The Keeper of the Mist (31 page)

Brann stepped back and glowered at them all, as though everyone in the room had deliberately conspired to play a prank on him and were now going to laugh.

Keri had never felt less like laughing. With Cort's head still resting on her thigh, she could not back away. But nothing seemed about to happen. Whatever magic had been released by burning those earrings, it did not, at least, appear to have made things much worse. So far as she could tell. She gave Brann a stiff nod. He scowled at her, but nodded back even more stiffly.

Then Keri looked down at Cort and found him gazing back up at her, awareness and sense gradually returning to his expression. He took a slow, deep breath and shifted his weight, groaned almost inaudibly, blinked, and shook his head slightly. Then he met Keri's gaze again, and his eyebrows drew together in puzzlement.

Keri took his hand in hers, trying to smile.

“Well, well,” murmured Osman, giving Tassel a respectful nod. “Well thought after all! I admit I was not quite certain there for a moment, but it seems your Bookkeeper's gift once more has proved its usefulness.”

“It's worked out well enough, I suppose, ill considered as it was,” Brann said ungraciously.

“Well enough?” Keri demanded, jerking her head up. “It was worth the risk! It has to have been worth the risk! Getting Cort back is
everything.
Now he'll figure out how to make a door and get us out of here, how to get us back to Nimmira and away from Magister Eroniel!”

“I doubt he can even stand up,” snapped Brann.

Lucas, smiling, took a breath, and Keri realized she ought to have known that of them all, Lucas would be the one to start a real argument just because he was bored and tense and enjoyed provoking Brann. And she also remembered that it was
her
job to make everyone cooperate and to stop anyone from arguing. Even with Brann. She started to tell Lucas to either say something useful or be quiet, and just at that moment, Magister Eroniel arrived in a ripple of silvery light that ran like water against the walls.

Suddenly everything seemed to happen at once.

Magister Eroniel came a step forward, his cold gaze taking in the scene, and exclaimed, “Fools! What have you done? The King cannot have missed
that.
Now he will surely come! Unless—” He swept up his hands, filled with pale light, and turned sharply toward Cort. Keri leaped to her feet and put herself between them, and the sorcerer extended a hand to sweep her out of his way, and Lucas started forward, lifting his staff, and Cort, groaning, got an elbow under his body and began to pry himself off the floor—much too slowly—and Tassel was hurrying to help him, but she wouldn't be in time, Keri saw that, and she had no idea what she could do against Magister Eroniel—nothing, she could do nothing, he had her magic and Cort's magic, and she had nothing—her efforts had been for naught after all—

And then, before Eroniel could take another step, color washed suddenly all around them like a breaking wave of warmth and light—crimson and gold and orange like leaping flames—and they were surrounded by warmth and by the colors of fire. Brilliant sunlight caught, glowing, in rich honey-colored filigree window screens and fell across soft rugs patterned with flames so vivid it was hard to believe they did not burn. The breeze that wandered in through the wide windows was warm with summer and scented strongly with roses. Roses climbed up past the windows. Red roses, all the shades of red—crimson and scarlet and carnelian—heavy with scent. But beneath the fragrance of the roses, Keri was sure she could smell not just the brine of the sea, but the coppery taint of blood.

With Tassel's help, Keri hastily dragged Cort to his feet and pulled him away from Magister Eroniel, but the sorcerer was no longer pursuing them. Keri tugged Cort another step toward the windows anyway, then stopped, amazed, finding rugs suddenly underfoot, dense and soft. There was a long couch not ten steps away, draped in cloth, but it was floating in the air. The cloth, ruby red and flame yellow, didn't reach the floor. She could see straight underneath the couch, which had neither legs nor a base. Lights floated near the ceiling. Not candles or lamps, but soft golden lights like round drops of water. The ceiling had become high and vaulted, set all about with these drops of light. But the lights weren't necessary, because the sun was brilliant and hot, light pouring in through windows that looked out over the blue, blue sea. It had been dusk in that other hall. Here it was hot noon, rich and golden as honey.

