Glasswrights' Master

by Mindy L. Klasky

  “No!” Her desperation honed her voice until it was as sharp as the blade that Crestman had traced across her throat. “I cannot tell. Not if I expect to remain an herb witch one more day of my life.”

  For a moment, they merely stood there, gazing at each other without compromise. Kella read more strength in the traveling man than she had ever seen in her cottage, more determination than he had ever let on. She pleaded, “Let me do this, traveling man. Let me work the Speaking. If I can find this tale in my own mind, I’ll Speak another for you tomorrow night.”

  He paused, and she wondered if he were remembering other nights with her. Did he recall lying on her pallet? Did he think of the pleasures she had shown him, the lessons that she’d taught after a lifetime of enhancing senses with her herbs?

  “Very well,” he said at last. “I’ll lead you in the Speaking tonight, and you will return tomorrow night. You’ll share another tale as payment.”

  She forced her voice to be even, forced herself to believe in tomorrow, if only for a broken heartbeat. “I’ll share another tale.”

  He gestured again toward the chair, and she seated herself, grateful for the support as relief rushed over her. He said, “You remember how to begin?” He brushed his hands over her shoulders, and she let his touch carry away some of her tension. He must have realized the calming effect the contact had, for he returned his hands, settled them lightly so that she was just aware of his physical presence behind her. “All right, then,” he said. “Breathe deeply. Inhale. Exhale. Again. Again.”

  She forced herself to listen to him, to lean back against his chest. He was a traveling man, a young man, a man who could never be trusted with a foolish old woman’s heart. But he had never lied to her, not in all the time that he had come to her cottage. He had never harmed her. She could trust him, trust him to stand behind her, trust him to guide her along his mysterious Speaking path.

  “Picture a stream that wanders through the woods. You are walking beside the stream, watching the water. Watch the water, Kella. Let it flow. Let it go by you. Let it take your thoughts. Let it take your worries.”

  She could see the stream; she had wandered through the forest countless times. She gave herself over to his words, let them wash over her like the flow of water over silt and sand.

  As if he saw the images in her mind, he said, “There are stones in the river, stepping stones. You can reach the first by stepping out from shore. Your footing is sure. You are steady and confident. The water flows around your feet easily, gently. As you step to the first stone, count out loud. One,” he prompted.

  “One,” she whispered. And she could feel the stone beneath her foot. She could feel the water. This was different from all the other times that she had tried the Speaking. She was not trying this for him. She was Speaking for herself, for her own need, her own growing, demanding–

  “Easy,” he said, and his voice soothed her back toward the river. “Breathe easily. Stay at the stream. Stay at the stones. You’re on the first one. Picture the second. Picture the second, and when you’re ready, take the step. When you’re ready, count the stone. Count two.”

  “Two,” she breathed, and she felt the second stone.

  “And when you’re ready, take the next. You can count them. You don’t need me to count them for you.”

  “Three,” she said, and the third stone was there. “Four.” Surprise welled up inside her, but she offered it to the stream, let it wash downriver before it could topple her from the stepping stone. “Five.”

  She thought about counting the other stones, thought about saying their numbers out loud, but that was not necessary. Tovin would understand. He would stay behind her; he would continue to guide her. She felt his voice more than heard it, felt the words whisper inside her mind. “Very good, Kella. The next stone is a large one. You can move to it now. Take the step. Very good. You can sit on this stone. You can let the water flow around you. You can stretch out on the stone, lie flat upon its surface. Let the water flow past. Feel it in your hair. Feel it against your body. Let the water take you farther away. Farther. Farther.”

  With a part of her mind, she knew that she was leaning against his chest, sitting upright on a stool in the middle of the northerners’ camp. She could open her eyes whenever she wished, come back to the camp and its dangers and its threats.

