Rules of Ascension: Book One of Winds of the Forelands

by DAVID B. COE

  They filled themselves with stew—Grinsa ate three helpings and he lost count of how many Trin had. They also drank a good deal of ale. Tired and slightly drunk, Grinsa was gathering himself to say goodnight to his friends when someone knocked on the halfclosed door to their small room.

  Grinsa and Trin exchanged a look.

  “Who is it?” the heavy man called.

  In response, the door swung open, and there, framed by the doorway, stood a tall Qirsi man with long white hair, a thin white beard and mustache, and eyes as bright and yellow as an owl’s. Grinsa knew that he had seen the man before, but until Trin spoke, he couldn’t remember where.

  “Cousin,” his friend said without enthusiasm, a weak smile on his lips as he looked toward the door. “Are you here as the duke’s man or as a Qirsi?”

  The first minister. Of course.

  “I wasn’t aware that I had to choose, cousin,” Fotir answered, his tone no warmer than Trin’s had been. “But I’m not here at the duke’s request, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It’s not. What is it that you want?”

  The first minister stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him. “I’d like to know which of you was present at Lord Tavis’s Fating today.”

  Before Grinsa could speak Trin raised a meaty hand, silencing him and Cresenne. “Why do you want to know?”

  “The boy was quite distraught afterward. The duke and duchess were concerned.”

  “That’s a common reaction, cousin. If I had five qinde for every boy or girl who went crying home to mother and father after a gleaning …” He shrugged. “Well, let’s just say I’d be even fatter than I am.”

  “Is it common as well for a duke’s son to arrive late and drunk at a formal dinner, to attack his liege man with a blade, and then disappear into the night?”

  “Gods have mercy!” Grinsa whispered.

  Fotir looked at him, narrowing his eyes. “It was you?”

  “Yes. How’s the MarCullet boy?”

  “He’ll be all right. He has a deep cut on his forearm, but it’s nothing too serious.”

  Grinsa almost offered to return to the castle with him to help with the healing, but no doubt the duke had his own healers. Besides, he could not afford to reveal so much.

  “Well, now you know it was Grinsa,” Trin said. “If there’s nothing else, you can be on your way.”

  Fotir took a chair from the nearest table, placed it next to Grinsa’s, and sat, as if he hadn’t heard Trin’s comment. “What can you tell me about Lord Tavis’s Fating?” he asked, his eyes fixed on Grinsa’s.

  “Nothing at all,” Trin said pointedly. “You know that, Fotir. Gleanings are a private matter. We’re not to share them with anyone.”

  “I also know,” the first minister said, glaring at the heavy man, “that gleanings are not always what they seem. You have as much to do with what those children see as the Qiran does. Perhaps more.”

  “That’s only true of the Determinings,” Trin said, sounding defensive. “The Fatings come from the stone.”

  “Only because you let them. There’s nothing to stop you from controlling the Fatings in the same way. Isn’t that so?”

  “What do you want to know about Tavis’s Fating?” Grinsa asked, drawing Fotir’s gaze.

  “I’d like to know what he saw.”

  Grinsa shook his head. “That I can’t tell you. As Trin said, it’s a private matter. You’ll have to ask Tavis.”

  Fotir clenched his jaw. “That could be difficult, given that no one knows where he is. His mother is afraid that he threw himself off the north wall of the castle. The captain of the guard is planning a search of the rocks below at dawn if he isn’t found tonight.”

  “I’m sorry. But I don’t see how knowing what he saw in the Qiran will help you find him. Isn’t it enough that he’s troubled?”

  “I suppose,” the first minister muttered, looking down at the worn floor. An instant later he met Grinsa’s gaze again. “Can you at least tell me if what he saw was real?”

  “It was real,” Grinsa said. He considered saying more, but quickly thought better of it. He had spoken the truth. That would have to be enough for now.

  “You know what he saw. Are you surprised that he’d behave this way in response to what the stone showed him?”

  Grinsa looked away, exhaling through his teeth. “No.”

  Fotir nodded. “I see. I can’t say that I’m surprised.”