Near her, Osman exclaimed, and Tassel said something, in a soft, breathless voice that Keri didn't catch, and Lucas said, “Well, that's an improvement, if you like!” But Keri attended to none of them. For Magister Eroniel was facing a high-backed throne of glowing amber that stood, not far away, against a pale gold wall. Neither throne nor wall had been there a moment before, yet there they were now, shining with golden warmth. And on the throne reclined Aranaon Mirtaelior, looking very much like a statue poured out of the same amber as his throne.

Keri had no doubt at all that this was the Wyvern King. She had never thought of what he must look like. If she had, she would have thought he must look old, for he had ruled Eschalion for a very long time and had already been old when he had carved his throne out of amber and filled it with sunlight. But his face was smooth and young and beautiful. Only the remote calm in his golden eyes was ancient.

He was beautiful as Eroniel Kaskarian was beautiful: those same fine features, the same wide-set eyes and narrow mouth. Only where Magister Eroniel was all moonlight and silver, Aranaon Mirtaelior seemed to have been poured out of sunlight and summer. His eyes and skin and hair were all the color of linden honey, warm and rich. His hair flowed loose and perfectly straight down his back, save for two thin braids, one in front of either ear. Seven tiny crystals of amber gleamed along the curve of his left ear, five in his right.

Aranaon Mirtaelior did not move. Even his eyes did not move. Magister Eroniel faced him, light pooling in his cupped hands, his expression composed, his silvery eyes remote and dangerous. He had attention now only for his King, not for Keri or any of her companions. But the Wyvern King did not look at Eroniel. He was not looking at anything. His gaze was blank and still. He might have been absorbed in watching the light that poured through the room. He might have been blind. On his left shoulder perched a golden wyvern with blue eyes, and on his right a black wyvern with yellow eyes, and both of the wyverns studied the scene with evident fascination. Each of the miniature wyverns was the size of a small crow, and they turned their slender, elegant heads back and forth on their long necks, considering Eroniel, and the little group of Keri's people, and Osman's cloak, which covered the smothered candlelighter and the melted remnants of the crystals.

The black wyvern tipped its head down and seemed to look directly at Keri. It gave a cry that sounded like a jay's sharp warning call crossed with the hiss of an angry serpent, then launched itself into the air, turned on a wing tip, circled the room in quick dipping flight, flicked out the wide window and back in, and at last glided again to the Wyvern King. He lifted a hand to receive it, the first movement he had made. The black wyvern landed on his fist, bobbed its head twice quickly like a bird, and gave another of those hissing cries.

Magister Eroniel had turned his head to watch the wyvern fly, but most of his attention had clearly stayed on Aranaon Mirtaelior, though the King sat still on his glowing amber throne and did nothing at all.

To Keri, the Wyvern King seemed something out of a tale—he
was
something out of a tale: the King of Gold and Amber, the King of Summer, the King of Blood and Roses. But he was real. She had no idea what he would do. Keri knew that she must be afraid, though she was conscious mostly of a slow, blank feeling of unreality, as though none of this were actually happening. She almost felt that if she closed her eyes and opened them again, she would find herself in Glassforge, in the house where the player's involution wavered in the garden, and none of this
had
happened. Or perhaps that it all was yet to come. It was a peculiar feeling.

Cort gasped. He gripped Keri's arm and drew breath to speak, and Keri, terrified of attracting the Wyvern King's attention, put a hand on his shoulder to stop him, and then Lucas tilted his head and narrowed his eyes and thumped his staff gently down on the rugs that covered the floor, and around Magister Eroniel first silvery light and then shadows suddenly stretched out. The room shifted and blurred, the air chilling, the colors fading, the walls reshaping themselves and closing in, dim and gray.

At first Keri thought Magister Eroniel was striving to break through his King's magic, to drag them all back into his own vision of his empty gray prison. But then the sorcerer sent Lucas a look of pure outrage and she realized that her brother was casting a very clever illusion to make it
seem
as though Eroniel were defying his King, trying to subvert his magic and perhaps even attack him. Of course, Eroniel had as much as
said
he was trying to usurp the Wyvern King's power, that was why Lucas had thought of this, but if
she
had possessed a magic of illusion, she would never have dreamed of anything so clever.

Then she felt the cold, and saw how the light in the room wavered between noon and night, and smelled how the fragrance of the roses faded and returned, underlain with blood, and she was no longer sure whether any of this was illusion or whether it was real. She looked quickly at Lucas, but she couldn't tell if what was happening was her brother's illusion or Magister Eroniel's doing after all.

