The Keeper of the Mist

by Rachel Neumeier

  Keri nodded. “I’m not contemptuous of player magic,” she said suggestively. Then she waited. The seconds ticked by, stretching out to minutes. She let them stretch.

  “Very well! Perhaps players have a little more magic than they admit,” her brother said at last. He spread a hand above the sprawled sorcerer puppet. Its wooden limbs twitched and moved; it sat up and shook its head as though awakening, then scrambled to its feet, strings dangling limp.

  “Oh,” said Keri. She didn’t leap from her chair and back away, but she did twitch a little. That puppet had been spooky before. She said, “No, you definitely didn’t get that from our father, did you?” She looked at the puppet closely. The way it held itself, the way it angled its head, was very like Eroniel Kaskarian. She shivered. “That’s a bit…Look, would you mind not doing that with that particular puppet?”

  “Sends cold shivers over your skin, this one,” agreed Lucas, smiling, not very kindly. She had made him show her this; he plainly did not mind unsettling her a bit. But he closed his hand into a loose fist, and the puppet collapsed, strings trailing. It was just carved and painted wood after all.

  “So you learned that from your mother,” Keri said slowly. “Along with how to slip back and forth between Eschalion and Nimmira like a little mouse. What else did you learn from her? How to find someone Magister Eroniel has kidnapped? How to get into whatever prison he took Cort to and get out again? Will your mother help us do that?”

  “Keri—”

  “Lucas, we’re all going to have to take risks now. It’s too late to hope we can stay safely at home. Sometimes,” she said, looking him in the eye, “sometimes the mice have to dare the wide world, even though they know there are cats.”

  “You can’t leave Nimmira,” he said sharply. “Don’t even think it, Keri! You hold all our magic in you. You daren’t carry that to Eschalion.”

  Keri hated that he was right, but she was glad he’d said so—his protest made her a little more sure that she could trust him, that he wouldn’t betray her. She liked how he’d said our magic, just like that, quick and urgent and not thinking about it, as though it had never occurred to him to regard himself as belonging to any land but Nimmira. But she only said, “I know that. I know, all right? But whoever does go will have help. Osman the Younger, maybe. I’m not sure who else. I’m still thinking about that….”

  “Yes. You know…” His tone, which had been edged, became gentler. “You know, sister, Magister Eroniel will almost certainly have given our Doorkeeper straight into the hands of the Wyvern King. And then there’s no knowing what Aranaon Mirtaelior will do to him, or with him. Or how long it will take him to do it.” He didn’t say, Cort may already be dead, or stripped of magic, or made over into something that neither you nor I nor even his own brother would recognize. He didn’t have to say anything. It was too obvious.

  Keri didn’t want to think about any of those possibilities. But she made herself meet her brother’s eyes. “That’s all the more reason to move quickly, isn’t it? Cort can close himself off, I think, for a while. He’ll lose the magic Nimmira invested in him, but not immediately, according to the Timekeeper. We need to get him back before that happens, but we don’t have even that much time, because really we have to get him back before Aranaon Mirtaelior can find a way to open him up and strip the magic right out of him. We need Osman the Younger, but we can’t depend on him. Or at least, I don’t want to depend on him. He’s not one of us. We need someone of our own, someone we can trust.”

  “Not me, oh no. Listen, Keri, I’m a terrible coward—”

  “Oh, you are not.” Keri fixed her brother with a steady look, the kind her mother would have used to pin an importunate male customer in place. She was satisfied to find that it pinned this wild brother of hers as well. She said, “I can’t leave Nimmira. You have some magic of your own, magic not bound to Nimmira, and you have special knowledge of Eschalion, and you can get your mother and the other players to help us, if anyone can. So we require your assistance in this. I require your assistance in this. I remember plainly you offered me your service, Lucas. Well, I’m claiming it now.”

  “You’re an uncomfortably decisive girl. Has anyone ever mentioned that to you?”

  Keri only wished that were true. “I’ll take that as a compliment. You’re going, Lucas. You’re my brother, and you belong at least as much to Nimmira as to anywhere else.” Meeting his eyes, she said firmly, “I trust you.”

  “Brann is your brother and belongs to Nimmira.”

