The Keeper of the Mist (34 page)

Nothing could have pleased Keri more. Except having all this over and done with, and Nimmira safe, and Cort safe as well.

Even after so much, Nimmira itself seemed unchanged. The rest of the world might be caught in the Timekeeper's lingering moment, but Nimmira clearly was not. Or maybe the rest of the world was going on normally, and only Nimmira had slid somehow out of time; on second thought, that seemed more likely. Either way, Gannon's farm was just as always, with the mares in this pasture and the sheep beyond, the farmhouse and barn on the other side of the sheep pasture, the young wheat green in the fields to the west and the martins and swallows darting about above everything. Nothing here was frozen out of time, Keri could see; not just she and her companions but all of Nimmira was caught up in the Timekeeper's lingering moment. Then she knew she should have realized it must be that way, because of course her time was also the time of Nimmira. But the Timekeeper's gift pressed at her, harder now that she stood here in Nimmira proper and not in the fragment enclosed by Eschalion. The moment trembled, wanting to tick forward and carry Nimmira into time. She had not realized before how hard the Timekeeper's gift might press her—how fiercely his role wanted to pass to someone else.

The boundary was thinner than before, the mist so attenuated that it seemed, to the eye, entirely gone. If Keri hadn't simply known where the boundary lay, she wouldn't have known. Well, that sounded ridiculous. But it was true. One couldn't mark the smooth arc of the boundary by eye at all, not anymore. She traded a glance with Cort, because of course he was the other one who knew exactly where the line ought to be.

The land on the other side shouldered up into the foothills and then mountains—wild country except for the road, clearly visible, that ran along the border of Nimmira for some little way before curving up into the hills and vanishing into to the east.

“Sol Daris lies that way,” said Osman. “And beyond Sol Daris, the mountain road and, ten days farther on, Tor Rampion and my father's castle.” He was gazing up that way with some wistfulness.

Tassel reached out and touched his hand. “Do you wish to go? It might be wise. I could send your people after you. Then whatever happens here, you won't be caught up in it….”

Osman blinked and seemed to come to himself. He caught Tassel's hand in his and smiled into her eyes. “Wise? No, no. It would be cautious, but that is hardly the same thing. How would I ever discover what happens here? No, I should be ashamed to bring my father—or my grandmother—so scant a mouthful of news.”

It had crossed Keri's mind in Eschalion that Tassel might be deliberately teasing Lord Osman to make sure he stayed on their side, to persuade him that Keri's reluctance to accept his offer wasn't a personal rejection, or maybe simply because she liked him and liked teasing him and wanted to make both him and herself feel better. But now, watching her friend's hesitant, wistful gesture, Keri believed that Tassel was quite in earnest. Lord Osman was certainly not much like any of the boys or young men who had pursued Tassel since she'd grown up. And he was unquestionably brave, and clever. And he really did know what he wanted. Keri thought she could see why Tassel might like him.

But she couldn't see how this tentative beginning of a relationship could end in anything but loss and regret and pain for both of them.

But she said nothing. There did not seem to be anything a friend could say, at such a moment.

Then Osman turned to her and added, “Keri—Lady—you mustn't close your little land away from mine so tightly this time. You must see that such careful solitude is neither necessary nor right.” He glanced at Tassel, who raised her chin and looked away from them all, refusing to catch Keri's eye. Osman said persuasively, “Leave a gate, at least, Lady! A way to come and go, too narrow for armies but enough for friends. Surely that would be possible?”

“Maybe,” Keri said, refusing to make that promise. Regret tugged at her heart, the beginnings of grief. The moment pressed her with a cold presentiment of loss, and she shivered. Cort, not seeming to hear any of this, took an impatient step away, toward the diminished boundary.

“There's Gannon,” Tassel said suddenly, nodding toward Cort's brother and a handful of other people hurrying in their direction.

“You can tell them everything.” Keri wasn't really paying attention. “Lucas, you can tell them at the House, can't you? Tassel, listen—”

“Yes?” Tassel asked, puzzled, following Keri's gaze along the line of the boundary. Of where the boundary ought to lie. She said, “But the Bookkeeper has nothing to do with the boundary magic, Keri. What can I do to help?”

“I don't know,” Keri said, still absently. “Something. Let me think.” The watch was heavy in her hand, heavier now than it had seemed right after the Timekeeper had given it to her. It felt like solid gold, with nothing of clockwork or crystal. Its chain seemed heavy, too. It had left a red mark all across her wrist where it lay.

She suspected it would get heavier before she was able to give it away.

She said, to Cort and to everyone, “I think…I think we'd better begin. And then we'll see just how far this one moment can be stretched.”

“Far enough,” Cort said shortly. “It will have to be enough. You're set to do this, Keri? Of course you are. You're always ready to do whatever must be done.”

Keri gave a stiff little nod. It wasn't herself she was worried about—but she was glad Cort trusted her to do her part. She didn't ask if he was ready. She knew he was.

“You're not actually going to—” began Tassel, and stopped, wincing, as Cort made a quick, short cut across two of his fingers. She began again, “Look, Cort, you can't—” but stopped again because, of course, as they all knew, Summer Timonan had done it.

