The keep of fire, p.22
The Keep of Fire, page 22
“You’re a beautiful girl, Tira,” Grace said in a soft voice, and she meant it.
The girl pulled her hand back, bowed her head, and carried an armful of dishes from the room. Daynen followed her. Grace watched the two go.
“Does Eddoc have any children of his own?” she asked.
Kalleth answered. “His wife died while heavy with their first child some years back, and I do not believe he’s taken another wife since.” He glanced at the reeve, who nodded in agreement.
Lirith rested her chin on a hand. “Lord Eddoc must be a very kind man to take in the children of others.”
“Too kind, sometimes,” Jastar murmured.
Grace glanced up. What had that meant? Did the reeve fear that the children were too great a burden for his lord? However, before she could ask more, Kalleth stood.
“We will leave early in the morning.”
“Then I will be up to see you off, my lord,” the reeve said.
However, Grace knew the knight’s statement had been as much a suggestion that the ladies retire to their chamber as it had been an announcement for the host.
Following Lirith’s lead, Grace and Aryn rose, bid the men good night, and headed upstairs. When they stepped into their chamber, they found Daynen and Tira within. The children had replaced the linens on the beds with fresh ones. When he heard them enter, Daynen hastily gathered up the old sheets and moved to the door. Tira followed after him, then halted when she drew close to Grace.
“Come on, Tira,” Daynen said.
“No,” Grace said. “It’s all right.”
She knelt and laid her hands on the girl’s shoulders. They were far too sharp and bony. She brushed the girl’s fiery hair from her face.
“You don’t need to hide,” she said. “Not with your pretty face.”
Tira went stiff, but Grace didn’t let go. The girl relaxed and looked up, grinning to show perfect white teeth. Grace grinned back.
“You have a good manner with children, sister,” Lirith said.
Now it was Grace’s turn to go rigid. In the ED she had avoided pediatric patients with grim determination. Children could be too disarming. Too honest. Yet somehow she felt at ease with Tira. What was different?
Isn’t it obvious, Grace? Mute kids have a hard time asking difficult questions.
“When did Tira stop talking?” she asked Daynen.
“She was like this when Lord Eddoc found her.”
Aryn took a step closer. “The lord found her?”
Daynen nodded. “It was when he journeyed to Perridon this spring, to visit his cousin. On his return he found her wandering by herself, in the wilds of southern Perridon. There was no way to know what had happened to her—she couldn’t say. So in his kindness Lord Eddoc brought her home.”
“How is it you know her name?” Lirith said.
“We don’t, not really. Tira is what my lord calls her. I think it was the name of his wife.”
With deft fingers Grace probed the girl’s throat, but she detected no abnormalities. Mostly likely Tira was physically capable of speech. However, the wounds she had suffered were more than enough to induce behavioral changes. It was not uncommon for a child to respond to trauma by refusing to speak. But how had she gotten burned?
Don’t you know, Grace? How else have people been burned in this Dominion?
Again she saw the charred remains of the village, and the man on the cot writhing as he underwent his impossible metamorphosis. But it couldn’t be the same, could it? Tira’s wound had healed—it was just a mundane burn.
“Tira and I should go, my lady,” Daynen said.
Grace nodded. “You heard him,” she said to Tira. “Go on—we’ll see you tomorrow.”
Daynen stepped into the hall, and Tira turned and trotted toward him. However, when she reached the door she stopped and turned. She looked at Grace, pointed through the open doorway, then formed her hand into a stiff shape and brought it up and down in a jerking motion.
Daynen frowned. “What’s Tira doing?”
Grace glanced at Lirith and Aryn, then back at the girl. Tira continued to make the peculiar motion, her face an impassive mask.
“I’m not sure,” Grace said. “I think … I think she’s trying to tell me something.”
Daynen shrugged. “Tira’s funny sometimes.” He groped forward, found her shoulder, and gently pulled her to him. “Come on, Tira. The ladies need to sleep, and so do we.”
The boy and the girl left the room, shutting the door behind them. Grace looked at the other women, but any words she might have spoken were lost as another clap of thunder shook the stones of the house.
34.
Grace woke to ashen light.
She sat up in her bed, pushed snarled hair from her eyes, and blinked. Something was strange—her ears seemed to throb, and the stuffy air of the chamber pressed in on her. Then she realized what it was.
Silence.
She wasn’t certain when she had finally fallen asleep. The storm had raged on long into the night. Even through her closed eyelids she could see the metallic flashes of lightning, and despite a feather pillow mashed over her head the thunder drummed through her skull. At some point she must have fallen into a fitful sleep. And now …
Grace cocked her head, listening, but she heard nothing except the steady breathing of Aryn and Lirith in the bed across the room. The storm had finally passed.
She rose and dressed, careful to make as little noise as possible. There was no point in waking Aryn and Lirith yet. By the light, dawn was still some time off, and given the restless night all were certain to have had, she guessed their departure from Falanor would be later than usual.
Unless Sir Kalleth marches in here with his spurs on and kicks us all into motion.
Grace wouldn’t put it past the stern knight.
