Shapers of Darkness: Book Four of Winds of the Forelands (Winds of the Forelands Tetralogy)

by David B. Coe

  She lay in the bed, listening to the rain, and to the rhythm of her love’s breathing, which slowed gradually as sleep came to her.

  Fetnalla didn’t realize that she had fallen asleep as well until she found herself on the Weaver’s plain. A cool wind brushed her skin and she remembered that she was naked.

  Not now, she thought. Can’t this wait until tomorrow night?

  To which the Weaver’s voice replied, “Why should I wait?”

  Usually she had to walk a distance to find him, but on this night the Weaver appeared before her immediately, the brilliant light behind him burning her eyes.

  “You’re not alone, are you?”

  She shook her head, crossing her arms over her breasts.

  “Dantrielle’s minister is with you?”

  “Yes, Weaver.”

  “Are you any closer to turning her?”

  She had already felt what he could do to her if she angered him, and so she didn’t dare lie. “No, Weaver, not yet.”

  “You still think it’s possible, though.”

  “I want to believe it. I’m not ready to give up yet.”

  She saw him nod. “A good answer. Very well. Tell me of your duke and his plans to defy the regent.”

  “He remains convinced that the war with Eibithar is a bad idea. He fears a civil war, but he believes that with the support of the other houses, he can prevail against the Solkarans.”

  “Tounstrel and Bistari are with you?”

  “No, Weaver. Only Tounstrel. Bistari’s new duke refuses to take sides in the matter.”

  “Ah,” the Weaver said, nodding again. “He aspires to the throne.”

  “That’s what the dukes think.”

  “Did Dantrielle win over Kett and Noltierre?”

  “Yes, Weaver. In all, five houses have pledged themselves to stand against the regent.”

  “Good. Very good. Bistari might have tipped the balance too far. I’m pleased.”

  She lowered her gaze. Already she had learned what the Weaver expected of her. “Thank you, Weaver. I wanted to ask you, when war comes, shall I wield my power on my duke’s behalf?”

  “You’ll have to. If you refuse, you endanger yourself and the movement. But if your duke is like most Eandi, he knows little of Qirsi magic. You can use your powers on his behalf without using them well. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Weaver.”

  “Good. I’ll leave you now, since you’re with the minister.”

  “Thank you, Weaver.”

  “Time runs short. You know that. If you don’t turn her soon, it will be too late. We’ll have no choice but to kill her.”

  He may as well have reached into her chest and taken hold of her heart.

  “Yes, Weaver,” she managed, and woke.

  The candle flame beside the bed flickered and danced. Evanthya was sitting up, staring at her, a single crease like a scar in the middle of her forehead.

  “You were dreaming.”

  Fetnalla’s throat felt dry. “Was I?”

  “Yes, and you spoke in your sleep.”

  She pulled up the bed linens, covering herself. “What did I say?”

  “It was hard to make sense of it. But you said something about a Weaver.”

  “A Weaver.” She tried to make herself laugh as she said this, but it came out sounding breathless and desperate to her own ears.

  “What was it you were dreaming about?”

  “Honestly, Evanthya, I don’t remember.”

  “Was it a vision?”

  Fetnalla shook her head. “I’d remember a vision.”

  Evanthya looked as if she wanted to ask more, but Fetnalla didn’t allow her the chance.

  “What’s the hour?” she demanded, kicking off the linens and swinging herself out of the bed.

  “I’m not certain.”

  She began to dress. “I should return to my chamber.”

  “Have you had this dream before, Fetnalla?”

  “I told you, I don’t remember it. How should I know if I’ve had it before?” She winced at what she heard in her voice. Even in the dim light, she could see the hurt in Evanthya’s eyes, the color seeping into her cheeks.

  “You seemed frightened,” her love said, low and sad. “Whatever you were dreaming seemed to terrify you.”

  It did. He’s going to kill you. Fetnalla stopped buttoning her shirt and sat beside her on the bed. “We all have dreams that scare us, Evanthya. You can’t tell me that Shyssir has never brought demons to your sleep.”

  “Of course, but—”

  “It was a dream, that’s all.” Fetnalla kissed her lightly on the lips. “I promise.”

