The Keep of Fire (29 page)

“It was me, my lady. I was carrying a girl in my arms while I walked on the bright fields of the sun. It was beautiful.”

Grace could find no words. She couldn’t tell him that it had been only a hallucination, one last-ditch effort by the vision center of his brain to make sense of the searing stream of photons before the whole system overloaded. He had looked to the sun for answers but had found only darkness.

He sighed and stood. “I’m going to go upstairs, my lady. I aired out Lord Eddoc’s chamber yesterday, but I think it still needs another try.”

Grace gave a stiff nod as he left the room, even though she knew he couldn’t see it. Then another figure stepped through the door. Grace gazed up into mysterious brown eyes.

“That child has the Sight,” Lirith said.

“Do you think so? Or is he just a stupid kid who stared at the sun too long?”

Lirith shrugged. “Who can say? But the simplest explanation is not always the truest, sister. Remember that.”

Grace thought about this, but things seemed no clearer. She stood. “I don’t like this, Lirith. There’s been no sign of the Burning Plague here, but there’s something wrong about this place all the same. Let’s wake Aryn and get the others. We need to find Sir Kalleth and go.”

The two women headed upstairs. When they reached the door to their chamber, Grace saw that the door on the opposite side of the corridor was ajar. Lord Eddoc’s chamber. Daynen must have gone in to open the window.

It hit Grace a second later: the choking atmosphere of decay. It poured almost tangibly through the open door. Flies buzzed on the air. Before she thought about it, she approached the door to Eddoc’s chamber. Daynen stood beside the open window, nose wrinkled, fanning his face with a hand. Grace’s eyes slid past him to the bed.

The decomposition was advanced. Death had occurred three days ago, maybe four. It was hard to say, because even from the door Grace could see that Lord Eddoc had been in the intermediate stages of the Burning Plague. The blisters were apparent, as were the first black patches showing through the skin. The cause of death was easy to determine: The cut in his throat was so deep it had nearly decapitated him. So not all of his flesh had been toughened yet.

The bloated remains of Lord Eddoc held Grace’s eyes for only a moment. Her gaze continued on, to the form lying facedown on the floor in a pool of blood. She didn’t need to see his face. His stocky shoulders and gray-shot hair were enough. The knife
still protruded from his back. By its position, Grace guessed it had slipped through two ribs to pierce his heart. Sir Kalleth had died before he even knew he had been struck.

There was a gasp behind her. Lirith.

Daynen looked up at the sound. “Lady Grace? Is that you? Or is that Lady Lirith?”

Grace shook her head. Daynen had been in this room yesterday. But he couldn’t see. He didn’t know what lay on the bed.

The boy frowned. “What is it, my lady?”

Grace did not answer him. Motion caught the corner of her eye. She turned and glanced down. Tira stood just outside the door. The red-haired girl stared forward, her scarred face blank. As she had done last night, she moved her arm up and down in a stiff chopping motion.

Grace looked up into Lirith’s startled eyes.

“Get Durge,” she said.

The five travelers stood outside the open door to Eddoc’s chamber, shocked into silence. Only the drone of flies sounded on the air. Aryn had stepped from her room at the same moment Durge and Meridar ran, boots clomping, up the stairs. Her scream had frozen everyone’s blood.

As if through great force of will, Aryn turned away from the grisly scene in the lord’s chamber and pressed her face against Sir Meridar’s chest. For once, Grace noted distantly, the baroness’s action appeared genuine rather than manipulative. The anger on the homely knight’s face was replaced by astonishment. He stiffened, then reached up and enfolded the slender young woman in strong arms.

Lirith was the first to find her voice. “So that was what Tira was trying to tell you last night, Grace.”

Durge looked at Grace. The Embarran’s face was as hard as wind-battered stone. “What does Lady Lirith mean?”

“Tira.” Grace folded her arms over the bodice of her gown. “I think … I think she must have seen what Jastar did. When he killed Eddoc.”

Daynen stood in the hallway now, staring with wide, blind eyes. He gripped Tira tightly. The girl gazed forward, her half-melted expression as placid as ever, twirling a lock of her fire-red hair with a finger.

“Kalleth must have suspected some sort of foul play,” Durge said. He glanced at Meridar. “That was what he went to see last night, when he left our room.”

