The Keep of Fire (15 page)

Low thunder approached, not in the cloudless sky, but up the hill behind Grace. She turned to see four riders—two women and two men—gallop up the grassy slope. They brought their mounts to a halt alongside hers.

Aryn pushed dark hair back from bright cheeks. Her blue riding gown was askew around her saddle. “Grace, what on Eldh possessed you to ride like that?” the young baroness asked. “You know shepherd’s knot is hard to see before it blooms. How do you expect to find any when you’re flying above it?”

The second woman nudged her mount closer. Her hair was long, coal black, and tightly curled, and her skin was the rich, dark color of
maddok
. The smile that played across her full lips was mysterious—as all of Lirith’s expressions were. “Perhaps it was not shepherd’s knot that Lady Grace was looking for.”

Grace grinned at the slender, brown-eyed witch. “Perhaps,” she said, trying for a bit of mystery herself.

Durge blew a breath through his drooping mustaches. The craggy-faced Embarran knight towered over the others on the back of his sooty charger, Blackalock. Despite the fair day, he was dressed in heavy garb of gray. “My lady,” he said to Grace, “it is perilous for you to ride ahead like that. There is no telling what dangers you might encounter, even in sight of the king’s castle.”

“With all respect, my lord, I would hazard that Her Radiance has the ability to care for herself.”

These good-natured words were spoken by the last member of the riding party, a knight by the name of Sir Garfethel. He was a powerful and broad-shouldered man—if not very tall—and while his beard was only a brown dusting on his cheeks, he sat
straight on his charger and gripped the reins in capable-looking hands. All the same, Grace found it hard not to think of him as just Garf, the squire who had tripped after her through the muck of the bailey one day several months ago, and who had humbly begged her to sponsor him for knighthood.

Grace had been horrified at his words. She wasn’t a duchess, no matter what Boreas or Aryn said. It would be utter fraud for her to knight a man. Like many squires, Garf was a second or third son who had right to neither land nor title and who was seeking a lord or lady who would grant him such in exchange for his allegiance. However, Grace had nothing to grant, and in no uncertain words she told him to leave her alone.

Garf followed her, of course. For the next two weeks, Grace found herself stumbling over him at every turn as he made a dogged effort to be of service. At last she advanced on him, and asked him flat out, “Why me, Garf?”

He had seemed genuinely surprised at this question. “What knight would not wish to pledge himself to the noblest and most beautiful lady in the Dominion?”

Grace had let out a groan. “And if I were really that, then I would have men falling at my feet to serve me.”

“Do you mean like Sir Durge, my lady?” Garf had said with an innocence so perfect it could only be genuine.

That had shut Grace up.

The next day she spoke with King Boreas, and they worked out an arrangement. Garf had squired with Sir Belivar, one of the king’s household knights, and Belivar recommended Garf for knighthood with such enthusiasm that Grace wondered if Belivar, who was getting on in years, wasn’t just relieved to be discharged of his duty. As was typical, Boreas had a
number of lands at his disposal—fiefs left heirless or seized from intractable lords—and he generously granted Grace a small manor in western Calavan, which she in turn granted to Garf.

They held the knighting on the first day of Vardath.

At dawn they gathered in the upper bailey. Barefoot and clad in a white shift, Garf knelt before Grace while Boreas, Aryn, Durge, and Belivar stood behind. At that moment he had looked so much like a boy that Grace nearly lost her nerve. However, a nod from Durge steadied her. She gripped the sword taken from Boreas’s armory, and while she feared she would fumble the heavy weapon and lop his head off, she instead tapped each of his shoulders with surgical precision.

“Rise, Sir Garfethel,” she had said, and she might have laughed at the absurdity of it. Except at that moment the sun crested the wall of the castle, and as he stood in its gold radiance Garf looked so proud and noble that her mirth stopped short at the sudden lump in her throat.

“Do not weep, my lady,” he said, and she laughed, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Why were her knights always telling her that?

After that, Durge led a dappled charger stamping and snorting into the bailey, and Garf promptly forgot his new mistress while he fell in love with his horse. Grace cast a grateful look at Durge. She had remembered the sword, but she had forgotten that a knight required a warhorse.

Thank you
, she had mouthed the words to him.

