Guardians of the Keep

by Carol Berg

  The tenants were tilling the fields. I could see them through the paned window on the stair landing. Nellia and James and the other servants were at their daily work. Nellia was singing. She always sang “The Warrior’s Child” in her rusty old voice when she sat with her sewing. I called out to say good day, but she didn’t answer, and the footman in the dining room looked right through me when I walked past him into the drawing room. Mama was there. She was very beautiful, dressed in white and wearing her favorite necklace—the one with the circles of diamonds all strung together. A harper played in the corner, and Mama was talking with her friends.

  “Was there truly no trace of him ever found?” A woman in green with a crow’s face leaned toward Mama’s ear.

  “None at all,” said Mama. She dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “The sheriff from Graysteve says that as no one has demanded ransom, we must assume he’s dead. I’m going to leave this wretched place forever. My poor lamb was such an unhappy child. It’s a comfort, in a way, a kindness that fate has saved him the pain of long life.”

  “Come, Lady Philomena, enough of sad thoughts,” said a young man as he pulled her up to dance. Soon she was laughing again and drinking wine. Her diamonds sparkled in the lamplight as she danced.

  “It’s as well the boy is gone,” said the woman in green to another woman. “He was so odd. I’ve heard rumors of murder and worse things . . . perversion . . . in this very house. The royal inquisitors were on their way when the boy disappeared. . . .”

  Another dream came, too, and like the other, it seemed more real than any dream. I knew all the people, but they couldn’t see me.

  Two men—peasant men—were running through one of the rocky rifts that cut through the heath north of Comigor. One of the men carried a little girl in his arms. The other, an older man with a gray beard, was bleeding from a wound in his leg. The older man stumbled on a stone and fell. “A curse on the House of Comigor.”

  “Hurry, Father Castor, they’re coming. We can’t stop.” The younger man was frightened. Choking smoke filled the air, and the young man couldn’t stop coughing. The little girl whimpered, and the young man pushed her face into his shoulder. “Hush, Ceillitta.”

  “Go on with you,” said the older man. “I’ll hold them here as long as I can.” He pulled himself up to lean on the steep bank, unhitching a scythe from his belt.

  With a sad curse, the young man gripped the older one’s shoulder, and then ran on down the gully away from the castle. He didn’t get very far. Riders wearing King Evard’s red-and-gold livery galloped along the edge of the rift and shouted when they caught sight of the men. Two soldiers slipped off their horses, slid down the bank, and cut off the old man’s head before he could cry out. Another pair of soldiers caught the younger man and dragged the little girl away from him. The rest of the troop came up, their horses’ hooves swirling up dust to mix with the smoke. They were laughing and mocking as they dismounted. Two soldiers held the young man by the hair and arms, and the others threw the little girl on the ground, pulled up her dress, and fell on her, one and then the other. The young man cursed and wept and strained to get free, while the little girl screamed, “Papa, Papa.” By the time they were done with her, her scream was just a dry bubbling sound. The young man was about crazy.

  “This is what happens to them as nurture sorcerers,” said the captain of the soldiers. “This is the evil they bring into the world. If you had given him up, you and the child and the old man would live.” Then he cut the little girl’s throat.

  “A curse on them all,” the young man sobbed. “May they all burn.”

  “Oh, they will. Never fear,” said the soldier. “You have the easier part.” And he stabbed the young man in the belly and threw him onto the rocks.

  I climbed out of the rift onto the hillside. The smoke was terrible, choking, making my eyes burn and water. When I stumbled on something softer than a rock, I didn’t know what it was until I fell on top of it, and came face to face with Allard, the head groom. Only it wasn’t hardly Allard anymore since his nose and ears had been cut off, and he was dead. I jumped up and ran before I could get sick, and I came to the top of a hill where I could see all around.

