Beyond the Pale

by Mark Anthony

  “Aryn said King Boreas is planning a feast for Midwinter’s Eve,” she said. “It’s the only time all the rulers will be together before the council meets again. That has to be when the conspirator will strike. It’s his only chance.”

  “But the great hall will be closely guarded, my lady,” Durge said. “I can assure you of that.”

  “It won’t matter.” Travis didn’t know why, but he was certain Grace was right. “Not if the murderer is already in the great hall.”

  “In which case we have to find him before the feast begins,” Grace said.

  “A fine idea, my lady,” Durge said. “But how do you propose we accomplish this?”

  She grimaced. “I don’t know. We’d need some sort of distraction—something to throw the murderer off his guard so he reveals himself. But I can’t think of anything to do that.”

  Travis started to agree, then winced in pain. He glanced down to see the black kitten pounce again at his shin like a miniature panther. Its sharp claws sank through the fabric of his breeches to pierce the skin. He started to shout in protest, then halted. The kitten sat and looked up at him with large golden eyes. Of course—it was only playing, only pretending to be ferocious.

  Only playing, only pretending …

  Travis laughed. The answer was so impossible, but even as he thought this he knew it was right, that it was their only chance. Grace and Durge stared at him, probably afraid he had lost his mind. He reached down, scooped the kitten into his grasp, and stood again.

  “I think I know someone who can help us,” he said.

  Grace and Durge stepped close to listen. In the crook of his arm the kitten licked a paw and purred.

  Minutes later the three of them—minus the kitten—stood outside a wooden door. This was a quiet part of the castle, a tower some distance from the main keep.

  Travis glanced at Durge. “Are you certain this is it?”

  The knight gave a sharp nod. “The Lady Aryn mentioned the king’s actors were being housed in the north tower. This is the only chamber large enough to accommodate an entire troupe.”

  “This has to be it,” Grace said.

  Travis drew in a deep breath. Did he really mean to do this thing? But there was nowhere else to turn for help. He lifted a hand, hesitated, then rapped on the door.

  There was no answer. Silence crept down the corridor on padded feet. Travis swallowed hard, then reached out his hand to knock again.

  The door swung open.

  “Who’s there?” Travis called out.

  No answer. Through the door he saw only shadows and gloom.

  “Let’s go,” Grace said.

  Durge loosened his knife in its sheath. “I will wait out here. Call me if you require my aid.”

  Travis doubted the knight’s blade would be of much use against anything they might encounter beyond the door. However, he did not say this. He exchanged looks with Grace, then the two stepped through the doorway.

  A heavy sound echoed behind them—the door shutting, Travis supposed, although it sounded muffled and distant. He adjusted his spectacles and peered around him. There was light in the chamber after all, silvery and sourceless. Rushes strewed the floor, and tapestries draped stone walls. The weavings depicted a green forest with tangled trees hiding white stags, birds, and crystal fountains. His hand found Grace’s, and they stepped farther into the room.

  Bells shimmered on the air, then faded with a lingering shiver across his skin,

  “This way,” Grace said.

  They followed the sound through an archway. More tapestries draped the walls, only they seemed closer now, and darker. The tapestries had been woven with great skill. He could see minute details: the texture of a tree’s bark, the dappled light on the surface of a brook. He and Grace pressed on. A moist scent rose on the air, fresh and green, so unlike the usual odor of the castle.

  Another stone archway, this one half-draped by one of the tapestries. Travis reached out to push aside the curtain and step through the arch.

  His hands brushed across smooth bark, and cool leaves caressed his face.

  No, that was impossible. It was only a tapestry. He looked at Grace. Her eyes were startled. He opened his mouth, but a rustling sound interrupted him, and something crimson streaked between them. Travis followed it with his gaze. It alighted on a branch: a small bird, its breast as red as berries. The bird regarded them with bright eyes.

  Grace squeezed his hand hard. “Where are we, Travis?”

  Travis looked around. He could still see the chamber’s stone walls here and there, and the floor was still wood, although now it was covered—not with cut rushes—but with fallen leaves. Somewhere water flowed, and branches arched overhead instead of beams or rafters.

