Again the black snorted, and Liaze laughed at the cause. “Eating bees, are we, my lad? Or did they sting your tender nose?” She stepped to the stallion and when he raised his head to her, she lifted his chin and looked at his muzzle. No bee stingers did she see embedded. “Ah, then, it was the eating of bees, eh? Regardless, ’tis time we were on our way.”
Liaze rearranged the tethers for the mare to follow with the geldings in tow and for the stallion to lead, and she mounted Nightshade and rode away from the red-clover meadow.
Down sank the sun through the sky as Liaze continued riding in the direction Leon had said the Blue Chateau lay. Leon had fled far with the child, and seven shadowlight borders stood between her and that goal. She fretted that she might fail to see the landmarks the armsmaster had told her to follow, and if she drifted too far off line and simply rode ahead, then she might altogether miss the realm wherein she would find the Lake of the Rose. To avoid going elsewhere, when she reached each sunwise border, if she found herself off course, she planned to roam along the near side of the given twilight wall until she came upon the marker described by Leon denoting the place to cross.
As dusk drew its lavender cape o’er the land, with the black of night to follow swiftly after, Liaze made camp in a small hollow through which a stream ran. After taking care of the horses and laying a fire, she sat on her blankets and took a bite to eat. As she savored the last of the boiled eggs Leon had given her, she reflected on what the armsmaster had said. Chateau Blu occupies the whole of a small isle in the center of the lake. There is a manmade causeway running from the shore to the manse. The manor itself is really a walled castle, and it is made of a grey-blue stone, hence the name “Blue Chateau.” The Lake of the Rose is so named because of the reflections of the red-hued rock cliffs along one shore, giving the water a rosy appearance. Too, Luc’s ancestors planted roses along the banks, and the briers spread, and some now follow the outlet stream that flowed forth from the sundown end of the lake. Together with the mirrored color of the cliffs and growth of the roses themselves, that’s where the name came from, as well as the title of the comtes and comtesses who ruled there. And as soon as I find Luc and free him, he will take the title: Count Luc of the Blue Chateau in the Lake of the Rose and the Keeper of the Key.
Liaze frowned. Keeper of the Key? What key? Why is a key part of the title? What might that mean? And why should it be guarded? Oh, I should have asked Leon. Shall I ride back? She sighed. Non, that would just waste two days-one going and then one returning. No doubt I will find the meaning when I reach the chateau itself. Surely the Widow Dorothee will know. I wonder, were she and Leon lovers? There was a certain fondness in Leon’s voice when he spoke of her as someone I could trust, as a person who would keep the horses while I go to the chateau as a goose girl and deliver his coded note to Comtesse Adele.
Even so, I would like to know what this “Guardian,” this “Keeper of the Key” means in Comte Luc’s full title.
Liaze spent a moment washing herself in the nearby stream, and she rubbed her teeth with a chew-stick and took a mint leaf and munched it to sweeten her breath, all the time wondering about the “Key.”
The puzzle was yet flitting at the edge of her mind when she fell asleep.
Just ere dawn, Liaze startled awake. “Caillou!” she said aloud. By the light of the embers of the fire and of the waning gibbous moon, Pied Agile looked at her, and then about, as if seeking a threat. Nightshade remained adoze. Liaze got to her feet and stepped to the mare and stroked her muzzle and along her neck to calm her.
“Perhaps Caillou knew the answer,” murmured Liaze to her horse. “But then again, perhaps not.” And scratching Pied Agile’s forehead, Liaze recalled that day on the stone creature’s flank when he said he had seen a man with a black horse:
Liaze’s heart jumped. “Did he wear a metal shirt and a metal cap and carry a metal horn like this one?” She held up Luc’s silver trump.
Slowly, grinding, the eyes turned toward Liaze, the flinty gaze to at last come to rest upon her. “Yes… It was but a short pebble cascade ago when he came across.”
“Oh, Lord Montagne, it was my Luc,” said Liaze. “It must have been when he was on his way to my realm… back whence I came. Did he recently return this way? Oh, I must find him, and I could use your help, Lord Montagne, if you have any to give.”
As she waited for the answer, she returned her arrow to its quiver and her bow to its saddle sheath.
At length, the being said, “Many things spill out of you all at once, as if in avalanche… Indeed… avalanche…”
Liaze waited, and just as she feared there would be no answer to her questions, the stone being said, “Yes, he went down the way you came… No, he has not yet come back this way.”
At these words, Liaze’s heart fell. Even so, she knew only by wild chance would the witch in her flight have flown through this pass, dragging the shadowy hand after, Luc in its grip.
Again there came a rumble, and she realized that the mountain was yet responding to her questions. “Rrr… I have seen him but once, and though I tried, I could not stop him, for he bore the stone… He passed through without giving me my due.”
“He bore what stone?”
As if thought moved slowly through a being who seemed to be made of the mountain itself, again there was a long pause ere the creature answered. “A tiny bit of keystone.” The eyes, grinding, slowly looked upward and then back down at Liaze. “It was the color of the sky.”
Liaze frowned, then brightened and said, “The gem on a chain about his neck?”
“I asked if he was going to open the way, but he did not know what I was… speaking of, and I did not enlighten him.”
“Open what way?” asked Liaze.
After long moments, the creature did not respond, and Liaze decided that he would not speak of it again, not tell her what he meant, just as he had not told Luc.
“Pied Agile,” said Liaze, speaking softly to her horse, “Caillou said a piece of keystone was about Luc’s neck; it was a gift given to him by his pere, or so Leon said. Could this be the key of the comte’s title? If so, what door does it open? — No, wait, perhaps it is not a door, for Caillou instead said it opened a ‘way.’ A way to where, I wonder? Or is it a way from somewhere instead?”
With Pied Agile now soothed, Liaze returned to her bedroll and lay down. Yet, unable to answer her own questions, she could not fall asleep. After a while she gave up her chase of elusive slumber and arose and started breaking camp-drenching the fire, feeding the animals, feeding herself and taking care of her needs. She led the horses to the stream and let them take water, and then she laded the geldings and saddled the stallion and mare. Dawn was just breaking on the sunup bound as she rode on toward her goal.
All day she fared toward the sunwise border, riding, walking, and riding again, pausing to feed the horses and herself, stopping for water, and then moving on. She passed by hunters’ shacks and woodcutters’ cotes and through hamlets and by farmsteads, and whenever she fared by or through those places some people would ask her for the news, but she had none to give, while others stood and watched in curious silence.
As the day sank into the sundown bound, Liaze came to a small town, where she engaged a room for one night at a tiny inn, with a village stable across the way.
“We don’t get too many travelers along this road,” said the proprietress. “ ’Cept in the honey season, and then it’s mostly buyers going up to Honey Creek, but surely you aren’t one of them.”
“Umn,” said Liaze, shaking her head but offering nothing more.
“Regardless,” said the innkeeper, “I’ve stew in the pot for tonight, and I’ll cook you breakfast afore y’leave in the morn.”
“Speaking of leaving, how far is the sunwise border from here?” asked Liaze.