  “I spoke with him briefly before his Fating,” Grinsa said. “It wasn’t an easy conversation.”

  “I don’t imagine. What’s your point?”

  “I’m not trying to make a point. I’m wondering about the source of your concern for the boy. When I spoke with him he was arrogant and hostile, and he seemed to have little use for me or my magic. He didn’t strike me as the type to inspire much loyalty, particularly from a Qirsi minister.”

  “Have you met his father, cousin?”

  “No,” Grinsa said, “though I know that he hasn’t been very accepting of Yegor and Aurea’s marriage.”

  “You’re quick to judge. Too quick, it seems to me.” Fotir glanced at Trin for just an instant. “It shouldn’t surprise me, given the company you keep. But it’s time the Qirsi understood that there’s more to measuring the worth of an Eandi than just knowing his or her feelings toward our people. The duke is a thoughtful, intelligent man, certainly far more so than many Qirsi I know. He has his faults, as all men do, but he’ll be a fine king. Regardless of what his son may or may not be, Javan does inspire loyalty.”

  “Spoken like the pet of an Eandi lord,” Trin said.

  The first minister stood abruptly. “I should have known better than to come here. You’re fools in a circus, nothing more. You think we’re so different. Where would you be without the Eandi? Do you really think your Revel could survive without them? There are Qirsi settlements throughout Eibithar. Yes, they’re small, but they exist nevertheless. Yet, I never hear of the Revel stopping in any of them. It’s always the cities, the courts of Eandi lords. You’re just like me, all of you. Except that I’m the duke’s minister, and you’re his entertainment.”

  He turned smartly and stepped out of the room, not bothering to look at any of them again.

  Grinsa and his companions sat in silence for a few moments. Then Trin began to laugh quietly.

  “There goes the fool,” he said. “His hair and his eyes are the right color, but his blood runs Eandi.”

  It was an old barb, dating back to the wars and the betrayal of the Qirsi army by Carthach, a Qirsi officer who, in exchange for gold and a promise of asylum for himself and his warriors, taught the Forelanders the secrets of defeating Qirsi magic. That his people still used it, that it could still be said with such venom, seemed to Grinsa terribly sad.

  “I’m not concerned with his blood,” Grinsa said, standing and starting toward the door. “I’m concerned with Tavis’s.”

  He made his way quickly through the main room of the inn, which was still quite crowded, and hurried out into the lane. Fotir was a short distance off, his back to Grinsa as he strode toward the castle, his white hair illuminated by the moons.

  “First Minister, wait!” Grinsa called.

  The man stopped and turned.

  “What is it you want?” he asked, as Grinsa stopped in front of him.

  “Simply to apologize. Trin doesn’t speak for me. If you say that the duke is worthy of your friendship, I believe you, without judgment.”

  Fotir eyed him suspiciously, but after a few seconds he nodded. “Is that all?”

  “I’d like to help, if I can.”

  “What makes you think that you can be of any help to us?”

  Grinsa shrugged. “I’m a gleaner. My power runs deeper than just reading the stone. Perhaps I can help you that way.”

  “Do you have any other powers, cousin?”

  Desperate as he was to make amends for what his gleaning had wrought, Grinsa could not keep the lie f
rom springing to his lips. He had been hiding the truth for far too long. “No.”

  “Well,” Fotir said, “as it happens, I’m a gleaner as well. I’m also a summoner of mists and winds and a shaper. The castle has several healers and one woman who speaks the language of beasts.” He smiled thinly. “The last thing we need is another Qirsi helping us with our search, especially one of such limited talents.”

  For the second time that night, the first minister turned and walked away from him, and this time Grinsa did not follow.

  “His kind doesn’t look for help from the likes of us,” came a voice from behind him.

  Grinsa turned and saw Trin and Cresenne standing a short distance away. He hadn’t even heard them approach.

  “We are his kind,” Grinsa said with more fervor than he had intended.

  Trin gave a gentle smile. “No, my friend, we’re not. I’d have thought you would understand that by now.”

