The Keeper of the Mist (37 page)

The Wyvern King would be furious. She knew that. Though
furious
seemed a very…active word, considering the golden King they had met. He would be
calmly acquisitive,
then. Ferociously but calmly acquisitive. He would move to stop them hiding Nimmira; he would do anything he could to stop them and take Nimmira for his own, all its people and magic, and he would never let them go. Keri could not guess what he might do to stop them. But she was sure he would do
something.

Unless they finished the boundary first.

Keri stretched her legs until she was nearly running. It seemed she had been nearly running for a long time, for miles and miles; her breath came hard, but she felt light and quick. She was glad she was no longer carrying the weight of stopped time—well, that was ridiculous, since that was the whole problem—but she knew just where her foot was going to come down at the end of every step,
flicker,
and they were hurrying through a peach orchard, hard green peaches on the trees; and then a grove of almonds and apricots; the sun sliding down toward the hills on their right as they sped into a new and beautiful evening. And suddenly that was Glassforge in the distance, she was almost sure of it,
flicker,
and she
was
sure: Glassforge, and, barely glimpsed beyond, a low but distinctive ripple of mist that began right in the middle of Cort's brother's pasture.

Keri couldn't see Tassel or anyone, not yet, not as more than tiny figures in the distance, but she knew they were there, waiting. Tassel and Lucas and a whole clutter of other people, but she didn't have time to sort them out.
Flicker flicker flicker,
and she could almost make out Tassel's face. The other girl was herding everyone else out of the way, good, and Cort hadn't slowed down a bit, he flung himself along with great strides, Keri was still nearly running to keep up, without Merric to help her she couldn't have managed, there was probably a lesson in that somehow, and then they were
there,
they were there at last. People were shouting and rushing toward them, but Keri had no attention to spare for any of them; she jumped forward to catch Cort as he fell.

She wasn't strong enough to keep him on his feet, but at least she broke his fall. He hardly seemed to know he had fallen. He knelt on the ground and brought his bloody hands down hard against the pasture grasses and the earth beneath, and the boundary snapped into place, whole and complete, and without letting him go, Keri told Nimmira what it was, that it was itself, separate from the Outside world. In both directions, as far as the eye could see, mist rose up in a shimmering wall. If you looked right at it or put your hand into it, it was just mist, no more solid or forbidding than the steam that rose from warm cobbled streets after a summer rain. But it went on and on and on, and towered up and up and up, and if anybody thought of walking into it, somehow they would just forget and turn aside. Because that was what it was. That was what it did.

It was over. They'd done it. They were safe. Except for Cort.

Tassel was there. A lot of people were there, actually. Keri was aware of Lucas and Brann; of Cort's brother Gannon and some of his people; of Linnet and, slightly to her surprise, Nevia the wardrobe mistress; of Mistress Renn and Timmet and Kerreth and a dozen other townspeople; of Osman Tor the Younger and all his men….It seemed a huge crowd. Keri was simultaneously vividly aware of them and hardly knew they were there. She clung to Cort, but he sagged bonelessly.

Tassel was there, though, and she didn't hesitate. She knelt by Cort's side, patting his face and speaking urgently. In her other hand, she held a crumpled brown oak leaf. Keri didn't hear what Tassel said, but she took a breath, gazing urgently at Cort. He would be all right, she was sure he would be, almost sure. He wasn't trying to get up, but suddenly he was trying to smile and had taken Tassel's hand to make her stop patting him.

Keri took a deep, hard breath, let it out, and straightened her back. Cort was all right. He was all right. Tassel had gotten her message and everything was all right. Keri began to turn, and suddenly the new Timekeeper seized her by the shoulders. He was shaking his head, his eyes wide. He looked stunned. He exclaimed, “Lady, in four minutes, disaster will fall on Nimmira.” Then, plainly shocked, he put a hand over his mouth.

Keri stared at him. Then she looked around. The boundary was complete. It rose up and spread out, and she knew it encircled the whole of Nimmira, an unbroken line right around all their land. She knew it was complete. She looked back at Merric, not understanding. Except that somehow things weren't over after all, and disaster was going to fall.

In, apparently, four minutes.

More like three now. Or two. Or possibly even less. She clenched her teeth and got to her feet, trying to look in every direction at once. Nothing she could do would hold back time for even an instant.

