Keeper of the Keys

by Janny Wurts

  Mist rolled across the harbour of Tierl Enneth and cloaked the ruined city in grey. The drizzle which began at dawn still fell in the early afternoon when, like a phantom haunting waters where moored ships once swung with the tide, Moonless ghosted in under the whispered flap of her staysails. Her deckhands sang no chanties. In sombre silence, they dropped anchor, furled canvas, and swayed two longboats out. The first craft they loaded with empty casks which bore recent marks of repair. Corley commandeered the second. Scowling, his maroon tunic darkened with damp, he accepted the blanket-wrapped weight of the Dreamweaver from the healer's anxious arms. Leaving command of Moonless to the first mate, the captain descended the side battens one-handed and settled in the stern seat of the boat. He arranged Taen in his lap, and paused for a moment to look at her. Rain beaded her lashes like tears; pale as a porcelain doll, the girl barely seemed to breathe.

  The healer glared reproachfully down from the waist and tried one last time to object. 'She ought not to be moved.'

  Corley ignored him. With a curt jerk of his head, he ordered his sailhands to proceed. The boat jostled under the added weight as four brawny men stepped within. They positioned themselves on the benches and threaded oars through rowlocks in subdued silence.

  'Take her ashore, then,' murmured Corley. His eyes never lifted from the girl in his lap. Looms lapped into water. As the Dreamweaver's head rolled with the pull of the first stroke, the Kielmark's most hardened captain bit his lip and wondered whether he was right to trust the dream which urged him to convey the failing girl to land. He had no fey skills; only a sure eye for weapons and a knack for managing men. But when his sleep had been torn into visions four nights in a row by an image of Taen dying in screaming agony unless he carried her with him into Tierl Enneth, Corley chose to act. He had nothing to lose. Barring a miracle, the Dreamweaver was already lost.

  The oars dipped and lifted like clockwork; expertly handled, the longboat hissed through the waters of the harbour. Surrounded by the smell of sweating men and damp wool, Corley regarded the landing of Tierl Enneth, once Keithland's most opulent trading port. Flotsam-snarled sands and wrecked dwellings now sheltered no life but seabirds. Crabs picked at the pilings of the emissary's dock, where past generations of royalty had debarked to fanfares of trumpets. If Landfast was the seat of government and antiquity, Tierl Enneth had nourished the arts, until Anskiere's sorcery smashed city and inhabitants without warning.

  The oarsmen threaded a careful course between the shorn bollards of the traders' wharf, and the boat grounded on the strand. Men leapt from the bow to steady the craft against the curl of the breakers as Corley rose from the stern. Bearing Taen, he stepped over the gunwale and, careless of the water which swirled over his boot tops, waded shoreward while the crew beached the longboat.

  The ruins loomed ahead, grey stone tumbled like bones against the lighter grey of the mist. Corley stood dripping on the seaweed at the tide mark. Uncertain what to expect, he scanned the slivered ramparts which remained of the harbour gate. The sculptures of eagles had been torn from their niches, and the great arches rose gapped and broken against the sky, spoiled past memory of design. Weeds presently grew where gilded four-in-hand coaches had thundered over marble paving.

  Despite the company of the men at his back, Corley shivered. He tightened his fingers in the blankets which sheltered Taen, and suddenly realized Tierl Enneth was not entirely deserted. A figure in a dark cloak walked amid the looming mist of the ruins.

  Corley tensed. Taen's helpless weight prevented a fast reach for his sword. On the point of tossing her into the arms of the nearest oarsman, he saw the approaching stranger throw his hood back. Sun-bleached hair tumbled in the wind, and with a shock of surprise, the captain recognized the face.

  'Jaric! Kor's Fires, boy, what are you doing here?' Corley strode briskly forward, his uneasiness transformed to annoyance. 'Brith was under orders to keep you safe at Landfast!'

  Jaric paused by the crumbled breakwater, brows knotted with an anger all his own. 'I owe no loyalty to the Kielmark, nor any of his hired henchmen. I came here for Taen.'

  As the boy leapt down to the strand, Corley sensed changes; Jaric carried himself with an unthinking self-command. If he had sailed to Tierl Enneth for the sake of the Dreamweaver, how could he possibly have known Moonless would make landfall there of all other ports in Keithland?

  Jaric drew nearer; Corley noticed the scabs of a recent fight on his knuckles. 'Did you best Brith?' he demanded in surprise.

