Teth listened in stunned silence, too surprised even to be angry. She saw all the pieces come together, all the seemingly random events that had pushed her toward where she was right now. They were not random at all. It had been this old man pulling her strings, crafting her the same way her father had crafted metal. He had put her in the fire then pounded her. Over and over, he had hit her, burnt her, struck her, tempered her, until she was ready. “Why?” she whispered.
“How first.” The Weaver paused, threw his head back and blew a long stream of air from his pursed lips. His hands came together in a great clap that shook Teth. “My power is to see the Order, to see how all things connect together, and understand how my actions and those of my followers will ripple through all those connections to change everything that will happen. Thus the movements you see. You think they are random, but every one has a purpose. They create ripples. Those are amplified by the men outside, by the Church, by a network that spans every nation until they become waves. And those waves change the Order. They make patterns, series of outcomes spanning time and space. Some take seconds, such as that spider falling on your hand. Others take years. Others generations.
“Ah, but there is freewill, you say. Any person at any point can undo our work by simply making a choice I did not expect. But the truth is that our freewill is almost never used. At any point over the past week, you could have run away, you could have climbed this tower, could have killed my followers. Even now, you could have let the spider bite you, could have stabbed me or slashed my throat, but you didn’t. You did exactly what my pattern dictated. The vast majority of the time, the vast majority of the people do exactly what we expect, and even when they don’t, their actions are almost always inconsequential. Almost.
“But those ‘almosts’ add up. Over the course of hundreds of years, even small distortions become significant to the pattern. Thus is was over two hundred years ago that the Master of that time saw Valatarian’s great pattern failing and made a desperate attempt to save it. He ensured that a woman would trip on a rock, that she would land in the arms of a man, that they would be perfectly matched, that they would be at their sexual peak. He ensured that a week later that man would be on top of that woman when her husband returned to get a new shirt after a passing wagon splashed his with mud. He knew that this husband had a great temper, that he held his wife like his last coin. A hired guard, he carried a knife at all times and knew how to use it. My predecessor expected this man to open the door, see his wife panting with pleasure in the arms of another, and use his knife to kill the adulterer. He was certain that this would be the outcome of the threads having been so pulled.”
The old man paused, caught a fly in his hand, held it for a second, then let it go. “But the adulterer, a proud and powerful man, did something entirely counter to everything the Order had made him to be, something that the Master could not have possibly predicted. He ran. He jumped from the woman in the middle of his climax, allowed her husband to stab her instead, and ran naked into the street to escape. But far more significant was that the adulterer, having survived, saw the entire thing for what it was. He saw how the Order had been used against him, knew that the Weavers were to blame, and thus dedicated himself to seeing us destroyed. And so, that one weaving, which was meant to sustain us, proved to be our downfall.”
The old man stopped and took a long, deep breath, sat still, movements stopped. “The adulterer? Was Elden Risbourg de Nardees, the first King of Liandria. And twelve years later, he would lead a rebellion that would destroy the Empire Valatarian had created. He would destroy our compounds, scatter our followers to the corners of the world, end our ability to maintain the pattern our savior had created. Through that one action, de Nardees destroyed what remained of Valatarian’s pattern and forced us to start all over again.”
The Master threw his arms back, knocking over a tall glass vial. Its contents flowed across the desk, dripping off the side and onto his robes. Teth caught the scent of alcohol rising from the puddle. Paying no attention to the spill, he leaned back and stared at the ceiling above. “I am old and my part is almost done. The pattern I have woven is woefully uncertain and may, even now, be unraveling. But it is the only path left us if we wish to maintain the Order. And that is why you are here. We created you, crafted you for a purpose. I know it has been difficult, but the moment that the first king of Liandria ran from that room, it became necessary to create you, and we have worked for nearly two hundred years to do so.”
“Dasen,” Teth whispered. “He’s the one you really care about. This isn’t about me. It’s about him. You created me to protect him. You wanted me to love him, to keep him safe. But why tell me that now? What if I reject what you’ve done? What if I turn on him? What if I react just like Nardees?”
“Everything I do is because I believe it is what is required to complete the pattern that will save the Order. I have judged the Tapestry as best I can and decided that this is what is most likely to result in the pattern that is needed.” The Weaver stopped, waited, made Teth hang on his words. “And I know that you need him, that you cannot live without him.”
Teth knew exactly what he meant. She knew that she could not survive, could not maintain her sanity without Dasen. She was tied too closely to him, was too invested in him now.
“But there is a catch,” the Weaver whispered, forcing Teth’s full attention. “And that is why you are here, why you have seen all this, why I have told you these things. You had to see, had to believe, had to know that I do not work in conjecture or prophecies. You had to know that my words are truth as absolute as the rising of the sun.”
Teth thought back on her life, on everything that had ever happened, and on everything she had just heard. She shivered, felt herself retracting from the thought that her life had been nothing more than a construct of this man’s ambitions at the same time she knew the absolute truth of it. She nodded numbly.
