Seeds of Betrayal

Chapter Thirty-five

North edge of the Moors of Durril, Aneira

It had been five days since their encounter with the singer in Mertesse, five days since their hasty departure from the inn at which they had been staying, five days since Tavis had spoken a word to him. They had traveled a good distance in that time, skirting Mertesse Forest as they walked eastward, putting as many leagues as possible between themselves and the assassin. Tavis had made no effort to slow their progress, though Gnnsa knew that the boy wanted to return to the walled city and face the singer again Perhaps he realized that he had little hope of besting the man a second time, that if he tried again, he’d be killed. If so, he must also have known that Gnnsa had cost him the best opportunity he might ever have to avenge Bnenne’s death. Whatever the reason, he walked when Gnnsa asked him to, stopped when the Qirsi did, and ate what food he could find in his carry sack, all the while refusing even to meet Gnnsa’s gaze.

For his part, the gleaner had tried to justify his choice every waking hour since leaving the walled city He did more that night than stop Tavis from taking his revenge and possibly reclaiming his place in the Order of Ascension. He kept the boy from killing an assassin, a man who was as certain to murder again as Ihas was to follow Panya into the night sky, a man who had sold his blade to the conspiracy and would likely do so again. And for what^? So that this assassin might kill Shunk and preserve Gnnsa’s secret. The gleaner didn’t need Tavis’s bitter silence and smoldering glare to make him question the choice he had made His own doubts were almost more burden than he could bear He tried to convince himself that Shunk’s death had been necessary, if not for himself, then for Keziah. “If the Weaver contacts him we’re lost,” she had said several nights before, confirming what he already knew to be true. “Just kill him and get out of Mertesse.” Little did she know that he would find a way to kill Shunk without having to raise the blade himself.

In recent days he had come to understand that it was this last point, his reliance on the singer, that lay at the core of his guilt Not that he had let an assassin live, or that he had allowed a man to be killed, but rather that he had not killed Shunk himself. He didn’t question that it had been the safest course, nor did he think that Keziah would fault him for his choice. He had no doubt that the assassin would find a way to enter the castle, kill the traitor, and escape with his life His own chances of success would have been far less certain. Yet, he couldn’t help feeling that he had taken the coward’s way out, at a terrible cost to the boy.

Midway through this fifth day, it began to snow, in heavy, wet flakes that clung to their clothes and hair. Before long they were soaked and Gnnsa was shivering with cold. Had they still been in the forest, they might have taken shelter among the trees and risked a fire, but the moor offered neither refuge from the storm nor kindling for a warming blaze.

“We should stop at the next village,” the gleaner called to Tavis, who was walking a few paces ahead of him.

The young lord turned just slightly, not enough to allow Gnnsa to see his face, but enough to indicate that he had heard. He gave a small nod, before facing forward again. A meager response, but more than he had offered in days.

Gnnsa quickened his stride, so that he was walking just behind the boy. He had apologized countless times since Mertesse, to no avail. Still, he briefly considered asking Tavis’s forgiveness once again.

“There are small towns throughout the moor,” he said instead. “None is likely to have more than one or two inns, but we should be able to find somewhere to stay.”

Nothing

“I know it’s cold, but can you walk a while longer, or do you need to rest?”

Again, no reply.

Gnnsa dropped back again, and they continued on in silence.

Several hours later, with the sky above them growing dark, they came at last to a small farming village that sat along a narrow stream, most likely a tributary of the Tarbin. The village consisted of a few homes, a smithy, a wheelwright’s shop, and a small marketplace that might have drawn a few peddlers in the warmer turns In most of the Forelands, a village of this size would not have had an inn, but this one, located in an area of the moor crossed with some frequency by those traveling between Mertesse and the Caenssan Steppe, had a single tavern with a few rooms for rent.

The innkeeper, a ruddy-faced Eandi man who made little effort to conceal his distaste for anyone with yellow eyes, refused at first to rent them a room. Eventually, however, his wife prevailed upon him to relent, pointing out that the inn had not seen any paying guests in nearly half a turn.

Tavis and Grinsa changed out of their wet clothes and ate a surprisingly fine meal of mutton stew, steamed roots, and fresh dark bread. Still the boy didn’t speak and Grmsa’s weak attempts to force a conversation left him increasingly frustrated.

They returned to their room and climbed into their beds, though Grinsa wasn’t at all tired. He left a candle burning, staring for a time at the sagging wooden ceiling. Stealing a glance at Tavis, he saw that the boy was awake also, his eyes trained on the small, bright flame.

“At least with you refusing to talk to me, I don’t have to listen to your weak attempts at sounding like an Aneiran.”

The young lord glared at him a moment, but didn’t answer.

“What do I have to do, Tavis?” Grinsa demanded, too frustrated to hold his tongue any longer “You want me to apologize again? Fine. I’m sorry. I know you want to avenge Bnenne’s death, but Shunk had to die, and I don’t think I could have reached him without getting myself killed, and you with me.”

Tavis let out a short sharp laugh. “So, you did it to save my life,” he said, his voice thick with sarcasm.