  With more of her mind, though, she was suspended in the river of her memory, deep within her own recollections. She was safe there. She was secure. Tovin spun out more words. “You can see the water flow beside you. Shapes form in the water. You can see them without opening your eyes. You can watch the shapes, watch them like a dream playing out before your eyes. One of the shapes is your handsel. Do you see her?”

  Jalina materialized from the water, appeared before Kella as if she had stepped from a bank of fog. Tovin was waiting for an answer, waiting patiently, and she took her time replying. “Yes.”

  “You can hear your handsel speak. She is saying the words that she said on the night that you first met. You have greeted her at your cottage, and she is responding to your greeting. Do you hear her?”

  Jalina made a curious bow, far too formal for a rustic woman. The strange greeting was made more bizarre by the careful hand she held over her just-swollen belly. “Greetings, madam,” Jalina said. “I have asked along the road, and they tell me that you are a wise woman with herbs.”

  Again, Tovin was waiting. Kella pulled away from the memory just enough to say, “Yes.”

  “Look through the water, then,” Tovin said. “Look at your handsel and listen to her. Remember what she told you–with her words and her actions and her very appearance. Remember all that you need to recall, so that you can settle your debts.”

  Kella heard the words as a suggestion, realized that she had the power to do whatever she wished. If she desired, she could end the Speaking then and there, open her eyes, stand straight on her feet, leave the player, leave the tent, leave the Great Clearing. But she chose to stay. She chose to linger in the stream, to contemplate her vision of Jalina.

  The woman had clearly walked to Kella’s cottage. She was flushed, and perspiration dampened her brow, but she was not exhausted. She could not have come very far, then. Not in her delicate condition.

  Kella looked at Jalina more closely, checking for more evidence of her hiding place. There was fresh earth upon the hem of her gown, a deep red clay that glinted almost black in the moonlight. Kella recognized the stuff; beds lay all along the Greenbank Creek.

  There. On the sleeve of Jalina’s robe. Bright yellow pollen stood out in the moonlight, glinting like the gold that the woman promised to pay her. Pollen from the otria plant; Kella knew it well. It grew up the Greenbank’s left fork, just beyond a giant clump of ferns.

  And there. Sap glistened in sticky beads against Jalina’s hair. She had brushed against a tree. Kella took a deep breath. A spruce tree. Spruce grew above the crook in the left branch, the tiny tributary of the Greenbank that flowed back to the north.

  And then, Tovin was speaking to her again. “When you are ready, let the images flow down the stream. Let your handsel leave you.” Kella closed her mind’s eye, let Jalina spread out over the surface of the water. “When you are ready, you can sit up on the stone. You can stand and turn back toward the river bank. You can walk back to shore, where you will awaken from our Speaking, feeling rested and at peace. You will remember all that you learned about your handsel. You can cross back over the stones whenever you choose. Count them as you go. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

  Kella’s eyes flew open. Speaking. She had done it. She had reached inside her memory.… She stood up, astonished by the energy that beat through her veins. Her first step, though, left her swaying.

  “Easy!” Tovin said, and his voice hid a laugh. “Take a moment to center yourself. Tell me what you saw.”

  “I can’t!” She heard the power in her voice, remembered all of her reasons for rushing, for hurrying. “I mean, I
will. But I have to go now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow night.”

  She wouldn’t, though. She could hear the knowledge in her own voice, she could hear her acceptance. If by some miracle she was alive tomorrow night, she would be far from the Great Clearing. Far from the Sisters, and the Fellowship, and the forest she had known all her life.

  “Kella–”

  “I have to go. I’ll come back to the camp, though. I promise. As soon as I am able.”

  He let her go, of course. There wasn’t anything else that he could do. There wasn’t any way to keep her, short of tying her to his camp stool, and she knew that he would not do that.

  He was a young man. He would forget her soon enough. She smothered the pang of loss that shot through her chest. She had never harvested his dreams. She had never learned the strange things that drifted through his mind while he slept.

  And now, she never would.

