THE KEEPER

The faster he ran the more the blood coursed down his sleeve, the final moments of his life fleeing him drip by scarlet drip. The Keeper had always told princes and kings that the harder a man ran away from his destiny, the faster he hurtled toward it. How true it felt now. Every hurried step toward escape drew him that much deeper into the maw of death.  

He had no time to remove his coat to see how bad a wound he had received, but judging by the way it soaked all the way down to his fingers, it wasn’t good. Yet he dared not stop. He could hear boots smacking stone behind him. Sounds that promised the final chapter of his story being told in stomps and shouts, panicked breaths and harsh crimson smears upon ancient stone floors.

He raced down cold corridors drenched in shadow, throwing himself blindly around corners, slamming his shoulders as he stumbled into walls at every turn, leaving reckless crimson streaks on the stones. He tried to swat out the orange flames of the reed candles as he careened by, hoping to soak his pursuers in darkness to slow them. But he missed more than he hit, and far too many did not go out even when he swung true.

When the axes had first come through his bedchamber door, he had fled so quickly he had forgotten to take his sword with him, and now he felt its absence acutely. Had he not been sitting in his adjoining study when they came for him, they’d have butchered him in his bed. A twist of good luck to flavor the bad—while they had busied themselves stabbing his pillows, he had slipped out into the halls of the fortress.

But not without injury.

He cradled his shoulder, pain pulsing with every heartbeat. As many as there were after him, he knew he would not be able to keep the chase going forever. The only thing he had to his advantage was that he knew the winding labyrinth of the Heart Keep better than any of the scum they would have sent after him. He knew which doors would be unlocked, and which he could hide behind while they passed. He had always hated this enormous fortress, its corridors bending and branching like arteries. Yet for once he found himself thankful for it. Any ordinary castle would have seen him caught long ago.

He found a door leading up to higher levels of the citadel and made a show of slamming it, then backtracked and crept into a fold in the walls few knew existed, crouching low.

He counted off the names of the Hundred Days to keep his hands from shaking and his throat from groaning as fear sought to strangle him. He matched one name to every drip of his blood slapping the stone floor, waiting for them to come, hoping they would fall for his ruse.

One ran past. Then another. Three more. Others turned down another hallway. He waited until the silence became complete, then rose and turned back, descended the servant stairwell. His breath shook like thunder in his ears. He thought it a miracle the whole castle did not hear him. He tiptoed in his stockings, peeking around corners, sliding against the wall to the end of the hall until he found his scribe’s door.

He punched the door with his fist, holding the latch tight with his other hand so the metal would not rattle. He heard Kaleb rustling about inside, slow to rise. 

Damn it, boy. Get up!

He thumped the door again.

The rusted handle of an oil lamp whined, and a stab of light cut its way out from under the door. The latch wiggled beneath his fingers and he shoved the door inward the instant it clicked, sweeping the lad aside like a broom, swinging the door shut behind him and locking it. 

Kaleb stumbled and fell on his backside, eyes wide as full moons. “My lord?” 

“Parchment,” he said.

“My lord?”

“Is that all you know how to say? Up. Up and bring me parchment.”

Kaleb complied, sliding open a drawer and handing him a pair of sheets, followed by quill and pen.

He slapped it flat on Kaleb’s bedside table and set the thoughts in his head into words, the quill a claw scraping sharp black lines to the page.

Kaleb certainly noticed the blood sopping from his sleeve, smearing across the parchment in thick crimson and pattering on the floor. The young man recoiled, his hip catching his chair, tipping it over backwards. It slammed to the floor like a crack of thunder. “My lord, you are…you are hurt.”

He ignored the lad, scribbling as fast as he could. Soon they would search for him here. It was only a matter of time. All the same, he cursed himself for bleeding so. The sheets of parchment were already spotted in red, more dribbling out his sleeve every moment, leaving calligraphic smears as his hand worked across the page. He worried how legible his messages might be when they made it into the hands he meant to have them. 

“You are bleeding, my lord. We must bring you to a physician.”

He did not answer.

Kaleb took a step back. “Why do you not wish to see the physician?” A sour thread of fear wound its way through his words. “Are you in danger?”

He sighed.

