Keeper of the Keys

by Janny Wurts

The rain abated, but wind arose to replace it, whining through the stays and rattling Callinde's mast and yard with the abandon of a madman drumming sticks. Docklines creaked against the bollards as Jaric stepped aboard. Bundled in a cloak of green, hand-spun wool, he knelt on the floorboards and set both hands against the stern-post. The wood was checked and grey; the marks of the tools which shaped it had long since worn away, battered out by a generation of weather. The fingers which had done the carving now lay cold, forever stilled.

  Jaric bent his head, vision marred by wet lashes. 'I'm sorry,' he said, as if the old boat could hear in place of the crippled fisherman Taen's dream-image had revealed in death. 'I never intended to keep her.'

  A gust slammed the dock and Callinde rolled, lines groaning with strain. Jaric sank down beneath the lee of the thwart. He stared at palms scabbed over with blisters from the steering oar, record of his storm-ridden crossing from Mearren Ard. He drew breath into his lungs, and felt trapped, felt selfish to be alive after the sacrifices others had made to see him safely to this moment. Once he had excused himself on the grounds of the Stormwarden's cruelty; but since the Llondel's intervention, that defence no longer sheltered. Anskiere's decision to call the heir of Ivain into service had been founded on nothing but compassion and desperate need.

  Jaric clenched fingers into fists. A solution must lie at Landfast; he had to search, and quickly, before the demons completed their work with Emien and struck again. If he refused the Cycle of Fire without finding an alternative to defend the Keys to Elrinfaer, then, in accepting Callinde to complete Anskiere's summons, Jaric saw that his actions had murdered the fisherman, Mathieson Keldric, as surely as if he had knifed the old man directly. Tears were useless. Grief would mend nothing. The niece who had woven the cloak on Jaric's back would mourn, and marry, and eventually forgive the ruin he had caused. But rocked by the lift of the swell under Callinde's keel, the boy understood he could never make peace with Mathieson's memory until he had accomplished the legacy of Ivain.

  A shout rang out from the shore. Moonless's boatswain waited with a line and a longboat to warp Callinde from the wharf. Jaric rose and made his way forward, running a hand along the thwart for balance. Worn, net-scarred planking contrasted with the sharper edges of new timber; though built to an ancient design, the craft was sound and well tested by the sea. Still Jaric fretted, checking the tension on the rigging and fussing to be sure each halyard was cleated. Once she was under tow, no one would be aboard to ensure Callinde's safety.

  Boots clumped on the dock. 'Tide's turnin', lad. Corley's crackin' his knuckles on the quarterdeck, an' it's the crew who'll suffer if he heats up.'

  Jaric nodded. Wind fanned pale hair across the collar of his cloak as he bent to secure a locker. But the gear inside had shifted somehow and pressed the cover askew. The latch would not quite close. 'I'll be a minute.'

  'Going t'fasten lines, then,' said the boatswain. Callinde rocked under his weight as he stepped aboard.

  Jaric opened the locker, reached to 'reorganize the contents, and instantly froze. The ash flute he remembered from the ledge on the ice cliffs lay crosswise on top of the spare headsail. But in the main harbour under the vigilant eyes of the Kielmark's sentries, how had a Llondian demon managed to leave it and go unobserved? Jaric drew a quick breath. Forward, the boatswain leaned over the bow threading towline. While the seaman's back was turned, the boy grabbed the demon's offering and flung it over the rail. Delicate wood struck the sea with a splash, and its silver and shell decoration sank swiftly out of sight.

  Jaric banged the locker closed. Mathieson's death left his confidence shaken; more than ever, he wished no help from demons. Caught by a queer surge of anger, the boy rammed the latch home and hastened to assist the boatswain.

  * * *

  Moonless sailed from Cliffhaven under full canvas and a sky scattered across with shredded drifts of storm cloud. Fair weather would bring a drop in wind; driving his command on a beam reach, Corley ordered the staysails set. As the boatswain bellowed instructions to the crew, the captain left his place by the wheel and paused at the stem rail, absorbed by the bobbing prow of Callinde.

  Cautious of his mood, the quartermaster steered as if mesmerized by the compass. Canvas cracked overhead. Moonless shivered, heeled, and gathered speed as the staysails bellied taut. She sailed without incident through sunset into night, but Corley remained on deck. The Kielmark's order was simplicity itself. Why, then, could he not shake the feeling that trouble brewed like a storm front just beyond view over the horizon?

