The Keys to Paradise Read online

  The golden key glowed darkly, the inset gem flashing green fire. Inscribed runes spelled out a promise beyond belief. The Key to Paradise. A promise and a quest.

  Giles Grimsmate, world-wandering survivor of the Trans wars, had won it fairly in a game of chance. The second key – along with a goodly haul of coin – had been stolen from a rich merchant by Keja Tchurak, master thief.

  And when they set out for the invisible Gates of Paradise, Petia, half-cat, half-woman, tracked them with silent night-skills.

  Yet to enter Paradise, three keys more were needed: The Flame Key, The Key of the Skeleton Lord, and The Key of Ice and Steel.

  Five keys, scattered throughout a realm of supernatural happenings, strange creatures and otherworldly powers.

  THE KEYS TO PARADISE

  Robert E. Vardeman

  NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY

  A New English Original Publication, 1986

  Copyright © 1986, by Robert E. Vardeman

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the publishers.

  First NEL Paperback Edition July 1986

  Second impression 1986

  Conditions of sale: This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulate without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  NEL Books are published by

  New English Library,

  Mill Road, Dunton Green,

  Sevenoaks, Kent.

  Editorial office: 47 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  Typeset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd

  Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

  Printed and bound by

  Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading

  British Library C.I.P.

  Vardeman, Robert E.

  The keys to paradise

  ISBN 0-450-01660-9

  Book One

  The Flame Key

  To Anna

  One

  Giles Grimsmate hungrily tore a piece of course black bread from the round loaf in front of him. He used it to sop up the last of the salty fish stew from his wooden bowl. It had been a long while since he had found food this good – or surroundings so pleasant.

  A young serving maid grinned at him as she removed his bowl and spoon. ‘Lick the bowl?’ the shapely brunette asked, her words falling like honey over Giles. He had been away from people far too long, he decided, when even a simple comment aroused him. Giles took a swipe at her behind as she turned away, but she dodged with practised skill and did a saucy dance step on her way back to the kitchen. The weather-battered man wiped his mouth on a many-times-patched sleeve that had seen better days – and worse, too. He couldn’t remember when he had eaten such a good meal. And fish was far from his favourite food. There had been little else during the War, but it had filled his belly well enough while others starved. Giles took a slender white bone from the pouch at his side. He turned from the table and rested his back against the wall, putting his legs up along the bench. Contentedly, he surveyed the room as he picked his teeth.

  The room in the Laughing Cod was warm and comfortable and gave a respite from sleeping under hedges that would only drip cold rain on him all night. Giles decided the presence of others gave him the tonic he needed. He’d been alone with only his thoughts for comfort more than he cared to remember these past twenty years.

  The maid returned, running a wet rag across the table to clean up spilled stew and breadcrumbs that had escaped his voracious appetite.

  ‘A flagon of ale when you have a moment, please.’

  ‘La de dah, isn’t he the polite one?’

  Giles saw that the small courtesy pleased her, however. She stopped her chores and scurried off to draw the ale, returning almost immediately.

  ‘The ale goes on the bill,’ he said, ‘but this is for you.’ He laid a coin on the table. She scooped it up; it disappeared into an apron pocket. Her smile warmed Giles more than the strong ale puddling in his stomach. He sighed. He was getting old – had grown old. And what did he have to show for it save scars and grey-shot black hair and memories?

  Memories. Good. Bad. And even worse than bad.

  Giles took another hefty drink from the pewter flagon and studied the maid. His wife had had a smile like that when he first met her. Red, full lips and white teeth and a smile that melted his soul. Giles drank heavily and remembered better days. Days when his two sons were born, days when Leorra was young and passionately supple in his arms, when he owned a plot of good, rich farmland and a horse and a cow, and rights to grazing outside the village.

  That was all before the Trans War. For twenty long, bitter years he had fought in that accursed war. And what had it accomplished. A dead family. The wife he so loved killed in a raid on his village. His boys dead because the War had lasted too long, and they had grown to fighting size. Giles closed his eyes and felt the pulse thundering like war drums in his head. They had been sent off to the brutal eastern provinces where the fighting had been fiercest and had never returned. Word came eventually that they were buried somewhere near Gallania and that they had died honourably. After twenty years of senseless death, he remained unconvinced that any of it was honourable, the war, the raids, the battles, the killing.

  Only the leaders had profited greatly from the Trans War. Playing on emotions and creating prejudices where none had existed before, they had prolonged the hostilities. Cleverly, they had manipulated the people, acquired territory, and avenged themselves on old enemies. But above all else, they had become richer and richer. What did they care that men and women had died, both Trans and humans?

  The War had ground to a halt, both sides depleted of troops and heartsick of the killing and endless suffering. Mass desertion, the leaders had called it. Sanity was the only word appropriate. Still, the commanders had not protested. Their games of conquest and wealth-seeking only turned to different avenues.

