The Keep of Fire (31 page)

“There! I told you I saw something.”

“Well, bend me over and Sulath bugger me.”

The voices were hoarse whispers, but by some trick of the damp air Travis could hear them perfectly. Or was it something else—some other trick that had to do with understanding the speech of others? If only he could remember.

“We’ve got to get out of here. He’s one of the dark ones, risen again and coming back to murder us!”

“Blast your dented skull, no he’s not. It’s mud, Darl. That’s all. He’s a man, and he just saw what we were doing, and if he tells the earl we’ll be the ones who get burned. And I promise you
we
won’t be back after that.”

Rain spilled into Travis’s eyes; it was impossible to see what was happening. He stumbled back, slipped on a stone, then regained his balance and looked up. There was the red spark again. It was bobbing now, drawing nearer. Then he understood. It was a lantern.

“Ho, there!”

This time the voice was a shout, meant to be heard.

“Ho, there, come on out, friend! It’s not a night to be staying in a place such as this. We’ll be making a fire. Why not come with us and get yourself warm?”

The voice was bold and cheerful. He could almost believe the words were sincere. Then Travis saw a curve of metal gleaming bloodred in the lantern light.

“Don’t fear, friend! Tell you what—if you come out now, we’ll share our booty with you. The old countess here doesn’t need her jewels anymore. And she’s got more than enough to make us all rich men. Come out and we’ll give you more gold than you ever dreamed.”

Along with a pick in the back of my head
, Travis added to himself. If he wasn’t dead yet, he was certain that would do the trick. He backed away another step.

Whispers again, yet somehow almost as audible as
the shout. “Let’s just be gone from here, Kadeck. I don’t like this place.”

“Shut up, worm. Now follow after me. And when you see him, brain him with your shovel.”

The red eye of the lantern drifted nearer. Then it blinked out of existence. Travis turned and ran. Energy coursed across the sky, and for a heartbeat light stilled motion.

“There he is!”

“Get him!”

Night constricted around Travis. He careened on, bare feet slipping on soaked grass. Then pain flashed through him, bright as lightning, as he struck the sharp corner of a grave marker. A grunt escaped his lungs. He stumbled, nearly dropped the bundle, then clutched it tighter and ran on.

“I heard him. This way!”

The shout was horribly close, but he didn’t dare look over his shoulder. Rain pelted down, lashing his naked skin, and his breath came in sick gasps. Just a little longer and he would fall, unable to go on. Just a little longer until sharp metal drove through his skull.

You were wrong, Jack. I am dead
.

Another flash of lightning illuminated the night. A black pit appeared in front of Travis: an open grave waiting for its fresh, new denizen. There was no time to veer to either side. Travis cried out and flung his body forward. The ground yawned beneath him—

—then he struck the other side, fell to his stomach, slid through sheets of mud, and came to a rough halt against a tumbled chunk of marble. He looked up as the sky shattered into shards of silver fire and saw his pursuers bearing down on him, murder on their faces. Too late they saw the open pit in front of them. They flung their arms out, but their boots skidded on the oily mud. As one the graverobbers tumbled over the
edge and into the grave. Curses of anger became groans of pain.

Travis did not wait to see if they would climb out again. He used the oddly shaped stone he had struck to push himself to his feet, and only then did he see what it was: a fallen statue, broken in half, its gray visage battered by the elements and by the angry hammers of vandals.

Travis stared down at the stone man in the long robe, gazing into the pits of eyes that, although shattered, remained somehow serene. Then he turned, stumbled past the statue, and ran from the graveyard.

Sharp stones cut into the soles of Travis’s bare feet as he ran, and nettles scratched at his naked shins. The gloom was impenetrable, save for disjointed moments of brilliance when lightning clawed across the sky. Each time Travis would jerk his head up and try to lock his eyes on a crooked tree or a crumbled stone wall—any landmark he might possibly navigate by. When the darkness snapped back he would stumble on, hoping he was moving away from his pursuers rather than toward them. He could hear no shouts, no sounds of booted feet behind him, but then he could hardly hear thunder and the howl of the wind over the rasping of his own breath.

