Keeper of the Keys

by Janny Wurts

  That moment a voice boomed out of the dark. 'Name yourself, trespasser! What brings you to intrude upon the Stormwarden of Elrinfaer?'

  No longer able to distinguish where dream-image ended and reality began, Jaric felt his awareness netted by a will like steel shackles. Power tore through him, ruthless and sure, stripping him to his innermost self. Threatened by total annihilation, he abandoned resistance. The touch softened and abruptly released. Light flared and dimmed. Thrown to his knees, Jaric opened his eyes to the sight of a carved stone fireplace, and a room that disoriented him utterly. No trace remained of ice cliffs, rain, or the chill of the windy night. His hands dug into the pile of a richly patterned carpet, and the clothing on his back was dry.

  'Ivainson Jaric,' said a voice at his back, gently, but terrible with command.

  The boy rose. Bewildered and shaken, he faced the speaker, and for the first time beheld Anskiere of Elrinfaer. The Stormwarden waited before a faded square of tapestry. His robes fell from straight shoulders, the velvet creaseless and blue as the skies of summer. Firelight played over silver hair, jutting brows, and a face creased deeply by weather and hardship.

  'You sought me,' the Stormwarden said.

  Jaric blinked. 'Where am I? How did I get here?' He raised a hand to his tunic, groped, and found the Keys to Elrinfaer missing. Panic shook him. 'The Llondian!'

  'Sent you to me,' Anskiere finished quickly. This chamber is an illusion, no more and no less than a thought within my mind. And the Llondelei are not your enemy.'

  Jaric reddened. 'They are demons.'

  'All races of Kor's Accursed are not alike. Some would consummate their hatred against man to the detriment of the rest. If the Mharg fly again, the Llondelei would perish.' Anskiere watched with understanding as Jaric absorbed this revelation. 'Where the Keys are concerned, the Llondel is your ally.'

  Jaric met the sorcerer's eyes, found them deep as the horizon at the sea's edge. He wanted to feel anger, but could not. Once he had believed that Anskiere had cursed the Firelord in vengeance for past wrongs. Now he knew differently. The geas delivered at Northsea had been created solely against need, that the betrayal which ruined Elrinfaer should never again be repeated.

  Anskiere spoke into the silence. 'When I sent my summons, I already knew Ivain was dead.'

  The statement held multiple meanings. Jaric felt his throat constrict. Ivain dead meant his heir must answer, perhaps repeat the tragedy engendered by the Cycle of Fire; this Anskiere had known. Even as he called, the grief of that decision had stamped irrevocable sorrow on his heart. The Stormwarden saw, down to the last ramification, exactly what consequences he had set upon the untrained shoulders of the boy from Morbrith Keep.

  'If you have questions, ask them now. I will answer as best I can. This may be the last time we communicate.' Anskiere clarified with unemotional calm. 'In sending you to me, the Llondel has shortened the span of my endurance. She took a risk that won't be repeated.'

  'She?' Jaric looked up, astonished. He had never thought of demons being female.

  Anskiere returned a half smile. 'They are not human, Jaric, but in some things the Llondelei are as mortal as you or I.'

  Mortal; Jaric flinched to hear such an admission from a sorcerer whose deeds had bent the very course of history. Yet the discovery should not have surprised him; the Stormwarden was not all-powerful. Prisoner himself, Anskiere dared not unbind the ice without a Firelord's skills; to loose those wards would release the frostwargs, demons themselves, and nearly as deadly as the Mharg. Jaric felt the blood go cold in his veins. How long could the Stormwarden survive in stasis beneath the ice, if no candidate mastered the Cycle of Fire?

  Although Jaric lacked courage to voice his question, Anskiere answered directly. 'My days will number less than the span of your own life.'

  The fire abruptly felt too warm at Jaric's back. He sweated, resisting an urge to step forward. 'What of the frostwargs? If you die, will they escape?'

  'Not immediately.' As if sensing Jaric's discomfort, the Stormwarden turned and stared at the tapestry, which depicted a seascape in bleached blues and greens. The sorcerer qualified in a voice as worn as the thread. 'The wards would deteriorate slowly. If electrical storms stay few and mild, the bindings might hold for a century and a half.'

  'The Vaere would send your successor,' said Jaric.

