The Silver Key

by Emery Gallagher

  “No, at least, not that I know of.” She wondered if she should explain how the sword had come into her possession. He seemed to know who Jordana was—maybe he knew something about the dagger as well. “It’s more of a—professional inheritance.”

  “So you’re one of those dagger girls then,” he said. “I thought they were all gone. Where’s yours then?”

  “I haven’t got one yet,” Charlie said, stunned. “I’m on the quest.” She sat and stared stupidly at him for a long moment. He politely went on with his sharpening and spared her his piercing gaze while she recovered. “How do you know about that?”

  “Suri was one of them too,” Davos answered easily. “The family has always been very proud of her, and her story has always been passed down. She made the daggers too. How many of you are there now?”

  “Oh. It’s just me right now. Or maybe I don’t count because I haven’t found my dagger yet. So I guess there aren’t any of us.” She realized she was rambling and tried to take a deep, calming breath. “I thought maybe it might be here.”

  Davos looked amused. “I don’t think so. I think I would have seen it, but you can look around the shop if you want to, in case it’s something only you can see.”

  “I don’t know what it looks like exactly. Maybe I’ve already seen it. There was a sword with a sapphire-studded hilt,” Charlie remembered. “That’s sort of what I’m looking for.”

  “I made that a few months ago, so I doubt it. Here.” He handed her back her sword. “I have a few of Suri’s drawings—maybe we can find a drawing of it.”

  Charlie slid the sword back into its sheath. “Did this even need sharpening?”

  “Barely, but that’s not why you came here anyway. Come on,” he said, holding open the door to the merchandise room.

  She followed him into the room and watched as he unlocked a cabinet with one of the keys on the key ring hanging from his belt. He pulled out a large leather envelope and set it on the table.

  “These are so old they’re falling apart, and many of them are too faded to read,” he told her. “I look through them sometimes for ideas, but I try not to handle them too much.” He untied the strings of the envelope and unfolded it to reveal a stack of parchment sheets, the edges tattered and the ink blurred by time.

  Charlie watched quietly as he lifted out stacks and set them to the side. He seemed to have them sorted into groups and knew which set he wanted. When he had found it, he slowly flipped through the pages, scrutinizing the faded images before setting each sheet aside. She looked as best she could without getting in his way and was able to make out that the images were sketches of daggers and knives that Suri must have designed. Finally he sighed and put a sheet on the table in front of her.

  “You said sapphires, but I don’t see anything that meets that description.” He pointed at the drawing in front of her. “But this is definitely one of the daggers she made for the Order; it has the name written at the top. It has amethysts for the stones, but I imagine they all look similar.”

  “Thanks,” Charlie said softly as she leaned closer to look at the sketch. The image was badly faded, but she could make out the outline of a dagger with a crossguard and a wire-wrapped hilt studded with amethysts, the purple color barely visible now. There was nothing spectacularly ornate about it, but the elegant simplicity of its design made it beautiful. “How lovely,” she said wistfully.

  “Yes, Suri really did have an artistic eye,” Davos said mildly. He gathered the parchment sheets and returned them to the envelope. “You can look around if you want, but I know every piece on the shelves, and there’s nothing that looks like that dagger here.”

  “Thank you,” she said again, really meaning it. She had gotten more help here than she ever could have anticipated. Even if the dagger wasn’t here, just the reassurance that the Order existed some place outside of Grandmother’s head was reassuring. Charlie walked up and down the room while Davos locked up Suri’s drawings, looking at the weapons again as if she could will the dagger to suddenly appear among the swords and pikes. She examined the sapphire-hilted sword hopefully, but she knew it wasn’t what she sought. The dagger wasn’t here. Something beyond simple observation or reason told her that quite plainly. She just knew somehow, and she felt suddenly quite sad.

  Davos had been watching her with his arms crossed, his eyes half-shut as if to dim the penetrating power of his gaze. His noted the change in her expression. “Don’t see it then?”

  “No,” Charlie sighed. “It isn’t here. And somehow I know that it isn’t.”

  He didn’t question her reasoning. “Do you have somewhere else to look?”

  “Yes, I have a list. How much do I owe you for barely sharpening my sword?” she wanted to know.

  “Nothing,” he said easily. “Or rather, when you find that thing, you have to come back here and show it to me. Promise me that, and we’re square.”

  “I promise,” Charlie said. “Thank you for all of your help.” She turned to leave.

  Davos followed her outside and watched her untie her horse. “Where will you go now?” he wanted to know.

  “I’ll re-provision in the city, then head east to the next place on my list,” she told him. “And if it’s not there either, I’ll go to the next place after that.” She shrugged. She had a lot more faith now that the dagger did exist, but not much more that she could find it by wandering about the country.

  The smith leaned against the pole supporting the roof of the shop, his face inscrutable. “Good luck then, Charlie. Be very careful.”

  “I will,” Charlie promised. “And thank you again.”

  As she rode away, she could already hear the reverberating clang of a hammer on metal as Davos returned to work.