Merric stared at her. His lips formed words without sound, but Keri knew what he was trying to say. He was trying to say
Now.

Keri squared her shoulders.

Above them, directly over Glassforge, the deeper, richer light of a midsummer afternoon poured suddenly through the air. It was like the way light might spear through clouds, vivid and brilliant before a storm. It was like that. Only this light lanced down from an empty, cloudless sky, a great circle of summer light blazing through the gentle spring evening.

Keri closed her eyes. She knew what it was. She knew exactly what it was. It was their own circle, the one they had drawn in Eschalion, in the Wyvern King's hall. The circle they had left there behind them. The King had found it; he must have realized it was there before they had managed to reset their whole boundary and make Nimmira properly unnoticeable. He had taken that little circle and claimed it and spun it out wide and flung it into the sky, and now he was going to use it somehow—

Through the circle flew an enormous wyvern that seemed to have been made of gold and light. It poured across the sky like sunlight, liquid and graceful. Its long, elegant head snaked from side to side; its tail flicked like a whip. High on its back, where its neck flowed into its great shoulders, rode the Wyvern King.

Little birds, swifts and martins and swallows, scattered in panicked flight from the shadow of the wyvern's wings, hiding amid the spring leaves of the trees and the eaves of the houses. Keri wished fervently that she and all her people could do the same. Hiding was what Nimmira had always done to protect itself from Aranaon Mirtaelior. But hiding now was clearly impossible.

“Ah…,” groaned Merric. “I did this?”

Keri shook her head. “No, no. We finished in time. This isn't your fault.”

“No,” Cort said hoarsely. “No, this is our fault.
My
fault.” He struggled to get to his feet, not quite successfully despite Tassel's help. Sinking back, he said, his voice scraped raw from effort, “If I hadn't made that circle in Eschalion,
he
couldn't do this.”

“If
we
hadn't made it,” Keri said.

“As though we had a choice?” said Lucas sharply, behind them. “As I recall, at the time, we were all glad you drew that circle, as without it, the King would have seized us outright. I know I for one didn't spend many seconds thinking about the possibility of
a huge wyvern flying through it
after we recovered our border.”

Cort didn't seem to hear either of them. He was staring upward at the great wyvern, at the shining king riding it through their sky. “We left it in his dream of summer. We left him a way into Nimmira. How could we have failed to close it? We should have found a way to close it—”

Keri nodded. Of course they should have. They'd had to draw that circle, or the Wyvern King might have seized them right then, or else the Timekeeper wouldn't have been able to find them. And if
he
hadn't found them and…done what he had done…everything would be different. Over, probably, and not in a good way. So they'd had no choice. Or all the choices they'd had had been fraught with a different kind of peril. But she knew they had been ridiculously stupid to leave that circle behind. Although she had no idea how they might have closed it. But Cort was right. They should have found a way. Now she did not know what to do.

She bent to help Cort to his feet, and Tassel helped from the other side, and even Merric jumped forward, and Cort made it up at last and stood swaying. Overhead, the golden wyvern swept across the sky like the sun. Only brighter, and bigger, and much, much more dangerous. And the wyvern itself was nothing compared to the King.

The wyvern was coming right toward them. The King knew exactly where they were.

“Can you close it?” Keri asked Cort, her eyes on the approaching wyvern. “The circle, I mean. Can you find it, and undo it? Make it not be there?”

“I don't—I don't know—”

“Might this help? It contains a fragment of the magic of Eschalion after all,” said Lucas. He held out Brann's thin gold coin, turning it over between his fingers so that it glittered and flashed like a fragment of captive sunlight.

“Ah…,” murmured Cort, snatching the coin out of his hand.

“Can you use that to find the link between Nimmira and Eschalion?” Keri asked him, hoping beyond hope that he might say yes. “You have to find it and close it so tight no one will ever be able to locate it again—”

“Ah…,” murmured a smooth, light voice, sounding faintly amused even though there was certainly no cause for amusement that Keri could see. “Even if you can do exactly that, perhaps you might not want to close any doors too firmly while
he
is still on this side of the border?”

It was Osman Tor, who had moved to stand behind Tassel and set his hands on her shoulders. Keri didn't like the possessiveness in his manner, but he was right. She bit her lip, stared up at the wyvern—it was very close now—and tried to think what to do.