  “I’m not sure, Grace.”

  But maybe he was. Maybe this was both castle and forest.

  “Greetings,” said a piping voice.

  Travis and Grace turned around.

  “Trifkin!” Travis said.

  The little man sat on a stump, cross-legged, his jacket blending with the leaves. It was difficult to be sure, but the silvery light seemed to emanate from his direction.

  “I knew you would come,” Trifkin said. “Yet I feared you would not.”

  “We need your help, Trifkin.” Grace took a step toward him. “We need to find a way to—”

  He raised a small hand and nodded. “I know.”

  Travis followed after Grace. “But how can you know?”

  “I have seen it happen,” Trifkin said. “Your plan for the Midwinter’s Eve feast.”

  “Then it’s going to work?” Grace said.

  “Yes,” Trifkin said. Then, “No.”

  Travis groaned. This was too much. “But what are you saying? How can it be both?”

  The little man held out his arms. “A tree has many branches, yet it is all one tree. Still, in the end, you can choose but one branch to follow.”

  Travis hesitated, then grinned. It was like the chamber and the forest. Sometimes two possibilities could exist at once: a fork in a road, a branch in a tree. There was no way to know which would be true, not until you picked one.

  “It’s not too late,” Grace said. “That’s what you mean. We still have a choice.”

  “You always have a choice,” Trifkin said. “It is what you will choose that is unknown.”

  Travis drew closer to the little man. “Will you help us then?”

  Trifkin’s round face grew solemn. “The Little People retreated from this world long ago. It had its New Gods—it needed the Old Ones and their children no longer.”

  Grace sighed. “Then you won’t help us.”

  Trifkin regarded her with his deep eyes. “Yes, that is one choice.” He stood on the stump. “Yet there is another choice as well. That which was once forgotten comes again. We were lost in our dreams of the old days, but now the old days are returning. The time for action has come.”

  “But what can we do?” Travis said.

  Now Trifkin smiled again. “But you already know. You have only to follow that branch to its end.”

  Travis shook his head. How could he possibly know? Then somehow he did. It glowed before him, perfect and whole, like a ripe fruit he had only to pluck. He looked at Grace. Her eyes shone—she understood.

  “You must go now,” Trifkin said.

  There was peril in his voice. The meaning was clear: This place was not safe for mortals.

  “But first,” the little man said, “I must give you each a gift.”

  A silver bracelet appeared in his small hand. From it dangled a dark, wedge-shaped stone. He handed it to Grace, and she slipped it over her wrist.

  “Follow this, Blademender,” he said, “until you can learn to follow your own heart.”

  Now a bundle wrapped in leaves appeared in Trifkin’s hand. He handed it to Travis.

  “What is it?” Travis said.

  “Hurry,” Trifkin whispered.

  “But—”

&nbs
p; Travis blinked, then stared at Grace. Before them the wooden door swung shut. They turned around and saw the Embarran knight.

  “Durge!” Grace said. “You’re still here.”

  “Of course, my lady. You were gone but a moment. Did he not speak to you then?”

  Grace could only shake her head. She lifted her hand, and silver glinted around her wrist.

  Travis looked down at the bundle in his hands. It was not covered in leaves any longer, but with green felt. With trembling hands he unfolded the cloth. Beneath was a disk of creamy white stone. His heart fluttered in his chest. He did not need Falken to tell him what the object was. He knew the meaning of the angular rune, and the meaning of the jagged break that divided the disk in two.

  It was Gelth.

  The second seal from the Rune Gate.

  And it was broken.

  96.

  After a week of muffling clouds and mist, the day before Midwinter dawned clear and brilliant over Calavere. It had snowed during the night, and a thick, white cloak mantled the fields and walls of Calavan. Grace rose with the sun, threw open the window of her chamber, and breathed in icy air. Snow capped the castle’s towers and battlements and concealed—for a short time at least—the mud of the baileys.