  Comigor was burning—the roof, the stables, the barracks, the fields—for as far as I could see it was burning. People were screaming. The soldiers cut down anyone who tried to run away. A few of the castle guard were fighting to clear a way through the main gate for a carriage, but they fell one by one. When the soldiers dragged Mama and Nellia out of the carriage, others were already sticking heads on poles.

  “The devil’s dam—the witch! Where’s fire enough for her?”

  I always woke up sweating and coughing about the time Mama started to scream. I told myself that these were only dreams, not things that had really happened. But they left me feeling sick and sad, as if I’d really seen them.

  By the afternoon of the second day, Captain Darzid was tearing away rubble with his bare hands. I stayed out of his way. He said we would have to leave that night if he didn’t find what he was looking for. There were other ways to get where we were going, but a lot farther and more complicated.

  “I’m going to get a drink from that fountain,” I said. The water in Captain Darzid’s flasks tasted like old boots.

  “As you wish,” he growled, pulling more stones away from a buried hearthstone and cursing the avalanche of rubble that followed. I left quickly, before he could tell me to help him move the piles of stone that had undone his entire day’s work.

  We were down to eating nothing but jack. Being so dry and salty, jack always made me thirsty, and we had used up all the wine in Darzid’s pack. I hadn’t told Darzid about my own supplies, because I planned to use them when I ran away from him. I had almost run away the previous night, but I hadn’t seen any towns or villages close by as we traveled. Besides, I didn’t relish picking my way through the ruin or the mud fields in the dark. I would have taken his horse, but the captain’s horse wasn’t nice at all. He was like Captain Darzid, bad-tempered underneath all his politeness.

  The little stone girl was still smiling to herself in the corner of the courtyard, pouring water from her bottomless pitcher. I helped myself to some of the water and sat down on the rim of the basin, not at all interested in going back to help Darzid. The water was cool, not freezing like you might expect in the winter, and sweet, the best thing I had tasted in a long time. It seemed to clear my head a bit, too. For the first time since leaving Comigor, I had two clear thoughts together. The first thought was that this whole business of searching a ruin for the route to a friend’s house made no sense at all. And the second was that those very instructions were staring me in the face from the bottom of the basin.

  “Captain!” I called. “I think I’ve found it.”

  He was beside me before I could snap my fingers. “Where? Show me, boy.”

  “There,” I said, pointing to the words carved in the bottom of the marble basin under the clear water.

  Darzid looked very strange for a moment, then a smile spread slowly out from under his black beard. “Of course . . . I never thought of that. Tell me, young Lord, how do you read it? My eyesight is certainly not of the same quality as yours . . . no, not at all . . . in this dim light.” He grabbed a charred stick and drew on the white paving stones everything that I read from the bottom of the pool. I didn’t know the language, but the captain nodded his head as if he did.

  “Now we can ride,” he said. “If this storm will hold off so we can see the moon, then by morning we’ll be safe in Zhev’Na.”

  I was happy to leave. “What was the name of that city?” I asked, as we rode toward the mountain. “Who lived there, and why were they all killed and left like that?”

  “It was called Avonar,” said the captain. “You’ll hear that name again. It was—and is—the home of your enemies, people of no vision, people of no understanding of the dimensions and possibilities of the universe. You’ll learn mor
e of it when we’re safe. For now, you’ve had a tiring day. Feel free to sleep as we journey.”

  And, of course, I did. I dreamed those terrible dreams over and over again, and when I next woke up, I was in a very different place.

  CHAPTER 19

  Seri

  Avonar. No poet has words to describe the view from our window in the Guesthouse of the Three Harpers. The Dar’-Nethi called it the City of Light, though no such simple name could capture its glory. Stars . . . everywhere stars embedded in the night’s dark canvas, so brilliant that when you closed your eyes, the image was etched upon your inner vision. Their number was so profuse that the trees of two worlds could not produce so many leaves. And they were not confined to the heavens. The pale towers of Avonar soared into the heights like long, slender hands sent to reap the sparkling harvest and shower it upon the landscape below, not only in refined and solemn white, but in palest yellows and blues.

