The Keep of Fire (51 page)

The bard pressed his lips shut but said nothing.

“Who is it, Falken?” Travis said without really meaning to.

Falken spoke in a hard voice. “It’s Mohg, the Lord of Nightfall. One of the Old Gods.”

“Like Olrig, you mean?”

The bard shot him a look so sharp that Travis bit his tongue.

“No. Not like Olrig. Even in the beginning Mohg was different from the other Eldhari, and in the end he was their foe.”

“Not just theirs,” Melia said, her amber eyes narrowing to slits. “All of ours.”

Grace nudged her palfrey forward. “I’ve heard you talk about the Old Gods, Falken. And the Runespeakers did as well. But no one else I’ve met has spoken of them. Did people ever worship them?”

“The Eldhari had little to do with people. Not like the Nindari, the New Gods who ventured into Falengarth from Al-amún and Tarras to the south, and whose fates were ever caught up with those who followed them. The Old Gods were creatures of stone, and forest, and sky. They had little understanding of the ways of people. Although some few did seek them out, and were befriended by them, and gained great gifts. Gifts like the runes. And for a numberless age the Maugrim knew of the Old Gods, and of their children, the Eldhrim—the Little People.”

As the bard spoke, Travis’s gaze was drawn again to
the figure outlined in white stones. There was something about it that seemed almost … familiar. Something about the single eye that stared from the center of its face. Then he saw something he had not noticed before: a shape perched on the old god’s left shoulder, a shape with folded wings and a curved beak. Almost like …

Like a raven, Travis
.

But that couldn’t be. The ravens were all gone—they had been burned away. Wasn’t that what Sister Mirrim had seen with her blind, bloody eyes?

“Who made this drawing, Falken?” Durge said in his rumbling voice. “Was it the Maugrim?”

The bard shook his head. “No, the Maugrim made no drawings. Nor did they make music or adornments for their bodies, save such pigments as they could gain from soil or plants. My guess is that this was forged later by some of the first people who journeyed into Falengarth from the south, and who encountered the Old Gods here.”

Beltan snorted, gesturing toward the struggling stick figures caught in the giant’s hand. “Call it a hunch, but something tells me it was an encounter they didn’t much care for.”

Lirith studied the drawing with dark, intent eyes. “It’s fascinating.”

“No, it’s hideous,” Melia said with quiet vehemence. She turned her amber gaze on Falken. “And you profess to wonder why people forgot the Old Gods.”

The bard only grunted.

“But what
did
happen to them?” Aryn said. “Where did they go?”

Falken sighed. “Their time passed. When the New Gods came with men out of the south and marched across Falengarth, the Old Gods and the Little People knew their age had ended, and so they faded away into the Twilight Realm.”

“It was hardly that simple,” Melia said.

The bard studied the drawing on the hillside. “No. No, I suppose it wasn’t at that.”

Grace brushed strands of ash-blond hair from her eyes. “There’s something I don’t understand. Last winter, the Little People of Gloaming Wood were roaming the halls of Calavere. You were the first one to say they had come back, Falken. So if the Little People can come back from this Twilight Realm, does that mean the Old Gods can as well?”

Before Falken could reply Melia made a sharp gesture with her hand. “Let us leave this place. There is nothing for us here.” She urged her white mare down the slope.

Travis frowned at Falken. “What was that about?”

However, the bard did not meet his gaze. “Come on,” Falken said, and together the riders followed after Melia.

The next day they rode between a pair of stone watchtowers set atop twin mottes—mounds of soil raised by the builders—and passed into the Dominion of Perridon. Evidently the fabled mists of the place had been lurking just across the border, for as soon as the travelers reached the towers a thick fog rose from low hollows in the ground, swirling around the legs of the horses and up to the knees of the riders.

Durge looked up at the silent watchtowers as they slipped past. The narrow windows high in each tower were dim. “Should not these forts be manned, Falken?”

“Given that this is Perridon, you’d think so.” The bard’s wolfish mien was grim.

Beltan snorted. “I didn’t think a mouse could slip
into Perridon without someone demanding its name and a tax of three whiskers. The Perridoners have garrisons at pretty much every road, river, and footpath that leads into the Dominion. Every time I’ve come here, I’ve had to stop and tell them who I am, why I’m here, and what I had for breakfast two Melinsdays ago.”

