Keeper of the Keys Read online

  Determined to avoid the bustle in the streets, Jaric hurried into the tortuous maze of byways and alleys which riddled the districts between thoroughfares. Because his route lay shadowed by gables and the clustered spires of the town, he never noticed the man who emerged from the arched gate of a nobleman's entry and followed his steps. Preoccupied with concern for Taen and intent upon reaching the harbour before the turn of the tide, the boy raced over puddled brick and ducked under the dank stone of cross-bridges. As he crossed a slash of sunlight between houses, the man who pursued caught sight of the cloak bundled under Jaric's arm; he swore and redoubled his chase.

  Jaric rounded a corner. Confronted by a five-way intersection where several alleys converged around mossy foundations of stone, he hesitated and, unsure of his bearings, chose blindly. The man who dogged his tracks saw his quarry run down a known dead end. He chuckled and slowed to a jog, confident he could reach the harbour ahead of the boy.

  Minutes later, Jaric leapt over the rotting boards of a tavern's rear stair and found himself blocked by the mortared bricks of a courtyard wall. Too winded to curse, he whirled and retraced his steps. One turn-off led to the locked gates of a root cellar; another sent him sliding and panting over a refuse heap. Broken glass skittered under his boots, startling a starved dog which foraged among the garbage. Jaric gave the snarling animal wide berth, nostrils revolted by the smell of rotten meat. Ahead, sunlight stabbed down through the grate of a culvert; beyond rose the lampposts which flanked the entry of the Lanterns Inn. Restored to familiar territory, Jaric continued at a run. He sprinted down the street of the spice, grinders and, still sneezing from a cloying miasma of cinnamon and pepper, arrived breathless at the quayside.

  Sea air slapped his face, damp and fitful, and straight out of the south. The boy squinted to windward and frowned to find a low band of clouds beyond the crosshatch of ships' rigging. The breeze might favour a crossing to Tierl Enneth, since Callinde sailed best on a downwind heading; but weather from that quarter invariably brought rain. Passage might be miserably wet. Jaric waited while a beer cart rattled past, then bolted for the wharf where his boat lay tied.

  The tide had just turned. In the harbour, a cargo bark raised sail; sailors' gruff voices blended in a chanty, accompanied by the rattle of anchor chain through the hawse. Anxious to catch the current to his advantage, Jaric threaded his way through the jam of commerce on the docks. Half running, he rounded a mass of piled fish nets and all but impaled himself on the point of an unsheathed sword.

  'Kor!' Jaric bounded back. Cloth spilled from his arms as he dropped his bundled belongings and drew his own blades from their scabbards.

  'Why the haste?' said Brith, in precisely the tone he had used the first time they met. Unlike the sessions in the practice yard, his mouth showed no smile beneath the brown tips of his moustache. The eyes he fixed on his pupil remained cold and steady.

  But Jaric was no longer the timid boy who had cowered from a fight on the steps before the scribes' towers. Desperate with worry for Taen, he lifted his sword and attacked.

  Brith's block met him, effortlessly executed and seemingly solid as stone. 'Where were you off to, boy? Didn't we have a practice scheduled this afternoon?'

  Harried backward by a fast attack, Jaric managed a breathless reply. 'I haven't time. Why concern yourself? Fires! Sometimes I think you have nothing better to do than follow me around!'

  Steel clanged vengefully against Jaric's guarding blade. Stung by the force of the blow, the boy guessed at once that this encounter was no spar for sport. Brith's eyes were narrowed slits of annoyance, and his attitude that of a man who fought in earnest. Pricked by intuition, Jaric feinted and kicked clear of the nets at his heels. 'You've been following me. Why?'

  Brith drove into a lunge and recovered with his habitual neat footwork. 'Where were you going, boy?'

  'Sailing!' Jaric twisted to avoid a rolling cask. A longshoreman cursed and ordered him out of the way, then sprang back as Brith's sword whined through the air and clashed against the boy's cross guard.

  'No, boy.' Brith beat at Jaric's guard, driving him towards a stacked pile of lumber. Steel clanged and shivered under the force of his offensive. 'I'm paid the Kielmark's gold to keep you safe at Landfast. Won't see my hide roasted by his first captain because I broke my trust. Put up now.' Jaric wrenched clear of a bind; Brith cut at his fingers and scored a glancing touch. 'Drop your sword, do you hear?'