With careful but deliberate motions, Meridar pushed Aryn away. Lirith took the young woman and circled an arm around her shoulders.

Meridar clenched his hand into a fist. “Jastar must have been waiting in Eddoc’s chamber, knife in hand, afraid one of us would see his handiwork. Then Kalleth did. Blast that cursed reeve. I will have his blood!”

Grace shuddered. The kindly knight she knew was gone. Now a queer light shone in his eyes.

“Wait.” Grace took a step forward. “I don’t … I don’t think you understand everything.”

Meridar stared at her. “What is there to understand, my lady? The reeve has slain his lord and our companion. His life is forfeit.”

She licked her lips. “Eddoc had the plague. The Burning Plague. Look, you can see it—the change … it had already started. I think that was why Jastar killed him. To keep it from spreading in the village.”

Meridar’s eyes narrowed. “And Sir Kalleth? Did he have the plague then, my lady?”

Grace stepped back, her face stinging as if struck with the flat of a blade.

Meridar looked to Durge. “Are you with me?”

Durge gazed into space, as motionless as if carved of stone, then he let out a breath and met the other knight’s eyes. “Get your sword, Sir Meridar.”

Grace placed a hand on the Embarran’s arm. “Durge—please …”

He shook his head, his words both regretful and hard. “We must do this, my lady.”

With care, but without hesitation, he pulled his arm free; then he and Meridar moved past her.

Grace watched them go, gripping the doorframe. No, she wouldn’t let rage seize her. That was how lives were lost. Meridar was out for revenge, and she knew Durge would not be able to control him. There was no telling what the Calavaner might do to anyone who got in his way. They were just peasants out there. It would be a bloodbath.

She pulled the door to Eddoc’s chamber shut, then turned and caught Lirith’s gaze. This time there was no need for magic to transmit the message.

Lirith pushed away the sobbing baroness. “Sister, do you need to stay in our chamber?”

Aryn roughly wiped her wet cheeks and forced her shoulders back. “No, I can’t stay here. Not with …” Her eyes flickered to the closed door.

“Come on,” Grace said. “We’ll go together.”

She started down the stairs, and the others followed.

“What do you intend to do, sister?” Lirith said behind her.

Grace spoke the truth. “I don’t know.”

The three women left the manor house and stepped into the mists of dawn. Dim shapes hovered like specters around them: houses and trees. Navigating half by what she could make out in the gloom and
half by memory of the evening before, Grace led the way through the village.

It was only when they reached the edge of Falanor’s common green that Grace noticed two smaller forms following behind Lirith and Aryn.

You idiot, Grace. You should have told Daynen and Tira to stay at the manor. If something happens, they could get hurt
.

But it was too late by then. There wasn’t time to take them back. “Stay behind us,” she said to the children.

Daynen nodded, tightening his hold on Tira’s shoulders. The mute girl gazed into the mist as if she could see something in its folds. Grace shivered.

“Sister,” Lirith whispered, placing a hand on Grace’s arm. “The Touch.”

Grace halted. She peered into the fog but could make out only fleeting shapes. Shutting her eyes, she forced herself to reach for the Weirding. There—she caught the shimmering threads of life that crisscrossed the commons just before the web slipped from her hands. Her eyes flew open. They were not alone.

“Blast you, reeve! Where are you?”

Grace jumped at the voice that sounded no more than twenty paces away. She recognized the gruff tone, even though she could not see him. Meridar.

“It is better if you show yourself, Jastar.” This voice was lower, more somber. Durge. “You cannot hide for long. The sun comes, and it will burn away the mist.”

Silence, then a harsh bark of laughter. “The mist is not all that will burn!”

Chain mail jingled. Grace could imagine the knights turning around, searching for the speaker. But the fog had a queer effect on sounds, muffling some, amplifying others.

“I can’t see what’s happening,” she hissed.

“But it’s so clear, Grace. Use your mind, not your eyes.”

She stiffened. Then she felt a slender hand on hers. She turned and found herself gazing into frightened but now strangely steady blue eyes. Aryn.

“It’s all right, Grace,” the young woman said. “We’ll help you.”

