Guardians of the Keep

by Carol Berg

  We padded through a university, its cloistered walkways broken up by weeds, its lawns and gardens long overgrown, entangling fallen statuary and broken stone benches in an impenetrable blanket of briars. At one end of a weed-choked quadrangle stood a ruined observatory. The domed roof that had once housed seeing devices used to study the heavens had caved in long ago, and many of the intricate carvings of heavenly objects that banded its walls were damaged beyond repair. The overgrown sculpture garden, the site of Dassine’s murder, lay quiet.

  Bareil said the palace was defended against hidden portals, so we would have to enter by one of its five gates. Almost an hour after leaving the inn, we stood across a courtyard from two slender towers that sheltered a single thick wooden gate into the palace precincts. This courtyard, tucked away behind the palace, almost hacked out of the rock of the mountainside, was not one of the commonly used entries, Bareil told me, but one used for prisoners being brought to the palace for trial or the royal family’s personal visitors who wished to be discreet. No guard was in sight.

  “This gate is sealed except when it is needed,” said Bareil. “Guards are unnecessary except under a direct assault.”

  “Then how are we to get in?”

  He smiled up at me, and whispered, “This is your house, my lord. The locks and seals will know you.”

  I hadn’t considered that I could just walk in. I was not stealing into a place where I had no legitimate business. If I wanted, I could stroll through the front doors of this place and proclaim myself home—though I didn’t think that would be clever.

  We slipped around the shadowed edges of the courtyard and came to the great wooden door banded with steel. When I laid my hand on the thick latch, barbs of enchantment pricked my arm all the way to the shoulder.

  “Press down as you would on any door handle,” said Bareil. “It should open to your hand.”

  I did so. Nothing happened.

  The Dulcé frowned. “I don’t understand. No one could change the locks without your permission, and you used this gate many times when you were a boy.”

  True . . . In my first nine years, no one had ever really cared where I was or what I did, but fussy courtiers and tutors would forever attempt to ingratiate themselves with my father by reporting on my ignorance and undisciplined behavior. So I had sneaked away from them, down the narrow stair through kitchens and barracks and through the open doorway into the cluttered courtyard that lay on the other side of this very gate, knowing that everything I wanted awaited me just beyond it: freedom and adventure, weapons, combat, fear, blood, and death . . . war. Out on the walls of Avonar my friends the soldiers stared over the walls at the misty gray wall that was the Zhid encampment, gulped from flasks of ale, and laughed. I had wanted to laugh at fear and blood and death. No one in the palace would teach me how, but my friends, the soldiers, had. Yes, this was my door, in my house.

  I pressed down again. This time the brass handle moved smoothly and quietly, and the massive gate swung open without the slightest pressure from my hand.

  Now I led Bareil. Across the courtyard, through the labyrinthine way to the stair behind the kitchens. Only a few voices echoed through the passages—guards and servants who cared for the palace itself and functionaries who performed the hard daily work of governing. No royalty had lived in the palace since I’d been taken to Exeget when I was nine.

  Our destination was not the living quarters I had so rarely graced, but the Chamber of the Gate, buried deep in the roots of the mountain underneath the palace. Downward and inwards, through minor galleries and guest quarters, past armories and long-silent ballrooms, into the ancient heart of the palace, burrowed deep into the rock. The stone of these corridors had not been cut and laid by any mason, even one who could cut with his singing or polish with a brush of his hand. Rather the walls were native stone that had been shaped and smoothed until the sworls of jasper and lapis shone of their own colored light. My steps accelerated.

  I thought we’d made a wrong turn when the passage we traversed ended in a blank wall. But before I could turn to Bareil, the stone shifted—a mightily unsettling sight—and revealed a door of age-darkened wood that swung open at my touch. I had forgotten the door words. Beyond the door lay the circular chamber of white and rose, its ceiling lost in white frost plumes. Only when I stepped through the door could I see the Gate—a towering curtain of white flame, rippling, shifting, shimmering, reaching exuberantly for the heights in the uncertain light. Cold fire that left the room frigid and sparkling like the clearest of winter mornings. Rumbling fire, exploding geysers of flaming brilliance that created constantly shifting patterns. Though the fire didn’t terrify me as it had when I was twelve, it still took my breath away. This was the legacy of my ancestors, one endpoint of a link that spanned the universe itself. My soul swelled and thrilled and wept all at once with the glory of it.

