The Keep of Fire (54 page)

It was only when she bumped into Aryn that Grace realized the group had come to a halt. Her physician’s instincts pricked up—something wasn’t right, she was sure of it. Then she made a quick count and understood. One of them was missing.

It took her a moment to realize it was Melia. However, even as she opened her mouth to ask Aryn why they had stopped, and where Lady Melia had gone, two amber sparks appeared in the gloom ahead, beyond the reach of Travis’s light.

The sparks hovered low to the ground, moving slightly up and down as they drew nearer. For a moment Grace wondered if it might be the black kitten—the sparks were the same color as the little creature’s eyes—but a quick glance to her right revealed the kitten still sleeping in Tira’s folded arms.

She glanced back up. The two amber sparks were closer, just beyond the boundary of Travis’s light. It seemed she could almost make out a low, sleek black shape behind the two bright points. Then the sparks winked out, and the dark must have been playing tricks on Grace’s vision, for it was Melia who stepped into the circle of radiance a moment later.

“There is a stairway ahead,” the lady said.

“Good,” Falken said. “That means we’re getting close.”

After a few more minutes of walking they came to the foot of the stairs. Like everything, the steps were hewn of the same onyx stone, their edges sharp as knives.

“We must be careful not to make a misstep,” Durge said, and this time his words received nods.

The stairway was even narrower than the passage, and they were forced to ascend single file. In places the ceiling dropped so low Beltan and Travis quickly learned to duck their heads, and if the ceiling were to come down another two inches Grace would have had to join the two tall men.

Grace had never thought of herself as claustrophobic, but, with each step she climbed, the walls seemed to press in a little closer. At three hundred she lost count of the steps, and still the stairway stretched on and up into the dark.

“What if there’s no door at the top?” she heard a faint whisper just ahead. Aryn. “What if there’s no door?”

These words jabbed at Grace’s heart like needles. This was a possibility she had not considered. However, at that moment, the stairway made a sharp bend to the right, and light spilled down the steps—not the magical light conjured by Travis’s spoken rune, but real, warm, outdoors light.

Grace squinted, protecting her dark-adjusted eyes, even though she knew it was only the faintest illumination filtering from up ahead. However, with each step the light grew brighter. Then the stairway made another turn, and she could not help gasping as the golden brilliance of the sun struck her full on the face. A few more breathless steps and Grace stumbled through another archway along with Tira. She drew in deep, shuddering breaths of fresh, unconfined air.

“Well,” Falken said. “This is it.”

Grace stared, knowing her expression contained the same wide-eyed wonder as those of her companions. Sheer cliffs of black, jagged rock ringed the valley on all sides, piercing the thin blue membrane of the sky. The fog of the lowlands was gone, and the sun blazed bright as it hovered just above the far rim.

Lowering her gaze, Grace scanned the floor of the valley. It was utterly barren, without even shrubs or grass, and littered with sharp, broken pieces of shale. Wind hissed over naked stone.

Beltan’s boots ground against the loose shale. “What are we looking for, Falken?” The knight’s voice seemed far too loud for the silence of this place.

“A temple,” the bard said. “A dark temple.”

Grace shivered. Unlike the lands below, the air in this place was chill and thin as a knife.

“There is something else here,” Melia said, searching the rocks all around.

Falken’s eyebrows drew down in a glower. “What is it?”

“Something that watches,” Lirith said, opening her eyes. She glanced at Melia, who gave a shallow nod.

Falken sighed. “Well, we won’t be here long. We just have to get to the temple, then get out.”

Beltan’s hand moved to the hilt of his sword. “Are you sure this is the right place? In case you hadn’t noticed, there aren’t exactly any spooky old temples in plain view. Just a whole bunch of rocks.”

“It has to be here,” Melia said. “Tome told us it was.”

Beltan cringed as he spoke. “I really hate to say this, but could your friend have been wrong, Melia?”

“No,” a low voice said. “This is the place. Krondisar was here.”

Travis had moved a short distance off, and he pointed to something in the ground. Pits of some kind.

No, not pits, Grace
. She drew closer to Travis along with the others.

Time had worn and roughened their edges, but there was no mistaking the nature of the holes gouged into the hard stone, set in two parallel lines. Travis edged a boot forward and slipped it into one of the pits. It fit perfectly.

