The Keep of Fire Read Free Page A

knight smiled and threw a twenty on the bar.
    “Damn, it’s hot out there,” he said.
    The wildman glanced at the lady’s fiery breasts and grinned. “Looks like you’ve got a bad case of war chest, Sarah.”
    She adjusted her bodice and winced. “I know. Thanks to Alan forgetting the sunscreen.”
    “Sorry,” the knight mumbled, and the three walked away with their glasses.
    Travis watched them go, then noticed Max gazing at him. Max cocked his head but didn’t say anything, and eventually he turned around to swab out a keg.
    Travis glanced down at the buckskin boots that poked out of his jeans: the boots Lady Aryn had had made for him. They were one of his few reminders of Eldh, along with the carved piece of bone—the rune of hope—he wore around his neck, and the silver half-coin Brother Cy had given him, which had brought him back to Earth, and which he always kept in his left-hand pocket.
    Travis shut his eyes and saw high battlements above stone-walled fields. Sometimes he burned to tell someone about where he had really traveled during those two months. But how could he? The only person in Castle City who could have understood was gone.
    I miss you, Jack
.
    He opened his eyes and moved to rinse a tray of glasses in the bar sink.
    On reflex, Travis looked up. It was hard to tell exactly what was being advertised. Scenes flashed by, showing smiling people engaged in various activities—boating on a lake, going for a walk, cooking dinner. No matter the scene, a bright crescent moon hung in the sky above or outside a window, casting asilvery radiance on whatever the oh-so-happy people were doing.
    The commercial faded to black, and a corporate logo appeared: a crescent moon merging into a stylized capital
D
.
    “Duratek,” came the voice-over in a soothing, masculine tone. “Worlds of possibility, close to home.”
    Travis frowned. What was that supposed to mean? He pointed to the TV. “Would you shut that thing off, Max? Turn on the radio instead.”
    Max killed the TV with the remote, then flicked on an antique AM receiver. A second later the phone rang, and Max lunged for it before Travis could move an inch.
    “The Mine Shaft,” Max said. He paused, then shot Travis a smug little smile. “No, but I’m the co-owner, so I’m sure I can help you out.…” He turned his back and kept on talking.
    Travis groaned. Now that Max was his partner, there would be no living with him.
    He bent back over his work. Music drifted from the radio behind him: ancient sounds soaring above a new electronic drone. The song was all over the airwaves, a tonic for ears tired of angsty alterna-rock. Travis smiled at the seamless blend of old and new. Maybe two different centuries could meet after all. Like two different worlds.
    A tingling danced across the back of his neck. On instinct he looked up.
    She watched Travis with smoke-green eyes that sparkled above high cheekbones. He set down the glass in his hand, and the woman smiled from her barstool perch. She had close-cropped hair that was dark and fiery at the same time, and she wore a black-leather jacket, jeans, and biker boots. He could just make out the edge of a tattoo coiled around her collarbone—aserpent twisted into the shape of a figure eight, swallowing its tail.
    “Deirdre? Deirdre Falling Hawk?”
    “My gentle warrior,” she said.
    Then she leaned across the bar and kissed him, stunning him like a buck caught in the white-hot beam of a hunter’s flashlight.

4.
    Travis had met her three years ago.
    It was in the dwindling days of July, when the frantic buzz of fresh-born insects had matured to a lazier drone, and clouds rolled across the blue-quartz sky every afternoon, filling the valley with thunder. She wandered through the saloon’s door one evening with the sound of copper wind chimes. Her hair had been long then, like a wave of midnight water, but she wore the same leather jacket, the same square-toed biker boots, and she carried the same