“Know this,” the old man leaned forward, empty sockets staring at her as if the eyes were still there. His hand caught the piece of fabric at the end of the table and brought it to the candle, allowing it to catch. “If you complete your joining with Dasen, if you make him your husband in fact, he will die. The pattern will be lost. Everything you care about will be ripped away. The Order will fall. And you will live to see it happen. You will suffer over and over and over, until everything that holds our world together has been torn asunder leaving you, alone in the Maelstrom.”
“But . . . but . . . I . . . we . . .”
“There is no negotiation,” the Weaver interrupted. He threw the flaming cloth into the air, its embers spiraling in a cascade of sparks. “The pattern has been set, and very soon the last Master will be dead, leaving no one to pull the weft, to correct your mistakes, to chart a new course.” And with that, the old man brought his hand slamming down onto the table a few inches from the spider. “The Order, the world, rests with you!” he yelled as the creature leapt to his hand and sank its fangs into his papery flesh. At the same moment, the embers landed. The desk erupted into blue flames that gladly took hold of the old man’s robes, consuming the spider, and climbing up his sleeve and out across his middle.
Teth jumped back, gasped, but she could not manage words before the man rose from his chair, threw back his flaming arms and screamed, “They are coming. Run!”
At that same moment, an explosion sounded outside. The tower shook. The flames rose around the old man in a conflagration, and the spiders fell. Dozens of great black shapes floated down from the rafters above.
Chapter 13
The 20th Day of Summer
“Dasen!” The sound pulled Dasen slowly from the drug-laden sleep that held him. His hands came up reflexively to fend off the hairless old man who would surely be waiting to ply him with the sticky sweet drink that had kept him dreaming on this bed since the monks had pulled him from the river.
There was no one there to fight. Dasen sat up and almost went back down. His body
was weak and distant, his thoughts were slow, his mouth dry and gummy. He was bathed in sweat, clothes – pants and a shirt – soaked through. His eyes were cloudy. He rubbed them to restore some vision and stared around the tiny room that held him. There were stone walls, a slit of a window, a door, a bed, and little room for anything else.
I heard my name, the thought came to him from a great distance, worming through the morass that was his mind. It was Teth. His thoughts become clearer. She might be in trouble. I need to find her.
He tried to stand. His shoulder slammed into the wall at his side, and he slid down it into a pile of unresponsive limbs. How long have I been lying there? he wondered as he shook his head. His legs felt like they were asleep. He tried to move them, but they barely responded to his commands. His arms, back, neck were little better. He must have been lying in that bed for days. He should have been sore, worn out from the fury of the battle, but he felt none of that exhaustion. In fact, the opposite was true. He felt like he had not used his legs in weeks.
Still, he had heard Teth calling for him. She must be looking, must have escaped the monks that were inexplicably holding them. “Teff,” he called, but his voice was a croak, tongue numb. “Teff!” he tried again, but the sound was weaker than the first. He could feel the dry rasp that was his throat, the heavy mass that was his tongue. He found a glass of water on the table, drained it and felt better, but he thought better of calling attention to himself.
He needed to recover, to get out, to find Teth before the monks knew he was awake, before they returned. And to do that, he needed his legs to work. He forced them to move, forced the blood back into them. He stretched them out painfully before him, fighting pins and needles as they came alive, then coaxed his knees to bend and his feet to slide back. He used his arms to help. It was a painstaking process, legs moving back and forth, slowly coming to life, resisting him like recalcitrant children being forced into a bath. But he refused to surrender, remembered all they had been through in the past weeks, all that they had overcome. This was nothing in comparison to the horrors they had faced, to the pain they had endured, to the terrible things they had done.
It seemed to take a painful eternity with any more clues from outside, no more calls from Teth, no sound of struggle, no shuffling of feet, no one at his door. But eventually, his legs remembered their purpose, and he stood.
He was as wobbly as a new born lamb, his head was foggy, and he already felt exhausted, but he was standing. He tried to imagine what awaited him. He had no idea how long it had been since he had heard Teth, but he knew she wouldn’t have stopped searching. She could only have been stopped by someone, silenced, dragged away, or run off. It meant that it was up to him to save himself, up to him to find her.
He reached for the power he had used in the battle. He had promised Teth that he would not use it again, but it was a promise he would gladly break if it was the only way to get her back. The power wasn’t there. His mind was foggy, but he could not find anything. Struggling to remember how he had done it in the battle, he tried again, but there was nothing. He took a deep breath. He would have to do without.
With another breath, he reached for the handle of the door. An explosion sounded. The room shook. The ground swayed, and he struggled to remain standing.
“Run!“ a voice rose out of nowhere, the howl of an ancient ghost. Dasen intended to follow its advice. He threw his weight into the door, felt the handle slide down, and yanked it open. Teth was standing just outside, staring at him in shock.
