The Keeper of the Mist (16 page)

Keri took a deep breath. Then she drew another. The garnet earring swung back and forth below Lord Osman's ear, back and forth, drawing a crimson arc in the air, and she blinked suddenly and jerked her gaze away from it. She found her breath coming quick and hard, as though she had risen out of a lake into the air and discovered, shockingly, that she had been near drowning.

Blood magic, blood sorcery: it wasn't real, or Keri had never thought it was real, or at least she had never thought it could be real anywhere but in Eschalion, in the Wyvern King's halls, where everything was magic, where magic rode the very sunlight. But in stories and plays, a sorcerer might use blood to make a magic that would haunt a paramour's dreams, or tempt an enemy into rash action, or persuade a stranger to pledge undying loyalty to a cause that wasn't his.

“Lady Kerianna,” Lord Osman said. His eyes had narrowed.

Keri drew her hand free. She did not scream or gasp or jerk away. She pretended she was playing a role on a stage and everything was just part of the story. Despite her fears, Lord Osman let her go. She rose to her feet, stumbling a little and catching herself with a hand on the edge of the table.

Lord Osman rose with alacrity as well. “I mean no offense,” he began.

“No,” Keri said. She knew she sounded breathless, but she couldn't help it. “No, of course not, Lord Osman.” She couldn't accuse him of using sorcery to try to make her agree with his suggestion. But she was sure he had tried. Almost sure. But now she couldn't quite remember what his magic had actually felt like. She was surrounded and steadied by the scent of almonds and sugar and, from the gardens outside, the fragrance of cut grass and damp earth. Nimmira filled her, and whatever magic Osman the Younger had brought with him was a small magic. She met his eyes as she became more certain she was still herself and not at all likely to suddenly agree to his suggestion.

She said, trying to sound firm, “I think you will find that when I bring back the boundary mist, even Aranaon Mirtaelior
will
forget, as he did before, but—but I will discuss your offer with my, my advisors.”
Advisors
sounded official, didn't it? “We can speak further tomorrow, or the next day, perhaps.”

“I shall live in hope,” Lord Osman assured her gallantly, with a smooth bow and only the merest trace of a frown.

Keri escaped from the room with a feeling of deep relief, and instantly found herself seized upon by Tassel and, almost as quickly, Cort. Keri began to blurt out her suspicions, but Cort was plainly at the far end of his patience and waved away her stumbling attempt to describe Lord Osman's earring. “Your impression of Lord Osman can wait! This is important, Keri, listen—”

“Wait your turn!” protested Tassel, elbowing her cousin firmly in the ribs. “
I
want to know about the supper! How did it go, Keri? Did you make him think you might give him Nimmira? Did he seem to believe you?”

Keri turned to Tassel in relief, though Cort glared at her in irritation. She said, before he could interrupt, “I didn't have to put the idea in his head! It was already there! He made me an offer of alliance, but only if we handfast right away. Tassel, did you expect him to propose handfasting himself? And not only that—”

“Keri! No! Really?” exclaimed Tassel. She looked impressed. “He
is
bold. I thought he'd surely wait for you to lead him into the dance before trying to whirl you away.”

Cort, who a moment earlier had obviously meant to break in with his own news, had stopped dead. Now he found his voice again, glowering at Keri as though this were all her fault. “Bold! Is that what you call it? I call it offensive! He's barely met you!”

“Well, it
was
sort of the plan—” Keri began.

“It's a stupid plan! And he's an arrogant son of a—”

“It wasn't either a stupid plan,” Tassel objected. “It's just he's picked up Keri's signals and moved faster than we expected. He's confident, that's all. And he certainly does know what he wants.”

Cort said grimly, “Too well he does! How dare he?”

Keri hesitated, torn between trying again to confide her suspicions about sorcery and holding her tongue. Blood sorcery was for children's stories. Tassel wouldn't laugh at her, but Cort?

Cort was going on, though, and the moment was lost. He declared, “We need to bring the mist back, strengthen the boundary before we lose it altogether, and get rid of
all
these foreigners! And we can. Because, Keri, I know what your father did to make the mist fail!”

Keri stared at Cort, caught by his tone: he seemed both grimly satisfied and furious.
I know what your father did.
That should be good, shouldn't it? That would solve everything quickly and easily, and never mind about whether Osman the Younger might be using a little bit of blood magic. She said hopefully, “You think we can get the mist back? And get rid of all those foreigners, and hide Nimmira properly again? That
is
what you mean?”

