The keep of fire, p.5
The Keep of Fire, page 5
She gazed forward and let herself be. Henna had drawn the fire from deep in her close-cropped black hair, and her one concession to makeup was a line of kohl that outlined her smoky jade eyes. A cross dangled from one ear, and an ankh from the other. Against the hollow of her throat rested a yellowed bear claw that her great-grandfather had given her the day he died.
Bear will give you strength, little one. Do not forget him when you are alone and afraid.
She brushed the claw with a finger and smiled. The blood of three Indian tribes ran in her veins, and she could trace her lineage to the legendary hero Cuchulain—or at least so her Irish grandmother had claimed. But she wasn’t just where she had come from. She was where she was, and where she was going. And she had a new tribe now.
Deirdre stepped into the street; her Harley was parked around the corner. It was nice to be able to leave the bike out without having to worry about it. Not like Paris or Athens. Definitely not like London. She straddled her hog, then started it and wheeled down the street in one seamless sequence. A helmet would have been a good idea; she usually wore one. But not here, not today. Today she needed to feel the wind tangle its fingers through her hair. Lovers were fine, and their caresses sweet, but the wind would never abandon you.
Square false fronts flashed by, then the town was gone, and it was only two-lane and mountains before her. As she rode, Deirdre let the last few years drift through her mind. She had been on many journeys since she last set foot in Castle City, and she had seen many wonders. She had prowled through catacombs beneath the Tower of London. She had meditated in the stony company of Notre Dame’s gargoyles. She had climbed the jungle pyramids of Tikal, had stood small and humble beneath the dome of the Hagia Sophia, and had gazed into deathless eyes in silent Egyptian tombs.
Yet, despite all the sights she had witnessed, nothing filled her with awe like the Colorado mountains. Theirs was no human beauty, limited and ephemeral, carved by mortal and imperfect hands. The mountains were great and ancient, and they did not need people. All the same, they were generous with their wonder. No sight she had encountered in all her travels gave her songs like the mountains did. It was good to be back, if only for a short while.
Deirdre cruised down a flat stretch of blacktop. Up ahead, a rusty speck grew rapidly into a car—a faded Volvo with crumpled bumpers. Inside, the shadow of a driver hunched over the steering wheel. By the time Deirdre recognized both vehicle and driver, they had flashed by. She glanced over her shoulder. Behind her, the Volvo slowed, then turned off the highway and headed down a dirt road. The car disappeared behind an outcrop, leaving only a plume of dust to rise like smoke into the dull morning sky.
Where was Max Bayfield going at such an early hour? He should have been home resting. These last days his burnt hand had seemed only to get worse, not better. Deirdre hoped Travis’s partner was all right; pain could make people do strange things. She almost considered going after him, but she had other duties that beckoned her.
She turned her gaze forward just in time to lean into a sharp curve. The valley floor fell away, and the highway bore her up into a twisting canyon. Last night she had told Travis not to expect her at the saloon that day, that she was going to the Medieval Festival. And maybe she would go there later, so her words would not become lies and, like cursed arrows, fly back to strike her. But it was not to the festival that she was going now.
The canyon opened up, and the two lanes of asphalt funneled into a narrow bridge. Deirdre veered onto a pull-off and brought the Harley to a halt. Years ago, this had been her favored place to find a moment of solitude. She hoped it would grant her the same now.
She drew something out of the Harley’s saddlebag, then walked to the edge of the pull-off and gazed down a slope of tumbled boulders. In her memory, Granite Creek rushed over those rocks in a hurry to reach the ocean. Now a trickle oozed between the boulders, and mosquitoes clouded the air over pools of standing water. All the same, there was beauty in the slender aspens that clung to the sides of the creek bed. She glanced up, made sure she had good exposure to the southeastern sky, then lifted the object in her hand—a slim phone—and flipped it on.
Deirdre touched one button and held the phone to her ear. Three seconds later, a voice from another part of the world answered.
