Key of Knowledge
Page 50

Since Moe had made short work of the Milk Bone, Rowena opened her hand and revealed a bright red rubber ball. She threw it over the lawn toward the woods.
“I should warn you, Moe will expect you to keep throwing that for him for the next three or four years.”
“There’s nothing quite so perfect as a dog.” Rowena tucked her arm companionably in Dana’s and began to walk. “A comfort, a friend, a warrior, an amusement. They only ask that we love them.”
“Why don’t you have one?”
“Ah, well.” With a sad smile, Rowena patted Dana’s hand, then bent down to pick up the ball Moe dropped at her feet. She ruffled his fur, then flung the ball for him to chase.
“You can’t.” The realization struck, had Dana tapping her fingers to her temple. “Duh. I don’t mean you couldn’t, but realistically . . . A dog’s life span is woefully shorter than that of your average mortal.”
She remembered what Jordan had said about them being alone, about their immortality on this plane being curse rather than gift.
“When you factor in the spectacular longevity of someone like you, and the finite life span of your average mutt, that’s a problem.”
“Yes. I had dogs. At home, they were one of my great pleasures.”
She picked up the ball, already covered with teeth marks and dog spit, in her elegant hand and threw it for the tireless Moe.
“When we were turned out, I needed to believe that we would do what needed to be done and return. Soon. I pined for many things of home, and comforted myself with a dog. A wolfhound was my first. Oh, he was so handsome and brave and loyal. Ten years.”
She sighed, and skirted along the edge of the woods. “He was mine for ten years. The snap of a finger. There are things we can’t change, that are denied to us while we live here. I can’t extend a creature’s life beyond its thread. Not even that of a beloved dog.”
She scooped the ball up for Moe, threw it in another direction.
“I had a dog when I was a kid.” Like Rowena, Dana watched Moe streak after the ball as if it were the first time. “Well, it was my dad’s dog, really. He got her the year before I was born, so I grew up with her. She died when I was eleven. I cried for three days.”
“So you know what it is.” Rowena smiled a little as Moe pranced back, doing a full-body wag with the rubber ball wedged in his mouth like an apple. “I grieved, and I swore I wouldn’t indulge myself again. But I did. Many times. Until I had to accept that my heart would simply break if I had to go through the death of another I loved so much, after so short a time. So, I’m so pleased . . .”
She bent down to catch Moe’s face in her hands. “And so grateful that you brought the handsome Moe to visit me.”
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, is it? Power, immortality?”
“Nothing is without pain or loss or price. Is this what you wanted to know?”
“Part of it. There are limitations, at least when you’re here. And Kane has limitations when he’s here. Limitations when he deals with something from our world. Is that right?”
“That’s a fine deduction. You are creatures of free will. That’s as it must be. He can lure, he can lie, he can deceive. But he cannot force.”
“Can he kill?”
Rowena threw the ball again, farther this time to give Moe a longer chase. “You’re not speaking of war or of defense, of protection of innocents or loved ones. The penalty for taking the life of a mortal is so fierce I can’t believe that even he would risk it.”
“The end of existence,” Dana supplied. “I’ve done my research. Not death, not the passing through to the next life, but an end.”
“Even gods have fears. That is one. More is the stripping of power, the prison between worlds that allows entry to none. This he would risk.”
“He tried to kill Jordan.”
Rowena whirled, gripped Dana’s arm. “Tell me. Exactly.”
She related everything that had happened in the middle of the night.
“He took him behind the Curtain?” Rowena asked. “And there shed his blood?”
“I’ll say.”
She began to pace, her movements so fretful that Moe sat quietly holding the tooth-pocked ball in his mouth.
“Even now we’re not permitted to see, to know. They were alone, you say? There was no one else about?”
“Jordan said something about a deer.”
“A deer.” Rowena went very still. “What sort of deer? What did it look like?”
“It looked like a deer.” Dana lifted her hands. “Except I guess it was the sort you’d expect to find in places where the flowers look like rubies and so on. He said it was gold and had a silver rack.”
“It was a buck, then.”
“Yes. And, oh, yeah, it had a collar, a jeweled collar.”
“It’s possible,” she whispered. “But what does it mean?”
“You tell me.”
“If it was him, why did he allow it?” Agitated, she began to stride up and down the verge, between wood and lawn. “Why did he permit it?”
“Who and what?” Dana demanded and dragged Rowena’s attention back to her by shaking her arm.
“If it was the king,” she said. “If it was our king taking the shape of the buck. If this is true, why did he allow Kane to bring a mortal behind the Curtain without consent? And to harm, to spill his blood there? What war is being waged in my world?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. But the only one wounded, as far as I can tell, was Jordan.”
“I will talk to Pitte,” she declared. “I will think. He saw no one else—only these two?”
“Just the buck and Kane.”
“I don’t have the answers you want. Kane has interfered before, but it’s never gone this far. The spell was of his making, and the boundaries of it, his own. But he breaks them and is not stopped. I can do more, will do more. But I’m no longer certain of the scope of his power or protection. I can no longer be certain that the king rules.”
“If he doesn’t?”
“Then there is war,” Rowena said flatly. “And still we are not brought home. This tells me, whatever is or has happened in my world, it remains my fate to finish what I was sent here to do. I have to believe it’s your fate to help me.”