The Keeper of the Mist (8 page)

Lucas took a quick step, dipped low, and caught the wineglass a foot from the floor with the neat, graceful movement of a dancer. He straightened, dangling the wineglass negligently from his fingers, and turned to regard spattered wine and shattered glass and the stunned expression on Brann's face with wide, innocent eyes.

Brann's expression went from stunned to furious.

Keri realized suddenly that Lucas had deliberately gotten Brann to look the wrong way and teased him into stepping backward so he would knock into that exact table. The realization astonished and appalled and charmed her all at once. She hardly knew which response was uppermost or which she ought to feel. But her reaction to the conflicting emotions was the wrong one, for she laughed aloud before she could stop herself. Lucas hid a grin behind his hand, and even Domeric's lips twitched upward. The Timekeeper did not appear amused, but then he had not appeared startled, either. He merely sighed and cast his gaze toward the ceiling.

But Brann was not amused at all. If the look he had turned on Lucas had been furious, the one he gave Keri was murderous. She swallowed and resisted, barely, an urge to step back and another, stronger urge to apologize. She felt sure that if she apologized for laughing, Brann would only become angrier.

“You are so persistently a fool,” the Timekeeper said to Lucas.

“Serving red wine when the upholstery and rugs are white is really asking for a mess,” protested Lucas. “It was an accident—it's not my fault! Anyway, why should Brann care? It's not as if he'll have to clean it up himself.”

Brann took a step forward, looking nearly on the verge of actual violence. Domeric moved between them, glass crunching under his boots but his attitude casual, as though he had only happened to shift that way by merest chance. Lucas smiled.

Keri caught his eye and said, borrowing her mother's sternest tone and most severe look, “Lucas, I should just mention: if you arrange a spectacular public accident for me, I won't think it's funny, either.”

Lucas started to protest that of course he would never—
had
never—but then he met Keri's stern gaze and laughed instead. “Fair warning, sister!” he said, and gave her a little bow.

Before anyone else could speak, before Brann could say anything cutting or Domeric decide to step out from between his two brothers, the Timekeeper unfolded himself from his chair, slowly, with a kind of creaky angularity, as though he might have more in common with spiders than just his cobweb hair.

His movement broke the moment and drew everyone's attention. Brann's narrow mouth twisted in something that seemed as much scorn or distaste as wariness. But he stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest, no longer on the edge of violence. Domeric moved again to the side and leaned against a sturdy couch, regarding the Timekeeper with narrow interest. Lucas sipped wine and smiled.

“Lady Kerianna will indeed call upon you all,” the Timekeeper said to Keri's half brothers. “Nimmira has entered a time of peril. The boundary magic has failed. Nimmira has opened itself to the outer lands. Incursions have already occurred. Osman Tor the Younger has entered Nimmira with twenty men.” He held up one long, spidery hand to quell the instant reaction. “The young Bear Lord and his men are currently comfortably ensconced in the Glass Hare. Lord Osman awaits tomorrow's ceremony with great interest and is eager to make the acquaintance of Lady Kerianna.”

Keri took a deep breath, but said nothing. The Timekeeper had done exactly what she'd asked. And it wasn't as though any of that could be kept secret.

The three men were staring at the Timekeeper. Brann said sharply, “The boundary has failed? And this little girl is our new Lady?” He gave Keri a look that wasn't suave at all. He appeared furious and alarmed, but also seemed to feel
vindicated.
It made Keri want to hit him. It made her want to come up with something brilliant right this minute and solve every problem facing Nimmira. She set her jaw, lifted her chin, and stared back at him.

“We have been here an hour at least, and you only tell us this now?” growled Domeric.

Lucas said nothing, but he had stopped smiling at last.

“The boundary magic has failed because of Lord Dorric's mismanagement,” the Timekeeper said, his tone flat and repressive. He was speaking to all of them, but his colorless gaze was fixed on Brann. “Nimmira itself has chosen Lady Kerianna to repair what has been put astray. I inform you now because this is the proper moment for you to be informed.”

There was a short pause.

