The Keep of Fire (38 page)

Marsh lost by consensus, and the travelers rode toward the bridge.

It was hard to say exactly why, but for some reason Grace was relieved when Shandis’s hooves echoed off timeworn stone. For the entire journey east, the Dimduorn had seemed like a barrier between them and Travis. It would be good to finally leave the river behind them. Gathered in a close knot, the riders started across the old Tarrasian bridge.

They were halfway to the other side when Daynen tilted his head back and sniffed the air. “Now I smell smoke.”

Aryn frowned in the twilight. “So do I.”

Grace drew in a lungful of air, then she caught it, faint but acrid. Beltan lifted a hand, and hooves scraped against stone as the party came to a halt on the bridge. Grace stiffened in the saddle.
Why are we stopping?
she started to say, but the words turned to ash on her tongue.

On the other side of the river, forms moved across the undulating landscape, approaching the bridge. They were shadows in the gloaming, shaped like spindly people, but as dark as the coming night. A parched wind sprang out of nowhere and blew across the bridge, like the air from an oven. Grace heard a stifled scream beside her, followed by a low oath from one of the knights.

A small hand reached up to touch Grace’s cheek. She looked down into Tira’s frightened eyes.

“The Burnt Ones are coming,” Grace whispered.

Tira nodded, looked back down, and cradled her doll.

Silver twilight stretched across the land on either side of the Dimduorn: a thinner and thinner membrane separating day from night.

“How many of them do you see?” Durge said. The Embarran’s grim face shone like a ghost in the gloom.

Beltan nudged his charger forward, peered past the end of the bridge, then shook his head. “It’s hard to say. There might be three, maybe four.”

Grace tried to count the
krondrim
, but it was impossible to hold them with her eyes. They melted in and out of the gloaming, vanishing only to reappear in a different—and closer—place. Then she caught the red flickers low to the ground, like crimson blossoms unfurling in the dusk. The grass of the plain was igniting under their feet, burning brightly for a moment, then dimming to ash. By the telltale light she was able to guess the number of the dark beings.

“Five,” she said, her voice turned into a croak by the hot wind. “There are five of them.”

Already the Burnt Ones were less than a furlong
from the river, lurching forward in a rough semicircle so that there was no clear route past them. Grace guessed they had two minutes, maybe three until the
krondrim
reached the bridge.

Hooves rang out on stone as Meridar pressed his charger forward. “Sir Beltan, were you and your men not tracking the movements of these creatures? Did you not know they would be in this place?”

Beltan threw his cloak back over his shoulders, and his chain mail gleamed in the pale light. “We had heard reports they were traveling along the river. But I had no idea they had come this far south, or this close to Ar-tolor.”

“What must we do?” Lirith said, her calm voice like a salve to Grace’s sizzling nerves.

Beltan glanced at the witch. “From all the stories I’ve heard, they don’t move fast. And they only burn what’s in their path. If we go back the way we came, we should be able to outride them easily enough.”

A cold needle injected panic into Grace’s chest. “But that means not crossing the bridge. Is there another way over the river?”

He met her eyes, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, Grace.”

She nodded. There was no other choice; if there were, Beltan would have offered it. How they would cross the Darkwine now and get to Travis before the full moon, Grace didn’t know. But they would do Travis no good if they were burned to cinders here. They had to turn back.

Durge nudged Blackalock’s flanks and brought the charger alongside Shandis. The knight reached out, hesitated, then laid a gloved hand on Grace’s arm. “Come, my lady.”

She pressed her hand over his, then let go. Together, the travelers turned their horses around and started back over the bridge. Tira squeezed her thin
body back, and Grace did not resist the closeness. She held the girl against her.

Just as they reached the west end of the stone span, Lirith spoke in a quiet voice. “Lord Beltan, do the men of your company ever patrol this near to the river?”

He frowned, glancing at her. “Sometimes. Why?”

“I see torches among the trees.”

Grace sucked in a breath. Even as Lirith spoke, she saw them: red sparks winking in and out of existence against the dark line of trees four hundred yards away. Then the lights moved from the trees, onto the open land between river and wood.

