Guardians of the Keep

by Carol Berg

  Philomena wailed again. The serving girl jumped up from her seat by the door, but I waved her away. I folded my hands in my lap.

  The wail ended with a sniff. The duchess dabbed her eyes. “It’s dreadful. If I’d not lost the others, you see . . . The physician tells me I must stay abed or I’ll lose this one, too. To suffer such wicked travail and have them all dead, save for Gerick, of course, my darling . . . though he’s not quite as affectionate as one might want, nor at all interested in the things he should be, and such a vile temper . . . The physician Ren Wesley tells me to stay abed, so Aunt Verally says he must think that I will die, too. Then today I wake with such awful pain in my back that I know the end must be near.”

  “Ah. I understand now. How many have you lost, then?”

  “Two. Both stillborn.” I handed her an embroidered handkerchief from a stack of them beside the bed. She blew her nose.

  “It’s a terrible thing to lose a child at birth.”

  Philomena glanced up quickly, as if it had just occurred to her who was sitting at her bedside. She pulled the red satin coverlet tightly to her chin.

  “I mean you no harm, Philomena. What Tomas did wasn’t entirely his fault. Certainly, I hold neither you nor your son responsible.”

  Months ago, even before Tomas was free from his corrupting blindness, he had begged me to return to Comigor, hoping that I could protect his child from some unnamable evil. I had refused him then. I had seen no reason to heed my brother’s fears when my brother had watched my husband tortured and burned alive for being born a sorcerer. I had seen no reason why I should care for my brother’s child when my brother’s knife had slit my own newborn son’s throat, lest he inherit his gentle father’s magical gifts. How had Tomas reconciled what he had done? Madness, enchantment—I had to believe that. It was the only way I could forgive him.

  She averted her gaze. “Tomas’s men brought your message when they brought the news that he was dead. I thought you were trying to make me afraid.”

  “Let’s not speak of those things now. If the physician has sent you to bed, then I’m sure it’s for the child’s health, and not because of any danger to your own. If your back hurts, perhaps it’s because you have so many pillows so awkwardly arranged.” I reached around her and pulled about half of them away, straightening the others so she could change position without being smothered. I had Nancy bring a warmed towel, which I rolled into a firm cylinder and inserted behind Philomena’s back.

  “Oh! That’s marvelously better.”

  “Good. Nancy can replace the towel whenever you wish. Now you should rest. When you’re awake again, I’ll tell you and your son what I’ve come to tell you of Tomas.”

  “It won’t bring him back,” said Philomena, settling into her nest and yawning.

  “No,” I said, feeling guilty at the joyous anticipation that prickled the boundaries of my skin. Ten years after his horrific death, my husband had indeed been brought back to life, a mystery and a marvel I could not yet fully comprehend. Only a few months had passed since Midsummer’s Day, when a sorcerer prince with a damaged memory had intruded on my life. Only a few weeks had passed since the day I realized that somehow Karon lived again within that prince, and a sorcerer named Dassine had confirmed my guess. At the end of that day, when the two of them had walked through the fiery Gate of D’Arnath’s Bridge and vanished, Karon could not yet remember either his own life or that of D’Natheil, the Prince of Avonar, in whose body he now existed. But Dassine had assured me that Karon’s recovery was only a matter of time and work and sorcery. He would come back. He would know me again.

  Sighing deeply, Philomena dropped off to sleep. To look on her drew me back to the lingering grief that even such a miracle as Karon’s life could not allay. Philomena had a living son.

  Appointing Nancy to guard the bedchamber, I wandered out into the passage and gazed from the top of the stairs into the great echoing well of the entry tower. Hazy beams of sunlight poured through the tall, narrow windows. This tower was young by the standards of Comigor history, but Tomas and I had found it marvelous as children. The giant black and gray slate squares of the floor tiles had been a magnificent venue for a hundred games. Our favorite was chess, and we were forever coaxing servants, visitors, dogs, and cats into our games as living chess pieces. When the light was just right, the thick, leaded panes of the high windows would transform the sunbeams into a rainbow. I would sit at the top of the stair and let my imagination sail up the shafts of red and blue and violet to places far beyond the lonely countryside of my home.

