Keeper of the Keys

  The human boy held still, awaiting a cue from the demon at his side. None came. Except the Llondel young noticed Jaric and broke apart with whistles of surprise. Lankier than human children, their silvery skin ridged with sinew, they approached with trusting curiosity. The grown Llondel made no effort to exchange images with them, but stood motionless. At last, confused by the adult's poised stance, and driven to uneasiness by the wild, animal innocence reflected in the eyes of the young, Jaric spoke. He hoped he would not offend. 'Why have you brought me here?'

  Grey cloth rustled. The Llondel's furrowed face turned towards him. Beneath the embroidered cloak hood, Jaric saw the creature's slitted nostrils widen; the light in its eyes shone subdued and sad. 'No Sathid.'

  The image rang with tragic overtones; cut to the heart by forced empathy, Jaric felt helpless tears blur his eyes. At his feet the cublings squealed and scattered playfully. With breathless, gleeful whistles, two smaller ones pounced upon the largest, and presently the entire group tumbled into a knot of fists and knees. Puzzled by the incongruity of the youngsters' behaviour in the presence of opposing emotions in the adult, Jaric found his answer; since Llondelei communicated entirely through shared mental images, spoken language did not exist among them. Any Llondian young born since Shadowfane's theft of the Sathid were deaf and blind to their own culture. Even if words could be made to compensate for the loss, the ancestral memories of Homeworld would be forgotten within a generation. Priceless heritage, and the cherished identities of forebears who lived before the Great Fall, would be lost.

  Jaric pressed his thumb to his side. Reduced to silence by the weight of tragic consequences, and saddened by the Llondelei cublings who cheerfully hammered each other with six-fingered fists, the Firelord's heir strove to lighten the plight of the Llondelei. 'What of the Vaere? If the sorcerers they train are Sathid-linked, another source of the crystals must exist.'

  The Llondel lifted spurred hands and pushed back its hood. It turned a rounded, earless head and regarded Jaric with anguished eyes, then answered. Like Kordane's Law, the Vaere held all demons alike. The Llondelei far-seekers had searched in vain for their isle. Though Taen could reach Tamlin with a thought, the far-seekers received only silence.

  Jaric tried again. 'But Anskiere was Vaere-trained. Would he break his loyalty to consort with Llondelei?'

  'Yes.' The demon's images turned forcefully emphatic. 'Anskiere was born a prince among men. Where he perceived injustice, he had strength to follow the dictates of his heart.' In a condensed rush of pictures, the creature showed Jaric the far-seeker who had befriended the sorcerer, and the pact sworn between Stormwarden and Llondel in the twilight seclusion of a forest glade. He heard words spoken as Anskiere of Elrinfaer promised to intercede with the Vaere on behalf of a wronged species. But hope was brief. Wrung by disappointment and a sweeping change of scene, Jaric perceived the tragedy of Tierl Enneth, then the prison of ice which prevented the keeping of that oath.

  'Keeper of the Keys, Firelord's heir, are you blind to destiny? The survival of your people, and also Llondelei, lies with your mastery of the Cycle of Fire.'

  'No,' whispered Jaric. But his denial proved futile. Out of patience, the demon overturned his senses with brutal abruptness.

  He saw himself ringed with the Sathid aura of a sorcerer's craft, but brilliant, stronger than even that of Anskiere of Elrinfaer. Centred within a nexus of power, his flesh charged to near incandescence, he would make war upon Shadowfane's demons.

  'No. Ivain my father went mad!' Jaric's shout echoed through the cavern, scattering the Llondelei cublings. But the images battered into him without surcease.

  By the Firelord's grace, Corinne Dane's fires will rise once more, bearing Llondel and human to the stars in peace.

  Jaric exploded into white-hot anger. He broke the demon's hold upon his mind and flung back a step. 'No! There must be an alternative!'

  The Llondel answered in words, underscored by finality irrevocable as death. 'Ivainson Firelord, for that you are already too late.' Eyes flared like coals beneath the cloak hood. The adult demon trilled a mournful seventh, and Jaric felt his will milled under like sand in the teeth of a storm tide.

