The Keeper of the Mist (10 page)

Keri had not yet met either Lord Osman or Magister Eroniel. She could see, however, that Brann was not afraid of the sorcerer. He stood now directly beside Magister Eroniel, occasionally murmuring a few words or listening to a brief reply. Unlike Domeric, Brann stood alone. Unlike Domeric, Brann clearly needed no one else to lend himself consequence. But at least the sorcerer seemed willing to speak to him.

It was perfectly plain that the Wyvern sorcerer and the people of the Bear disliked each other. Keri could tell by the way they refused even to glance at one another. Keri found herself trying to avoid looking at any of them, but gazing out over the huge crowd was no better. She paid attention mostly to Cort and Tassel, because they were the only people she could see whom she actually knew
and
because they were the only people in this whole gathering who looked like friends. Unchanged. Familiar, as though they recognized Keri when they looked at her, so she could recognize them in turn.

Cort and Tassel stood with the Timekeeper on the first step below Keri. Lucas stood with them, since he wasn't responsible for any Outsiders. With his weight rocked back on his heels and his thumbs hooked into his expensive belt, Lucas appeared to be enjoying the day tremendously. The Timekeeper seemed exactly as always: stark and impassive and ancient. But Keri fixed her attention on Tassel and Cort so that she would feel a little more like herself. She was so lucky they were with her. No one knew how Nimmira picked those who would keep its magic, but surely not every Lady could count on the support of Keepers who were also
friends.

Tassel wore a wonderful gown, rose pink with touches of madder, all delicate lace and ruffles, with an embroidered bag to keep her book safe, and the pen lost among the many other ornaments in her elaborate hair. But that was exactly what she might wear anyway, to any special occasion, and her glowing smile was just as always. She tilted her head and winked at Keri to show how silly she thought this whole formal ceremony was, even though she knew that Keri knew that really she loved all kinds of fancy, elaborate occasions.

Tassel had come up earlier to see Keri's gown and help Nevia and one of the girls, Linnet, decide how Keri should wear her hair. Then she listened to Keri practice bits of the investure ritual that she was afraid she might forget. “As though you would!” she mocked Keri, but gently. “You remember all those complicated recipes, don't you? This is much easier!”

It wasn't the same at all. Keri
liked
baking cakes, but she had never tried to memorize formal rituals before. She thought she had better memorize this one, in case it did not spring readily to her tongue when the moment came. She didn't really want to find herself speaking the right words without even having to remember them, because it was so strange to discover words on her tongue when she hadn't ever properly learned them.

She had also thought she'd better put in new bits about welcoming neighbors and hoping for good relations, and Tassel had listened to those bits and nodded, or shaken her head, or here and there suggested different phrases to say the same things. They all knew already that the Wyvern sorcerer was formal and haughty, and Tassel said that he would probably like flowery speeches and elaborate compliments—the more flowery, the better.

Even more helpfully, Tassel had also brought Keri a book of poetry from Eschalion so she could choose the right kinds of flowery phrases. Neither she nor Keri had commented on Tassel's sudden ability to find just the right of books ready to her hand, simply by turning around and reaching for them. If she couldn't turn and pick up the right book, Keri thought no such book must exist, which was a grim thought, as she still badly wanted a proper, detailed explanation of the magic of Nimmira and so far Tassel hadn't found anything like that. But the poetry was helpful. The Bookkeeper's magic must be, Keri imagined, a lot like opening your mouth and finding words you hadn't ever learned waiting on your tongue. She hoped that would happen to her now, because her mind seemed to have become as empty and blank as the sky, her thoughts no more orderly than the darting flight of the swifts.

Cort looked nowhere near as cheerful as Tassel, but he also looked exactly like himself. He wore a plain outfit, not stark black like Domeric, but dark brown and light brown and copper. He looked as though he had shaken himself free of the earth of his pastures just that moment, but in a good way—brown and copper and tan in his coat and boots as well as in his hair and skin and eyes. The buttons on his coat were copper and gold, and there was copper and gold embroidery on his boots. Keri had no idea where he had gotten those boots and that fancy coat. Surely not from Brann, because she could not imagine Cort deliberately borrowing anything from Brann if he had three minutes together to arrange something else.

