by DAVID B. COE
“Still,” the first minister said, “we know who he is. That has to count for something.”
“Does this mean that he’s more powerful than you are?” Keziah asked, sounding so young, so scared.
“I don’t know, Keziah. Truly I don’t. As Tavis pointed out to me, we were hardly on equal footing. He was in my dream, so he could hurt me, but I couldn’t hurt him. The most I could do was illuminate his face and the moor, and I managed that.”
She nodded, but he read the despair in her expression, and he knew its source. If he, a Weaver, couldn’t keep this man from hurting him, how was she to protect herself? Any hope she had drawn from Cresenne’s success was already gone.
For a long time, Keziah didn’t speak. She just stood there, staring off in the distance, until Grinsa began to wonder if he and the first minister should leave her. But after several moments, she seemed to gather herself. Looking first at Grinsa and then at Fotir, she said, “There’s another matter we need to discuss, before the empire strikes at us again.” She cast a quick look at Kearney’s soldier, as if to assure herself that he wasn’t close enough to hear. “When the fighting begins, how far will we go with our magic to aid Kearney and the dukes?”
“Do you mean will I weave your powers with mine?”
She nodded.
“I think the risk is too great,” Fotir said. “The emperor sent Qirsi with his army-quite a few really. And they’ll be watching us closely. I don’t know what powers you possess, archminister, but I’m a shaper and I have mists and winds. If the gleaner and I raise a mist together, Harel’s Qirsi are likely to know it. Word of a Weaver would spread across this battlefield in no time.”
“But what if it’s the only way to keep them from breaking through our lines?” Keziah demanded. “Kearney already knows that Grinsa’s a Weaver, and if Eibithar’s other nobles find out because he used his powers to save the realm, they can hardly turn around and have him executed.”
“It would be foolish of them, I agree. But that doesn’t mean they won’t do it.”
“Careful, First Minister,” Grinsa said with a smile. “That’s something one of the renegades might say.”
Fotir’s expression didn’t change. “Well, in this case they may be right. This is no time for us to underestimate Eandi fear of Qirsi magic. With all that the conspiracy has wrought in the last few years, I’m afraid our nobles will be more inclined than ever to put a Weaver to death, even one who uses his magic to protect their realm.”
“Is that what you think?” Keziah asked.
Grinsa shrugged. “I suppose it is.”
She nodded, though clearly unhappy with his answer.
“But I can’t see allowing the empire to prevail in this fight, no matter the danger to me.”
“The danger isn’t yours alone,” Fotir said. “They’ll kill Cresenne and your child as well.”
“They may try, First Minister, just as they may try to execute me. I assure you that they’ll fail. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We have a number of Qirsi on our side; I may not need to weave at all. And if it does come to that, I believe I can join our powers without anyone realizing it.” He looked at Keziah again, wanting to brush a strand of hair away from his sister’s face. But he didn’t dare, not with the soldier so close. Even Fotir, who knew so much about him, didn’t know that Keziah was his sister. The danger was still too great to reveal that to anyone. Fear of Weavers ran deep among the Eandi, and for centuries, when Weavers were executed, so were all those in their families. Add to that the fact that Dusaan might have spies on the battle plain ready to report back to him any strange behavior on Keziah’s part, and they were risking her life merely by standing and talking to one another. “I won’t let them get past us. You have my word on that.”
“Shouldn’t the three of us be together then, fighting in the same place?”
“The first minister and I will be together on the Curgh lines, and if I need your power too, I can find you.”
She nodded again, but appeared tense and uncertain.
“I should return to my duke,” Fotir said, his gaze wandering northward, to the Braedon army. “And I’d suggest, Archminister, that you find Kearney. I expect that we’ll be raising mists and summoning winds before long.”
Chapter Six
That Fotir was right shouldn’t have surprised Keziah at all. She had spent enough time with Curgh’s first minister to realize that he was every bit as brilliant as he was reputed to be. When he warned that Braedon’s attack would come before the day was out, she should have believed him.