He had nodded, and while she could not quite make out what he said beneath his mustaches, it might have been,
I am ever at your service, my lady
.

Now Durge turned in his saddle to cast his somber brown gaze on Garf. “You make light of danger, Sir Garfethel. What if our mistress were to ride far ahead of us and then come upon a nest of brigands?”

“Then I think they should find themselves put under a spell,” Garf said. “And when we came upon our mistress, we would discover her waving a finger while the brigands danced in time around her with flowers in their hair.”

Lirith clapped both hands to her mouth, and even Aryn—who laughed so seldom these days—smiled at Garf’s words. However, Durge looked even less amused than usual. Grace knew she needed to say something. As far as she could tell, the primary duty of a noble mistress was damage control.

“I do thank you for your confidence, Sir Garfethel,” she said. “But Sir Durge is right, of course. It was wrong of me to ride so far ahead.”

“Although I would have liked to see the dancing brigands,” Lirith said.

Grace glanced at her. Sometimes it was hard to diagnose whether Lirith was being earnest or making a jest. Maybe for her there was little difference between the two.

Lirith had arrived at Calavere not long after Queen Ivalaine’s departure. This had been in late Durdath, and even though the world was still frozen, the various rulers who had journeyed to Calavere for the Council of Kings, and who had stayed on when it was renamed the Council of War, were returning to their own Dominions. Ivalaine was the last of the rulers to go, and Grace and Aryn ventured to the lower bailey, bundled in their fur-lined capes, to say good-bye.

The queen sat upon her white horse, as regal as the day Grace had first seen her riding up to the gates of Calavere—a day that seemed so long ago now. They bid farewell to the queen’s advisor Tressa first, and the plump, red-haired witch climbed from her horse to encompass each of them in a motherly hug. Grace felt tears welling up, but they froze solid when she turned to speak to the queen. After all that had happened, she still did not know Ivalaine. The queen was
as cool as the stars and every bit as impossible to reach.

“We will keep studying, Your Majesty,” Aryn had said.

Ivalaine’s ice-colored eyes had shone. “Yes, sisters,” she said. “You will.”

A week later, on the first day of Erenndath, Lirith rode up to the castle gates, accompanied by a pair of Tolorian knights. She asked to speak to Lady Grace and Lady Aryn even before begging King Boreas for hospitality.

“Greetings, sisters,” Lirith had said to them in the castle’s entry hall. “Queen Ivalaine bade me to make haste here from Ar-tolor. I have come to see to your studies.”

Grace had thought the witch’s words would fill her with dread. So far King Boreas had not discovered what she and Aryn were doing; so far they had not done permanent harm to themselves with what they had learned. So far. Instead, at Lirith’s words, a flood of relief had washed through her.

You want to learn more, don’t you, Grace? No matter how dangerous it is, no matter how inevitable it gets that Boreas will find out what you’re doing and have your head lopped off. You’ll do anything to feel more, won’t you?

But she had not needed to answer the question then, and she did not now.

Garf guided his charger to the crest of the knoll. He shaded his eyes and gazed out over the undulating landscape.

“What is it you search for, Sir Garfethel?” Durge asked. “The campfire smoke of cutthroats? Signs of wild boar? Bogs where our horses might founder?”

“A place to have dinner,” the young knight said.

Grace smiled. Garf’s concerns were always a bit more practical than Durge’s.

They all sat straight on their horses and scanned
the distance, looking for a dell or hollow that would offer protection from the wind and water for the horses.

Aryn gasped.

Grace turned toward the baroness, to ask her if she had caught sight of a good stopping place, but Aryn was not looking at the green-gold hills. She was looking at Grace.

“What is it? Grace said, startled.

“The land,” Aryn murmured. “It’s the same color as your eyes, Grace.”

Lirith nodded. “So it is.”

Grace opened her mouth, but she didn’t know what to say.

Garf laughed. “Why, if her eyes are the same color as the land, then she must be the queen of this fair place.” He bowed in his saddle. “All hail the Queen of Summer!”

It was a poor jest. Grace shook her head and started to protest. However, her words faltered as a second sun appeared in the sky. It streaked above them, casting impossible shadows in all directions. The five jerked their heads up in time to see the white-hot bolt vanish into the north.

