The keep of fire, p.23
The Keep of Fire, page 23
Meridar stared at her. “What is there to understand, my lady? The reeve has slain his lord and our companion. His life is forfeit.”
She licked her lips. “Eddoc had the plague. The Burning Plague. Look, you can see it—the change … it had already started. I think that was why Jastar killed him. To keep it from spreading in the village.”
Meridar’s eyes narrowed. “And Sir Kalleth? Did he have the plague then, my lady?”
Grace stepped back, her face stinging as if struck with the flat of a blade.
Meridar looked to Durge. “Are you with me?”
Durge gazed into space, as motionless as if carved of stone, then he let out a breath and met the other knight’s eyes. “Get your sword, Sir Meridar.”
Grace placed a hand on the Embarran’s arm. “Durge—please …”
He shook his head, his words both regretful and hard. “We must do this, my lady.”
With care, but without hesitation, he pulled his arm free; then he and Meridar moved past her.
Grace watched them go, gripping the doorframe. No, she wouldn’t let rage seize her. That was how lives were lost. Meridar was out for revenge, and she knew Durge would not be able to control him. There was no telling what the Calavaner might do to anyone who got in his way. They were just peasants out there. It would be a bloodbath.
She pulled the door to Eddoc’s chamber shut, then turned and caught Lirith’s gaze. This time there was no need for magic to transmit the message.
Lirith pushed away the sobbing baroness. “Sister, do you need to stay in our chamber?”
Aryn roughly wiped her wet cheeks and forced her shoulders back. “No, I can’t stay here. Not with …” Her eyes flickered to the closed door.
“Come on,” Grace said. “We’ll go together.”
She started down the stairs, and the others followed.
“What do you intend to do, sister?” Lirith said behind her.
Grace spoke the truth. “I don’t know.”
The three women left the manor house and stepped into the mists of dawn. Dim shapes hovered like specters around them: houses and trees. Navigating half by what she could make out in the gloom and half by memory of the evening before, Grace led the way through the village.
It was only when they reached the edge of Falanor’s common green that Grace noticed two smaller forms following behind Lirith and Aryn.
You idiot, Grace. You should have told Daynen and Tira to stay at the manor. If something happens, they could get hurt.
But it was too late by then. There wasn’t time to take them back. “Stay behind us,” she said to the children.
Daynen nodded, tightening his hold on Tira’s shoulders. The mute girl gazed into the mist as if she could see something in its folds. Grace shivered.
“Sister,” Lirith whispered, placing a hand on Grace’s arm. “The Touch.”
Grace halted. She peered into the fog but could make out only fleeting shapes. Shutting her eyes, she forced herself to reach for the Weirding. There—she caught the shimmering threads of life that crisscrossed the commons just before the web slipped from her hands. Her eyes flew open. They were not alone.
“Blast you, reeve! Where are you?”
Grace jumped at the voice that sounded no more than twenty paces away. She recognized the gruff tone, even though she could not see him. Meridar.
“It is better if you show yourself, Jastar.” This voice was lower, more somber. Durge. “You cannot hide for long. The sun comes, and it will burn away the mist.”
Silence, then a harsh bark of laughter. “The mist is not all that will burn!”
Chain mail jingled. Grace could imagine the knights turning around, searching for the speaker. But the fog had a queer effect on sounds, muffling some, amplifying others.
“I can’t see what’s happening,” she hissed.
“But it’s so clear, Grace. Use your mind, not your eyes.”
She stiffened. Then she felt a slender hand on hers. She turned and found herself gazing into frightened but now strangely steady blue eyes. Aryn.
“It’s all right, Grace,” the young woman said. “We’ll help you.”
Grace swallowed hard, then gave a nod. Lirith took her other hand, and Grace stood between the two witches. She shut her eyes and could feel the warmth pouring from them, filling her. A sigh escaped her lungs, and she felt her dread melt. Before, when she had attempted the Touch, the web of the Weirding had slipped from her grasp. Fear was the reason—fear she would see it again, the hideous blot attached to the thread of her own life. But now there were other, brighter threads to surround her. She let the power of the two witches fill her, then reached out and touched the tapestry of life woven across the commons.