  Bareil gave me the rose-colored stone. As he had instructed, I roused it to glowing life, creating a pool of warmth in the hollow of my hand. Then, with will and power, I shaped the path of the Bridge that lay beyond the Gate, so that it would lead me to the stone that matched the one I held.

  “Shall I await your return, my lord? No one will alter the Gate path while I live.”

  I had to leave the pink stone behind to keep the return path open. If anyone removed it from the chamber or reworked my enchantment, then I would have to travel to the Exiles’ Gate—the mundane world’s counterpart of this, the Heir’s Gate—in order to return to Avonar. That might be a journey of many days, depending on where the Lady Seriana was to be found. But I dared not get separated from Bareil and the information he carried.

  I shook my head, unable to speak while I held the enchantment in my mind. Motioning him to leave the stone and stay close, I stepped through the curtain of fire and onto the Bridge that was my singular inheritance.

  CHAPTER 12

  Seri

  Gerick was my son. Karon’s son. My heart stumbled on the words, yet of their truth I had no doubt. There was no other answer to the puzzle he was.

  Had Tomas known it? Surely not. Law and custom had convinced him that my child had to die for the safety of our king and his realm, and Darzid had convinced him that his own knife must do the deed. Not even the knowledge of his own child’s frailty would have persuaded him to spare a sorcerer’s child. Yet, I wondered . . . Had there been somewhere within my brother a mote of suspicion, a seed of doubt that never made its way to the light of his waking mind, but blossomed into the incessant nightmares and overpowering dread that made him beg me to return to Comigor? Never could he have permitted that seed to grow into the light, for it would have told him that the babe he had murdered was his own. If my fear and grief had left me any tears, I would have wept for Tomas.

  On the evening of my discovery, I paced the library, waiting for news. The cabinets that had housed the lead soldiers gaped at me in reproach.

  Every servant and soldier of Comigor had been called to the hunt. Troops of guardsmen scoured the Montevial road, inquiring for Darzid or the boy at every private or public house all the way to the capital. Other soldiers and servants followed every road, trail, and footpath that came anywhere near the castle. Giorge and his assistants were querying the tenants. I had done everything it was possible to do. Now I had to wait—until the last man came back and told me he’d found nothing. I knew it would be so. I had no idea of Darzid’s capabilities, but every instinct screamed that they would be enough to hide Gerick from one who had no talent but that of her own prideful imaginings. Where would he take a sorcerer’s child? Dassine had said that Zhid could not cross the Bridge without the complicity of powerful sorcerers in Avonar . . . but Zhid had crossed the Bridge last summer, and Darzid had been hunting with them. What if Zhid could take Gerick across the Bridge?

  I slammed the door of the soldiers’ cabinet so hard one glass pane shattered.

  I had dreaded telling Philomena. When I had gone to her room that afternoon, I’d foun
d her sitting up in bed, a maid brushing her hair. Her fingers toyed idly with the gray silk bag in which I’d brought her the lock of Tomas’s hair. All evidence of her dead infant had been stripped from the room. Not the least trace remained of that short, sweet life, and I wondered if anyone had given the little girl a word of farewell as she was laid in the frozen earth. “I’m so sorry about your daughter, Philomena,” I said.

  “Gerick has run away, hasn’t he?” she said calmly, not taking her eyes from the gray silk that was wound about her fingers.

  I could not understand her composure. “How did you know?”

  “The servants say men are searching the house. I’ve not slept as much as everyone thinks.”

  “No one has seen him since last evening. I’ve sent—”

  “Is he dead?”