  They might.' Anskiere did not add that talent was rare; even the most gifted often failed to endure through the trials of a sorcerer's training. But his silence on the subject spoke volumes, and Jaric found none of the reassurance he sought. Every exchange with the sorcerer led him closer to the Cycle of Fire, until acceptance of the torment which had destroyed his father seemed inevitable as death.

  'No.' Anskiere whirled from the tapestry. He lifted eyes passionless as ice water and added, 'The decision to undertake the Cycle of Fire can never be forced on a man. I charged you with one trial only: recover the Keys to Elrinfaer and hold them safe until they can be returned.'

  Jaric shrank from the sorcerer's gaze. Naked before perception which pierced through denial, and unravelled his dread of Ivain's mad fate to reveal the inner core of his shortcomings, for the first time he fully understood the burden set upon him. Memory replicated the conflict at Northsea and the doom Anskiere pronounced upon Ivain. '... And should you die, my will shall pass to your eldest son, and to his son's sons after him, until the debt is paid.'

  As if cut by the lash of a whip, Jaric paled. His hands knotted beneath the cuffs of his tunic. 'Can you not relieve me of the Keys?'

  Anskiere replied with surprising gentleness. 'Only if I am freed, son of Ivain. Until that day, you, or your children after you, must protect the Keys from demons.'

  'I have no such powers of defence!' Too late Jaric wished the words unsaid.

  Anskiere smiled, implacable. 'You have the potential.'

  'No!' Jaric abandoned restraint. Cornered by the Stormwarden's presence, and inwardly seared by the shared recall inflicted by the Llondel's thought-image, he spilled the horrors which had festered in his mind since the moment he discovered his parentage. 'Who am I to assume those powers? Kordane's Fires, sorcerer, how many people did my father harm before he ran a knife through his heart?' Once started, Jaric could not stop. His voice thickened. 'You, Stormwarden, with all your wisdom and compassion, how many died at Tierl Enneth?'

  The accusation died into silence. Jaric stood with his chin lifted; he could not regret his defiance. The reproach was surely just. All Keithland remembered the wave which had roared in from the sea and despoiled the shores of Tierl Enneth. Four thousand people had died, each one under the Stormwarden's sworn protection.

  Anskiere bent his head, vitality and strength drained from him until suddenly he seemed an old man. 'I'll explain, Firelord's heir, though I've told none before but the Vaere. I pray you have wisdom enough to understand.' He lifted tired eyes. 'The demons found a way to twist the human mind and seize control. A terrible thing, for those they choose to corrupt are the talented. One called Tathagres came to me asking for apprenticeship. She proved to be the demon's own, and she discharged the powers of my staff one day while my back was turned. Such a simple betrayal I never thought to guard against. The staff was protected; to this moment I don't know how she manipulated the defence wards and lived. But her meddling raised the seas and destroyed Tierl Enneth. The act was done to discredit me.'

  Jaric let his hand fall, shaken to discover sweat on his palms. 'Tathagres is dead.'

  The sorcerer responded fast as a slap. 'Did her secrets perish with her?'

  'Perhaps.' But Jaric did not finish the thought, that more likely the witch had bequeathed her corruption to another. Drawn as an overpitched harpstring, he closed his eyes, wishing darkness could obliterate the destiny his inheritance laid before him. The sorcerer held no answer but the Cycle of Fire to his quandary; and that fate Jaric was determined to avoid, lest power beget more wrongs for demons to exploit. Since the Llondel had emphasized the pe
rils of mankind's survival, Jaric dreaded to be the one to upset the final balance and consign his own kind to extinction. With a curse of agonized denial, he wished himself elsewhere.

  The carpet buckled underfoot without warning. Pitched off balance, Jaric fell but struck no floor. The room dissolved into air around him. Light melted into blackness, and the Stormwarden's final words scraped like the whisper of a ghost in a void.

  'Demons will seek the Keys, Ivainson Jaric. Guard them well. Make what choices you must with boldness and courage. My hope and my blessing go with you, however you fare.'

  Jaric strove to respond, but words stuck in his throat. Over and over he tumbled, buffeted by powers beyond mortal control. When his voice broke free at last, he screamed with pain and fear. The sound stung him awake. Roused to cold and sharp rocks and the booming roar of breakers, Jaric opened his eyes on the northern shore of Cliffhaven. Clouds had blanketed the stars. The ice cliffs towered upward, shadowed white buttresses against the Stygian dark of the sky. Shoreline, reefs, and rocks blended beneath, stark as a drawing in monochrome, except for two points of orange. The Llondel watched still from the ledge, her cloak tucked over crossed legs and her eyes emotionless sparks beneath her hood.