A gasp escaped her. Durge and Meridar shone like cold blue steel in the center of the commons. The villagers were dimmer but still clear, milling about the edges of the square. And there, on the farside of the green, stood one who—like a coal—was black and fiery at once. Her eyes flew open.
“Jastar,” she breathed. “He has it.”
Both Lirith and Aryn cast questioning looks at her. She opened her mouth, but she didn’t have time to explain.
“Get out of here.” The reeve’s harsh words cut through the fog. “Get out while you still can.”
“Not without justice,” came Meridar’s reply. “Lord Eddoc and Sir Kalleth are dead by your hand, Reeve Jastar. You must be made to pay.”
Grace pressed her eyes shut again. Meridar and Durge stood together, swords drawn, facing in the direction of Jastar’s voice, crouched and ready. But the knights couldn’t see the villagers who even now shuffled from the left and right, feet silent on damp grass. Fear and hate choked the air as thickly as fog.
“Durge!” she cried out. “Durge, they’re coming from the sides!”
She heard the clank of chain mail as the knights spun around, as well as a hissed curse from across the square. But it wasn’t enough. She shut her eyes again. The lines of villagers hesitated, then kept pressing inward, toward the center of the commons. There were too many of them.
“We have to do something,” she whispered.
Aryn trembled. “What, Grace?”
Desperation flooded her. She didn’t know. What could she do against an entire mob? If only this fog would lift …
That’s it, Grace.
There was no more time to think about it. “Help me,” she said.
A calm presence touched her mind. Lirith. What are you doing, sister?
I’m not entirely sure. If it works, you’ll see.
That she had replied to Lirith without spoken words registered only dimly. She gripped the hands to either side—so tightly she heard soft moans of pain. Warm power flooded her body. The Weirding flared in her mind, its brilliant threads running in every direction.
Then she saw it: shadowed and sickly, pulsing just on the edge of her vision. Grace recoiled, knowing that if she followed her own thread it would lead straight toward the darkness. She steadied herself; she had other threads to follow. With substanceless fingers she clutched the silvery strands rooted to either side of her and followed them out into the greater web of the Weirding.
For a moment she was perilously intoxicated. The Weirding was so vast, endless and shimmering, coursing between all living things. It would be so easy to lose herself to fascination.
Weave, Grace. You’ve got to weave.
At first she used imaginary hands, pulling the threads together, running one over the other. However, that was too slow. She imagined more hands, and more, gathering the strands and binding them together. Then it was done. It drifted in the air, covering the entire commons, like a mesh fashioned of starlight. Grace felt astonishment radiate from both sides, but there was no time to explain. The villagers were ten paces from the knights. Five paces. Three.
Pull! Grace shouted without words.
There was confusion, then understanding. She reached out with her mind and gripped the shimmering net at the same time she felt Aryn and Lirith do so. Together, the three witches cast the net aside.
Grace felt as much as heard the rushing noise. She opened her eyes in time to see the fog before her swirl and break apart. Like a sudden dawn, sunlight poured through the rift, illuminating the commons as the last shreds of mist retreated to the edge of the square. There, a gray wall undulated, rising twenty feet into the air.
Aryn gasped, and Lirith gazed at Grace with an expression not of amazement, but of deep interest. Grace shook her head. She would explain it to Lirith later—if she even could. Right now there was no time. She felt hollow but oddly exultant, as she did after a twenty-hour shift in the ED in which she had not lost a single patient.
Cries of fear and dismay sounded as the mist broke. The villagers skidded to a halt on the wet grass, clubs and wooden hoes in their hands, their boldness dissipating with the mist. It was one thing to sneak up on a man who could not see you. It was another to face two angry knights, their blades sharp, drawn, and ready. Durge flicked his gigantic greatsword. The villagers stumbled back a step.