“I’ve made contact,” she said.
The voice spoke several careful words. A thrill coursed through her, and she gave a slow nod.
“Yes, I suppose it would be. A Class One encounter. If you’re right.”
Now the voice was sharper.
Deirdre winced, then licked her lips and forced her voice to remain even. “That’s what I’m here to confirm.”
A question. She ran a hand through her short hair. High above, a hawk wheeled against the sky.
“No, I haven’t verified anything. Not yet. But there was something—a medicinal herb. He used it to make an analgesic tea for his business partner. I know a fair amount about herb lore, but this was not a plant I recognized.” She nodded. “Yes, I saved some of the leaves from the cup. I’ve already couriered the specimen to the London Charterhouse for testing. It should arrive today.”
She listened for a few seconds more—the plan had not changed. The voice started to conclude.
“Wait,” she said. “There’s something more. There was … there was an incident at his place of business. Spontaneous combustion. Four days ago. There was no ID for the victim, but it was a textbook example. I think it might be related to the others.”
She listened, then nodded. “Yes, it is. But I’ll have opportunity for more observation. I helped him reopen the saloon after the incident, and he expects me to check back.”
Another question, and this time it was Deirdre’s voice that contained a note of annoyance.
“No, I haven’t forgotten the Third Desideratum, or the Vow for that matter. I’ve been watching, or doing what an old friend would do, and that’s it.”
A few more words from the phone. They were not conciliatory. She forced herself to breathe.
“If you think that’s wise.”
There was a click, and the connection was closed. Deirdre pressed a button and lowered the phone. So it had begun. There was no turning back now. She could only hope she was doing the right thing.
But it is right, you know it, Deirdre. You knew it when you swore the Vow in London. To Watch—To Believe—To Wait. This is how it has to be.
Deirdre sighed. If she hurried, she could still be at the gates of the Medieval Festival when they opened and save herself from being a liar. She turned to head for the motorcycle—
—and stopped in mid-stride.
“Hello,” the girl said.
The child’s voice was high and clear, silver against china. Deirdre blinked, mouth open. The girl before her appeared to be eight or nine years old, her dark hair pulled back from the pale cherub’s cameo of her face. She wore an old-fashioned dress of black wool and equally old-fashioned buttoned shoes.
Deirdre glanced up. Her Harley was the only vehicle in sight. But how had the girl gotten here? How had she approached across ten yards of gravel without making a sound? And what did she want?
“To watch,” the girl said. “To believe. To wait.”
Deirdre sucked in a breath. But the girl had only overheard her conversation, that was all. Deirdre must have spoken the words aloud.
“Are you lost?” she said.
“No,” the girl replied in her lisping voice. “Are you?”
Instinct prickled the back of Deirdre’s neck. Stories echoed in her mind, told beside a fire by her greatgrandfather—spirits that haunted stones, shadows that spoke from trees. The sun had crested the canyon rim, but twilight still clung to the girl’s dress.
“I don’t understand,” Deirdre said.
Purple eyes bored into her. “Seek them as you journey.”
Deirdre found herself crouching down to meet the girl’s eyes. “What do you mean? Seek what?”
“Fire and wonder,” the girl whispered.
A shrill cry pierced the air, and Deirdre looked up. The hawk had wheeled lower on red-tinged wings, and Deirdre gazed into small, bright eyes. The hawk rose on a column of air, dwindled into blue sky, and vanished.
Deirdre looked back down, but she already knew the girl would be gone. That much her greatgrandfather’s stories had taught her.
9.
The sun broke like a blister against the sharp summit of Castle Peak, and crimson flowed down into the valley. The day was almost gone. Its death would bring only relief.
A few locals and fewer tourists passed Travis as he walked down Elk Street. Castle City should have been bustling this time of year, but the usual flood of vacationers had dried to a trickle under the summer glare as steadily as Granite Creek. Travis hadn’t bothered to open the Mine Shaft yet. There was no sense in rushing. Those few customers who did come wouldn’t show up until after sunset, when the valley cooled—at least a bit. He would wait until then.
