily dragged Cort to his feet and pulled him away from Magister Eroniel, but the sorcerer was no longer pursuing them. Keri tugged Cort another step toward the windows anyway, then stopped, amazed, finding rugs suddenly underfoot, dense and soft. There was a long couch not ten steps away, draped in cloth, but it was floating in the air. The cloth, ruby red and flame yellow, didn’t reach the floor. She could see straight underneath the couch, which had neither legs nor a base. Lights floated near the ceiling. Not candles or lamps, but soft golden lights like round drops of water. The ceiling had become high and vaulted, set all about with these drops of light. But the lights weren’t necessary, because the sun was brilliant and hot, light pouring in through windows that looked out over the blue, blue sea. It had been dusk in that other hall. Here it was hot noon, rich and golden as honey.

  Near her, Osman exclaimed, and Tassel said something, in a soft, breathless voice that Keri didn’t catch, and Lucas said, “Well, that’s an improvement, if you like!” But Keri attended to none of them. For Magister Eroniel was facing a high-backed throne of glowing amber that stood, not far away, against a pale gold wall. Neither throne nor wall had been there a moment before, yet there they were now, shining with golden warmth. And on the throne reclined Aranaon Mirtaelior, looking very much like a statue poured out of the same amber as his throne.

  Keri had no doubt at all that this was the Wyvern King. She had never thought of what he must look like. If she had, she would have thought he must look old, for he had ruled Eschalion for a very long time and had already been old when he had carved his throne out of amber and filled it with sunlight. But his face was smooth and young and beautiful. Only the remote calm in his golden eyes was ancient.

  He was beautiful as Eroniel Kaskarian was beautiful: those same fine features, the same wide-set eyes and narrow mouth. Only where Magister Eroniel was all moonlight and silver, Aranaon Mirtaelior seemed to have been poured out of sunlight and summer. His eyes and skin and hair were all the color of linden honey, warm and rich. His hair flowed loose and perfectly straight down his back, save for two thin braids, one in front of either ear. Seven tiny crystals of amber gleamed along the curve of his left ear, five in his right.

  Aranaon Mirtaelior did not move. Even his eyes did not move. Magister Eroniel faced him, light pooling in his cupped hands, his expression composed, his silvery eyes remote and dangerous. He had attention now only for his King, not for Keri or any of her companions. But the Wyvern King did not look at Eroniel. He was not looking at anything. His gaze was blank and still. He might have been absorbed in watching the light that poured through the room. He might have been blind. On his left shoulder perched a golden wyvern with blue eyes, and on his right a black wyvern with yellow eyes, and both of the wyverns studied the scene with evident fascination. Each of the miniature wyverns was the size of a small crow, and they turned their slender, elegant heads back and forth on their long necks, considering Eroniel, and the little group of Keri’s people, and Osman’s cloak, which covered the smothered candlelighter and the melted remnants of the crystals.

  The black wyvern tipped its head down and seemed to look directly at Keri. It gave a cry that sounded like a jay’s sharp warning call crossed with the hiss of an angry serpent, then launched itself into the air, turned on a wing tip, circled the room in quick dipping flight, flicked out the wide window and back in, and at last glided again to the Wyvern King. He lifted a hand to receive it, the first movement he had made. The black wyvern landed on his fist, bobbed its head twice quickly like a bird, and gave another of those hissing cries.

  Magister Eroniel had turned his head to watch the wyvern fly, but most of his attention had clearly stayed on Aranaon Mirtaelior, though the King sat still on his glowing amber throne and did nothing at all.

  To Keri, the Wyvern King seemed something out of a tale—he was something out of a tale: the King of Gold and Amber, the King of Summer, the King of Blood and Roses. But he was real. She had no idea what he would do. Keri knew that she must be afraid, though she was conscious mostly of a slow, blank feeling of unreality, as though none of this were actually happening. She almost felt that if she closed her eyes and opened them again, she would find herself in Glassforge, in the house where the player’s involution wavered in the garden, and none of this had happened. Or perhaps that it all was yet to come. It was a peculiar feeling.

  Cort gasped. He gripped Keri’s arm and drew breath to speak, and Keri, terrified of attracting the Wyvern King’s attention, put a hand on his shoulder to stop him, and then Lucas tilted his head and narrowed his eyes and thumped his staff gently down on the rugs that covered the floor, and around Magister Eroniel first silvery light and then shadows suddenly stretched out. The room shifted and blurred, the air chilling, the colors fading, the walls reshaping themselves and closing in, dim and gray.

  At first Keri thought Magister Eroniel was striving to break through his King’s magic, to drag
them all back into his own vision of his empty gray prison. But then the sorcerer sent Lucas a look of pure outrage and she realized that her brother was casting a very clever illusion to make it seem as though Eroniel were defying his King, trying to subvert his magic and perhaps even attack him. Of course, Eroniel had as much as said he was trying to usurp the Wyvern King’s power, that was why Lucas had thought of this, but if she had possessed a magic of illusion, she would never have dreamed of anything so clever.

  Then she felt the cold, and saw how the light in the room wavered between noon and night, and smelled how the fragrance of the roses faded and returned, underlain with blood, and she was no longer sure whether any of this was illusion or whether it was real. She looked quickly at Lucas, but she couldn’t tell if what was happening was her brother’s illusion or Magister Eroniel’s doing after all.

  The light appeared to stutter, or the shadows faded and came back, and Eroniel pivoted, his expression cold and resolute, to face his King. Whatever had prompted this conflict, she no longer doubted that he was battling with the King in earnest. Silvery light streaked out from his fingers, cold against the heat of the Wyvern King’s summer. Eroniel actually seemed to shimmer, as though there were light trapped beneath his skin, and Keri felt for a moment like she had stopped breathing. She could feel her own magic, Nimmira’s magic, trying to tear itself free of Eroniel and come back to her like a dog trying desperately to reach its master, but it couldn’t, and she was angry, so angry and so frightened she could hardly think. She held out her hands and wished with her whole being for Nimmira’s power to be back where it belonged, in her and in the land of Nimmira, not trapped here in this foreign country where magic fell out of sunlight and welled up from the scent of roses, where it pooled in blood and condensed into cold crystal.