The Keep of Fire (24 page)

Aryn began weaving again, humming a dissonant song under her breath. Grace caught only a few words:

Grace knelt beside Aryn’s chair. It was going to be as crude as operating with a dull scalpel—she didn’t have the training or the instincts for this kind of procedure—but she had to try. She might have been a flesh doctor, but she knew enough about psych to know it wasn’t the weaving Aryn was trying to correct.

“Aryn,” she said in a quiet but insistent voice. “Aryn, listen to me. Fixing the tapestry won’t make it better. I know something happened to you. On Midwinter’s Eve.”

Aryn ceased motion. She stared forward, her body rigid.

You should leave her alone, Grace. You could drive her over the edge doing this
.

But tomorrow she was leaving Calavere. This was her only chance to understand. “What is it, Aryn? What are you really trying to make better?”

Silence. Grace hesitated, then reached up and touched Aryn’s shoulder.

An animal howl of pain filled the chamber, and Grace leaped to her feet. Aryn threw her head back, spine arching away from the chair, and her cry echoed off hard stone. At last her anguish phased into words.

“I killed him!”

At first Grace thought she meant Garf, then the baroness slumped forward, choking out words between sobs.

“Leothan. I killed him, Grace. I killed him with my magic. On Midwinter’s Eve.”

Grace shook her head, trying to comprehend. She had not thought of Leothan—the young lord who had once spurned Aryn’s invitation to dance—in many months. However, she remembered vaguely that Leothan had been among the dead of Midwinter’s Eve. She had assumed
feydrim
had killed him, as the monsters had a dozen other people that night.

Aryn’s right arm writhed against the warp of the loom like the broken neck of a swan. Grace clenched her jaw; this was a pain she had little power to ease. All the same, she moved again to the baroness.

“Tell me, Aryn. Please.”

The young woman nodded, then in a halting voice recounted a story that froze Grace’s blood: how Leothan had coaxed Aryn into an antechamber, how he had forced himself on her, revealing himself for an ironheart, and finally how the rage had flowed out of Aryn, turning Leothan’s brain to gruel.

By the time Aryn finished she was rocking back and forth in the chair. Grace gathered her into a clumsy embrace, holding the baroness’s slight, shaking body against her own.

“It’s all right, Aryn,” she murmured. “You did what you had to, and it’s over.”

“No, Grace.” Sobs like convulsions shuddered through the young woman. “You don’t understand. I killed him.”

“You had to protect yourself, Aryn.”

“But was that the only way?”

Grace shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Healing is your gift, Grace. Ivalaine said so.” The young woman clutched her withered hand. “But what if all I can do is harm? What if that’s
my
gift?”

No. Aryn had been punished enough by others for something beyond her control. Grace would not let her torture herself. Her power made her evil no more
than did a deformed arm. She pushed the baroness away.

“You use what power you have. Do you understand me, Aryn? You do what you have to in order to survive, and you use whatever ability you have to do it.” She gripped Aryn’s shoulders and squeezed. Hard. “Do you understand me?”

Aryn stared, her face smudged with tears. Then one last shudder passed through her, and her body relaxed. A light shone in her blue eyes.

“Yes, Grace,” Aryn whispered. “Yes, I see. I must use what power I have.…”

Grace held her breath. There was something odd about the way the baroness spoke the words. She wasn’t certain Aryn had really understood.

Yet after that Aryn’s trembling eased, and she managed to stand on her own, to gather herself, and to walk with Grace back to her chamber. There they spoke long into the night, talking about all that had happened to them in the last months, and by the end Aryn was laughing—a genuine if fragile sound. Maybe Grace had gotten through to her. At least she hoped so. She was going to be journeying far from Calavere, and she didn’t know when she would get back.

By the time Grace finally finished her good-bye, both of them were weeping, although this time the tears were the normal byproduct of good, plain sorrow. Then Grace returned to her own room, lay in her bed for a few dim hours, and rose long before the sun to ready herself for the journey.

They set out at dawn the next day.

Grace let Durge help her onto Shandis’s back. The palfrey pranced in a circle, eager to be gone. It seemed she knew this was more than just a morning jaunt into the countryside, but once more Grace was giving an animal too much credit.

