Glasswrights' Master Page 5

  Kella could not hear the words they spoke; they were not meant for her ears. She saw the scroll raised high, though, and she watched Tovin pore over it, nodding to himself.

  She looked away from the knot of adults, and her attention was immediately captured by a cluster of children on the edge of the forest. A mere glance confirmed that these boys and girls belonged to the players’ troop–they wore the same bright colors, carried themselves with the identical sense of entitled power.

  And they were playing games on the edge of the Great Clearing. Games! Where the King’s Men patrolled! Kella started to shake her head, started to cry out to the children, but even before she acted, she knew that she would be ignored.

  Instead, she stepped back to watch the children play. A girl took the lead, a tall child with the willowy grace of a young girl soon to be a woman. Kella watched as the creature laughed and ran away from her peers, ran, trailing a white scarf.

  Not a scarf, Kella realized. A length of silk. Spidersilk, that strange commodity brought by Tovin to Sarmonia. The fabric drifted on the air, hovering indecisively between floating away forever and settling down to earth.

  The girl laughed as she ran, a metallic tinkle like bells whispering in the wind. The sound was infectious; other children laughed as well, and they began to run across the Great Clearing. As Kella watched, a boy trailed a length of cobalt silk, and then a girl ran, crimson floating from her hand.

  Soon, the Clearing was full of children–laughing, running children, each followed by a length of silk. Kella’s breath caught in her throat as she saw the images they wove, great sweeping circles, tight spins, impossible spirals. The ribbons trailed them as if the silk was some sort of trained beast; it circled in the air, billowing high, darting low.

  Kella saw the strength there, the beauty, and a strong emotion rose inside her heart. These children were creating something new in the Great Clearing, something new in the forest. They were making a sort of magic that Kella could only imagine, that an herb witch could only dream. They were weaving power out of empty air and wisps of cloth.

  As Kella watched, she forgot the King’s Men. She forgot the sweetvine petals stewing in her sack. She forgot all that she had lived and dreamed, all the lessons she had learned among the Sisters. She remembered only to watch and to breathe and to become the ribbon dance.

  “So, you see the patterns.”

  Tovin’s voice beside her made her jump, and she wanted to scream at him, to punish him for pulling her away from the perfection of the silk. She identified her rage, though, named it and shielded herself from it. “Aye,” she said, and her voice was raw, as if she had been panting at hard labor for a day and a night.

  “They’re another of our tricks.” Tovin shrugged. “Like Speaking.”

  Not like Speaking, Kella wanted to say. Not like Speaking at all. There was true power in the ribbons, true power in the dance. She shook her head and said, “They’re children playing.”

  “They’re players’ children.”

  Kella forced herself to swallow hard and clear her throat. She pushed defiance into her tone, as if she mustn’t let the traveling man know how the silk ribbons had affected her. “They’ll still be cold and lonely in a Sarmonian prison if the King’s Men catch them here.”

  Tovin laughed, throwing back his head and letting his chestnut curls reflect the sunlight. “You needn’t worry about that. My players have just received a writ from King Hamid himself. It seems our reputation precedes us. Sarmonia has invited us to stay at the Great Clearing, to prepare a magnificent show. Come the last day of summer, we’ll present ourselves to the court.”

  Immediately, Kella disbelieved the man. Commoners were not permitted in the Great Clearing, not without the company of the king. Commoners other than Kella, that was. Kella and the Sisters.

  But times were changing. Sarmonia was no longer the kingdom she had known, no longer the home that had sheltered her with four familiar walls and a tight-woven roof. “The last day of summer,” she said, and her voice scratched over the final word.

  “Aye,” Tovin agreed, nodding shrewdly. “Not long, now. But long enough. Long enough to do what must be done.”

  Kella caught the man’s gaze drifting past the children, past the breathless ribbon dance. He looked to the edges of the forest, to the darkness beyond the sun-lit field. For a heartbeat, she imagined that his eyes could penetrate to the thicket where Jalina lived, to the northern woman and her hidden son. What exactly did Tovin know about them? Why did he care?