Grace swallowed hard, then gave a nod. Lirith took her other hand, and Grace stood between the two witches. She shut her eyes and could feel the warmth pouring from them, filling her. A sigh escaped her lungs, and she felt her dread melt. Before, when she had attempted the Touch, the web of the Weirding had slipped from her grasp. Fear was the reason—fear she would see it again, the hideous blot attached to the thread of her own life. But now there were other, brighter threads to surround her. She let the power of the two witches fill her, then reached out and touched the tapestry of life woven across the commons.

A gasp escaped her. Durge and Meridar shone like cold blue steel in the center of the commons. The villagers were dimmer but still clear, milling about the edges of the square. And there, on the farside of the green, stood one who—like a coal—was black and fiery at once. Her eyes flew open.

“Jastar,” she breathed. “He has it.”

Both Lirith and Aryn cast questioning looks at her. She opened her mouth, but she didn’t have time to explain.

“Get out of here.” The reeve’s harsh words cut through the fog. “Get out while you still can.”

“Not without justice,” came Meridar’s reply. “Lord Eddoc and Sir Kalleth are dead by your hand, Reeve Jastar. You must be made to pay.”

Grace pressed her eyes shut again. Meridar and Durge stood together, swords drawn, facing in the direction of Jastar’s voice, crouched and ready. But the
knights couldn’t see the villagers who even now shuffled from the left and right, feet silent on damp grass. Fear and hate choked the air as thickly as fog.

“Durge!” she cried out. “Durge, they’re coming from the sides!”

She heard the clank of chain mail as the knights spun around, as well as a hissed curse from across the square. But it wasn’t enough. She shut her eyes again. The lines of villagers hesitated, then kept pressing inward, toward the center of the commons. There were too many of them.

“We have to do something,” she whispered.

Aryn trembled. “What, Grace?”

Desperation flooded her. She didn’t know. What could she do against an entire mob? If only this fog would lift …

That’s it, Grace
.

There was no more time to think about it. “Help me,” she said.

A calm presence touched her mind. Lirith.
What are you doing, sister?

I’m not entirely sure. If it works, you’ll see
.

That she had replied to Lirith without spoken words registered only dimly. She gripped the hands to either side—so tightly she heard soft moans of pain. Warm power flooded her body. The Weirding flared in her mind, its brilliant threads running in every direction.

Then she saw it: shadowed and sickly, pulsing just on the edge of her vision. Grace recoiled, knowing that if she followed her own thread it would lead straight toward the darkness. She steadied herself; she had other threads to follow. With substanceless fingers she clutched the silvery strands rooted to either side of her and followed them out into the greater web of the Weirding.

For a moment she was perilously intoxicated. The
Weirding was so vast, endless and shimmering, coursing between all living things. It would be so easy to lose herself to fascination.

Weave, Grace. You’ve got to weave
.

At first she used imaginary hands, pulling the threads together, running one over the other. However, that was too slow. She imagined more hands, and more, gathering the strands and binding them together. Then it was done. It drifted in the air, covering the entire commons, like a mesh fashioned of starlight. Grace felt astonishment radiate from both sides, but there was no time to explain. The villagers were ten paces from the knights. Five paces. Three.

Pull!
Grace shouted without words.

There was confusion, then understanding. She reached out with her mind and gripped the shimmering net at the same time she felt Aryn and Lirith do so. Together, the three witches cast the net aside.

Grace felt as much as heard the rushing noise. She opened her eyes in time to see the fog before her swirl and break apart. Like a sudden dawn, sunlight poured through the rift, illuminating the commons as the last shreds of mist retreated to the edge of the square. There, a gray wall undulated, rising twenty feet into the air.

Aryn gasped, and Lirith gazed at Grace with an expression not of amazement, but of deep interest. Grace shook her head. She would explain it to Lirith later—if she even could. Right now there was no time. She felt hollow but oddly exultant, as she did after a twenty-hour shift in the ED in which she had not lost a single patient.

Cries of fear and dismay sounded as the mist broke. The villagers skidded to a halt on the wet grass, clubs and wooden hoes in their hands, their boldness dissipating with the mist. It was one thing to sneak up on a man who could not see you. It was another to face two angry knights, their blades sharp,
drawn, and ready. Durge flicked his gigantic greatsword. The villagers stumbled back a step.