  “We’ve no reason to believe it. I won’t believe it.” Worse . . . The stone that settled in my stomach whenever I thought of him grew colder, heavier. Some things were worse than death.

  Philomena wrinkled her brow as if trying to decide on white wine or red with dinner. “It’s not as if he was ever very affectionate. He didn’t like playing cards or dice with me, and I never knew what else to do with him. Boys are so beastly. They like fighting and dirt and nasty things.”

  “He’s not dead, Philomena. I believe Captain Darzid has taken him. Many people know the captain; he’s easy to identify. Do you know of any place he might take Gerick? Did he ever mention any town or city or person to which he might go?”

  “I never listened to Captain Darzid. He was boring.” She looked up, her fair brow in an unaccustomed wrinkle. “Some say you are responsible for these terrible things. Auntie says it. But others whisper that the gods make me pay for my husband’s sin—because he killed your child and helped King Evard burn your husband—and that’s why all of them are taken from me. Do you think that’s true?”

  “Don’t ask me to explain the workings of fate. Life is incomprehensible enough without believing we have to pay for someone else’s faults in addition to our own.”

  “Ren Wesley says you saved my life.”

  “I only fetched the midwife.”

  “Did you want me to live so that I would know that all my children are gone—so I would suffer? I don’t understand you at all.” She sighed and tossed the gray silk bag onto the floor. “You’ll come read to me tonight?”

  I was ready to scream, Are you mad, stupid woman? My son—mine—has been stolen away by a smooth-tongued villain, and I don’t know where in this god-cursed universe they’ve gone. Yet, what else had I to do but wait? Losing myself in fantasy for an hour might be the very thing to save my reason. I bit my tongue. “I’ll be here at the usual time.”

  “Do whatever you need to find him,” she said as I left the room.

  “You can be sure I will.” But how and where?

  And so I had dispatched more searchers and a message to Evard, and when evening came, I read to Philomena until she fell into the image of peaceful sleep. Since then I had waited, gripping the rose-colored stone that hung around my neck as if sheer force of will might bring it to life and send my plea to Avonar along the paths of its enchantment. Our child had been abandoned at his birth—by his dead father’s idealism and his living mother’s bitterness and self-pity. He had grown up in fear, not understanding what he was. If I had to walk the Bridge myself to fetch help for him, I would do it. Somehow.

  Just after dawn a footman came to me in the library, saying that a stable lad was causing trouble. “It’s the cripple. I caught him sneaking through the kitchens and threw him out. Then I caught him again, coming through the windows of the wash house. I told him Giorge would have him flogged, but he insists he has to see the Lady Seri—pardon the liberty, ma’am, but that’s how he put it—as he had information you would want to know. I didn’t want to bother you with it, but Allard said that with the hunt and all—”

  “Bring him to the housekeeper’s room.” Any distraction was welcome.

  “Yes, my lady. As you say.”

  The footman dragged Paulo into the little office next to the kitchen, holding him at arm’s length by the neck of his shirt. “Here he is, my lady. I’ll stay close by.”

  “No need.” I closed the door firmly, then laid on the table a packet of ham and bread I’d fetched from the larder. Paulo’s eyes brightened, and he reached for it. But I laid a hand on the packet and said, “First a question, my friend. What’s so urgent that you risked punishment to get in here?”

  Paulo crammed his dirty hands in his pockets. “Just wanted to tell you she’s on the way.”

  “She?” Paulo never liked to use four words when two would do.

  “You know. Sheriff’s friend what saved him and me last summer.”

  “Kellea? Kellea is on her way here?”

  He nodded and eyed the packet of food under my hand. Paulo had every intention of making up for thirteen lean years living with a drunken grandmother. I pushed the bundle toward him, still not understanding.

  “But why? I mean, what brings her this way?”

  Stuffing the bread in his mouth, he mumbled. “Told her you needed her.”