“They’re footprints,” Aryn said, her voice merging with the wind. “Footprints in the stone.”

Falken opened his mouth, but before he could reply Tira squirmed free of Grace’s grip, dashed forward, and—like Travis—placed her small foot in one of the footprints. She looked up, a smile on her half-melted face.

“Mindroth,” she said.

The girl laughed—a high, clear sound. Grace and the others could only stare as the sun slipped behind the high rim of stone, plunging the valley into shadow.

It was not difficult to follow the footsteps.

Travis clutched his mistcloak around himself as they walked across the hard slate floor of the valley. However, the scouring wind snatched at the edges of the garment, tearing it away, and letting icy fingers of air slip beneath his tunic to stroke his flesh. His gaze fell to the ragged pits in the stone. This was not the first time he had seen footsteps like these.

It had been the day after the burnt man staggered into the Mine Shaft. Deirdre had seen them first, melted into the asphalt of Elk Street. But what did it mean?

His gaze moved to the girl, Tira. Beltan carried her now, wrapped in a cloak on his back; the shards of stone that littered the valley were far too sharp for small, bare feet. According to Grace, the girl could not speak. Certainly Travis had never heard her utter a sound. Yet, minutes ago, she had spoken a single word in a clear, unmistakable voice.
Mindroth
.

A shiver coursed through Travis. Maybe he knew what it all meant after all.

Durge had paused to kneel up ahead, examining a place where the footprints disappeared beneath a loose layer of scree that had tumbled down ages ago. Now the grim-faced knight stood, dusting his hands together.

“They head in that direction,” he said, pointing across the valley, “past that spur of rock.”

Travis followed the Embarran’s gesture. It took him a moment to pick out the ridge that jutted from the valley rim. It was the same dark color as the surrounding stone.

“Let’s go,” Falken said. “We’ve got about three
more hours of daylight. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d rather not be here when night falls.”

While it was still afternoon, the sun had sunk behind the high rim of the valley, and the circle of the sky had turned the color of blue ashes. It was an effect Travis had seen many times before in the mountains of Colorado, in deep canyons cast into premature twilight hours before the coming of true night. It seemed the valley was no longer part of the larger world, but instead floated alone in an empty place that was neither day nor night, neither light nor dark.

The clattering of stone ceased as the others came to a halt. Travis skidded to a stop next to Grace, then looked up.

So the valley wasn’t a perfect circle after all. Instead it was shaped like a figure eight, with the ridge partially dividing the two halves. Now they had circled around the end of the ridge, and Travis knew this was their destination.

“What is this place?” Aryn whispered, her face pale as she gripped Lirith’s hand.

“A place where death rules,” Melia said. She bent her cheek to the kitten tucked into the fold of her arms.

Although he resisted, Travis could not help gazing at the temple that hulked before them. He tried to trace the onyx columns, lintels, and cornices with his eyes, but doing so caused his vision to swim and brought dull pain to his skull. The lines of the structure were maddening and alien, its impossible angles giving Travis the feeling that it was he and the world, not the temple, that were grotesquely skewed. Friezes seemed to writhe above the shadowed colonnades, their tortured figures looking not as if they had been carved from the stone, but rather as if they were melting back into it, mouths open in soundless screams.

At last Travis managed to wrest his gaze away from the temple. He looked up and met Grace’s eyes. They were haunted in the white oval of her face.

“By the Bloody Bull of Vathris,” Beltan said in a hoarse voice, “who built this thing, Falken?”

The bard turned away from the temple. “You speak of Vathris, and that is more appropriate than perhaps you know, for it was one of the kindred of Vathris who built this place.”

“No!”

All turned shocked gazes toward Melia. The small woman’s face was flushed, and she dropped the kitten to the ground as she clenched both hands into fists.

“Dakarreth was not the kindred of the Nindari.” Melia’s words edged on a cry. “None of his kind were!”

“You’re wrong, Melia,” Falken said in a soft voice. “Whatever they became later, the Necromancers were once New Gods, just like the other Nindari. Albeit they were minor ones, far more limited than Vathris, Yrsaia, or any of the other gods of the mystery cults. Then again, once they took bodies to walk Eldh, they gained … different abilities.”