Cort's older brother, Gannon, was undoubtedly out there in the crowd, but Keri couldn't see him, despite having looked. She had always liked Gannon, though he was old enough to be Tassel's uncle rather than her cousin; he was steady and kind and never shouted at anyone. Keri did not know him well, but he must surely have come to witness his brother's first public official act as Doorkeeper of Nimmira.

Unlike Tassel, Cort hadn't come upstairs this morning to see Keri, but he looked at her now with a straight, direct gaze that seemed to truly recognize her, even though she was wearing this elaborate dress and expensive necklace and a title no one had ever expected to be hers. Cort was frowning. But it was an intent expression, not an angry one. He looked solid as the earth and just a little impatient. It felt somehow restful just to look at him. After his father had died and he'd grown up, Cort had become all about duty and responsibility and meeting every single obligation. It was why he was so serious these days. She didn't
like
him all that much. But she knew she could trust him completely, and right now that seemed more important than anything. Keri found she was glad he had become her Doorkeeper.

Then the Timekeeper sent a piercing glance her way, and Keri knew it was time. She stepped forward. It felt a little as though someone else stepped forward, leaving her behind to hover in the shadows and watch from a distance. But it was really her. She was the one walking through the sunlight in a heavy rustle of skirts, with the crowd murmuring around her. She didn't look out at the people, but she heard them, a wordless sound like the wind in the leaves. The swifts curved through their intricate minuet overhead, heedless of anything people did in the town below.

The Timekeeper lifted a hand, drawing all her attention. His watch was cupped in his other hand, its crystal face glinting opaque with light so that Keri could not see its hands. For some reason, this invisibility of the watch's hands added to her uneasiness. She tilted her head until the angle of the light changed and she could see the quick ticking movement of the second hand. The sapphire hand and the one of rose crystal and the arrow-slender silver one were all lined up one beneath the next, so that they made one combined hand of glittering jewel-edged silver that pointed at noon.

“The hour has come,” the Timekeeper said, pronouncing every word with precise ceremony. “Kerianna Ailenn, this is your hour and your time.”

Keri took one more step forward. She found herself seized by a terrible conviction that she would open her mouth and nothing at all would come out: she would be as mute as the enchanted swans of the mountain lakes that only sang as they died. Brann would be so satisfied. Everyone who had wanted him to be Lord would be satisfied to see her embarrass herself. Domeric…She couldn't guess what Domeric would think. Lucas would laugh, of course. Tassel would be so disappointed in her….Keri discovered that she was staring straight at Cort. He looked exactly the same: solid and a little bit impatient, as though he were resisting the urge to say,
Come on, then, don't we have important things to do? Let's get this nonsense over with.
As though he had no doubt whatsoever that she had important things to do, and no doubt that she could fluff little distractions like the ascension ritual out of her way with a wave of her hand. As though he had no doubt in
her.
That couldn't be true. Cort least of all had that kind of trust in her, but he was focused on his new duties and he was sure she was focused on hers, and that was actually a kind of trust, wasn't it?

Keri lifted her chin, turned to face the gathering, and said, “It is the hour and the day and the appointed time. Lord Dorric has passed, and the sun has stopped in the sky, waiting.” She heard her own words echo as though she spoke in a small enclosed room rather than out of doors, and she couldn't quite resist a quick glance upward at the sun. It had not
actually
stopped at her father's passing. The sun stopping was merely a metaphor. No one could see the sun's movement across the sky just in a glance. Yet somehow it seemed to her that the noon sun stood above the square, absolutely still.

She was not the only one who had looked up, she saw as she brought her gaze back down. Everyone had. Even the Outsiders had tilted their heads back and shaded their eyes and looked at the sun. Osman Tor the Younger was frowning, his eyes narrowed against the light. Eroniel Kaskarian was frowning, too, and as Keri watched, he tilted his head to the side and sent her a slanting, curious look.