Nor should she have been taken aback by the ferocity of the empire’s assault. She had seen combat before, only a year earlier. The fight to end the siege at Kentigern had not lacked for violence or blood, and though she had been horrified by what she witnessed, she had also believed that the experience had hardened her, preparing her for the day when once again she would have to follow her king into battle. Nothing, though, could have readied her for the storm of steel and flesh and blood that raged before her now.
It seemed as well that she was not the only one. Even with scouts from Heneagh, Curgh, and the King’s Guard keeping watch on the Braedon army, the enemy’s attack caught the Eibitharians off guard. The empire’s army gave no warning at all. Among the houses of Eibithar it was tradition to loose a single arrow into the sky over the battle plain before commencing an attack. Braedon offered no such gesture. Nor did their Qirsi raise a mist to conceal their numbers. Keziah did not even hear an order shouted to the empire’s archers before their first volley. One moment all seemed as it had for the past several days, the next a thousand arrows were carving across the sky and pelting down on Eibithar’s warriors.
Even before the first of the darts struck, Braedon’s soldiers had begun their charge across the moor, sunlight glinting off their blades and helms, the earth seeming to tremble with the roar of their war cries. Kearney and his dukes barely had time to call their men to arms, much less marshal an ordered defense. They had thought that the attack would be concentrated on Heneagh’s lines-clearly Welfyl’s army was no match for Javan’s or Kearney’s.
But Braedon’s commanders, rather than striking at the weakest point in Eibithar’s defenses, aimed their assault on the King’s Guard itself, the strongest of the three armies. Curgh and Heneagh weren’t spared. Far from it. Within moments of that first volley of arrows, all three armies were under attack, but Kearney’s guard bore the brunt of the onslaught. Poorly prepared for the intensity of Braedon’s attack, Eibithar’s men were forced to fall back. Kearney and Javan had managed to get their archers in place soon enough to loose one barrage of arrows at the charging Braedony soldiers, but after that, their bowmen had little choice but to draw swords and fight with the rest. Heneagh’s archers didn’t loose a single arrow before the empire’s men crashed into their lines.
“Why would they attack this way?” Keziah called over the din of battle, as she rode beside Kearney, who was rallying his men as best he could.
“Because it’s working!” he shouted back, green eyes blazing, his face damp with sweat.
She nodded, wishing she hadn’t asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said a moment later. “None of us expected this. But I think they wanted to keep our armies from working together. Had they focused their attack on Welfyl, Javan and I would have banded together to try to flank them. This way we have no chance to combine our forces.”
Keziah nodded a second time, eyeing the battle with apprehension. The king’s men were still giving ground, more grudgingly now, but there could be no mistaking the trend. It wouldn’t be long before Kearney rode forward to join the fighting. He had deployed his men as best he could under the circumstances, and already he was glancing toward the lines, his hand wandering to the hilt of his sword. And as much as Keziah feared for him, she envied him more. She felt useless. She had no place in this battle. Though competent with a blade, she was neither skilled enough, nor strong enough, to fi
ght beside these men. None of Braedon’s soldiers were on horseback, so having the magic her people called language of beasts did her no good, and with the men already fighting at close quarters, it did no good to raise a mist or wind.
Looking toward the middle of the fighting, Keziah tried to catch sight of Grinsa or Fotir. The fighting there appeared every bit as vicious as it did along Kearney’s lines, and like the King’s Guard, Curgh’s army looked to have slowed Braedon’s advance somewhat. Gazing beyond Javan’s army, however, she could see that the men of Heneagh were still being driven back with alarming speed. She didn’t need Kearney’s knowledge of military matters to understand how vital it was that Welfyl’s men keep the Braedony force from breaching their lines.
“Keziah.”
She forced herself to meet his gaze, knowing what he would say.
“I have to join my men. I can’t just-”
“I know,” she said. “Go. Orlagh guide your blade and keep you safe.”