She slipped through the door and pressed it shut. As she started down the hall, her nose wrinkled. Yesterday’s putrid scent still hung on the air, stronger than ever. What had the cook done with that joint of meat? Shoved it up in the rafters? She hurried down the hall to the head of the stairs.
When she stepped into the main hall, she found she was not the only one who had arisen early, for Meridar and Durge sat at the long table. A fire burned on the hearth. No matter how hot the day, Grace had observed, people in the Dominions always lit a fire. As far as she could tell, it was some sort of obsessive-compulsive need in medieval people.
The boy, Daynen, was in the act of setting a tray of bread, cheese, and dried fruit on the table. Tira followed behind him, carrying with studious care a clay pitcher of some grainy-looking fluid. She set it on the table without spilling a drop.
“Hello,” Grace said from the doorway.
The knights rose to their feet, and Daynen smiled.
“Good morrow, my lady,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”
Grace raised a hand to the back of her aching head, glad the boy couldn’t see the pained expression on her face. “Just fine,” she said.
“Reeve Jastar left early to see to affairs in the village, but he bade me to be sure you had anything you needed.”
“How is Lady Aryn?” Meridar asked before Grace could thank Daynen. “And Lady Lirith,” the knight added belatedly, his pitted cheeks brightening.
A twinge of regret pulled at Grace’s heart. She wished Meridar didn’t feel the way he did about the baroness. Then again, he was hardly a stupid man. No doubt he wished the same.
“They’re still sleeping,” Grace said.
She felt a tug on her skirt and looked down. Tira pointed to the table: Eat. Grace crouched down, bringing her eyes on a level with the girl’s.
“Thank you,” she said.
Tira gave a hesitant nod, then ducked her head, letting her red hair cover the shiny, melted scars on her face. She hurried to a corner of the hall. Grace sighed. Something told her that the smile she had glimpsed last night was a rare gift.
She sat down and surveyed the breakfast fare. The soupy brown liquid in the pitcher turned out to be beer, although if someone had whirled together stale bread and water in a blender she wouldn’t have known the difference. Grace would have preferred a blistering-hot cup of maddok laced with a single curl of cream. Her growing suspicion was that the entire Dark Ages on Earth would have lasted about three weeks instead of ten centuries if there just had been an ample supply of coffee to get everyone’s brains jump-started.
She sipped her beer, then looked at Durge. “Where is Kalleth?”
Durge’s expression was as somber as his gray attire. “I do not know. During the night I went to see to the horses, to be certain fear of the storm had not driven them to harm. When I returned sometime later he was gone.”
Meridar broke open a loaf of coarse bread. “Kalleth rose very early this morning, just as the storm was waning. He told me there was something he wished to see, but he did not say what it was, and he has not returned since.”
Grace frowned. That was peculiar news. Kalleth hardly seemed like the type just to wander off in the night. He must have had a task of specific import to see to. “What should we do?” she said.
“We will wait,” Durge said. “For a time.”
The piece of bread Grace had started to swallow stuck in her throat.
They continued eating in silence, and when they finished the knights headed outside to ready the horses for the day’s journey. Daynen cleared some of the dishes, leaving out the food for those who had not yet risen, and Grace found herself alone with Tira. She tried to speak to the girl, but Tira sat on a bench, staring into the fire, and did not move. Whatever Grace had done to reach the child last night, it escaped her now as surely as the Touch. She was glad when Daynen returned to the hall.
“May I ask you a question, Daynen?” she said in a careful voice.
He nodded and sat on a bench. “Of course, my lady.”
“I’m a healer,” she said. “I was wondering about your eyes. Can I ask how you lost your sight?”
He turned his face up, his tousled hair falling back. “I looked into the sun. I looked and never turned away.”
Grace’s jaw dropped. She had expected fever, or perhaps a blow to the head, but not this. Staring at the sun would sear the retinas and fry the optic nerve to a crisp. There was nothing Grace could do to repair that kind of damage.
“Why?” she said, the question startled out of her.
“They come in fire. That’s what my father said. So one day I woke up and knew I had to look into the sun, because that’s the biggest fire there is. I knew that if I looked long enough, I would see what we’re supposed to do to stop them.”
Grace shook her head, fighting for understanding. “Who are you talking about? Who comes in fire?”
“The Burnt Ones.”
Grace clutched the edge of the table. “You’ve seen the Burnt Ones?” Her voice was an urgent whisper. “Tell me, Daynen. Have you seen them?”
He shook his head. “No, but my father spoke of them. He heard about them from a man who came from the east. The man said that people get a fever, and that some of them die, but that some don’t, that they turn black as night and become the Burnt Ones and come back to burn everyone up. He used some other word, too. Kren … krem …”
“Krondrim,” Grace murmured.
He nodded. “Yes, that was it. He said the krondrim would come for us here just like they had in his village.”
Grace laid her hands on the boy’s shoulders and spoke in precise words. She had to know, she had to be certain. “This is important, Daynen. Did anyone touch the man—the one who came from the east? Did anyone have contact with him?”
Daynen frowned. “I don’t think my father touched him. He said there was something wrong with the man, that he smelled bad. The man went to talk to Jastar, I think, but then I didn’t see him again. He must have kept traveling west.”