  * * *

  The second place marked on Charlie’s map wasn’t too far from the first, but it was significantly more vague. Grandmother had called it an apothecary, but she had admitted she wasn’t quite sure of the exact nature of the place. She was more confident about its location though, a little town next to a river. Charlie thought that once she got there, she would just ask around until she found the apothecary.

  A problem arose when the town was nowhere to be found. It was clearly marked on her map, and she was fairly certain of her own location having just left a sizable city, but she couldn’t seem to locate it along the river. She rode upstream until she was certain she was well past where the town was supposed to be, then turned around and rode back the other way. She reminded herself that maps, especially on this scale, were not known to be entirely reliably. Probably the town was just located on a different part of the river or perhaps it was located much further away from the riverbank than it appeared. She widened her search to include several miles in either direction from the alleged location of the town. She couldn’t get to the other side of the river without crossing it, but she had a clear view of the opposite bank, and there were no buildings or signs of habitation on that side either.

  Finally she went back to the city where she had met Davos and asked one of the guards at the city gate if he knew how to get to Havering.

  “Havering?” he repeated slowly.

  “Yes, I rode all up and down the river where it’s supposed to be, and I can’t find it.”

  “Well, did you see a sort of lake feeding off the river while you were riding?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That would be Havering. The river took it thirty years ago. It’s been underwater since then.”

  “Oh,” Charlie said, deflated.

  “What did you need to go there for anyway?” the guard wanted to know.

  “I was looking for the apothecary.”

  He shrugged. “There’s a few in the city you could try.”

  “Thank you for your help,” Charlie told him.

  She rode back to the wide curve of the river where Havering had been. Sure enough, there were a few beams and bits of building materials lurking around the edge of the water, but the r
iver had washed most of the town away. After thirty years, nature had reclaimed the land, and almost all traces of human life had disappeared.

  Charlie looked at the smooth stretch of water, a bit stagnant away from the current of the river, and sighed. What was she supposed to do—dive for the dagger? If it had ever been there, it had either been washed away, or it was out of her reach. She had the uncomfortable thought that perhaps this quest thing could have a major flaw if the dagger had been left somewhere for her to find, and then that somewhere had been destroyed. Davos could have closed down his shop. The shrine and the temple could both be gone too. Finally Charlie decided that sort of thinking was unhelpful. She had been able to search one place out of two so far. She would try for the third and see which side the balance fell on before she made any decisions. The daggers were supposed to be magical; surely that magic couldn’t be thwarted by something as mundane as a flooded river.

  * * *

  4

  Traveling Companions

  Reaching the low mountain range that ran vertically down the western side of Shala marked another leg of Charlie’s journey. The remainder of her destinations lay in the central part of the country. The landscape became more settled as she neared, with farms, fields, and towns taking over from the forest. Now that there was no forest to ride through, she traveled on the road during the day and sought a concealed place to camp at night. Traffic began to increase as she neared the pass that cut through a low spot in the mountains.

  She noticed that though she saw many people, usually traveling in small groups for safety, few of them would even look in her direction. A person or two would raise a hand in greeting or mumble a few words, but only if she greeted them first. It wasn’t too surprising that peasants wouldn’t speak to a noble until spoken to, but could they really tell her social class through all the trail grit she and her belongings had picked up? Yet most people stepped over to the other side of the road, or even left it completely, to let her pass, their eyes on the ground.

  Raising a hand to her eyes, Charlie studied the mountains ahead. The passage cut into a particularly low section of the mountains formed a gently rising curve, created by man’s labor and worn smooth by man’s feet. Many people traveled over the mountains through the pass; there were several roads across the country, but only a few places to cross the mountains. The light was still good, and with a little luck, she could make it over before darkness fell.

  She guided Mystic quickly over the stone path, trying not to kick up stones at the others journeying over the mountains. She alternated walking and trotting, dodging holes and travelers coming from the opposite direction. Soon she had reached the top. She had come to appreciate vistas during her travels; the view was a reward for trudging uphill, the achievement of the halfway mark. And this was a particularly lovely one.

  Huge grassy hills rolled away from the base of the mountains, like the bubbles in a pot just beginning to boil. Past the hills she could see flatter land for many miles, and beyond the flat land, she could just barely make out still more hills. Little toy villages and a patchwork of crop fields and pastures speckled the land. A miniature castle topped one of the hills, gazing down on one little town. A river cut a blue strip across the land, connecting one mountain range with the other phantom one. A thick forest covered most of what she could see to the south, but much of the rest of the land was treed as well. She hadn’t realized she was up so high; the land on the other side of the mountains must be lower.

  “I know it’s beautiful,” an overly patient voice said behind her, “but could you move somewhere else to stare it?” The voice sounded strangely familiar and rather snide.

  Charlie twisted around in her saddle to glare at the speaker. She caught a glimpse of piercing green eyes and dark, curly hair, and a sharp retort died on her tongue. She silently continued to stare at the man on the black horse with a growing sense of foreboding.

  It was Griffin of Darklight, the knight she’d met after her fall.

  He had recognized her too. “Charlie?” She nodded, and the corners of his mouth slowly curved into a grin. “Well, what are the chances of meeting you here,” he said, not hiding his amusement. He nudged his horse up next to hers. “So this is where your journey across the countryside alone dressed as a boy has taken you.”