“It's all wrong,” murmured Tassel, craning her neck. She didn't seem to object to Osman's touch; she leaned back against him as though she had already learned in just this past day to depend on his support. But she spoke perfectly normally and without looking at him. She spoke to Keri, but she never took her eyes off the wyvern. “It doesn't belong here, that creature. It belongs somewhere hot and where the sky is filled with light, not
here.
”

“You're right,” said Keri. She stared upward. She was already holding Cort's hand, and Tassel had his other one….Keri reached out for Merric's hand. She wanted to tell Osman to take his hands off Tassel and step back, but there wasn't time and she wasn't sure it mattered anyway—well, of course it mattered, but compared to the Wyvern King, it didn't matter at all.

“Cort,” she said. “Tassel. Merric.” Her voice came out low and clear and decisive. It was her mother's voice, and she knew it, and for the first time since her mother's death, the memory came with gratitude and not with grief, and even at this moment, she realized that and knew she had come to a point of balance in more ways than just one.

“Yes,” Cort said, and in his hand the gold coin became a key, long and narrow, made of gold like sunlight. He said, “I can lock fast the door.”

Tassel wordlessly snatched at her pen and flipped open her little book, but Merric said in a wavering voice, “Me?”

“You'll have to be quick,” Keri told him in the same calm, decisive tone. “We all will.” Then she shut her eyes and reached out and found the circle they had made. She found it. She knew it. It was hers, it belonged to her, it was
part
of her; she knew exactly where it was, which was not where it needed to be. It was in Eschalion. It shouldn't be there. It should be here. It was hers.

Keri opened her eyes again. The golden wyvern was right above them, swinging about in a smooth arc like the path of the sun. She could feel the heat of its wings on her skin like molten summer. She stared at it, but what she looked at was Nimmira. She held it in her heart and her mind. She knew it all. All of it. It was hers. The circle was hers just as much as the rest.

She said, hearing her own voice as though it were the voice of a stranger, “I'm going to put that circle just where I want it. I know where it should be. It will be
here.
It
is
here, but, Doorkeeper, it's wide open. You'll have to close it. At just the right time.”

“Yes,” Cort said again, grimly.

The wyvern stooped, its vast wings filling the whole sky with fire and gold. Everywhere there was the scent of roses and of molten gold.

“We don't have enough time,” Keri said to Merric, each word falling precise and unhurried. “The time we have has to be enough.”

The young Timekeeper started to ask a question or frame a protest, but then he swallowed all of that and simply said, like Cort, “Yes.”

Keri said to Tassel, “Be ready to write the ending. Write the ending we have to have.”

“Yes,” said Tassel, white and steady, her bone pen in one hand, her little book open in the other.

Keri reached out and reclaimed the circle from Eschalion and from the Wyvern King. Then she stared up into the sky, and put the circle exactly where it needed to be, directly below the stooping wyvern. Dim silvery light showed through it, because in the high north it was not this gentle evening, but a sharply cold night.

The wyvern tried to dodge sideways, drawing in its wings and lashing its tail. It cried out, a high, angry cry like a breaking harp string; or maybe that was the King.

Merric caught his breath and rubbed his thumb across the face of his watch, and though the wyvern tried to curve its flight away and up, it nevertheless seemed to leap downward, falling with unreasonable speed before it could even begin to change its course.

The wyvern flashed through the circle, plunging out of Nimmira and into the winter night exactly the same way that it had come into Nimmira from the golden summer, except with a high shriek of fury.

Though that cry, too, might have come from Aranaon Mirtaelior.

“Doorkeeper,” said Keri, but she didn't need to. Cort was already turning his key and closing the circle. The circle was falling right toward them, but it shrank as it fell; by the time it hit the ground, it was no wider across than a wagon wheel, and no one needed to step out of its way. It didn't stop, but fell straight into the earth and out of sight. Keri felt it sinking past soil and roots and worms and pebbles, still shrinking even now, the circumference of a cake, a peach, a pebble, a grain of sand…gone, too small even for her to find it.

“Bookkeeper?” Keri asked.

“Yes!” said Tassel, her voice sharp and intent. “I'll tell you the ending: that circle vanished completely, leaving not even an echo, neither in Nimmira nor in Eschalion. It didn't leave even a
memory.
”

She was writing briskly in her little book, swift, elegant letters. Keri craned her neck to see, though she didn't need to read the words. After all, Tassel had
said
what she was writing.