  Jaric shifted and sat up. He set his back against granite and cautiously studied the Llondel, but found no visual clue to confirm her sex. Uncertainty followed; what if Anskiere's words had been a dream, or, worse yet, an illusion designed by the Llondel to blunt his sense of caution? Undermined by mistrust, Jaric groped inside his tunic. Only when his fingers located Anskiere's basalt block did suspicion leave him. If the Llondel had not stolen the Keys by now, chances were her intentions meant otherwise.

  As if his thought cued movement, the demon blinked. Grey cloth sighed in the dark as she leaned intently forward. 'Firelord's heir and Keeper of the Keys, you have spoken with Anskiere. What now will you do?'

  The thought-image rang dissonant with threat. Jaric swallowed and found his throat dry. He was not out of danger yet. Carefully as he sifted answers, in the end only truth would suffice before the demon's empathic perception. Braced by bravado he never knew he possessed, Jaric attempted an answer. 'I will safeguard the Keys as best I am able. But I will accept neither training nor power from the Vaere.'

  The Llondel hissed.

  Jaric recoiled into rock. His next words came barbed with bitterness. 'Did you know my father?' Desperate to be understood, he sent pictures flicking one after another through his mind; the Llondel would read them, he knew. Jaric showed the Firelord whose cruelty had so vividly marked the memories of man. Told in taprooms and singer's lament, and written in legal records, Ivain's capricious temper had inflicted destruction upon every corner of Keithland; burned hostels, slagged fields, and even the blistered hands of a stableboy too slow to bridle his horse.

  Jaric finished, but the Llondel sat still as carved stone, eyes like candles under the shadow of her hood.

  Uncertain what might move a demon to empathy, Jaric tried again. 'Even when matched with noble intentions, the powers of the Vaere have brought grief to my kind.' Once more the boy chose images, showed the grief which haunted Tierl Enneth after the discharge of Anskiere's staff let in the sea. 'No matter how wise the sorcerer, power on that scale is too easily misused. I cannot.' Jaric paused, swallowed, and doggedly resumed. 'I won't be responsible for that kind of risk.'

  The Llondel hissed and surged into a crouch.

  'No!' Jaric slammed both fists into his calf. 'Wait and listen! There must be alternatives. Won't you understand? Sorcery brings nothing but ruin. If I must, I'll find another way to preserve my kind and return the Keys to Anskiere!'

  A charged moment passed. Then the Llondel settled back with a ripple of robes. She extended an arm and with ritual deliberation scraped her spur along the stone between Jaric's knees. The sound raised hair on the boy's neck. Though the gesture was not customary among humankind, its meaning was unmistakable.

  'I warn,' the Llondel sent. 'You are marked by the Vaere, and your path will be noted.'

  Chilled to the marrow, Jaric caught his breath, for the Llondian showed him an image of himself ringed by a triple band of fire. The pattern was all too similar to the seal on the Keys which symbolized Anskiere's mastery. The Llondel implied danger; she cautioned that the Firelord's heir would be not merely noticed, but hunted. The vision held warnings within warnings; Jaric's potential as a sorcerer posed threat to the demon compact at Shadowfane. His reluctance to develop those talents yielded no safety at all, for since he lacked the defences of a Firelord's training, enemies might defeat him without risk.

  But danger alone could not shake Jaric's resolve. Brutalized by memory of Anskiere of Elrinfaer's mastery, the undisciplined mind of the boy could not fathom the weather sorcery which had scoured the depths of his awareness. He knew only that resonance of such power caused pain; the pitiless and terrible self-command required to bend raw force into control daunted comprehension. No margin existed for doubts. Trapped by the realities of his own inadequacy, the heir of Ivain met the Llondel's silence with denial.

  For an interval, man and demon sat locked in stubborn conflict. Then the Llondel whistled through the crescent slits of her nostrils.

  'A true son of your father,' she sent. Sharpened with Llondian frustration, the comparison wounded.

  Jaric recoiled. 'No!' He spoke out in rising anger. 'I'll have no part of Ivain's cruelty! By the Great Fall, even Anskiere said he couldn't force me to try the Cycle of Fire.'