  Grace spent the day doing simple things. She passed the morning beside the fireplace, reading a book taken from the castle’s library. It was a history of Calavan. She read of the terrible winter five centuries ago, when the River Darkwine froze over and barbarians crossed the ice to attack. However, the Tarrasian captain Calavus—who had never in his life traveled to the great city of Tarras—met them, not with swords, but with skins of wine and joints of roasted meat. He forged a pact with the barbarians, they knelt to him as their leader, and in that moment Calavan was born.

  Grace set down the book and gazed again at the frigid world outside the window. The Dimduorn had not frozen since that winter five hundred years ago. She had heard it said in the castle how some thought it would freeze that night.

  At midday, a serving maid brought her a tray with dinner. She ate, then she spent the afternoon working on her embroidery. Aryn had said all noblewomen in the Dominions knew how to embroider. Grace thought she would be good at it—after all, she had sewn enough stitches in the Emergency Department. However, it turned out she was awful. No matter which finger she wore the thimble on, she always seemed to prick another, and what was supposed to be a pattern of leaves and acorns looked more like something she would grow in a petri dish.

  She looked up, neck aching, as the daylight began to fade beyond the window. It was nearly time. She set down her embroidery, rose, donned a different gown—the frosted winter violet, her favorite—then brushed her hair until it shone like the last of the sunlight that gilded the castle’s turrets. She set the brush on the sideboard, turned, and faced the door. Outside, shadows crept across the snow—a deeper hue of purple than her gown.

  “Let’s go, Doctor,” she murmured to herself.

  Grace opened the door, stepped through, and set out to catch the murderer in the castle.

  Over the last two days, the Circle of the Black Knife had refined their plan to discover the conspirator at the Midwinter’s Eve feast, although they had told no one—not even Falken and Melia—what they intended.

  After their meeting with Trifkin Mossberry, Grace and Travis had gone at once to the bard and the lady’s chamber to show them the broken seal from the Rune Gate. Falken had sworn, then had asked them where they had gotten it, and they had told them of their encounter with Trifkin.

  “It looks as if you were right after all, Travis,” Falken had said as he folded the stone disk back into its cloth.

  Melia had raised an eyebrow.

  “Travis saw them at King Kel’s keep,” Falken had said. “Trifkin and his troupe of actors, I mean. Travis told me there was something strange about them, but I thought he had just drunk a bit too much ale.”

  Melia had rested her chin on the back of a slender hand. “Travis does have perceptive vision. I think it’s best if we don’t forget that.”

  Falken had grunted.

  With this new revelation, the bard had been more resolved than ever to speak to the kings and queens about the danger that faced the Dominions, to convince them to act, and he intended to use the broken rune Gelth as further evidence. Grace had not disagreed with his words. However, something had told her it would take more than shattered stones and old stories to change the minds of those rulers who did not believe in the Pale King.

  Grace had exchanged a look with Travis, and she had known they were in accord—they had not mentioned their Midwinter’s Eve plan.

  Now Grace halted before a door and lifted her hand to knock, but the wooden surface swung away before her hand could contact it. She gazed into a pair of solemn brown eyes.

  “The others are all here, my lady,” Durge said.

  She nodded, then stepped into the room, and the dark-haired knight shut the door behind her. Travis, Aryn, and Beltan all nodded to her in greeting.

  Grace had never been in Durge’s chamber before. What she saw was not what she had expected. The room was small and had only a narrow slit of a window. It was heated, not with a fireplace, but with a small brazier that cast its smoke on the air and left the substance to find its way out through cracks in the walls and ceiling. There was a low bed and a heavy wooden chest which most likely housed the knight’s armor when he was not wearing it, and which was doubtless empty at the moment. Durge was clad in his gray tunic and cloak, but the garments were bulkier than usual, and Grace heard a jingling when he moved. His greatsword was slung across his back.

  What caught Grace’s attention most of all was the chamber’s sideboard. It was covered with crucibles, glass vials, clay pots, and oil lamps with wrought-iron stands to hold an item being heated. Jars contained thick liquids or colored powders. In all it looked like a well-equipped chemistry lab. Grace looked at the knight.