Kaleb correctly guessed this to be a confirmation. ”But…but you are the Keeper of the royal records, my lord. You are…important. The guards, the knights, the soldiers, someone would surely come to defend you if we sound the alarm.”

He wished he had time to say more, to offer the lad the explanation he deserved, the thanks he was due. But the message was all that mattered now. 

No sooner had he scratched the final cross of a letter than the pounding began. Two fists at least. Beating the wood like a drum, rattling the hinges. 

Kaleb’s flesh turned white as snow.

The Keeper began a second copy of the letter as the first axe bit into the door. Every dab of the quill in the pool of midnight ink was punctuated by another snap of wood. The old oak bought him just enough time to finish, but by then a large enough gap had been chopped open for one of them to reach a hand through, gloved fingers fumbling for the lock.

Kaleb wet his nightclothes, eyes hollow, hands shaking. 

“Bring me your sword, Kaleb.”

“My lord?”

“I do hate to repeat myself, Kaleb.”

The young man hastened to his bedside and retrieved the red leather rig of his swordbelt, holding the scabbard up, belt and all, balanced on his open palms, offering it to him.

He set down the quill. His fingers groped for the hilt as his bloody hand tucked the messages into his coat pocket, hurriedly drawing the blade, unable to avoid scratching the tip against the wall behind him in the close confines.

Two men lurched through the doorway. When they saw him holding a sword, they seemed shocked, like men who had misplaced their dinner and wandered in by mistake. They looked him up and down, marveling at the blue velvet coat hanging halfway down his thighs, the fashion of a rich man, a man of power. He could tell at a glance he was not the sort this lot were used to killing. 

But that did not mean it would stop them. One raised the axe they used to chop through the door, the other a rusty sword. They came at him at once, hoping one would take his parry and the other score a hit on his flesh. 

He lunged to one side, out of range of the swordsman, forcing the axeman to dance with him alone. He stabbed with Kaleb’s blade, the attack deflected by the axe well enough to keep from skewering anything, but he adjusted the angle of the blade as he recovered, finessing a cut across the axeman’s hand as he did so. The pain startled the man and he dropped the axe. 

Not expecting an old man with a bit of fight in him, were you?

He shouldered the axeman into the wall, and swatted Kaleb’s lamp at the man with him. It sloshed oil up and down his tunic, a tongue of flame chasing the splashes from his face down to his shoes, and he lit up like the wick of a candle, screaming, running into the walls, setting a tapestry aflame. The axeman, suddenly preoccupied with yanking down another tapestry and trying to roll his accomplice in it to douse the flames, was in no position to block their escape.

The Keeper took Kaleb by the hand and led him around the pair of murderers and raced down the hall. Many doors opened as the passed, and he heard every last one slam shut after he had gone by.

He hobbled down corridors, up stairs, across bridges, startling servants and noble folk alike, stumbling dizzy into the walls, missing steps, nearly collapsing half a dozen times. The drips of blood falling from his fingertips were always with him, the sound a reminder that time was not his friend here. 

Kaleb kept on his heels, helping him up when he fell, waving away those who stood wide-eyed in his path. 

They finally reached the guardroom beside the river gate. The door was ajar. He let himself in and stabbed the two sentries in the back before they could even look up from their table. They fell, scattering coins and dice, their goldcards taking flight like a flock of yellow jays. He made sure they were both dead while Kaleb barred the door behind him.

Across the guardroom was a slender stone portal with a heavy iron squint, barely wide enough to get a hand through. Beyond it the river drifted by. 

“My lord, there is no way out.”

He could always count on Kaleb to note the obvious.

He hoped they would think he would try to save himself, diverting the men after him to attend doors and windows, leaving the hill down to the river unwatched. He lifted the iron cover over the squint and peered out. 

He had better be here. 

Already they were biting into the door behind him with their axes. 

“What are we doing here, my lord?” Kaleb asked.

“Someone is coming to find us here.” He glanced at Kaleb, but the words must not have been reassuring to the lad. His eyes were wide with panic.

At last, he saw Samdren down by the riverside, and shoved his hand out through the squint, snapping his fingers. 

