The Keep of Fire (3 page)

But they can’t know. They’re not even supposed to be here. They should be a world away
.

The three reached the bar. Travis couldn’t move. The knight rested a hand on the hilt of his sword and spoke.

“I need a Coors, a glass of the house chardonnay, and …” The knight glanced back at the wildman. “What did you say you wanted?”

“Make it a Guinness,” the wildman said.

The lady frowned. “How can you drink that stuff, Ted? It’s noxious.”

The wildman grinned, his teeth white and straight in his dirty face. “Don’t knock it until you try it.”

Travis stared, his mind flailing. Only then did he notice the mobile phone clipped to the knight’s belt, the Day-Glo fanny pack around the lady’s waist, and the shoes on the wildman’s feet: nylon strap sandals with rubber soles.

Of course—he remembered the tents and stalls he had seen going up east of town the other day. It was June. The Medieval Festival had started up again for the year. Most nights, a group of workers from the festival would show up at the saloon near sundown to have a drink after a sweaty day of work.

Max touched his arm. “Is something wrong, Travis?”

He hadn’t responded, and the knight was frowning.

“No, Max. Everything’s just fine.”

He moved to get the drinks, and the knight smiled and threw a twenty on the bar.

“Damn, it’s hot out there,” he said.

The wildman glanced at the lady’s fiery breasts and grinned. “Looks like you’ve got a bad case of war chest, Sarah.”

She adjusted her bodice and winced. “I know. Thanks to Alan forgetting the sunscreen.”

“Sorry,” the knight mumbled, and the three walked away with their glasses.

Travis watched them go, then noticed Max gazing at him. Max cocked his head but didn’t say anything, and eventually he turned around to swab out a keg.

Travis glanced down at the buckskin boots that poked out of his jeans: the boots Lady Aryn had had made for him. They were one of his few reminders of Eldh, along with the carved piece of bone—the rune of hope—he wore around his neck, and the silver half-coin Brother Cy had given him, which had brought him back to Earth, and which he always kept in his left-hand pocket.

Travis shut his eyes and saw high battlements above stone-walled fields. Sometimes he burned to tell someone about where he had really traveled during those two months. But how could he? The only person in Castle City who could have understood was gone.

I miss you, Jack
.

He opened his eyes and moved to rinse a tray of glasses in the bar sink.

On reflex, Travis looked up. It was hard to tell exactly what was being advertised. Scenes flashed by, showing smiling people engaged in various activities—boating on a lake, going for a walk, cooking dinner. No matter the scene, a bright crescent moon hung in the sky above or outside a window, casting a
silvery radiance on whatever the oh-so-happy people were doing.

The commercial faded to black, and a corporate logo appeared: a crescent moon merging into a stylized capital
D
.

“Duratek,” came the voice-over in a soothing, masculine tone. “Worlds of possibility, close to home.”

Travis frowned. What was that supposed to mean? He pointed to the TV. “Would you shut that thing off, Max? Turn on the radio instead.”

Max killed the TV with the remote, then flicked on an antique AM receiver. A second later the phone rang, and Max lunged for it before Travis could move an inch.

“The Mine Shaft,” Max said. He paused, then shot Travis a smug little smile. “No, but I’m the co-owner, so I’m sure I can help you out.…” He turned his back and kept on talking.

Travis groaned. Now that Max was his partner, there would be no living with him.

He bent back over his work. Music drifted from the radio behind him: ancient sounds soaring above a new electronic drone. The song was all over the airwaves, a tonic for ears tired of angsty alterna-rock. Travis smiled at the seamless blend of old and new. Maybe two different centuries could meet after all. Like two different worlds.

A tingling danced across the back of his neck. On instinct he looked up.

She watched Travis with smoke-green eyes that sparkled above high cheekbones. He set down the glass in his hand, and the woman smiled from her barstool perch. She had close-cropped hair that was dark and fiery at the same time, and she wore a black-leather jacket, jeans, and biker boots. He could just make out the edge of a tattoo coiled around her collarbone—a
serpent twisted into the shape of a figure eight, swallowing its tail.

“Deirdre? Deirdre Falling Hawk?”

“My gentle warrior,” she said.