  “You’re not Brann.”

  His mouth twisted in irony, but he gave her a small acknowledging nod.

  “If Magister Eroniel has Cort somewhere, or even if he’s already given him to the Wyvern King, you might know where—or your mother might, or one of her friends. Or they can find out. Aranaon Mirtaelior won’t be guarding his citadel against us. Why would he? I don’t think he’ll expect us to do anything whatever. You know how Magister Eroniel was, how he took us all so lightly.”

  “My mother always said to keep clear of sorcerers, and never mind she didn’t always follow her own advice.” Lucas was smiling, but not with much humor. He picked up the puppet again, untangling the strings with an expert flick of his wrist. Then he stood it on the table and let it go. The puppet drew itself up and tilted its head, somehow taking on a shadow of Magister Eroniel’s arrogance. “Here I am, safe in the Wyvern King’s citadel. I’m not worried a bit about little peasant girls from tiny kingdoms tucked along the edge of great Eschalion….That arrogance may be an advantage for us. I doubt Magister Eroniel will look for trouble from you, because you’re right. He thinks no more of you than he thinks of a dog or a cow. Anyway, the boundary’s not entirely gone, is it? For all we know, he may still be having a bit of trouble remembering quite where he picked up Cort or exactly what he meant to do with him.”

  “We can’t count on that.”

  “No, I realize that.”

  “Well, then?” asked Keri. “There’s us, and there’s your mother and her friends, and there’s Osman the Younger and his men. How can we fail? Especially because we don’t dare fail. But the first thing is for you to show us the player’s little gap folded between our land and Eschalion.”

  “Well…” His mouth twisted, then curved upward. “I promised my mother I would never reveal the mouse gap to anyone other than another player, but here we are.”

  Keri nodded.

  Lucas was definitely smiling now. “It would be quite a trick on Aranaon Mirtaelior. In plays, you know, the common people always get the better of the sorcerer. In the end. I think my mother would appreciate a clever plot twist to this play. And naturally you’re quite right: we should move fast. Very well. Yes. I can show you the way. The rest, I can’t promise.”

  “I know. All I’m really sure of is, we have to get Cort back. I’ll convince Lord Osman to help us. I will. Somehow.” She hoped she could. She wondered about these players, who slipped through cracks between the great kingdoms and little Nimmira. She wondered about them very much. At the moment, she wondered mostly about whether they would cooperate with Bear soldiers from Tor Carron. Lucas would just have to make sure they did.

  She said out loud, “You’ll know how to handle those people, won’t you, brother dear? You can take our people through the player’s gap. And you can persuade your mother and the players of Eschalion to help us. And then we’ll get Cort back, and then we’ll fix the boundary, and then everything will be the way it’s supposed to be!” She stopped, surprised to find she was breathing fast. And she was on her feet, too. She didn’t remember getting up.

  “Did I forget to mention I’m a terrible coward?” said Lucas, leaning away from her. “Terrible. Really. You have no idea.”

  Keri laughed. She couldn’t help it.

  “It’s true!” Lucas protested. But his mouth crooked again into an unwilling smile. “Though this would make a splendid play, so there’s that….”

  “Afterward,” Keri
promised. “Afterward, you can make it all into a play and design the puppets for it any way you like. They’ll still be putting it on a hundred years from now.” She paused. “Or they will if Nimmira is still here in a hundred years.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. No need to be so emphatic, sister dear.” Lucas got to his feet with a lingering glance at the open book of plays and the abandoned puppets lying near it. Reaching out, he tipped the book gently shut. Though he didn’t touch it, the sorcerer puppet lifted and turned its head as though it had heard some faint, alarming sound in the distance. “Listen!” said Lucas softly. “It’s the sound of outrageous plans being laid in tiny, insignificant countries far, far away….I’m sure the Wyvern King won’t tremble at our coming,” he added with a sidelong look toward Keri. “But he ought to.”

  “I’d rather he didn’t know anything at all about our coming till we’re out of his kingdom again,” Keri said fervently, and rolled her eyes as her brother laughed.

  Osman Tor the Younger plainly could not decide whether to blame Keri or ill luck or the devious plotting of the Wyvern King when Keri told him what had happened.