Travis guided Patch past Lirith and Aryn, toward Grace’s horse. “Cheerful place, isn’t it?” he said to her under his breath.

Grace smiled. “Actually, I’ve always sort of enjoyed foggy days.”

“You’re not kidding, are you?”

She shrugged. “I like the way fog hides everything. It’s sort of nice to be able to move through the world and have it seem like you’re the only one on the planet. It feels … safe.”

Travis shuddered. Grace’s words didn’t sound nice at all, but instead horribly lonely—dwelling in a world of gray, unable to see or touch the people all around you. He opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment Tira looked up and gazed at him with her one perfect, one drooping eye. She held her half-burnt doll out toward him.

“She wants you to hold it,” Grace said. “It’s an honor, really—she doesn’t offer it to just anyone.”

Travis stared at the girl, certain that he did not want to hold the charred doll, to feel the dry, scorched wood under his fingers. But she lowered neither doll nor disarming gaze, and he started to reach for it.

“Go back!”

The riders brought their horses to a halt at the sound of the rasping voice. Even as Travis watched, a figure stepped from a bank of mist. The man’s hair was plastered to his skull, and his cheeks were shadowed by dark stubble. His cloak was as gray as Travis’s own.

“Go back!” the man shouted again, his voice a dry
croak. “You are fools to enter here. Go back from where you came.”

Falken guided his horse forward. “We mean no harm to you.” He reached his ungloved hand down toward the man.

“No! Don’t touch him!”

A figure surged past Travis. It was Grace, spurring her palfrey toward Falken. The bard jerked his hand back and stared at her, as did the man in the gray cloak.

It was then that Travis saw the man’s eyes: They were black, without whites, without irises. A sickness flooded his gut. Next to him, Aryn clasped a hand to her mouth, and Lirith let out a soft sigh.

“Yes,” the man said, gazing up at Grace with his impossible eyes. “I see you understand.”

“How far?” Grace said. Travis had never heard her voice so cold before. “How far has it spread in Perridon? The Burning Plague.”

The man passed a hand before his face and staggered to one side. Travis wondered if he would collapse. Then he spoke, his voice quieter now.

“I don’t know. Some villages here, some there. There is no reason, no pattern to it. They come, they strike, then they are gone again.”

There was no need for Grace to ask whom he spoke of. They all knew: the Burnt Ones.

Beltan nudged his roan charger forward—but not too close. “How long ago were they here?”

The man crossed his arms over his sunken chest. “I cannot say. When I came to this place they were already ashes.” He made a vague gesture toward the two towers.

“Do you know what they want?” the blond knight said.

The man laughed now, a crazed sound that chilled Travis’s blood. “To burn us all, I suppose. But there was one. I saw him in the duchy of Varsarth. One who
still could speak, near as he was to the end. The key, he said. He wanted the key to fire. Yet what does that mean?” He held shaking, skeletal hands before him. “But then, perhaps I will know before long.”

“It’s not too late,” Grace said, her voice without emotion. “To end it.”

He smiled now, his lips pulling back in a rictus from rotten teeth. “I know, my lady. I came here to watch, and to warn others as long as I could. But that time is nearly over. I will make one more trip up the steps of the western guard tower. And when I descend again, it will not be by the stairs, but rather by the very swiftest of routes.” His black gaze flickered toward Falken. “Now, will you turn away from this place, for fear of plague?”

“It is for fear of plague that we must ride here.”

The man considered the bard’s words, then nodded. “So it was that I guessed. I’ve heard it said that trouble precedes you, Falken Blackhand. It seems the stories of the Grim Bard are true. But may the other tales be right as well.” He pressed blistered lips together. “Find an end to this, Blackhand. Find an end for all of us.”

Falken opened his mouth, but the man had already slipped back into a swirl of mist and was gone.

“Do you want me to find him?” Beltan said, gripping the reins of his charger.

Falken held up his gloved hand. “You won’t find him. Didn’t you see what he wore?”

“A mistcloak,” Durge said. “He is a Spider, then?”

