Keeper of the Keys

by Janny Wurts

  The rain had ceased. Stars glittered like frost overhead, gapped by the black silhouettes of the Landfast towers. Wretchedly alone, and chilled with the aftermath of sickness, Jaric wiped mud from his face. He rose clumsily to his feet and turned down the alley towards the dockside and Callinde.

  The lane between the tavern and the shoreside warehouses loomed black as a pit. Dizzy from the wine, Jaric walked slowly, one hand braced against the alehouse wall. Refuse and run-off from the storm squelched beneath his boots. Between a cranny in the foundations, he heard the furtive crunch of a rat gnawing a bone; the sound ceased as he passed, then resumed. Jaric stopped. Overtaken by nausea, he crouched in the street once again. Yet instead of wet paving, his hands brushed the icy flesh of a man stretched prone in the alleyway.

  Jaric recoiled with a cry of surprise, all sickness shocked from him. He explored further, felt a length of torn cloth and a sinewed arm. Suddenly a furred creature threaded between his knees. Jaric started back. He lost his balance and sat sharply on the cobbles, just as the beast leapt into his lap. It rubbed against his chest and meowed.

  Recognizing the beggar's cat, Jaric shivered in relief that swiftly changed to worry. He pushed the animal away and bent over the man who lay prone in the street. Lanternlight flickered at the mouth of the alley. Dimly Jaric made out the form of the beggar, his one empty cuff pressed wet to the cobbles. Bruises mottled his face.

  'No,' whispered Jaric. He required no imagination to deduce what had happened: the beggar had carried silver into the alehouse, then boasted of the wealth and the freedom bestowed upon him by a young swordsman who had returned to pay his fine. Probably footpads had attacked him as he left, beat him senseless for his money, and dragged him into the alley to die.

  Jaric touched the old man's face, felt cold skin and a flaccid mouth. No roguish, world-weary smile animated those lips now. Wrenched to the heart, Jaric bowed his head.

  'No,' he repeated. Grief overwhelmed him. Another friend lay dead. Unbidden, the boy remembered Taen and the fate mapped out for her by Llondian dream. Jaric felt a smothering sense of panic. Dreams had shown him death. But never until now had he experienced the reality. These cold hands, her cold hands, Maelgrim would knife her; the cat huddled forlorn in the alleyway; himself, bereft.

  'No!' Jaric's shout rang, echoing, through night-dark streets. The fears twisted inside him changed, transformed to cruel regret; the chance he might cause a catastrophe like Tierl Enneth paled to insignificance by comparison. Ivainson did not hear the jingle of mail, or the footsteps which approached. Slammed hard against the end of dreams and hope, he wept to realize that nothing in life could wound him so deeply as the eventuality of Taen's murder.

  That moment the cat streaked away. A dazzle of lantern-light fell full across his face, and an authoritative voice demanded, 'What's happened here?'

  Jaric opened his eyes, squinted, and felt the steel of a guardsman's sword prick his throat.

  The blade jerked. 'Quick, thief. Answer sharp. Did you murder for money?'

  'No.' Jaric lifted empty hands, spoke around the pressure against his larynx. 'Search me. You'll find no coin.'

  The guardsman spat. He did not lower his weapon, but seized the boy with a gauntleted fist and hauled him to his feet. 'Perhaps I caught you too soon to find coin, yes?'

  Sickened to the core, Jaric stiffened. 'Search us both, then! This man was my friend.'

  The guardsman bashed him back against the building and raised the lantern. Flame-light flickered over the sprawled form of the beggar, opened eyes and bloodied jaw glistening like macabre paint. Jaric turned away.

  The guardsman grunted. 'Some friend. That's old Nedge. Thief himself, did you know? The executioner chopped his hand as lawful punishment.' He released his hold on Jaric and sheathed his sword in disgust. 'Kor curse his flea-ridden corpse. I'll have to clear him out before he starts to stink.'

  Distastefully, the man at arms prodded the beggar with his toe. 'How long's he been dead, d'you know?'

  'No.' Jaric rubbed his wrists, outraged by the guard's callousness. No matter what his crimes, no man deserved to die without the pity of his fellows. As that thought turned in Jaric's mind, logic drove him one step further; unless he mastered the Cycle of Fire, Anskiere would perish similarly, deep under the ice cliffs with no friend to care.

