The Keeper of the Mist (17 page)

“Yes!” Keri snapped back. “That would be better than watching you slice yourself up and maybe cripple yourself! But you're too stubborn, that's the trouble!”

Cort started a sharp answer, then surprised her by stopping with a short laugh. He still sounded angry, but it was a real laugh even so. “Yes,” he said. “I'll give you that one. But it would take an hour to get back to town on foot, and longer still to find a bonesetter, and what would we tell him? No, I'll get this.”

Keri had to admit that she didn't really want to delay, either. “All right. You're right. But be careful!”

“I'll try a slightly bigger cut,” Cort decided, and muttered under his breath while he carefully sliced across the tips of the two smallest fingers on his left hand. Keri flinched and looked away, but after a moment, Cort said, “There, that should do it,” his tone both grim and satisfied.

They had found the wagon trail without difficulty. Cort had found it; he had actually led them straight to it. Keri had recognized it only afterward, belatedly, with a sense of inevitability that annoyed her. If she'd known all the time, why not really
know,
in the front part of her mind, where it would do some good? She wondered if Tassel might be able to find any books on how to be Lady, how to best harness the intrinsic magic of Nimmira. Probably nothing so useful existed. Maybe she could write one herself, once she figured things out. If she could only get through these next few days.

The trail itself had proved to be rutted, but passable. The turn onto the trail from the road was disguised: you had to push through a stand of cedars and pines, and it seemed that someone had taken care to sweep fallen needles over the bare dirt of the track, too. So her father hadn't been so reckless as to trust entirely to illusion to hide the path—or maybe he'd been so
very
reckless he hadn't pulled illusion across the gap at all.

Either way, once you were past the cedar grove, the wagon trail was obvious enough, even by lantern light. Both Keri and Cort carried lanterns. They had brought almost nothing else, other than Cort's knife. Keri wanted to tell him again to be careful, but bit her tongue because she knew it would only annoy him. Then he said, sounding grim, “I think that's done it,” and left the trail, heading off north one stride at a time, with a tiny hitch at every step as he paused to make sure a drop of blood fell from his cut fingers to the ground.

Keri stared after him, almost more alarmed than relieved. Suddenly she wanted to say,
Stop, wait, I don't know what I'm doing!
But then she realized that she could actually feel every drop of Cort's blood hit the ground. That she could feel every drop of blood turn to pale mist and wreathe back into the air. The mist glimmered in the air, and she hurried to follow Cort. It seemed unlikely that one drop of blood for every step could give rise to enough mist to work with, but then it wasn't exactly mist. Cort was doing something to the drops of blood as they fell—anyway, something was happening to them—he was putting himself between Nimmira and the outer lands. Keri couldn't have done it. That wasn't
her
magic.

Her magic was all about knowing what belonged to Nimmira and what did not and what could go either way, all about knowing where the boundary lay and, yes, making it real somehow, real in a way that Cort couldn't quite manage. Defining
this
as Nimmira and
that
as Outside and making the land itself understand which side of the boundary it lay on.

She walked behind Cort, and where she stepped, the mist rose up and spread out and thickened: not exactly mist, but the magic of misdirection on which Nimmira depended, so that even though a careless step or flit of wings might lead a man or fox or sparrow into the narrow border between Nimmira and other lands, somehow neither man nor beast nor bird ever quite took that step or fluttered in quite that direction. It was exactly as though, to anyone outside it, Nimmira were not there at all. Anyone drawing a map would show the border Tor Carron shared with Eschalion as though little Nimmira did not exist.

Ahead of Keri, Cort stumbled and missed a step, and Keri drew up short and waited anxiously as he cast back and forth, muttering, until he found the true line once more. He had to slice the knife across another finger, and he muttered about that, too. But it was working. Keri could see it was working. Cort was repairing the boundary, filling in the gap, and in the morning everything would be fine, everything would be back to normal. She was conscious of an enormous relief, even though Osman the Younger and his men would still be on the wrong side of the border, even though Magister Eroniel would still be waiting, no doubt, for the promised private breakfast. Keri had no idea how they would get rid of either the Bear soldiers or the Wyvern sorcerer even after they fixed everything else.

But they would think of something. She clung to that thought every painful step as she followed Cort over the rough ground and through the dark, back toward the unseen town. It seemed a long quarter mile. But it was working. She knew it was working.

