Weavers of War (23 page)

“Hold, Duchess!” came a man’s voice.

The distance was great, but Elspeth didn’t know how far Qirsi magic could reach. She resisted an urge to look back at the white-hairs.

“Just keep moving,” she told the boys, her voice low and taut.

“Not another step, my lady!” the man called again, closer this time, the tone harder.

Still she didn’t slow.

Suddenly, a stone just beside the road exploded in a cloud of white dust, the report making her jump.

“Another step, and I do the same to one of you.”

Elspeth stopped, holding out a hand so that her sons would do the same. Turning slowly, she saw a tall Qirsi approaching her, followed by a company of perhaps two dozen sorcerers. But it was the leader who drew her eye. She had never seen a Qirsi like this one—comparing him in her mind with Pillad, her husband’s unremarkable first minister, she found it hard to believe that they were of the same race. This man was powerfully built and had an elegant bearing. He was even handsome in a chilling way, with his unruly white hair, brilliant golden eyes, and square face. He had the look of a noble—she could see why these others followed him.

Before she could stop the boy, Renald pulled his sword free and stepped in front of her.

“Get back, white-hair,” he said. Elspeth could see his hand trembling.

A sharp, ringing note echoed off the tor, and shards of steel fell to the ground, clattering off the stone road.

“I could do the same to your skull, whelp,” the man said. He gestured at the Qirsi standing with him. “So could any of my warriors. You may think yourself brave, but in this case you’d be wise to let fear stay your hand.”

Her son’s face shaded to crimson and Elspeth worried that he might say something rash. But he merely stared at the useless hilt of his sword.

“Your husband rode south with his army?” the man asked.

Elspeth regarded him for several moments. She wasn’t about to do anything foolish, but neither was she ready to just give him whatever information he wanted. “Who are you?”

The man grinned, though the look in his eyes remained deadly serious. “Very well. My name is Dusaan jal Kania.”

She narrowed her eyes. The name sounded familiar.

“Until recently, I was high chancellor to the emperor of Braedon.” His smile broadened at what he saw on her face. “This surprises you. Perhaps you think that a man in my position would have too little to gain and too much to lose from a movement such as ours.”

Elspeth opened her mouth, closed it again, shook her head. “I don’t know what I thought,” she admitted.

“It may also surprise you to learn that I’m a Weaver.”

“Gods save us all!”

“Indeed. Now I’m going to ask you again, and I won’t be so patient this time if you refuse to answer. Has the duke ridden south with his army?”

She hesitated, pressing her lips together. Then she nodded, feeling as she did that she was betraying her husband, wondering that she should care.

“And the first minister with him?”

“Yes, he—” She stared at him. “Pillad’s a traitor, isn’t he? He’s part of your conspiracy.”

The predatory smile returned. “As you might imagine, we don’t think of ourselves as traitors. But yes, he serves our movement.”

“I warned him,” she said, her voice low. “But the fool just wouldn’t listen.” The duchess nearly asked the man what orders he had given Pillad, but she wasn’t certain that she wanted to hear his answer, at least not in front of her children. Just a short time ago she had wished for Renald’s death. Faced now with the realization that he most likely would be killed, she found herself grieving for him, her eyes stinging with tears she had never believed she would shed.

“I see you understand,” he said.

“Understand what?” Renald the Younger demanded. He glared at her. “Mother?”

She ignored him, keeping her eyes on the Weaver. “What is it you want of us?”

“You’re to accompany us back to the castle and convince your soldiers to surrender the castle.”

Renald shook his head fiercely. “Never!”

“And if I don’t?”

“We’ll take it anyway, hundreds of men will die, and the fortress of your forebears will be destroyed.”

“You could do that?” But already she knew the answer. She had seen what this man and his army had done to the fleets in Falcon Bay.

“Weaving the magic of these other shapers, I can lay waste to the entire city.”

How could Kearney possibly prevail against this man? How could any sovereign? In that moment, Elspeth understood that she was looking upon the future of the Forelands.

“Very well. I’ll do as you command. In return, I ask that you spare my life and those of my sons.”

“Mother! You can’t do this!”