  At no time in all my girlhood dreaming had I ever imagined anything resembling the strange courses of my life, or the mysteries of a universe that was so much larger than I had been taught. Wonder enough that I had married a sorcerer, reviled as evil incarnate by the priests and people of the Four Realms. But in these past months I had learned that another world existed beyond the one we knew—a world called Gondai, embroiled in a long and terrible war, a world of sorcerers, the world of my husband’s people, though he and his ancestors, exiled in this most unmagical of realms, had forgotten it.

  Lost in reminiscence, I made my way down the stairs. Just off the entry tower, near the bottom of the stair, was my father’s library, one of my favorite rooms in the house. I laid my hand on the brass handle of the library door. . . .

  “Now just hold there a moment, young woman,” spoke a crusty, quavering voice from behind me. A familiar voice. “Might I ask who you are and what business you have in the duke’s library, much less ordering the servants about like you was mistress here?”

  I smiled as I spun about to face her. “Was I not always the one to get my way, Nellia?”

  The elderly woman was propped up on a walking stick, but she came near toppling over backward in surprise. “Seriana! May the gods strike me blind and dumb if it not be my darling girl . . . after so long and so dark a road . . . oh my . . .” She fumbled at her pockets.

  I caught hold of her and guided her to a leather-covered bench. “I was beginning to doubt there was any familiar face to be found here, but if I were to choose one to see, it would be yours. It makes me think the place must be properly run after all.”

  “Oh, child, what a blessing it is to see you. There’s none but me left that you’d know, to be sure. The mistress”—the word was dressed with scorn enough to tell me the old woman’s opinion of Tomas’s wife—“brought mostly her own people from the city. She was of a mind to dismiss us all. But His Grace, your brother, wouldn’t allow her to send me away, nor John Hay nor Bets Sweeney, the sewing woman. But you can see as things are sadly out of sorts. The new girls care only for the mistress and her things. John Hay died two years ago, and Bets is pensioned off to live with her daughter in Graysteve, so I’m all as is left. Little worth in me neither. But these eyes is good enough to see my little sprite come home when I never thought she would.”

  She patted my knee and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Shall I have one of the girls open up your room? I’ve kept it set to rights in hopes you and your brother might make it up between you. We never believed what was said about you. Great wickedness we were told, but I knew my little Seri could no more do a great wickedness than she could eat a frog. The master wouldn’t speak of it. And mistress—well, she has little good to say of anybody—and so’s Bets and John Hay and myself would never credit ought she said of you.” Quite breathless, Nellia stopped. Waiting, perhaps. . . .

  The tales she’d heard of me were likely quite wicked—treason, heresy, consorting with sorcerers and all the evils attendant on such sordid association—crimes that would have cost my life had my brother not been the boyhood friend and sword champion of the King of Leire.

  I wrapped my arm about her bony shoulders. “You mustn’t worry about anything you’ve heard. It was all a terrible misunderstanding. And I appreciate so much that you’ve cared for my things, but I’m not to stay. I’ve only come to speak to Philomena and her son. I was with
Tomas when he died, and all was well between us at the last.”

  Nellia’s pink-rimmed eyes filled with tears. “I’m glad to hear it. He was always a prideful boy, and the same as a man. Never learned to bend. Came by most everything as was his desire, but he’d no peace from it. Broke my heart it did, who knew him from a babe, to see him so high, but troubled so sore.”

  “But his son—he spoke of him with great affection. Surely the boy brought him happiness.”

  The old woman frowned and shook her head. “You’ve not met the young master, then?”

  “No. I’ve been here only half an hour.”

  “It’s right to say the duke—may holy Annadis write his name—took pride in the boy and had great hopes for him, but he’s not an easy child.”

  “Tomas and I weren’t easy either.”