  She forced herself to snort in indignation. “Fine, then. Let the children play all day long. I have work to do, at least. I have potions to brew, if I’m to hold off the cold of a long winter’s night.”

  Tovin said nothing as she crossed the clearing, making her way back to her cottage. She resisted the urge to turn about, to see if he was following her. He would come to her soon enough. He would return to her cottage, drawn by the power that he sensed in her, pulled to the lessons she might teach him. And then she would get him to tell her his dreams. She would learn the power in him, the power of the players that she had seen in the children’s silken dance.

  Chapter 3

  Halaravilli ben-Jair looked down the forest path and choked back the urge to bellow in frustration. This was not how he had planned things. This was not how he had imagined his life would be. He was supposed to be home in Moren, looking out at his groves of riberry trees, counting the riches of his octolaris spider venture. He was supposed to be standing beside his wife, gazing fondly at his children as they romped about the royal garden. He was supposed to reign in peace and prosperity, leading his people to riches they had never imagined in the days of his most worthy ancestors.

  But Hal’s dreams had shattered long ago–even before the loss of his heirs, even before soldiers had driven him from his homeland. His dreams had been destroyed when an arrow took his older brother, when he was required to set aside his tin soldiers and command real men of flesh and blood. Flesh that could be torn. Blood that could flow.

  Blood that had flowed, within the very house of the Thousand Gods.

  Blood flow. Body blow. Bitter foe.

  Once again, Hal’s mind was assaulted by the frantic confusion of those dark moments in the secret passage beneath the altar. He could recall the sound of his men fighting on the cathedral floor above him, the stench of smoke and blood and ruin as they paid their lives to protect him. He had huddled with his advisors for endless heartbeats before someone–Farso? Mair? Even now it wasn’t clear–began to lead them through the darkness, down the hidden passage, beneath the city streets, out to the abandoned First Port on the edge of the city’s oldest section.

  Hal had fought against his advisors, then. He had argued that he could not flee Moren, could not abandon his city when rampaging armies roamed her streets. He had vowed to massacre the Briantans, promised to destroy the Liantines.

  His loyal men would hear nothing of it, though. They hurried him onto a low-slung boat and threw a cape over his shoulders to deceive a harbor-master who proved to be absent from his duty post. All of them ignored him–Puladarati, Farso, even Rani Trader.

  Only when they were out of the harbor, bobbing on the open sea, could Hal look back at the horror behind him, at the rising smoke. The black clouds saturated his senses as completely as they blotted out the sky. He could not look at his loyal followers; he could not listen to them. He scarcely heard Farso muttering oaths of revenge. He barely made out Father Siritalanu tolling the names of the Thousand, asking for their mercy and their guidance. He was barely aware of Puladarati roaring defiance, bellowing like an injured lion as he watched Briantans swarm the streets.

  The loudest sound, though, the clearest voice, was Mair’s–Mair’s mad chatter as she narrated events to the square of black silk around her wrist. So many lives gone, so much traded for so little.…

  In the end, only Rani had been able to persuade him to leave the railing. She had turned his head awa
y forcibly, guiding him down the steep, narrow stairs to the hold. She had handed him over to his squire and told him that he must shed his royal robes, that he must burn those clothes, now, before they could incriminate him. She had told him to be strong.

  And he had listened to her. He had begun to plan, even before the sun had set on that first dark day of banishment. He had gathered up the ship’s charts and its maps. He had led his puny army in long strategy sessions as the boat rocked back and forth, as he forbade himself from imagining the ruins of his capital.

  Hal had balanced safety and speed, calculated security and strength. Ultimately, he convinced them that they should head for Sarmonia, for the southern kingdom that had so far stayed uninvolved in Moren’s brutal politics.

  Sarmonia was a risk, of course. It was no accident that King Hamid had removed himself from the fights among his northern neighbors. He plied trade with Liantine, but he had almost no connections to the distant Briantans. In the past few years, he had begun to purchase spidersilk from Hal, gladly undermining his own costly bonds to the original spiderguild. But would he take up arms against Liantine’s bellicose house of Thunderspear? Would he set his own kingdom on the line?