Then again, for all you know, she can calculate pi to twenty decimal places
.

Grace decided to stop worrying about personifying.

Durge swung himself up into Blackalock’s saddle, his shirt of chain mail jingling. “Have you made all your preparations?” the Embarran asked the other two knights who, like him, sat astride tall warhorses.

“I believe I’m ready,” Sir Meridar said, making a last check of the leather bags tied to his saddle.

Grace remembered Meridar. He was the knight who had come upon them in the valley after the attack by the bear. His eyes were kind in his pockmarked face.

The remaining knight, Sir Kalleth, gave a curt nod. “We should already have left by now. The day wastes.”

Grace’s frown was a mirror of Durge’s. There was something about Kalleth she didn’t like, although it was hard to pin down exactly what it was. He was a plain man, if powerfully built, with salt-and-pepper hair and unremarkable features, save for a broken and badly reset nose. Maybe it was the flatness of his eyes. Regardless, Grace wished Boreas had not ordered Kalleth to accompany her.

Both Meridar and Kalleth had pledged their swords to the new Order of Malachor. Accompanying Grace was to be their last duty for King Boreas before he
released them from service. On their return from Perridon, the two knights planned to journey to the order’s new fortress in Galt. Grace would have to remember to tell Meridar to say hello to Beltan for her. She missed the big blond knight, and she hoped he was doing well.

“The king has granted us his leave,” Durge said. “There is nothing holding us.”

Grace glanced around the bailey, but there was no sign of either Aryn or Lirith. But why should they have come? Grace had spoken with Aryn at length yesterday, and she had already bid Lirith farewell over breakfast that morning.

It’s better not to draw out good-byes. You know that well enough, Grace
.

Yet it was hard not to feel a pang of disappointment.

Durge looked at her. “Are you ready, my lady?”

Grace hesitated. There was one more she had wanted to say farewell to. However, yesterday, when she had ventured into the garden with the gold light of afternoon, she had found no sign of Naida. The little grotto where the Herb Mother usually worked was silent. As she turned to leave, Grace had seen that the tree in the corner had finally died. Its brown branches hung down, as if to touch the other plants in a final embrace. Grace had lifted a hand to her chest, then had turned and left the garden.

Now she glanced up at the flawless summer sky. It promised to be a hot day. She searched the blue dome, and although she could not see it, she knew it was there, sinking even then toward the horizon. The new moon.

She lowered her head and met Durge’s gaze. “Let’s go.”

They rode through an archway into the lower bailey. Grace gazed at the stone walls within which she had lived most of the last eight months of her life.
When would she set foot in this place again? Then they passed through the castle gate and into the world beyond.

Once they reached the foot of the hill they broke into a brisk but far from rapid trot. Grace forced herself not to order the knights to ride faster. It was still two weeks until the full moon; they had more than enough time for the journey. Yet it was hard not to feel that what she had seen in the vision had already happened, that no matter how hard they rode they would be too late. She concentrated on riding, and by the time she remembered to look back Calavere was already lost to sight behind her.

They rode north from the castle to the old Tarrasian bridge over the Dimduorn, then before crossing turned east, ascending the grassy ridge that paralleled the south bank of the river.

“Why don’t we just cross the Dimduorn here in Calavan?” Grace had asked Durge yesterday after studying a map of the Dominions with him. “It looks like we’ll have to go five extra leagues to the south to cross the bridge on the border of Toloria.”

“No, my lady,” Durge had said. “We must keep to the south side of the Darkwine. There are too many tributaries to cross if we were to ride on the north bank, and all of them will be swollen with snowmelt this time of year.”

Grace had nodded. But even five leagues seemed too great a sacrifice to speed.

They had ridden an hour in silence when Durge dropped back and brought Blackalock alongside Shandis. “We have not discussed Ar-tolor, my lady. Will we be begging the hospitality of the queen for a time?”

Grace opened her mouth to answer, but harsh words beat her.

“We ride straight to Perridon.”

Grace jumped in her saddle. Kalleth’s horse was
just a half length behind her own. She hadn’t realized he had been following her so closely.