#
Spiders, dozens of black shapes, fell from the rafters, legs spread wide to slow the descent, as Teth wove her way to the door. Behind her, the Master burned. His howls suffused her. The stench of his burning flesh inundated her. Gagging, legs shaking, stomach turning, she found herself back on the battlefield. Bodies were everywhere, black shapes descended on her, smoke and the smell of death surrounded her. She saw them all as if she were still there, still fighting, still feeling all that fear and pain. Running, somehow, through it, she dodged the falling spiders, kept her feet despite the shaking of the ground, and slammed the door behind her to keep the black shapes from following her down the stairs.
Dasen, something whispered in her mind. Fighting through the phantasms that threatened to overtake her, the fear, the sorrow, the helplessness, she stopped at the first landing, shook her head, and forced herself to breathe. You’re not there, she told herself. You are here. You have to be here. You have to find Dasen. You have to get away.
The door to her side flew open. Teth nearly leapt from her skin. She turned, crouched, prepared to pounce, and saw Dasen.
“Dasen!” she screamed and threw herself at him. She wrapped her arms around her husband and felt him collapse. Unbalanced, they tumbled into the room and crashed onto a bed. Teth didn’t care. She found his lips, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him with all her might.
Explosions sounded outside. The tower shook. Dust rained down. The first tendrils of smoke crept through the window above. Teth pulled herself away, tried to catch her breath. She wanted nothing more than to kiss him again, to press herself against him, feel him close, and know that he was there. Explosions be damned.
“Teth,” Dasen gasped. “By the Order, I can’t believe . . . .”
She could not help herself. She kissed him again. The tower shook, smoke filled the top of the room. She ignored it all, forgot everything else, allowed it all to pass over her, and kissed him again and again.
She pulled away more slowly than she should have, catching his lip in hers, feeling him against her where her legs were spread around him. She stared at him for the briefest moment, just looked into his eyes, at his sallow, sunken face then jumped to her feet. “We have to go,” she yelled, holding a hand out to the man she had just tackled.
Dasen held her hand, but it took almost all her strength to lift him to his feet, as if he were not even trying. She looked at him, question obvious. “I don’t know how long I’ve been lying here,” he answered. “But they’ve kept me drugged. This is the first time I’ve moved since they pulled us from the river, and my legs are still waking up.”
“Well, it’s not the first time I’ve carried you.” She pulled his arm around her neck and maneuvered them toward the door.
“What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Teth answered when she realized that it was not a question she could possibly answer.
They started down the stairs, Dasen hobbling, Teth supporting his weight to keep them from falling. Smoke was filling the tower, streaming in the windows and up the stairs from the door. The air was filled with a cacophony of sounds, the yowls of creatures, clatter of weapons, crackle of fire, stamping of feet, beating of wings. The creatures were here. They had finally found them.
Emerged from the tower, choking against the smoke that was everywhere, they found exactly what Teth had expected for a week. Black shapes filled the smoke, fell from the sky, ran through the garden. And the Weavers arrived just in time to meet them. A column of them happened to be walking down the path. They did not even turn to see their fates. The creatures smashed them to the ground, slashed through them with weapons, tore them apart with talons, feasted on their flesh. And the men died without the slightest struggle, without a sound, without so much as a scream or a groan.
Teth stood stunned, just stood outside the tower and watched as the creatures, black shapes in a dozen hideous forms that were impossible to differentiate through the smoke, slaughtered the Weavers. Those who were not claimed in that first wave just kept walking at the same pace they always maintained. The creatures could not resist. They leapt from man to man, growing more and more vicious, taking more and more time, and growing more and more frustrated. They want the suffering, Teth realized. The Weavers’ indifference was acid to them. They howled, shook, snapped at one another in frustration as their malevolence was met with silence, stillness, and indifference.
“Come on!” Dasen shouted f
rom beside her. “We have to run.”
Teth was frozen. Her eyes shifted from creature to creature, from one mangled victim to another and returned again to the battlefield. The blood, the pain, the death, the fear, the desperation were before her again, were every bit as real as they had been outside Thoren. She wanted to fall to the ground, wanted to cry, wanted to curl up in a ball and never see anything again. Her entire body shook. Her breath caught. Her heart stopped. She hyperventilated, stabbing pains radiated from her chest, shot down her arms. And still she could not relinquish the terror, could not escape the fear, could not help but feel it all again.
“Teth!” Dasen yelled. “Come back! I need you! Please, we have to run.”
She looked at him. And saw hundreds of bodies scattered to dust, saw the horrible devastation that he had created. She gasped, released a single sob, and retched. She waited to feel her emotions pulled away, to feel that terrible sucking sensation, to witness the horrible things that he would do with those emotions, to see the man she loved become a monster as real as the ones he had destroyed.
The False Martyr Page 14