The Keeper of the Mist (4 page)

Keri's small bakery stood at the east end of the southern lane that wrapped along the edge of the neat little town, the second largest in Nimmira. Farms stretched out to the west; Cort's farm—actually, his brother Gannon's farm—was one of the nearest. It was the third-largest farm near Glassforge. Gannon raised wheat and rye and tended chestnut and peach trees, and he also bred the heavy horses farmers needed for their plowing.

The glassworks were mostly to the south and west, on the other side of the river; Keri's mother had taken her to see them once, when she was a child, because she said everyone should know how Glassforge had earned its name. She had let Keri choose a little glass ornament that had no purpose at all but to look pretty; you hung it in a window and let it catch all the colors of fire from the sunlight. Keri had not understood at the time that her mother had spent two weeks' profit on that one little bauble. She had not understood that until she had started running the bakery herself, during that awful time when her mother was sick but before she died, when she had first started counting the cost of everything in terms of how much flour or white sugar it could buy.

She had hung that fiery bauble in her mother's window when she'd become so weak she was unable to rise from her bed. Her mother could not even sit up, so Keri had brought her flowers. She had picked them herself; it would have been far too expensive to buy flowers. She had brought her mother flowers, and the first peaches, and hung the bauble in her window so she would have sunlight.

Then her mother had died, and Keri had made the glass bauble her grave-gift. She had not wanted her mother to go into the lonely dark without even a spark of light, and besides, she felt that she herself would never want sunlight again. Few of the townspeople had come to the graveside with gifts: only Tassel and Tassel's mother and her aunts and her girl cousins, and two women who lived in the next house toward town and made rag rugs out of scraps of cloth, and an older woman, whose name Keri didn't even know, who had come every single week without fail to buy a cake and two dozen cream buns. In the whole of Glassforge, those few were all who came.

Glassforge was a pretty town, though. Keri might have resented its prettiness, except her mother had said often how much she admired a pretty house or a tidy shop, and in Glassforge, all the houses were pretty and all the shops tidy. The buildings were all of gray stone or red brick or white-painted wood. Most of the houses had window boxes filled with flowers, and most of the shops had lilacs or sweet pepperbushes or some other fragrant shrubs by their doors. All the houses and shops had bright trim and fine glass windows, because nobody in Glassforge, no matter how poor, would dream of using mere oiled parchment. In this part of town, the cobbled lanes, swept twice a day by a small army of young boys, were shaded by great high-spreading elms and chestnuts.

The shops that lined the square in the center of town were the best in Glassforge, and the two inns, one on the east side and the other on the west, were expensive enough that only the well-to-do could purchase a room or a meal at them. Keri, for example, had never bought so much as a bowl of soup at either inn, although she, as her mother before her, had sold the proprietors cakes and cream buns and other confections to serve their guests. She wondered if either inn's proprietor or any important guests were looking out just now to see the Timekeeper pass, trailing his unlikely companions.

Keri had a strange sense, as she walked between Tassel and Cort and behind the Timekeeper, that she had never actually seen Glassforge before. The streets looked unfamiliar, though she had known them all her life; the pretty houses seemed almost like part of a painted backdrop, as if someone had put up scenery for an enormous stage and in a moment would roll up the canvas and take it away. There were folk out in the lanes, some strolling and some hurrying and a few riding in carriages that rattled over the cobbles; the horses' hooves clattered on the stones with a sound that echoed too loudly and yet at the same time seemed somehow muted. And too many of the people looked at her. They looked at the Timekeeper and then at Keri, and their eyebrows rose and their mouths pursed, and, though they were too polite to point or shout, they leaned together and murmured.

Keri knew she had flushed. She straightened her shoulders and fixed her gaze directly ahead. She was acutely aware of Tassel giving her quick, concerned little glances out of the corner of her eye and of the scowl Cort directed at the passersby, so that their interest became a little more covert. She wished they had already arrived at the shelter of the House. Then she wished far more ardently that she had refused to leave her shop, because she already knew that whatever the House of the Lord of Nimmira offered her, it would not be
shelter.

But she could not go back, even if she wanted to. The Timekeeper had been right about that, at least. Time—time went inexorably forward, and everyone was dragged along, will they or no. She stared straight ahead at the Timekeeper's ornate coat, at the bound length of cobweb-fine white hair that fell down his back, and wondered again how old he was and whether he himself sometimes wanted to turn the hands of his watch backward.

The Lord's House was not quite centered in the town square, though this had the effect of making the square look oddly narrow along one side rather than of making the House look wrongly placed. Both the town square and the House's actual courtyard were paved with the same gray flagstones, so you couldn't precisely tell when you'd crossed from the town proper to the House's own territory. The House itself was a tall, square building of gray stone, not fancy, but much larger than the ordinary houses of the town. For all its plain construction, it did boast a carved oak door and carved shutters on the windows, and no fewer than twelve chimneys, which provided nesting places for any number of chimney swifts in the spring, not to mention employment for a horde of chimney boys in the fall.