The bard nodded. “One of the king of Perridon’s personal spies. It’s said that a Spider can walk through a city at midday and not be seen by a single pair of eyes.”

Travis scratched his chin—the gold-and-copper stubble had grown into a thick, full-fledged beard—and glanced at the bard. “But if that man was one of the king’s spies, what was he doing here?”

“King Persard is dead,” Grace said in a low voice.

Lirith’s eyes glittered. “And a new king has new spies.”

“But we have heard nothing of a new king in Perridon,” Aryn said.

Beltan fingered the hilt of his sword. “Maybe we just have.”

“What now, Falken?” Melia said, folding her arms.

“We ride,” the bard said. “This changes nothing. Except perhaps to make our errand more urgent yet. Come on.” He nudged the flanks of his stallion.

Travis hesitated, then cast a glance back at the two towers. The mist was rising, and the towers floated like islands in a colorless sea. He squinted through his spectacles. Was that a small shadow he saw moving atop the westernmost spire? Before he could be certain, a gray wall heaved upward, obscuring his view. He turned and followed the others, riding into the thickening fog.

It was midmorning four days later when Falken, who rode at the head of the traveling party, raised his black-gloved hand and brought the group to a halt.

At least Grace assumed it was midmorning, but this was a vague supposition at best, with little visual evidence to support it, and only the growling of her stomach. The mist-heavy air was so dim that Grace nearly continued on past the others after they had stopped. If Shandis had not snorted—recognizing the location of her companions by smell—Grace supposed she would have kept riding until she and Shandis and Tira all fell over a cliff or into a pit. There had certainly been enough such perils as they made
their way north through Perridon, across the rock-strewn moors at the broken feet of the Fal Erenn.

With one hand Grace held on to Tira while she used the other to tug on the reins, bringing Shandis hard around. Squinting, she made out a number of darker patches of gray against the fog ahead. Either she had found her friends or a group of stumps shaped remarkably like people on horses. As she drew near, the fog parted a bit, and she glimpsed rocks and thorny shrubs along with her companions—all of them slicked with moisture.

Despite the words spoken by the Spider at the guard towers, their ride through Perridon had been mostly uneventful. They did come upon a few isolated farms and villages after crossing the border, but all had appeared to be fine. Or at least as fine as any medieval village with open gutters for sewers and a population rife with rickets, scrofula, and other diseases of malnutrition. At any rate, there had been no signs of another, far more virulent disease—the Burning Plague.

Along the way they had been able to pick up a few supplies to replenish the foodstuffs packed at the Gray Tower—but only a few. These were the hinterlands of Perridon, far from any major castle or keep of power, and the folk who lived there were both shockingly poor and fearful of strangers. In one village they had managed to purchase a small amount of dried fruit, unleavened bread, and sour wine.

“We’ll have better luck in the next village,” Beltan had said, a slightly desperate crack to the big knight’s voice. “Don’t you think we’ll have better luck, Grace?”

But there had been no next village. After that they had ridden across only barren plain and moor, intermittently choked with fog and crisscrossed everywhere by jagged ravines and broken stretches of loose,
rain-slick slate that placed both horse and rider at peril.

Despite the fog and moisture, the coolness of the wild lands between Toloria and Perridon had vanished at the border along with the sun. Instead, the misty air was hot and dank, like that of a steam room that had been allowed to mold. The damp permeated everything—armor, tunics, gowns—and the heat conjured sweat which had no chance of evaporating, but only soaked their garments further.

As they traveled, Falken had spoken little more of their destination—only that it was the place where he believed the Stone of Fire had dwelled for a time. While she had heard Falken tell stories about the Imsari—the three Great Stones—Grace still didn’t really understand what they were or where they had come from. All she knew was that the Pale King had been willing to go to any lengths to gain Sinfathisar, the Stone of Twilight, but instead Travis had given it to the Little People to guard. Understanding that, Grace knew it was possible Krondisar could be used in the manufacture of many evils.

Including plagues of fire. It looks like you’ve finally got your disease vector, Grace
.

But whether or not she could find a vaccine or a cure was another question altogether. However, wasn’t that what they had journeyed there to find out?