  Well, she didn’t exactly tell him everything that had happened. Nothing about Brann and what he had done, or tried to do. Nothing about why the boundaries of Nimmira had been weakened in the first place, or how impossible it was to close them again. She didn’t need to explain any of that, and it would make Nimmira look terrible: corruption and greed and treachery everywhere. It wasn’t like that, she knew it wasn’t really like that, but she couldn’t bear to have Lord Osman know about her father and about Brann.

  But just telling Lord Osman that Magister Eroniel had kidnapped Cort, that Cort as the Doorkeeper could open or close every border and boundary and gate of Nimmira, and that Magister Eroniel had already used Cort to try to force open Nimmira and she feared he, or even the Wyvern King himself, might try that again and this time succeed—this much of the truth was entirely sufficient to compel Lord Osman’s full attention.

  “Why under the broad sky of the wide world did you ever invite any sorcerer of Eschalion into your pretty little country in the first place?” he demanded, not quite able to keep the exasperation out of his tone, though Keri could tell he was trying. “Everyone knows better than to trust the people of the Wyvern!”

  Keri, finding it impossible to answer this with any patience, looked at Tassel. She had insisted on Tassel’s attendance at this meeting, and this was exactly why.

  Tassel immediately glided forward two steps, laying her hand on Lord Osman’s arm, and gazing up at him. She managed this even though she was just about exactly as tall as he was. She said in a tone of soft appeal, “But we didn’t invite Magister Eroniel, of course. He came because, when we opened the border between our country and yours, we accidentally opened a tiny little gap for a Wyvern sorcerer, too. So we tried to make it seem as though we had let him come. But you surely realize,” she added earnestly, “we did not want him at all. Anyone can see that Tor Carron, not Eschalion, is our natural ally.”

  Lord Osman smiled at Tassel. But he also said, kindly enough but with no sign that he was persuaded by her wiles, “Naturally you would say so to me, now.” He patted her hand where it rested on his arm, but he also moved a step away from her and turned back to Keri, leaving Tassel gazing at him in startled offense. Tassel was not used to her wiles failing.

  Keri, who was not used to that, either, blinked at Lord Osman for an instant, nonplussed. But then she collected herself and said, following Tassel’s lead, “We thought we could just be polite to Magister Eroniel for a few days while we—you and I, your people and ours—became better acquainted. We thought we could coax that little gap to close, but leave the border open between Nimmira and Tor Carron. Cort thought he had realized how it might be done. Only then Magister Eroniel took him, and it was too late.”

  “Exactly,” said Tassel, smoothly picking up when Keri ran out of breath or nerve or inspiration. She didn’t step toward the young Bear Lord again, but folded her hands in front of her skirts and took a more matter-of-fact approach. “So you see why we must appeal to you, Lord Osman: because we are natural allies, whether or not any handfasting agreements have been made between our peoples. You know Eschalion so much better than we do, and Keri’s brother Lucas knows it better still; between you, surely you can find Cort. And as for getting him out—well, Tor Carron is the only country between the sea and the sand that the Wyvern King has failed to conquer. We know it can’t be just the cliffs at your border. You have some way to resist his sorcery, don’t you?”

  Keri added, “You even said so, Lord Osman. One or two protections against Aranaon Mirtaelior’s sorcery. That’s what you said. That’s more than the rest of us have.” She glanced at his garnet earring, then raised her eyebrows, knowing he must be familiar with blood sorcery, with the kind of blood magic they did in Tor Carron, all wrapped up with fixing magic into gemstones. Lord Osman’s earring must be magic, or what hope did they have of getting Cort back?

  She and Tassel and Lord Osman were gathered in the Little Salon, Tassel having declared that its pale formality was just right for letting the Bear Lord know that this was an official meeting rather than any kind of intimate gathering. Not that anybody could easily have mistaken this gathering for intimate, because not only were Keri and Tassel and Lord Osman present, but also Domeric and Linnet and one of the Bear soldiers. Not Lucas, who had gone to do something to find the player’s gap, or to stabilize it or open it or something, Keri wasn’t quite sure, but her brother had seemed to know what he should do. She knew where he was, and was uneasily aware that probably a gap in Nimmira’s border was right near him, but even knowing it was there, she couldn’t find it with her inner eye. It was strange, realizing there was something within the borders of Nimmira she couldn’t see. Her Doorkeeper could have found it, probably.

