The Keys to the Realms (The Dream Stewards) (13 page)

“I so vow.” She lifted the chalice to her lips, sipped the blood of their bond, and then offered the vessel to Hywel.

He accepted the cup without question, but not without hesitation. The only faith Hywel knew was his sure belief in his
destiny
. The prophecy was the purpose to which he had been born, and the only thing more valuable to Hywel than the promise of this destiny was his word. He did not give it lightly. In fact, he rarely gave it at all.

He raised the cup to drink. “I so vow.”

T
WELVE

G
lain arose far before dawn, anxious and ambivalent. Nothing good had come from several hours of fitful meditation once the dreams had departed. Certainly not sleep, which lately was almost as dreaded as it was
necessary
.

Since the premonitions had begun nearly two years before, very few nights had passed undisturbed, and the dreams that came were always ghastly. She had long ago given up hoping for visions of glad tidings. That was not her gift. However, a forewarning of an ugly fate was preferable to no warning at all. And sometimes Glain was able to effect a change for the better.

Such was the obscene nature of these precognitions. The visions revealed, often in incongruent scenes of metaphoric horror, a destiny that was already unfolding and all but inevitable should events progress unchallenged. The revelations did not, however, offer any indication of
how
one might intervene. That was a matter of interpretation and, very often, accidental discovery. And this was the dilemma that truly kept her up nights and the one that troubled her so deeply now.

Glain dressed in the dark, too distracted to bother with the candle ends or the hearth. Twice more the grisly vision of the clashing stags had come to her, each reiteration more urgent and bloody than the last. She had believed her conversations with Hywel would alter the outcome, but the dream remained the same. Apparently an improvement in Hywel’s perspective was not enough, and Glain had the distinct impression that the time for change was waning.

She took to wandering the second-floor corridors so as not to disturb the slumbering souls in the third-floor residences wi
th h
er restlessness. Not that the answers were any more likely to find h
er a
s she prowled the Fane than they had while lying awake in her bed, but somehow Glain felt less useless.

The rhythmic whisper of her soft-soled house shoes scuffing the stone floor created an illusion of companionship at first, filling the quiet with something more than the sound of her breathing. But soon, given the dark images and brooding thoughts occupying her mind and the shifting shadows cast upon the corridor walls by the guttering torches, she began to feel vulnerable.

It was still an hour at least until the novices assigned the house duties would be up and about, and Glain decided to wait out the time until she could call for tea by pondering her worries in the scriptorium. She eased open one of the heavy double doors partway and slid inside, feeling a little sneaky, but she did not want her solitude interrupted by someone investigating a suspicious noise.

The ember glow from the remains of yesterday’s fire was welcoming, but the huge room with its alcoves and shelved recesses and towering book stacks was a less reassuring refuge than she had hoped. Glain snapped her fingers and incited the charred, half-spent logs in the hearth into a short-lived flare, then sat in the nearest armchair, facing the dying heat.

The room was still too cold and too dark to be comfortable. Alone with the memories of her night terrors, Glain’s attention began to wander from the soft crackle of barely burning wood toward the random creak and clunk of settling foundation stones and the hushed moans of the walls breathing. A breeze, sneaking through a gap in the framing of one of the oversized arched-transom windows that punctuated the exterior wall, rustled the coverings. The drapes were drawn over the leaded panes to keep out the cold, but they also shut out any celestial light. Glain went to the window and pulled back the heavy curtain on one side, hoping for moon sign.

The clouds were too thick to see stars but thin enough that the sky was a paler shade of black than the silhouetted trees of the forest beyond the walls. The enchanted mist that veiled the Fane kept to the trees, forming a ring of wispy white fog around the castle that she could see even from two furlongs away. But inside the walls, the grounds proper were shrouded in black and even blacker shadows that created a monochromatic landscape where only motion distinguished one thing from another.