“No!” a shrill voice cried. “There are more of us than them. We must kill them before they kill us!”
The villagers hesitated, staring with dirty, scarred, and battered faces. What had Jastar told these people?
Grace gazed across the commons. Now that she knew to look for the signs they were obvious enough; she should have seen them before. But then, from what little she knew, onset was sudden. His tunic was sodden, not just with the fog but with sweat, and his hair was plastered to his soot-smeared forehead. There were a few small blisters on his neck and on the backs of his hands. His eyes were already starting to darken.
“Get back,” Meridar barked at the villagers. “Get back and you won’t get hurt. It’s him that we want.”
“Jastar,” Durge said, “do not let your people be harmed for your own folly. Call them aside and stand forth to meet your judgment with dignity.”
“It is you who shall be judged, Sir Knight.” Jastar’s lips pulled back from his teeth. “You and your kind, who would bring death upon this village. It was your Sir Kalleth who killed Lord Eddoc. I saw it with my own eyes, and I killed the murderer before he could strike again.”
Hisses ran among the crowd. A few of the villagers stepped forward again, gripping their hoes and pitchforks. Dread filled Grace’s chest. She had to stop this. But how? Fog she could clear from the air—but this anger, this deceit, this hate? She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged.
“Your words are easily proven false, reeve,” Meridar spat. “Eddoc’s body is putrid. We arrived only last evening, yet he has been dead for days.”
Again uncertainty flickered in the eyes of the villagers. They looked to Jastar, then to the knights. Grace understood. These were people who had followed an authority figure all their lives. Right now all they wanted to know was who they should listen to, who would tell them what to do.
Fear pulled the air taut as a drum. Everything was still, then a slight figure moved forward to stand beside Grace. A small hand snaked up to grip her own. Tira.
Jastar’s face twisted into a mask of horrid glee. “Look! Look at the burnt child. They consort with her!”
A woman clad in a shabby dress the color of soil pointed at Tira. “She will bring the plague upon us. Jastar says she will.”
Durge’s mustaches drooped in a frown. “What is this madness you speak, goodwife?”
The woman wrung gnarled hands together. She was toothless, wrinkled, and hunched with osteoporosis. Grace supposed she was just over thirty.
“It’s the Burning Plague.” Fear filled her puffy, red-rimmed eyes. “Those stricken will burn up, but they won’t die. They’ll turn black as night and come back to burn us all. She’ll do the same. She’ll put fire to us all, she will!”
Now Daynen stood beside Tira. “You’re wrong!” he shouted, his face flushed. “Tira wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
Grace clutched his shoulders, pulled him back. A smooth voice spoke beside her. Lirith.
“Was not the girl burned before Lord Eddoc brought her here, goodwoman, before this scourge began?”
Even as the witch spoke these words, Grace knew they were wasted, that reason was pointless.
Jastar raised a fist. “Maybe she started it all then. She should have died. Don’t you see? She’s the one who brought it on all of us. Take her with the knights!”
An energy coursed through the throng of villagers at these words, like a wild wind through a stand of trees. The knights positioned themselves before the three women and the children, swords ready, faces hard. It was going to be a massacre.
Then, just like the mist clearing, she understood.
“You’re wrong, Jastar,” spoke a voice that was so cool, so clear, so filled with authority that all were forced to cease motion and listen. Grace was only dimly amazed to realize the voice was her own.
Still holding Tira’s hand, she stepped forward, away from Daynen and the witches, past the stunned knights. The villagers pulled away from her. A few even started to bow, then caught themselves, faces puzzled at their own actions. Grace felt a power, and it had nothing to do with the Touch. It draped her like a gold mantle, and she did not resist. These people wished for someone to obey, and it would be her.
Jastar shook his fist at her, sputtering for words. “You have the plague! You and that monster of a girl.”
Grace took another step forward. “No, it is you who has the plague, Jastar. You have all the symptoms. Can’t you feel it? The heat rises in you even now.”
