Glasswrights' Master

by Mindy L. Klasky

  The soldier seemed unaware of her concession. He growled, “If you lie to me, then you will die.”

  “I do not lie.” If she kept the handsel, she would die. She would never be able to help another person. She would never aid another anxious mother, never save another weakling babe. Never earn another copper coin. By violating one confidence, she could save countless lives. Including her own.

  “Swear it, then. Swear it in the name of Jair.”

  Jair. Not the Thousand Gods that the northerners usually invoked. Not a king, or a nobleman, or some other powerful force. First Pilgrim Jair.…

  Even as Kella took the oath, “I swear it, in the name of Jair,” her mind raced. She had heard rumors, when was it? Years ago? A decade or more in the past…

  She had left the forest and traveled to Riadelle, selling her potions in the marketplace, thinking to make enough money for fine silk and velvet, until she realized the costs of living in the city.

  In Riadelle, though, she had met the Sisters, dozens of other herb witches, trained even more thoroughly than Kella, for they shared their knowledge. They shared their gossip. She had laughed at tales from the king’s court, the rumors about electors and landed men who found themselves in the wrong beds. She had rolled her eyes over the tales of ladies who bore children that looked nothing like their sires, ladies who could have been helped by any herb witch, any one at all, if only they had signed the handsel early in their nine-month passage.

  But there were other stories. Darker stories. One Sister had whispered about a secret cadre, a cabal that moved behind the electors, behind the landed men. Kella had listened to stories about meetings held on the darkest nights, meetings where conspirators swathed themselves in midnight cloaks and determined the fate of a kingdom.

  What was that Sister’s name? Kella fumbled for it, her mind skittering as if it chased after a dropped pebble. Dania. Yes, Dania had joined the secret organization, had been sworn into the heart of their hidden meetings…

  Yet Dania understood that her first loyalty would always rest with the Sisters. She had attended hidden meetings, sworn to secrecy, and then she had violated that oath, in light of prior ones… “The Fellowship of Jair…” Kella whispered, remembering the tales that Dania had carried back to her sisters.

  The soldier’s eyes narrowed for a fraction of a heartbeat, and then he snapped, “What?”

  “You speak for the Fellowship, don’t you? They’re the ones who want to find the woman.”

  “I speak for myself,” he said gruffly. “That’s all you need to know. My knife will be the one you’ll answer to.”

  Kella’s mind reeled. She had agreed to break her handsel, to betray a woman who had come to her in need. And yet, if she acted to better the Sisters.… The other herb witches could not hold her in disgrace for long if she provided them with information, information about the Fellowship that might very well save their lives. The soldier had murder on his mind, of that Kella was certain. If he killed her, then Jalina would seek out another Sister. She would sign another handsel, and another herb witch would be threatened.

  Kella must protect her Sisters. She must collect information for them, divine the extent of the threat from this northern soldier and his Fellowship. She could see the balance as clearly as if she weighed bitterroot against deergrass on her scales. One handsel, for saving all the Sisters.…

  “I know your people,” Kella said. “I know their goals. I know that they meet in Riadelle’s alleys, and I know that they control the future of my land.”

  “I have no people.”

  Kella reached back into her memories, stretched for the words that Dania had told her years before. “You do not search for the Royal Pilgrim, then?” He grunted, and she knew that she had hit her mark. She resisted the urge to smile as she asked, “You do not think that the Royal Pilgrim will reign over all lands in the future?”

  “You are one of us, then?”

  “One of you?” She started to mock, “How could I be one of you? You do not exist.” She stopped, though, and contemplated a more useful elaboration, one that would not be an utter lie. “It has been many a year since I first heard of the Royal Pilgrim.”

  The soldier glared at her for a long moment, obviously debating whether he should challenge her directly. Before he could make the wrong decision, she said, “I can help you, soldier man. I can help the Fellowship.”

  “How?” He did not waste time with more words.