  Grinsa tried to smile in return, but knew that he failed. “I guess I’m just slow to learn.”

  “Perhaps. Or maybe you’re slow to abandon hope. There’s no shame in that.”

  “Thank you, Trin,” Grinsa said, caught off guard by the fat man’s kindness.

  “I’m heading back to my room now,” Trin said. “I have a skin of wine there that I’d be happy to share.” He looked from one of them to the other, an eyebrow raised.

  Grinsa followed his gaze to Cresenne and found that she was already watching him, a coy smile on her lips.

  “Ah,” Trin said knowingly. “I thought not. Very well, I’ll leave the two of you. Do try to get some sleep. We’ve a busy day ahead.”

  Grinsa and Cresenne stood together in the moonlight for some time, watching Trin walk away. Then they faced each other.

  “Let’s walk,” she said, the smile still on her face. “This is my first time in Curgh.”

  They started east, away from the sanctuary and the castle, back toward the marketplace. There was still music coming from the center of the city, and Grinsa had little doubt that it would continue until dawn. This was the Revel’s first night in Curgh. Few people would get any sleep tonight.

  “You’re concerned about the duke’s son.” She offered it as a statement, but she was regarding him closely.

  “I am. What I said before was true: he was difficult to talk to and he seemed to have a temper. But to take a blade to his liege man …” He trailed off, shaking his head.

  “That must have been quite a Fating.”

  He nodded. “It was. I’m not certain that I would have taken it much better.”

  “Really?” she said, sounding surprised. “What was it he saw?”

  He looked over at her. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  She met his gaze for an instant, then looked down. “Of course,” she said. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “It’s all right.”

  She appeared so young just then, her smooth skin almost seeming to glow with moonlight and the glimmer of the street torches. A light breeze stirred her hair and she brushed a few strands away from her brow. Grinsa thought about stopping her there on the street and taking her in his arms to kiss her. Instead he faced forward again and continued to walk.

  “You were very quiet at the inn,” he said. “Were Trin and I talking too much?”

  She let out a small laugh. “Not at all. I was listening, enjoying your stories about the Revel. Then that man came in.”

  “Fotir?”

  “Yes. I didn’t think it wise to get in the middle of all that.”

  Grinsa nodded. “You were right. It seems sometimes that the rifts among the Qirsi are even more difficult to bridge than those among the kingdoms of the Forelands.”

  She nodded. “It was that way in Wethyrn as well.”

  “It makes no sense,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ve too much in common to be at war with ourselves this way.”

  “Maybe. But the Qirsi feud is as old as the kingdoms and Carthach’s treachery.”

  “The Qirsi feud?”

  She colored and looked away again. “That’s what they call it on the Wethy Crown.”

  “I suppose it’s apt. And do they also still refer to Carthach’s choice as treachery?”

  “Some do.”

  “You just did.”

  She smiled, though there was a brittleness to it. “That’s what my father always called it. I do it by habit more than anything else.”

  He wasn’t certain that he believed her, but it was not a subject worth pursuing. Discussing Carthach’s betrayal with a Qirsi was as risky as asking an Eandi whether he or she followed the Old Faith or the Path of Ean. Most of the Qirsi in the Forelands viewed Carthach as a traitor, a man who abandoned their people in the time of their greatest need, for a few bars of gold. But some, Grinsa among them, saw Carthach as something else.

  The Qirsi Wars were going to end badly for the invaders, regardless of what Carthach did. That much was clear by the time he struck his deal with the leaders of the Eandi army. The Qirsi advance across the Forelands had been stopped, and the two armies had fallen into a brutal war of slow attrition, one that the Forelands’ defenders, who vastly outnumbered the invaders, were bound to win. By crossing over to the Eandi side, and showing them how to defeat the Qirsi magic and end the war swiftly, Carthach might have saved tens of thousands of lives.

  There was an old Qirsi saying: “The traitor walks a lonely path.” As one might expect, Carthach was reviled by the Qirsi. But he was never truly embraced by the Forelanders. They gave him gold and asylum, just as they promised, but he lived the rest of his life truly an exile, friendless, loveless, and scorned.