  Giles hoped that others found peace when they returned home. He certainly hadn’t. He had found his plot and his house – devoid of everything that he had loved. He took another deep draught of the ale, but it did nothing to erase the pain felt from that homecoming.

  The village elders were no longer elder. They were young upstarts with ideas contrary to his own. Oh, yes, they made room for the grizzled veteran on the governing council. They gave a small celebration in honour of his return and grudgingly moved in an extra seat for the council meetings. The meetings were filled with endless bickering over the most trivial of matters, accomplishing little more than making Giles angry. Soon, he stopped attending.

  He didn’t know the villagers any more. He couldn’t make friends with them because few were his age, and fewer still had shared the constant hardships and the ineffable bonds of friendship forged by trooping.

  Giles put away his toothpick and took out a plain, well-used darkwood pipe. He filled it carefully with tobacco shaved from a block. Clouds of noxious blue smoke enveloped him, and he stared into it, oblivious of the activity and conversation in the room.

  Six months had proved to him that he could no longer call his village home. He had rolled up his blankets, made a small pack of his few belongings, had his boots repaired and left quietly. He imagined that the village sighed in relief when they found him gone.

  Giles puffed deeply, the smoke filling tired lungs and bringing back a tantalising hint of youth. For just a moment, to be sure, but he felt it. The past months had been nothing but aimless wandering little better than staying in his village.
>
  He walked, he rode, he travelled, and still memories of Leorra haunted him. And his sons. And the good life now gone because of the War, because he had believed and fought and found only misery.

  What had he accomplished? Early this afternoon he had come down into this delta town along the coast. Klepht, they called it. It seemed no better or worse than a dozen other seaports.

  As he had ambled along the waterfront, Giles had been amused by the inn sign. The Laughing Cod, it proclaimed. The artist had portrayed the plump fish with its fins on its waist and a mouth open in what had to be a loud guffaw. Giles had entered only to have an ale, but it was such excellent ale that he had found himself taking a room for the night. He had a few coins jingling in his pouch and no schedule to keep. Why not enjoy a night at the inn, someone else’s cooking, sleeping in a real bed, and maybe a moment’s conversation? It had been too long since he had a decent travelling companion to argue with, to swap lies with, to depend on.

  Giles puffed harder as the tobacco burned down to spent embers. Outside the sun set and cast cool grey fingers of twilight through the cobbled streets of Klepht. The inn slowly filled with sailors and fishermen whose day of hard labour had ended.

  Giles sat listening to the talk of nets and gear and the catch and cargo. He shared little with these men, but the dim reflections of their shared companionship proved better than being alone for still another night.

  In a quiet moment, he signalled for another flagon. When the maid brought it he asked, ‘Do they ever talk of anything but the sea?

  She ran her hand through the thick mat of her curly brown hair. ‘No. But they’ll slow down pretty quick and begin to dice. Do you have any skill?’

  ‘Not much, but a spot of luck rides at my shoulder now and again,’ Giles said. ‘What’s the game?’

  ‘Anadromi. Do you know it?’

  ‘Never heard of it.’ Giles flexed arthritic fingers until they snapped as loud as a cannon shot. They felt up to a game of dice, as they had on many a night with his men during the War.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll teach you. Go easy or they’ll have all your money. You won’t be able to pay your bill, and I’ll have to put up with you as scullery maid for the next week.’

  ‘Is that so bad?’

  ‘You’d look a perfect fright wearing a dress and apron,’ the brunette said, white teeth gleaming.

  ‘You’ve convinced me to be careful. My knees are not nearly as comely as yours.’ He settled back and sipped his ale. Warm, dry, full, content, a bit of harmless flirting. All a man could ask for when his world had become a hollow shell.

  The talk around Giles slowed, and the men of the sea quieted, contemplating their burning bowls and their memories.

  At last, a stubby little man at a table raised his fist and waggled it back and forth. The serving maid nodded and took a leather cup from the shelf behind the serving counter. She brought it to the table and shook it several times before rolling six bone-white dice out on the table. She bent over to see what she had rolled.

  ‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘Maybe I should play tonight.’

  The stubby man grinned up at her. ‘And who’d serve the ale?’ he asked.

  ‘Why, you would, of course.’

  ‘Get yer out of here now,’ the man said.

  Giles knew that this was another oft-repeated dialogue that had become a ritual, and once again he longed for the steady companionship of good friends.

  The man dumped the dice back into the leather cup and rattled it twice. He rolled the dice out, looked at them and shook his head glumly. For a time, he seemed to be the only one in the room interested. He rolled them again and again, shaking his head and muttering every time he examined the results.

  ‘You can’t fool us, Niss. When you shake your head like that, everyone knows you’re netting the big fish.’ Chuckles rolled around the room.

  ‘Just tryin’ to warm them up a bit. Come along and help, Tal.’

  Several men went to the table. Each took his turn at rolling the dice, warming the leather cup with their hands before each toss.

  Giles left the warmth of his spot to wander over, standing back and watching the results of the rolls.