  The Llondel trilled a mournful seventh. For a space her eyes burned with an almost human sadness. 'Firelord's heir, Keeper of the Keys.' She wrought image with the subtlety of a master musician, blending sight, sound, and ancestral memory into a wail of inflexible destiny. The illusion echoed through Jaric, choked his spirit with grief. 'Go as you will, son of Ivain. But take heed, O little brother of your race, take heed.' And his sight of the Llondel's face rippled deftly into dream.

  Blanketed by a touch like fog, Jaric slipped into the pattern of her imaging. His awareness of ice cliffs and rock shifted, transformed to the wallowing toss of a boat on the open ocean. Barely larger than a dory, the craft carried patched sails, a gaff rig, and piled nets which reeked of fish. Through Llondian perception Jaric understood he viewed the present; this boat sailed now off the western shores of Elrinfaer. Two brothers in oilskins hauled twine over the gunwale. Unaware of observation, they worked in silence, lit by a storm lantern lashed to a ring in the sternpost. Salt-streaked glass threw starred patterns which swung with each roll of the boat, and in fitful intervals of shadow and light, Jaric noticed someone else sprawled on the floorboards in the bow.

  Sweating in the throes of fever, the third man lay half-covered by a rough wool cloak. The arm flung over his face was streaked with dirt and sand, and clothed in ragged linen. Jaric saw glints of goldwork on the cuff. With a twist of dread he recognized the pattern of the weave. He examined the man more closely, saw fingers scabbed with blisters and seal-black hair caught in tangles beneath. Without looking further, Jaric knew. Here lay Taen Dreamweaver's brother, Emien, whom Jaric had forced to yield the Keys to Elrinfaer over the bared point of a sword scarcely three days past. The fishermen must have found him wandering the beaches and taken him on board. The sight of Emien's suffering should have inspired pity; instead, Jaric felt dread, as if something had gone irrevocably amiss.

  From the depths of the Llondel's dream, he called out. 'Why? What harm can Emien do? His mistress, Tathagres, is dead, murdered by his own hand on the shores of Elrinfaer. It was she, not Emien, who conjured through the powers of demons.'

  The Llondel responded with images. Jaric watched the fishing vessel blur, then shift in some subtle manner, as if a veil suddenly fell away. With eerie clarity, the scene that followed recorded what would happen in a time yet to come. Jaric saw Emien shed his wool covering, rise, and take an unsteady step. His eyes glistened with fever and his arm trembled as he grasped the gunwale to steady himself agai
nst the heel of the boat over the waves. The sullen set of the sick boy's features unsettled Jaric with foreboding; though Emien walked with the abandon of a sleepwalker, he acted for a purpose beyond the vague stirrings of delirium.

  The boat wallowed over a crest and the lantern tossed. Shadows wheeled, pooling and receding over faded planking as the stern settled deeply into the trough. Twine chafed against the thwart, dragged seaward by the relentless pull of the water. The nearer fisherman swore irritably. His sea boots stamped against floorboards as he set his weight to his work; had he looked up, he would have seen Emien leave the bow. But, absorbed by their labour, neither brother noticed the fugitive they had rescued from Elrinfaer bend and search out the flensing knife stowed in the forward sail locker.

  Only Jaric watched as quivering, blistered fingers tightened over the steel. Then the air surrounding Emien's body rippled, as if wind stirred curtains of light made visible. The boy's form shimmered with a glow similar to the aura which had surrounded the Stormwarden of Elrinfaer when Jaric had observed through the Llondel's perception. Yet, although related to power, this configuration was other, evil in itself. Plainly Taen's brother had inherited Tathagres' affinity for demon possession.

  Jaric shouted, but in the half-world of the Llondel's dream, his voice made no sound. Reminded that he experienced nothing more than a prescient image, he watched helplessly as Emien wrenched the knife from the wood. The reddish aura flickered, strengthened, became a hard-edged veil of force. Infused by a rush of demon strength, Emien lunged and sank his blade in the back of the nearest fisherman. Hands slackened on the nets. Twine grated over wood, reclaimed by the sea, and the man slumped against the gunwale with a gurgling cry. Blood snaked across his oilskins, black in the lanternlight. With a yell of outrage and surprise, his brother spun around. He glimpsed a fevered face, tangled hair blown back from a demented smile. Then Emien's knife found his chest. The fisherman toppled backward into the silvery mass of his catch.