  That moment the beggar stirred. A snore escaped his lips. Steel flashed as the guardsman started back with a curse. 'Kor, the stupid sot! Got himself drunk, didn't he? And probably bashed his silly head passing out in the street.'

  Jaric almost shouted with relief. He had not caused the beggar's death. The sudden, lifting rush of departing blame snapped a barrier within him. Self-doubt imprisoned him no longer. Offered the reprieve of a second chance, he seized the freedom to choose. He would go to the Vaere. No failure, no loss, and no fate carried worse penalty than the guilt of a loved one's death. If he could act to spare Taen, the risk of his father's madness must be accepted.

  'Get on your way,' said the guardsman curtly.

  Jaric lifted his chin, his hair glinting gold in the lantern-light: 'One moment,' he said. With deliberate defiance, he loosened the laces at his throat, drew off his linen shirt, and spread it over the beggar who lay in the street. 'This man is my friend, thief or not. Let him sleep in peace.' And with a level glance at the guardsman, the heir of Ivain Firelord rose and strode off, to seek Callinde and the open sea.

  * * *

  Summer haze hung a moon like a yellowed game piece over Cliffhaven when Moonless returned to her home port. Despite the late hour, her crewmen furled sail with matchless efficiency. Yet the anchor had barely bitten into the seabed when signals flashed from the light tower caused Corley to yell for a longboat. No man dared delay direct summons from the Kielmark, far less a message coded urgent.

  Blocks squealed in a night of oppressive stillness. The instant the boat splashed into the harbour, Corley departed for shore with all the speed his oarsmen could summon. Too impatient to wait until the craft drifted to the dockside, he leapt a span of open water to the wharf.

  An officer with a lantern met him. His skin sparkled with sweat above his unlaced collar, and his chest heaved, as if he had been running. 'Best hurry, man. Kielmark's in his study, pacing.'

  'Kor,' said Corley sourly. 'He wouldn't by chance be in a dicey temper, now would he?' Without pause for answer, he stripped off his own tunic and shirt and sprinted through close, late-season heat.

  Except for an occasional sentry, the streets by the wharf lay empty. Corley raced past closed shops and darkened houses with only the echo of his footfalls for company. The stair which led to the fortress left him winded after long weeks confined to a ship's deck. Yet when the guards waved him through the gatehouse, he did not slow down to walk. If the Kielmark sent for audience demanding all speed, he would be counting every second with resentment until his captain arrived.

  Corley passed the repaired portals of the great hall, then hastened down the corridor which led to the study. The door burst open as he rounded the last corner, and the Kielmark thrust his head out.

  'Kor's Fires, another minute, and I'd have ordered you spitted, captain.' The Lord of Cliffhaven spun and paced savagely from the threshold.

  Corley followed into the candlelit clutter of the study. Breathless after his run, he bent a keen gaze upon his master. The Kielmark was stripped to leggings and boots in the heat. He paused before the opened square of the casement, the muscles of his back and shoulders quivering with suppressed tension. Throwing knives gleamed in a row upon his belt, and both hands were knuckled into fists. Suddenly he whirled from the window. The eyes he trained upon Corley shone ice-pale with anger. 'Demons take judgement, man, what were you doing in the north?'

  Corley ignored the question. With an expression of mild enquiry, he lifted his wrist and blotted sweat from his brow. 'What happened here?'

  The Kielmark surged forward with a frenetic burst of energy. He drew one of his knives. A flick o
f his wrist spun the blade the breadth of the room, to strike quivering in the stacked logs by the hearth. As if the violence steadied him, the King of Pirates leaned back against the sill. 'Thienz-demons came hunting. Now tell me where Taen Dreamweaver is, and quickly.'

  'She's safe.' Corley qualified promptly. 'Though not on the Isle of the Vaere, as you ordered.'

  The Kielmark straightened with warning speed. 'I said, where?'

  'Imrill Kand.' Corley smoothed the crumpled cloth of his shirt and tunic, and draped the garments across the back of a nearby chair. Then he sat. 'Between a run of contrary weather, an illness related to the maturity of her mastery, and a vagary of Jaric's, the original plan had to be abandoned. Taen asked to go home. I saw no reason to prevent her.'

  'Kordane's Blessed Fires!' exclaimed the Kielmark, his consonants bitten and sharp; then without warning he burst into laughter. 'Made the damned demons chase themselves, snouts to tailbone, you did.'