Samdren noticed him and ran over. The trusted messenger was a dull beanstalk of a man wrapped in shadow, white face made whiter still by a slap of moonlight across it. He may not have been much to look at, but he was a longrunner, able to carry a message faster and farther than any ordinary man, and without needing to rest as a horse would. If he could not see the messages delivered, no one could.

“I have come,” Samdren said. “You said you would have messages for me to carry. More records to carry all the way to Sedonia?”

He passed the bloody, folded squares of parchment through the squint. “Take these to Oldmeadow. Put them in the hands of no one but the name written on them.”

Samdren accepted the messages. “You are bleeding,” he said. 

“Go now. They mustn’t see you. They must never learn what it is you carry, or that you carry anything from me at all.”

“What about you?” Samdren asked.

He did not answer. 

Samdren nodded, put a closed fist to his heart and thumped his chest. He stuffed the messages into a pocket within his tunic, and made haste across the river bridge, disappearing into the city.

“He is not here to help us escape,” Kaleb realized.

“No, he is not. I am sorry, Kaleb.” He grimaced. The expression felt foreign. 

“What is going on, my lord?”

He turned to Kaleb, met his eyes unflinching. “You have always been a good lad, loyal and true.” He clapped a hand to the back of the lad’s neck, giving him a solid shake, acknowledging the strength of their bond.

“Thank you, my lord. But I—”

His eyes misted over. He could barely keep them open. “You have served me well for many years. There is one more thing I must ask of you.”

“I do not understand what is happening,” Kaleb whispered.

He leaned forward until his forehead met Kaleb’s. “You are a good lad. I need you to serve me one last time.” 

He drove the point of the sword into Kaleb’s belly, a sibilant hiss of splitting cloth and skin. Kaleb put a hand on his elbow, trying to push against it, to keep the blade from sinking any further into him. But the lad was not strong enough. The blade slid deep, carving through heart and lung. Blood splashed the floor like a wine bottle left on its side, soaking the rug at their feet. 

The lad reached out with both arms, embracing him out of reflex.  

“They cannot learn from either of us that those messages were sent,” he whispered into the lad’s ear. 

It seemed a piss poor apology.

He wrapped his bleeding arm around Kaleb and held him there until his body shook its last. Then, he set the lad down as gently as he could, weak and slippery with blood as he was. 

He pulled the sword free, and rose to his feet, eyes stinging, full of water. 

He had been the Keeper since he was all but a child, preserving the records of others. Now he would have to be a keeper of another kind.

I must not allow them to take me either.

The door broke open, and the men hunting him poured through with swords drawn, spreading out in a half-moon before him. They were so still, only the ends of their blades bobbing up and down as they stared to let him know they were more than just a tapestry upon the wall. He recognized none of them. Not the High King’s men then, yet they were permitted to run through his castle. Who sent them? Who had allowed them in? 

He met their gaze, sweat running cold rivers behind his ears, knees shaking, the blood dripping from his fingertips keeping time. It seemed like hours passed in those seconds. 

He knew they would never move unless he forced them. 

So he charged. 

He stabbed and slashed, forcing them to meet his steel with their own. Punctured one of them among the ribs, swiped a thumb from another. 

The first bite of a blade struck his flank. Pain staggered him, flaring like a lightning strike. He flailed wildly. Another sword found its way to his thigh, then his chest. Neither alone would kill him, too shallow. But more were coming. He managed to keep waving his sword until one of their errant swings met his throat, opening his neck onto the floor.

His eyes went dark. No air would go in when he tried to breathe. There would be no healing from this. 

He smiled and lay down, pleasantly surprised by his sudden calm. The frantic running and fighting, the desperate messages in the night, all of it now seemed a distant memory, already fading.

He had never felt as contemplative as he did now while bleeding to death. He thought back on every word said or left unsaid, as far back as his youth. He remembered lies he had never apologized for, and truths he wished he’d kept secret. He’d witnessed the rise of many a fool in his time, and the downfall of many a legend. He realized now in these final moments, for the very first time, how narrow was the boundary between those they named fools and those they called legends. Labels decided by little more than circumstance.

He smiled as his eyes rolled back. Then, he did the only thing left he could do to help his friends in distant Oldmeadow. 

He died.