Glasswrights' Master (6 page)

Sighing contentedly, Kella led the way through the forest. They weren't far from the Great Clearing. She and Tovin could relax in the sun there. Perhaps if she let him fall asleep, she could prod him awake from the midst of a dream. Then he would be certain to remember something. Then he would be certain to share.

Kella stopped on the edge of the clearing, astonished by the sight of a platform on the far edge of the field, surrounded by a dozen brightly colored tents. She reached out one hand for Tovin's arm, scarcely managing to bite back her words of warning.

The player, though, strode into the center of the plain, oblivious to the wrongness, utterly unaware that things were not as they should be. “Gali!” he cried, and it took Kella a moment to realize that the strange syllables were the name of a woman, the woman who stood in the middle of the stark wooden platform.

She turned toward Tovin slowly, and Kella could see that she balanced the ends of two fine sticks upon her palms. Thin metal plates sat on top of the sticks. As Kella squinted, she realized that the sticks were spinning, twirling so rapidly that their motion was nearly invisible. The plates whirled on their narrow supports, catching glints of sunlight as if they were butterfly wings.

Gali inclined her head toward Tovin, but then she returned her attention to her sticks. With a studied concentration, she tossed the pole on her left palm to her right, so that the two sticks spun next to each other. The woman took a moment to verify that the plates were still in motion, and then she edged one foot forward. Kella saw that Gali wore strange slippers–odd shoes that curled up over her toes. The herb witch blinked, and then she realized that the ends of the shoes were actually cloth-stuffed balls.

Gali watched her spinning plates with careful attention, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth. When she perceived some invisible signal, she kicked forward with her right foot, and the motion tossed the cloth ball into the air. A quick shuffle brought the woman's plate-bearing hand beneath the bauble, and she managed to catch it on top of one of her plates.

She steadied the new configuration–one stick, plate, and ball, another stick and plate. Then, she kicked her left foot into the air, sending its ball arcing into the sky.

The kick was too vigorous. Gali lunged for the ball, but it was too far beyond her reach. She stepped back, stilling her hand, steadying the spinning plates. Even that motion proved too extreme, though. The balance was gone. Sticks, plates, and balls came crashing down around her. A torrent of angry curses cut across Gali's lips.

Tovin laughed and reached down for the ball that had dropped off the edge of the wooden platform. He tossed it to the woman easily, nodding as she caught it. “Keep trying,” he called. “You'll get the balance eventually.”

Gali's eyes flashed fire, and Kella wondered that her traveling man could not see the true anger behind that gaze. Perhaps he did, though. Perhaps he merely laughed at the scarce-banked fury. Perhaps he did not care if a woman raged against him.

Tovin turned toward her with a deep bow, as if he were in the presence of royalty. “Kella Herb Witch, may I present to you Gali Player.”

Kella read the shrewd appraisal in the younger woman's face, realized that she was being measured against all sorts of speculation.
Aye,
she wanted to say.
Your player man has been keeping company with me, me with my grey hair and wrinkled flesh. I find more to entertain him than the spinning of a few plates.
Instead, Kella said, “You should not be here in the Clearing. If the King's Men come this way, they'll drive you away, after charging you kingspence for using the space.”

Gali's response was immediate and frosty. “The King's Men will be entertained by my performance, goodwife.”

“By throwing around some sticks and plates? If you run your mouth to the King's Men, you'll find yourself in a stone cell in the city.” Kella knew that she was right. The king would never tolerate a company of vagabonds. Not here. Not near the groves where the stags ran, the ponds where the swans nested. Certainly not with this construction they had made–a wooden platform in the middle of the living forest.

Kella walked a narrow path inside the woods. She knew that she was mostly tolerated because she hid her presence. Hid her presence, and brewed a tincture or two, some that even found their way into the king's court.

But Kella would not waste time arguing with a child. She turned to Tovin. “You're borrowing trouble.”

“We're plying our trade.”

“You're trading in another man's market.”

“It's not as if we're hunting here. We're practicing, and then we'll go into the city.”

“The king will make no distinction! You should realize that. The forest is forbidden to all but nobles; the Clearing most of all.” Another thought came to her, one that she suspected would hold more power than her warnings. “If the King's Men get wind of your troop here, they'll likely ride to see who else is in the forest.
All
the others who hide here.”

She thought that Tovin would worry for her, that he would hesitate to place her in danger. The name that sprang to his lips, though, belonged to another. “Jalina.”

Kella disciplined her face to a passive nod. Whatever it took to remove these
invaders from her forest.… “Jalina,” she repeated.

Tovin's eyes narrowed, and he stopped to look at all the people arrayed across the clearing. There were six tents that Kella could see on the grass, and it looked as if a handful more were scattered beneath the canopy on the far side of the clearing. “We'll think about it, then,” Tovin said. “Perhaps we'll move to the high road, just outside of the woods.”

He looked to Kella, as if to seek her approval. She nodded once, exercising restraint so that she did not turn to Gali, did not gloat to the other woman. Kella had her power. She could best any city girl newly come to the woods.

Just then, one of the players called out to Tovin, summoning him across the grassy field by waving a white parchment scroll. Kella could just make out the ribbons that hung from the edge of the document, royal blue in the morning light. Tovin nodded and strode across the clearing, and the troop of performers gathered around him.

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.