The Keep of Fire (21 page)

That week, Grace returned to the garden each afternoon to visit with the Herb Mother.

Plants were not people. However, it turned out that gardening was not as alien to Grace as she had thought. Herbs and shrubs were still life—just a different sort of life from the kind she was used to working with. In the past her occasional houseplants had met with bad ends, but that was because she had always treated them as she did patients in the ED: Give them the prescribed treatment, and they should respond. As it turned out, plants were a bit trickier than that.

“You have to want them to grow,” Naida said one afternoon.

Grace halted in her work. “Excuse me?”

Naida swiped a fluttering wisp of hair away from her face. “Well, you can’t simply stick something in the ground, dump water on it, and expect it to perform wonders, now can you, sweet?”

Grace looked down at the clump of fairy’s breath she had just transplanted. It leaned at an odd angle and already looked as if it was wilting. “Why not? It’s just a plant, isn’t it?”

The old woman shook her head. “Forgive her, sisters. She does not know what she speaks.”

Grace looked around, suddenly glad plants couldn’t move. If they had the power, she suspected they would be happy to coil their little green tendrils around her neck.

“Look here,” Naida said, moving to the clump of fairy’s breath Grace had been working on. “See how she tilts to one side? But she would rather grow straight up to the sun, would she not? And here she is nearly rising out of the ground when she would feel much better if her roots were tucked in securely, so that she might stand up tall. And how about a nice little well all around, to catch the rain when it falls that she might drink?” The old woman finished tamping down the soil around the flower. “Now, isn’t that better?”

Grace had the feeling Naida was not talking to her. However, she nodded all the same. She reached out and touched the fairy’s breath. “What are the properties of this one?”

“A tea will ease an upset stomach and bring sleep. A tincture of the root is good against rashes. That is its magic.”

Grace studied the delicate white flower. “But it isn’t magic. It’s just chemicals—tannins, alkaloids, other secondary plant compounds. That’s all.”

Naida sighed. “If that is what you believe, Lady Grace, then that is all you will ever see in them.”

Grace looked up and opened her mouth, but the Herb Mother had already turned her back to see to another flower.

That night, Grace went to Lirith’s chamber in the west wing of the castle and asked the witch why she had sent Grace to see Naida.

“Your studies with the Weirding were not proceeding well,” Lirith said without looking up from her embroidery. The evening song of insects drifted through the open window.

Grace folded her arms. “Naida hasn’t taught me anything about the Weirding.”

“The Herb Mother has ever been weak in the Touch.”

A groan escaped Grace. “Then why did you send me to her?”

Lirith looked up. “Why do you think, sister?”

The air in the chamber was suddenly stifling. Grace lifted a hand to the bodice of her gown. Had Lirith seen the shadow in her, just as Naida had seen it in the dying tree?

Lirith bent back over her work. “Both Ivalaine and I studied with the Herb Mother during difficult times, as have many others. I do not think it will cause you harm.”

So that was it. There was no great point to studying with Naida. It was merely a respite. A chance to rest away from the more challenging work with the Touch and the Weirding. Grace bade Lirith good night and left the room.

She proceeded to Aryn’s chamber, but a serving maid informed Grace, in regretful tones, that the baroness was finally resting, and that King Boreas had given a strict command that nothing was to disturb her. Grace could not find fault with this order. No therapy had the power to heal as sleep did. But she would have liked to have seen Aryn all the same. Instead she returned to her chamber, alone.

The next day, Grace plunged into her work in the garden with the same intensity she had always shown in the ED. If this was what Lirith wanted her to study, then she would study it with all her ability. And if Naida noticed this new fervor, the old woman did not comment on it. Instead she showed Grace how to prune a branch so that more branches would grow, how to gather the seeds of the mistmallow, which could prevent pregnancy, and she listed the medicinal properties of a dozen other herbs.

As the sun sank over the castle wall, the two sat on the bench and drank from the flask Naida always kept full.

“How did you do it, Naida?”

Grace asked the question before she really decided to. The old woman raised a thin eyebrow. Grace was committed now.