The villagers turned to stare at Jastar. He opened his mouth, but only a strangled sound emerged. Grace advanced again, and he moved back.
Her voice was soft and relentless. There was no need to raise it. “Even now you’re becoming one of them, Jastar. You know it. You slew Sir Kalleth because he discovered the truth. And that’s why you want them to kill Tira. Because she’s the only one who saw you touch Eddoc when you killed him. But then, you didn’t know at the time that was how it was transmitted, did you, Jastar? That even as you killed Eddoc to stop the plague, you brought it on yourself.”
Tremors coursed through his body. She could see the first telltale wisps of smoke rise from the shoulders of his tunic. So stress seemed to exacerbate the symptoms, she noted with clinical detachment.
“No, you’re wrong!” His voice was a wet shriek of fury. “Kill them!”
Durge and Meridar hastened forward to protect Grace, but they were too slow. Jastar pulled a knife from his belt and with weird speed lurched forward, until his face was inches from her. Heat shimmered from him in sick waves, and the stink of burnt meat filled her nostrils. Even as she gazed into his eyes, the last vestiges of white and brown faded, leaving only blackness.
“Die,” he hissed.
The knife slashed down—
—and passed inches from Grace’s throat. The expression on Jastar’s face was one of confusion. Grace had seen the look many times before. People seldom expected to die.
She stepped back with Tira and watched Jastar’s body fall facedown to the turf. A pitchfork protruded from his back. Even as Grace watched, the wooden tines blackened with heat. She looked up into a broad, coarse face and caught a peasant man’s eyes. He gave a shallow nod. The villagers stared at the dead reeve, then one by one they turned and walked from the commons. The man who had struck the fatal blow started to follow them.
Grace held out a hand. “Where are you going?”
The man’s leathery face was without expression. “I will wait in my house,” he said in thick words.
She shook her head. “Wait for what?”
“For them to come, my lady. And for all the world to burn.”
The man turned his back to her, walked to the edge of the commons, and disappeared into the wall of fog. He was the last; the villagers were gone. Grace was aware of Lirith and Aryn to one side of her, Daynen between them. To the other, Durge and Meridar still gripped their swords, faces grim. But Grace did not look at them.
Instead she followed Tira’s calm gaze upward, to the red star that shone low in the morning sky, turning the mist to fire.
36.
The rain poured down from a gray sky, washing away everything he was and ever had been.
“Blood and bones!” a man’s voice said, muffled by the din of the storm. “What was that?”
“What was what?” This voice was deeper and coarser, the final word merging with a crash of thunder.
Travis blinked water from his eyes. It was hard to see where he was. Dark walls pressed against him from every direction. He was cold—terribly cold. How had he come to be here?
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.…
The raspy words drifted through his mind. He shut his eyes, and images came to him: the old graveyard on the hill, the scarecrow preacher clad all in black, the rectangular gash in the earth. Again he read the fresh, sharp words incised on the slab of stone. In death do we begin.…
He opened his eyes and gazed at the walls of wet soil. Mud oozed between his bare toes where he crouched. Yes—he understood now. That was why he was so cold. He was dead. What other reason to lie naked in a grave?
The thunder rolled away.
“—so get back to digging. It’ll be full dark soon. Or sooner, with this queer storm.” A scraping sound punctuated the coarser of the two voices as it spoke.
“I can’t dig. Not when we’re being watched. I tell you, I saw something.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not … I’m not sure.”
The scraping sound ended in a clank. “Well maybe you’d see better if you quit looking out your arse, Darl.”
“Sulath slit me! I know what I saw, Kadeck. Something is over there. Like a light, it was. And it wasn’t lightning, mind you. It was all silvery and low to the ground.”
There was a groan, then, “All right, all bloody right. If that’s what it takes to make you dig, then let’s—”
A clap of thunder drowned out all other sounds, and a flash illuminated the rough planes of the grave. By its light, Travis saw a wadded-up bundle of cloth lying at his feet. On instinct he reached for it, and only then did he realize he already gripped something in his right hand.