“Those aren’t torches,” she said, her voice rising.

Beltan swore a low oath.

“There must be ten of them,” Meridar said. “Twenty.”

Durge let out a rumbling breath. “More.”

Spindly, onyx forms lumbered from all directions, approaching the west side of the bridge, leaving snaking trails of fire in their wake.

A strangled sound escaped Aryn’s throat. “I don’t understand. What do they want from us?”

“Maybe nothing,” Beltan said. “We don’t know what their purpose is. I suppose we were just lucky enough to get in their way.”

“We must head back over the bridge,” Durge said. “There are fewer of them on the east side of the river.”

Beltan nodded. “And if we can get past those, then we can outride the ones coming from the west.”

And how are we going to get past even five of them?
Grace tried to say. But the parched air had fused her throat shut.

They wheeled their mounts around and pounded over to the Tolorian side of the bridge. The horses snorted and rolled their eyes; the beasts smelled fire.

“I’m afraid,” Daynen said, his voice warbling.

Lirith circled her arms around the boy and held him close.

The five
krondrim
on the east side had continued their approach. They were thirty yards from the bridge now and closing, setting the grass ablaze wherever they stepped.

Beltan swung his legs over his charger’s back and hit the ground with a dissonant ringing of chain mail. “Everyone, get off your horses. It’s going to be hard to control them when those things get close.”

Durge reached up and drew his greatsword from the sheath on his back. Colorless light reflected by the river shone off the flat of the blade, and its edge was stained with crimson. “My lady,” he said to Grace. “You and the others must stay behind us. Be sure to keep the children with you.”

Grace gave a wordless nod.

They left the horses in a knot to the right side of the bridge. Grace, Aryn, and Lirith stood in the place where stone met turf, Daynen and Tira in their midst, while the three knights fanned out in front, swords raised. Grace watched the lines of fire draw closer and wished Melia were here. On Midwinter’s Eve, the amber-eyed lady had managed to hold dozens of snarling
feydrim
at bay in the great hall of Calavere. If only Grace had such power.

But don’t you have power, Grace? Maybe it’s not like Melia’s. But you were able to conjure a wind in Falanor, enough to move fog, at any rate
.

However, she didn’t know what good that did her. It was going to take more than a breeze to hold the
krondrim
back. The Burnt Ones were ten paces away now. Five. Still, Grace could make out no distinguishing features: only the sharp outlines of their bodies, so dark she saw them as holes in the gloom.

“Get ready,” Beltan said to the other knights. “And whatever you do, don’t let them touch you.”

Durge and Meridar tightened their grips on their
swords. The
krondrim
covered the last remaining distance and reached out sooty hands. Heat rolled off of them in choking waves.

Durge’s sword was the longest, and he struck first, a powerful blow aimed at the center of the nearest creature’s body. There was a harsh clanging, as of metal on stone. Both Durge and the
krondrim
stumbled back. The Embarran recovered, then raised his sword again. The tip of the blade glowed a dull red, as if it had just been pulled from the coals of a forge, then dimmed as it cooled again. The Burnt One staggered, then started forward once more.

Two other
krondrim
closed in, and—like Durge—Beltan and Meridar were able to beat them back with their swords. However, the blades did not seem to harm the creatures. Their skin was like rock hardened from lava. The Burnt Ones moved forward again, joined now by the rest of their kindred.

In ones and twos the
krondrim
lurched toward the foot of the bridge, only to fall back under the onslaught of the knights. Sweat poured down the faces of the men, and they shifted their grips constantly against the hilts of their hot swords. How long could the knights stand the furnace? And how long would the
krondrim
attack only one or two at a time?

A puff of hot, gritty air struck Grace’s face, and tears ran from her stinging eyes. She blinked the tears back—

—and saw Tira walking away from her.

“Tira!” she hissed, snatching out her hands to clutch the girl. She was too slow. Tira started forward, in the direction of the battle, and Grace let out a strangled scream. Then the girl turned, dodged the stamping legs of the terrified horses, and squatted beside the bank of the river, just to the right of the bridge. Small waves lapped at her bare toes. She pulled her charred doll from her smock, dipped it into the water, and looked back in Grace’s direction.