  Amid the uncertainty, Hal convinced his followers that they could not approach Hamid directly. They should avoid the great Sarmonian coastal cities altogether, put in at some village on the shore, or better yet, an unprotected natural port. They should make their way across the land slowly, carefully, sending out their own messengers to gather information, to sense Hamid’s will before they forced his hand.

  And so it had been done. The soldiers who had rescued Hal in the Morenian cathedral proved competent seamen, purposely beaching their shallow boat along a stretch of deserted coastline. Reluctantly, Hal had helped to stave in the bottom, had watched water seep up between the well-caulked planks. Retreat by sea became impossible.

  Hal had led his men into the great forest that spread across the northern third of Sarmonia. He tried to make a game of it, keeping up his followers’ spirits by acting as if they were on an extended hunt, making merry in the woods as a sort of late summer play. He used his maps to measure out paths through the forest, to trace the ancient roads that passed beneath the wooded canopy.

  All the time, he maneuvered his men closer to his true destination, knowing that he was creating a new danger even as he sought to ease the fear deepest in his heart. Mareka hid inside the Sarmonian woods. His wife and son were safe within the forest. That much Hal knew from a lone messenger who had made his way back to Morenia during brighter days, in a more hopeful time.

  If Hal’s men wondered at his familiarity with the maps, if they questioned how he knew the woodland paths, they did not speak of their suspicions. Instead, they followed his lead, acting for all the world as if they were celebrating a prolonged feast day of the gods. They managed to ignore the fact that they set a guard at night, that Mair prowled about the camp like a mad ghost, that Rani Trader watched and waited, silently assessing their progress.

  And Hal listened to the voices growing inside his mind, the despairing voices that he thought he had silenced, once in Amanthia, then again in Liantine. He knew the seductive power of their rhymes, understood the sing-song power of their chants. They pulled him deeper into himself, into his sorrow, into his fear. They made him less a king and more a mortal man. They cut him off and left him lonely and afraid.

  Afraid for his life. Afraid for his wife. Afraid of a knife.

  A knife, or a sword, or a vial of poison. The Fellowship could find him here, or Briantans could, or Liantines, even the good loyal men of King Hamid. All could bear death.

  Hal ran his palms down the rough clothes that he had donned on the ship, that he had worn every day since arriving in Sarmonia. The doeskin was well-tanned, for which he was grateful. The breeches were neatly cut, as if the hunter who had worn them before him had been his twin. The jerkin was loose enough that he could move with ease, and yet it felt protective. It had not saved the deer that gave it, of course, but it might keep him secure a while longer.

  “Sire!”

  Hal knew the voice before he even turned around. “Rani.”

  “The men are gathered for their mid-day meal, Sire.”

  “Have them eat, then.”

  “They will not. Not until you join them.”

  It was some blasted conspiracy, he knew, some plot to save him from the whispering creatures inside his own mind. Whether the cabal was led by Rani or by Farso, or most likely of all, by Puladarati, it had worked so far. He was responsible for his men. They demanded leadership of him; they dragged him out from the dark places deep in his own thoughts. After all, how could a good king let his loyal men go hungry?

  I’m not a good king, Hal wanted to say. I can’t be that leader. I can’t be that man.

  Instead, he turned to Rani and forced a smile, hoping that she would understand if it was somewhat wan. “Let us go, then.”

  The men were gathered in the center of the small clearing. They had built rough sheds on the edges of the woods, using fallen limbs for walls and woven leaves for ceilings. The shelters would never suffice in the winter, but for the summer, they were good enough.

  Immediately upon arriving in Sarmonia, Father Siritalanu had assumed responsibility for cooking for the party–on their first day in the clearing, he had pulled the grass free from a circle in the precise center of the field. He tended his fire with the devotion of a fanatic, managing a pair of tripods and their matching cauldrons. The man was a fair hand at stews, and he had managed to grill a string of river trout the night before without losing a single one to the flames.

