The Keep of Fire (46 page)

Heretic
. That was what Oragien had called him as well. But then, wasn’t that what they were always called—people who spoke a truth no one wanted to hear? Weren’t those who were different always crucified like this … on crosses, on fences, on stones?

Outside the window, the flecks of copper ignited into flame and spread across the sky. The first echoes of boots against stone sounded outside the door.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Travis murmured.

But maybe this wasn’t really such a bad way for things to end. Maybe the Runespeakers would never understand, but he
had
helped them. They would learn now—because they had to. He supposed a lot of people died having done less. He folded his hands in his lap and waited for them to come.

By the fire of Durnach’s forge! Are you just going to let them do this to you, Travis?

He winced as the voice spoke in his mind. “Jack.”

Travis wasn’t certain whether he was glad or not to hear the voice finally speak to him. Yes, it had helped him in moments of danger. But sometimes it seemed more like an affliction than a blessing—a reminder of what had been done to him, of how he had been changed.

This is absurd, Travis. These fools are the barest shadows of the Runespeakers of old. And you’re a runelord. They should be obeying your commands, not questioning your actions
.

“I broke their runestone, Jack.” He spoke aloud because somehow this seemed a little less insane.

And what a show that was, Travis. By Olrig, you’re bolder than I ever guessed. I’m not certain many of us could have done that. But then, you’re the only one left now. You’re everything we ever were
.

For a moment it seemed there were other voices in
his head besides Jack’s—a vast chorus speaking in harmony. Then it was just his old friend once more.

There is no need for this, Travis. Once they open the door, you can drop them all with a single rune and be away from this place. You have the power
.

Travis clenched his right hand into a fist. “No, Jack. I won’t hurt them. I won’t hurt anyone. That was my vow, and I’m going to keep it. I didn’t ask for this power.”

What utter nonsense! No one asks for power—except for idiots and madmen. But you have it, Travis, and it’s your duty to use it
.

Travis shook his head. “Not if it means hurting people. If I could get away from the null stone after they leave me there, I’d do it. But you can’t speak a rune there—I know, I tried. So there’s nothing that can help me.”

There was a silence so long Travis thought that even the voice had fled him now in this final hour. Then it came again, a whisper deep in his mind.

You’re wrong, Travis. The null stone is ancient, but there are powers more ancient still. The hand of Olrig will aid you
.

This was a cruel joke. Travis pounded his fist against his thigh. “But Olrig isn’t here anymore. Don’t you remember? The Old Gods are gone.”

Are they?

Travis opened his mouth, then closed it. There was no use in replying. As if a door had shut in his mind, the voice was gone. At the same moment another door—the one to his cell—swung open. Three journeymen entered. Travis stood.

“You don’t need that,” he said, as one of them lifted a strip of leather. However, the man ignored him and tied the strip over his mouth, gagging him. Apparently they weren’t going to risk his breaking their rune of silence again. The others took his arms and shoved him through the door.

A half-dozen times he nearly saved them the work of taking him to the null stone by stumbling and just about breaking his neck on the steps as they pushed him down the staircase. However, with rough jerks they kept him upright, and he made it to the bottom. They forced him through the gate.

The light of the dying day spilled like blood across the plateau in front of the tower. The runespeakers were all there, gathered in a semicircle facing west. He could not see past them to the null stone, but he knew it was there, for it weighed like a blot on his mind. Hard hands propelled him toward it.

Sweat trickled in rivulets inside Travis’s robe, and he was unable to walk without knocking his knees together. It was difficult not to entertain thoughts of escape. If somehow he could get the gag off, just for a moment, he could freeze his captors with
Gelth
, or burn them with
Krond
. Then he could run far from here. Where he would go, he didn’t know. Maybe back to Calavere, to see Grace and Beltan, and …

The runespeakers parted, making way for him to pass, and all of Travis’s thoughts ceased. His eyes locked on the black outline of the null stone—then moved down to the heap of sticks piled at the base. Fear transmuted into panic. He strained against the grips that held him, but more hands reached out, pulling him toward the stone. Travis tried to scream but only choked against the gag instead. He had been wrong. Horribly, stupidly wrong. They weren’t going to just tie him to the stone and leave him.