“Well, well, how very exciting!” said Lucas. He was smiling again, a malicious smile that, even though he was not actually looking at Brann, was somehow clearly directed at him.

Brann said, his tone biting, “I am entirely out of patience, Lucas.”

“Really? At last?” said Lucas.

Domeric dropped one massive hand to rest on Lucas's shoulder. Lucas tried to step out of reach, but Domeric had moved just a little too quickly and unexpectedly, and of course once he tightened his grip on his brother's shoulder, there was nothing Lucas could do to get free. He continued smiling, but he closed his mouth and stood still.

Keri had to admit that, though she thought she might like Lucas, she was glad to have Domeric shut him up just at that moment. She began to ask the Timekeeper something, what they should do or what she should expect from Lord Osman, but before she could do more than draw breath to speak, rapid footsteps sounded in the hall, and Cort burst into the room. He was breathing hard, and his hair was windblown, and his gaze sought first the Timekeeper and then Keri with alarming urgency.

“Keri!” he said, ignoring the others—and ignoring Domeric in particular could not be easy, even in a rather large room.

Looking at him, Keri found that she knew what he was going to say. While she'd been trying to find her way through this House and this moment, Cort must have gone about figuring out how to be Doorkeeper, and how to be Doorkeeper in a Nimmira with failing magic. In a moment, he would say—he would say—

“Eschalion!” he said, his voice sharp and clear. “At least one of the Wyvern's people has come through the boundary, Keri! The boundary's failed everywhere, not just here by Glassforge, and someone's stepped right across the border above Ironforge, from Eschalion into Nimmira. Without the mist, I can't close Nimmira against anyone, but least of all a Wyvern sorcerer!”

The Red Bear was the badge of Osman Tor, the Bear Lord, who ruled Tor Carron, which sprawled out in rugged mountains and forests southeast of Nimmira and trailed off far to the south into the arid desert. Rocky and steep or else flat and dry, Tor Carron had little farmland and few orchards. Its people raised goats and hunted wild game and quarried stone and mined copper, and they never, ever gave an inch of ground to the people of the Wyvern.

The Black Wyvern was the sign of the land of Eschalion and of the sorcerer-king who ruled there: Aranaon Mirtaelior, who was himself as old as the mountains, or so people said. He had mastered the sun and mastered fire; he had used fire to carve his golden throne out of amber and then poured sunlight into it and turned it into light; he had stepped into the sun and changed himself into gold—all this, people said. There was even a children's song about the Wyvern King: all about bloody roses and the garnet sunrise and the golden noon and sunlight trapped in amber….No one quite seemed to know what parts of the tales might be true.

Aranaon Mirtaelior had ruled Eschalion for hundreds of years, and his reign had seen the steady enlargement of Eschalion, until, of all the lands between the endless seas and the endless deserts of the south, only Tor Carron remained independent. But the Wyvern King did not find Tor Carron an easy mouthful, for even his measureless ambition broke against the sheer mountains of that border.

Neither Wyvern nor Bear ever quite noticed Nimmira, tucked between their lands like a plump mouse between two lean wolves. Or that was how it was supposed to be. The boundary mist was more than mist and more than illusion and far more than ordinary magic, and it never, ever thinned so far anyone could see through it. It turned the eye and the attention of even the sorcerers of Eschalion, never mind of the ordinary men of Tor Carron. That was why the Bear had never yet reached out to claim the beautiful farmlands of Nimmira, with their deep loam soils and abundant streams. That was also why Aranaon Mirtaelior had never coveted the magic that hummed through Nimmira, nor stripped the magic out of the land to which it belonged and made it his own.

Only now that Lord Dorric had died and the succession had come to Keri, notwithstanding the Timekeeper's claim that the succession was right and solid, the boundary mist had signally failed. And now here, almost at once, was the Red Bear leaning forward from the southeast and the Wyvern sweeping in from the north. Keri had no idea how either of them had realized so quickly that Nimmira was even there, but she had little time to think about that because the real question now was how to fix it.