Nor were Max and Deirdre at the saloon. Last night, Deirdre had told him she would be playing at the Medieval Festival that day, and all afternoon he had imagined red-faced Denverites buying hot pewter dragons and gnawing greasy turkey legs under the fierce high-altitude sun. It seemed less a recipe for entertainment than a prescription for sunstroke. He hoped the bard was having some luck.
As for Max—Travis had stopped by his place on the way into town, but Max’s apartment had been dim and silent, and the Volvo gone. For some reason, Travis had gotten out of his truck to peer through the apartment’s front window. The curtains had been drawn, but through a crack he had glimpsed a clutter of crumpled clothes, newspapers, and dirty dishes. At first he was sure he had looked into the wrong apartment—in his experience, Max’s neatness bordered on pathological—then he checked the number. He hadn’t made a mistake.
On his way back to his pickup, something shiny had caught Travis’s eye, tangled in a web of dry weeds. It was a piece of glossy paper, from a brochure maybe, although Travis could make out only fragments of hyperreal images, so that it was impossible to tell what it was selling. He had shrugged, then shoved the paper into his pocket and climbed back into his truck.
Travis had hoped he would find Max once he got to the Mine Shaft, but his partner hadn’t been at the saloon either. Now, as he walked, a sick feeling rose in his throat. He clenched his jaw and swallowed it.
Of course Max is all right. It’s just a burn, Travis, that’s all. And it’s no mystery that his place is a mess—I’m sure it’s harder to be obsessive-compulsive with just one hand.
Travis angled across Elk Street, toward McKay’s General Store. In his back pocket were the door hinges he had bought four—was it really only four?—days ago. He needed to return the hinges, to exchange them for new ones. They didn’t fit.
As he stepped onto the boardwalk, Travis noticed a black sport utility parked outside of McKay’s. He paused. It might have been the same vehicle he had seen driving past the saloon the other day. Or it might have been different but identical. It was impossible to tell. The glossy jet paint was without dent or blemish, and the tinted windows were as impenetrable as midnight. The crescent moon logo on the side door glowed scarlet in the fiery light of sunset.
A dude ranch cowboy jostled past Travis, and he blinked, realizing he had been staring. He mumbled an apology, then headed through the creaking side door into the familiar clutter of McKay’s General Store.
McKay’s had opened its doors in the 1870s and hadn’t closed them since, barring holidays and the Great Depression. Ian McKay, son of the original owner, had sold the store in the forties, but about ten years ago his granddaughter, Onica McKay, returned to Castle City on a genealogical research trip, got caught by the spell of the valley, and bought the store her great-grandfather had built.
The store hadn’t changed much over the years. The gigantic discount warehouses had invaded other mountain towns, leaving McKay’s pressed-tin ceiling and plate-glass front window intact. The high shelves were just as crowded with merchandise as they had been in the waning days of the silver rush—although now they were more likely to hold garlic presses and cans of Indian curry than pickaxes and bottles of mercury.
Travis breathed in dusty, spicy air and smiled at the smell of history. At least there were some things he could still count on. He wandered back to the hardware section, found a new pair of hinges, and headed toward the front of the store.
The high, chiming sound of bells drifted on the air.
Shock crystallized Travis. Once before he had heard silvery music like that in Castle City. Once before, when everything had begun to—
“Thank you for coming to McKay’s,” a chantlike voice drifted from up ahead.
A man with a plastic shopping bag appeared from around a corner, smiled at Travis, then headed for the side entrance of the store. Travis stepped around the corner and saw the source of the sound.
The antique brass cash register that had dominated the front counter of McKay’s for time out of mind was gone. In its place lurked a low, aerodynamic shape molded from black plastic. Again the chiming shimmered on the air, and Travis knew it was not bells. Instead the sound had that hard, perfect clarity that could come only from an electronic chip.