  Stung, bleeding, and angered beyond reason, Jaric executed a whistling riposte. After Anskiere's demands, the Kielmark's high-handed attempt to meddle became an intrusion not to be borne. Only the innocent would suffer; distressed by the threat to Taen's life, and incensed by Brith's superiority, Jaric felt something snap within his mind. He focused every ounce of his being on the fight. As his sword battered against Brith's guard, his lips curled with a grim understanding. Unlike the weaponsmaster, he was under no constraint of the Kielmark's; if he must, he would strike to kill.

  The shift in the intensity of Jaric's style caught Brith by surprise. The swordmaster deflected a fast cut to his chest and escaped with a tear in his tunic. In the exchange which followed, he lost two steps. When the boy beat and lunged and nearly maimed his face, he was forced to recognition; somehow, Jaric had lost his inhibition against fighting. 'Kor, boy! Had you applied yourself like this earlier, I might have taught you something worthwhile.'

  Icily silent, Jaric continued to attack. Brith abandoned speech. Although the boy was still too inexperienced to best him, for the first time the guardsman required total concentration to defend himself.

  Swordsman and pupil circled like dancers across the dock, the flash of parry and riposte licking between obstacles. The belling clang of swordplay carried stridently over the bustle. Longshoremen loading a nearby lighter rolled their casks upright and perched on the rims to observe the fight. Brith and Jaric wove back and forth. Unaware of their audience, they skirted pyramids of stacked barrels, baled cloth, and the heaped mounds of fish nets. Other workers joined the longshoremen, and presently a crowd formed. Coins clinked in callused palms as the sporting ones among them exchanged wagers, then energetically joined the spirit of the dispute by shouting encouragement to whichever duellist they favoured to win, the seal-dark man with the fast sword, or the blond boy who met superior skill with determined defiance.

  Idlers gathered and the crowd swelled larger. At any moment their commotion would draw the attention of the town guard. Brith redoubled his efforts, aware he must subdue the boy at once or risk getting fined for brawling in public. Steel rang dissonantly. Brith hammered at Jaric's guard, then, in a twist, caught the boy's sword in a bind. Through the sliding ring of blade on blade, he sensed the tremor of flagging muscles. The boy could not last much longer. Though competently executed, his technique was now wholly defensive. As the weapons wrenched apart, a fast feint and a lunge might corner him against the lumber pile. Confident of victory, Brith drove in with the agility of a fox.

  Jaric parried the attack, twisting to avoid a step back. His elbow snagged on a plank. The wood fell with a boom on to the dock. A moth-eaten cat shot from a cranny just as Brith lunged. His boot struck the animal a glancing blow in the ribs. The cat yowled and fled. Distracted, Jaric glanced sideways for a fraction of an instant. Brith's blade hooked his cross guard and, with a single stroke, disarmed him. The sword pinwheeled from the boy's hand and fell ringing on to wood. Deafened by a chorus of cheers and groans from the onlookers, and pressed hard against the lumber by the points of his opponent's steel, Jaric panted and shifted his dagger to his right hand.

  'Desist,' snapped Brith. He also breathed heavily from exertion. 'You're beaten now. If you don't quit, I'll have to hurt you.' His sword flicked like a snake.

  Flattened against stacked planks, Jaric missed his parry and, trapped in another bind, caught a warning scratch on the wrist from his opponent's dagger.

  'Drop your knife,' commanded Brith. His sword arm flexed, bearing painful pr
essure against the boy's stressed wrist.

  Still Jaric refused to relinquish his weapon. 'How many times did you warn that chance can ruin a victory?' And his brown eyes showed a hint of laughter as a board thrown from the sidelines struck the weapons-master squarely in the back of the neck.

  Brith buckled at the knees and crashed at Jaric's feet. The swordmaster's head had barely struck planking when a familiar, one-handed figure darted from the crowd and piled squarely on to his shoulders. Breathless, the beggar lifted his face to the boy. 'Kicked my cat, this lout sure did.'

