The Keeper of the Mist

by Rachel Neumeier

  “I don’t…Oh. That son of a…It’s Osman. He’s trying to lay in a gap across my boundary.” Cort shook his head and rubbed his eyes, but carefully, with the backs of his fingers. It still left a smear of blood on his face. But he was smiling, if reluctantly. “Of course he is. Stubborn, that one, and he knows just what he wants. But how many sorcerous earrings did his grandmother give him anyway?”

  “More than two?” Keri sighed. “Have you stopped him? Can you?”

  Cort met her eyes. “I have to stop him. Or I think the whole boundary might become uncertain. Was I imagining there was…something? Between him and Tassel?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “The Bear Lord and Tassel,” Cort repeated, incredulous. But not offended, as Keri might have expected. He shook his head, but that was only astonishment and, she thought, maybe regret. He said again, “I can close any gap he tries to open. I have to close every gap, or I think the boundary won’t be clear enough.” But he looked at her for the decision, waiting.

  “Then stop him,” Keri said steadily. Because Cort was waiting, and because she knew very clearly how the decision had to go. She said, “Make the boundary utterly firm and clear, and we’ll sort it out for Tassel later.” If there was a later. If he was with her, later, to help her sort it out. She wouldn’t think about it. She asked instead, “Do you need to rest? Or are you able to pick up the…the thread again right now?” She thought perhaps he wouldn’t be; once his attention had been diverted from his magic, it must surely be hard to go on.

  But though Cort shook his head once more, it was not in denial or refusal, but only in weary agreement. “I’m so thirsty. But I can go on. We have to go on. Just past Woodridge? We’re not even halfway yet.” He straightened, with an effort that showed in his tightening mouth. Then he looked around. “A stream, a river…”

  Keri tilted her head, looking inwardly at the land surrounding them. “I should have thought to bring a wineskin, but…we’ll turn straight north soon, and then start back east, and then if we haven’t found a stream, we’re sure to cross the Ouzel. I’ll tell you when we’re close and you can take small steps so we don’t miss it. Cort, we’re almost halfway, and you’re all right. You’re fine. So we’re fine, we can do this, and then we’ll deal with Osman the Younger and his grandmother’s little gifts. Osman doesn’t worry me!”

  The Wyvern King worried her, but she didn’t say so.

  She knew that the Timekeeper had saved them all, she knew that the Wyvern King couldn’t touch them, but she worried anyway. The weight of the Timekeeper’s watch dragged at her—the weight of time trying to balance itself across kingdoms. Or perhaps it was the weight of the Wyvern King’s sorcery trying to find her and Nimmira, even hidden as they were in a moment that did not pass to the next moment.

  Gritting her teeth against the weight, she straightened. Cort smiled wearily and nodded. Then he took a step, awkward now that he had lost the rhythm. But he took another step after that, and the world flickered.

  Where they found it, high in the mountains, the Ouzel was a fast-moving little river. The water, coming down from the heights of Eschalion—for now they would walk alongside the border of Eschalion for many miles—was very clear and cold. It dashed over jagged granite, shattering into light where it broke against the stone, and cascaded into deep pools. There were indeed water ouzels here, little dark birds with white eyelids that flickered like tiny lanterns when they blinked. They darted fearlessly through the spray and the rainbow-prismed light, into and out of the water, half hopping and half flying underwater. Keri loved them. She loved all this rugged country of pine and white birch and naked granite. Out beyond Nimmira, the mountains climbed and climbed. She wanted to bend the boundary outward and take all that country for her own, but then she looked at Cort and did not suggest it.

  He had sunk down beside the river and was gazing longingly at the crystalline water, his bloody hands cupped in his lap, unable to drink.