  “You told her. . . .” Needed Kellea? Of course . . . she was absolutely the one person in this world that I needed, and I hadn’t even thought of it. Kellea, the last survivor of Karon’s Avonar, newborn the week before the massacre, was a Finder. Herbs, lost objects, people . . . given the proper materials to create a link with the thing or person she sought, she could locate almost anything.

  The first spark of hope glimmered in my head. “She’s coming to search for Gerick?”

  Paulo nodded. “Be here tonight.”

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard in two days. But how, in the name of heaven, did she know?”

  He gave me the same long-suffering sigh he used whenever I asked how he knew that a horse wanted to run faster or graze in the next clearing rather than the one we were in. “I told her.”

  “I think you’ll have to explain that.”

  He took the bread from his mouth, but not too far. “When I come here, she said that every once in a while she’d talk to me, tell me about the horses and Sheriff and all. You know, like she can, that way we can’t say nothing about?” Dar’Nethi—J’Ettanne, as Karon’s people had called themselves in this world—had rarely used their ability to read thoughts and speak in the mind, aware of the potential to abuse such power, especially when living in a world where no one else could do it.

  “Mind-speaking? I didn’t think she knew how.” Or cared to know.

  “Well, she learned it of that woman”—he leaned close and dropped his voice even lower—“the swordwoman.”

  The “swordwoman” was one of the three Zhid who had pursued us to the Bridge in the summer. After his battle with Tomas, Karon had healed the three of them, returned or reawakened the souls they had lost in their transformation. I believed that their healing had been the very act that had strengthened the Bridge and kept the Gates open. Karon had been too weak to take them back across the Bridge to Avonar, and, indeed, they had had little reason to hurry. Their own families and friends had died centuries before, and they were unlikely to find welcome among the other Dar’Nethi whose family and friends they had slaughtered or enslaved. So the three had taken up residence in Dunfarrie under Kellea’s and Graeme Rowan’s protection.

  “Kellea taught me how to talk back to her when she was with me in my head,” said Paulo. “Just think real hard about her and what I want to say and nothin’ else at all for as long as it takes. Thought my head might burst while we were working at it, but I learned how. The swordwoman says not many non-magical folk can do it so well as me.” The rest of the bread and a good measure of ham cut off any further discussion.

  “Paulo, I knew it was a good day when you came here.”

  The boy wiped his mouth on his sleeve and jerked his head at the door. “Best go now. Got work to do.”

  “Yes. Not a single word to anyon
e about these things. You know that?”

  He gave me a bready grin, pulled open the door, and disappeared through the hot kitchen.

  My revived hopes were quickly swallowed by grim reality. Throughout the day—the second since Gerick’s disappearance—searchers returned empty-handed. I sent them out again, telling them to go farther, ask again, be more thorough, more careful, more ruthless. Even for a Dar’-Nethi Finder, the trail was growing cold.

  I wandered down to the library and curled up in the window seat where I had first laid eyes on my son. For half the day I stared at a book of which I could repeat no word. The bright winter sun glared through the window glass. . . .

  A rapid tapping startled me awake. Someone had built up the fire and thrown a shawl over me to ward off the evening chill. My book had slipped to the floor. The insistent tapping came again from the direction of the library door. “My lady? Someone’s asking to see you.” It was Nellia. “A young woman. Says she’s expected.”

  “Bring her right away”—I jumped to my feet, fully awake in an instant—“and hot wine . . . and supper. Whatever there is. She’s come a long way.”

  The small, wiry young woman who strode into the room a few moments later could almost pass for a youth with her breeches, russet shirt, leather vest, and the sword at her belt. Her black, straight hair hung only to her shoulders. “Here almost before you thought of me, right?” she said, displaying the quirky smile people saw so rarely.

  All my grief and guilt and terror, so closely held for two long days, was unleashed by Kellea’s arrival. I embraced her thin shoulders fiercely and engulfed her in storm of tears. The poor girl . . . shy, uncomfortable with people, especially awkward with anyone who knew of her talents . . . Knowing how such behavior would unnerve her, I swore like a sailor even as I wept.