  ‘Are you ready, lads? It’s time to be serious.’ The little man looked around the circle of men at the table. Then he glanced up at Giles. ‘They hang back. What of you, stranger?’

  ‘I don’t know the game,’ Giles said. ‘Let me watch for a bit till I see what it’s about. Maybe later.’

  The man shrugged, going back to rattling the dice in what he hoped was an enticing fashion. He passed the cup to his left. The men rolled once around the table to see who would begin.

  For half an hour, Giles only watched. It was not a game he had seen before, but it wasn’t difficult to understand. It had to do with runs of numbers in ascending order and different little from a game played in camps during his days of soldiering.

  Two players lost consistently and bowed out of the game. Five men still sat at the table. Niss gestured to Giles and to the empty seats. Giles nodded and sat down.

  For a time Giles’ losses equalled his winnings. The game became more familiar; he decided there was little strategy to learn for Anadromi, unlike some he had played which involved multiple rolls and decisions of which die to leave and which to roll again.

  A big, burly man had a good run of luck and reduced the players’ ranks to only four. The pile of small coins slowly grew in front of Giles, but the gnarled seaman won consistently. On the next round Niss dropped out, sweeping his few remaining coins back into his pouch. ‘The luck’s not with me tonight,’ he said. ‘Mousie seems to have the most of it.’

  Giles grinned at him. ‘Maybe another night.’

  ‘Aye, there’s always another night.’

  On the next round a young, round-faced, red-bearded man followed Niss’ example.

  Giles looked at the burly seaman. ‘You ready to call it quits?’ he asked.

  ‘Not on your life,’ Mousie growled. ‘I’m looking to hook the big fish tonight. I’ll take your money as well as the next man’s.’ He glowered at Giles.

  Giles shrugged, picked up his coins and let them slip neatly from his thick fingers into a stack on the table. ‘Your choice,’ he said. ‘Let ’em roll.’

  Mousie shoved half of his coins into the centre of the table. Giles matched them. But luck was beginning to abandon the seamen. The dice rolled out and stopped. A triple six, a three, and a one. That was an excellent roll for many different games, but not this one. Giles’ roll fared scarcely better, but it won the round.

  The seaman shoved the rest of his stack out, and Giles matched it again. As winner of the previous round, he rolled first – a nearly perfect roll. Two, three, three, four, five, six.

  Giles felt no sense of triumph, only a quiet pleasure at the roll. He had outgrown youthful enthusiasm over such matters. ‘You give up? It looks like a tough one to beat.’ He passed the cup to Mousie.

  Two fists enclosed the cup and shook it vigorously. The fisherman concentrated on the rattling dice, willing them to obey his mumbled commands. Giles relaxed, knowing full well that there was nothing he could do about six cubes of bone with black spots on them.

  The men in the inn sensed the drama at the table and gathered to watch the roll. When the dice came spinning out of the cup and slid to a stop, a sigh passed through the crowd. Giles had won again.

  Mousie stared around him as if he couldn’t comprehend what had happened. He looked at the pile of coin in front of Giles. For a moment he seemed about to fling himself over it.

  ‘Let me see those bones.’

  Silently, Giles passed him the leather cup. The man stared moodily into it, then upended it, spilling the dice out onto the table. One by one he picked them up, examining them as though he suspected Giles had substituted for the real dice. Finally, he looked up at Giles. ‘I want a chance to get me money back.’

  ‘I gave you a chance to quit. Didn’t you keep anything b
ack?’

  ‘No,’ the man muttered.

  ‘That’s foolish. They you’ve got nothing left to wager, have you?’

  The sailor said nothing, staring off toward the fireplace. Making a hard decision, he tugged open the neck of his sailor’s smock and pulled a string from around his neck. A key dangled from the string.

  Mousie pulled the string over his head and handed it to Giles. ‘I’ll wager this against the whole pile,’ he said.

  Giles turned the key over in his hands. It appeared to be gold. The three teeth were square and the circular shank stretched nearly four inches, ending with a flat round circle. In the centre of the circle was a small, light green gemstone; peridot, Giles thought. Encircling the stone were finely etched runes.

  ‘You’re sure you want to wager this?’ Giles asked.

  Mousie nodded glumly.

  ‘It looks valuable. Gold, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where’d you get it?’

  ‘A friend. He left it to me. We were shipmates once. He was killed in the War. He’d understand me wagering it.’ Mousie snorted derisively. ‘Old Porgg bet more’n this in his day. Best two out of three rolls?’

  Giles turned the key over in his hands, thinking. He had won all the sailor’s money, plus some from each of the other players. Now this man wanted a chance to win it all back. Luck was with Giles tonight and, for the most part, it was other men’s money.

  He nodded. ‘Two out of three. Your key against my coin.’ Giles felt more alive than he had in weeks. ‘Want to roll one die to see who goes first?’

  Mousie won the roll of the single die and grinned as if he had already won. He dumped the six dice into the cup and shook it with confidence.