  Yet at first the captain's apprehension seemed entirely unfounded; Moonless made swift and easy passage across the Corine Sea, her crew in good spirits, and her two passengers apparently secure. If Taen worried over her disobedience of the Vaere's directive, she appeared not to fret. Mornings she could be found clinging to the netting under the bowsprit, hair blowing in the breeze, and her laughing face drenched in spray. Mealtimes she teased the cook in the galley, and the off-watch crew corrupted her sense of fair play by teaching her to cheat at cards. The first mate especially liked to bait her until she blushed. He did so without fear of retaliation, until one night all on shipboard were disturbed by his yells of angry outrage. Taen was found by the scuttlebutt, crumpled helplessly with laughter. Under the amazed stares of the deckhands she admitted to filling the mate's berth with live fish. Called in to mediate, Corley belatedly recalled that the Dreamweaver had been raised on Imrill Kand, where bait and hooks were the staples of survival. Thereafter, he assigned her the task of filling the dinner pot with her talents, though the card games continued, with stakes of dried beans used for winnings.

  Jaric smiled over Taen's popularity with the deckhands, but he did not join her antics. Corley's promise to the Kielmark kept the boy busy with sword and dagger, through exhausting hours of practice. A week passed, then two days more. His hands blistered, grew new layers of callus, and Corley's exacting instruction turned briskly unforgiving. Jaric sweated, striving to master his footwork while the captain hammered blow after blow against his guard. The sun shone hot on the deck, striking blinding reflections from the swells. Squinting against glare, neither tutor nor student noticed that Taen did not sit by the stern scupper with her lines, as she usually did in the morning. The quartermaster and the mate were aware; but with Moonless lying twenty-eight leagues from port, neither one thought to interrupt their duties to inquire why.

  Taen lay in the heat of the stern cabin, hands pressed tight to her face. Above decks, she could hear the clang of swordplay, and Corley's voice exhorting Jaric to mind his guard. The drill had begun at daybreak, and near noon showed no sign of ending, though Moonless's master estimated landfall by sundown.

  'Watch it!' Steel chimed and stilled. 'Your feint was too wide.' Feet thumped planking. 'Go again, Jaric, move.'

  The din resumed. Taen flinched and buried her ears in blankets. No matter how inclement the weather, Jaric's practice kept schedule. Ofttimes Corley drove the boy to exhaustion, yet Taen never heard a complaint. Ivainson did his best to learn. White-faced and determined, he persisted, though the roll of Moonless marred his control time and again; Corley battered him dizzy with ripostes and cursed him often for clumsiness. This morning, with the voyage all but over, the captain insisted on exchanging practice weapons for rapiers.

  Metal scraped and parted. 'Better,' gasped Corley. A dagger clanged a cross guard, and something bumped the deck. 'Damn you, boy, I said watch that footwork!'

  The Dreamweaver felt rather than heard Jaric rise and lift his sword arm. A rapid exchange followed, the ring of tempered blades repeated over and over until Taen felt battered by the continuous onslaught of sound. Buried beneath the sea-dampened weight of her blankets, she sought the calm taught by the Vaere, that inflexible inner stillness she perfected to bring her Dreamweaver's talents into focus. Yet, oddly, the discipline of her craft served only to increase her disorientation. Swept by a rush of heat, Taen felt her ears ring as if with fever. The c
lash of swordplay thinned, suddenly faint as the jangle of the wind charms which hung from the eaves of the house where she had spent her childhood. Sifted through a febrile mesh of memory, the present slipped away. Corley's curses whirled like leaves into darkness.

  Taen struggled to orient her dream-sense, separate vision from presence, and restore awareness of her cabin on board the brigantine. Control eluded her. Too late Taen recognized something amiss. Images swirled through her mind, fragmented glimpses of other people's lives drawn from the island of Innishari to the south. The bell of steel deepened in Taen's ears, gradually acquired the slower rhythm of a blacksmith's hammer. Heat burned her face, traced ruddy lines through a beard, not her own-, yet even as she wrestled to regain her own identity, she felt the ache of sweating fingers clenched on iron tongs and turning a glowing horseshoe upon an anvil. The Dreamweaver snapped the link with a touch sharpened by fear. Yet as the smith's awareness faded, her perception did not return to normal. Tools transformed in her grasp, became the worn wood of a broom handle. Coal-fire cooled into the packed earth of a door stoop where a farm wife shooed six bedraggled hens from a measure of dried corn. The chickens took flight, squawking, and the air turned sickeningly around them. Taen blinked, whirled into the dusty, cluttered confines of a shop where a weaver wound grey wool on his shuttle. Desperate now, she banished the dream, firmly bent her mind away from the town and back to the clean, open sea.

