The Keep of Fire (23 page)

She came face-to-face with a stout Embarran shoulder. It would have struck her face and bloodied her nose except that Durge was able to skid to a halt at the last moment. Lirith stood just behind him, a stunned expression on her face. Grace supposed she looked like hell on a bad hair day.

Durge regained his composure, but his deep-set eyes were concerned. “My lady, what has happened?”

She opened her mouth, but her throat was a desert.

Lirith breezed past Durge, all traces of surprise gone from her serene visage. “Can you not see the obvious, Sir Knight? She needs something to drink, of course.”

The witch laid a dusky hand on Grace’s arm and led her back to the chair. Looking chagrined, Durge filled a cup from a decanter on the sideboard and handed it to her. Grace accepted it in a trembling hand.
Wine—it’s not just for dinner anymore
.

She took a sip. The wine stung her throat, but she
gulped the rest of it down, then handed the cup back to Durge. Her shaking eased a degree. Now both knight and witch gazed at her with curious expressions.

“It’s Travis Wilder,” she said before either of them could speak. “He’s on Eldh. And he’s in danger.”

She wanted to tell them everything then, but before she could say more Lirith clucked at her underclothes and gave Durge a pointed glance. The stalwart knight actually flushed, then turned his back while Lirith took Grace’s gown from a chair and helped her into it.

Lirith’s instincts were right, as always; as she dressed, Grace was able to gather her wits. By the time she sat in the chair again, this time holding a cup of steaming
maddok
brought by a servingwoman, she was able to speak in calm, precise words. Not that she didn’t feel urgency: She did. But if she was right, there was still time to save Travis.

When she finished speaking Durge and Lirith regarded her—one with astonishment, the other with interest.

Lirith crossed slender arms over the bodice of her rust-colored gown. “What you did was foolish, sister. And it was forbidden. If Ivalaine were to discover what you have done, she might cast you from the Witches altogether. And with good cause. What you did endangered yourself, but it might also have placed me or Aryn in peril had one of us been forced to attempt to retrieve you.”

Grace bit her lip at this chastisement. All the same, her dread receded a fraction.
If Ivalaine were to discover …
Grace had a feeling Lirith had chosen those words carefully. The witch did not intend to tell Ivalaine what had happened.

Grace gripped her cup. “Yes, Lirith,” she said, and it was not difficult to find a contrite tone.

Durge stroked drooping mustaches. “Are you certain about the moon, my lady? It was full in your … your vision?”

“Yes. I saw it clearly. All of it. It was just like before, at the circle of standing stones. What I saw hasn’t happened yet.”

“But will it?”

Both Durge and Grace looked at Lirith.

The witch paced, a hand poised beneath her chin. “It is not so uncommon a thing to use an object as a focus for visions. Several sisters have the power. However, they usually see but fragments, and these of things past. I have heard about visions such as Grace describes—visions which illuminate what will be rather than cast shadows of what was. But the power is rare.” Her eyes flickered toward Grace. “Quite rare.”

Durge shifted from foot to foot, and Grace gripped the arms of the chair.

“But will it happen, Lirith?” she said. “That’s what I have to know. Can what I saw be stopped?”

“Should it be stopped?”

The words were like a slap. Grace’s jaw dropped.

Lirith spread her hands. “He can break runes, sister. What if he were the one?”

The one what?
Grace wanted to ask. But she already knew.
Runebreaker
. The one whom the Witches feared even more than the warriors of the Cult of Vathris.

“The tower you saw can be only the Gray Tower of the Runespeakers,” Lirith said. “And why would the Gray Men put one of their own to death unless they knew him to be a peril?”

Grace shook her head. “He’s my friend, Lirith. And he saved everyone in Falengarth from the Pale King. Now will you answer my question or not?”

“Very well, sister. But the truth is, I don’t know the answer to your question. Perhaps Ivalaine might.
Yet it seems to me that if you saw it, then it must be so. Else why would it have been revealed to you?”

No. Grace wouldn’t accept that answer. If it hadn’t happened yet, then there was still a chance to change it. How many times had someone been pronounced dead only to be brought back to life on her table in the ED?