  Corley slipped a dagger from his boot and the inevitable whetstone from his pocket. 'You say? How?'

  The Kielmark pushed off from the window. He bent, wrenched his throwing knife from the log, and thoughtfully tested the edge of the blade with his thumb. 'Shore patrol here captured a fishing boat off North Point. They found it crammed to the gunwales with Thienz-demons who thought they could drift off Cliffhaven's shores with impunity, even spy and pick the thoughts of my following. The stinking toads!'

  Corley's steel sheared across stone. 'Thienz lurking inside the bounds of Keithland? That's bold. I trust you taught them a lesson.'

  The Kielmark raised murderous eyes, the knife haft poised in his fist. 'I lost a man bringing those Accursed in. Two demons I killed outright, for that. The third died very slowly. It talked before the end.'

  Cautioned by his master's tautness, Corley stilled his hands. 'Was that wise?' With a single thought, a Thienz could relay its suffering clear back to Shadowfane.

  'Then their masters will think twice before they send another such envoy, won't they?' said the Kielmark. When Corley offered no comment, the King of Pirates turned on restless feet to the window. Moonlight silvered the curled hair on his crown as he continued. 'At first I thought that demons came seeking the Dreamweaver. But the Thienz I tortured said differently. Shadowfane seeks to locate the Isle of the Vaere. They tried tracing Moonless. Only my most reliable captain sailed them all over the Free Isles' Alliance, every place but the southwest reaches where she belonged. Man, I sweated and I counted hours until you made port. Thank Kor the weather went contrary. If my original orders hadn't been balked, who knows what might have resulted?'

  The Kielmark considered his captain, and frowned as he noted that whetstone and knife lay motionless. 'So?' he said softly. 'The Dreamweaver is on Imrill Kand, alone, but she can cloak herself with her craft. I trust Jaric remains under a guardsman's protection, securely inside the Alliance's defences at Landfast?'

  Corley placed his weapon on the bare wood of the table, then faced his master with steady eyes. 'Five weeks past, Jaric went to sea with Callinde. Not even Taien would say where he went.'

  The Kielmark exploded from the window. The candles in the sconces guttered furiously as he crossed the carpet. 'Great Fall, were you daft?'

  'No.' Corley smiled. Another man might hang for such a transgression; but he had stopped enemy knives at the Kielmark's back so many times, they might have been the same flesh, so tightly did their loyalties interweave. 'That boy is marked by fate. I saw a hill priestess name him Demonbane at the summerfair rites on Tierl Enneth. Her clans paid him homage like a holy one. He went, Lord. I doubt a man could have stopped him without causing him injury.'

  The Kielmark hefted his knife, impaled it in the trestle next to his captain's, then shrugged his massive shoulders in resignation. 'Either Jaric will return one day with a Firelord's powers, or else he'll wind up dead. I cannot shepherd every sorcerer's brat who rebels against fate. But Taen is another matter. Cliffhaven's debt to her is too great. You will despatch five ships to safeguard Imrill Kand.'

  'The fishermen there won't like interference,' Corley pointed out.

  The Kielmark slammed the table with his fist. 'Bedamned to the fishermen! Choose the finest crews in the harbour. Then return here and deliver your report.'

  Corley rose to depart with troubled thoughts. Unless the demons' true quarry was the Firelord's heir, why should Thienz risk themselves within the borders of Keithland seeking the Isle of the Vaere? No chart listed its position; even to find the place required the talents of a trained sorcerer. Now, too late, the captain regretted the fact that he had yielded to Taen's request. Jaric should never have been permitted to sail without escort.

  * * *

  Night fell swiftly in Keithland's lower latitudes. Braced against Callinde's sternpost, Jaric chewed a strip of dried meat and watched the afterglow of sunset dapple the western waters gold. Around him the sea stretched to the horizon, empty. A fortnight had passed since the peaked profile of Skane's Edge had disappeared astern. Still the boy found no trace of the fabled Isle of the Vaere. Jaric swallowed the last of his savourless meal and rubbed his hands on his breeches. The water flasks were nearly empty. If he encountered no land in the next three days, he would be obliged to head about and return to Westisle to restock his supplies.

  A glance at the compass showed the wind steady from the south. Jaric ran a calculating glance over the mild swell and the clear arch of the sky, then sheeted headsails and spanker on opposite sides. With the mainsail furled on the yard, Callinde would ride out the night hove to. After a quick check to be sure all gear was stowed, the boy settled in his accustomed nook in the stern.