A great many of the slender, dark swifts flicked this way and that through the sky now. Keri paused, tipping her head back to watch them. She had never admired the House, but she liked the birds. The people of Nimmira said that if you let swifts nest in your chimneys, they would scatter the bad tempers and bad dreams of the previous day and night out across the sky at dawn. Keri wondered whether whoever had built the Lord's House with twelve chimneys had thought the people who lived there would have a lot of bad dreams. She imagined that possibly she might, at least at first.

To get to the House, you only had to walk through the square, past all the girls fetching water from one or another of the fountains that ornamented its corners and the young men pretending to have business there so they might have an excuse to chat with the girls, past mothers with their toddlers and prosperous men of business coming and going between town and House, past children tossing pebbles and copper coins into squares chalked on the paving stones and chanting as they skipped through the figures.

Keri paused for just a moment to watch the children. The counting game was supposed to have started as a charm to gain the favor of Eschalion's Wyvern King. In Nimmira it was safe to mock the Wyvern King's power by turning charms like that into children's games. Or it had been safe. If the boundary mist failed completely…Keri didn't want to imagine what might happen the next time a handful of children borrowed a gold coin instead of a copper one and chalked those figures on the cobbles, playing at blood sorcery to frighten themselves. Gold for fire, gold for sunlight, gold to contain sorcery and lock enchantment into the world—but not in Nimmira. Not anymore.
One for the gift of fire, two for the gold you bring, three for the price of heart's blood, four for the Wyvern King….
She shivered.

The children were too serious about their game to notice anything else, and the young men and the girls were too busy flirting with one another, but some of the matrons and almost all of the gentlemen turned to look in startlement at the Timekeeper's little procession. Keri's face felt hot. She wondered whether there were smears of flour or frosting visible on her dress, which wasn't her best one anyway. It seemed likely. She lifted her chin and refused to flinch, though even Tassel didn't look like she welcomed the attention. Cort, of course, glowered impartially back at everyone. Keri thought she had not quite appreciated his temper properly before. She appreciated it now. It gave her courage.

Then she realized that people were turning to look at something else, something new. The murmur that went through the square wasn't the same. Keri stopped, just stopped dead in the middle of the square, and turned toward the east. She seemed at first to see something in the way the sunlight fell, and then she thought she saw something in the way the air shaped itself around something that shouldn't be there, though she couldn't at once say what the strangeness might be.

Then there was an unfamiliar rhythmic ringing, metal against stone, and a voice called out something, and a sharp silence fell across the square. Even the young people at the fountains turned and stared, and the older women caught up their children and backed away, and with a crash of boot heels against stone, a troop of soldiers marched into the square. Actual soldiers. Real soldiers, like out of a puppet show or a dusty old book. When she was little, Tassel had shown Keri a book like that. Twenty soldiers, in four ranks of five, which made them easy to count. Or actually twenty-one because there was one man out front.

These were Bear soldiers, from Tor Carron, surely used to facing conscripts from Eschalion in the constant tension along their northern border, not in the least used to the people of Nimmira. That might, Keri thought, explain the wary manner in which they carried themselves. They wore tan and brown, with the Red Bear on badges over their hearts and on the center of their rectangular shields. They had long hair plaited back from sharp-featured faces and swords at their belts—sheathed, at least, Keri was grateful for that much—and boots with iron in the heels so they rang on the flagstones. It was this that Keri had heard, but they had stopped now, right there on the east side of the square, and stood straight and still, just looking. At the House, Keri thought, and not at her, though it seemed that way. Or maybe they were staring at the Timekeeper, tall and formal in his black coat, with his white hair in a queue down his back and the stark lines of his face. Anyone might well stare at the Timekeeper.

In front of the soldiers stood their captain or lord: a tall man with a face like a knife blade and eyes black as jet, with a red cloak and a teardrop earring swinging below his left ear, a ruby or garnet or carnelian, Keri couldn't tell. He was certainly staring straight at the Timekeeper.
Surely
not at Keri, who must look ordinary and commonplace next to the Timekeeper's grim height.

“Bear soldiers!” Tassel said, sounding fascinated and not at all frightened. “Imagine, actually leaving your own home and traveling into a different land!”

Keri said, startled, “You can't think that would be a
good
thing?”

“Well, but it would be so exciting! They must be brave, don't you think? Who do you suppose that is at the front? Look, he's staring right at us! Do you suppose he made that earring with blood magic? Maybe he can do sorcery with it. Don't they use jewels to channel their magic in Tor Carron? He looks like he could do sorcery, doesn't he? He looks clever. He looks…He looks like he knows
exactly
what he wants.” She smiled, slowly. “Isn't he handsome?”

Keri and Cort gave Tassel identical looks. The Timekeeper lifted one cobweb eyebrow and sighed.