She said to Cort, “All right. We surely aren't surprised to find the boundary failing all the way around. But you think it's just one man who's come in from Eschalion, not a whole company of sorcerers? This isn't Aranaon Mirtaelior himself, I hope! Flying this way on a throne made of sunlight caught in amber, lightning in his hands and wyverns flying before him?”

Cort stared at her for a long moment, his expression first startled and then abstracted. At last he said, “One man, I think. I'm not entirely certain, but I think only one. I can't swear for or against lightning and wyverns.”

“Eschalion,” breathed Lucas. “Sorcerers, magic, garnet sunrises and golden days, and roses whose crimson petals are made of flames. We should lay roses at crossroads to confuse any blood magic anybody casts—”

“Wonderful,” snapped Keri. “
You
can find roses out of season, Lucas, and maybe that will keep you too busy to throw wine across the room and break a lot of glass!” She thought Lucas's lack of alarm just barely missed being offensive. He didn't look alarmed at all, not like everyone else. He looked curious and interested and even entertained.

People said Lucas's mother had come and gone between Nimmira and the Outside. Maybe she had taught her son not to fear the countries Outside, despite their ambitious rulers and warlike peoples. That was all very well when the mist of concealment and misdirection lay properly around Nimmira. She was afraid Lucas was about to learn, along with the rest of the people of Nimmira, that there was all the difference in the world between a crack in a wall wide enough for the occasional mouse to creep through and a wide-open door through which a bear—or now a wyvern—might thrust his head.

Domeric, at least, plainly did not take any of this lightly. Her most intimidating brother had now turned that glower of his from Lucas to Cort. That wasn't fair. It wasn't Cort's fault the boundary had failed; keeping the boundary magic alive was the Lady's task. If she didn't do her part, how could he do his?

Keri wanted badly to stomp in circles and scream. Instead, she only asked, trying to keep her voice steady and cool, the way she imagined a Lady ought to sound, “Cort, I don't suppose you could close off Nimmira some other way, even without the mist?” She took in his grim expression and nodded. “Fine. Then it's like the Bear soldiers. It's just like that. Someone can go welcome this Wyvern sorcerer to Nimmira, and explain we dismissed the boundary mist on purpose, and invite him to my ascension, and be all—all smooth about it, so he believes it and believes we have reason to be confident. So he believes our magic is even stronger than his sorcery.”

“Marvelous!” exclaimed Lucas, and applauded.

“Really?”
said Brann, though at Keri's idea or Lucas's response wasn't clear. But the Timekeeper turned his head the fraction necessary to fix Brann with an impassive, colorless gaze, and he flushed with the effort of suppressing whatever he had begun to say.

Cort said, ignoring Brann, “Yes, but a sorcerer?” Then he said, his tone resigned, “I'll go. I think I'd better.”

“It is entirely proper for the Doorkeeper to represent Nimmira in such a manner,” said the Timekeeper, expressionless. “You will need a formal coat in order to perform your official duties. Brann's coats will fit you.”

Lucas said with cheerful enthusiasm, “With that hair and those eyes, definitely the black coat with the russet flashes. Or do you think emerald would seem less aggressive?”

“Aggression is the
point,
” Domeric growled.

Brann wasn't laughing. He had stiffened in affront. But the Timekeeper only said, speaking straight to him, “With some alacrity, if you please.” It was an unmistakable command, and Brann, who would, Keri thought, have refused any order or suggestion
she
might give, swallowed, glanced at Cort, took a deep breath, and produced a short, reluctant nod.

Cort nodded in return, took a step toward the door, paused, and looked back at Keri. “This can only be a short-term measure,” he said to her. “Whether with the Bear soldiers or the Wyvern sorcerer. You'll—we'll have to come up with something else to tell them after your ascension and investure. And I have no idea what that should be.”

Keri nodded. He hardly needed to tell her that. She knew it perfectly well. “We'll think of something. We have to. But first you need to meet this sorcerer from Eschalion, and I don't know how you're going to get to the other side of Nimmira in time to meet him.”

“Be a shame for anyone to miss
this
party,” said Lucas. He raised his eyebrows at the Timekeeper.