She shut her eyes and thought. Unlike Earth’s satellite, the moon of this world took precisely a month to wax, wane, and wax again. Today the moon was one day from new. Then fifteen more until it was full again. That gave her just over a fortnight. She counted in her mind. It was a week to Ar-tolor. And how far from there to the Gray Tower of the Runespeakers? She tried to remember the charcoal maps. Four more days? Five?

Grace opened her eyes and saw Durge gazing at her. His expression was odd. Somber, as always, but eager as well. “What are you thinking, my lady?”

Of course. He was a knight and a man of action. How long had he stayed at this castle, seeing to her small needs, attending her on her little rides into the countryside? How long had she expected such trifles to occupy him?

“I don’t know,” she said. “Not yet.”

But she had an idea, and every moment it grew clearer.

Lirith glanced at Durge. “I fear in all of this we have forgotten about the king.”

“What about the king?”

“He is the reason we came to your chamber, my lady,” Durge said. “Boreas asked me to bring you to him.”

Grace stood up and smoothed her gown. “Well, then I had better go.”

Lirith gave her a concerned look. “Are you well enough, sister?”

Grace gave her a tight smile. A meeting with Boreas was the last thing she needed just then. But there was something she had to tell the king, and she might as well get it over with.

“I’ll be fine,” Grace lied.

Ten minutes later she stepped into the king’s bedchamber. His need for her must have been urgent indeed for him to have summoned her there. She expected to be berated for her tardiness, but Boreas only grunted and waved for her to sit.

He sat at a table, poring over a sheaf of parchment, a scowl on his bearded face. His black hair was tousled from sleep, and he wore only tight-fitting knee pants and a loose white shirt open to expose a triangle of hard chest. He looked for all the world like what he was: a barefoot warrior who had just rolled out of bed.

As she watched, the king grabbed a quill pen, dunked the tip into an ink pot, and scribbled on the parchment. He regarded his handiwork, then set the pen down and looked up at Grace.

“Well, what is it, my lady?”

Grace did not try to hide her puzzlement. “You sent for me, Your Majesty.”

He snapped his fingers. “That’s right.” His blue eyes sparked. “What took you so long?”

Grace groaned. She should have quit while she was ahead. Her only chance was to detour the conversation.

“What is that, Your Majesty?” She gestured to the parchment on the table.

“This,” he said, folding the sheaf and sealing it with a blob of candle wax, “is a letter of endorsement.”

“A letter of endorsement?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

Grace drew in a breath. It was going to be one of
those
conversations. She tried again, choosing her words like surgical instruments.

“What does the letter endorse, Your Majesty?”

“My new envoy to Perridon, of course.”

“Envoy?” Grace bit her tongue, but she was too late to prevent the word from escaping.

Boreas glared at her. “My lady, you will fail miserably in Perridon if all you can do is state the obvious. All words spoken in Castle Spardis are vagaries mixed with half-truths wrapped in a gauze of subtle misdirection. And that’s when you’re talking to a servant about what you want for breakfast. I’m beginning to have second thoughts about sending you.”

Grace clawed at the arms of the chair. “Sending me? Where?”

Boreas crossed his arms. She crunched down into her seat.

“To Perridon?” she said in a small voice.

“However did you guess, my lady?”

The air was suddenly unbreathable. He wanted her to be an envoy to a foreign nation? She could hardly ask a serving girl for a second cup of
maddok
, let alone make demands and negotiate treaties. “But …”

“But why you?” Boreas rose and paced to the window. “Because you’re the best spy I’ve got, my lady.”

A sigh escaped him at this utterance, and some of her dread was replaced by indignation. She wasn’t
that
bad of a spy. After all, she had helped uncover the Raven Cult’s plot to murder one of the rulers at the Council of Kings.

“And who am I to spy on, Your Majesty?”

“Everyone. I want you to watch and speak with every person who is scheming for the throne of Perridon—which, in Spardis, is a list that likely includes the kitchenwife and the stableboy. I need you to find out who is the most trustworthy of the lot—if there is such a person in that foggy dominion—and who is most likely to serve dutifully as a regent to the infant
prince without seizing control of the Dominion himself. That’s who we’ll back if there’s a struggle for the crown.”