Cort seemed to relax a bit. He gave her a tight little nod. “Yes. Or I think so. I hope so. I know how to get the mist to return—I think. Then, yes, we can tell Lord Osman to get himself and his men back across the border and take his presumptuous handfasting offers with him! If we're all clear that setting Nimmira aside from the world is our most important goal.” He studied her face and nodded again. “Keri, this will work and then anybody can tell all those foreigners anything, because whatever tale they hear, they'll take home with them only confusing memories of a land that doesn't exist, tucked into a spot between Eschalion and Tor Carron where everybody knows there's nothing but a disputed border.” Intense and forceful, Cort seized her hands and dragged her into a nearby sitting room, sparsely furnished with non-red tables and couches. He pulled her over to a wide window, though it was too dark to see the town as anything other than a scattering of lamps glowing in windows. “Look!” he told her, and pointed, while the startled Tassel stood on her toes and tried to see over their heads.

“Cort, it's dark! And the border is much too far away to see from here anyway.”

He only shook his head impatiently. “It's because it's dark you can see it, like the gray line of dawn, only much closer. Just over there, past the edge of town! Look!”

Keri stared out the window for a long moment. “Cort…”

“You don't see it?”

“I'm not the Doorkeeper! What am I supposed to see? A line like the edge of dawn—what does that even
mean
?”

Cort shoved both hands through his hair so that it stood up in all directions. He immediately looked younger, like a boy caught out in some mischief that had gone wrong. He looked, in fact, almost like the boy he'd been years ago, when he and Tassel and Keri had found one ridiculous scrape after another to get into. Before Cort's father had died and he had suddenly been called on to help his brother run the third-biggest farm near Glassforge; he'd lost his mischief then. And his sense of humor, and his patience, and his temper.

Then Keri's mother had died, and Keri had suddenly needed to fight to keep the bakery. She'd understood Cort's temper much better after that, but she had been far too busy to ever think of telling him so.

And now here they were, both unexpectedly struggling to keep more than just one farm or just one bakery. Cort wasn't even a bad choice for the fight. He was actually a good choice, difficult as he could be: stubborn as the solid earth, unyielding as an iron lock.

Keri knew she should look out the window and try again to see what he saw, because she was the Lady, so she should be able to see anything so important. But she found it hard to look away from Cort. The temper was still evident. His sense of humor was still imperceptible. But somehow the way he hadn't changed a bit made Keri feel more like herself.

She asked gently, “Cort? What did my father do?”

“It wasn't him. It wasn't
just
him. His Doorkeeper, Lyem Aronn—I got Tassel to look up his name—must have helped. It might have been his idea. Your father didn't have a tenth of your good sense or a hundredth part of your responsibility, but he
was
Lord; I can't believe he would have thought of something like this on his own. Curse Lyem Aronn for a grasping, greedy, arrogant— If I found him, I'd—I don't know, but I'd do
something.
Keri, I want to strike his name from the rolls of titleholders.”

Keri wanted to suggest that Cort tell her more about herself, but she was afraid she was blushing already. She hadn't realized Cort thought she had good sense. Though she ought to have guessed that he would put responsibility first among qualities to admire, because he was the most responsible person she knew. But she only asked Tassel, “Is that allowed?”

Her friend looked intrigued. “I don't…I'll find out.”

Keri nodded. She wondered, now that Cort had suggested it, whether it might be possible to strike her father's name from the rolls, too, and what people would say if she did. She was almost certain he deserved to have his name erased from the rolls. Or maybe he deserved to have his name forever remembered as the Lord who opened up Nimmira to satisfy his own greed. Maybe Cort's predecessor deserved that, too.

“You find out, then,” Cort said grimly to Tassel. “He didn't just fail his duty. He
deliberately
disrupted the boundary.”

Tassel nodded, her eyes wide. Keri said, “Well, we knew that.”

“Not like this! I'm telling you!” Cort pointed out the window. “He made a
hole
in the boundary. You can see it—all right, maybe
you
can't, but
I
can see it. It's like looking at the line of dawn, only there's a gap where the sun isn't rising.” He hesitated, giving her an uncharacteristically uncertain look. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's what it looks like. Like a hole in the sunrise, out there, just south of town. It's not that the mist is thin or the boundary narrow—there's
nothing there,
no mist at all, and even with the boundary magic failing, that's not right! It's just
empty air
for a good quarter mile. And I think the gap is getting wider every minute we fail to close it up properly.”

Keri looked out the window and, seeing nothing but the nighttime town, shook her head. She thought about holes in the boundary, about her father somehow blowing the true mist away and filling the air with—what? An
illusion
of mist? Or nothing at all, not even illusion, hiding it with no more than branches swept across the road or something? It seemed incredible.