  'No.' The boy looked worn, exhausted utterly from his passage. His clothing and hair sparkled with salt crystals, and his hands were chapped from the sea. 'He tried to stop me.' Reluctant to elaborate, Jaric bent over the blankets and studied Taen. 'How long has she been like this?'

  'Too long.' Corley hefted the girl and settled her more comfortably against his shoulder; her cheek rolled limply against his neck. 'Do you know how to help her?'

  Jaric looked up, eyes darkened with sudden and painful uncertainty. 'I've been instructed. But by Kor's divine grace don't ask anything more.' He lifted his arms to take Taen.

  Concerned by the boy's fatigue and by his studied lack of comment on his encounter with Brith, Corley shook his head. 'Wherever you're going, I'll carry her.'

  Jaric stiffened, distrustful of the captain's motives. He might face another fight should Corley try to balk him; and delay would cost dearly. Taen's still limbs and cold flesh warned how near she lay to death.

  Corley sensed the boy's suspicion and softened his tone. 'I won't stop you, Jaric. Just show me where to go.' With crisp decision, he addressed the crewmen who lingered nearby. 'Return to Moonless. Tell the mate to post an anchor watch until I return. I'll signal for a longboat by lighting a fire between the pillars of the harbour gate.'

  Jaric watched with trepidation as the sailhands moved to depart. 'Do you act for the Kielmark?'

  'No.' Corley qualified without pause. 'I act for the Dreamweaver who once spared every soul on Cliffhaven from Gierj-demons.'

  'Then leave your sword and knives behind,' said Jaric.

  Deison Corley clenched his teeth with a visible jerk. His lips tightened to an expressionless line, and for a long, dangerous moment he regarded the boy on the strand before him. Yet Jaric stood his ground with staid resolution; and something about his stillness disarmed the captain's affront.

  Without speech, Corley hefted Taen, and transferred her limp weight into the arms of the boy. Gravel crunched at his back as his men busied themselves launching the longboat; unwilling to leave his blades unattended on the strand, Corley reached swiftly to unbuckle his sword belt.

  But Jaric impulsively changed his mind. 'Never mind, I'll trust you.'

  Corley looked up. He searched the boy's troubled expression through windblown strands of Taen's hair, and suddenly understood. Probably Jaric's guidance came from a source as fathomless as the dreams which had entreated the captain to bear the Dreamweaver ashore in Tierl Enneth. Sympathy filled Corley for the upheaval caused by a destiny too weighty for even a sorcerer's heir to encompass. 'You won't be sorry,' he said gruffly.

  With an emotion very near to gratitude, Jaric restored Taen to the captain's capable arms.

  * * *

  Thick fog muffled Tierl Enneth. Its whiteness erased the outline of the beach head, and the hiss of unseen breakers turned ghostly, a mirage of disembodied sound. The forms of captain, Firelord's heir, and Taen Dreamweaver became lost to the eyes of the crewmen aboard Moonless, yet the limits of visual perception were not shared by demonkind. Aboard the fishing vessel dispatched to destroy Ivainson Jaric, the Thienz assigned as watcher observed the exchange on the shore. Even as Corley accepted the limp weight of Taen Dreamweaver and turned with Jaric to bear her towards the ruins, the demon signalled its companions.

  'Man-fools, we have them, with-certainty.' The Thienz ruffled its crest, amazed and elated by the hapless ways of humans. For the Dreamweaver lay unguarded, unconscious to danger; and though the p
resence of latent power wrapped a haze of confusing energies about the Firelord's heir, the Kielmark's captain had a mind decisive as a sword's edge. His intentions were plain: directed by Ivainson Jaric, Corley planned to bear Taen Dreamweaver to an unspecified place, and upon his given word, the Kielmark's men at arms were to stay behind.

  The companion Thienz whuffed their gill flaps, pleased-for-Scait, while the watcher showed them Corley turning towards the ruins. The captain and the two-who-were-prey turned unsuspecting towards deserted dwellings where no-human-ally-now-lived.

  'Ours,' hissed the Thienz at the helm, its reference to the Firelord's heir. It clicked sharp teeth and pulled the tiller with anticipation, even as the response of its companions swirled and buffeted its awareness. The harbour must not be risked, with the vigilant presence of eighty men at arms. But the landward side of Tierl Enneth's ruins was unguarded since the devastation unleashed by Anskiere's powers. Thought-forms flickered with rising excitement as the demons plotted. The sloop could be landed under cover of the mist, then concealed in a cove beyond view of the brigantine's sentries. Thienz would creep ashore. On dry land, well removed from the accursed dangers of salt water, the Kielmark's captain and his blades could most-easily be overwhelmed.