  But even such a glorious vision as the royal city could not liven my spirit. Neither could the wonder that should accompany any venture into a new world, nor the simple relief at our safe passage through the Breach. I paced the little room, waiting for Karon and news of our son.

  Bareil brought food: delicately fried pastries wrapped about a savory filling and dusted with cheese, golden fruits the size of apples with pink flesh that tasted like a blending of peaches and tart cherries, and a brass pot of something fruity and pungent that he called saffria. The others un-stacked the small plates and poured the hot cider into mugs of painted pottery, gathering around a low table by the fire to share the meal.

  I could muster no appetite. “Why would they bring him to Avonar?” I said. “And how was Darzid able to cross the Bridge without the Heir to open the way, to guide him, protect him . . . ?”

  Kellea waved her mug and amplified my questions. “And how could there be a Gate in the ruined Avonar? I thought there was only a single Gate to the Bridge in Gondai, and a single Gate in our world.”

  “As to the Gate,” said Bareil, setting down his cup and wiping his mouth with his fingertips, “indeed only one exists in the world of Gondai with its single reflection in your world. But each Gate would have been built with multiple points of entry. Here in Gondai, all entries have been lost to the Zhid except the one in the palace in Avonar. We could not know where the entries in your world were set, of course, or how many might still exist. As for your other questions, I wish I could say. Perhaps when the Zhid followed D’Natheil to your world this past summer, the secret of the Bridge crossing was compromised. Master Dassine put extra wards at the two Gate chambers, but this entry we traveled had not been used for hundreds of years. And for the man to venture the Bridge without the Heir . . . I cannot . . .” Bareil’s expression suddenly fell blank and featureless. “Well, your guesses are more likely to be correct than those of a Dulcé unbidden by his madrisson.”

  We filled the next two hours with trivialities. Kellea and Paulo made an inventory of our supplies, only what Bareil had carried in the small pack on his back and the rest of us had in our pockets. The Dulcé cleared away the meal, setting the remaining food aside for Karon, and then gave us a monologue on the major points of interest in the view from our window. Kellea asked about the bronze mask above the door, and Bareil told us the story of Vasrin of the Two Faces, who had existed when the universe was nothingness. But eventually these occupations flagged, and we fell into anxious silence. Heavy clouds rolled in from the mountains, obscuring the stars.

  Another hour and we heard footsteps in the passage. One person. Bareil cracked open the door, peered out, and then pulled it wide open. “Holy Vasrin be praised for your safety, my lord.”

  Karon shook a dusting of fresh snow from his cloak, but shook his head when Bareil moved to take the heavy garment from his shoulders. He moved directly to the fire, rubbing his hands together as he held them close to the flames. “Seems we brought an ill change in the weather.” He gratefully accepted Paulo’s offer of a mug of Bareil’s pungent fruit cider. After a sip or two, he settled on a stool by the fire. Only then did he glance at me, his blue eyes filled with such concern and sympathy that I thought my heart must rip. He averted his gaze quickly, fixing his eyes on the fire.

  “I tracked them to a house, but didn’t follow them inside. Wards—protective enchantments, formidable ones—barred every door and window. It made no sense to break the wards until I knew more, lest I endanger the child unnecessarily.” Leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, Karon gripped the mug until I thought the pottery would crumble. “As I happen to know that particular house quite well, I could guess where the owner was like to take guests that arrive in the middle of the night. And I know how to observe what goes on in that room without setting off any alarms. But I was too slow. By the time I realized what they were doing, the circle was drawn, the candles were lit, and the words were spoken. The space inside the circle—the portal—opened onto another place . . . and the dark-bearded man stepped into that place with the boy. Only an instant and they were gone.” He flicked another glance my way before returning his gaze to the fire. “The child was asleep through everything, so he could not see what was happening and be afraid.”