  Salt air slapped her face like wet cloth. Gasping, Taen centred her awareness, and immediately saw she had failed. Moonless plied westward, amid the archipelagoes of the Free Isles' Alliance. There the sun shone fair at the zenith and the islets scattered near Landfast notched the horizon. In place of this, her dream-sense had spilled her into a place of storm-tossed whitecaps and stark, pewter-grey swells which matched no sea where the brigantine sailed. Terrified, Taen tapped her reserves. Power flared and sparked, but would not answer; the image escaped her control like water through a sieve. Sliding downward into panic, Taen beheld an object awash on the breast of the swell. She thought it was a snarled length of fishing net negligently abandoned to the tide; until she noticed the catch which dragged between the painted markings of the floats. Showing through the twine were fingers, a jacket of rent oilskin, and boots.

  Certain the corpse was a vision from her own past, Taen shouted, 'Father!'

  Yet, tossed over a crest, the body turned; foam subsided to reveal hair that was not black but fair, and trailed like weed across the swollen features of a stranger. Taen shuddered. Too shaken to struggle, she abandoned her mind to the vision. Mist drifted like gauze over the water, shrouding the net's grisly burden. Even as the fog thickened, Taen caught the glint of a knife sunk in the breast of the dead man's jacket. Before she could ponder the significance of the murdered fisherman the sight melted into featureless white, then grey; light drained out of the day, and night fell unbroken by lantern or star. Sound arose through that unnatural dark like bubbles from the depths of a well. Taen heard a door slam faintly, and footsteps. Someone's hand touched her shoulder; the blackness around her crackled. A sheet of fire shot across Taen's mind, blinding orange-gold and white with a heat which did not burn. Strangely, she felt none of the terror which had infused her earlier dreams. A human presence lay behind this conflagration; someone restless, intense, whose touch was nearly as familiar to her as that of the brother she had lost.

  Taen started violently and woke, jarring her cheek against the bulkhead. 'Jaric!'

  'Are you all right, little witch?' His voice was filled with concern, and very close by.

  Taen blinked, realized how severely she trembled. Not trusting her voice, she did not speak as Jaric drew her gently into the light which filtered through the salt-stained panes of the stern window. Disoriented and inexplicably cold, Taen looked up, met eyes whose brown lay shadowed under brows hooked into a frown. The ties of Jaric's shirt swung unlaced at his throat; his skin glistened, finely sheened with sweat, and his nostrils flared slightly, as if he was winded from recent exertion; normal enough if he had just left practice with Corley. But Taen sensed a detail out of harmony in the instant she touched his mind.

  'I was on the way to fetch the ship's healer when I heard you cry out,' said Ivainson. 'Are you ill?'

  There was something; his voice confirmed the fact.

  'No,' said Taen. Brought fully and sharply awake, she shoved a hand into the crumpled blankets of the berth and sat up. 'I had a nightmare, no more.' She studied Jaric intently, but found nothing. Afraid he would leave before she could trace her suspicion, she qualified quickly to delay him. 'I dreamed I saw a murdered fisherman floating in the waves.'

  Jaric stepped back, his expression abruptly guarded. But Taen noticed nothing beyond the crimson-splashed knuckles of the hand held pressed against his side. Her breath caught in her throat. 'You're hurt!'

  Jaric shrugged in immediate reassurance. 'Only a little. Corley cursed me well for carelessness, and rightly. The mistake was mine.'

  His voice held jarring relief. Startled, Taen looked back to Jaric's face. Diverted by concern for his cut hand, she took a moment to recall the words she had used at need, which, surprisingly, had distressed him. Then she wondered why mention of a dead fisherman should prove so alarming. Jaric's stance suggested reluctance; he would refuse to answer if she asked. Taen considered using her dream-sense. But that instant the lookout called from the masthead. Moonless crossed the perimeters of the Landfast defences, the net of energies woven by the initiates of Kordane's brotherhood to ward against entrance by demons. Taen sensed the barrier as a prickle of cold force. For an instant she shivered, gripped by a power that ruthlessly tested her humanity; then the moment passed. Sunlight through the stern windows rinsed away the discomfort.