Though it was too dark to see detail, Glain could orient her view from memory. This window was north facing and overlooked the rear of the keep—the herb and vegetable patches directly below and the sheepfold and old orchard beyond. The apple grove was ancient and stretched all the way to the outer wall. To the east, in daylight Glain would have a glimpse of the ruined dormitory that had once housed the apprentices; and to the west, a portion of the faerie meadow.

The apple trees swaying with the breeze caught her eye, and Glain wondered if the waning winter was whipping up a last bluster. For a while she watched their spindly, naked boughs bend and wave against the misty white background of the enchanted veil, and then she noticed something else in motion on the ground.

It was coming closer toward the Fane. Glain stared hard into the shadows, waiting for the dark and indistinct mass to take recognizable form. The shape moved with the cadence and intent of a living thing like a stag or a horse. As it drew nearer, she realized it was more than one, a pack or a herd. And once they were very near, Glain knew it was neither.

Approaching the Fane from the apple grove was a cluster of hooded and cloaked persons. Three, or maybe four—she couldn’t be sure, and they were completely indistinct in the dark and from this distance. Presumably Stewards, but who, and up to what? This was odd and unexpected, but not unheard of, and probably nothing more sinister than a few of the novices daring themselves to brave the grove at night. But given the frightful happenings taking place in the Fane, it was more than a little possible that something far more dangerous and even illicit
was afo
ot.

Glain watched until the group disappeared beneath the eaves, assuming they would enter the castle through the kitchens. If she hurried, she could be in the corridor on the main floor by the time they made their way back to the sleeping porches in the east annex. And if any of them happened to be one of the new prefects she had assigned or any of her fellow acolytes, they would have no choice but to face her.

She took the stairs as quickly as she could, growing more suspicious and angry as she ran. Just as she reached the grand
vestibule
, she paused, thinking she heard voices down the west annex hallway, just ahead of her. Instead, she realized the
murmurs
, now accompanied by footsteps, were overhead. They had taken the service stairs.

Cursing herself for not having thought of it first, Glain ran back up the stairs, as far as the second-floor landing, and paused again to listen. She waited and waited, but heard nothing more. Somehow she had missed them.

Suddenly, a rustle from below reached her ears. She leapt down the steps to the vestibule and turned down the west annex hallway toward the kitchens and the sound of approaching fo
otfa
lls.

“Will you be taking your morning tea in the scriptorium, Proctor?” The attendant was startled and clearly embarrassed to see her so early, thinking he was late to his duties.

Glain struggled to give a polite nod and turned straight around, winded and aggravated beyond words. She made her way back up the stairs to await her tea and mull over what might well have been the longest night of her life.

Master Eldrith could not stop wringing his hands. Whenever his fingers were not purposefully occupied with a quill or a cup or a task, they took to nervous fidgeting as though they were under the direction of a mind other than his. And so Eldrith had unconsciously adopted the annoying habit as a way to keep himself under control.

It did not seem to be helping much, the wringing of hands. If anything, it keyed his nerves to an even more frantic pitch. Eldrith tried clasping them on his desktop while he waited, and then in his lap. Lastly he held them clenched at the red and gold tasseled sash that belted his vestments as he took to pacing back and forth behind his desk, beneath the leaded glass window depicting the sigil of Castell Banraven—a white raven rising on a red shield.

Drinking did some good, but he found it difficult to partake of wine without sodding himself into a stupor. He glanced at the cabinet on the opposite wall, reassuring his conscience that just one cup couldn’t hurt, and then remembered he had thrown out the last of the port in an effort to keep himself from succumbing in moments like these.

The door latch clicked and nearly sent him to his death by way of terror. But it was only Algernon, thank the Ancients, come to report. Eldrith was almost too afraid to ask.

“Well?”

Elder Algernon scuttled into the rectory and closed the door behind him. “The Hellion scouts have returned. They have abandoned the chase for now.”

Eldrith sighed aloud with relief. “Then Thorne got away.”

“If he did, it’s no thanks to you,” Algernon snipped. Gnarled and shriveled as he was, the old man had plenty of snarl left. “If I hadn’t stepped in when I did, you’d have gone through with it. You’d have given him over.”