Until Cort stopped, and she stepped up beside him, and they both turned to look back the way they'd come and found the mist sinking and thinning behind them, dispersing into the chilly night air, like moonlight dimming as clouds slide across the sky. The emptiness of the gap was reasserting itself. They had failed after all.

“What is
that
?” Cort demanded, sounding thoroughly offended.

“It was working,” Keri protested. “I know it was working. I could
feel
it working.”

But they could both plainly see it had not worked. Staring out at the boundary that rose and thinned and poured itself into the empty sky and disappeared, Keri struggled not to burst into tears. This was all too hard and too infuriating, and it wasn't her fault it was like this, but she had to fix it, she and Cort, with his poor bloody fingers, and it wasn't
fair.

“There's another hole somewhere,” Cort said suddenly. He sounded disgusted, but not at all close to tears. “Another gap! Of course there is. A road to Tor Carron; naturally there's also some way to get to Eschalion. A gap, a door, a crack…Where is it? Where would it be?” He turned slowly in a full circle, his eyes narrowed, studying something Keri couldn't see. “I can't
find
it,” he said furiously, as though this were a deliberate insult someone had done him.

Keri tried to think. “It has to be somewhere logical, doesn't it? Somewhere someone could get to it easily. It wouldn't have to be very big. It might be just a door, like you said—”

“It could be anyplace,” snapped Cort. “Anywhere in Glassforge. How am I to find it—walk back and forth in the House and the streets and the private homes till I trip over a gap in the light?”

“Tassel,” said Keri, feeling as though she were grasping at straws. “Tassel might be able to figure it out.”

Cort grimaced. He had, Keri thought, wanted badly to finish this right now. To finish it and take up his proper role, keeping the proper boundaries of Nimmira and not some half-absent flickering echo of the proper magic. Cort, with his drive to get things
right,
might have wanted that even more than she did. But he said at last, “She might, at that. Very well.” He glowered once more around at the dark, opened and closed his cut hand in silent but bitter commentary about this failure, and said grimly, “Well. It's a long walk back to the House, and dawn not so far away anymore.” And he stepped aside, gesturing Keri past him with hard-held patience, to begin the trek to town.

Keri truly disliked Eroniel Kaskarian, she decided. She set one elbow on the table, rested her chin in her palm, and smiled at the Wyvern sorcerer through the steam rising from her teacup. She smiled at him the way she would have smiled at a man whom she did not like but who might purchase an expensive cake. Except what she was trying to sell was a lot more important than a cake, and she was afraid Magister Eroniel might be hard to fool.

“I hope, Magister,” she said, “that you are enjoying your visit to my Nimmira. Nimmira must seem very small and poor to an important sorcerer from Aranaon Mirtaelior's own family. You
are
of the Wyvern King's own family, are you not? That's what that ornament indicates, isn't it?”

The sorcerer did not return her smile. His thin lips crooked upward, but that was not a smile. It was too disdainful to be anything so friendly. His eyes really were an almost metallic color, like old silver. They reminded Keri of the eyes of a snake, one of the whippy tree snakes seen sometimes in the spring, draped over a high branch. Those snakes had eyes that were just that kind of opaque metallic gray.

The tree snakes were harmless, mostly. But they ate the eggs of wrens and swallows and finches and other little birds, and sometimes the fluttering birds as well, so they were not as welcome on farms or in gardens as the ordinary black rat snakes.

Magister Eroniel was leaning back in his chair, his long silvery hair pouring down past its carved arm. Most of his hair was loose, but when he turned his head, the obsidian wyvern Keri had asked about swayed from a single thin twist of pale hair braided with a slender silver chain. The wyvern's eyes were crystal, glittering in the early sunlight.

“The wyvern is the badge and the sign of the King's servants,” the sorcerer said eventually. Softly. His voice was like the voice of a snake, too, if a snake could speak: light and smooth and malicious. “But it is true I have the honor to share close blood ties to the King. Kaskarian is the line founded by our King's estimable sister, Liraniel Kaskarian, through her three sorcerer daughters, the first sired by sunlight and the second by moonlight and the third by the light of the stars…or so Liraniel always claimed.” He set down his own teacup and lifted his graceful hand to brush the obsidian wyvern. “One assumes the tale is metaphorical. Though who is to say what might be possible for a woman adept in the three greater and four lesser arts?”