  Jaric seized the interruption, backing hastily towards the companionway. 'Have you ever seen the towers of Landfast?'

  'No.' Infected by his excitement, Taen kicked bare feet free of her blankets. 'I'll meet you on deck, but only after you've shown the healer that cut.'

  'Shrew,' said Jaric. He grinned amiably. 'Would you throw something at me if I refused?'

  Taen brandished a fist. Jaric ducked in mock fright through the companionway and left her. As the door banged closed the Dreamweaver sighed, her pretence at levity abandoned. A force beyond her understanding or control had inflicted visions upon her; the event was no slight matter. She had disobeyed the directive of the Vaere, and if this was the first sign of the consequences, no strategy of the Kielmark's could aid her. Against mishaps by sorcery, all of Corley's skill with weapons and seamanship could offer no safety at all. Taen slipped unsteadily from her berth. Much as she valued her freedom, now, her return to the Isle of the Vaere could not happen quickly enough.

  * * *

  To Jaric, standing wind-whipped by Moonless's rail, the towers of Landfast thrust like fat spearmen ranked against serried banks of cloud. Although he had never beheld the Free Isles before, the city which governed the Alliance had fascinated him ever since his apprenticeship as copyist in a backlands keep. Here lay the heart of human endeavour. Scholars claimed that the Landfast archives preserved even the mysteries of Kordane's Blessed Fires. Maintained by Kor's Grand High Grace and a staff of priests and initiates, the libraries contained the histories of all mankind, preserved since the Great Fall.

  Familiar with the landmarks through a painting which had hung in Morbrith's copy chamber, Jaric touched Taen's arm and pointed out several slender, silver-domed spires which soared skyward from the central cluster of buildings. 'There, do you see? Those are the sanctuary towers of Kordane's shrine, where seventeen masters guard forbidden texts. The archivist who taught me said no woven cloth, nor any item which will sustain flame, is permitted in that place, and that the inner-circle brotherhood undertake a vow of isolation. They enter, never to leave.'

  Jaric fell silent, his face animated with wistful excitement. To a boy whose childhood had been limited to books and writing, Landfast held wonder and t
he promise of dreams. In bright sunlight, amid the bustle of sailhands and shouted commands, he could for a time forget the terrible burden which compelled him to visit these shores.

  The wind freshened, then shifted northeast. Driven on a broad reach, Moonless shuddered under tautly curved canvas. She rounded the headland with her bowsprit and star-crowned figurehead glistening through flying sheets of spray; then, ducking like a haughty maiden, she jibed and bore down upon the light beacons marking the jetties which flanked the harbour entrance. Landfast lifted ahead like a jewelled diadem set on a sea-beaten headland of sandstone. Black against tawny bluffs, wharves, shops, warehouses, and fish shacks cluttered the shoreline beneath; and, shadowed by the painted towers, the docks at the bay side teemed with boats of scattered shape and description, some inhabited, others packed to the thwarts with vendors and wares.

  Corley called orders from the quarterdeck. Jaric roused from his reverie. He shed his shirt and passed it to Taen. Then he set his bandaged hand on the ratlines and swung himself up to join the topmen who clambered aloft to shorten sail. The cut on the back of his wrist did little to blunt his dexterity, and work on the main royal yard granted him a splendid view of the city, with its narrow twisting lanes, bronze statuary, and tiled courtyards.

  Corley left the quarterdeck, and the mate called commands in his place.

  Flying the scarlet and silver wolf which blazoned the Kielmark's standard, Moonless backed sail. She dropped anchor inside the barrier islet of Little Dagley with the enviable precision that earmarked every vessel in Cliffhaven's fleet. A crowd of frowning men clustered on the harbourmaster's dock to watch. But no lighter launched to claim anchorage fees. Hated, respected, feared, and left strictly alone, the Kielmark's vessels plied every port in Keithland exempt from tolls or tariffs. Though merchants and officials complained waspishly, they voiced their bitterness out of earshot. To arouse Cliffhaven's ill will brought ruin to trade, since any shipping bound for eastern kingdoms must run the narrows of Mainstrait; there the King of Pirates imposed an inflexible demand of tribute in exchange for amnesty from his fleet of corsairs.