  Evanthya gazed at her for several moments, then nodded.

  She stood again and finished dressing. “I have to go, but we’ll have breakfast together in the morning. All right?”

  “All right.”

  She bent to kiss Evanthya again. “I love you,” she whispered.

  “And I love you.”

  Fetnalla turned and let herself out of the chamber. She could feel Evanthya’s eyes upon her as she opened and closed the door, but she dared not look back for fear that she’d weep. She could almost feel her love’s lips still, warm and soft. But she could only hear the Weaver’s voice.

  Time runs short. . . .

  He hadn’t said the one thing she feared most. He didn’t have to. She knew it, just as she knew that Ilias would follow Panya into the sky, and a tide once high would soon ebb. When it came time to kill Evanthya, she would have to wield the blade.

  Chapter

  Nine

  Kentigern, Eibithar

  e was awake before daybreak, driven from his slumber by visions that made him tremble with rage and terror. Aindreas of Kentigern, the tor atop the tor, duke of one of Eibithar’s great houses, had been frightened from his bed by wraiths. Again. It almost seemed that his castle was haunted, that the tor had been swallowed by Bian’s realm and that shades walked everywhere. Brienne, his beautiful daughter, whose murder had started this spiral down into misery and hatred and, ultimately, betrayal, hovered at his shoulder. The king’s man, the soldier of Glyndwr, killed in Aindreas’s ducal chambers by Jastanne ja Triln, lurked in corners, silent and grim, his eyes following the duke’s every movement, his very presence an accusation. The duke’s wife, Ioanna, had fallen back into the dark torpor that first gripped her in the turns following Brienne’s murder. She lived still, but as a mere ghost of the woman he once loved.

  As always, Aindreas sought shelter in his pursuit of vengeance and his stores of Sanbiri red. But in recent days, he had come to understand that revenge was further from his grasp than it ever had been and that the flagons of wine brought to him by his servants were no longer adequate to ease his mind. Walking through the dimly lit corridors of his fortress with two soldiers in tow, the duke found himself wondering if he wouldn’t be better off taking his own life, and joining the specters roaming about his castle. He dismissed the notion immediately, horrified by the workings of his mind, ashamed of his cowardice. But he also took as a measure of how desperate he had grown that such an idea should even occur to him.

  Reaching his presence chamber, taking hold of the door handle Aindreas hesitated for just an instant, suddenly aware of the two men behind him. As soon as he opened the door, the smell hit him like a fist, just as he had known it would. He was amazed that the guards didn’t notice, so strong was the stench. Blood.

  The smell had lingered in the chamber since the murder of the soldier Kearney sent to speak with him. He could still see it all so clearly—the way the soldier fell when the Qirsi woman used her magic to shatter the bone in his leg, the glint of firelight on Jastanne’s blade as she raised it to cut open his throat, the man’s blood flowing like an ocean tide over the floor of Aindreas’s chamber. Jastanne had walked out a moment later, seemingly unaffected by what she had done. And though Aindreas knew that he should stop her, that she deserved to be imprisoned and executed for what she had d
one, he let her go.

  Unwilling to reveal to anyone what truly had happened, Aindreas made it seem that he had killed the man himself, going so far as to pull the man’s dagger from its sheath and drop it in the crimson puddle that had formed around his body.

  “He insulted me and our house,” the duke told Villyd Temsten, his swordmaster, when Villyd arrived in the chamber with several of his soldiers. Aindreas’s hands were trembling, and he felt unsteady on his feet, but that served only to make his story more convincing. “When I took offense and ordered him from the castle, he pulled his weapon. I had no choice but to defend myself.”

  “Of course, my lord,” Villyd had said at the time, though his tone left Aindreas wondering if the swordmaster believed him. After making certain that the duke was unhurt he eyed the corpse for several moments, his brow furrowed. When next he spoke, he surprised Aindreas with the direction his thoughts had taken. “Under the circumstances, my lord, we might be best served to keep his death a secret. If the king learns that he’s dead, he’ll march against us.”

  “That may be.” The duke hesitated. “What would you suggest we do?”