“Fascinating,” said Keri. It even was, in a strange way. She wondered whether Magister Eroniel thought that story about sunlight and moonlight was metaphorical or true, and if it was metaphorical, what it was supposed to stand for. Maybe it would be obvious to anyone from Eschalion.

“My mother was Liranarre Kaskarian,” added Magister Eroniel. “She was the eldest daughter of Asteriarre Kaskarian, who was in turn eldest daughter of Liraniel Kaskarian, sister of Aranaon Mirtaelior, who is our King.”

“I see,” said Keri, hoping she wasn't supposed to remember all those names. She knew she wasn't going to. But maybe she was only expected to realize how important Magister Eroniel was, as a—what? Great-grandnephew of the King? She had known that Aranaon Mirtaelior had ruled Eschalion for a long time, but he must be even older than she'd thought, if Magister Eroniel was his great-grandnephew. Perhaps sorcerers didn't age like other people. She wondered how old Magister Eroniel was. Older than he looked, she suddenly suspected. How long would it take to learn to smile that opaque, unreadable smile?

She said, trying to get the sorcerer to talk about himself so she wouldn't have to risk talking about Nimmira, “How strange and beautiful the court of Eschalion must be, and how difficult for those of us from other lands to imagine. Have you lived all your life at your uncle's court, Magister? What is it like there?”

But Eroniel Kaskarian only lifted one elegant eyebrow and murmured, “Oh, I have dwelt in the white halls of the court now and again. Yes. Now and again. But, indeed, I do not expect your imagination equal to encompassing the court of Eschalion…Lady.” He glanced around the breakfast chamber, as though he could hardly think of when he'd seen so homely a room, which was certainly not fair, since the room was actually very pretty.

The breakfast chamber was in a part of the House that Keri hadn't seen before. The chamber itself was more a porch than a room, floored with smooth flagstones and surrounded by latticework rather than ordinary walls. There was a gate in the lattice, in case anybody should want to descend the two steps necessary and walk in the tiny walled garden beyond. Keri hadn't known the garden was there, either. She couldn't quite visualize what part of the town must be on the other side of the stone wall of the garden.

Except she could, actually, if she didn't think about it too hard. She was aware that the street of clothiers and weavers was just there, on the other side of the wall, with the town square around to the east. She was aware of the click of looms and the sound of voices and the play of water from the fountains. Someone was selling small puffs of sugared bread, children running to buy it. Overhead, the swifts darted in complicated figures through the sky.

She blinked, bringing her awareness back with some difficulty to the little garden and the open chamber and the girls clearing away the remnants of the eggs and fried mushrooms and bringing in bowls of apricots with cream and honey, and more tea. And to the elegant sorcerer lounging gracefully across from her, smiling his scornful, humorless serpent's smile. He had hardly tasted anything but the tea. She couldn't tell whether he disdained barbarian food or simply lived on moonbeams and cobwebs, but either way, she was inclined to resent it.

She started to ask something about how he had become a sorcerer. She suspected Eroniel Kaskarian would brush her off with some sort of
Oh, I hardly think your understanding equal to the complexities of the sorcery we practice in Eschalion.
Certainly he seemed to need no encouragement to take her lightly. But at that moment, there was a crisp rap on the door, and Cort strode in without waiting for an answer. Keri put down her cup and sat up straight in her seat. “Doorkeeper?” she asked sharply.

Eroniel Kaskarian steepled his hands before him and gazed over his fingertips at Cort, his eyebrows slightly elevated, as though he only barely restrained himself from murmuring something about impetuous youth. Or maybe impetuous peasants.

Keri ignored the sorcerer with some effort, asking Cort, “What is it? Something's happened?” Immediately she wished she hadn't asked, because if her Doorkeeper answered, he might well give too much away to the Wyvern sorcerer.

But Cort only said tightly, “Forgive me for interrupting you, Lady, but I think I may have found…the thing we sought last night.”

“Oh!” said Keri. She was afraid that might have been a little too intriguing, but she supposed Cort was so straightforward that he wasn't used to subterfuge. Turning to Magister Eroniel, she explained, “This is a trivial matter, Magister. My Doorkeeper seems to have found a…a missing key to one of my father's chests.” Did that sound even remotely believable? She was afraid she was no better at subterfuge than Cort, but forged on since she had no choice. “It seems to be an important chest, and naturally we have been curious to learn what it may contain, but I'm sure it is nothing very important. You were going to tell me about the court of Eschalion, so impossible for ordinary folk to imagine….”

