Keeper of the Keys

by Janny Wurts

  A chill roughened Jaric's skin. He looked up, perturbed, and through tangles of his own hair peered at the horizon. There, after days of brute suffering and struggle against the elements, lay a sight to strike him to the heart: a black sloop sailed against a dirty drift of storm cloud. Her course bore directly for Callinde. Stripped by the storm of his mists and illusions, Maelgrim Dark-dreamer closed in for his conquest.

  Jaric cast down his bailing scoop. Screaming denial, he lunged to unfurl the main. Yet even as his fingers prised the halyards from the cleat, he understood that such effort was hopeless. The winds had already shifted west. With her headsail in shreds, Callinde could make no headway to weather. Cornered now without alternative, Jaric abandoned the sail. Left no time for recriminations, he reached with stinging fingers and jerked off the thong which hung Anskiere's wards from his neck.

  The pouch was sodden, the knotted ties swollen impossibly with damp. Jaric cursed. The little air pocketed within might prevent the Keys from sinking if he cast them into the sea still wrapped. Dreading the attack which might rip his mind at any moment, Jaric reached for his rigging knife. Too frantic to agonize over failure, he slashed; and the cube of dark basalt tumbled out into his palm.

  The surface of the stone was unnaturally warm to the touch. Jaric turned the Keys over, and light rinsed his face, sudden, blue-white, and blinding. The falcon device set into the face of the cube glowed with a fierce energy that waxed brighter by the second. Terrified such change might be provoked by the meddling of demons, Jaric smothered the brilliance with his hands. Contact blistered his flesh. He fell back with a cry, but the resonance in the ward stone died away, keyed to response by a force entirely separate. A flash like lightning split the air. Mast and yard and rigging jumped out, inked lines against light. The ocean gleamed bright as molten metal, and Callinde became consumed by a scintillating explosion of rainbows that spiralled Jaric downward into dark.

  * * *

  Blackness suffused the boy's senses for an unknown interval, then tore asunder as a crackling burst of energy rent the air. Sparks pocked his vision, cold-white as starfields called up by Llondian imaging. Light followed. Jaric opened his eyes to sunshine, bewildered, shaken, and now certain that the sorcery which had transformed storm-torn night into daylight was no invention of Anskiere's. The Keys to Elrinfaer were now cool in his hand. Ivainson tucked them in his shirt and gripped Callinde's thwart. Tackle creaked as he straightened to view his surroundings. No sign remained of the demon fleet. His boat drifted alone upon a sea gone calm as burnished metal. No land relieved the distant edge of the sky; only an odd, silvery haze hung over the horizon. For no reason Jaric could name, the air smelled wrong, as if the untimely advent of day had also altered the season. The wind carried a tang of frost.

  A glance at the compass showed the needle spinning in lost circles across the cardinal points of direction. Jaric checked in alarm. Denied sure means of navigation, he sought the position of the sun, and that moment discovered he was not alone.

  A tiny man sat on Callinde's bow. He perched on the wet wood like a toy, stiffly formal in a fawn tunic and dark brown hose. The laces of his sleeves and boot cuffs were fringed with feathers and bells. Black eyes regarded Jaric from a face nestled amid windblown tangles of hair and beard.

  Jaric reached reflexively for the knife at his wrist. His hand slapped an empty sheath. Too late he recalled the dagger dropped in the moment when sorcery had ripped him from reality.

  'Violence will not avail you.' Bells jingled as the strange man sprang from the rail. Callinde failed to rock beneath his weight as he landed, and his shoulder barely topped the rim of the portside locker.

  Jaric backed until the hard edge of the stempost jabbed his spine. 'Who are you?'

  'Keeper of the Keys, do you not know?' The little man tilted his head, fetched a briar pipe from his pocket, and thrust the stem between his teeth. With no pause to strike a light, he blew a smoke ring in the air and vanished.

  Jaric shouted in astonishment. He dashed to the mast, but found no trace of his strange visitor. Only the smoke ring remained, drifting into a smeared oval above the ripped fabric of the headsail.

  'I am Tamlin, and you trespass upon the domain of the Vaere,' said a sudden voice from behind.

  Jaric spun. The creature stood poised on the chart locker, his wrinkled face insouciant. A fresh triplet of smoke rings drifted around his head.