  It was dusk outside the tent. Shadows melted into dim evening light, and Kella would have missed the page if he had not asked, “Will you come to the cooking fires, then?”

  “No. Just back to the path.” She drew her cloak high over her shoulders, settling the hood so that it hid her face. It would not do to encounter anyone she knew in the camp. Not now. Not when she had a solid path beneath her feet for the first time in weeks.

  And, for once, her luck held. She left the Great Clearing and made her way along the wide forest path. She found the narrower trail she needed. She arrived at the Greenbank, and she followed the stream until full darkness had settled over the forest.

  Her own hem became stained with red clay. Twice, she slipped, and only the strength in her hands, her strength and her speed at reaching out for strong grasses and spindly trees, kept her from splashing into the stream.

  She reached the fork in the waterway, and she chose the left branch. She could smell the sharp otria beside her. The riverbed turned to the north, and she followed it easily. The moon had risen now, high enough that she could make her way without difficulty. She could smell the spruce trees around her.

  There! That fallen tree was new since the last time she had walked beside the Greenbank. Something about it seemed wrong, out of place. She crossed it quickly and made her way past the stony tumble of an abandoned huntsman’s cottage.

  She should almost be there now.… She should be able to see something, something indicating that a northern woman was camping beside the waterway.… She should–

  “Halt!” The command was quiet in the night-time, but sharp enough that there could be no doubt of its serious intent. Kella blinked, and she made out glinting steel in a soldier’s hand. “Who disturbs the forest’s sleep?”

  “It is I,” Kella said, casting back her hood. “Kella Herb Witch. I come to see Jalina and Mite.” She swallowed and added their true names. “Mareka and Marekanoran.”

  There was a whispered consultation between two guards, and one slipped through the underbrush that grew down to the river. It was not supposed to be like this, Kella thought. She was supposed to have saved much money from her labors. She was supposed to have turned the northern soldiers in the Great Clearing, used them to her own advantage.

  Kella was the one who had been turned, though. She was the one who had been changed by her encounters with all the strangers in her world.

  Once, it had been simple. She had known how to use her herbs. She had known the rights of a handsel, and she had known her own obligations, and she had lived by both. Crestman had destroyed all that, though, with his wicked hands and his long, sharp blade.

  Maybe things would be different when Kella was through. The northerners would leave. The Fellowship would leave. They would take the gift that she had left for them, take Rani Trader, and all would be as before. All would be peaceful, and quiet, and the same.

  In the time that Kella had been thinking, Jalina’s guards had come to some decision. The first one, the one who had challenged her, held his post. The other led her up the riverbank, took her behind a massive clump of tree roots. He knocked once on a carefully concealed door, and then he stepped back.

  Jalina answered the door herself, as if she were a common woman, as if she were no queen. “Kella!”

  She held a candle in her hand, a fine beeswax taper, and its golden light softened her dark hair. She was tiny, Kella thought. No wonder she’d had such trouble bearing a child, bearing a living son.

  “Good even,” Kella said, and her voice was as gruff as ever.

  “What brings you here? How did you find me?”

  “I’m an herb witch, aren’t I? I know my forest.” If Jalina was surprised, she managed to hide it. “I’ve come to check on the little one. How is Mite?”

  “He’s fine,” Jalina said, her surprise melting into puzzlement. “Why wouldn’t he be?”

  “He’s sleeping well?” Kella asked, momentarily dodging the question.

  “Yes. The moonbane works. That is, he’s not sleeping through the night yet, but he’s still so young.” A note of concern shimmered through Jalina’s pride. “Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing serious.” Kella heard the lie in the back of her head, spoke it without hesitation. “Sometimes, though, the benefits of moonbane pass. Some children grow more restless than before they drank the herb. The problem can be especially acute with early boys. If they do not sleep, they fail to grow properly. They start to fuss during the day, and they stop taking milk.…” She trailed off suggestively.

  “Well, he has been difficult the past few days. I thought that was just a phase.”