Then she leaned across the bar and kissed him, stunning him like a buck caught in the white-hot beam of a hunter’s flashlight.

Travis had met her three years ago.

It was in the dwindling days of July, when the frantic buzz of fresh-born insects had matured to a lazier drone, and clouds rolled across the blue-quartz sky every afternoon, filling the valley with thunder. She wandered through the saloon’s door one evening with the sound of copper wind chimes. Her hair had been long then, like a wave of midnight water, but she wore the same leather jacket, the same square-toed biker boots, and she carried the same wooden case over her shoulder.

She said her name was Deirdre Falling Hawk, and she was a bard.

For the last month she had worked the big Medieval Festival down the highway, she explained. Now that the festival had closed down for the season, she had come to Castle City, hoping to find a little work before she moved on.

“The mountains give me songs,” she said. “I always hate to leave them.”

All Travis knew was that, when she played a melody on the burnished mandolin she took from her case, he had never heard anything so beautiful. He had cleared the boxes from a platform by the player piano that had once served as a vaudeville stage and on it set a chair. For the next two weeks, Deirdre
Falling Hawk sat on the tiny stage each night and played her mandolin. She was of both Irish and Native-American descent, and she blended both traditions in her simple, haunting music. After that first night, word spread, and locals packed the bar each evening to hear her play a repertoire that included thirteenth-century madrigals, Celtic ballads, and Plains Indian myths recited in her chantlike voice.

Travis never saw much of Deirdre during the days; the bard proved as fleeting as her music. But a few times she stopped her Harley as she passed him while cruising down Elk Street.

“Hop on, my gentle warrior,” she would say.

My gentle warrior
. That was what she always called him, after he told her the story of the antique spectacles he wore and how once they had belonged to the gunfighter Tyler Caine.

He would climb onto the back of her bike, and they would go roaring up the canyon, leaning deep into the curves. Finally, one night, they sat and talked after the saloon had closed, drinking whiskey and trading two-bit dreams. In a silent moment, Travis almost reached out a hand to stroke her hair. Almost. His hand faltered, then made a clumsy reach for his glass instead.

Afterward he was never sure why he hadn’t done it, why he hadn’t let his fingers tangle themselves in the softness of her hair, why he hadn’t drawn her close, kissed her, and made love to her on a blanket thrown over the sawdust-strewn floor. But love was a kind of power, wasn’t it? And power, as he knew well, was a dangerous thing.

The next night, after Deirdre had played her set at the saloon, he heard the roar of her motorcycle echoing down Elk Street. He never saw her again.

Until now.

Travis regarded her from across the bar. “I should have known that was your hog out there.”

“Actually, it’s new. I picked it up in Cody last summer.” Her lips curved into a wicked smile. “I won it in a poker game against a Hell’s Angel out of L.A.”

Travis narrowed his eyes. “Remind me never to let you talk me into a hand of five card stud.”

“Don’t worry, Travis—I’d let you win. Once or twice, anyway.”

He glanced at the wooden case slung over her shoulder. “Have you come to play, Deirdre?”

“Maybe. It depends on the going rate.”

Travis punched a key on the saloon’s antique cash register, then lifted the drawer to scrape up what was left of petty cash. He counted it out on the bar.

“How does fifty-two dollars and seventeen cents sound?”

Deirdre stood, scooped up the money, and shoved it into a pocket. “It sounds like you just booked yourself an act, Travis.” She turned and sauntered to the small stage by the piano, moving with the litheness of a deer.

At the same moment Max set down the phone, although it was clear he hadn’t been talking to anyone for minutes. “So, is she a good friend of yours?”

Travis poured two mugs of steaming coffee. “Not really.”

“Of course,” Max said. “That kiss was a dead giveaway. In New York, that’s how complete strangers always greet each other.”

“I didn’t say she was a stranger.”

Max’s drooping mustache framed a toothy smile. “Make up your mind, pardner.”

He considered telling Max that people in the West didn’t really say
pardner
but as usual decided against it. The knowledge would devastate him. Travis carried the mugs over to Deirdre, set them on the player piano, and straddled the bench.

“It’s good to see you, you know,” he said.