The color drained from Melia’s face, but she said nothing.

Travis took a step toward the bard. “So it was a Necromancer who built this place?”

Falken nodded. “Over a thousand years ago, the Pale King seduced thirteen of the Nindari, the New Gods. He convinced them to take bodies of unliving flesh, and in so doing bound them to him as slaves. They became his Necromancers—his wizards of death. Before the War of the Stones, he sent them out into Falengarth, to raise places of power, like this one, in preparation for the struggle to come.”

“So that’s why we saw the pylon below,” Grace said, her arms folded tightly over the bodice of her
violet gown. “You said the Pale King and the Necromancers used them to communicate with their slaves in the war.”

“Yes. And it was here, in the pits of this place—and in other places like it—that many of those slaves were forged. Here the Eldhrim, the Little People, were brought in chains of iron. And here, by the magics of the Necromancers, their bodies were corrupted into new and terrible forms.”

Fresh sickness rose in Travis’s throat. He thought of the
feydrim
he and Grace had once encountered in Calavere, of its monstrous fangs and talons—and of the look of pain and release in its yellow eyes when they managed to kill it.

“You tell a dark tale, Falken,” Durge said in his rumbling voice, “but it has not yet told me why we have come to this place seeking one of the Imsari. Were not all of the Necromancers destroyed in the War of the Stones?”

Falken flexed his black-gloved hand. “So the stories say.”

“Then how did the Stone of Fire come to be here?”

Before the bard could answer, Travis pointed to the pits burned into the black steps of the temple. “It was brought here.”

Falken’s voice merged with the mournful chant of the wind. “After the War of the Stones, the Runelords safeguarded the three Imsari in Malachor. But Malachor fell little more than two centuries later, and the Runelords were destroyed—all save three, who each fled with one of the Great Stones, and were lost to knowledge. Their names were Jakabar, Kelephon, and—”

“And Mindroth,” Travis said. He saw again the freshly carved words on the tombstone Brother Cy had shown him in the Castle Heights Cemetery. “It was him, wasn’t it? The burning man who came into my saloon. It was Mindroth.”

Falken nodded. “So I believe.”

Travis almost laughed. Yet it made sense in a way. After all, there had been footsteps leading into this valley but none leading out. Mindroth must have left by another sort of door.

“I must be swift,” Melia said, her voice as hard as the stones beneath their feet. “We are not alone in this place, of that I am certain. Although what the nature of the other might be, I cannot say.”

She glanced at Lirith, but the witch shook her head.

“My senses are not so keen as yours, Lady Melia. I do not know what it might be. But I feel it too—like a shadow always just beyond the edge of sight.”

“Keep watch,” Melia said. “All of you. I will do my best not to be long.”

Beltan stepped forward. “I’m coming with you.”

Her amber eyes flashed so brightly that the knight took a half step back. “On this there will be no argument, Beltan. It is certain death for any other than myself to enter this place. If you doubt, ask Falken.”

The bard nodded. By the shadow in his eyes, he had had this same argument with Melia—and had lost just like Beltan.

The blond knight touched the lady’s shoulder, his green eyes wounded but resigned. “By all the gods, be careful, Melia.”

She brushed his hand, her voice softer now. “It is with all the gods that I will enter.”

Without further words, the lady turned from them, ascended the steps to the temple, and vanished in the shadow between two misshapen columns.

Aryn clutched her left arm around herself, her blue eyes as dusky as the sky above. “What now?”

Falken sat on a boulder. “Now we wait.”

They did not speak. The wind grew stronger and colder, howling as it passed over the rocks, as if their razored edges cut at it. Beltan and Durge paced back
and forth, scanning the distance, while Lirith sat, head bowed and eyes shut—keeping watch in a different way. Grace huddled beneath her riding cloak with Tira, and when Travis saw that Aryn could not stop shivering, he opened his mistcloak and wrapped it around himself and the slender form of the baroness.

The minutes eroded as slowly as stone. However, Melia had not lied. No more than a quarter hour later she appeared at the top of the steps before the temple. She staggered and clutched a column for support. Beltan started to spring up the steps, but a sharp gesture from Melia halted him. With careful movements she descended until the knight was able to grip her arm.