“Ride away with a man you had never met before, I mean.”

Naida clasped dirty, wrinkled hands in her lap. “I had to do it. The welfare of my family depended upon it. My bride-price was enough to keep them in bread for years to come.”

“But weren’t you afraid?”

This elicited a burst of laughter. “I was terrified! All the way to Toloria I threw up from the back of the horse. And I shall never forget our wedding night. Poor Ederell. He had to coax his bride out from under the marriage bed. But he was always a good man, kind with me from the first day we met, and in all the years I knew him he never raised his voice once.” She pressed her eyes shut. “But it hurt. It hurt terribly, as kind as he was.”

Grace looked down at the stem in her hand. It ended in a pale flower. Mistmallow. A sharp, metallic scent rose from it, and memories of the orphanage came to her, shocking as always in their clarity after
all these years. She saw herself, nine years old, stepping into the dusty, slatted light of the shed behind the home. She heard again the low, animal moan, saw again Ellen Nickel hunched in the corner.

Ellen?

Go away, Grace
.

Ellen, what are you doing?

I’ve got to get it out
.

Get what out?

You wouldn’t … you wouldn’t understand
.

I understand. It’s something they put inside you
.

Oh, Grace, it hurts.…

Only as she stepped closer had she seen the wire. And the blood. Grace had gotten rags to stanch the flow. It was the first time she had tried to save another’s life. It was the first time she had failed. But not the last.

“Sweet one?”

Grace surfaced from the dark lake of memories. Naida had been a year younger than Ellen Nickel had been. In Colorado, had Ederell’s deed ever been discovered, it would have been a crime. On this world it was a matter of bread.

“I don’t think I could do it,” she said.

Naida gripped Grace’s hand in her own. Her touch was as warm and dry as soil in the sun. “Yes you could, sweet. You just have to decide to give yourself up for another—to sacrifice everything with abandon.”

“But don’t you lose yourself when you do that?”

Naida smiled. “Why no, sweet. That’s when you find yourself.”

That evening Grace wandered the castle’s corridors, thinking about Naida’s words. There was a beauty to them, and perhaps even a kind of truth. But after an hour the cool logic of Grace’s mind found the fundamental flaw: What if there was nothing left inside to discover?

Only when she paused did she realize she stood before the door to Durge’s chamber. She had not seen the knight in days. Of course, had she summoned him, he would have come to her in an instant. But sometimes one wanted a friend, not a servant. Grace lifted a hand.

Before she could knock, a muffled clatter—as of something shattering—came through the door. Instinct overrode decorum, and she opened the door and pushed through. He knelt on the floor, sweeping up shards of green glass with a handbroom. Smoke and the reek of sulfur clouded the air, stinging Grace’s eyes.

“Durge, are you all right?”

He looked up. “My lady!”

“I’m sorry. I should have knocked. But I heard something break, and …”

He set down the broom and rose to his feet. “You need never apologize to me, my lady.”

Grace did not know what she had done to deserve such forgiveness, but she was grateful for it all the same. As the smoke cleared, she saw that Durge’s face was haggard, the lines around his mouth no longer just etched but chiseled. The wound he had received from the bear was now a thick scab on his forehead. She took a step farther into the room.

“Durge, is something wrong?”

“Yes, my lady. I mean, no.” He gestured to his workbench. It was cluttered with vials and crucibles. “I fear I have not yet mastered the process I’ve been attempting, that’s all.”

He moved to the sideboard and ran a hand over a yellowed sheaf of vellum. Grace approached and, over the knight’s stooped shoulder, peered at the manuscript. Despite the magic of the silver half-coin, the faded diagrams and scribblings made little sense to her, although in the center of the vellum she could discern a drawing of a man and woman.

No, Grace—look. They’re wearing crowns
.

Not a man and a woman, then, but a king and queen. Other than their crowns, the two figures were naked. They clasped hands, standing together inside an oval shape while flames coiled up around them. Symbols, smaller drawings, and spidery text were written all around the figures. Grace could not understand what it was all supposed to be, although the flames reminded her of the dreams she had been having.