  'Then shall Ivainson-Firelord's-heir perish, to the sorrow of mankind and the Vaere.'

  Whetted for the kill, a Thienz crew member sprang to harden sheets. Fingers ill suited for handling rope slipped and gripped in eagerness to tease the sails into perfect trim. The sloop responded, rounding to the slight breeze and swinging shoreward. Yet as the sails snapped gently taut, the watcher hissed warning from the bows. Wide lips curled back from small, back-canted teeth, and its thought-lash of startled annoyance slapped through the minds of its companions.

  'Men move beyond the walls of the city-now-fallen, many-men, stop-see; they might bring danger.'

  Two Thienz abandoned the lines. They crowded around the spokesman and at once melded awareness to scout this new development. Chafing, almost reckless in their haste, they pressed to sample the human minds who presently converged upon the meadows beyond Tierl Enneth.

  The demons' probe met the taste of dust, and beast-smell and the sweaty reek of oiled flesh. Wagon wheels creaked, and somewhere a singer intoned a chant in queer, quarter-tone intervals that jarred the eavesdropping Thienz with unpleasantness. Shadowfane's minions delved deeper to escape the irritation. Beneath the surface patterns of sensory perception, the enemy minds they touched were strangely unstructured by logic. Their thought-colours blazed like beacons, twisted to resonance by fierce countercurrents of emotion. The watcher-Thienz saw and sorted implications, even as a presence among the humans noticed the eddies generated by demon meddling. Warned off, the Thienz withdrew. Their probe dissolved without trace well before that guardian awareness coalesced and stabbed out in challenge.

  The dark boat rocked gently in the mist, its occupants stilled to listen. 'Clan tribes,' hissed the watcher. 'They gather to celebrate the solstice, and with them rides she-who-sees-truly, a sightless-one trained to read memory.'

  A wail arose from the helmsman, echoed in octaves by its companions. Thienz could not pass that way, for clan priestesses never failed to detect the presence of Kor's Accursed. Other Thienz paused in their tasks, turning wide, near-blind eyes towards the shadow the watcher's body imprinted upon the air. 'Trouble for us, but also hindrance for Corley-Jaric-Taen,' they intoned in return.

  The shared song of the Thienz' enthusiasm swelled yet again. Wild clans on the move might complicate the will of Lord Scait, but all was not lost. The humans hunted by Shadowfane would be forced to travel far afield, since clan tribes celebrating solstice would be dangerously inclined to violence. Strangers who trespassed upon the rites quite often got themselves murdered.

  The dark boat rocked as the Thienz turned hands to their sailing. They bailed, and eased lines, and cheerfully bickered over who-next-should-share-helm-watch; while, as a descant to physical action, they braided words and mental musings into plans for night landing followed by ambush in the misty fells past Tierl Enneth.

  * * *

  Poised at Corley's side with one foot on the breakwater wall, Jaric felt as if he stood at the edge of the unknown. The Kielmark's captain would keep his word, though his life became the cost; yet the boy fretted, wondering how Corley would react when he discovered they acted under influence of the Llondelei demons. Distressed that Taen's life should depend on the whim of Kor's Accursed, Jaric slipped one hand beneath his cloak and touched the shaft of the ash flute. Contact roused a cold tingle of energy; a presence touched his mind, urging him quickly into the mist-choked ruins of Tierl Enneth. Aware no choice remained but to trust in such a guide, the boy drew breath and started forward.

  Corley leapt the shattered stone of the breakwater. Trained to move in silence, he followed the boy's lead across cobbles slimy with moss. Except for the fact the captain carried Taen, Jaric might have forgotten the presence of his companion. Once within the city, cracked walls rose up on either side, the hiss of breakers echoing between like the mournful whisper of ghosts. Wind sighed over tenantless thresholds, and gull droppings streaked the fretwork of sills and chimneys. To Jaric, Tierl Enneth was a city haunted by the resonance of misused powers. Only bones remained, scattered by scavengers; once he tripped over a skull, and eye sockets clogged with fungi stared accusingly at his back as he passed.

  Distressed by the emptiness and the mist, Jaric whispered unthinkingly aloud, 'Why weren't they buried?'