Grace stared, paralyzed. What was the girl doing? Then Tira submerged the doll again, and Grace understood.

“The water!” she shouted to the knights. “We have to get them into the water. It’s the only way to harm them.”

None of the men looked her way, but a grunt from Durge let her know he had heard. He started to back away, toward the strip of shore just left of the bridge, opposite Tira and the horses. Beltan and Meridar followed, as did the
krondrim
. Tira dashed back to Grace’s arms. Grace gripped the girl tightly, then pushed her behind Lirith and Aryn, up onto the bridge. How the girl had known what to do was a mystery that would have to wait for later.

“Stay here,” she said to Tira. “You too, Daynen.” She nudged both boy and girl a dozen paces up the bridge. Daynen’s face was a mask of fear as he found Tira with blind hands and held her close. Grace turned and moved back down to the other women, at the foot of the bridge.

“Come!” Meridar hissed. Flames reflected off his eyes. “See if you can melt this blade before it cuts you in two!”

He shook his sword at the Burnt Ones. Blisters dotted his face. The knights’ armor gleamed in the light of small grassfires, and Grace knew they were baking inside the metal.

“Keep moving them toward the water!” Beltan called.

Durge grunted in assent. The knights kept falling back and left, and the
krondrim
staggered after them. Five feet from the river, now three, now one. The heels of Beltan’s boots touched the waves washing up on the bank.

The Burnt Ones stopped.

The knights moved back another pace, letting the water rise up to their knees. The
krondrim
milled
back and forth on the shore, reaching onyx hands toward the men. But they did not step into the water.

Grace saw it—the flaw in their plan. Water had the power to harm them. And that meant the Burnt Ones would never follow the knights into the river. Hot tears blurred her vision.

“Grace.”

Lirith’s voice was soft, but somehow it cut through the smoke and despair that dulled her mind.

“Grace, look.”

There was a muffled gasp beside her. Aryn. With her fingers, Grace wiped her eyes clear. Unwilling to tread into the river, the
krondrim
had turned away from the shore. Now they walked in a new direction—one, thanks to Grace’s plan, no longer blocked by the knights or their swords.

“Grace!” Aryn’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “What do we do?”

Grace hesitated, then reached out and took the hands of the others into her own. Lirith gave a solemn nod, and Aryn squeezed back tightly. Together the three women watched as the Burnt Ones shambled toward them.

With a great frothing, the knights pounded out of the river and onto the shore. However, the water held them back, slowing their action. The
krondrim
were well away from them—and only a matter of feet from the foot of the bridge.

Grace glanced over her shoulder at the children who stood on the bridge twenty feet behind her. “Daynen, stay put. And hold on to Tira. Do you understand me?”

He nodded, his blind eyes wide, and tightened his
grip on Tira’s shoulders. Grace turned back, and a searing wave of heat struck her in the face. She willed her legs into columns. If she could delay the Burnt Ones, even for a few seconds, the knights might have time to save the children.

And how will you accomplish that, Grace?

But she already knew the answer to that question. For all its frailty, flesh was not so easily consumed. Even the white-hot fires of the crematorium at the hospital took time to reduce a body to ashes.

A shout rose above the crackling of burning grass. “Adagar! Lunge!”

At the call, one of the horses reared onto its hind legs: Meridar’s charger. The charger let out a trumpeting call, its muzzle wet with foam and the whites of its eyes showing. However, such was its training that the warhorse heeded the command of its master. It burst from the knot of horses and charged directly into the line of approaching
krondrim
. Hooves crashed down, striking sparks against hard flesh. Several of the Burnt Ones tumbled to the ground—then clambered to their feet again. Black hands reached out to stroke glossy flanks.

The charger screamed: a squealing, impossibly high-pitched sound that shredded Grace’s nerves. The horse crashed to the ground, legs flailing, as the flames engulfed it far more swiftly than she had thought possible. She heard oaths from the knights, but they were lost in another animal shriek. Then the sound ended as the horse’s legs went stiff. The
krondrim
moved past the smoking carcass, continuing on their path toward the bridge.