  “We should tell the king’s other men that he offended you, that he threatened you with his blade in hand. But we’ll say that you overpowered him and placed him in your dungeons, and there he’ll remain until the king offers a formal apology for the soldier’s behavior. That should give us a bit of time to decide . . . how to proceed from here.”

  “Yes, of course. A fine suggestion, swordmaster.”

  “That leaves us with the question of what to do with his body.”

  Aindreas considered this for but a moment. “Is there anyone in the dungeon right now?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Then we’ll put him in the forgetting chamber. Let him molder with the corpses there.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Villyd ordered his men to dispose of the corpse and clean the blood from the duke’s chamber. Then he approached Aindreas again.

  “A word, my lord?”

  He stepped from the chamber, giving Aindreas little choice but to follow.

  “You must understand, my lord,” Villyd said, turning to face the duke once more. “I seek only to understand the circumstances of his death. But I have to ask you: what happened to the soldier’s leg?”

  Aindreas just stared him. “His leg?” he managed at last.

  “I couldn’t help but notice that his right leg was broken. I’m just wondering how that happened.”

  “It . . . it must have broken as we struggled. At one point I fell on top of him.” He tried to grin, failed. “It isn’t that hard to imagine, is it? A man of my size. . . .”

  Villyd frowned. Clearly he knew the duke was lying to him. “Yes, my lord.” He paused. Then, “Forgive me, my lord. But I heard talk of a woman—”

  “Don’t, Villyd.” The duke rubbed a hand over his face, thirsting for his wine. “Some things are best left unsaid. Kearney’s man is dead—I killed him. Nothing else matters. Do you understand?”

  “No, my lord. I don’t.”

  At another time, Aindreas might have taken offense. Villyd, though, was not a man given to impertinence, and in this instance he deserved more than Aindreas’s lies. How was the duke to explain? He had betrayed his kingdom, his house, his people. He had tied himself to the Qirsi conspiracy, thinking that they might help him strike at Kearney and Javan. He had given his word in writing—in writing!—expecting that he could turn the renegades to his purposes. That, he had believed at the time, was his path to vengeance. Only recently had he come to realize the truth.

  Tavis of Curgh hadn’t killed his beloved Brienne. It galled him to think it—he hadn’t yet found the courage to speak the words aloud. Even alone in his chambers late at night, drunk on Sanbiri red, wrestling with his grief and fury, he hadn’t been able to give voice to this horrid truth. Yet he knew it to be so. Brienne was a victim of the conspiracy, and—gods be damned for forcing him to confront this truth as well—so was the boy. The conspiracy had been deceiving them all, making them see enemies in the other courts when in fact the white-hairs were the danger. Others had been saying this to Aindreas for the better part of a year now—Javan of Curgh, Kearney, the strange gleaner whom the duke suspected of having helped Tavis win his freedom. But for so long Aindreas had refused to hear them. He still hadn’t found the strength to tell his wife all of this. How could he tell the swordmaster?

  “I know you don’t,” Aindreas said at last. “I’m sorry; truly I am. But I can’t tell you any more than I have. I want to make right all I’ve done, but it’s going to take some time.”

  “Perhaps I can help you, my lord.” He sounded so earnest. What had Aindreas done to deserve such fealty?

  The duke laid a meaty hand on the man’s shoulder. “Thank you, Villyd. But no one can help me. This is something I have to do alone.” He glanced back toward the doorway. “See to the cleaning of my presence chamber. Please.”

  Villyd gave a small bow, still looking displeased. “Yes, my lord.”

  That had been a half turn ago—nearly all the waning had passed—and still the castle servants had been unable to clean away the reek of the dead man’s blood. Aindreas had ordered them back to the floor with their buckets and cloths a dozen times; he had ordered them to use perfumed soaps of the kind used by his wife and her ladies. Nothing worked. Every time he opened the door to his presence chamber, the odor reached him, reminding him of that night, forcing him to envision it all again.