  'Too many dead,' said Corley, and the boy flinched at the sound of a human voice. 'Very few had relations left living to care.'

  Shocked speechless, at last Jaric understood the undertones of sorrow which had haunted the Stormwarden's manner; Tathagres' transgression had permanently cost Anskiere his peace of mind. Amid the smashed houses of Tierl Enneth, the boy's doubts resurfaced with vicious intensity. Evidence of tragedy wider than his worst imagining confronted him on all sides. The silence, and the empty, gaping doorways, infused fresh desperation into his need to escape the Cycle of Fire. What were Vaere-trained sorcerers if not evil, that demons could deflect their formidable powers against mankind? Shaken numb by the catastrophic scale of Anskiere's failure, Jaric stumbled through dooryards and gardens overgrown with briar as he followed the ash flute's directive.

  Late in the day, the sun broke through the fog. Purple shadows slanted across the western lanes of Tierl Enneth. Wreckage was less evident on the landward side of the city; yet even those dwellings left whole sheltered no inhabitants. Windows gaped fireless and black, and alleys lay deserted. Guided by the Llondian artefact, the Firelord's heir and the Kielmark's captain reached the far wall of the city in the wan light of the afterglow. Darkness obscured the arch of the trade gate which pierced the inland fortifications. Above, the battlements rose intact, notched like the spine of a dragon with scales of green ivy. Jaric stopped briefly to admire the pair of eagles which capped the portal, their outstretched wings tipped in gilt.

  Corley paused and shifted Taen's weight to his opposite shoulder. 'Are we going through?'

  Jaric nodded. Though twilight was nearly spent, the tingling pull of the ash flute showed no sign of diminishing. Dogged by rising uneasiness, the boy pressed on towards the arch.

  Shadow closed around him, dense as spilled ink. Corley followed on his heels. The air smelled of damp and moss, and the stone deflected the sound of their footsteps into echoes. Directed through darkness by no more than the mental pull of the ash flute, Jaric hastened his pace. Suddenly his shoulder crashed into rock. He gasped in near panic.

  Corley spoke calmly over the boy's shoulder. 'Turn left. Before the city was destroyed, an iron gate was kept barred during the night. The tunnel on either side was built with a crook to foil siege engines.'

  Jaric pushed away from the stone, his fear changed to regret. The finest of engineered defences had not spared Tierl Enneth; the survivors of the cataclysm had chosen to relocate rather t
han rebuild their homes. A few paces ahead, Jaric brushed past the rusted remains of the grille. Then the corridor bent once more. The far arch loomed ahead, scattered across with clusters of orange light.

  'Kor,' swore Corley in disbelief. 'Could those be campfires? I can't believe it!' He lengthened stride, reached the far entrance of the tunnel, and, with Jaric at his side, looked out over the countryside beyond.

  Blurred by streamers of mist, the valley that nestled between ruins and hills lay riddled with hundreds of torches. Music wafted faintly over summer's chorus of crickets, cut across by raucous shouts. Painted wagons, lighted stalls, and the packed earth where dancers circled all formed a familiar pattern. Jaric needed no words to qualify; identical seasonal gatherings had occurred beneath Morbrith's walls each solstice throughout his childhood. Tierl Enneth itself might lie deserted, but wild clansmen from the hills still gathered there - for summerfair.

  Corley shifted his weight, settling Taen in the crook of his elbow. Her face appeared as a pale oval against the mouth of the tunnel. When Jaric did not speak, the captain scuffed his boot irritably against the cobbles. 'We have a problem.' Clansmen were distrustful of strangers and quick to anger at any time; when they were drunken and euphoric from the rites of the solstice, their belligerence became unmanageable. 'We could wait for full dark and perhaps slip past without being seen.'

  'No.' Jaric released a quivering breath. The Llondian flute directed him straight towards the heart of the festivities. Aware as his companion of the dangers, and agonized by Taen's helplessness, the boy resisted an urge to fling the artefact to the ground.

  'Carry the Dreamweaver, then,' said Corley grimly. 'Before long we'll both be glad my blades weren't sent back to Moonless.'

  The mention of weapons earned no response but an unreadable glance from Jaric; the boy made no effort to accept the burden of the unconscious girl. And frayed to a nervous edge by the prospect of crossing a summerfair on the very eve of the solstice, Corley's great hands knotted. Taen's blankets pulled taut, and a lock of her hair tumbled free and streamed in the wind.