Cort didn't even look at his cousin. He simply started off, one step and then another, along the line he knew ought to be there. One drop of blood for every stride; Keri could feel it, just as she had when they had tried to repair the boundary before, except somehow different. One step and another, one drop of blood and another, and the mist rising behind him where he had stepped—all that part was the same. The difference was in something else. Somehow Cort's magic felt more decisive this time. More…determined. It almost felt to Keri as though Cort had slashed the knife across not his hand but the land—as though he were still cutting through the earth, tearing the narrow blade right through the soil and tangled roots and little pebbles behind him, cleaving it all in two parts, so that even without Keri doing anything herself, Nimmira fell inward and every other part of the world fell away to the Outside.

But Keri knew she had to finish what Cort had started for the boundary to be solid.

She caught Tassel's hand and said hurriedly, “Listen, there has to be a way to save Cort, you know. There has to be a way, and we'll find it.”

Tassel shook her head, her eyes wide and her mouth tight. She burst out, “You're always so confident, you always know what to do, but it's almost four hundred miles, Keri! He can't do it; no one can do it; he's not Summer Timonan, and anyway, she
died
! Oh, three hundred and seventy-eight,” she added in a different tone. Evidently, that was just one of those things the Bookkeeper knew. Then she remembered what she had been saying and repeated even more emphatically, “He can't do it! Keri, you have to think of something else, some other way; we can't let him try to do this—”

“Wait for us,” Keri said hurriedly. “Wait for us, no matter how long this takes. I think we'll need you, in the end.” She looked around, as though she might be able to see all the hundreds of miles of their journey stretching out before them. She knew they were horribly unprepared for anything of the kind, but what choice did they have? She said quickly, because although she didn't know why, she thought it was true, “I don't know what you can do, Tassel, but I think finishing this will take all of us.”

Tassel stared at her. “Keri—we don't even have a Timekeeper anymore!”

“I know, I know, but wait for us anyway!” Without pausing for an answer, she spun around and ran to catch up with Cort.

Cort was already most of the way across the pasture, walking faster now as he got used to what he was doing. His magic wanted to drift, or maybe disperse. He was laying it down in one line, but it was trying to spread out again. Keri knew where it should go and fixed it in place. One step after another, hurrying, making Cort's magic more real and definite, telling the boundary where to lie, telling it what was on the inside and what on the Outside. It wasn't hard, but she didn't have much of a chance to look at Cort and see how he was faring; her attention was constantly tugged this way and that by an awareness of tangled roots and crawling beetles that crossed the boundary, of bees and butterflies and little russet-capped sparrows that had to be coaxed away from the rising mist lest they cross the boundary at just the wrong moment and get trapped in uncertainty.

She caught the knack after a bit and found time to glance at Cort. He was looking straight ahead, not seeming to see the land over which he strode, flicking a drop of blood from his cupped palm to the earth with every step he took. His expression was abstracted, his attention absorbed, Keri understood, by some special kind of awareness that was probably not quite the same as hers. She wanted to ask him how many steps he thought this would take, how many drops of blood he thought a person might lose and still be able to walk three hundred and seventy-eight miles.

But she was distracted then as a slate-winged falcon, stooping fast on unseen prey, crossed the line of the boundary just ahead of them, from inside to Outside. The bird went from flashing flight to utter stillness as it crossed the border; it hung in the air like a sculpture, its narrow wings angled back in its dive. She felt its flight as a sharp loss as it passed out of Nimmira into the Outside skies of Tor Carron; she had a sharp awareness of just when and where the falcon had hatched: three years ago on a ledge on a cliff not too far away. But she had lost it. It was in Tor Carron, and now, as the boundary rose up, it would not be able to come back. The boundary was spreading out—a width of land a good stone's throw across blurring and becoming indistinct and uncomfortable, so that bird and beast no less than person would turn away without ever knowing they had turned.

Three hundred and seventy-eight miles!

But she didn't think now that Cort, or she, was going to have to walk all the way one step at a time. She thought it was more as though Cort would open one door after another and step through them all, folding the distance between each step and the next, as the player's gap had folded the distance between Glassforge and the Wyvern King's citadel. Cort was going to…He was going to stitch the boundary across the countryside, she thought, like putting beads of icing around the edge of a cake. So that when he was finished, he would have set a whole border of beads in place, even though he had not traced out a continuous line.

It was a ridiculous analogy, but she couldn't think of a better one.

Keri glanced up at Cort's face again. She wanted to take his hand, but of course she couldn't. He looked strained and pale and tired, and they had barely started. She longed to ask if there was something she could do for him, but she didn't dare speak lest she distract him. And all the time, part of her attention was on his magic and part on her magic and part on the strangely indistinct magic of Nimmira that was separate from them both. She could feel how the land fell away behind them: in a rapid-fire series of tiny jerks. Like beads around the edge of a cake.

Cort was hardly pausing now to make sure drops of blood fell as he walked. She didn't have to see the blood fall to know a drop was falling with every one of his steps. She could feel the drops of blood touch the earth and turn to magic. Every stride was the same length, too, and every drop of blood carried an exactly equal measure of magic. That was simply Cort, who liked to have everything just so and thought it was important to do things
right.
And to do them right the
first
time.