“And you.”
They stared at one another for just a moment more, Keziah doing her best to commit his features to memory, every line on the youthful face, every strand of silken hair, silvered before its time and gleaming in the bright sun.
I love you, she mouthed.
And I love you.
An instant later, so suddenly that she actually started, Kearney pulled his sword free and swung his mount around, plunging into the bloody tumult. Even as the tide of the fighting drew him away from her, she could still see him, towering and fell atop his mount, his sword rising and falling, its blade stained crimson. It didn’t take long for the battle to close in around him, as if cutting him off from her, from any path to safety.
Such confusion, such frenzy, such carnage. As Keziah watched the battle unfold, one thought kept echoing in her mind, and it scared her more than all that she saw. Anything could happen in conditions like these; what a perfect place to kill a king.
She could even imagine different ways it might be done, ways she might do it herself. “You possess both language of beasts and mists and winds,” the Weaver told her the last time he walked in her dreams, just after he punished her for failing to kill Cresenne. “They should serve you quite well in this regard.”
He was right, of course. She could see it now, how easy it would be. A sudden gust of wind might alter the path of an arrow aimed at another. Or even better, a single word whispered to Kearney’s mount might make the beast throw the king into the fury around him. No one, no matter his skill as a warrior, would survive long on his back amid the steel and the blood.
Keziah was horrified at herself for thinking any of this, but once she began, she couldn’t stop. As more died, falling at the feet of Kearney’s mount, it would be more and more difficult for the horse to step true. A shaper might break one of the beast’s legs and drive the king to the ground that way. Or he might shatter Kearney’s blade as the king struck at another, leaving the king defenseless. Working with a second person, an assassin perhaps, a Qirsi might raise a mist to conceal the other’s approach. With so many sorcerers on the battle plain, with so many dying in this fight, almost anything was possible.
How many of the Qirsi around her served the conspiracy? To how many of them had the Weaver given the order to kill her king? Surely she wasn’t the only one. As the Weaver himself had reminded her, she had already failed him once. Knowing that she had loved Kearney, that she might love him still, he would not trust her with this unless he had others poised to act should she falter.
Frightened now, convinced that one of the Weaver’s servants would make an attempt on Kearney’s life at the first opportunity, Keziah very nearly spurred her mount forward into the fray. She had no idea what she would do when she reached the king, she only knew that she wanted to be there, to guard him, to watch for the Weaver’s killers. The archminister had gone so far as to adjust her sword in preparation for entering the battle, when she felt something brush her mind as a stranger might brush one’s arm in a crowded marketplace.
For a single, horrifying instant, she thought it was the Weaver, reaching for her, attempting to read her thoughts or compel her to kill Kearney. In the next moment, however, she realized that there was something familiar in the touch, and something gentle as well. Turning to gaze toward the Curgh lines, she saw Grinsa atop a mount, looking back at her. She couldn’t understand why he would have reached for her now. Fotir, perhaps, but not her. She hadn’t any magic that would be of use to them. Certainly he couldn’t think that raising a mist would do any good. But after catching her eye ever so briefly, no longer than the span of a single heartbeat, he looked away, his touch gone from her mind. It almost seemed that he had only wished to reassure himself that she was all right. Or maybe he had sensed what she was about to do, and had wanted to stop her, if only for a moment, so that she might reconsider. Whatever the reason, she realized that she could do Kearney no good by rushing to his side. Her presence would only distract him, making it easier for agents of the conspiracy to strike at him.
Unable to do anything more than watch the battle, Keziah began what could only be called a vigil. She kept her gaze riveted on Kearney, straining to see him through the sun’s glare and the haze of dust and dirt kicked up by the warriors. So long as she could see his bright silver hair, and the gleaming blur of his sword slicing through the air, she knew that he was safe, or at least alive.
