The Keep of Fire (18 page)

Lirith met her eyes. “Spin the web around him, sister. You have the power like neither Aryn nor I.”

“Please, Grace,” Aryn said. “Please, you have to try.”

No, she was a doctor and a scientist. She had used her power to probe, yes, to understand and diagnose. But that was all. The rest was medicine. It had to be.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

Lirith spoke in a soft voice. “Then he will die, sister.”

Grace licked her lips, then held shaking hands toward Garf and laid them on his chest. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to do it again, but even as she closed her eyes she saw the shimmering web. Except now he was connected to it by the barest thread, and even as she touched it the strand began to unravel. She fought to hold it together, but it was too
fragile. The thread slipped through her fingers. There was no more time.…

In her mind Grace almost laughed. Of course—once she saw it, it was so clear. She had simply to connect his thread to her own. Let her own life become a link between him and the great web that could sustain him until they reached the castle. She reached out a ghostly hand and touched the silver-gold thread she knew to be her own.

“Yes!” Lirith’s triumphant whisper seemed to come from all directions. “That’s it, sister!”

Grace brought Garf’s thread toward her own—

—and froze.

Terror filled her. There was a darkness in the web of the Weirding, a terrible black blot, and only after she recoiled from it did Grace realize that her own thread led directly to it. The blot had been hidden, but when she had pulled on her thread the thing had been revealed.

The blot heaved upward, taking on shape: a long, rambling building with windows like soulless eyes. Pale hands stretched out of the darkness, reaching for her. Grace shrank from them. The calls of owls sounded in her ears. Now the words that spoke in her mind belonged to another witch and another time.

Much of who you are lies behind a door, and I cannot see past it. However, you must know that you cannot lock away part of who you are without locking away part of your magic. If ever you want to discover that power, you will have to unlock that door.…

No. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let the shadow escape. If she set it free, then it would surely consume her.

She let go of her own thread. The door shut. The blot vanished.

“Grace!”

The cry was faint, as if it came from very far away.
Grace hardly heard it. She clutched for Garf, but the remaining wisp of his thread unraveled, and the shining web became a gray shroud in her hands.

They reached the high gates of Calavere with the last red light of day.

Grace and Aryn rode at the fore of the party with Lirith just behind. Next to the dark-skinned witch, on a gray charger, rode Sir Meridar, another of the king’s knights. He was a quiet man about Grace’s age, with gentle eyes set deep in a face ravaged by pox. Meridar had tied the reins of the dappled charger to his saddle, and the riderless horse followed after the gray. At the rear of the party came Durge and Blackalock with their grim, blanket-wrapped burden trailing behind.

None of them had spoken, not since they had left the purple valley. It had taken no more than half an hour to ride back to Calavere, but it might as well have been an eternity. Tears streaked Aryn’s face as she wept openly, and even Lirith looked shaken. Durge’s face was etched with hard lines. In a way Grace envied them. Maybe it would have been better if she could have felt something—anything besides this hollowness. But then there was an advantage to numbness. Wasn’t that the purpose of anesthesia? To feel no pain.

They might still have been there in the valley had Sir Meridar not found them. Grace had attempted resuscitation. She had showed Lirith how to tilt Garf’s head back, how to make a good seal around his mouth with her own, how to fill his lungs with air. Then Grace had worked his chest—endlessly, brutally, long after it was useless, long after she had heard ribs
crack. Still she had not stopped, even when Aryn, sobbing, begged her to, even when Durge laid strong hands on her shoulders and tried to pull her back.

She halted only when the thunder of hoofbeats echoed off granite. Moments later Meridar rode into the valley. From the back of his charger he took in the body of the bear, then the figure lying in front of Grace. Had word of what had happened somehow gotten back to the castle? Then he spoke to her, and she had realized that was impossible.

“Lady Grace, you have grave circumstances to concern you. From what has met my eyes, this is a dire and sorrowful thing that has befallen your party. However, I bring a summons from King Boreas, and even now, with what has happened, it must be obeyed with all good speed.”