“Please,” murmured the sorcerer, turning one palm up with gracious condescension. “You wish to attend to this inquiry, of course. You are still familiarizing yourself with your new estate…of course. Do not allow me to detain you, Lady Kerianna.”

Somehow when he said it, it sounded like an insult, even when he was saying something perfectly polite. Keri pretended not to notice. She couldn't even blame him, really: it might have been insulting for Cort to rush in like that, and maybe he had realized she'd made it up about the key. But she couldn't think how to repair the situation now, and she disliked the sorcerer so intensely that she couldn't bring herself to try. She waved at the dishes that had just been brought to the table. “You're so kind, Magister Eroniel, but don't let me interrupt your breakfast. The apricots are very good this year. Or if you don't care for apricots, you must ask for whatever you wish. My household will try to please you, I am sure.”

“Of course,” the sorcerer agreed softly.

Even that sounded somehow like an insult, or a warning, but Keri didn't linger. She was glad to escape, though she hoped this wasn't too obvious. She nodded to Cort. “Doorkeeper?”

“Yes,” Cort said, and took her arm, not so much in a courteous gesture, but almost pulling her along. Keri pretended not to notice until they were out of the sorcerer's sight, but she freed herself as soon as they'd left the breakfast chamber. Cort let her go without seeming to realize he'd ever gripped too hard, which, Keri knew, was almost certainly the case. She liked that about Cort, though: the way he poured all his attention into whatever was urgent and forgot about niceties.

“You've found the other gap in the boundary?” she asked.

“Yes,” snapped Cort, striding along the hallway without regard for Keri's shorter legs. The hallway ran beside the gardens, latticework on one side so anyone could enjoy the fragrance of the lilacs planted along the way, but he showed no signs of noticing the flowers. He said, still snapping, “I should have found it much earlier. I should have recognized it the instant I saw it. I'm such a
fool.
”

Keri liked that, too, she decided. It would have been easy to resent how demanding Cort was, except anybody could see he was even more demanding of himself. “We've all been busy,” she reminded him.

“Yes, but—” Cort flicked a sideways glance at her. “Where would
you
put a secret doorway if you wanted to be able to step into Eschalion and back again with no one the wiser? Someplace convenient, yet someplace where no guest or servant would stumble unexpectedly out of one land into the other. Remember, we're not talking about tons of wheat and wagonloads of peaches. You can carry a handful of jewels in your pocket.”

“Oh,” said Keri. “Your own apartment?”

“The Doorkeeper's apartment, exactly, curse the man! The biggest wardrobe in the bedroom! I should have looked through all the rooms, I should have looked there
first,
not wasted my time searching ridiculous places like the attics. Who would put a secret door in a cursed
attic,
where you couldn't even keep track of it? Oh, no, of course you'd put it in your own cursed apartment and just order the servants to keep out of it. The son of a lizard even
labeled
it. And I missed it anyway.”

“Labeled it?”

But Cort only shook his head, a sharp, annoyed gesture, as he led her up a flight of stairs and along another, broader corridor, this one lined with large portraits on either side. He didn't pause to look at them. Keri, having to stretch to keep up, didn't have time to steal more than a glance, though she realized many of those portraits must show some of her own ancestors.

“I didn't see it until one of the staff asked if he was permitted to put my things away in the wardrobe and it came out that no one was allowed to mess with the Doorkeeper's best coats, which is what he told them was in there. They are, too. The gap's behind the coats. You shove them aside and there you go—Eschalion.”

Cort put out a hand and pushed open the door to his apartment. A couple of servants who had been dusting or whatever looked up; one jumped to his feet and said uncertainly, “Doorkeeper?”

“Out,” Cort ordered them shortly. He slammed the door behind their hasty departure and led Keri through the apartment.

At least these rooms hadn't been decorated in red. There was a lot of heavy, fancy, carved furniture, though, and sumptuous hangings and deep carpets, and the lamps and candlesticks were all set with garnets. Nothing about the reception room, or the sitting room that followed, or the bedchamber beyond that, looked the least bit like anything Cort would appreciate or want to live with. Keri thought he would look far more at home in a place with simple pine furniture, nothing carved or heavy, with plain rugs on the wooden floor and ordinary lamps of brass. But there was no sign Cort had even noticed how little his predecessor's possessions suited him. He stopped in the middle of the bedroom and glowered at the wardrobe.