As the seething shadows of men and beasts and weapons lengthened across the bloodstained grass, the tide of the battle began to turn. Eibithar’s forces were not able to gain back much of the ground they had lost initially, but they managed to halt Braedon’s push forward. Even in the west, where it had seemed that Heneagh’s lines must surely be broken, Welfyl’s men rallied, aided by reinforcements from the Curgh army. When at last the sun dipped below the western horizon, leaving a fiery sky of yellow and orange and scarlet, the empire’s men broke off their attack and pulled back.
Raising a ragged cheer, some of Kearney’s soldiers began to give chase, only to be called back by their king. Kicking her mount to a gallop, Keziah rushed to Kearney’s side, resisting an urge to throw her arms around his neck. He had several gashes on his legs and a deep wound on his side, where blood oozed through his chain mail.
“You need a healer,” she said.
Kearney flashed a smile. One might have thought that he’d come through nothing more dangerous than a battle tournament. “I’m all right. I need to speak with my dukes.”
“Your Majesty-”
“Find them for me, Archminister. Bring them here as quickly as possible. Their ministers as well.”
Keziah frowned, but nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
She wheeled her horse and started toward the Curgh lines, only to halt after a few paces, her stomach heaving. The grass, once lush and green, had been trampled and soaked in blood, so that the earth itself seemed to be bleeding from some gaping wound. Scattered among the corpses of more soldiers than she could count were severed limbs, disembodied hands that still clung to swords and battle-axes, and heads that stared up at the darkening sky through sightless eyes, some of them with their mouths open in silent wails, as if with death cries still on their lips, waiting to be given voice. She should have been looking at their surcoats, trying to determine which side had gotten the better of the day’s fighting, but she couldn’t look away from those faces, those hands, that blood.
“Keziah.”
She flinched, looked toward the voice. Kearney gazed back at her, the smile gone, his brow furrowed with concern.
“Are you all right?”
“I…” She swallowed, fighting another wave of nausea. “I will be.”
“Don’t look. Just find Javan and Welfyl. Send them to me, and then ride away from the lines, away from all this. Do you understand?”
She nodded, but even as she did, her eyes dropped again. One of the dead seemed to be staring at her, a look of surprise on the young face that might have been amusing had it not been
-
“Keziah.”
Her eyes snapped up again.
“Find the dukes.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
She started forward again, allowing her mount to navigate among the corpses as best he could, forcing herself to keep her eyes on the men ahead of her, the ones who lived still and who wore the brown and gold of Curgh. She spotted Grinsa and Fotir, and hurried toward them, knowing that the duke would be nearby. A moment later she saw Javan, standing with Tavis, Curgh’s swordmaster, and another young man who she had gathered from previous conversations was Tavis’s liege man and the swordmaster’s son. Like Kearney, Javan bore a number of wounds, but none of them appeared grave. Grinsa, too, was bleeding. Indeed, all of them were. Aside from the healers, she was probably the only person on the Moorlands who hadn’t been injured.
At her approach, the duke raised a hand in greeting. “Archminister. What news of the king?”
“He’s well, my lord. He wishes to speak with you and your minister.”
“Of course. We’ll go to him immediately. How fared the King’s Guard?”
“I’m not certain, my lord. I wasn’t in the fighting. I don’t … I don’t have the magics of a warrior.”
“Of course, Archminister. Forgive me.”
“Not at all, my lord. I’ll see you shortly. I must find the duke of Heneagh as well.”
Javan glanced quickly at Fotir before facing her again, and she knew from his expression what he would say. “The duke is dead, Archminister. He fell in battle.”
Her first thought was of Heneagh’s duchess, who had no idea that she had lost a husband and a son on this day. Keziah didn’t even know the woman’s name. As archminister to the king, she should have, but they had never met, and because Welfyl was duke of a minor house, he and the king had little contact before these last few turns.
“Archminister.”
She shook herself, as if waking from a bad dream. She was not cut out for war. “Yes, my lord. Who commands Heneagh’s army now?”