  Ivainson steadied shaken nerves, strove to act as if such vanishings and reappearings held no strangeness at all; but his voice betrayed uncertainty. The forces which had plucked him headlong from Maelgrim's path had been Vaerish, and the mystery of them overwhelmed. 'Surely you know why I seek the fabled isle.'

  Tamlin gestured, his movement an indignant flurry of feathers and bells. 'Fabled? You presently observe otherwise. And demons tracked you, even over water. That's trouble more grave than you know.'

  Aware the being he confronted would abide by no human code, Jaric answered with care. 'A seeress named me the bane of demonkind.'

  'And well she may,' said the Vaere. 'But Kor's Accursed grow bold in their plot to defeat Keithland. Now, after centuries of striving, they have what they sought longest, a man with a sorcerer's potential whose loyalty they command. Maelgrim is their supreme weapon. Dare you oppose the designs of beings many times more powerful than yourself? You could die, and still save nothing.'

  Poised with his hands against the mast, Jaric felt his palms break into sweat. Had he travelled so far and overcome such odds, had hillfolk died to aid him in reaching this place, only to see him refused through Vaerish caprice? Shaken badly, Jaric fought through diffidence to respond. 'I am the Firelord's son,' he said grimly. 'Gladly would I leave responsibility to another, but Ivain left no better heir than me.'

  Tamlin tilted his head as though waiting for the boy to qualify. But Jaric added nothing. At length the fey man raised his brows. 'Very well. If you prove worthy of your father's heritage, you shall undertake the Cycle of Fire.'

  That moment, though the sun shone warm on his back, Jaric felt chilled to the heart.

  Tamlin raised his chin. 'Listen closely and follow my instructions. The weather will change. When it does, you must sail before the wind. Take no heed of your compass. If you delay, even for a fraction of an instant, your life could be forfeit.' Beads, bells, and feathers jangled as the Vaere raised his arms. Without warning, he clapped his hands and vanished.

  'Wait!' Not at all certain he had understood such instructions, Jaric shouted Tamlin's name.

  The little man did not reappear. Almost immediately icy breezes puckered the sea. Caught with his spanker snarled and his jib in ribbons from the storm, Jaric leapt and freed his last functional sail. Callinde's square main unfurled from the yardarm; fortunately the boat required no other canvas for a downwind course. Yet as the boy moved to set the sheets, he frowned in puzzlement, for what weather he received came from no fixed direction; the breeze ruffles on the water seemed contrary and unstable. Even as Jaric sought to decipher their patterns, lightning jagged the sky. The air went dark as ink. Wind howled astern like the roar of an angry giant. Jaric bounded aft and seized the steering oar, just as canvas cracked taut aloft. Deafened by a stupendous peal of thunder, he felt Callinde reel forward under the blind fury of the elements.

  Jaric wrestled the helm by touch. Waves broke into whitecaps under the stern. Spray splashed his face, and wind stung his back, sharp as a midwinter gale with the scent of snow. But the boy had no chance to contemplate the inexplicable shift of seasons; whirled like a leaf in a maelstrom, he fought to steady his course. Sudden energy slashed the sky. For an instant, the air seemed to scintillate, smashed to a prismatic orchestra of colour.

  Then the wind died to a breath. Callinde rocked upright. Blocks squeaked as her canvas billowed and settled into a gentle curve from the yardarm. Jaric blinked, restored once more to sunlight. Spray-soaked and shaking, he found himself sailing under the mild, warmth of spring. The ocean ah
ead lay empty no longer. An islet rose like an emerald amid the waves. Beaches glittered, trackless and fine as powdered marble beyond the surf, and dunes crowned with grasses lifted against darker stands of cedar. The trees themselves towered spear-shaft straight, unscathed by ocean storm or woodcutter's axe. Confronted by a shoreline so peaceful it seemed bewitched, Jaric forgot to breathe.

  Surf nudged the steering oar. Callinde surged shoreward on the sparkling crest of a swell. Recalled to his seamanship, Jaric recovered his breath with a jerk. He cast the sheet lines free and swung the yard across the wind just as Callinde's keel grated on sand. The son of Ivain caught a line and leapt the thwart. Barefoot, salt-stained, and weary, he splashed through the shallows and set foot on the Isle of the Vaere.