  Twilight deepened over the face of the ocean. Rocked upon the waves, Jaric lay still and listened to the slap of Callinde's halyards. Stars pricked the cobalt of the zenith overhead. The boy watched them brighten, and wondered whether Taen watched the same sky many leagues to the north. Presently weariness overcame him. His eyes fell closed. Of necessity, Jaric slept lightly at sea; even a slight change in weather could endanger him if he failed to rouse in time to adjust Callinde's sails.

  Alone in a world of wind and waves, Jaric rested dreamlessly. When the late-rising summer moon lifted above the horizon, a presence brushed his mind. Gently, furtively, it probed his sleeping thoughts for information.

  Jaric stirred against the stern seat, vaguely aware the disturbance originated elsewhere.

  'Taen?' he murmured, wondering whether she might have tried contact. But the presence subsided at the mention of her name. Jaric sighed. He nestled his head in the sun-browned crook of his elbow and settled back into slumber. The moon rose high over Callinde's starboard quarter, tracing silver highlights over the wave crests. But Jaric no longer drifted alone. A whisper of foam sheared the water. A tiller creaked, and a dense black triangle of sail eclipsed the sky. As Callinde plunged into shadow, a wiry figure leaned from the newcomer's rigging and snagged the smaller craft's stay. Froglike hands caught her thwarts. In silence, two other figures leapt across the water between the rails.

  Callinde rocked under the stealthy weight of boarders. Jaric roused in the stern, eyes opened and alert. Dark as ink against the stars, he saw two crested, lizardlike heads. Blunt, smooth-skinned faces trained towards him, revealing a glint of gimlet eyes and no nostrils at all. With a jolt of fear, Jaric recognized the Thienz. The creatures had been hunting since Taen's encounter with Shadowfane; but Jaric's stop at Landfast had muddled their search. Thienz had overtaken Callinde much farther south than they planned. Though the demons' eyesight was all but useless, they would stalk prey by sensing the thoughts in their victims' minds.

  Desperate and frightened, Jaric fixed his attention upon the innocuous memory of a book he had copied as an apprentice scribe. The text had expounded at boring length upon the particulars of planting; in hopes that farming might mask his intent from the Thienz, the boy eased back his sleeve, where he kept a knife to slash rigging in emergencies. The haft slipped coldly into
his palm. One Thienz stiffened in the bow. Jaric jerked his blade from the scabbard and threw.

  Steel flashed and struck. Air whuffed through the demon's gill flaps. It staggered backwards, the knife buried to the hilt in the folds of its broad neck.

  Expecting the swift, crippling attack upon the mind which had brought down Deison Corley, Jaric kicked off from the stern seat. He could not know that, even untrained, the intensity of his inborn potential made his awareness difficult to grapple. His hands shook as he tripped the latch on the locker beneath the steering oar and snatched the spare rigging knife from its bracket. Bitterly he regretted the sword left on Moonless as he confronted the demon who remained.

  It carried a short, curved sabre, unsuitable for throwing, but deadly enough against a man armed with nothing but a knife. Jaric moved forward with caution. Frantically he reviewed the strategies taught by Corley and Brith. The Thienz did not wait. Disadvantaged by poor eyesight, and sensing murder in the boy's mind, it raised its blade to cut the head stay and bring down mast and rigging in a tangle to trap its adversary.

  Jaric launched himself with a shout. Unable to clear the mast before the demon's blade fell, he sawed frantically at the headsail halyard just above the cleat. Plies popped and parted, and the line snapped. Loosened canvas slithered in a heap over the bow. Knocked off balance, the Thienz tumbled across the thwart with a croak of surprise. Its sword flailed clumsily through the air as Callinde swung into the wind. Jaric lunged and stabbed it in the back. Flesh shuddered under his hand as he jerked his steel free for a second strike, then a third. The slick heat of the creature's blood on his hands caused the breath to gag in his throat. Half-sick with shock, Jaric stumbled back from his dying enemy. He shrank against the thwart and only that moment noticed the boat which trailed Callinde, a second party of demons poised by her rail to board. Moonlight glanced off blowguns and darts pinched in demon fists. Jaric freed his feet from the miring folds of the headsail. Even with his enemy half-blind, numbers threw the odds against him. Very likely the darts carried poison.