It was impossible. Grace had gotten better at dealing with people—whole people—these last months, but she had just learned to walk, and now Boreas was asking her to run up a mountain. This was utterly beyond her. She opened her mouth to tell him she couldn’t possibly go—

—and an image flashed in her mind. She saw the map Aryn had drawn that day. There, in central Falengarth, was Calavan. Perridon lay to the east. And between the two …

Toloria. And the Gray Tower of the Runespeakers.

That was it. She wouldn’t need to beg Boreas’s permission to leave Calavere. And no doubt he would send knights to accompany her. That was good—she had no illusions about what could happen to a woman traveling alone in a medieval world.

The plan crystallized in her mind. It was perfect. Almost too perfect. Had she influenced the king somehow without trying? Had she made him want to send her east?

Now she was thinking like Kyrene. Not every one of her whims was a spell. Besides, it wasn’t important. All that mattered was that she get to Travis before the moon was full. Grace looked up and met Boreas’s blue eyes with her own of green and gold.

“I will be honored to serve you, Your Majesty.”

Evening drifted on soft gray wings through the castle. Outside the high windows, mourning doves sang of loss and sorrow. The day was dwindling. Her last in Calavere.

Grace walked down a corridor, although she had no idea where else to search. Earlier she had gone to Aryn’s chamber to tell the baroness about what had happened, how she would be leaving for a time. However, the young woman had not been in her room. Nor had she been in the great hall, or the kitchens, or either of the baileys. For the last two hours Grace had looked everywhere in the castle she thought the baroness might be.

Finally, she had ended up in the little shrine in the north wing sacred to the mysteries of Yrsaia the Huntress. Aryn seemed to believe Grace did not know about the prayers the young woman sometimes spoke to Yrsaia, but Grace had overheard her whispers on more than one occasion. Why did Aryn think she had to keep her religion a secret?

She’s afraid that if you knew the truth, you wouldn’t feel the same about her
.

Grace understood. After all, she had secrets of her own.

She stopped, sighed, and considered going to Boreas’s chamber, to tell the king she was worried about Aryn. Maybe Boreas could send some of his guards to search for her. She turned to go.

A faint, rhythmic sound floated through an open doorway. Grace halted. Where had she heard that sound before? She listened a moment more, then she stepped through the doorway. Beyond was a spiral of stone steps. She started up the steps and after a few revolutions realized she was climbing into one of the smaller towers that flanked the main keep. The clacking ceased as she climbed, then came again moments later, louder than before.

Grace stepped from the staircase into a short hallway. At the end was a wooden door, slightly ajar. The sound was clear now.
Clack-clack. Thrum. Clack-clack. Thrum
. She approached, then stopped at the
half-open door, finally recognizing the sound even as she saw its source.

So this is where she’s been coming
.

The circular room was empty except for a wooden loom and a chair in the center. For a time—she wasn’t certain how long—Grace stood in the doorway, watching as Aryn worked the loom, using the small, folded hand at the end of her withered arm to help catch the shuttle as it passed through the warp. After seven passes, Aryn would stop, set down the shuttle, and with deliberate motions pick out the threads she had woven. Then she would lift the shuttle and begin again. That was why the sound had come and gone.

“Aryn?”

The shuttle clattered to the floor.

Grace rushed into the room and picked up the block of wood before Aryn could react. She straightened, then pressed the shuttle into the baroness’s good hand.

“I didn’t know you were there, Grace.”

The words were listless, and Aryn didn’t look up as she spoke. Grace pressed her lips together. She had stood by on enough psych evaluations in the ED to know that repetitive behavior and lack of eye contact were both troubling signs.

“Aryn, are you all right?” Grace cringed even as she spoke. Words were so damn worthless sometimes.

The young woman turned back to the loom. “I’m just weaving, Grace. Like Ivalaine said we should. I’ve got so much to learn still. Only I can’t seem to get it right. The threads never make the picture I want. But I’ll keep trying.” She smiled, but the expression was as thin as a paper cut.

Grace sucked in a breath. This was worse than she had thought. She cursed herself for not having read the signs better. But it was broken bodies that she knew how to reassemble, not broken minds.