“No. I probably would have left you at the inn. I did it to save myself, and Keziah. Is that what bothers you?”

The young lord turned away, his jaw tightening.

“I’ve tried to tell you all along that there’s more at stake here than your life and your family’s claim to the throne.”

“What? Your life?”

Grinsa sat up. “Stop it‘ You’re not nearly as stupid as you’re making yourself sound right now You couldn’t be You know of the conspiracy, you know what it’s done. We have to destroy it. Don’t you see that? Don’t you understand that defeating these Qirsi is more important than any one of us?”

“The assassin killed for the conspiracy.”

“Yes. But as I told you that day in Mertesse, he’s nothing more than a hired blade. One day he kills for them, the next day he kills one of them. Shunk was the real threat.”

“Only to you.”

“Yes, to me! Who do you think is going to stop the conspiracy, you little fool? You? Your father? The movement is led by a Weaver, Tavis. A Weaver! And it’s going to take another Weaver to destroy him.”

He rubbed a hand across his brow, wondering how he could explain to the boy what it meant to go to war against his own people. The Eandi did it with some frequency though they didn’t seem to realize it. They saw themselves as Aneirans and Sanbiris and Eibitharians. Grinsa’s people, even those who served loyally in the courts, were Qirsi before they were anything else. This was how they viewed themselves; certainly it was how the Eandi saw them. Clearly, they weren’t all willing to join the conspiracy, to abandon their friendships with the Eandi and their loyalties to the realms in which they lived. But the Eandi, including Tavis, his father, and Kearney, spoke of civil war as if it were an unimaginable horror, without seeming to understand that this was precisely where the Qirsi of the Forelands were headed: a war pitting Qirsi against Qirsi, perhaps brother against brother.

Not long ago, as they crossed through the Aneiran wood, Grinsa had told Tavis of Carthach’s betrayal. He couldn’t begin to explain to the boy, however, how one man’s treachery, though well intentioned, had divided his people, how, nine hundred years later, it still divided them. Grinsa already hated the Weaver for what he had done to Keziah, yet he still didn’t relish the notion of leading the Eandi courts to war against him. The man was Qirsi, a Weaver, just as was Grinsa. The gleaner wanted to believe that he was nothing like this man, who had used his magic to cause Keziah such pain, who had bought murders with his gold. But Grinsa knew better. They were more alike than they were different. Even without seeing the Weaver’s face, he had seen his own reflection in the man’s shadow. It had been distorted, twisted, to be sure, but it was still recognizable.

“I’m not even certain that I can defeat him,” Grinsa said, his voice dropping. “But I’m the only one who has any chance against him.” He looked up, meeting the boy’s angry stare. “If the Weaver finds a way to destroy me first, everything else is lost. He doesn’t know my face, at least I don’t think he does. Shurik did, and so Shurik had to die, even if that meant denying you your vengeance and your name.”

“So the fate of all the Forelands rests solely on your shoulders?” the boy asked.

“It depends on a great many people,” he began again. “I-”

Tavis sat up. “No! That’s not what you said. You’ve told me twice now that you’re the only one who has any chance of defeating the Weaver. You really believe that, don’t you?”

Grinsa clamped his mouth shut for a moment, struggling to keep his anger in check. He had no desire to yell at the boy a second time. “I suppose the armies of the seven realms could defeat a Qirsi army if they managed to put their differences aside and fight as one. But the loss of life on both sides would be great.”

“So you’re saving lives now.” Tavis laughed again, though he was shaking his head. “You’re keeping all the people of the Forelands from destroying themselves. I’ve never heard such rot! You’re one man, Grinsa! I don’t care what powers you wield, you’re just one man. And I refuse to accept that you’re any more important to this war than my father or the king!”

“I don’t give a damn what you choose to believe! Nor do I care if you forgive me for what I did in Mertesse! I had thought that you were man enough now to grasp the significance of all that’s happened to you over the past few turns, but obviously I was wrong! You were a spoiled fool of a boy the day I met you and you remain one to this day! This is not about you, or me. This is about fighting a war against a man whose powers you can’t possibly understand, whose resources seem boundless, and whose army is unlike any fighting force seen in the Forelands for nearly nine centuries!”

He lifted his hand, summoning a bright golden flame to his palm. A moment later he raised a wind that swept through the small chamber like a squall in the planting turns, making the window shutters rattle, and threatening to overturn the small wardrobe in the far corner, all without disturbing the flame. As the wind continued to blow, and the flame still burned steady and unflickering in his hand, he shattered the wood of a small chair by the bed, sending splinters in all directions.

The young lord stared at him as if he had transformed himself into some great beast from Bian’s realm.

“I’m but one man, Tavis,” he said calmly over the roar of the gale. “Yet if I chose to do so, I could tear this inn to the ground in a matter of moments. And I could do it any number of ways. I could summon a wind that would rip the building off its foundation. I could shatter the walls and beams with shaping power, or I could conjure a flame that would consume it before your eyes.” He let the wind in the chamber die away and extinguished the flame that had balanced on his palm. “A Weaver binds together the power of many Qirsi and wields it as a single weapon. Imagine what I could do with an army of one hundred Qirsi, or a thousand.