  XII

  Destiny

  Caught in a moment of wrenching disorientation, Jaric blinked to clear eyes that were stung by change. He looked upon night and the orange glow of a fire. The Llondel allowed him an instant to recognize the campsite where earlier the Kielmark's senior captain had toasted a fish for supper. Then demon thought-image swept away self-awareness, and Ivainson Jaric was Deison Corley, waking from sleep with the hair on his neck prickling with the sense of impending danger.

  Even as Corley closed hands over his daggers, shadows moved, studded with the glint of eyes touched by firelight. Thienz-demons come hunting from Shadowfane closed in to take their prey, not the Firelord's heir they sought, but another: the chestnut-haired captain who had set up the Kielmark's counterattack during Kisburn's assault on Cliffhaven. Because of Corley, a Thienz, six Gierj, and a Karas shape-changed to human form had been slain. The demons reached for the captain's mind to initiate their attack. As they melded awareness with his thoughts, their eagerness seeped through the contact; and chilled by an influx of malice not his own, the captain jerked his first dagger from the scabbard. He had no chance to throw. His human will suddenly reeled under a demon-inspired compulsion to turn his blade against himself.

  In the nursery chamber of the Llondelei burrow, Jaric cried out, the sound of his own voice unheard in his ears. He never saw the cubs who scattered away, eyes flaring in alarm, from the dimness of the far corner.

  Trapped wholly in Corley's awareness, the boy knew only desperation as the Thienz drove the captain towards suicide.

  But the trained instincts of the fighter were not easily overpowered. In the moment Corley raised his knife, Thienz-bound against himself, the unconquered portion of his mind rebelled. He seized the only available recourse, and shoved his left hand to the wrist in live coals.

  Pain came white-hot and immediate. Entwined in rapport with their victim, eight Thienz suffered equally. They screamed as one. Their hold upon Corley sundered, and even as reflex jerked the man's scorched flesh from the flame, he whipped back his knife hand and threw. The blade caught the nearest Thienz in the throat. Its death-dream diverted its fellows a split second, enough for Corley to close his fingers over the cold hilt of his broadsword. He yelled, shattering forest silence, and drew. His first stroke sliced two of his antagonists in half.

  The survivors scuttled frantically into the night-black thickets. Corley could not see them. But Thienz-demons would sense each other; their counterattack would be sudden and coordinated, and against five he would be lost. The captain struck blind. Twigs and small saplings sheared under his blade. Slashed greenery whipped straight to jab him as he pressed forward, each step taking him farther from the fire that had been his salvation. Yet he did not hesitate in false hope. He had read the histories. Repeat tactics never worked on a Thienz. His only chance was to cut them down before they managed to regroup.

  Yet his enemies had melted like ink into the night. Corley shook back sweat-soaked hair. His seared hand throbbed, and his breath rushed raggedly through his throat. Necessity forced him onwards. His sword stroke stayed even, a scything lethal arc he had practised to mechanical perfection. With wry fury, he wondered whether his corpse would continue the motion after the Thienz had crushed his spirit to whimpering defeat.

  Then, without warning, the captain's inner musing became wrenched away and replaced by another reality.

  Jaric smelled sweetrushes. Yanked back to separate awareness, he dimly recalled falling to the floor in the nursery of a Llondelei burrow; but as dream-image bound him deeper into night, he could neither tear free nor influence the demons who manipulated his mind.

  'Firelord's heir, you were cautioned long ago on the ice cliffs: now Shadowfane's minions come hunting, and Keithland holds no haven.' Revelation followed
, cruel as death: Jaric and his companions had nearly been overtaken on Tierl Enneth. Only because Llondelei influence had directed them across the midst of the clansmen's summerfair had they been spared from attack. Since the tracking Thienz had presumed civilized humans would never attempt such a course, the ambush they prepared had been foiled. Cursing, yowling among themselves, Shadowfane's hunters lost precious time and their prey by going around, beyond range of the blind priestess's sensitivity to demon presence. Now, with Firelord's heir and Dreamweaver out of reach, the Thienz vented their frustration upon the luckless person of Deison Corley . . .