She looked at the boy. “Be quiet, Renald. Only a fool would doom so many men to their deaths simply out of pride and obstinacy. It’s time you learned what it means to lead a great house.”

The irony hit her as soon as she spoke the words. If this Qirsi standing before them truly intended to rule the seven realms, all Eandi nobility would be overthrown. Her sons would never rule in any court. Not even in Prindyr or Lynde, much less in Galdasten or the City of Kings. If the Weaver was thinking the same thing, he had the good grace to keep it to himself.

“Well?” she asked, eyeing the Qirsi once more.

“I make no promises, my lady, except to say that so long as you cooperate with us, you’ll not be harmed.”

She couldn’t be certain whether he meant only her or the boys as well, and she had the sense that his ambiguity was intentional. Fear for her sons seized her, and for a moment she couldn’t even bring herself to draw breath.

“Lead the way, my lady,” the Weaver said, his square face as placid as a morning tide. With a slender hand, he indicated the road back to the castle.

Run!
she wanted to yell to her children.
Make your way to the sanctuary and don’t look back!
But she had little hope that they could escape the Qirsi, and every expectation that the Weaver would punish them all for making the attempt. So she turned, defeated and helpless, and meekly led them back toward the castle gate. The duke wouldn’t have recognized her; her sons wouldn’t so much as glance at her.

She kept her eyes fixed on the ramparts as she walked up the road, half hoping that Galdasten’s archers would loose their arrows despite her presence at the head of the Weaver’s army. Instead, they lowered their bows and called for the gate guards to open the portcullises. Just as the Weaver had known they would.

For all her talk of Renald’s cowardice, his weakness and poor leadership, Elspeth couldn’t imagine him giving up his castle without a single weapon being drawn.
What have I become?

Within moments, they stood in the center of the lower ward, surrounded by men who even now looked to her for leadership. The archers still carried their bows, and the swordsmen held their blades ready. Elspeth could see murder in their eyes. She could still save Galdasten, if she were willing to sacrifice herself and her boys.

Perhaps the Qirsi read these thoughts in her eyes, for abruptly he grabbed Renald the Younger by the arm, pulling the boy away from her and in the same motion drawing his sword. For one terrifying instant, Elspeth thought the Weaver would kill the boy right there, but he didn’t. He merely laid the edge of his sword against Renald’s neck and looked at her, his expression unchanged.

“Tell them to lay down their weapons.”

“No, Mother, don’t!” the boy said gamely. “He’s not—”

“Quiet!” the Qirsi said. He pressed harder with his blade, so that a thin line of blood appeared at the boy’s throat and trickled over the steel.

Elspeth had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out.

“Now, my lady. Do it, or he dies.”

“Surrender your weapons,” she called to the soldiers, her eyes never straying from the steel and the blood. When several of the men hesitated, looking at one another, she said, “Please. I’ve seen what these Qirsi can do with their magic. They destroyed the entire Braedony fleet, and Wethyrn’s as well. We cannot defeat them; if we try, they’ll kill us all.”

The men stared at her for what seemed an eternity, until finally one of them stepped forward and dropped his sword and dagger only a few paces from where she stood. Then he bowed to her and took a step back. Slowly, others did the same, all of them offering obeisance to her as they added their weapons to the growing mound of steel.

Adler and Rory stood on either side of her, clinging to her hands, but though the Weaver had released Renald, the boy still would not look at her, nor did he bother to wipe the blood from his neck. He stood perfectly still, staring straight ahead, like a soldier bravely awaiting execution.

Soon archers were filing out of the towers to place their bows and quivers with the other arms. As the surrender continued, the Weaver whispered something to two of the other Qirsi, one of them a waif-like woman with eyes as bright as his own, and the other a man with pale yellow eyes in a lean face. A moment later these two started off in different directions, the woman with a half smile on her face.

“You two,” the Weaver said, pointing to the captains Renald had left behind to protect the castle. “Come here.”

The soldiers approached him, as a low murmur swept through the courtyard. They stopped just before him, both of them pale and tight-lipped.

“Your duke left the two of you in command of the army?”

Neither man spoke.

“Answer me.”