“The Weaver can do all that I can, perhaps more. And he has raised an army. He’s gathered to his cause some of the most powerful sorcerers in the Forelands-not Revel Qirsi, but ministers from the courts, who wield two, three, maybe even four different magics. Even Cresenne, who did come to him from the festivals, wields three.” He paused, groping for the right words. “When I say that I’m the only man who can defeat him, I’m not boasting, and I’m not trying to excuse my past actions. I’m merely stating what I know to be true. I’m a Weaver, and so I know what a Weaver is capable of doing and how he or she can be defeated. Kearney, your father, the other nobles, they’re good people most of them, and they’re formidable in their own way. But they’ve never faced an enemy like this one, and with all that’s happened in the past few turns, the courts are weaker than they’ve been in centuries. You may not believe this right now, Tavis, but I am your friend. That said, I cannot allow our friendship to keep me from doing what I must to defeat the Weaver. You have to understand that.”

For a long time Tavis kept silent, sitting motionless on his bed. Gnnsa saw something glisten on the boy’s face and realized he was crying.

“You threatened me,” the young lord finally said, his voice so low that the gleaner could barely hear him.

“What?”

Tavis looked at him, wiping his tears on his sleeve. “At the Swallow’s Nest. You said that you’d shatter my blade if you had to, and that you were tired enough that you might break my wrist also.”

Gnnsa closed his eyes briefly, wondering how he could be so thoughtless. Time and again, he found he had to remind himself that for all the changes he had seen in the young lord over the past several turns, despite the scars on his face and his arrogant bearing, Tavis was still a boy, less than a year past his Fating.

“I didn’t mean it as a threat so much as a warning,” the gleaner said. “I wasn’t going to let you kill the man and if I couldn’t persuade you to lower your blade, I would have had to break it. I swear to you, Tavis, I have never had any desire to hurt you. I’ve always done only what I felt was necessary. That’s all.”

He looked over at the boy, trying to gauge his reaction. Tears continued to fall from the young lord’s dark eyes, but the expression on his face didn’t change.

“I know that it seemed we were searching for the singer a long time, Gnnsa went on. ”But it was only a few turns.“

“It was five.”

He conceded the point with a small shrug. “All right, five. But that’s still less than half a year. Now we know what he looks like. We know his name, or at least the name he uses. He’ll be easier to find a second time.”

“He knows we’re looking for him now. Even if we find him, I won’t be able to surprise him again.”

“Maybe not. But then we’ll find some other way. No matter what it takes, we will prove your innocence to all the nobles of Eibithar. I don’t know what will happen with the Order of Ascension-the fate of the Glyndwr line lies beyond my control. But we will restore your name, that I promise you. You were born a noble of the House of Curgh, and you’ll be a lord of that court again.”

Tavis took a long breath and nodded, though he still looked grim. At last he spoke. “If all that you say is true, you risked a good deal more than your life freeing me from Kentigern’s dungeon. You risked the future of the Forelands.”

Gnnsa was silent for a moment. “I suppose I did. I thought the risk was justified.”

“I’m grateful. But my point is that if you’re the only one who can stop this Weaver, then we have to do everything possible to keep you alive.”

“Don’t worry about me, Tavis. As I’ve already made clear, I wield many magics. I can take care of myself.”

The young lord looked away. “But it might be helpful if you had someone with you, watching your back. Someone who was good with a sword.”

Gnnsa suppressed a smile. A joke came to mind, something about the lord becoming a liege man, but he kept it to himself. He had worked too hard trying to repair their friendship, and he sensed that this was important to the boy, that Tavis needed to feel that he had a role to play in the coming war, just as did his father and the king and Gnnsa himself.

“Yes,” the gleaner said instead, keeping his expression solemn. “I think you’re right. I’d feel safer knowing such a person was nearby.”

Tavis nodded. “All right then.”

The gleaner watched him for a moment. “Does that mean you’re going to start talking to me again^?”

“Isn’t that what I’m doing now‘”

Gnnsa frowned. “On second thought, I think I enjoyed your silence.” He lay down again. “Sleep now. We’ve a long way to go and I’d like to cover at least three leagues tomorrow, notwithstanding the snow.”

“Where are we going, anyway^?”

Gnnsa glanced at him, a smile on his lips. “Don’t you know^?”

The boy shook his head. “I’ve been occupied with other things. I know we’re headed east, toward the steppe. I assumed you just wanted to get as far from Mertesse as possible.”

“I did. But I have it in mind to cross into Caerisse and then turn north.”

“North?”

“Yes. I thought it might do you some good to go home, to Eibithar.”

“It would,” Tavis said, smiling for the first time in days. Almost immediately, however, his expression sobered again. “But Aindreas still wants me dead. Except for Glyndwr, I’m not safe anywhere in the realm.”

Gnnsa summoned a small wind that extinguished the candle. “You haven’t been safe in Aneira either,” he said, closing his eyes. “And at least to the north you won’t have to rely on that awful accent.” He couldn’t be expected to keep all of his jokes to himself.