  'I saw.' Jaric grinned. He bent wearily and recovered his sword, then gathered up Brith's weapons as well. 'Can you hold him long enough for me to cast the lines off my boat?'

  The beggar raised both eyebrows and answered with a gap-toothed smile. 'Surely, boy, surely.'

  'Thanks.' Jaric flexed bleeding fingers, and hurled the swordmaster's weapons over the lumber pile. They plunged with a splash into the shallows by the breakwater. Brith could find them easily enough, but only at ebb tide. By then Callinde should be well beyond the harbour. Jaric could buy provisions in one of the fishing villages north of Landfast; after that the rain would hide him from further pursuit. Ivainson tossed a silver to the beggar, collected his bundle of belongings from the dock, and shoved through the bystanders who now argued loudly over the validity of winning bets, since the beggar had clearly foiled Brith's victory. By the time the boy boarded Callinde, the shouts had transformed to a brawl. As a uniformed guard on a war-horse thundered over the docks to intervene, none but the beggar noticed the fishing boat slip her docklines and hoist sail for the open sea.

  * * *

  In keeping with the advent of summer, weather from the south brought low clouds, and then mist which lowered clinging and grey and turned finally to drizzle. Light winds held Callinde to an easy, northerly course, but she was not the only craft to ply the Corine Sea. North and east, on a close-hauled course for the heart of the Free Isles' Alliance, a scarred old fishing boat with no flag of registry sailed under orders from Shadowfane. Her sails were grey with mildew and her hull dark; the face of her helmsman was the toadlike countenance of a Thienz. Alone of seven companions, it hunched over the compass, rain dribbling runnels over the ornamental crest of its headdress. Yet the others huddled in the lee of the mainmast were not sleeping. Joined mind to mind, they bent their thoughts towards Landfast, whose barrier ward shone to their perception as an icy halo of light. This no demon could cross without rousing the wrath of men. Though their quarry lay on the other side, this difficulty did not distress the Thienz, who turned their every resource to the hunt. Humans by nature had short memories for trouble; sooner or later they grew complacent and misjudged, and for the day such folly overtook Ivainson Jaric, the Thienz waited with a patience no human could match.

  Night fell. Rain blew cold in the face of the helmsman, and he rose with a whuff of his gill flaps and shook droplets from his headdress. At his movement the tranced Thienz stirred from their huddle. They shambled to ungainly feet and sought a meal of fish, snatched live from a barrel by the masthead. Then, with backs hunched against the gunwales, they gnawed through scales and fins and cartilage. The youngest of them whistled soulfully, deploring the salt in the flesh. Its elders rolled tiny, half-blind eyes in shared sympathy. Though water was the natural abode of their kind, the deep pools of fresh streams and lakes were their proper element. Boats were a curse to limbs designed for swimming, and the surrounding sea an evil best not mentioned. Its rich solution of minerals could leach the gills of an immersed Thienz, bring death by poisoning and suffocation. For seagoing brothers, awareness of mortality permeated every lift of the swell. Yet Lord Scait commanded. The company sent to hunt Jaric licked fish from webbed hands, oppressed and silent with a distress they dared not express.

  At length the Thienz who had served as helmsman groped its way to a nook by the mast. One of the others took its place in the stern, knuckles gripped to the tiller and its snout lifted to the wind, since it maintained course by senses unknown to humans. The rest of the Thienz finished their meal and, picking scales from pointy teeth, drew together to resume communion with their purpose. Collective consciousness pooled, focused as always upon the ring of defences surrounding Landfast. The hard lines of the wards lay unchanged, and, surrounding the fringes, the clustered flickers of illumination that were men and the crews of wooden ships scattered like beads on dark velvet. Thienz-memory recalled a time when ships had been metal, ablaze with the brightness of energy fields. The mighty star fleets of ancestors once had tracked such sparks of light through the vast deeps of space, and all but obliterated humanity. But the remembered glory ended in captivity and cruellest exile, and survival became a thing steeped in hatred. For that, Thienz braved oceans and sour fish and at last found reward for their patience.