  “What is all this, Durge?”

  He stroked his mustaches in what seemed an embarrassed gesture. “It is nothing, my lady. I have a passing interest in alchemy, that is all. I know little enough.” He moved to the sideboard, picked something up, and handed it to Grace. “Thank you for letting me study this.”

  Grace accepted the object. It was the bracelet Trifkin Mossberry had given her. When Durge had seen her wearing it the day before, he had expressed interest in it, especially the charm of dark stone, and had asked if he might examine it. Grace had given it to him, but only now did she understand the source of his curiosity. She slipped the bracelet onto her wrist.

  “Do you know what it is?” she said. “The charm, I mean.”

  “I was able to perform some tests,” Durge said. “I believe it to be a piece of lodestone.”

  “Lodestone?” Aryn said with a frown. “You mean it’s a stone that fell from the sky?”

  Durge nodded. “That’s right, my lady. I have heard astrologers of the south call such rocks meteorites, but lodestone is the name used in the Dominions. It is the same kind of stone as the artifact of Malachor in the great hall.”

  Beltan let out a whistle. “That must have been some falling star. It takes ten men to move that thing. Though the ring turns easily enough.”

  Grace regarded the charm bracelet, then thought of the massive ring of dark stone in the great hall. So the two were connected. This fact seemed important somehow, but she couldn’t say why.

  “Is everybody ready?” a low voice said.

  Grace looked up. It was Travis. His gray eyes were serious behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, and his face above his beard was white.

  Capillary constriction—an autonomic response. He’s frightened, Grace. She almost laughed at the diagnosis. Grace suspected her own capillaries were constricted as well.

  She drew in a deep breath, then stepped toward the others. “I’m ready.”

  Beltan nodded. “And I.”

  Aryn braced her shoulders inside her azure go
wn. Her dark hair was intricately coiled and woven with strands of pearl. “I suppose I’m ready.”

  “And I as well,” Durge said in his grim voice.

  Travis sighed and rested a hand on the stiletto tucked into his belt. “Me too. I think we’re all ready then. Everybody knows what to do?”

  Each of the five nodded.

  “Then I guess it’s time to go.”

  They started to move to the door, then Grace halted, turned, and regarded Travis.

  “Can we trust them?” she said in a quiet voice. “Trifkin and his troupe, I mean.”

  Travis seemed to think about her words, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think we can trust them. They’re older than us, and different. But I don’t think they have much love for the Pale King, either.” He shrugged his shoulders inside his baggy tunic. “We’ll just have to hope that’s enough.”

  Grace nodded. She looked at each of the members of the Circle in turn, and only when she was done did she realize she had just fixed each one in her mind exactly as he or she was at that moment. Afraid she knew the reason why, she hurried to the door, before she lost her resolve, before she let herself think that this plan just might be sending one of these people—one of her friends—to his or her death.

  “Let’s do it,” she said.

  They left Durge’s chamber one at a time, and let a minute or two pass between each of their departures so no one would see them together. Grace was the second to go, after Beltan. She stepped outside and glanced both ways down the corridor. A few servants hurried this way and that, caught up in their tasks, but that was all. She set her shoulders back and forced herself to walk calmly down the passage. It would not do to appear nervous or in a hurry. Besides, the light was still fading outside the castle’s windows: soft purple hardening to gray slate. There was still time before the feast—and the longest night of the year—began.

  She heard the dull roar of voices before she even reached the great hall. Rumors concerning the Midwinter’s Eve feast had flown about the castle these last days, and no doubt everyone had turned out to see if any of them were true. According to the stories, Boreas had spared no expense on the feast. There was to be an entire roasted ox, some said. No, it was two roasted oxen, and each was to be stuffed with a lamb, and the lamb with a hare, and the hare with a partridge, and the partridge with a single dove’s egg. There were to be braised swans, and lampreys, and subtleties shaped like each of the kings and queens of the Dominions. Grace didn’t know what to think of the rumors, but she hoped the last one turned out to be true. Something told her it would be fun to take a bite out of King Boreas.