  Again she nodded, feeling rather foolish. “Why are you here?” she mumbled, finding her voice at last.

  “Well, this is how one crosses the mountains,” he replied with a careless wave of one hand. “What have you been doing? How’s your head?”

  Charlie made a face at him. She hadn’t remembered him being so glib. “I only fell off that time because—”

  “Because you broke a stirrup leather taking a jump. Is she a more spirited mount than she looks?” He spoke lightly as though teasing, but something in his tone offered insult.

  Growing up with many so siblings to bicker with had not prepared her to ignore a gibe. “I was being chased by a pack of dogs! I can hardly help that she was afraid of them.”

  He frowned at her hot reply. “Calm down; I was only joking. Where are you going?”

  “To the other side,” Charlie answered, annoyed at herself for letting his teasing upset her. She didn’t even know him! She told her horse to walk, and Griffin kept pace with her, the formidable size of his horse and his knightly trappings sending other travelers scurrying out of their path in a manner they had not done for Charlie’s horse before.

  He grinned crookedly at her. “Funny how we’re going to the same place. Any plans once you reach the bottom, or is that all?”

  “That’s as far as I’ve planned,” she said firmly.

  “Perhaps after you go down, you’ll come back up,” he suggested.

  Charlie opened her mouth to refute that stupid statement, then shut it again abruptly, belatedly realizing that he was only trying to keep her talking. His eyes were oddly serious even as he joked and prodded, steady and piercing even though his attitude was amiable. She hadn’t noticed much about his face the few minutes they had met previously other than that he was rather good-looking, but now she could see evidence of both intelligence and something that seemed just a shade away from meanness. Charlie decided to ignore him and trotted ahead, having remembered she was talking to a complete stranger, one who was too curious about her affairs.

  He caught back up with her, peering around to see her face. “You are the oddest person I have ever met.”

  “Likewise.”

  Griffin laughed, unbothered by her rudeness. The mean edge softened slightly.

  “If you’re a knight in the king’s service,” Charlie asked, meaning to turn his game back on him, “why did you leave the camp?”

  “I have my own business,” he said simply. He leaned toward her. “Where are you really going?” he inquired, eyes imploring, tone charming. He was a handsome man, and the way he looked at her made her breath catch for a moment.

  “I,” Charlie informed him steadily, “am going wherever I want.” She gave him her prettiest smile in retaliation to his attempt to charm her and sent Mystic off at a brisk trot again, hoping he would take the hint.

  Again he caught up with her, his horse’s long legs making short work of the distance. She could see that she was wearing on his patience, but he hadn’t given up yet. “That I believe,” he grumbled. “Why does it have to be a secret?”

  “It isn’t a secret; it just isn’t your business,” she corrected, hoping a firm rebuttal would end the conversation. “And why do you care so much? I’m a stranger to you, and it’s no concern of yours what I do or where I go.”

  He raised dark eyebrows, his expression serious. “Because it isn’t often that I meet someone like you. I’m curious about who you are and what you’re doing. And I’m a little concerned that you’re on your own.”

  “There’s nothing to be curious about,” Charlie muttered toward Mystic’s neck, irritated. “And your concern is unnecessary.”

  “Hmm.” He d
idn’t seem convinced. “Yes, I can see that you’re a very capable and self-sufficient girl. You’ve got your sword and your bow and exactly two arrows in your quiver.”

  Charlie eyed him, uncertain if he was relenting or subtly insulting her again. She decided not to reply. The sun was low in the sky, and she would need to hurry to find somewhere to camp before it was dark. They were nearing the bottom of the pass.

  “Well, I’ll be off then,” Griffin said cheerfully. “I have somewhere to be or I’d stay and chat. Be careful, Charlie. Buy some more arrows.”

  “I might,” Charlie said cautiously.

  He gave her a winning smile and urged his horse forward. Charlie watched him until he disappeared into the crowd at the mouth of the pass. She hoped that was last she had seen of Griffin of Darklight. He had an odd feeling about him.

  * * *

  The persistent warbling of a little bird near her head woke Charlie before she was quite ready to get up. She slapped blindly in its direction, hoping to startle it away. It hopped out of reach and redoubled its efforts.

  “Ugh,” Charlie huffed, sitting up and throwing her blanket back with unwonted force.

  The bird was a little brown sparrow, and it was looking at her with unusual intelligence. It hopped a few times and whistled, and a tiny roll of paper tied with a string appeared at its feet. It continued to whistle at her until she picked up the scroll and unrolled it. As Charlie had suspected, the scroll was a letter from Grandmother.

  “I’m reading it! Be quiet.”

  Grandmother had indicated that she would try to write to Charlie, but this was the first letter she had received. Charlie supposed that if she sent her messages by carrier-sparrow, they probably took a long time to be delivered. She wasn’t sure how the little bird had found her or how it carried letters, but it seemed to have been told to wait for a reply. She scattered a few bread crumbs for it to eat while she ate her own breakfast and read the letter.