“Lady,” murmured the Timekeeper, and Keri blinked, straightened her back, and opened her mouth. Once again, words were there. She recognized them this time, or some of them. She said, “I hold the heart of Nimmira, and its borders, and the span of its sky. I can name the winds that bring the rain and the summer warmth and sweep away the clouds: they are the southeast wind and the northwest wind and the wind from the sea. I know every furrow in the fields and every lamb in the pastures and every swift on the wind.” That part was familiar, but had she read those lines in one of Tassel's books, or did she just remember them? She felt for one dizzying moment it might almost be true: that she might in fact know all the great winds and every minor breeze, that the fragrance of turned earth had risen up around her, that every quick-winged chimney swift left behind a lingering trail of light through the air when it darted and swooped. She thought she could close her eyes and point to each bird as it flew. She did close her eyes then, because the awareness of the darting birds and wandering winds confused her sense of balance.

She said, and this time knew she had never read these words anywhere but simply found them ready on her tongue: “I know the measure of every road and the weight of every wagon, and where the seams run in the hills above Ironforge, and the age of every tree that is felled and the striving of every seedling that is planted in the forests around Woodridge.” She opened her eyes then, and looked out at the crowd. All those people, but they were quiet now, silent and attentive.

She found, to her surprise, that she did after all recognize some of the faces in this gathering. Yes. How could she have missed seeing the number of these people who were familiar? Cort's brother was indeed there, right at the front. There were the owners of the two best inns on the square, standing shoulder to shoulder, frowning and serious; she thought of course she must speak to them both and find out what they thought and guessed about their foreign guests, especially the innkeeper from the east side of the square, because she did not know whom Eroniel Kaskarian might speak to, but surely the Bear soldiers, possibly even Osman the Younger himself, must gossip with the serving girls from the inn.

And there was Mistress Renn, who, long widowed and severely respectable, owned and ran one of the best glassworks in Glassforge without inviting the least raised eyebrow. Of course Keri knew Mistress Renn. She had a taste for exquisite pastries and had been one of Keri's most regular customers.

And there was Timmet, who sold the finest flour in town; Kerreth, the apothecary, whose medicines were said to be some of the most efficacious in the whole of Nimmira; Derrin, whose shop sold heavy, intricately carved furniture to wealthy households. Keri knew others amid the crowd. Not every one was her friend, but she knew them. All of them, even, though that did not seem possible.

Standing in their tight clump among the people of Nimmira, Osman Tor the Younger and his men seemed unutterably foreign, Eroniel Kaskarian even more so. Foreign in a wholly different and much more profound sense than Keri had previously realized. If it had been pitch-dark on a moonless night rather than bright noon, she thought, she would still know exactly where each foreigner stood. They might as well have been limned with fire in her mind.

She didn't like them. She didn't like any of them. It was
wrong,
those strangers standing right here in Nimmira. The stones of the town square seemed to tilt around them, as though they were too heavy for the ground to bear, as though the very earth beneath them wanted to shrug them away. The impression was so strong that she had to look again to be sure the flagstones had not actually moved.

She was frowning, she realized. She tried to smooth out her expression, but wasn't certain how successful her efforts were.

Then she blinked, and it was noon, and the sunlight lay warm on her shoulders, and the stones of the town square rested level and steady on the earth. No one had moved. But the sun had. It had continued its slow path through the sky and was perceptibly farther over toward the west. Keri felt suddenly as weary as though she had gotten it moving by climbing into the heights of the sky and setting her shoulder to it herself. She let her breath out and wished she dared clutch the Timekeeper's arm for balance.

But Cort moved forward just then. She put her hand on his arm instead and tried to lean unobtrusively. His strength beneath her weight seemed endless. Keri started to say something to him, she didn't know what, but then she said to the gathered crowd, not even thinking about it, the words coming automatically to her tongue, “My Timekeeper you know. This is my Doorkeeper, who opens and closes all doors and roads of Nimmira.”