The light appeared to stutter, or the shadows faded and came back, and Eroniel pivoted, his expression cold and resolute, to face his King. Whatever had prompted this conflict, she no longer doubted that he was battling with the King in earnest. Silvery light streaked out from his fingers, cold against the heat of the Wyvern King's summer. Eroniel actually seemed to shimmer, as though there were light trapped beneath his skin, and Keri felt for a moment like she had stopped breathing. She could
feel
her own magic, Nimmira's magic, trying to tear itself free of Eroniel and come back to her like a dog trying desperately to reach its master, but it couldn't, and she was
angry,
so angry and so frightened she could hardly think. She held out her hands and wished with her whole being for Nimmira's power to be back where it belonged, in her and in the land of Nimmira, not trapped here in this foreign country where magic fell out of sunlight and welled up from the scent of roses, where it pooled in blood and condensed into cold crystal.

Magister Eroniel turned to glare at her, and she knew he was furious that Nimmira's magic should dare try to get away from him. He took a step toward her, but both Tassel and Osman stepped in front of her. Keri ducked, trying to see around them, and then a great golden heat rolled through the room and all shadows fled.

Even now, Aranaon Mirtaelior did not so much as glance at Eroniel, but the golden wyvern spread its wings and hissed. Eroniel backed away, seemingly involuntarily. Then, though the golden wyvern hissed a second time, Eroniel stopped and straightened his shoulders and stepped forward once more, again summoning his coldly glimmering magic. The air and the very light between the two sorcerers seemed to crack and shatter, shards of light breaking like sheets of glass. Keri pulled Cort hastily back, trying to think of something useful to do.

“It would be nice to slip cleverly away at this point,” Lucas murmured in her ear.

Keri shook her head and whispered back, “We have to free Nimmira's magic! Look, you can
see
it's trying to get away from Eroniel!”

“Yes, well, perhaps I should have asked this earlier, but how are we going to do that?”

But Keri did not know. She glared furiously at Magister Eroniel and tried to think of something.

Then Eroniel moved forward, one step and another, toward the Wyvern King. The King lifted one hand, palm out, in a languid gesture, and the air flashed and burned between them. The little golden wyvern crouched and batted its wings and screamed, a thin sound like a knife blade, and the black one leaped into the air and flew at Magister Eroniel's face. But Eroniel flung up his other hand, and the air rang like a bell, and the little black wyvern sheered off sharply and fled across the room. It went out the window and came back in with a tangle of sunlight in its claws, the air shivering and glittering around it as though it flew through a cloud of sunlit dust.

It was all impossibly strange, and Keri looked away from the battle, down at Cort's face. His eyes were ordinary brown, human brown. He returned her look and gave a little nod, as though understanding something she had said, though she had said nothing.

The black wyvern flew in a fast circle, and Aranaon Mirtaelior rose to his feet and took a single step forward, and Magister Eroniel said a few brief words that Keri could not quite make out. Each word seemed to strike the air between himself and the Wyvern King with a sharp, hard hammer blow, as though it had carried actual physical force. The King tilted his head and smiled, a distant, unreadable curve of the lips like a statue's smile, and Eroniel stopped again and stood completely still.

He was actually
glowing,
he was using
her
magic that he had stolen, she knew he was, it was pent up inside him, trying to get out, and Keri suddenly leaped forward, tore the earrings out of his closer ear—his left—flung them down, and stomped on them as hard as she could. Light flared under her foot, and she was distantly aware that Aranaon Mirtaelior was smiling slightly, without real amusement, a soulless lift of the lips, the way a player's mask might smile.

But she had no time to think of the King. Eroniel swung around and tried to slap her, but Keri grabbed his hand in both of hers. Touching his skin was like touching light, like touching fire, but it did not burn. Shimmering magic was already fountaining out of the crushed crystals, but that didn't matter to Keri because that magic wasn't hers.
Her
magic fled to her from Eroniel, leaping from him to her across their linked hands, and though the sorcerer tried to pull away, she did not let go. The magic fled toward Cort as well, and a little bit toward Tassel; Keri was aware of that, too, though more distantly. She gasped, feeling that she had actually taken her first breath in hours, then let go of Eroniel's hand, and leaped back.