She said, trying to get it straight in her own mind, “So they made a gap. My father and the old Doorkeeper. They made a gap somehow, and when my father died, not only did the whole length of the boundary start to thin, but also the empty part started to spread. Is that right?” That was bad enough, but she realized something else before Cort could even begin to answer her. “Wait, wait, even
before
my father died,
anybody
who followed that trail could have stumbled right out of Nimmira into Tor Carron or back the other way, is that what you mean? A couple looking for a private tryst, a boy after a stray sheep, anybody just curious to see where a path might go. Anyone.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Nimmira made him Lord. And he did this? How
could
he?”

Tassel said, “When he was a young man, he must have been the right choice. I suppose later he became—” She hesitated. “Overconfident.”

“Overconfident! He became selfish, thoughtless, and careless,” snapped Cort. “
And
Lyem Aronn, too! The trail's hard to spot, I'll allow. At least that worthless dog's puke did that much. I checked. But it's a working track, and once you've been so blazingly stupid as to tear open a hole in the boundary mist, there's only so much you can do by ordinary means to disguise a trail like that. Maybe he used some kind of illusion, some little player's charm or whatever, but even that would hardly suffice to hide a road that people are actually
using.
”

Keri stared out the window again. She thought maybe she could see…something. Like a pearlescent line curving through the sky. So the mist hadn't failed completely, not yet. It had faded, yes. But a trace of the magic lingered. And, now that Cort had pointed it out, she thought she could after all see—or maybe feel—a totally empty gap south of Glassforge. It was a bit like realizing a step wasn't there before you put your foot on it. Was it possible to see a hole by its emptiness? “Cort, you're sure you can tell exactly where the true gap is, even with the boundary fading all along this part of its length?”

“The boundary's certainly thinnest right here by Glassforge,” Cort conceded. “But even here, the mist hasn't blown away completely, and the line of the boundary is still there, the line where it ought to be. That's why I think I might be able to close the gap. And if I can—look, Keri, do you actually know how Lupe Ailenn first raised the mist and made the boundary? Because I never did, until I looked it up just now, but he wasn't my great-great-great-grandfather or whatever.”

“Five
greats,
” Keri said absently. “I thought everyone knew. He went right around Nimmira, him and Summer Timonan, whom they called the Borderkeeper afterward, though she didn't really keep the border, did she? She made it, but she never had a chance to keep it. A drop of blood every step, for three hundred and seventy-eight miles, and she died at the end—” She broke off. “Cort, what are you thinking?”

“A drop of blood every step,” Cort repeated. “Summer Timonan's blood, and Lupe Ailenn's weaving.” He gripped the windowsill, staring out at the night, the muscles of his back and shoulders tight with intensity. “Almost four hundred miles. Even if it wasn't literally a drop of blood every single step…I can't even imagine. But the gap out there isn't large at all. Maybe a quarter mile all told.” He turned, leaned his hip against the windowsill, crossed his arms over his chest, and met Keri's eyes. “I can do it. My part of it. I don't know exactly how, but…” He jerked his head in a gesture like a shrug, meaning none of them really knew anything and it hadn't mattered so far. “If we do this, if we make it work, we might have the boundary mist back up by morning. And if we don't, it'll just keep getting worse and harder to fix. So. You up to trying it?” He gave her a look that made it clear he had no doubt she was.

Keri imagined dawn rising on a secure border, and had to close her eyes for a moment, she wanted it so badly. “Just let me change out of this dress.”

They could do this. She almost thought they could. Then, once things were a
lot
less exciting, she could get her balance as Lady.
Then,
once things were normal, she could prove to Domeric and Brann and the Timekeeper and everyone that she really could be much better than her father. Even the people who had worked with her father in his schemes would be glad she was Lady, once they understood how near their own greed had brought them to complete disaster.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Tassel, you can stay here and keep an eye on…on everything. And think of how to handle Lord Osman! But if we can bring the mist back, no matter what happens then, it won't be like this. It'll be something we can deal with.”

A drop of blood every step.
That turned out to be trickier than Keri had thought, even for a smallish gap like this one. A pricked finger would only bleed for a minute, and then the tiny wound would close up and you had to prick another finger. From Cort's steady cursing, this wasn't pleasant. But if you made a real cut, you might actually hurt yourself, not to mention get far too much blood all at once, so most of it would be wasted. “Details!” Cort snapped furiously. He held a small, sharp knife in one hand, angling his other hand as he tried to decide how and where to make a cut. “
Details
in those records would have been nice! Didn't it occur to
anyone
that maybe someone someday might need to know exactly how Summer Timonan did this?”

“After what happened to her, they probably hoped no one else ever would. Who'd think of opening up holes like this? No, don't cut across your wrist, there are all those tendons and things! Maybe if you poked the base of your thumb? We should have asked a bonesetter….”

“Want to return to town and get one?” Cort asked shortly.