  As one might expect, upon being told that their leader had been imprisoned, the other eight riders sent by Kearney demanded to see the man. When Villyd refused, they requested an audience with the duke. Following Aindreas’s instructions, the swordmaster denied them this as well, at which point the soldiers broke camp and started back toward the City of Kings, vowing to inform the king of just how poorly they had been treated since reaching Kentigern’s gates. Aindreas had heard nothing from Audun’s Castle since.

  It was only a matter of time, though. Aindreas had yet to submit to the king’s authority as demanded by the soldier. He still owed tribute to the Crown—four turns’ worth now. With this last act of defiance he had left no doubt: Kentigern was in rebellion. The Qirsi wanted him to break with the king, to make it plain that Kentigern would fight before it recognized Glyndwr’s claim to the throne. And though he had been reluctant to carry his defiance that far, Jastanne, who was one of the leaders of the Qirsi conspiracy, had left him little choice.

  As it happened, since that bloody night he hadn’t heard anything from the Qirsi, either. Nor was Aindreas surprised by this. They had gotten from him what they wanted. Civil war was inevitable. The realm would be weakened. When Braedon and Aneira attacked, Kearney would be unable to marshal a force strong enough to withstand their assault. Soon, the western half of the Forelands would be engulfed in warfare, and when the white-hairs attacked, Eibithar, Braedon, and Aneira would fall. Wethyrn, Caerisse, Sanbira, and Uulraan would be left standing, but Wethyrn and Caerisse were the weakest of the seven realms, and Uulrann’s suzerain had long refused to concern himself with affairs beyond the mountains that bounded his domain. In essence, the warriors of Sanbira’s matriarchy would be all that remained of the Eandi armies. It would fall to them to keep the conspiracy from gaining complete dominion over the Forelands. Aindreas didn’t believe that Sanbira could hold off the Qirsi by herself for more than a few turns.

  He wasn’t so vain as to think that the white-hairs wouldn’t have succeeded without him. The more he dealt with Jastanne, the more he recognized just how formidable a woman she was. She might be slight as a reed and so young as to make him feel like a wasted old man, but it seemed that she anticipated his every move. She could gauge his moods and fears better than he could himself. He tried to tell himself that her insights were born of magic, that they were little more than a sorcerer’s trick, much like the dancing flames he saw in the streets of Kentigern when the Revel came t
o his city. Yet, even if this was so, it did nothing to diminish their effect. From his first encounter with the woman, she had controlled him, turning to her advantage his grief and his blind certainty that Tavis and Javan were to blame for all that had befallen his house. If all the leaders of the conspiracy were like Jastanne, the Eandi were doomed, and had been from the start. His betrayal merely made matters a bit easier for the renegades.

  Yet, knowing this did little to lessen his shame at the ease with which the Qirsi had ensnared him. A thousand times he had made up his mind to seek out Ioanna and confess all, and on each occasion, he hadn’t gotten as far as the corridor outside his chamber.

  It would kill her, he had told himself. She would be lost once more to the blackness that gripped her after Brienne ‘s death. She had taken to her bed again after Aindreas tried to tell her of the woman Kearney held in the prison tower of Audun’s Castle, the Qirsi traitor who claimed to have paid gold for Brienne’s murder. How far would she fall if he told her of this wicked pact he had forged with the traitors?

  He knew, though, that he didn’t remain silent out of concern for his wife, at least not entirely. Even had she been strong, her mind whole, he would have kept this from her. He couldn’t bear the thought of what she would say to him, what she would call him. And what if his children overheard? How would he explain to Ennis that he had disgraced their house, leaving the boy heir to his infamy? What answer could he possibly find for the tears Affery would shed upon learning of his treason?

  Sitting at his writing table, the scent of blood filling his nostrils, Aindreas could think of no way to escape his ignominy, except of course the one he had turned to so many times before.

  “Wine!” he bellowed, his voice echoing in the chamber. He glanced behind him at the shuttered window. No light seeped past the edges. It wasn’t even dawn, and already he was calling for his beloved Sanbiri red.

  “They deserve better than this, Father.”

  He turned at the sound of the voice, though reluctantly. It wasn’t really Brienne. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t yet Pitch Night, and even if it was, this was no sanctuary. But there she stood, her golden hair shimmering in the lamplight, a look of pity on her lovely face.