“What does it mean?” she said.

“It is the Great Work, my lady.” Durge pointed to the two figures. “Do you see? That which is male and combustible comes together with that which is female and liquid. Through fire they are wed, and their child is perfection given form.”

Grace studied the ring drawn between the two figures. Then she understood. “It’s gold. You’re trying to make gold, aren’t you?”

Durge shook his head. “No, my lady. I have many steps to master before I can attempt the Great Work myself. Right now I seek only to fix and whiten brimstone, which is one of the most basic steps along the path.”

“Whiten brimstone?”

“Yes, my lady. See how it begins its existence?” He held up a rough, yellowish lump. “But when it is heated in the proper fashion, it becomes thus.” Now he held up a vial of opalescent white powder. “Through fire, the brimstone’s secret attributes are made manifest.”

For some reason, the knight’s words disturbed Grace. She gestured to the vial. “And did you make that, Durge?”

The knight rolled the vial in his hand, then set it down. “No. The brimstone turns black on first heating, as it should, but I cannot seem to move it then to white.” He let out a sigh. “I fear I am not applying the
heat evenly enough. I will have to try again, although I imagine I’m bound to fail.”

The knight reached for a crucible, fumbled, then dropped it onto the workbench. He started to retrieve it, then staggered and leaned against the sideboard, head bowed.

Grace recognized the symptoms of sleep deprivation. How long had he been working on his experiments without rest? One day? Two? She touched his shoulder. “Durge, you should get some sleep. You can work on this again tomorrow.”

He did not look up. “Tomorrow. Yes, I suppose I do have tomorrow.”

She drew her hand back. “What do you mean?”

The voice he spoke in was soft, low, and profoundly weary. “I am old, my lady. Past my forty-fifth winter this year. It should have … it should have been me.”

Grace could only stare, unable to speak the word in her mind.
What?

He looked at her, his craggy face solemn. “Sir Garfethel was bright and young, my lady. He had much life ahead of him.”

For so many years Grace had feared she had lost her heart, that it had been stolen from her as a child at the orphanage, but she knew once and for all this was not so, because at that moment she felt it break.

“As do you, Durge.”

He nodded. “If you wish, my lady.” Then he turned again to face the sideboard.

Grace watched his broad back and tried to understand. Something about Garf’s death had affected Durge more than just the death of a fellow knight. But what was it?

If there was an answer to that question, it was beyond Grace’s reach. She folded her arms over the bodice of her gown and watched him work.

“Will you ever do it? Make gold I mean.”

He placed a lump of sulfur on a scale. “It takes a pure heart to perform the Great Work, my lady. As pure as the gold one would create.”

Grace thought about this. “Durge, look at me.”

The knight immediately obeyed her command, a fact which almost made her wince. She licked her lips and forced the next words out.

“I don’t … I don’t know if anyone’s heart is pure.” Her mouth twisted into a wry grimace. “In my experience, flesh is a whole lot softer than metal. And I don’t know if you’ll ever manage to turn lead into gold. But there’s one thing I do know.” She laid a hand on his arm. “You’re a worthy man, Durge of Stonebreak.”

Durge gazed at her, and now his eyes did not seem so much bleak as simply tired.

“I believe you are right, my lady,” he said at last. “I will go to bed now.”

He set down the pair of tongs he had been holding. Grace pressed her lips together and nodded. Then she turned, stepped through the door, and left the knight to his quest.

That night she dreamed again of Travis.

Once more she stood on the pinnacle of stone. In the gloom she saw other sharp summits, islands in the ocean of mist. She turned carefully on her eyrie, searching, until she saw him.

As always he stood upon a needle of rock not far away, his back to her. Crimson flashed overhead. The firedrake. No—even as she looked up the firedrake halted and hung in the gray sky above her: the red star. If a meteor was a harbinger of royal death, then what might the star foretell?

Fear filled her. There wasn’t much time. She reached a hand toward Travis and called to him, even though she knew it was futile, that the mist would encapsulate her words as she shouted them, that he would not hear her.

“Travis!”

This time he turned around.