Just when he felt both heart and legs failing he saw it, outlined by a livid streak of greenish lightning. In a blink the sight was gone, but the outline remained, seared onto his retinas: the blocky shape of a building.

Travis knew he should keep running, that the thieves could not be far behind. However, he had to rest, if only for a minute. His lungs were molten, but
he was shivering, and his limbs felt as if they were molded from cold clay. He lurched in the direction of the building.

A flash revealed the wall too late to stop him from running into it. Pain fizzed through his head, and he stumbled back. Before the lightning faded, he made out the squat stone structure before him. Part of one wall had fallen outward in a heap of rubble. Where was he? He tried to think of what structures stood near the Castle Heights Cemetery. Except that was pointless, wasn’t it? He spat into his hand and gazed at the silver half-coin. This was not Castle City.

Eldh needs you, son. They’re calling for you even now. Can’t you hear?

No, he was someplace very far away from Colorado. A thrill coursed through his chest, but it quickly became a shudder. He had to try to get warm. Scrabbling over the pile of stones, he clambered into the building.

The hovel was barely more than ten feet square, the floor covered with clumps of dirt and some kind of thorny weed. The roof had mostly fallen in, but there was a corner that was still covered and relatively dry. He huddled in the corner, pressing his back against the stones, and tried to catch his breath. It felt as if he were breathing hot water. However, after a time the laboring of his lungs eased.

Only then did he remember the bundle still pressed beneath his arm. Curious, he held it before him, but he could not make out what it was.

You need to see, Travis. Give yourself light
.

The voice speaking in his head should have alarmed him. But it sounded so much like his friend Jack that instead it made him feel warmer and less lonely. Before he even knew what he was doing, he murmured the word.

“Lir.”

A pearl-white glow sprang from nowhere to hang upon the air of the hovel.

Travis blinked, able now to see walls, wreckage, and the object in his hand. Dull shock gripped him. What was this light? He had to think about it, to understand what he had just done, but someone had wrapped his brain in cotton. He focused on the bundle instead.

It was caked with mud, but as he wiped away the dirt he found the ends of a knotted cord. He undid it with fumbling fingers, then set the bundle down and peeled the covering back.

The outer layer of cloth must have been waxed, for it was stiff and crackling, and it had kept the mud and water away from what things lay within. With his fingers, Travis brushed soft fabric. Then he lifted the folded garment and shook it out. It was a robe of mistgray.

The robe seemed familiar to him somehow, but he couldn’t say why. Not that it mattered. It was dry and looked warm. He shrugged the garment over his head—the rain had done a good job of washing the mud from his skin—then smoothed the gray fabric down. He sighed. The robe felt … 
right
.

The bundle was not yet empty. He bent down and this time came away with a cloak in his hands. The cloak was frayed along the edges, but it was thick, and as gray as the robe. Except, as he moved it in the pale light, a rainbow sheen danced across the fabric of the cloak, like a skim of oil on a puddle. He cast the cloak over his shoulders.

A quick examination revealed more objects inside the bundle. The first was a small pouch of soft leather attached to a cord. It was empty, but Travis thought he could guess its purpose. With careful motions he placed the silver half-coin in the pouch. He hesitated, then took the bone talisman—the rune of hope—from around his neck, coiled it up, and placed it in the
pouch as well. Then he cinched the pouch tight and slipped the cord over his head.

Next in the bundle was a thick leather belt, and he used that to cinch the robe around his waist. Then there were his familiar buckskin boots. He pulled them on. The last object in the bundle was a slim stiletto with a single bloodred gem in its hilt. He touched the tip of the knife, winced at the keenness, then tucked it into his belt, shifting it toward the back where it was covered by the cloak.

It was time to go; he couldn’t stay in this hovel. The graverobbers knew he would be seeking shelter. And they were men used to dealing with corpses. One more would mean nothing to them. He moved to the gap in the wall. Even as he thought it would be good to banish the light somehow, it ceased without a whisper. Night stole back into the ruin. Travis moved in the opposite direction.