She raised a dark eyebrow. “Is it?”

Once again Travis thought of that night, when he had wanted to touch her and hadn’t. “Yes, it is. I always … I always wished that …” That what? But he wasn’t really sure.

A smile twisted her lips. “I learned a long time ago not to regret my choices.”

She took her mandolin out of its case and began tuning it with deft fingers. It was a sleek thing, crafted of dark wood and glowing with a patina of long use.

“So who’s the lucky girl who finally got you, anyway?” Deirdre said.

He shook his head. She cast a sly glance at Mitchell and Davis Burke-Favor, who sat at a table across the saloon, heads bowed close, their square shoulders touching.

“All right, then who’s the lucky guy?”

He laughed, then shook his head again. Her smile dimmed to a knowing expression.

“So you’re going it alone, then?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t you say not to regret your choices?”

“And is it a choice?”

Travis rubbed his right hand. He didn’t know how to answer that one. Finally, he gestured to the mandolin. “You know, I had a friend who would have loved looking at this. He was an antique dealer. Jack was always telling me that the best way to understand the here and now was to look at it through the eyes of a distant time or place.”

Deirdre strummed a mellow chord. “History is important to both my mother’s and my father’s peoples. This mandolin belonged to my mother’s grandfather. He brought it with him from Ireland. Every time I play it, I think of him, and how brave he was to cross an ocean to a land he had never seen before.” Her
fingers plucked out a wistful melody. “Your friend Jack sounds like a wise man.”

Travis was never ready for the hard lump that wedged itself in his throat. “Yes, he was. He gave me these. Remember?”

“The gunfighter’s spectacles.” Deirdre gave a playful smile, and her music drifted into a mournful dirge.

Travis laughed. He could still picture the day Jack had given him the spectacles. He had been rummaging through a box in the Magician’s Attic, helping his old friend clean out the cellar, when he came across them—bent, tarnished, the lenses cracked. He had shown them to Jack.

So that’s where those were hiding. Well, it’s good that you found them, Travis. I believe they belong to you
.

It was an odd thing to say, but Jack said plenty of odd things, so Travis had shrugged and accepted the spectacles.

Deirdre regarded him over her mandolin. “You know, it’s interesting that those are the eyes through which you choose to look at the world.”

“You think so? I guess I always thought it would be sort of fun to be the bad guy.” He curled his lip into a mean snarl and gave Deirdre his best steel-eyed look. “This here’s a holdup, ma’am.”

“Fearsome,” she said, green eyes dancing. “But I’m serious, Travis. Why a gunfighter’s glasses? Why not a sheriff’s, or a ranger’s?”

Travis scratched the red-gold stubble on his chin. “I don’t know. I suppose I’m just not really the hero type.”

“Oh?”

“It’s true. Even when I was a kid, I never identified with the heroes in fairy tales. I always secretly wanted the monsters to eat them.” He smiled his nastiest smile. “Now the troll under the bridge
—that
was me.”

Deirdre gave him a sharp look. “That sounds like your shadow self talking.”

“My shadow self?”

“Your dark side, your doppelgänger, your manitou—whatever you want to call it.” She picked up her coffee mug and warmed her hands around it. “Maybe, deep down, there’s a part of you that knows you really could be a gunslinger.”

Travis looked down at his hands. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it all the same—Jack’s mark, the rune of runes—prickling beneath the skin of his palm. “No, I could never do what they did.”

“Be careful, Travis. The human spirit is a great, deep ocean. Each of us has the ability to do things we don’t care to think about. And that’s fine. But if you try to deny that that ability exists, it can have a way of making itself manifest without your consent.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Then put it this way. A hundred years ago, there wasn’t much difference between the sheriff and the gunslinger. Each made his living with a revolver. The only difference was that one used a gun, while a gun used the other.”

Travis stared. Deirdre couldn’t possibly understand what it was like—how it felt to have power flow through you, and out of you, destroying another.

“I’m sorry, Travis. I didn’t mean to lecture you. Besides, our shadow selves aren’t always bad. Sometimes monsters can be heroes, too. Look at
Beauty and the Beast
.”

He lifted his head and gave her a crooked smile. “Don’t go trying to spoil my fun.”