  “I can locate the one you seek. I can tell you about the others who seek for her.”

  “Others?”

  “You know that many travel through the woods these days.”

  “The players.” He made a rude noise as he shrugged.

  “The players. And others. Northerners.”

  “Who?”

  Kella had seen a gleam like that before, in the eyes of the old men who came to her for mandrake, in the most desperate of the girls who sought love potions. Hunger. Pure and unalloyed. “I’ll tell you. After you bring me to one of your meetings.”

  “I could beat the information out of you now.”

  “You could beat me, but I would not tell you.”

  “You can say that, after the way I bested you?”

  She made herself laugh, as if she weren’t afraid. “You tricked me, soldier man. You caught me unawares.” She read the indecision in his eyes, and she lowered her voice, dropped it to the register that she reserved for telling her customers the most dire news–about deaths, and stillborn babes, and plots of murder. “If you set a finger on me, you’ll never eat an easy meal again. You’ll never know when my Sisters will appear, when they’ll seek you out. We have fast poisons and slow. We have draughts that will make you as forgetful as your grandfather’s grandfather. We have herbs that you’ll never smell, never taste, but they will make your good arm shrivel worse than your bad one. Bring me to a meeting! Let me see your Fellowship.”

  Let her see the Fellowship. Let her see the power base in Sarmonia. Let her see who to approach, who to confront, who to pamper. Let her see her future.

  He stared at her for long enough that she began to question her own gamble. She had no doubt that he could kill her in cold blood, that he could reach out and slash her throat as easily as grant her request. This one had killed before, killed both to save himself and for the pure pleasure of it. At last, he nodded. “I’ll take you to the Fellowship. Tomorrow night. After moonrise. Wear a dark cloak.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “You can ride a horse?”

  “I will.” Well, how could she answer his question? She couldn’t know until she’d tried.

  “Good enough.” He glanced toward the door of her cottage, and she knew that he was wondering what herbs were hidden there, what power hung dusty and untested in the rafters. He swallowed uneasily, tightening the scar high on his cheekbone. His knife flashed out, and he cut the rope that bound her wrists, sawing it free in one even slice. “Until tomorrow,” he said.

  “Until tomorrow.” She watched as he left her clearing, limping heavily. She imagined the herbs that she could mix to ease his hurts. She imagined the herbs that would kill him.

  * * *

  The following afternoon, Kella was basking in the last of the afternoon sunlight. She had a sharp knife in one hand and twine in the other. It was well past time to harvest the last of the garden by her door.

  She hummed to herself as she worked, an old song that her mother had taught her when Kella was a young girl. It felt good to stretch her muscles–she was stiff after her fight with the soldier the day before.

  She shook her head in irritation; she still could not believe that she had failed to get his name. She had been so surprised by his attack.… She was getting old, older than she’d dare admit to anyone but one of the Sisters. Old enough that she had driven off Tovin the night before, scarcely admitting to herself that she was too sore to enjoy his sort of attention.

  Even as she shifted to get a better angle for one stubborn clump
of herbs, she heard footsteps behind her. She whirled quickly and was only a little relieved to find a newcomer standing there. Not the soldier. Not Tovin, who might require another lie.

  This man was clothed all in green, his robes the color of spring’s first leaves. He was a priest, then. Not likely to be well-disposed to her profession. He puffed slightly from his exertion; he must be unaccustomed to walking through the forest. His round face was flushed; the color made him look like a boy. She suspected he was older than he first appeared, a conclusion that was bolstered by her realization that his hair was thinning.

  “Good dame,” he said, and he bowed a little from his waist. At least he was making an effort to be polite. That was more than she could say for many of her visitors. Ruefully, she resisted the urge to rub at the bruise that spread across her back, above her poor kidneys.

  “Sir.” She kept her voice on the narrow edge of politeness. This might be a handsel, after all, a man in search of a potion. Scarce chance of that, though. The priests all acted as if her herbs were sacrilege.

