The Keeper of the Mist (30 page)

Tassel straightened her shoulders and said warningly, “Osman…this would not be a good time for any little deceptions.”

He turned to her at once, spreading his hands. “I promise you, I do not lie. Well,” he conceded at her skeptical look, “of course I am happy to lie when it suits me, but you have never yet been deceived by any lie I have told. Will you allow yourself to be deceived by the truth? This is made of my blood, for use by those of my blood. Yet I know of no harm that will come to the Lady's honored brother should he allow it to taste his blood. I think it is too small a thing to take more than a mere taste. But, no, I am not certain. Blood sorcery is always unpredictable. But what else should we do?”

“He's right. We've no choice,” said Lucas.

“Don't trust him,” Brann said abruptly. “The Bear's not our friend.”

Tassel rolled her eyes and looked at Keri.

“Look!” Keri turned on her brother, hearing the tightness in her own voice but not able to hide it. She gestured expansively at the surroundings. “Cort's hidden somewhere here, and even if we find him, we'll still be trapped, and surely I don't need to remind you that until we get out of this, we're all on the
same
exact
side.
” She turned to Lucas. “I think you'd better try it. If it doesn't work, we're not worse off, and if it goes wrong—” She cut that short and said instead, “I don't know what else to do if you're not willing to risk this.”

“Don't be a fool!” snapped Brann.

Lucas paid no attention to his older half brother. He gave Keri an unreadable look, braced himself, and held out his hand, and Osman, unsmiling, tipped the garnet earring into his palm. Brann threw up his hands and shook his head in disgust, but Lucas held the earring up by its wire and gazed at it. “Not so very small a trinket, is it? It feels powerful to me. It feels complicated. Must one wear it properly? My ears are not pierced….”

“An unfortunate failure of style among your countrymen,” agreed Osman. “I have no knife, but if you will notice, the wire is both sturdy and sharp. That will furnish the blood required. If you will allow me?”

Lucas gave him an edged smile. “I think not. No offense, Lord Osman. Keri can do it.”

Osman lifted an eyebrow, but he said smoothly, “Of course, if you prefer. We admire caution in Tor Carron. Though not so much as we admire boldness.”

“Indeed, indeed, Lord Osman, I'm sure. But no one admires stupidity.” Lucas turned to Keri, the earring glinting in his palm like a drop of blood.

Keri hadn't expected this. She hesitated. “You're sure you want
me
to do it? Tassel's mother pierced her ears when we were little, I remember watching her do it, but I've never pierced anybody's ears myself.”

“Just be quick, that's the trick of it,” Tassel advised, coming over to lend moral support as Lucas handed Keri the earring.

“Oh, because you're so experienced?”

“Well, no, but it must be easier that way, don't you think?”

Keri supposed this was true. The earring felt warm and alive in her hand, but that might have been just her imagination. She wanted to ask Lucas if he was sure, but since he had plainly barely been willing to do this in the first place, it seemed unwise to now try to talk him out of it. Especially since she could see no other reasonable option. She glanced one more time at Osman, warningly. He gave her an earnest little bow. So then she nodded to her brother, who knelt at her feet and tilted his head. Still, at the last moment, she asked, “Lucas?”

He smiled. “What's life without risks? But anything that drinks blood is better in the hands of a friend. So you'll do well. Yes, go ahead.”

“Um,” muttered Keri, uneasily flattered that Lucas would consider her a friend. The earring was not large, not quite the size of her thumbnail. Its silver chain was about as long as a finger joint, and appeared delicate, but the wire was good steel. It was indeed stiff and, when she tested it gingerly against the tip of her finger, seemed more than sharp enough.

“All right,” she said. Holding Lucas's head with one hand, she ran the wire sharply through the lobe of his left ear. A drop of blood welled up and ran down the silver chain. Then another. The blood touched the garnet and vanished. Lucas didn't flinch, but he went white and closed his eyes, and his staff, which he had left standing in the air, clattered sharply to the floor.

Tassel, alarmed, caught his arm from the other side to steady him.

Keri hovered, wanting to pat her brother's cheek or maybe shake him, but on the other hand not wanting to do anything that might hurt him. She settled for asking urgently, “Lucas! Are you all right? Osman!”

Osman the Younger shook his head. “It takes one that way. Well do I recollect it.”

Lucas blinked, blinked again, shook his head, and opened his eyes. He caught Osman's wary gaze. “A slightly more specific warning would have been nice.”