Domeric gave Lucas a disgusted glance, but the Timekeeper said dispassionately, “A man who travels according to his own measured time might indeed be present at the boundary to meet the sorcerer.”

Keri stared at him. He looked exactly the same: tall and stern and forbidding, his seamed face expressionless, the line of his mouth ungiving, his eyes flat and unreadable. She was almost sure she didn't like him; she knew she didn't really trust him; she was definitely scared of him. But she could hardly imagine a more powerful ally than someone who could give people a gift of measured time. She said, “All right. Good. Now, should someone go besides Cort? Someone with more—”
Polish, grace, poise,
she'd intended to say, but none of that was exactly what she meant. Or she did mean all of that, but what she
really
meant was something more like
a better liar.
But she didn't quite know how to say that.

Tassel, arriving in a flurry of exquisite skirts and expensive fragrance, slipped around Brann and hurried to take Keri's hands in hers, turning to glare protectively at everyone else in the room like a small, elegant cat facing down a pack of angry dogs.

Tassel, Keri thought. Tassel would be a good choice in some ways. She always knew just how to act and she could charm anybody. She had all the polish and grace and poise in the world. And she could look anyone straight in the eye and lie so smoothly even Keri could hardly tell. The only person who'd always been able to tell when Tassel was spinning an elaborate story was Keri's mother.

Keri wished fervently that her mother were here now, ready to dust the flour off her hands and deal with all of this. Her mother should have been Lady. She would have been
perfect,
she would have known just what to do about Tor Carron and Eschalion, plus if she'd been Lady of Nimmira, none of this trouble would ever have happened anyway. Lupe Ailenn had been a fool, when he first built the boundary magic, to fix the succession only on his own descendants.

Nonetheless, Keri was stuck with it. But she would make her mother proud, and shame her father, and make her half brothers and everyone in Glassforge admit she was the right Lady for Nimmira. She would do it. She had to do it, and she would.

But the Bookkeeper wasn't the best choice to meet a sorcerer who was probably aggressive and certainly dangerous. Besides, Keri needed her here; she needed her to find the right kinds of books about Nimmira and its magic. No, Keri didn't want to send Tassel.

The Timekeeper wasn't about to suggest anyone. She could see he wouldn't. Keri was beginning to think he was going to be a truly frustrating ally. She looked away, out through the open balcony door and across the city. She almost thought she could see the boundary of Nimmira from where she stood, except that was impossible.

She said, “Cort can go—and, as the oldest of my brothers and one of the most important men in Nimmira, Brann can go with him,” and looked quickly at the Timekeeper to see what he thought of this idea.
She
thought it was a good one.

“Oh, clever!” Lucas applauded.

“What?” snapped Brann, but then paused, recovering from a seemingly reflexive objection to anything she proposed as he realized exactly what she had said.

Lucas grinned at him, then turned his most dazzling smile on Keri. “No, but it's a brilliant choice,” he told her. “Brann could sell iron to a miner or wool to a shepherd. No matter how subtle a sorcerer this man from Eschalion may be, Brann can certainly make him believe he's a welcome guest and not at all an intruder.”

“Indeed. This will serve,” the Timekeeper said, in his customary flat voice. “Brann has the rank and position, and Mirtaelior's servant cannot object to your courtesy if you send your eldest brother and your Doorkeeper to welcome him.” He didn't say,
And you can trust your Doorkeeper to keep a careful eye on your brother.
Keri was sure they all understood that, except maybe for Brann himself.

“It should be me,” Domeric said grimly. “
I
would make them think.”

“Just as long as it's not me,” Lucas said lightly.

“You wouldn't make anybody think of anything but throwing wine at you,” Brann snapped. “Or stones. Or knives.” But Lucas only laughed.

Ignoring them both, Keri said, “Domeric, I think
you
should go meet the Bear soldiers. The Timekeeper can explain where to find them. You can make sure they feel welcome in Glassforge. You and half a dozen men. Whomever you choose.”

Domeric gave her a slow look and a grim little nod of understanding. “Big men,” he growled. “Men all dressed the same, in plain black coats, maybe. Men to make soldiers respect us, and you, and Nimmira.”