  * * *

  Their next strike battered the captain to the edge of unconsciousness. The sword flew spinning from his hand. He crashed after it, landed heavily on his shoulder. Briars tore his face. His teeth gouged up a mouthful of dirt, and his vision went utterly black. Still he fought. But now his enemies were guarded; pain could no longer free him. All he had left were the knives concealed on his person, though he might only get the chance to use one. Trapped like a rabbit in a warren, Deison Corley reached for the blade snugged in the sheath against his thigh. Around him, the Thienz closed in.

  Jaric twisted, savaged doubly by Llondelei accusers. 'You'd let Corley die!' he charged in return. 'Your kind saw his peril, and yet did nothing to save him.'

  The Llondel returned no mercy. Unlike the heir of Ivain and the Dreamweaver, the life of Deison Corley held no consequence to the far-seers of their burrow. The man's continued well-being concerned the Llondelei not at all; Jaric had disregarded all warnings; that the Kielmark's captain should die was just consequence. The guilt cut like a whip.

  'No!' Jaric's anguished denial rang without echo within the burrow's earthen walls.

  'Then who else among mankind shall end contention?' The Llondel showed him Corley, struggling in the night with his dagger in the guts of a Thienz who had strayed within reach. Human and demon thrashed over and over in leaf mould, entangled and sticky with blood. Jaric tasted salt. Dream-image and self muddled together, his own tears indistinguishable from Corley's sweat as the captain fell limp, mind-bound victim of the four Thienz left living after the ambush.

  Jaric felt his face ground on the rushes. He whimpered, flayed raw by remorse as the demons closed, vindictive in their desire to maim. Still he could not snap the fear which rejected Ivain's inheritance. Though he shared the suffering and the death of a friend, the bones of four thousand unburied corpses bound him to horrors far worse. The multitudes slain by sorcerers' mistakes shackled the heir of Ivain against action, and for this the Llondelei named him coward.

  'More than one captain died at Elrinfaer and Tierl Enneth!' Jaric flung back. 'Must human endeavour be limited to Vaerish mysteries and the Cycle of Fire?'

  As if in vindication, an arrow slashed the dark. The shaft struck and buried to the feathers in the neck of the Thienz who crowded to kill. It tumbled thrashing to the ground. The demon beside it spun with a snarl towards the brush. This one was mature enough to carry venom, and Jaric saw the glint of poison sacs distended to bite.

  Then, beyond the thicket, a shadow moved. The creature staggered and fell, the beaded leather haft of a hillman's dagger stuck in its chest. As one, the Thienz survivors abandoned Corley. Flight availed them nothing. As Corley threw off the effects of their hold, ten leather-clad tribesmen dashed silently from the thickets. A hail of javelins transfixed the last two Thienz from behind.

  Relief lent Jaric the boldness to repudiate the judgement against him. 'There, humans can kill demons without sorcery!'

  Llondelei consciousness denied nothing as Corley rose from the ground. Half-dazed, cut in a dozen places where branches and Thienz claws had mauled him, the captain still retained presence of mind to thank his rescuers in clan dialect.

  The leader of the foray hid surprise at the fact that an outland captain spoke his language. He jerked his dagger from the nearest corpse, feathered ornaments trembling at his wrists as he raised the bloody blade. 'No thanks are due, seafarer, and none accepted. Our Lady sent us hunting for Thienz, not to win tribe-debt for sparing the carving of city-man skin.'

  Corley bent with a grunt, retrieved his longsword from the leaves, then leaned heavily on the cross guard. Tired, battered, and stinging, he regarded the clan chief entirely without rancour. 'Health to your horses, then,' he said.

  The hillman raised painted eyebrows; here stood a townborn wise enough to tribe ways that he returned insult with blessing; this from a warrior great enough to slay four of the enemy before he succumbed to their mind-tricks. Guardedly acknowledging respect, the clan chief turned his fist outward in salute. Then he and his fellows spun soundlessly and the image of their leaving vanished utterly into dark . . .

  * * *

  Jaric's reprieve ended, his awareness of Corley ripped away by a tide of contempt. 'Foolish boy, did you think peril ends here?' Without waiting for answer, Llondelei consciousness tore away his defence, stripped him vulnerable before self-evident truth: young Thienz were the compact's lowliest and most expendable resource. Their auras were least detectable to humans, which made them suitable as errand runners to Keithland; but before the mighty of Shadowfane, the powers of these were insignificant. Angered now, the Llondelei tightened their net. Cruel as the death of hope, they toppled Ivainson Firelord's heir headlong into nightmare ...

