The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [172]
Grace gasped, staring in horror. “The key—”
“Is right here, daughter.” Grisla reached behind Grace's ear, then pulled her hand back. Between her fingers was the disk of stone. She cackled, then flicked the rune at Grace, who caught it in fumbling hands.
“That's not funny,” Grace said. “This is the key to awakening the keep's defenses. Without it, there's no hope.”
“Nonsense,” Grisla said, clucking her tongue. “There's always hope. You don't need some little chip of stone to give you that. Besides, just because you have a key doesn't mean there's got to be a hole to stick it in.”
Grace felt too weary to argue. She gazed again at the distant shadows. “They're counting on me, Grisla. They expect me to find the on switch to the keep's magic defenses, to hold off the Pale King until the Warriors of Vathris get here. But even if Boreas makes it here, we're still destined to lose. That's what the legends of the Warriors say.”
Grisla sidled up alongside her. “Well, at least you can say you tried. That's something, isn't it?”
Grace shivered inside her cloak. “What good is standing against darkness if no one's left to remember what you did?”
“There.” Grisla pointed at the courtyard below. “He knows that making a stand matters even when you're bound to lose.”
Below, a figure clad all in gray walked from the barracks, his heavy shoulders slumped. Durge.
Grace stared at the hag. “What do you mean? Does he know about . . . does he know what's in him?”
Grisla cocked her head. “And do you, daughter? Do you know what's in him—what's in his heart?”
Grace held a hand to her chest, feeling her own heart; it felt so frail. “There's nothing that can be done for him. That's what the forest queen said.”
Grisla shrugged knobby shoulders. “Well, I won't go about arguing with the Lady of Gloaming Wood. You'd be hard-pressed to find one in this world who is wiser than she. All the same, even if there's nothing that can be done for him, have you not considered what he might yet do for you?”
Though she did her best to fathom them, Grace couldn't make sense of those words. The task that lay before her was so enormous, and any day—any moment—Durge would be taken away from her. The knight's steadfastness was the only thing that had kept her going all these leagues. She didn't know how she could possibly face this without him.
“I wish Melia and Falken were here,” she said softly.
Grisla let out a chuckle. “They are not so far as you might think, daughter.”
“What do you mean?”
The hag said nothing. However, her lone eye gazed out across Shadowsdeep, in the direction of the Fal Threndur. Before Grace could speak, a thunderous shout rose from below, shaking the very stones of the keep.
“Where is my witch? Bring me my witch!”
Grisla winced. “It sounds as if His Boisterousness is awake. I suppose I'd better go see what he wants before all his bellowing brings this whole place down.” With that, she turned and shambled away, disappearing down the staircase.
Grace gazed again at the dark columns rising into the distant sky. Then she tucked the rune into her pocket and followed after the hag.
Over the next three days, the restoration of Gravenfist Keep continued at a furious pace. Grace doubted this fortress had ever housed quite such a curious army as it did at the moment. There were knights and soldiers from all seven of the Dominions, working alongside witches and runespeakers and Queen Inara's Spiders. What was more, King Kel had brought not only his warriors, but his entire band of followers.
As a result, when stern-faced Embarran knights called for rope or hammers, those things were likely to be brought to them by wenches with frowsy hair and saucy smiles—something which caused even the stolid Embarrans to blink a time or two. In addition, the job of the camp's cooks was made easier by Kel's wildmen, who spent all day scrambling through the underbrush up and down the valley, catching rabbits and quail with their bare hands and bringing them back—usually in their mouths—for