Durge’s mustaches twitched. “Lady Grace is a close companion of the queen. What if Queen Ivalaine were to extend an invitation to stay?”

“Then Lady Grace will politely decline,” Kalleth said, baring yellowed teeth in what was not a smile. “We will stop at Ar-tolor to beg permission of the queen before riding through her Dominion, as protocol demands. But then we will be on our way. We have our orders from King Boreas, and a holiday in Ar-tolor is not mentioned in them.”

Kalleth jerked the reins of his charger—so hard the beast snorted and rolled its eyes—and the horse veered to the side and dropped back.

Grace glanced at Durge. The knight gave a somber nod but said nothing. It might prove difficult to convince the other two knights to go out of their way to the Gray Tower. Grace suspected that Meridar could be persuaded with effort. But Kalleth seemed about as malleable as a block of granite. All the same, that was exactly what Grace had to do.

And what will you do when you get to the Gray Tower, Grace? Just how do you intend to help Travis?

But she had over fifty leagues in which to figure that one out. She hunkered down in the saddle and kept her eyes on the horizon.

Grace had gone for a number of rides in the last months, and her equestrian skills had improved, but she had never ridden hard for an entire day, and by the time the sun threw their shadows out before them her whole body hurt. Just when she was fearing they would never stop, she saw the thin trails of smoke rising into the sky not far ahead.

“The village of Foxfair lies just beyond that rise,” Durge said. “We will beg the hospitality of Gaddimer, the local lord, for the night.”

Grace nodded, grateful they were close to the village and to rest. Although she wasn’t certain that, when they did stop, she would actually be able to pry her fingers from the reins.

As they reached the base of the knoll that separated them from the village, the trail passed into a stand of trees. They were nearly through the stand to the other side when Kalleth hissed behind them.

“We are being followed.”

Durge came to an immediate halt. He cocked his head, listening, then looked up and made two sharp motions with his hand. Meridar and Kalleth wheeled their horses around and plunged into the thicket to one side of the road.

“This way, my lady,” Durge whispered.

He guided Blackalock into the undergrowth opposite of where the other knights had vanished. Grace and Shandis followed. She waited, watching the road through a screen of leaves. Then she caught the sound of hooves, and she held her breath.

The riders came into view. There were two of them. Both wore dark capes, the hoods pulled up to conceal their faces despite the warmth of the late-summer afternoon. A blade of fear stabbed at Grace. Raven cultists? No, the followers of the Raven had always worn robes, not capes. Highwaymen, then. Not so terrifying, but still dangerous.

The riders brought their horses to a halt. Their hooded heads turned from side to side, as if searching. Panic slithered up Grace’s throat. Did the brigands know their prey was hidden among the trees? The two bowed their heads together. One seemed to speak something, and the other nodded. Then they nudged their horses, and Grace breathed a sigh of relief as the two cloaked riders started onward again.

Her sigh became a gasp as, with a crashing noise, a horse burst out of the undergrowth in an explosion of leaves. The two cloaked riders jerked their heads up,
then fought to keep their own startled horses under control. Grinning, a naked sword in his hand, Kalleth thundered toward them aback his charger. The riders fumbled with their cloaks, as if trying to grab weapons concealed beneath, but they did not have time.

“Hold, Kalleth!” a voice roared beside Grace.

Blackalock surged forward, a dark blur, out of the trees and onto the path.

“I said hold!”

Durge’s face was a deeply etched mask of fury. At the last moment Kalleth changed the direction of his blow, and the sword passed its mark, missing one of the riders by a scant inch.

The knight cast a venomous look at Durge. “What is the reason for this?”

Durge did not answer. Instead he rode forward, grabbed the hood of the nearest rider, and jerked it back.

Grace sucked in a sharp breath.
Of course. You should have recognized the horses
. She nudged Shandis forward, reaching the path at the same time as Meridar.

All looked at Aryn as she blinked wide blue eyes against the light of the westering sun. Her face was pale, and she lifted her left hand to the throat that nearly had been sliced through by Kalleth’s blade. The other rider reached up dark, slender hands and pushed back the concealing hood. Grace was shocked again. It was Lirith. What were the two doing here?