  Images hammered into him with the force of physical blows. The Dark-dreamer emerged from Shadowfane. Commanding the same powers Taen employed for good, the brother spun ringing webs of nightmare. Misfortune harrowed the people. Farmsteaders on the northern borders of Hallowild died screaming in their cottages; others woke crazed from sleep and butchered their families. Cattle and crops died of neglect in the fields, and weeds wove shrouds through the bones which lay whitening in the dooryards.

  'Spare them,' whispered Jaric, but his words became the sated croak of scavenger birds. He heard laughter as demons praised their chosen, one called Maelgrim who had once been born a fisherman's son on the isle of Imrill Kand.

  A demon hissed, and stone walls crumbled. Jaric saw dead men at arms in Morbrith livery stare open-eyed at the sky. Within the bailey, amid a litter of shredded parchment, the master scribe who had taught a lonely boy to write pleaded on his knees for mercy. Yet the Dark-dreamer saw into the victim's mind and there encountered memories of Ivainson Jaric. Maelgrim spat in the dust, and the ascending whistle of Gierj-demons rang across the valley where corpses rotted in the sun. Parchments ignited into flame, and Jaric's scream blended with that of the archivist at Morbrith, who burned alive on a pyre fed by his own life's works.

  'No!' But the images spun faster, slivering the soul of the Firelord's son to agony: Taen dead, spitted on the knife of her brother, all because a recalcitrant boy refused the fate of his father! Black hair clotted in a pool of scarlet where she fell. Her death brought an end to the powers of the Vaere-trained, and the demons advanced unhindered.

  The eastern kingdoms of Felwaithe and Kisburn did battle and failed, proud cities razed one by one to rubble while the countryside smoked with the burned-out shells of farmsteads. The wizards of Mhored Kara came singing to the field and perished, slaughtered beside their familiars without any bard to commemorate their passing. The images continued, relentless. Gierj-demons sang in another place, and fire swept across the thornbrakes of Cliffhaven. Bleeding, riddled with burns, the Kielmark howled curses as he and his men roasted like slaughtered animals. On the north-shore cliffs, dirtied tons of ice softened and slithered seaward with a roar like a spring avalanche. Bloodthirsty whistles echoed over the roar of flames. When the heat subsided, the frostwargs scuttled to freedom, and their segmented legs scattered the bones of the Stormwarden of Elrinfaer who had once confined them. Roused, murderous, crazed to insatiable frenzy, the creatures rampaged across the straits. No Firelord stood forth to curb them.

  Broken at last by grief, Jaric wept. Yet the images knifed through his tears with terrible clarity. Landfast became desecrated by demons.
Priests died, disembowelled, and the knowledge preserved by Keithland's first, star-faring generations was torn from broken towers. Forever ignorant of their heritage, the townsmen trapped in the streets suffered diabolical torment as the Dark-dreamer culled the weak from the strong. Demons bred the survivors for slavery.

  Jaric's tears became the salt-wet tumble of storm waves. Crouched in despair over Callinde's rail, he cast the Keys to Elrinfaer into the sea, that Kor's Accursed might never recover them. Yet atrocity did not end. Maelgrim Dark-dreamer and his pack of Thienz chased down their final quarry, the heir of Ivain Firelord whose latent masteries held Keithland's last chance of recovery. Winded and beaten after a long, hopeless flight through the wilds, Jaric stumbled to his knees against the granite cliffs of Northsea. His captors closed in, Emien among them, his eyes bereft of all trace of humanity. Jaric gasped air into burning lungs. At bay and cornered, he stared at the sword blade which quivered in triumph at his throat.

  'You showed mercy and granted me life, once,' said the brother whose hand had murdered Taen. 'I survived to know my true masters. Shall I offer you the same courtesy? The Keys to Elrinfaer are lost, but your talents might yet unbind the Mharg.'

  Jaric tensed, his final, desperate act an attempt to throw himself on his enemy's blade. But the Dark-dreamer engaged his mastery and slapped him aside unharmed. Captured alive, and bound by the Thienz, Ivainson saw himself delivered to Shadowfane.