  “Tovin Player sent me here, good dame. He said that I might learn from you. If you have time, that is. If you aren’t busy. If–”

  Tovin, sending her a priest? The notion was difficult to imagine, as if all the birds in the sky had chosen to fly upside down for the day. Surprise made her voice sharp. “What do you want to learn?”

  “About your… skills.”

  “My skills?”

  “Your knowledge,” he amended.

  “My knowledge?” She laughed, letting a little of her fatigue sharpen her tone. “Here’s something I know: The day is getting old, and I have a great deal of work left to finish.”

  His gaze was drawn to the leaves, to the small green arrows that cascaded across the ground before her. “What do you use those for?” He swallowed hard, and forced out a second question. “Could it make a man go mad? Could it kill?”

  She stared at him, surprised by the awe and horror mingled in his voice. She was accustomed to people who scorned her arts, handsels who acted brave in the face of her potions and incantations. She had never before seen such fear, though, such blatant terror, even if it was washed with respect. Her first inclination–to toy with the man and create imagined properties of the herb–fled. “It’s sorrel. I place it in soup.”

  “Sorrel.” He breathed a sigh of relief, and she thought that he might collapse on her very doorstep.

  “Good sir, perhaps you were led astray by Tovin Player. Perhaps you do not truly wish to speak with an herb witch such as myself.” She saw him flinch at the word “witch”, shying like a child who remembers a beating. His fingers twisted in a strange gesture, an automatic motion that seemed to bring him peace. Against her better judgment, Kella nodded toward his hands. “That twist you just made. What is it good for?”

  “Twist?” He looked confused. “Oh, the gesture of warding.”

  “Warding?” Perhaps the man was crazed. Perhaps he was some sort of fool who Tovin had come across in his travels, a rogue who might amuse her. “How do you think that waving your fingers will protect you here?”

  “Not here,” he said, shaking his head. He sighed. “Far away from here.”

  Kella was growing tired of the game. “Where, then?”

  “Brianta. Where they torture witches. Where they pile stones upon them until they confess their evil and then bury the corpses in the middle of the road.” The man began to weep, great, silent tears rolling down his cheeks as if he were unaware of the emotion.

  “Someone you loved was named a witch?”

  His face set, as if he would deny the accusation twisted into her question. “Princess Berylina Thunderspear. I was sent to protect her. I failed.”

  “And your princess died in Brianta?”

  “She was not a witch! They accused her falsely! She fell because she was too good for them, because they could not understand! She was not a filthy witch!”

  He stopped in mid-tirade, remembering his audience with a nearly comical gasp. He started to mumble a retreat, to explain away his anger, but she waved his words away. “Come inside, Father.…”

  “Siritalanu.”

  “Come inside, Father Siritalanu. Let me brew you a cup of tea.” She watched the fear blossom on his face. “No, father. Mint tea. You can pick the leaves yourself–they are there, by your feet.”

  He let himself be mollified by her gesture, yet he did bend down to pick his own herbs. He stooped as he entered the cottage, and he watched intently as she filled a kettle with fresh stream water from the bucket on the hearth. As she moved the iron kettle over the flames, he looked about the room, taking in the festooned rafters, the clay pots on shelves, the glass jars that glistened on the windowsill.

  “Relax, Father,” Kella said, and she gave him a bowl to hold his crushed leaves. The aroma of the herb filled the cottage, and she wished that she dared to slip something extra into his tea, a drop or two of heartsease to calm him. “Why don’t you tell me of your princess while we wait for the water to boil.”

  She thought that he would not respond. He swallowed, and he raised his hands to his face, as if he were surprised to find the remnants of the tears that he had shed outside. “She was blessed by all the Thousand.” He paused, as if to confirm that she understood that he meant the gods. She nodded, and he continued. “She prayed to them with purity in her heart. She was making her pilgrimage, dedicating her life to their service.”

