The Keep of Fire (25 page)

Kalleth shoved his sword into its scabbard. “This is a foolish game you’ve played, my ladies. And it might well have cost you your lives.”

“Thanks to your swiftness, Sir Kalleth,” Durge said in a hard voice.

Kalleth frowned at him, but the Embarran did not look in the knight’s direction.

Grace shook her head, struggling for words. “Aryn, Lirith—what are you doing here?”

Aryn’s fear vanished, replaced by a brilliant smile. “We were following you, Grace. We’re coming with you.”

Grace was stunned anew. Yesterday Aryn had been weeping and distraught over what she had done on Midwinter’s Eve. Now she was more cheerful than Grace had seen her in months. Lirith’s gaze fell on Grace, and Grace stared back. That Aryn had done this was almost comprehensible given her age, but that Lirith had agreed was impossible to believe.

“Forgive us,” the dark-eyed woman said. “But we did not want you to go without sisterly companionship to … your destination.”

Meridar glanced at Durge, his eyes filled with mirth rather than anger. “And what are we to do with these bandits?”

“It is too late to do anything tonight,” Durge said. “We will ride to Foxfair and hope Lord Gaddimer has room enough to keep us all. No doubt King Boreas sent another of his knights after Lady Aryn and Lady Lirith when he discovered their absence. They can wait for him at Gaddimer’s manor until he arrives.”

“But he won’t arrive,” Aryn said. Her eyes shone. “By the time Boreas finds out we’re gone, we’ll be days ahead, and not even the king’s fastest chargers will be able to catch us.”

The knights stared at Aryn, and she smiled. The expression was slightly smug. Lirith cast a shocked look at the baroness, and dread pooled in Grace’s stomach. Now she understood. Lirith had ridden with Aryn only to keep watch over her, believing Boreas’s men would come upon them before they got too far from the castle. But Aryn had done something—some spell—to conceal their absence. Only what? From the look on Lirith’s face, even she did not know.

Durge shifted in his saddle. “If Boreas has not sent a man, then one of us will have to return to Calavere tomorrow with the ladies.”

Kalleth spat on the ground. “And which of us will that be, Sir Durge?”

The Embarran grumbled under his mustaches. Grace didn’t need to hear his words to understand. His plan wasn’t going to work. The knights all had their orders to ride to Perridon. None would be willing to go back.

It was Meridar who offered the solution. “Let the ladies ride with us, then. It is hardly dangerous while we are here within the king’s borders. And let us not leave them to stay at some crude village, but rather take them to Ar-tolor, where they can stay with Lirith’s queen until such time Boreas sees fit to send for them.”

It was a good plan. Grace knew Durge had to agree, then was surprised to find him looking to her. Of course. It wasn’t the knight’s decision.
You’re the duchess, Grace
.

She swallowed the mad laughter that bubbled up in her throat. “We’ll do as Sir Meridar says.”

Durge nodded. Meridar appeared relieved, and while Kalleth did not look altogether pleased, he did not disagree. Aryn laughed, and Grace turned to meet Lirith’s dark eyes. The witch nodded. They would speak about the baroness later.

“Night comes,” Durge said. “We had best hurry on to Foxfair.”

The Embarran led the way, and the ladies came behind, followed by Meridar and Kalleth. Grace glanced at Aryn and Lirith as they rode. Despite the rashness of what they had done, she was glad for their company. Durge was a stout and true companion, but he was a man. It would be good to have other women along on the journey. Other witches.

But just how had Aryn arranged their unseen escape?

Grace nudged Shandis alongside the baroness’s palfrey. “What did you do, Aryn?” she whispered.

The young woman shrugged. “I only did what you said, Grace.”

“What do you mean, what I said?”

“If you have power, use it.”

Before Grace could say anything more, Aryn smiled and nudged her horse into a trot.

The traveling party rode east through the Dominion of Calavan, never straying more than a half league from the southern bank of the Dimduorn as they went.

Grace could not help marveling as they cantered across the gently undulating landscape. In the time she had lived on this world, she had hardly ventured outside the castle walls, and then only for short jaunts into the well-tilled countryside a few furlongs from Calavere. There, nearly always surrounded by crowds of dirty, foul-smelling people, she had been able to believe that Falengarth was a populous land, filled with similar keeps and towns. She was wrong. As far as Grace could tell from her vantage atop Shandis’s back, this world was just about empty.