They were going to burn him alive.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

“There has to be a way out of here. There has to be.”

One more time Grace pawed at the rough wood of the cell’s door, digging her nails into every crack, groping for any sign of weakness.

“Grace.” Aryn’s voice was soft but urgent. “Grace, it’s no use. You have to stop.”

She hesitated, then lifted her hands to gaze at them: Blood oozed from the raw fingertips. With a stiff nod she stepped away from the door. Aryn let out a sigh, then cast a worried look at Lirith. The witch’s lips were pressed into a line, but she said nothing, her hands resting on Tira’s thin shoulders.

Grace paced around the boundaries of the wedge-shaped cell. They had found themselves in the cell upon waking—sometime after sunset the previous night—once the effects of the rune had worn off. Somehow Tira had already been awake, for Grace had opened her eyes to see the girl’s placid face bent over her. Now it was nearly sunset again. Grace knew that, when it rose over the western mountains, the moon would be full.

She considered shouting again, but her throat was as ragged as her fingers. Not that there was a point to it anyway. They would not come again. At least not until after nightfall. Oragien had made that much clear.

The old man who had met them at the tower’s gate had come to their cell just after dawn, and had spoken to them through a crack in the door, identifying himself as the All-master of the Gray Tower.

“Why are you keeping us?” Aryn demanded before
either Grace or Lirith could speak. The baroness’s blue eyes blazed with ire. If Grace had forgotten Aryn was nobility of the highest degree, she had remembered it then.

“It is for the best that you remain here,” Oragien said, his voice weary but resolute.

“And for what crime are we being imprisoned?”

“For no crime, good sister. After sunset tonight we will release you, and you will be free to leave the tower.”

Grace clenched her jaw. After sunset … and after they had murdered Travis. Wasn’t that what the old man meant?

Aryn’s tone was frosty steel. “I am a baroness of Calavan, here with a duchess as well as a countess of Toloria. And all of us are companions to Queen Ivalaine. Do you truly believe you won’t have to answer for this deed?”

Oragien passed a withered hand before his eyes. “In the end, we each must answer for our deeds, good sister.”

At that, the color had drained from Aryn’s face, and words had seemed to flee her. Lirith gripped her shoulders, pulling her back from the door. Oragien stepped away from the crack.

Wait!
Grace had tried to shout.
You still haven’t said why you’re doing this to Travis!

But the door had already shut, and since then no other had come to the cell.

Now Grace sat on one of the two cots that occupied the cramped room. She shut her eyes and lifted a hand to her forehead. They had all awakened with headaches that still lingered. An aftereffect of the rune magic, perhaps.

“Here. Drink this.”

Grace opened her eyes and saw Lirith holding a wooden cup. At least they had been left a pitcher of
water, along with some bread and raisins. Grace accepted the cup and drank, and the throbbing in her skull receded a bit.

“Maybe we should try again,” she said as she handed back the cup, meeting Lirith’s dark eyes. “To use the Touch.”

Lirith laid a slender hand on Grace’s arm. “The walls are stone, sister. The door wood and iron. Not mist, not water. You tried this morning when you were fresh and rested, and you could not move them. How can you now when you are weary?”

Grace stiffened.
And maybe you just don’t want me to open the door. Sister. After all, you think he’s the Runebreaker. Maybe you don’t want me to save him
.

But these thoughts were madness, brought on by exhaustion and fear. Lirith was her friend.

Grace drew in a breath. “You’re right. And even if we weren’t all too tired, the Weirding is weak here. I don’t think there’s enough life in this tower to fill a thimble.”

Aryn ran a hand over one of the impossibly smooth walls. “No, that’s not true. I know it seems odd, but there
is
life in this stone. It’s like the Weirding, but it’s different as well. Colder. More distant. I can’t …” She shook her head. “I just can’t seem to grasp it.”

Grace shot Aryn a grateful look. At least she had tried.

“My lady …” came a deep, faint voice.