Dread trickled into Grace’s stomach. She wished she hadn’t drunk the sour beer.
“And I did see something, my lady. In the sun. Just before everything went dark, I saw it so clearly.”
She moved to him. “What was it, Daynen? What did you see?”
A smile touched his lips. It was a strange expression—distant yet joyful. Beatific, that was the word. The expression on the face of a painted saint whose pale body was pierced with arrows.
“It was me, my lady. I was carrying a girl in my arms while I walked on the bright fields of the sun. It was beautiful.”
Grace could find no words. She couldn’t tell him that it had been only a hallucination, one last-ditch effort by the vision center of his brain to make sense of the searing stream of photons before the whole system overloaded. He had looked to the sun for answers but had found only darkness.
He sighed and stood. “I’m going to go upstairs, my lady. I aired out Lord Eddoc’s chamber yesterday, but I think it still needs another try.”
Grace gave a stiff nod as he left the room, even though she knew he couldn’t see it. Then another figure stepped through the door. Grace gazed up into mysterious brown eyes.
“That child has the Sight,” Lirith said.
“Do you think so? Or is he just a stupid kid who stared at the sun too long?”
Lirith shrugged. “Who can say? But the simplest explanation is not always the truest, sister. Remember that.”
Grace thought about this, but things seemed no clearer. She stood. “I don’t like this, Lirith. There’s been no sign of the Burning Plague here, but there’s something wrong about this place all the same. Let’s wake Aryn and get the others. We need to find Sir Kalleth and go.”
The two women headed upstairs. When they reached the door to their chamber, Grace saw that the door on the opposite side of the corridor was ajar. Lord Eddoc’s chamber. Daynen must have gone in to open the window.
It hit Grace a second later: the choking atmosphere of decay. It poured almost tangibly through the open door. Flies buzzed on the air. Before she thought about it, she approached the door to Eddoc’s chamber. Daynen stood beside the open window, nose wrinkled, fanning his face with a hand. Grace’s eyes slid past him to the bed.
The decomposition was advanced. Death had occurred three days ago, maybe four. It was hard to say, because even from the door Grace could see that Lord Eddoc had been in the intermediate stages of the Burning Plague. The blisters were apparent, as were the first black patches showing through the skin. The cause of death was easy to determine: The cut in his throat was so deep it had nearly decapitated him. So not all of his flesh had been toughened yet.
The bloated remains of Lord Eddoc held Grace’s eyes for only a moment. Her gaze continued on, to the form lying facedown on the floor in a pool of blood. She didn’t need to see his face. His stocky shoulders and gray-shot hair were enough. The knife still protruded from his back. By its position, Grace guessed it had slipped through two ribs to pierce his heart. Sir Kalleth had died before he even knew he had been struck.
There was a gasp behind her. Lirith.
Daynen looked up at the sound. “Lady Grace? Is that you? Or is that Lady Lirith?”
Grace shook her head. Daynen had been in this room yesterday. But he couldn’t see. He didn’t know what lay on the bed.
The boy frowned. “What is it, my lady?”
Grace did not answer him. Motion caught the corner of her eye. She turned and glanced down. Tira stood just outside the door. The red-haired girl stared forward, her scarred face blank. As she had done last night, she moved her arm up and down in a stiff chopping motion.
Grace looked up into Lirith’s startled eyes.
“Get Durge,” she said.
35.
The five travelers stood outside the open door to Eddoc’s chamber, shocked into silence. Only the drone of flies sounded on the air. Aryn had stepped from her room at the same moment Durge and Meridar ran, boots clomping, up the stairs. Her scream had frozen everyone’s blood.
As if through great force of will, Aryn turned away from the grisly scene in the lord’s chamber and pressed her face against Sir Meridar’s chest. For once, Grace noted distantly, the baroness’s action appeared genuine rather than manipulative. The anger on the homely knight’s face was replaced by astonishment. He stiffened, then reached up and enfolded the slender young woman in strong arms.
Lirith was the first to find her voice. “So that was what Tira was trying to tell you last night, Grace.”
Durge looked at Grace. The Embarran’s face was as hard as wind-battered stone. “What does Lady Lirith mean?”
“Tira.” Grace folded her arms over the bodice of her gown. “I think … I think she must have seen what Jastar did. When he killed Eddoc.”
Daynen stood in the hallway now, staring with wide, blind eyes. He gripped Tira tightly. The girl gazed forward, her half-melted expression as placid as ever, twirling a lock of her fire-red hair with a finger.
“Kalleth must have suspected some sort of foul play,” Durge said. He glanced at Meridar. “That was what he went to see last night, when he left our room.”
With careful but deliberate motions, Meridar pushed Aryn away. Lirith took the young woman and circled an arm around her shoulders.
Meridar clenched his hand into a fist. “Jastar must have been waiting in Eddoc’s chamber, knife in hand, afraid one of us would see his handiwork. Then Kalleth did. Blast that cursed reeve. I will have his blood!”
Grace shuddered. The kindly knight she knew was gone. Now a queer light shone in his eyes.
“Wait.” Grace took a step forward. “I don’t … I don’t think you understand everything.”