It was not so noticeable in the beginning. On that first day out they came upon villages with predictable regularity—one every two miles. Foxfair, where they stayed that first night, was typical of the others: a stone manor house about as big as the average subdivision tract home on Earth—although built to stand for centuries rather than decades—with a stable, a common green supporting a few sorry-looking cows, a well, a shrine to the lord’s favored mystery cult, and about two dozen hovels of thatch, wood, mud, and stone scattered among rock-walled fields that were
each about a quarter acre in size, and a third of which were lying fallow.

It was hard to believe this was the basis for the economic system that supported the entire Dominion. Then, as they rode on, Grace realized there wasn’t that much Dominion to support.

They set out from Foxfair at dawn after saying farewell to Lord Gaddimer and his wife—a kindly and diminutive couple who possessed deeply lined, good-natured faces as well as a trio of large, handsome sons. The oldest of the sons, all of nineteen, was helping his father run the manor, while the others, once they were a year or two older, would head for Calavere or the castle of one of Boreas’s barons to become squires and, hopefully in time, knights.

As they rode that second day, the size and frequency of villages decreased rapidly. It was only that evening, when they stopped at the first village they had seen in hours, that Grace understood the reason. Once again they begged the hospitality of the local lord: a younger, unmarried man named Unreth who was more reserved than Gaddimer but no less welcoming. When Unreth’s ancient housemaid brought an extra blanket to the damp bedchamber Grace and the other women were to share, the maid begged for news of Calavere.

“Do you know Elthrinde of Orsel?” the old woman asked Grace in a wavering voice. “She is my cousin, you see. She went to Calavere to work in the king’s kitchen.”

Aryn and Lirith shook their heads. Grace thought, then realized she did in fact know the name. She sighed and laid her hand over the old woman’s. Why was it so much easier when she had grim news?

“I did know Elthrinde,” she said. “Although not well, I’m afraid. A few months ago her granddaughter asked me to see to her. I’m a … I’m a healer. I did
everything I could. But I’m afraid Elthrinde was worn-out, and she died.”

The old woman considered Grace’s words, then nodded. “Was she still beautiful? Elthrinde was so beautiful when she left for the king’s castle.”

Grace pictured the crone—toothless, arthritic, scarred by scrofula—who had struggled for breath on the flea-infested bed in the town beneath Calavere. “Yes, she was still beautiful. When did you see her last?”

The maid blinked in watery surprise. “Why, when she left Orsel, of course. I remember it clearly. It was the year we both reached our sixteenth winter.”

After the old woman left, Grace stared at the folded wool blanket. From further discussion she had learned that the maid had never journeyed to Calavere to see her cousin, even though it was a ride of only two days, and a walk of perhaps four. But then, shouldn’t she have known this would be the case?

Remember your world history class, Grace. In medieval times, on Earth, people hardly ever traveled more than ten miles from the place they were born
.

She supposed it was the same on Eldh. Only the nobility seemed to travel about with some frequency. It was a hard concept to grasp—at least for someone who was used to hopping into a car or a plane and zipping across a continent. Miles might have shrunk on Earth, but here on Eldh the leagues were still vast and forbidding.

They set out at dawn again the next morning, and after Orsel vanished from sight they did not see another village all that day, and the farms they passed looked practically abandoned.

Grace had hoped she would have a chance to speak with Lirith as they traveled—about Aryn and what had happened when the two left Calavere—but by that third day she knew it was not going to be easy.
As they rode, Aryn was never far from either Grace or Lirith. Nor, in any of the cramped manor houses at which they stayed at night, had there been a place she could talk to Lirith without Aryn overhearing. Grace’s questions would have to wait.

By that third day, Grace was already growing weary of traveling. Her riding gown was hot and uncomfortable, bunching up around her as she rode, and it collected dust in every fold of cloth, so that by the end of the day she was covered with grime and had to spend half an hour just shaking herself out. Her muscles hurt constantly, and her jaw felt as if she’d spent the last three days chewing a piece of vulcanized rubber.