  “My lord!” called out one of his soldiers. The men were not calling him “Sire” here, and certainly not “Your Majesty,” not while they were assuming the guise of mere hunting companions. Nevertheless, the informality reminded Hal of all that he had lost, all that he had left behind. Not that he had ever craved being called king, not that he had ever wished for the title.…

  He started to grimace a reply, but Rani stepped closer to him. She spoke in a low voice: “They need you, my lord. Be their leader.”

  She was right. He knew that. He must be the man that they could respect. He must be the one that they could look up to, that they could honor with their lives. Only if he remained worthy were the deaths of their comrades justified. Only if he were a great king did the lost Morenian lives have meaning.

  Hal forced a smile and gestured about the clearing, making sure that his motion was expansive enough to include all the men. “What have we here? Some sort of broth, by the smell of it. There looks to be enough for me, but what will the rest of you eat?”

  The feeble jest was appreciated. Puladarati nodded once from across the clearing, and Hal felt a rebellious flare of pleasure. Of course he knew how to lead his men. Of course he knew what was right.

  He filled his wooden bowl from the cauldron, consciously striking a jaunty pose in his doeskin breeches. “Thank you, Father,” he said. “This smells as good as any fare I’ve eaten from the royal kitchens.” Siritalanu’s face was flushed from the fire, and his color deepened at the compliment.

  As had become his custom during their stay, Hal stalked across the clearing and settled on a fallen log. The unusually smooth trunk did double duty as both table and chair. He was not surprised when Puladarati came to join him, balancing his own bowl in his three-fingered hand. “The men were worried about you, my lord.”

  “I was not far. I went down the path to find some quiet, some space to think. They could have heard me, if I’d called for help.”

  “They’re more comfortable if they can see you.”

  “They’re afraid I might disappear, stolen away by wood-sprites? That would make this entire adventure unnecessary, wouldn’t it? They’d all be free to return home.”

  Puladarati did not laugh at the grim joke. Instead, he set down his bowl and leaned closer to his king. “They don’t want to go home, my lord. Not without yo
u. Not without a crown upon your head and an army at your back.”

  Hal tried to look away from the old general’s commanding gaze. “I know that.”

  “I don’t think you do. I don’t think you realize what you mean to these men. They chose to do this. Back in Moren, when things grew grim, they came to me. They volunteered for service, based only on the growing rumor of threats against you. When we first learned that the Liantines and Briantans planned to attack together, those men purchased a boat. They obtained the charts. They paid off the harbor master to escape Morenia. They love you, Halaravilli ben-Jair, and they will fight to see you returned to your rightful home. With them. Not without.”

  “I know that!” Hal said again, and he looked away in desperate hope that Puladarati would not see what the admission cost him. Of course he knew that men would die for him. He also knew that he was not worthy of that sacrifice. He was not worthy of that price, not worthy of the lives that had already been spilled out on the cathedral floor, in the Moren streets, at the city gates and in the waters of its harbor.

  “Then act as if you know it!” Puladarati insisted, sounding for all the world as if he were once again Hal’s regent, once again a strict disciplinarian bent on bringing his rebellious young charge into line. “Talk to them! Guide them! Give them some assurance that you have a plan, that all will be well in the end!”

  “And if I don’t? If I don’t have the least idea of how I’m going to get us out of this forest and back home?”

  Puladarati gazed at him steadily. “Act as if you do, Sire.” Sire. Father. Leader of all these men, all of Moren, all of Morenia. “Act as if you do. You might begin now.”

  With that, Puladarati glanced up, seeming to discover by chance a newcomer on the edge of their conversation. “Ah! Davin! Come and join us!”

  Hal did not have an opportunity to gainsay his advisor, did not have the chance to escape from Davin. Instead, the old man hobbled over to the trunk. Hal stood instinctively, reaching out to steady the ancient retainer’s arm, to ease him down to sit. As always, Hal was captivated by the wrinkles on Davin’s face, by the gulleys etched deep beside his eyes, flowing into his long, tangled beard.