Meridar’s eyes were compassionate, but there was a sharpness to his words—an edge not meant to hurt, but to cut through the dullness, to remind her that even now she had noble duties. Grace leaned back, let her hands slip from Garf’s chest, and stared at the ravaged body that a short time ago had been whole and strong. Sometimes no power was enough.

Except you did have the power, Grace. You did, you saw it, and you were afraid.…

The words sounded in her mind again as the riders passed between the castle’s guard towers and through the raised portcullis. She saw again—felt again—the shadowy blot upon the Weirding; then she pressed her eyes shut and forced the image away. They rode through an archway into the castle’s upper bailey. The last color drained from the stone walls, and the world faded to monochrome.

Meridar dismounted before the stable, then reached a hand up toward Grace. “The king awaits you, Your Radiance.”

She opened her mouth, then glanced at Durge.

“I will see to him, my lady,” he said softly.

She nodded, then accepted Meridar’s hand and slid to the cobblestones. The knight started to lead her toward a door; then she halted to look back at Aryn. But Durge had already helped the young woman from her horse, and Lirith had wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Grace decided she had better worry about herself and concentrated on keeping upright as she followed Meridar into the dimness of the castle.

When they reached Boreas’s chamber, the guard standing at the door stared as if they had startled him. Had he not been watching for their arrival? Then the man recovered, bowed to Grace, and opened the door. Grace stepped through, and only as the door swung shut behind her did she realize that Sir Meridar had not followed.

Boreas pushed himself up from the dragon-clawed chair that sat next to the hearth. The mastiff at his feet rose to its haunches and growled. The king glared at the dog, silencing its noise, and the beast skulked to a corner, but it did not take its black eyes off Grace.

“What has happened, my lady?” the king said in his thrumming baritone.

Grace blinked. How could he have heard that something had befallen the riding party? Sir Meridar had not come here before her. Then she followed his gaze, looked down at herself, and she understood the guard’s startlement, the dog’s growling, the king’s strange look.

Her lavender riding gown was drenched in crimson, dark with Garf’s blood, which was stiffening as it dried. Grace held out her hands, and they were caked with gore and dirt. She could only imagine the mask of her face. She met Boreas’s steely eyes.

“Garf, Your Majesty. Sir Garfethel. I did everything in my power. But his heart stopped beating, and he died.”

The words came easily to her lips. But then, she
had spoken them countless times to the wives, husbands, parents, and children in the hospital’s waiting room. In the past the words had always held the conviction of truth. But did they now? Had she really done everything in her power?

Spin the web around him, sister.…

In clinical tones Grace recounted what had taken place. However, she did not speak of the Weirding, or of the web of magic she had tried and failed to weave.

She was startled to realize she had finished the story. Boreas leaned against the heavy table. His black hair and beard shone in the light of an oil lamp; a servant must have slipped into the room to light it, but she hadn’t noticed.

“I saw the firedrake, as well, my lady. All in the castle did. And I thought it to be a harbinger of the news that reached me not an hour later. They say such a sign appears only when a king passes. But perhaps the tales are wrong. Perhaps it was for another.” His deep chest heaved as he let out a breath. “Regardless, you tell a strange tale, my lady. Bears seldom venture down from the Gloaming Fells. And it is not like such a beast to come straight for a man.”

The king had not invited her to sit, but all the same she sank into a horsehair chair near the door.
You’ll get blood on it, Grace
. But it was either that or fall to the floor. Boreas looked at her but said nothing about her impertinence.

“It was wounded,” Grace said. “Burned. I think it was mad with pain.”

Boreas nodded. “It is good you and Lady Aryn are well. And the others.”

Grace winced. Well? She was hardly well. But it didn’t matter. In the ED she had learned to move without thought from the dead to the living. Finish that chart and start a fresh one. She had a new case now.

“Why did you summon me, Your Majesty?” However, even as she spoke the words she knew.
They say such a firedrake appears only when a king passes
.

Boreas met her gaze. “Perridon is dead.”

“When?”