  Keri patted a birch tree, coaxing it to yield a length of flexible bark, which she tucked around itself to make a cup. She told the cup that it was waterproof, dipped water from the river, and held it for Cort to drink. She drank, too, after him, from the same cup, while he leaned against the bole of the tree, tilting his face up to the cold spray and the warm sun. Here in Nimmira, it was late afternoon. Yet she could see that Outside, where they had not yet raised up the boundary mist, the world lingered near noon. Nimmira was now hours and hours out of true. No wonder the Timekeeper’s watch had grown so heavy with the weight of time trying to pass. She took off her belt and slung it over her shoulder to make it easier to bear the weight. It was a pity she had not worn a wider, softer belt. Or, even better, thought to find a sturdy satchel.

  Cort got to his feet at last, so Keri scrambled up, too, staggering a bit. The watch seemed to have become heavier in just that little time. She didn’t mention it, because what good would that do? She only braced herself against the weight and looked around vaguely, wishing she had a walking stick. The birch would give her one, but its wood would be too light and springy. She should have thought about walking sticks while they were still making their way among oaks.

  She did gather up the birchbark cup, though. She even stooped quickly to fill it, telling the water not to spill.

  Then she hurried to catch up with Cort.

  The mountains only grew after that: great ranks of sharp-edged peaks lying off to their left, rising up against the glass-clear northern sky. Here in Nimmira, they made their way across lower mountains that were like mere foothills compared to the sharp ranks of the northern range. But the footing was uncertain, or Cort seemed to find it so, though Keri always seemed to know herself which stone would turn underfoot. But there was no trail. She wished for one, but even if they had come upon a beautiful straight road, of course they would have lost it again after a single step.

  Keri held Cort’s arm all the time now to steady him in case he should stumble; he looked terribly pale, and a fall here could be bad. The cup was long since empty, though she had paused to dip up water whenever they happened to cross a stream. There were many streams in the mountains, at least, as the snow melted with the shift in the seasons. Keri longed for the golden fields of summer. At least down among the fields, the land would have lain level and soft underfoot.

  They came to Ironforge at last. It rested below them in their timeless moment, a rambling sort of town that sprawled down the flanks of the hills wherever the land was level enough to build. There was some wood in Ironforge, certainly, but there was more stone: mostly granite, but other stone as well, darker gray and closer-grained than granite. The forges of its name smoked, and traces of the mines could be seen, jagged lines opened up along the face of a mountain. They smelted iron here, and tin, and made bronze. There was even a seam of gold ore. Keri knew, absently, just where it snaked its way through the mountains, slightly south of where she and Cort stood now.

  The people of Ironforge had enough of hard metal and gray stone. They wanted softness and color. There was little good land for gardens, so they planted flowers in boxes and small trees in barrels and tended them carefully. Spring was not as far advanced here as lower down, but even so, flowers were everywhere, and the people painted their doors and window frames in bright colors and dyed their cloth not just red but also sky blue and buttercup yellow and madder pink, so that color spilled down the mountains wherever people built their homes and lived their lives.

  Here near the town, there was no good grazing for cattle or sheep, but the people kept goats: pretty little shaggy animals that leaped up and down quite vertical pathways between yard and mountain pasture. Half a dozen kids, white with fawn spots and white with brown spots and one pure white, bounced across the slope in front of Keri and went up a sheer incline that seemed too steep for a spider to climb. She laughed, and felt less weary.

  Cort did not seem to have noticed the goat kids. Looking at him, Keri didn’t feel like laughing after al
l. He had every right and reason to be exhausted, but this seemed more than weariness. He had always been stocky and strong, but he had lost weight. This did not seem possible in so little time, but the bones of his face stood out more than she remembered, and surely it was not just the streaks of blood that made his hands look thin. He was only a few years older than she was, but there was actually gray in his hair now.

  He wasn’t going to be able to finish.

  Or, no. Of course he would finish. She knew that Cort would always finish any task he began. But she was more and more afraid he would not survive it. Summer Timonan had died and become a story, tragically lost in a hundred plays. She feared Cort was going to die, too. He would reforge the border and save Nimmira, but all that would be left of him afterward would be a heroic story.