  Even after his death, even after the Qirsi had lived for centuries in peace among the Eandi of the Forelands, Carthach remained the most hated man in Qirsi lore. Among the Eandi he was largely forgotten. Most Qirsi avoided discussing him at all, especially in the company of the Eandi. But his betrayal lay at the root of nearly every conflict that had divided his people since. Certainly it was the source of Trin’s hostility toward Fotir. Those who hated Carthach the most believed that the Qirsi who served in the courts of the Forelands’ kingdoms repeated his betrayal every day.

  This was not to say that Fotir, or others in similar positions throughout the Forelands, had forgiven Carthach. On the contrary, some of them were nearly as vehement in their loathing for the man as Trin. But they saw their own influence as a way to improve the standing of the Qirsi in the northlands, to help their people become something more than merely a vanquished race.

  Grinsa, while acknowledging that there was wisdom, perhaps even a sort of honor, in Carthach’s actions, could not in good conscience align himself fully with either side. There were real dangers in the rage still carried by men and women who felt as Trin did, dangers that were beginning to manifest themselves in frightening ways in the Forelands. Yet there was also something offensive in the righteousness of men like Fotir. Nearly nine centuries after the end of the Qirsi Wars, Grinsa’s people had done little to ease the pain of their defeat.

  He and Cresenne walked for some distance without speaking. He sensed her unease and was very much aware of his own, but he could think of nothing to say.

  “It seems we’re on opposite sides of this,” she finally said, her voice subdued.

  “Yes, it does.”

  She halted, reaching out for his arm to stop him as well and make him face her.

  “Does that mean that we can’t … ?” She stopped. Even in the pale light of Panya and Ilias he could see that she was blushing.

  “No,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that at all.”

  Their eyes met. After a moment Cresenne stepped forward and, lacing her fingers through his white hair, pulled his lips to hers, kissing him deeply.

  “I’m glad,” she whispered, resting her head against his chest.

  Grinsa smiled. “So am I.” He gave a small laugh. “Trin was right. This is better than waiting six turns.”

&nb
sp; She smiled up at him and they kissed a second time. While they were kissing, though, Cresenne suddenly yawned.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, starting to laugh. “I’m very tired.”

  Grinsa frowned. “Yawning during a kiss, especially a first kiss—”

  “It was our second,” she broke in, still giggling.

  “Still,” he said, smiling now himself. “That’s a terrible thing to do to a man’s pride.”

  “You’re right,” she said, trying with little success to stop laughing. “I’m terribly sorry.”

  He held out a hand to her. “Come on. I’ll walk you to your room.

  With that, her laughter did stop. “But our walk.”

  “We’ll be in Curgh for another half turn,” he said, gently brushing the hair back from her brow. It was as soft as Sanbiri silk. “And if you’d like, I’ll walk with you every night.”

  She took his hand. “I’d like that,” she said, although before she could finish, she had to suppress another yawn.

  They both laughed, turning once more to walk back to the inn and their rooms.

  Cadel had ended his singing performance some time ago, making his apologies as he left the other performers, claiming to be weary from the journey to Curgh. Jedrek had made a point of remaining to sing on. No sense drawing any more attention to themselves than was necessary. Cadel would have liked to stay as well. They sounded good tonight, and there were some fine musicians here for the Revel. But he had an appointment to keep. He had made his way, silent and watchful, over the city wall and around the base of the castle to the rocky promontory overlooking the Strait of Wantrae. There he had waited. And waited. Until his patience began to wear as thin as parchment.

  Yes, they were paying him handsomely, but that did not give them the right to treat him like this. He almost wished that he hadn’t taken so much gold from them in Thorald two years before. Ever since then, they had acted as though he was theirs to do with what they pleased, as if he were a servant, or a mount. No amount of gold was worth this.

  As Panya reached her zenith and began her long slow arc downward to the western horizon, he resolved to leave.

  “Let them find me tomorrow,” he said aloud, his voice sounding small amid the pounding of the waves below and the rush of the water wind.