Aryn, in contrast, seemed to enjoy the journey immensely. She smiled aback her palfrey as they rode, and when they stopped to rest, while Grace plopped down on a stone and concentrated on simply not moving, the baroness hunted around, gathering herbs, flowers, and leaves. At night she would spread them on a kerchief and discuss their names and properties with Lirith. She laughed often, and the sound was as bright as silver.

It was clear early on that Sir Meridar was enthralled by Aryn. He hardly bothered to hide his grin as he watched her, and the baroness often asked him to do small tasks for her, which he performed eagerly, and when he did she cast smiles at him which Grace thought bordered on cruel. For even were the kindly knight’s pockmarked face not too homely for the baroness, his station was without doubt too low.

Lirith seemed to notice this behavior as well, and the witch would frown when Aryn asked Meridar to bring her water or pluck a leaf from a high branch for her. Sir Kalleth frowned as well, but this was the only expression of which he seemed capable. And if Durge noticed, he said nothing about it.

Grace did her best not to worry about Aryn. The
fact was, the young woman seemed fine, and Grace knew she shouldn’t argue with results. It didn’t matter how the patient got better, just that she did. Besides, Grace had other matters to worry about, and with each league they consumed her mind more and more. Would she and Durge be able to convince Meridar and Kalleth to ride to the Gray Tower? If so, would they reach it in time? And once there, how would she help Travis?

The sun was sinking on the third day of their journey when Grace noticed a line of smoke rising into the sky not far ahead.

“There must be a village on the other side of that down,” Kalleth shouted above the horses.

Durge pulled on Blackalock’s reins and dropped back. “That would be Tarafel,” the Embarran said. “I was hoping we had not passed it by. If I recall correctly, there is not another village for some leagues.”

Grace breathed a sigh of relief. She did not often know Durge to be mistaken.

Aryn shaded her eyes. “I do not see the smoke,” she said. “Where is it?”

Meridar brought his charger close to Aryn’s horse. “There, my lady,” he said, leaning toward her and pointing.

The baroness nodded, then turned to smile at the knight.

Grace ground her teeth but said nothing. She didn’t need to glance at Lirith to know the witch was looking at her.

“Let’s go,” she said.

The riders ascended the low ridge. The shrubs covering it were thicker than they had appeared from a distance, and by the time they reached the top the sun was heavy and low behind them, spilling red light across the land. They pushed through the last tangled wall, then came to a halt.

At first Grace thought the shadow cast by the
down was playing tricks on her. Everything was black. Then she understood. The smoke was too dark to be from cookfires. And there was too much of it.

Aryn clapped a hand to her mouth, and Lirith sighed, her eyes deep with sorrow.

“By Vathris,” Meridar said. “What happened?”

Durge shook his head. The village was gone.

At least most of it. Grace could make out the square lines of stone foundations, cracked and scorched, and here and there the remnants of a wall or chimney still stood. But that was all. The village of Tarafel had burned to the ground.

“Wildmen.” Kalleth spat the word. “They must have ridden down from the mountains and done this.”

“I do not think so,” Durge said. “There is not a place to cross the Dimduorn for many leagues.”

Kalleth glared at the Embarran but did not disagree.

“I don’t understand,” Grace said. “The fires are almost all out. It must have been some time since this happened. Why didn’t we hear about it in Orsel?”

But even as she asked the question she knew the answer. In all likelihood they were the first people from outside Tarafel to come to the village in a week. But if invaders had not destroyed the settlement, what had? Grace couldn’t believe that fire could sweep through the village so easily—even houses that stood at a distance from others had burned.

For the first time in days Aryn was not smiling, and her voice sounded like that of a small girl. “But where are we to sleep?”

Grace almost laughed. No doubt this no longer seemed like such a grand adventure.

Durge squinted at the horizon. “There is a farm near that stand of trees, on the farside of the village. It looks as if it is unharmed.”

There was little discussion given the lack of
choices. The six rode down the slope and in silence skirted around the remains of the village. At one point, lying in their path, was a form that should have been charred beyond recognition but was not. The arms were thrown above the head, as if in a final gesture of supplication. Or terror. Aryn gasped and hung her head. Grace forced herself to look ahead as they rode on.