At once Grace stood, moved to the farside of the cell, and knelt beside an opening at the base of the wall—so small even Tira would not have been able to slip her hand through it. The opening would allow water from this cell and the next to pour into a common drain. More importantly, it let Grace see into the adjacent space. She peered through and saw a stone floor and two sets of boots.

“Durge. Beltan.”

“We are still here, my lady,” came the Embarran’s somber voice.

“We’re sure as steel not going anywhere with these things on,” Beltan’s tenor followed.

Chains rattled. They sounded heavy.

“So you haven’t been able to get free?” Grace said without even attempting to sound hopeful.

“I’m sorry, Grace,” Beltan said, his voice hollow through the opening. “I don’t think a troll could break these chains.”

“My lady,” Durge said, “I called because I wondered what time of day it was. There is no window in here.”

Grace glanced at the glowing slit in the wall behind her. “It’s almost sunset.”

There was silence from the other side, then the chains rattled again, louder this time, and a shout of effort, rage, and pain echoed off stone.

“They can’t do this to him! By Vathris’s bloody blade, they can’t do this! Oh, gods …”

Grace squeezed her eyes shut as Beltan’s words ended in a strangled sound of anguish.

“Forgive us, my lady,” came Durge’s quieter but no less heartrending tones. “We have failed you. And we have failed Goodman Travis.”

No
, Grace wanted to say.
No, I’m the one who failed—failed to be where I was supposed to be
. But she couldn’t give voice to the words.

She still couldn’t understand how this had happened. Her vision was going to come true, but she was not going to be there by the standing stone as she had believed. But that didn’t make sense. In the vision, Travis had seen her standing there, she was sure of it. But how was he going to see her now that she was locked in this cell?

Grace opened her mouth to say something, anything, that might comfort the knights—

—and stopped as a knock came at the cell door.

She jerked her head up. Both Lirith and Aryn stared at the portal. Tira only played with her burnt doll. The knock came again, louder this time. Then the cell door opened—not a crack, but all the way.

Grace was so astonished she could not move, could not bolt for freedom as she should have given the opportunity. Instead, she watched as a man—robed not in gray, but in brown—stepped into the cell. He was young, no more than twenty, his rubbery face misshapen but kindly.

“Who are you?” Grace said.

The young man drew something from inside his robe and held it toward her. Grace drew closer. It was a hand made of gray stone. She cast a puzzled look that was returned by Aryn and Lirith, then met the young man’s eyes.

“What is it?” she whispered, certain that something important was about to happen.

The young man opened his mouth. As he did, she saw the stump of flesh where his tongue had once been. He worked his jaw, his face contorting even further. Then sound issued from his lips.

“Oh … hrig.”

Grace stared. Her instincts told her this was the first time this man had spoken in many years, perhaps since he was a child, when his tongue was taken from him. Shaking, he held the stone hand out farther and spoke again.

“Oh
-hrig.”

Grace gazed at the hand. It was broken at the wrist, as if once part of a larger sculpture. Ohrig. Was that a word for hand?

No, Grace. That’s not it. Think—he doesn’t have a tongue. That means he can’t form lingual sounds
.

She took the hand and looked up into his eyes. “Olrig. This is the hand of the Old God Olrig.”

He nodded and grinned, his eyes bright.

Aryn stepped forward. “Grace, what’s going on?”

She shook her head. “I don’t …”

The young man handed her another object. Grace’s fingers closed around soft fabric. She shook the garment out and gasped. It was a robe the color of mist.

The young man gestured, his movements as eloquent as gently spoken words:
Put it on, my lady
.

She cast a shocked look at Aryn and Lirith.

Lirith’s eyes were intense as coals. “You must go, Grace. I looked out the window just a moment ago. Already the runespeakers are gathering.”

Grace clutched the robe. “But …”

“But there’s only one robe.” Aryn stepped forward and touched her shoulder. “We’ll do our best to free Beltan and Durge. Now go, Grace. You’re Travis’s only chance.”

Grace gazed at the two women. Then Tira moved between them. She patted Grace’s hand, then looked up and cast a beautiful half smile at the young man. He grinned back at her. Grace held up the robe.