  She couldn’t let herself think about Cort. She would be too afraid and then she wouldn’t be able to think about anything.

  Domeric was there because he was supposed to intimidate Lord Osman a little, if necessary. Not that anybody had said so, exactly, but it was a role Domeric was obviously used to playing.

  Linnet had been Domeric’s idea, but a good one: the other girl was obviously accomplished at playing roles, too. She did not cling to Domeric, but poured wine for everyone, moving softly and gracefully. She smiled prettily, and gazed admiringly at Lord Osman whenever he spoke and at the Bear soldier Lord Osman had brought with him on, apparently, general principles, and nodded at all the right places, looking grave and concerned.

  Keri only wished she were as good a player as Tassel and Linnet.

  Lord Osman seemed to find her explanations believable, though. He nodded in grim agreement as she finished. “Yes, those of my family have one or two protections, but nothing that I would dare set against Aranaon Mirtaelior himself.” He brushed his thumb against the garnet cabochon at his ear. “This is merely a small thing. We manage only small magics in Tor Carron.”

  “Blood sorcery is never trivial,” Tassel said firmly. “Besides, even this is more than we have.” She had almost entirely dropped her pose of innocent helplessness, speaking instead with cool practicality.

  Lord Osman gazed at her for a moment, then looked away with what seemed something of an effort. He said, turning to Domeric, “The Wyvern King is not kind to foreign sorcerers; he always wants to tear their magic out of them so he can see its pattern and design and take it for his own if he pleases. He respects nothing but power and admires nothing but sorcerous skill. Folk with normal blood running in their veins rather than sorcery…he doesn’t care about such folk at all.” He gave everyone an apologetic little nod. “I fear he thinks of ordinary folk as we think of cattle or dogs. The people of Tor Carron are not a magical people, Lady Kerianna. My family has long been determined that Aranaon Mirtaelior will never take them under his shadow.”

  “Indeed,” said Keri, and looked at Tassel.

  Tassel was g
iving Lord Osman a thoughtful look, as though she suspected she heard a false note somewhere in this. But she only said seriously, “So, you see, we are indeed natural allies, Lord Osman: your people, who must invest their magic in gemstones, and ours, whose magic all resides in the land itself and manifests as it will. Especially now, after what has happened.”

  “We thought of you at once in this disaster,” added Keri.

  “We are not asking you to lend your men to any sort of direct attack,” Domeric put in, his deep, heavy voice rumbling with authority. “We know we have no hope of defeating the Wyvern King through force of arms. But a careful little raid…just a few men to slip in and out…”

  “Any small magic you might possess,” Tassel said, looking pointedly at his earring.

  “Anything you could suggest, to help our people recover our Doorkeeper,” Keri said. “We actually hope to have one or another advantage when it comes to finding things out, including finding out where Cort is. But getting him away—I don’t know how we’re to do that. But daring raids can’t be anything new for your people, Lord Osman. Your men would no doubt find all this very easy and familiar.”

  Lord Osman spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I fear not, alas. My father would not forgive me if I cast the lives of his men on such a roll of the dice! You believe that your Doorkeeper has gone into the hands of the Wyvern King himself; you do not deny this? No, indeed. Well, then, it’s sorcery you’ll need, yet I must warn you: you will certainly not defeat Aranaon Mirtaelior through sorcery! His Wyvern sorcerers draw magic directly out of air and sunlight, so it is said, and out of the mortal blood of those who fall into their power. And the Wyvern King is the greatest sorcerer who has ever lived. What you ask is impossible.”

  “Indeed—” began Domeric.

  “But we can defeat the Wyvern King through sorcery,” Keri interrupted. “You must realize that Nimmira has always defeated Aranaon Mirtaelior through sorcery! We don’t lift magic out of blood or sunlight, but it is in us, in our land, and not even the Wyvern King is stronger than the land of Nimmira. Our whole history shows that! We can defeat his sorcery, and we have, and we will do it again, Lord Osman—if we can bring our Doorkeeper back into our land. You must advise us!”