Another customer—a young woman—waited at the counter. Waunita Lost Owl stood on the other side. Her black-and-white hair was woven into a thick braid, and she wore jeans and a geometric-patterned shirt. A pair of thick-lensed glasses perched in front of her serene brown eyes.
At first Travis thought Waunita was ringing up the young woman’s purchases, but then he wasn’t so certain. Waunita touched each item lightly, then when she was done she touched the black unit on the counter. A pale luminescence frosted the sculpted features of her face, and again the chime sounded on the air.
“Seventeen-thirty-two,” Waunita said.
So she had been totaling the items after all.
The young woman held out a credit card. Waunita took it and passed it over the wedge-shaped unit without touching it. Another chime. Waunita handed the card back, placed the goods in a shiny plastic sack, and nodded as the young woman stepped away.
“Do you need help, Travis?”
He shook his head—he had been staring again. He hurried to the counter and set the hinges down.
“Hello, Waunita. I need to exchange these.”
She nodded and touched the hinges—no, that wasn’t right. Instead she carefully touched the metallic price sticker attached to each one.
Travis frowned as she worked. “What happened to the old cash register?”
“This is better.”
For the first time he noticed that she wore what looked like a black wrist brace, made of nylon and Velcro. On the back of the brace was a small black box. Waunita touched the main unit on the counter. It chimed, and at the same time a small LED on the wrist brace flashed.
His frown deepened.
“It uses my body as a wire,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“When I touch things, this remembers.” She brushed the box attached to the wrist brace, then she gestured to the unit on the counter. “And when I touch this, it listens through my body and hears what things I touched. Then it adds them up.”
Understanding crept into Travis’s mind. He remembered sitting at the saloon with Max on a slow night a few months ago, watching the Wonder Channel on the TV behind the bar. The show had been about new technologies. One had involved a device that could use the human body to transmit data instead of a network cable. Personal area networks—PANs—that was what the monotonous voice of the narrator had called them. But the prototypes had been large and clunky. They had looked like something from a junior high school science fair compared to the slim, elegant device Waunita wore.
“They do good things,” Waunita said.
He shook his head. “What do you mean, Waunita? Who did this for the store?”
She reached under the counter, pulled out a brochure, and handed it to him.
“Maybe they can help you, too, Travis.”
He glanced down at the brochure and almost laughed. Maybe he should have been surprised to see the crescent moon and capital D, but he wasn’t. Duratek. So this was what they did—this was one of the possibilities they advertised.
“Mrs. McKay was worried,” Waunita said. “But now she is full of hope all the time. She says things have not been this good in many years. She is paying me more.”
Travis gazed out the front window. Desiccated scraps of litter blew down Elk Street like dirty tumbleweeds in the gloom. No, Waunita was wrong. Things were not good—they were not good at all. Who were these people? What did they know about real possibilities? He glanced down at the crescent moon on the brochure. Once before he had seen a symbol all over town right before things had changed. Travis crumpled the brochure, shoved it into his pocket, and turned to walk from the store.
“Travis? You forgot your hinges.”
He barely noticed as Waunita pushed the slick plastic sack into his hand, then he stepped out the front door and walked into hot, gritty twilight. He glanced in both directions, looking for the black vehicle, ready to confront these people, to ask them who they were to come here and change things.
The street was empty, the vehicle was gone. Travis sighed and headed back to open up the saloon.
10.
Max called the Mine Shaft at a quarter to midnight.
Behind the bar, Travis fumbled with the handset. “Max? Max, is that you?”
A digital hiss phased into words. “—course it’s me, Travis.” The voice sounded thin and metallic, as if Max spoke from down a long steel tube.
Travis turned his back to block out the low din of conversation. To his amazement, people had been waiting outside the Mine Shaft when he returned from McKay’s. Now the saloon was over half-full. People were kind sometimes. Too kind. He had thrown a rug over the scorch mark on the floor, but he could still smell the stench of fire.