  The old lady chuckled. “No. Easy was ne’er a word used in the servants’ hall about either of you, but this one . . . Well, you must meet him.” She glanced up and wrinkled her brow. “Shall I find out where he is?”

  “I think it would be prudent if we were introduced in Lady Philomena’s presence.” I desired no personal relationship with the boy.

  “That mightn’t be easy. He’s not one to sit at his mother’s knee or—” She broke off and waved a hand. “Ach, I’m too free. You must be perishing thirsty, and hungry, too, I’d guess. Shall I have a tray brought to the library?”

  “That would be marvelous. And it would be kind if you would send someone to your mistress’s room to tell Nancy where I can be found. I’d like to know when the duchess wakes.”

  “Done, my dearie.” Nellia wiped her eyes once more, patted my hands, and hobbled away.

  My father’s library was almost the same as I remembered it—leather chairs, dark woods, and ceiling-high shelves stuffed with leather-bound books and rolled manuscripts. On the end wall farthest from the hearth was his giant map of the Four Realms: our own Leire colored in red, subject kingdoms Valleor in blue, Kerotea in brown, and the ever-rebellious Iskeran in yellow. And yet a great deal of dust lay about, along with a general air of neglect. The tables and desks had seen no oil or polish; the brass lamps were tarnished; and my father would have threatened to behead the hapless servant who had allowed the bindings of his books to crack or his priceless maps to curl in their display.

  My father had been, first and foremost, a warrior. For twenty years he had fought his sovereign’s battles with skill and pride, always with more notches on his sword than his most grizzled veterans. But even more than fighting and glory, he had relished strategy and tactics, the marvelous interplay of soldier and general. Though not a scholarly man, he had accumulated a library of military history and philosophy unrivaled even at the University in Yurevan. He had collected maps, too, of all known lands and seas, ranging from ancient, primitive brushstrokes on silk or parchment that would crumble at a whisper to the most detailed, modern charts made by King Gevron’s military cartographers.

  But long before the books and maps held any fascination for Tomas and me, we were drawn to the library by the contents of two glass-fronted display cases. The treasure inside was a wonder unknown in any other house of our acquaintance—hundreds of miniature soldiers, cast in such perfect detail that you could read the expressions on their tiny lead faces and distinguish the individual links in their chain mail. Foot soldiers and cavalry, knights and flag bearers, trumpeters and generals, heralds and kings were crafted in every possible position. There were horses, too: battle chargers rearing, racing, wheeling, and beasts of burden laden with water casks the size of a thumb or pulling tiny baggage wagons. Along with a miniature flotilla, awaiting a young admiral’s command, were armaments enough for a nation of finger-sized warriors.

  Sometimes we would find the diminutive hosts deployed upon the maps of some ancient battlefield, poised to relive a day of blood and glory. Sometimes they were arrayed on the long, polished library tables as our father considered a new plan for smiting the enemies of Leire. But we couldn’t touch the armies if they were in use, so our delight was to find them captive in their velvet-lined cases. Then had we released the leaden hordes and devised our own games.

  The soldiers were the first thing I looked for in the library. To my delight, the cabinets were just as I had last seen them, flanking my grandfather’s suit of plate armor. One cabinet held an army painted silver and blue, and the other a host of red and gold. I pulled open the door and reached for a silver swordsman and a horse caparisoned in blue, but passed them by when I saw the silver king, his sword still raised in royal majesty and his crown still bent from the days when Tomas and I would forever fight over him. Beside him was his herald, blowing an invisible trumpet, his instrument lost when Tomas sat on him in the dining room to hide from our father his terrible crime of removing a piece from the library.

  “You’re not to touch them!”

  I turned in surprise, still holding the silent herald, and glimpsed the shadow of someone sitting in the window seat, all but his boots obscured by green velvet draperies.

  “But they do no good, sitting so quietly in their case. They are meant to be out and about, defending their king from his enemies, are they not? No soldier hides in his encampment forever.”

  “You needn’t speak to me as if I were five.”