“A fortnight ago. King Persard died in his sleep.”

Had she the ability, Grace would have laughed.
And how many nubile maidens were in the bed with him?
At least one, she was willing to bet. It was a fitting end to the spry old king. But the news troubled her. Grace clutched the arms of her chair, and her mind clicked and whirred. It was good to have something else to think of, something more distant and impersonal.

It seemed a lifetime since the white days of winter, since she had worked as Boreas’s spy at the Council of Kings, since her friend and fellow Earther Travis Wilder had helped her uncover the murderous plottings of the Raven Cult, and since Travis had bound the Rune Gate, stopping the Pale King from riding forth to freeze the Dominions in everlasting ice.

For a month after their Midwinter’s Day decision to band together, the rulers of the Dominions had labored at the council table to forge new treaties should the Pale King—or any other threat—ever face the Dominions again. Calavan, Toloria, Galt, Brelegond, Perridon, and Embarr: All pledged to aid any Dominion that was attacked by an outside force, and also to act as arbiter should there arise a dispute between any two Dominions.

While these were good steps, the council’s greatest act had been the founding of the Order of Malachor.

Oddly, it was Grace who gave the council the idea for the order. But for her—at least until recently a citizen of the United States—the idea of a multinational force working together against a global threat seemed like standard operating procedure. It wasn’t until she saw the stunned light of realization in the
eyes of the monarchs that she realized, for a feudal society, just how revolutionary the idea was.

There was some debate, of course. Would each Dominion contribute an equal number of knights or a number based on size? How would the order be funded? From whom would these knights receive their commands? But in the end, the decision was unanimous.

“Peculiar times call for peculiar measures,” King Sorrin, the gaunt ruler of Embarr, had said.

The greatest challenge facing the council seemed to be in naming the order, but fortunately Falken Blackhand helped in this. After an hour of squabbling among the rulers, the bard approached the table. He did not speak, but simply pointed with his black-gloved hand to an empty seat: Chair Malachor.

The monarchs fell silent, then one by one nodded. While it might have been mere myth, it was spoken that should ever a king of Malachor come again, he would be lord over all the Dominions. To name their new order after the lost kingdom was only fitting.

A few days later the council disbanded, and in the last frozen days of Durdath the rulers departed Calavere for their respective Dominions. Although his was the smallest Dominion, it was King Kylar of Galt who granted a modest castle on the southern marches of his Dominion to the Order of Malachor. However, who would lead the order had not been so easily decided as where it would be housed.

The council first offered leadership to Beltan, King Boreas’s nephew and Grace’s friend. The blond knight was growing stronger each day, healing from the terrible wound he had suffered on Midwinter’s Eve when he had protected Travis from hordes of
feydrim
at the Rune Gate. Grace’s heart had soared when she had heard this decision—then had sunk again when Beltan refused the honor.

“I will humbly serve the order,” Beltan had said
before the council. He stood straight and tall, but Grace could see that the wound in his side still caused him pain. “However, it is not for one such as me to lead it.”

Boreas’s eyes sparked with rage, but he only nodded, and the council instead appointed Sir Vedarr to lead the Order of Malachor. Vedarr was a graying but still hale Embarran whose face was craggier than even Durge’s. He was a competent knight, and Grace knew he would do a fine job. Yet his name did not cause the eyes of other men to light up, not like the name Beltan of Calavan. She wished her friend could see the effect he had on others: the way he could win a man’s loyalty with just a look and a nod. However, his gaze was turned inward these days.

All knew that Beltan, bastard though he was, might have been king of Calavan after his father, Beldreas, was murdered. Instead he had vowed to find his father’s killer—and had failed. It was Boreas, Beltan’s uncle and Beldreas’s younger brother, who had become king instead.

For a time during the winter, the air of sorrow around Beltan had receded somewhat. But not long after Travis Wilder returned to Earth, the knight’s melancholy returned. Grace supposed he missed Travis; they all did. She sighed as Beltan walked stiffly from the council chamber. Some wounds were not so quickly healed as those of muscle and bone.