Durge was the first of them to find his tongue. “A firedrake.”

Only as the knight spoke did Grace realize what it was she had witnessed. A shooting star. Except she hadn’t known it was possible to see a meteor in broad daylight.

“I’ve never seen a firedrake so bright,” Aryn said.

Lirith still cast her face to the sky. “It was beautiful.”

“Let it be our good omen, then,” Garf said with a grin. “We will certainly find a good spot for a picnic.”

Durge gave the young knight a solemn look. “If you wish, Sir Garfethel.”

For the first time in many months, Grace shivered.
But that was foolish. “Let’s go,” she said. “I may not be a queen, but I am hungry.”

Together they rode down the slope and cantered deeper into summer.

Not surprisingly, it was Garf who found the perfect place to rest and eat.

The other four brought their horses to a halt beside the young knight’s charger at the base of a hill so perfectly conical in shape that Grace doubted it was natural. There were many such mounds and tors scattering the verdant fields of Calavan, raised by the barbarians who had dwelled in these lands before the Dominions were founded, before the emperors of Tarras had come to plant their golden banners here. Or perhaps the hills had been made by some nameless people long before that—the same people who had raised the circle of standing stones that stood north of the castle.

Grace surveyed the spot Garf had picked for them. The ground sloped gently to a brook, its banks shaded by willow and green rushes. The chaotic song of water chimed on the air, and Grace swallowed, suddenly thirsty. For all she knew the water in the brook would be muddy and brackish, but it sounded
cool
.

Grace waited for Durge to dismount and assist her. It wasn’t that she felt it was his duty to serve her; it was just that getting off a horse while wearing a gown without falling face first into the turf was a trick she hadn’t consistently mastered. All in all, she would have preferred a pair of Lycra biking tights with ample rear padding, but one had to make do with what one had, and she was a good rider, even before she had had much practice.

Too bad you can’t control people as well as you do horses, Grace
.

She winced at the thought. But the voice in her head was hollow now, the words bitter but empty. Grace still had difficulty interacting with people—whole, conscious people. She knew she always would. But she had learned that she didn’t have to be perfect to have friends. When others cared about you, they seemed to develop an amazing ability to accept all of your flaws wholesale. You could break a body into each of its components: organs, fluids, bones. But in the end, Grace was beginning to think, people were a package deal.

Grace swung one leg over the saddle, trying to keep it from getting tangled in yards of violet linen, and let Durge catch her in hard, powerful arms and ease her to the ground. She smiled her thanks at him. Kyrene had been right about one thing: Men did have their uses.

Her smile faded as she thought of Kyrene. Sometimes, when she turned a corner in the castle, Grace still expected to come upon a green-eyed lady clad in a revealing gown, a sly smile on her coral lips. However, if the past was a shadow, its touch was fleeting, like a cloud over the sun soon gone.

Durge moved to help Lirith dismount, and Grace glanced back at Aryn. Garf was helping her off of her horse—a white mare—and if the young knight’s hand lingered a moment more than was strictly necessary around Aryn’s slender waist, the baroness seemed not to notice. He stepped away and bowed, but she had already turned her back to him.

“Well done, Sir Garfethel,” Lirith said, turning around and spreading her arms, as if she were drinking the warmth and life of the dell.

And perhaps she is at that
.

Grace gazed at the Tolorian witch, and Lirith smiled back. What the smile meant was a mystery,
but it wasn’t coy, not like Kyrene’s expressions had been. Instead it was secret and inviting.

Lirith started toward the banks of the brook, as lithe as a deer even in her russet riding gown, and the two knights followed, carrying a pair of saddlebags between them.

Grace hung back, letting them get ahead, but Aryn stayed with her, as if she knew Grace wanted to talk.

“Can we trust her?” Aryn asked before Grace could.

“I don’t know, Aryn. Can we trust any of the Witches?” It wasn’t the first time they had discussed this topic. “Sometimes I’m not sure we can even trust ourselves.”

“I can trust myself,” Aryn said.

Grace stopped short to stare at her friend. The words had been quiet and hard. She searched Aryn’s face, looking for pride or anger or sorrow—anything, any emotion that might give her a clue as to how to respond. But as usual the baroness’s lovely face was pale and impassive.