  “But the Briantans did not trust her?”

  “The Briantans did not understand. She knew the gods in ways they’d never seen before.”

  The water began to boil, and Kella scowled as she found a mug. She made a show of upending it, proving to the priest that nothing would be added to his mint. She filled the mug with hot water, and she let him drop his own herbs into the cup. He moved mechanically, as if he were an exhausted child. Kella could see that he had lost more than a member of his congregation. The man before her was bound up in grief, as stricken as any widower.

  “Knew the gods?” Kella asked, keeping each word perfectly neutral.

  “She heard them. Saw them. Not their voices, not their bodies–sensations that no person has a right to know. She tasted them, by all the Thousand, she smelled them! She felt them touch her flesh!”

  Kella reached out to steady his hand, to keep the steaming water from splashing over the edge of the mug. He flinched at her touch, as she said, “And for that, the Briantans called her witch?”

  “They did not understand.”

  Well they might not, Kella thought. “But what brings you to me, Father? Why have you come to my cottage?”

  “I thought that if I could meet a true witch, if I could learn the true scope of your powers, then I might understand what they accused her of being. I thought that I might understand the threat. I might understand why she had to die.”

  “You want to hate me, then?” She kept her voice neutral. “You want to find me so terrible that I deserve death myself?”

  “Yes,” he whispered, and she could see that he longed to flee from the room, to be far away from her.

  “And?”

  For answer, he set the mug upon her table and placed his face in his hands. His sobs were violent cloudbursts, breaking from his chest like a wild storm crashing through the woods. This was not the quiet emotion that she had witnessed outside; this was a man tearing himself apart, destroying himself in a final, desperate attempt to build meaning in his world.

  “Tarn,” he wailed, and the word was meaningless until Kella remembered the name for the god of death. “Tarn! And Mip! Zil, and Ile, and Nim!”

  He repeated the names, his chant growing more frantic, his breath coming harsher and harsher. Kella feared for his mind, feared that he would rip what little of it remained. He was not a true handsel, and she had promised that she would not dose him with her herbs, but she was afraid to do nothing. Her hands darted out without her planning to move; she reached for pots that ranged about the h
earth. She crumbled a leaf of henbane into his mint tea, added a pinch of thornapple. He had not seen her; his eyes remained closed as he chanted the gods’ names in agony.

  “Father,” she said, trying to break his concentration. “Father!” She pushed the cup into his hands, held it there as she raised it to his lips. “Drink, Father. Drink your tea. Swallow, Father. Your princess would have wanted you to drink this. Another sip, Father. Another…”

  The herbs acted quickly, as she had known they would. It was pure luck that made mint enhance their properties, simple good fortune that the priest’s herb masked the flavors of her own. The henbane made him docile; he let her lead him to the low stool beside her fire. The thornapple opened his mind to her suggestion, and she leaned close to him, whispering, “Ease your heart, Father. You did not cause your princess to die.” She repeated the words three more times, and he took them up on his own, forming his lips around them like a child discovering a new flavor.

  Kella dared to step back, summoned the nerve to look to her cottage door. What was happening here in the woods? How had her quiet corner of the world become so busy? Why were so many people coming to her, bothering her?

  As if to mock her question, a shadow fell across the threshold. Kella did not even pretend to welcome the newcomer as a potential handsel; instead, she grimaced and said, “Yes?”

  The woman who stood there blinked as her eyes adjusted to the cottage, and then she rushed to the priest. “Father!” she exclaimed, trying to capture his attention. “Father, it’s me. Rani Trader.”

  The man continued to mouth his silent words of comfort. The newcomer turned accusing eyes on Kella. “What have you done to him?”.

  “Rani Trader,” Kella said, taking possession of her visitor’s name. “He’ll be ready to travel in a moment.”

  The woman swallowed hard, her skin paling beneath her blond hair. “How have you dosed him?”