Osman spread his hands in something that might have been an apology. “Anything that awakens to blood is liable to bite. But I think the jewel's bite may have been fiercer for you than for me. I suspect that your mother may have had powerful blood? Or perhaps we, also, are distant cousins.”

“My mother is descended from a line of players, not sorcerers,” Lucas snapped, unamused by this suggestion.

Making a conciliatory gesture, Osman said, “Indeed? Well, who can be quite certain where one kind of magic ends and another begins, eh? But the question is whether you now perceive any new doors in our prison.”

Lucas touched the garnet cautiously with a fingertip, rubbed his eyes, got to his feet, and gazed at the blank wall across the room. Then he turned back to Keri. “It's there.”

The wall still looked blank to Keri. But some of the fear that had been knotting her stomach began to relax. “Truly? You can see it?”

“I feel quite deprived,” Osman said, glancing from Lucas to the blank wall. “I shall ask my grandmother many close questions regarding her gift, which gives another man vision when I remain blind. Alas, she will only cast aspersions on my skill and dedication.”

“You think I possess skill and dedication?” Lucas asked. His dry tone did not quite conceal his tension.

“I think you possess many hidden depths, and far more magic than I expected,” murmured Osman. His voice was faintly mocking, but there was no mockery in his eyes. “But can you pass through the hidden door?”

Lucas gave an abrupt nod. “Let's find out.” Turning, he walked away from the little group. He paused for a heartbeat in front of the far wall. Then he stepped forward, and disappeared.

Keri exchanged a glance with Tassel, and both girls moved toward the wall. Osman shifted as though to follow, then hesitated. Keri touched the wall—so did Tassel, a foot away from her—and they glanced at each other once more. “It's a wall,” Tassel said, and Keri nodded. It was bitingly cold and utterly smooth and completely impossible to disbelieve in. She ran her hand across its solidity and wondered, a little desperately, whether any of them were ever going to see Lucas again, or whether he, too, would be lost.

Then he came back. His mouth was tight with effort and he was staggering, but Keri hardly noticed, because he was carrying Cort over his shoulder.

Cort, stocky and muscled from farmwork, was probably heavier than Lucas himself. It was instantly plain that Lucas had just barely managed to get him up at all and was not going to be able to carry him more than a few steps farther. Keri jumped forward, Tassel with her, and together they lowered Cort to the floor. Keri touched Cort's cheek. Beneath his farmer's tan, he was ashen, and his skin felt cold. He didn't stir awake at her touch, but then he wouldn't, if being heaved up and bundled around by Lucas hadn't woken him.

Crouching at Cort's other side, Osman touched his throat. He eased open one of Cort's eyes and then the other, inspecting the pupils. “It could be a philter,” he told Keri. “Or it might be sorcery, or it
could
be a blow on the head, but I think not—there's no sign of injury, and his pupils are the same size. His heartbeat seems strong enough, though slow.”

Keri nodded, then nodded again, then made herself stop and tried to think. “If it's sorcery, can you wake him? Lucas, can you?”

“If I could have woken him, I'd hardly have hauled him around like a barrel of ale,” Lucas told her with some bitterness. “I think I strained my back. And my shoulder. And my neck. Every muscle I own, in fact. Your Bookkeeper would be a good deal easier to rescue. Please keep that in mind next time!”

But there was something under Lucas's foolery. Keri thought it sounded like fear. She hesitated, her hand resting on Cort's cold face, and lifted her gaze to meet her brother's eyes.

Lucas told her reluctantly, in a very different tone, “Keri, I think it's sorcery binding him asleep. That's a room meant for sorcery if ever I dreamed of one, and Cort laid out in it like…I don't know. There were black jewels on the palms of his hands and on his eyelids. Candles were burning at the corners of the…table, platform, whatever. But the fire was black and cold and burned with a cold mist rather than smoke. And…look here.” Reaching out, he tipped Cort's head to the side.

Keri saw for the first time that Cort's left ear was now pierced: five tiny black crystals traced its curve. Without thinking, Keri touched them, and found that they burned her fingertips with a violent cold. She snatched her hand back, shaking her fingers, and stared at Lucas.

“I know,” he told her. “I mean, I don't know. I have no idea. This is…this is real sorcery, the real thing, not player's tricks nor anybody's half-remembered magic. I have no idea, and that's the truth.”