Eldrith hoped not, though he wouldn’t dare swear it. “But you did step in, Algernon, just as I knew you would.”

“No more men of the Ruagaire Brotherhood will come to harm so long as I can do something about it.” Silver cups clattered as they rocked back and forth on their stems. Algernon had gone to the cabinet and was rooting through it. “Where the bloody hell is the port?”

Eldrith winced a little and reluctantly reached behind the draperies for the silver flacon he had hidden on the windowsill, setting it down on the desk a little too hard. “Here. It’s claret, though, not port. Might as well bring two cups.”

Algernon gave him a reproachful scowl but brought two cups anyway. “What excuse did you give?”

“That Thorne sensed mage sign more quickly than I expected and ran before he could be stopped.” Eldrith eyed the wine sloshing into the cup far too eagerly. “Not so hard to believe really, given Thorne’s reputation. But our new prelate was not pleased.”

“Hah,” Algernon scoffed. “Where is he now?”

“Retired to his chambers, finally.” Eldrith was sickened to think of it. He missed the featherbed in his former room and the other creature comforts the dark mage had commandeered.
“I h
ave no idea what goes on all night in those dungeons, and I hope to never know.”

“Thorne will be back. He will want answers.”

Eldrith knew this was true, and in fact he was counting on it. “If anyone can save us, it is Thorne.”

Algernon coughed out a wry chuckle. “If he tries, he’ll end up no better off than Trevanion for his trouble. Even the great Thorne Edwall is a small challenge to this black sorcerer. He’ll need an army of mage hunters, all of them at least as good as he is, if not better.”

A shiver rippled along Eldrith’s spine. The blackened, malformed remains of Martin Trevanion had burned visions of unimaginable horrors into his mind. At night, he could still hear Martin’s screams. And yet, despite several days of soul-gutting torture, Trevanion had died without uttering a single word, not even a hint at the whereabouts of the oldest mageborn stronghold in the White Woods.

Eldrith swallowed the wine in one gulp and pounded the empty stem on the desk. “Keep pouring, Algernon. And keep praying that you’re not the next ‘inquiry’ on his list.”

“I doubt the black mage worries much about me.” Algernon narrowed his eyes and unfurled a thin, mocking smile. “I am a very old man with a very poor memory, Eldrith. And you forget. I’ve spent all my days in Banraven. I believe I just may be the only one of us left who has never been to Elder Keep.”

Eldrith tasted the salt of his own sweat as tiny, cold droplets erupted on his upper lip. He snatched the cup up nearly before Algernon had finished filling it and sucked the wine down. “By the time this is finished, you may well be the only one of us left at all.”

Algernon no longer bothered to hide his disgust or dress it up with sarcasm. “How could you have been such a fool?”

“How was I to know what he had done?” Eldrith snapped back, trying to sound less defensive than he felt.

“You knew enough,” Algernon accused. “For years we’ve heard rumors he was inciting sedition. Drydwen herself warned you against him, and then there were Trevanion’s reports of odd happenings near Fane Gramarye.”

“I never imagined what he had become.” Eldrith’s knees would no longer hold him upright. He wobbled to his desk chair and slumped into its overstuffed arms. The empty cup still clutched in his hand mocked his defeat. “What he was capable of.”

“You underestimated him. Or worse, you overestimated yourself.” Now Algernon mocked him. “To my knowledge, your grace, arrogance is not one of the four virtues.”

Eldrith was mortified. When the dark mage and his legion had arrived at Banraven, demanding the Brotherhood surrender their sanctuary, Eldrith feigned submission and opened the doors to evil. He had believed he could contain it, even conquer it. He had been wrong.

At least he now understood Machreth’s intentions, though the knowledge kept him up nights. Having been thwarted in his attempt to overtake Fane Gramarye and the well of knowledge it guarded, the dark mage had set his ambitions on Elder Keep and its secrets. Eldrith now had no choice but to accept that Machreth would spare none of the Order in the end. The power of the
Ruagaire
, should they ever regain their strength in numbers, was the only force Machreth still had any reason to fear.