  By its very stillness, the place intimidated; the presence of the boat seemed a blasphemous intrusion. Harried by uneasiness, Jaric immersed himself in the ordinary. With careful hands he landed Callinde, lowered the yard, and lashed the torn sails. While he delved among the spare lines for a block and tackle to beach his craft above the surf, Tamlin reappeared.

  The little man gestured with an agitated flurry of bells.

  'No need for that, boy. Can't you see? The weather here never changes.'

  Jaric set his shoulder against the side of his boat, rope trailing from his fingers. 'What about tide?'

  The Vaere set his hands on his hips. 'Mortal, you jest. Water and weather abide here unchanged, until the day the first riddle is answered, or unless Kor's Accursed learn the heart of Vaerish mystery.'

  Jaric restored the rope to the locker and reluctantly fastened the latch. Callinde had been the proudest possession of an aged fisherman; the boy hesitated to entrust her cherished hull to the vagaries of an enchanted isle.

  Bells clashed as Tamlin stamped his foot. 'Mortal fool. I am the master of space and time. Are you doubting my ability to safeguard simple timber and cloth?'

  'No.' Jaric ran his eye over the boat, distressed that wood and rigging should suddenly seem so frail. By the time he recovered the courage to inquire what the first riddle might be, Tamlin vanished. Not even footprints remained to mark the place where the Vaere had stood on the sand.

  A mocking tinkle of bells sounded beyond the dunes. 'Keeper of the Keys, no man since the founders of Keithland remembers the first riddle. But if you seek a sorcerer's mastery, you must go to the grove at the forest's centre.'

  Jaric loosed an exasperated sigh. When Tamlin did not reappear, he rummaged through Callinde's gear until he located his boots. Then, with a shrug of resignation, he donned his footgear and hiked inland towards the dark stand of cedars.

  The forest was rich with shadows after the reflective brilliance of the beach. In a single step, Jaric plunged from light into trackless tangles of undergrowth. His feet sank soundlessly into moss. The wood sheltered no wildlife; at a glance he saw that deer had never browsed the lower branches of the trees. The ground showed no trace of game trails, and since the moment he landed, the only birdsong Jaric noticed had been the sour call of sand swallows. The sole sound to disturb the stillness was the snap of sticks beneath his boots.

  The gloom deepened. At first Jaric attributed the dimness to denser foliage, but as he pressed forward through the matted growth of thicket and gully, sunbeams no longer dappled the moss underfoot. Farther on, the light which filtered through the trees shone eerily silver, as if in this forest time itself stood suspended in the interval between sunset and darkness.

  'I am the master of time and space,' Tamlin had declared at the seaside. Unable to locate the disc of the sun, denied even the crudest means of guidance, Jaric battled uneasiness. With no visible effort, the Vaere had caused day, night, and seasons to change upon the face of the open sea. Here the boy sensed that he trod soil beyond the borders of any land known by men.

  The wood grew darker. Twigs and trunks lay limned against shadow like an etching rendered in moonlight; yet no moon gleamed overhead. Jaric's step faltered. Sweating with apprehension, he thought of Taen, remembered how her eyes looked when she laughed, or badgered Corley about his quick temper. Fear of the brother left free to murder in Keithland drove Jaric forward. He crashed recklessly through the next stand of overgrowth. Light glimmered ahead, soft as summer twilight. Jaric stopped in awe, all terror forgotten. Through the black fringes of the cedars he beheld the grove of the Vaere.

  Grasses spread green beneath a towering circle of oaks. Grey trunks rose like pillars in the gloom, supporting leafy crowns which arched into a vaulted ceiling overhead. Jaric stepped to the edge of the clearing. He felt springy turf give under his boots. Constellations of tiny flowers studded the ground, and the strange, silvery light seemed to blur all concept of time. Here lay the magic and the mystery of the Vaere. No man could turn back from this place; to enter the grove was to yield mortal flesh to forces which could alter the progression of nature with impunity.

  Jaric crossed the boundary of the oaks with barely a pause to reflect. A stressful, tempestuous year had passed since he had fled Morbrith Keep, clinging helplessly to the mane of a stolen horse. Here for the first time he found peace, and a silence more abiding than the central shrine in Kor's cathedral at Landfast. Jaric settled himself to wait. The perfume of the flowers hung heavy upon the air. Weary from Anskiere's storm, and lulled by the changeless twilight, he sat on the grass and rested.