“Take them out,” Brann said sharply. Everyone turned to stare at him, and he glared back at them all defiantly. “Take them out,” he repeated. “Jewels and crystals are never meaningless in Eschalion. Five earrings means something big, something powerful. For Cort, they can't mean high birth or great power, but they mean
something—
and nothing good for him or for us.” He met Keri's eyes. “Take them out, Keri.”

Keri thought this was the very first time her oldest brother had ever called her by name. Without a word, she began to remove the crystals from Cort's ear, handling them gingerly and shaking the sting out of her fingers every time she dropped one on the floor. Lucas drew a breath as though he might say something, but then he shook his head and was silent. Osman touched one of the discarded crystals cautiously, but hissed between his teeth and jerked his hand back sharply. He took out a square of cloth and gathered them up in that, careful not to touch them.

Keri found she was whispering vehement curses under her breath, words that would have shocked her mother, but she didn't stop. If ever there was a time for cursing, this was surely it.

She took the last of the earrings out with fingers that trembled and gave it to Osman. Then she touched Cort's cheek again. She wanted him to wake…she thought he would wake…she told herself he would wake…but he did not. He only lay bonelessly still, his breathing shallow and quick, his heartbeat steady and slow, his skin pale and cold….Keri couldn't bear it, and stood up and turned her back. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest and stared blindly across the empty, somber room. The shadows lay more deeply in the corners and doorways, for the daylight that came through the high windows was failing. She could hear the endless waves running against the cliffs below, and her own breathing. She was cold. She felt she would never be warm again.

“Keri—” Tassel began, but then she stopped, stood up, put her arms around Keri, and drew her into a tight embrace.

Keri didn't cry. She wanted to, but she didn't. She wouldn't. Pulling away from the other girl, she said furiously, “We have to do something!” And she turned and glowered at them all where they knelt around Cort, but even then she didn't cry. Everyone stared back at her. They were waiting for her to think of something, Keri realized. She felt helpless, and tired, and cold, and she had no ideas at all. And poor Cort did not look like he would ever wake again.

“All right,” she said out loud. “We have to wake Cort, because he's our Doorkeeper and how else are we supposed to find or make a door that will take us back to Nimmira? But we have to get the magic of Nimmira back from Magister Eroniel, too, and we don't dare draw the attention of the Wyvern King….” She couldn't imagine how to do
any
of that. She had no idea how they could even wake Cort. She looked at Lucas.

“I fear I have no idea what we might do,” her brother said quietly.

“The sorcerer's tools in the…other room? Those cold crystals?”

“I wouldn't try to use those, or even touch them,” Osman said sharply. “I would advise most strenuously against anything of the sort.”

Keri felt he was probably right. She made an impatient gesture. “So here we are, in the Wyvern King's citadel, I suppose, or maybe some prison Magister Eroniel made, and how are we to get out if we can't wake up Cort? Summon the Wyvern King himself and ask him politely to let us go?”

“We'd be very foolish to ask for help from the Wyvern King, even if he doesn't already know we're here,” Lucas said drily. “I don't suppose he would serve us all tea and cakes and bid us a neighborly farewell. He's not Osman's friend, nor ours.”

“Aranaon Mirtaelior is nobody's friend, believe me!” declared Osman.

“I
know,
” Keri assured them both. She rubbed her hands over her face, trying to think. She felt she had no ideas about anything. She even looked at Brann, standing a little aside from the rest of them, his arms crossed over his chest but his shoulders slumped in discouragement. He didn't look like he had any ideas, either.

Tassel looked drawn and tired. The shadows that fell across her face made her appear older. Osman stood with his hand beneath her elbow as though he thought she needed his support. Maybe she did.

Keri stepped back to Cort's side and knelt down. She held Cort's hand between both of hers and gazed at his waxen face. How could she wake him, or give him back the magic that Magister Eroniel had stolen, or reclaim the magic of Nimmira for herself? How did you free magic once a sorcerer stole it and locked it up inside himself somehow, or whatever it was sorcerers did with magic? Surely it could not be much longer before Eroniel came to check on Cort or gloat over the rest of them. Or remembered Tassel's magic and returned to take that, too, with his cold black crystals and his cold black sorcery. Keri shuddered, imagining Tassel laid out as Lucas had described Cort.

Unless Magister Eroniel meant to just leave them here until they died of starvation. Or of thirst, while they listened to the waves break against the cliffs outside their narrow windows. Or of cold, perhaps. Keri shivered again, then found she could not stop. She wondered whether it was actually growing colder or whether it just seemed that way to her because she was sitting still.