  “I had no such intent. I just believe that it’s a shame when any things so fine as these soldiers are left idle. Someone ought to use them, whether to give military insights or just for the pure pleasure of playing with them.”

  “No one plays with them.”

  “More’s the pity,” I said.

  “Who are you?”

  “When your mother is awake, we can be properly introduced.”

  “One of her friends. I might have known. Are you here to steal something from us?”

  “It’s not my habit. Have there been a rash of thefts in the neighborhood, that everyone here seems to suspect a stranger of thieving?” I drifted to my left, trying to get a glimpse of the boy in the niche, but the glare from the window behind him left him in shadow.

  “Why else would anyone come here?”

  “To visit your mother?”

  “No one enjoys visiting her. And now she’s a widow. Not worth knowing.”

  “To visit you, then?”

  “I can grant no favors yet.” How old was this child?

  “Then perhaps to visit this marvelous house and the beauteous lands of the north?”

  “No one—”

  “No one would consider them marvelous or beautiful? I’ll not dispute your assessment of your mother or even of yourself, but I will argue with any attempt to discount the attractions of Comigor Keep. Once you’ve held one of the Guardian Rings and imagined what it was like to be chained there for months on end with everyone you valued depending on your faithful watch, or hidden in the secret room in the north tower and watched the colors of the hills and sky change or the lightning dance across the roof as a summer thunderstorm rolls through . . . Well, I’ll hold it up to you for marvels any day of any week. But for now, I’ll leave you to your business. Excuse me for intruding.”

  Without waiting for a response, I left the library, narrowly avoiding a collision with a young footman who bore a tray loaded with jam pots, butter, and steaming oatcakes. “I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “I’ll sit in the music room. Leave the door ajar, if you please, so I can see if anyone looks for me in the library.”

  The footman set the tray on a low table, and I sat where I could see the library door. After only a few moments I saw a thin face peep out of the carved double doors that led to the library.

  Tomas had said his son had our looks. There was no disputing that. The boy could have been his father as a child or a masculine version of myself at ten or eleven. Deep brown eyes, too large for the immature face, a body gangly and bony, already starting to get his height. Shining hair that waved about his face, hair of the same dark brown color with the tinge of red as my own. Bitter resentment at fate�
��s cruel jests took a moment’s grip on my heart. My son might have looked just the same as this boy.

  The boy surveyed the hall and seemed annoyed at finding no one about. He threw something to the floor and ran toward the stairs, out of my range of vision. Such an odd child. So angry.

  I restored my equilibrium by devouring Nellia’s oatcakes until some half an hour later when a chambermaid scurried across the tiles to the library doors. I jumped up. “Are you looking for me?”

  “Aye, miss. The mistress is waked. Nancy’s sent me to find the lady in the library.”

  “Well done. Tell her I’m coming.”

  The girl hurried away, and I followed more slowly. Halfway across the black and gray tiles, I saw a lump on the floor and stooped to retrieve it. It was the silver king, his bent crown now totally askew, and his mighty blade twisted so that it could never harm his enemies, only himself.

  CHAPTER 2

  When I arrived at her room, Philomena was yelling again, but not for pain or fear of dying. A stooped, middle-aged man, soberly dressed and unremarkable, was the recipient of a diatribe being laid on like a flogger’s cane. “How can there not be enough silver to pay the wine merchant? You’ve likely put it all in your own pocket. I’ll have you hanged!”

  “But my lady—”

  “Comigor is the richest hold in the Four Realms, and you are paid exorbitantly to manage it. Perhaps if we were to take your wage out of your flesh, you would find what’s needed.”

  “But, if you please, my lady, we have spent . . . prodigiously . . . in the past year: the new furnishings, the gem dealer, the dressmakers. And now the roof is leaking in the west wing and the forge is unusable since the fire, and we cannot even hire laborers—”

  “How dare you accuse me! My husband denied me nothing, but my steward dares tell me ‘no more’? I suppose you would have me wear rags. I suppose I am to suffer completely.”