The Weaver didn’t move at all, but it seemed that both men suddenly sagged, as if they had abruptly taken ill.

“Yes,” one of them said. “We’re in command.”

He’s using magic on them,
she had time to think.

“Get on your knees.”

The men dropped to their knees, their heads bowed.

The Weaver still held his sword, and now he stepped forward, raising the weapon as to strike them.

“No!” Elspeth cried.

The Qirsi glanced at her. “They’re soldiers, my lady. They understand that I can’t allow them to live. So long as these captains live, your husband’s soldiers remain an army. Without them, they become nothing more than a collection of defeated men.”

He faced them again, and with swift, powerful strokes hewed off the head of one man and then the other. Their bodies toppled sideways to the earth, blood darkening the grass. The other men said nothing nor did they make any move to retrieve their weapons.

Rory, on the other hand, was sobbing, his face pressed against her dress. Elspeth stroked his head, fearing that she’d be ill.

“See what you’ve done?” Renald said, glowering at her. “You made those men surrender and now they’re dead!”

She should have said something. She should have had some answer for the hatred she saw in her son’s eyes. But she couldn’t think of anything adequate. And in the next moment matters grew far worse.

“What are they doing with Father Coulson?” Adler asked.

The duchess’s head snapped up in time to see the man the Weaver had sent away moments before leading the prelate down the broad stone stairway that linked the castle’s upper and lower wards. Even from this distance, she could see that Coulson was trembling, and that his legs seemed barely to support him.

“What are they going to do to him, Mother?” Adler asked again.

She glanced at Renald, whose face had gone white and whose eyes still held such contempt.

“I don’t know, child,” she said. A lie, for who in that ward didn’t know, save for the young ones? The cloisters had long been tied to the courts and were known to be hostile to the Qirsi and their adherence to the Old Faith. Was it so surprising that these renegade white-hairs should strike at the prelacy?

“They’re going to kill him,” Renald said bitterly.

“They are not!” Adler shot back. “Are they, Mother?”

“Hush, child.”

The Qirsi man pulled the prelate with him until they stood before the Weaver. Then he threw Coulson to the ground and handed the Weaver the hilt of a shattered sword.

“This is his?” the Weaver asked.

“Yes, Weaver.”

The Qirsi nodded. “Thank you, Uestem.” He looked down at Coulson, a smile playing at the corners of his broad mouth. “So you fancy yourself a warrior, do you, Father Prelate?”

“I’m a man of the cloister,” he answered in a quaking voice. “But I’ll gladly take up arms to defend my house and my realm.”

“Bravely said. Of course, your house is defeated, and your realm will soon be mine. So it seems your courage has been wasted.”

Without another word, the Weaver raised his weapon once more and hacked off the prelate’s head.

Adler screamed, Rory’s sobbing grew louder.

Several of Galdasten’s soldiers looked away. Others shouted angrily, a few of them taking a step toward their weapons.

There was a strange, dry cracking sound, and the nearest of these men collapsed to the ground clutching his leg and howling with pain.

“That was his leg,” the Weaver said, his voice carrying across the ward. “It could just as easily have been his neck. And it will be for the next man who takes even a single step toward those weapons. Do I make myself clear?”

The others who had started toward the weapons stood utterly still, but several of them continued to eye the swords.

Apparently the Weaver noticed this as well, for a moment later there was a second snapping noise and another soldier fell to the ground. This one, however, didn’t cry out, nor did he writhe in pain. He simply lay still, his head tipped at a wrong angle, his eyes gazing sightless at the sky. The other men stepped back.

“You’re going to kill us, too, aren’t you?” Renald said, drawing the Weaver’s gaze.

“I have no intention of killing you today, Lord Galdasten.”

“What about tomorrow, or the day after that?”

The man smiled thinly. “Gleaning has always been my least favorite of the Qirsi magics.”

Renald said nothing.

“For now, you’ll be placed in the prison tower with your mother and your brothers. Beyond that, I can’t say.”

“You intend to rule the Forelands, and to be served by Qirsi lords, just as our king is served now by Eandi nobles. You can’t have men like me about, reminding your subjects of the day when the great houses ruled the seven realms.”