  At first nothing happened. Jaric had time to order his thoughts, to realize at last that his safety from demons was secured. Granted reprieve from the demands of survival, he examined the guilt so recently and painfully inflicted by the seeress, whose clansmen had died for his uncertainty at Landfast. This the grove's stillness touched also. Inside the achievement of Vaerish protection, life and death became framed by a greater truth. Jaric understood that for all her far-seer's wisdom, the Lady of Cael's Falls had accused him wrongly.

  Had he chosen his Firelord's inheritance without first finding himself, even had he acted in earnest duty for loved ones he longed to protect, he would have failed Tamlin's initial assessment. The Stormwarden had stated as much from his icy prison on Cliffhaven. No man could be forced to a sorcerer's mastery. A challenge as stringent as the Cycle of Fire required a whole heart and a settled mind.

  Drowsy now, Jaric recalled another scene, and a half-forgotten promise of Anskiere's that he would receive his heart's desire if he succeeded in safeguarding the Keys to Elrinfaer. But the memory of the boy he had once been, and what outgrown longings might have shaped his hopes, became obscured by the vision of Taen. The last time he had seen her had been in Moonless's chart room, the lantern tinting her skin with the delicacy of fine porcelain. Hair had cloaked her shoulders like starless night. Aching for the sight of her, but free now to appreciate love as a miracle separate from his happiness, Jaric pondered the words she had spoken then. 'The sanctuary towers contain keys to Kor's Sacred Fires, also answers to the riddles of eternal space and time.'

  Now the boy wondered whether Vaerish mystery might be linked to the same knowledge. But weariness overwhelmed him before he could reflect. Ivainson Jaric closed his eyes. Surrendered to the enchantment of the fabled isle, he fell dreamlessly asleep, even as his father had before him.

  Epilogue

  Anskiere's great storm blew and raged across the southwest reaches, to spend its fury in the empty seas far south of the Free Isles. The sorcery of its binding dissipated finally, leaving swells that churned and rolled green, bearded with flotsam and frothy mats of weed. There, across leagues of empty ocean, Taen threaded her awareness in dream-search. She found no boats, only smashed spars and ripped lengths of planking, rafted together sometimes with shreds of sails and snarled tackle. The Stormwarden's tempest had ravaged the dark fleet from Shadowfane. Scavenger fish now fed on the remains of the Thienz; if Maelgrim Dark-dreamer escaped the same fate, the Dreamweaver's probe detected no trace of his presence.

  At last, content, Taen withdrew. As she collapsed the net of her awareness, she sensed isolated points of ene
rgy across Keithland's isles and mainlands. Here the seeress of Cael's Falls laid flowers of thanks and offering before the spring which gave rise to her powers. North and east, the King of Pirates penned orders on Cliffhaven, recalling his captains from patrol off Felwaithe and directing them instead to attend the merchant shipping which plied the straits. And in burrows in the wilds well hidden from the eyes of men, Llondelei demons reared dumb, unenlightened cubs with one less of their far-seers' prophecies waiting for fulfilment. The heir of Ivain Firelord had safely reached haven on the Isle of the Vaere, to challenge the Cycle of Fire for his mastery.

  Taen roused fully to sunlight and the inquisitive tug of a goat who sampled a taste of her hair. She shouted, laughing, and, with the mercurial energy she had always shown as a child, sprang to her feet and chased the creature back to the flock. Then she turned her face to the wind, which smelled of autumn, and started home. Shadowfane still held demons who hated and plotted, while Jaric must brave the perils of a sorcerer's passage to power. But when the winds blew fair and favourably, the daughter of an Imrill Kand fisherman would not fret upon storms that might bring ruin. Tomorrow could only come after today.

  Here ends Book Two of The Cycle of Fire

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Betrayal

  Chapter 2: Keeper of the Keys

  Chapter 3: Warning

  Chapter 4: King of Pirates

  Chapter 5: Crossing

  Chapter 6: Landfast

  Chapter 7: Dream-storm

  Chapter 8: Search

  Chapter 9: Ash Flute

  Chapter 10: Tierl Enneth

  Chapter 11: Corinne Dane

  Chapter 12: Destiny

  Chapter 13: Maelgrim

  Chapter 14: Hunted

  Chapter 15: Stalkers