Keri said sharply, “No, he isn't, and we had better hope his earring is just an earring. We don't need a Bear Lord who can also do sorcery!” She turned to Cort. “I know you said the mist was thinning, but this seems awfully fast. Impossibly fast. Can someone in Tor Carron have known the boundary was going to open? Can they have been
waiting
for it?”

“I don't know how, but I think they must have been.” Cort was staring at the soldiers, but he spared a brief glance for Keri. “Maybe it was blood magic, at that. A magic of finding and seeing, maybe. It shouldn't have mattered. No little magic like that should have seen through our mist. It wouldn't have if the boundary was holding.” He paused and then went on grimly, “It was my job to keep them out. I realize that. Once they got in, it was my job to know they got past me. But there was nothing, I swear. Only the thinning mist, that's true. But look at them! Tassel's right about this, at least: that's a man who knew just what he was doing when he crossed our boundary. He knew what he was doing and he knows what he wants, and I much doubt he'll listen to a polite request to leave!”

“Whatever happened to the mist, it wasn't
your
fault.” Keri, too, was finding it difficult to look away from the soldiers. “You could hardly lock the boundary against foreigners when the mist simply failed.” She turned to stare up at the Timekeeper. “And you said the succession was good! It should really have been Brann, shouldn't it? Only you didn't want him, so you said it was me!”

“No,” said the Timekeeper, his tone flat, unmoved by Keri's accusation.

“Or Domeric!” said Keri. Domeric was a big man, strong. Everyone respected Domeric even if they didn't like him; she knew that. She repeated, her voice rising, “Of course it should be Domeric! Those Bear soldiers would think twice before offending
Domeric
!” Though that didn't make sense even to her, after the first second, because naturally if the mist hadn't failed, no one would have had to care what Osman Tor's soldiers thought about anything. But if Domeric were Lord right now, she was sure he would know how to deal with those soldiers.
She
had no idea.

The Timekeeper met Keri's eyes with his unreadable serpent's gaze. “It was your hour and your time, Lady Kerianna. I could not possibly have been mistaken.”

“Really?” cried Keri, driven past any wariness of him by terror and fury and shame. “What kind of Lady can I be? You
were
wrong, and now this!” She stabbed a finger toward the Bear soldiers. She couldn't stop them from coming into Nimmira. No one could stop them. The
mist
was supposed to stop them, but the mist had failed.
She
had failed, and she had only become Lady less than an hour ago.

“Even so,” said the Timekeeper, unmoved.

“What are we going to do?” Cort demanded. Of the Timekeeper, not of Keri. But the Timekeeper did not answer. So Cort looked at her: a skeptical, tense look that made it plain he did not expect her to have any idea what to do.

Keri hesitated, flushing. But she said quickly, determined to answer that look, “They don't have their swords drawn. That man in the front—
who is not either handsome, Tassel
—he looks curious, mostly, not angry or anything. Surely that's good.”

Now the Timekeeper tilted his head, shifting his gaze to Keri's face. “Lady,” he said quietly, “the succession was good. The boundary mist has failed, clearly. But you are correct: that was not your failure, nor the failure of your Doorkeeper. And correct again: this lord of Tor Carron shows, as yet, no inclination toward violence.” He gave her a faint nod. “What should we do?”

Keri took a deep breath, feeling somehow that the Timekeeper's expectation that she would have an answer for him made it possible for her to think. “You,” she said. “
You
look the part. You've been Timekeeper for many years; you know just what to do. You must know! So you can go talk to them. Tell them—tell them—” Inspiration struck. “Tell them the new Lady has deliberately opened the border, wishing Nimmira to become better acquainted with its neighbors. Tell them that.” She looked at Tassel and Cort, too, quickly. “We'll tell everyone that, do you think?”

“Clever,” Cort admitted, perhaps a trifle reluctantly. “You think people will believe that?”

But Tassel patted Keri approvingly on the arm and told her cousin, “Of course they will. They'll want to believe it.”

“As long as it stops people panicking,” said Keri, hoping it would at least slow down any panic. But she suspected Cort was right. At least, she doubted
she
would have believed it. But it was all she could think of. “Anyway…” She turned back to the Timekeeper. “Tell that Bear Lord that he and his people are welcome. Tell them they are invited to stay for my ascension and that after that I will welcome them personally and—and—”

“And in the meantime, they may stay at the inn on the east side of the square at the Lady's expense,” Tassel put in. “That they may become familiar with the people of Nimmira and the town of Glassforge.”

“Perfect!” Keri said, relieved. “Yes, tell them that. Will you tell them that? And then come find me, and tell me who exactly that man is and what he wants. Will you do that?”

The Timekeeper inclined his head. “Of course, Lady.” It was impossible to know from his manner whether he approved or not. He took out his watch and glanced at it. “Your appointment with your brothers is scheduled for one hour and seven minutes from this moment.”