  A light-mote brighter than the others emerged from the glow defined by Landfast's wards. As it cleared the energy barrier, its pattern grew more distinct, and, with a hiss of triumph and malice, the Thienz narrowed the focus of their search. They knew, without mistake. The aura of this man brightened and blazed, a hard-edged beacon that seared sensitive perception almost to pain. So did humans with a sorcerer's potential appear to the minds of demons. The Thienz-eldest croaked, shivering with ecstatic anticipation. The perilous vigil had ended. For whatever reason, Ivainson Jaric sailed beyond the protection of Landfast.

  The Thienz collective flicked thought to the helmsman, who flung the tiller hard over. Two youngest left the link to adjust sail, and the dark boat scudded into a heel, gunwales pressed into a reach. Her course was set now to race, for from Jaric's untrained, unshielded thoughts the demons had pried the required facts. He sailed in haste for Tierl Enneth, his hope to spare Taen the agonies of the Sathid death.

  The night fell close as ink over the Corine Sea. Droplets rolled like sweat over the face of the Thienz helmsman, and its wiry limbs trembled. Tierl Enneth lay seventy leagues off, against a contrary wind. Yet the shores of that isle housed a ruin, empty of all but the bones of slaughtered men. With diligence, and determination born of hate, Thienz might win two prizes, Ivainson Jaric, Firelord's heir, and Marlsdaughter Taen, who might yet make a weapon to pair with the brother already in thrall to Shadowfane.

  * * *

  Though fitful and unsteady, the winds blew from the south throughout Jaric's passage from Landfast. Drenched by intermittent rain, and exhausted by the pull of the steering oar, he muscled Callinde through the narrow strait which separated the mass of Tierl Enneth from the splinter islet of Hal's Nog. Shaking drenched hair from his eyes, the boy clung grimly to the helm. He had been twelve days at sea. Now, in the final hours of crossing, the channel was treacherous with rocks. Current ran counter to his course, and a single miscalculation could sliver Callinde's stout timbers, leave him awash in the hainmerblows of breaking swells.

  Gulls looped and screamed above the yard as daylight failed. Overcast skies blackened into night like starless ink. Jaric blotted dripping fingers and groped in a locker for the flint to strike the compass lantern. He longed for the safety of anchorage. Every sinew ached with exhaustion. Waves crested and boomed to starboard, carving crescent swirls of foam which warned of submerged reefs. Yet Corley was due to make landfall with Moonless the following afternoon; Jaric had no choice but to run the strait's perilous waters in darkness.

  Sheltered by the damp folds of his cloak, the lantern wick flared and caught. The boy latched the glass closed, knuckles stained red by the glimmer of flame within. The air smelled heavy with rain. Dreading reduced visibility, Jaric bent strained eyes upon the waters off Callinde's bow. While the waves remained dark, he sailed safely in the deeps of the channel. But should a faint slash of spray suggest the presence of whitecaps, he hauled on his steering oar and dragged in the sheets, setting his frail craft to weather to claw clear of the shoals. He lost count of the number of tacks he made long before midnight. Left only guesses and the glimmer of the compass lamp to gu
ide him, Jaric fought to stay alert. More than once he caught the cloying scents of earth and wet grass, as his course strayed close to the shore of Hal's Nog.

  The rain held off until dawn, then resumed with wretched persistence, turning waves and whitecaps a pocked, leaden grey. Jaric huddled in his cloak and blinked droplets from his lashes. With visibility reduced to scant yards, he dared not relax vigilance, even for a second. Beaten with exhaustion, he never knew the precise moment when he cleared the straits and entered the wide, safe harbour of Tierl Enneth.

  Yet, in time, he noticed that tidal currents no longer kicked and curled around Callinde's steering oar. The swells under her keel silvered and flattened into wavelets, the first sure sign he had reached protected waters. Weeping with relief, Jaric abandoned the helm. He set his anchor, dropped canvas, and settled to rest under the partial shelter of the mainsail. Wind through the rigging lulled him. He slept finally, unaware that two additional vessels bore down upon the harbour where Callinde took shelter. One was Corley's command, Moonless, bearing a battle-trained crew of eighty. In the other, a black vessel seen only in dreams, eight Thienz licked their teeth, driven onward by Scait Demon Lord's directive to kill.

  X

  Tierl Enneth