  Kella nodded grimly at the young mother’s blossoming concern. A phase. Every baby had them. If Mite had not been fussy, then Kella would have suggested something else–that he was fixing his eyes on one moving point, or he was failing to clap his hands together. She would have snared Jalina. She would have gotten to Mite somehow.

  She needed to. Her life depended on it.

  She shook her head. She hadn’t much time, but she must not push the young mother too hard. “I’ve brought something for him. It’s a gentle tisane. Actually, truth be told, it’s mostly mint, but it has a little something more. It will settle him down, put him right to sleep.”

  Jalina looked to the blanket before her hearth, to the child who was holding onto his own feet and cooing. “If you think it’s necessary,” she said doubtfully. “I’ll give it to him tonight.”

  “As long as I’m here, I can brew it myself.” Kella produced the four packets from her skirts. “There’s a bit of a trick to the mixing. Order is important, you know.”

  “I– Well.…” Kella could see the indecision; she knew that Jalina’s common sense told her to ignore the witch, to protect her baby. Kella also knew that Mite would not have lived this long, not without the herb witch’s earlier potions.

  And Jalina seemed to remember that last point on her own. “Go ahead,” she said. “Mix the potion.”

  Kella nodded, doing all she could to make her old eyes sympathetic. “Come sit with me by the fire. Talk to me while I work.”

  Jalina came to the fireside, pulling up a low stool while she watched the witch. “What is that?” she asked, as Kella opened the first of the herb packets.

  “Powdered dara bark.”

  “What does it do?”

  “It brings deep sleep,” Kella said. And she wasn’t completely lying.

  “And that?” Jalina watched as Kella measured out the second powder, stirring it into the first with a quartet of fast, whipping strokes.

  “Pollen from the ataline flower.”

  Jalina shook her head, as if Kella were muttering gibberish. “And what will it add?”

  “It regulates the heart. Makes for sounder sleep.” Again, that was the literal truth.

  Jalina did not ask about the last two elements, mint and something else. Instead, she watched Kella’s mixing in silence, observing as the herb witch poured the combination from one cup to another, once, twice, three times, four. Jalina’s attention was half-snag
ged by the child who played on her hearth; she crossed to the blanket and gathered up her son.

  When Kella had finished preparing the potion, Jalina stared at her with dark, earnest eyes. “Explain again why this is necessary.”

  Kella thought about the true answer. She might explain about the soldier man, about the murder that she had seen in Crestman’s eyes when he caught her beneath her white banner, about the demands that he had made, about how he had threatened Kella’s own life if she did not do as he instructed. She might tell how she had realized that she could never stay in Sarmonia, how the Sisters would never trust her, never let her bind another handsel for all the rest of her days. She might say how she was tired, so tired, how she had never intended for everything to spin so far out of control.

  But she had not created all the webs of deceit on her own. Jalina was responsible for her own actions. The young mother had sought aid from Kella under false pretenses. Jalina had come to the forest pretending to be someone she was not, masquerading as a common woman, an ordinary mother hoping to bear a healthy son.

  Kella might have refused to help Jalina if she’d known the truth! She might have refused to be drawn into the tangle of northerners, into their conflicting alliances. It was all well and good for Kella to have passed time with her traveling man, but she had never bargained on Crestman, on the sobbing Father Siritalanu, on Rani Trader.

  Jalina should have told the truth. The lies invalidated the handsel! Jalina was responsible for what was about to happen. Jalina had made it come to pass.

  Kella raised her eyes, met the mother’s troubled gaze. “It will help your son to sleep,” she said. “It will complement the moonbane that we gave him before. Here. You give him a swallow. Place it on his lips. Let him lick it. The mint tastes good. The potion is sweet.”

  Jalina still hung back. “I’m just not sure.… He hasn’t truly had any problems sleeping, no more than any boy his age.”

  “But is his sleep deep? Is it what he needs to grow into a strong and healthy man?”

  “I –”