  “My lord, did you see anything of their destination, so that we might identify it?” asked Bareil.

  “Enough, I think.”

  “You know how to show me, so that you may command me to tell you of it?”

  “Yes. Though I’m not sure we want to hear it.” Karon set the mug on the table, then laid his hand on the head of the Dulcé who knelt on the floor just in front of him. “Detan detu, Dulcé,” he said, quietly, “tell me of this place.”

  For a moment Bareil wore no expression, but then his skin lost its rich color and he closed his eyes. The rage that had been heating my veins slowed for that one moment as if everything in the world held its breath. I heard the words even before he said them. “Detan eto, Giré D’Arnath. Everything in my experience tells me that this place is surely Zhev’Na, the stronghold of the Lords in the heart of the Wastes.”

  “From what cursed house in the heart of Avonar do they send innocent children to Zhev’Na?” I had kept my seat while Karon spoke, but I could no longer hold back the storm that had been building since we crossed the Bridge. I stood in place, wrapping my arms tight about my breast, lest I fly apart in fear and fury and grief. “Darzid crossed the Bridge, a feat that I’ve been told is only possible with the aid of the Heir of D’Arnath. And now he’s taken this child into the heart of evil. In what ‘familiar house’ can such events take place without fear of retribution?” Never had I felt so helpless, not even when Karon and my son had been taken from me the first time. At least then I had lived in a world I understood.

  For the first time since the bandit cave, Karon spoke directly to me. “The man read secret words carved into the stone of a fountain at my family’s house. We had been told the words would take us to a holy place, and we tried to use them a few times in the grotto. Without success. But we didn’t know the language, and so we didn’t understand about the moonlight. Now I seem to know the language. . . .” A grimace tightened his brow for a moment. “As to the crossing . . . Dulcé, can you suggest how he might be able to pass the wards on the Bridge?”

  “Perhaps if you were to command me, lord.”

  Karon issued his command to Bareil again. The Dulcé pondered for a few moments, and then looked up, crafting his words carefully. “Somehow the man Darzid must have known there was an entry point in the ruined city. I have no knowledge of how this could be possible. Clearly he read the inscription in stone at your family’s house, just as you did. This told him of the location of the entry and how to move from the cave to the Gate. And you, my lord . . . When we joined the lady and her friends in the bandit cave, you left the Bridge passage open for our return, and thus the man was able to cross unhindered. Master Dassine knew of that risk, but discounted it, because he believed no one in your world could know of the Gates. You had no way to
know. . . .”

  “Demonfire!” The line of his jaw grew tighter. “And so it seems I must take the responsibility for his easy passage as well as the rest of it. To my shame and that of all Dar’-Nethi, the house where the boy was taken is the Precept House of Gondai; the chamber is the meeting place of my counselors. And so, this wickedness, too, is my responsibility, and I swear to you that I will repair it. But I’ll not pursue my own reckoning with the Preceptors or do anything else that might jeopardize the boy’s safety until he is returned unharmed. Please have my word, Lady. Whatever is in my power to do, I will do. Your nephew—”

  I must have flinched just then: changed color, grimaced, closed my eyes, compressed my lips, or given some other physical sign of my impatience with lies. For he stopped abruptly and examined me, his eyes widening with new-found understanding. “Gods in the heavens, he’s not your neph—”

  “My lord”—Bareil shot to his feet, blocking the view between Karon and me before I could control my trembling enough to give answer—“you must command me to give you information about Zhev’Na. Not the location, of course. No one has ever found a route to Zhev’Na. Even were you to command me, I could not tell you. But I bear all of Master Dassine’s knowledge of the Wastes and the evil citadel. Surely some of it will be of value.”

  Though his glance kept shifting to me, Karon listened to Bareil. I bit my tongue until I tasted blood. The moment of danger passed as the Dulcé drew him into several hours’ questioning.