  She couldn’t bear to lose him. She knew that now. Nimmira would create a new Doorkeeper. But she knew she couldn’t bear to have a new Doorkeeper. The depth of her certainty astonished her; it seemed to have unfolded whole all at once, though looking back…she could see that conviction in the bud, too. She could see now that it had always been there—as though part of her had known all the time how much she needed Cort, how much she needed him to be here for her. To be here.

  She could stop him, because if she refused to do her part to set the magic in place, there would be no point in his going on.

  But she couldn’t stop him without risking the whole of Nimmira.

  Keri always made a decision when she had to, when no one else could. She could see, now that she was paralyzed with indecision, that she had always before been able to decide. Now she couldn’t. Every possible decision was wrong.

  She could almost see Cort growing thinner, his bones becoming more stark before her eyes.

  If he went on, he was going to die.

  Hurrying, she caught his arm and pulled him to a halt, even though she knew there was nothing she could do to help him. There was nothing she could do. But she couldn’t bear it, and so she drew him to a stop anyway.

  Swaying slightly, he reached out to press a hand against a nearby pine for balance and support. “Is there water?” he asked her, his voice strained.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Keri told him gently. “Rest for a few minutes. Are you hungry? We’re a bit past Ironforge.” She tried to make him sit down. “If you’ll rest here just for a little while, I can go—”

  Cort only shook his head and looked ahead, toward the way they needed to go. She couldn’t tell whether he meant he wasn’t hungry or he didn’t want to rest, or whether he meant that if he stopped now, he wouldn’t be able to start again. She was afraid he meant the latter. But Cort didn’t say anything. As though he no longer had the strength or attention to spare to form words.

  Keri pressed her hands over her eyes. In a moment, she would let him go. In just a moment. He would step forward and catch back up the rhythm he had learned, and they would go on, around the arc of the boundary and back to his brother’s farm, and then…and then a new Doorkeeper would come forward to pick up his keys, and Tassel would record his death in her book.

  Keri caught her breath.

  The Bookkeeper recorded every birth and death. The Bookkeeper recorded every death, but what if she didn’t record it? When Summer Timonan had died, the Bookkeeper had written down her death, but what if she hadn’t? What if, when Summer had collapsed, the Bookkeeper had written down that she woke up two days later and was perfectly fine?

  If the Timekeeper could make time stop for Nimmira, then the Bookkeeper ought to be able to make truth match her record of it. Shouldn’t she?

  Something about this analogy seemed strained, but Keri didn’t want to think about it too closely. She wanted it to be true. If she wanted it to be true, and she was the Lady of Nimmira…and if Tassel wanted it to be true, and she recorded births and lives and deaths for Nimmira…then maybe. Maybe Tassel could save Cort.

  Maybe not.

  But maybe she could.

  Except that Tassel was miles and miles away, waiting for them. As Keri had told her to wait. And now Keri had no way to ask her to try writing the ending of this play before it was set. She should have told Tassel to come with them. But she hadn’t thought of it. What good was being decisive if you didn’t think of the right things when you needed to?

  Cort tugged against Keri, looking forward. He took a step, shaking off her grip with impatience, as though he had forgotten her and didn’t realize she held him.

  Keri caught his hand and held on tightly, patting her pockets even though she knew perfectly well she didn’t have a scrap of paper or a quill or ink or anything. Then, more sensibly, she patted Cort’s pockets, because she didn’t know what he might have, except he was the kind of person who always had whatever you needed. She found a sliver of wire—that was typical, but not useful—a bit of twine, a slender piece of leather that could be used to mend a bridle or patch a bucket or do any of a thousand little tasks on a farm, but was completely useless to Keri—

  A sliver of wire. Keri seized on that. Cort tried to pull away from her, seeming not quite aware of anything, and she shook him hard. “Open a door, Cort! Straight back to Gannon’s farm and Tassel!”