At least they'd found Cort. At least they'd done that much right. She lifted his head to rest on her thigh, hoping that even unconscious, he would somehow know that he was no longer alone.

She supposed if he died here, the last bit of his magic would be released into the air. Maybe that was what Eroniel was waiting for. Earlier, she had been terrified the sorcerer would come back. She still was, but now she also almost wished he would come. Foolish as that was, she longed for everything to just be
over.

Tassel folded up her legs and sat down. Osman sat down beside her, and she leaned against him. Lucas leaned on his staff, contriving to look bored. Brann glowered at them all. Keri hoped he wouldn't say anything, not excuse or explanation or even apology. Whatever he might say, she didn't want to hear it.

She laid her hand on Cort's cheek, but his skin was still cool under her fingers, and his breathing did not change. She wanted to shake him, but was afraid she might hurt him. Worse than he had already been hurt. She wanted to wake him with a kiss as though she were the hero of a play, but she knew nothing she might do could possibly wake him.

Then she decided she didn't care whether it worked or not. She bent forward…and Tassel said, in a stifled tone, “Keri.”

Keri jerked upright.

Tassel wasn't looking at her. She was staring across the room, at the blank wall where Lucas had found the hidden door and the sorcerer's secret chamber and Cort. She said, “All those sorcerous things. The candles and the black jewels. I remember something about that. Keri, it was in that book I found, the book from Eschalion, you know, I showed it to you before your ascension? It was about…I don't know, let me think. All right.” She took a deep breath. “Something like this: ‘Sorcery in black air and in black blood; sorcery frozen by black fire into crystal.' Something, something, let me see, something about ‘True flame frees magic as condensation holds it.' Something like that.” She stared at Keri, her eyes wide. “
Frozen by black fire
—those cold candles Lucas found? Frozen into
crystal
—those horrible little earrings? But—” She stopped, plainly uncertain. “Probably it's a foolish idea. Who knows what would happen to Cort if we tried anything like that?”

“Fire frees magic?” Keri said doubtfully. She held out her hand to Osman for the little bag of tiny black earrings. He lifted a doubtful eyebrow, but gave her the bag. The earrings chimed against one another as he handed it to her, like tiny bells, but discordant. Because the magic of Nimmira was discordant with the magic of Eschalion? Keri poured the crystal earrings out upon the floor, careful not to touch them, and stared down at them. They glittered coldly back at her. They should have seemed harmless: five little crystals. Somehow they looked malevolent. Probably that was just her.

Keri took a breath, glanced around at the others, and said, in a voice that surprised her by its very normality, “Does anybody have a candlelighter?”

Osman produced one, handing it over with a flourish.

“You
are
useful,” Keri told him, taking it.

“This is dangerous,” Brann declared. “Even if the crystals do crack in the fire, who knows what magic will be released? Or what it would do? Those earrings are nothing of Nimmira. Probably anything we do will free Eroniel's magic, not Cort's, and he'll come immediately to see what's happened—had you thought of that?”

“Well, we can certainly do nothing at all and see how that works out,” Keri told him tartly. She flicked the candlelighter and held it down so the flame licked over the black crystals. Glass did sometimes crack in heat, she knew that. Artisans in Glassforge occasionally heated glass or ceramics to get special crazed patterns of cracks in their glass or their fancy glazes. Whether crystals would crack in a little flame, she had no idea, nor whether Magister Eroniel's crystals would break like ordinary glass.

But she did not expect the crystal earrings to shatter the moment the flame of the candlelighter touched them. She did not expect them to melt like ice, or for wisps of magic like black steam to whisper suddenly into the air. The smoke or magic or whatever it was smelled awful, like burning feathers, like burning blood. Keri flinched back, dropping the candlelighter. Osman wrapped an arm around Tassel, lifted her off her feet, swung her around, and deposited her well away from the area of potential danger. At almost the same moment, Brann, quicker-witted than Keri would ever have expected, whipped out a thin gold coin and cast it down among the rising wisps of magic, which settled heavily toward the coin as though blown downward by some unseen breath. Lucas had stepped forward and lifted his staff, though what he thought he could do with it was not clear to Keri: beat the fire out, possibly, but Brann's coin seemed to have ended the danger. Now he lowered his staff, cautiously.