The rain had dwindled to a light mist, and thunder rolled away in the distance. The storm was ending, but the night seemed darker than ever. Crimson specks danced on the air before him. They vanished each time he blinked, then one by one swam back into his field of vision.

He made his way by feel more than sight, and after only a few steps he stumbled through a break in the weeds. A pale swath stretched away from him in the gloom. A road. Hope flooded his chest. He still didn’t know where he was—not exactly, anyway—but a road meant people. People who could help him.

Travis started along the road. It was more of a path, really, winding around trees and small boulders, but it was easy to follow even in the murk. The cloak kept the drizzle off of him, but sweat poured into his eyes and trickled down his sides beneath the robe. The spark-motes kept hovering before his eyes, and he started to wonder if perhaps he wasn’t ill, if that wasn’t why it was so hard to think and remember.

Yes, that was right. Hadn’t there been something about a fever or a sickness? There had been a man. No, not a man—a friend. He had been burning with the fever. Except then Travis saw flames. It didn’t make sense. Had the man, his friend—Travis couldn’t seem to remember his name—had the man touched him? He wasn’t sure why, but that seemed important for some reason.

Brighter sparks appeared in the dark before him, gold rather than red. Travis tried to blink them away, but this time they did not waver. As he drew closer the lights grew into bright squares. Windows.

He raised his eyes and saw more lights in the distance. A town? Maybe. But if it was a town, it was too far way. His legs ached, and his throat felt as if he had swallowed a handful of ground glass. He stumbled toward the nearer structure. Where there were lights, there had to be people.

Travis halted before the building. Had it not been for the lights glowing behind the translucent windows, he might have thought it abandoned. Thistles sprang up all along the stone foundation, and the thatch roof sagged precariously. A board hung above the peeling door, but if it had once borne words then the gloom made a mystery of them. Over the wind he caught the sound of rough voices and raucous laughter.

Hunching his shoulders inside the gray robe, he moved to the door. There was no knob, so he pushed against the weathered wood. There was a groan as the door swung inward.

The laughter ceased in a ragged edge of sound, as if cut off with a dull knife.

Smoke-blackened beams hung low over a long room, and dirty straw covered the floor. A fire sputtered on an open hearth, while a scattering of candles produced the wan light along with a rancid odor. A trio of plank tables took up most of the cramped
space. Sitting at these on benches were a half-dozen men. They wore coarse, brown tunics, mud-stained hose, and close-fitting leather caps. To a one they were short, crooked of limb, and powerfully muscled. They stared at Travis with small, dark eyes.

Villeins. Freemen, yes, but barely more than peasants in manner. Do be careful, Travis
.

Travis stepped into the room. A gust of wind slammed the door shut behind him.

Ducking his head to avoid the glares, he sat at the end of the least-populated table. Whoever these people were, they did not appear glad to see him. Perhaps they feared strangers. But Travis wouldn’t bother them. He just needed a place to sit for a moment, to rest and decide what to do next. He knew he wasn’t on Earth anymore, but he had to find out exactly where he was. That way he would know where to go. He had friends here, he was sure of it, even if he couldn’t remember their names just now. He had to find them.

Mutterings broke the silence, and this time the half-coin did not help Travis comprehend. He hunched over the table. Even the dim illumination cast by the candles distressed him. The light seemed to throb, expanding and contracting on the air.

A shadow appeared before him, and he lifted his head, although this action sent a wave of dizziness through him. A woman stood above him. It was impossible to tell if she was young or old because her face was a mass of thick scabs. Food, sweat, and blood stained her brown dress, and a shapeless cloth cap covered her head. The only features Travis could really make out were her eyes, and they were clear and filled with fear. Hand trembling, she set a small clay pot on the table, then hurried away, vanishing behind a curtain.

Travis stared at the chipped clay pot. He reached
for it, but it was hard to make his hand move precisely the way he wanted, and he nearly knocked it over. Using both hands, he managed to grip the pot and bring it to his lips. A metallic scent flooded his skull, and his gorge rose in his throat so quickly he barely had time to swallow it back. He set the pot down with a clatter, fumbled, and managed to keep it from tipping over. However, some of the liquid within spilled onto the table: thick, brown, and gritty as vomit.