  The urgency in her tone snagged his attention, and he focused on her then, glowering in confusion. “We’re not done. We can’t go straight back to Gannon’s farm—”

  “I know! Just a little door, hand-sized is enough, right in front of Tassel—you can do that, can’t you? You have to be able to do that!” Looking around hastily, Keri pulled the biggest leaf she could see off the nearest tree—it was an oak, with last year’s tough leaves still hanging on its twigs, brown and dead, but whole. Squinting in concentration, Keri told the leaf not to tear and used the wire to punch out words: W-R-I-T-E…

  “Tassel,” muttered Cort, peering around as though expecting her to be there beside him.

  “A door! Right in front of her!” Keri punched out T-H-E and then E-N-D-I-N-G. It took both hands, but Cort seemed willing to wait, at least for a few seconds. She had wanted to say Write the ending we want or Write the ending where Cort lives, but the leaf wasn’t that big and she couldn’t punch out letters that small. She looked for a second leaf, but then Cort extended a hand and opened a gap in the air, narrow as a knife blade and no longer than her finger, and waved vaguely at her as though to say, There, that’s done. And then he stepped forward, and the air flickered.

  Keri hastily threw both the leaf and the wire through the tiny gap and called Tassel’s name. There was no time to look to see where the leaf had gone or whether Tassel was there to catch it or whether anybody had noticed anything at all. Even though the moment was not passing, Cort needed her and there was no time to make sure of Tassel before she ran after Cort.

  But maybe now there was hope.

  Cort stepped forward, and she followed. Now at the back of her mind, along with her own magic and her awareness of Nimmira and the boundary, she was thinking about Tassel, and about what the Bookkeeper might do. Maybe. Maybe.

  Step, and flicker, and they were on the stone above Ironforge’s highest mines; Keri felt the seams of coal and iron running through the earth below her feet and made a quite automatic mental note to suggest to the miners of Ironforge that they shift their workings east and south; she was almost sure there was a good vein there. It felt rich and heavy below her, though deep. It occurred to her that she might be able to open the earth for the miners; though she had never thought of it, that seemed like something she might do.

  Or she might do if the boundary could be secured so the Wyvern King couldn’t take all this country as his own and make the miners into his slaves.

  No, no leisure now to think about losing Nimmira. She shouldn’t think about anything except moving forward. About coming around and back to Gannon’s farm with Cort, both of them completing a solid working that would protect Nimmira, both of them living a long, long time and protecting Nimmira for all that time. Perhaps not as long as the Timekeeper had, but long
enough.

  Step, and flicker, and they were suddenly in among a small group of men and boys, miners who had come up to guard the thinned border into Eschalion. Keri blinked in surprise to find all these people in her way, the first in this whole long walk. Some of the men held heavy blacksmith’s hammers and some held pickaxes and all of them wore worried expressions, but the worry turned to astonishment when Keri and Cort appeared. Startled shouts rose all around them. They knew her. “Lady!” one of the men exclaimed, and another, “Kerianna Ailenn!” which surprised her again; she would not have thought they would know her name. But she had no time to be surprised, because they pointed urgently northward.

  Turning quickly to see what had worried them, Keri stepped back in alarm before realizing that there was no danger, not now. A long stone’s throw away stood a village or camp of some kind: shelters more fit for goats than people, set amid ragged gouges that were not immediately recognizable as the entrances to mines. Much nearer, and this was why Keri had flinched, stood several dozen men, frozen in midstride when the Timekeeper had made a gift of his last moment to Nimmira and to Keri.

  The men were thin and their clothing was poor, but they had plainly meant to attack someone. They had clubs, mostly, and shovels, and a few pickaxes, smaller and with sharper points than the pickaxes belonging to the miners of Nimmira. Their lips were drawn back, their faces twisted in ferocious grimaces, every one of them caught in an attitude of fury and hatred.

  Keri’s own people began calling out questions and warnings and confused explanations: “The mist, it failed.” “Those bandits…Timmis, he said they caught him alone—”